Tadek snorted with laughter at the sarcasm. “Your father told you all that?”
“In part. The rest of the voids I filled in myself. My father didn’t particularly like to talk about his Weimar Berlin past. I only began asking him questions directly when all sorts of people began appearing on our doorstep. I’d never seen them before; the butler – we had a butler already by then – slammed the door in their faces sometimes without even announcing them to my father. He couldn’t imagine that his employer could have ever kept such company, as they had claimed and one couldn’t quite blame him. My father was Standartenführer Neumann by then, a dignified and thoroughly politically-reliable man.”
“Former acquaintances from the dives?”
“Yes. They still waited for him right on the steps and spent the night near his staff car, so that in the morning, if the driver didn’t chase them away first, they could ask him to say a word for them. I saw them through the window a few times. It was always the same scenario: ‘Otto, it’s me, Willy, from Bogart’s joint, surely, you remember? I brought pork for the christening of little Georgy. We had such a feast that day, do you remember?’ My father would always grab them by the sleeve and drag them away from the driver and say the words to them that I could never hear. I just remember he looked almost terrified whenever one of them would appear and call Georg, Georgy, in the American way, and ask my father to do something about the summons they received from the Gestapo. The Gestapo part I heard a few times because they would invariably raise their voice when pleading with him and my father would try and hush them and then put them in the car if they refused to leave and drive away somewhere with them… They never returned twice. I always wondered what happened to them.”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“Of course, I did. I was much too curious for my own good.”
“And what did he say?”
“That they were criminals and that they ought to go to jail.” She pondered something for a long moment. “I’m thinking that is where he took them all. Straight to jail. Or, perhaps, even worse. Asked somebody from the Gestapo for a favor. He had new friends and the new friends couldn’t find out about the old ones, or it would be the end of everything. He had a very good career and a very bright future before him. He finally had a lot of money, a new house, and five domestics working for him. Two adjutants and a driver. He couldn’t lose it all because of some Willy, who smuggled pork for his firstborn’s christening, from the countryside and who was stupid enough to get caught on the suspicion of falsifying the papers for some Jews.”
In the silence of the room, the rustling of the paper sounded like a whisper as Gerlinde turned the page and moved the album closer to Tadek. “This is Georgy’s christening. This is Willy. He died in Dachau.”
“Your father told you?”
“Yes. Sometimes, he would tell me things. I think it was too difficult for him to bear it in silence. He never told Georg that he used to be Georgy at one point. Only to me he would tell these things, sometimes. I think, he knew, on some instinctual level, that I would understand. Or, at least, that I would ask the right questions, not the ones that my brothers would ask. Or, he was afraid they’d go and denounce him. Such things happened, too and particularly with Hitlerjugend members. And both of my brothers were exemplary Hitlerjugend leaders before they joined the SS. I think, he was equally afraid of his own past and of his own future – what he did to his own sons, that is. He was afraid of many things, my father.”
For some time, Tadek sat and stared at the face of the Bohemian Berliner with that roguish look and longish hair as the fashion had it in those days. Gerlinde was right, they all looked so happy in those first photos from the twenties. Gruppenführer Neumann never looked happy in any of the photos Tadek saw.
“Why?” That was all he could come up with. “If he never was a truly convinced nationalist; if he knew that it was all wrong… why?”
Gerlinde shrugged slightly, another wistful smile passing over her face without reaching her eyes. “It is my profound conviction that he simply got so used to playing the role before all of these people and then suddenly couldn’t shed his costume anymore. He lied to everyone around – his new friends, his own children, his own wife but what’s worst of all, to himself, about what he was. And maybe those two personalities eventually merged together and even he couldn’t separate them any longer. They became the Siamese twins, Gruppenführer Neumann and him. Still two different people but forever locked in one body. There was no ridding of one without killing the other.” She looked up sharply from the album. “He wrote to me, you know.”
Tadek blinked, unsure if she really just said it. Gerlinde was suddenly standing before him, then squatting on her haunches and digging wildly under the mattress until she pulled out a small, square piece of paper folded in two and thrust it into his hands.
“Read it.”
With great hesitation, Tadek reached for the letter, still unable to process that she just, in fact, handed it to him of her own volition. Slowly, the words came into focus, written by an unsteady hand of someone in a rush.
My dearest Gerlinde!
I hope this letter finds you well. I learned about your Mutti already here, in Italy, and despite my profound grief that this news brought me, I ought to say I celebrated in secret because you, my little warrior, found in yourself enough strength not to follow her example. In no way,
