Silence (3 page)

Chapter 4

April 20, 1998

Rita Albers was transferring an oleander and two small orange trees into bigger pots on the terrace; the plants had spent the winter indoors.

Nine years before, immediately after her divorce, she had turned her back on Cologne and moved here. She had taken this cottage—in the middle of nowhere, as her friends said—on a lifetime lease. Her friends had also gloomily predicted that she would be lonely and would soon return. Instead, she had resigned from her job at a women’s magazine and now worked as a freelance journalist. She liked coming back here after extended research trips to work on her articles in peace. She had never regretted her decision.

She was scrubbing the teak garden furniture with soap and water when the doorbell rang. She assumed it was the mail carrier and called out, “On the terrace.”

When she looked up, she saw a stranger coming up the path into the garden. She put the bucket of soapy water on the table. “Can I help you?” she said in a slightly irritated tone, resting her gloved hands on the low balustrade of the terrace. She had put up a conspicuous sign bearing the words “Private Property” at the entrance. Cyclists and hikers were constantly taking a wrong turn here, mistaking her nature garden, with its large orchard at the back, for a tourist attraction and wandering in without so much as a by-your-leave. When she came home one day and found a group of cyclists having a picnic on the lawn, it was the last straw, and she put up the sign.

The man now approaching the terrace did not quite fit that picture. He was wearing neither hiking boots nor those body condoms plastered with advertising that cyclists wore.

“Forgive me for disturbing you. My name is Robert Lubisch.” He stood at the entrance to the terrace, somewhat embarrassed. He cleared his throat. “Is this the Höver cottage?”

“Yes,” she replied, a little less abruptly. She pulled off her rubber gloves and ran a hand through her short dark hair.

“I went to the Höver house, but there was nobody at home.” He cleared his throat again. “In fact, I don’t even know whether you can help me.” He held up a small photograph. “It’s about this woman. She used to live here.”

Rita Albers’s professional curiosity was aroused. “Come on up,” she said impulsively. “It’s time for a break anyway.”

She slipped off her gardening shoes, held out her hand, and introduced herself. Then she led him into a bright, spacious kitchen. She maneuvered her slim body confidently around the heavy wooden table that stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by eight beige plastic chairs. She told him to sit down and placed glasses, a jug of orange juice, and a bottle of mineral water on the table. Once she had sat down too, she looked at him expectantly.

He laid the photograph on the table.

“This is Therese Peters,” he explained, “and she probably lived here, with her husband, until the end of the war.”

Rita Albers frowned critically and examined the picture. She looked at Robert. “That may be, but I didn’t take this house until nine years ago. I mean, I don’t quite understand what you want. Is she a relative of yours or something?”

Robert Lubisch shook his head. “She isn’t a relative. I don’t even know whether she’s still alive.” He thought for a moment:
What am I doing here? Therese Peters wasn’t my father’s lover. It’s over and done with.

He shook his head and stood up. “I’m sorry. Please excuse the intrusion.”

Rita Albers looked at him, then stood up too.

“Now wait a minute. That’s not right. First you make me curious, and then you just leave?” She smiled broadly. “I mean . . . I’m a journalist. Maybe I can help you.”

Robert stopped by the kitchen door, undecided, and ran through her argument in his mind. A journalist probably did know how to proceed and would get information more quickly. Besides, she lived here; she knew the people. And if she didn’t, that was all right too. In truth, the matter was resolved, as far as he was concerned, but now that the woman in the photograph had a name, it did interest him to know what had become of this Therese Peters.

He sat down and relayed what he had found out so far. Albers questioned him skillfully, and soon he was telling her about Heuer, Wilhelm Peters’s papers, and the role they had played in his father’s escape.

Rita Albers, sniffing a story she might be able to sell, offered to ask around a little.

“Do you have the papers with you?”

“In the car.”

They sat without saying anything for a moment. In the garden, blue tits twittered in the silence.

“Look,” said Rita, taking up where they had left off. “Now I’m interested too. After all, they lived here.” She patted the table gently with the palm of her hand. “It must at least be possible to find out what has become of this woman.”

She fell silent.

When he still seemed hesitant, she said, “You know, this house had been standing empty since 1951 or 1952—the Hövers didn’t know exactly when. It was a real wreck. Smashed windows, holes in the roof, ruined furniture, garbage everywhere.” She gave the table another gentle pat. “All I could salvage was this little treasure.”

Robert examined the rough, sturdy table. Perhaps the Peterses had sat at this table, just as he was sitting with this woman now. The photo was taken in the early 1940s at the latest, so Therese Peters had to be about eighty by now. Perhaps it would mean something to her to hold this picture in her hands again.

He stood up and fetched the papers from the car.

He followed Rita Albers through a wide archway into a large room with sliding doors that opened onto the terrace. Twin sheets of glass on metal stands in the right-hand corner formed a kind of modern desk. The wall-mounted bookshelves reached all the way to the ceiling. The pale wooden floor, stripped and unfinished, gleamed almost golden in the fading sunlight.

Rita Albers scanned the photograph, the identity card, and the safe-conduct pass. The machine took several minutes. She printed out the photograph and gave the original back. A blurry black-and-white image gradually pushed its way out of the printer.

Robert looked at his watch. He had stayed more than an hour. They hurriedly exchanged business cards, and he drove off toward Nimwegen.

Rita forgot about the bucket of soapy water and the garden furniture. She powered up her laptop and launched an Internet search for Therese Peters. The German phone book had twenty-one entries.

The evening news was on by the time she hung up the telephone for the last time. She had contacted all but two Therese Peterses. None had ever lived in the Höver cottage, or even in Kranenburg, and she did not hold out much hope for the two she had not yet reached. The woman had not even been thirty when she left. She was bound to have remarried.

When Rita Albers went to bed, she decided to try the Hövers first, Hanna and her brother, Paul. They had probably still been children during the war, but they must have known the Peterses. The Hövers were hardly talkative people, and she did not maintain regular contact with either of them, but she had a good pretext. She was planning to dig a well, because piped water was so expensive. Paul Höver enjoyed talking about such things. He liked her garden too, and he was pleased when she asked his advice.

Chapter 5

April 21, 1998

She walked along the narrow track that linked the Höver cottage with the Höver farm. It was early, and the air was cool. A fine mist lay on the fields and pastures. The sun would suck it up bit by bit in the coming hours.

She could see Paul and Hanna in the horse pasture from a distance. He was busy with a bridle, and she was leading a white horse to the practice area. The Hövers ran a boarding stable. People came from far and wide to house their valuable horses here, and the local vets recommended the Höver farm whenever a horse needed to build up its strength gradually after an injury.

Paul’s wife, Sofia had died of cancer. While she was ill, he had completely given up farming, from which they could make only a meager living anyway, and devoted himself entirely to her care. The farm had deteriorated significantly, and Rita was sure that Paul had signed the lease with her only because he was in financial difficulties. After Sofia’s death, his sister, Hanna, who had been working as a nurse in Kleve, moved in. They refurbished and converted the stables, laid down the practice ground, and made good the barns and the house. Rumor had it that the money for all this had come from Sofia’s life insurance.

Hanna had never married, and it was obvious at first sight that she and Paul were brother and sister. They were two big, strong figures, and Hanna, who, like her brother, wore rough overalls and checked shirts, was plump without looking fat.

Rita stopped by the fence and waved to them. They answered her greeting with brief nods and went back to their work. That was always their way. They would never stop working to say hello to her. Not to her, nor to the customers who drove up in their four-wheel-drives to drop off or pick up their horses. When it came to the Hövers, whoever you were, you waited until one of them had time for you.

At first, Rita had found their behavior arrogant, but she soon realized that it was not. They just had a very particular set of values. It seemed as if they followed a different clock. They would not interrupt a job in order to chat. Chatting was out of the question anyway. They were both friendly but reserved. They lived frugally, though they must have had a good income by now, and this frugality extended to the way they spoke.

It was a good ten minutes before Hanna led the horse from the practice ground back to its pasture, came to stand beside Rita, and said, “Morning.” Then she waited. And that too was always her way. If people came to the farm, it was because they wanted something, so they should say what it was and then go away.

Rita felt for the copy of the photograph in her denim jacket. “Hanna, I have a couple of questions about the people who lived in the cottage until the end of the war. Their name was Peters, wasn’t it?”

Hanna gave a short nod.

“It’s about Therese Peters.” Rita took the copy out of her pocket and handed it to her. “So, what I know is that her husband was killed in the war and was never found, and that she then went away too.”

Hanna looked straight at her, unmoved, saying nothing. She barely glanced at the piece of paper. Rita swallowed. “It was Heuer, the photographer, who took the picture. Do you remember Photo Studio Heuer?” She cleared her throat. “At any rate, he said Therese Peters went away after that.” Rita began to stammer, annoyed that she was losing her train of thought because of Hanna Höver and her infuriating coolness. She was quite unable to work out whether it was stupidity that lay behind that gaze or calm wisdom. She decided not to mention Robert Lubisch or his father’s role in the story.

“And?” Hanna asked at last.

Paul came across the yard and greeted her with the same curt “Morning” as his sister.

Wordlessly, Hanna handed the piece of paper to her brother, and Rita thought she saw a brief twitch in the man’s face. Surprise? Fear?

“I thought perhaps you might know what became of her? I mean . . . you must have known her.”

The cawing of rooks and the sound of a car engine approaching and then receding built up in the silence that followed. A horse snorted in the pasture. Paul folded the photocopied sheet repeatedly into smaller and smaller rectangles, scoring the edges between his thumb and forefinger as if he wanted to cut it up.

“She went away,” Hanna said finally, “and nobody knows where.”

Rita, relieved that Hanna had said anything at all, immediately asked another question.

“Do you know when that was?”

“No.” The reply was not unfriendly, but it came as blunt and direct as if Hanna had taken a potshot at her question with it.

“Her maiden name was Pohl, wasn’t it? Did she have brothers and sisters who might be able to help me?”

“No.” Once again, the reply was immediate and definitive.

Paul said, “You know, it was a long time ago. One day she just wasn’t there anymore.” He ran his hand through his unkempt, gray-brown hair. “Where did you get the photograph?”

Rita ignored the question. “The Pohls, were they from Kranenburg?”

Hanna shoved her hands into the pockets of her corduroy vest. “I have work to do,” she said curtly, and went over to the stables.

Suspecting that Paul would soon leave her standing there too, Rita asked hastily, “And this Wilhelm Peters, was he from here too?”

He nodded.

Rita took a deep breath and forced herself to be patient. “And . . . did he have brothers and sisters, perhaps?”

“A sister.”

“What about her? Does she still live here?”

“The war kept her.”

The choice of words left Rita speechless for a moment. Kept by the war. Why would someone say that? Did it mean that, for the dead, the war was still on?

“But maybe you can—”

This time Paul interrupted her: “I asked you where you got the photograph.” The firmness of his tone, coming from a man who was normally rather gentle, made her start.

It took her just a fraction of a second. “The old table,” she said quickly. “You know I restored the old table. The picture was in the drawer.”

Höver nodded. “Leave the dead in peace,” he said almost comfortingly, then turned and headed back toward the pasture.

Rita Albers set off for home. It was not until she was almost at her front door that she realized Paul Höver had not given back the copy of the photograph.