Silence (2 page)

Chapter 2

February 18, 1998

Maren Lubisch was sitting in the living room that evening, hunched over one of the photo albums. Robert sat down beside her and looked with astonishment at the pictures of his father in his midforties. Maren laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was you.” He had the same high forehead and prematurely gray hair, the same straight nose, and the narrow, somewhat severe mouth. From his mother’s side he had inherited only his physique. Whereas his father was a rather hulking presence in the pictures, Robert had a much different build, his limbs being long and slender.

One photo showed them both in the study, behind the desk. Robert, age nine or ten, was on the armrest of the old mahogany chair, beside his father. They both looked surprised. Maren was about to turn the page when he put his hand between the pages and pulled the album closer.

In the photo, an open cigar box lay on the blotter.

“Wait.”

He fetched the cigar box and placed it next to the album.

“Do you see that?” He pointed at the picture and felt the kind of unease that arises when something long forgotten takes shadowy form. He knew something about those papers.

He stroked the mother-of-pearl oval and opened the lid. The faint, sour-sweet scent of fine tobacco wafted toward him. The smell brought back memories. It was as if he could feel the pressure of the armrest on his buttocks and thighs as he pictured those few intimate moments he had had with his father.

“I deserted.” He heard the old man’s voice as if from a great distance.

He had been fighting with an armored division in the lower Rhine, and when the Allies’ big offensive began and his two closest comrades fell down dead within minutes of each other, he lost his nerve.

Yes, he remembered it now.

His father had said, “I ran without thinking. Just away, away from the front. Away from all those dead men.”

And one of those dead bodies had been SS Squad Leader Wilhelm Peters. His identity card was in his breast pocket, a folded sheet of paper with a photograph rendered unrecognizable by dried blood. In his coat pocket he found the safe-conduct pass, a small, linen-bound booklet. He removed the dead man’s overcoat and tunic, appropriated the papers for himself, and, as SS Squad Leader Wilhelm Peters, managed to get through the German lines to the Ruhr. What he actually wanted to do was get home to Breslau, but people said the Russians were there and civilians were trekking long distances to get away from their homeland. In the Ruhr, he got rid of the coat and tunic and was taken prisoner under his real name, Friedhelm Lubisch. He was not released until 1948. He had tried to trace his parents and sister, and found out two years later, through the Red Cross, that they had stayed in Breslau and died there.

Robert Lubisch sat in silence for a long time.

He had gone into his father’s study many times, in those days, and asked to hear the story. Over and over again. How close they had been.

Maren took the portrait of the woman out of the box. “What about the woman? Didn’t he say anything about her?”

“No,” said Robert, shaking his head. “He never showed me that picture, or if he did, I don’t remember.”

“Could it be your grandmother? Or an aunt?”

“Perhaps.”

Maren turned the photograph over. On the back were the words “Photo Studio Heuer, Kranenburg.”

“Look at this.” She showed him the back of the picture. “Kranenburg’s in the lower Rhine somewhere, isn’t it? Maybe the picture was among this Peters person’s papers. Maybe she was his girlfriend or his wife?”

They sat up late into the night, talking and speculating about who the woman might be, and the man too, this SS squad leader. Maren said, “SS squad leader” repeatedly; the “SS” hissed between her teeth, as if the letters had to be spat out. All at once the documents became important. Significant. Serious. The man was dead, perhaps the woman too. By turns, again and again, they reached for the photograph in which this woman smiled at them in an almost intimate manner. That was not how one smiled at a stranger. Not even at a photographer. Who was present? This Wilhelm Peters? Or Robert’s father? After all, he had been there at the end of the war too.

Maren said, “Maybe she’s still alive.”

They did not say any more, and he did not make a decision. But it was working away inside him. Perhaps she really had been this Peters’s girlfriend, but perhaps she had also been close to his father, so close that he had kept her picture all these years. But why had he never shown it, never mentioned the woman?

Perhaps his exalted father, the man above suspicion, had a secret after all. Robert liked this idea. Perhaps a weakness would be revealed, a small dent in the old man’s smooth untouchability, against which he had struggled for so many years.

Robert smiled. It would be a kind of liberation for him to be able to cut his all-powerful father down to size. He wanted to know. Just for himself.

Chapter 3

April 20, 1998

Spring had followed hard upon a mild winter, and the thermometer had risen to a summerlike seventy-seven in recent days. The meadows of the lower Rhine were a rich green, sprinkled with the yellow of dandelions and the occasional long stalk and small pink flowers of lady’s smock. The farms and villages looked as if they had been casually strewn across the plain by a huge hand, groups of houses cowering amid the flat expanse.

Robert Lubisch had been invited to a conference at Raboud University in Nimwegen, and he took the opportunity to investigate Photo Studio Heuer in Kranenburg.

Reaching the place late in the morning, he came upon a roundabout and then a street like a wide slash, on both sides of which the houses of dark red brick were thrust forward like front-row spectators. Small businesses and storefronts lay beneath steep roofs. Only a few people were about.

He parked his car in one of the bays at the side of the street and went into a pub with snow-white net curtains in the windows. The tables had heavy-duty, cream-colored tablecloths, and on them stood small porcelain vases with colorful plastic posies of the kind that could be kept clean with a feather duster. In a flowing hand, a slate by the counter advertised asparagus dishes. It was still early; the restaurant was empty.

A plump woman stood behind the counter, opening letters with a steak knife and casually discarding the empty envelopes into a wastepaper basket at her feet. An elderly man sat opposite her behind a half-full glass of beer, smoking unfiltered cigarettes. When Robert Lubisch took a stool at the bar, they both looked at him expectantly. He wished them a good morning.

“There won’t be any food for another hour,” said the woman. “At twelve.”

He shook his head. “No, no. I didn’t want to eat anything, thank you.”

He ordered an espresso and took the portrait from the pocket of his linen jacket. “I wanted to ask,” he began awkwardly, “whether you could maybe help me out.”

He placed the photograph upside-down on the counter and pointed at the stamp. “I’m looking for this address. Photo Studio Heuer.” He smiled with embarrassment. “It may not be there anymore, but . . .”

The woman, probably the owner, interrupted him. “Heuer, gosh yes, he’s been gone at least twenty years.”

The man leaned over the picture and nodded in agreement. “At least,” he confirmed. He turned on his stool and pointed in no particular direction. “Used to be on the corner over there, where Linnen has his insurance office now.”

“That’s right.” The woman was no longer paying any attention to her mail. “But before Linnen, it was Wiebke Steiner in there, with her children’s clothes.” She folded her arms and looked at Lubisch suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

He hesitated. For a moment he felt it would not be right simply to show them the woman in the picture. That was silly. He knew it. He turned the photo over. “Do you know who this woman is?”

The woman picked up the photo and examined it thoroughly. “Is she supposed to be from Kranenburg?”

Lubisch shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that this photograph was taken at Photo Studio Heuer.”

She handed the photo to the elderly man, who took it in his nicotine-stained fingers and scrutinized it at arm’s length, frowning. He shrugged. “I’m not from around here. Didn’t move here till 1962, and this picture is definitely older than that. But old man Heuer, he’s still alive. Must be about ninety by now.”

The woman was now openly curious. “What is it about this woman? I mean, why are you looking for her?”

Robert Lubisch lied, without really knowing why. A kind of unease was spreading through him. “My mother died recently, and this woman was her best friend when she was young. I happened to be in the area, and I thought maybe I could track her down,” he said, a little too hastily.

The coffee machine let out a concluding hiss and gurgle. The woman placed his espresso in front of him.

“What’s her name?” she asked after a lengthy pause during which she appeared to be considering whether she should believe this stranger.

“That I don’t know, unfortunately.”

She folded her arms beneath her ample bosom. “Hmm. Well, I’m not so sure either . . .” She scrutinized Robert Lubisch without embarrassment and then reached a decision. “But Heuer, he lives with his son in Nütterden.” She reached back, opened a small door in the cabinet behind the bar, and took out a phone book. Licking her fingers repeatedly, she flicked rapidly through the thin pages.

“Here. Norbert Heuer. That’s his son.” She wrote the address and phone number on a waiter’s pad, tore out the page, and handed it to Robert.

He gulped down his espresso, thanked her, and left a generous tip.

When he came out, the sun had brightened. He took off his jacket, laid it on the backseat of his car, and rolled up his sleeves. It was a long shot but, spurred on by his success at the first attempt, he decided to drive to Nütterden.

The single-family home, with its carefully tended front garden, was in a residential area that had probably been developed in the 1960s. As he got out of the car in front of number twenty-three, that same unease came over him again—the feeling that he was getting involved in things that did not concern him. He shook his head. What did Maren always call him? “My personal worrywart.”

He rang the bell, and a woman of about sixty opened the white plastic door with the gold knocker, purely ornamental, in its center. He explained the purpose of his visit, and suddenly the whole thing felt unpleasant. What was he doing bothering people with photos that were at least fifty years old?

For a moment he hoped she would simply send him away. Then he would get into his car and take the most direct route to Nimwegen.

She said, “Well, you’ll be lucky. If it’s all so long ago . . . but come in and ask him yourself.”

In the living room, a slight man was hunched over the newspaper with a magnifying glass. The furniture was brown and too heavy for the small room. The old man looked like a child in the big armchair.

He stood up with effort, and they shook hands. Robert towered over him by almost a foot and a half, and he sat down hurriedly. The old man’s daughter-in-law offered coffee and then left the room.

Heuer looked up with large, watery eyes and waited. Robert thought about Heuer’s profession as he looked through the viewfinder, waiting for the right moment, for that fraction of a second that was worth capturing. He leaned forward and pushed the photograph across the table.

“Perhaps you took this picture?” he asked quietly. “At any rate, it comes from your studio.” He did not know why he was almost whispering.

Heuer picked up the magnifying glass and examined the front and back of the photo carefully. For a moment, Robert Lubisch glimpsed his watery eyes enlarged by the magnifying glass and was reminded of a lake over which mist gathers and never disperses.

“Yes, that’s mine,” the old man said, putting down the picture and magnifying glass. Robert had expected pride in his work, but his “Yes, that’s mine” sounded resigned.

Frau Heuer came in with a tray, passed around coffee cups patterned with pink flowers, and poured coffee from a round-bellied pot with a matching pattern. Nobody spoke. Then she left the room again, and the soft emphasis with which she closed the door behind her gave this encounter an air of mystery.

The old man stirred his coffee, apparently listening to the bright and regular tone of the spoon striking the thin sides of the cup.

Robert waited.

“That’s Therese,” said Heuer, and he too spoke softly. His voice blended with the clinking of the porcelain, and to Robert it sounded as if he had sung the name. Heuer put his spoon to one side and looked up. “Therese Pohl. Later Therese Peters.”

Robert shuffled forward a little in his chair. “Wife of Wilhelm Peters?”

“Yes,” he said. “Wilhelm Peters.”

Robert felt disappointment.

“Wilhelm went missing,” said Heuer, taking a sip of coffee. “He’s been missing ever since.”

Robert frowned. “Wilhelm Peters has never been found?” he asked skeptically.

The old man shook his head slowly. “No. Never.”

“Do you know, perhaps, whether Frau Peters is still alive and where I might find her? Or did they have children?”

He did not know why he was asking the question. In truth, his search ended here. He had not found some secret lover of his father’s. But now the woman had a name, and it was as if she had come a little closer, stepping out of that sepia-hued distance.

Heuer picked up the photograph, and he seemed to be talking to the picture. “She went away too. Not long after . . . She was never heard from again. And . . . no, they had no children.”

“Where did the Peterses live at the time?” asked Robert, trying to curb his increasing disappointment.

“The last place they lived was out of town.” He gestured weakly with his arm. “In the Höver cottage.”

He looked directly at Robert. “But tell me, how did you come to have the picture?”

Robert hesitated briefly, then decided on a half-truth. “It was among my father’s papers.”

For the first time, a smile appeared on the old man’s face. “Yes, yes. Therese. That was one pretty girl. She wouldn’t have stayed alone for long. Perhaps she found happiness after all.”

As Robert was leaving, he stopped for a moment. He simply had to ask. “Herr Heuer, do you remember the photo session? Do you know whether Therese came alone, or with someone?”

The watery eyes shifted, and he stared ahead for several seconds. Then he shook his head. “No. I think she came alone, but it was a long time ago. I can’t remember exactly.”

Robert was standing at the garden fence with Heuer’s daughter-in-law when he asked her the way to the Höver cottage. She told him. “But it was unoccupied until a few years ago,” she said pensively. “It stood empty for nearly forty years. So I should think, if it’s about such an old story, you’d be better off going directly to the Höver farm. Paul and Hanna Höver. They grew up here. They’ll have a better idea, I’m sure.”

Robert Lubisch thanked her.

The Höver farm lay beyond Kranenburg and looked well tended. A narrow asphalt drive led off the main road, past a tall hedge, and to the house. Behind it lay some whitewashed stable blocks. In the open barn stood an old tractor and two trailers. At the house itself, four wide steps led up to a heavy oak door. Terra-cotta pots overflowing with geraniums flanked the entrance.

Before he had even pressed the doorbell, a dog started barking inside the house. He rang twice, and the animal seemed to become more agitated at each ring; it was now yapping immediately behind the door. Robert took a step back.

There was no other sound to be heard. He looked around. There was a large empty space in the barn, beside the tractor, and he could see spots of grease on the floor. It seemed likely that a car was normally parked there.

He looked at his watch. He did not have much more time. There were horses grazing in a field next to the house, and there was a show-jumping area beside it; to the west, beyond the fields, a small house lurked alone in front of a copse of trees.

That had to be the Höver cottage. He could still try there.