On Monday morning Frans fetched Dieter and Otto and drove them to the police station. They did not know what it was for, and both sat quietly in his glass office while he organised coffee for each of them. Policemen busying themselves at desks cast furtive glances in their direction. Dieter could not suppress little flashbacks to his recurring dream; that feeling of guilt, that one day the police would catch up with him and tap him on the shoulder. He felt as though every examining stare was looking through Frans’ transparent office walls into his darkest secrets, deciphering his inexplicable guilt, preparing to expose him. It seemed to him that everyone in that police station knew about his dream, that his dark secret was finally out. The day he had long dreaded was finally upon him.
“I keep thinking about that dream,” he whispered to Otto.
“What dream?”
“You know, the one I told you about – the rolled–up carpet and the body inside.”
Otto’s eyes widened as he stared at Dieter. “Christ, you don’t think you actually saw something, do you?”
“I just have no idea anymore,” Dieter said. His palms felt sweaty, and he rubbed them on his trousers. Suddenly the door burst open, startling him, as though he had been doing something illicit.
“Here you go, three black coffees.” Frans set them down on his desk.
“What do you need from us, Frans?” Otto asked.
Dieter swallowed, imagining fingerprints, perhaps a blood sample for that DNA analysis, lie detector testing. Frans moved to the steel filing cabinet and slid open the top drawer.
“I want you to have a look at this,” he said, removing the child’s reconstructed clay head and placing it on the desk between them.
Otto frowned and Dieter shuffled in his seat.
“This is a forensically reconstructed likeness built around the child’s skull that was found in your garden,” Frans explained.
Dieter did not like the word ‘your’, implying their culpability. The first image that came to mind as he looked upon the clay head was of the rolled–up green carpet. Did some neglected childhood memory circuit in his brain make a connection between the two?
“How accurate are these reconstructions?” Otto asked.
Frans pulled a face. “Not bad. We used a specialist in Johannesburg.” He leaned forward and turned the head slightly. “Do you recognise this face?” He paused. “Have you ever seen it before?”
Dieter noted the fine nose and long upper lip, and the chillingly small size of the head. It reminded him of the face from the home movies they had watched on Saturday night. But then, he considered, he was no expert on babies and they did all look somewhat alike to him.
“How old do you think this child was?” Otto asked, studying the face with curiosity.
Frans pouted his lips. “Around one year, give or take a few months either way. That’s what the forensic people have told us.”
“Jesus,” Dieter said; “just an infant.”
Dieter and Otto examined the head carefully for a few surreal moments, staring at something from 1948 that had, chillingly, almost been brought back to life, its lips slightly parted, as if to breathe. This was the face of the child they had played on top of, Dieter reflected.
“I was only tiny myself,” Otto said. “You should have asked Ingrid.”
“I have,” Frans said.
Dieter’s heart skipped a beat. “You’ve shown this to her?”
Frans nodded in a noncommittal way.
“What did she say?” Otto asked.
Dieter could feel his heart quickening. He felt sweaty. He could picture the rolled–up carpet, shadowy figures moving about with it at shoulder height, going nowhere distinct. Could it have been this child concealed inside?
“Not much,” Frans said, reaching for his coffee. As he sipped he kept his eyes on Dieter and Otto’s faces.
“I’ve never seen this child before. It’s definitely not Herero though,” Dieter said.
“No,” Frans agreed.
“Boy or girl?” Otto asked, angling his head as he studied the sculpted face.
“We don’t know yet.”
“The DNA test will tell you,” Otto said.
“On Saturday we watched the last of the family home movies, filmed here in Lüderitz. There was a small child in them,” Dieter said, gesticulating towards Otto, “but you could clearly see it was Otto.”
Dieter could not drink the coffee. It was weak and bitter.
“What now?” Otto said, half–turning away from the head.
“Well, we should get the DNA results back in a day or two. I’ll let you know.” Frans smiled. “Depending on what they reveal we’ll know… er… what to do next.”
Dieter stood up, followed by Otto. He wanted to get out, to stop thinking about his dream.
“Thanks again for yesterday, Frans,” Dieter said.
“My pleasure. It was very revealing, I thought,” Frans said. “Do you want a lift up the hill?”
Otto shook his head with a wan smile. “It’s OK, thanks, we’ll walk.”
“Jesus, that was creepy,” Dieter said once they were out of the police station.
The seaweed smell of the fog permeating Lüderitz was strong that morning, and it seemed to transmit the sounds of the harbour very clearly, as though it was solid.
“Why didn’t he tell us before now that he’d shown it to Ingrid?” Otto asked.
Dieter stared at Otto, unblinking. “You think he’s playing us?”
Otto was silent for a moment. “Frans?”
“Biggest mistake anyone can make is underestimating a copper,” Dieter said. “Don’t be fooled by his squint.”
Otto pondered this sobering thought. He did not know what Ingrid knew. He did not even know what Dieter knew. And what was that dream of Dieter’s all about?
“I wonder how Ingrid reacted to that head?” Otto said.
“Frans didn’t say much about her, did he?” Dieter said.
“She was about fourteen then. Surely she’d remember something?”
“Well, she’s given Frans the slip now,” Dieter sniped.
They walked past Felsenkirche, its steeple just visible through the asphyxiating grip of the fog. It should have made Otto think of Mother, but it didn’t. Barely two days since her funeral and he was thinking about the reconstructed clay head, about Dieter’s dream, and wondering where Ingrid was. It was as if the funeral had not even taken place.
“We need to go through all Mum and Dad’s old things at home, see if we can find anything,” Otto said. “I can’t stand this nagging question hanging over us.”
“That’s got a rather seedy feel about it, though, hasn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Otto said.
“You know, going through your parents’ things, searching for clues, for something out of the ordinary. Like we don’t trust them.”
Otto breathed hard as they climbed the steep hill up to Bülow Street. Dieter’s words reverberated in his mind, cutting, making him bleed at the unpleasant prospect. Father had been gone ten years already, but he could not imagine questioning his mother’s character in the way that he was now, had she still been alive. It made him feel disrespectful.
“Children inherently trust their parents, don’t they?” Otto said eventually. “Implicitly.” A vision of Max and Karl burst into his mind. He could not entertain the possibility that they would not trust him for the rest of his life. But the rest of his life was not as long as the rest of their lives.
“When was that unreserved trust first shaken for you?” Dieter asked, searching Otto’s eyes.
Otto was taken aback. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do,” Dieter chided him. “You know, parents tell you about Father Christmas and the tooth fairy, and going to heaven and all that shit.”
“Uh–huh.”
“Well, when was the first time you realised that they didn’t always tell you the truth?”
Otto was stunned by this question. They walked in silence for a few moments, the sound of their footsteps on the road clipping the eerie stillness.
“You mean before Inez?” Otto said, rubbing his temples.
“You know when things changed for me?” Dieter said. “When I realised I could not tell them I was gay. I knew I dared not confide in my own mum and dad about who I really was. They made me choose to live an invented life because it suited their ideology.”
“That’s not a lie,” Otto objected.
“Oh, it is. I didn’t mind the little things, tooth fairy and so forth.” Dieter rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “When I left for Cologne they told me my best friend was going away and couldn’t come to Windhoek to say goodbye.”
“Marko?”
Dieter nodded. “They lied. Father had threatened him that if he came anywhere near me again he would speak to the church priest.”
“Why?”
Dieter looked at Otto quizzically. “Don’t you remember Marko?”
Otto tried to remember. “Not well… he was always nice to me…”
“He was very effeminate,” Dieter said. “You were too young to notice, I guess. Marko and I were very close friends at school.” He paused, an old wound visible behind his eyes. “Anyway, Marko wrote to me, eventually, and explained about Dad and the airport. I never saw him again.”
Otto realised this must have hurt Dieter deeply.
“Have you always believed them?” Dieter said, creasing his brow.
Otto looked into Dieter’s incredulous eyes and nodded.
“Even after finding out about Inez?” Dieter said.
Otto closed his eyes. He had never envisaged having such a conversation with Dieter, questioning the moral character of his parents, challenging the very fabric of his lifelong memories and his cherished emotional bond to them.
“Until… until I found out about Inez,” Otto heard himself whisper. “This last week has just been a nightmare… beyond belief. Where will it end?”
The awful realisation about the deceit over Inez had been a turning point in Otto’s heart and his mind. With his words still fresh on the moist foggy air Otto felt a greater hurt in this declaration to Dieter than he had at Mother’s funeral.
“With the truth,” Dieter said. “I know what it’s like to live with lies, and I know how emancipating it is to reveal the truth.”
“Maybe Ingrid was right,” Otto said quietly.
“About what?”
Otto looked into Dieter’s eyes, trying to measure in them the depth of his own despair. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”