The Third Reich

AUGUST 31

At ten in the morning Ingeborg called me to say that we had an appointment at Navy Headquarters. I waited for Ingeborg and Hanna in the car in front of the Costa Brava and we set off. Hanna was more animated than the night before. Her eyes and lips were made up, and when she saw me she smiled. Ingeborg’s face, meanwhile, presaged nothing good. The Navy Headquarters is a few yards from the marina, on a narrow street in the old town. To get to the offices you have to cross an inner courtyard paved in dirty tiles, with a dry fountain in the middle. There, propped on the fountain, we discovered Charly’s board. We knew that was what it was before anyone told us, and for an instant we were unable to speak or to keep walking. “Come on up, please, come on up,” said a young man (I later recognized him as being from the Red Cross) from a second-story window. After the initial shock we went up; waiting on the landing were the head of Civil Protection and the secretary of the Windsurfing Club, who greeted us with warmth and sympathy. They asked us to come in: in the office were two other civilians, the kid from the Red Cross, and two policemen. One of the civilians asked us whether we recognized the board in the courtyard. Hanna, her tanned skin paling, shrugged. They asked me. I said I couldn’t be sure; Ingeborg said the same thing. The secretary of the Windsurfing Club looked out the window. The policemen seemed fed up. I got the impression that no one dared to speak. It was hot. It was Hanna who broke the silence. “Have you found him?” she asked in such a shrill voice that we all jumped. The German speaker rushed to answer no, we’ve only found the board and boom, which as you’ll realize is quite significant… Hanna shrugged again. “Probably he knew he would fall asleep and he decided to tie himself on”… “Or he guessed that his strength wouldn’t hold, the sea, the fear, the darkness, you know”… “In any case, he did the right thing: he let the sail go and tied himself to the board”… “These are guesses, of course”… “No effort has been spared: the search has been lengthy and we’ve taken every risk”… “This morning a boat belonging to the Fishermen’s Guild found the board and the boom”… “Now we’ll have to get in touch with the German consulate”… “Naturally we’ll keep combing the area”… Hanna had her eyes closed. Then I realized that she was crying. We all exchanged somber glances. The kid from the Red Cross bragged: “I’ve been up all night.” He seemed excited. His next move was to pull out some papers for Hanna to sign; I don’t know what they were. We went to have sodas at a bar in town. We talked about the weather and the Spanish officials, well-intentioned people with few resources. The place was jammed with a dirty sort of day-tripper and it smelled strongly of sweat and tobacco. It was past twelve when we left. Ingeborg decided to stay with Hanna and I went up to the room. I could hardly keep my eyes open, and soon I was asleep.

I dreamed that someone was knocking at the door. It was nighttime, and when I opened the door I saw someone slipping down the hall. I followed. Unexpectedly we came to a huge dark room filled with the outlines of heavy old furniture. The smell of mildew and dampness was strong. On a bed a shadowy figure was twisting and turning. At first I thought it was an animal. Then I recognized Frau Else’s husband. At last!

When Ingeborg woke me, the room was full of light and I was sweating. The first thing I noticed was her face, which was definitely changed: irritation was etched on her forehead and eyelids, and for a few instants we stared at each other blankly, as if we had both just woken up. Then she turned her back on me and gazed at the closets and the ceiling. She’d wasted half an hour trying to call me from the Costa Brava, she said, and there had been no answer. In her voice I heard anger and sadness; my attempt at conciliation only disgusted her. Finally, after a long silence during which I took a shower, she admitted: “You were asleep but I thought you’d left.”

“Why didn’t you come upstairs to see for yourself?”

Ingeborg reddened.

“There was no need… Anyway, this hotel scares me. The whole town scares me.”

For some obscure reason I thought that she was right, but I didn’t say so.

“That’s silly…”

“Hanna loaned me some clothes, they fit just right, we’re almost the same size.” Ingeborg is talking quickly and for the first time she looks me in the eye.

In fact, the clothes she’s wearing aren’t hers. All of a sudden I’m aware of Hanna’s taste, Hanna’s aspirations, Hanna’s steely determination to enjoy her vacation, and it’s disconcerting.

“Any word of Charly?”

“Nothing. Some reporters were at the hotel.”

“Then he’s dead.”

“Maybe. Better not to say anything to Hanna.”

“No, of course not, that would be absurd.”

When I got out of the shower, Ingeborg, who was sitting next to my game lost in thought, struck me as the image of perfection. I suggested that we make love. Without turning, she rejected me with a slight shake of the head.

“I don’t know what appeals to you about this,” she said, gesturing at the map.

“The clarity of it,” I answered as I dressed.

“I think I hate it.”

“Because you don’t know how to play. If you knew how, you’d like it.”

“Are women interested in this kind of game? Have you ever played with one?”

“I haven’t. But they do exist. Not many of them, true; it isn’t a game that particularly attracts girls.”

Ingeborg gave me a bleak look.

“Everyone in the world has handled Hanna,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“Everyone’s handled her.” She made a terrible face. “Just because. I don’t understand it, Udo.”

“What do you mean? That everyone has slept with her? And who is everyone? The Wolf and the Lamb?” How or why I can’t say, but I started to shake. First my knees and then my hands. It was impossible to hide.

After hesitating for a moment, Ingeborg jumped up, put her bikini and a towel in a straw bag, and literally fled the room. From the door, which she didn’t bother to close, she said:

“Everyone’s touched her and here you were in this room with your war.”

“So what?” I shouted. “Does that have anything to do with it? Is it my fault?”

I spent the rest of the afternoon writing postcards and drinking beer. Charly’s disappearance hadn’t affected me the way one might expect it should. Every time I thought about him—which was often, I admit—I felt a kind of emptiness, and nothing more. At seven I went over to the Costa Brava to check things out. I found Ingeborg and Hanna in the TV room, a long narrow room with green walls and a window that looked out onto an inner courtyard full of dying plants. The place was depressing, and I said so. Poor Hanna gave me a sympathetic look. She had put on dark glasses and she smiled when she said that this meant no one ever came in, the guests usually watched TV in the hotel bar; the manager had promised that this was a quiet place. And are the two of you all right here? I asked stupidly, even stuttering. Yes, we’re all right, answered Hanna for both of them. Ingeborg didn’t even look at me: she kept her eyes glued to the screen, faking interest in an American series dubbed in Spanish of which obviously she didn’t understand a word. Near them, in a kind of toy armchair, an old woman was dozing. I nodded toward her inquiringly. Someone’s mother, said Hanna, and she laughed. They made no objection when I offered to buy them a drink, but they refused to leave the hotel; according to Hanna, news could come when we least expected it. So we were there until eleven, talking among ourselves and to the waiters. Hanna has evidently become the hotel celebrity; everyone knows about her misfortune and at least superficially she’s the object of admiration. Her bruised cheek contributes to people’s vague sense of a tragic tale. It’s as if she herself has escaped from some shipwreck.

Life in Oberhausen, of course, was evoked. In an uninterrupted murmur, Hanna recalled the basic traits of a man and a girl, a woman and an old woman, two old women, a boy and a woman— all disastrous pairs whose ties to Charly were scarcely explained. The truth is that Hanna had met only half of them. Alongside all of these masks, Charly’s face shone with virtue: he had a heart of gold, he was always seeking adventure and the truth (what truth and what adventure I chose not to inquire), he knew how to make a woman laugh, he didn’t have stupid prejudices, he was reasonably brave, and he loved children. When I asked what she meant when she said that he didn’t have stupid prejudices, Hanna answered: “He knew how to ask for forgiveness.”

“Do you realize that you’ve started to talk about him in the past tense?”

For an instant Hanna seemed to ponder my words. Then, with her head bowed, she started to cry. Fortunately this time there were no hysterics.

“I don’t think Charly is dead,” she said at last, “though I’m sure I’ll never see him again.”

Seeing that we were incredulous, Hanna said she believed it was all one of Charly’s jokes. She couldn’t imagine that he’d died for the simple reason that he was such a good swimmer. Then why hadn’t he turned up? What reason did he have to hide? Hanna believed it had something to do with madness and the loss of love. An American novel told a similar story, except that in it the motive was hatred. Charly didn’t hate anyone. Charly was crazy. Also: he had stopped loving her (this final certainty seemed to give Hanna strength).

After dinner we went out to talk on the terrace of the Costa Brava. Actually, it was Hanna who talked and we who followed the erratic twists of her conversation as if we were taking turns caring for an invalid. Hanna has a soft voice, and despite the silly things she rattled offit was soothing to listen to her. She described the telephone conversation she’d had with an official at the German consulate as if it were a romantic encounter; she pontificated on the “voice of the heart” and the “voice of nature”; she told stories about her son and wondered whom he would look like when he grew up: at present he looked just like her. In short, she had grown resigned to the horror or, perhaps more astutely, she had exchanged the horror for rupture. When we said our good nights there was no one left on the terrace and the hotel restaurant was dark.

According to Ingeborg, Hanna hardly knows anything about Charly:

“When she talked to the official from the consulate she couldn’t give a single address of near or distant relatives to contact about his disappearance. She could only give the name of the company where they both worked. The truth is, she knows nothing about Charly’s past life. On the bedside table in her room she had Charly’s ID booklet open, with his picture surveying everything. Next to the booklet there was a little pile of money and Hanna was very explicit: it’s his money.”

Ingeborg was afraid to look at the suitcase where Hanna had put Charly’s things.

Departure date: the hotel is paid up through September 1, that is, tomorrow noon. She’ll have to decide whether to go or stay. I suppose she’ll stay, although she starts work on September 3. Charly would’ve started work on September 3 too. Which reminds me that Ingeborg and I have to be back on the 5th.