day that Gerhardt had shed tears in front of Tobias — August 16, 1977 — Tobias had listened to the news on the radio and learned that Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, had passed away. For reasons beyond his immediate comprehension he bawled like a baby, cried himself to sleep. It was raining heavily. He didn’t know it then, but on that day an amorphous seed was sown into his mind. It inspired an abstract plan that he wouldn’t fully understand for years. That’s the moment things really went wrong for him.
But we’re jumping ahead.
*
One year later the radio played a couple of Elvis tunes to commemorate the first anniversary of his passing and Tobias remembered the portentous conversation with Dad. It was raining again. On the following Sunday morning, Tobias pushed Gerhardt up and down Segelflugstrasse. The old man’s need for fresh air taken care of, his son was free to set off on a stroll to enjoy the one luxury the Ith provided — proximity to nature. No matter how many times Tobias walked among the spruce and beech trees, he always discovered something new and beautiful. The paths were still muddy but he didn’t mind. He knew he had his best ideas when he was alone, hiking through the woods. His thoughts took off on tangents with almost cosmic reach.
Suddenly he remembered the last time he had cried. He didn’t recall the exact year or his age at the time; it had to be in the late 1950s, when he was ten or thereabouts, maybe a year younger. Gerhardt had taken the boys on a trip to Bad Nauheim, a spa town where he had been sent to rest after Tatjana’s death on doctor’s orders. He’d returned to visit an old friend – what was his name again? The boys had found the visit particularly boring. They’d had to sit quietly at the lunch table for hours, listening to particularly dull conversations without interrupting and without peers to play with. Finally a digestive walk was suggested and the twins had happily accepted.
After walking through the town for a while, Albert needed to go to the toilet, and urgently. Uncle Willie — that was the name of Dad’s friend who, incidentally, had liked Albert better than Tobias, too — took the boy into a nearby restaurant.
Left momentarily alone with Gerhardt, Tobias noticed a small but rapidly growing mob of young people across the street. Soon a journalist joined them and started taking pictures.
‘Look, Dad,’ Tobias said.
Flashlights went off, the crowd continued to swell and suddenly a man in US army fatigues separated from the group and ran across the street toward the boy and his father. He was in his early twenties with dark hair and a somewhat pasty complexion. The man dashed past them and disappeared in a small lane next to the restaurant Albert and Uncle Willie had entered minutes earlier.
Dad was visibly impressed but tried to hide his emotions behind a sarcastic snigger.
‘I bet you one mark you don’t know who that is, son.’
Tobias looked up at him, proud to be sharing the moment with his father. He sensed that something monumental was happening, something that he failed to comprehend. Why would Dad risk good money, a whole mark? It didn’t matter. He was alone with Dad. Best not to disappoint him.
‘Who is it? Who is it?’ he said.
‘That man, my son, was only the King of Rock, Elvis ‘the Pelvis’ — Presley,’ Gerhardt said. ‘Wait till I tell the guys. They won’t believe me.’
Tobias pondered immediately which ‘guys’ his father was referring to and felt instantly jealous of them. Could they be Uncle Willie and Albert? Either way. ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ meant absolutely nothing to him, and he said as much.
In reply, Gerhardt made a breathy sound through his teeth. To his son it was the devastating sound of disdain. Perhaps he misunderstood, perhaps Dad wasn’t judging his young son’s ignorance at all, but merely releasing some trapped air from his mouth with ill-timed precision. But to Tobias it sounded and felt like being ridiculed once again and he realised fully how hurt he was when Willie and Albert returned a few minutes later. By then most of the crowd had dispersed and there was little trace left of any historical happenings.
‘Guess who we just saw!’ Gerhardt said.
‘Who, Dad?’ Albert said.
‘Mother Teresa?’ Willie hunched his shoulders.
‘Only Elvis Presley, the king of Rock’n’Roll. That’s who!’ Dad said.
‘The quiff, the teddy boy? Yeah, that’s not impossible, actually. He’s doing his military service not far from here, in Friedberg, but they let him sleep in a villa here in town. Some people are more equal than others, even in the US army,’ Willie said.
‘They chopped off the quiff but it was him all right. Just raced across the street, chased by a crowd of young girls. And them journalists. Saw ‘em with my own eyes,’ Dad said.
‘Who’s Alois?’ Albert said.
Dad looked at him tenderly and ruffled his hair.
‘Well, how could you know him, son? We’re a bit isolated on that Ith of ours, aren’t we? Next year we’ll get our own television set. You’ll get to see him, too,’ Gerhardt said.
‘I’ve got some 45s at home. Hot stuff. We’ll give them a spin when we get back, if your dad has no objections. I have a feeling you might like him,’ Uncle Willie said and smiled at Albert, who would start his record collection that year.
That evening, soon as they shut the doors to the car and started the drive back home, Tobias cried in the back seat. He hadn’t wanted Uncle Willie to see him this way, had fought against the tears all afternoon but couldn’t keep them in check any longer now that they were alone.
‘Tobi is crying, Dad,’ Albert said when he saw what was happening. There was sympathy and surprise in his voice.
Gerhardt shifted in his seat in order to find Tobias’ reflection in the rear-view mirror.
‘What’s wrong now, son?’ he said.
Tobias was resolute, and his pain was as deeply felt as he was inarticulate. He would not and could not say how the constant difference in treatment he and Albert received from Dad and everybody else hurt him. He couldn’t deal with the unconcealed mockery in his father’s snort on the one hand, and with the warm understanding Dad had extended towards Albert on the other. Most of the time he experienced the inequality of affection as dull and unfocused. That day it had become an acute, piercing ache. Although he wiped at his tears they kept coming back.
‘Am not crying,’ he said.
‘Bertie, let your little brother cry, why don’t you? Leave him alone. After all, he’s only the wee one,’ Gerhardt said and smirked sarcastically.
That had been the last time Dad saw Tobias cry, and remembering it still hurt like a motherfucker nearly twenty years on.
*
And now Elvis had been dead for exactly one year and Tobias felt sad again, sad like he had all those years ago on the drive back from Bad Nauheim, sad about life in general, about what had become of him. Worse was still to come.
He was so caught up in his sadness that he didn’t see Detlev Donnersberg at first. Detlev was leaning against his car and somebody else was inside, maybe a woman.
Detlev, alone with a female companion on a deserted forest path…It was getting interesting. If only Tobias could get a better look at the companion. But Detlev positioned himself deliberately between Tobi and her – which made it even more interesting.
After a brief and awkward greeting – Detlev was three or four years his senior and merely a church acquaintance after all – Tobi moved on.
As he reached a bend in the path that would remove the car from his field of vision he turned around once more to get a better look at the woman.
She was almost a girl, much younger than expected.
Where had he seen her before?
It didn’t come immediately.