by Arthur C.
Frau Eberhardt refilled Johann’s coffee cup and offered him another roll. “So have you and Eva set a date?” she asked.
“No, Mother,” Johann answered. “Lately it seems that we’re both so busy we don’t have much time to talk. She has been working hard to prepare for the museum opening.”
His mother leaned across the table and touched Johann’s hand. “I know that you wanted to be with her this weekend,” she said. “We really appreciate your taking the time to visit.”
There was a long silence as Johann tried to decide exactly how to phrase what he was going to say. “Mother,” he said at length, “you should have told me a long time ago about this tax problem with the house. You can’t wait until these things get out of control.”
She realized that she was being reprimanded. “I didn’t want to bother you, Johann,” his mother said defensively. “I thought maybe we would find some way to work it out.”
“How, Mother?” Johann said, frustration showing in his voice. “How could you possibly have worked it out? Real-estate taxes must be paid with money. And you and I both know—”
He stopped. Johann could see that his mother was very uncomfortable. “What does Father think about this situation?” he said after a long pause.
“He doesn’t take it seriously,” Frau Eberhardt said. “Whenever I bring up the subject, which is not often, your father quickly dismisses it and reminds me of all his friends in the state government.” She looked out the window. “Sometimes, Johann, I think your father has lost touch with reality.”
Neither of them said anything for a full minute. “Mother,” Johann then said, “I want to help you, but I don’t have seven thousand marks. My portion of the savings account that Eva and I have earmarked for our honeymoon is barely half the amount that is needed… And you know how difficult it is to borrow money at this time.”
“I thought about calling my brother Hermann, and asking for his help,” Frau Eberhardt said after another long silence. “But Max would never forgive me if I did.”
“Did you hear what I said to you?” Johann interrupted. “I don’t have seven thousand marks.”
“Yes, Johann,” she said, “I heard.” Frau Eberhardt turned away and gazed out the window. “I hate it that we have put you in this position,” she said softly. “I just don’t know what else to do… You have been so generous since your father and I started having problems.”
There must be some way. Johann was thinking. The pain in his mother’s eyes was obvious. He remembered two years earlier, when his parents had raised some money by selling possessions. There had been some items that his father had refused to sell.
“What’s left in the attic?” Johann suddenly asked his mother.
She shrugged. “Nothing much,” Frau Eberhardt said. “Really old family stuff with no meaning to anyone except your father. I can’t believe that there’s anything worth more than a couple of hundred marks.”
Johann stood up. “I’m going to take a look,” he said.
“All right,” his mother said wanly. “I guess under the circumstances it can’t hurt… But don’t tell your father if you decide to take anything.”
Johann was afraid that the creaky old ladder was not going to hold his weight. He stopped on each step, holding the bag his mother had given him in his right hand, and waited to see if the ladder was going to collapse. Frau Eberhardt stood in the hallway with both hands steadying the ladder. She had an anxious expression on her face.
The entrance to the attic was a small rectangular panel in the ceiling almost four meters above the floor. Despite his height, Johann could not push the panel with any force until he was on the next-to-last step of the ladder. When he did finally apply some pressure to it, the panel wouldn’t budge.
“How long has it been since anyone has been up here?” Johann asked his mother.
“Not since that last sale,” she said. “Be careful, Johann, I wouldn’t want you to fall.”
Johann moved up to the top step, carefully balanced himself in a crouched position, and pushed the panel very hard. It finally gave way. Dust and debris fell on his head and shoulders. After waiting several seconds for the dust to clear, he removed the panel and placed it to the side on the attic floor. Then, using his arms, he lifted himself up and crawled into the attic.
“I’ll call you when I’m ready to come down,” he shouted to his mother.
“All right,” she said. “But don’t be longer than forty-five minutes.”
The only place in the attic where Johann could stand up completely was along the beam that cut the room in half. On either side of the beam the ceiling sloped sharply downward. There were not as many objects and packing boxes as Johann had expected to find, based on his childhood memories. However, he had not seen the attic for at least seven years, and many of the items sold two years earlier had been taken from the room.
Johann covered his mouth with a cloth to keep from inhaling the ubiquitous dust. Off to his left he could see an odd collection of objects, including two old mirrors, some discarded paintings of no merit, and a few smaller pieces of furniture. It did not take him long to determine that there was nothing in that jumbled mess that could be sold for any significant amount of money.
Against the opposite wall, under the only window in the attic, ten or fifteen boxes were stacked in piles of two and three. Johann found a sturdy crossbeam and crawled in that direction.
The first group of boxes contained photographs and video records, some carefully organized and labeled, and some scattered randomly around the interior of the boxes. The two boxes at the bottom of the stack were the most interesting. Inside them were old family photograph albums, a couple dating back to the first decade of the twentieth century. Johann flipped through these quickly, stopping only occasionally to look at an especially unusual photo.
Plaques, citations, degrees, awards, and trophies filled the second group of boxes. Johann found his great-grandfather Eberhardt’s laminated medical degree as well as a plaque, with his great-grandmother Frieda’s name inscribed upon it, announcing that her novel Der Blau Stuhl had won the Thomas Mann literary award for the year 2082. In the bottom of the same box Johann found a handsome wooden board, onto which was glued a paper document, written in script German, dated July 20, 1763. The document an-flounced the appointment of Karl W. Eberhardt to a civil service position under Frederick the Great. Johann put the board into the bag his mother had given him.
The last set of boxes contained journals that had been kept by various members of the Eberhardt family. All of them had been carefully arranged and cataloged by his literary great-grandmother Frieda in 2115, just three years before she died of a stroke. Johann remembered her only vaguely, but her talents were a legend in the family. Whenever any Eberhardt displayed a streak of creativity or brilliance, Frieda’s genes were always given the credit.
Two entire boxes were filled with Frieda’s journals, a few handwritten, but most of them printed on paper. Assorted storage media, reflecting the changes in word-processing technology around the turn of the twenty-second century, were also labeled and cross-referenced to the printed pages. Johann read scattered tidbits of Frieda’s journals before deciding that perhaps this material might be worth something. He had just started putting her journals into the bag when he noticed some unusual annotations on the master table of contents his great-grandmother had created when she was cataloging all the family journals.
Around the name Helga Weber Eberhardt, 1922—1979, Frieda had made a thick black circle. Five of Helga’s journals were listed, the first one covering the time period 1938— 1941. Johann’s great-grandmother had drawn a fancy arrow pointing to this journal, and had written in the margin, in French, “absolument extraordinaire.”
Curious, Johann dug through the remaining boxes until he found Helga’s five journals, neatly wrapped in clear plastic and bound together by thick rubber bands. He opened the top volume and began to read. The first entry was dated 28 June 19
38.
“Ich heisse Helga Weber und ich bin sechzehn Jahre alt. Ich vohne in Wilmersdorf, auf 38 Bayerische Strasse, mit meinen Eltern, mein Bruder Peter, und unser Hund Fritz.”
At first, Johann could not understand what his great-grandmother Frieda had found so extraordinaire about this journal written by a sixteen-year-old girl. There was little of interest in the early entries, and Helga had no particular literary aptitude. Most of the events recorded were mundane and banal. A walk in the park with her dog Fritz highlighted the first weekend in August for Helga. Johann was about to put the boring journal aside when he read Helga’s entry for August 8, 1938.
“From this day forward,” Helga wrote, “I will be a new person. My life has been forever changed. This afternoon Katrina took me as her guest to a meeting of the League of German Girls. It was sensational. Tonight, after my preliminary training, I was accepted as a new member of the group. I cannot believe how much I have already learned about everything, but especially about what the awful Jews and communists are trying to do to our country. I will be forever thankful to Katrina for opening my eyes. Heil Hitler!”
Johann could not put the journal down. Helga described in detail her training sessions, the enthusiasm and patriotism of her friends, even the stylish new Hitler Youth uniform that she wore at every opportunity. What absolutely amazed Johann was how quickly the apparently ordinary teenage girl was transformed into a loyal and devoted Nazi, willing even to report her brother for actions considered not entirely satisfactory by the Third Reich. In the first five weeks of the journal, there was but one reference to anything political. By the beginning of October, however, when Helga celebrated Hitler’s triumph in taking over the Sudetenland without firing a shot, she was writing about nothing but her activities associated with the League of German Girls.
In mid-October Helga and Katrina began attending Nazi rallies with Katrina’s older brother Otto, a rising star in the Sturmabteilung (SA). From Helga’s descriptions, it was obvious to Johann both that Helga had a schoolgirl crush on Otto, and that the young man was broadening her political horizons considerably. Helga apparently never questioned anything that Otto told her, or any of the propaganda that she heard at the rallies, for her journal entries during the last half of October read as if they had been lifted verbatim from Nazi literature. At the conclusion of one such entry, after a particularly vitriolic attack on the Jews, Helga wrote, “I will not be content until all Germany is Judenfrei! Heil Hitler!”
On the night of November 9, the famed Kristallnacht after which there was no doubt that Hitler’s intention was to utterly eradicate the Jews, Helga defied her parents and joined Katrina and Otto in an orgy of terror and destruction that lasted until noon the next day. When she returned home, completely exhausted, the first thing she did was write in her journal.
“Last night and this morning were the most satisfying hours of my life,” she wrote. “We have finally taught those Jewish bastards a lesson they won’t forget. We have revenged the brutal murder of Herr vom Rath in Paris. We have burned their synagogues, looted their shops, invaded and destroyed their homes, and terrified their women and children. Otto even strangled one old Jew in Darmstadtstrasse when the fool tried to resist. It was a glorious night for everyone loyal to the Reich. Heil Hitler!”
Johann’s fascination with Helga and her journal had turned to revulsion by the time he read her comments about Kristallnacht. He was also deeply distressed that one of his direct ancestors had been such a fervent supporter of the anti-Jewish policies of Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, remembering a conversation that he had had with Eva about the Third Reich Museum needing more source material from the time period, he suspected that what he was reading was worth a lot of money. Glancing quickly at his watch, he put all of Helga’s journals in the bag and crawled back to the center of the attic. He was down the ladder ten minutes before his father returned from his walk.
12
Johann disembarked from the S-Bahn at Bellevue. The station was uncrowded, typical for a winter Saturday morning. In the middle of the station, beside the kiosks selling prepared meals, snacks, entertainment, and electronic newspapers and magazines, a small group had gathered to listen to a trio of blue-robed Michaelites, two with guitars, who were singing folk songs. Moving among the crowd were another three or four members of the sect. They were handing out leaflets and collecting money in large cans.
Johann instinctively made a wide arc around the group as he headed for the stairs to the surface. The first time he heard his name called he did not respond. However, when the familiar feminine voice said “Johann” again, much louder, he turned around, puzzled, and looked in the direction from which the voice was coming.
A tall young woman, wearing the characteristic blue robe with the blue-and-white headpiece, was rapidly approaching him. “Hello, Johann,” she said with a pleasant smile.
For a brief moment Johann could not integrate the well-known voice and smile with the clothes of the Order of St. Michael. “Heike?” he said at length. “Is that you?”
The young woman laughed easily. “Of course,” she said. “Who else could it be?”
Now that Heike was standing right next to him, Johann was embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said, awkwardly. “I didn’t expect to see you dressed like this.”
“We’re not some kind of fanatic cult,” Heike said, teasing him slightly, “despite what you might have heard.”
“But I thought you were teaching in Staaken,” Johann said, still off balance. “When did you…?” He didn’t complete his sentence.
“Early last summer,” Heike said. “Right after the school year finished. I was feeling unfulfilled, and frustrated because I wasn’t doing anything to help with all the problems this economic crisis has caused.” She laughed again. “Actually I signed up for the training orientation almost as a joke, after a night of overindulgence… But the more I saw, the more I liked. And the better I felt.”
“And Klaus?” Johann asked. “What happened to him?”
“We separated for good when I went away to Freiburg for the six weeks of training,” Heike said. “He’s fine… We’re still friends. He told me last week that he’s now engaged to a ballet dancer.” Heike put her hand on Johann’s arm. “But that’s enough about me. How’s life treating you? Have you been at home visiting your parents?”
Heike Schmidt had been Johann’s closest friend during his last two years of school in Potsdam. Although there had been some mutual attraction that went beyond friendship, for a variety of reasons the pair had remained simply friends, like a close brother and sister. Heike and Johann had been able to talk about everything during those two critical years of adolescence. Now, as he looked at her, and remembered how close they had been, he longed for a companion with whom he could share his innermost feelings without worrying about her reaction.
After a brief chat, Johann invited Heike to lunch. She declined the invitation, explaining that she could only take a short break from her fund-raising activities. “We use every cent for food and other basic essentials, Johann,” she said. “This afternoon we will take all the money we receive here to the supermarket in Tempelhof, where our volume buying earns us a huge discount. Then, tonight and tomorrow, we will distribute what we have purchased at our large center in Kreuzburg… Early Monday morning I will return to Mariendorf, where five days a week I manage a day-care center for the children of people who are trying to find work.”
Johann was more impressed by the tone of Heike’s voice, and her general demeanor, than by what she was saying. She seemed completely content with her life. “By the way,” Heike said a moment later, “you might mention to your father that the order has established support groups for the unemployed all over Germany. I know there’s a chapter in Potsdam, for Greta Ulbricht’s father goes regularly. The men and women are able to share their experiences, and they have an opportunity to participate in some worthwhile projects.”
He shook his head and smiled. “I can
’t imagine my father ever doing something like that,” Johann said.
“Stranger things have happened,” Heike said lightly. “And now, my friend,” she continued with a wink, “before I go, can I talk you into parting with some of your hard-earned cash for those less fortunate than we? I assure you the money is all spent wisely.”
Johann surprised himself by giving Heike a twenty-mark banknote.
He was still thinking about his conversation with Heike when he entered his apartment. After discovering that Eva wasn’t there, Johann noticed that he had two messages. Surprised, he exercised the self-test subroutines on his watch to see if there had been a malfunction in his personal communications system. There had not. Both messages had purposely not been forwarded.
Johann sat down in his living room opposite the huge video screen. The first message was from his mother’s brother, Uncle Hermann, whom Johann had not seen for almost twenty years. From the coding on the video Johann could tell that the message had been transmitted from a Berlin hotel room the previous evening around dinnertime.
“Hello, Johann,” a man dressed in a dark suit said on the screen. “In case you don’t recognize me, I am your uncle Hermann, older and fatter than I was the last time you saw me.” Hermann Kurz had a warm face. He smiled before continuing. “I am in Berlin for the weekend and would like to see you on a matter of some urgency. If you would be able to join me for drinks or dinner at the Schweizerhof Hotel on Saturday night, please phone and leave a message.
“I am not having this message forwarded because I do not want your parents to know of our meeting. At least not yet… Please, Johann, make an attempt to rearrange your schedule if you possibly can. I assure you that our conversation will be of the utmost importance to you and your family… I am looking forward to seeing you again after all these years.”
The astonished Johann only had a few seconds to think about his uncle Hermann before his message retrieval system automatically projected the second video onto the screen. Eva was sitting on a couch in a room that Johann did not recognize. Johann touched the pause button on the remote control and went into the kitchen for a drink of water.
