But the man lay on Franz Muller’s conscience, as much as any of the victims he felt responsible for in the east. He had carved a small cross on the tree above the grave, and he visited once a month. He cleared the nastiest weeds and brought flowers and, most of all, stood there and listened to the forest and tried to show respect.
At some point, her father had researched the man at the local archive and discovered an article in the town paper from around that time, more of a newsletter really, released by the occupying Americans, naming a Fyodor Ivanov, former inmate of Stalag VIIA, missing, last seen outside of Ehrenheim with his former stalag comrades. It was one of many such listings—missing persons took up a whole page. And Franz had not known how to pursue it further. He had only a grade-school education. He was not a researcher. And Ivanov was a common Russian name.
Some years ago, another body was discovered in these same woods. This was right before Franz Muller died, and he had followed the story with interest. The bones were entered into an official process run by the German Office, the state agency responsible for such findings. They were analyzed and bundled into black plastic, stored temporarily in the town’s morgue. DNA testing revealed they belonged to a German male, approximately thirty-eight years old, with evidence of combat injuries and death from a wasting sickness. No definitive identity was established. The bones were reinterred in a cardboard box in the Ehrenheim cemetery.
Were the bones of that man, whoever he was, any better off now than they were before they were found? This was the question Franz Muller asked. He honestly didn’t know. Clotilde could decide, once he was gone, what she should do. Her father’s secret is now her responsibility.
She is still undecided. Maybe someday she will go to the authorities and set the official exhuming process in motion. Maybe they will dig up the bones and discover enough information to separate this specific Fyodor Ivanov from all the others declared dead or missing at the time. Maybe his family will be tracked to some corner of what is now Belarus and contacted by a tireless employee of the German Office whose job it is to conduct this sort of postmortem search. And maybe this will bring someone closure, or stir their anger, or reopen wounds. But it won’t bring back the man.
For now, Clotilde maintains her father’s tradition. She visits the grave and ensures it is not entirely overgrown. She brings flowers from her garden or sometimes a special stone she has found on a trip. The original cross Franz Muller carved into the trunk has grown up out of sight, and there is a new one, a stripe he gouged into the bark maybe fifteen years ago, which itself has moved up. Any passersby who might stumble upon the site would probably imagine it an animal’s grave or a child’s fairy house. Maybe they would stop and wonder for a moment. But most probably not.
When she visits, Clotilde follows her father’s instructions. In the dappled light beneath the tall pine, she tries to think of the varied beauties of life: the watchful way her dogs look on as she stands in silence; the sight of crocus heads pushing through the melting snow; the fact that human beings are compelled to construct cathedrals and sing lullabies and create art; that they devote themselves to obscure causes and esoteric fields of knowledge; that the world population grows by eighty million people each year.
She conjures these things in her mind and hopes they have meaning.
And she doesn’t say a word.