The Zum Sperrgebiet was the model of a clean and generically designed chain hotel: deep–pile blue carpeting woven with the hotel crest, square oak reception desk and gleaming chrome and alloy lighting. Barry Manilow softened the airwaves melodiously at the perfect volume.
Otto found Ingrid in the lounge, reading a book through fashionable plus one dioptre readers perched halfway down her nose. She was clearly surprised to see Otto, who slumped uninvited into the empty space beside her on the fleur–de–lys patterned sofa.
“Otto!”
He smiled and stretched his arm out across the back of the sofa. “Morning.”
He imagined that in some families he would have leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, perhaps a little embrace, her hand on his arm briefly, her posture opening up to reassure him that he was welcome. Ingrid carefully marked her place, closed the book and pulled the readers off her nose.
“I’ve never seen you wearing reading glasses,” Otto said.
“We’re not getting younger, Otto. It happens to the best of us.”
Otto nodded and surveyed the room in which they sat: potted green ferns – quite out of place in Lüderitz – and framed landscapes of desert scenery and sculpted sand dunes on the neutral walls.
“It looks nice here.”
“It’s OK,” Ingrid said, making a face. “Definitely not four star, as they claim.” She studied Otto for a moment. “So, to what do I owe this honour?”
Otto inhaled. “Well, you didn’t come to the house, Frans has been and gone, Dieter’s at the library…”
Ingrid tutted and rolled her eyes.
“…So I decided to find you.”
“Aaaah,” Ingrid said, but it sounded insincere. “Should we order tea, or something stronger?”
Otto glanced at his watch. “Why don’t we walk?”
“It’s blowing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but it’s not unpleasant. Let’s look around the old town again.”
Five minutes later they stepped out into Göring Street, Ingrid in a knee–length grey coat with matching fur trim and a charcoal Russian fox–fur hat. As they approached the square colonial monstrosity of Woermann House she unexpectedly hooked her arm around Otto’s elbow.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked, curling her nose. “God, it smells out here.”
The wind was constant with occasional sharp gusts that could be surprisingly strong.
“Frans says it’s the smell of guano and seal dung being blown this way on the south–wester.”
“Jesus, give me the Central Park pigeons any day.”
They crossed to Hafen Street, which flanked the harbour. The lone, listing fishing boat moored forlornly at the quayside caught Otto’s eye as he recoiled slightly from the fishy smell of the harbour, effortlessly overwhelming that of the guano.
“I’m sorry your marriage didn’t work out,” Otto said.
“Which one?” Ingrid retorted with a curl in the corner of her mouth.
“All of them, I suppose,” Otto said. “You OK?”
Ingrid laughed cynically, dismissively. “God, yes. I’ve been through far worse. Growing up in our family prepared me for dealing with rejection in many forms.”
“Now that sounds like a confession.”
She glanced at him, her eyes unwavering. “I am not the one who should confess.”
Otto was pleased just to get Ingrid talking, even though conversation with her often took unexpected twists. The last time he remembered discussing her divorce from Newman she managed to bring up his Morris Minor car, his exorbitant university fees for six years in Cape Town, and Dieter’s all–expenses–paid business course in Cologne for four years, including an apartment on Taubenstrasse. She reminded him that even as the eldest child all she got was a secretarial course in Swakopmund for eighteen months and an engagement ring from Frederick. There was never any benefit to pointing out that she had not wanted to go to university and that she had in fact been desperate to marry Frederick, kicking and screaming about having to go as far as Swakopmund to study. She had even forsaken her graduation ceremony to leave by boat from Cape Town on a three week honeymoon cruise bound for her new home in New York.
“And who exactly should confess?” Otto asked.
“You been talking to your brother?” Ingrid asked.
“About what?”
She shrugged. Otto stopped and stared down a finger of land, a peninsula that extended the length of the harbour into the bay. The proximal end was a haven of factory buildings and warehouses, probably fisheries and processing plants, people and forklifts swarming in all directions.
“I think that’s Shark Island beyond the harbour.”
“Uh–huh,” Ingrid said, disinterested.
“That’s where Mum scattered Dad’s ashes after we left.”
“Is that where you’re taking me?” Ingrid asked.
“Another time. I want to go somewhere quieter,” Otto said, resuming his stride. “It looks very busy around those warehouses.”
They turned a corner. Straight ahead would take them into Diaz Street and right past the front of the Bay View Hotel.
“Let’s go up here,” Otto suggested as they turned sharply into Bismarck Street. “Why did you not attend Dad’s funeral?” he asked.
Ingrid adjusted her arm in his. “You know, Otto, I didn’t really see eye to eye with Dad. We had our differences, it was no secret; he clearly favoured you boys, that was no secret either…” She paused for effect. Otto ignored the bait. “We just… drifted apart. Living in New York just made it easier.”
“That’s all?” It always amazed Otto how trivial the causes of lifelong feuds could be, especially in families.
“God, look at this old relic,” Ingrid said, stopping to admire the Deutsche Afrika Bank building, now, as the plaque proclaimed, a national museum. “Makes you realise that this dump of a town was once quite prosperous, in its day.”
An imposing building of typical German colonial architectural design – chiselled stone blocks to the first floor, supporting a square corner turret and gabled upper structure painted in vibrant white and bottle green to match the tiled roof – it was eye–catching, complete with security bars that had endured the corroding forces of nature for eight decades.
“It upset Mum deeply, you know,” Otto said.
Ingrid stiffened and withdrew her arm suddenly. “Mum knew exactly how I felt about Dad, and why. I don’t believe she ever expected that I would attend his funeral.”
“But something must have happened between you two?”
“Lots of things happened, Otto, but they’re in the past now, dead and buried.”
“But not forgotten?” Otto said.
She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t bring them up again.”
They resumed walking, now apart with no physical contact, though almost in step with each other.
“Let’s go down here, I think I hear waves crashing on the rocks,” Otto suggested as they turned into Nachtigall Street, which led them to one of Lüderitz’s rugged shorelines.
It was as though they were walking down the western edge of the central spur of a letter W. The blue bay separating them from a rocky headland called False Island – site of Bartholomew Diaz’s centuries old beacon at Diaz Point – was spitting white waves under the relentless south–wester.
Otto wanted to press the point and ask Ingrid why she seemed to harbour such animosity towards her family, but decided at the last moment to draw back. If he upset Ingrid she might just leave, something she had done before. He wanted her to stay for Mother’s funeral, and there was also that unfinished business at the house.
“Do you want to know what they found with the tree this morning?” Otto asked.
Ingrid looked at him sharply as salty spray from a wave crashing into the rocks sprinkled over them. “I suppose.”
“They cut into the trunk and then counted the rings to establish its age.”
“Frans?”
“There was a tree surgeon there as well.”
“And?”
Otto glanced at Ingrid’s eager face. It was the most interested and animated he had seen her since disturbing her reading at the hotel.
“Forty–two years, give or take a few either way.”
“So, that makes it about 19… 43?” Her face lit up. “Well, that’s OK, we weren’t even in Lüderitz yet.”
“It’s approximate, Ingrid. There are such things as double annular rings in some years, apparently, so the tree could be younger than that.”
They stopped and looked out across the angry waters of the bay, steaming and frothing like a cauldron on the boil.
“What does Frans think?” Ingrid asked.
Otto began to walk slowly with the bay now on his right–hand side, crashing waves sending spray into the air against an arid, rocky backdrop framed by towering sand dunes, creating a surreal scene of contrasts.
“He reckons that it would still fit with the body being buried either before or soon after the tree was planted, because the largest camelthorn roots had grown over the skeleton.” Otto tried to engage Ingrid’s gaze. “Don’t you remember anything, Ingrid? You must have been at least… fourteen or so?”
“Twelve when we arrived in Lüderitz.” She drew her shoulders up momentarily. “Ever tried fitting into a new school in a small, godforsaken place like this, as a pubertal adolescent? I remember exactly how old I was.”
She walked on, hands now pushed into the pockets of her coat, her furry Russian hat being blown by the swirling breeze that threatened to unseat it.
“You must have missed your friends,” Otto sympathised, sensing a crack in the door, the tiniest of opportunities to connect with his sister.
“I didn’t like Hamburg – snobby people at my school. But there was no–one here like me.” She stopped and looked around, sweeping an arm for effect. “Look at this place, trapped in its colonial past still, nearly a hundred years on, like a living museum.”
“I’ve always wondered – why did Mum and Dad come here?” Otto asked.
“God knows. Dad came first and we followed the next year. It took five weeks to get here by boat and I was seasick all the way.” Ingrid turned to Otto and made a face.
Otto, being the youngest and born in Lüderitz, had never felt the schism of being separated from his homeland like the others. He didn’t even know the stories about the great migration. They were never openly spoken about.
After a few minutes of walking in silence, enduring the wind and the spray off the churning sea, Otto said, “There’s something I really must ask you, Ingrid.”
She looked at him, unimpressed. “As long as it’s not about Dad or your brother.”
A seagull swooped dangerously close and they both instinctively took evasive action.
“Who was that baby in the movies last night?”
“Otto, please.”
“Do you know?”
“Did you talk to your brother?”
“Does he know?”
She hesitated. “I don’t think he was old enough to remember.”
“It couldn’t have been me, it was eight to ten years too early.”
Silence as Ingrid’s eyes stared straight ahead.
“It could’ve been Dieter, I reckon, but then there would be four children… too many of us.”
The wind suddenly gusted and both Otto and Ingrid were temporarily unbalanced.
“Why the big secret? What is going on, for God’s sake?”
Otto stopped but Ingrid continued walking on down the rough coastal track, sea battering the rocks to her right and arid, stubborn desert rock heaped up to her left. The image obscurely brought to Otto’s mind an iconic scene from the recent film adaptation of The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
“Has the baby in the movie got anything to do with the body in the garden, Ingrid?” Otto shouted defiantly into the howling wind, feeling his heart speed up as he spoke, fearing the worst.
She did hear him because she stopped, half–turned and met his eyes assuredly. “No, Otto, nothing at all!”
Otto raised his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “So you do remember something?”
Ingrid began to walk again.
“We’re going to watch another reel tonight. I will find out what’s going on,” Otto said, raising his voice against the wind and the waves to bridge the growing gap between them. “Let’s do it together, as a family.”
She kept walking.
“Where are you going?” Otto shouted as another arc of spray peppered his face.
Ingrid turned, her face stony, eyes set and unyielding. “I need time to think.”
Otto watched as she walked away, almost mechanically, one foot in front of the other. He shook his head. Hard as he tried, it was very difficult to understand Ingrid. What was it? Was she merely stubborn? Was she frightened? Was she traumatised?
Of one thing he was now certain: she knew something.