The French Promise (16 page)

After the funeral it was weeks of study and then mid-term exams before Max could get back to Lausanne, where he spent the entire break with his grandparents, remembering happier times, and using his presence to help lift the pall in the house. He chose not to raise the issue of his father with his grieving elders. Given
his mother’s secrecy over Kilian, he wasn’t sure it was worth opening old and awkward wounds of a pregnant and unmarried daughter in the late 1930s.

Max had skimmed the letters once in a haze of regret after his mother’s death and wisely put them away until he could coolly face the knowledge that details of his father had always been within his reach. He was ready now. It was mid-November and
cold enough to snow; the tourists had long disappeared and Strasbourg was once again a peaceful university town. Max was well on top of his studies, which was handy because his mind was filled with the determination to find out more about Markus Kilian. His father was
Wehrmacht, so presumably there were official records and perhaps a family – his mother hadn’t said whether he’d had siblings –
but even if there were, Max didn’t want to meet those people yet. He preferred to learn about Kilian from the safer distance of people who had known him around the time of his death.

His father’s rambling letter from Paris had mentioned a handful of names; they were his starting point. There was also Lukas Ravensburg, who went by the name of Luc Ravens in 1946. As the letter was postmarked
Inverness, Max had to presume that possessing a German name in Scotland that year was unwise, which may account for the variation.

Max strolled over the small ‘covered’ bridge, which had lost its timber roof centuries earlier but retained its name. He felt the familiar rise and dip of the cobbles beneath his sneakers as he entered the oldest part of Strasbourg –
La Petite France
– which he enjoyed.
He looked out across the river and promised again that he would treat himself and friend Nicolas to a meal at the restaurant
Au Pont Saint Martin
. It overhung the water and during the summer months would bulge with an increasing number of international tourists gradually beginning to travel around Europe freely again. They would hang out over its balcony grinning for photos, trying to capture
themselves in what he had to admit was a storybook setting of half-timberworked houses.

He leant on the bridge, nestling his chin deeper into the thick scarf his grandparents had given him on his recent trip home, and looked out at the picturesque scene. In medieval times this had been a part of the city where its tanners made good use of the waterway to transport the animal hides they
dried in the lofts of the neighbourhood’s sloping roofs.
During the ensuing centuries the border city of Strasbourg had flip-flopped in ownership between France and Germany. It often confused visitors, who remarked that its name sounded German and they had assumed it was. Locals shrugged. Strasbourg was Alsatian before it was anything! But Germany was just a few miles away – a couple of stops
on the train. His mind slipped to its most recent history – a time of German occupation – during which it was forbidden to speak French in Strasbourg and where so many of its men were sent to fight in Russia as German slaves.

His father had fought in Russia; he might even have had men of Strasbourg under his command. Max shook his head, a mixture of emotions escalating the rhythm of
his heartbeat so that he became aware of it pounding beneath all the winter layers. Anger, guilt, shame, even; his father was part of the machine he and most of his fellow students despised.

I didn’t want you to hate him
. This is what his mother had been referring to; why she’d not told him about his father any earlier – he had been a German colonel in an army that had brought so much ruin to
Europe.

Had Kilian been Nazi, firm in the faith of the Aryan?

His mother had assured him Kilian was a good man with strong principles, but whether his father had committed the atrocious war crimes that kept Max awake at night, he wasn’t sure. His letters suggested otherwise, for it was clear he was in exile in Paris. His mother believed that he’d refused to obey a directive from Berlin.
This gave him hope, a thin strand of admiration that his father defied Hitler at the height of the war and on the bloodiest of all battlefields.

Wondering whether his father was Nazi was another likely reason he hesitated to make contact with Kilian’s family if
they could be found; he’d admitted only to himself that he was frightened of what his digging might unearth.

Nevertheless, he
remained dogged in his determination to learn about his father’s death. He needed to build a picture around his last few months when that letter had been written to his mother, discover the truth behind his killing and why a Frenchman had stayed with him and then gone to so much trouble to not only mail his father’s letter but accompany it with one of his own. And so he had taken the first tentative
step and written to one of the people mentioned in his father’s letter … the first person, in fact, and probably the easiest to track down.

A return letter had arrived this morning from Regensburg. Max had anticipated it, looking out for it each day for the past week or so. He had pounced on the envelope in his pigeonhole at the student digs that morning but then became unnerved. It was hours
later and still sealed and Max could feel it almost like a pulse in his breast pocket, demanding to be read.

His mother had accused him of a tendency to become obsessively focused on something. Ilse Vogel had known that once she’d opened Pandora’s Box – as Max had now come to think of that shoebox – it had the potential to poison him. And yet knowing she was dying, how could she not tell him the
one truth he had craved since childhood?

Max knew that without the motivation to find out more about his background, he might have given in to his grieving state of mind, left university and returned to Lausanne for a while. His mother had assured him he would have money. The truth was well beyond even his estimates; when her will was read it was obvious that if he didn’t work a day of his life
it wouldn’t matter. His studies became purely academic now, unlike those of every other student he knew. Guilt loaded upon guilt.

Better to be busy, best to be distracted and committed to a project. Studies were not enough. But Kilian gave him the outlet, the focus. Kilian gave him the pathway, drowned out all the words of condolences, removed him from the everyday.

‘Max, do you think
you’re depressed?’ his professor had bluntly enquired recently.

He’d straightened in his chair, unable to hide his shock. ‘Why do you ask that, sir?’

The law lecturer had shrugged slightly. ‘Intuition.’

‘But I’ve handed in my assignments, attended all lectures … I haven’t been drunk or disorderly. I’m not moody or—’

‘No, but you do seem distracted. You’re one of my smartest, Max, if not the brightest,
of my students in a long time. Even though you carefully don’t show it, I know your mother’s death has hit you hard but I don’t see any sign of that grief. If you were getting drunk or you were snapping at people or disappearing to your rooms, I’d understand it. But …’ He shrugged again.

‘But what, Professor?’

‘Well, it just feels recently as though you’re on automatic. You’re conscientiously
here where you should be and yet why do I get the feeling that you’re here in body only? Why do I sense that your mind is wandering away? That you are entirely cut off from the rest of us?’

Out of all of his university heads, Max respected Professor Joubert most. He’d been determined to study law with him for his master’s and had been chosen amongst only three students
to enjoy one-on-one attention
with the old man – something of a legend around the halls of the university for the way he could inspire young minds, motivate youthful spirits to soar.

Max liked him enough to tell him the truth without censoring himself.

‘Well,’ Joubert had said after he finished and a suitable pause had been left for the professor to absorb his charge’s passion. ‘Given that you are not only a talent
at law but a scholar of modern history, I suspect the hunt for the background to your father, digging about in recent history, to be wholly appropriate and indeed nourishing.’

‘Really?’ Max had said, feeling relief that someone he admired was giving him permission to dig around in Nazi records.

‘Of course. And I agree with you, Max, it is another way of grieving … a constructive one, too. You
will likely have something to show for the endeavour.’

‘It fills the emptiness.’

The older man had nodded thoughtfully. ‘Be sure, though, Max, that you are ready for discovery. It sounds as though you’ve spent a lifetime wondering about him and now the doors have opened a crack. If you walk through, you need to prepare yourself to accept whatever you find. The eastern front was an ugly place to
be. So many Jews slaughtered in their villages, so many Russians brutally massacred.’

‘We were massacred in Russia too, professor,’ he defended, thinking of his grandmother’s tears at all the young Germans being cut down on the whims of ‘that maniac’.

‘We?’

Max cringed, remembering how he’d blushed. ‘Sorry,
I mean the German army on retreat was brutalised and everything and everyone in its wake.’

Joubert had shrugged. ‘We need your generation to understand that war takes far more than it gives. And that the only way forward is through peace, education, money being put into the right hands and strong legal bindings. As a young lawyer, you might take that on board.’

Max had nodded thoughtfully. ‘I read your paper,’ the professor continued. ‘It’s good. No, it’s very good. I’m clearly
worrying unnecessarily.’

‘Don’t worry about me, sir. But this is something I am driven to do.’

‘I can see that. Don’t let it consume you. And if you ever want to talk about it, my door is open to you any time.’

‘Thank you.’ He’d shaken his head. ‘I barely know where to begin.’

‘The German National Archives,’ Joubert had said, standing and removing the pipe he’d been puffing on gently, filling
his study with a sweet-smelling fog. ‘The Nazis, if they were anything, were dedicated record keepers to the point of obsession. Koblenz is your starting point.’

Max knew he’d gaped at his elder.

‘Happy hunting, Max.’

So now his pathway was clear. The German National Archives beckoned. Max turned away from the canal to head down the cobbled streets towards the towering cathedral and found a small
brasserie sitting beneath its shadow. There were not many places to choose from to eat in the old quarter but he assumed it was only a matter of time before demand would see this whole area full of cafés and taverns selling the local food that Alsatians were so proud of.

They’d have to get rid of the traffic, though, that wound along a ribbon of tarmac around the imposing cathedral. Tourists caught
their breath as they turned the corner at place Gutenberg or rue Merciere, glimpsing the cathedral’s imposing structure in the heart of the city. Max liked to sit inside its peaceful walls of rose-pink stone when he was swotting for exams. He’d find a quiet corner, close his eyes – as though in prayer – and run through all the case studies he needed to recall for his law exams. It was a better
space than the university library and he could focus far quicker in the cathedral and without distractions from fellow students. In summer the venue became noisier, greeting visitors who came to witness the marvel of its astronomical clock in the south transept as animated figures paraded before Death, marking hours. He could never tire of it either.

In the brasserie he found a seat
by the window and soon enough a pretty, dark-haired waitress arrived to clean down the table. He recognised her – Gabrielle; she was from Paris and a fellow student.

‘You’re back,’ she said. ‘How was Lausanne?’

He was surprised, had forgotten he’d told her. ‘I’ve been back for weeks,’ Max admitted. ‘I just haven’t been out much.’ She didn’t know about his mother.

She shrugged. ‘Studying hard,
huh?’

‘Something like that,’ he replied. ‘How about you?’

‘Oh, you know how it is. I’m just counting down the weeks to Christmas. I miss the family.’

Max was reminded of how easy life was for him in comparison to so many other students. He cleared his throat, feeling sheepish. ‘Only three weeks to go. It will fly.’

She nodded. He didn’t think she knew anything about him
but her smile suggested
that his words were patronising – of all people, he couldn’t possibly know how she was feeling. He admonished himself for being so touchy about his background.

‘Are you ready to order or should I …?’

‘No, no, sorry, I’m ready.’ Max glanced at the menu and toyed briefly with the idea of ordering
flammekueches
with onion and garlic, but he was cold and a thin tart wouldn’t hit the spot
today, whereas the rich
baeckeoffe aux trois viandes
sounded warming and too good to pass up. ‘How’s the stew?’

‘Really good,’ she admitted. ‘Pork, lamb and beef in one pot and made the proper way. I tasted a small bowl for breakfast.’

He laughed. ‘Then it must be good for lunch. I’ll have that and a beer, please.’

She wrote it down. ‘Back soon.’

Max stared out of the window and removed
the letter. It was a quality stock, crisp and thick enough that its blue envelope hadn’t been crumpled during the postage process. The stamp on the right was perfectly level, stuck down with care, and the handwriting was in indigo ink in a firm, old-fashioned script.

On the flap was written the sender’s surname and address in Regensburg, Germany. Max knew the beautiful old city with its Roman
walls and the Danube flowing through it.

He traced a finger across the name.
Eichel
. This was Walter Eichel, now retired, the German banker in Paris during the war years who had drunk with his father and talked art and opera amongst politics and war.

‘Here’s your stew,’ Gabrielle said. ‘There’s bread coming and your beer is on the way. Enjoy your meal,’ she said over his thanks and departed.
He liked that they made this stew
the traditional way, with a dough crust on top in the manner of the bakers who used to seal the stews left by the women to cook in his oven while they went down to the river to do their laundry. By the time they returned from their washing, their meals would be cooked.