The Dark Room (21 page)

He watches her cycle up the road before he gets dressed.

Yasemin Devrim; Mina; physical therapist; love of my life.

Micha makes coffee; he eats a roll and honey.
Me and Luise, Vati and Mutti, Oma and Opa. Opa and Opa and Opa.
Half asleep at the window, Micha weaves over and under his threads of family; reciting, listing, working on and on.

Opa Askan. Opa Askan. Opa Askan Boell.

Though it is automatic, internal, it is also only partly subconscious. Michael is all too aware of his mind’s-eye maps. All too aware of where they are leading him.

It is the first day of the autumn break. Micha should be marking, preparing, buying Mina’s brother a birthday gift. Instead, he cycles to the university in the rain. In the library he goes to the computers
and calls up the catalogue. He types in
Holocaust
, lists the class numbers and finds the shelves. Micha reads only the spines today. Black and gold and red lettering. Green and brown and blue bindings. Meters and meters and meters of shelving.

Why now?

Michael asks himself this question all the time.

We learned about the Holocaust in school. We were taken to visit the camp nearest the city, we watched documentaries, wrote essays. I remember our teacher crying. That was at the camp. He went outside while we were eating lunch in the cafeteria. We thought he was having a cigarette, but when he came back his eyes were red.

Micha doesn’t remember crying.
I don’t think I did cry.

It was his uncle’s birthday recently, Mutti’s baby brother. The family went out together for a meal. They didn’t talk about the war, the Holocaust; they didn’t really talk about the past at all. Only in family milestones: births, marriages, deaths. It was the age difference that caught Micha: Mutti and Bernd and the fourteen years between.
A daughter before and a son after the war.
Micha had never really given it much thought before: Bernd was always just Bernd, uncle and cousin rolled into one.

Mother and uncle.
They read each other’s moods, finish each other’s sentences.
Brother and sister.
Micha knows the contrast to him and Luise is stark.
The war got in the way. That’s what Oma says: the war got in the way, but they found each other all the same.
It is her customary toast to her children. How happy they make her.

—
But the war was only six years.

Micha said to Oma, up in her bird’s nest the following Sunday.

—
Not fourteen.

He stood outside with her, on the balcony. So she could smell the autumn leaves in the air.

—Opa came back New Year 1954. He was Waffen-SS, you see.

She said it as if Michael knew already.

—He went away in ’41, the Russians got him, and I didn’t see him again for thirteen years.

SS.
No one had told Michael before. He stood with Oma in the sun and looked out over the green and gold of the park below.
Why did the Russians hold on to Opa so long?

He’d never thought to ask.

A week after Cem’s birthday, Michael goes back to the library. He finishes at school around midafternoon and heads for town. The university precinct is empty, the paved streets swept clean. It is getting dark already and the air is dry and cold, smells of snow.

In the library, people work quietly at the computer clusters. Michael knows where the books are, but he searches the catalogue again.
Nazi:
entries 1–12 of 1,547 are displayed. He has a coffee and a pretzel in the café. He doesn’t know where to start.

Michael walks up and down the rows of shelves. He is the only one in this section. On the far side of the room, a librarian is shelving returns. Michael works his way along the spines. Top row, middle, then bottom, pulling out anything general, anything overview. His arms start to ache. He puts the pile of books on the floor next to his feet and continues along the shelves. He reads the back covers now, about the authors. Academics, historians, survivors, survivors’ children. Israelis, Americans. Some Germans. Many of the books are in English. Michael teaches English; he can read English. The pile next to him gets taller.

He opens the books and reads the dedications now. Brief names, lonely in the blank page. Often they are parents, grandparents. Michael is aware that they are dead. That they were killed.

Another shelf holds diaries. American servicemen; journalists; a German woman.
From the same city as Oma.
Born in the same year, too.

Michael carries the books to a desk by the window. Three journeys back and forth from the shelves. The librarian has made her
way around the room. Her trolley is almost empty. Outside, the dark is streaked with yellow-white lights. Michael goes downstairs to phone Mina, but gets the machine. He says,
I’ll be back later. Eat, don’t wait.
He smokes a quick cigarette out by the lobby.

The librarian is hovering over Michael’s books, surprised to see him.

—You’re back.

She smiles briefly, not friendly, moves off along the shelves. Michael feels uncomfortable, wonders if she noticed the titles. He shakes himself:
What else would people be reading here?
Still, he turns the spines to the wall.

He has three hours. Michael reads from the top of the pile, taking notes as he goes. A diary, mixed with newspaper clippings. An American journalist: in Berlin before the war, and back again after. He talks about indoctrination, obedience, street violence, anti-Semitism in schools, on posters, and on the crowded city trams. Michael reads, dismayed; reads again, makes notes.

Seats all taken, old woman got on. Heavy bags, no one helps. Journalist angry, stood up for her, but old woman wouldn’t sit down. Tried to ignore him. Another man told the journalist don’t bother. Points with umbrella, draws a J on the floor at the old woman’s feet. She stays by the door and says nothing. Angry? The tram stopped, she got off and walked. Man with umbrella laughed. Spat at her out the window.

Reaching for the next book on the pile, Micha glances over what he has written. He stops short, alarmed. His notes are impassive; words on a page. He writes again:
More visible, more vulnerable
, pressing hard with his pen. He underlines it:
Spat and laughed
, but even with emphasis it still feels feeble, all wrong. Micha thinks his notes should say more, not less, than the books. Should reveal something about himself. But beyond discomfort he has nothing to show, no ready response.

Micha thinks,
She was Jewish
, but when he writes the words down, they look so cold and indifferent, he quickly turns the page.

Michael is frightened. By the quiet of the library; the cool distance of his notes. He decides to go home.

Mina is on the phone when he gets in, laughing with a friend. Michael is hungry and he searches through the fridge for food. He brings his plate into the hallway, watches Mina talk while he eats. She doodles; black ballpoint on her fingertips, the backs of her hands. Speaks in Turkish, then German, then Turkish again. Later, she climbs into Micha’s bath with him. He thinks at first he will tell her about his notes and how they scared him, but Mina has gossip from friends, plans for the weekend. Micha listens and washes the ink from her skin.
I might find nothing
, he tells himself.
There might be nothing to tell.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and he lies in the warm water with his arms around Mina, and feels relieved at the thought of the weekend together.

When Micha remembers his Opa, he thinks first of all the good things.

I was his only grandson. Opa drew pictures for me when I was born, birds and horses and a squirrel. He drew them with blue pen on hospital stationery, talking to me in my crib.

Michael has heard this story so often, it’s like a memory. He keeps the drawings in a box in a cupboard on the shelf above his shoes. They are beautiful; precise and fine. The squirrel has a nut between his paws, and tiny splots of blue ink in his tail, which have smudged over the years.

Michael also keeps two photos of himself with Opa.

The first one is black-and-white, taken when Michael was a baby. Opa is wearing a black suit and Michael is in his christening robe. Opa is standing, holding Michael, who is looking up at his Opa,
surprised. He has one baby hand held up to his grandfather’s face, and Opa smiles back at him, eyebrows raised. It is supposed to be a formal portrait, but Opa has forgotten about the photographer.

—
That’s what I like about this picture.

Michael told Mina, the first time he showed it to her.

—
He’s not looking ahead, like he should be, you know. He only has eyes for me.

Michael blushed when he said this, and Mina laughed, but she could see it was true. And Michael smiled, through his blushes, because he could see it, too.

The second photo was taken just before Michael started school.
Just before Opa died.
This one is in color, taken at a family dinner, with Opa in shirtsleeves and Michael in pyjamas, orange and blue.

—
It was time for bed. I was sent down to say good night, and Opa let me stay.

In this photo, Michael sits on his Opa’s lap, legs dangling, smiling into the lens. Behind them, his uncle Bernd is laughing, facing the camera, wineglass raised. Opa has his hands folded across Michael’s tummy and is smiling, too, but not at the lens. He is looking only at the boy on his lap; his food and wine abandoned on the table, the photographer forgotten again.

Why not earlier?

Another question which circles Michael’s brain.

It should have been important all along.

On Saturday afternoon Micha and Mina go to her parents. It’s not far, but it’s cold, so they take the bus. Mina bought cakes in the morning, and the paper bag smells heavy and sweet on Micha’s lap. Mina’s mother loves German cakes; her father says she loves them a little too much.

He came here thirty years ago, worked hard, saved money, so his wife and children could follow. He has family, a whole history far away, but a business, a community, grandchildren, all in Germany, all within five minutes’ drive of his home.

Mina’s father says, I am Turkish, that doesn’t change. Germany is racist, that doesn’t change. He isn’t confrontational.
He’s not saying this to make me uncomfortable.
Michael reassures himself, but he still doesn’t know where to put himself. Between Mina’s father and the fridge and the wall, in the kitchen, apple juice in one hand, biscuit in the other. Mina’s father looks up at Michael and smiles.

—Micha, my son, this is a good and a bad country we live in.

They like me, Mina’s parents. They like my family. They would like us to get married. Her mother told me. She told me to ask Mina, but Mina said no.

Michael asks her again this evening, walking home across the park.

—No.

She smiles and holds his hand.

—I don’t want to be married. You know that.

Michael asks her all the time and she always says no. It doesn’t worry him as much as it used to.

—
Are you Turkish or German, Mina?

—Oh God, my dad. Is that what he was saying in the kitchen? I thought so.

—
I’m interested, though. Would you say you were German or Turkish?

—According to the government or according to me?

—
You, of course. Forget the government.

—Both. Turkish and German. Both.

She laughs.

—
Which one first? German or Turkish?

Mina looks at him. It is dark under the trees, but Micha can see she is smiling.

—Promise not to tell my dad? Or my brothers?

—
Promise.

—German. German-Turkish.

Mina laughs again.

—Can you imagine my dad’s face if he heard that? First plane back to the village, and married to the nearest available cousin.

—
Oh, come on.

—Yes, I know. But he wouldn’t like it.

—
No.

—What do you think I am?

—
German-Turkish.

She nods, satisfied. Micha nods, too. But he thinks:
Turkish-German
, and that bothers him. Even the next morning on the train it bothers him.

Michael reads in the library every day after school for the next two weeks. He tells Mina that he’s planning new lessons for next term. He is afraid to tell her what he’s really doing. In case he finds Opa Askan in one of the books; in case he stops before he finds him. Either. Both.

Waffen SS. Soldier elite. Heroes of the front line.
Michael has a list now of their triumphs,
Demyansk, Kharkov, Kursk.
More names, more dates and connections running across the pages of the maps in his head. But with them also comes the list of their crimes.
Oradour, Le Paradis, and there when they destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto, too.

His reading is not so random now, more deliberate. He works on the books like he works on his imaginary maps: reading footnotes, finding references to other books, articles. He looks them up in the catalogue. If they are there, he reads them. If not, he adds them to his list for other libraries, other times. He has a pile of notebooks by now.

Photos are difficult, painful, but Micha seeks them out. The dark line of evidence in the middle of the book, bound firm into the center
of the spine; description, interpretation feeble next to what they disclose.

cheekbones

nose

forehead

the way he held his cigarettes (he turned them in to his palm)

Micha can’t find his Opa’s face.
Young Askan Boell.
They all look like him and none of them do, the young Germans with the guns and the Jews.

Luise is older. She remembers Opa better than me.