Kino (30 page)

“That's why I'm here,” he said, catching up. He was out of breath and one of his shoes was untied. “I am so sorry I lied.”

Mina stopped pushing and turned to him.

“Did you know that my husband left me? I got divorced over all of this.” The words sounded false to Mina, but her anger was real.

“I didn't know that. I am sorry.” He stopped to lean on a garbage can and catch his breath. “You got me good, with that chair. My name isn't Schnark. It's Jupp. Jupp Koblitz.”

Penny strained in her seat to turn around and get another look at him. “You're Heinz's son?” She spit again, this time into the bushes. “Let's keep going, princess. We don't want anything to do with this man.”

“Wait,” Mina said. “Your father was Kino's brother Heinz? You're my father's cousin?”

“No,” Schnark–or Jupp–said. “I'm not.”

“Named for Kino's younger brother,” Penny said. “Jupp died in the estate fire. Heinz made it out without a scratch, and I bet he figured the least he could do was name his son after him.”

Mina looked at the man she'd first noticed at Tegel airport, after the bomb scare. Now he was here, drunk, claiming he was family. She didn't know what to think.

“Heinz was always the one who made out fine when others suffered,” Penny said. “Always the better businessman, too, even back in twenty-three, twenty-four. When Kino ran out of money, Heinz bought his shares in Koblitz & Söhne for dollars. Kino was living the high life while Heinz consolidated control over the family business. He moved the company to Berlin because that's where the real money was. He made political connections that guaranteed him a handsome share of Germany's rearmament.”

“You mean Heinz was a Nazi?”

“Long before it was fashionable.” Penny pointed at the flask Jupp was sipping from anxiously. “What do you have there?”

“Asbach Uralt,” he said.

“I'll have a nip.”

The man whose real name appeared to be Jupp Koblitz handed Penny the flask. “Not here,” Mina sighed, looking around for nurses who might object. She pushed Penny toward the beach boardwalk. It was the nicest place for an old person's home Mina could have imagined–except for all the old people. Penny took a deep swig.

“Keep talking, Oma,” Mina said, worried the alcohol might put her out.

“Heinz showed up to the premiere of
Jagd zu den Sternen
in uniform,” she said, “and that was in 1930. He claimed he had nothing against the Jews–he was supporting Hitler strictly for business reasons. Ha! His wealth was second only to Stinnes. But the greedy son of a bitch was always jealous of Klaus and his starlets. His wife Cornelia was a frigid bore, and Heinz was smitten with our world. He made a pass at me once–I never told Kino. He kept showing up at film parties and the restaurants that mattered. Everywhere he went, he threw money around, introducing himself as Kino's brother.”

On the oceanfront, bikers, skaters, and rollerbladers oozing health zipped by in the golden late afternoon light, dodging old people with walkers and wheelchairs. There was a fresh breeze. A swarm of surfers was bopping in the water, waiting for a wave. Jupp sighed and massaged his temples.

“After my father was arrested,” Penny went on, “we relied on Heinz and his connections for news. He loved it, the power. The son of a bitch made us suffer and wait and beg and grovel. It was Heinz who finally brought news that my father had been killed, in Bergen-Belsen.”

“That man was not my father,” Jupp said, with barely contained anger. “You're right, I was named for Kino's younger brother, and yes, I grew up thinking Heinz and Cornelia Koblitz were my parents. But that man was not my father.”

Penny shifted uneasily in her wheelchair. “I don't want to hear any more of this. Take me back upstairs, princess. Oma needs her medication.”

Jupp ignored her. “It's true that I grew up believing I was his son. Heinz did well for himself after the war. De-nazified Germany needed leaders, and he became one of the stewards of the
Wirtschaftswunder
. He groomed me to take over Koblitz & Söhne, but I rebelled against him for as long as I can remember. I was barely eighteen when I left town, lived in communes, traveled, got married. I owned a bar in West Berlin and didn't hear from my family until Heinz died, in 1989.”

He took another drink. “After Cornelia's death–what did you call her? A frigid bore?–Heinz remarried and had three more children. When he died, he split the company and his wealth between them, and I inherited the key to a safe deposit box. Guess what I found?”

“Princess, please? You know what the Dokters said about my blood pressure. This man is lying.”

Mina shook her head. “I want to hear this. What did you find–
Tulpendiebe?”

“Not just
Tulpendiebe.
In the climate-controlled vault of the bank, Heinz had kept prints of all of Kino's films, ten altogether. There was also a birth certificate stamped
Streng Geheim
that showed I wasn't born in a hospital.” From a small leather backpack, he took a yellowed document in a protective plastic sleeve. “The Nazis kept immaculate records. Here, it indicates I was born at Plötzensee Prison.” He took one more deep drink. “And Penelope, it says that you're my mother.”

With a screech, Penny propelled herself out of the wheelchair and lunged at Jupp, trying to get a hold of the document. The two of them tumbled to the ground, struggling.

“Help!” Jupp yelled. “Get her off me!”

Mina took the document from Jupp's hand and held it out of reach. “Stop it,” she said. “Stop fighting.” People were beginning to point and stare, and after a few more moments of frenzied grappling, Mina managed to separate the two. She helped Penny back up. The wheelchair had fallen over, and Mina pulled Penny onto a bench overlooking the ocean. Jupp sat down next to her, breathing heavily. Mina thought he was awfully out of shape for a detective, only to remind herself that of course, he was no detective. He was–her uncle?

“My God,” Jupp said, rubbing a long red scratch on his arm. “You know how to fight.” He passed the flask back to Penny before Mina could say anything. Mina righted the wheelchair, sat in it, and wheeled up next to them. “This is amazing,” she said, studying the swastika-adorned document. “This says you had him on June 9, 1943. It doesn't mention the father.”

Penny's eyes were aimed somewhere above the horizon, and she began to choke with tears. Nobody spoke. Finally, she cleared her throat. “Oh, the melodrama,” she said. “It's like a scene from
Meine wilden Wanderjahre.
Klaus would've been proud.”

Mina found a prescription bottle in the wheelchair's side pocket, shook out two pills, and handed them to her grandmother, who downed them gratefully.

After a long pause, Penny began to speak.

“I got pregnant the night we tried to leave Germany, on the sleeper train to France. We thought we were leaving everything behind, but they recognized us and we were arrested.
Isolationshaft
, you know what that means? I didn't see another soul the entire time. I had the baby in prison, starved, desolate. There were bombs the night you were born. They drugged me and showed me a dead baby. They told me it was stillborn, the umbilical cord around his neck like a noose. I knew they were lying. I screamed and screamed. They just gave me an injection and locked me up again.”

Penny paused, looking sideways at Jupp.

“I don't know how many days or weeks I spent in a haze of grief and hatred. Finally, Heinz came into my cell to tell me he had secured our release–provided we left the country and never returned. He told me it was our only chance.”

“He sent you and Kino away,” Jupp said, “but he kept me as his own. Cornelia couldn't have children.”

“How could Heinz get away with this?” Mina's head swung back and forth between Jupp and Penny. Her family.

“In 1943, people had more pressing concerns than following other people's pregnancies, and dead babies were easy to come by,” Penny said. Jupp was staring out over the ocean, as if he weren't listening at all.

“He took Jupp, and he kept the movies, too.”

Penny made a throaty noise as if she were about to hock up a mouthful of spit, but then she just sighed. “Letting us live, that was the cruelest punishment of all.” She began to sob.

Mina had watched Penny's drug-induced seizure and spent weeks staring at her in a coma, but this, here, was the most vulnerable she'd seen her, weaker even than as the Duke's moribund daughter. Of all her accumulated grief and dark secrets, this was the one she'd guarded more than anything. Mina wondered if Penny's frail body felt any different now that they knew. Jupp put his arm around Penny but she pushed him away. “You were never mine. You belonged to that Nazi swine who took you away. You were born in a cell and I never held you, not once. I was never your mother!”

Mina put a hand on Penny's shoulder, hoping to calm her down. She could not imagine what it must have been like, pregnant and alone in a Nazi prison, and to lose the child.

“Why didn't you tell me sooner?” Mina asked Jupp.

“The time wasn't right. Heinz died just after the Wall came down, and my wife was divorcing me. My life was a mess, and I wanted nothing to do with this past. I got as far away from it as I could–Morocco, Corfu, India. During a rave in Goa, I finally realized that I couldn't keep on running. I returned home and found a
Doppelnocken
projector.”

“You have seen all the movies?”

“My father's films became my burden and my only pleasure. I learned how to store them and watched them over and over again. I found something comforting in them, and I made them my home. They were all I needed.”

“You didn't want to find your real family?”

“Oh, I tried. I came to your house in Connecticut, pretending to be a biographer. Detlef could barely contain his scorn, and he refused to be interviewed. I knew I had nothing in common with him, my angry little brother. I remember you, too, coming home on a bicycle just after he shut the door in my face. I wished I could have told you who I was.”

“I don't remember that,” Mina said. She was rocking herself back and forth in the wheelchair.

Penny stabbed her finger in Jupp's chest. “You're a coward, just like Kino. Just like Detlef. That's what the three of you have in common.”

“You threw me out, too,” Jupp told her. “Screaming your head off before I could get a word out. Of course I didn't come back. I swiped my father's journal from the study, and I found Marty, who told me about
Twenty-Twelve.
”

Mina waved for the flask, took it from Jupp, and had a drink herself. The cognac burned in her throat.

“So you sent me
Tulpendiebe.
Why?”

“Kino's movies taught me that timing is everything. When your wedding announcement turned up in the
New York Times
the same week the Botha auction went online, I suddenly knew what to do. Coincidences are the world's way of winking at you.”

“I'm in the phone book.”

“You came to Berlin because of
Tulpendiebe.
It showed you cared. Your heart was in the right place. That's why I trusted you with the journal.”

Mina felt a familiar anger rise in her throat. “If you were testing me, you fucked up good. I screwed up all around. I let that prick Dr. Hanno steal
Tulpendiebe
out from under my nose, remember? I took
Twenty-Twelve
straight back to Paramount. You're an idiot.”

Something else occurred to her, something that made her even angrier. “What about the bomb threat, that day at Tegel? Who was that?”

Jupp avoided her eyes, nervously unscrewing and rescrewing the top of his flask. He took another sip.

“You're fucking kidding me, right? That was
you?
”

“You left in such a hurry. I hadn't had a chance to–”

Mina cut him off. “I don't want to hear any more. You're nuts. You could have just sent me an email and explained things. Maybe then we didn't have to lose the movies, and I didn't have to lose Sam.” Her voice trailed off. She was determined not to cry in front of them. She reminded herself she was much too angry to cry. If only it hadn't all been such a waste.

Jupp put the flask to his lips again, but it was finally empty. He was looking out over the beach, still avoiding Mina's eyes.

“Well,” Penny said, shaking her head. “I've had enough fun for today. Take me back to my room, princess.”

Mina got up, glaring at Jupp. “Of course, Oma. We're done here.”

The sun was low over the horizon now, casting long shadows on the boardwalk. Jupp cleared his throat. “The convertible was a stroke of genius.”

“What do you mean?” There was a glimmer of something in Jupp's eyes that got Mina interested in spite of herself.

“You must have known I followed you from the airport to the train station, right?”

Mina shook her head. It hadn't occurred to her.

“Your trunk was too tiny for the cans and you left them on the back seat. Remember you stopped for gas, your father went inside to pay, and you tried to call me? It gave me just enough time to swap the film.”

“You switched the cans and I didn't notice? You're saying I pulled a gun on my father over a fake?”

“You did it for Kino. Just like I knew you would. It was noble. We did it, Mina.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Exactly,” Penny said.

Mina was still processing this. “You manipulated me and–wait. You have
Twenty-Twelve?”

“Well.” Jupp grimaced. “For a professional, Botha did a terrible job storing the film. I spent the last three weeks in Berlin, with your friend Dr. Broddenbuck. We've been able to salvage only fragments.”

“You saw Dr. Hanno?”

“He happens to be a very talented digital restorator. His DVD transfer of
Tulpendiebe
is outstanding. He hid a digital master from Katz's goons, and we transferred the other movies on museum equipment. Most of the films look great, but
Twenty-Twelve
is in bad shape. It just sat in the humidity of Botha's attic and rotted away.”