At Johann Langner’s home in Grünwald, Jefferson Tayte had been listening to the continuation of his host’s wartime story with great interest. During the course of Langner’s monologue, Tayte had also become knotted with anger over what had happened to Ava and her parents. Volker Strobel had done a terrible thing indeed, and while Tayte would have felt anger at hearing such a story about anyone’s family, more and more he was coming to regard the Bauers as his own family, especially as he’d just heard that Johann Langner and Ava Bauer did indeed have a child together.
Ingrid Keller had finished cutting Langner’s hair, and Tayte and Langner were now alone in the sunlit drawing room. Tayte appreciated his time together with the man he was now coming to think of as his grandfather, although he supposed Keller wouldn’t be gone long. He sat back on the sofa he’d been perched on since his arrival at Langner’s home and took a deep breath to calm himself.
‘Thank you, Mr Langner,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what it means to me to hear that you and Ava had a child. And you’ve cleared a few more things up, too,’ he added, thinking about the Bauer family and the records he’d previously seen, and those he had not been able to see.
‘How do you mean?’ Langner asked.
‘Well, there were no death records for Ava or her father on file at the Munich record office. They could have been recorded elsewhere, but I now know that’s not the case. If they died at Flossenbürg concentration camp, maybe their deaths weren’t recorded at all.’
‘I see,’ Langner said. He nodded. ‘Yes, I’d say it was highly unlikely, particularly as they died close to the end of the war.’
Tayte thought about Ava’s mother then and he recalled that she’d died in 1945. Now Tayte understood why. ‘I saw a copy of Adelina Bauer’s death certificate,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware, but it appears that Flossenbürg killed her, too. She died soon after she was released, and it seems likely to me now that her death was as a result of her ordeal at the camp.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Langner said. ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
It was a sorry affair altogether as far as Tayte was concerned. No, not altogether. Something good had come out of it—the child. It seemed likely to Tayte now that he had become Karl Schr?der, and if Karl really was Tayte’s father then he had been born in a concentration camp at Flossenbürg, not in Gilching as was recorded on Karl’s birth certificate, supporting Tayte’s belief that he’d been looking at Karl’s amended record, and that Karl had indeed been adopted. Tayte knew such seemingly miraculous births existed, although they were few. He’d read about them in newspapers and online, and with great fascination over how such fragile life can emerge and survive under such atrocious conditions. Yet here was another example of life finding a way.
Tayte was distracted from his thoughts when the door to the drawing room opened behind him and Ingrid Keller returned. She still hadn’t spoken a word since Tayte arrived. He didn’t know what he’d done to upset her, but it was clear that she’d taken a dislike to him. He thought perhaps she just had a sour disposition, and that she was the same with everyone. Rudi Langner had certainly backed up that notion, but Tayte couldn’t see what he could do to win her over, so he dismissed it. He turned back to Langner to see Keller produce a nail file with which she began to manicure his fingernails.
‘Someone’s being pampered,’ Tayte said in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere he felt Keller’s presence imbued. ‘Are you just glad to be out of hospital, or do you have a party to go to?’
Langner looked up from his hands, showing a hint of a smile. ‘I’m being fussed over because I have an anniversary party to attend this evening.’
‘For the gallery?’ Tayte said, knowing it couldn’t be a wedding anniversary. ‘That’s great. I’ll bet you’re thrilled to have made it out of that hospital in time.’
Langner chuckled to himself. ‘I’m thrilled to have made it out of there at all,’ he said. ‘Now shall I continue my story before I forget where I was?’
‘Absolutely,’ Tayte said. He wanted to hear what became of the child, sure now that he’d been adopted by Ava’s uncle, Heinz Schr?der. He figured there had to be a story to explain how and why that came about, too, but for now he couldn’t get past Langner’s account of the terrible thing Volker Strobel had done. ‘So what did you do about Strobel?’ he asked, supposing that a fighting man in the ranks of Germany’s elite Leibstandarte could not have let such a thing go without retribution.
Tayte knew at once that his question had stirred further dark memories within Langner. His fleshy cheeks sagged as he began to shake his head. A moment later he sighed heavily and said, ‘I was so full of hatred. And one terrible deed can so easily lead to another, can’t it?’ He nodded slowly to himself, as though answering his own question. ‘What did I do?’ he repeated. ‘I’m afraid an equally terrible repercussion followed Ava’s death.’
Chapter Forty