He fashioned himself a writer of what came to be known years after his passing as speculative tales of the fantastic. Being a dreamer, he convinced himself, could have its rewards if only he could transcribe his visions into words. These conceptions, and many more, he incorporated into novels in which the protagonist, an inventor, being a prophet of sorts, existed without honour in his own land only to be acknowledged as a true visionary after he was dead and gone. To my father, this theme constituted life's ultimate tragedy.
Alas, publisher after publisher rejected my father's novels. Somewhere between the tailor shop and his wished-for career as an author, our family's meagre finances steadily leaked away.
For years, my mother suffered anxious days and restless nights waiting for the sky to fall and put an end to our seemingly endless miseries. So ramshackle was our house that it became the subject of a local joke: neighbours, it was said, pleaded with us in winter to keep our doors and windows shut tight to prevent the cold within from escaping into the outdoors.
It was after one particularly bitter January day that the boundaries of my mother's vast patience were at last breached, and she could no longer restrain her fury. “Look at this house!” she cried. “It is a desolate place, windswept by hopelessness and neglect!”
Father pondered this for a moment, then nodded appreciatively. “I like it, Emma…yes indeed, I think it's quite wonderful.”
Mother eyed her husband with disbelief. “You like this house?”
“No, no,” Father replied quickly, “I mean the sentence, the way you expressed yourself just then.” He paused, gazing up at the crumbling ceilings. “Ah yes, ‘a desolate place…windswept by hopelessness and neglect’…” Excusing himself, he dashed off to his writing table to jot down my mother's words in his small, tattered notebook.
Leaping after him, my mother continued at the top of her lungs: “Wolfgang, listen to me, this family cannot go on much longer clinging by our fingertips to the unsteady ledge of your ambitions! Do you hear what I am saying?”
“Please, Emma, please,” my father begged, “speak more slowly. I cannot write so fast. What came after ‘unsteady ledge?’”
So it went: my mother uttering printable sentences that seemed to flow naturally from her tongue; my father keeping up the pretense that he was the literate one in the family, while at the same time increasingly unable to distinguish fiction from reality.
As for my little sister Ilse and me, we played games of make-believe in which we imagined ourselves the offspring of German nobility, dispatched to this shabby household by a vengeful wicked witch, whose amorous advances our handsome princely father had once made the mistake of spurning. Soon, very soon, we told ourselves, a carriage drawn by eight white horses would clatter up to our doorstep, and our father-the prince, that is-would sweep us off to our rightful palatial chambers.
During much of my childhood and early youth, then, that was how our days were spent. My father nourished his fantasy that any day now the name “Wolfgang Preiss” would replace “Goethe” on the lips of Europe's literati. My mother nourished her fantasy that any day now she would become a widow and, with her looks still miraculously intact, attract a solid provider as a second husband. My sister and I shared a dream that, restored to noble surroundings, we would be brought up as all well-born children should be-by doting servants.
The one fortunate aspect of my childhood was my scholastic prowess, especially in the sciences. My instructors in chemistry and physics at the Gymnasium discerned that I possessed an extraordinary aptitude for scientific investigation. In my senior year, they encouraged me to apply for the only scholarship available to a youth of my social station. And so it was that, shortly before my eighteenth birthday, I found myself at the tiny railway station in Zwicken, about to leave home for the first time. I was to attend the National Police Academy in Hamburg. At last, liberation!
Overcome with uncontrollable grief, my mother and sister could not bring themselves to accompany me to the depot. (In moments when I feel less than charitable, I cannot resist the feeling that their recipe for uncontrollable grief consisted of one part sorrow and ninety-nine parts envy.)
It was while I stood on the station platform awaiting the train that my father drew me aside, seized me by the shoulders and, gazing deeply into my eyes, intoned, “My boy, this above all-”
He halted in mid-sentence. Whatever thought was on his mind seemed to be momentarily suspended above us like some enormous mudslide.
“Yes, father?” I said.
“This above all,” he repeated. Again there was a pause while he glanced about him to make certain there were no eavesdroppers, though we were the only people at the depot. Lowering his voice, he said, “If you remember nothing else, Hermann, remember this: avoid surprises!”
Our relationship up to this point was such that I never questioned or challenged my father's advice or his perceptions about the world around us. This was so at first because of the strict rules of filial respect and obedience that prevailed in the God-fearing households of the day. Later it was so because the man was such a patent fool that there seemed no point in taking issue with him on any subject. Still, as we waited now for my train, the grave expression on his carelessly shaven face suggested that it was possible, just barely possible, that the man knew something I didn't. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I repeated dutifully, “Avoid surprises.”
“Good boy!” My father jerked his head with approval. “You see, Hermann,” he explained, “there is no such thing as a good surprise. Without exception they're bad, all of them. Death, infidelity, insolvency…a sudden knock on the door and-poof! — you're a corpse, or a cuckold, or some brazen bill collector makes off with your trousers. Then there are riots in the streets. And, of course, diseases. An innocent glass of water tonight, tomorrow morning your body is on fire and covered with purple spots!”
Listening to these last-minute cautions, I was willing to bet the few humble banknotes sewn into the lining of my jacket that the old gent had taken one pinch too many of his beloved snuff and sneezed his brains into his hat. Though I'd never been more than ten kilometres in any direction from Zwicken, even I knew this much: of the countless evils to be shunned in a port city like Hamburg, surely innocent glasses of water were far from foremost. It was no secret in Germany that Hamburg's waterfront was an immense open sewer, where human waste and wasted humans mingled so freely in the tides that they were often indistinguishable. The city's sidewalks and shady entrance-ways throbbed with brothel life around the clock, offering with one hand a few minutes of pleasure, and guaranteeing with the other a lifetime of embarrassing skin disorders. Innocent glasses of water indeed!
Nevertheless, I was determined that my last few minutes in Zwicken should be spent agreeably. “Thank you, father,” I said, “I will try to remember your words of wisdom. I consider myself blessed to be the son of a true sage.”
My father's eyes suddenly gazed even more deeply into my own. “Ah yes, Hermann,” he said, “that's the other thing I meant to tell you.”
“Other thing?”
“Yes. You are not my son. Your mother was pregnant by another man…possibly a French warrant officer at the time of the invasion, though there was also this commercial traveller from Potsdam…when I agreed to marry her. Since you are not my own flesh and blood, my last will and testament leaves nothing to you. I'm sure you understand that it's only fair that your dear little sister Ilse should be my sole beneficiary, bearing in mind that she is to the best of my knowledge and belief my own flesh and blood. Now then, my boy, do try to be of good cheer at all times. Goodbye and best of luck.”