Otto Rabun Bowles, now at the age of fifteen, had become a thoughtful, perceptive boy. He understood the significance of much of what had happened; but to make sense of it, he used the same strategy he had been taught in mathematics of simplifying equations and reducing fractions to their lowest common denominator. In his new, simplified, equation of life, Nonna Amina suffered because she had tried to help two families, one Jewish and one German. Because, in the final analysis, she was German.
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It was the injustice of Nonna Amina’s imprisonment that caused Otto Rabun Bowles to embrace his German heritage, raise it up from the filth in which he believed it had been trampled, and carry it forth for all Rabuns. Like his father before him, who in the name of honor entered the darkness of his own father’s sins, young Ott, in the name of honor, entered the darkness of the Rabun past. Also like his father, however, he never quite returned from the journey.
Ott’s letters to Nonna Amina in the penitentiary soon became interviews for the story of redemption he was writing in his mind. He asked her to recount in the smallest detail the lives of their fallen family, beginning with Joseph Rabun, the patriarch and founder of the company that bore his name and that had been a source of such pride and, now, shame. Amina resisted Ott’s inquiries at first, finding the memories too painful to explore; but Ott was persistent and, gradually, Amina opened up, discovering that writing about her past was an effective therapy for the deep depression into which she had fallen.
Barratte, by contrast, was overjoyed by her son’s sudden insatiable curiosity about his heritage and ancestors, deeming it the first step in fulfilling his destiny to become the savior of the Rabuns. So enthusiastic was she, in fact, and so determined to encourage and assist him in any way, that for Ott’s sixteenth birthday she arranged a three week trip to Germany, coinciding with the reunification of the country following the collapse of communist rule and thus allowing them the luxury of freely visiting Dresden and Kamenz.
They began their tour by paying their respects at the poorly maintained gravesites of the Rabuns in a churchyard outside Kamenz, including Ott’s grandmother, great-grandfather, aunt, and uncles murdered by the Russian soldiers, and also the monument to little Helmut Rabun, made from the mangled girders of his school destroyed by an Allied bomb. As heartrending as this visit was-and it was exceptionally difficult for both mother and son-the emotions released there paled in comparison to the sheer agony, and terror, that overwhelmed Barratte when they reached the ruins of the once grand estate where the Rabuns had lived and where Barratte’s mother and siblings had been murdered in cold blood before her eyes, and where she, Bette, and Amina had been raped. Witnessing the indescribable wailing and anguish of his beloved mother, Ott was instantly transformed, vowing at that moment to right the wrongs of the past and restore the dignity and glory of the Rabuns, accepting his mother’s mission for him as his own.
After taking two days to recover from the trauma of seeing the estate, Ott and Barratte undertook a more methodical tour of Kamenz and Dresden, searching for remnants of their family’s past in recorders’ offices, archives, and, often without knowing it, standing, walking, riding upon, and drinking from the sturdy concrete infrastructure constructed by Jos. A. Rabun & Sons, which had survived not only the horrific Allied bombing that leveled much of Dresden and killed thirty thousand of its inhabitants but also the dreary period of communist rule and reconstruction afterward. The only sour moments during these days came when Ott and Barratte proudly revealed their identities and heritage to aging pensioners who might have known the Rabun family, only to be greeted with silent glares or malicious comments about how the Rabuns had lived all too well while others suffered during the war, and how Friedrich and Otto had despoiled the good name of Kamenz with their involvement in the death camps. But for each one of these bitter people, Ott and Barratte also located more friendly contemporaries who were delighted to see living Rabuns and share with them sweet stories and photographs of the happy days before all came to ruin. During these conversations, Ott marveled at his mother’s fluency in speaking German and eagerly demonstrated his own growing proficiency, greatly pleasing her.
After learning everything they could, and gathering all the documents and artifacts about the Rabuns they could carry, and snapping hundreds of photographs, Ott and Barratte journeyed north to Berlin and then south to Munich, and, finally, to Austria, in search of the remnants of the Third Reich that lived on in Barratte’s memory and loomed ever larger in Ott’s imagination. Although largely unsuccessful in uncovering evidence of the former Nazi empire-expunged by the victors during the post-war years-they did find much to be hopeful for and proud of as Germans, including thriving industry, commerce, and culture. Before flying home from Frankfurt, they concluded their trip with a visit to the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth to take in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Otto Rabun Bowles, like Adolph Hitler-or perhaps because of him-had come to worship Richard Wagner.
Ott returned to Buffalo profoundly changed, having discovered the world to which he believed he truly belonged. Unfortunately, most of this world existed only in the past, or only in fantasy. Thus, the silent world into which Ott had withdrawn himself at home and in school began filling with voices: the pleas of impoverished German workers in the nineteen-twenties; the empty hypotheses of German intellectuals and the broken promises of German politicians in the nineteen-thirties; the strategic decisions of field marshals and the brutal commands of concentration camp guards in the nineteen-forties. While Ott’s classmates raced home from school to watch television or go out to movies, Ott raced to the library to read more about the history of the German people, beginning with the resplendent days of the First Reich and the coronation of his ancestral namesake, Otto I, as Holy Roman Emperor; then moving forward in time to the humiliation of Germany by Napoleon and the hopes of nationalism to restore the old Roman grandeur; then on to the second humiliation with Germany’s crushing defeat during the First World War; and, finally, the fatal seduction of a bold new Aryan nationalism and, when the fever broke, the fading away of the Fuhrer’s one thousand years dream.