It was daylight before I dared rise from the couch again. Ellis’s package remained hidden like a bomb between us, unmentioned, unrevealed, waiting to tear us apart at the right moment. The trick was knowing how to detonate it with the least damage.
When I came out of the bathroom, my bladder finally relieved, Ellis had made coffee and was searching through piles of papers on his desk.
‘Good morning. How’s the head?’ he said, barely looking up.
I knew what he was looking for, but I wasn’t ready to admit I’d been in the apartment yesterday. Not yet. It was still early and while the winter sun had risen, there was no strength to the light filtering through the window. My head was throbbing, my mouth dry as cotton and I couldn’t face a confrontation. I grunted, went to the kitchen and poured myself a coffee, then sat on the couch watching him until the caffeine started to kick in.
‘I think I need to apologise for last night,’ I said finally. ‘I was pretty drunk.’
He smirked. ‘You could say that.’
‘I hope I didn’t do anything I might regret?’
The smile broadened. ‘Not as far as I’m concerned.’
I took a breath, but it couldn’t be avoided. ‘I might have, kinda, broken into your apartment yesterday.’
His body went still, then he turned to look at me.
‘I was worried, all right? You didn’t show up. You didn’t let me know where you were, that you weren’t coming. I thought – with everything that’s happening, I thought—’
‘You thought what?’
‘That something had happened to you – that you’d been attacked or something.’
‘So you broke into my apartment?’
‘Well, I didn’t break in, I found your spare key. It’s stupid, I know. I’m sorry.’
He came over and joined me on the couch. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or not.
I pulled the papers out of my bag and laid them on the coffee table.
‘I know about Walter Kubel,’ I said. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about last night.’
I told him about my visit from the Nazi hunters. I’d had time to think about it while he was in the shower, and I couldn’t see any reason not to tell him. Yes, he had something going on that he didn’t want me to know about. But I couldn’t see how it could possibly have anything to do with me, my grandparents’ deaths or Lily’s disappearance. And he already knew about Walter Kubel. What I had to tell him wouldn’t be news.
‘They’re still looking for him after all these years,’ said Ellis.
‘They think he was masquerading as Karl Weiss.’
He didn’t look surprised. ‘It’s the logical conclusion. There’s no doubt it’s the same ring. And it would explain your grandparents’ deaths as well. If Henschke and Dof went there to arrest him, and things went wrong . . .’
‘My grandfather was not a Nazi criminal.’
‘All right. Take it easy. I’m not saying he was; I’m just saying it’s logical that they thought he was.’
I was only slightly mollified. ‘They swore black and blue they didn’t kill him, and I’m inclined to believe them. They wanted public retribution: to take him into custody, make him stand trial and admit to what he did. What Walter Kubel did. So there must be some connection between Kubel and Hans, because you’re right, it is the same ring. Kubel must have given it to Hans, who then passed it on to my grandfather.’
‘There is a connection,’ said Ellis. ‘Hans Whemar worked as a clerk in Kubel’s office in Berlin towards the end of the war. In the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. It was a Nazi organisation dedicated to confiscating cultural property, artwork, literature, jewels and such.’
‘I’ve read about it. The Nazis hid the treasures at the end of the war to keep them from the Allies – in old mines, and at the bottom of lakes and such. There’s still a lot of it that hasn’t been found.’
He nodded. ‘Partly because most of the people involved in the transport of the goods didn’t survive.’
‘Prisoners?’
He nodded. ‘Concentration camp inmates. Considered expendable by the Nazis.’
The thought made my stomach queasy. ‘I knew Hans Whemar joined the Nazi party quite young, but I had no idea he was involved in anything like this.’
Ellis shrugged. ‘Being a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party doesn’t necessarily make him guilty of war crimes. He was a clerk in an office. How much he was involved in what went on is debatable.’
I drained the dregs of my coffee while I thought about that.
‘Hans must have known Kubel quite well for him to give him his signet ring, though. Why would he do that?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. It could be that Hans was involved in the black market. Rations were short, and people bartered and traded stuff on the black market all the time. Could be Hans had something Kubel wanted, something valuable enough to trade his ring for.’
It was plausible, even probable. ‘Kubel wasn’t on that passenger list. He must have given it to him before they boarded.’
‘I agree.’
I went into the kitchen to refill our cups. The man we’d found in our research, Hans Whemar, Nazi party member, associate of a known Nazi war criminal, possibly a war criminal himself, was not the man Opa had talked about. He’d talked about the kindness of Hans, the bravery and compassion, the long talks and the jokes, the shared laughter that had got Karl through his first weeks on the front. The generosity he’d shown to Karl after the war, supporting him and paying his passage to Australia. It was as if there were two sides of Hans. And if there were two sides of Hans, were there also two sides of Karl? Had I known only one side of my grandfather?
‘What about Karl?’ I asked when I returned to the couch, using his name deliberately. I couldn’t call him Opa in this discussion. ‘Did you do any research on him?’ What I meant was, was he a Nazi? Please don’t tell me he was a Nazi.
Ellis looked at me levelly. ‘I did. He wasn’t listed as a Nazi party member, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
I let my breath out.
‘He would have done Hitler Youth and the Labour Service before he was conscripted – all German boys did that – but from what I can find, he never joined the party.’
‘I knew it. Henschke’s got it all wrong, the bastard.’
Ellis put a hand on my arm and gave it a squeeze.
‘The rest of what I found is mostly what you already know. His war service, and then emigrating here with Hans on the Fairsea. Interestingly, they both were paying passengers, which wasn’t common.’
‘The Australian government wasn’t providing assisted passage to Germans then. Opa borrowed the money from Hans. He always considered himself in debt to him, even though he died, tried to find some of his family so he could pay the money back.’
‘Hmm.’ Ellis nodded. ‘The funny thing is, though, that while both Karl and Hans board the Fairsea, only Karl goes through immigration in Sydney. There’s no record of Hans disembarking at all – in Fremantle or Sydney.’
‘I told you, Hans died on the journey.’
‘There’s no record of that,’ said Ellis. ‘Not that I could find. In fact, I couldn’t find the ship’s logs for that journey at all.’
‘You think they’ve been lost?’
He shrugged. ‘Could be. It wouldn’t be the first time. But it seems awfully convenient. Without those logs we can’t confirm whether Hans really died or not.’
‘Come on. Why would my grandfather lie about that?’
‘I have no idea. But think about it, Juliet. Two of them boarded in Italy, and only one disembarked in Sydney. If you ask me, it’s a pretty good disappearing act. Ask those Nazi hunters of yours. It wasn’t uncommon. There were a lot of people trying to escape Europe unnoticed after the war. Some were more successful than others. And until that signet ring was plastered on the Internet, Hans Whemar had disappeared completely, with only your grandfather’s word to say that he died on board. What if he didn’t?’
I didn’t like what he was saying, but I couldn’t deny that he’d asked a lot of good questions I really didn’t want to think about.
‘You think Hans bribed Karl to say he was dead?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was really Hans who went through immigration. Maybe he paid the real Karl to slip off in Fremantle and assumed his identity. Or maybe he silenced him altogether and dumped the body overboard.’
‘Now you’re just making things up,’ I said. The conversation was deviating into uncomfortable territory.
‘The point is, we’ll never know what really happened on that ship, or who it was who went through immigration as Karl Weiss. The only people who knew for sure were Karl and Hans. And they’re both dead, or at least likely so.’
I looked away from him, from the earnestness in his eyes.
‘I have to go,’ I said, standing quickly.
Ellis rose with me. He was very close and I tried to take a step away from him, but he grabbed my hands and held me in place.
‘Look, maybe I’m not explaining myself very well. All I meant was that someone seeing the ring could easily assume that the person wearing it was Hans Whemar. We know Hans was a Nazi. There could be any number of reasons someone would want to kill him, even after all this time.’
I nodded slowly, pulling my hands out of his. Everything he’d said was racing through my brain. I needed time to think. ‘I really do have to go.’
‘Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want me to call a cab?’
‘I’m fine. Thanks for putting up with me last night.’
‘Any time.’ He still sounded concerned. ‘Juliet, before you go—’
I was already fishing in my handbag before he finished the sentence. ‘I almost forgot – your neighbour asked me to give this to you.’ I tossed the small brown package in his direction.
He caught it deftly. ‘Thanks.’
‘I didn’t open it or anything. In case you were wondering.’
The look on his face suggested he wanted to say more, but instead he tightened both hands around the package and nodded. ‘Okay. Thanks.’
I took the opportunity to leave before he could change his mind.
~
After the conversation with Ellis, I needed to get more information, real information from people who knew Opa, who knew Karl as a young man, not just facts on a page. Uncle Luka was the first person I thought of; he was Opa’s oldest friend.
I drove through the city towards Salisbury, where he lived in an aged care home, stopping in at one of Opa’s bakeries to pick up a slice of Black Forest cake for him. Luka had always loved Oma’s Black Forest cake, made from a family recipe she had tucked into her coat as she escaped from East Germany.
I’d heard the story many times, of how she’d left with little but the clothes on her back, precious items sewn into the hem of her dress or hidden in secret pockets for fear of alerting the authorities of her intentions. It was before the Berlin Wall had gone up, but travel to the West was severely restricted. The inner German border was closed, escape to the West possible only via Berlin. After her mother died, she took the train to East Berlin, ostensibly to visit friends, and slipped off the S-Bahn on the western side of the border, at Zoologischer Garten amid a group of young people on an excursion to the zoo. It had been risky. If she’d been stopped, if they’d suspected she wasn’t coming back, she would have been arrested. Would she have chanced that for a man capable of the things Henschke had accused my grandfather of doing? I couldn’t believe that any more than I could believe Opa capable of committing the atrocities himself. Still, there were unanswered questions, and I was determined to find out as much as I could.
Luka was pleased to see me. He was always pleased to see me, regardless of whether or not I was bearing gifts. His wife had passed away quite young and they’d never had children, so he’d adopted our family as his own, first my mother, and later Lily and me. I couldn’t remember a Christmas Eve in my childhood without his booming laugh and his traditional Lithuanian Sakotis cake that he ordered from a specialty bakery in Melbourne every year.
‘Juliet, come, sit.’
He was propped up in a recliner, a woollen blanket over his legs. He looked thinner than I remembered, older, his skin paper-thin, his eyes weepy. Of course, he must be in his mid-eighties now. He had every right to look old. Somehow, though, I sensed the loss of Oma and Opa had taken its toll.
‘How are you?’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘I can’t complain. I’m still here.’
‘You never complain,’ I said, reaching out and giving one of his hands a squeeze. ‘Maybe that’s the trouble. Are you well?’
He shrugged again. ‘A little cold. It’s nothing.’
I made a mental note to ask the nurse about it when I left. After a lifetime of smoking, his lungs weren’t strong. Last time he’d had a cold it had turned into pneumonia and he’d been in hospital for a week.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been round. It’s been . . .’ I couldn’t finish. Hell was the only way to describe it, and I couldn’t say that to him.
‘I understand. I miss them too.’
We sat in silence for a moment, lost in our own thoughts, then I took a breath. ‘Tell me about him,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tell me about what he was like when you were young. When you first arrived here.’
He didn’t need much encouragement. As the years moved on, he spent more and more time in the past, and I’d heard him reminiscing with Oma and Opa on many occasions.
‘You know the story of how we met,’ he said and I nodded. ‘Well, I wasn’t sure about him at first. He was a German, after all, and it wasn’t long after the war. But I was lonely. I’d just left Maria, my wife, at the migrant camp – we’d only been married a few weeks and I was feeling lonely. It was good to have someone to talk to. My English wasn’t so good in those days, but German I knew.
‘It was January, 1950. Karl had just arrived in Australia and didn’t know a thing about anything – where to get work, housing – nothing. I always wondered why he hadn’t gone to the migrant camp. When Maria and I arrived, they put us on a train straight off the boat and we went to Bathurst Migrant Camp. Across the Blue Mountains, you know. I remember the day very well. It was dark when we arrived at the camp – on the bus from the train station. But we all saw the boom gate come up to let us in. And then come down again as soon as we’d driven through. It was not a comfortable feeling, I can tell you.’
‘I can imagine,’ I murmured.
‘But it was all right in the end. We were given housing, such as it was, and meals, English lessons and skills training. It wasn’t much, but we made do until we could afford something of our own. And it’s where employers recruited workers. Karl would have got all the information he needed if he’d gone there as I had, and help finding work as well.’
My interest was piqued. Here was Karl as a young man, fresh off the boat, but not following procedure, avoiding the migrant camp and getting on a train to Adelaide instead. That didn’t sound like the Opa I knew.
‘What was he like?’ I said, almost afraid to ask.
Luka shrugged. ‘He was young, quiet but determined, a patient and generous soul. But he could be stubborn too, if you got on his bad side. He had his ways, and he wasn’t easily swayed.’ A pause. ‘He was besotted with your grandmother, constantly writing letters to her.’ Luka winked and then his face sobered. ‘He wanted to put the past behind him.’
My skin prickled. ‘What happened that he wanted to put behind him? Did he talk about it?’
He gave me a measured look. ‘It was war, my dear. A terrible war. We did not speak of specifics. Everyone wanted to put it behind them.’
I leaned back in my chair. ‘Of course.’
‘One thing I do know,’ continued Luka. ‘Karl had wealth.’
‘Wealth?’
‘Of a sort. Jewellery. Pearls that he bartered for cash when we arrived in Adelaide. Good ones. He said he had more, much more, although I never saw them.’
I frowned and he reached a hand out to me. ‘Don’t look so concerned. Back then it was quite common to sell valuables for cash. It was all that people could bring with them when they fled Europe. Likely they were his mother’s pearls.’
I clasped his hand and squeezed gently. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘He was a good friend. Loyal. Working in the mines, we looked out for each other. I knew he would have my back.’ Luka heaved a sigh and dabbed at his rheumy eyes with a handkerchief. ‘He did have his ways, though. A man of tradition, for sure, especially after he reunited with Grete.’
‘You went to their wedding, didn’t you?’ I said.
‘You know that I did. I was the best man and Maria the matron of honour.’ He glanced my way. ‘It was a simple affair, organised in rather a hurry, if you get what I mean?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know that.’
He nodded. ‘It’s not something that was common knowledge. Grete wanted to wait and plan the wedding properly, but Karl insisted. He didn’t want any shame brought on the family. But now . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Times have changed. It does no harm to tell you.’
‘Of course not.’ I patted his knee.
He said no more, and I hesitated before speaking. ‘I’ve been trying to find my mother,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t know what’s happened. That is, if she hasn’t . . . if she’s still alive.’
A look of pain crossed his face. ‘She’s alive,’ he said.
My breath caught in my throat. ‘You’ve heard from her? You know where she is?’
‘I don’t know where she is, no.’
‘But how . . . who . . . ?’ The questions were coming so fast, I couldn’t get them out quick enough. ‘How do you know she’s alive?’
‘She calls from time to time. She asks about you. She’s very proud of your success as an author.’
I was momentarily speechless. ‘And you never told me?’
He turned to look at me. ‘Juliet, your mother doesn’t cope well. She never has. She was a demanding child, sensitive and needy, given to sudden outbursts. Karl and Grete did their best, but – they were so young.’
‘They were twenty-eight,’ I said. Oma had told me the nurses at the hospital considered her quite old to be having a first child.
‘Perhaps inexperienced is a better word. They’d only just found each other again, were just getting on their feet. They weren’t ready for a child.’
‘Are you saying they didn’t want my mother?’
‘No, no. Of course not. Karl had talked of nothing else but having a family with Grete. They were pleased as punch. But I don’t think they ever were able to relate to Elaine in the way she needed. Karl worked long hours in the bakery, and Grete too, took her turn. For a while Maria looked after Elaine when Grete was needed . . . we weren’t blessed with children and she was pleased to do it. But then Maria passed . . .’
I put my hand on his arm. ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’
He was quiet for a moment, and I thought he’d lost the thread of his thoughts. Then he took a breath.
‘The teen years were particularly difficult. Elaine was prone to periods of melancholy, and they couldn’t understand it.’
I remembered that as well, the days when she would stay in bed and Lily would get my breakfast, urging me to stay quiet, not to disturb her. On the worst days, Oma would come and take me back to the bakery with her.
‘What happened after my dad died? Why did she leave?’
Luka shook his head sadly. ‘Only your mother can answer that. I know she loved your father very, very much. And she loved you and Lily.’
‘But not enough to stay.’ I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice.
He shrugged. ‘I’m sure she thought she was doing the right thing.’
My eyes opened wide. ‘By abandoning us? Without a word or a note? Not even a Christmas card?’ I took a deep breath. ‘Uncle Luka, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’
He brushed aside my apology. ‘No matter. I understand.’
I watched his face, but he said no more. ‘She called you, though?’ I prompted. ‘And Oma and Opa?’
‘Here and there. Your grandparents not so much, maybe once every two or three years. It’s been a while since she last called.’
‘And you never told me?’ I asked again.
He spread his hands helplessly. ‘We thought it best. It was a couple of years before she called the first time. You finally seemed to be settling into a routine, making some friends at school. You seemed happy and she was . . .’ He groped for a word. ‘Okay, I’ll say it – she was drunk. We thought it would only unsettle you. We never knew when she would ring, had no way to contact her ourselves. What good could it do?’
I frowned. It would have helped to have known she was alive, that she was asking about me, about us. Maybe it would have helped Lily too. ‘And when I was older? Why not tell me then? I’m thirty years old now. I think I could handle it.’
‘I’m sorry. After the first couple of calls, we didn’t speak of it. I didn’t think.’
He started coughing and I got him a glass of water, let the subject lie. Upsetting him wouldn’t change anything.
We talked more, of trivial matters; the weather, the food at the home, my writing. My mind was still on my mother, out there somewhere, struggling to cope, but getting by somehow. Without me. I showed Luka the key, but he knew nothing about it. Then the carer arrived to check on him and help him to the bed so he could rest.
I leaned in to kiss his papery cheek. ‘Please, if my mother calls again, give her my number, tell her I’d like to speak to her.’ I wasn’t sure it was true.
I left with a heavy heart. Luka was all alone now, his family gone, his friends gone. What more was there for him in this life? I looked back towards the care home, glancing up at his window on the second floor. I would come to visit him again. Soon.
The front doors of the care home slid open and a young woman exited. She fished a tissue out of her handbag and dabbed her eyes. I looked away, got into my car. We all had our sorrows. I hoped hers weren’t as horrific as mine, or as steeped in mystery.