“Oh God!” she mumbled.
She watched the phone with a disdainful look until the answer machine eventually clicked in.
“Hi Ingrid, it’s Otto. I’m not sure if you’ve been getting my messages…”
“Shit!” Ingrid muttered as she heaved herself up and strode towards the phone. “Hi Otto.”
“Ingrid?” Surprise in Otto’s voice.
Ingrid glanced at her gold wristwatch. “It must be very late in England, little brother.”
“Yes, it is… quite. I really need to speak to you.”
Ingrid picked up the phone and dragged the lengthy cord with her to the sofa where she resumed her original pose.
“Sorry, Otto, it’s been hell here.”
“Did you get my messages?”
Ingrid hesitated, examining her nails. “Yeah. Look, Otto, I don’t know what I can do. I haven’t spoken to Mum since…” Ingrid lifted both feet onto a cream pouffe and crossed her ankles, wiggling her painted toes. “She never did approve of my… lifestyle.”
Ingrid remembered the men she had brought to the house: successful, rich, usually divorced and universally disapproved of by both Mother and Father. In the end she married Frederick, who had taken her to New York. Ever since she considered that things had never been the same between her and the rest of the family again.
“How is Maurice?” Otto asked.
Ingrid pulled a face. “I divorced him six months ago.”
“Oh, sorry. No–one tells me anything.”
“Don’t be sorry, Otto, I got his lovely apartment,” Ingrid said with a smile as she glanced around the spacious living room.
“I thought you got Larry’s apartment?” Otto said.
“I got his money, and so I should have for putting up with the bastard. No, it was Newman, my second husband’s apartment that I got, but this one is better so I sold his. That really pissed him off.” She snorted.
Otto sighed. “Can we get back to Mum and this business back home?”
“That is not my home any longer, Otto; hasn’t been for a very long time. But I did get your message about finding a body or something. What the hell’s that all about?”
“We don’t know yet?”
“They identified the body?”
“No. It’s been sent to forensic labs in… er… Windhoek, I imagine.”
Ingrid raised her waxed eyebrows. “I can’t help you with this, Otto, and Mum certainly hasn’t called me about it,” she said, sounding indifferent and cold. “As she pointed out to me after I married Larry – or was it Frederick? – we all have our crosses to bear.”
Otto sighed irritably. “Ingrid, Mum has suffered a massive stroke.”
Ingrid’s feet dropped off the pouffe as she sat forward. “Stroke?”
“Yes. Quite a bad one, I’m afraid.”
“Why? How?”
“The stress, I expect. The discovery of the body really affected her.”
“Did she tell them anything?” Ingrid’s voice was suddenly a semitone tauter.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Ingrid said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“I’m flying out tomorrow to see Mum. I’m really worried about her. I think Dieter is coming too.”
“Did Mum phone him?” There it was again: that insecure, bitter edge to her voice. She seldom referred to Dieter by his name, not since he had called her a gold–digger when she met Newman and divorced Larry. That was years ago, even before Father died.
“No, Ingrid, I did, the same day I left my first message for you.”
“Is Mum really that bad?”
“Yes. She’s in hospital in Swakopmund and she’s not waking up.”
Ingrid managed to cradle the phone against her ear and bury her face in the open palms of both hands, her eyes staring over her fingertips into her past.
“Will you come out and join us?” Otto asked.
Ingrid took several deep breaths, feeling her eyes twitching. In the background a distant NYPD siren filled the silence.
“I don’t think I can go back there. Lüderitz is such a dump and that house is filled with too many—”
“Come on Ingrid, we haven’t all been together for… I can’t even remember when last it was,” Otto pleaded.
Ingrid snorted. “Together? What’s ‘together’ about our family, Otto?” she said sharply.
“Let’s not get into this now. Mum needs us.”
“I have nothing to say to Dieter, you know that.”
Otto tactfully ignored the Dieter issue. “Let’s not have a repeat of Dad’s funeral. Come out this time, before it’s too late.”
Ingrid’s chest rose and fell with bottled–up emotions. “You really think there might be a funeral?” she said eventually.
“It’s a distinct possibility I’m afraid.”
Ingrid rubbed her temples. “I don’t know. What’s the point? The past is in the past.”
“Mum – your mother – may well die, Ingrid, that’s the point. Perhaps you could see her one last time, even speak to her. Eventually you will be free from the past that you seem to so despise, and then you can get on with your New York lifestyle unhindered.” Otto’s voice rose, a sudden loss of composure.
“Don’t lecture me, Otto, you of all people. You don’t know the half of it,” she replied venomously.
“Well then, after all these years of sniping and bitterness, come and explain it to me. I’ll be there from tomorrow night.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll be pleased afterwards if you make the effort,” Otto said, sounding much softer again. “It’ll be good to see you.”
Ingrid emitted a derisive nasal sound. “I wish I shared your optimism. Where the hell do you get it from, Otto?”
Four
12 April 1985
It was never clear how many people were carrying the rolled–up carpet – at least that’s what it appeared to be. The carpet seemed strangely familiar too, perhaps the old green one out of his bedroom, though of course that was never pulled up so it couldn’t have been. That was the carpet Mum and Dad said was so durable and tough it had put the company out of business; perhaps that and its hideous colour.
Dieter always imagined that Dad must have been one of the taller people carrying the carpet, but somehow he remained deeply unconvinced that his father was one of the shadowy figures shouldering the awkward bundle. So who were these people then, their faces always turned away slightly, obscured by the subversive shadows of a dreamscape? How many were there? Two, three, definitely no more, but was he one of them or was he watching? Had he witnessed this, or was he recalling an event he’d been told about?
The next oddity was where they were, because something deeply familiar seemed to suggest the back porch of their old house, yet he often got the impression that vine leaves were dangling down above them. This could not be because no vines would ever survive in Lüderitz’s harsh desert climate, and they certainly did not have any at their old home. So perhaps they weren’t at home, but if not, then where on earth were they?
The next bit was often where Dieter would wake up. Having relived the first half of the dream more or less consistently countless times over, the ending was frequently interrupted. What were they carrying, and where were they headed with this rolled–up carpet? Sometimes he saw a skip against the garage wall and this fitted in with a sweaty panic about someone finding the grim contents of the carpet in the skip. But they never had a skip at home, of that he was certain, so this part was surely imagined.
Did this mean that the rest was imagined too? Why would they be taking something that they should not have, whatever it was, something that would be discovered and traced back to them, out of the house in a rolled–up carpet? Who or what was in the carpet? Who put it there? Where were they going with it?
The strangest part of this experience was the incongruity of it all. Why on earth should such a mountain of guilt be manifesting itself in his subconsc
ious mind? It all seemed so utterly out of place, so out of context and alien compared to his childhood memories. Yet he would awaken from it disturbed, frequently shaken and sometimes covered in a sheen of nervous perspiration. Why was he plagued by this?
Dieter believed that if he could sleep and dream just a little longer the mystery might be revealed. But this never transpired and he seriously considered that it was because there was no conclusion stored in his memory. This dream was the equivalent of a sandstone engraving weathered by the wind to the extent that most of it was no longer legible.
The phone was ringing.
“Yeah?” Dieter said, irritably and half–asleep.
Foghorns vibrated in the distance across Repulse Bay. Dieter reached across the bed in the streaky light cast by the blinds and realised the bed was cold and empty beside him. Then he remembered.
“It’s Otto. Sorry to wake you.”
Dieter rubbed his eyes in the dark without lifting his head off the pillow. “What is it now?”
“Mum died, Dieter.”
Dieter stiffened. “Huh?”
“It was peaceful.”
Dieter’s eyes opened and he stared ahead, suddenly wide awake. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Lüderitz, at home.”
“When…?”
“I arrived yesterday,” Otto said.
“Did you see her?”
Otto hesitated. “I was too late.” He sounded deeply remorseful.
“Shit, I’m sorry Otto, I know you were very close.” Dieter empathised with his younger brother, who had just lost his last remaining parent without the opportunity to say goodbye.
“Yes, very close. I live in Durham and she lived in Lüderitz and I didn’t see her often enough.”
“Hey, hey, this is not your fault, Otto, don’t beat yourself up about it,” Dieter said. He had sat up in bed and placed his feet on the wooden floor.
“Are you coming out?”
Dieter nodded before he answered. “Yes. I’ll get the next flight I can. It’s not a good time with the business mind you, so much happening. Is there a fax machine at the house?”
“I’m sure Mum did not plan to be awkward, Dieter.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I recall you running around making phone calls and sending faxes throughout Dad’s funeral,” Otto said.
Dieter recollected groups of stuffy old men standing about quaffing schnapps and small pumpernickel Appetithäppchen over muted conversation, praising Ernst Adermann. Christ, he’d had to walk to the local library to send a fax. Dieter stood up, suddenly impatient to end the call.
“I’ve got to go, Otto, lots to organise before I leave. Is Ingrid coming this time?”
“I couldn’t say. She knows, though.”
“Mmmmh,” Dieter said. “Bloody poor show at Dad’s funeral.”
“I agree.”
“I’ll pick up a nice bottle of scotch at duty free. What you drinking these days?” Dieter blurted, as though he was preparing for a party.
“Surprise me,” Otto replied.
“Do you want anything from Hong Kong for the boys, for Max and er…”
“Karl,” Otto said, accustomed to this. “Don’t worry yourself.”
“No, no, I am really shit at remembering their birthdays… and Christmas. I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK.”
“Do you celebrate Christmas?” Dieter asked after a brief pause.
“Yes, why ever not?”
“Oh, I just wondered… I don’t know why but I thought Sabine was Jewish – something Ingrid might have said once, long ago when we still… you know… spoke.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about. Sabine is as German as you and I are. What did Ingrid say?” Otto’s voice could not contain his evident irritation.
“I can’t remember – I obviously got it wrong, I’m sorry. Look, I’ll see you in a day or two; we’ll have a scotch or three and catch up.”
Otto looked out of the window across the lengthening evening shadows. A stiff breeze bowed the plastic crime scene tape stretched between four metal staves around the roots of the fallen camelthorn in the bleak, rocky, sand–strewn garden. There had been a forensic tent over the hole in the ground but it blew away on the night Mother passed away.
He knew Dieter would bring expensive scotch and share it generously, but also be completely absorbed in his own world, preoccupied with his business back in Hong Kong. And if Ingrid came too, it would be very interesting.
Five
15 April 1985
The South Atlantic Ocean, undulating like a restless sheet of liquid lapis lazuli, repelled the brightness of the high sun at its zenith. The heat scorched the arid earth and forced Otto to squeeze his eyelids together protectively. The broad crime scene tape cordoning off the disfigured hole beside the fallen camelthorn’s roots felt surreal and yet indefatigably final between Otto’s fingers. He stared at the broken sandy soil where he had played as a child, recalling the hazardous climbing expeditions into the tree’s unwelcoming thorny bosom. It was difficult now to recreate the perspective in his mind, though, with the stricken tree lying as it was, prostrated on the ground.
“I don’t recall this place being quite so desolate,” Dieter said, stroking his Thomas Magnum moustache.
The Adermann family home, an imposing double storey Bavarian–styled colonial house, was built on a steep incline of harsh black rock near the corner of Bismarck and Bülow Streets. Most of Lüderitz was chiselled into this brutal terrain, softened only by the desert’s relentless sandy incursions into every corner of the town – the roads, the sidewalks – heaped by the strong coastal winds against every vertical intruder, be that lamppost, wall or broken–down vehicle. The only clean and immovable boundary was the edge of the bitterly cold South Atlantic waters lapping the sandy shore.
“It’s grim, isn’t it?” Otto agreed, staring at the hole in the ground. “Yet Lüderitz still has a unique charm for me. I don’t know what it is… a paradox perhaps. You just wouldn’t expect to find humans settled in such a…” He searched for the word. “A foreboding place.”
“I wonder why Mum and Dad chose to come here?” Dieter kicked at the stony ground. “To this remote, desolate corner of Africa?” He chuckled, waving his arm aimlessly. “I mean, there is nothing in any direction for hundreds of miles.”
Otto was mesmerised by the roughly excavated hole in the ground where the sanctity of a human grave had been desecrated, first by nature and then by inquisitive police hands. Someone had been lying down there amongst the struggling roots of one of the few trees to successfully survive the Namib Desert’s unforgiving climate. Just four feet up, in blissful childhood ignorance, he had played on top of it. A chill ran down his spine and he felt himself shiver.
“Do you remember how Mum used to watch us through the kitchen window when we played out here?” Otto said, glancing up to the rear wall of the house, through the large square kitchen window, imagining his mother standing at the kitchen sink, hands out of sight and busy as she watched them play.
“You mean, what was she thinking?”
Otto met his brother’s eyes. “Possibly.”
Dieter turned and looked around the large, white–walled garden imposed upon the steeply angled rocky slope. The relatively level soil around the camelthorn tree had provided one of the few child–friendly places for he and Otto to play. The only greenery to punctuate the black rock and sandy brown hues were succulents of various shapes and sizes: aloes, Damara milk–bushes, and the incredibly rare Welwitschia with its odd–looking pinky–red flowers, fed by the dense Skeleton Coast fogs.
“I only have happy memories of this garden, apart from the later years… you know, the squabbles with Ingrid.” He looked back at Otto. “We used to fight too, but we got on well mostly, didn’t we, despite our age difference?”
“How old are you now?”
“Forty–seven,” Dieter said. His long, neatly groomed sideburns
and short fair hair made him look younger, Otto thought.
“You’re right, I was much younger than you, but somehow you were quite a patient brother, as I recall. In fact you kind of did the things with me that Dad never did, sort of like a younger father sometimes, more than an older brother.” Otto shrugged. “I don’t know, that’s what it felt like, when I was a boy.”
“Yeah, Dad was pretty preoccupied with his work, wasn’t he?” Dieter said. “It used to feel as if he lived in… where was it again?”
“He had a clinic in Keetmanshoop,” Otto said.
“Yeah, that’s it – well, he seemed to be there more than he was at home.”
Otto turned away and rubbed his exposed arms. He was only wearing a white T–shirt with Queen printed on it, over blue denim jeans. “I can’t look at this hole anymore. Let’s go in. The air’s getting cooler.”
Lüderitz was blessed with a constant, mild climate, a compromise between the harsh dry heat of the Namib Desert and the cold air blowing off the Benguela Current in the South Atlantic. The dramatic collision of the two produced dense coastal fogs that had sunk many a ship over the centuries. But despite a clear sky and a reasonable air temperature the coastal breeze was intensifying, and across the blue ocean Otto could see a fog, like a concrete wall, obliterating the horizon. He knew that soon the sky and the sea would both be grey and Lüderitz’s harsh, inhospitable qualities would be softened in the ensuing murky haze.
At that moment a taxi stopped in the sandy road below them. A tall woman wearing high–heeled, knee–length black boots and a long sable fur coat with mink trimming emerged and stared up at the house. Her eyes met Otto’s but she did not wave.
“My God, it’s Ingrid, I think,” Otto said.
Dieter looked surprised, or perhaps disappointed, and scuffed the sandy soil with his shoe. Otto watched Ingrid climbing the twenty–three steps from the roadway to the house. He would never forget the number of steps because they had formed the backdrop for many a childhood game with his brother. There was bouncing the ball from the top to the bottom, seeing how many steps one could land the ball on. They would take turns waiting at the bottom to retrieve the tennis ball and throw it back up to the top. Otto had always struggled with throwing it back; it had seemed such a long way. Yet Dieter, older and stronger, had managed the high trajectory so easily.
16mm of Innocence Page 2
