Lutz’s notes suggest that he doesn’t tell Gertrud everything. There are many times when he believes he has understood something from what he has experienced in different countries, but then he comes across events at the sight of which, he senses, the rational mind balks and the suspicion arises that he will never rid himself of that sense of unease. There are things he would like to say and discuss. But over and over again he comes up against the problem of their inexpressibility. Not because of the rules of diplomatic work, no, but because he does not wish to unsettle Gertrud. Even he himself is unsure about his sentiments and suspicions.
He has a Leica camera with an f/2.8 lens. After years of service in Palestine he finally gets back home. If it were up to him, it would be to have a good long rest.
He makes his way to the church in Walzenhausen. Flowering almond trees in the April light. The cluster of buildings of the Lachen farmstead stands slightly to the left, behind the church, in the bend of the little street leading to St Margarethen. One of those houses is where he was born. Behind is the elevation of the Meldegg.
He takes several photographs, waiting so he can catch exactly the same shot in the light of the morning, the afternoon and at sunset. He positions the shot so that a blossoming branch of an almond tree should always be seen bending into one of the upper corners of the picture. He arrives in Berlin in May 1941. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Zürich he had been charged with representing Yugoslavia’s interests. On the night he arrives the city was bombed by Allied planes. The day after his arrival the newspapers carry stories about the defeat of the Yugoslav army opposed to the Nazis. Lutz gets the message that his assignment is not going to last very long.
He was received by the Chief of Protocol of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the Grossdeutsches Reich, who tells him that they well remember how successfully he had represented German interests in Palestine. He meets several officials whom, in the days immediately after the outbreak of war, he had personally accompanied in an armoured car with a police escort to Haifa, whence they had been able to return to Germany. He could have no idea, given Yugoslavia’s collapse, how long he would have any business in Berlin, but he had set to work in the manner expected of a disciplined official. In his spare time he would rove around Berlin’s environs. He pays a visit to the garrison church of Potsdam. The sacristan, an angel-faced sixteen-year-old, proudly tells him that this is where, on 23 March 1933, Hitler, following the Reichstag fire one month earlier and his own electoral gains soon after, reconvened the new Reichstag in the presence of President Hindenburg. He adds that Johann Sebastian Bach also played there and transported his admirers, so he says, to higher spheres.
He gets to see the forests of Spreewald, with its maze of interweaving canals, many people rowing and paddling on the water, some propelling punt-like craft with long poles.
This is his favourite picture, Gertrud indicates to Gizi, not that I snapped it. Nor did Lutz, thinks Gizi, because he can be seen in the picture.
The punt glides noiselessly through Spreewald. Lutz is sitting in the prow; in the bows is the boatman, who operates with deft pushes of his long pole. Flutters of birds’ wings, shadows of overhanging trees. In Lutz’s hands is his Leica. They step ashore by a line of poplars. It is then that Lutz notices the boatman is dragging his left foot, so he helps him on the damp bank. The man is in his forties. Lutz imagines that it is because of his crippled leg that he has not been called up into the army, although it might also be that he had received a war wound. I could ask him how he ended up here; he could ask me the same. He has a feeling of being fenced in by a common fate in which there are many more together than hitherto.
My foot, are you asking what happened to my foot?
I didn’t ask, Lutz thinks; he feels vulnerable because the man read from his expression what he wanted to ask.
Some bastard, chopping into me with a spade, the bastard.
For Lutz space now expands; the time is unidentifiable. The meadow, the canals, it’s as if behind the line of poplars he could see the man’s foot as a spade digs into the ankle, but there is nothing to go by as to who raised the spade, why, where and when.
Students approach. Lutz asks one of them to take a photograph of the two of them. He sets distance, the light and the shutter time on the Leica and steps over next to the man.
Gizi looks at the picture. The scenery was really pretty, tranquil, she says later to Mother. Lutz smiled at the camera, but it was evident that it was a forced smile; the other man drew himself up, wellington boots, knee-britches, hunting jacket, military bearing, a good deal taller than Lutz.
The Poles are worse than the Jews, says the man when the student hands the Leica back to Lutz. That’s what springs to mind when I think about my foot, even though the Jews are nevertheless worse than the Poles, and the worst of all are the Polish Jews if they get hold of a spade.
Lutz understands. That’s all there is to the story. He scarcely knows anything, but still it’s as if simply on account of that slight knowledge he was party to it.
I used to guard the gravediggers. Eight hours on duty, eight hours on stand-by, eight hours off duty to start with. But later fourteen hours on duty, six on stand-by, four hours off. Chopped into me with a spade, the bastard.
When he looks at the picture later on with Gertrud, it occurs to Lutz that the German may also have sensed there was some sort of bond between them now, the way he held his body, standing shoulder to shoulder, the way he had looked not straight into the lens of the Leica but at him when the lad had taken the shot. You see, he tells Gertrud later, it’s as if he was waiting for me to enquire about how the spade had chopped into him; he was waiting for me have at least one question. When he talked about it, Gertrude tells Gizi, I felt that I, too, had become a party to the same thing he was. That I don’t understand, Gizi chimes in. No wonder, dearest, because I don’t understand it either, but that’s the way I felt then and still feel now.
I think the reason I did not ask, Lutz says to Gertrud in front of the photograph, was not because I didn’t want to get to know his story, but because I was scared of what I might learn. You said much the same thing when you escorted the Germans from Haifa to the border, Gertrud says. Lutz can’t remember having said anything of the sort at the time. Back then everything had been clear. Berlin had recalled its officials. They had travelled in an armoured car to the border; he had a very clear memory of confinement, boiling heat, a stench of sweat mixed with petrol fumes. He had talked with Gerhart Feine, the German Vice-Consul, about how none of them knew what their next posting was going to be. At the border Feine had shaken his hand at great length and made him give his word of honour to pass on his humble regards to Frau Lutz.
It was on New Year’s Eve 1941 that we set out from Zürich to Budapest, Gertrud says to Gizi. Well, I mean, expecting one to board a train on New Year’s Eve — tell me, dear, do you recall where you passed New Year’s Eve going into 1941?
Gizi does not say that by then it had already been three years since her husband had been laid to rest, does not say that she had sat by herself listening to the radio when Károly, bearing a bottle of champagne, rang the doorbell. She does not say that the first lieutenant had for the first time stayed the night there, because she knew that Gertrud would immediately ask, Oh, darling, is he the one who yesterday in the street … maybe not completing the question because she would not dare say was gunned down. Gizi remains quiet. Gertrud takes Lutz into the next room, returns and pours herself a drink. Gizi places a hand over her own glass. She wonders what Gertrud must have been through in previous years, whether even before that her wrist had shown such a practised tipping gesture when downing her drink. Our train left St Margarethen punctually at midnight, says Gertrud. We looked at our watches, and I said, 1941. Carl waited a few seconds before bursting into laughter. Your watch is running late again; we are already in 1942.