Otto willingly let his mind wander back in time as his fingers brushed over objects familiar to his past. Sometimes it was the smell, sometimes the texture, but mostly it was associations that triggered within him waves of nostalgia.
For instance, the lead soldiers that he and Dieter had played with in their sandy garden: he measured the weight of a Napoleonic infantryman in his palm, turning it over softly. They had all been beautifully hand–painted once, in reds, blues and blacks, but their glossy finish was now chipped and worn from hours of imaginative play. These memories were predominantly pleasant: he and Dieter had been good companions as children, despite their age difference, though Otto did recall the instances when Dieter would torment him intellectually with highbrow conversation beyond his comprehension.
“They would never be friends, Otto: the Cossacks are from Russia, and these blue and white soldiers are French – Napoleon’s troops,” Dieter taunted his younger brother. “Don’t you know anything?”
“But they are both fighting against the Turks… together.”
“You dig the trenches, Otto, and I will decide which ones are friends with the Cossacks.”
Otto smiled, remembering that his only form of retaliation to these mounting frustrations had inevitably been physical, and this would land Dieter in hot water when he reciprocated, because of his sizeable somatic advantage.
Otto turned a Cossack over in his fingers. Both brothers had harboured great admiration for the bravery and endurance of the Cossacks – why, he had no idea, but they were seldom the villains in any of their fantasy battles. The one he held, mounted on a black stallion, had lost the tip of his curved shashka.
His eyes fell upon a handmade sash of diaphanous white ribbon edged in red. On it, in Father’s black Gothic handwriting, the words Mein erstes Auto had bled and faded into the adjacent material.
It had been wrapped around Otto’s first car, a camel–brown Morris Minor, presented by proud parents to transport him back and forth the seven hundred miles to medical school in Cape Town. Otto swallowed a surge of nostalgia. He had loved that car, rattling along at a top speed of fifty–five miles per hour on straight roads that bisected the arid and hostile landscapes of the Namib, the Richtersveld and the Karoo before finally being welcomed by the sight of Table Mountain, an oasis in the wilderness at the southern tip of Africa. And to have a car as a student in Cape Town in the 1960s – what a prestige that had been. But that Morris had created great discontent in his family too.
“I was never given a car,” Ingrid said, eyes downcast, lips pressed together.
“Otto has to get to medical school in Cape Town, Ingrid,” Mum replied, “and he has to get between hospitals for his tutorials.”
“Yes, of course, Otto is going to be a doctor like Daddy.” Ingrid’s voice was laced with sarcasm.
“You went to secretarial college in Swakopmund. That’s what you wanted.”
“It’s all about the boys in this house. Always the boys,” Ingrid said.
“You didn’t need a car, Ingrid, you didn’t choose to study far away.”
“Oh, so it was my choice, was it?”
“Your father and I have never prevented you from following your dreams.”
Ingrid always rolled her eyes, shaking her head in utter disbelief as she sighed deeply.
“Dieter went to fancy Schloss Gracht in Cologne to study business, Otto to medical school in Cape Town and I stayed behind in bloody Lüderitz.”
“But you have Frederick,” Mum argued, referring to the wealthy businessman that Ingrid had been dating for some time.
Otto remembered that Dad never had the patience to listen to Ingrid’s discontent, reminding her always about the hardships he had endured to provide her with a good home, schooling and all the clothes she could possibly dream of. Dad also disapproved strongly of Frederick, regarding him as too old for Ingrid, and of course he had also been married before. They fought terribly, Ingrid and Dad. Mum always said they were too similar: strong–willed, proud. Neither ever liked to apologise.
The foghorn sounded in the murky distance through the brume, snapping Otto back. He pushed the ribbon back on the shelf, as if banishing the dark emotions that it had aroused in his family. His eyes gazed across the dusty boxes of items that safeguarded the remnants of his childhood. Mum, it seemed, had never disposed of anything. He sneezed from the musty odours and shook his head as he chuckled. Then his eyes fell upon a large worn box marked Bell & Howell.
His eyes lit up instantly and he bent down to retrieve the box. Here was something that used to give them hours of pleasure as youngsters: the old family cine projector. He recalled how he used to set it up, threading the film around the toothed sprockets and through the gate, watching the large metal reels turn synchronously as the images flickered onto a white sheet tacked to the living room curtains. It had been utterly magical when he was a child.
Somewhere there would be an old box containing reels of home movies, filmed mainly by Dad who had enjoyed brandishing his black Agfa cine camera whenever family events occurred, like when Otto had been presented with the Morris Minor. Otto smiled and hoped that the films had survived, for they would be an excellent icebreaker when Dieter and Ingrid returned. There were bound to be many happy and amusing moments captured for eternity on grainy black and white celluloid.