The Woman from Bratislava (12 page)

‘Who says we exterminated six million Jews? Who the hell counted all those bodies?’

‘There’s no need to defend it,’ Karl Henrik said. ‘You can’t defend those killings, no matter how many or few they were. One was one too many. But that’s not the issue here.’

‘No, you’re right, Karl Henrik. You’re right. I’m an old man. I have a right to take my opinions with me to my grave.’

‘So what is this really about, Fritz?’ I asked, but it was Karl Henrik who answered. He spoke with his cigar held up in front of his eyes, as if he were studying it. Fritz ran the glowing tip of his cigar around the ashtray until it fell off.

‘It’s about justice,’ Karl Henrik said. ‘It’s about the rehabilitation of those Danes who fought on the German side on the Eastern Front. That is the purpose of the association.’

‘What association?’ I asked.

‘The Veterans’ Association, of which I am secretary. We work for the rehabilitation of the fallen, the missing, the convicted, the survivors …’

‘Of whom Dad was one,’ Fritz interjected.

‘That’s nothing to do with me!’ I snapped and he lowered his head again, but Karl Henrik went on, under the icy, blue eye of the yellow-faced old man.

Karl Henrik leaned across the table.

‘We are neither old Nazis or neo-Nazis. My uncle here may never have completely given up the faith, but he also voted
Conservative
for years – though I suspect that these days he would be more likely to vote for the Danish People’s Party …’

‘Too bloody right. It’s not the Jews who are the big threat to the Danish way of life nowadays, it’s the Muslims who are destroying everything that’s good about this country and the old parties are failing the nation again, just as they failed us.’

‘Be quiet and let me explain.’

‘Don’t bother. I have to be getting home,’ I said, but Fritz placed a hand on my arm and said in a voice both pleading and peremptory:

‘Just listen to him for a minute, Theodor. If only for my sake, and Irma’s.’

I sat down again and listened, puffing fiercely on another
cigarette
. It was the old story of betrayal and deceit again. Karl Henrik described – with perfect truth – how twelve thousand young men joined the Danish Legion and the Waffen SS. Six thousand of these were sent to the Eastern Front. Possibly as many as three
thousand
were killed or went missing in action. The largest number of Danes to go to war since the Schleswig-Holstein conflict in 1864. They played their part in the first lightning victories and the last of them fell in the ruins of Berlin in May 1945. They were
dispatched
with the blessing of the Danish government in 1941 and condemned by the same politicians in 1945 under
ex post facto
laws. For years they were treated as pariahs and outcasts.

‘We are campaigning to have their reputations restored, to see that they receive an apology for the wrong done to them after the war.’

‘It was a gross injustice,’ the old man said.

‘You’ll never get that apology, I’m glad to say,’ I responded. ‘These fine men you’re talking about fought for the Nazi killing machine, in the SS – an organisation which was convicted as a whole at Nuremberg of crimes against humanity. You make me sick!’

Something like fire flashed in the old man’s eyes and Fritz fiddled nervously with the tablecloth, but Karl Henrik continued unperturbed:

‘You’re part of this too. Your father was wrongfully convicted.’

‘That’s right, he was a soldier, not a criminal,’ the old man said.

‘I don’t want any part of it,’ I said.

‘The Veterans Association is now several hundred strong,’ Karl Henrik said. ‘We’ve attracted a lot of new members over the past few years. Most of them descendants of Eastern Front combatants who now realise the injustice done to their relatives. We help one another, but neo-Nazis are not welcome – although we have been approached by some.’

‘What a network,’ I remarked wryly, but the irony was lost on him and the old man said:

‘We would like to offer whatever assistance we can give, to enable you to help Irma. It would be better coming from you than from one of us …’

‘What’s Irma’s part in all this, Fritz?’ I asked.

Fritz glanced at his two associates before answering:

‘She’s been a member of the association for years. She supports its aims …’

‘Irma’s a flaming Marxist, or at least she was …’

‘We don’t discuss politics within the association, Theodor,’ Fritz replied. ‘It’s best you speak to her yourself.’

I merely stared at him, wondering yet again how he had ever managed to make so much money. Once more Karl Henrik came to his aid and in his words I heard an echo of my sister:

‘Through her Marxist analyses of the crisis capitalism of the thirties Irma has also come to the conclusion that the Eastern
Front volunteers were as much victims of the war as the members of the resistance. There were simply more of them. The real bad guys were the collaborationist politicians who got Denmark into such a mess. With their boundless hypocrisy and double-dealing they managed to push the resistance movement onto the sidelines after the war, and judged the volunteers according to unlawful principles. You know your sister. The very fact that she is a
socialist
means she’s determined to see that justice is done.’

I clapped my hands sardonically and said what a splendid little lecture that was, but I could tell that I had better not step too far out of line otherwise a situation which was already fraught could turn really nasty.

‘Look,’ I said, as if I were talking to a bunch of silly,
badly-behaved
schoolchildren. ‘This may sound trite, but it is also fairly obvious. People make choices. In this case, some chose to join the resistance movement. Others did nothing and got through it as best they could. Still others chose to pick up a gun and enlist in the SS. But they crossed that line themselves. It wasn’t society’s fault, dammit.’

‘It was a different story when the Soviet Union collapsed, though, wasn’t it?’ Karl Viggo Jensen said, raising his voice slightly. ‘Suddenly everyone could see the true face of communism. If the Western powers had made a concerted stand against Stalin the world would have been a different place. It was a bad, bad system. We fought the atrocious system which attacked little Finland and the Baltic countries. It was our duty.’

‘Stalin was an arsehole,’ I said, genuinely appalled. I was sick of the way everything these days was subject to the same moral
relativism
. ‘On that we can agree, but the communists did not believe that one race was superior to another. They weren’t fucking racists. Originally they were in fact idealists. Communism is a
wonderful
concept. Nazism is anything but. Even in totalitarian systems there’s a difference, for Christ’s sake. The Nazis were racists. They regarded themselves as supermen.’

Karl Henrik glared at me:

‘I may be only an amateur historian, but it so happens that there are well-respected researchers, also at your sister’s university, who see the matter in a different light. A certain revision of history is, after all, taking place these days. Giving a more nuanced picture of the occupation. The views of the resistance movement no longer predominate. The fact that in their lust for revenge they too
committed
atrocities is, I believe, now being accepted in certain
historical
circles.’

‘I know. You’re right, I’m sorry to say. Everyone in Denmark suffered. Some simply suffered more than others. I only hope,’ I continued, declaiming like a second-rate actor, ‘that our version of history doesn’t end up like that presented to Russian high school students. Do you know what
they
say: Russian history is too
difficult
to learn – because they keep changing it.’

They did not find this funny. They hardly turned a hair, merely smiled politely. I was a guest, after all, and this was the country, where people are more prone to observe the proprieties. The old man poured a brandy for me anyway, and this time I was stupid enough not to say no. It went down well too. Fritz had got his cigar going again. Suddenly he blurted out:

‘You don’t know what it was like growing up as Dad’s son. Or Dad’s daughter. The amount of stick we had to take. How we were called Nazi brats until we moved and people gradually forgot as times got better. You were kept in the dark. You were the baby. You had to be shielded. Poul forbade Mum to talk to you about the past. Poul betrayed Dad’s memory …’

Now I was really riled. How dare he insult my good, kind, loving step-father.

‘Leave Poul out of this, brother mine.
He
was my father, so you and Irma can keep your rotten Nazi, Eastern Front volunteer of a Dad!’

I could see from Fritz’s face that his temper was up and I
suddenly
remembered that he had actually given me a hiding once or
twice when I was a little boy. He had a violent, or at any rate an aggressive, streak. Maybe he had brought that to bear in the
business
world from which he had made his money, or maybe he was just good at baking and selling bread.

‘You had no right to say that,’ Fritz said at length.

‘No, you’re right, I didn’t,’ I said mildly. ‘I didn’t know him, my real father. Well, how the hell could I? So Poul was my Dad, okay?’

‘Dad was a good man,’ he said.

‘If you say so, Fritz. I didn’t know him. And you’re right, I may have gone too far.’

‘That’s alright,’ he said, but I could tell by looking at him that it was not. We sat for a while in silence, probably less than a minute, but it felt longer. At last the old man said:

‘You met a woman in Bratislava …’

‘How in hell’s name do you know that?’

‘She is Andreas’s daughter. I told you, we support one another, we stick together. Our work also transcends national boundaries. Not in order to gain power or to bring back Nazism, simply to help one another … you met Maria, didn’t you?’

‘I received a visit from a woman who called herself Maria and told me some crazy story about her being my half-sister. And how my real father had not died ages ago in a bar in Hamburg, but lived happily ever after in Croatia. Is that the one you mean?’

‘That’s the one I mean,’ he said clasping his hands on the table in front of the blue-fluted coffee cup. ‘That’s the story I’m
thinking
of and I was wondering whether she showed you anything to substantiate her story?’

‘Yes, she did. Both words and pictures. Most convincing,’ I said.

‘And I presume that you have this material at home?’

‘I do not have this material at home.’

‘Don’t tell me you brought it with you?’ he said, sounding
surprised
and pleased.

‘No. I no longer have it.’

There was silence around the table, then Karl Viggo and Karl
Henrik both spoke at once, their questions overlapping: had I thrown it away, destroyed it? I told them the honest truth – that I had packed the letters and photographs into a suitcase which had disappeared, as so many suitcases have a way of doing on their way from one place to another. That my suitcase, according to the information I had received from SAS, had decided, more or less of its own free will, to see as much as it could of our wonderful world and in the course of its new globetrotting life had then chosen to vanish into thin air.

They did not find my presentation of the facts particularly amusing, but I honestly did not give a shit. They might well have been hoping to add those letters and photos to their little SS shrine, but that I would never have allowed, lost suitcase or no lost suitcase. Not that I said that to them. Instead I asked to be driven back to my car. They looked at one another, then got to their feet.

I stood for a moment with Fritz in the yard. It was extremely peaceful out there. A couple of chickens strutted about, and the birds had started singing again. The unmistakable scent of spring was in the air, it seemed to send a double dose of light and ozone shooting straight to the brain.

‘I don’t want to be in your gang, Fritz,’ I said. ‘And I think you would do well to let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘That’s funny, coming from a historian,’ he said with a sigh.

‘This isn’t history, it’s fetishism,’ I retorted and gave him my hand. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’

‘I’ve spoken to my lawyer, it’s all arranged,’ he said, releasing my hand. ‘He’ll take on Irma’s case, but he says that there’s very little we can do for the next two or three weeks. Not until she comes up before the judge again.’

‘Fair enough. And thanks.’

‘It’s the least I could do,’ he said. ‘I mean, I have the money, and she
is
my sister …’

‘Even so.’

I do not know how much Karl Henrik had had to drink, but he took it nice and easy on the drive back to Knudshoved where
my car was waiting. The young driver had evidently taken himself off. We did not say a word to one another the whole way. I was tired and I had a headache. My back was playing up too, although even that I was getting used to, pain and all. I fleetingly considered driving into Nyborg and taking the train. Let Janne pick up the fucking car. But that was just plain stupid – I hadn’t had that much to drink, and it had been with a meal. So most of the alcohol had to be out of my system by now, surely?

I drove onto the low bridge, across the high bridge and through the toll barrier. That must have been where they spotted me. Nobody gets through there without being caught on video and it is also a good place for checking number plates, especially on weekdays when the traffic is not so heavy.

The squad car flagged me down just outside of Slagelse. A
uniformed
policeman came up to the car and I rolled the window down. How much
had
I had to drink? He tipped his cap politely and asked to see my driving licence.

‘Have you had anything to drink today, sir?’

‘A beer and a schnapps with lunch,’ I said.

‘Oh, at least, I’d say,’ he commented, sniffing inside the car.

Cars zoomed past and I saw people sending me sympathetic or smug looks. The policeman held onto my licence and said: