As for Christiane’s background, that was quite different. She went to a private school and lived in a part of town where the houses were enormous and set back from the river. I went there once, not long after I had first seen her. It was summer, and at that time I used to attend meetings at our Heim in the fervent hope that she would be there. We had not yet spoken; it was enough for me just to see her. Since she only rarely came to Dienst, I was frequently disappointed.
After yet another Dienst meeting without her, I chose to stay behind in the Heim. I sat by the open window while the others filed out. The afternoon sun poured through the window. There was honeysuckle climbing up the wall and its tendrils tapped against the wooden window frame. Its fragrance enveloped me and filled the room. I drunk it in and pretended to myself that it wasn’t the scent of honeysuckle but rather the essence of Christiane herself which I was inhaling.
Perhaps the honeysuckle intoxicated me. After I had sat by the window for a while, I decided to cycle to Christiane’s house in the hope of seeing her. We all knew the street she lived on – it was one of the most famous in the city – but I didn’t know the number of her house. Between the houses and the river there was a path where the sunlight filtered through the Linden trees. I cycled up and down the path for a while, then I sat on one of the benches which had been positioned to afford a view of the river. I never saw her.
There were other Hitler Youth Heime in Bochum to which Christiane could have gone, but ours was the largest and we had the best relationship with the Gauleiter. That was why some of us were initiated at Marienburg, and also why our summer camps took place in the Bavarian Alps rather than in the flat countryside surrounding Bochum. Because of these advantages, Christiane’s father wanted his daughter to be a member of our Heim. When she did attend meetings, he would drive her in an open-topped black BMW – he was a wealthy Bavarian and a big fish in the automotive industry. Christiane had grown up in Munich until her father was transferred and the family moved to Bochum.
Christiane had an older brother of whom she was very ashamed. He was a painter in his mid-twenties and lived in Hamburg. Once, during a secret rendez-vous at the summer camp, she confessed to me that her brother was opposed to the Nazis. When I think about it now, it seems to me that Christiane’s devotion to the Führer and her outstanding record in the BDM were an attempt to atone for her older brother. I did not realise that at the time.
The Hitler Youth complicated family relationships, there is no doubt about it. It certainly drove a wedge between my parents and me. When I was 14, a few months after I had joined the Volkssturm, I was informed of my father’s death in the bombing of the factory where he worked. I remember I was helping Herr Weiss to clean his gun, a procedure about which he had not the faintest idea, when one of the orderlies entered the hut and instructed me to accompany him. We walked across the frozen parade ground to the hut belonging to Kompanieführer Zaun, the austere elderly Captain of our company. The orderly remained at the door while I entered the hut.
Kompanieführer Zaun had been a tanner in civilian life and, as I recall, his wrinkled skin had a suitably leathery appearance. I found him frightening. When I entered the hut, he was sitting at his desk, facing the door. The hut was warm inside – there was a brazier in the centre of the room and Kompanieführer Zaun had plentiful access to coal. I closed the door behind me and clicked my heels. Kompanieführer Zaun continued writing for several minutes before looking up.
‘Volkssturmmann Eisinger,’ he said, ‘your father is dead.’
‘Sir.’
‘You may take compassionate leave.’
‘Sir.’
He returned to the papers on his desk and I let myself out of the hut.
I am not proud to admit it, but I cannot say that I was particularly saddened by my father’s death. There was nothing I admired about him – he was not a soldier or a hero. In all honesty, I was ashamed of him: a cowardly engineer hiding in a metal factory. When he died I realised that I was now the only remaining male Eisinger; I liked the fact that the future of the family name lay entirely in my hands.
I was given a week of leave to attend the mass funeral in Bochum but I didn’t go. I was afraid the Allies might roll into Germany while I was away from my post. That may callous, but in many ways I had ceased to see him as my father long before then. We were encouraged to view the Führer as our father and I was more than willing to do that. Now, of course, I do wish that I had known my own father better, or at least that I had known him before the death of his first son robbed him of any ambition he may have had. My father was a broken man, and as a young boy I believed that one should despise things that are broken.
After my father’s death, my mother became even more withdrawn. She seemed to be afraid even to leave the house. At the time this did not concern me; it meant that I could come and go as I pleased. Later, after the war, and after my ‘denazification’, I suggested to her that we emigrate. She said she preferred to remain in Germany; I did not try to persuade her. I was confident I could get to Brazil and make a new life for myself with the help of relations of my father’s who had emigrated before the war.
Eventually I had all the necessary papers. I left Germany in 1947, bound for Brazil. My mother stayed behind. I was not sorry to say goodbye. If anything, it reinforced my sense of a new beginning. That was what I wanted more than anything.
Chapter 13
FERNANDA CHASED me out of the ward just as Seu Otto was about to tell me about his family. As I drove through the dark streets back to my apartment, I realised that was what I really wanted to know. It’s strange because that’s not the angle that will sell Seu Otto’s story. I mean, I am interested in the Hitler Youth and the parades and the camps in the mountains too, and I can see how attractive that must have been to a young boy. But to me it feels like a different world, one that I can only see in jerky black and white. Seu Otto’s feelings about his parents, on the other hand, and his sense of difference from them, well, that I can understand.
Maybe these thoughts were at the forefront of my mind as I left the hospital because I knew that my mother’s birthday was coming up, and that I would have to return to Blumenau to celebrate with her as I did every year. And not just with her, but with all her friends too. Even as a small child I did not enjoy these events – there was always too much attention on me. Adults standing round, staring at me, commenting on me… I used to hate it. I never knew what was expected of me.
Things haven’t improved all that much now that I’m officially an adult. I still always have the feeling that I’m being wheeled out as a showpiece, and that something’s expected of me but I’m not sure what. In fact, maybe it was better when Gorka and my mother still lived together. There was plenty of bickering and he could be very insensitive, but at least he always kept things pretty real. For all his faults, there’s never any bullshit. In fact, maybe he goes a bit too far in the other direction. Everything is about money and who’s screwing who over, and how important it is not to be the one being screwed over. My mother is more of a dreamer I guess, and that’s fine so long as those dreams aren’t all about you.
So, this was my mother’s forty-fifth birthday, and I was right to be apprehensive about it. It turned out to be quite an ordeal. The ordeal actually started the night before, when I had a row with Marina. Nothing serious, just a disagreement about what film we should watch, which led to her saying that if I really loved her I would compromise about the film and watch what she wanted to watch for a change. Well, I said that wasn’t fair because at least when I chose a film I looked for something which we could both enjoy, whereas there is no way I could enjoy the sappy crap which she liked. Anyway, it escalated a bit and maybe she was annoyed that I was leaving for Blumenau the next day without her. I think that was it because when, in an effort to make up, I asked her to come with me, she immediately forgot all about the film. And in fact we didn’t argue again all evening, quite the opposite.
I hadn’t been op
posed to her coming to Blumenau as such. I just thought it would be boring for her. Also, I didn’t want to give my family the impression that we were going to get married or anything like that. And I didn’t want Marina to start thinking along those lines either. Plus I didn’t really want her to witness me in that awkward family situation.
We left early the following morning and arrived in Blumenau shortly before midday. Marina had never been in Blumenau before and she loved the half-timbered Germanic houses with their pointed roofs. I used to love Blumenau’s architecture too, though on this occasion it seemed precious and inauthentic. The houses were too quaint, the walls too bright and too recently painted. Also, the town was full of tourists, many more than I remember seeing when I was growing up, perhaps because the Oktoberfest was coming up. But Marina was enchanted by it. In fact, she leant so far across me when we passed the Castelinho Moellman that I nearly knocked a bicyclist off his bike.
‘Wow, what is that? That building,’ she said, blocking my line of vision with her arm.
‘That? That’s the castle Moellman. It’s a copy of the city hall of Michelstadt, in the south of Germany.’ I’d had to learn all that in school.
‘It looks so old.’
‘But it’s not. It was built in 1978. First it was a department store, now it’s the tourist information office.’
‘Huh, that’s not so romantic.’
‘I know. I guess Blumenau is a bit like that. Everything looks great on the outside, but it’s all a bit of an act.’
‘Like everything, then,’ said Marina.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing really,’ she smiled back. ‘Forget it.’
Was Marina referring to me? To my family? To our country? She refused to say anymore, but that didn’t stop me wondering. I like it when she makes me think.
*
My mother lives in a small house on a well kept street near the river, ten minutes or so from the castelinho. The river is only a short walk away. As a child I was not fond of the river: it is brown and sluggish and the kind of place in which I imagined piranhas to lurk, or those big primeval catfish with their ugly whiskers.
Blumenau gets more rain than the coastal regions and, sure enough, by the time we had pulled up in front of my mother’s house it had started to drizzle. The door was open and I could see a number of people inside.
‘Pietro, I really need the bathroom,’ Marina whispered in my ear on the doorstep.
‘I’ll show you,’ I said, and I was about to lead her upstairs to my mother’s bathroom when I heard someone shout my name:
‘Pietro!’ bellowed Jorge, a colossal man who had been one of my grandfather’s best friends. The summer my parents split up, Jorge had spent a lot of time with me. He’d shown me how to put up a tent, and he’d told me about the tribes he had lived with in the jungle – he was a professor of anthropology at the university. He also gave me my first penknife. He was older now, but his voice had lost none of its resonance.
‘How was the journey? Did you take the 101?’
‘Jorge, leave him alone,’ interrupted my mother. Jorge has a thing about road directions – he can go on for ever. ‘Caro, come here. Where is Marina?’
‘She had to go to the bathroom,’ I said, embracing my mother. Then my mother led me through into the living room where a number of her friends were gathered on the sofas and armchairs, all holding glasses of champagne.
‘My son Pietro,’ announced my mother. ‘He is studying journalism in Florianópolis. In a few years we’ll be seeing him on the television. He has recently been interviewing Senhor Otto Eisinger, the gentleman who tried to fight the robbers in the shop.’
‘I saw that on the news!’ exclaimed Kika. Kika is an estate agent in Florianópolis and probably my mother’s oldest friend. ‘In fact, I sold him the house he now lives in. A beautiful house with a perfect lawn, in Sambaqui. He was a very polite man. Beautiful manners.’
‘Isn’t that the man your mother works for?’ asked a lady whose face always reminded me of a horse and whose name I can never remember.
‘Yes,’ said my mother. ‘She’s worked for him ever since my father died. He’s still in hospital so she couldn’t come.’
I felt bad for Vovó - she loves anything that resembles a family get-together. That must be her Italian side. We are not a big family, not even remotely, but there are certain people who have been friends for so long, they practically count as family. Jorge was one of them, as was Kika. Vovó would have enjoyed being here. In the past I have driven her up myself, but that has often been quite exhausting. She wants to know everything and she asks sneaky questions. Last year I think she drank too much wine; she became quite emotional when I said I had to go back to Florianópolis. As I said goodbye to her she said, ‘Sometimes I really think you don’t love me anymore.’ There is probably no better way of driving someone away. I remember feeling quite relieved when I left the house last year. At least I won’t have to go through the same thing again this year.
I looked around the room and noticed that my mother’s friends were all staring expectantly at me. I realised that I hadn’t heard a word they’d said.
‘Young people today have so many options,’ said Kika. ‘With a degree I am sure you can do anything you want.’
‘Well, I’d like to go into the media,’ I said, ‘but it’s very competitive.’
‘I’m sure it’s very corrupt,’ said my mother. ‘People only give jobs to the people they know. If you are young and talented they will try to keep you down.’
There was an element of truth in what she was saying. In the media, a lot does depend on your contacts. But everything my mother thinks is based on the conviction that I am brilliant and that everything is predisposed against me because of that. I know she’s just proud of me, but I do find it annoying.
‘It has very little to do with being talented or not being talented. There are just a lot of people who want to work in this industry, and not a lot of jobs,’ I said.
‘One day you’ll see,’ said my mother. I felt a small surge of irritation but before it could grow any bigger I heard Jorge’s voice booming in the kitchen. Thinking that he had probably cornered Marina, I went to look for him.
*
When I entered the kitchen, Jorge and Marina were examining my mother’s shelf of old family photos. Marina turned round and smiled at me.
‘I was just showing your girlfriend some family pictures,’ said Jorge.
‘You used to be so handsome. What happened?’ asked Marina. Her hand sought mine and squeezed it. I looked at the photo they were staring at – it was one of me as a small child, my hair cut evenly around my head so that I looked like a mushroom.
‘It’s awful what parents do to their children before they can defend themselves,’ I said.
Marina pointed to another photo. ‘Isn’t that your Seu Otto?’ she asked.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said. It was a faded photo of my grandmother and Seu Otto on the patio of the house in São Paulo. He was sitting on a garden chair with a pipe in his hand; she was standing rather formally behind him. I wondered how and why the photo had been taken, and why my mother had it on her shelf. ‘She’s worked for him for a long time,’ I said. ‘I used to go and stay for a week every summer in that house. It was very quiet and dark inside – I always preferred being out on the patio, although the stones cut my knees.’
‘Here’s your grandmother again. Who’s that with her? He looks like you.’ She indicated a black and white photo of my grandparents sitting at a seaside café, I have no idea where.
‘That’s Horst,’ said Jorge, ‘Pietro’s grandfather, and my best friend. He died very young – that’s when Anna-Maria went to work for Senhor Eisinger.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Marina. Jorge continued to stare at the picture. After a pause Marina asked me, ‘What was he like?’
‘He died before I was born,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know. Jorge was his best friend.�
��
‘He was a wonderful man, but his life was not easy,’ said Jorge. ‘He was born in this country because his mother, Freya, had been sent here from Germany when her parents found out she was pregnant. That was a big disgrace at the time, at least in a Catholic family. She died in childbirth – she was only sixteen. So Horst never knew his mother, and he had no idea who his father was. He was raised by his mother’s relatives in Blumenau. But despite that, he had a wonderful sense of humour. Dark humour, it’s true, but we used to laugh a lot. What else can you do?’
I did not know that Horst’s mother was so young when she gave birth to him. I suppose I never asked. But maybe it’s not so surprising. From what Seu Otto has been telling me these last couple of days, it seems that everything used to happen much earlier.
‘What about Horst’s grandparents back in Germany?’ asked Marina.
‘They didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I think they were very hard-hearted. After all, they sent his pregnant teenage mother to Brazil pretty much to fend for herself. Poor Freya, dying so young and so far from home.’
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