on the items in his basket rather than on her, and Dagmar feigned disinterest by looking out the window.
A strange sensation invaded her. What the hell was she doing? This was a happily married, god-fearing man. What possible interest could he have in her, an ugly little shop girl, an orphan-outcast, a horny little teenager who hadn’t quite turned eighteen? And adultery, wasn’t that a mortal sin? A sin that, even confessed, barred you from access to paradise, just like murder?
Now he was close and she didn’t look away, couldn’t take her eyes off him even if she tried. She remembered what her face looked like when she smiled. She had seen it on a photo Anika took of her. Her smile could light up her ugly mug, and her eyes could sparkle, make the onlooker forget about that schnozzle of hers.
When he raises his eyes to look at me, let me sparkle, let me dazzle him.
She was ready. She smiled, put everything into it.
But he didn’t look up.
‘Do you have batteries?’ he said.
What was wrong with him?
‘Batteries? Sure.’ She pointed to the right of the counter. ‘What size?’
‘Ah, let me have a look,’ he said and veered away from her.
Dagmar tried to hold on to the smile, but felt it turning to stone on her lips, the light going out of her eyes. She knew if she didn’t do something, and quick, she would forever regret missing this opportunity.
A concupiscent thought brought a deeper glow to her cheeks and her groin.
Equipment. Picture his equipment.
‘Herr Hoffmann, one question. Didn’t you want to ask me something?’ she said, not knowing where she got the nerve.
He hesitated. ‘Huh?’
At last, though, he raised his eyes and met hers. Initially there was no recognition in them – he might as well have been seeing her for the first time in his life. But then something changed, crumbled almost tangibly in his expression. It was his distance, his restraint.
‘Remember?’ she said when he didn’t reply, just looked at her, taking her in.
‘You mean…?’ was all he said.
‘When we talked, outside your house? You said something about my photography?’
It only took a few more hastened heartbeats in her chest before, at last, he reacted verbally.
‘Yes, I remember. Your photography. Of course,’ he said.
‘You wanted to ask me something about it at church, I think. But then I never saw you there. You see, I always sit upstairs, next to – next to the organ,’ she said.
Her glow deepened as she thought of his sex organ.
‘Yes, I remember,’ he said, and finally Dagmar believed him.
There was recognition in his eyes, at last. And maybe something more. It emboldened her to go further.
‘Well, let me know. Anytime you want to see the collection, even today. Tonight. I’d be pleasured…honoured. It would be my…a pleasure,’ she said.
‘Tonight?’ he said, at last fully master of himself, fully himself, Albert Hoffmann again, turning that famous smile on.
That was the day. That night they became lovers.
*
That night was long gone. Years ago, more than three. The torrential affair had never ceased, not even after the accident that robbed Albert of his wife and child, and throughout the prolonged mourning period that followed the tragedy. At first, Dagmar thought he’d never come again. Hadn’t the accident paralysed him, bound him to a wheelchair? Several weeks went by. When she heard the familiar sound of his steps again outside her door she rejoiced. From then on, at least for a little while, she was proud to be the only person in Eschershausen to know that Albert could walk like before. There was nothing wrong with his legs. He maintained the wheelchair for the sake of the general public even after the rumour spread that his legs were fine. Still, nobody bore him a grudge over the deceit. He was Albert Hoffmann, after all. And as far as Dagmar was concerned, nothing had changed. He told her he would always come back for her.
She looked at the clock again. It was now past ten. He would come very soon or not tonight.
The candle had burned down and she had got wet again thinking about the day in the shop when he didn’t seem to recognise her at first, and how she seduced him – and there was no doubt that it was she who had taken the initiative that day, had made him her lover.
A lover with an impressive amount of stamina, loving her several times in the short while he would spend with her.
Thinking of his stamina increased the warmth she felt emanating from the space between her legs. If he did show up tonight they wouldn’t need to break the seal of the brand new tub of lube that sat on the nightstand. Not tonight.
If he did show, that was.
And then, at last, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. His footsteps. Dagmar could distinguish them from thousands.
She was ready and open.
Chapter Four
Gerhardt Hoffmann had soiled his pants again. It wasn’t his fault, probably, but still… Ever since his second stroke his anal incontinence had become a frequent issue, and Tobias found himself wondering if his father wasn’t doing it on purpose, out of spite, because he knew that his youngest son wouldn’t let him marinate in his own shit overnight if he could help it.
Tobias liked to think that his – their – dad had once tried to be a loving father to him, when they were little boys. He had probably made an effort to treat his sons equally, tried to love them both the same, in theory at least. They used to get the same Christmas presents and the same weekly allowance, a pittance maybe, but it was all that Gerhardt could afford on his reduced income. Yet Tobias had known for a long time that his father’s acts of equality were just that — acts. When it came right down to it, Dad, like most people, preferred Albert over him.
When did it all go wrong? Born in 1949, a mere three minutes apart, Albert and Tobias looked, sounded and behaved identically, as interchangeable as only identical twins could aspire to be. For all intents and purposes they were the same person. People would forever ask who was who, and sometimes even their father didn’t know the answer. In one of Tobias’ earliest, most eagerly guarded memories, Albert stood at the top of the staircase, and Tobi wanted to sneak up from behind, push him with all his might and take over his beloved brother’s life when the real Albert broke his neck falling down the stairs.
If only their mother Tatjana had lived, things would have been different, of that Tobias was certain. Gerhardt never talked about her, and there were no photos in the house on the Ith where they grew up. With no maternal relatives to fill in the gaps, the boys only knew that Mum’s personal story was tightly enmeshed with the country’s post-war history.
After the great defeat in 1945, Germany had been awash with refugees, ethnic Germans who were expelled from the eastern countries they had been calling their homes for centuries, many seeing the so-called fatherland for the first time. Most of the influx of new arrivals who settled in Eschershausen came from Silesia, once a real hinterland of the Reich and now the new Poland. When Russia expanded westwards, Stalin shifted Polish borders from east to west and into land and properties of recently dispossessed and evicted Silesians. In the post-war confusion nobody minded when the victors looted, raped and killed the vanquished whenever the process of evicting them got too monotonous.
Among the many things the Silesians had discarded on the run was any sense of culpability they might have felt for the unimaginably horrid destinies that had befallen the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, intellectuals and lefties on their former doorsteps. Nothing bleaches the human conscience as thoroughly as naked survival. Similarly they didn’t want to know about atrocities that