Читать книгу Time Lies - Magnus Stanke - Страница 9

Gerhardt Hoffmann had soiled his pants again. It wasn’t his fault, probably, but still… Ever since his second stroke his anal incontinence had become a frequent issue, and Tobias found himself wondering if his father wasn’t doing it on purpose, out of spite, because he knew that his youngest son wouldn’t let him marinate in his own shit overnight if he could help it.

Tobias liked to think that his – their – dad had once tried to be a loving father to him, when they were little boys. He had probably made an effort to treat his sons equally, tried to love them both the same, in theory at least. They used to get the same Christmas presents and the same weekly allowance, a pittance maybe, but it was all that Gerhardt could afford on his reduced income. Yet Tobias had known for a long time that his father’s acts of equality were just that — acts. When it came right down to it, Dad, like most people, preferred Albert over him.

When did it all go wrong? Born in 1949, a mere three minutes apart, Albert and Tobias looked, sounded and behaved identically, as interchangeable as only identical twins could aspire to be. For all intents and purposes they were the same person. People would forever ask who was who, and sometimes even their father didn’t know the answer. In one of Tobias’ earliest, most eagerly guarded memories, Albert stood at the top of the staircase, and Tobi wanted to sneak up from behind, push him with all his might and take over his beloved brother’s life when the real Albert broke his neck falling down the stairs.

If only their mother Tatjana had lived, things would have been different, of that Tobias was certain. Gerhardt never talked about her, and there were no photos in the house on the Ith where they grew up. With no maternal relatives to fill in the gaps, the boys only knew that Mum’s personal story was tightly enmeshed with the country’s post-war history.

After the great defeat in 1945, Germany had been awash with refugees, ethnic Germans who were expelled from the eastern countries they had been calling their homes for centuries, many seeing the so-called fatherland for the first time. Most of the influx of new arrivals who settled in Eschershausen came from Silesia, once a real hinterland of the Reich and now the new Poland. When Russia expanded westwards, Stalin shifted Polish borders from east to west and into land and properties of recently dispossessed and evicted Silesians. In the post-war confusion nobody minded when the victors looted, raped and killed the vanquished whenever the process of evicting them got too monotonous.

Among the many things the Silesians had discarded on the run was any sense of culpability they might have felt for the unimaginably horrid destinies that had befallen the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, intellectuals and lefties on their former doorsteps. Nothing bleaches the human conscience as thoroughly as naked survival. Similarly they didn’t want to know about atrocities that may have occurred in their new homes.

In Eschershausen most locals had started the Hitler years by closing their eyes and they continued looking away until it was too late. For every actively dissident villager there had been a dozen fascist, trigger-happy thugs willing to stand them up against a wall. The silent majority had just followed the flock, the way of least resistance, right into hell, or purgatory at least. In the autumn of 1944, several hundred Jewish prisoners had been delivered to work in a local mine. By March 1945, when the war was all but lost, the Jews were put on a train and transported to a death camp. It was a holocaust on wheels.

Several months later came the American liberation of Eschershausen which was followed by the British occupation. God only knew it wasn’t easy being a German during the austerity of the post war years, what with the humiliation and the shame and the guilt. And for what? After all, they had just followed orders. And they suffered, too. If only they could conjure up a victor-approved enemy, things would look up.

The Silesians injected three traits into the straight-laced, all-protestant Lower Saxony gene pool: ardent Catholicism, strident frugality and a wily sense of humour. Their sheer numbers effectively doubled Eschershausen’s population, increased it to a sleepy four thousand, plugging the holes caused by the ravages of war and then some. Unlike the Catholics, the Protestants didn’t have the relief of holy confession. The guilt stayed with them and became an invisible, unshakable burden.

Life was hard and gloom was ubiquitous. Misery and rubble were in the air you breathed, in the rags you wore and in the gritty food you ate, if you were lucky enough to eat at all. Still, being miserable felt a bit like redemption and made it easier not to think about what you could have done, should have done, would have done. Survival instincts kicked in; just forget the past, look to the future.

There were new uniforms —victorious allies, first the Yanks and then the Tommie’s —and the refugees from the east with spine-tingling stories of escapes from evil, raping Russians. Suddenly the Germans were real victims, too: victims of allied bombings, of communist persecution, of starvation. Victims of shame and fear, the Marshall plan, the Berlin corridor. The Cold War commenced and time marched on. Facts blurred in a cloud of rubble dust.

The few blurry facts that Albert and Tobias knew about their mother included that she had been one of those refugees who arrived with nothing but a tiny bundle of clothes on her back and some bad memories she couldn’t shake. Tatjana never found out what had happened to her family back east, never reconnected with any relatives. But she did find Gerhardt Hoffmann and, following an awkward courtship, bore him twins in the same year as the new Federal Republic of Germany was founded, when things started to look up, when things slowly started getting better, if almost imperceptibly so.

The twins were a symbol of hope. Except, in the words of their father, Tatjana didn’t make it. There were complications…and in the end Gerhardt was a single father of two healthy boys. He quit his job to look after them. At least that’s what he told them when they were growing up. Doubt about the veracity of his words didn’t set in until much later when they learned that he did menial jobs on the Ith like cleaning the British officers’ wives’ swimming pools.

One day Tobias chanced upon his father’s paperwork while searching for some social security slip from way back. He found out that Gerhardt Hoffmann had been relieved of his post in August 1949, weeks after their birth, and had been receiving a pension and child support since then. He had not quit of his own volition as he had always maintained. The implications of this lie were enormous.

Tobias made a mental note to ask his father about this and about the other incongruences when the opportunity arose. Only it never did, and it had become increasingly rare by the late 1970s to find Gerhardt in a lucid, benevolent mood where it would make sense to press for answers.

All the more reason not to wait forever, Tobias thought as he wiped his father’s bottom. What was clear to him, what he knew as fact, was that dad loved Albert better than him. He knew it because since their childhood the boys had played games with the rest of the world. They had swapped identities, had merged into a hybrid being that was probably more Albert than Tobias. The latter had experienced his father’s love both as himself and as his brother. He knew the difference. Although it was substantial and hurt like torture, he didn’t hold it against anybody, not his father or anybody else — not even against himself. Albert was just more loveable. Hell, he preferred his brother, too. Tobi was never happier than when he was being Albert, losing himself in the illusion, Believing that he was worthy of the unquestioning love that came pouring out of everybody he met and that he never received when he was merely himself, Tobias.

If ever there had been a conceivable way of getting rid of his first ego for good, Tobias wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to metamorphose into his alter-ego Albert for keeps. The Ith, where they grew up, and Eschershausen, where they went to school, were very finite worlds, and there simply wasn’t enough room for two Alberts.

By and by Tobias learned to appreciate that his brother needed Tobi to be Tobi for his own purposes. When Albert was in one of his bad moods he sent Tobi to act in his stead. This trick helped to maintain the illusion that Albert was perfect every day of the year. Tobias played along willingly and learnt to smile as little as possible when he was himself to underscore the contrast between the brothers.

What had started in their home continued at school with teachers and peers alike. Albert was the star, Tobias the sidekick. Sure, he had his own hangers-on, people who didn’t make it into Albert’s inner circle and who by proxy were happy enough in Tobias’ vicinity. For those losers he felt nothing but disdain.

When they grew older Albert said he wanted to repay his debts, and girls were the currency. He’d set up rendezvous and send Tobias in his stead. Invariably the girls would want to make love, and Tobias-as-Albert would be only too happy to comply. He worked out soon enough that his brother let him have only girls he had grown tired of and couldn’t be bothered breaking up with, not when he was in one of his foul moods. For Tobias that was in order, the way of the world. He wouldn’t have had it any other way and he appreciated that Albert didn’t like to dilute his flawless image by showing himself publicly when he felt depressed. And after all, Tobi got guaranteed sex out of the deal without having to worry about touching first, second or third base, any base he cared for. Albert’s charm worked like a proverbial charm, even when channelled through his brother.

*

The boys grew up in the 1950s and 60s, unwittingly watching their country recover, blossom economically and divide. After the construction of the Wall in 1961 the Germany of their forefathers had ceased to exist permanently, and that was probably a good thing.

Everybody expected great things from Albert but he opted for an ordinary office job in a local concrete factory. While his choice baffled many in Eschershausen, his brother suspected all along that Albert was working on long-term designs to remain at the top of the pecking order, a game he knew better than anybody else.

Tobias, in contrast, was ready to stretch his wings and discover the world; he had much less to lose. He got as far as Göttingen, some forty kilometres up the road, where he enrolled at university to study chemistry. There, left to his own devices, he tried to be Albert as much as possible — extroverted, friendly, smiling. After all, people in Göttingen wouldn’t know the real thing. Surely they could accept him, love him and want to have him around. Only, like a leper without limbs, he felt alone and incomplete without his twin.

He excelled at his studies, soaked up information like a dried-out bone and had no idea what to do with all that knowledge. Surely he would never set foot in a laboratory or a pharmacy, at least not to work.

When Dad suffered his first stroke Tobias was exhilarated. He had done three years of university, three years of being nice and wondering why he wasn’t happy, three years of wanting to be back in Eschershausen where he could be both Albert and Tobias, at least for short periods. Without hesitation he dropped everything, ostensibly to be with Dad, to look after the old man, but mainly because he had seen enough of the world and was ready to come home.

To his eternal consternation he found the house of his childhood had changed and would never be the same again. Albert was in love and would not permit any further switching of identities. He wouldn’t even allow Tobias to fuck his future wife once.

*

In the beginning there had been promises, vague ones at that, but promises all the same; Dad and Tobias would move in with Albert and his bride Cordula, live in their great big house, a wedding gift from Cordi’s father. The renovated mansion on Hüschebrink twenty-one boasted more bedrooms than Albert and Cordula could ever fill, even if they became fruitful and multiplied beyond their wildest dreams.

As it turned out, however, they only had one kid and Albert quietly reneged on his promise. Tobias never doubted that Cordula was behind it all, was really wearing the pants in his brother’s marriage. She had put her foot down, said ‘no way’ whenever Albert gently broached the subject of Gerhardt and Tobi moving in. She was more than happy to take care of the medical bills for her father-in-law; money was not the issue. As far as Cordula was concerned, marrying below her elevated social strata was one thing, but sharing her house with a bitter old man and her husband’s less likeable look-alike – well, that would have spoiled the happy-ever-after she had wished for so hard as a girl.

Albert never explained any of this to his brother. He didn’t have to. In those days the twins still had the extra-sensory way of communicating they had developed as kids, could still finish each other’s sentences if they chose to and still knew at all times how the other felt. Whenever Tobias broached the subject all he had to do was look at Albert’s pained face to correctly predict his answer and the reasons behind it. After a while, though Tobi had stopped asking, Albert knew full well that his brother merely held his tongue. He had not changed his heart, however.

Things were tough for Tobi. The Ith was isolated and dad wasn’t getting any younger. Gerhardt learned to speak and walk again, though with great difficulty. If Tobias didn’t stay with him around the clock, he would have to be hospitalised permanently. Unexpectedly, looking after Dad became a multifaceted raison d’être for Tobias in which paternal love only played a subordinated part. Albert felt he had forsaken his own family in their hour of need in favour of his rich wife. His growing, unacknowledged guilt was expressed in cash contributions to Gerhardt’s household. At least there was that.

*

After Tobias finished cleaning Gerhardt, he operated a mechanical hoist to lift his father from the bathtub back into this wheelchair without breaking his own back. The old man had put on pound after pound since the strokes, and Tobias’ upper body had strengthened from lifting and shifting his dad day-in, day-out. He wheeled Gerhardt to his bedroom, attached a fresh adult-diaper to his groin and thighs and got him a glass of water from the kitchen, the better to down the medication.

Only then did he take a moment to look at the old man, his eyes, to gauge the degree of lucidity in them. For now they were clear. Cold and distant as usual, but seemingly all there.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.

‘Dad…how are you feeling? Clean and fresh again?’ he said, and Gerhardt blinked expressionlessly at him.

‘You know, I don’t know if you remember this, but I want to talk about your job, the one at the ministry, you know, the last one you had. You always said…’

He hesitated when he saw that his dad was turning his eyes away.

Already Tobias knew he wasn’t going to get a straight reply, or any, for that matter. Still, he gathered up enough courage to finish the sentence.

‘You always said that you left the ministry because of health reasons. But I know, Dad. I know the truth.’

He spun the old man around in his wheelchair so he had no choice but to look at his son.

‘F…f…fuck all. You know fuck all,’ Gerhardt finally managed to say, spitting out the words and saliva with the limited muscle control he retained over his face. ‘Alb…Alb…’

He didn’t have to say any more — his eyes, near hateful now, said it all.

‘Albert’s not here. I am. I know you didn’t quit just to look after us. I know you lied about that and I also know you worked for the foreign ministry before that. What were you, some sort of a spy catcher?’ Tobias said.

Suddenly, and much to his surprise, the hatred in his father’s eyes disappeared. Were the pills kicking in already? They couldn’t be, it was too soon for that. And then something happened that Tobias couldn’t understand, that messed with his emotional compass. Gerhardt’s eyes welled up and out spilled tears of sadness and of loss; first one, then another one and then a thin, constant trickle.

His son, momentarily overwhelmed by a never previously experienced pity for his father, placed one hand on Gerhardt’s head, another on his shoulder. Tender, unfamiliar instincts drove him. He wanted to reach out and hug Dad in spite of the wheelchair that made embraces awkward if not downright impossible. He stepped behind him, laid his head on Gerhardt’s shoulder and found this position no less unusual than a frontal hug.

‘Oh, Dad. I’m sorry I asked,’ he said, not because it was true but because he wanted to say something reassuring.

Behind his father’s silence there was a bottomless well of sadness and an invisible force pulled Tobias inside, dragged him down into the depths of it, nearly under. He fought back the urge to join in the spillage of tears. He was not accustomed to showing himself raw, least of all in front of his father.

He had never seen Dad cry.

But what about the other way around —when was the last time Dad had seen him cry? He couldn’t remember. It had been a long time ago, that much was sure, but when he looked his father in the eye to ask him as much, it was too late. The moment had passed; the drugs had taken him far away.

*

One hour later Tobias had calmed down after the muted emotional outbreak. He knew that his father would never share any of the traumatic memories that obviously plagued him with his least favourite, arse-wiping son. If Gerhardt could talk he would surely curse the day that brought him into this close physical dependency on Tobias. Why not his golden boy, why couldn’t it be Albert?

Of course Albert would never stoop this low; Gerhardt hadn’t brought up Albert to be a bottom-wiper, an emasculated male nurse. If his brother was here instead of Tobi, Dad surely would have spilled the beans, would have told him everything they always wanted to know about Mum, about why he stopped working, and everything else that merited being passed on.

There were a number of things that Tobias wished he understood. Why did they fire Dad? Why didn’t he hire a wet nurse or a nanny and get himself another position? It would have made financial and professional sense. Why hadn’t he remarried, provided a substitute mother for his offspring? As far as Tobias was aware, there had never been another woman in his father’s life after Tatjana. Not a one.

Tobias knew that Albert cared little for these things, just wasn’t interested. Why should he be? Albert’s life was complete, perfect. He didn’t feel like Tobias did, didn’t suffer from emptiness, self-loathing or loneliness. Albert was Albert and never aspired to be anybody else.

An idea dawned on Tobias, a way to find out whatever dark secrets might be lurking in the family closet. Of course, why hadn’t he thought of it before? He’d cut out the middleman; better yet, he’d become the middleman. Rather than talking Albert into coming up to the Ith – which he rarely ever did – in the hope that Dad would be willing and lucid enough to talk to him, he, Tobias, would become Albert. He wouldn’t have to rely on anybody’s unpredictable timetable and he’d get the juice fresh from the source. And at the same time he would have fun, enjoy being the ‘real’ Albert again, the man he had tried and failed to become when he was away at university, when he’d toiled under the delusion that he could be somebody who was liked and loved for his own sake.

Yes, it was a good plan. Even the timing fit. The Albert Hoffmanns were going away for a week to Sylt, a small German island in the Baltic Sea. Cordula had graciously asked Tobi to water their garden while they were away. That’s when he’d do it.

Tobias didn’t and couldn’t have reckoned with the fact that the nature of the Hoffmann family secret he would manage to elicit from his father was so devastating, so far-reaching in its consequences that it would push him over the edge.

Earlier, on the night of the day that Gerhardt had shed tears in front of Tobias — August 16, 1977 — Tobias had listened to the news on the radio and learned that Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, had passed away. For reasons beyond his immediate comprehension he bawled like a baby, cried himself to sleep. It was raining heavily. He didn’t know it then, but on that day an amorphous seed was sown into his mind. It inspired an abstract plan that he wouldn’t fully understand for years. That’s the moment things really went wrong for him.

But we’re jumping ahead.

*

One year later the radio played a couple of Elvis tunes to commemorate the first anniversary of his passing and Tobias remembered the portentous conversation with Dad. It was raining again. On the following Sunday morning, Tobias pushed Gerhardt up and down Segelflugstrasse. The old man’s need for fresh air taken care of, his son was free to set off on a stroll to enjoy the one luxury the Ith provided — proximity to nature. No matter how many times Tobias walked among the spruce and beech trees, he always discovered something new and beautiful. The paths were still muddy but he didn’t mind. He knew he had his best ideas when he was alone, hiking through the woods. His thoughts took off on tangents with almost cosmic reach.

Suddenly he remembered the last time he had cried. He didn’t recall the exact year or his age at the time; it had to be in the late 1950s, when he was ten or thereabouts, maybe a year younger. Gerhardt had taken the boys on a trip to Bad Nauheim, a spa town where he had been sent to rest after Tatjana’s death on doctor’s orders. He’d returned to visit an old friend – what was his name again? The boys had found the visit particularly boring. They’d had to sit quietly at the lunch table for hours, listening to particularly dull conversations without interrupting and without peers to play with. Finally a digestive walk was suggested and the twins had happily accepted.

After walking through the town for a while, Albert needed to go to the toilet, and urgently. Uncle Willie — that was the name of Dad’s friend who, incidentally, had liked Albert better than Tobias, too — took the boy into a nearby restaurant.

Left momentarily alone with Gerhardt, Tobias noticed a small but rapidly growing mob of young people across the street. Soon a journalist joined them and started taking pictures.

‘Look, Dad,’ Tobias said.

Flashlights went off, the crowd continued to swell and suddenly a man in US army fatigues separated from the group and ran across the street toward the boy and his father. He was in his early twenties with dark hair and a somewhat pasty complexion. The man dashed past them and disappeared in a small lane next to the restaurant Albert and Uncle Willie had entered minutes earlier.

Dad was visibly impressed but tried to hide his emotions behind a sarcastic snigger.

‘I bet you one mark you don’t know who that is, son.’

Tobias looked up at him, proud to be sharing the moment with his father. He sensed that something monumental was happening, something that he failed to comprehend. Why would Dad risk good money, a whole mark? It didn’t matter. He was alone with Dad. Best not to disappoint him.

‘Who is it? Who is it?’ he said.

‘That man, my son, was only the King of Rock, Elvis ‘the Pelvis’ — Presley,’ Gerhardt said. ‘Wait till I tell the guys. They won’t believe me.’

Tobias pondered immediately which ‘guys’ his father was referring to and felt instantly jealous of them. Could they be Uncle Willie and Albert? Either way. ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ meant absolutely nothing to him, and he said as much.

In reply, Gerhardt made a breathy sound through his teeth. To his son it was the devastating sound of disdain. Perhaps he misunderstood, perhaps Dad wasn’t judging his young son’s ignorance at all, but merely releasing some trapped air from his mouth with ill-timed precision. But to Tobias it sounded and felt like being ridiculed once again and he realised fully how hurt he was when Willie and Albert returned a few minutes later. By then most of the crowd had dispersed and there was little trace left of any historical happenings.

‘Guess who we just saw!’ Gerhardt said.

‘Who, Dad?’ Albert said.

‘Mother Teresa?’ Willie hunched his shoulders.

‘Only Elvis Presley, the king of Rock’n’Roll. That’s who!’ Dad said.

‘The quiff, the teddy boy? Yeah, that’s not impossible, actually. He’s doing his military service not far from here, in Friedberg, but they let him sleep in a villa here in town. Some people are more equal than others, even in the US army,’ Willie said.

‘They chopped off the quiff but it was him all right. Just raced across the street, chased by a crowd of young girls. And them journalists. Saw ‘em with my own eyes,’ Dad said.

‘Who’s Alois?’ Albert said.

Dad looked at him tenderly and ruffled his hair.

‘Well, how could you know him, son? We’re a bit isolated on that Ith of ours, aren’t we? Next year we’ll get our own television set. You’ll get to see him, too,’ Gerhardt said.

‘I’ve got some 45s at home. Hot stuff. We’ll give them a spin when we get back, if your dad has no objections. I have a feeling you might like him,’ Uncle Willie said and smiled at Albert, who would start his record collection that year.

That evening, soon as they shut the doors to the car and started the drive back home, Tobias cried in the back seat. He hadn’t wanted Uncle Willie to see him this way, had fought against the tears all afternoon but couldn’t keep them in check any longer now that they were alone.

‘Tobi is crying, Dad,’ Albert said when he saw what was happening. There was sympathy and surprise in his voice.

Gerhardt shifted in his seat in order to find Tobias’ reflection in the rear-view mirror.

‘What’s wrong now, son?’ he said.

Tobias was resolute, and his pain was as deeply felt as he was inarticulate. He would not and could not say how the constant difference in treatment he and Albert received from Dad and everybody else hurt him. He couldn’t deal with the unconcealed mockery in his father’s snort on the one hand, and with the warm understanding Dad had extended towards Albert on the other. Most of the time he experienced the inequality of affection as dull and unfocused. That day it had become an acute, piercing ache. Although he wiped at his tears they kept coming back.

‘Am not crying,’ he said.

‘Bertie, let your little brother cry, why don’t you? Leave him alone. After all, he’s only the wee one,’ Gerhardt said and smirked sarcastically.

That had been the last time Dad saw Tobias cry, and remembering it still hurt like a motherfucker nearly twenty years on.

*

And now Elvis had been dead for exactly one year and Tobias felt sad again, sad like he had all those years ago on the drive back from Bad Nauheim, sad about life in general, about what had become of him. Worse was still to come.

He was so caught up in his sadness that he didn’t see Detlev Donnersberg at first. Detlev was leaning against his car and somebody else was inside, maybe a woman.

Detlev, alone with a female companion on a deserted forest path…It was getting interesting. If only Tobias could get a better look at the companion. But Detlev positioned himself deliberately between Tobi and her – which made it even more interesting.

After a brief and awkward greeting – Detlev was three or four years his senior and merely a church acquaintance after all – Tobi moved on.

As he reached a bend in the path that would remove the car from his field of vision he turned around once more to get a better look at the woman.

She was almost a girl, much younger than expected.

Where had he seen her before?

It didn’t come immediately. It took him the best part of the day to remember where he had seen the girl and to come up with a plan to see her again. Then he was well underway.