THE GREEN KING (part 41)

THE GREEN KING (part 41)

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The Photographer from Salzburg

The three little boys came in and sat down with the same furtive movement, their three faces looking from the hook to the frightened face of the women without showing any interest in what was looking place. The presence, the attitude, the silence, the large, serious blue eyes of the three little boys in this farmhouse in the middle of the forest were reminiscent of German folklore stories, full of ogres and fairies.

‘Once,’ said Emma Donin, ‘he spoke of a sanatorium.’

‘Where they might have taken my father between July and September of 1941.’

Near Linz, sshe said. Anton had said another name, but she didn’t remember it anymore. From under his sirt, Reb pulled out the official map stolen from the British general. It took some time; he read, one by one, all the names on the map, including Mauthausen, within a forty mille radius of Linz…

… until the movement when he said yes, that was the name, Hartheim.

The castle of Hatheim.

Having left Reichenau, he spent the rest of the day and the following night in Payerbach, at the house of the old man with the barrow, whose invitation he had at first declined. And it was the only time in four years, since his departure for Lvov with his mother and sister, that he slept in a real bed, ate at a table surrounded by a family. The old man’s name was Doppler; three of grandsons had been recruited into the German Army, two of them had already died, officially, and there was no word on the third one. Reb told Doppler about the children in Emma Donin’s care and asked him to look after them.

TO BE CONTINUED

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I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…