The Dark Room (26 page)

—You weren’t a coward. You were brave to go there and do what you did.

She says it like it’s finished. Micha doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know about Jozef Kolesnik, the tears, and the photo he took all the way to Belarus, and then didn’t show.

Micha can’t look at Opa’s photo now.

He wishes he could throw it away.

On Sunday, Oma makes coffee and Micha lays out the newspaper cuttings for her to read. He has the picture in his pocket, waits for the right moment, standing at the window until Oma settles down. She cuts herself a slice of cake, and he slips into her bedroom.

Put it back, sit down, and drink some coffee.

That’s what Micha thought he’d do, but instead he stays in there. Sitting on Oma’s soft single bed, with her album open on his knees.

There is Opa as New Husband on honeymoon. Askan in shirtsleeves by the lake; slotted in place again on page 1938. Micha turns over, seventeen years later, back to back: Opa as Papa. Opa with young Karin, holding hands. Askan in a dark suit, leaning over, smiling into the crib where his baby son lies.

Micha flicks the pages back and forth, back and forth. 1955: Opa has less hair, more lines; his waist is thicker, his arms are thinner.
And in between?
Two children, nearly two decades of faithful marriage. Seventeen years have passed, but if Micha didn’t know, he would never guess there had been war and prison, too.

Micha shuts the photo album, tells himself,
he was a soldier
, but in his head, he inserts the photos from the museum. Thick pages; a whole album of atrocities between the honeymoon and the newborn boy.

—Bring it out here, schatz. Sit out here. I see you so rarely.

Oma is at the door. Her head shakes a little now, with age. And she is smaller again, bones folding in on themselves, head well below Micha’s shoulders when he stands.

I went to Belarus and I came back.

A museum and an old man;
wasted days;
nothing more. Micha could cry again. Here, now, in the bird’s nest, on Oma’s bed. Rage about those days. That he let them pass like that.

—
We’re going to have a baby. Mina and me.

He needs Oma to smile now, be happy. Something to stop him being angry.

—Micha! I am hearing things! Say it again!

She holds out her hands. Micha knows he should take them, but he can’t.

—
But you mustn’t say anything, Oma. Please. It’s a secret still, you know?

—Yes, yes, of course, schatz. I know. A baby!

She puts her hands on his face and kisses him. Micha can cry now, so he does, because he doesn’t have to explain. Oma brings tissues, cake and smiles, baby books from the drawer where she has stored them.

—Just in case. I always hoped, you know. For you and for lovely Yasemin.

My Oma.

Micha’s family map. The one that leads to Opa. It always stops with her.

Micha carries Opa’s honeymoon photo on trains and buses, around the school, the supermarket, to movies and bars. It creases, and he buys a plastic wallet to keep it from tearing along the deep fold across Opa’s legs.

At school they commemorate the liberation of the camps, and the children make speeches. Many of them cry. The history teacher explains
the day to the silent hall, crowded with parents, older and younger brothers and sisters. Michael sits with his shame and his fury in the back with the staff.

Mina sits up in bed, Michael smokes at the door. Not sure how he can describe it to her; his anger; how he saw this day.

—
Every year it’s the same fucking thing. The students read survivors’ accounts. Everyone cries these we-didn’t-do-it tears. Then the essays get marked, the displays are packed away, and we move right on to the next project.

—Why don’t you say something, then?

—
I can’t talk to the other teachers.

—Why not?

—
They just wouldn’t want to hear it.

Micha thinks Mina doesn’t want to hear it, either. He carries on.

—
It’s taboo, untouchable. It says our school is open and good.

—I think it is. I think it’s good. The students should learn about it.

—
But it’s perverse, Mina. They identify with the survivors, with the victims.

—How do you know?

—
Those are the words they are taught. Those are the words they cry over.

—And they shouldn’t cry?

—
Yes, they should cry! But they should cry that we did this. We did this, it wasn’t done to us.

Mina sighs and punches the pillow into shape behind her head.

—
They shouldn’t only cry about the things that happened, they should cry because we made them happen.

Micha tries to keep it down. Mina doesn’t like it when he shouts, and he has been doing so much shouting these days.

—
Do you understand what I mean?

—I think so, Michael. Yes. But
we
didn’t do it. It was another generation.

—
But we’re related. It’s still us. I mean, I can’t be the only one. There must be others in that hall every year with grandfathers like mine.

—Not everyone. Some of your students are Turkish, aren’t they? Greek? Iranian?

—
Okay, then I’m talking about the ones with German parents, grandparents.

—But they
didn’t
do it, Michael. They really didn’t. The children, the students. Even the very purest of the pure German ones.

Micha stops. Mina has her eyebrows raised, angry.

—
They are being taught that there are no perpetrators, only victims. They are being taught like it just happened, you know, just out of the blue people came along and did it and then disappeared. Not the same people who lived in the same towns and did the same jobs and had children and grandchildren after the war.

—I don’t think that’s true.

—
It is, Mina. I never made the connection before, and it was there in my home. He drew me pictures, I sat on his knee.

—But you don’t even know if he did anything!

Mina has her hands over her face. Micha covers his eyes, too.

—
No. Okay. I just think they should read about the people who did it, too. The real, everyday people, you know. Not just Hitler and Eichmann and whoever. All the underlings, I mean. The students should learn about their lives, the ones who really did the killing.

—I think you’re the perverse one here.

—
I’m serious.

—Michael, you are fucking sanctimonious and you’re fucking obsessed. Please, can we talk about something else now, or can we just go to sleep?

Micha knows Mina is waiting, but he can’t think of anything else to say. She turns off the light and Micha finishes his cigarette in the dark. When he gets into bed, he turns his back to Mina, closes his ears to her breathing. Tries to shut himself away, but the rage and the shame both remain.

Mina said it. There is no place for sanctimony here.

•  •  •  

Micha’s uncle is surprised to see him. He tells his secretary that he won’t be long, and then he looks up at his nephew, clears his throat.

—We can be as long as you want, Michael. Of course.

He says he’ll buy lunch.

Micha doesn’t know where to start, and there are awkward silences until the food arrives, but Bernd relaxes when he asks his questions.

—He drank. I think he probably drank all my life, though I only remember him really drunk two or three times.

—
Why do you think Opa drank?

—I don’t know, Michael. Maybe in Russia, in the prison, perhaps that’s where it began.

—
Not earlier?

—Before he was married?

—
No, the war.

—Oh.

Bernd takes a mouthful of his food. Micha thinks he’s stalling.

—
I mean, do you think something might have happened to him? Or he might have done something in the war, and that made him want to drink?

—Perhaps. Perhaps.

Maybe he just doesn’t know.

—He did drink, and I remember there were times he got so drunk and angry we had to leave the house. Mutti, your Oma, she took Karin and me outside, and we went to the park and waited until it was over.

—
He smashed a window once, didn’t he?

—Yes. Did your mother tell you that? He did.

—
Why?

—Why? I don’t know. Because he was angry, because he could.

—
What happened?

—He smashed the kitchen window with his fist and Mutti took
us outside. That’s not how I remember him, you know. It’s not really what I remember him for.

—
How do you remember him?

—He was a very good father.

Bernd blushes. Micha smiles, despite himself; he enjoys hearing it, seeing his uncle’s love.

—He was gentle. My schoolfriends, their fathers had rules, seen and not heard and so on, but Papa wasn’t like that. He let us run around the house and sing, he let us make a mess. He liked it. I think he really enjoyed it.

—
So, when he drank, or when he was drunk. Was he a different man?

—I don’t know. I suppose so. Maybe that’s one way of seeing it.

—
But that’s not how you see it?

—No. I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it, Micha.

—
Do you think he might always have had it in him?

—Alcoholism?

—
Violence.

—He wasn’t a violent man.

—
But he smashed the window. You had to leave the house. I mean, you must have been scared, Oma must have been scared.

—Listen, Michael. What he did was three, or at most four, times over a period of, I don’t know, years. He got drunk and he got angry and we were there, we were there to take it out on. That’s all. It was a shock, as I said, but that’s all.

Bernd smiles, exasperated. They sit and eat and Micha thinks.

Perhaps he is right.

I am finding connections because I am looking for them, not because they exist.

Opa drank because he killed. Opa killed because he drank. Opa drank because the war was lost, because he was wrong, because he was in prison for so long. Opa drank.

—Do you think Opa killed anyone?

Micha’s uncle looks at him. Micha takes a mouthful of food. It
occurs to him that his uncle could do the same, and that they could pretend he never said it. But then Bernd speaks.

—He was a soldier.

—
He was in the SS.

—The Waffen-SS, Micha. A soldier.

Micha waits a little longer, but knows that that is the only answer he will get, and he doesn’t dare ask anything more.

It is the weekend. A first day of summer with sharp green leaves. Mina buys fresh bread for breakfast and says they should get out of the city, maybe stay somewhere overnight.

—Haven’t been sick this morning. Don’t even feel sick.

She smiles, puts on another slice of toast, pours another glass of juice, rests her feet up on Micha’s lap.

—
Taunus?

He thinks how nice it will be to watch Mina enjoy a picnic lunch.

—
Oder Vogelsberg? We could borrow Cem’s car. Find a hotel, come back tomorrow evening.

—
Let’s camp. We won’t be able to camp for a while after this one is born.

Micha rests his hand against her still-flat stomach. She smiles.

—If you like.

—
Okay, good. I’ll get the tent out of the cellar.

When Micha gets back upstairs, Mina says,

—This is nice. This is nice, isn’t it?

—
Yes, of course it is.

He kisses her. He knows what she means: leave Opa Askan at home.

Micha doesn’t talk about him, and he laughs and smiles all weekend. And he does feel lucky and happy, too, with Mina and with the baby. But he doesn’t leave Askan at home. Even while Mina builds a campfire and Micha reads out his list of names for their child, Opa sits next to him on the cool evening grass.

•  •  •  

The phone rings and Mina takes Micha’s hand, pulls him back down onto the sofa.

—It’s after ten. No one should phone after ten on a weeknight.

Micha folds his fingers around Mina’s hands. Luise’s voice is loud on the answering machine.

—Listen, brother, I don’t know what you are up to, but I wish you would just be careful, just a little bit more careful, you know. And you better not be asking Oma the same stupid questions as Bernd, because if you are, then you are even more heartless than I thought. And if you are listening to this, which I bet you are, then you are a fucking coward, too.

She breathes a moment or two, and then she hangs up.

—My God, Michael. What have you done?

In the kitchen, Micha helps his mother with the food. He is nervous. His mother brushes the hair back from her face, and he can see how tense she is. It shows in her skin, around her eyes.

Bernd told Inge, who would have told Luise, and probably also Mutti, because Mutti knows.

Micha isn’t sure whether he is supposed to speak.

—Michael?

He stops chopping and looks at her. His mother holds his gaze and then turns away, opens the oven door.

—
I just started wondering why he was away so long. Why the Russians kept him.

—Lots of men were kept away. It was normal. Almost all my schoolfriends. If their fathers weren’t dead, they were prisoners of war.

—
I know. But maybe not all of them were prisoners of war. Not normal prisoners.

Micha’s mother closes the oven door.

—He didn’t do anything, Michael.

—
How do you know?

—I know.

—
Have you ever been curious?

—No. Of course not.

—
Did you ever ask him?