Silence (7 page)

Chapter 13

April 22, 1998

Luisa cleared the breakfast table, and Therese, wearing a blue taffeta caftan with matching slim-cut trousers, set off on her daily walk around the bay. The street led steeply downhill past several small hotels, cafés with views, a real estate agent’s office, and a tourist shop. She exchanged a few words in Spanish with the owner of the shop, who was dragging racks of beach toys and postcards out onto the street and complained about the slow start to the season.

The sandy beach was only five hundred yards wide, but there were narrow paths cut into the cliffs to the right and left, and it was possible to walk out at either end and skirt several bays along the water’s edge.

A light breeze had sprung up, and out on the windsurfing school’s platform, beginners in wet suits were struggling with boards and sails. She could hear their shouts and laughter and the rhythmic pounding of the waves. This lightheartedness.

Autumn and winter 1939

The following day Therese had gone to the town hall and asked to see her father.

Herr Grünwald, the policeman, whom she had known since she was a little girl, shook his head as soon as he saw her. He walked her to the door and said, “I’m so sorry, Therese, but there’s nothing I can do. Your father’s in Kleve.” He was about to stroke her cheek, as he used to, but his arm dropped. “It will all be cleared up,” he whispered. “The pastor’s already been, and I heard Colonel Kalder called. I’m sure they’ll release him soon.”

On the third day, she waited for Wilhelm in front of the town hall.

She saw his shock, felt shame mounting in her head and her face turning red. He said good-bye on the steps to two men in SS uniforms, crossed the square, and signaled with a jerk of his head that she should follow him.

She waited a moment before entering the alleyway he had disappeared into. Suddenly, a hand pulled her into an archway that led to a courtyard behind a pair of houses.

“I’m sorry, Therese. You have to believe me. I didn’t know anything about the arrest. I would never have taken you into the Krug with me if I’d known.” His voice was pleading, and Therese was surprised. The idea that Wilhelm might have known about her father’s arrest that evening had not even entered her head.

“That’s not what I think, Wilhelm. Tell me, how is he? Where is he? What is he accused of?”

Wilhelm went on talking, but he had not heard her questions. “Therese, we can’t meet so publicly anymore. You have to understand. Your father has caused us the worst kind of problems, and that evening . . .” He did not look at her. His gaze wandered searchingly over the gray facade of the courtyard wall, pausing on the small darkened windows as if trying to make out silhouettes.

“You shouldn’t have just run away. Can you see that? You made yourself look suspicious. Yourself and me. They questioned me really thoroughly.”

“I’m sorry, Wilhelm. I certainly didn’t mean to get you into trouble.”

He waited a moment, pensive. Then he said, “Your father’s a collaborator, do you understand? They suspect him, together with others, of having smuggled communists and Jews across the border into Holland.”

Therese swallowed hard. She felt the fear in her belly first—a hard chill, like steel, that spread out and slowed her thoughts. Her father’s all-night absences, explained away as house calls by her mother, which she was not supposed to mention to anyone. “Please, Wilhelm, have you seen him? How is he?” Tears were running down her face, and she felt the trembling of her voice in her throat.

He grabbed her by the arm. “I haven’t seen him, but I’ve heard he’s not talking. They’re interrogating him. He has influential advocates—I’m sure they’ll release him soon.” He took her face between his hands and looked at her intently. “Therese, you have to distance yourself from your father. Join the League. Participate. Hollmann thinks if you don’t show that you . . . which side you’re on . . . Do it for my sake, please.” Then he kissed her on the mouth. When he noticed that she did not return his kiss, he took a step back and looked at her penetratingly. “I love you, Therese. Do it for us.”

Her body felt stiff and unmoving; her thoughts were sluggish, and she could not think them through to a conclusion.

Wilhelm loves me
, she thought, searching for some kind of sensation in her wooden body, a feeling that went beyond friendship. A moment of happiness, perhaps, a moment of sincere attraction that demanded a greater closeness. But instead, she wondered why he was making this declaration now, in the secrecy of a courtyard, hurriedly and in a whisper.

And she thought about Alwine, who was in love with Wilhelm and was her best friend.

She lowered her head. “Wilhelm, I need to think.” She stepped hastily out from the archway and into the alley. “Mother will be worried,” she whispered, and walked away at a quickened pace.

Anxiety and loneliness tormented the following days. She did not go to the town hall again.

Later, she had often thought about the distance that appeared between two people when love was the subject and that love was one-sided.

In the evenings that followed, she stood by the living-room window and watched Wilhelm on his way home from the town hall. His path led past her house, and he always looked up. She waited in vain for the impulse to run out, throw herself in his arms, and say, You’re right. I’m confused, and I make things unnecessarily complicated.

Then she would turn away and look over at her mother, who was mending clothes with trembling hands. Her mother did not leave the house anymore.

At night, Margarete Pohl now sat quietly at the kitchen table, gazing out at the darkness beyond the window. She did her daily chores mechanically, often pausing suddenly and staring ahead. Then, as if awakened, she would look around the room in surprise, as if the place were unfamiliar. Her nervousness had left her, and it sometimes seemed to Therese that her mother was glad at least to know where her husband was. Indeed, she had the impression that her mother thought prison was a place of safety for her father.

It was early on a Monday morning. The sun had lost some of its strength, but the days were clear and bright. The trees and hedgerows displayed the reds and golds of fall, and the sweet scent of late-season apples and pears mingled with the earthy smell of freshly plowed, winter-ready fields.

Therese was helping her mother with the laundry. She came out of the cellar with a wicker basket full of boiled linens and put it down in the yard. She used a rag to wipe the lines that were stretched out over five poles. She had tied the little bag of wooden clothes-pegs like an apron in front of her belly. The cold bit into her wet hands as she hung a wet sheet over the line. At that moment she saw him, standing by the back gate to the yard, and she cried out.

He had a gash over his right eyebrow, his left eye was swollen shut, his lips split open. Margarete Pohl came running up the cellar steps and stared at her husband. Then she clasped him in her arms, whimpering, “It’s not true. It can’t be true.”

Over and over again she touched his battered face. Over and over again she repeated the same phrase. Her father was weeping. Therese had never seen her father weep. Her mother pushed him into a chair in the kitchen, poured hot water from the kettle, wiped the crusted blood off his face.

Therese sat down beside him. He reached for her hand. Once her mother had treated the wounds, she took off his shirt and jacket. She staggered back and dropped heavily onto the kitchen bench. His trunk was covered with bruises.

Therese Mende remembered the silence. The kind of silence in which one breathlessly seeks words one does not know. Which one has to invent.

“Those will heal,” said her father, as if there were other things besides, things that would never heal.

Her mother put him to bed. When she came back down, she went at things with more strength, sweeping the kitchen with short, angry strokes of the broom. She, who went through life gently, almost lethargically, now seemed to have summoned up all her reserves. She went up to the bedroom repeatedly, as if to confirm that he really was lying there and that they really had dared to strike him. It was as if she could not believe that, outside, this day was continuing like any other.

That night, Therese was awakened by a sound in her bedroom. When she opened her eyes, her father was sitting on the edge of the bed. He put his finger to his split lips.

“Therese, I know it’s asking a lot, but you have to do something for me.”

She sat up. He undid a ribbon that was wrapped around a sort of leather wallet. She recognized identity papers.

“These things have to go, urgently, to the lookout tower behind the Kalder estate. Do you remember it? We used to go there sometimes. The clearing, not far from the Dutch border.”

She nodded. Wilhelm’s voice danced through her head.
Collaborator . . . He stands accused of treason.

She had walked past the lookout a few months before, with her friends. “Yes. But it’s a ruin. There’s . . .” Her father put his finger to his lips again.

“The wall on the left-hand side is made of a double thickness of planks. The middle one is loose. You must take it out and push the folder into the gap. Make sure it sits firmly and can’t slide down.”

Therese nodded again automatically.

“Go to the Kalders’ first, mind. Whatever you do, don’t go straight to the tower.”

Siegmund Pohl opened the drawer in her bedside table and placed the leather wallet inside.

She risked another whispered question. “Who are those papers for?”

He leaned forward. “For people who must urgently leave this country.”

He kissed her on the forehead and stood up with effort. She pulled him back by the hand.

“They say you’re a collaborator.”

Siegmund Pohl looked at her seriously. “I’m a Christian, Therese. A Christian and a democrat.”

Once her father had left, she took out the leather wallet and opened it. Van de Kerk. Henk van de Kerk, Sophie van de Kerk, and their children Hendrika and Jan. And a young woman, not much older than her. Leni Platjes.

Therese swallowed. She knew the woman. She wasn’t Leni Platjes. She was Karla Goldbach, who had done her final exams at her school two years before.

Years later, Therese Mende had told her husband that she made a decision that night. That seemed smug now. She had not made a decision. She had wanted to do her battered father this favor. That was all.

The next day, immediately after breakfast, she took her bicycle and rode to the Kalder estate. When she arrived, she asked whether Alwine would be coming home that weekend, and whether they had heard from Jacob. She was given a large cup of hot coffee in the kitchen, and Martha, the maid, related the latest gossip. Nobody mentioned her father, though she was sure they all knew about his arrest. Old Martha patted her on the head as she set off. The leaves of the blackberry bushes along the track glowed in tones of fuchsia and terra-cotta, and when she reached the forest path, the light dripped like honey through the autumn foliage. The clearing appeared in front of her, quite unexpectedly, after a few minutes. She leaned her bicycle against a tree and pushed on through tall grasses and ferns. Her heart was hammering wildly, and as she climbed the steps, she felt her arms and legs trembling. The trapdoor was heavy. She found the loose plank in the wall, pushed the tightly wrapped packet inside, and replaced the plank. On the way back to the Kalder estate, she kept looking around, as if she expected to be followed. It was not until she had passed the farmhouse that her heartbeat calmed down.

Her father recovered, but when he opened his practice again, only a few patients continued to come. People did not want to be seen with him, and sometimes there was a note in his mailbox: could he perhaps come by that evening—the newborn had a bad cough, the son had had a fall, or the old mother couldn’t keep anything down. So it came about that what Margarete Pohl had claimed in the preceding months actually became true. Her husband was out half the night. He was making house calls.

Chapter 14

April 22, 1998

When Rita Albers dialed the Spanish telephone number, it was a Luisa Alfonsi who answered, and there was a short pause before a self-confident voice announced itself as “Mende.”

Rita introduced herself, and was hesitating before making her request, when the woman firmly interrupted.

“I know who you are. Get to the point.”

Rita was thrown off balance, but she tried not to show how rattled she was. How did Mende know who she was?

“It’s about your marriage to Wilhelm Peters,” she said quickly.

The woman at the other end of the line reacted immediately. “And?”

“Well, I’d very much like to interview you.”

“I don’t give interviews.”

Rita swallowed hard. She had assumed she would have the element of surprise on her side.

“But you don’t deny that you were married to Wilhelm Peters, and that you were suspected of his murder when he disappeared?”

“If you think you’ve dug up a good story here, you’re mistaken. Keep your nose out of it,” Mende replied bluntly.

Rita gasped. Who did this woman think she was?

“I’m a journalist, and I’m working on a story, and if you don’t wish to comment, I’ll publish the results of my research without your statement.”

Again the answer came swiftly, and with a level of self-confidence that made Rita nervous.

“You’re a naive little thing, you know. I strongly advise you to check your so-called facts very carefully. Other journalists before you have ruined their careers with libels. You can be sure I’ll sue you and win. I’ll be glad to give you that in writing.”

And with that the line went dead.

Rita slammed the receiver down, ran into the garden, and stamped her way across the orchard, snorting with fury. The woman was bluffing. There was no other explanation. She was a successful businesswoman, and of course she had had a lot of practice, but she, Rita, was not going to allow herself to be browbeaten. On the other hand, she had often had dealings with canny people who had threatened and abused her, but that had been different. Mende had not hesitated for a second: not the slightest hint of uncertainty. And how had she known who she was?

Once she had regained her composure and headed back toward the terrace, she heard the telephone ringing inside the house.

It was Robert Lubisch. “Frau Albers, the conference is over, and I’m about to leave. I must talk to you.”

Rita rolled her eyes and thought for a moment. “All right,” she began. “Come and see me. I have some new information that might interest you.”

Robert Lubisch had been distracted all day, and he found himself almost unable to follow the presentations. He kept going back to Rita Albers, and the question of what else she would uncover, or what else might happen. This word
happen
felt threatening, and the more he thought about it, the more the word
stretched out and howled in his head, rising and falling, like a siren.

He had slept fitfully the previous night, tormented by bad dreams. He dreamed that he was in his parents’ house, walking from room to room. He was looking for something, but he didn’t know what. Nevertheless, there was this inner certainty that he was on the right path to identify it. His mother was sitting in the kitchen, her head in her bony hands, the bluish veins visible under her parchment skin. She was wearing a black knitted shawl, and when she lowered her hands, her face was astonishingly young. She said, “That’s his life’s work.” She appeared not to see him. She stood up, turned her back on him, and went over to the kitchen door. Her shawl unraveled from top to bottom as she stepped away from him. She kept on walking, without ever reaching the door. Bit by bit, his mother’s naked back was exposed, and he knew it was his fault, that he was standing on the yarn, incapable of lifting his foot.

This had made him wake up with a start, the first time, and drink a glass of water. When he went back to sleep, he was walking about in the house again. Once more he was searching, but this time without confidence; instead, he was fearful, and driven by an inexplicable haste. He ran up the broad, curving staircase, two steps at a time, and was again the boy he had once been. He opened every door, and realized he was looking for his father. He found him in the study, sitting in his armchair. It was disproportionately large, and his father sat in it, small, with dangling feet. He had the cigar box in his lap and he said, almost inaudibly, “Come, I’ll show it to you.”

Eventually he had sat up in bed, bathed in sweat. He had gotten up at four o’clock, afraid of further dreams.

Later, as he listened to a colleague’s presentation in the conference room, he remembered an incident during his student days. He had been at home during vacation and had gone to a concert with his parents. His father, who seldom drank, had had some red wine at dinner. During the interval, he drank some sparkling wine, said hello to a large number of people, and introduced his son to them. “This is my son,” he said, “the future head of the Lubisch Corporation.” Robert did not rise to this, preferring not to argue with his father in public. As they were returning to their seats, his mother took him aside and whispered, “Let him have that. He’s so proud of his life’s work. Of you and his life’s work.”

But all he heard was that his father did not respect his decision to become a doctor. Once they were home, they got into one of those arguments that built up over the years, making them grow farther and farther apart.

The old man had clung to his expectations with incredible tenacity, as a consequence ignoring, even denying, anything that did not fit in with his image of the world. What if he had done the same thing with his own history?

Robert felt a flush of heat rising, heard his blood rushing in time with his heartbeat in his inner ear.

What else would this journalist find out?

His colleague’s presentation was over, there was noise all around, chairs being pushed back. He sat where he was.

His father was dead. The woman in the photo had not been his father’s lover, and he had not wanted to know any more. He would not allow this journalist woman to drag his father’s life out into the open.