Silence (16 page)

Her clandestine happiness with Yuri seemed unthreatened. The mild evenings allowed her to meet up with him for as long as two hours, sometimes in the nearby forest, sometimes by the lake, and now in the fading light of day. That they were no longer surrounded by darkness was perhaps the greatest gift of that spring. Along with the bittersweet scent of the elderflower bushes, which they could almost taste, it was the colors, above all else, that gave them optimism.

The whispered news made its contribution too. Underneath the official bulletins on the radio and in the newspapers, beneath the shrieks of “total war” and “final victory,” there was another flow of information that passed by word of mouth. “The war is coming to an end. The war is lost.” Her father listened to the BBC at work, with his colleagues, and he knew how the front was changing. When she told Yuri about it, he crossed himself, gave thanks for the news, and covered her face with featherlight kisses. Then he pulled her toward him, and they did not dare to talk about the future. They sat close beside each other and willed peace to arrive. They sat close beside each other and feared peace.

Chapter 30

April 24, 1998

The Long One was not in. Manfred Steiner, with whom Karl used to go out on patrol as a young policeman, was sitting at a desk in Homicide. He greeted him with the words, “You’ve made yourself unpopular.”

Van den Boom rubbed his balding pate and feigned remorse. “But Köbler came last night after all and was going to show up here today.”

Steiner frowned. He was gaunt and wore his thick, now-gray hair short; he carried reading glasses on a cord around his neck and was in the habit of clacking his arms against each other the moment he sat down. “He didn’t show up here, and he’s taken leave from the editorial office for the next two days.” Steiner stood up, went over to the coffee machine, and filled two cups. He held one out to Karl. “So, what did Köbler tell you?”

Karl shook his head. “He was stubborn, wanted to know what Rita Albers had found out about Peters. He’s probably doing his own research now.”

“You mean the suspected-murder case from the early fifties?” Karl nodded. Steiner opened up a file. “So . . . for the moment we’re not assuming there’s a connection. Even if Rita Albers found the Peters woman, there’s nothing in the old file that could be awkward for her today. Even at the time, there was nothing to substantiate the charge. So why, nearly fifty years later, would she kill Albers?” He leaned back in his chair. “We’re checking out Albers’s ex-husband and her private life. It looks much more like something to do with a relationship. The head wounds are massive, and the perpetrator struck several times. I can’t see an old woman as the perpetrator.”

Van den Boom took a sip of coffee and wondered whether he should tell Steiner about his visit to Gerhard, but decided against doing so. It could only be a good thing if they investigated in different directions and did not get in each other’s way. That gave him some breathing space. “Have you found out anything about the murder weapon?” he asked casually.

Manfred Steiner snapped the arms of his glasses together. “A meat hammer, aluminum, surface area two inches by just under three. Probably came from the kitchen; at least, there was a rack of kitchen utensils of the same material there.”

“Hmm,” rumbled Karl, “but you haven’t found the thing.”

The telephone rang. Steiner picked up the receiver. Van den Boom tried to glean something from his responses.

“In the archives? . . . No, he can’t . . . I have it here, and it’s part of an ongoing investigation . . . Then he can be so good as to come here.”

When Steiner hung up, Karl grinned at him. “Let me guess: Köbler’s in Kleve and wants to see the Peters file.”

His colleague put on his reading glasses. “Could it be that you know more than you’re telling me?”

Karl shook his head. “Nothing concrete, honestly. Just inconsistencies, but lots of them. Too many, if you get me?” He told him about Hanna and Paul, and now also about Gerhard and his reaction to the question about the last years of the war. As he laid out this information, he remembered again how Hanna and Paul had reacted to the name Lubisch. “This Lubisch,” he asked. “How come he was interested in the Peters woman in the first place?”

“Our colleagues in Hamburg interviewed him.” Steiner leafed through his papers. “Here.” He pushed a computer printout across the desk. It was a photograph of a young woman. Karl was surprised. The young woman was not pretty in the conventional sense, but in this picture she was beautiful. He remembered Gerhard’s remark that she was a slut.

Steiner quoted extracts from the file: “ ‘Lubisch has a private interest . . . Found the photo among his late father’s papers and wanted to know who she was. There was a note about Photo Studio Heuer, here in Kranenburg, on the back of the photograph . . . which led him to Rita Albers.’ ”

Karl stood up ponderously, thanked Steiner for the coffee, and made to leave. “Karl.” Steiner stood up too. “I suggest we keep each other informed.” Van den Boom nodded with satisfaction. “If you keep the Long One off my back, it’s a deal.”

Steiner laughed. “Interesting. This morning he said to me, ‘Just keep that small-town sheriff off my back.’ ”

As Karl was leaving the station, he thought about the expression “small-town sheriff.” He saw John Wayne in a rocking chair on the porch, dozing in the sun, with his feet up on the balustrade. People said friendly hellos to him, and he put thumb and forefinger to the brim of his hat and said hello back.

Small-town sheriff was a fine thing to be called.

Chapter 31

1943

They saw each other less often in the summer. There was work to be done on the farms from early in the morning till late at night. The systematic bombing of the Ruhr had begun. American long-range bombers flew over the lower Rhine during the day; the British took over at night. Wailing sirens and rumbling in the sky became routine, and perceptions became reversed. Several hours of silence now felt somehow ominous.

They met on the edge of the clearing with the lookout tower where she had dropped off and picked up identity papers, four years before. The space formed a long green oval; an old copper beech with a substantial crown stood in the center. Ruby red against slowly fading blue. One Sunday afternoon was of that particular silence that seems to originate in some other reality. They clung to each other and wanted to stay so forever, lying wordlessly in the grass amid such peace. Hands, light as wings, aroused trembling and then powerful shuddering, and they wanted each other totally, clothed themselves in a naked summer skin, bridged the gaps of unfamiliarity. On the first night, she did not experience it, but later she did. A sensation of floating and rising, and she learned with astonishment that the peak came as she fell. And when she opened her eyes, the ruby red of the beech was always there, with the blue of the sky behind it. These were the colors of happiness.

Her parents accepted her evening walks. Sometimes, as she set off, her father would say, “Be careful, child.” He said it quite casually, quite quietly, and with it he whispered a secret about the secret. The letters continued to arrive from the private in France, and she wrote back with the same regularity. Once he wrote,
One of my comrades found your picture. I told him you were my fiancée. They all envy me.

On September 28, 1943, she went to the Höver farm, as she did every Wednesday, to fetch milk. Everyone was busy with the turnip harvest, and there was a trailer in the yard from which Hanna and Fedir were unloading turnips. Therese said hello and went on into the covered yard. As she was using a ladle to fill her little can, suddenly Hanna was standing behind her. Avoiding Therese’s eyes, she pushed a few strands of hair that had fallen over her face back under her kerchief. “Wilhelm asked Father how often you come here in the evening,” she said without preamble.

The ladle fell to the ground, and Hanna stared at Therese. She bent down, picked up the ladle, took the can from Therese, and filled it mechanically. “Be careful,” she said warningly. She passed Therese the milk can and left the hall in a hurry.

Therese Mende paused on the top step of the short staircase that led between two cafés to the beach. The previous night’s rain and wind had left the sea in turmoil. The water was still greenish brown, and seaweed lay drying in a broad line on the sand.

That evening, she had left the lid of the can on the floor, and the milk had repeatedly sloshed over the rim as she made her way back to the cottage. Tears ran down her face, and she talked herself into thinking she was crying because of the spilt milk, rejecting the premonition that this was the beginning of the end.

The days that followed were indistinct, and when she did remember specific images—she did not realize this until years later—they were gray, as if the color had drained out of her life that autumn evening.

The very next morning, at about six o’clock, Theo Gerhard and two Gestapo men came and picked her up. They took her to Kleve—her and her parents. Her mother was allowed to go home the same day. Her father after two days. They were reluctant to let him go, but he was a doctor, and people in high places had insisted on his release.

The gray walls of her cell, the gray blanket on the bare platform bed, the gray interrogation room, the gray and black uniforms. And above it all Theo Gerhard’s loud voice, which seemed always to be shouting, even when he tried solicitously, almost pleadingly, to persuade her.

She repeated again and again that she had a sweetheart in France and that she knew Yuri only by sight. She had met him at the Höver farm, and she had seen him working in the fields from time to time.

Gerhard struck her in the face and yelled, “Bolshevist whore!” Then he sneered, “We’ll put that Russian up against the wall anyway.”

On the third day, he tossed a pile of letters onto the table, took one at random, and ordered her to read it out loud. She read:
“Dear Fräulein Pohl, Your photo came today, and at last I have an image of you. I am so grateful that our NCO has asked me to write to you regularly . . .”

Father told her later that she was in jail for eight days, so it must have been on the fifth or sixth day that Gerhard placed another document in front of her: “. . .
That I saw Therese Pohl with Yuri in the forest . . . that they have often met on the edge of the forest and that they have kissed each other
. . .” The name Paul Höver had been typewritten underneath.

“A child,” she said. “A child who can’t even read.” Gerhard leapt to his feet, shouting, “Are you going to be impertinent now too, you lying whore?” He threw the photograph that she had given Yuri down on the table.

What happened could only have lasted a few minutes, but to her it seemed endless. He yanked her out of the chair by her hair and flung her against the wall. The pain in her head was dull. She felt her knees go weak, saw the bare concrete floor of the interrogation room coming toward her, thought it was rising and that that was impossible. Blows to the face and flecks of Gerhard’s spittle and his bellowing. Inexplicable stabs of pain throughout her body. Breathlessness when he punched her in the belly. Arms held protectively over her head, she saw the black boots hurtling toward her, over and over again, and she smelled shoe polish and blood and then nothing.

She did not come to until she was back in her cell, where she vomited and soiled herself.

All of this was just momentary images, fragments she was never able to piece together into a whole, not even in the years that followed. What remained in her memory was being scared to death—a fear that rendered her mute and blind, and almost made her lose her mind.

She did not know how much time had passed when she was fetched from her cell during the night, shoved along a corridor, and thrown out a side door. In the pouring rain, she dragged her way to Martha, who lived below Schwanenburg Castle. Martha screamed out loud when she recognized her, then pulled her hurriedly inside her home. Darkness. Brief moments of consciousness. Martha washing her, Martha bandaging her head, giving her something to drink. The next day, her friend brought in an acquaintance of hers, who loaded Therese onto a horse cart and took her home.

Her mother’s wailing is still in her ears, and then the pictures break off.

She had open wounds on her head, a concussion, several broken ribs, scratches and bruises all over her body.

Wilhelm visited her two days later and was beside himself with fury. He had known nothing of it at all. From him she learned that Yuri had been condemned to death by a summary court, but that the execution had not yet taken place. Fedir had been sent back to the camp at Münster.

She wept and pleaded, told him he could ask anything of her if he would help Yuri.

Tears glittered in his eyes as he said, “You know I’d do anything for you, Therese. But what are you thinking? Do you really think I could help him escape and he could come back to you?”

“Just let him live,” she whispered. “That’s all I want.”

Wilhelm paced up and down in front of her bed, not saying anything; occasionally he would stop by the window, looking out pensively. Then he asked, “Will you be my wife?” She did not understand, thought her broken, aching head was playing tricks on her.

He sat down beside her on the bed and went on, now sober and rational. “Therese, I’m willing to risk my life for you. Gerhard shouldn’t have hit you. So he owes me something. Maybe I can help this Russian to escape, but then he has to disappear from here immediately, do you understand?”

Oh, this sudden hope. Of course she understood that Yuri had to go away. But he would live. She gripped Wilhelm’s hand gratefully, and he asked again, “Will you marry me?” She hesitated, heard that this was the condition. She nodded. If Wilhelm risked his life to save Yuri’s, the price would not be too high.

Five days and nights went by. Wilhelm did not come. She went back to helping her mother with light housework, sometimes thinking, her heart pounding, that she had only dreamed Wilhelm’s visit. Perhaps her heartfelt wish that Yuri might not die had led her to imagine the conversation.

And then October 16 came, a Saturday morning that blanketed the whole area of the lowlands in thick fog. It was shortly after eight when she went out to feed the two rabbits. She was standing at the well, pumping water into a bowl, when Hanna emerged out of the fog like a ghostly apparition. “Yuri has to leave,” she said. “He wants to see you one more time.” She said it quietly, and the fog seemed to muffle her voice even more. Slowly, Therese put the water bowl down on the wall of the well; it took her several seconds to understand. “Come on,” Hanna hissed. She turned and walked away.

She followed. Her ribs hurt as she ran to catch up with Hanna. She had a thousand questions in her head, but she could not put them into words. She had only one thought:
He’s alive. He’s alive.

They did not follow the path. Hanna led her across the meadows and cleared fields toward the Höver farm. She pointed at the barn. “By the wall at the back,” she whispered, and disappeared.

He was standing, leaning against the wall of the barn. He crossed himself when he saw her and said, “God is on our side, Therese.” A black eye, a makeshift bandage around his head, his left arm in a sling, split lips—she could guess what it might look like under his clothes. They clung to each other for several minutes without saying a word.

He whispered, “Therese, we don’t have much time.” He took her face in his hands. “What have you done?” At first, she did not understand what he meant. “Why are they letting me go?” he asked, and fear of her reply flickered in his eyes.

Therese Mende walked close to the water. The sand was firm here, and walking required less effort. She had only lied to him that one time, wanting the short time they had together to be untroubled. Hope is without logic. Hope is irresponsible.