Let’s go back to the weekend of the party. At noon on Friday the guests started to arrive. I was ecstatic, walking with my sister in the sun and waiting for your father to arrive to introduce them to each other. At last he appeared, in his military jacket, white gloves, and captain’s cap, and carrying a dress sword. He had dressed as he would for the engagement on Saturday night, and he said he’d done it to impress me. It made me laugh.
But when I introduced him to Brunhilda, something odd happened. Your father took her hand and held it for a little longer than was proper or appropriate. And she seemed bewildered, as though struck by a bolt of lightning. At the time I thought-fool that I was-that it was just embarrassment, but Brunhilda had never displayed even a hint of that emotion in her life.
Your father had just returned from a mission to Africa. He had brought me an exotic perfume used by the natives in the colonies, made with sandalwood and molasses, I believe. It had a strong and very distinctive scent but was also delicate and lovely. I clapped like a fool. I was delighted with it, and I promised him I would wear it for the engagement celebrations.
That night, while we were all asleep, Brunhilda let herself into your father’s bedroom. The room was completely dark, and Brunhilda was naked under her dressing gown, wearing only the perfume your father had given me. Without a sound she got into bed and made love to him. I still find it difficult to write these words, Paul, even now that twenty years have passed.
Your father, believing I had wanted to give him an advance on our wedding night, didn’t resist. At least, that was what he told me the following day as I looked him in the eye.
He swore to me, and swore again, that he hadn’t noticed anything until it was all over and Brunhilda spoke for the first time. She told him she loved him and asked him to run away with her. Your father threw her out of the room and the next morning he took me aside and told me what had happened.
“We can cancel the wedding if you want to,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “I love you, and I’ll marry you if you swear to me that you truly had no idea it was my sister.”
Your father swore again, and I believed him. After all these years I’m not sure what to think, but there is too much bitterness in my heart now.
The engagement went ahead, as did the wedding in Munich three months later. By then it was easy to make out your aunt’s swollen belly under the red lace dress she wore, and everyone was happy except for me, because I knew all too well whose child it was.
Finally the baron found out too. Not from me. I never confronted my sister or reproached her for what she had done, because I am a coward. Nor did I tell anyone what I knew. But it had to come out sooner or later: Brunhilda probably threw it in the baron’s face during an argument about one of his affairs. I don’t know for certain, but the fact is he found out, and this was partly to blame for what happened later.
I, too, became pregnant soon afterward, and you came into the world while your father was on what would be his final mission to Africa. The letters he wrote to me were increasingly dark, and for some reason-I don’t know why exactly-he felt less and less proud of the job he was doing.
One day he stopped writing altogether. The next letter I received was from the Imperial Navy, informing me that my husband had deserted and that I had a duty to notify the authorities if I heard from him.
I cried bitterly. I still don’t know what prompted him to desert, nor do I want to know. I learned too many things about Hans Reiner after his death, things that do not fit at all with the portrait I’d made of him. That was why I never spoke to you about your father, because he was not a role model or someone to be proud of.
Toward the end of 1904 your father returned to Munich without my knowledge. He came back secretly, with his first lieutenant, a man by the name of Nagel who had accompanied him everywhere. Instead of coming home, he went to seek refuge at the baron’s mansion. From there he sent me a brief note, and this is exactly what it said:
“Dear Ilse: I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I’m trying to fix it. I’ve asked your brother-in-law for help, and another good friend. They might be able to save me. Sometimes the greatest treasure is hidden in the same place as the greatest destruction, or at least I’ve always thought so. With love, Hans.”
I’ve never understood what your father meant by those words. I read the note over and over again, though I burned it a few hours after it arrived, for fear it might fall into the wrong hands.
As for your father’s death, all I know is that he was staying at the Schroeders’ mansion and one night there was a fierce argument after which he was dead. His body was thrown off a bridge into the Isar under the cover of darkness.
I don’t know who killed your father. Your aunt told me what I’m telling you here, almost to the word, though she was not present when it happened. She told me with tears in her eyes, and I knew that she was still in love with him.
The boy Brunhilda gave birth to, Jurgen, was the spitting image of your father. The love and unhealthy devotion his mother always showed him was hardly surprising. His wasn’t the only life to be thrown off course that dreadful night.
Defenseless and scared, I accepted Otto’s proposal that I should go and live with them. For him it was at once an expiation for what had been done to Hans and a way of punishing Brunhilda, reminding her who it was that Hans had preferred. For Brunhilda it became her own way of punishing me for having stolen the man she’d taken a fancy to, even though this man had never belonged to her.
And for me it was a way of surviving. Your father had left me nothing but his debts, when the government deigned to pronounce him dead some years later, although his body never turned up. So you and I lived in that mansion, which contained nothing but hatred.
There is one other thing. To me, Jurgen has never been anything less than your brother, because although he was conceived in Brunhilda’s womb I have considered him my son. I have never been able to show him affection, but he is a part of your father, a man I loved with all my soul. Seeing him every day, even for a few moments, has been like having my Hans back with me again.
My cowardice and selfishness have shaped your life, Paul. I never wanted your father’s death to affect you too. I tried to lie to you and hide the facts so that when you were older you wouldn’t go out in search of some ridiculous vengeance. Do not do that-please.
If this is the letter that ends up in your hands, which I doubt, I want you to know that I love you very much, and all I have tried to do through my actions is to protect you. Forgive me.
Your mother who loves you,
Ilse Reiner
58
When he had finished reading his mother’s words, Paul cried for a long time.
He shed tears for Ilse, who had suffered her entire life because of love and who, out of love, had made mistakes. He shed tears for Jurgen, who had been born into the worst possible situation. He shed tears for himself, for the boy who had cried for a father who hadn’t deserved it.
As he fell asleep he was overcome by a strange sense of peace, a feeling he didn’t recall ever having experienced before. Whatever the outcome of the madness they were about to attempt in a few hours’ time, he had achieved his goal.
Manfred woke him, tapping him gently on the back. Julian was a few meters away, eating a sausage sandwich.
“It’s seven p.m.”
“Why did you let me sleep for so long?”
“You needed the rest. In the meantime I went shopping. I’ve brought everything you said. The towels, a steel spoon, the shovel, everything.”
“So let’s begin.”
Manfred made Paul take the sulfonamide to stop his wounds from becoming infected, then the two of them sent Julian to the car.
“Can I start it?” the boy asked.
