Part Five

Twenty-Three

Andrew felt exhausted after reading his mother’s diary. It was not only a physical exhaustion, but also a mental and emotional one. What a story!

He had asked Rebecca to leave him alone while he was reading his mother’s diary; he needed to concentrate on what he was reading, and the presence of another person would have bothered him too much.

Now, as he was slowly recovering, he gradually began to realize that what he had read wasn’t just a story, it was reality. It’s possible that Mum may have got a few details wrong, but not very probable. The main facts of her report must be true.

Now the big question: What to do with the knowledge of this truth? Throughout his life since his puberty he had always assumed his grandfather to be a victim. Now the old man had been found out as a perpetrator, a Nazi criminal.

Andrew tried to come to a decision about an adequate reaction to this shock. But he was too dumbfounded to keep his senses together and decide what he should do.

He left the apartment and went to the Dolphin. Once there, his most important question was how to get drunk. What was the right drink now? He asked for a white wine, and when Sandy behind the bar asked him what white wine, he just croaked, “Any old plonk will do, I just need the booze.”

Sandy tut-tutted but gave him a glass of Chardonnay because she remembered that he often had that. He refused the glass and asked for the bottle, which Sandy first hesitated over but eventually served him.

When David entered the pub about an hour later, he saw that his friend was already in a state of considerable inebriation - he often thought of this beautiful expression for a state which was anything but pleasant.

“Come on, old chap,” he said, trying to pull him away from the bar. “I think you’ve had just about enough.”

Andrew made a feeble attempt to protest, but David managed to get him out of the pub, supported him along the pavement to his doorstep, helped him find his key in his pocket and then helped him to his flat. He got him out of his clothes and put him to bed. Then he wrote a note for Rebecca, which he left so she would see it when she came home. In it, he begged her to be gentle with Andrew. He wrote: “He’s had such a terrible experience reading his mother’s diary.” David had expected something like this. He didn’t know why.

When Rebecca came home, she saw the note and decided to sleep on the settee in their living-room. The next morning, she met Andrew in the bathroom. She could tell he had a bad headache. He didn’t say very much. Later, after some medicine and two cups of coffee, he slowly got back to his old self.

“You must’ve had a very interesting evening,” she teased.

“Oh, my dear! I’m sorry, but I needed to get drunk. It was my first reaction. Now I have to cope with what I’ve learnt about my family’s past.”

“Why do you have to cope? Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie? What does our family’s history matter? What has it got to do with us?”

“I know, it’s hard to understand for you. But your family are all good people. You haven’t got a Nazi criminal among your ancestors.”

“A Nazi criminal? Your Granddad? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“But even then... I mean, there may have been murderers, rapists and arsonists among my own ancestors, only not just recently. Back in the eighteenth century or so, what do we know?”

Andrew reflected for a few moments. “The crimes of the Nazis are too recent. It’s too early to forget them. Besides, many of their inhuman ideas are still around. Look at all those populist right-wing politicians that you can find in many European countries. Their ideas are extremely dangerous. It’s only to be hoped that they’ll never get to power. So we have to know these dangers in order to prevent such developments.”

“Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?”

He decided to leave the subject. Rebecca wasn’t interested enough, and her political sensitivity didn’t amount to very much. He took another sip of coffee and only remarked, “I’ll have to discuss it with Dave first.”

But she wasn’t prepared to let him off. “Can’t we just forget the whole thing? Look, we are so happy. We live in great times. Our nation isn’t at war, we are gradually moving towards something like world peace. We are all growing happier and richer every day. If we play our cards right, we might be able to buy our first house soon.”

He did not respond to this. Any adequate answer would be either too complicated or too detrimental to their relationship.

“I think I’ll ask Dave to spend a men’s weekend with me, just the two of us. If you like, you can arrange something with Marie-Claire or with any of your other friends.”

“If that’s what you want. Where will you go?”

“We shall see.”

* * *

It was two weeks later when the two friends managed to get away for the weekend. They took David’s car, a relatively new Ford Mondeo, and drove to Weymouth. David knew a nice hotel there. It offered a pleasant view of the bay. When they were checking in, the receptionist, who was Irish and seemed to be the owner, explained to them that the bay in front of his hotel was going to host several water-sport events in the upcoming Olympic Games.

After settling in, they walked along the seafront and began to talk. During the trip they had discussed all sorts of things but avoided the all-important topic, saving it for now.

“So, what about the worst part of your findings? Or should I say your mother’s findings?” David introduced the sensitive topic.

At first, Andrew had difficulties finding the right words, but then decided to dispense with all embellishments. His best friend deserved to get the unmitigated facts.

“My own grandfather was a Nazi criminal,” he began. And during the following forty-five minutes, he managed to tell his friend the whole story of Manfred Weidmann, SS-Hauptsturmführer Weidmann, the man’s escape to Frankfurt under the name of Dieter Wolff, his move to Switzerland and eventually his emigration to the States under the name of Didi Woolf. He also mentioned his grandfather’s love affair with Anna Kleinschmidt before the War.

“There’s even a half-uncle living somewhere in Canada, I understand,” he added, before he concluded his report.

“Tell me,” David asked, “which aspect of the whole story hurts you most? Which part really gets under your skin?”

“I think it’s the injustice, most of all. The injustice. How did he manage to get away like that? How could he have the cheek to lead the life that he’s been leading from 1945 to this day? How could he escape without being caught? Why did he never have to appear in front of an inquiry, a so-called Spruchkammer?”

“Well, my dear fellow, that’s another story.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that those Spruchkammer procedures were anything but just. Yes, we all know they represented at least something like a public effort in the whole process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in post-war Germany. But only too often in reality, they were mere fig-leaves.”

“Why?”

“Because most of those inquiry boards called Spruchkammern had a fair share of old Nazis among their members. You know, after the really big shots were condemned at the Nuremberg Trials, there was a general feeling that that was enough. The new democratic Germany needed educated men, teachers, university professors, lawyers, judges, policemen and politicians. Almost every man they could recruit had some brown spots in his biography. So, the watchword for those Spruchkammern was leniency, clemency with the men they had to assess in view of their Nazi pasts.”

“You mean they didn’t get their deserved punishment?”

“Most of them got off with a mild reprimand, and some bad guys were even transformed into heroes and heaved into important positions.”

“Yes, Mum mentioned people like Hans Filbinger and Kurt Waldheim.”

“Right you are. But there were thousands of Nazi followers who had only obeyed orders but caused misery to unwanted individuals by just doing their office jobs. They wrote lists of Jewish families, they copied and filed Gestapo documents needed to persecute and imprisoned dissidents, they helped the Nazis in power in many possible ways.”

“We don’t know what we would have done in their situation.” Andrew threw in.

“Exactly. So why punish everyone? If the Spruchkammern had been set up with members of the Allied Forces and if they had been as strict as possible, Germany would have been even more depopulated than it already was through the numerous casualties. You can’t build up a new country without people.”

“I’m just disappointed. So, the whole process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung was just a sham? A big show to pretend that the German people weren’t so bad after all?”

“Not at all. The process was the best thing that could be done in that situation. It was impossible to deny the past, and it was equally impossible to throw a whole nation into prison. But what was possible was some large-scale action to prevent such horrible crimes from ever being repeated. The German people had to be re-educated.”

“I see.”

The two friends stopped at a street-café and sat down for some nice refreshment. Andrew looked out to the sailing yachts in the bay.

“But Granddad was more than a small follower. He was in the SS. He must have blood on his hands.”

“Do you remember? One evening at the pub a few years ago we were discussing Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in view of what can be done with a heavy guilt?”

“Yes, and you drew a comparison with L’Etranger by Camus. I can clearly remember.”

“Now, if we want to explore the moral sides as well as the social sides of a heavy guilt, we have to do a lot more thinking.”

“Indeed. But listen, Dave. Only half an hour ago we agreed that we can’t know how we would have reacted if we had been young men during Hitler’s dictatorship. Young men without the type of democratic education that we have today! Wouldn’t we have joined what was presented to us as a great cause?”

“Yes, possibly.”

“So how can we sit on our high horse and judge those men and women on the basis of today’s enlightened insights?”

“We aren’t judging them, and you shouldn’t judge your grandfather either.”

“What are we doing then, I’d like to know?”

“We cannot judge them because we are individuals.”

“What do you mean?” Andrew raised his voice.

“Remember Dostoyevsky,” David replied. “His view isn’t that of an individual either. His great novel asks what society as a whole can do to cope with such aberrations as Raskolnikov’s. So, if we take the view of our post-war society in Europe as a whole, including not only Germany but all the European nations, even the ones who won the War, we can and we should try to assess the whole phenomenon from a moral, a legal and a social position on the basis of democracy and Human Rights.”

“Those are big words, my friend.”

“Indeed, they are. But they aren’t any less appropriate for that, are they?”

The two friends spent the day walking around Weymouth. The weather was fine, so their extended walk offered them many new views of this seaside town. Andrew loved the fishing boats they found moored to the quay, while David was more interested in the expensive yachts. They also admired the modern car ferry for the Channel Islands, promising each other that they would visit Jersey and Guernsey with their girlfriends one of these days.

Their conversations were mostly about the topics of the day, but from time to time they returned to Nora’s diary and Granddad’s role in the War.

“Actually, we don’t know any details of what he did during the War. So, he may have been just one of the followers,” Andrew suggested.

“If he was an officer of the Waffen-SS you can bet he committed his share of horrible crimes, I am sorry to say.”

“The question is: Do we have to find out?”

“Didn’t you say your grandfather is already far advanced in his dementia? He probably couldn’t even remember everything himself, let alone share those awful memories with you.”

“You’re right.” Andrew heaved a long sigh. “And what about that son of his in Canada? My Uncle Manfred, or rather half-uncle? Do you think I should urge my mother to find him and visit him in Vancouver? Or should I go?”

“That’s for your mother to decide or to negotiate with you. If it was me, I would certainly be curious about a new uncle popping up on the horizon.”

They left it at that.

The next morning, they had a long breakfast. Between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs they uttered occasional comments on what they had discussed the day before. Especially David felt the urge to place everything he had said then in the right light. He was afraid that Andrew might get things the wrong way. It was important for him to make sure his friend didn’t get the impression that he had to do what he told him. Andrew was completely free to act in any way he considered right. There was no hard and fast rule about how to speak to his grandfather or what to say to his mother.

“Then there’s that fellow, Wolfgang Löffel,” Andrew said at the end of their long breakfast session. “What am I to do with him?”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do,” David replied.

“He must be in his late eighties. I only hope he’ll kick the bucket soon.”

* * *

When back in Eastbourne, Andrew spoke to his mother again; he asked her a lot of questions about further details she might have found out on her visit to Germany. But she said she couldn’t remember anything else but what she’d written down in her diary.

So, he asked her about Wolfgang Löffel. She answered she didn’t want to know about that awful fellow. He might still be in England, from all she knew, probably scheming. He might still try to blackmail the family.

“What a pain in the neck. He raped Anna, he made life difficult for Granddad and he’s still trying to make trouble. I wish I had him here. I could kill him.”

“Don’t say a thing like that.”

“But it’s true. It’s how I feel.”

“Listen, my dear. Before you judge a man like Löffel, look at what your grandfather may have done. Having been in the SS, he most probably caused misery to many more families. So just hold your horses.”

“Okay. But you can’t expect me to like the fellow.”

They spoke about other things. Nora told her son about her friend Debbie and the difficulties she was having in her job.

When he got back to his flat, Andrew was greeted by Rebecca. She told him she had booked a wellness weekend at a beautiful hotel near Canterbury.

“So I’m going to be on my own for the weekend?” he asked.

“Of course not, my darling. It’s for two people. We’re going together. It will do you good to get away from all your worries. You’ve been reading that story in your mother’s old schoolbooks, so you need a break now.”

Andrew was at a loss for words.

“Aren’t you going to give me a big kiss?” she pleaded.

“Now, look here,” he tentatively began, “you should know that there’s nothing that I hate more than so-called wellness weekends. Besides, I have too much to do. I can’t get away like that.”

“You aren’t going to read any more of that morbid story of your mother’s?” Having said this, her face drooped and tears began to roll down her lovely cheeks.

“You still don’t understand. It isn’t a story. It’s my mother’s diary which she wrote when she was visiting Germany, back in the nineties.”

“But it’s so morbid. Why do you keep delving into the past like that? Aren’t we happy as we are?” With a pouting mouth she tried to win him over to her side.

“Listen. You go on that wellness weekend. Go on your own, or if you’ve booked it for two people, take one of your friends.”

“And what are you going to do in the meantime? Are you having an affair with another woman?”

“Of course not. I need the time to discuss what to do with what I’ve learnt from my mother’s diary, discuss it with Dave and with Lisa.”

“Oh, you are so boring. Why can’t you leave things as they are?”

“Because we might learn something from those events in the past, learn important lessons for the present and the future.”

Rebecca was silent for a few minutes. While he was getting himself a scotch on the rocks, she busied herself with unnecessary household chores. It was meant to give him the message that while he could always get his own way, she was not much more than his household slave. She remained in her offended state for the rest of the day.

The next morning, she took up the subject again. “What lessons can you learn from a woman’s old diary, tell me.”

“It’s not so much from what Mum wrote, it’s more the things she found out about Granddad during the War. The events of those days have enormous social and political implications. It’s only now that I’ve read Mum’s diary - or rather her report about her research - that I’m beginning to understand things better.”

“What things?”

“Well, one of the most dangerous questions that I’m asking myself is this: Will the world of today ever force us to take such hard moral decisions? Another issue concerns the relative significance of truth. Do we always have to tell the truth? Where is the borderline between a white lie and a huge self-deception? And then there’s the question of individual responsibility.”

“Stop it. All those big words. They don’t mean anything to us.”

“That’s exactly my problem.”

“You are losing your mind, if you ask me.”

Sad as Andrew was about his darling’s incomprehension, he had to admit to himself that he had actually expected something like this.

* * *

On Saturday, after Rebecca had left for Canterbury, Andrew decided to speak to his mother again, and then later to David.

Sitting over a hot cup of tea in Nora’s lounge, he came straight to the point. “In my opinion, there are two issues to be clear about right from the start. There’s the Löffel fellow, as we discussed last time, and there’s the existence of your half-brother in Canada. What do you intend to do in either case?”

“I haven’t done anything about any of these ‘issues’, as you call them, for the past sixteen years. So why wake up sleeping dogs now?”

“If you don’t want to do anything, will you allow me to do something?”

“But not to kill Löffel.”

“Of course not. I was only joking. He’ll die pretty soon anyway. So that problem might solve itself quite naturally.”

“And Manfred in Canada?” she asked.

“If you allow me, I’ll try to find out his whereabouts. It shouldn’t be such a big problem today with the Internet.”

“And then?”

“Then I’ll contact him, explaining our connection. If he doesn’t reply, then so be it. But if he’s interested in some sort of contact, we might perhaps find out if he really is your half-brother, or if he is the son of old Löffel. Of course, only if he also wants to know.”

“How can you find out if he’s my brother or not? Not even Anna knew.”

“Oh, Mum, we’ve got DNA in this day and age.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve heard about it in one of the science programmes on TV.”

“So, will you allow me to proceed with my quest?” Andrew was eager to get something done, to produce some sort of result.

“All right. But we won’t tell your father or your grandfather. If and when we have a result, it’ll be early enough to involve them.”

“Agreed then,” he said.

“And about Löffel, shall we just wait and see if he tries to blackmail us again?”

“I don’t think there’s much else we can do. So yes, let’s do that.”

Andrew left his mother and went home for a quick lunch. In the afternoon, he had arranged to go for a walk along the seafront with David. They met at the bandstand, from where they directed their steps towards Holywell. It was a very pleasant afternoon, blue sky with a few clouds and a light breeze from the sea. There were quite a lot of people strolling along the seafront, many of them with dogs and some with prams and small children.

“I think more people ought to do what you did,” David said. “I mean study some of the most important chapters of history, particularly twentieth-century history. Too many people don’t know the dangers of political extremism. Too many people are far too careless about the effects of Globalization and rampant Capitalism.”

“How could they learn about such dangers from studying the history of the last century?”

“They could see how dangerous it is for societies to exclude large sections of their people from participation in the process of political decision-making. Also, if more people could see these dangers, the whole idea of the European Union would have been built up differently, and the governments of many countries would have understood that Globalization not only brings more shareholder value but also the danger of eroding the middle-classes, which will lead to more social unrest and possibly to the next world war.”

“Aren’t you being a bit too gloomy here?” Andrew asked.

“That may be. But the dangers are there.”

“You are criticizing the EU. Isn’t it a safeguard against anymore wars on European soil?”

“That’s what it was originally meant to be.”

“What’s wrong with it then?”

“For one thing, it was set up the wrong way round. Instead of developing it bottom-up, it was established top-down.”

Andrew was a bit puzzled. “Can you explain?”

“The countries involved should first have held referendums and asked their people if they wanted to be in the EU, also what was important for them in such a union. And only then the entire administration in Brussels should have been elected democratically. As you know, the present EU is anything but democratic.”

“But the European Parliament is elected democratically,” Andrew objected.

“And does this parliament have anything to say? Does it have power?”

“I don’t know. I’m not so well-informed about what’s going on in Brussels.”

“There you are. The structures and the activities of all the EU institutions should be a lot more transparent, and all the EU citizens ought to be familiar with them.”

“I see. You may have a point there. But could it be that it’s only us, the British, who have this problem? I imagine the Germans, the French and the Italians are much more familiar with the institutions of the EU. After all, they’ve got the Euro.”

“Another shambles, I tell you!”

“Why? Isn’t it great for all those people travelling between the different countries to have a common currency?”

“It may be very practical for tourists, but it isn’t healthy for the economies of the different member states.”

“How is that?” Andrew was surprised. He had always thought the Euro was a fantastic idea.

“Go on the Internet and listen to the speech that the German politician Gregor Gysi made in the Bundestag on 23rd April 1998. He predicted every problem with the Euro. He correctly pointed out that the monetary policies and the national banking systems of the member states should first be made compatible, then certain measures should be implemented to cope with the different economic situations in the member states, all that before one could even think of establishing a common currency. But like the EU, the Euro was also set up top-down instead of bottom-up. It was practically forced on many countries. Gysi exactly predicted the problems they are having now with Greece. It was first Ireland, then Spain and Portugal, and now it’s Greece. Their economies can never compete with Germany.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of the Greek financial crisis.”

“I could tell you a lot more, but I fear I’m getting a bit too professorial,” David said.

“Not at all! Tell me, what could come of this situation? And how could our knowledge of recent history help us?”

“The main points are democracy and common respect. We should have learnt these from the terrible mistakes of the last century.”

“Okay. But what do you see as the worst case for our political, social and economic future?”

“Well, in the case of the EU, either it will have to be reformed dramatically, made more democratic, or it will fall apart, which would be a great pity.”

“And in larger terms?”

“Well, my dear chap, I’m basically a linguist, so I’m not really an expert. But I’ve studied the political and economic situations in most European countries because this whole question interests me.”

“And what conclusion have you come to?”

“In most European countries there’s a deficiency in democracy. Their political systems may very well be set up in a democratic pattern, but in reality, there are large proportions of the population that are excluded. The politicians are far away from the ordinary man in the street. You need a lot of money to get elected. The politicians form what experts call une classe politique. They don’t really know what concerns that proverbial man in the street. Most political decisions are geared to suit the dictations of macro-economics, not to help the ordinary people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The middle-classes are being eroded, dried out.”

“Isn’t that Communist propaganda?”

“Not at all. It’s just clear observation. Today it’s obvious for every critical mind in the Western world that Neo-Liberalism in conjunction with Neo-Capitalism was conceived in the States as early as the 1960s, but it all remained political theory at first. It took such ruthless politicians as Reagan and Thatcher to implement those theories in the 1980. One of the measures that were implemented was wide-spread privatization of public services. Competition was the watchword of the day. Many believed that competition was the key to the general improvement of many goods and services. The entire process was accelerated and helped by the technological development which made Globalization possible. For the first two decades or so, the world merely applauded the macro-economic benefits of the new system.”

“Wasn’t that a good thing?”

“In a way, yes, mainly for investment bankers and multi-national syndicates. But it also led to general greed and a disregard of social responsibilities. Investors and their bankers lost all shame and blindly followed the most primitive impulse of greed, making ever and ever higher profits. So that, by the turn of the century, many ordinary middle-class individuals began to believe that the el-dorado of investment banking was there for everyone, just for the taking. Thousands of middle-aged people in the UK who had managed to put away a modest nest egg for their retirement were led to believe that they could just go on the computer and start their own private investment banking in order to increase their savings.”

“Yes, and didn’t many of them make a good profit?”

“Some very few did. But someone had to pay the bill. Most of them had lost enormous sums by about 2006. Many even lost their entire savings and their pensions. However, their disillusionment came too late, because the investment bankers themselves had also lost their former confidence. After 2008, everyone, that is governments, bankers and the general public, believed that the illusionists behind the whole shambles must have learnt their lessons from the recent crash. But we were all wrong. To this day, the morbid greed of most investment bankers and of the multi-national syndicates has remained as strong and as criminal as ever. They haven’t learnt a single lesson.”

“Okay, but what has that got to do with what we’ve been discussing? I mean the rise of new nationalism and the increasing success of populist leaders.”

“During the past twenty years or so, the middle-classes in European societies have been eroded, dried out. A few middle-class people managed to participate in the general economic success, but many more failed and dropped down to lower-class living standards, thanks to the immoral greed of those champions of Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Capitalism. This led to a loss of confidence in the established politicians because they couldn’t stop the terrible development either. The situation was such that the politicians were seen by the general public as ‘those up there’ who only filled their own pockets and couldn’t do anything for the ordinary people. Fewer and fewer citizens even took part in elections and referendums because they thought it was all for nothing. If the national governments suffered such a loss of confidence, matters became even worse for the EU. And in stepped the populists! They attacked the established political systems and the elected politicians of their countries and of the EU administration in Brussels, not with well-founded arguments but with cheap slogans, telling the frustrated people that they had the simple solutions to their problems. They completely ignored the complexity of many of today’s problems and the tedious reality of political processes in a democracy, promising radical and simple solutions. They acted like the rat-catcher of Hamelin. Frustrated people began to follow them in thousands in France, in Germany, in Hungary, in Poland and in this country. UKIP is hardly better than the French Front national or the German Alternative für Deutschland. They all belong to the same cast.”

“So where does it lead?”

“In the worst case, we’ll see a dangerous increase of right-wing populism in many European countries. Sooner or later, such populist leaders will blame all the problems on the democratically elected governments, and political discourse will get rougher, like in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Eventually, they will be successful as the proverbial rat-catchers that they are. People will say: ‘At last someone calls a spade a spade. At last a politician who listens to us and takes our fears seriously.’ And all those self-styled pseudo-saviours will play with the people’s fears. They will lie to the people that they can solve all the problems and heal the fears that they first instilled in them.”

“Could that lead to civil war?”

“Possibly. One thing it will produce is national isolation. Those populist leaders will disregard EU regulations more and more. They will re-introduce border-controls and they will make racism an accepted attitude. Lies will become generally acceptable.”

“And you’re saying that you can see such developments in many countries?”

“Yes, as I said, certainly in France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Netherlands. The only country that may be spared such developments is probably Switzerland because it is the most democratic country in the world. But all the others have representative democracies in which the people have no direct influence on single political decisions. Perhaps the Scandinavian countries will also be spared because they have better social systems and generally more coherent societies.”

“What about this country?”

“I don’t know where we’re going. There are a few dangerously populist signs. Take the example of Steve, an old friend of mine. He’s a plumber, and he used to be our neighbour when I was a small boy, so we became friends and have remained friends ever since. He’s retired now, but every time we have a chat he goes on about all those foreigners coming into our country, how they are taking away our jobs, how they are getting too much money from our social system, and then how Britain has to pay all those enormous sums, week after week, to Brussels. These are all populist lies, slogans spread by individuals who want to gain power by the means I’ve just been explaining. Everyone who cares to check will find out that we profit a lot more from the EU than what we have to contribute. As I pointed out before, I’m not saying the EU is perfect. Far from it! But the populist lies being spread about our membership in the EU are enormous. More and more people are beginning to believe them - particularly older people who still dream of Britain’s alleged greatness in the times of the Empire, or people who lost their jobs through technological innovation or as a consequence of Globalization.”

“What if we’re going to leave the EU?”

“I wouldn’t object to that, even though our economy would have to go through hard times after such an exit. But what I would object to, and most emphatically, is an exit from the EU based on such populist lies. If we’re ever going to leave the EU - even if such a step is possible - we’ll have to do it on the basis of facts, not as followers of populist liars. That would be a crime committed by the frustrated older half of our people, and our younger generations would be the victims. Blind nationalism in this country is most widely spread among the elderly, and they would be robbing the younger generations of their opportunities in the world.”

During this long discussion, which really amounted to a lecture from David, the two friends had reached Holywell and were now strolling back towards the town centre and the Pier. They decided to sit down in one of those relatively new open-air cafés along the seafront. They got their coffees and were silent for a while, merely enjoying the view of the English Channel and the mild weather.

Twenty-Four

It was not very difficult for Andrew to find out the whereabouts of Manfred Kleinschmidt in Vancouver. Unfortunately, he could only find out his postal address, not his email. But this was far better than nothing. On Google there was nothing about the man, so he hadn’t distinguished himself in any way.

Andrew decided to write an old-fashioned letter. But before he could start he had to get himself into the mood.

He sat at his piano and began to play a Chopin waltz. While he was playing, his mind drifted off and he found himself playing mechanically, without really being in the music. So, he gave up.

He sat at his computer and opened the “Word” programme.

“Dear Manfred,” he began, but then changed his mind. Should he write “Dear Mr Kleinschmidt” or “Dear Uncle Manfred”? He decided to leave the greeting until the end. Once the whole letter was composed it would be easier to find the right wording for the address. He could still insert it then. That was the advantage of writing with the computer.

First, he introduced himself as Manfred Weidmann’s grandson. He explained what he thought was necessary to understand the whole context, such as his grandfather’s change of name after the War, his move to Switzerland, to the States, to England. He told the story of his mother’s meeting with his grandfather’s young love, Anna, in Gera. He mentioned Wolfgang Löffel without giving any more details. Naturally, he didn’t mention what Löffel had done to Anna. But he told Manfred junior how Manfred senior had always loved Anna and still loved her today, despite his dementia. Andrew felt the man in Vancouver ought to know about this great love.

In the end, he added the relevant data of his family, such as everyone’s names and dates of birth, his grandmother’s early death and his mother’s keen interest in family history, which was why they would like to get in touch with a man they believed to be her half-brother.

He made sure the letter was kept in a friendly tone, not too presumptuous and not too business-like. In the end, he decided to put “Hello Manfred” at the beginning. Rereading his letter, Andrew was quite satisfied with himself.

After he had posted the letter, he went to see his mother. He told her about the letter, which she was very grateful for.

“However,” she added, “I think it’s a bit daunting. I mean, I might find out if he’s really my half-brother.”

“The alternative would mean that Löffel has a son in Canada,” Andrew said.

“Indeed.”

“Which would you prefer? Would it make you happy to know you’ve got a half-brother? Would you want to travel to Canada to see him?”

“I don’t really know. That’s why I’ve been putting it off for all those years. I tried to forget the question. But to tell you the truth, when I allowed you to read my diary, I half expected you to ask it again. I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we wait and see what the man’s response to your letter will be?”

* * *

David and Marie-Claire were giving a party. Of course, Andrew and Rebecca were among their guests, but there were a lot of people, many of whom Andrew had never met before. There were old friends from both the host’s and the hostess’s side, there were academic colleagues of David’s and there was a happy mixture of other people who were connected with them in one way or another. Quite a big party, in fact.

“What’s the occasion?” Andrew had asked when he got the invitation.

“You’ll see,” had been David’s answer.

The party took place in the function room upstairs from the Bibendum Bistro. There was a small jazz band. They had obviously been instructed to play soft background music, not too loud, at least for the first half hour or so. When the party was in full swing, everybody’s glasses filled, and people had been introduced to each other for the greater part, David and Marie-Claire positioned themselves next to the band, which aroused everybody’s attention by playing a flourish.

“Dear friends,” David began his speech, holding hands with Marie-Claire. “We all love parties, don’t we? But many of you may have wondered if there could be an occasion for this party.”

There were loud cheers and people shouted, “Yeah!”

David then told their guests that he and Marie-Claire had decided to get engaged, and they intended to get married soon. Andrew was surprised. He asked Rebecca what she thought of it. She just laughed.

“Oh, you stupid intellectuals,” she teased.

“What do you mean?”

“You go on and on about things that nobody cares about, and you can’t see what’s in front of your nose. Marie-Claire has got him at last. He has always been full of excuses. All that prevarication.”

“I am surprised, I must say. Dave never mentioned anything. I know he loves her, but he’s often spoken about the heavy responsibility of marriage.”

“Bullshit, they love each other, and they obviously have fantastic sex. So why not get married?”

Andrew hesitated. “Well, for one thing, one has to be quite certain about mutual compatibility, about common aims in life and such things.”

“Oh, you intellectuals!” she shouted and walked away.

Andrew drifted among the guests, dropping a friendly greeting here and there, taking in the few familiar faces and registering the unfamiliar ones. From the distance, he could detect Rebecca as she was talking to a tall young man with very fair hair. She was drinking from a champagne glass, obviously involved in a very vivid discussion, while the tall man merely nodded his head.

“A penny for your thoughts,” a voice on his right said. He turned his head and faced a very charming woman whose skin was a very appealing light brown colour and whose hair was black and curly. She was wearing a lot of jangling jewellery. He noted her deep black eyes and glossy red lips.

“Oh, I’m just skimming the crowd, nothing in particular. What about you?”

“I’m a journalist looking for material,” she smiled and handed him a business card. He looked at it but failed to register her name.

“Are you looking for material here? This is only a private engagement party, and the couple concerned are hardly VIPs.”

“I was having a drink at the bar downstairs when I realized there was a party upstairs, so I left the others downstairs to come up here. You could call me a gate-crasher, you see. I’m just curious. Who’s the guy getting engaged and who’s the lucky girl? Do you know them?”

“Yes, they are friends. But tell me, what do you write about? Society gossip in small towns?”

“I’m interested in small-town life, yes. And this is such a sleepy and boring town that my curiosity is aroused. There must be a lot of intrigues going on behind the bland façade. Do you live here?”

Andrew said yes, but when the woman went on asking him questions he held back. Why should he tell her everything? While he was fending off some of her curious enquiries he was becoming aware of her flirting attitude. So, this was her game! She made charming eyes at a man in order to get out of him what she was looking for. A dangerous person, indeed! Andrew decided to enjoy her charms and sexy smiles without giving anything away. Like this, they kept talking for quite some time while the party was going on, people were growing louder, and general merriment prevailed.

It was about an hour later - Andrew had been talking to several different people - when he found himself face to face with the young journalist again. She had told him she was originally from Jamaica but lived in Brixton. She moved her body in a very alluring way, put her arms about his neck and kissed him quickly. Then she moved off, looking over her shoulder, obviously attracting him to follow her.

At that moment, he was hurled around from behind and his face was slapped by a strong blow from a flat hand. He stumbled and found himself lying on the floor.

Andrew hardly realized what was going on when Rebecca had already disappeared among the surprised bystanders. It must have been her. She had hit him. She must have seen him with the Jamaican woman and thought he was flirting with her.

David helped him up, his face full of concern. “Come on, old chap,” he breathed his usual phrase of encouragement. But then he asked what had happened. Andrew couldn’t tell him the whole truth because he wasn’t sure if it had really been Rebecca and if her motive had been what he first thought.

“I think it was Rebecca. I think she hit me,” he explained.

David took him to where the drinks counter was and gave him a full glass of champagne. The little incident - violent as it had been - was soon forgotten, and people went on with their celebrations, their small-talks, their excessive drinking and shouting, and their general merriment.

When, several hours later, most of the guests had left, the band had packed up their stuff and the waiters were beginning to clear up, there were only David, Marie-Claire, Andrew and three other people left. They were sitting in a circle of easy-chairs, sipping from their glasses, but mostly too tired to leave.

“Why do you think Rebecca did that?” David asked his friend.

“I don’t know. But I think it could be jealousy. Jealousy of two types, I might add.”

“You mean she thought you were having a fling with another woman?”

“That’s one type. There was that Jamaican journalist who was nailing me with questions about possible scandals in Eastbourne. She was very sexy and got a bit too fresh with me, I have to admit. Rebecca must have seen her giving me a kiss.”

“And what’s the other type of jealousy?” David wanted to know.

“It’s her general intellectual jealousy. Of late, she has told me off several times for using too many big words, for being an arrogant intellectual, for having lost touch with normal people. That sort of thing, you know.”

“Yes, I’ve seen that myself.”

“You must have, particularly when she’d had too much to drink. The other day she even called me a bloody German. I told her I wasn’t a German, it was only Granddad who was. And only yesterday she yelled at me, telling me off for criticizing current politics. ‘How dare you criticize our government, you bloody foreigner!’ she shouted at me. I told her again that I was as English as she was, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Oh dear!” David said. Marie-Claire joined them. She had heard the last bit, so she wondered what Rebecca must have thought of her, who was a real foreigner.

They were silent for a while, digesting not only their alcohol but also their new shock about Rebecca’s behaviour.

“There’s even worse news,” Andrew said. “This morning she announced her intention to join the xenophobic right-wingers. She said she had to throw in her weight with the other side to counterbalance my treacherous activities. She said that people like me were a danger for the nation. What was needed was more of the good old patriotism. Britain had to be made great again.”

“You mean she joined UKIP?”

“As it appears.”

Andrew went home with David and Marie-Claire. They offered him a bed in their guest-room.

* * *

When Andrew called at his parents’ house two days later, he found his sister Lisa sitting over a cup of tea in the lounge. From the start, he registered a gloomy atmosphere. Lisa was in a state of extreme excitement.

“Isn’t it terrible?” she asked, throwing her hands up in the air. “Here we are, an ordinary family, nothing to worry about. And now look! Everything shattered to smithereens in one blow.”

“Hey, Sis. What’s the matter? Just calm down and tell me,” Andrew said.

Their mother entered with a cup of tea for Andrew. She didn’t look shattered, as could have been expected from Lisa’s ravings. Her expression was calm but serious.

“Now, tell him. Tell him everything!” Lisa shouted.

“Please, just calm down,” Andrew repeated. “Let’s have a sip of our tea, then breathe normally.”

Since Lisa was too flustered to speak coherently, it befell on her mother to inform Andrew of the latest development. She explained how Wolfgang Löffel had suddenly appeared on her doorstep last night, probably knowing that George would be away on business, and had tried to blackmail her with an entirely new story.

The new story ran thus:

Didi Woolf was not Manfred Weidmann. Wolfgang Löffel had always believed that until he suddenly stumbled over the truth. Manfred Weidmann killed himself in the early 1950s, shortly after his arrival in the States.

Didi Woolf’s real name was Henry Miller. He grew up in Davenport, Iowa. From his early years he’d had a fantastic talent for acting and for languages. He could fool people with different accents, he could impersonate many of his schoolmates and he spent most of his time learning foreign languages. While his friends were out playing football or baseball, young Henry was sitting in his room brooding over language learning material, practising different accents of the English language and copying out Latin proverbs. A most unusual child indeed! His parents tried to get him interested in other things, such as sports or games, but without success.

As a teenager, Henry made friends with one of his schoolmates called Eamon O’Reilly. Together, they formed a team of tricksters. Initially, they were satisfied with harmless pranks. For example, they would go to shops and ask for goods in the name of other people, whom they were impersonating in such a convincing way that the shop-owners believed them. Or they would dress up as a pair of dissatisfied citizens and appear at one of the police stations of the town, giving invented evidence about crimes apparently committed by people they had selected at random. Eventually, however, their tricks became small crimes. Burglaries and assaults, all in disguise, became their trade.

When, in the early 1950s, they became radicalized by political ideas, the brutality of their crimes increased dramatically, and they became more politically motivated. They called themselves the avengers of the intellectually dispossessed. Their enemies were the disciples of Joe McCarthy, the controversial Senator from Wisconsin.

They called at remote farms in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin where they knew the farmers to be followers of the McCarthy movement. Within three years, they committed at least ten armed robberies, dozens of burglaries, a few arsons and at least five murders. At every crime scene, the police found a note or a placard with the words, “Thanks, Joe McC!” They were hunted by the FBI, there were angry letters to editors of the national papers, and of course, Senator McCarthy told the newspapers and his fellow-politicians that those crimes were the result of Communist activities in the land. He didn’t tell them how much the crimes helped his own policies, his witch-hunt for left-wing politicians, artists and other critical intellectuals and his morbid anti-Communist campaigns, whereas his friends demanded the immediate capture and just punishment of those monsters, as they were often dubbed by the media. The electric chair was practically waiting for them.

However, the two gangsters were too clever for the police. They always appeared in different disguises, and the scenes of their crimes allowed for no recognizable pattern. They were described as Southerners with a French accent, as lower-class British criminals, as immigrants from Russia, Germany or Mexico. In one case, a witness swore he had detected a Chinese accent when he’d met them personally before they shot his family. The truth was: nobody knew their real faces or had any idea about their true identities. All they knew was that they were two youngish men, one a bit taller than the other, and they were very quick in everything they did.

Their crimes in the three states stopped as suddenly as they had begun. The two criminals disappeared, their notes addressed to the hated senator vanished, and it was believed they had either been killed or they had managed to leave the country.

The truth was a different matter. The two friends had found they’d made enough money to start a new life. They were satisfied they had inflicted enough damage on McCarthy and his followers. They even saw themselves as heroes, the Robin Hoods of the Mid-West.

Henry Miller changed his name to Didi Woolf, while Eamon O’Reilly became Paddy Malone. With their large sums of money, Paddy bought a partnership in a medium-sized company producing chemical and pharmaceutical goods in Chicago. After six months, as one of the company’s executives, he advertised a job for which Henry applied. Of course, it was all play-acting, so Henry got the job. Two years later, their company was bought by a larger, multi-national syndicate, in which both friends got good jobs at the executive level.

Sometime in their early phase, they both found suitably gullible women they could marry without risking anything. Thus, they became respectable executives and family-men. While Paddy’s new wife asked a few dangerous questions when she found out how much money he had, Didi’s wife Emily never even suspected any foul play. The men’s cover-up story was so well concocted and so realistic in every way, and Emily was too much in love to have any doubts at all.

Both friends started their families in Chicago, but perhaps because the FBI was getting a bit too nosy, they shifted their main business activities to England. Newcastle was the ideal spot for Didi Woolf alias Henry Miller. The city’s economy - indeed the whole North East - was so depressed that the thriving business was welcomed with open arms. The company created quite a lot of new jobs. Nothing would have been further from people’s minds than any suspicions about the two successful businessmen’s past.

When Mum had completed her story, Andrew and Lisa looked at each other. What could they say?

“And that’s the story you got from Löffel?” Andrew asked.

“Yes. He told me more details to prove the truth, apparently. But yes, that’s his story. So now we have the choice to believe either one or the other version of your grandfather’s biography. Was he a Nazi criminal or was he an American gangster? A very attractive choice, indeed!” Her face drew a bitter smile. Neither Andrew nor Lisa had ever seen their mother in such a sarcastic mood.

They couldn’t arrive at a solution to the question of an adequate reaction to this new development. They went over some of the details in the new version, speculating on how Löffel had got the story initially. Andrew suggested he could go home and check things on the Internet before they were going to take any steps. Lisa was in tears.

Back at his flat, Andrew was glad to be on his own. Rebecca had left him, and if he was honest, he had to admit it was a relief after all.

He had taken notes about the American version, so he started his computer and began to search things on the Internet. He was too busy in his search to stop and ask himself which of the two versions could claim a higher degree of credibility, the Nazi story or the American gangster story.

He found that all the details he had noted down were correct. On the Internet, he found all the data about the atrocious crimes committed in those three states in the early 1950s, about Senator Joe McCarthy and his politics, and about the fact that those two mysterious criminals had never been caught. It was one of the black spots in FBI history. As one of the articles explained, there was a certain Chuck Harvey of Des Moines who proclaimed himself to be the man to catch those criminals, even after more than half a century. He had lost his grandparents in one of the assaults, and he had collected a host of evidence over the decades. On his website, he asked the general public for support. Had anyone come across anything that might throw new light on those terrible crimes and their perpetrators? He was grateful for any small detail that might come to light.

Andrew gulped. What would happen if Löffel contacted Chuck Harvey? Could he still damage the family? A good thing Löffel was such an old man, probably not very familiar with the Internet. But then, he must have found out a lot about the affair for himself. How had he found out? Andrew checked himself. The whole thing could be a big fake. Löffel could have got hold of a report, perhaps an old newspaper, which led him to that old case, and he just invented the connection between Henry Miller and Didi Woolf. And who knows that one of the gangsters was really called Henry Miller? That might be a fake, too.

In the evening, he sat down and wrote a statement for himself, to clarify his mind. He wrote down everything he knew about the two versions of his grandfather’s life and career.

It was ten-thirty when he had completed his comparative statement. He looked at the pages filled with his characteristically regular handwriting and decided to sleep on it before thinking of any plan of action.

He watched an older detective story on TV before he went to bed. But he couldn’t go to sleep straightaway. In his mind, he went through all the points of both stories again and again. Eventually, however, the arguments got mixed up and his mind turned to Rebecca. Why had she left him? Did he want her back? Of course, she was a very attractive woman, he remembered the good times they’d had together, and he could still feel the sensational sex they’d had, but then he had to admit to himself that they hadn’t had sex for several months now. That should be an indication of their relationship, shouldn’t it? In time, Rebecca’s face and his mental image of his grandfather as an American gangster merged and produced a sort of Bonnie-and-Clyde image, a mere mirage of his mind, which was gradually drifting off into a troubled sleep.

Twenty-Five

Andrew made himself a strong cup of coffee from his Saeco machine. He added a dash of milk and a tiny portion of white sugar. As he was putting the sugar away, he remembered how odd it was that so many people in this country took brown sugar in their coffee, an awful practice which distorted the lovely aroma of a good cup of coffee, whereas white sugar enhanced the taste. Well, well, what can you do? Continentals just know better.

He sat down at his desk and started his computer. There were several email messages waiting for him. Three of them could be deleted, and there were two very interesting ones, one from Rebecca and another from “mkleinschmidt@yahoo.com”.

He opened Rebecca’s message first, because he wanted to have her off his mind before devoting himself to his grandfather’s biography.

She wrote to tell him that she wasn’t coming back. She’d had her doubts about their relationship for quite some time. They were as different as chalk and cheese. His constant reference to Germany and his morbid interest in his grandfather’s past as a Nazi had become unbearable, and his repeated arguments about international politics were really most unhealthy. Why couldn’t he just enjoy life in this country as it was? This was the greatest country, and it had a glorious past. And what was wrong about national pride anyway? He was a disgrace, an absolute disgrace. His Communist opinions couldn’t be washed away by his arrogant intellectualism. Besides, he wasn’t a real intellectual anyway, since he hadn’t even been to university. She could see that he just liked rubbing shoulders with intellectuals. He should learn to be proud of his country instead of criticizing it all the time. The way he sometimes talked he appeared like some stupid Continental. One of her acquaintances had actually already asked her if she was living with a foreigner.

The message went on for a few more paragraphs in which she was just repeating herself.

So she had really left him. He wondered how it could have been that he’d never realized that she was seeing him like that. But then, can you ever really know what other individuals think of you? He remembered a story that David had told him a few weeks ago. David’s father had enjoyed the friendship of a couple up in Croydon, Hubert and Ursula. They’d been best friends for decades, they’d invited each other to their homes, they’d been taking holidays together, they’d taken a keen interest in each other’s welfare and their children’s progress for years and years. David’s dad had counted them among his very best friends whose opinions mattered a great deal. He would have been prepared to do everything for them if they ever needed him. He’d always been looking forward to seeing them again. Then, one day, his old friends obviously behaved in a strange way to him. On one of their common outings in Ashdown Forest, they greeted him and his wife with awkwardness, and their conversation seemed stilted. When they drove into Forest Row to have a light lunch they drove in Hubert’s car, leaving their own car in a car park in the Forest. Hubert drove like a madman, jerking his gears and using the clutch pedal like a learner-driver, constantly talking about banal and useless topics, not at all compatible with their common relationship. After they’d all gone home, David’s dad sent his friends an email message asking them if anything was amiss. Their reply absolutely shattered his belief in humanity because Hubert and Ursula answered that they wanted to terminate their friendship. They’d always considered David’s dad an arrogant hedonist. He never really recovered from this shock. He wasn’t only terribly sad to lose their friendship. He was particularly disappointed with his old friends and their obvious hypocrisy over all those years, pretending friendship while despising him all the time. How can anyone be so absolutely and abominably false to betray their best friends’ blind trust?

When David told him this story, Andrew couldn’t believe him. But now he could. His own positive image of Rebecca must have blinded him, so he couldn’t see her real character.

He decided to let the matter be for the moment, and he opened the other email message on his computer.

“Dear Andrew,

I was surprised to get your message. I have never wondered about my early life in Communist East Germany and once I’d left Europe behind me, I never wanted to have anything to do with what was going on over there. Life here in B.C. is so wonderful, so why worry about my past in corrupt old Europe? My mother never told me who my father was, and I never worried. I don’t know your granddad, never heard of a Manfred Weidmann or a man called Wolfgang Loeffel. I appreciate your concern, but I’m not interested. Perhaps if I ever visit Europe again I might get interested, but not at this point in time. I wish you well.

Kind regards,

Manfred Kleinschmidt”

Andrew breathed heavily. Two disappointments within one day! He remained seated at his computer for some time. Obviously, not every person had the same interest in their past. Could it be that he was just too sentimental about his own past? Rebecca might have a point when she called his keen interest in recent history, his concern for moral responsibility and his search for the truth merely a morbid streak. Would it not be a lot easier to accept all those lies about one’s past, about one’s relationships and about one’s moral misjudgements? Why worry? He ruminated on the mendacity and treacherousness of Granddad, of the Löffel guy, of so many of his workmates, of those former friends of David’s dad’s in Ashdown Forest, of today’s Western societies. An easier life? No! Definitely not! Andrew came to the conclusion that he might very well live with small lies, so-called white lies, he was sure he used the odd white lie himself when it was justified, but he definitely could not live with such big lies about areas that defined your most sacred beliefs, throwing them into an immoral abyss.

What lies was he prepared to accept? He asked himself if he could identify any. His first reaction was Rebecca. Her decision to leave him had actually shocked him. But now, thinking more carefully about it he had to admit that, if indeed her views of life and the world were so utterly different from his, he was certainly better off without her. Yes, he had loved her passionately. In a way, he could still love her, but he had to admit to himself that she’d never even tried to understand his aims in life, his visions, his ideas or his dreams. For him, it would amount to moral mendacity if he denied himself his visions; it would be dishonest if he pretended that he had no interest in things that really interested him a great deal.

This was not only true on a moral, emotional or intellectual level. If you live with a partner, you have to respect your partner’s dreams and ideas, however unconventional or wild they might be. If Rebecca had informed him she wanted to take up a new hobby or she wanted to have a holiday in a particular destination - even a destination he himself considered uninteresting or unattractive - he wouldn’t have stood in her way, he would even have accompanied her if it had made her happy. He knew she was dreaming of a small house with a nice garden for them. For him, this was not at all a desirable objective. But he would have helped her reach her aim. He would have accepted the nice little house to make her happy. For him, it would have been a small compromise. But when it came to her muddled political views, her blind nationalism and xenophobia, he had to stand his ground. For him, her political opinions were a much greater disappointment than her refusal of all his material hopes. He could forgive her that she absolutely forbade him to take up any interests that were not hers. He’d wanted to take up sailing, a lovely sport he’d already tried out on several occasions, but she didn’t want to hear of it. Also, he was thinking of getting himself a second piano, so that he might be able to play together with another amateur pianist, but she yelled at him that he was out of his mind. No-one had two pianos, one was more than enough.

It was no use arguing with her. Whenever he tried to make her understand his side of things, she just shouted abuse and left the room. So, indeed, he was probably better off without her. Still, it made him sad. He remembered the dictum that every farewell is a minor version of death.

After his piano lesson, Andrew was walking past a news-stand. The headlines of the Eastbourne Herald caught his eye: “Beachy Head Body Found.” He knew that the sheer drop of the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head were not only a local landscape attraction but also a favourite spot for suicidal persons.

Andrew was still thinking of the sad reputation of the beauty spot in the local landscape when he entered the Dolphin Inn. Although it was only five o’clock in the afternoon, he felt he badly needed a drink. There were only few people in the pub at this time of the day. He got his pint and sat down in one of the easy-chairs. He opened the paper and began to read the report about the body the police had found at the base of the chalk cliff. As it was reported, it was the body of a very old man.

About half an hour later, David rushed in. He saw Andrew sitting there, so he got his own pint and sat down opposite his friend.

“You look terrible,” he said, smiling and shaking his head.

“You can say that again. I feel terrible.”

“Why is that?”

“Rebecca and I have split up.”

David was silent for a while; then he said, “I’m afraid, I could see this coming. Definitely after she’d slapped you in public the other day, but really, I could see it coming before that. She often criticized and humiliated you in front of other people, and she wasn’t all that easy to get along with either. Marie-Claire tried to make friends with her, but all she got back from her was ungrounded criticism and anti-intellectual slogans, stupid nationalistic phrases about the ethnic uniqueness of the British people and such crap.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Would you warn me off Marie-Claire if you found a fault in her?”

“Probably not. You’re right. I was so much in love with Rebecca, I must have lost my clear sense of judgement.”

“Literature is full of men who suffer from the same problem. When you fall in love you switch off your brain. Obviously, Rebecca must have had something that made you fall in love with her.”

“I can’t tell you what it was exactly. When I met her I just couldn’t escape her special charm. She had this, well this ... I don’t know what it was. The French would say she had a certain je ne sais quoi. I just fell for her.”

“Oh yes,” David switched into his professional mode. “The phrase goes back to Cicero. He called it nescio quid. It’s used for processes in our mind that we find inexplicable, such as falling in love. It literally means, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me’. The phenomenon is as old as humanity.”

“That’s it. I can’t tell you what I found so fascinating in her or about her. Of course, she was a very beautiful woman, but...”

“Sorry, my friend. She wasn’t beautiful, she was pretty.”

“What’s the difference? I’d like to know.”

“A woman may be pretty to look at, you know, her face, her figure, the sort of standard female beauty on the surface, the thing we would call handsome in a man. But beauty is a different category, a superior dimension. A person is beautiful from the inside. No human being can be beautiful without having a positive and truly philanthropic outlook on the world at large.”

“Oh, come on, old man. That’s getting a bit too thick. Let’s have another pint, shall we?” Andrew took their empty glasses and stepped over to the bar.

* * *

When Andrew answered his mobile phone in the evening, he saw David’s name on the display. He wondered what his friend might have to add to their deep discussion about love, about female beauty and about women’s characters earlier on at the pub.

“Listen, Andrew,” David began. Andrew immediately knew that this was serious because his friend only rarely called him by his name. Usually it was just “old chap” or “old man”, but “Andrew” only when things were really serious. No laughing matter at all.

“What is it, tell me.”

“The police spoke to me. They came to my home. They asked me all sorts of questions about you and your family, your background, and what you’d been up to in the last few days. When I asked them why they were asking those questions they didn’t tell me. Then they wanted me to tell them what you’d told me about that old German codger, you know, that Löffel guy. I couldn’t give them a great deal, but I told them the old fellow had obviously pestered you and your family about your granddad, something to do with what had happened during the last war, not anything recent.”

“What could all that be about? What do you think?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure they’ll be coming to interrogate you, too. I just wanted to warn you. Is there anything I should know?”

“Of course not. There’s nothing to be of any concern for the police, I can assure you.”

“All right, my friend,” David sighed. “That’s okay, then. But be careful with that Löffel guy. There must be something fishy about him if the police are on to him.”

The two friends drifted into small-talk and soon rang off.

It was next morning, before Andrew was ready to leave his home, when the police called at his door. They were friendly but determined. They stepped inside and sat down at the dining table with him. One of them was in plain clothes, while the other one was in his uniform.

“My name is Chief Inspector Armstrong,” the older police officer began, “and this is Sergeant Gillespie.”

Despite the pre-warning that he’d had from David the previous evening, Andrew found himself getting nervous. The police were so serious. But what could they be wanting from him?

“Do you, or did you, know a man called Wolfgang Loeffel? A German national of advanced age?”

“Well, I didn’t know him well, but my mother knew him a bit better. Why? What about him?”

“We ask the questions here, Mr White. Can you tell us what you were doing on Tuesday afternoon and evening?”

“I was having a quarrel with my girlfriend, or rather my ex-girlfriend. We had a serious disagreement, and we split up. Then I went to the pub for a drink. I don’t remember much about the rest of the evening.”

The inspector exchanged meaningful glances with the sergeant.

“Is it true that you announced your intention to kill Mr Loeffel?”

Andrew gulped. “I don’t know, one says things like that, but one doesn’t mean them really.”

“We have witnesses who are ready to testify that you actually proclaimed your intention to murder Mr Loeffel.”

“Why should anyone believe such a thing?” Andrew said. “Why are you asking me these things anyway?”

“Well, Mr White. We are here to inform you that the dead body of Mr Wolfgang Loeffel was found at the bottom of Beachy Head on Wednesday morning, and we are treating his death as suspicious. We would like you to accompany us to the police station for a taped interview.”

Andrew asked if he could inform his family, a friend or a lawyer. Chief Inspector Armstrong told him he was under caution, and he could have a solicitor or a personal friend present at the interview. Andrew called David’s mobile phone and asked him to send a solicitor to the police station, which his friend agreed to do.

In the interrogation room at the police station, Chief Inspector Armstrong announced: “Mr White, let me explain the situation first. As I pointed out to you when we invited you to accompany us here, you are under caution. This means, you are not under arrest, you are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but if you fail to mention something which you will later rely on in court it may harm your defence.”

The solicitor that David had sent was sitting at the same table. His name was James Brentwood. He just nodded his head while the inspector cautioned the suspect.

During the following hour, the inspector interrogated Andrew, who was just puzzled over what the police obviously suspected. Since he had shouted at the pub how furious he was about Löffel’s blackmail of his family, he gradually realized that his position was a very serious one indeed. They asked him if they could come round to his flat and take away his computer. He said no, he didn’t do anything. At the end of the interview, he was exhausted. He couldn’t even remember what answers he’d given the inspector, and he looked at his solicitor, begging for some support. Mr Brentwood told him not to worry at this stage. He arranged to have a private interview with him on the following day, when they could go over the whole case, just the two of them. It was doubtful that the police would still treat him as a suspect once he’d told them Andrew’s version after their personal interview. First, though, Andrew was told to go home and relax. Then Mr Brentwood would come round to his flat with his own questions. He still had lots of questions to ask. That was to be expected. How else could he defend his client? So, Andrew left the police station with a heavy mind.

Back at his flat, he first called his mother. When he told her what had happened, she was speechless. After she had recovered, she admitted that she was glad Löffel was dead, but she was shocked by the fact that the police suspected Andrew.

“They will probably interrogate you, too,” he warned her. “After all, it was you that Löffel blackmailed.”

The next person he called was David, of course. He thanked him for producing the lawyer so quickly, and he told him what had happened at the police interview.

“Of course, they have to suspect you, the way things are. What’s important for you, though, is to produce a good alibi that will prove your innocence. Can’t you remember anything about the afternoon and evening in question? I mean something that can be proved. You know, by witnesses or by hard, irrefutable evidence.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Andrew murmured.

Andrew had been lying stretched out on his sofa-bed in the lounge, trying to relax and trying to remember at the same time, when the doorbell rang. Three men showed him their police badges and asked to be let in.

“Well, Mr White. Since you refused to give us your voluntary agreement we had to apply to the magistrate for a search warrant.”

They showed him a piece of paper which appeared to be a search warrant and told him they wanted to search his premises and take anything with them which could throw any light on the case, such as letters, mobile phones or computers. They slouched around his flat for about half an hour, took his computer and some of his papers, then they left.

Three hours later, the police called at his office and asked him to accompany him as discreetly as possible. At the police station, they informed him that the investigating officer suspected that an offence had been committed. He was therefore under arrest.

In his small cell at the police station, Andrew had time to review his situation. He couldn’t think of a way to defend himself. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing on Tuesday evening after he’d had those few drinks at the pub. So, he would probably have to rely on Mr Brentwood.

A man in a grey suit with a narrow green necktie entered, accompanied by a sergeant, and asked him to come to the interview room again.

“My name is Captain Charlton, I am the CID officer responsible for this case.”

“I beg your pardon,” Andrew said. “What is CID?”

“It’s the Central Investigation Department. I’m from Lewes.”

“And your job is to get me convicted, is it?”

“Please, Mr White, don’t take this too personally. My duty is to investigate the case of Mr Loeffel’s violent decease in order to determine whether or not a criminal act was committed. As I have already informed your legal counsel, Mr Brentwood, we have the written declaration signed by the custody sergeant, to the effect that he has satisfied himself that the arrest is lawful in your case.”

Andrew gulped.

Mr Brentwood joined them at this moment and sat down at the same table. For the next two hours, the CID officer asked him question after question. The questions concerned the entire history of the victim and Andrew’s connection with him. Obviously, they wanted to find out any evidence.

When he was taken back to his cell, Mr Brentwood accompanied him. In the cell, they went over the whole case again.

“The CID officer now has to determine whether or not you should be charged,” Mr Brentwood explained. “But I will have a word with him first. He has to consider what I have to tell him.”

“And what are you going to tell him?”

“Well, that’s obvious. All he has is a suspicion based on the flimsy evidence of a few pub-patrons who heard you announce your annoyance over Mr Loeffel, your alcohol-induced wish to have him dead, evidence given by people who were hardly sober themselves at the time. They have absolutely no other evidence against you. The body only shows injuries caused by the fall from the cliff, no signs of any other injuries which could have been caused by a personal attacker, no gunshot-wounds or such things. Also, there are no eye-witnesses. The poor man must have fallen to his death in the middle of the night. There weren’t any chaplains on duty at the time. You know they normally patrol the cliff edge during the day, watching any possibly suicidal individuals that they find too near the edge.”

“What happens if you can’t convince the CID officer?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll convince him.” Mr Brentwood put his hand on Andrew’s wrist, a soothing gesture.

Andrew looked in his eyes. “But what if you can’t?”

“Then you will be charged with murder and you will be remanded in custody at Lewes Prison unless bail will be granted. As a suspect under charge, your name will be published.”

“And what then?”

“After all the evidence has been collected, you will be put before a magistrate in Eastbourne. The magistrate may then remit the case to the Crown Court. This means that the local police will have to submit the file of the case to the CPS. That’s the Crown Prosecution Service. If the CPS is confident to have a chance of more than fifty percent for a conviction, the Crown Court will have to set up a jury, and the case will come to trial.”

They were silent for a few minutes. Then Mr Brentwood patted him on the back and stood up. “As I said, all that is highly unlikely.”

The solicitor said good-bye and left Andrew alone in his cell.

So, he had more time to think.

Twenty-Six

Since David was going through a very busy period, he didn’t have much time to lose himself in worrying thoughts about poor Andrew. This doesn’t mean he ignored or forgot his friend’s plight, but he excused himself with the argument that there wasn’t very much that he could do to help him.

When walking through Cavendish Place on a sunny morning about four or five days after Andrew’s arrest, he ran into his friend’s sister, he didn’t quite know what to say.

“Oh, my dear David,” Lisa cried, “you are his best friend. What in the world can we do to help him?”

“Hello, Lisa, good to see you.”

“Isn’t it terrible? What a shame! What can we do?” Lisa could hardly contain herself. Her emotional personality had a field day. David decided to stop her tearful outrage before it got out of hand. He placed his hands on her wrist and looked her in the eyes.

“Please, Lisa,” he said in a comforting voice full of compassion but firm at the same time.

“You are such a strong man. I admire your mature nature. What a piece of good luck for my poor brother to have such a reliable friend with such a strong character.”

“Thanks for your confidence, but there’s not much I can do. We have to trust his lawyer. As far as I know they haven’t really got any evidence against him, except his motive. You know, the blackmail. So they’ll have to release him sooner or later.”

“Oh, David!” she cried. “You mean you don’t know?”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve found a witness. You remember they called for witnesses in the paper the day before yesterday, and there’s someone who has actually seen him. He came forward yesterday. That’s what the lawyer said.”

“Seen Andrew push the guy over the cliff edge?”

“I don’t know any details, but isn’t it terrible?” She began to sob again.

“There, there,” David murmured, putting his arm around her shoulders and patting her on her back. “I’m sure everything will be cleared up in time.”

When she got her sobs under control she looked at him with tearful eyes. “But isn’t it terrible?”

“Yes, it is terrible, but there will be better times ahead. Just be patient.”

“How can you be so confident? Okay, let’s say Andrew might get out of this. But you’ve got to admit we still live in terrible times. You never know when you could become the victim of a terrorist attack. It’s all those terrible events in the Middle East and the refugees, all the terrorists coming into our country and then...”

“My dear Lisa,” David tried to remain calm. “The statistical probability of becoming the victim of a terrorist attack in Europe is smaller than being hit by a meteorite. There are far more serious dangers to a safe and peaceful future in Europe than terrorism. But terrorism lends itself to splashy news headlines and - more spectacularly - to emotional brainwashing by populist politicians. Terrorism is awful, but it is really a minor problem of our times, believe me.”

Lisa was dumbstruck by David’s explanations. Almost every day she read in the papers and saw on television how all those terrorists from the Middle East were invading European countries in order to execute more and more terrorist attacks. She thought she knew what terrible dangers came from all those Muslims that were coming here and didn’t want to lead peaceful lives but aimed at the complete destruction of our way of life. And now this! What did he think? Didn’t he read the papers? Didn’t he watch the news on TV? She’d always admired David for being a very clever and educated man. He must be blind.

“Isn’t such a view very callous and cowardly? You only want to ignore the dangers of terrorism because you want to have your peace and quiet.”

“Believe me, Lisa, I am much more concerned about the real threats to our civilization than most people, certainly more than most people in this country. Just read the facts, and you’ll find I’m right.”

“What do you call the real threats then?”

“Well, this is going to be much more complex than the populist politicians want to make us believe. Let me just mention the most alarming dangers for a safe and peaceful future. They are first of all environmental issues - I mean the destruction of our natural environment, the killing of hundreds of species every year, the effects of global warming, the filling of our oceans with plastic particles - then there’s the irresponsible business practices of several global players, as they hypocritically call themselves - I mean the arms industry selling weapons to criminal governments, but also many players of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, many irresponsible players in the field of genetic engineering, as well as several giants in the international food industry - and last but not least there’s the international financial system that makes sure the rich get richer while the poor get poorer every day. Dollars and shareholder values have replaced our old ethical and moral values in these days of rampant Neo-Liberalism. Do you really think all those dangers should be left to continue, to grow day by day? Business as usual until the world will sink into complete chaos? Terrorism, in comparison, is a relatively minor problem, and it could be solved by massive investments in education world-wide.”

“Wow, what a speech! Well, I must say...”

“Sorry, I know most people don’t want to know. So just forget what I said. What’s more important for us now is to get Andrew free.”

Lisa didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded. David waited a few moments, then he took his leave and the two parted.

The same evening, he went for a drink at the Dolphin. He was hoping to meet someone he knew, but as it happened, he found himself alone. He missed his good friend Andrew. Looking around the pub, he noticed that there were about a dozen other people. At the other end of the bar, he saw a group of middle-aged men and a woman arguing about what they called “the bad times”. They argued about the NHS, one of them swearing about the inefficiency of the health service and two of the others maintaining that the service itself was a very good idea but it was being run down by all those foreign doctors. The woman tried to get a word in, which was difficult. Eventually she managed to give her opinion. She said it wasn’t the doctors but the managers of the service. There was too much inefficiency and corruption. This caused everyone to talk at the same time, and it was hardly possible for David to catch what they were actually saying.

He took another sip of his pint and made an effort to shut the group out from his mind. This proved impossible. The group argued at such a volume that one just couldn’t escape their heated discussion.

“Yeah, I’m telling you guys, it’s all those bloody foreigners. We shouldn’t have let them in.”

“How right you are. Why can’t we stop them from coming into the country? It’s all because of the EU, everything’s being dictated by those bureaucrats in Brussels. It’s about time we left, I’m telling you.”

“Yeah, didn’t Cameron say he’d let us vote on it?”

“Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s about time.”

“But what then?” the woman threw in. “Even if we leave the EU we can’t throw them out. We’ll have to keep all those Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians. And the Blacks. Particularly the Blacks because they came as refugees.”

“Oh, come on, we’ll find a way. We just HAVE to get rid of some of them.”

“Especially the criminals among them,” a bald man in his late forties with thick glasses cried.

“You can’t do that,” the woman countered. She was the calmest person in the group. She looked quite attractive, David thought. Brown hair with some silvery streaks, nice face, light blue eyes, figure perhaps a bit on the plump side, but quite attractive. He remembered that he was to call Marie-Claire. They were to meet up later. They were planning to go out for dinner later.

After the call, putting his mobile phone away in his jacket pocket, David listened to the group again. While he’d been on the phone with Marie-Claire, the attractive woman in the group must have argued that the refugees couldn’t be sent out of the country because of the European Convention on Human Rights.

“If the law doesn’t allow it we’ll just have to change the law. It’s as simple as that,” the bald man shouted.

David was absolutely horrified. How could anyone with even a trace of decency suggest such a thing! He had to hold back not to step up to the group and tell them how utterly monstrous and incongruous that was. Even to think of such an anachronistic backward step in history should make one’s hair stand on end. Wasn’t the ECHR an achievement for which the civilized peoples of this continent had fought so hard over many decades? The principles of the Convention were absolutely binding and stood far above petty little political whims of the day. If ever a British politician were to suggest such a crime, David feared that this country was really going backwards down the path of history. Where were we? Was this 1914, the eve of the Great War, with its rampant blind nationalism? David found it hard to keep his mouth shut. But what he’d heard made him sad. Very sad.

He ordered another pint. He was just about to look at his watch to check how long he’d have to wait for Marie-Claire when she entered the pub, smiling at him.

They kissed. He was still in love with her. Tonight, he was especially aware of her charm, and he liked her perfume.

After she got her drink, they sat down in those comfortable armchairs at the end of the bar. “So, how was your day?” she asked. “Have you been giving public lectures on political science again?” she teased him.

He laughed. “That’s just the sort of guy I am, I’m really sorry. If you prefer one of those blind buffs who go on and on about bashing the EU and all the foreigners in our country, you’ve got to get yourself a new fiancé.”

“Oh, come on, my darling, you’re okay. I only worry about your repeated concern for our democracy. Things will turn out all right in the end, don’t worry.”

David digested her words for a few moments. He looked around the other people in the pub. Then he said, “I’ve come to the conclusion that a great many people in this country don’t really want democracy because it’s too demanding on the individual, and it doesn’t agree with the basic structure of our society.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you know the saying about a square peg and a round hole, don’t you? It’s the same case with democracy and the feudal structure of our country. In effect, we are still stuck in the Middle Ages. Our history of the past few centuries only managed to cover it up with a thin coat of a superficially democratic fabric. Just look at our legal system, our system of property ownership, or our voting system. They are–”

“Aren’t we going to have a romantic evening?” she cut him short.

He agreed, and they left the pub to walk to the restaurant where they had reserved a table for a pleasant dinner à deux, as she liked to point out.

Two days later, David met Andrew’s lawyer. They had arranged to meet at the lawyer’s office in Hyde Gardens. After they got their cups of coffee, brought in by one of the office minions, the lawyer immediately came to the point.

“As it appears, your friend should be free within the next few days,” he began. “The alleged witness proved to be a fake, a liar. Nobody saw Andrew near Beachy Head on the day in question.”

“That’s good news indeed,” David sighed. “But tell me: Why did the witness lie in the first place?”

“It’s quite complicated. Being questioned in more detail, the witness entangled himself in all sorts of contradictions. In the end, it turned out he just needed an alibi himself. His wife had accused him of having another woman, a secret lover. Which he had, in fact. On the evening in question, he was with her, and in order to cover up his infidelity, he jumped at the opportunity that presented itself to him in the form of the call for witnesses published in the local paper, as you might remember.”

“Do you mean, the man lied about seeing Andrew just to make his wife believe he had been taking a walk near Beachy Head, while he had been in bed with the other woman somewhere else?”

“Well, we don’t know about being in bed, but he certainly needed that alibi for his own activities.”

“How did the investigators find out?”

“The man got so muddled that he broke down: In the end he confessed.”

“What a stupid liar!”

“Well, in my line, you come across more liars than you would ever expect. They often think that a small lie won’t hurt anyone. But sometimes even white lies can cause harm.”

“You can say that again,” David confirmed. “Andrew himself could write a thriller about the lies in his own family.”

“Oh yes, you’re referring to his grandfather’s role in the war, the story with which Mr Loeffel had been trying to blackmail the family.”

“Absolutely.”

Another three days later, the people of Eastbourne could read in the paper that the man originally suspected of murdering a German tourist at Beachy Head was innocent and had to be released. Forensic investigations had shown that the victim had suffered from cancer in its final stage, so the case was declared a suicide. There were only a few hints at a possible blackmail involved, but not enough was known about it. So, the journalists understood the blackmail story as the delusions of a very sick man shortly before his own suicide. The whole case was closed, and that was the end of Wolfgang Loeffel and his connection with Andrew’s family. Andrew and Lisa were relieved, and so was their mother. Their grandfather was too far gone in his dementia to be told. So, the family just celebrated in quiet humility.

Only Andrew and David celebrated at the pub.

On the whole, the family returned to their former quiet lives. Everyone was glad to forget what had threatened their peace of mind only a short while ago. Their grandfather involved in war crimes? Impossible. Only Nora and Andrew knew better.

It was about three weeks later when Andrew and David opened the touchy subject again over their pints at the Dolphin.

“The question is,” Andrew said, “what we can actually learn from the whole affair. What lessons does it teach us?”

“I could give you a full-length lecture on this, but I don’t know if you’re the one who needs such lessons. You have read your mother’s diary and you have seen the full extent of your grandfather’s dishonesty. And I believe you’ve also understood some of the reasons behind the whole story, haven’t you?”

“I hope so. I think that’s something we’ll have to discuss with my whole family. The only question is: Is anyone else going to learn any lessons from this? What about our politicians? What about our society, our country at large? What about Europe, the world?”

“Come on, keep your hair on,” David tried to calm his friend down. “We can’t save the whole world. But what we can do is speak and act at all times on the basis and in full cognizance of what we have learnt.”

After such a big resolution, the friends remained silent for a while, sipping their pints, lost in thought.

* * *

The news came in the early morning. Andrew was still sleepy, rubbing his eyes and yawning, when the telephone rang.

“Andrew, listen,” his mother spoke nervously at the other end of the line, “I’ve got some bad news. Your grandfather passed away early this morning. I was with him. The nursing home called me at three, so I went there immediately. When I arrived, he was breathing hard, already half gone. I held his hands and asked him if there was anything I could do for him. He found it hard to speak. The only word I believe he uttered, but I’m not sure, was ‘Anna’. Anyway, he was gone within the hour, his end was peaceful.”

“Oh, Mum,” Andrew said.

“Don’t make a big fuss over it, my son. In a way I am relieved he’s gone. His life was difficult, to say the least, and he had a long life. But you know as well as I do that there was also a dark side to his early life. He had to get through the rest of his life - probably nearly three quarters of his life - in full knowledge of his own crimes and his mendacity. Not an easy life, if you ask me.”

“Even though, Mum, I don’t think we should forget those crimes. They’re a part of our family history.”

“Probably, yes. But we still don’t know his exact role during the war, do we?”

“No, we don’t. But does that make a difference? Do we have to know the details? Isn’t it enough that he was an officer of the Waffen-SS and his actions must have been so terrible that he had to change his identity after the war?”

“You may be right. Nevertheless, though I dismissed all that years ago, it seems to come back now he’s dead. I have discovered I’m curious. Did he really kill people?”

“Forget the gory details. He must have had blood on his hands, that’s for sure. Anything beyond this certainty is mere curiosity, voyeurism.”

“Well, if you say so...”

“Is there anything you want me to do?”

“Yes, my dear. Would you please tell Lisa? I can’t get up the courage. She’s so emotional, you know.”

“Of course, I’ll do that. Don’t you worry too much now. As you said earlier, his death is really a relief. But at some point, we’ll have to speak openly within the family. I don’t want to keep any ghosts in the attic. Grandpa’s role in the war should be made known to the whole family, and we should discuss how to cope with it. Don’t you agree?”

“If you say so, my son...”

They rang off, and Andrew waited until a bit later in the morning before he called Lisa. He told her the bare facts without referring to their grandfather’s past. He thought it would be better to put some time between his death and what he saw as a family assessment of his life.

For the time being, Andrew was quite busy coming to a working relationship with the cellist who had answered his advertisement. At last, he could play his music with someone else. He was thrilled at the thought of exploring all the music for cello and piano by the old masters.

Grandfather’s funeral was a quiet affair. The man who had affected the lives of so many people had to leave this world almost alone. Only his closest family attended. Not much was spoken.

* * *

Eastbourne remained the sleepy town it had always been. It was a town that still attracted mainly elderly people. On sunny days, the benches along the seafront were full of old people, many of them in wheelchairs, enjoying the pleasant breeze coming in from the English Channel. Due to the abundance of elderly people in the public space, some locals jokingly dubbed the town “God’s waiting-room”. During the summer months, the old people were counterbalanced by the tens of thousands of foreign students coming to the town to learn English. Eastbourne was one of the major centres of English language teaching for students from all over the world. What Eastbourne did not have enough was a functioning section of middle-aged people.

Could that be the reason for the extremely poor quality of the town’s infrastructure? The local roads were similar to the roads in East Germany or Poland before the collapse of Communism, full of potholes, bumpy and often beyond repair.

Since the 1980s, many businesses and chain stores had left the town. Not only was the local and regional infrastructure too poor, also traffic connections to other important locations in the South East were neglected. The rail service from and to London Victoria was slow and unreliable.

Andrew was thinking of this decline of a once proud seaside resort. He was waiting for his mother, Nora. They had arranged to meet for a picnic on the slope leading up to Beachy Head, away from the footpath. They wanted to look down towards the sleepy town, enjoy the fine day and have a final discussion about Grandpa. They had agreed that no other members of the family could fully understand how they felt about him and his history, because the others didn’t have their knowledge of the truth.

When Nora came slowly walking up, panting with the exertion of the steep ascent, Andrew had already spread a large blanket on the grass. He had chosen a really beautiful spot from where they could have a magnificent view over the town and out towards the sea. There were a few clouds in the sky, but otherwise it was a fine day with a pleasant temperature. The wind, which in Eastbourne often reaches unpleasant levels, was just perceptible but quite mild. In fact, it was a perfect day to relax.

“Phew, I’m really getting old,” Nora breathed as she put down her picnic-basket. “I see you’ve already made yourself comfortable.”

“I wanted to have a few moments to myself before talking to you.”

“Of course, I can understand.”

She settled down on the large blanket, arranged her clothing and placed the picnic-basket between them. Then she relaxed, and they both swept their eyes over the gorgeous landscape. They remained in silence, wondering how to begin.

“Okay,” Andrew said at last. “Let’s have a drink and a sandwich while we’re going to approach the difficult subject.”

“A good idea.” She opened the basket and took out two sandwiches and two cans of lemonade. While they were getting into their picnic Andrew observed his mother and had to admit to himself that, despite what she’d just said, she was still a very youthful and attractive woman. For a split second he asked himself if his father was aware of his good luck. But he quickly dismissed the idea and concentrated on the matter at hand.

“So, have you thought about things?” he asked.

“Well, yes. I think it all boils down to the question of secrecy, doesn’t it?”

“You mean, should we keep it to ourselves what we know about Grandpa?”

“Yes, that’s the big question.”

“And are you ready to tell the family? Don’t you think they’ve got a right to know? Don’t you think we’ve got a duty?”

“No,” she said, heaving a heavy sigh. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t do anyone any good. And just imagine Lisa. She’s so emotional. I don’t think she could cope with such terrible knowledge. She always loved her grandfather, so why destroy this love now that he’s dead? Besides, what could anyone gain from what we know? Wouldn’t it only upset everybody?”

Andrew was silent for a while. He picked out another sandwich before he explained his view of the matter. “I just think we should not only tell everyone in our family but the whole world.”

“What for?”

“Because we should make sure - as much as that’s in our power - to prevent anything like that from happening again. Ever.”

“My dear boy, times have changed. A thing like Nazi terror could never happen again, certainly not in our part of the world. And we have no power whatsoever over what’s going on in other parts of the world.”

“You may be right in degree but not in kind.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I’m trying to make you understand is much more differentiated than a mere black-and-white picture. I agree with you that, except for some very distant countries like North Korea, for the time being, hardly any other country - certainly not in Europe - is in danger of establishing such a cruel and criminal system like the Nazis did in Germany all those years ago.”

“Yes,” Nora made her point. “So, we can bury my father’s life history with all its dark aspects. Put it behind us. Nobody will be any wiser. Case closed.”

“Sorry, Mum, I don’t agree. Let me put it this way. Just imagine - for the sake of the argument - that our country turned into such an inhuman and criminal system. It wouldn’t be called National Socialism, but some other name that would appeal to the majority of our people. Perhaps something like Britain’s Greatness or some other stupid name.”

“But that could never happen. We have such a rich cultural tradition, you know, Shakespeare and Milton and all that, and we’re a deeply Christian nation.”

“Germany had Luther, Kant and Goethe, the Enlightenment, Bach and Beethoven, and they called themselves Christians as much as we can claim to be Christians. That’s not my point. Forget the likelihood of such a development; just imagine it for the sake of the argument, okay?”

“If you wish...”

“Yes. Now imagine the leaders of Britain’s Greatness would set up a system in which you had to decide. You would be either for them or against them. You wouldn’t get any outside views because the Press and all the Media would be censored and streamlined as they’re now in North Korea or even in Russia. If you support the system, you can enjoy lots of privileges; if you oppose it, you risk disappearing. And after all, it all seems to make good sense. If you have the knowledge of the Age of Enlightenment, the Human Rights and the principles of Democracy you could see through the inhuman and unjust system. But the government would provide for you, and you could see that their representation of our place in history and our true greatness were somehow credible and really for everyone’s good. Whatever doubts you may still have, something like Winston Smith in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, you’d best throw them overboard because it would be too dangerous to step out of the system and risk your life.”

“All right, all right. Come to the point.” Nora was getting impatient.

“Now ask yourself the big question. Would you really risk everything, your friends, your family, your job, your home, even your life, by opposing the system? Or wouldn’t you rather choose to go along with the ideas of Britain’s Greatness, to avoid any difficulties and to be able to enjoy the privileges offered by the system? Ask your conscience!”

“Oh, come on, Andrew.”

“No, just tell me. What would be your choice?”

“Nobody can answer such a question because the picture you painted is all science-fiction. We don’t have to make such a choice, thank God.”

“I think we should ask ourselves such a question. And if you ask me, Mum, my answer would be: I don’t know for certain, but I fear I would go along with the criminal system. It would be the easier choice.”

Nora looked at her son with big eyes. She took another sip from her lemonade, then she shook her head.

“If that is your analysis, then we should forgive my father.”

“I don’t agree. For one thing, he didn’t just go along, as I put it, he became one of the perpetrators. And secondly, just because it would be so easy to fall into the trap set by such systems, it is our duty to warn ourselves and others. Beware the beginnings of such developments.”

“And how do you propose to do such a thing?”

“I don’t really know. I had lots of discussions with David. His view of the whole problem is rather academic, but in essence he’s right. As an individual, I can’t do anything to prevent such dangerous developments, but maybe I can accept part of the responsibility.”

“What do you mean? Responsibility for what?”

“I can accept part of the huge responsibility that our family has loaded on its shoulders - to speak metaphorically - by harbouring a Nazi criminal within our fold.”

Nora was shocked. “We are not responsible for what he did! How can we be? We were born after the event. How can you think that we can be held responsible for the crimes of our ancestors? If that were so, practically every individual would be responsible for a crime committed by one of their ancestors in the past two thousand years.”

“For one thing, we can’t go back all that far. We all knew Granddad personally, we even loved him, and we were close to him in many ways. So, his crimes can’t leave us cold. Secondly, we aren’t held responsible by anyone, as you put it, but we can accept responsibility, at least in parts. There’s a big difference.”

Nora was dumbfounded. While she was impressed by Andrew’s readiness to accept some responsibility for her father’s misdeeds, she considered the whole idea to be far too exaggerated. Andrew must be mad.

They changed the subject and didn’t mention it again for the time being.

* * *

It was on Christmas Day. The family was assembled at George and Nora’s home for the season’s celebrations. Lisa was there, and Margaret was there with her lady-friend. To complete the party, there were also two neighbouring families that the Whites were very friendly with. After the delicious turkey dinner, the children went upstairs to play, while everybody else sat down in the easy chairs and on the sofa in the living-room. Some had half-empty wine glasses in their hands while Andrew and Margaret were sipping their small cups of coffee. With all the heavy food in their bellies, they were all very relaxed and conversation was gradually falling flat. The pauses grew longer, but nobody seemed to mind.

George felt he had to keep the conversation going. He tried to tell a joke he had told several times before but got it wrong and muddled it all up. Then he made another attempt by asking Andrew about his plans for his career. George was a father who never made a big thing about his son’s career. Although there had been a few remarks about Andrew’s lack of ambition when he was younger, the father had accepted his son’s choices in life.

“Any ideas of changing your job?” he blurted out with a heavy tongue.

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“Well, I’m just trying to make some friendly conversation, and so...” his voice trailed off.

Andrew got out of the low armchair in which he’d been sitting. He stretched, looked round at his family gathered in the room and cleared his throat.

“If you are interested,” he raised his voice, “I do indeed have some news about my future, and you may all hear what I’ve got to announce.”

Everybody fell silent. They had never experienced Andrew as a great orator. So, they gave him their full attention.

For a split second before he began with his speech, Andrew saw himself as Mark Antony addressing the citizens of Rome after the murder of Julius Caesar. The present situation had such a theatrical note for him. But he began without hesitation.

“I don’t know if all of you are familiar with our family history. So, I don’t think it would be right to involve you all in the reasons behind my plans. Those of you who know will be satisfied with what they know, while those of you who don’t know or don’t know everything will just have to accept the outcome.”

“Hear hear! Come to the point!” Lisa cried. “We aren’t all of us so interested in history, so we just want to hear what your plans are.” She looked round the assembled family as if to ask for agreement.

“Yes, dear Lisa,” Andrew continued. “I don’t propose to give you a long lecture about history. So, I’ll come straight to the point. I have decided to give up my job at the council offices. My new job will take me abroad. In fact, it will take me very far away from here.”

The room was so silent with expectation that you could have heard a pin drop on the floor.

“What I’m saying is that I’ll be going to work in Africa. I’ll start off in Kenya, but I may transfer to other places in Tansania, Uganda or Somalia, wherever my duties will take me. I have been recruited as an aid-worker by a charity organisation called African Children’s Fund. I will make sure to help children get enough food and an education, among other things. My new life will start in six weeks’ time. I’m going to rent out my flat here because I don’t know how often I’ll be able to come back for a break. My future life will belong to the children of Africa.”

“Well, my boy, that’s quite a surprise,” George muttered.

“But why are you going to risk your life like that?” Lisa entreated.

Andrew thought for a few moments before he gave his answer:

“Let’s just call it an act of atonement and leave it at that.”

The hall clock struck the hour with its deep chime. No-one uttered another word.