Eschershausen most locals had started the Hitler years by closing their eyes and they continued looking away until it was too late. For every actively dissident villager there had been a dozen fascist, trigger-happy thugs willing to stand them up against a wall. The silent majority had just followed the flock, the way of least resistance, right into hell, or purgatory at least. In the autumn of 1944, several hundred Jewish prisoners had been delivered to work in a local mine. By March 1945, when the war was all but lost, the Jews were put on a train and transported to a death camp. It was a holocaust on wheels.
Several months later came the American liberation of Eschershausen which was followed by the British occupation. God only knew it wasn’t easy being a German during the austerity of the post war years, what with the humiliation and the shame and the guilt. And for what? After all, they had just followed orders. And they suffered, too. If only they could conjure up a victor-approved enemy, things would look up.
The Silesians injected three traits into the straight-laced, all-protestant Lower Saxony gene pool: ardent Catholicism, strident frugality and a wily sense of humour. Their sheer numbers effectively doubled Eschershausen’s population, increased it to a sleepy four thousand, plugging the holes caused by the ravages of war and then some. Unlike the Catholics, the Protestants didn’t have the relief of holy confession. The guilt stayed with them and became an invisible, unshakable burden.
Life was hard and gloom was ubiquitous. Misery and rubble were in the air you breathed, in the rags you wore and in the gritty food you ate, if you were lucky enough to eat at all. Still, being miserable felt a bit like redemption and made it easier not to think about what you could have done, should have done, would have done. Survival instincts kicked in; just forget the past, look to the future.
There were new uniforms —victorious allies, first the Yanks and then the Tommie’s —and the refugees from the east with spine-tingling stories of escapes from evil, raping Russians. Suddenly the Germans were real victims, too: victims of allied bombings, of communist persecution, of starvation. Victims of shame and fear, the Marshall plan, the Berlin corridor. The Cold War commenced and time marched on. Facts blurred in a cloud of rubble dust.
The few blurry facts that Albert and Tobias knew about their mother included that she had been one of those refugees who arrived with nothing but a tiny bundle of clothes on her back and some bad memories she couldn’t shake. Tatjana never found out what had happened to her family back east, never reconnected with any relatives. But she did find Gerhardt Hoffmann and, following an awkward courtship, bore him twins in the same year as the new Federal Republic of Germany was founded, when things started to look up, when things slowly started getting better, if almost imperceptibly so.
The twins were a symbol of hope. Except, in the words of their father, Tatjana didn’t make it. There were complications…and in the end Gerhardt was a single father of two healthy boys. He quit his job to look after them. At least that’s what he told them when they were growing up. Doubt about the veracity of his words didn’t set in until much later when they learned that he did menial jobs on the Ith like cleaning the British officers’ wives’ swimming pools.
One day Tobias chanced upon his father’s paperwork while searching for some social security slip from way back. He found out that Gerhardt Hoffmann had been relieved of his post in August 1949, weeks after their birth, and had been receiving a pension and child support since then. He had not quit of his own volition as he had always maintained. The implications of this lie were enormous.
Tobias made a mental note to ask his father about this and about the other incongruences when the opportunity arose. Only it never did, and it had become increasingly rare by the late 1970s to find Gerhardt in a lucid, benevolent mood where it would make sense to press for answers.
All the more reason not to wait forever, Tobias thought as he wiped his father’s bottom. What was clear to him, what he knew as fact, was that dad loved Albert better than him. He knew it because since their childhood the boys had played games with the rest of the world. They had swapped identities, had merged into a hybrid being that was probably more Albert than Tobias. The latter had experienced his father’s love both as himself and as his brother. He knew the difference. Although it was substantial and hurt like torture, he didn’t hold it against anybody, not his father or anybody else — not even against himself. Albert was just more loveable. Hell, he preferred his brother, too. Tobi was never happier than when he was being Albert, losing himself in the illusion, Believing that he was worthy of the unquestioning love that came pouring out of everybody he met and that he never received when he was merely himself, Tobias.
If ever there had been a conceivable way of getting rid of his first ego for good, Tobias wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to metamorphose into his alter-ego Albert for keeps. The Ith, where they grew up, and Eschershausen, where they went to school, were very finite worlds, and there simply wasn’t enough room for two Alberts.
By and by Tobias learned to appreciate that his brother needed Tobi to be Tobi for his own purposes. When Albert was in one of his bad moods he sent Tobi to act in his stead. This trick helped to maintain the illusion that Albert was perfect every day of the year. Tobias played along willingly and learnt to smile as little as possible when he was himself to underscore the contrast between the brothers.
What had started in their home continued at school with teachers and peers alike. Albert was the star, Tobias the sidekick. Sure, he had his own hangers-on, people who didn’t make it into Albert’s inner circle and who by proxy were happy enough in Tobias’ vicinity. For those losers he felt nothing but disdain.
When they grew older Albert said he wanted to repay his debts, and girls were the currency. He’d set up rendezvous and send Tobias in his stead. Invariably the girls would want to make love, and Tobias-as-Albert would be only too happy to comply. He worked out soon enough that his brother let him have only girls he had grown tired of and couldn’t be bothered breaking up with, not when he was in one of his foul moods. For Tobias that was in order, the way of the world. He wouldn’t have had it any other way and he appreciated that Albert didn’t like to dilute his flawless image by showing himself publicly when he felt depressed. And after all, Tobi got guaranteed sex out of the deal without having to worry about touching first, second or third base, any base he cared for. Albert’s charm worked like a proverbial charm, even when channelled through his brother.
*
The boys grew up in the 1950s and 60s, unwittingly watching their country recover, blossom economically and divide. After the construction of the Wall in 1961 the Germany of their forefathers had ceased to exist permanently, and that was probably a good thing.
Everybody expected great things from Albert but he opted for an ordinary office job in a local concrete factory. While his choice baffled many in Eschershausen, his brother suspected all along that Albert was working on long-term designs to remain at the top of the pecking order, a game he knew better than anybody else.
Tobias, in contrast, was ready to stretch his wings and discover the world; he had much less to lose. He got as far as Göttingen, some forty kilometres up the road, where he enrolled at university to study chemistry. There, left to his own devices, he tried to be Albert as much as possible — extroverted, friendly, smiling. After all, people in Göttingen wouldn’t know the real thing. Surely they could accept him, love him and want to have him around. Only, like a leper without limbs, he felt alone and incomplete without his twin.
He excelled at his studies, soaked up information like a dried-out bone and had no idea what to do with all that knowledge. Surely he would never set foot in a laboratory or a pharmacy, at least not to work.
When Dad suffered his first stroke Tobias was exhilarated. He had done three years of university, three years of being nice and wondering why he wasn’t happy, three years of wanting to be back in Eschershausen where he could be both Albert and Tobias, at least for short periods. Without hesitation he dropped everything, ostensibly to be with Dad, to look after the old man, but mainly because he had seen enough of the world and was ready to come home.
To his eternal consternation he found the house of his childhood had changed and would never be the same again. Albert was in love and would not permit any further