It’s not an easy matter to reconstruct the following week. Probably Zündel didn’t do much except write. But since he rarely dated his notes, it’s hard to be certain what he put down when. One thing that is dated (July 14) is the description of the scene in the Ancona department store, the scene I set at the head of my account. – Also dated (July 15) is another entry that proves that Zündel knew about his father, even if he never shared his knowledge with anyone, not even Magda.
It goes, verbatim:
The man who sired me was, apparently, a sad dog, a man in human terms rich, a melancholy joker, brisk and dreamy, impulsive and charming, a sinful ascetic, a hermit with an appetite for love. Everything in him was inverted: heart on the right, liver and appendix on the left; he was a case of what the medical profession calls Situs Inversus. There’s one such in every ten thousand, and it had to be my father, and I his son. – I inherited his pale gray eyes and his divided nature. – I never once saw him, and don’t go by his name. (Just as he didn’t go by his father’s either.)
In 1919, at the age of eleven months, by the intercession of some international organization or other, he was brought across the Swiss border, as a mysterious collateral victim of the war. Made the lives of his adoptive parents, the Fischers, difficult. Was a gifted cuss and showed early signs of restlessness. Later on, he studied various subjects, got a girl pregnant, married her, joined his father-in-law’s construction business, turned out, unexpectedly, to be extremely adept at it. Deepened his understanding of business. Fathered a second child. Enjoyed a secure existence.
On the eve of the day he was to take over the business, he walks into the kitchen. Says: Elisabeth, I’ve got everything I never wanted to have: a family, a business, a well-mapped future ahead of me. I can’t breathe. Let’s pack up and make a new beginning somewhere.
– Elisabeth says sweetly: Don’t make jokes like that, Hans. Hans went off on his own.
People thought he was mad.
Six months later, Elisabeth gets a love-letter from her husband. He was in Alexandria, had found a job in a cotton exporting business, and was missing her and their children.
Already a little toughened, but still unsure what to do, Elisabeth takes advice from friends and family, and doesn’t join him.
A few letters and official documents wing their way from Bern to Alexandria, and from Alexandria to Bern. The marriage is dissolved. For reasons unknown he remarries: a prostitute of Armenian extraction. For reasons again unknown, she leaves him before long.
Abruptly, in a profound depression, he leaves Egypt. Takes ship for Genoa. Arrives there in the middle of April ’48 with a high fever. Is taken to hospital, and soon nursed back to health by Sister Johanna. She is young and warm and pretty, and best of all she’s Swiss.
A never-experienced mutual passion. On May 2 they celebrate his thirtieth birthday and plight their troth one to another. On May 3 he says: I’m leaving tomorrow.
Johanna is incredulous.
Hans says: closeness is only possible through distance, physical presence kills passion. If we separate now, we’ll hang on to each other. I love you, and can’t imagine a life without you.
On May 4, Hans Fischer takes his exit. Destination unknown.
Johanna is wild with pain. She goes home to her parents. Spends day after day sitting in the garden in despair. Slits her wrists. Is found and put in an asylum. There, she suddenly feels something moving around inside her. From that point things start looking up.
In the icy January of 1949 she gave birth to me.
She never forgot him. Remained a spinster, never touched another man.
After four years, the first sign of life from him. From the north of Sweden. He had remained faithful to her. Would she join him? – She didn’t have the strength to reply.
Three years later, she finally did manage a letter. She wrote: Today is our son’s seventh birthday.
He responded right away, sent money, covered several pages, only the words “see” and “you” were missing.
Even so, the next summer she went to see him, unannounced.
To this day she hasn’t told me what happened.
Now he’s living in Canada, on his own, doesn’t write often.
His script is like a flock of birds flying up in excitement.
His German is eccentric.
Maybe he was a cad.
I should like to see him one day.