All that would probably have escaped me—Anke and I had better things to do than to worry about the adults’ affairs—if my father had stayed home like every other winter, if his hedges and flower beds had been buried under a thick layer of snow. But the old owner insisted that my dad work long hours in the gardens of the Big House, and the strangest thing was that it didn’t seem to bother my father. Quite the opposite. Each morning he seemed to get up a little bit earlier than the previous one, and my mother started to complain about his early rising, his good spirits, and loud voice. When my father returned home in the evenings, she was in such a foul mood that I left the house to make Christmas decorations from colored paper and straw with Anke.
What I didn’t know, but what my mom told me all too soon in a low whisper, was that Inge Madelung was helping my dad with his work. In the fall Inge had helped in the fields, just like the previous year, but one day the overseer had approached her and asked if she would like to help the gardener with his work. Inge had agreed and had been happy to escape the sun beating down on her without respite. My father had shaken his head when the overseer introduced him to Inge, had complained to my mother that she couldn’t lift and carry like a man.
But after the first week, he had been surprisingly satisfied with her work, and after another week, they could often be seen working side by side until my father drove home at night in his beat-up truck.
My mother’s face was dark, her eyes shimmered, and something that appeared to be a smile, but was so much more dangerous, played on her lips while she told me all this two days before our Christmas recess. “The worst,” she said, “is that he won’t talk about her at all anymore. He’s keeping her a secret. He can’t wait to be alone with that hussy. Your father is not himself anymore. He’s long forgotten about the two of us.”
I didn’t answer my mother. No word could have consoled her or changed the plan she had come up with. As soon as school let out for Christmas, I was to accompany my dad to the Big House again. “You have to keep your eyes open and tell me everything you see,” she said.
“Can Anke come with me?” I asked.
My mom nodded. “Just don’t let on.”
On December 21, at five o’clock in the morning, my dad and I left the house and picked up Anke, who was already waiting outside her house, freshly washed and groomed. Together we trundled through the darkness toward the Big House.
Anke carried a small leather bag that her mother had packed for her, and she stared intently through the side window. She wore a dress, which was, unlike my own, much too nice to wear for work or play, and she looked all pretty and smelled as if her mom had rubbed her whole body with cologne. “Can we go into the maze?” she asked.
“As long as you don’t get caught,” mumbled my father. Last summer my presence had still cheered him up, but this winter morning he was moody. “Don’t do anything foolish and, above all, be courteous to old man von Kamphoff. Curtsy when you see him.”
Three generations of the von Kamphoff family lived in the manor house. The old owner had served as an officer in two wars. He was missing an arm and had a pronounced limp. It was he who had first hired my dad, when my father was a young man with a pregnant bride, and he treated Dad with the same benevolence one might show to a favorite dog. His legs were white and crisscrossed by varicose veins and scars, and one shirtsleeve was rolled up and fastened to the shoulder with safety pins.
Some days he stood next to my dad, who was digging up weed trees or planting rhododendrons, and rambled on good-humoredly about the battles he’d fought in. He explained why we should have won the wars and which mistakes and coincidences had prevented us from claiming what was destined to be ours.
My father agreed. He might have been a good, gentle man, but if his bad eyes had not kept him out of the service, he would readily have fought for the Vaterland. He was poor, Hemmersmoor was poor, someone had to be responsible for the misery in the world, and it couldn’t be us. Not us.
Only a few people in the village had ever visited the manor, and even fewer had set foot inside. Yet this fact added spice to the rumors that swirled around the von Kamphoff family. It was said that the old Johann von Kamphoff had murdered his father in his sleep to become lord of the manor, and that a black woman he had captured during the last war was imprisoned in the basement. The patrons of Frick’s Inn again and again talked about the true heir. They claimed that Johann had had a younger brother, and that this brother, against all customs, should have inherited the manor. But after the death of his father, Johann hadn’t wanted to cede what he thought was his and had killed his brother. In a different version of the story, Johann had imprisoned his brother, just like the black woman. Yet nobody could remember what the true heir had looked like. All this had happened before the first of the wars, and birth certificates weren’t archived in Hemmersmoor.
Today, though, it wasn’t old von Kamphoff who greeted us when we arrived at the manor house. It was Inge Madelung, and as soon as my dad had climbed out of his truck, he introduced us to her. “Winter recess,” he mumbled. “They’re in the way at home.”
Inge shook hands with us as though we were already grown up. “You must be going to school with my Friedrich,” she said.
“Yes,” Anke said. “He’s in our class.”
“How nice,” said the widow. “Maybe you’d like to play together.”
“Maybe,” I said without enthusiasm, but my dad looked sternly in my direction, then sent me and Anke to get rakes, garden shears, and buckets from the toolshed. “You can give us a hand,” he said, and soon we were pulling weeds and raking the lawn.
“This is stupid,” Anke said. Her hands were already covered in blisters. “My mom is baking cookies today.”
I stuck my tongue out and said, “Why don’t you run home?”
“And later we have to play with that bastard,” she complained.
“Yeah, that’s really stupid,” I agreed. I couldn’t tell her the true reason why we had come to the manor. My mom had forbidden me to make a single peep, but her admonishment hadn’t been necessary. “When the old man joins us, we can go and play.” I tried to appease her.
Last summer Mr. von Kamphoff had come into the garden two, maybe three, times a week, but now my dad was complaining about his constant presence. “Here he comes again,” he said under his breath when, around nine o’clock, the old owner made his way toward us. He seemed to abhor the many visits his employer made, and I noticed that Johann von Kamphoff’s appearance had changed. His hair was neatly cut and glistened with grease. He had stopped wearing his worn and shapeless pants, and his shoes had been shined. He greeted me and Anke, and we both curtsied; then he turned to the widow and asked, “Mrs. Madelung, busy again?”
“Let’s go,” I whispered into Anke’s ear, but my friend shook her head silently.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, but I still didn’t receive an answer. Instead Anke stared at the old man, and whenever he looked in her direction, she smiled diligently. Finally she stooped and pretended to pull weeds while listening intently to the adults’ conversation.
While Johann von Kamphoff was talking about his war adventures, my father’s face grew increasingly somber. “Didn’t have to kill them,” the owner sighed. “Could have simply disowned them.” He still wore his shirtsleeve rolled up and pinned to the shoulder, but the shirt was made from silk, and he wore an expensive tie.
“Absolutely,” my father agreed. “Would have been better for the war effort.”