16mm of Innocence

by Quentin Smith

  Otto realised this must have hurt Dieter deeply.

  “Have you always believed them?” Dieter said, creasing his brow.

  Otto looked into Dieter’s incredulous eyes and nodded.

  “Even after finding out about Inez?” Dieter said.

  Otto closed his eyes. He had never envisaged having such a conversation with Dieter, questioning the moral character of his parents, challenging the very fabric of his lifelong memories and his cherished emotional bond to them.

  “Until… until I found out about Inez,” Otto heard himself whisper. “This last week has just been a nightmare… beyond belief. Where will it end?”

  The awful realisation about the deceit over Inez had been a turning point in Otto’s heart and his mind. With his words still fresh on the moist foggy air Otto felt a greater hurt in this declaration to Dieter than he had at Mother’s funeral.

  “With the truth,” Dieter said. “I know what it’s like to live with lies, and I know how emancipating it is to reveal the truth.”

  “Maybe Ingrid was right,” Otto said quietly.

  “About what?”

  Otto looked into Dieter’s eyes, trying to measure in them the depth of his own despair. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Thirty–One

  Searching through Mother and Father’s personal belongings was a task laden with emotional time bombs, exploding at irregular intervals when least expected. They began in the bedroom, in heavy walnut wardrobes filled with the musty smells of old clothing.

  “Mum kept all of Dad’s clothes,” Otto remarked as he fingered the heavy fabric of Father’s favourite Thor Steinar jackets.

  “Creepy,” Dieter said, opening the drawers of their bedside cabinets.

  Rows of Father’s fine leather shoes were neatly ordered beneath the jackets, suits and pressed trousers. For the first time in his life Otto found himself staring at them, wondering what sort of man had worn them. They were no longer simply Father’s shoes: he now knew that they had carried a man who had very likely inflicted considerable suffering on his family.

  “There’s nothing in Dad’s bedside cabinet except a Lutheran Bible and a pair of reading glasses,” Dieter said, surveying the room through narrowed eyes. “What’s in that polished wooden box?”

  Otto glanced across to the domed object of Dieter’s interest. “I think it’s Mum’s sewing machine,” he said.

  In the corner, behind a pair of well–worn black Speziell Angefertigt shoes, Otto uncovered an old Birkenstock Orthopädie shoebox. He levered it out of the wardrobe.

  “Something here,” he said, lifting the lid off a wave of napthalene.

  The contents comprised yellowed papers and a few monochrome photographs. Otto made himself comfortable on the threadbare rug and began sifting through them.

  “Birth certificates: Dad born 1899 in Baden–Baden, Mum in Wüppertal in 1904. Baptism, marriage certificate: 17 February 1926. Christ, Mum was only twenty–two when she married Dad.”

  “That was normal back then,” Dieter said.

  “So she was… how old then when Inez was born?” Otto said, counting on his fingers.

  “Inez died in 1948 aged twenty–one, so she was born a year after they married,” Dieter said quickly.

  “You’ve always had a good head for maths,” Otto said.

  “That’s why I’m in business.” Forced smile from Dieter. “What else is there?”

  “Oh, look at this – a cabin aboard the Warwick Castle in 1946: you, Mum, Ingrid and Inez.”

  Dieter walked over to examine the frayed and yellowed cards bearing the Union Castle Line logo.

  “Passage from London to Cape Town, via St Helena,” he said, pursing his lips and tapping the tickets against his hand thoughtfully, running his eyes over their handwritten names on the sturdy cards. He turned a ticket over: Union Castle Mail Steamship Company; Second Class; Berth 242A; 27 July 1946.

  “How old were you?” Otto asked.

  “About four, I think.”

  “It must have been quite an experience,” Otto said thoughtfully. “Travelling from Hamburg to England, by train was it?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Then several weeks at sea to Cape Town.”

  “The only thing I recall is being seasick into this smelly steel toilet. Otherwise I have no memory of any of it.”

  “How did you get from Cape Town to Lüderitz?” Otto asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “You remember nothing?”

  Dieter pulled a face and shook his head. Otto continued pulling documents from the box. Tattered and yellowed smallpox vaccination certificates for all four children, including Inez, were folded into neat squares.

  “Look here,” Otto said, holding Inez’s certificate out for Dieter.

  Otto examined a few sepia photographs of their old house in Hamburg, recognisable to him now from the home movies they had seen: timber frame, gabled roof, window boxes and abundant hydrangeas.

  “What’s in the envelopes?” Dieter asked, leaning closer.

  Otto opened each of the two envelopes in turn. “My letter of acceptance at medical school in Cape Town and, presumably, yours for ISMT in Cologne – it’s in German.”

  Dieter took the letter and read it in silence.

  “Letters of good standing from the local school for the three of us, a newspaper clipping about Ingrid marrying Frederick, Dad’s funeral notice in the Lüderitzbuchter, an obituary for him – Dr Ernst Adermann, 1899–1975 – and a few photos of this house being built…” Otto looked up in disappointment. “That’s it.”

  He and Dieter shared the moment of deflation, Dieter massaging his forehead rhythmically with several fingers.

  “Let’s read Dad’s obituary,” Dieter suggested.

  Otto unfolded the neatly cut newsprint.

  Dr Ernst Adermann, respected family doctor in Lüderitz since 1946, died from heart failure in his home on Sunday 5th January 1976. He was seventy–six years old and is survived by his wife, Ute, and three children, Ingrid, Dieter and Otto. Born in Baden–Baden in November 1899, he studied medicine in Karlsruhe and practised in Hamburg until emigrating to Lüderitz with his family in 1946. His passion as a caring and sympathetic family doctor earned him great respect amongst local families and soon he had opened a second practice in Keetmanshoop, sharing his time between the two. Dr Adermann was a devout Christian and faithful member of the Felsenkirche congregation. His sense of public spirit was limitless and earned him many friends and admirers throughout the German community in South West Africa. His youngest son Otto has followed in his footsteps and works as a family doctor in England. Dieter is a successful businessman in Hong Kong. The funeral service for Dr Adermann will be held on Friday 10th January at 2pm in Felsenkirche.

  Otto stared at the news cutting in his hands, noticing his fine, almost imperceptible tremor. “They didn’t even mention where Ingrid ended up.”

  “She didn’t attend the funeral,” Dieter said.

  “That’s gotta hurt, though,” Otto said, tapping the news cutting.

  “You think she even knows about it?” Dieter said.

  Otto entertained an uneasy thought. “Do you think Mum wrote the obituary?”

  Suddenly Dieter’s face lit up, as if overcome by an epiphany. “You know what’s missing?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  “What?”

  “There is not a single thing in that box of keepsakes about Inez’s death or her funeral. Nothing,” Dieter said.

  Otto flicked through the papers and photographs again, eyes narrowed in concentration. “We have her ticket for the Warwick Castle, her smallpox vaccination certificate… and that’s it.” He looked up and met Dieter’s eyes. “They were not happy with her,” Otto proffered, shaking his head.

  “Or with Neil Solomon I bet.”

  “It’s as though she was erased from the family, never to be mentioned again,” Otto said. “Even Ingrid didn’t speak of her.”

  Dieter glanced
absently at his watch and then, his eyes widening, stood up suddenly. “Jesus, is that the time? I have to get to the library for a fax.”

  “Oh come on, Dieter, not now.”

  “Business doesn’t stop because I’m feeling sentimental, Otto.” He paused, as if checking his irritation. “I won’t be long.”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” Otto muttered under his breath.

  In a flash Otto was alone, surrounded by ageing mementos of a broken family. He packed them back into the shoebox and moved to the next room, his bedroom. Mum had meticulously stored every toy of his in cardboard boxes, even labelling them for easy identification. He found his old cowboy suit with black hat, sheriff’s badge and gunslinger’s holster. A metal earth grader with adjustable scoop and rotating tracks, somewhat perished, that brought back memories of scraping the gritty sand beneath the camelthorn tree. The scoop was still crusted with residues of soil, the same soil that extended down a few feet to surround the decaying corpse of a young child.

  Otto recoiled from touching the soil and replaced the grader in its box. He found a linen bag filled with chipped marbles and, fondling the milky marbles – always his favourite – recalled how he and Dieter would spend hours on their knees in the dirt trying to outplay the other. He usually lost – Dieter was simply too good.

  Soon he ventured into Dieter’s bedroom and found more toys that he remembered playing with, including a fishing rod. His mind filled with sunny images of him and Dieter dangling their legs off the pier in Robert Harbour, the water dancing like glitter beneath a mirror ball. Otto could not recall Father ever fishing with them. He was always at work. Otto pushed the fishing rod away.

  Dieter had loved woodwork and Otto discovered several of his carved pieces carefully wrapped in old newspaper and stowed in a box. Some were rather good, he thought: birds, an airplane, a cluster of heads – presumably the three children.

  Otto found nothing of importance and moved through to Ingrid’s old bedroom. Her wardrobe was packed with dresses and slacks, many of which appeared to have been hand–sewn, probably by Mother. Wide collars, no collars, flared and tight–fitting trouser legs, revealing the changeable fashions through Ingrid’s years at home. Several cardboard boxes were stuffed full of dolls, their ageing porcelain glaze cracked and peeling, the cotton clothing grey and lifeless. Some of these must have been very precious to her, he thought, yet all had been cast aside, unwanted.

  A small box at the back of her wardrobe caught Otto’s eye. He pulled it closer. Eugen Ising Film Splicer was printed on the stiff card.

  “Here you are!” Otto said to himself, as if addressing an errant child.

  He opened the box to reveal a die cast metal 16mm film splicer and a half–empty bottle of Agfacol film cement. He recalled the hours he had spent splicing film ends together, enjoying the sensation of celluloid in his hands and joining strips of magical imagery together to produce a homogenous product. He opened the bottle to savour the acetic smell of the cement once again, and smiled as memories flooded back.

  There was something else in the box, beneath a card shelf. Lifting this up, as if revealing a false bottom, he found seven coils of tightly wound film. Offcuts, he initially thought, discarded strips scooped up off the editing room floor. But why conceal them in what appeared to be such a clandestine way, beneath a cardboard shelf?

  Otto unrolled one and held it up to the light that streamed in through the window, straining his eyes to examine each frame. It was difficult to make out the images clearly, though they appeared to show men in military uniform. Otto frowned.

  The phone rang.

  “Otto.”

  “Oh, hi Frans,” Otto replied. He wondered if Frans was calling with results of the DNA analysis, and felt his mouth drying.

  “I just had a call from Ingrid,” Frans said.

  This surprised Otto, who had not spoken to her let alone said goodbye to her properly after the funeral, three days ago.

  “She’s in Windhoek,” Frans said. It sounded as if he might be chewing something as he spoke.

  Otto moved the receiver around to his other ear. By now she should have been back in New York. “I don’t understand,” he said, trying to suppress rising annoyance that she would choose to call Frans but not her brothers.

  “She wanted to know if I had the DNA results,” Frans explained.

  “Did she miss her flight or something?”

  “No. She decided to delay her return.”

  Otto hesitated. “But why not stay in Lüderitz?”

  He could hear Frans exhaling. “I’m just pleased she hasn’t left the country yet.”

  Otto rubbed his eyes in exasperation. Most of the time he felt no closer to understanding Ingrid; this was how it had been for many years. “Where is she staying?” he asked.

  “The Furstenhof.”

  A silence, somewhat embarrassing for Otto as his family divisions were further laid bare, occupied their conversation like an unwanted intruder.

  “She hasn’t called you, obviously,” Frans said.

  “No.” Was Frans tracking her as a suspect, Otto suddenly wondered? In that case, why let her leave Lüderitz? “Thanks Frans,” Otto said. “No more news?”

  “A few more days I reckon.”

  Otto returned to the box of hidden film strips feeling chastened. What was Ingrid’s game, he wondered? Absently he collected the coils of film, the splicer and cement and returned to the dining table. The grandfather clock took a deep, rasping breath and began to chime.

  Retrieving an empty film reel from the box of home movies he set to work splicing the film fragments together: lining the strips up in the splicer, perforations over the sprocket guide, cutting the ends neatly with the hinged guillotines, roughening them with the abrasive tool to create purchase for the layer of film cement, and joining them together. How many minutes should he allow for the cement to set? He could not remember.

  He had no idea what he was joining together – what it would reveal, or why it was hidden in the back of a cupboard in Ingrid’s unused bedroom.

  Thirty–Two

  Sporadic flashes of light crash on to the screen. Nine… eight…seven… six…

  Otto hugged himself, feeling the reassuring embrace of his own arm around his chest, the other hand clasping his chin. The once–soothing whirr of the Bell & Howell motor, the rhythmic soft staccato of the film being clawed through the gate – none of it was exciting him as it always had. It was as though a deep visceral apprehension had been roused within him, and he feared that he was about to witness images that would forever, and indelibly, alter his family memories.

  He glanced at the unhurriedly rotating front reel of film, not with the usual sense of anticipation, waiting for the thousands of frames to be illuminated in rapid succession, transformed magically into a moving picture on the screen, but with trepidation, fearing the imminent unmasking of dark secrets long hidden from his world.

  Four… three… two…

  A crisply focused scene of uniformed men gathered around a table bursts onto the screen. Scratches and a few rolling lines are the only blemishes to tarnish the impeccable, professionally procured image. The men are wearing black Schutzstaffel uniforms trimmed in silver with pips and sig–runes on their lapels, sitting with their arms resting on a polished wooden table in a large, well–lit room. The camera pans around the table, revealing the faces of at least a dozen officers, smiling, chatting, casually relaxed though conscious of the camera that captures their every move. Furtive glances into the lens, tugs on the earlobe, fingers rubbing noses, hands clasped together protectively on the table.

  The image zooms in to the face of a middle–aged man with greying temples and an affable smile sitting at the head of the oval table. He nods and forms small hand gestures as those beside him speak. The printed sign in front of him on the table reads Standartenführer Max Pauly.

  The next man onscreen has short black hair, neatly slicked and combed back from a beakish face
. His eyes dart about restlessly, his hands clasped together. His sign reads Hauptsturmführer Kurt Heissmayer.

  More faces occupy the screen, stern yet disarming, dark eyes coupled with broad smiles, manicured hands and neatly combed hair: Hauptsturmführer Bruno Kitt; Hauptsturmführer Alfred Trzebinski…

  Otto felt a chill as he read that name. It was both familiar and sinister and yet he did not know why. Where had he seen it before?

  Rottenführer Adolf Speck; Unterscharführer Wilhelm Bahr; they laugh, politely it appears; they nod and glance about the table at each other in a show of unity for the camera. A waiter wearing a white starched tunic and bearing a silver platter hands a glass of champagne to each officer. The camera zooms in on an officer in a black SS tunic and insignia. Dark eyebrows brood over steady eyes. The sign on the table in front of him reads Hauptsturmführer Ernst Adermann.

  Otto felt a knot of nausea twist his stomach around and threaten to eject his lunch into his lap. He stared into the unmistakeable face of his father, seated at a table with fellow SS officers drinking champagne, toasting a success. Otto wiped at his mouth, dry as a desert rock behind parched lips, and stared in disbelief at what was being projected onto the screen.

  The officers gathered around the table all stand up and turn to face the central figure, Standartenführer Max Pauly, who remains seated. They raise their glasses in a gesture of mutual commitment captured for eternity on celluloid in teasing silence. Pauly nods humbly and allows his subordinate officers to drink to his health before lifting his glass to his own lips.

  Otto watched his father drink, eyes upon his senior officer in the centre. The look on Father’s face was unmistakeably one of pride, admiration and reverence. How could this be? Surely it was not true? For a moment Otto’s gaze faltered and he stared down at his feet in shame, but then quickly looked up to the screen again for fear of missing something vital.