Free Silence by Mechtild Borrmann Page B

Corporation.” Robert did not rise to this, preferring not to argue with his father in public. As they were returning to their seats, his mother took him aside and whispered, “Let him have that. He’s so proud of his life’s work. Of you and his life’s work.”
    But all he heard was that his father did not respect his decision to become a doctor. Once they were home, they got into one of those arguments that built up over the years, making them grow farther and farther apart.
    The old man had clung to his expectations with incredible tenacity, as a consequence ignoring, even denying, anything that did not fit in with his image of the world. What if he had done the same thing with his own history?
    Robert felt a flush of heat rising, heard his blood rushing in time with his heartbeat in his inner ear.
    What else would this journalist find out?
    His colleague’s presentation was over, there was noise all around, chairs being pushed back. He sat where he was.
    His father was dead. The woman in the photo had not been his father’s lover, and he had not wanted to know any more. He would not allow this journalist woman to drag his father’s life out into the open.

Chapter 15

    April 22, 1998
    To begin with, her short telephone conversation with Rita Albers had provoked Therese Mende to anger, but then this had turned into a kind of impassivity. It had become a vacuum in which her thoughts moved slowly and viscously. She picked up the silver-framed picture of her daughter from the sideboard. Beside it stood the picture, still bearing a black ribbon, of her husband, Tillmann. He would have known how to talk to Isabel. He would have found the right words. But she herself? How was she supposed to tell her grown-up daughter the thing she had kept secret all these years? Isabel was strong, of that there was no doubt. She would know how to handle it. But how would she behave toward her mother in the future? Could Therese bear it if her daughter turned against her, if she wouldn’t forgive the lies about her past?
    Rita Albers, filled with blind journalistic zeal, was in the process of destroying her life.
    She put the picture down. That woman would try to sell her story to the highest bidder. It was about money. Of course, it was always about money.
    The realization was liberating, and it set her in motion. She spent more than an hour on the phone with her lawyer. Then she sat down on the terrace, beneath the eaves, and felt the tension dropping away. It would be a matter of the right price.
    But for herself there was no escape. The time that had been kept secret was relentlessly demanding its rightful place, now that the first images had revealed themselves. Whenever she found herself at rest, it was like an undertow from which she could not pull free.
    Christmas 1939
    For the first half of December, Kranenburg was like a sketch in soft charcoal. Snow lay heaped on the roofs. The fields and meadows were laid out like huge bleached sheets on wash day. Avenues of poplars stood like smudged lines in the colorless silence. Toward the lake, hungry crows cawed from bare trees.
    A damp, heavy chill forced people to hurry through the streets with their heads bowed.
    Therese joined the League of German Girls, and her mother joined the National Socialist Women’s League. It was a family decision, whereby they hoped to escape general attention. And peace did in fact return to the Pohl household. A sensitive, concentrated peace, a kind of still watchfulness.
    During the last few weeks, she had cycled to the lookout three times to drop off or pick up papers.
    From time to time she met up with Wilhelm, who would now be seen publicly with her in places where she “belonged.” They went for walks, or went to the little café by the church. His pale blue eyes would light up in honest joy when he looked at her. Sometimes he would outline his plans. Across the table in the café he whispered that he wanted a big family; during a walk he told