Voices of the dead

“The SS were nervous, making the prisoners clean up the yard, the barracks, burning bodies in the morgue or burying them. Word was Reichsfuhrer Himmler had a weak stomach.” Martz took a breath. “We were in the yard, standing at attention after roll call. Himmler came out to inspect us. I remember his eyes, dark and small, close together. He looked like some kind of rodent.”

“Here are a few more,” Lisa said, sliding the pile over the desktop to him.

Harry shuffled through the pictures and shook his head. “I don’t see him. Now what?”

16

The beer garden was crowded when Harry got there at 6:15. He had walked through the Augustinerkeller, and it was like going back in time, the beer hall much the same as he remembered it: dark wood, heavy pine tables, timber-frame ceiling, and animal heads on the walls.

He went out back and saw Colette sitting at a long table under the linden trees. She was with a group of locals decked out in Tracht clothing, home-sewn Tyrolean outfits that made them look like friendly mountain people, smiling ruddy-faced men and women who drank goat milk and lived humble honest lives.

They were talking, drinking beer, listening to the oompah band, its members wearing lederhosen, having fun. It was a scene from his past when everything was good, before all the craziness.

Harry watched Colette for a couple minutes, Colette the quintessential fraulein singing, hoisting her mug, enjoying herself. She looked over, saw him and waved. He walked to the table, sat next to her and met the people she was with. This was the custom, you found a space at a table and mixed with whoever was there. The waitress, a sturdy blonde with huge bazooms, came by and he ordered a beer. The band started up again and the Bavarians were singing and swaying in their seats, really getting into it.

“Ein prosit, ein prosit der Gemutlichkeit,” Colette sang, smiling at him. “Come on, Harry, try it.”

“I only sing in the shower,” Harry said.

“Here, everyone sings.”

“I better not.”

“Then you have to dance with me.”

Before Harry could object, Colette stood up next to him, took hold of his hands, pulled him up and hooked an arm around his, moving for the dance floor. He held her right hand and she put her left on his shoulder. He put his other hand on her hip and brought it up and felt the firm tautness of her waist. He twirled her a couple times, Colette really into it, laughing and grinning at him. When the song ended they went back to the table. Harry sang “Ein prosit,” loosening up a little, trying to put Hess out of his mind for a while. But he wanted to get out of the beer garden. He’d had enough of this Bavarian schmaltz, the oompah band and the cheeky German camaraderie.

They went inside and had dinner: sauerbraten and roast potatoes.

“You’re obviously German,” Harry said. “But your name isn’t and you speak English with a British accent.”

“My father, Joe Rizik, was Lebanese. My mother was German. His family emigrated from Beirut in the early twenties and settled in Berlin. My grandfather imported Persian rugs. His clientele were wealthy Germans, mostly Jews.”

“How’d your parents meet?”

“My father was in the hospital, with appendicitis. My mother was his nurse. They got on, fell in love. Got married right before he enlisted. He was in the Heer, the regular army, not the SS.”

She took a photograph out of her purse, a cracked, faded shot of a good-looking dark-haired guy posing in a coat and tie.

“I never met him. He was a sergeant in the infantry, killed in action on the Eastern Front, 1944. Served with great distinction. One of only twenty-seven men to receive the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. My mother said he was a good man, ashamed of what the Nazis were doing.”

She was proud of him, that was obvious, the war hero father she never knew.

“What about your mother?” He cut a piece of sauerbraten and pushed it through the gravy, took a bite, the smell and taste taking him back thirty years.

“She’s retired, living outside Bergheim, a village just north of Salzburg.” She paused, watching him eat. “You‘re hungry, yes? Enjoying the sauerbraten, Harry?” she said, smiling, being herself, no pretensions.

She told him about getting a degree in journalism from the University of Berlin, the same school Albert Einstein and Otto von Bismarck had attended. She told him about the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the autumn of her senior year, forty-three kilometers long, dividing West and East Berlin.

“Why was it built? I can’t remember,” Harry said.

“The communists wanted to keep East German professionals from emigrating to the west. They were losing too many doctors, lawyers, and engineers. The manpower losses had been estimated at twenty-five billion marks. I did a story on it when I was hired by the Berliner Zeitung after graduating.”

“Where’d you get the Brit accent?”