Alphabet House (24 page)

‘Perhaps she’s no longer alive. Maybe she doesn’t live in Freiburg or have a phone.’ The desk clerk tried to comfort him, almost kindly. Even if he was right, the comfort soon proved superfluous. A few minutes later, after the pile of
pfennig
had been replenished, a quiet voice sent his heart racing.

‘My mother’s name was Gisela Devers and she would soon have been fifty-seven, yes,’ the young woman replied. Her English was correct, though clumsy. Bryan had interrupted her evening routine.

Her name was Mariann G. Devers. Considering the name, she probably lived alone. ‘Why do you ask? Did you know her?’ She asked more out of politeness than curiosity.

‘Is she dead?’

‘Yes, she’s been dead for more than ten years now.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Bryan was silent for a moment. His sympathy was genuine. ‘Then I won’t intrude.’

‘I don’t think my mother ever told me she was acquainted with an Englishman. Where did you know her from?’

‘I met her here in Freiburg.’ His disappointment was tangible. It was not only about James. Gisela Devers was dead. The past was imploding. He would never see her again. Surprisingly enough, he was disheartened. He could still remember the painfully straight stocking seams on her lovely legs. She had been beautiful and she had kissed him fervently in the antechamber of horror.

‘When was that? When did you last speak with her?’

‘Listen, maybe you have a photo of your mother. I would so much like to see a picture of her. Your mother and I were once very close, you see.’

Mariann Devers was somewhat older than Bryan had imagined. At any rate older than her mother had been when Bryan met her. She was quite a different woman. She wore no make-up and was by no means as beautiful as her tall, lithe, stylishly dressed mother. But there was a resemblance about the cheekbones.

The flat was like a shoebox. Its gay colours and numerous posters on the walls were well suited to Mariann Devers’ spontaneous manner and her strange clothes combination. She seemed like someone who was poor, but used to a better life. The flowers Bryan brought immediately found their niche.

‘So you were born during the war? Then you must have already been alive when I met your mother.’

‘I was born in 1942.’

‘In 1942? Were you really?’

‘And you saw my father, you say?’ Mariann Devers casually adjusted her dark hair and the numerous scarves around her neck.

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about him.’

The more Mariann Devers seemed to grasp, the more Bryan embroidered the truth. She knew so little about her father.

‘I know my father was killed during a bombing attack. Maybe it was in the sanatorium you’re telling me about. I don’t know. Mother said it made no difference where it happened.’

‘Did she live here, in town? For some reason I thought she might have. She didn’t come from here, as far as I know.’

‘No. But many people moved after the war. They had to.’

‘Had to? What do you mean, Miss Devers?’

‘Court cases, confiscations. My mother’s family lost everything. Your fellow countrymen saw to that.’ The undertone lacked bitterness, but hit home nevertheless.

‘How did she manage, then? Did she have an education?’

‘For the first few years she didn’t manage at all. She never used to talk about it. I don’t know where she lived or what she lived on. I was living with my mother’s cousin in Bad Godesberg. I was nearly seven before she brought me here.’

‘And then she got a job here in Freiburg?’

‘No, she got herself a new husband.’ The blow she dealt the tabletop to emphasize the word ‘husband’ wasn’t hard, but effective. It was clear that Mariann Devers would have found a different way out of the situation. The smile she gave behind her thick, flowing fringe was a bitter one.

‘Was she married here in Freiburg?’

‘She was, unfortunately, yes! It was here she was married and it was here she died. After a wretched life, if you ask me. Full of disappointments and mental torture. She married for money and status, so she got what she deserved. Her own family became poor after the war and she couldn’t take it. But the way he treated her was disgusting.’

‘And he treated you the same way?’

‘Fuck him!’ Mariann Devers’ vehemence astounded Bryan. ‘He’s never been able to get to me, the shit! I’d like to see him try!’

The photo album was brown and stiff and worn. It was full of pictures of landscapes in which a young girl – scarcely older than Bryan’s own daughter – ran around and posed with a twinkle in her eye, first half-hidden behind tree trunks, then sprawling in an alpine meadow. They were photographs from Gisela Devers’ happiest summer, she’d told her daughter.

The young girl displayed the carefree attitude of youth to the album’s very last page. Mariann Devers pointed at her father with obvious pride. He was a handsome man in uniform to whom Gisela Devers was clinging in enviable harmony. That was long ago.

‘You take after both your parents a great deal, Miss Devers, do you know that?’

‘Yes, I know, Mr Scott. And I also know I’ve got to get up early in the morning. I don’t want to be impolite, but you’ve seen what you came for, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, thank you. I have, Miss Devers. And I apologise if I’ve kept you up. You don’t happen to have a later photo of your mother, do you? I’d hate to leave without asking you. I have so many different images in my mind, you understand.’

She shrugged her shoulders, knelt down and reached under the plain bed. The dust that covered the wicker basket she dragged forth revealed her lack of interest in housekeeping. A huge jumble of photos appeared. Almost ten years of different hairstyles, poses and clothes. Rapid transformations, great changes of fortune.

‘Here she is,’ she said simply, handing him a faded photograph. It could have been anyone. Mariann looked over his shoulder. Presumably she hadn’t seen it for years and probably there’d been no occasion to. Gisela Devers’ face was quite close
to the camera. Her features were out of focus; the photo was taken in a moment of playfulness. She was shouting something to the photographer, her hands spread out. Everyone around her was smiling at her, apart from the little girl who was lying on her tummy on the grass, looking at her mother from behind. She had been a lovely child, Mariann Devers. Above her stood a man with his arms folded. He was the only one who was looking away from the scene. He seemed uninterested in the others. Not even the little girl seemed to concern him. An apparently handsome man whose bearing bore witness to a person of position and self-assurance. Several scratches across his face rendered the photograph unclear. And yet Bryan began feeling uncomfortable. Not at the thought of the young girl’s attempt to revenge herself by scratching her stepfather’s face out of the family photo. It was something else. A kind of presence that was almost familiar.

Mariann Devers apologized, asserting that unfortunately she didn’t have a better picture. It was all she had managed to get out of her mother’s husband when her mother finally found peace.

‘But your stepfather was well known here in town, wasn’t he?’ She nodded noncommittally. ‘So don’t you think any official photos were ever taken? I can hardly recognise your mother in this picture.’

‘There are lots of official photos. Plenty. But Mother was never with him. He was ashamed of her. She drank, you see.’ Mariann Devers sat down on the arm of his chair and pursed her lips. There were holes under the arms of her blouse. Once more Bryan felt a growing, inexplicable uneasiness. There was something ominous in the air. It was the photo he’d just seen.

And he also felt guilty for having intruded. His hostess adjusted her clothing and straightened her back. ‘Were you in love with my mother?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Maybe…’ The young woman beside him bit her upper lip. Once again Bryan felt obliged to ask himself the same question.
‘I don’t know,’ he finally said after a while. ‘Your father was very ill. It was difficult to identify one’s feelings under those strange circumstances. But she was very beautiful. I might well have fallen in love, if I wasn’t already.’

‘What circumstances are we talking about?’ Mariann Devers’ eyes were locked on him.

‘It’s actually terribly difficult to explain, Miss Devers, but you might say they were pretty unusual, considering I was here in this country and there was a war on.’

‘My mother couldn’t possibly have been interested in you.’ She laughed. The absurdity of it had just struck her. ‘I don’t know anyone who was such a confirmed Nazi as my mother. She loved all the paraphernalia. I don’t think a single day went by without her dreaming of the Third Reich. The uniforms, the marches, the parades. She loved it. And you were a Brit. Why would she have been interested in you? It sounds very strange.’

‘Your mother didn’t know I was British. No one in the hospital knew.’

‘So you were a spy, then? Maybe you fell down from the sky dressed as Father Christmas?’ She laughed. The truth didn’t interest her much. ‘Do you know what? Come to think of it, I might have another photo, since you’re so interested. From my school graduation. Mother’s standing in the background, but it’s better than the other one.’

This time she had to turn the wicker basket upside down. The picture was framed, but the glass was broken. There were still fragments along the edge and in the bottom of the basket. This was another Mariann Devers than the woman who was sitting in front of him. Her hair was smooth and the bell-bottoms had been replaced by a white dress that scarcely revealed she was a woman. But she looked proud and she was the focal point.

Her mother was standing in the picture, looking at her. She seemed cold and subdued. And she looked run down. The years had not treated her kindly, even when one saw her from a distance.

Then came the shock. Not because of the merciless workings of time, nor the suffering and disappointment mirrored in the woman’s eyes, but because of the man who was standing behind her, hands resting heavily on her shoulders. It was the man whose face Mariann had tried to scratch out of the other photo.

‘Her husband?’ Mariann Devers noticed Bryan’s hand was trembling as he pointed at the photograph.

‘Her husband and tormentor, yes! You can tell by looking at her, can’t you? She wasn’t happy.’

‘And her husband – is he still alive?’

‘Still alive? No one can get rid of him. Yes, he’s alive. In the best of health, one might add. Well-known in town. New wife. Money in the bank. Piles of it in fact, the bastard!’

The stab of pain in Bryan’s chest came stealthily. He swallowed a couple of times, forgetting to breathe. ‘May I ask you for a glass of water, Miss Devers?’

‘Do you feel ill?’

‘No, no! It’s nothing.’

Bryan refused Mariann Devers when she politely offered to let him stay a while longer, even though he was still pale. He had to get some fresh air.

‘And your stepfather, Miss Devers…’ She was helping him on with his coat, but stopped in the middle of his sentence.

‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call him that.’

‘Did he take his wife’s last name, or have you just kept your mother’s maiden name?’

‘Good God, my mother kept her own name and he kept his. His name is what it’s always been: Hans Schmidt. Original, isn’t it? ‘
Herr Direktor
Hans Schmidt’, as he likes to call himself.’

Original, indeed. Bryan was surprised by the name’s anonymity.
Not very characteristic
, he thought. It may have surprised Mariann Devers when Bryan asked for the man’s address, but he got it.

The house was not enormous, but of a standard that required a practised eye to appreciate. No detail had been overlooked, nor was anything exaggerated. A beautiful, discreet work of architecture. The materials used bore witness to taste, a sense of quality and the presence of resources. A palace in harmony with the palatial side street. A small brass plate indicated the house’s owner. It simply said ‘Hans Schmidt’.
Liar
! thought Bryan, and felt like scratching the engraving. It sent shivers down his spine to think that here was the man who had taken possession of the romantic flirt of his youth, the beautiful Gisela Devers, and destroyed her life.

Up on the first floor a light was still burning in the southern corner of the house. A shadow was outlined so faintly behind the curtain that it could be the curtain itself, blowing in the breeze. But it could also be the outline of Gisela Devers’ oppressor. A silhouette from the past. Swine and businessman Hans Schmidt, alias the pock-faced pig,
Obersturmbannführer
Wilfried Kröner.

Activity in the neighbourhood the next morning soon quietened down. Since the light of day Bryan had been watching the businessmen marching out to their BMWs and Mercedes. The sight was familiar to Bryan. There were really only two things that distinguished the scene from his own, back home. The make of car and the wives. The wives in England also waved goodbye, but in Canterbury an upper-class lady of the house would rather lose access to the chequebook than display herself the way these women in Freiburg did. Laureen was always impeccably dressed before she stepped out on the doorstep. But here the sight was the same in all the doorways. Irrespective of the house size or the price of the husband’s suit, wives were standing everywhere in kimonos with their hair in curlers.

But in Kröner’s house nothing happened.

Bryan kept being struck by the thought that he ought to have been better equipped. Perhaps even armed. The possibility of
a confrontation with the most calculating tormentor of a bygone age brought out the unrestrained aggression of his younger days. All Kröner’s atrocities leapt vividly to mind. The sadistic face whispered to him of weapons, violence, revenge, and still more revenge. And somewhere else in Bryan’s mind other pictures took shape. Glimpses of James, moments of hope, anxiety that demanded caution.

Not until ten o’clock was there any movement behind the shade of the awnings. An elderly woman stepped out onto the garden path and began shaking out a rug.