"Shut up!" "Down by the Nahe, a man saw a storm ruining his crops." "What did he do?" "He took his gun, went to the door and fired up into the sky." "But as he fired, his gun was struck by lightning." "Right!" "If I were God I wouldn't want people firing into my heaven." "I can depend on my cellar steps." "If they're a bit damp, there'll be rain." "If they're warm, we get a storm." "This morning they were cold." "You and your steps!" "You sound as if you'd fallen down them." "That's the High Mass from Cologne cathedral." "Then we needn't have gone to church this morning." "The whole of Baldenau Castle is like a church." "Eduard, the volt metre." "Paul, the music was lovely." "We'll get it better after I tune the aerial." "You're in the newspaper." "It says, "Even in the Hunsrück radio has arrived."" "Here's something else." ""He who waves money about..." ""...never had any before."" "Have you heard in Simmern, the girls are having their hair bobbed." " Is that the latest fashion?" " They have to follow every fashion." "What does that look like?" "Is he back again?" "Now he has his fingers in that jar of gherkins." "Will you stop that?" "What?" "Can't you hear, Pauline?" "Pauline, your lung!" "What we need today are really feminine women and masculine men." "Inwardly and outwardly." "Why don't you want any?" "Glasisch had his scabby fingers in there." "No, I'm not eating that." "Alois, don't make a fuss." "Eat some." "That's a distant radio." "This is RAVAG, Vienna." "Leo Slezak's first wireless broadcast." " Why do they say wireless?" " Leave the wire alone." "Dear listeners non-licence payers everyone listening to wavelength 530." "Today I am singing on the wireless for the first time." "You have no idea how excited I am." "My first song will be "The Linden Tree" by Franz Schubert." "Now, everyone, a nice friendly face." "In the shade of the linden tree I dreamed many a sweet dream." "How furious my father was when Glasisch got beside him in the photograph." "I knew it, the valley and the castle they're like a great dish collecting the waves from space." "Sometimes, Paul..." "You came back three years ago but you still aren't at home here." "That's just what Apollonia told me." "You still think of Apollonia often;" "I've noticed that too." "Well, she speaks French now goes shopping and can make French jokes in Normandy." "She didn't want to stay here with us." "Why have you never asked me how she is?" "She's written to me;" "I'd know best." "She says it's a lovely country, France." "And they are the luckiest people in all Europe." "She wants to be remembered to you." "I still see her going through the village with her black hair." "Always merry, such white teeth when she laughed." "She could look at you so affectionately." "We often talked about you, when she was still here." "You were the only one she thought anything of." "How they tormented her, even as a child in Dickenschied because nobody knew her father they called her a gypsy and blamed her for everything that happened in the village." "Yet she was so good-hearted never wanted to let anyone see her crying." "And she loved you, Paul." "You're just like Apollonia." "You won't let anyone see what you feel." "Paul, once you promised me something." "What?" "That you'd do something special." "That you'd be the only one and the first." "What are we doing here?" "Maria, I think I love you." "Won't you be my wife?" "Now a photograph of the rabbits." "Hold them high." "We'll have a souvenir of them after they're eaten." "Pauline, I said you should bob your hair then it won't get in a mess." "This is my sister Pauline." "I told you about her." "That's a nice dress..." "Did you make it yourself?" "Look, Schorsch, Julius." "The pictures from last Sunday." "I developed them." "They've come out well." "They are wonderful." "Good shot." "You should have been in Simmern last weekend." "It was quite an event." "Julius and I had a great time." "That's a great photo." "Julius, look at the second row." "That's us." "We read about it in Kreuznach, in the paper." "The French arrested the mayor because he wouldn't show his identity card." "And I photographed it." "Not the actual event, but I was there a couple of hours later." "That's the house where they arrested him." "Rolled gold wedding rings in stock - very durable." "I can make wedding rings from your own gold." "He lives up there." "Pauline, I'll be back!" "When I saw you outside I thought I'd better bring you inside the shop because there's a Jew living upstairs who's said to be a Separatist." "They call him the slow worm." "There's still some in there." "Keep still." "We have three of four Separatists in Simmern." "Each of them has five or six window panes." "Imagine all the breakages in the last three days." "The plates are in the bag." "Careful, they're glass." "What's he put there?" "That looks like blood poisoning to me." "We must make sure it doesn't go over the wrist." "Keep it in." "It has to be as hot as you can bear or we don't get the bacteria out." "I read on a calendar what bacteria get up to in the blood." "You must mind they don't go into the heart or the head." "You can't see them, but they've got to come out of the hand." "Keep it in there." "I can't throw them on the manure or they'll go on the fields, then back to us." "Mother, what are you doing?" "What have you got there?" "Where can I tip something like this?" "No, the hares are there." "I'll take them behind the house." "Mother, stop." "These are the bacteria from Pauline's hand." "Paul, where are you?" "Maria, get out of my way." "Paul, get your wife to bed, she must lie down." "I know." "She'll have a premature birth;" "dangerous in the eighth month." "Not in the house." "Pauline is there and I've spilt bacteria." "Go to Wiegand's." "Mother, be quiet." "I don't know what you want from me." "Does it hurt here?" "Not there." "It is the back of my head that hurts." "Why your head?" "That was Pauline." "Will it be premature?" "It's a good thing you're back, Mother." "I was in the house the whole time." "No, I saw you in the slate quarry and a cold wind was blowing out of the cave and I waited so long for you and above me Eduard was sitting in the woods holding a lump of gold in his hands." "Eduard's in Alzey, in prison." "A lump of gold." "He must be lost." "Eduard, your lung!" " Talk German." " He doesn't know German." "To think you're Ralf Windhäuser and you're from America." "In Argenthal, there's another Windhäuser..." "His name's Rudolf." "In my grandfather's time, people emigrated to Brazil." "Nowadays, they're called Emilio, Francisco Roberto and Margrinia." "Like margarine!" "If you won't believe it, go up to the loft and get the letter from Leopold Simon, from the Matto Grosso." "But that's Brazilian." "The American airman won't understand it." "I understand everything." "If you need more we can get anything with dollars in Bernkastel." "Now, Herr Windhäuser, you can go to bed without any worry." " Airmen are the real heroes." " You are right." "Good morning, Mister Paul." "Sleep well?" "He sat up all night in the loft listening to the wireless." "Just imagine, Mathias he picked up London." "A wireless fanatic?" " How terrible he looks." " That will pass." "Come with me for a fly-round over the village." " Get a bit of fresh air." " Me?" "A fly-round?" "Yesterday he arrived, out of petrol." "So me and my friends went to Bernkastel and bought petrol." "It's not easy to get that much petrol in Germany." "Now some of it is in there and the engine's up there." "Here's a special lever where you can let the petrol out in an emergency." "The propeller is special, too a Gypsy-Major." "We'll fly up there in the ether." "See the world from above, better than a king." "Paul, I'm afraid." "Are you flying with him?" "He's letting me, Eduard." "I'd like to fly, too." "Later." "Children, move out of the way." "Land!" "I want to get out, I want to get down." "I want to see that woman!" "Go down!" "I've found out something." "Father." "Paul." "I must tell you something." "First sit down." "I know where there's gold here." "You're light-headed." "Have something to eat." "We have places named Ducat Brook." "Gold Brook, Silver Lake and I know the reason." "Up at the tower there were cars from the Geological Institute in Bonn." "I helped them mend their punctures." "They had geological samples lumps of copper and iron ore and on one box was written "Gold." "Monzelfeld." ""...200mg per 10 tons, 15th June, 1927."" "And other boxes where they'd found gold in Stromberg and Kempfeld." "The district's full of gold and nobody knows." "Yet Gold Brook's been called that for 1,000 years because gold is in it." "A few years back, I read something like that in the paper." "See, Paul, didn't I say so?" "And you found all this out." "Dammit!" "On the back of the car it said Geological Institute of Bonn University." "That's official proof." "Now eat something." "Paul, we must go to Monzelfeld." "I'm not going." "I'm not making a fool of myself." "Here's a fat slice of bread and butter." "That's gold for your lung." "We'll be making a mistake if we don't go to Monzelfeld." "Eat, or you'll spit blood again like you did in the Alzey prison." "How worried we were about you then." "The district's full of gold and nobody knows." "Shouldn't you go back to your observation post?" "We don't want word of this to go around." "Otherwise there'll be a whole town here." "Something's glittering in there." "It glitters like the lumps in the engineer's boxes." "With a leaf shutter - and how small it is." " With my gold..." " Shut up!" "I'll buy six pairs of shoes pigskin, leather, calfskin, yellow and black." "Come over here." "Here's a musquash and kid coat." "Here's a Russian squirrel and marmot coat for 475 marks." " The most expensive on show." " Unbelievable..." "What do you think of a molerab coat?" "That must be a cross between a mole and a rabbit." "With that you'll get round any woman." "My sister Pauline." "What are you all doing here?" "No so loud!" "Is Robert home?" "He won't be back from Koblenz until tonight." " What are you up to?" " We can't tell you." "We'll call back later." "They are having a good time." "Let's go in." " That's not our sort of thing." " Oh, come on." "Well, are we going in?" "We can't go in there with our dirty clothes." "From today, we can go in anywhere, however we look." "Of course, we're going in." "You needn't fear your wife will see you." "I'm not going in." " Not dirty as I am." " Oh, let's go in." " What do you want?" " Two entrance tickets." "Not if you look like this." "Four tickets then." "Even if you buy five tickets, you're not coming in." " Stop!" " We're only looking." " Ten entrance tickets." " No." "They'll be richer when they come out." " Why?" " They'll have pearls in their hair." "Now we'll go to my brother-in-law to see if we've 100% or only 18 carat." "Want to pawn your wedding ring?" "I needn't touch my capital for a long time." "Eduard, you're so strange." "What is it?" "What's this?" "We've got more." "It's not 18 carat." "It's going black." "It's not 14 carat, either." "I'll test it for 8 carat." "It may look golden it is probably cupric oxide." "That might contain gold." "You can hardly see it." "Someone with a gold tooth probably bit the stone." "Grub up!" "Make sure you bring Frau Molz the new Singer sewing machine." "And Frau Weckmüller would like two dozen needles." "I must collect goods from Kirchberg station." "But don't dig around in streams for gold." "Nobody got rich that way." "Leave it to me." "It's all under control." "There's a woman lying in the wood back there." "She's dead." "Paul, what did you see?" "A woman's lying there, dead." "Never seen her before." "She's not from our district." "She's not from around here." " She's got nothing on." " Not even a ring." "We can't leave her lying there." "Who knows what did it?" "We won't touch her." "The best thing is to get Stallkäth from the village." "Paul, you go." " She's not been dead long." " Looks as if she's still alive." "Looks as though it happened this morning." "Just when we were working." "Where is she from?" " She's no German." " Might be a Jewess." "It's possible." "Maybe it was an indecent assault." "Or sex murder." "Like Haarman." "There's no wound." "Maybe she was ill." "Then she wouldn't be naked." "Let's try to find her clothes." " Good idea." " Let's go." "We won't touch them if we find them." "Why are children here?" "This isn't a fair to gawp at." "Keep away from her." "Come out." "It's your father-in-law's barn." "Can we leave her there?" "We can." "I'll call Wiegand." "I found a tiny hole at the back of her head." "It wasn't an illness at all." "Someone must stay;" "better you, Paul." "Didn't you think of calling the police?" "You dump a corpse in my barn." "So I come under suspicion, damn it!" "My barn, but I've nothing to do with the corpse." "I didn't order the corpse to be moved from where it was found, either." "Who are you?" "My son-in-law." "He was working with the others and he found her." "Come with me to the car." "We'll make a report." "26th May, 1928." "About 1 p.m." "You don't need me any more." "So I'll ride home." "Where were you on the 26th May, about noon?" "My son has nothing to do with the corpse." "I asked your son." "Where were you, then, on that day?" "Look at the Socialists and their police." "They don't question the vital person." " Who's that?" " Find out for yourselves." "Check the Party books, you'll get him." "Six days ago, we had the Reichstag elections." "Of our 120 voters, 74 voted Centre 26 voted National and 6 Liberal." "Still they couldn't stop the slide to the Left." "We've got just two Socialists and as one was in hospital in Simmern that leaves the one he means." "Call your dogs off!" "Yours first." "They are interested in the other party's dogs." "My dogs are non-party." "They're used to different smells." "Where do you keep your dogs?" "They smell." "My dogs smell what they smell." "Our dogs don't smell." "I refute that." "They do." "You can smell what they smell." "What was that?" "Paul, someone's in the house." "I'll go and see." "For days I've felt there's someone here." "Don't wake Ernst up." "Sleep." "You rogue!" "That pine marten even got into the loft." "I threw my stick at him and he went leaving his mark." "That's what a marten's shit looks like." "I'll make a trap for it tomorrow in the forge." "I'll go and quieten the animals." "That wicked marten, he's killed our three best hens." "Bit them to death." "It's disgraceful." "He killed our best three hens." "The marten!" "But we will get him." "Such a shame!" "We can't eat them or use the feathers either." "The three best white Leghorns." "Anton, come here." " What's wrong?" " Why?" " Where are you going?" " To get a beer." " There's the cover." " It'll be repaired by next week." "Paul, where are you going?" "Marie-Goot was at Wiegand's for coffee and she buttered her bread so thick Wiegand's eyes almost popped out." "But Marie-Goot wasn't put out saying, "Nice soft cheese you've got"." "So Wiegand got angry and said..." ""..." "Soft cheese be damned you're eating the butter."" "Haven't you seen him?" "But we really haven't seen him." "You must have." "He went for a beer and he must have passed your house." "I still wouldn't know where he's gone." "Mäthes-Pat said he went across your meadow." "Come, Maria." "Sit down." "The police are looking everywhere for him." "Sit down." "They're sure to find him." "Nobody wished him harm." "He had no enemies." "No, he really didn't have enemies." "Such a good chap." "He never harmed anyone." "Impossible." "The door will open and Paul will be back." "I heard there's an exhibition in Mannheim about shortwave wireless, radio spares and so on." "Isn't it possible that Paul might have gone there?" "No, Marie-Goot." "That can't be." "Well, why not?" "THE CALL OF FARAWAY PLACES" "This is the Simon family from Schabbach." "On the right there, grinning at the camera that's Mathias." "That's his wife Katharina and their three children, Eduard, Pauline and Paul." "It's 1919, and they are smiling at the camera because they don't know yet what is going to happen." "This is our village in 1919." "They are just unveiling the war memorial." "The whole village turned out." "The teacher conducted the school choir." "They were all dressed up." "There you can see the memorial under its cover." "And in the other picture Edward is just about to pull the mechanism to unveil the memorial." "He pulled the cloth down and everybody stood around the memorial and were amazed." "There they are, in their Sunday best." "Even though it was raining, they all took their hats off." "That's Eduard in close-up." "He worried the life out of his mother Katharina." "He had lung trouble but he would keep messing about in the ice-cold Hunsrück streams with the bell ringer and me, looking for gold." "Fool's gold, that's all we found." "That's Pauline who later on married Gröber clockmaker and jeweller from Simmern." "That's Wiegand, the local know-all." "He always had to be in first with anything new." "First car in the village and before that, first wireless, first motorbike." "That's Maria, Wiegand's daughter, a beautiful girl." "She went on to marry Paul." "And they had two kids, Anton and Ernst." "Down there, you can see Katharina who was so proud of her two grandchildren." "Then something strange happened." "Paul started to brood more and more, like in that photo." "And then, one day he got up and said he was just going out for a beer and never came back." "The whole village was in turmoil." "Everybody wanted to know where Paul went." "Maria cried a lot." "Nobody understood why he left, they'd given him no reason to leave." "Police came and looked for him for weeks on end." "Those were the good old days when we all went on a picnic to Baldenau castle and heard music out of that black horn there wireless music." "THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD" "Father's caught a pine marten." "What's that?" "Your father?" "Yes." "Come with me." "I'll tell you something." "I just heard the hens applauding in the hen-house." "Shall we go and see?" "I'm sure Paul's still alive." "I'm certain of it." "I knew it." "There was something the matter with Paul that made him go away." "I felt it." "Our hens are so happy, they've laid three eggs." "One for Anton, one for Ernst and one for Granny." "Let's go indoors and I'll make Easter eggs, all yellow." "But, Granny, it's not Easter." "It doesn't matter." "You never know what will happen." "We'll put them in the water and they'll go yellow." "Ernst, we'll put that in, too but we don't need anything else." "Have a look." "See..." "See, they're going yellow." "You're so silly." "Let me do it." "Children need things like this." "Now, we'll see." "Look how yellow they've become." "Ernst, can you carry them over there?" "And now we need some cold water so they'll shine." "My grandma did this a hundred years ago." "Now, we'll put them here then they'll dry and afterwards we'll eat them." "Tomorrow, we'll gather bilberries." "Get the bowls and pick berries." "You'll want to eat them in winter." "Anton, are you tired?" "Stay sitting, then go to your mother." "It's a long morning when the children are here." "There are more of them up there." "Ernst, you've been so busy." "I'll put some more in your bucket, then it will be full." "Now we'll put them in the big bucket." "Now pick some more." "Look what we've found." "There's blood on them it's gone all brown." "The clothes of the dead woman Paul found." "Away with them!" "They're nothing to do with me!" "There's a salamander in them." "Why did you leave the homeland?" "Didn't she love you, the ungrateful wretch?" "Did she drive you out, too?" "Clear, candid, German eyes." "I can see you were driven out." "Was it poverty?" "Was it death?" "What is the isms?" "What isms?" "Mammonism, futurism, Communism symbolism, expressionism, nihilism scepticism, Socialism, Zionism." "Or was it just egoism?" "Don't say anything." "I can read it in your sorrowful eyes." "You're also part of that power streaming from our Fatherland to disperse in this electric chair land." "The Empress Elizabeth's assassin couldn't be executed;" "no death penalty." "The law had me put away in my homeland." "That law's unknown here." "Despite my being buried alive at Verdun." "Do you know we had to cool our machine-guns with urine?" "And do you know why?" "I'm asking you why." "Because we had no water." "I've lost my food ration card." "Would you like to buy my boots?" "I'm sorry." "I haven't much money." "Have you left a family back home?" "I walked and walked." "I wanted to think and my legs walked by themselves and my head was empty." "I couldn't do anything but keep on walking." "ln this year, Mathias sells the meadow by the Gold Brook." "With the money, Eduard is to go to Berlin." "Will his lung be healed in the capital?" "Did you see that?" "Of course, a woman on a horse." "What a woman!" "What a horse!" "Keep loading the piglets and I'll go and see." "I'm looking for Baldenau Castle, the Count of Baldenau." "Understand?" "I come from far away, please." "The Baldenau Castle." "The Count." "Here, on the map is it Hunsrück already?" "Do you understand?" "Wiegand, help me." "I think it's French." "Say it again, Miss." "I'm the mayor." "Please repeat that, yes?" "My name is Denise de Gallimasch and I'm riding from Paris to Berlin." "From Paris today?" "Impossible." "My horse isn't lightning." "I wish to get to the Chateau de Baldenau." "What does show dough mean?" "Chaude eau." "It means hot water." "I can help with this." "Me prisoner of war in France, you understand?" "Certainly." "I found on the map a castle called Baldenau." "I'd like to spend the night there." "Where can I find the Count?" "That's complicated." "Look, Miss." "Baldenau's a ruin." "Danger of collapse." "You can't stay there." "For 1000 years kaput." "Do you know Schinderhannes?" "No, unfortunately." "She doesn't know Schinderhannes." "What can be done?" "Can't one of you explain?" "I'll try." "Schinderhannes..." "No." "I can't do it, either." "Schinderhannes, 100 years ago, head cut off by the French - no Count." "His cap is in the museum in Simmern." "Museum, I understand." "What do I do now?" "Me and my little horse?" "Sleep, where?" "No problem." "I'm the innkeeper." "Guest rooms, chambres." "A room with a bath, please." "She wants a room with a bath." "We'll put a tub in the dance-room." "Make sure she pays well." "She'll fit a tub well." "She'll have her room and bath." "The innkeeper will see to everything." "I'll stable the horse." "I wish you a pleasant stay in Schabbach." "Good night." "If you ride from Paris to Berlin, you have to go through Schabbach." "No, she's made a detour." "No, we're right in between." "That's not true." "Schabbach's a bit lower down." "Just pay attention." "Here's Paris and here's Berlin." "Here's Schabbach, right in between." "Draw a line from the North Pole to the South that goes through Schabbach, too." "We don't realize where we are." "I tell you, we are the centre of the world." "But, she's not a pretty girl, not as pretty as Apollonia." "Apollonia's become a Frenchwoman." "She's got her papers for French nationality." "The horsewoman's better class, I could tell." "From a French castle with Gobelin carpets on the wall." " We saw that in France." " Carpets on the wall?" "Yes, carpets on the wall and mirrors on the floors." "Unbelievable." "A different world." "Apollonia wrote that, too." "Couldn't the woman have come to Germany a bit later?" "With conditions nowadays, you feel ashamed." "They've dissolved the Reichstag in Berlin it makes you sick." "The papers are full of shootings and stabbings." "Still, we must make a good impression." "On the Frenchwoman?" "Why does a young Frenchwoman want to go to Berlin nowadays?" "It's a question we in Schabbach must ask ourselves." "I know why." "So she can get a change from all that French asparagus." "She tipped a whole bottle of lilac bath salts into the tub." "Smell." "Kath, come here and smell this." "From the Frenchwoman." "Kath, just smell it." "It smells of the big city." "That's how I've always imagined it." "My dear Eduard." "When you see the woman who brings this letter, flee!" "She has the evil eye." "Here in Schabbach, where she took a bath, we saw that at once." "And don't help her off her horse." "Your mother" "I woke and heard you go out." "Maria, she's not here." "It's four in the morning and she's gone already." "What do we make of that?" "Don't worry." "It's a long way to Berlin." "She'll latch on to my Eduard in Berlin." "Come, Mother, Berlin's a big place." "Eduard's ill and can't defend himself." "And now, I've written the letter for nothing." "Eduard in Berlin is like a needle in a haystack." "You can't find it." "Eduard will get well." "You'll see." " Everything all right?" " Yes." "If you must have a cognac, too, come in." " Who was that?" " Our caretaker." "I always knew he'd drink himself to death." " Is he dead?" " He just drinks too much." "He's not dead." "He'll be back, I guarantee it." "Look how cold I am." "My arms are all gooseflesh." "Come in, you'll catch your death." "My hairs are standing on end." "Are you ill?" "You look a bit green." "I've never seen a dead body." "I saw my first when I was six." "My Granny took me to the cemetery and we went to the morgue." "There was someone in white with a sharp nose." ""Look, Martina," my Granny said, "I'll look like that one day."" "Coming up with me?" "Don't be scared." "How she stands it?" "I think she's given herself a second shot of morphine." "And alcohol on top of it." "I'll say one thing for her she's got magnetism in her skinny body." "She puts her matchstick legs up on the couch." "Puts her head in the client's lap and they sit there hypnotized." "We can't let the gent go home unscathed, can we?" "Did you sleep, or did you have a bad dream?" "Well, look at that." "Jasmine is awake." "Usually, she just sleeps." "She's even found a client." "Well, children, you two are happy now, aren't you?" "You really look alike around the eyes." "But, Jasmine, you must open yours." "Jasmine, how is the circulation?" "Well, how about trying Martina?" "You won't get Jasmine on her feet tonight." "Actually, I was only taking a walk." "Then we can take a walk together." "But she's had a bad dream." "She always has bad dreams." "Makes no difference to her." "Come on, big boy, we'll take our leave for now." "We'll go up the spiral staircase into our Seventh Heaven." "I'll go to the lav' while you get undressed." "What's your name?" "Eduard Simon." "Eddie, you're still not undressed." "I think I prefer not to undress." "You needn't be ashamed with me, I'm stark naked, too." "I've got something here." "Show me." "Let me have a look." "I'm sorry." "What have they done to you?" "I'm one of Dr. Sauerbruch's patients." "You must be a big shot." "Besides, I've got an artificial pneumothorax." "I thought so when you were down by the door." "I've got a scar, too." "You don't see it at first sight." "I nearly didn't recover." "Almost heard the angels singing." "See that mark?" "I can't see it without twisting my head." "A Russian emigré stubbed a cigarette out on me the sod." "Is that thorax dangerous?" "Not any more." "I've been here three months and I'm almost cured." "How long will you stay in Berlin?" "Until spring." "By then, you'll have had your shirt off." "Come here." "Let me smell you." "You smell good." " Where is your home?" " In the Rhineland." "What sort of work do you do?" "With my illness, I'm not allowed to work." "You were lucky." "Nowadays, everyone is looking for work, except you." "Where are you from?" "I'm from Glauchau, in Saxony." "Eddie, shall we see what else you've got?" "How did you land up here?" "The way you land up anywhere." "Let me feel your scar." "You were frightened when you saw the caretaker, weren't you?" "Well, once, I almost died myself." "Never mind." "What with the queues at soup kitchens no jobs, one government stupider than the other even a normal man can't get it up in such misery." "Things will change." "Then you'll come back and it will be fine." "Thank God there are still men capable of intellectual conversation with a woman." "Herr Simon is getting treatment from Professor Sauerbruch." "The things you hear, the things they're doing in medicine." "What people need today is medicine for the mind." "I don't know you, sir, but I must admit you're right." "And what you perhaps don't know we National Socialists have had that medicine available for fourteen years." "I hope there's a deaths' head on the label." "You can count on that." "A deadly medicine for all the Culture Bolsheviks and parasites on the state and a cure for everyone who has kept their faith deep down." "Can I help you?" "I haven't welcomed you yet." "I'm the madam, Lucie." "Every citizen is the equal of every other." "Class superiority is unknown." "Our leader Adolf Hitler is a man of the people." "I can't listen to this." "Every evening for three months, nothing but politics." "We had an exclusive clientele." "Some weekends, the entire broadcasting staff." "All educated people, never a word about politics." "And two famous actors were here." "Promise not to tell anyone their names." "Surprised, eh?" "Our National Socialist goal the new German state we've planned, worked and suffered for." "I just wanted to go for a walk." "What line of business are you in?" "A bit of agriculture, machinery..." "broadly speaking, of course." "Oh, the countryside." "If my old mother were sitting here, she could tell you I've been mad about the country since childhood." "Then you must be a really big landed proprietor, eh?" "Where are your estates?" "I'll show you something as you obviously don't read the papers." "Look here." "Eisenach, 24th October, 1932." "Hitler drove on to Weimar." "I'll read you what he said on behalf of us all." "We'll deal ruthlessly with anyone whose opinions differ." "That's what he said." "I've grown an elephant hide, a double one, Herr Simon." "Feel it." "Have you read all those books?" "I took over the flat as it stood." "Books create a terrific impression." "There is so much going on in Berlin." "Theatres, concerts though I don't know much about that." "I could give you a few tips." "But that lot, rats and blow-flies." "In a word, plebs!" "God, I'm hungry." "Are you, too?" "The best thing I've heard tonight." "I'll go and get something." "Knuckle of pork and liver..." "we're not having that." "Martina, Saxony potato cakes are a bit much for 2.30 a.m." "You'll each get two rissoles with rolls, and that's it." "Don't forget the strong mustard, madam." "Will you come with me, Herr Simon?" "And for God's sake, not a word about politics until I'm back." "Marga, give the guests a drink on the house." "Alone at last." "May I call you Eduard?" "You're lying there in front of me like an open book that I can read." "You need someone to look after you." "I suppose your mother did that at home." "The world is a wicked place." "Weren't you lucky to bump into me?" "And I just intended to take a walk." "And look what you walked into." "You've really got me on heat." "Have you got a tap here?" "Look at this." "Are you living in such a tiny room?" "If your father only knew." "They're still waiting for their rissoles." "SIMMERN 30th JANUARY 1933" "Adolf Hitler." "Reich Chancellor." "Bread and work for the German people." "Neither learned anything at school." "And Fritz there with his fine boots all duffers in uniform." "I'm going out for a look." "I love you." "Pauline, what's the matter." "I want to be with you." "Hold me tight." "You're all excited." "Things are getting better and we must stick together." "Everybody feels it." "Every day, it's getting better they feel that in Schabbach, too." "Be glad, Robert." "I thought that while I was dismantling the clock." "I felt as if there had been lovely weather for years." "And in the clock mechanism, suddenly everything looked bright." "It's true." "Something's coming." "Customers laugh nowadays and they're always in a hurry." "It's taken a long time." "We'll soon get on and grow rich with our efforts." "It's taken a long time." "Papa, look, it's us." " Mother, look." " Oh, it's you." "But I baked a cake." "A car, I can't believe it." "You haven't gone into debt for it?" "People are buying more watches and jewellery than ever before." " Isn't that right?" " Things are looking up." "We're hoping to buy Kahn's flat upstairs so we have the whole house." "You know, the Jew living upstairs..." "We think he'll sell." "Things aren't so rosy for the Jews." "I'm expecting." "A car and a house and a baby, too; all at once." "You're only young once, Mother." "You're right, Pauline." "Robert says we should enjoy life." "Who knows what may come?" "I'll tell you what's coming today." "Dear Mother I've been lucky enough to find a wife you'll be proud of." "Born in Berlin, she's naturally proud of stature and elegant in posture." "She's got a brain, too." "Lucie is from the best metropolitan circles." "She has wealth and a car in which we shall arrive to see you on Sunday, 9th April." "Please welcome her into the family circle for marriage has cured my ill-health." "Isn't it wonderful that we live in times in which one's origin no longer matters and where everything is starting to get better?" "Love from your Eduard." "Today is the 9th of April." "When I heard your car, I thought it was Eduard and his new wife." "Beautiful." "The Rhineland is the nicest country I know." "That's true, Eduard." "My mother and I aren't on speaking terms now." "We were on holiday once at Usedom." "That was nice, too." "But not as nice as this." "Your home must be like summer holidays all year long." "Lucie, strictly speaking, the Rhine..." "These are only the Hunsrück foothills." "It goes up higher." "And the lovely vineyards there." "Yes, vineyards all around." "But up there, the wind blows." "We're used to it, but it's too cold for grapes." "It's often much too cold up there in the Hunsrück." "Or, rather, far too cold altogether." "So what's planned on your father's estates?" "Estates... well..." "We have to import a lot of fertilizer because of the soil." "We get saltpetre from Chile and guano from Peru." "You know guano?" "It's bird droppings." "A hundred years old, lying about on South American islands." "And they dig it out with cranes, like brown coal." "Know what I mean?" "I can picture myself on the veranda, watching the farm workers working for us." "I didn't say anything about farm workers." "I must explain all this to you." "In our Hunsrück dialect we don't mean what you understand by 'estate' it doesn't mean anything big." "We haven't big words." "Know what I mean?" "I'll show you." "We'll drive around the district." "But now we should get going or we won't get home till dark." "We Hunsrück people are very proud that our people are all over the world, even in Brazil and in Australia, and the Ruhr, and in America, too." "Stop, Lucie, I must show you something." "It all started here, Lucie." "Gold." "Where did you find it?" "I don't know if it's gold." "I washed it out of the brook." "Up to my knees in water, not knowing I had a high temperature." "Without that, I'd never have come to Berlin and met you." "That's nice." "And we wouldn't be here." "I wanted to show you things before we drive into the village." " How about these for your mother?" " Maybe." "My home ground, Lucie." "Here we used to play cops and robbers." "We built huts with branches and old potato sacks." "Over there, where it's so dark in the bushes." "Know what's growing on these trees?" "Those are wild cherries." "They turn jet black." "You've never tasted real cherries until you taste them." "All those are sloe bushes." "Sloes are so sharp, you can't eat them." "We call them Hunsrück grapes, because it's so cold here." "See Baldenau tower?" "My grandfather hacked at it for twenty years, to get inside." "Walls five metres thick." "He wanted to find the Schinderhannes' treasure." "Guess what he found, a staircase that goes to the very top." "And here I heard the wireless, at Baldenau." "With my brother Paul, only we don't know where he is now." "Lucie, I know every stone here." "Eduard, I love your home." "Lucie, the woods." "You're Anton, aren't you?" "Open the door." "Lucie picked the flowers for you, in the meadow near Baldenau." "Won't you sit down?" "The journey must have tired you." "You can't buy such bread at the baker's." "Mother makes it." "We have a bake house opposite." "Accidents will happen." "How nice Mother looks." "Normally, she only wears that dress to church." "Maria, your Anton is growing up." "Curd, Lucie." "Mother makes it herself." "The earthenware bowl." "She makes it in that." "The car outside, is it yours?" "You're doing well, you and Pauline?" "Robert, I'm really glad." "Lucie and I, we so looked forward to seeing you all the way from Berlin." "Didn't we, Lucie?" "Just be quiet, Eduard, and sit down." "Mathias, they're here." "We've seen the Berlin car." "Hurry home." "We'll go ahead." "Three months ago, we wouldn't have thought it possible." "A new era has begun." "We can see it and we're doing it all with our own strength." "I'm from Schabbach, so is he, and his wife, too." "Wilfried, take note, I must tell Eduard to get his car Schabbach number plates." "By the way, on Friday week it's Adolf Hitler's first birthday as Chancellor." "Remember that." "The scar goes from back to front." "On 20th April, there will be celebrations here like never before." "It's one thing after another." "I'm offering flags so cheap it will be dearer to make your own." "Hindenburg's own personal physician stood by my bed, shook my hand and said "Death was in this room, but we two have beaten him."" " And you're better, Eduard?" " Well, look at me." "Your wife is a beauty." "I must admit." "And from the best circles, remember that." "Did you experience the capital's excitements?" "Were you close to events?" "Then tell us about it." "Actually, you read about it more." "You didn't see the Führer?" "Not personally, no." "You didn't see the national revolution?" "Well, yes, on 30th January it was suddenly very light in my room." "That must have been the torchlight procession." "But then I slept." "So, you slept." "Not really asleep, but I was tired." "You can't get out of Berlin easily." "They have checkpoints whether you're on a train, or in a car, like us." "We were checked." "We were waiting in the queue at Halensee." "And who was three cars in front of us?" "Max Schmeling and Anny Ondra." "We read about them in the paper." "They're such a happily married couple." "The cop tipped his cap and Schmeling showed him his pass." "Anny Ondra was wearing an ivory-coloured trouser suit gathered at the waist, like this, but not flashy no, very respectable." "They were treated just like us like everyone else." "Mathias, we've eaten." "Come and eat." "First, I'll wash my hands." "Wash yours, too, if you like;" "I have dung on mine." "Good country air." "I like the smell." "If she likes the smell, embrace your daughter-in-law properly." "Mathias, three cars outside the front door." "The things they still want, and everything on tick." "I feel that the whole world is living on tick." "Come on, wife, sleep." "One day, we'll have to pay for all this." "Quiet, Lucie;" "the whole house is listening." "Forget everything here, Eduard." "We're not in Berlin, here." "This is Berlin now." "The district has been waiting for you." "If you want it to, the district will soon listen only to you." "I've noticed that." "I just had an idea." "Gauleiter Simon in Koblenz;" "aren't you related to him?" "What makes you think that?" "Simon is Simon, and Koblenz isn't far from here." "In the country, you're all related." "No, we aren't related to him, definitely not." "Leave it to me, I know what I'm doing." "My name is Simon now, too." "You can't just go and see him." "Listen, Eduard." "In two years, we'll own a villa, I swear it." "In Schabbach?" "Why not?" "Or the next biggest village." "This place is still virgin territory." "Nothing has happened here but when I make something happen, you'll see." "You really scare me." "No, you scared me on the way here." "But now, I'm quite happy." "Put your hand on my heart." "Six cylinders." "Some car, eh?" "The things you can do, father-in-law." "I touched a cow like this once, on holiday." "Off on a long journey, Kath?" "Yes, to my brother Hans and his wife to Bochum, in the Ruhr." "Tomorrow is his birthday and I haven't seen him in ages." "Is Hans's birthday really the same day as the Führer's?" "I never knew anyone with a birthday on 20th April." "Our Hans will be sixty tomorrow." "When he was born, Hitler didn't exist." "Going away when we're celebrating here?" "You'll miss everything." "My brother is closer to me than the Führer." " Not so loud." " Well, it's true." "Maria, mind the bilberries on the stove don't burn." "I'm going now." "I offered to drive her to Koblenz but she said she didn't want me to." "You don't know Mother." "She's been walking to the station for thirty years." "Does she come from the Ruhr?" "No." "All the villagers have relatives in the Ruhr, ask anyone." "Where the farms couldn't support all the children lots went off to the mines." "There are people from the Hunsrück in the Saar, too." "And the one that stayed was made the village idiot." "Quiet, you idiot." "Fasten that at the top." "Don't fall asleep there." "Hitler is a Columbus." "Is he going to America?" "No, we mean he's a man of vision." "Wilfried, help them." "It's too high, let it down a bit." "Suppose the Gauleiter sees that, damn it." "Mummy, the bright lights." "Lovely, Richard, is that electric?" "Yes, that's electric." " It's as bright as day." " It's wonderful." "Electricity does that." "Richard, isn't that lovely?" "Daddy, is that the new era?" "Yes, that's the new era." "Richard, it's so beautiful." "Look, that's the chemical industry." "That will help us." "Black pudding and liver sausage." "Yellow plums, damsons and bilberries." "Happy birthday." "Sixty years, what a long time." "Fritz is the only one earning anything?" "At the moment." "I knew it, Hans, believe me." "Maria, believe me." "I knew something was wrong up here." "Three weeks ago, I woke up one night and I knew it." "It always happens to me." "But I had the wrong idea in my head." "I thought Fritz was having a bad time and there he sits and has a job." "But Auntie Kath why think it was me?" "You were always such a Communist, you couldn't keep your trap shut." "I'm not saying a word." "There's nothing more to be said." "Auntie, look." "You've done that well, Lotti." "Give Father some, too." "But you're doing well in the country look at you, so plump and healthy." "And all those fine things." "Yes, they're buying cars on tick." "The new era." "You're right about tick, Aunt Kath." "Things go well as long as it's all on tick." "Let's bide our time and sup tea." "And I've said nothing." "But, Fritz, you must admit postal charges are down and rents, too." "Food is cheaper and insurance premiums aren't so high, either." "Everything is getting cheaper." "You'll see." "All show." "In three months, it will be over." "I think you're right, Fritz." "I've often thought like that." "I don't feel it, but I've thought it." "I have some real Mosel brandy." "Walter, you drink first." "Will you drink it uphill?" " What do you mean?" " Don't." " Drinking uphill." " Ah, I understand." "He's drinking uphill." "Take your scabby fingers out of the basket." "Those Hitler rolls are a good idea." "I'm surprised the teacher thought of it." "It isn't his idea." "They're in numerous localities." "You said that well, Wilfried, "numerous localities"." "The lad talks as if he were in Berlin." "He's going to Berlin and we'll all have new respect for him when he's somebody in the SS." "Father, don't joke about it." "Right, Wilfried, national matters are no subject of jokes." "My God, when I think of Berlin..." "You're doing the right thing, that's a world capital a different atmosphere." "Today more than ever." "And don't forget to look at every place I told you, will you?" "And take a look at my hospital." "Give me a bite, Ernst." "They taste like the rolls we'd have on the Kaiser's birthday." "That's long ago;" "twelve or fifteen years." "That's how long since we've had a Kaiser." "Long enough." "The Kaiser will never return." "Even if the Crown Prince sits 1,000 times beside our Führer in church." "When I think of Berlin and the Führer I keep remembering my old mother." "Grandpa, a Hitler roll." "Anton, I think Paul is in America." "Your father is alive." "We two will never stop believing that." "Promise me?" "Now connect the loudspeaker." "Is the music from America?" "No, from Hilversum." "That's the only station we can get with this set." "Is Hilversum far away?" "No, it's in Holland." "From Holland, people used to go to America." "What are you scheming, you rogue?" "We'll read the wireless book for a while." "The effectiveness of the valve depends on the quality of its construction." "When at night we go to sleep, fourteen angels watch will keep." "Two at my right hand, two at my left hand two at my head, two at my feet two to tuck me in, two to wake me two to guide my steps to heaven." "Dear God, please let our father still be alive and well and let him soon come back home." "Aunt Kath, wake up, someone's here." "And who are you?" "Katharina Simon, from Schabbach in the Hunsrück." "I'm here on a visit." "Go back to bed, Lilli." "Frau Schirmer, don't start worrying." "I've known Fritz all his life." "He just went along with them, like many others." "Nothing will happen to him." "We've had the least bloody revolution of all time." "He'll be taken to Mülheim to the concentration camp for re-education." "They'll exorcise that Marxist spirit." "You won't know him when he returns." "He'll be alert, clear-headed, gladly participating in our programme." "We need every willing man." "Where would it get us not to show mercy?" "Another thing, don't believe foreign propaganda." "The food is good, there's lots of sport and school every day." "Don't hold it against me, I have to do it." "What time is it?" "Half past five." "It almost makes you afraid to go to bed." "Good day, Kath." "Back home again?" "We're home." "It was a long walk, wasn't it?" "Wait a second." "Anton gets everything." "I want a uniform like that, too." "You heard what Uncle Eduard said." "You're still too little." "Are you tired too?" "My legs hurt." "Let's sit down and have a rest." "You won't get a uniform until you're ten." "That's true, Ernst." "Here, you can put on my cap." "Pick it up!" "Now!" "What if the Führer saw?" "He sees everything." "There's be the devil to pay." "Eduard, I don't think Anton is really cut out for all this." "Look how he stands there." "You'll never make a soldier, will you, Anton?" "Look at me." "Was I born for a uniform?" "Maria, we've got the movement now and the movement will care for his education." "Eduard, why do you have to go with every new fad?" "I can see you in Simmern with patent leather shoes and spats." "The child..." "She isn't breathing properly." "Who is this, then?" "Lotti from Bochum, Fritz and Lilli's daughter." "She's feverish, Mother." "She's ill." "She must go to bed." "Attention!" "Heels together, stomach in, chest out." "You were away so long, almost three months." "Father doesn't yet know you're back." "People talked of nothing but where you'd got to." "Things are bad for Hans and the people in the Ruhr." "Not everyone is prospering." "Is Lotti to stay here now?" "I couldn't leave her in that misery." "We must get the doctor." "If you're looking for the doctor, his car is there." "Maria, my little Gottfried is dying." "What's wrong with him?" " It's diphtheria, the doctor says." " Unfortunately." "Doctor, please come with me." "We've got a little girl who can't breathe." " Feverish?" " Yes, and gasping." "Another one." "Get in, Frau Simon." "Anton, don't go home yet, and don't go to the upper village or you'll catch diphtheria from the Rothmatzens." "Yes, I've connected the test lead." "All right my end." "Measure the test current." "I'll measure." "Yes, it's fine." "Down in this house, a child has died of diphtheria." "Come here, I want to tell you something." "We get around, kids are dying everywhere in Morbach, eleven in a week." "I'm keeping my children indoors." "Gargling with vinegar gets rid of it, I've heard." "I'm not letting my children out on the streets." "Anton, go and take off that uniform." "Grandmother." "Must Lotti die now, too?" "No, she can breathe again." "Will Lotti stay with us?" "Yes, Lotti is staying here." "But you're not to put on that uniform again." "Will you promise me?" "Suppose they come and say I must?" "We'll say you have a weak heart." "THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD" "In all these photos, there's nobody whose name isn't Simon." "We were all one big family then." "These photos were all taken at the beginning of the 1930." "These are the grandparents Mathias, the village's blacksmith and his wife Kath, Katharina." "That's Paul." "The son who had gone out for beer five years earlier and had never come back." "That's his wife Maria and his two little boys Anton and Ernst." "That's Anton again." "Anton had to join the Hitler Youths." "Maria said, "Anton, this uniform doesn't suit you."" "And Kath said "Anton, promise me you'll never put that uniform on again."" "As if anybody could make that kind of promise in those days." "Kath also said, "Tick, everything's on tick."" "That went right round the village." "She was brave." "But we were all scared for her." "This is the Simons' house with the smithy to the right." "That's Wiegand." "He had to be the first in the village to sport a Hitler moustache." "And his son, Wilfried, was packed off to Berlin so that he could become something in the S.S." ""One day you'll bow to him", Wiegand used to say." "And the family grew and grew." "Everyone got married." "That's Lucie." "Eduard married her in Berlin." "She's from the highest circles of society." "But Kath said, "My eye."" "The Führer's birthday." "The first birthday, he had as a Chancellor in 1933." "We celebrated it." "Wiegand said, The village looks to the Führer." "Only, I wonder whether the Führer ever had any regard for us except to look down from his picture." "And Lucie..." "She was from the big city." "If she had to live with Eduard in the sticks then at least he was going to be somebody." "Where could he become somebody?" "In the Party and that's where she pushed him." "Cars, they all had cars." "Wiegand as usual had the biggest." "Three cars in front of the house." "Then the telephone came." "They put up telegraph polls all over the place." "There was a telephone wire on every house." "Here, the post office men are just taking a break and Eduard took a picture of everything." "THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER" "Mister Mayor, did you say something?" " Is that Berlin?" " No, it is my mate." "Besides, they could have shut off half of Hunsrück." "There have been so many fires here in the past two years." "I say we must stick to the truth." "I was burnt out twice in the inflation time and I wasn't insured." "Those difficult times for farmers are over now." "I'll explain to you what our farming policy is and what a healthy basis it is for our entire policy and how at one stroke we'll get rid of all our Weimar Republic debts." "I heard district leader Nadisch and the farmers' leader Orth in Simmern." "They talked on Palace Square." "I noted everything they said." "They spoke about debt conversion and the farmers and the laws about entailed estates but, frankly, I don't understand all that." "That's why people like us from the Party are here to explain to you." "We make a distinction between farmer and landed proprietor." "The farmer with his own farm is sacrosanct and protected." "What Jews and speculators sowed during the Weimar Republic we now refuse to harvest." "Yes, that's official." "Is that you?" "What, you're not Wilfried?" "No, I thought..." "I want to speak to Wilfried Wiegand my son." "Here is your father." "I am telephoning from Schabbach." "We have a telephone in the room now on the wall to the left of the door." "Don't shout." " What?" " Don't shout like that." "No, he doesn't mean you." "How are things in Berlin?" "Tell us." "From here, I have a wonderful view over the capital." "Have you?" "Well, damn me you're quite a fellow." "Wilfried, are you still there?" "Hans, what are you doing?" " Lost your way?" " No, just looking." "Then go on looking." "Take a look at everything." "What's wrong with your eye?" "If you want a proper look, open the other eye." "I can't, it is always closed." "My boy, you're a born sharpshooter." "I wouldn't know." "This is the rear sight and this is the front sight." "Anyone else has to close one eye to shoot with this but you needn't." "See that man with the pick?" "If he tries to run, I aim at his back." "When backsight and foresight are aligned I squeeze the trigger and he falls down dead." "A normal person must shut one eye to do that, but you needn't." " Where are you from?" " Schabbach." "Then take your bike and go back to Schabbach." "Thank you again, it's been a charming evening." "It's hard to believe you are not my uncle, Gauleiter." "Eduard see the film's developed first thing tomorrow so our hostess gets the pictures as soon as possible." "You'll see." "Eduard's a brilliant photographer." "The pictures he's taken of the workers' life in the Hunsrück." "I didn't know that." "We must arrange an exhibition." "Gudrun, put a note on my desk tomorrow." "Eduard, you don't understand money." "Leave it to me, I'm used to it." "Some have a knack with money others have their minds elsewhere." "All my life I've dealt with money." "But not with the Jewish bank, Lucie." "They're people too." "Careful, Lucie, the chalk pit's somewhere here." "Do you know how many windows our house will have?" "No idea." "Fifty-two." "Like the villa at Usedom." "I counted them once when I was eight." "Our house will be nicer than the Gauleiter's." "I'll be happy when it's paid for." "Is that the foundation stone laid already?" "They only do that with big constructions." "What a pity." "I'm so cold." "I was freezing at the Gauleiter's." "Let's lay a stone in secret, just a little one." "I'd be so happy." "Let's lay a foundation stone." "Do you know how it is done?" "You make a cavity in the foundation and put a souvenir in it." "For posterity." "When they excavate it, they'll know why we built it." "Here's a cavity." "Got anything on you?" "It is as if fate decreed it." "You've got the Hunsrück gold." "But no one knows if it's really gold." "Just a minute." "But that's not watertight, it won't hold together." "Wait, I have an idea." "We're building our house on something we're not sure is gold." "Oh, at a quick glance everything's gold." "That's been my experience in life." "Herr Simon, that's sabotage." "Don't you agree?" "From Simmern to Kirchberg all the important official lines." "Hans, tell me why you did that." "It made such a lovely crack." "I thought so." "Did you hit them every time?" "Yes, every time." "Officer Martin, take it easy." "The boy is talented." "The money we spend to educate a talent in the state." "It's worth a few insulators if he learns to shoot so well." "We must look at the positive side." "Sabotage, I say." "Laugh it off." "You can leave the gun here." "I'll look after it." "Marie-Goot, get over by your washing." "I'll photograph you bleaching." "Hold the watering-can and look at me." "That's good." "Go on sprinkling." "Smile." "One more." "Look at the camera." "That must be young Hans." "I thought it was you." "Did you fire?" "A bull's eye from that distance?" "Let me shoot, too." "Missed." "You shoot, Hans." "Show me." "I want to see this." "Hans, you're a crack shot." "DECEMBER 1935" "They're sure to have something." "Let's see." "German handicrafts for your 1935 Christmas gifts" "Maria, is it true that in your sister-in-law's villa there's a dining-room, a smoking-room a study and a conservatory?" "Does Eduard really go into the smoking-room to smoke?" "Eduard doesn't smoke." " His wife does, I'm sure." " Lucie doesn't, either." "Were you ever in the study or aren't women allowed in?" "I don't like going in there." "People are saying all sorts of things that her Berlin relations paid for the villa." " Is that true?" " Well, I don't know." "I don't want to poke my nose in." "I'd never cross their threshold, it's too posh for me." "When I pass their house I think I'm passing a church or a monument." "But I must say Lucie goes to Koblenz for stockings though my shop's full of them." "She's a city girl, perhaps she's happier doing that." "Anton, take off your jacket." "People are saying things in the village." "She's not been out for days." "What's up?" "I don't know." "Anton, try this coat on." "It suits him." "It's wonderful." "Maria, you won't be wasting money on that coat." "I've sold at least a dozen like that." "Do you like it, Anton?" "What have you wished for as a Christmas present?" "Something technical." "He's mad about technical things, aren't you?" "I want a steam engine with belt transmission." "It'll be such a Christmas." "I've never seen people buy so many presents before." "Remember what we got?" "A new apron for the old doll and a wrinkled apple with a fir twig on it." "Horst, where's your mummy?" "The Mayoress is ill." "Ill?" "Where is she?" "Lucie, what's the matter?" "Oh, Maria, what I'm going through." "I can't move." "A headache?" "That's not the word to describe it." "Where's Eduard?" "Don't talk to me about Eduard." "He's the other half of my suffering." "Anton, take off your coat and play with Horst." "Leave us alone, please." "Gudrun, where have you been?" "But Eduard's been quite successful." "Don't be unfair." "A man must be his wife's superior." "I worry myself sick because I'm superior to him." "But he's somebody, he's the mayor of Rhaunen." "I wanted that to be a springboard for Eduard." "What do you think this house was built here for?" "This house is as unfulfilled as I am." "I feel the way you see me lying here." "Is this house paid for?" "That's not the point." "The point is that Eduard doesn't bother about his official duties." "He's only interested in photography." "He keeps on about his great exhibition under the auspices of the Gauleiter instead of asking the Gauleiter about promotion in the Party and administration." "What sort of family have the two of us married into?" "The two of us?" "Why do you say that?" "But, Maria, your husband." "He's Eduard's brother." "You know nothing about him now." "We women have to do everything on our own." "You can't say that, Lucie." "It's not fair." "Now listen." "You, Eduard and Horst come to Schabbach for Christmas." "We'll kill a goose." "Then you'll see how things are." "Maria, you're a good soul." "Mother, what's wrong with Lucie?" "She has worries." "But you needn't go to bed with worries." "But in the cities people do go to bed when they have worries." "Mother, why are you sitting in the dark?" "I was thinking about Eduard." "We've just come from there, from the villa." "It's all on tick." "Someone came home from Berlin today, looking like a young lord." "Wilfried?" "Isn't it a bit big?" "Well, Ernst, do you like it?" "Hands out of pockets." "Hitler Youths don't do that." "Is Herr Simon in?" "Wilfried, come in." "I've brought a Christmas tree from Berlin." "But our woods are full of trees." "This is special;" "it smells of the city." "You cut it secretly in the wood on the way here." "I bought it at the Berlin Christmas market right next to Dr Goebbels." "And I was thinking of you." "Where's Lucie?" "Lucie, where are you?" "Just imagine that." "Wilfried, you look quite different." "Eduard, look at him." "He's been promoted." "He stood beside Goebbels and bought us a Christmas tree in Berlin." "Wilfried, I still see you as you were standing in short trousers on Hitler's birthday." "And I said, "Wilfried, get some big city atmosphere in your nostrils."" "And now you stand here and you've done that." "I feel so homesick when I see you standing there." "Well, sit down." "You don't have to remain standing, Herr Obersturmführer." "But you've achieved a lot, too." "Just look at this house." "Patience." "I'll give you a guided tour in a moment." "Eduard, please get us a bottle of the good Bernkasteler." "Meanwhile, I'll show Wilfried the house." "You'll appreciate the wine." "This is our drawing-room." "What do you say now?" "It reminds me of an evening I spent with Dr Lenich of the State Film Office." "What, Wilfried Wiegand mixing in film circles, too?" "You're quite a fellow." "Our house is like a harbour still awaiting the big ships." "Or like a flower bed, awaiting the month of May." "The things you've learnt in Berlin." "His Worship the Mayor is back." "Staying on leave?" "Tell us about yourself." "I can tell you because very soon I have to talk to you officially." "Have a drink first." " Excellent." " That's a nice drop." "This matter must remain confidential." "It concerns the first day of the new free Rhineland district." "The free Rhine?" "Is the Führer going to march into the Rhineland?" "We're not allowed to know that." "Nor you, Eduard." "But I can tell you this." "In a fortnight, three of our most important leaders will call in here." "Who, Wilfried?" "Rosenberg, Frick and Ley." "All three?" "They're passing through here?" "You're responsible for the Bundenbach-Stipshausen section." "When and at what time?" "On the 16th of January, about noon." "But then they'll be feeling hungry." "They can stay here, in our house, for a while." "Wilfried, to please me get them to come here, to pay a visit." "This house is ideal for such guests." "Edu, say something, too." "Lucie, there'll be more than the three of them." "Their entourage could number hundreds." "That's Eduard for you." "Whenever the stakes are high, he loses his nerve." "Well, it's not impossible." "Wilfried, how nice you're back." "How nicely they've decorated it, Pauline." "Have you been in a Catholic church before?" "Yes, I have." "I've never seen so many lights." "It's really quite festive." "How beautiful the crib is." "Shall we kneel, too?" "Horst Wessel, your memory also burns bright on this holy Christmas night." "With your death you gave us the belief we feel which henceforth no power can steal." "Belief in a great time to come, though it seems far away to some." "Oh, German Christmas, at home and beyond." "You forge anew the sacred bond." "The Glittering Christmas tree will gleam it is the children's favourite dream." "With tinsel and with baubles smart it will make happy each child's heart." "And joyously into our ear will pour the lovely Christmas songs of yore." "Oh, German Christmas, feast of love." "Feat of belief in heaven above." "You've been our favourite feast so long now storm troops join believers' throng." "So let one prayer arise from here make our armband's meaning very clear." "O Father in heaven, protect us still as you've always done and always will." "Help us to conquer enslavement and pain so that finally we're free people again." "Our faith, so sacred, so immense, will not waver, to the last defence." "For we must, we want to free our land so that as pure German stock we stand." "Adolf Hitler, lead our way with pride to victorious liberty by your side." "Isn't that the most beautiful thing there is?" "A Catholic Christmas Mass." "I looked at the children with tear-filled eyes." "I've never been in the Catholic church but that was the best Christmas ever." "This year it's been the way we always wanted." "When I think of our turnover in the last three weeks, my God!" "Eduard, after closing time today I sold another three gold watches." "Isn't that amazing?" "You know, Lucie, when I look at people there's a different belief in their eyes." "Wilfried, stop your silly speeches." "Look happy." "Now let's all go and eat together." " What are we having, Granny?" " A goose." "Alois, you weren't in church." "In my church at home it was better." "Let's have a drink before Katharina comes in; she always nags." "The storm trooper sits by the family heart so neat and finds that, since Hitler, life's once again sweet." "The children are so happy with their toys." "Is that nice, Ernst?" "Look, Uncle Eduard, a propeller." " Ernst, let's build this." " No, we'll build an aeroplane." "A great golden goose gobbled with gusto is a good gift from God." "Here's the goose." "That looks tasty." "Look, water comes out of the valve." "Will you put it beside my bed when I go to sleep?" "Don't worry, Anton, no one will take it away." "He can't believe it." "But it's true, Anton." "You haven't something wrong with your lung again, Eduard?" "Are you getting you're breath back?" "Mother, home is really the nicest place to be." " Still recognize the Bell-Ringer?" " Of course." "At the back of the church there are at least ten motor-bikes." "And cars like you've never seen them." "They are huge." "There was one just like the Führer's." "Maybach cars." "A black one, a red and a yellow." "Red!" "That was brown." "I know who's in them, though we're not supposed to Rosenberg, Frick and Ley." "Who?" "Don't shout, we're not supposed to know." " Rosenberg, Frick and Ley." " Eduard never told me that." "Gudrun, go to your room, I'll do that." "I'm trembling all over." "My knees, too." "The Reichsleiter paid me a sweet compliment." "He said I've got the flair for big occasions." "Didn't he say that, Wilfried?" "I can confirm that." "And he's right, too." "The Herr Reichsleiter is so charming." "They're all so charming." "I thought the Minister of the Interior would look older." "He looks just the job for the right woman." "No one's to go to the study." "The Reichsleiter told me to ensure that." "They mustn't be disturbed." "In a bigger place or a hotel this trip couldn't be kept a secret." "I'm proud of you, and that I could make this suggestion." "Edu, say something, too." "Didn't I always tell you?" "When we've got the house, we'll get the right life in it." "We'll remember this a long time." "Rosenberg, Frick and Ley." "And your uncle Gustav Simon." "A Gauleiter for an uncle, and he won't believe it." "No time for lunch, the gentlemen are going." "Dear lady, please accept the gentlemen's thanks and my own." "We apologise for the swift departure." "The Führer's colleagues were most comfortable in your lovely house." "The undisturbed seclusion discussing difficult political problems in private pleased the gentlemen very much." "Their best wishes and thanks once more, from the heart." "We prepared all this food for nothing." "Dear namesake Simon, we'll meet again soon." "You must achieve some task, Eduard." "Task!" "But what sort of task?" "That's the only thing to gain you advancement, a task." "Maybe we could organize an extra waste-paper drive or give a prize for the prettiest farmhouse." "You must start at the top, not the bottom." "We need something that requires special forces of nature." "I've got it." "Keep quite still." "We must have a catastrophe." "It will only work with a catastrophe." "But what sort?" "An earthquake, a flood." "No, better, a railway disaster." "Lucie, we don't get earthquakes here, and you can forget the railway." "A forest fire." "We've got woods like California, they're always burning." "I can see you organizing the rescue operations getting in all the papers." "But in the Hunsrück nothing ever happens." "Nothing to help you get on in the world." "Our house has come out very well." "THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER" "This is the older generation of the Simon family." "Mathias and Katharina." "They were born around 1870 in Schabbach." "That's our village." "They had three children, lanky Eduard Pauline and Paul." "Mathias was the village blacksmith like his father, his grandfather and his great grandfather." "That's Eduard." "He made it big." "He became the district mayor." "His wife, Lucie, was from Berlin." "She always wanted him to be somebody." "She always wanted something better." "They built a villa with 52 windows." "They borrowed the money from a Jewish bank so the rumour went." "That's me and Wiegand." "He had the first telephone in the village." "What did he do with it?" "Speak to his son in Berlin, Wilfried." "That's him on the photo." "He was in Berlin with the SS." "And there we go..." "That's Christmas 1935." "And what had he brought from Berlin?" "A Christmas tree." ""Dr Goebbels bought the very next one" he said as if there weren't enough Christmas trees in the woods." "Eduard took snap after snap." "We had the best Christmas ever, with a roast goose!" "And Lucie..." "All she cared about was her villa, her most prized possession." "She always said "The villa is like a harbour waiting for the big ships."" "And they came too..." "Rosenberg, Frick and Ley top people in those days, Nazi bosses they were." "They spent three hours in the villa." "As for all the food in the end, they had to eat it themselves." "Oh yes, Maria..." "At that time, she only lived for her kids Anton and Ernst." "Sometimes you'd think she'd forgotten her husband Paul who'd gone missing over 10 years ago." "That was winter 1938, yes." "THE HIGHWAY" "Alone am I in the night." "My soul has taken flight." "Oh heart, do you know why all the palm trees sigh?" "The wind has brought me a song about a love strong." "What my heart needs, it knows;" "for whom it beats and glows." "See Zarah's apron?" "Hand-embroidered." " Do you think she made it?" " No, they have people for that." "She's in a new film with Viktor Staal To New Shores." "We'll come and see it." "You're so lucky, Pauline, having a cinema around the corner." "It's lucky there's no cinema in Schabbach or we'd never get to bed." "Let's go home." "We'll put Gabi in bed with Robertchen then you can sleep there." "Oh, Maria, if we didn't have the children." "Look, Pauline, they've got three." "Yes, Maria, but we two together have four." "Pauline, I get really carried away by a film like that." "When Zarah Leander..." "she's from Sweden, you know when she falls for the bullfighter..." "Where's Robert got to?" "He went to Idar-Oberstein to buy stock for the business." "It's late." "Aren't you scared?" "No, he went in the car." "But, Pauline, with all that gold and silver in the car." "That's good stuff." "If only we could be young over again." "I saw a hat recently, in blue velvet, with a little feather." "I tell you, I almost weakened." "Know something?" "I wish I had the courage to start again from scratch." "Somewhere far away in the world." "That's how I feel." "Don't laugh." "You don't believe me, do you?" "Sometimes I think I've never really lived at all yet." "But you've got two children, almost grown up." "Anton is taller that you are." "When I saw him this morning I thought, That might be my little brother."" "It's all like another life." "Paul... and the time that's passed." "Maria, that's just the wine." "Just once in my life, I'd like a trip to Italy." "Venice, Naples and Lake Garda." "Robert doesn't understand that." "He could leave the shop to his assistant for a fortnight." "But he thinks it can't do without him." "He wouldn't sleep a wink, away." "I've heard that for the highway thousands more men from Thuringia and Saxony are coming to the Hunsrück." "Wohlleben, the engineer, told me." "You know, the man who's lodging with us." "You have no idea the money they spend in our shop." "And they only want genuine gold and silver articles and real stones, too." "Rolled gold is out of the question." "Those lovely rhinestones that we've always sold a lot of they say, "No cheap stuff for us, we want something expensive."" "They say the road from Koblenz to Trier will be built in a year." " Do you believe that?" " Why not?" "Don't tell anyone." "Swear not to, then I'll show you something." "I swear." "And the coat, Pauline, it's a dream." "Put it on." "I bought it with Robert in Koblenz." "I haven't dared to wear it." "You look like Zarah Leander." "Stand back a bit." "When you look over your shoulder with the light from the lamp." "You just told a lie about the hat." "You bought it, didn't you?" "You're right, Maria." "For some months, I diverted money from the till." "Robert didn't notice." "He doesn't know what these things cost." "A deer nearly collided with my car." "What are you so merry about?" "We went to the pictures." "Show me what you've bought." "Bracelets." "Good, the amber jewellery is there, and the pearl necklaces." "They're in such demand." "That's good, Robert." "And the rose crystal bracelet for Frau Sulzbacher;" "She'll be so pleased." "And here are the rings." "They're nice, too." "You've done well." "I found a manufacturer who will supply these for 3.30 marks each." "Silver, hallmarked." " We can sell them for..." " 9.50 marks, I'd say." "You didn't hear that, Maria." "They're frightening." "Those red eyes seem to stare at you." "Those cost 12 marks each;" "the eyes are real rubies." "Who buys stuff like that?" "That's the best selling item ever." "The Hunsrück road workers all the engineers and the Labour Corps the Todt Organization men, they keep buying death's head rings." "Death's head brooches, pendants and even death's head ear-rings." "For their wives in Erfurt and Leipzig." "They feel guilty about being unfaithful." "I think the wine has gone to my head." "Now, good night and sweet dreams." "Robert and I will be very quiet, not to disturb you." "That's 1,275 marks, Pauline." "That's 138 marks more than yesterday." "See, Robert, the business runs even without you." "They prefer to buy from a woman;" "I'd better serve alone in the shop." "Then I can really flash my eyes at them." "They don't dilly-dally." "When they look into my eyes, they buy." "I've noticed that, too, Pauline." " Look, how do you like it?" " Just say that again." " How do you like it?" " Your voice is just like Zarah's." "Robertchen, are you awake?" "I knocked the towel down." "You're wide awake." "I'm taking a photograph." "What's in your picture?" "Left, the site office." "Right, the cart." "Centre, Herr Wohlleben." "Why is he standing on his head?" "It has to be like that." "If you like, I'II make you a copy of the picture." "What a state you're in, Anton." "Mother, I must go into the dark room." "Where have you been this time?" "Maria, this was the last time." "You can hardly get the stuff into the car." "I hope it's the right one, at least." "Let's see." "Yes, Viking-K 2." "That's what Ernst wanted from the catalogue." "Do you know it cost more than 70 marks?" "70 marks for a glider!" "Wilfried, it's no concern of yours what I buy for my children." "From my money." "You should worry." "The boy is technically gifted, and he gets what he wants." "Then send him to the Hitler Youths, they make things." "He doesn't like going there and he needn't if it's no fun for him." "It's not a question of fun." "Fun keeps you going in life." "You can't just have fun in life." "I dare not think how you spoil your children." "I don't spoil them." "They learn things this way, that's what it's about." "It's more important than marching and singing." "Just add it all up." "The Märklin building set and three boxes of accessories." "The Kosmos building set, the steam engine." "Anton's photography and now Ernst's second model glider." "Bigger and bigger." "Soon, you'll be able to sit in one." "And I want Anton to have the film apparatus and the lens grinder." "And Ernst is getting that fat book about aerodynamics." "You can bring the glider with you." "A drive to Koblenz for a glider that will crash in ten minutes." "70 marks!" "Wilfried, it's not your business, drop the subject." "Then send someone else to Koblenz." "I will, I'm going there very soon." "You can afford it." "Yes, believe me, I can." "You now why?" "Because you're paying for it." "That's all of my inheritance I'm claiming at present." "You're not the sole heir." "I'm not only my children's mother, I'm their father." "You'll see, I'm making sure they become something." "That they have fun out of life." "I want them to get what they're entitled to." "I don't want them to be like me forced into things by circumstances." "Yes, well, good evening." " Where have you sprung from?" " My laboratory." "Look how pale he is." "In the army, in 3 years' time he'll collapse if he has to double about." "The children must do more sport." "How about your sports badge, Anton?" "We can ride a bike instead of swimming." "You can't swim?" "Leave Anton in peace." "You'll find out where that attitude gets you." "Your fingers aren't clean." "Isn't that Herr Wohlleben?" "The next must be smaller, because the wings taper." "I'll draw it for you." "Uncle Otto, I'll shoot you down." "We'll see about that." "Come on, Ernst, bed." "Look how far we've got." "Aren't you bothering Her Wohlleben in his free time?" "You've one of those rings, too." "Lots of people are wearing them." "I didn't think I'd see you with one." "They're alike, but they mean something different to every wearer." "Now, bedtime." "Shoes off." "Everything was fine until you came." "Don't you feel well?" "I'm alright, just tired." "Come on, bread and cheese, then off to bed." "Go on the meadow with that, or it will get smashed." " But I can run about with it." " Yes." "Frau Simon, isn't it a lovely day?" "Yes, it would be a nice day for a trip." "He should hold the marker vertically, Pieritz." "Oh God!" "The other direction." "They've sent us another Saxon." "I didn't hear that, Herr Wohlleben." "He's asleep." "How were the angles?" " Mark 1." " PP 23." "Mark 2." "That's nice." " Why nice?" " Very nice, Pieritz." "Give me Mark 1 again." "Take your time, Pieritz." "Want to look?" "Something nice and warm in this cold place." "Cut out the stupid remarks, Pieritz." "Look, isn't that the glider you constructed with the boy?" "You're not with the newsreel." "It flew very well." "Now look at the spirit-level." "Frau Simon, can you hear me?" "Forgive me for disturbing you so late." "Herr Wohlleben had an accident at work." "He is in the car." "Please let us in." "At once." "Excuse us, Frau Simon." "We've come from Simmern." "What happened, for heaven's sake?" "Just imagine I was beside Herr Wohlleben, just looking through the theodolite." "Suddenly, the whole stand fell over." "I saved the theodolite but the stand hit Herr Wohlleben." "Is anything broken?" "You should have heard what the hospital sister said." "We're special." "A complicated multiple fracture, she said." "Fractured in three places." "But he wouldn't stay in hospital." "But I can soon take you back there, no trouble." "Have you eaten anything?" "Will you have something, too?" "Thank you, but I think I'd better go." "What's going on?" "Go to bed, Mother." "Everything is alright." "Herr Wohlleben has been injured but I'II tell you tomorrow." "Then we'll do it another way." "What was going on?" "Mathias, let's get back to sleep." "I think we must look after Maria's children a bit more." "She must have more time to herself." "She's had such a hard time of it all these years." "Can you help me?" "I think I've lost my way a bit." "You've gone completely astray, lady." "Didn't you see the barrier?" "Am I hearing right?" "You must be a countryman of mine." " I'm from Kölleda." " And I'm from Glauchau, next to it." "Someone's having me on." "This road is marked as open on the map." "Impossible." "Here we are slaving away and it's shown as finished." "Where did you get this joke?" "In Berlin." "They're in a hurry." " Where are you bound?" " Trier, to see Jesus' Holy Robe." "But my friend Lucie lives near here so I thought I'd make a little detour." "Are you Catholic?" "Not very, but the Holy Robe helps others, too." "How do I get out of here in one piece?" "Herr Wohlleben, shall we carry her over?" "That's some undertaking, eh?" "Something like this is no problem for us." "What brought you here to the end of the world you muscle men?" "Don't you ever get a bit of fun here sometimes?" "Work, eat, sleep, and once a week a National Socialist Party directive." "And sometimes a little song." "Doesn't anyone make you Saxony potato cakes for afters?" "Only pork belly and meatballs." "And when someone belches, you lose your appetite." "Listen, my dears, my friend Lucie has a huge villa and I'll tell her and you'll all be invited and I'll make potato cakes for you." "Give me your address." " You're Otto Wohlleben?" " No, that's our engineer." "He's got the telephone in the site hut." "Well, take care." "Thanks a lot and I'II see you soon." "Lads, give her a push." "Would you like to sit on the hard side or the soft side?" "The hard side, it's safer." "I thought it was "Tod", the Death Organization." "No, it's "Todt", with a hard T at the front and a soft D and a hard T at the end." "Well, now I know." "Everybody's wearing these rings now." "You, too." "The rings are private." "You said they mean something different to everybody." "What does it mean for you?" "Herr Wohlleben's sitting with Frau Simon." "What are you thinking of now?" "Of a woman?" "You're right, there is a woman in my life." "And now there's you, too." "It's got me all muddled up." "Is she beautiful?" "Yes, she's beautiful." "And she's far away." "I can't get used to it." "I've seen her." "I looked in the bedside table drawer and she was lying there." "Are you angry with me now?" "No, Maria, I'm not." "It's not a very nice story." "You see, she's my cousin." "We're starting." "Shut the door." "What is it?" "Newsreel Number 1, 1938." "A balloon being prepared for ascent and the Führer's tribute to the faithful." " What's the Führer babbling?" " The Führer doesn't babble." "See the strip on the left?" "That's the sound track." "You hear it in the cinema." "One day I'II add sound to my projector." "Fifteen cars at the Nürburgring start." "Caracciola's leading pursued by Rosemeyer." "Now Rosemeyer's leading." "That was car 27." "Caracciola's in car 28." "But for the first twenty minutes we won't see anything." "We don't know their speed." "There'll be no storm, don't worry." "I can tell by my cellar steps." "But we're here at the Nürburgring and I'm telling you that Caracciola will win the race." "Rubbish!" "Make me a pork sandwich, will you?" "...speaking to Saxony, Thuringia Australia, New Zealand and other islands." "A direct broadcast from the Nürburgring." "Hallo, come in, South Bend." "This is South Bend." "There's a huge crowd cheering on the cars." "On my left, 8000." "On my right, 8000." "That makes 88.000 watching me." " Here comes another one." " They can't be here yet, Pauline." "Hallo, Carousel, come in." "Nothing's going around at Carousel yet." "Pieritz is quite a comic, isn't he?" "In a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes that's the Mercedes of von Brauchitsch." "He's overtaking Lang." "This is Start and Finish." "The crowd's wild with enthusiasm." "In the seats of honour we can see the Reich representatives." "Hermann Göring, the motor-racing fan next to Rudolf Hess and Gauleiter Simon." "They're just like us joining in a really popular event." "Here they come!" "Von Brauchitsch has overtaken his stablemate Blondetti." "Maria, what was that?" "Paul Greize from Sul really did go by in a BMW." "Pieritz is a card, eh?" "And I didn't see it." "Greize has also gone past." "When she comes down we'll all get a good look at her speciality." "Her potato cakes?" "Reinforcements!" "Eat up, there's plenty, but mind, they're hot." "Miss Martina, your speciality has given us a lot of pleasure." "You're a ray of sunshine." "We don't have much fun here." "I understand, my dears." "Far from home and no loving hand available." "Martina, please come in." "At once, madam." "I've been telling you since yesterday but you pay no attention." "Don't keep saying "Edu, my darling" to my Eduard." "And don't keep calling me madam." "Otherwise you'll have to leave, sorry as I am." "It just slips out." "I wasn't hinting at anything." "You simply have to realize where you are." "You're right, Lucie." "This lovely house the expensive furnishing, all these rooms." "I keep thinking of how it was in Berlin the two of us and the girls." "But you've got it much nicer here, Lucie." "Different, Martina." "It's different." "And if you think to lure men here with potato cakes, you're wrong." "Lucie, just one or two." "It's for my savings, nobody will notice." "And the poor chaps need it occasionally." "Stop that sort of talk." "Here in the Hunsrück there's none of that sort of thing." "It's not even thought of." "Have you understood, Martina?" "Have you understood?" "Yes, madam." "Thank you for collecting the plates." "Put them down anywhere." "Best wishes from Miss Martina, and I wish you all the best, too." "Leave them, I've got a maid for that." "Just put them down there." "What Eduard means is the credit we built our house with." "Bielstein of the Jewish bank has been arrested for foreign exchange fiddling." "Now Eduard's scared the party will find out about our loan." "But the Party's said nothing and we've heard nothing from the Jew, either." "Nobody wants the money." "That's the trouble." "That's the trouble." "Something's brewing." "If anything happens to Bielstein I don't want to be guilty of his death." "Besides, debts are debts." "It's immaterial to whom you owe the money." "I always say Eduard Simon got into debt through building up the movement." "And the law of 29th August for the cancellation of old debts has settled the matter officially;" "the Führer gave the order." "Lucie, Martina isn't the authorities." "Thank God, at least we've one human being in the house." "Those were marvellous times in Berlin with you." "I thought I could bring a bit of that into my home for ever." " Do you still need me, madam?" " No, Gudrun, you can go to bed." "An angel flew by." "This is the precise moment that time ought to stand still." "Everything we've achieved ought to remain just so." "The new highway, the whole new life." "And it ought to remain for ever, for everyone." "And we shouldn't want any more at all." "And everyone would remain healthy, everyone we know." "Including Bielstein, with his bank in Mainz." "Then you'd have debts again." "Martina, I haven't seen my parents for five years." "That's how long I've not been in Bern." "Have you stood it for so long?" "I'd like to have them here." "We've so many empty rooms, they've really earned it." "They all worked so hard." "We all worked hard, didn't we?" "THE HIGHWAY" "It was in 1928 that Paul Simon left Schabbach and his wife Maria and his two little boys, Anton and Ernst." "That's them..." "Ernst in front and Anton behind him." "These are the grandparents they lived with Katharina and Mathias." "For all those years, Maria lived only for her children." "She told herself "They shouldn't be confronted with the truth the way it happened to me."" "Maria was born in 1900." "On these photos, she's 38 years old." "I get the feeling she could start her life again." "Here she is on her way to the cinema with her sister-in-law, Pauline." "They went to Simmern to see Zara Leander, who was singing..." "How does it go?" ""The wind has brought me a song..."" "And at home they imitated Zara's curls." "This picture shows them clearly." "At that time, 5,000 men from Saxony and Thuringia came to the Hunsrück to build a motorway." "All the way from Koblenz to Trier." "That's Otto Wohlleben and his assistant, Pieritz." "They worked on the road as engineers." "And Otto lived at the Simons' house where Maria was." "In the evenings he built a toy glider for Ernst and sometimes he'd let Anton take his picture." "For example here." "He liked it when Anton photographed him." "One evening in August '38 Otto came home as he had an accident at work." "His arm was in plaster for months." "Maria had to feed him the whole time." "There, yes, it's a big motor race at the Nürnburgring." "The whole family was there." "Pieritz imitated the radio reporter." "And that's Otto and Maria at a dance." "And Eduard, who married Lucie, from Berlin." "They built themselves an enormous villa in the Hunsrück." "It had 52 windows." "That's Martina." "She used to work with Lucie in Berlin." "She came for a visit." "And there's Eduard, standing by the big clock, saying "This is the precise moment when time should stand still."" ""When everything should remain just as it is."" "As if we didn't all wish for that just before the war." "UP AND AWAY AND BACK" "AUTUMN 1938" "Once the road linked villages, now it by-passes them." "That's modern times." "Car drivers don't want so many bends." "They risked running people over in the villages." "There'll be more cars than ever." "I mean, if you drive along the highway you see only the highway." "The village is linked to the highway." "Someone going from Paris to Berlin won't come through Schabbach so we won't see the people who come to the Hunsrück any more." "People just want to drive faster." "When I look at the highway, it goes from Berlin to the border." "It goes to Trier." "I just thought..." "In Hermeskeil there's a bunker, in Morbach and in Hirschfeld." " In Kappel there are two bunkers." " That's not news." "We know that's the West Wall." "They're building more bunkers, too." "The road goes from bunker to bunker, not from village to village anymore." "My parents!" " You aren't from round here, either?" " How do you mean?" "The beautiful Frau Simon." "She has a plaster on it now but I've heard her looks are ruined she was injured in one eye." "Such a lovely villa, and so much bad luck." "There'll be two people in the Schabbach cemetery now who never saw Schabbach with their own eyes." "And we only get to know them now that they're dead." "HOME" "A woman's made lovely through love." "Only through love, that's why she always longs for love." "She's full of yearning for love." "She hopes things will always remain so for a woman's made lovely by love." "My fur coat's almost as nice as hers." "Pity I can never wear mine." "We'll make a trip soon, then you can." "You've gone quite white, and you've become handsome." "I'm so happy to be back here." "Why didn't you come at once?" "Repentance and remorse cleaves the sinner's heart asunder." "Do you still know me?" "That's Mummy." "I want to telephone." "Frau Kröber, come quickly." "Your children are at the window calling, "Where's Mummy?"" "Robertchen, Gabi, what's happened?" "Go in quickly or you'll catch cold - I'm coming up." "Herr Pollack, there's still a light on in the shop." "We can't sleep." "We're wide awake." "We were in the cinema." "Probably the children woke up and dialled your number." "Thank you very much, Herr Pick." "Did you hold on tight?" "Whom did you telephone?" "Did you do it, Gabi?" "Well, you two night owls." "I was scared if my mum wasn't there." "Only Mum, not Dad." "When they left me alone, I used to go to the kitchen and make sure the gas oven was turned off properly." "I was so afraid." "As soon as I got to bed I went down to check again if the oven was properly turned off." "I can well understand if children are scared when their parents are out." "Not exactly a chatterbox, are you?" " It all depends." " Then let it." "How did you get to the Hunsrück?" "I come from Reichenberg, Sudetenland." "You've annexed yourself to us." "One of Konrad Henlein's flag-wavers." "I put an advertisement in The Clockmaker's Journal." "That's how I got here." "Do they only write about clocks in that journal?" "No, there are marriage adverts, too." "Offers of marriage in the trade." "Are you keen on getting married?" "Well, sometimes." "To tell the truth, so am I, sometimes." "Herr Pollack, Martina, come up." "That's a great thing with the highway, isn't it?" "It wouldn't be possible without organization, Herr Kröber." " I hear it's reached Hermeskeil." " Ordeter Haus, to be exact." "Does your arm hamper your work?" "I'd rather it was the left hand but Pieritz is a good right hand man." "Do you remember last autumn?" "Hot." "I was in Holledau, in Bavaria." "May I ask you to be quiet for a moment?" "Herr Pollack and I have just got engaged by the pendulum clock." "Well, well, the quite Herr Pollack." "Still waters run deep." "Young wedded is never regretted." "Take a seat, Herr Pollack." "Martina wont' bite you." "Well, I'm not so sure." "What were you doing there so long?" "I turned off the light in the window." "Then I closed the spare parts box." "You should, every evening." "Some wine?" "It's the '37." "It will be the best of the century, believe me." "I've laid down a hundred bottles of it." " Where are the children?" " Tucked up asleep again." "Poor, sweet children." "I'd have liked to make them some potato cakes." "Herr Pollack, have you ever eaten Saxony potato cakes?" "What's that?" "You don't know what Saxony potato cakes are?" "Pauline, have you any boiled potatoes left over?" "And soft cheese?" "Raisins?" "Pork fat?" "Then off to the kitchen!" "Come and keep me company, Herr Pollack." "But it's half past ten." " What does that mean?" " In wine lies truth." "I've noticed several times, too." "Things might get lively tonight." "I'll go down and fetch more wine." "I get tipsy so easily." "Pauline, can you give me a pinch of salt?" "You put salt in it, too?" "There must be a pinch." "Herr Pollack, stop, you've run out of potatoes." "Yes, I think they're good." "I dreamt of you, Otto." "You stood with your arm in plaster on a high pedestal, like a statue." "I thought, he'll never get down by himself." "Maria, I'm no statue." "I'm flesh and blood, and I love you." "Don't touch, please." "Stay a dream for me a little while longer." "I was alone so long, Otto." "So many years." "I'm already very close to you, Maria." "In a moment it will be too late." "I feel it." "So, number five." "May I, sir?" "Please do, madam." " Is your heart there?" " My heart is there." "Oh, that's very good." "Is that your heart?" "Uncle Otto." "Will your arm take a long time still?" "I hope so." "How do you manage when you have to go?" "I use my left hand." "I've got to go." "Ernst, you don't need me for that." "Isn't your arm healthy?" "Go on, you're a big boy." "But Uncle Otto's even bigger than me." "Today I'd really like to do something special with you." "Otto, for heaven's sake, walls have ears." "Maria, you must help me to change gear." "Now!" "Yes, towards you." "Wonderful, Maria." "Now into third." "You move it to the centre then across to me when I say "now"." "With you I could go motor-racing, you do it so well." "What have you got?" "Our Paul's written." "I can't see anything at all." "Grandad, I'll read it to you." ""My dear family back home." "For ten years I've kept trying to write this letter but I couldn't." "Now I don't even know if you're all still alive." "Father, Mother, Maria and the children." "I'm living in Detroit." "I've been lucky in America." "It was a long way." "Please believe that I've often thought of you all." "Especially as recently we've all heard so much about Germany." "I'm worried so I've decided to see my home again." "Above all, I'm worried about Anton, Ernst, and also about you, Maria." "The business makes a good profit." "Electrical business." "In a year, at the latest, I'm booking a passage to Germany." "You'll get details later." "Give me a sign of life." "Your Paul."" "Grandad, at the top of the letter it says SIMON-ELECTRIC INCORPORATION." "POSTBOX 2179, DETROIT, U.S.A." "And a picture of the factory, stretching to the horizon." "I can't see anything." "Is it true, Katharina?" "Did you see where Ernst went?" "I'll look for him." "Till tomorrow, Pieritz." "And don't go joy-riding in the car." "Some hopes." "I'll soon be falling asleep at the wheel." "What are you doing there?" "I love you so much, Otto." "You're so dear to me." "That's no reason to cry." "That man, that stranger." "For years he's had nothing to do with me." "It's as if he were dead." "And he is dead for me, Otto." "For me, he's really dead." "Otto, he simply went away." "He said nothing, simply left." "And that corpse writes a letter after twelve years." "He's dead for me because he has no heart." "Who are you speaking of?" "Your husband?" "He's written a letter to say he's coming." "I love you so much, Otto." "So much." "Hold me tight." "You must leave, Otto." "Come home, Ernst." "I don't want to see him." "Neither does Mother." "Engineer Wohlleben is transferred to Trier." "Come on, Ernst." "Aunt Lucie's waiting." "Careful, Horst." "He can't stay with me and he won't go home with the confusion there." "Is it that bad, Ernst?" "Take it to the table, Horst." "Be careful." "I've got him a place on a gliding course." "Aren't you a bit too young?" "Well, you've always wanted to fly properly yourself." "That's a good idea, Wilfried." "Let Ernst live here until he's posted to the Hitler Youth Air Corps." "When's your father coming?" "According to what I hear, end of August." "They've made Uncle Otto leave." "Don't look at it like that, Ernst." "Certain conventions must be observed." "Simon-Electric Incorporation, Detroit, U.S.A." "It sounds good." "And he hasn't forgotten that he's German." "You must remember that." "You hate him so much, Ernst?" "He's a Yankee." "Excuse me, was a lady here on her own?" "I've booked us a room." "The months without you, Maria..." "I could hardly bear it." "You're lying on my bad arm, but it's healed now." "Did you notice?" "I'm shivery all the time, I keep trembling." "I can't remember things." "They ask something and I forget what they've said." "And I've started killing time." "Killing time is murder." "At home they're cleaning the house." "They've rearranged the kitchen." "And his parents keep doing things." "Otto, do you know something?" "I've pressed Paul's suits, can you imagine that?" "I've ironed his old suits." "And Anton's learnt a poem by heart." "To recite when he comes." ""In front of my dear family's door I hang my walking-stick today." "What drove me through the world before now at her feet I'll lay"." "What was I just saying?" "Maria, you're not really here at all." "Oh yes..." "Anton." "They want to hang garlands across the street." "And the whole time nobody's asked me how I feel about it, what I think about it." "I've lost my job, Maria." "That doesn't happen nowadays, Otto." "What have you done?" "You know my mother's Jewish." "But they need engineers." "Apparently they can do without me." "And you?" "Do you still need me, Maria?" "His father goes round the forge tidying up and saying "At last I'll have some help here, now I can't see so well."" "Since the letter came, he's almost blind in one eye." "Listen!" "I asked you something, Maria." "Young Ernst" "The man with the hat, that could be him." "Yes, Mother, he just waved at us." "It can't be him, he can't see us from back there." "He doesn't know we're in here." "He won't come at all." "Of course he'll come, we'll wait a bit." "Are you Frau Simon?" "You must telephone the ship." "There are difficulties." "Ask for the purser." "How do you telephone the ship?" "I still haven't understood." "Proof of Aryan identity?" "That's why they won't let you off the ship?" "They've objected to my name, Simon." "Is Anton there?" "Nice to talk to you." "Have you grown up?" "You really don't know me?" "We'll meet soon." "I remember you and Ernst as little boys." "Paul, I've an idea." "I'll talk to Wilfried." "No, he's not little anymore." "He's in the SS." "And he'll help us?" "I can ask Eduard, too." "He's the mayor now, he can do anything." "You don't know he's the mayor of Rhaunen." "A telegram." "The boat sails tomorrow at three." "You must read this." ""Please supply proof of Paul's Aryan identity within three days"." "Not here in the street!" "Fancy writing that in a telegram." "As if we were Jews." "Jesus Maria!" "Edu, keep out of this." "I have to get it at once, I must, for Paul's sake." "What do I do now?" "What if you start checking and they find something?" "The name." " What name?" " Simon." "But the Gauleiter's called Simon, too." "Right." "It can't be so bad then, eh?" "But so quickly, within three days." "A race against time." ""Please supply proof of Paul's Aryan identity within three days."" ""Otherwise he's not allowed to leave the ship."" "Is that him?" "It could be." " Mother, he's waving." " Do you think it's him?" "Wilfried, there you are." "I was at the cemetery." "I've waited five minutes." "My great-grandfather and his father the cemetery's full of Simons." "Then let's just see." "Simon, Abraham, peddler." "Died 1867." "Simon, Abraham." "But you needn't worry, he was childless." "Simon, Daniel." "He's possible, he had a son." "Here he is." "Alfons." "He was called Alfonso later." "They're in the Mato Grosso now." "Who comes after that?" " How far back must I go?" " 1815." "Then I must fetch the other volume." "Why did they pick Biblical names?" "I'm scared every time." "Thank God they're in the Mato Grosso." "Thank God my name is a genuine German name." "Wiegand..." "It means, the weigher-up, the balancer." "People with that name were leaders." "And Simon means "the rock", like Simon Peter." "Or Wieland." "Wiegand might also come from Wieland." " Wieland, the smith." " An L doesn't turn into a G." "I could say Simon comes from Samen." "Besides, my father's the smith." "That's immaterial." "Anyway, we're German." "That must be proved for your family." "Your name sounds suspiciously French to me." "Europe's a melting pot of Aryan races." "Look at our Führer." "We'll never do it in the time." "We must try." "Where there's a will, there's a way." "Have you written everything correctly?" "The Hunsrück is full of Simons, we keep getting more." "I'm losing track." "It's suspicious, how they multiply." "The ship calls at Le Havre, perhaps he'll get off there." "It's all too much for me." "It's simple." "Le Havre, in France, is as far from home as Hamburg." "Maybe he'll telephone home;" "we must hurry back." "We can send him proof of Aryan identity by express letter." "I think I've done everything wrong." "I don't know my father at all." "Won't Uncle Otto ever come back now?" "I've done everything wrong." "You're mother's done everything wrong." "Air cadets, stand easy!" "Your Hitler Youth commander has something to tell you." "Boys, girls, comrades." "The Führer is about to make an historic announcement to us all." "You will now hear, together with the entire German people the Führer's statement on the radio." "Air cadets, attention!" "Poland, last night, for the first time on our own territory fired at us, using regular soldiers." "Since 5.45 a.m. we have been returning their fire." "From now on, bombs will be met with bombs." "Poison gas will be met with poison gas." "Whoever departs from the rules of humane warfare cannot expect anything but the same from us." "I shall wage this struggle, no matter against whom until the safety of the Reich and its rights are guaranteed." "I have now, for six years laboured to re-establish the German armed forces." "In this time, more than 90 billion marks have been utilized for this purpose." "The armed forces are best-equipped beyond comparison with those of 1914." "My faith in victory is unassailable." "If I call on these forces if I demand sacrifices from the German people then I have the rights to for I am ready today as I was before to offer every personal sacrifice." "Just as I am ready to pledge my life at any time so each one of you..." "Why is it so quiet in the village?" "Haven't you heard?" "Now we'll show the French." "Since 5.45 a.m. we have been firing back." "Bombs will be met with bombs." "It was different in 1914." "Käthe's had her baby." "It was born the very moment war broke out." "Do you know what its name is?" "Sieghild." "Because we want to win." "You're to be called Sieghild." "Tick, living on tick." "Do you know what now?" "Now we must pay the bill." "Kath, how do you mean that?" "Robert, I'm afraid." "I think I'll be back this evening." "The document didn't mention that." "I suppose they just want to check the car." "Don't believe it, Robert." "They want you." "You're no soldier, with your sensitive fingers." "Say you've got a weak heart." "You must understand, the Führer needs every car now." "But I'm so alone in the shop." "Remember to wind the clocks in the window, and adjust them." "When Frau Gerlach comes, her clock's ready." "That'll be 6.50 marks." "My husband's gone to surrender his car;" "the Führer needs them all." "It'll be over in no time." "You'll have your car in a fortnight." "If it's not wrecked." "Maybe a touch of camouflage paint." "But you can wash that off." "Can I have 5,000 marks?" "Of course." "Is that too much?" " Worried about your money?" " No, I just felt I should." "UP AND AWAY AND BACK" "This little village is Schabbach, in the Hunsrück the way it looked in the 1930s." "It's all quite different now." "These are the grandparents, parents, children uncles, aunts, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and friends." "The whole Simon family." "The Hunsrück is our home." "Only one of them couldn't stand it in the Hunsrück." "When he was 28, Paul Simon just walked off and left them all in the lurch." "His father Mathias, his mother Katharina his two little boys, Ernst and Anton and his young wife, Maria." "His brother Eduard and his sister Pauline might have wanted to leave the poor Hunsrück village as well." "But the Hunsrück kept them there." "His sister, Pauline married the clockmaker Kröber from Simmern and became a businesswoman." "His brother, Eduard, went a bit further and became district mayor." "He married Lucie, from Berlin and they built a villa." "The new motorway built in one go straight across the countryside." "It linked the Hunsrück with the outside world." "The youth enjoyed themselves in those days." "We went to the cinema and the motor races at the Nürburgring." "That's the cinema again." "That's Zarah Leander." ""A woman's made lovely through love" That's what she sang." "There's Maria with her Otto Wohlleben the engineer from the roadworks." "She looked so lovely then." "And then the letter came from America." "After 12 years, the first sign of life from Paul when nobody knew he was in America." "Nobody even knew if he was alive." ""We've been hearing so much about Germany", he wrote and said he wanted to come over." "Mathias could hardly believe his eyes." "From the time the letter came Mathias was almost blind." "And Maria clung to her Otto." "She didn't want him to go, she didn't want to give him up but she couldn't help it." "She didn't know then that she was expecting Otto's baby." "That's the last picture of Otto in peace time." "Ernst was up in the glider when the war broke out." "That's four years later." "Her boys have become men." "On the left, Ernst." "On the right, Anton in uniform." "That's Anton in Russia." "In Schabbach there were days you forgot there was a war on." "THE HOME FRONT" "Nice mess." "All from last night?" "What an air battle." "Our fighters brought down 16 bombers." "They're scattered between Kirchberg and Kastellaun." "Near Sohren we found six charred English bodies." "This size, they all fitted into one coffin." "Our fighter pilots are first-class." "Another Gypsy-Major propeller." "Why another?" "Wilfried, stand still." "The Führer's H.Q. broadcast a special radio message for the Hunsrück." "Yes, of course, Karl." "Isn't Ernst a pilot?" "Yes, but he's still training." "Now get ready." "Some of you, look out of the cockpit." "Our fighters need only lie in wait." "Enemy bombers have to cross here." "Sometimes they try to fool us by seeming to head for Frankfurt but only some go there." "The rest head for Kassel, the main target." "Our fighters aren't fooled." "When will the line be working?" "In about two hours." "It's vital for Schabbach." "We can't remain cut off." "Airmen are the true heroes." "They don't suffer." "Stop the engine." "I'll go and check." "Stay in the car." "And don't start the engine." "You saw him?" "Yes, an English airman." "Here he comes." " He's not holding his pistol now." " But there was a shot." " The Englishman didn't shoot." " Then Herr Wiegand shot." "You were right, boys." "An English terror pilot." "He can be taken away." " Is he dead now?" " Yes, unfortunately." "I had to shoot him when he tried to escape." "To what do we owe the honour?" "I have a report to make." "Four kilometres North West, on path W16 about 200 metres to the right near some basalt rocks there is a dead Englishman." " Dead?" " He tried to escape, so I shot him." "Wonderful!" "We must report it to Kirchberg at once." "Specht!" "Bring us a mug of coffee." "You'll know the place by the parachute caught in a tree." "You lot at Kirchberg are said to be great at retrieving parachutes." "You must be Martha, from Hamburg." "I'm your mother-in-law." "I've been with the Post Office for four months." "Didn't Anton tell you?" "I'll take you on my round." "Let's look at you." "You're really lovely." "Anton's picked himself someone very nice." "What month are you in?" "The sixth." "Things could start soon." "Whoever sits by the fire" "Wasting his time" "He'll save his energy" "But get nothing done" "But whoever asks no questions" "And sets off undaunted" "For him there's no question mark until his job is done" "Yes, gentlemen!" "That's how we like it." "From today, the world belongs to us." "Yes, gentlemen." "Worries are gone" "We do what we like" "And whoever bothers us" "Before he knows what's happening" "He'll have been dealt with by us" "Yes, gentlemen, you can bet on that" "Why are you crying?" "I was thinking of Anton out there somewhere in Russia." "It's so horribly far away." "In that vast, terrible country." "Our boy." "My Anton and your Anton." "You know he doesn't fit at all into the war." "He was always a sensitive boy really gentle." "If you'd known him as a child..." "Two missing." "Where are Roger and Marcel?" "Gone to eat." "Oh, have they?" "And where, may I ask?" "Today we've done a lot." "Good travail." "Now we'll have a decent meal." "A bit more viande?" "And a bit more for camerade, yes?" "What's up with Wiegand now?" "He's overseeing the French prisoners." "This is incredible." "Really, Aunt Kath, you stab me in the back." "Corporal, you'll make good this food that belongs to the German people." "Half rations for a week for those two." "What's happened to you?" "Do you know what you've become, Wilfried Wiegand?" "A really dirty dog, that's what you are." "It's disgraceful what's happened to the children in the war." "He's the one I mean." "Watch your tongue!" "You've no pity for people." "I saw that from the start." "When you lot took things over, with those boots of yours." "You don't know what you're saying." "I hope you're a prisoner abroad one day with nothing to eat and you meet someone like you." "Else, know what he did?" "He forbade Marcel and Roger to eat after work." "You all know they're enemies, not people." "And that personal contact with prisoners is strictly forbidden." "You, Kath you could be charged with malicious gossip, watch out." "There's no peace and quiet!" "Wilfried, you're a shirker and a coward." "All you can do is order women about." "There's a war and this is the home front." "Look around, Aunt Kath." "Marga's husband was killed at Leningrad." "Hermine's husband's plane crashed at Kharkov." "Else's lost her brother and her husband." "And I want you now to keep quiet." "You're not being shot at here." "You act like the lord of the manor and if your father weren't so old and doddery he ought to tan your arse!" "I've been digging up potatoes all day with Marcel and Roger." "Two quiet, hard-working chaps." "One has a wife and four children in France." "Now you'll meet us all." "This is our mother." "This is Martha from Hamburg." "What's the matter?" "Nothing." "I just lost my temper." "What month is she in, then?" "This is our parlour." " Father!" " What is it?" "Martha's here from Hamburg." "Look, grandad!" "To think you can still see all that." "I can imagine it." "Our grandad has bad eyes." "What a sweet boy." " Is that Anton's little brother?" " Yes, my Hermann." "My child from Otto." "Then he's my brother-in-law." "If he only knew he's a brother-in-law." "Father, greet Martha." "All in due course." "Go up close, Martha, so that grandad can see you." "I'm not short-sighted." "I saw you, I'm farsighted." "It's just the one eye that won't work properly." "My grandfather had a cataract too." "When I look outside, I see everything." "But so foggy." "That's how it is when you get old." "Sit down, Martha." "See my damaged thumb?" "I hit it in the forge." "I can't see well." "After forty years, I hit my thumb." "Yes, after forty years." "Anton, a good lad." "Always so interested in the forge and the work." "Just like his father." "Has he told you about Paul, his father?" "My daughter-in-law." "It's as though Anton has sent me a greeting with you and the child to come." "Paul is American now." "But he's not fighting against us." "Where's mother?" "Didn't she come in with you?" "Look, grandad and mama." "A lovely, mysterious stretch of water." "Deep, too. 1,000 metres." "A bomb crater, too." "A volcanic crater." "A crater like that has a narrow funnel down below." "And inside is a cork, a very small cork." "And below that, all flaming hell." "10,000 landmines are a warm fart by comparison." "The cork is a wobbly thing." "If anyone touches it carelessly..." "If I throw this stone into it now it could be just the one gram too much." "What they've waited for below for 500,000 years." "Better not, Herr Wohlleben." "We may be lucky." "Nothing again." "It might have been." "I mean, the whole Reich might have exploded." "Then the Allies would suddenly have won." "Just like that." "This morning when I defused that unexploded bomb I sat on it, unscrewing the fuse bumping it a bit and I noticed a text beneath the church clock." ""One of these days will be your last."" "I don't get it." "One of these hours, it meant." "But I thought about my bomb all the time." "A bomb, the last thing I could ever wish for." "Or my last bomb." "Then I unscrewed a bit and thought give it a try." "And?" "Nothing." " My name wasn't on it." " What a sense of humour." "If I thought about all that, I'd get the shits." "Then squat down and press your arse hard against your bomb." "Then nothing can happen to you." "You'll be absolutely watertight." "Thank God, you're here." "The bomb's right in front of the hangar." "The whole training programme has been stopped." "Pieritz, a perilous situation." "It must have come from back there silently, not a sound." "Scared you last night, eh?" "Pieritz, the compass." "Why a compass?" "Lance-Corporal Pieritz will trace magnetic currents." "Extremely magnetic." "You must remove it at once, Lieutenant." "Magnetic pistols, damn dangerous." "The theory, later." "Your pistol is magnetizing our tools." "Are you trying to kill us all?" "I need a No 17 left-handed spanner." "Mine's broken, and Luftwaffe supplies are erratic." "Get a No 17 left-handed spanner!" "And take away my magnetic pistol!" "Lieutenant, get the hangar cleared." "Probably a triple-five." "We've had them before." "Or a British triple-six." "We had one in Kaiserslautern." "Dented, remember?" "Gurgling away, not nice at all." ""Quiet", I told her." ""You'll soon be relieved."" "She kept gurgling so I gave her a kick that shut her up." "Then she quietly let herself be defused." "We'd better take a look at the lady." "Very kind of you, Lieutenant." "With such gloves, he defuses bombs." "You can hardly believe it." "Pieritz, take the left-handed spanner or we'll lose it." "Otto Wohlleben." "Bomb disposal squad 241 stationed in Nürnberg." "Unusual name, isn't it?" "Uncle Otto, don't you recognise me?" "Ernst!" "You taught me flying with the Viking glider." "It's still in our attic." "How tall you've grown." "You remember Pieritz." "That's Ernst Simon." "Are you two still together?" "Time to take cover." "Does he do it alone?" "Yes, but afterwards we'll talk it over." "How long has he been doing that?" "When I joined the squad in 1941 he'd been there a year." "Do you defuse bombs every day?" "It depends." "We usually explode them, but not here because of your aircraft." "Did she officially report whose child it is?" "No, not to anyone in the village not even the mayor." "If anyone asked, she said "It's a child." And that was sufficient." "Of course, we know you're the father." "I always wanted a child." "Only not in times like these." "What does he look like?" "When I look at you, he looks like you." "Those English are real mechanics." "Look at these components." "Precision work." "They can be proud of that." "But they didn't consider that the better the work the easier it's dismantled." "If I stick to the same technique then I can rely on their precision." "Let me hear his name again." "Hermann, and he's four." "If their mechanic's sloppy, or grumpy I'll be blown into the stratosphere." "We've often talked about you." "Get in touch with mother." "She'll be so happy." "And you're a pilot as you've always wanted." "My training's almost over." "We're on terrestrial navigation now." "We fly over Bitburg, Delmenhorst and back over Kassel." "You land drenched in sweat." "Is that the marriage certificate?" "Yes, Anton's signed it at the front." "What's the book?" "It's Hitler's Mein Kampf." "Are you reading it, too?" "I don't know yet." "Now the wedding photograph, with the bride." "Get into the middle." "Eduard, a permanent souvenir." "Herr Specht and Herr Huch..." "Can I come in too?" "A marriage without God's blessing." "I can't get it into my head." "Fancy not going to church, Martha." "You can't do that." "Glasisch, help me." "Stand still." "Don't exert yourself, you're ill." "I tell you, Martha." "Marriage is directly connected with God." "Well done, Glasisch." "Ursel, don't dirty your coat." "Martha, the church is over there." "It wouldn't take five minutes to go in and say a prayer." "Let me be in the picture too." "Martha, I implore you." "Don't do it without God." "It could bring a curse on you." "Good God!" "How much longer, Eduard?" "That was a lovely one." "They're only bothered that nobody should miss lunch." "Don't keep kicking my shoes, Robertchen." "Pauline, tell him to behave." "It's a proxy marriage, not a children's party." "Take your scabby hands off." "Nobody here thinks about our Anton." "He's the bridegroom, at the front starving and freezing." "You've never had to go through that yet." "Don't start that again." "I can't help being ill as a child and having had lots of operations." "Our boys at the front aren't starving." "Or freezing." "You've no idea." "And not dying, either?" "You mean that?" "They're not dying either." "It's a pleasure to be at the front." "I'll ring later." "Don't tell me stories, Wilfried Wiegand." "That's atrocity propaganda." "Do you listen to enemy broadcasts?" "If I catch you, there'll be no pardon never mind being related." "You were a fool as a child and you've remained one." "I've got a telephone call laid on his unit in Krimskaya." "I shouldn't tell you Anton's there." "But it may ease your mind." "Then I'll ask him if he's starving and freezing." "You won't touch the telephone if you're going to ask that." "Look at the cake!" "It's Anton to the life." "My call to Propaganda Company 421 Sector Sebastopol-Krimskaya." "I am ready to take the call." "Yes, it's the proxy marriage." "Please ring us back." "Fine, we are waiting." "I'm going to church to pray Our Lord to bless you." "You and your Anton." "I don't understand why you won't come, Martha." "Edu, you're coming with me." "Horst, you stay here." "Dear bride dear mothers dear friends soldiers, comrades dear children..." "It is my duty as the only man still at home..." "The only man!" "Somebody has to be, Aunt Kath." "What if no one kept order here?" "My duty to say a few words to you so that we appreciate the significance of this hour." "At this moment countless telephone girls in the whole Reich are feverishly occupied at the telephone exchanges consummating a minor miracle of our technology." "Consummate!" "These are not empty words, Aunt Kath." "As so often happens, war is the mother of invention." "Our indefatigable German diligence and inventiveness have made it possible for every soldier between Bordeaux and Kharkov..." "And Schabbach." "Aunt Kath, someone must be here to look after food supplies for comrades at the front." "Agriculture's an important war effort." "Shirker!" "Between Narvik and Salonika whether in the air or underwater whether in trenches or staff bunker every fighting German soldier can be reached from home by telephone at any time." "And thus we can unite our bride here with her bridegroom, our dear Anton fighting far away." "Who would think crossing the fields from Schabbach that these telephone wires are part of a network covering the whole of Europe." ""We regret that our dearly beloved son..." ""...nephew and grandson..." ""..." "Grenadier Hans Betz..." ""...has lost his young life on the Eastern front." ""Schabbach, 15th January, 1944." ""We ask for your prayers."" "The basket-maker's boy, Hans." "Yes, this is Schabbach." "Is that you, Anton?" "This is your grandad Wiegand." "We're here in the parlour all together because that's where the telephone is." "I'll tell you who's here so you can picture it." "Besides me sits your grandmother." "Over there is your mother, both very excited." "But you must speak to your wife." "If you could see how she looks you'd look too." "We've kept a place here for you and your mother-in-law has come." "You don't know her?" "She's come specially from Hamburg." "Oh, after the war." "Soon, then." "The room is full of people." "And an enormous spread on the table." "Anton, here's your wife." "Anton, are you all right?" "Yes, it's really nice here in your home." "I've got my blue outfit on." "You know, the one I had on when we first met." "Yes, it still fits just about." "Yes, I said "Yes" and they read out your "Yes" to me." "What's that?" "I didn't understand." "Anton says he's being filmed by the newsreel unit at the front." "Just a moment." "Don't all sit there like dummies." "Anton, your whole family's here, looking and nobody's saying a word." "You must wait a moment." "My comrades are lighting me." "They've got spotlights here." "I'll explain later." "You must wait a moment." "Your mother's so nice to me." "Tell our comrade Simon he looks so stiff." "His face is too stiff." "Understand?" "As you say, Captain." "Please smile for our film expert." "Now, completely natural." "Speak up." "You mustn't be sad, Martha." "Make sure nothing happens to you." "Adolf Hitler's standard is right beside us so nothing can happen to us." "I'm so relieved." "Want close-ups, Captain?" "We ought to film the bride at home." "That would suit an old hand like you." "Pity." "It's Ernst!" "He's crazy." "He could have hit the church tower." "He's set up a long-distance record." "Training for three months and he's flying a 190." "How lovely, Gabi." "We'll send them to papa at the front." "I hope he doesn't crash." "He's firmly in the saddle." "Martha, all good things come from above." "That's how our Ernst is." "Now you've met him too." "You're all so nice to me." "Cadet, to the C.O. at once!" "Trouble, he's fuming." "Stand to attention." "What do you think our meagre fuel supplies are for, Simon?" "My brother's proxy marriage..." "Rubbish!" "Proxy marriage!" "Did you at least hit them with your bouquet?" "It wasn't that easy, was it?" "1,000 metres off, throttle back flaps out, slide in at 50 metres." "100 metres from our roof toss out flowers." "Bang on target, Major." "A training manoeuvre." "By the way, report to Captain von der Heiden." "Tomorrow you fly your first sortie." "This music!" "This divinely gifted artist!" "What culture!" "We were in Munich station and this man in uniform comes up." "Says, "Girls, have you ever seen our Führer?"" " He did, didn't he, Erika?" " Yes, Erika." "Of course we said no." "So he laughs, goes and telephones "In five minutes, a car will be here." ""If you like, the Führer will receive you."" "You went with a complete stranger?" "He wasn't strange." "He showed us his identity card." " He was a "Gauleiter"." " Gauleiter?" "We thought he was having us on." "Then we found out he was a Gauleiter." "We drove to Rudolf Hess's house in the Luitpoldstrasse." "And the Führer came to the door and shook our hands." "And gave us each five marks." " Didn't he, Erika?" " Yes, Erika." " When was it?" " I'll never forget the date." "It was 26th January, 1938 and I was 17." "And he gave us each a signed photograph, didn't he?" "Yes, Erika." "And we didn't care that we'd missed our train." "That I believe." "So where did you sleep?" "I normally only invite officers to the house." "But this common soldier, Herr Zacharias he's got a sort of nobility, I saw it." "While others at the field kitchen wolfed their food down he, the artist he ate slowly just morsels with his spoon." "As a man eats, so he is." "You have taste, dear lady." "Bravo, Helmut!" "Once again, you were divine." "I can't find words." "Divine!" "War has its good sides." "It brought you into my house." "Isn't that right, Edu?" "Please be kind and play some more." "The final solution is being executed mercilessly." "Between ourselves, we all know anyway." "Up the chimney..." "What does "Up the chimney" mean, Wilfried?" "I mean the Jews." "I can't explain in detail with children here." "My comrades suffer greatly over this matter as one can imagine." "A very, very unpleasant task." "Mama, who goes up the chimney?" "Be quiet, Robertchen." "Why do you keep blinking one eye?" "What are you blinking for?" "I keep thinking of the basket-maker's boy, Hans." "He might still be alive if I hadn't taught him that." "What did you teach him?" "THE HOME FRONT" "Put that light out!" "When you look at Maria's photos you always know exactly when they were taken." "Maria was born in 1900." "And when she's 20 in the picture, then you know it's 1920." "That's how she looked as a young mother." "She was about 30 then." "The mother of Anton and Ernst." "When Anton went to the Hitler Youth in 1934 Maria was 34 years old." "She was always there for her sons." "She met the civil engineer, Wohlleben, in 1938." "You can see them dancing." "Her husband Paul left her in the lurch in 1928." "Twelve years later he wrote from America saying he wanted to visit her." "Maria didn't know he was still alive." "She went to Hamburg with Anton to pick up Paul." "But he wasn't there because the war had started." "That was in 1939." "And here is Maria at 44." "Hermann, her child by Otto, is just four years old." "That's during the war too, in 1944, when Anton got married to Martha." "In this one Maria was 45 and the war had just ended." "In 1946 her husband - you can see him at the top there Paul, the American, came to Schabbach on a visit." "There, Maria is 48." "It was the year of the currency reform." "There she is 56 and Hermann, her youngest boy, is 16 and at the High School in Simmern." "Maria had quite a lot on her mind then." "Anton, her eldest son has formed an optics company in the village." "That's him in front of the factory." "He is 33 now." "And Ernst, the second eldest thought about nothing but flying." "That's him in a helicopter." "He is 32 now." "Oh, our Maria!" "She was our family calendar." "I always used to call her our living century." "In the photo on the right she was 65." "That was in 1965." "Hermann, her youngest, has got older too, with the years." "He is not the youngest these days, any more than I am." "He spent time in America and now he lives in Munich." "He was always interested in music." "He always played the organ and wrote songs." "And today, he is a famous composer, famous in America too." "Maria again." "All three of her sons have made something of themselves Anton, Hermann and Ernst." "THE PROUD YEARS" " Which road, this one or that one?" " I don't know." "You take that one, I'll take this one." "It seems they meet." "Give me the figures again." "1963, about 50 million;" "1964, 82.6 million." " We have to turn right." " So I'll go right." "No, left." "The Simon family founded the firm in 1949 and still controls it as a family business." "What's that?" "What a peculiar place." "Drive on!" "The visitors from Brussels." "I'm glad we could arrange this meeting." "My colleague, Herr Eichinger." "Sorry we're late, we got lost in the forest." "Have a seat." "Are those the firm's founding fathers?" "My grandparents, my father." "A firm with a tradition." "Please eat something first;" "that's our home-made sausage." "I prefer to smoke, if you don't mind." "Excellent sausage." "We have this sort in Flanders." "I'd be pleased to take you out, if you ever visit us." "That's a famous sausage hereabouts." "Home-made, Simon quality." "Your secretary seems to know all about sausages." "The Liver sausage and the black pudding were made by my mother." "That's from the Schabbach butcher, Manfred an old schoolmate." "Tell me, is it all forest around here?" "Don't you like it?" "Delicious." "Excellent." "Is there any left over?" "I can give you some to take, if you like." " I'd appreciate that." " Help yourself." ""Careful!" "Not customers!"" "I must have a smoke." ""They want to buy out my factory."" "I thought they looked suspicious." ""A sum has been mentioned." "Come over, unobtrusively."" "What do you think?" "What's that?" "Army boots?" "Did I ever tell you I took up photography as a boy, when I was fourteen?" "I had a box camera and a tripod, from my uncle." "We photographed houses and buildings." "Architectural photographs." "No distortion." "Wide angle." "An ordinary modern camera can't do that." "Suppose we develop an objective lens which has some focal adjustment." " Got any ideas?" " I had such an idea, too." "We'd have to separate the lens from the barrel and then connect them with a variable adjustment." "I thought so, too." "Concentrate on it for the next fortnight." "Ever seen anything like it?" "Gentlemen, I think this offer of yours is some misunderstanding." "I am now forty-four, our order book is in excellent shape." "I have just registered three new patents and taken on extra specialist workers." "I don't know why I should retire from business." "As we see it, you are not mass-producing." "You specialize in products for technology, medicine space exploration, etc..." "And we are a multi-national concern operating in fields adjacent to yours." "You need only imagine what would happen to your ring of patents ...once it is broken." "Magnificent work." "Never seen the like." "Neither have I." "It's no secret that our concern has invested large sums in processes comparable to yours." "Sooner or later they will be successful." "I can only reply with personal arguments." "I love my work." "I've built up a factory which for me and the local population is our livelihood." "We all depend on this firm." "Sixty million is a lot." "I imagine you have other dreams apart from work." "We offer sixty million, our final figure which means transferring all your past and future patents to us." "Obviously." "I must take advice, and I request a few weeks for reflection." "Obviously." "Can I help at all?" "I don't suppose you'll want to return to Brussels today." "You could stay the night here at "The Linden Tree"." "They have very good rooms." "I must show you something." "Robertchen and I just cleared out the cellar as the builders are coming and I found this box in a suitcase." "You'll never guess what's in it." "Pauline!" "That's money!" "Old, pre-war money." "Pauline, that's thousands." "I think Robert hid it before he was called up." "He always said we'd be well off when we'd won the war." "I worked it out." "Those are the shop takings for July and August, '39." " And he didn't tell you?" " No last words, I swear to you." "And it's turned up now." "When it's no longer worth anything." "How stupid men are sometimes." "Do you know what I miss most in my flat in Simmern?" "All the clocks ticking." "What plans we had in those days." "You with your fur coat." "And you wanted to go to Lake Garda." "Robertchen and his wife were in Morocco recently." "They brought me a real caftan and a leather pouffe." "But I can't sit on it, it hurts my knees." "Actually, we ought to be content." "Anton's been successful." "Ernst has his business and jets from place to place." "Hermann's finished his studies and will soon have his first radio concert." "Robertchen's got twice the turnover we used to have." "And Gabi's husband drives a BMW." "And we two, Pauline?" "Our travels are with one finger on an atlas." "Isn't that right?" "You know what?" "We'll go to America and visit our Paul." "Look." "Paul sent me this card from Florida." "They say the sun shines there all year round." "Then we'll fly to Florida." " On an aeroplane?" " Well, of course." " At our age?" " Older people than us fly." "Who can afford such a thing?" "I asked at the travel bureau." "We can easily afford it." " Well, I have saved a bit." " Maria, we'll do it!" "Then let's drink to it." "It can't be done, Pauline." " Why?" " Because of the cow." " What cow?" " My cow." "Sell her." "I'll call the cattle dealer." "Wait a bit." "I'LL do it now, or you'll change your mind." "Glasisch!" "You needn't look, it's not cooked yet." "Heard the latest?" "They're starting colour TV in Berlin." "And now because the expression "applying pressure" to the button when used by a member of the government might be misunderstood..." "..I'm now, so to speak, firing the starting pistol for German colour television." "Such cheek!" "Typically American." "When a Yank's on a crowded street where we would say, "Excuse me" he says, "What will you take to step aside?" "..." " ..." "We'll pay sixty million."" " What?" " Are we that rich?" " Yes, but now keep quiet." "You must regard it all as your success." "At last we know what we're worth." "If I refuse, suddenly we're not worth anything at all." "If only I could say something useful to you." "If only I knew to whom to turn." "One bit of advice, don't let anyone in the firm notice anything." "Perhaps I should speak to our new engineer." "God, don't do that!" "You're capable of asking people in the pub you've remained so naive." "What am I to do?" "Now I know." "Now I know whom you can speak to, your father in America." "To Simon Electric Incorporation, Detroit." "Telex 0431  34576." "Dear Father I need your advice on an urgent business matter." "Time is short." "Is a meeting possible?" "Anton." "Then give our telex number." "It's 2.10 p.m. in Detroit they'll have finished their lunch break." "It's like the old days, Anton." "5,316 kilometres you walked with your patents in your head from beyond the Urals to Schabbach." " How time flies." " And now it's standing still." " Jäbsche." "Where are you?" " Hello, Ernst." " Have you thought it over?" " Well, I don't know." "I've costed it all." "Your house has got a bit shabby, hasn't it?" "You're almost the last in the neighbourhood." "It looks as if the war is still on." "Modernization, that's the slogan of today." "Admit it." "Those windows need enlarging, with aluminium frames." "They're clean and weatherproof." "The front door, too." "This is Mosmann's house;" "isn't he related to you?" "Doesn't it look good now?" "My firm will give you... fifteen years guarantee on doors and windows." "It's too dear for me." "Nonsense." "Think about the advantages." "Look, I'm from around here, too." "How we kids suffered from the lack of light, air and vitamins!" " Cut the soft soap!" " Move with the times, eh, Elsbeth?" "Father, I saw a girl's room in the catalogue." "It was great." "Interlaced carvings on the doorposts, that's what I'd like." "I've furniture, too." "Take a look, your eyes will pop out." "Complete renovation programmes, and here's my special offer." "I'll take the old fixtures in part payment even windows and doors." " But not before harvest." " Take your time." "I'll come back." "Keep the catalogue." "Your house has become a real palace." "Just as I imagined it, the same as in Woppert." "Wonderful." "But the old front door sticks out like a sore thumb." "Change it, too." "You're right." "Which of these would you prefer?" "That's not so easy to clean." "I'd like that other one." "Same colour as the other door?" "If both are the same colour we'll mistake the front door for the stable." "You'd never guess what an old house it is within." "Doesn't Grandma say the house is three hundred years old?" "Now it looks brand new." "Is it meant to be sandstone, or natural stone?" "The main thing is, it's modern." "If brick becomes fashionable, we can replace this with brick." "Aluminium's the coming thing;" "they're using it in space." "You think you can tell us farmers anything." " Will it keep out the Hunsrück wind?" " What do you do with the old stuff?" "That's just a hidden form of discount." "The odd sale doesn't cover my storage costs." "Our Mike's working in your brother's firm." "Anton's a fine chap." "With such a brother, we trust you, Ernst." "I've heard you two don't get on well." "Rubbish." "Every family has a cross word now and then." "Anton, this telex came in." ""Managing Director Paul Simon currently in Germany Park Hotel, Baden-Baden." "Best wishes." "Simon Electric, Detroit, USA."" "Lotti, place a call to the Park-Hotel, Baden-Baden." "Father is in Germany?" "Why weren't we told anything?" "Brenner's Park-Hotel?" "Mister Paul Simon, please." "He's out?" "But he is staying with you, isn't he?" "No, thanks, not necessary." "Don't you want to leave a message for him?" "I'm going there." "Turn right, then you'll get to Fremersbergstrasse." "You'll see the "South-West Broadcasting" signs just follow those." "What's he doing in South-West Broadcasting?" "There's a problem." "What do you mean by large and small "Tuchels"?" "Those are our plugs." " How do I translate that?" " That's your problem." "Anton how did you get here?" "How did you find me here?" "Why weren't we told you were here?" "Wait, I'll come out." "You're surprised, aren't you?" "We were close to what I wanted but we ought to destroy the sound more." "Have we got a tape of an old Volkswagen engine?" " Do you think that will work, Daddy?" " Let's try it." "If only we'd solved the plug problem." "I've had a work commissioned by the radio." "Daddy has built the whole installation for me in Detroit." "For two years my research department has worked only for Hermann W. Simon." " A very clever boy." " Can your people fix those plugs?" "I've brought Allan from the States, he's a technical genius." "We'll sort out the plugs." "Have you a soldering iron?" "What's a soldering iron?" "Have we a soldering iron?" "Let's play M5 back, then." "Anton, I'm sorry, but we're in mid-production." "Daddy, it sounds great." "Allan, the chainsaw again." "In Japan, they've got small cars like these, too." " Were you in Japan?" " Of course." "Is that the park where the nightingales sing?" "I couldn't sleep for them, it was so lovely." "Let's lie in and wait for them." "You'd better go into the hotel, Anton's waiting." " I'll do it alone." " I'd forgotten him." "Don't be long." "Anton, one shouldn't hang on to things." "What have you got?" "Daddy, listen to this." "It sang again." "I recorded it in the park." "Now we'll alter it a bit, multiply it then we'll have a rhythmic pattern nobody can identify." "Well, Anton, my advice is sell... immediately!" "I did that with my Detroit factory two years ago." " Surprised, eh?" " You sold it?" "That's news." "For two years, Simon Electric has been an IBM company." "But I kept the research department for myself." "So I've produced these musical toys rather at IBM's expense." "Our Daddy, eh?" "After the recording, I'll donate the installation to Karlsruhe University." "My tax adviser devised all that." "I can just see it in the University entrance hall a beautiful marble plaque..." ""..." "To our benefactor, Paul Simon the pioneer of electronic sound installations."" " Don't get carried away." " It's usual in the States." "In my case, things are different." "I've just applied for two patents." "You said sixty million." "Well..." "Taking into account their saving on research, buildings, equipment the takeover of the work force and the name your whole technical know-how ask for one hundred to one hundred and ten million." " So you advise me to sell?" " Of course." "That'll make nice music." "How's business?" "Good?" "Can I have a beer?" "Why have they gone so quiet?" "Sometimes it's loud, then it's quiet, then it gets loud again." "It's like walking from beyond the Urals." "Not bad, Ernst, about beyond the Urals." "How is Anton doing?" " Why not tell me what you know?" " Have I ever known anything?" "Is it true your brother's in difficulties?" "So that's it." "I don't know, but I shouldn't be surprised." "Is it true that your brother wants to sell up?" "It concerns some of us, too." "Well, you can't count on me." "I'm not lending my brother a penny." "Where Anton is now, he doesn't need you." " Leaving in the middle of the night?" " Yes, the bill please." "I'm calling my work "Connections"." "We begin here for five seconds with an electronic intro then piano and flute." "I won't disturb you any longer, just to say goodbye." "Anton, my son." "Spending money is much nicer than earning money." "I've only appreciated that in my old age." "This musician is ruining me, but I'm enjoying it." "He impressed me in the States." "He's shameless about accepting things." "But then, his father's name, Wohlleben, meant "to live well"." "Best wishes to your mother." "Now, Hermann, start again." "What are you doing out here so early?" "Want to run a bit with me?" "I run every morning between five and six summer and winter." "Who's hunting over there?" "A hunting club from Düsseldorf." "I've an hour to spare." "Want a lift?" "All right, just this once." "They come from all over as though everything's obtainable in the Hunsrück." "It will be a great honour to show you my business." "About time, too, after five years." "You've never visited me." "I was near here a year ago." "Why didn't you call in?" "What have you got in the barn?" "Doors." "Over five hundred front doors." " That's a lot, Ernst." " Too true, it's a lot." "These are my entire stores." "There, replacement wood." "Here, old window frames." "Those are old beams, up to five hundred years old." "Those pieces are used in the old half-timbered houses." " Is that your wife?" " Well, not exactly." " Well, is she or isn't she?" " Not yet, Anton." "Mind your head." "So those are the front doors?" "And room doors, windows, shutters, beds." "And out there are huge barn doors." "Below is the workshop;" "five restorers work for me." "Out of two items, they make three." "Ernst, remember this?" "Anton, smell this." "It smells like the inside of that cupboard." "The original smell of 1865." "I had it created by a perfume designer from Augsburg." "I got the idea when I bought an old car." "The dealer had used a spray to give it a new car smell." "It fooled me and I bought the car." "I told myself that others were sure to be as stupid as me." "We supply wardrobes, tables, chairs ceiling beams, floors, facades for villas and pubs from Flensburg to Garmisch-Partenkirchen." "And that's my secret weapon." "Smell it again." "Believe me, the sense of smell is man's most primitive sense." "The sense most closely connected with the subconscious." "Seeing, hearing, feeling, don't come until much later." "And thinking - forget it!" "That comes last of all." "People have within them a yearning for the smell of 1865." "It even works on metal." "So my business is flourishing." " And yours?" " Ernst, I don't understand you." "No wonder." "I don't understand myself." "It's embarrassing, but I must tell you." "Everyone's worried." "There's a rumour." " What rumour?" " That you're in difficulties." "Nonsense." "Who's talking such rubbish?" "I said it was rubbish, too." "All will be explained." "Staff meeting in the meadow in half an hour." "Lotti, tell the despatch staff to bring their sandwiches to the meadow." "And don't forget Karl in the boiler room." "What did your father say, Anton?" "Typical American." "Hermann is the only one he cares about and he never settles anywhere." "I don't understand you." "A man must know where he's at home." "At least we do." "And what do we do now?" "We carry on." "As usual." "I'd pictured us with all that money, evicted onto the street." "We're waiting down there." "I'm proud of you." "Lotti, where are you?" "Come here, with paper and pencil." "Listen carefully, everyone." "I'll dictate a telex message which will be sent straight away." ""With regard to your offer of 12th August, 1967 concerning the takeover of our business by your concern we inform you that we are not interested at all." "Simon Optical Works, Schabbach/Hunsrück."" "Telex that immediately." "I'll tell you what it all means." "I have no secrets at all from you." "You know only too well I walked 5,317 kilometres from Russia." "From beyond the Urals to Schabbach on foot." "I might as well have stayed there if I wanted to sell the firm." "Fritz, Otto, your grandfather started here with me." "He had real peasant's hands;" "now look at your hands." "Precision mechanic hands and those are my assets..." "your hands." "Those Corporations that have a finger in every pie will get their fingers burnt with us." "My principle is: "quality succeeds"." "We know if one of us in the firm has messed something up." "If, for instance, there's a complaint about goods marked number 317 then we know that you, Fritz, have botched the job." "That's how it is." "We're unbeatable." "And because we're unbeatable, they want to buy us up." "Because they can't copy us." "Would the concern want to alter anything?" "It's like this." "As long as we're here in Schabbach there'll be a standard in the world." "If they buy us out, they'll get rid of that standard." "That will ease competition for them." "They'd use our name for three or four weeks so that it looks like free market economy then they'd secretly get rid of the competition." "That's their aim." "I just wanted to remind everyone that this is the only precision works in the Hunsrück and our existence depends on what's done here." "I'll keep faith with you, everyone." "As long as I live, you can hold me to my word and with the coming struggle for survival ...against the big concerns we must all retain a mutual trust." "Our development engineer, Herr Schauss will explain our projects and investments." "We won't climb down." "We'll march ahead." "Dear fellow workers I'd just like to explain briefly..." " Did you send it?" "Any answer?" " It takes time." "Frau Simon, don't get upset about it." "ALL that work for a drop of milk, it's not worth it any more." "Going to your mother's?" "I don't believe it." "Still like a century ago." "Down to the last nail." "What are you doing here?" "My first aeroplane." "Our house is a treasure trove." "Things I'd quite forgotten." "And there's also Grandma's room and the parlour dating from 1813, with period chairs." "And your mother's still alive, and your brother and your youth, and your soul if you have one." " What's wrong?" " What do you want?" "Do you want to sell your parents house as you did with half of Hunsrück?" "Calm down!" "You never knew the meaning of work." "You've lived from the hard work of others." "You've never thought out anything in your stupid head." "Hold on, I've built up my business, just as you have." "For fifteen years, every day I've worked fourteen hours, like you all so what do you want?" "You have nothing for your children to inherit." "What little the war spared and what your parents and grandparents created people like you use to make pub interiors in Düsseldorf." "I've always wanted to tell you that." "You haven't a spark of culture under your dirty fingernails." "You're oversensitive, Anton." "With bankruptcy looming over your works your kids won't inherit anything." "You're on the wrong track there." "This is mine, you've got no right to it." "It's too hot for you up here." "Downstairs you'll be cooler." "You're out of place, up so high." "You looter of corpses!" "You pedestrian!" "It still files." "Did you see, Anton?" "Has it begun already?" "This is South-West Radio in a link-up with West German Radio the Free Berlin, Austrian Swiss and French broadcasting systems, the BBC..." "Put the speakers further apart." "... We bring you the first performance of the new work "Connection Number One" by the German composer Hermann W. Simon, born in 1940." "It is performed by members of the Radio Orchestra conducted by the composer." "Our little Hermann." "Electronic passages arranged by Simon Electric Incorporation, Detroit." "I know where he gets the "W" from." "It's customary in America." "No, he gets it from his father, Wohlleben." "Yes, he remembers his father, because he's artistic." "Artistic!" " I'm very happy." " I think it's going to be great." "How do you like the man next to me?" "He's my intended." " Where did you find him?" " He's a painter." " Well done!" " He's Sepp Vilsmeier, from Munich." "Later I'll show you his letters to me." "Yes, later." "He's a painter, Lotti's intended." " Like it?" " I think it's great." "Hermann looks fantastic." "Quiet!" "You can't hear a thing." "What instrument is that?" " It isn't any instrument." " It's electronic." "That's what he got from Grandpa in America." "I never knew the boy had become such a stranger to me but now I've heard his music." "He's so far removed from me, Anton." "You just can't believe it at all." "Do you know what, Anton?" "Do you know what really hurts?" "That we can't even listen to music together any more." "Do you know where he is now?" "Mother, perhaps he'll telephone afterwards." "Yes all right, Anton." "Hermann, those are birds." "Those are nightingales, like in the forest." "In the background, there's a brook." "I've never heard such music." "Hermann, where did you get it all?" "So foreign and so beautiful as if from other lands." "Hermann, you did that very well." "Congratulations, but it goes a little too far." "One can't mix a soulless medium like a tape with that divine flute." "The human element is missing." "I'd like to congratulate you but didn't you also use some concrete material in those tape inserts?" "Were those birds?" "I think that's what I heard." " You studied with Messiaen?" " With Fortner." "Do you come from a district rich in bird life, in the Hunsrück?" "Yes, but I recorded the birds here, in Baden-Baden." "SUMMER 1969" "I wasn't expecting you at all." "You might have telephoned;" "I'd have baked us a nice cake." "Mother, that's sweet of you, but I haven't that much time." "We're on our way from Paris to Berlin and just happen to be here." " Today?" " Yes, we'll see how far we get." "You're a terrible boy." "For two years, not a word from you, and then you're at the door." "Do you know what Mother's making here?" "Sloe wine." "Kathrin, try one, they taste great." "They're not poisonous." "So sour, they shrivel your arse and your shirt-tall with it." "Don't you want to shave any more?" "But you've such a handsome face." "It's true." "Hermann, who's the girl?" "That's Kathrin, my girlfriend." " And the other one?" " She's also my girlfriend." "And your music, Hermann." "I don't understand that, either." "Now the school bus will be able to turn easily." " Focussed properly, Hartmut?" " Yes, now get away." "Look happy, everyone." "That's our Ernst." "Thank God that thing's going." "It's stood there fifty years." "I can remember the day we erected it." "In most villages those things have gone." "About time, too." "They've put them all in the cemeteries." "9th May, 1919." "A Friday." "Paul Simon returned from the World War." "For six days he had tramped home from France to the Hunsrück." "THE CALL OF FARAWAY PLACES" "Isn't that Paul Simon?" "Oh, go away!" "The cart belongs to Kath Legrand." "Her Helmut was killed on the River Vistula." "Thank God!" "Paul's back home." "Mother, wait a moment." "Pauline, come here." "Eduard, your lung." "You're sitting at the window again." "You'll tip over;" "don't keep fidgeting." "He's supposed to take care of his health." "Come away from that window you'll catch your death with your chest." "Wiegand's bought a motorbike." "With a sack of berries." "He sits on it like a cat on a grindstone." "Yesterday he almost ran over my foot." "Don't exaggerate." "It's true." " Shut up!" " I always have to be quiet with you." "Paul, did the French feed you so well in France that you've no appetite at home?" "Listen to this." ""In London, May Day went practically unobserved."" "Paul!" "To think you're still alive." "It's hard to believe." "Just fancy." "It's hard to believe." ""All heaps of horse or cow dung in places occupied by French or American troops must be cleared away by 1st May, 1919."" ""Manure must be shifted at least twice a week onto fields at least 1,000 metres beyond village boundaries."" "They're mad." "Paul's hands are so white." "Paul always had slender white hands." "Don't you remember?" "I thought men had different hands after a war." "Leave Paul's hands alone." "Isn't that right, Paul?" "Anyway, I always knew he'd come home." "And there he sits." "When Paul was in France and no post came for seven months I heard his footsteps under my window at night." "Then I knew he was alive." "In Munich the Spartacists robbed passengers on a tram." "Thank God we've no trams in Schabbach." "I'II never go to a city." "I remember when mobilization came." "We were in the fields, cutting the corn and the bell tolled and Willi, the postman delivered the letters and they pulled up a poster." "We ran through the village, we thought there was a fire." "Mobilization had started." "And the dead will never rise again." "It's all right for you, Eduard." "The boy's got lung trouble, as you well know." "It's in writing, from the Army Selection Board." "I'd have liked to have been an airman." "Well, one's got money, the other's pretty." "But she's so dark she could easily be a gypsy's child." "You don't know her, Paul." "That's Apollonia from Dickenschied." "She went into service here, because of Helmut Legrand." "The Schissbach rag-collectors moved on to Dickenschied and someone there took her in, of course she's gypsy." "Marie, you can't say that." "Nobody knows for sure." "Now she's in service at the inn." "I'm surprised Maria Wiegand's her friend and Helmut wanted to marry her." "I'm sure she put a spell on him." "Now he's been dead two years by the Vistula." "In Woppert, we had an aviator, Rudi Molz." "He shot down fourteen aeroplanes." "Now he's in the ground, dead." "When airmen crash, they don't suffer." "Eduard, don't talk." "They're as if hypnotized before they crash." "Maybe they think of the nice turf they're going to ruin but they don't think of themselves." "Airmen are the true heroes." "I recognized him immediately." "That's Paul Simon." "Paul, you're back home and my Helmut was killed in Russia." "Did you know?" "Pauline, the glasses." "In Russia they've shot four grand dukes." "Four at one go and they had to strip naked first." "What?" "Naked?" "Where?" "Karl Glasisch, too." "Apollonia's got him on her conscience, too, the witch." "He came home from the war with a skin infection from poison gas." "Now she's turned his head and keeps turning him down." "So he's boozing." "Marie-Goot, be quiet." "And Eduard, stop rocking that chair." "But it's true." "She thinks only of tormenting the men, that gypsy." "She doesn't want Glasisch because of his scabs that's all." "He got that from the mustard gas in Flanders." "Were you ever in a gas attack, Paul?" "City folk just came, looking for food." "Wiegand drove them away." "We've always had food." "Tell Paul, Mother." "The French want us to starve." "We're in the country here." "French!" "French!" "We'll drive you from your trench!" "We said that but now we've got them here." "When the French occupied us they stabled their horses in the church." "In the church!" "In Flanders, we played different tricks." "A Frenchman came into our farmyard." "He kept going around, looking for chickens." "Then he shouted, "Come on, chick, chick!"" "And whacked his stick against his boots." "Then the Americans came." "They were more decent." "They didn't whistle at the girls." "When Big Bertha shelled enemy villages everything shook, we had to drive the tent-pegs deeper." "The German army wasn't defeated, but its strength ebbed away." "My Helmut never fired at villages." "And first the airmen with their bombs." "We had good guns." " What's wrong with his eye?" " He's the basket maker's boy, Hans." "I knew him when he was little." "At his Confirmation party his brother put his eye out with a fork." " With a fork?" " With a fork." " During the meal?" " During the meal." "Exactly." "Two men in Rhaunen killed Hartmann, the chemist." "What?" "I got my heart medicine from him only last week." ""Murder and robbery in Rhaunen."" ""As Hartmann had invested nearly all his money in war bonds the loot was less than the criminals expected."" "Only last week I saw gypsies in Rhaunen." ""Two hawkers suspected of the crime have been arrested."" "I knew it!" "Does it say how he died?" ""One of the criminals was throttling Hartmann while the second used a heavy object to smash his skull in as he lay on the floor."" ""It was this in particular which brought about his instant death."" "Hallo, Paul." "See my white robe?" "...Smashed in his skull..." "I have a white robe like an angel." "AII soldiers go to heaven and get a white robe." "My rash came out and the sun went in." "Murder in the Hunsrück." "There was never such a thing before the war." "I can see the snow in Russia." "All my life there was never such snow in the Hunsrück." "That he's spared your wicked gossip is a good thing, too." "Our Paul and Helmut were always the best of friends." "Son, your lung!" "You can't be friend with such a swarthy person." "My Helmut and Apollonia had agreed to marry before he went off to war." "Apollonia's a beautiful girl." "Has she bewitched you, too, old fool?" "I see the battlefields below." "They lie there so peaceful, as if they wanted to rest." "In Kirchberg in the last three years of the war you could hear the thunder of guns from France." "So we went out and listened to the war." "Sit down." "Paul's falling asleep." "Paul, your trousers are torn." " Have you heard?" " What?" "They're making a new sports field." "They want to make a sports field, Paul." "Paul's gone to sleep." "Down on earth, as you all know there's high German and there's low." "Some say das, some say dat." "Some say was, some say wat." "But in heaven, as you'd expect they speak the Hunsrück dialect." "Airmen have oxygen masks now so they can go higher than 6,000 metres." "That's worn right through." "Do it the other way round." "What's that, then?" "That's my new aerial." "I may get Hilversum." " Hilversum?" "That's a new transmitter in Holland." "Have you got there yet?" " Where?" " Hilversum." "Give me a pencil." "The "Elizabeth" is carrying four hundred four hundredweight of cod to Wilhelmshaven." "End." "That's marine wireless." "Morse code." "I learnt it in Signals during the war." "And all that comes through the kite?" "We're making progress." "We can listen to the whole world." "Not yet awhile." "Walter, there's a kite up there." "I was just thinking about you, Paul." "The bell ringer rings the village bell and stinks like an old goat as well!" "I'II hit you with a stick." "The bell ringer with his stick, we hope he drops dead quick!" "Otto and Adolf." "We might soon have been on there, too, Karl." "And now we watch our girls bed down with Frenchies." "I've seen you with Apollonia." "Tell me..." "A wireless like that..." "I mean a real one, a big one with a horn like you see in pictures..." "Is that expensive?" "Well, I know a Leipzig firm that makes the parts." "It's cheaper to make it yourself only nobody will deliver nowadays for our inflation money." "Paul, come here." "If it could be for in dollars..." "I've got some in reserve, but don't tell anyone." "At home I've got a circuit diagram and assembly instructions for a two valve set." "If I could find out how he's paying for the car he's ordered." "Like us, he invested all his money in war bonds." "I paid gold for iron." "When you've got as much land as he has..." "Such a skinflint." "Our richest farmer and he doesn't even feed his dog decently." "And he must always have the latest..." "First a motorbike, now a car." "Since my grandfather's day the District Council's always met in the inn." "But since Wiegand's been mayor they always meet in his parlour." "So they can save paying me for a few beers and wines." "And in his parlour they won't be so quick to contradict him, will they?" "If only he'd break his neck on his motorbike." "That envious, dirty dog!" "I've heard that gypsy women shave themselves down below." "Is that right?" "Take your scabby fingers away." "Are you shaved, or not?" "Glasisch, keep your hands off Apollonia." "She wants nothing to do with you." "Has she had a kid from a Frenchman, or not?" "Glasisch, that's no concern of ours." "But if it's true, that the kid's in your midden as people say, then it does concern you." "Glasisch, there's nothing but shit in my midden." "Would you like to stick your nose in it, like the other people?" "What's Stinker from Morbach doing here?" "Apollonia's baby, they say it's buried in the midden." "Start your work." "Let's go and see." "That thick muck must be removed." "With buckets, or better, with a pump." "Just leave it to us, Herr Glasisch." " Here's something solid." " Can you get it?" "I know my job, I tell you." "There's something solid." "They've found something." "So Glasisch was right." "It's too hard to be a child." "That's metal." "There's no question about it." "Maybe shells." "Maybe from the last war." "Did any shells come this way?" "Stay here, Herr Jakob." "Please." "Can you tell us what hard object there could be in there?" "I don't know about anything hard." "Eduard, come and help." "It seems to be quite big." "It's Wiegand's motorbike!" "How did my bike get into your midden?" "I don't know." "I didn't chuck it in." "I reckon you know something." "Do you think I drove it in there?" "Anyway, the thing was in there." "Inspector, I'm lodging a complaint against persons unknown." "Mind where you point that finger." "Note that my bike has lain for over a year in Jakob's midden." "AII suspicion and insults." "But someone's got to withdraw and Wiegand, it is time you did." "Inspector, shall I go on searching?" "For over a year, I've looked for the rascal the rotter the Lucifer!" "Wiegand, I've still got five thousand-mark notes from 1914." "I'd give them for the stinking thing." "The other day I threw such notes into the stove." "The Ohlsweiler scrap merchant will give you two hundred marks for it." "Give me your money and do what you like with it." "I'm buying a car, anyway, when times are better." "If my patent invention for unveiling monuments works it'll spread like wildfire from village to village." "They'll adopt it even beyond Morbach." "You in the middle, you on the left..." "no, I'm left, you're right." "The cue is, "Bow silently before them."" "It's got to go like clockwork." "Lower it or it will already be unveiled." "Now it's up to us." "Let's hope the rope doesn't break." "It would be so sad, it would be funny." "Be serious, now." "The children's choir is coming." " Is it working?" " An Eduard patent never fails." "What's the matter?" "It's been going on for three years." "They keep saying bad things about me." "I work myself to death and they won't even give me a friendly word." "I can't live like that, Maria." "Don't take it to heart." "Only Paul Simon has stood up for me." "Paul Simon?" "The heavens praise the eternal glory..." "They're consecrating memorials everywhere." "This week they were in Simmern, Kirchberg and Sohren." "In Sohren's memorial, there's even bells." "And they always make the same speech." "Know who profits most?" "The quarry by the River Nahe." "They're delivering 5,000 memorials as far as beyond Trier and the Eifel." "Well, enough men got killed." "My dear friends assembled here." "The men whose names are inscribed here knew what they were fighting for." "They did not carry the heavy pack of a guilty conscience like their enemies who made a cowardly attack on a peace-loving people." "No, they marched against this universal enemy with the light pack of an easy conscience." "At last a man who stands up to the occupiers." "A courageous man." "We Germans who still have ideals should work to bring about better times." "We should fight for justice, loyalty and morality in the name of our war dead." "Because of the farcical Versailles Treaty which so deliberately humiliates our people Germany will one day arouse the genius of its blood who will deliver us from His dungeon of humiliation like a saviour." "Already we sense His shining presence in the distance." "Then peace will come." "A peace necessary for the strong future of our state and which will influence world history." "Our loved ones did not die in vain." " Let us bow silently before them." " Ready!" "Keep in time with the music." "Mäthes-Pat, I'm here too." "A bullet came towards us meant for me or meant for you?" "Who's that?" "Böhnke, the baker from Simmern." "He lost three boys in the war." "You're always holding what I need." " Why is there always blue smoke?" " The flux always burns blue." " Is this the valve?" " Don't touch it, it's delicate." "You'll burn the house down one day." "Wilfried, time for bed." " It is only half past seven." " No arguments." "He always has to have the last word." "Did you catch it?" "What?" "The music I just heard." "There wasn't any music." "But I heard it, drums and trumpets." "Impossible, I haven't unpacked everything yet." "I've so looked forward to hearing music from you soon, Paul." "The valves are not connected yet." "I've brought you this." "You must let the chocolate melt very slowly in your mouth." "I always do, when I'm in bed." "I put a piece in my mouth and let it slowly melt." "Then you can enjoy it for a long time." "Why are you giving it to me?" "You're so quiet." "I like that." "Quiet?" "Yes, you are." "I like people like you." "During the war, I used to think if I come through this, then I'll do something special and I won't stop until I've done it." " But you're doing that." " Think so?" "Of course." "You're the only one who can do something like this." "Do you really think so?" "If you're the only one, then you're also the first one." "Hold this." "Steady." "Don't wobble." "One day, I'II make a short-wave receiver." "With that, I can listen to the whole world." "But I need a battery." "Then get yourself one." "Paul, what are you doing on the Rhine?" "Apollonia, I've bought a battery for Wiegand's wireless." "Why is it so lovely on the Rhine the German Rhine?" "Because the French side over there pollutes the healthy air." "Apollonia..." "I can't get it into my head that you're the mother of a child." "Nor can I. I just can't believe it." "But I've got one." "Such a beautiful baby, with such beautiful dark eyes." "You should see Armand's eyes." "He's the little Frenchman, the baby's father." "You'd have liked him, Paul." "I only wanted to dance with him." "But he was so far away from home." "I couldn't say no to him." "The worst thing is what they say in the village." "Take no notice of them." "And Jakob won't even pay me for my work at the inn now." "He says I should be glad not to lose my place." "I work as well as ever." "They call me a French whore." "In church, they tipped me off my chair." "They call me a witch because of my black hair." "They say I've trodden Helmut's memory into the mire." "I was seventeen." "I'm twenty now." "Must I pay for ever because there was a war?" "They say I flung my baby into the midden but I didn't want them to see it." "I'm glad you let me see it." "Your child." "Paul, people aren't like you." "You're different from the village people." "I'm not different." "You are, you're making your wireless." "You came back three years ago, but you still aren't at home here." "Where are you?" "Are you catching the three o'clock train, too?" "Go on, we'll meet later." "Armand!" "Paul, Armand wants to marry me." "That's why it took so long." "And you?" "I don't know." "Armand thinks his parents will leap for joy to see me, but that's not so." "That's not so." "How quick it seems when I'm beside you." "We're almost in Simmern." "They're all unhappy with me at home." "Father wants me in the forge and the fields to carry on his work." "I could travel like this with you for ever." "They talk about grandfather and great-grandfather and so on and the trade the family has carried on for years." "And I look at my wireless, and I no longer know who I am." "I've got the feeling I know." "Who am I?" "You don't belong to Schabbach." "Like me, Paul." "If only I were sure." "It's an evil village." "Like all the evil villages out there." "When they flash by faster and faster, I can breathe again, Paul." "Paul, I'm never going back to Schabbach." "I'd like to be with you always." "Let's just go on." "We won't get out in Kirchberg, we'll travel on." "To the end of the world?" "You misunderstand me." "I mean, we really won't get out here." " Where, then?" " We'll find somewhere." "What about my battery and my wireless?" "Then go alone to Schabbach." "Where our sweet little village ends" "Where, by its wheel, the mill-stream wends?" "Here stands, amid dark blossom's foam" "My old beloved parents' home" "I long to go there when I sleep" "I often think of it and weep" "My parents' home, so dear and neat" "We haven't touched any of your things." "It's all just as you left it." "In Berlin, they've built a radio tower with a café on the top and from there, they blare out music, I've read." "Can you get Berlin on it?" "Paul, I'd open a shop and sell wireless sets to the whole district then your father would have money." "Look at the lovely linen, all spun by Maria." "For eternity." "There's Wiegand's car, with Wilfried." " Come one, let's have a go at him." " Good idea." "Know-all Wiegand!" "Nice car you've got!" "Have you got goggles like your dad has for his motorbike?" "My father doesn't ride a motorbike any more." "The gentry only let their dogs ride back where you're sitting." "Stop, I can't bear to watch Wiegand ducking." "He'll crack his starched collar." "Take your scabby fingers off my car!" "You bastard!" "You idiot!" "You'd have done better to go to church." "If I'd fallen in Flanders, I'd be on this memorial." "And people would lift their hats to me." "Go on, Hans, stretch out the aerial!" "That should be enough." "Careful!" "Don't cut their heads off!" "Perfect." "Clap your hands, Wiegand." "A bit higher, Hans." "Higher!" "Still higher!" "Now pull it tight." "Paul has made it." "My Paul's got a flair for that." "Eduard, help me attach the earth lead." " No, go to where it's earthed." " What?" "To the walking stick." "Wilfried!" "What are you doing?" "Eduard, your lung." "You're sitting on damp earth again." "That boy with his lung!" "I don't know." "Something's building up over there." "I think there'll be a thunderstorm." " I don't think so." " Never." "My cellar steps were dry this morning." "There'll be no storm if the steps are dry." "You should have brought the steps for us to see." "In 200 years things never changed as much in Schabbach as they did in the 10 years after the war." "There, you can really see it in me." "Look how I've changed." "We had an economic miracle in the Hunsrück the same as everywhere else." "But what Anton, Maria's eldest son, achieved was a real miracle." "There he's coming back from captivity." "Maria is amazed and happy that her favourite son is back." "Anton was always her favourite." "She bought him a camera and a film camera she took him to Hamburg..." "In the war he was a camera assistant in the propaganda division." "He was always interested in optics." "There he married by proxy." "And then he was captured by the Russians." "Anton walked 6,500 kilometres across Turkey, Greece and the Tyrol to get back home." "Just imagine how he longed to get home to the Hunsrück." "And here, he's sitting in the kitchen back home." "That was the time Anton was telling everyone he had 27 patents in his head and was going to build a factory." "We all wondered whether he'd gone a bit mad in captivity." "This is Anton today." "And that's when "Simon Electric Detroit, USA, Post Box" came on a visit with his black chauffeur and big car." "We'd never seen anything like it in the village before." "There he's saying goodbye to Maria." "There he's sitting in his posh car, the American." "Just before he left, his mother Katharina died." "We buried her after he'd gone." "Maria, proud of her boys she was." "That's Ernst, her second son, who was always keen on flying." "Then, he was shot down over France in his fighter-plane." "But he is still crazy about flying." "There's Maria again with the youngest, Little Hermann." "Her bastard child from Otto." "And in four years, on the meadow inherited from his grandfather Anton actually built a factory." ""Without any capital" he always said." "But we knew better." "Paul, his father in America, helped him out with dollars." "Maria's been very lucky with her sons." "Little Hermann, the youngest, as soon as he was old enough she sent him to the school in Simmern so he'd be the first one in the family to go to university." "LITTLE HERMANN" " Hermann, how fast are we going?" " 40 kph." " My brother's house." " It looks like a castle." "They don't stand on ceremony there." "Ernst is all right." " Can we stay the night there?" " I don't know yet." "My brother, Ernst Simon, lives here, doesn't he?" "Of course." "He lives here, but he is not at home." "Can you tell me where to find him?" "We've come a long way." "He's in the forest." "Up there, where they cut the trees." "See those woods up there?" "Right at the top." "The patch where they're felling timber." "How about that?" "Is Herr Simon here?" "He just took off with the helicopter." " When will he be back?" " In ten minutes." "Can we sleep at your place tonight?" " Have you been there?" " They send us up here." "Look things over, but don't touch anything." " That surprises you, eh, Hermann?" " Is it yours?" " Of course." " It must have been expensive." "You bet." "I paid out my whole Nibelungen hoard for it." " Ready?" " Yes." "That's the last toothpick for today." "You want to fly with me?" " My bike, my guitar..." " Shove it in, we'll take it." "Ask your brother if we can come, too." "It won't work." "With the weight below, it's a bit much." " Are we so heavy?" " No." "Make yourself at home, Little Hermann." "Flying a helicopter is different from flying an aeroplane even if the cockpit looks much the same." "The only thing that's completely different is this." "But it's all-important." "In ordinary flying, keeping moving is half the battle." "Here it depends on the rotation, that's the whole battle." "When the rotation and pitch are correct you can do what you want." "You can fly backwards, or stop in mid-flight but you mustn't get out!" "When I think of our ancestors dragging timber laboriously from the forest, metre by metre." "War is the father of everything." "That's where we learned to overcome transport problems." "Transport today is everything." "I know what I'm talking about." "After the war I started with a bicycle." "With the timber underneath it's like handling raw eggs." "If you're sick, it'll cost you a crate of beer." "My father-in-law is the timber king of Trabach." "He owns the sawmills, the entire forest." "But the Sikorskie is mine." "It's one thing old Bausch can't interfere with." "Look!" "Your friends." " The ground's pretty damp." " There's a row up there." "They could have let us sleep indoors, with such a big house." "Not too cold for you?" "You're used to it." " Need anything else, Hermann?" " No." "I'd have liked to let you sleep indoors but my in-laws are a bit awkward." "Will the gate be open in the morning?" " No, but go down the back steps." " We don't want to be locked in." "Well, if you've got everything, I'll go back up." "They're waiting for me." " Will you go to the fair?" " No, we're too tired." "Thanks." "Well, take this anyway, for food." "I wouldn't like to be in his shoes." "He's henpecked;" "look at his old woman up there." "They're a bit short on domestic bliss." "To hell with all families!" "It's strange to walk in the fog..." "Lonely is every bush and stone..." "Nobody knows the other..." "Everyone's alone..." "The curtain rises, the king enters." "Where are you, my noble damsel?" "Here, Father, on the stage." "Why so pale, and yet so blushing?" "Who between you legs has been rushing?" "The page!" "The page!" "Grab this arse!" "Crack his nuts!" "All heard with stupefaction the king's nutcrackers snap into action." "Pity!" "Pity!" "I only touched her titty!" "Cheers, sweetie!" "You sticking with us?" " What horrible stuff." " It tastes like mothballs." "Another four glasses of mothballs." "What do you call it?" "Do you like it?" "It's so nice and green." "That rump over there floats over the dance floor." "I can't keep my eyes off it." "They've never any ideals." " Old cynic." " I'm an existentialist." "I exist, so I'm an existentialist, too." "Now comes the act of liberation." "She only tangos." "I only dance when I harmonize with the girl." "Want another?" " Ever kissed anyone?" " Of course." " I bet you haven't." " I have." " Let's go outside." " I don't want to now." "Pay attention." "I always open my mouth and shut my eyes." "Tongue out..." "Is that a torch in your trouser pocket or do you really love me?" " You're just like all the others." " What do you mean?" "The description of the eerie landscape on the evening ride to Sesenheim and the dissolving of the tension into the exultation of love is enchanting." "The overwhelming experience of his love for Frederike allows Goethe to find notes in his verse which we've never heard in the generally sugary poems of earlier periods." "May I just quote from Welcome and Farewell, Strasbourg, 1771." "My heart beat fast;" "to horse, that's best!" "It was no sooner thought than done." "The evening lulled the earth to rest and in the mountains night was hung." "Already cloaked in fog, the oak assumed a risen giant's size." "And from the bushes, darkness broke and peered with hundred jet-black eyes." "Goethe wrote this poem in Strasbourg in 1771." "Can anyone tell me the year that Goethe was born?" "1749." "The first great excitement of love for Brigitte von Sesenheim allows him to find, in his verse new notes that up to now we have not known in him." "Hermann!" "Must you?" "You give me a seizure every time you come." "This is something for you." "Gerhard, move over." " Boss, we're behind schedule." " Never mind, let Hermann try it." "He's got the fingers of a real precision instrument craftsman." "Simon hands, you can see it at once." "It's in his blood." "Right, Fritz?" "Are you surprised with your peasant's hands?" "Look, what paws." "Look at Hermann's hands." "It takes three generations to get fingers like that." "Think so, Herr Simon?" "I'll show you." "Hermann, if you feel like it when you finish school you'll be welcome in the business;" "then I'll show you everything." "That won't get rid of your double chin." "You must keep saying "Hen's bottom."" "Chick's arse!" "Hermann, get out!" "You're embarrassing me." "You must go in and see this function Simon Works guarantee of quality." "Cabaret, Magic show, Talent Contest." "The cabaret's over, but not the magic." "Come in!" "There are seats at the back and some food, too, on the firm." "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm a magician, too." "Look here!" "I said this morning we'd get rain." "Herr Simon's asked me to say a few words of introduction." "You've probably guessed why I've invited you." "Having a good time?" "I'll explain in detail." "You know I was born here in Schabbach and I think anyone can achieve things if he's aware of the signs of the times." "The teacher says to the children, "Make up a sentence with 'dough"'." "And a kid stands up and says, "Teacher, what do you mean?" ""Do you mean dough the baker makes bread with?" ""Or do you mean doe, a wild animal?" ""Or do you mean doh as in 'doh-re-me'?"" "And now here's some real 'do-re-me' from another talented group." "I'd like to introduce "The Six Immaculates"." "Immaculates lenses, big and small, the firm of Simon makes them all." "Who's going to cry then, when one love affair is done?" "When on the other corner stands another one" "You say Auf Wiedersehen and as you drink your wine" "You're thinking that the next girl will be just as fine" "God, people are so sentimental they let love drive them all mental." "Erich, tell me honestly." "Nobody told me I'd be an inventor or manufacturer of optical instruments." "Yet I've taken a whole new road and broken away from the Hunsrück traditions." "Because of that, you can all do it, too." "Above all, the young people who have their future before them." "Maybe your father or grandfather has told you that, once the poor Hunsrück farmers couldn't feed their children." "We had to change." "A few years' apprenticeship with me and you've quite different hands." "I walked home 5,317 kilometres from a prisoner of war camp and in that time I got these ideas for my business." "Not everyone's got a father in America who helps us." "The main thing is that you choose the right job." "And who does the farm work?" "Should we sell out to your brother-in-law Wiegand?" "I was born in Schabbach, just like you." "Here there are twelve farmers who work to survive." "The thirteenth is Wiegand, your brother-in-law." "He's my uncle, not my brother-in-law." "And you know what I think of him." "Conditions are changing everywhere." "It's nothing to do with Wiegand or me." "I see you're back again." "I've just been outside." "The water's rising, like the tide of prosperity." "Now, ladies and gentlemen, here's a great song number." "Our much loved and respected chief secretary, Lotti and from my department, Klärchen with the assistance of the three graces from the despatch department." "Casanova, can you hear me?" "Casanova..." "I know your heart at night belongs to another." "I know that it lies when it swears to be true" "Our staff, Glasisch." "Anton, can I sing, too?" "Shine your light, Glasisch." "Maria's still awake." "Waiting for us with her rolling-pin." "No, it's Little Hermann." " Still doing homework?" " Yes." "Latin." "Think we'll be in tomorrow's paper?" "Know what I see?" "I'm lying in the bathtub and all around me it's all lovely, warm pee." "What are you laughing about?" " Never mind," " It's not for little boys." "He's not so little any more." " Can't you be quiet?" "I can't sleep." " Don't be a killjoy." "Either in or out." "Shut the door." " What's that?" " Want a drop?" "Welcome to the visitor's gap." " No glasses?" " We're drinking from the bottle." "Someone's here!" " Is your mother still awake?" " I don't know." "We must make it darker here." "Whenever I drink champagne, I think it's New Year's Eve." "The champagne's got quite warm from us." "Like pee." " You didn't spit in this?" " Only a bit." "Every time I lower the bottle, it squirts." "I just can't drink out of a bottle." "You must leave an air gap." "You can't do it, either." "You and your stupid air gap." "Pieritz always wanted to teach me." "Pieritz." "He's a crafty one." "When I was wiping the floor yesterday he started chatting me up." "But you just can't be angry with him." "No, you can't." "I've known him for so long." "Comical man." "Klärchen." "I saw behind the stage where the magician hid his doves." "Where?" "I'm not telling." "I'm going to practise doing it with our hens." "He's from..." "I think it's Kassel." "No, he's from Düsseldorf, he's in a cabaret there." "Rubbish, he's on the radio." "He does his tricks on there." "I got a fright just now." "I thought Maria was at the door." "That would have been a catastrophe." "What would we have done?" "I'd have held the door and not let her in." "Suppose she'd knocked and asked what we're doing." "I wouldn't have known what to say." "You'd have had to do it." "I'm pretty good with excuses." "Beforehand, I never know what to say, then suddenly something comes out." "I surprise myself." "But we've got away with it again." "We've been lucky again." "Where are you taking the bedding?" "Come on, there's nothing to be ashamed of." "Now you can go." "You've overslept." "It's eight." "It's far too late now." "The train's gone." "What have you been up to?" "What's the matter with you?" "You're not your usual self this morning." "You've had no breakfast." "There's no point now, Hermann." "Marie-Goot, go inside." "It's thirty kilometres to Simmern." "You'll never do it." "Hermann, last night, you know, you were very lovely." "Go now." ""The moon, shining white..."" "Aren't you asleep yet?" " What have you there?" " I've written something." " In your diary?" " Yes." "I've translated something." "I thought you were asleep." " Shall I read it to you?" " Yes, softly." "The white moon in the forest shines." "Round each branch soon the light entwines" "Beneath their cover, you're my lover." "Lovely." "It's French, isn't it?" "That's a poem by Verlaine." "I've tried to translate it." "But it's hard to say in German because it has quite different sounds." ""For K"." "For me?" "I can feel you, Hermann." "It's lovely." "Don't say anything." "This is our secret." "I'm going now." "I've done it for five minutes." "When I lie here and hold my breath, I hear a singing in my head as if it were a machine factory, or an electricity works." "A music from all sounds at the same time." "It makes me think." "A thought factory." "The electricity works thinks about itself." "And now it's thinking, I." "Who am I?" "I am." "Cogito, ergo sum." "Sum, sum, sum, in me it starts to hum." "You're a philistine." "The philosophy of the future, of anticipation." "The action is anticip." "But it can also be dissip consumm, confirm, exhort." "And degrad." "If we clarify it, that's clarific-action." "That's something completely new." "When I really listen to a word, it becomes empty." "Like war, war, war..." "In less than five minutes the word is dead, finished, gone." "Gym, gym, gym..." "Teacher, teacher..." "Factory, factory..." "The philosophers' gym class, you pipsqueaks!" "There'll be no philosophising here." " No more war!" " What does that mean, Simon?" " Think about it, Herr Öller." " Don't be cheeky, Simon." " A healthy mind in a healthy body." " Quite right." "By the left, march!" "Healthy minds make me sick." "Can you imagine Hölderlin doing gymnastics?" " Don't make me laugh." " Sport lacks poetry." "If you don't join in, you'll get no marks." "Remember that." "Now he's offended." "He's running bandy." "He always does when he's offended." "Whither then I mortals live on wages and work alternating toil and rest." "Is everything cheerful?" "Why then does the horn sleep only in my breast?" "Rose-oh, pure contradiction." "The longing to be nobody's sleep beneath so many eyelids." "I like that music, Klärchen." "Is that the mambo?" "Yes, Marie-Goot, that's the mambo." "Waggle your hips, you have to look like a rooster." "Look at the way they dance." "Right, Hermann." "That's right." "Mind you don't tread on Lotti's feet." "Girls don't like that." "You should have seen me dance when I was young." "Now leave Hermann in peace." "He'll learn that soon enough." "He can do the mambo now, and he does the rumba and samba already." "Our dance teacher says sambas and rumbas are feminine mambos are masculine." " Have you learnt your Latin?" " Yes, Mother." "Lotti, now leave him alone or it'll be so late he won't get up in the morning." "I always wake him now, since he overslept." "Hermann, study!" "You're always so pale in the mornings, Hermann." "Sleepy, too." " Don't you like going to school?" " Of course I do." "I'm so proud of you." "You must go to university." "Your father, Otto always wished he could study." "He only learned engineering at technical school." "You'll be a graduate engineer." "Everybody wants me to be an engineer." "Anton... and you, too." "But my favourite subjects are German and music." "Can you remember your father, Hermann?" "You sat there." "Yes, you sat there." "And wouldn't give him your hand." "I can still see it." "Don't you remember?" "You were four years old when Otto was here." "Don't you remember?" "He loved you so much." "Mother, I was only four." "Give me your Latin book." "What's "to entrust"?" ""to request"?" "Principal parts?" "Was that correct?" "Mother, I think that's enough." "Let me go on studying maths." "I learn so many new things with you." "I'd like to be a mouse in your school and prick up my ears in class." "Mother, you think it's all fun." "You never tell me anything nowadays." "You always used to tell me all about your lessons." "About South America, about heredity how things look on the bottom of the sea." "Remember, Hermann?" "Mother, now we're doing trigonometry if you know what that is." "You're all I've got left." "Don't you understand that?" "Yes, I know, Mother." "Let me go on learning." "Will you put your hand in my pocket?" " Do you like that?" " Yes, a lot." "You've got a hole in your pocket." "It's all hot." "I can hardly keep on walking." "Recently I had a dream." "I saw you walking in the meadow with your trousers open letting it hang out." "Then you moved towards me." " Did you like what you saw?" " Yes." "I could walk with you for hours through the night." "If we went through the village like this you'd let your jacket cover it a bit and nobody would guess what I have in my hand." "It's better if we walk in step." "Now we'll walk straight ahead towards the moon until we're in space." "I'm a fantastic harpist." "You think I can't play with them." "Christian's in a class of his own." "Christian slipped a four page love letter into my book." "You, too?" "There were seventeen spelling mistakes in it." "Frau Gerloff, come over here." "Just listen to that." "I'm putting a stop to that!" "Can you play a bit more harmoniously?" "Though, frankly, I'd prefer you not to play in here any more." "Frightful!" "That was a ninth, Frau Gerloff." "You'll find that in Beethoven, Wagner and Strauss if they mean anything to you." "But that really hurts." " Art must hurt." " Not in my house." "But, Aunt Gerda, where are we to go?" "Listen... why don't you come to us?" "You can't play there, but we can listen to records." "What are we to do, Hermann?" "I'm going to Schabbach." "Humpty and Dumpty sat on a hill." "What fat thumbs." "I'd like to be with you." "I mean, really close." "I'd like it, too." "But I'm scared I might have a baby." "If your mother noticed anything, she'd strike me dead." "Do we always have to think of others?" "If we're really careful... do exactly what I tell you... we'll do it." "Maybe very soon." "I promise you." "We've known each other like this for sixty-three days." "Have a look." "Is that your mother?" "And Marie-Goot." "Upside-down." "They're at the cemetery, thank God." "So close." "They can't hear us." "Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf." "Malaparte, The Skin." "Narcissus and Goldmund." "The Glass Bead Game." "Is that the book you told me about?" "Close your eyes." "First I thought you would put something in my mouth." "You've got a filling there." "That was a good idea with the telescope." "With it, I can see the ring around Saturn." "When I see that, I always hear music." "Will you sing again the song I wrote for you?" "The stalks stand, right and left, like walls restricting us to narrow paths" "In secret to the nicest lanes" "And our summer-brown hands wave gaily at the many landing-stages that reach out over light-filled waves" "They murmur under small stones there" "In fields where we are scared and hide" "Where, in the shadows, red snails glide" "Beside our naked legs so bare" "That was beautiful." "I can't hit the note with the snails." "You said you wrote the song for me." "Why did you include such a high note?" "At the start I did write the song for you but then the composition itself took over." " Do you understand that?" " Yes." "Kiss it." "Then it will become a prince." " I'd rather kiss you." " I'm already a prince." "Come, toad." "You must wait a bit longer." "Someone's coming." "Is Anton there?" "I'll get him." "Martha, is Anton here?" "What are you doing here?" "First you make such a noise outside and suddenly you're so quiet." "Our flier!" "That was a crazy landing." "I thought you'd get caught in the power lines." "It's only the heavy insurance that's crippling me." "Look at the last two years' balance sheets." "And here's the assessment of my commander, Lt." "Colonel Beck." "Ernst, you don't realise that war's over." "Maybe this was possible in the Air Force where money didn't matter." "The war was a bankrupt operation." "Now you're going bankrupt the same way." "Do you remember, I told you from the start that this would happen." "The business might prosper if you transported gold instead of timber." "But even for that I wouldn't lend you the money." "It's only the two insurance premiums." "Thirty thousands marks - no problem for you." "I'm more than ever certain of my idea." "Ernst, you're an adventurer, and you'll stay one." "I see that, just as your bank does." " Won't you even read these?" " No." "Are you staying tonight?" "I've nothing left." "And now old Bausch wants to sue me, too." "But you've got your wife, or won't she stick to you?" "Lotti, you don't know upper-class women." "When you're doing well then you're somebody." "But now, I'm a pedestrian..." "I just can't understand it." "Good thing I never met your wife." "That makes it easier to accept that it's over between you." "Has your wife got a horse for riding?" "Yes." "Why?" "That's how I imagined her, like in the magazines." "That's only an advert, Marie-Goot." "You must go back, Ernst." "Mother, I'm glad I've got away." "And so is she." "You must fight, Ernst." "Now eat, boy." "I made you lentil soup especially." "You always liked it so much." "Remember when you were small?" "You were twelve and you ate seven plates of lentil soup." " We didn't think it was possible." " That was long ago." "Stay a few days." "Tomorrow I've an appointment at the bank." "Then you'll have to go." "Do you hear?" "Where did you get it from?" "This ability." "Two days ago we were in the quarry and now it's become a poem." "It was exactly as you write it, yet it was quite different." "I don't understand it." "I've never seen anything like this before." "It's to make Thursday between four and five immortal." "Because you were there." "With holy will, to write something on a gigantic sheet" "In the damp silent mountain, in a world of corridors we meet" "The torch burns out, the will becomes faint" "Your living skin, a land that's waiting you are" "And lay in my hand lightly on the sheet" "Her eyes, look, how quiet she is" "Close your eyes." "Klärchen, your skin is much more beautiful than music or poetry." "I think you were born to be something special." "I want you." "Recently, when I went to church with Mother I thought, if that's sin with us I'll stop believing in God." "Did you confess that?" "No." "Because it's no sin." "I know that for certain." "Glasisch, how time flies." "Remember going on our bikes from brook to brook?" "We wanted to buy the whole world." "And we didn't even get into the dance hall." "But it was nice." "With the bell-ringer and the yellow shoes." "When I imagine in two hours I could fly with Fräulein Klärchen from the despatch department and be in Paris, on the Promenade in that blaze of lights." "Paris." "On the Promenade." "We're too old for that." "No." "How time flies." "I've been in this spot now for eighteen years." "Go away, Lotti!" "What are you doing?" "Tell me what's up." "You'll kill yourself." "I'm pregnant, by Hermann." "I can't have this baby, as I'm sure you agree." " Are you quite sure?" " Yes." "Now let me get on with it." " Does Hermann know?" " He mustn't ever know." " Understand?" " Just don't get excited." "This is no solution." "At the most, you'll only kill yourself." "I'm almost twice Hermann's age and I ought to have married long ago." "I've no family and nowhere to go." "I'm getting old and wrinkled, can't you see?" "I won't stay here any longer, either." "You were the only thing that kept me here." "You and your love." "Don't say that, Hermann." "I will say it." "I tried Anton again this morning but he said he no longer needs me at work." "He's always preferred Lotti." "I've been there as long as Lotti, but she's head secretary now." "I still do all the dirty jobs." "Well, I'm not a member of the family." "That's how things go in the Hunsrück." "I hate that Anton." "When I went through the village this morning I said goodbye to it all." "The path and the steps and everything." " I shan't stay here, either." " You have to take your exams." "That's important for you." "I'm not like the others." "What I want to become I can't do it in the Hunsrück, anyway." "I know you're different from the other boys with your music and your poems." "You're my only love, my great love." "God wanted it this way." "Don't say that, Hermann." "You'll be in love with so many other women." " No." " Yes, you will." "I'd compare them all with you;" "it would be a betrayal." "Klärchen, I'll marry you and we'll go far way where no one knows us." "I'm eleven years older than you." " So?" " Some day you'd be ashamed of me." "I'm yours alone." "If we ever lost each other, I'd live like a monk." "Another woman would be a sin for me." "You say that now." "In a few years things will look different." "I've lived nine years with you." "I don't want to go away, but I must." "How do you think I'll feel?" "I come home and you're not there." "I'll see you everywhere and you'll be gone." "It's like your poems, so much sadness in them." "As if you'd sensed it while writing." "I often sense thing like that." "We can write to each other sometimes." "I'll write you a letter every day." "I'll write, too." "I'll tell you everything I'm doing." "I don't understand why he's sacking you." "He can't know about us." "There's no other reason." "You work harder than all the others." "I don't understand it, either." "Just now, when I feel closer to you than I've ever done before." "Why, in what way?" "The sun shines brighter in the sky when Pieritz with the mail comes by." "Herr Simon, here's the post." "Could I have that stamp from Pakistan?" "I'm too busy now." "That's just how we like it." "Yes, two hundred lines." "What's that?" "It looks like dust." "Dust?" "How did that get in here?" "The air's full of dust." "Cover everything!" "Stop production!" "This is scandalous!" " It's Herr Wiegand." " My uncle?" "Yes, he's experimenting with insecticides on a large scale I've heard." "This is incredible!" "Stop it!" "He's going to hear a thing or two!" "Who?" "That farmers' Führer, that SS-peasant." "He'll pay for this!" "Filthy swine!" "Polluting all the Hunsrück air!" "Just take it easy, Anton." "Wilfried, are you at home?" "No, Uncle Wilfried." "You're not getting away with this." "There are measures required which will cost millions." "This is quite normal development in agriculture nowadays, Anton." "We're the last to realise it." "The German chemical industry leads in this field." "There's no reason why we can export such products to Peru..." "Right, Wilfried!" "...and not introduce them here." "And there'll be more, Anton." "Pesticides, fungicides, herbicide..." "And the other cides, too!" "Yes." "And all the fertilizers." "But not at my expense." "Yes, at your expense." "What are you talking about?" "I settled here because of the air with a very complex branch of industry." "Twenty-four people from our village our village, that he wants to pollute depend on me for a living and I won't be let their job be jeopardized by anyone, nor by you while you're raking in state subsidies paid for by our taxes for your automatic milking plants, you automatic silos automatic feeding sheds and automatic manure disposal." "Do you think we pay no taxes?" "We have to earn every penny with our brain and our labour." "You don't give that impression!" "That's why you must pay for an automatic filter system for my roof." " That's the limit, damn you!" " Calm down." "I can raise the matter at the next CDU party meeting." "I'm not without influence there." "Maybe something can be done with public money." "But I can't promise you anything." "While we talk here, our production's halted." "Don't get so worked up;" "they'll soon be finished down here." "You're always on the right side." "So what?" "We're always on the right." "Yes, first with the SS, then as the Regional Farmers' leader then Chairman of the Farmers' Union then you got into the CDU and now a testing ground for BASF chemicals." "There's a gulf between us." "Go to the devil!" "Hermann, what are you doing here?" "Don't just stand around." " You're disturbing us." "Get out." " You throw out what disturbs you?" "Yes, I throw out what disturbs me." "The rubber-stamp stays here." "And you threw out the girl who used the rubber-stamp, too." "Did she disturb you?" "You're all I need today!" "Everyone's getting in my hair like flies." "Plutocrat!" "Where did you get that expression?" "Please leave this office at once." "I have something to dictate to Lotti." "Chucker out!" "Hermann, go now." " Why do you think I sacked Klärchen?" " Because she told me." "She gave notice and put us in a fine mess." "She left us at the lurch, didn't she, Lotti?" "Yes, Hermann, it's true." "Klärchen wanted to leave." "You're all lying!" "You're a pack of liars!" "You bourgeois!" "What's up with him?" "You're crazy." "You know how things like this can end up." "When you're eighteen, get a licence." "Don't touch the canvas, or the rain will come through." "It's pouring." "It's nice, sitting here in the dry." "I'm so happy you're not angry with me any more." "I was so afraid that I'd hurt you and your studies would be disrupted." "But it was something of both of us, you and me." "If we'd had a baby, I'd have stuck by you." "I'd have loved it as much as I love you." "I know you're like that, but it's better this way." "What if I'd stayed in Schabbach and everyone had found out?" "They'd have persecuted us." "And I thought..." "You mustn't suffer, too." "Do you understand that?" "I want to share everything with you." "I love you." " It must have been terrible for you." " Yes, it was terrible." "The nuns in the hospital treated me like a criminal." "When I came out of the anaesthetic the sister made me look into a bowl." "It was lying inside." "And then she said "That's so you can see what you've done, murderess!"" "How vile." "It keeps on raining." "We'll be washed away with the tent." "It's stopped." "Just a few drops from the trees." "Toni, heard the latest?" "Bertha, over there, second house, has had a baby." "Know whose?" "I don't know either, but that's why she stayed in Simmern." "I don't believe it." " Toni, do you like my outfit?" " You're an elegant chap." "I've been waiting like..." " I don't believe it." " Let's have a look." "No time!" "Pick yourself a nice shirt." " All right, Marie-Goot?" " At my age, you belong in a museum." " You'll go on for ages yet." " I'm too old for this work." " What have you got for us?" " Morning." "A letter for Hermann Simon, for collection but I thought I'd deliver it as I'm here." "He often has letters for collection now." "From Klärchen Sisse?" "I must talk to you." " My train, sir." " Take the next; this is urgent." "You're intelligent, but a lazy hound." "When it's critical, you race ahead, then wait for others to catch you up." "I've checked your marks in other subjects." "They're up and down." "1, 5... all the time;" "that sort of thing annoys a teacher." "We're all human, damn it." "Don't look like that, be frank with me." "You're one of my favourite pupils;" "that's no flattery." "I've simply specialised in German and music." " What do you want to be?" " A composer." " Have you a woman?" " No." "What's going on here?" " Storm brewing." " Why?" "I'll be in in a moment, Mother." "Ernst, what's going on?" "Mother, what is it?" " You know what this is about." " No, what?" "That's for me." "Who opened it?" "We know everything." "The woman is eleven years older than you." "Besides, for what she's done, she can go to prison." "That's rotten of you." "Really rotten." "They're my letters." "You have no right to read them." "The woman mentioned everything in the letter." "That's enough to prosecute." "You're still a minor, Hermann." "It's a crime against a child." "We'll make sure you never see her again." "He's not going to wreck his whole life." "Doctor Keim in Mainz is a smart lawyer." "With him, we'll be in good hands." "Have you had anything to eat, Anton?" "Open the door, Hermann." "I've brought you dinner." "I know it's not your fault." "You can't help it." "Don't do anything silly." "I'll break the door down." "Open at once!" "This won't lead anywhere!" "I've brought you your dinner, Hermann." "Hermann, my dear Hermann" "Now I'm alone again, yet I don't feel lonely or deserted." "I still feel the warmth of your face in my lap and of your warm hands which give me so much strength that I feel like shouting aloud and hugging people half to death so that they have a little of our love." "When we cuddled together in that little tent and kept each other warm then there was only you and me and eternity." "I don't know how long that is but even if it lasts just one day, that's fine." "Isn't it crazy?" "I'm pretty old now and grown up." "I know you'll laugh when you read this but I've remained a little girl." "And now there's you in the world and nothing bad can happen to me again." "In that lovely long time with you at home everything had to happen secretly." "Now it's all so simple and clear I'm no longer afraid." "We mustn't be sad any more and cry, will you promise me that?" "At your mother's, from whom we hid our love our baby couldn't have lived, either, I'm quite sure of that." "But in a few years, if we still love each other then we'll have a child, or two, or three, or ten." "Hermann, I love you." "For always." "Your Klärchen." "Ernst, now come over and eat at the table, like the others." "Anton." "An autocratic ruler, six letters." "Kindly shut your trap!" "Tyrant." "Despot fits, too." "You've given your family a perfect example of how to conduct one's life." "In a boom period you've gone broke." "Quite an achievement." "No wonder your wife's divorcing you." "I couldn't get him to go to school this morning." "I kept begging him to go." "He should have gone." "At least there he'd get some peace from you." "Ernst you talk to him." " He won't listen to me any more." " Me?" "I'm supposed to speak to him?" "If you drop the prosecution." "Only then." "We're waiting." "They're checking at the factory whether she's done anything else." "With such a person, anything's possible." "Besides, who introduced her into this house?" "Just look at Anton." "Look at him closely." "Eyes popping, face twitching hands trembling." "He's beside himself." "Anton, just between brothers you're not plain jealous, are you?" "Just imagine." "I've given him all my love." "No wonder he wouldn't wake up in the mornings." "The bad marks he brought home from school." "Why he was always so pale." "And I thought the boy was ill." "You can't imagine." " Mother, it won't go on like this." " I hope not." "Depend on me." "We've got things in hand, Mother." "I've locked the door again." "I've locked the door again." "It worked." "FOR HERMANN" "I advise you to destroy it after you've read it burn it, don't take it home." "If you're careful, you can go on getting your post through me." "O.K.?" "I'm so excited that we'll see each other on New Year's Eve." "Whatever happens, you'll find me on 31st December at 8.05 pm at Boppard Station, and I'll wait there for you." "But please be careful nothing happens to you on the way." "You mustn't write to me here so often as the family I work for here in Königswinter is very nosey." "Sometimes I think the doctor's wife goes through my things." "You're right when you say that love and suffering lie so close together." "Your Klärchen." "Hermann, what are you doing?" "You haven't a driving licence." "Come and celebrate New Year with me?" "I thought it was the Chancellor!" "That's Anton's car." " You're beautiful." " For you." "This business with the car..." "Know what I've brought you?" "Your favourite cake." "What else?" "Wine and eggnog." "We're really living it up." "Do you know what I'd like to do tonight?" "We should go to a real New Year's Eve ball." "Yes, we'll do that." "Wait here for me." "I'll ask." "It's no good here, either." "I saw." "The way they've dressed up." "Don't be cross." "After all, we're together." "What now?" "They can shove their New Year's Ball." "How lovely." "I've never seen that in all my life." "A Chinese invention." "The Chinese invented fireworks?" "I love you." "Did you make a wish?" "If you kiss at midnight, you can make a wish." " What?" " I'm not saying." "Or it won't come true." " I'll tell mine." " Don't." "I have the feeling I'm not at home anywhere." "I feel it now especially, with you gone." "But it can't be otherwise." "So sated, so stuffed with food and so lacking in ideals as they are at home." "Do you think your mother no longer loves you?" "Oh, her..." "But she loved you so much." "I remember how she doted on you." "All the things she did when there was nothing to be had, after the war." "Do you know what my mother is?" "She's one of the mass." "I'm still trying to understand her." "She admires Anton, because he's got a factory because he feels a father's responsibility towards me." "But my father is dead." "I'm not related to them at all." "I was put into their nest like a cuckoo." "And because they have no ideals, they're mass people." "The masses cry out for a leader." "They'll soon see once again where that gets them." "We must eat something or we'll become sad and we won't love each other." "Maybe all this is the beginning of the end." "Maybe the atomic mushroom will destroy all of us." "Do you sometimes think about war, too?" "Yes, I'm often scared about it." "But we two are an island, aren't we?" "The time goes so quickly." "It's almost eight." "Happy New Year!" "Before I say goodbye, I must give you something." "I've had it with me, but I didn't want any sadness in our short time together." " It's as if we'll never meet again." " Yes." "Read the letter when I'm gone." "It's from your mother and brother." "When you read it, you'll know what to think." "I'm never going back to Königswinter, I've been sacked there." "You mustn't come after me." "Wait here until I've gone, then turn around and drive home." " Promise?" " Yes." "Dear Klara Sisse" "You are an adult and we needn't explain what our laws provide for in your case." "What you have done with our boy, who is a minor, is a crime." "We are watching every step you take." "If you should ever again dare to pester Hermann with your filthy mind we'll have you prosecuted." "We'll destroy you." "We've given full details to the family whose nursemaid you are." "They ought to know whom they're sheltering." "Doctor Bongart appreciates the danger to his children." "He's dismissing you as from 1st January 1956." "Something else." "Nothing on earth will allow you ever to see Hermann again." "All your letters will be delivered to us." "We've taken care of that." "And if you try any tricks, don't forget you could go to prison." "After years of trust you have disgracefully abused, we now know you." "You're a wh..." "Hermann, too, sees that and has promised to forget you." "Anton Simon, Simon Optical Works." "Schabbach." "When Hermann was eighteen, he left the village for ever." "He studied music in various capitals and became a composer." "LITTLE HERMANN" "In the summer of '43, an English bomber was shot down and the wreckage ended up in a meadow near our village Schabbach in the Hunsrück." "It was mentioned in a special report from the Führer's headquarters." "We all rushed out to have a look and we took photos." ""We are at war and this is the homefront"  Wilfried Wiegand kept saying to women whose men were at the real front." "Kath stood up to him." "She used to say "If your dad wasn't so old, he would smack your ass."" "Kath was brave enough." "That's her in the photo." "And next to her, that's her husband, Mathias, the village blacksmith." "That's a nice family photo with all the children around them." "That's the Simon's house." "It is about 200 years old." "The forge is on the right." "That's Maria, she saw them all leave home." "First, her husband Paul who went to America then her sons, Anton and Ernst went off to war when they grew up." "And last Otto, the father of her son Hermann." "She didn't know where he was." "She didn't even know he was in the army in a bomb disposal squad." "That's in November '43." "Maria is going to Kirchberg to fetch Martha from the station." "Martha is from Hamburg and was engaged to Anton." ""It is as if Anton sent me a message through the child in your womb" Maria told Martha." "They got on very well together." "That's a proxy marriage." "Martha, Anton's fiancé was married to Anton while he was at the front." "And the telephone call was filmed at the front for the newsreel." "How we celebrated in the village!" "We were all in Wiegand's parlour and took photos." "There is the bride on her own in all of them." "The bride's groom was only there on the cake." "Then Ernst flew down in his fighter plane just 5 metres above the village." "He nearly hit the church and dropped 50 red carnations for the bride." "We all ran into the street waving to him and shouting Ernst, Ernst..." "And in the war Anton got close to what he always wanted to be." "He became an assistant cameraman for the newsreel." "He was always interested in optics." "Sometimes I wondered if the moon that shines down on Schabbach really is the same moon that shines over Russia." "Sometimes you just can't imagine it." "SOLDIERS AND LOVE" "Come on, Mengershausen." "Let's see what's left of our Arri camera." " What's this?" " We were lucky, Captain." "In filming an attack, we got a direct hit." " You call that lucky?" " Yes, sir." "It ricocheted." "It just missed my left eye and it went through the magazine." "The camera lens narrowly missed the assistant's ear." " What about the film?" " Ruined, sir." " A day's shooting?" " Yes, 120 metres." "Theorist!" "Dear Herr Geschrei." "My name's Gschrey, sir." "You are an old sweat." "A good quality for the infantry but a rotten one for art." "Think about it." "You needn't always take your camera where the mud's flying where they shoot holes in your face." "The idea is to get something on film that moves the heart." "When I'm in the thick of it, Captain I can't stand aside I share the same conditions as my comrades." "You use that camera like a gun." "That's a common error." "Did Dante really enter his Inferno?" "Did Bosch see the Garden of Earthly Delights with his own eyes?" "No!" "But the divine spark was in them of which you are ignorant, Herr Geschrei." ""The artist sees things with his personal inspiration."" "Do you know who said that?" "Our Doctor Goebbels." "That surprises you, eh?" "We're not in Babelsberg, Captain making The White Dream or The Great Love." "Here people really die." "Wrong." "Not feature films but war newsreels are the real art of the twentieth century." "Our units have shot more than 2.8 million metres of film." "Over ten years' feature production more than a thousand features." "We manage to imprint the war into people's souls more forcefully than the power of their own eyes ever could." "We achieve that with our camera if it remains undamaged." "Captain, I can repair it." "I'll manage." "That won't make the world extinct..." "Captain, is this the camera position?" "I don't know." "Usually he goes on about the camera not being a gun." "But today..." "We'll use the telephoto lens." "Anton, adjust the lens." "What's the matter?" "It's jammed." "What's jammed?" "The iris." "We'll use an 85, then, while you repair it." "Ready?" "Camera!" "Simon, log it:" "60 metres, exterior, day." "Don't send it with the other material." "Take it at once to the Intelligence Office." "Which laboratory, sir?" "Arnold and Richter, Munich." "Don't forget to seal it properly." "See that?" "Blotches, scratches, flashes - every fault possible but they film in impossible conditions." "Our processing is not to blame." "The court is now in session." "Chief Inspector tell us how the film we are going to see was made." "It's terrible." "Ignore the content." "Watch for technical faults." "That's what you are here to learn." "The film aided police investigations." "We reconstructed the crime in the house of the accused exactly where it happened." "We made use of the Professor's ability to imitate Crippen." "For the part of Mrs. Cora Crippen we found an actress who closely resembled the murdered woman." "We can begin with the projection." "Inspector, please provide the necessary elucidation." "Silence, please." "Please, sit down, ladies and gentlemen." "On the last evening, Mrs. Crippen didn't feel well." "The guests had departed." "Mrs. Crippen had sent the maid to bed." "Dr. Crippen and his wife were now alone." "Look, Pieritz, that's Schabbach." "Like peacetime." "Yes, Herr Wohlleben, those were the days." "What a car!" "Aren't you Jürgen?" "You've grown." "Stay here, Pieritz." "Maybe we'll go straight on." "Good day, Frau Simon." "How nice that you've come." "In uniform, too." "Maria!" "Guess who's here!" "I met Ernst." "He recognized me straight away." "The boy's a terrific pilot." "Yes, I know." "I saw him when he flew over the house." "He dropped a bouquet." "Typical." "Why stand out here?" "Go into the kitchen." "I found the way easily, it's still familiar." "They've got prisoners-of-war now, in Anton Jakob's big room." "We've thirty French prisoners in the village." "Most of them work at Wilfried's." "You know, at Wiegand's, the one in the SS." "My brother." "There are no men here at home any more." "They're doing the work for us now." "But the house, it looks as if I went upstairs only yesterday." "Nothing's changed." "Only Granny, she's aged." "Where's Grandad?" "In bed." "He's not very well." "His eyes are bad and he's fragile now." "Do sit down, Otto." "I thought I'd never see you again." "So did I, Otto." "Ernst told me everything." "I thought you ought to see him at once." "This is little Hermann, Otto." "Believe it or not, I knew you'd come." "Here I am." "I am on my way from Hermeskeil to Koblenz." "It's the first time I've seen the completed Hunsrück highway." "Already full of potholes, only six years after we built it." "You can't imagine the traffic it's seen this last year." "The whole army's travelled across it." "Well, Hermann, will you shake my hand?" "You're not from around here, I can tell." "I'm from Bochum." "And that's my sister Lotti, she's from Bochum, too." "Mother's stayed home in Bochum." "She works in a bomb factory." "Ursel!" "It's called a munitions factory." "And Father sends me postcards from the war." "He's in Russia." "He's got a motorbike and sidecar." " Know a bonbon factory?" " No, it's called a bomb factory." "No, a bonbon factory." "Look, I'll explain." "There's a huge factory in Paderborn with 3,000 little girls like you sitting in a row at a conveyor belt." "Every girl has a box of sweets on her lap but they're all square." "Yes, square." "On the word of command they put the bonbons in their mouths and suck them." "Because bonbons have to be round." " Right, Corporal?" " Right!" "And when they've sucked the sweets until they're round on the word of command, they spit them out." " Want one?" " No, it's got spit on it!" "There's room in the house for you, we can spend the night here." "That's your room." "We're alright again, eh?" "Together, like old times." "Pieritz, just get into your room." "Off with you." "I'm giddy." "This little radio show is presented by an actress whose name is closely linked in film and radio with request programmes Ilse Werner." "This is a "Thank you" for our soldiers." "Dear boys, as you know I always answer soldier's letters first and on many a free afternoon I invite a soldier to my home." "She can invite me any time." "But you must realize I can't write long replies or invite you all home." "The whole army would be a bit much." "I read all your letters." "They make me happy, grateful a little proud, often sad." "I will never forget a story one of your comrades told me recently." "A soldier had taken his portable gramophone to the front." "Maybe as a talisman maybe to entertain himself and his friends." "Eat, or your soup will get cold." "Whenever there was a break, he put on my record "Sing a song if you feel sad"." "Once more, the record played." "Once more, you listened to me." "Then the alarm sounded." "My song faded in the noise of the attack." " The soldier rushed forward." " Or backward." "He woke up in hospital." "Thank God, it could have been nastier." "According to his story, as he opened his eyes a little melody that made him smile was still ringing in his ears." "The little woman in his ear." "And how beautifully one of you has told me in words and drawings about your party to celebrate..." " I wonder what." " I wonder who." "...the christening of a strapping gun to whom you've given the name of Ilse." "Martha, is the baby kicking inside you?" "A bit, now and then." "May I feel?" "It just kicked." "Lotti, I've written a poem for you." "Want to hear it?" "Yes, Specht." "Two legs prop up my machine-gun, and those I must align." "Two legs that ache too much to run, unfortunately they're mine." "I know two legs so slim and smart, I'll think of them when we're apart." "And those, my love, are thine." "And when those lovely legs I see, I think, my darling you." "I think, "Why hasn't my MG got legs as lovely, too?"" "Did you think of me when you made that up?" "Must you go now to your gun?" "At night we can't do anything with our little gun." "When you think what a weight of iron is flying through the air up there." "That's nothing to do with nature any more." "Iron, steel, explosives and phosphorus." "I've got used to it." "That droning in the dark every night." "It really makes me drowsy when I listen to it." "First it gets louder and louder." "Then for a while, it's constant." "Then it gets quieter and quieter and my eyelids just close." "You've such lovely, firm shoulders, Maria." "Come to bed, Otto, you'll catch cold." "Often we fell asleep together with my lips on yours." "In the morning, that's how we woke up." "And your warm feet." "I've never known you with cold feet, never." "You warmed me, Maria." "In my life, I've loved three women." "Each time it was different." "Each time it was stronger." "I'll never again love anyone as I love you." "Sometimes, I didn't wash for days." "I wanted to sense you still beside me." "Come to bed, Otto." "All the years without you..." "If you were an animal, what would you be?" "You'd have been a swallow." "The most beautiful birds." "They always say when they fly, "Dear, dear Maria."" "I've laughed when I've thought about your feet." "Do you know you've got flat feet?" "Lovely little flat feet." "You've become much more beautiful than before." "If you could make me so small and stick me in your apron pocket then we could always stay together." "So small." "Lie beside me, Otto." "You know, Otto I've lain awake in this bed for hours and imagined going away to far-away places." "Like in novels where people just go away." "I've never really been away anywhere." "I really wanted to." "And I've been travelling all around." "The places I've been..." "In France, in Brittany, along the whole Atlantic coast." "I was in Salonika, in Liège and in Bergen." "I was on the island of Bornholm in Czeslochowa and Brno." "Once I was in Brescia, in Italy." "I liked that best, that's a U-boat supply base." "And everywhere I felt alone." "People all around me, and I was alone." "For a while I woke up every other night because I was crying in my sleep." "They've all gone away from me, when I think about it." "Paul went away." "Then the two boys when they grew up, Anton and Ernst." "And you went away, too." "With each of them there was a different reason you must admit." "Don't be unfair." "You made me go away." "I didn't know what I was doing." "I was just so scared then." "I thought it was the end of the world." "You know, you and I and then Paul after so many years, after twelve years." "I waited for him every day." "For twelve years, I was the only one who believed he was still alive." "They'd all given him up for dead." "His own mother thought he was dead." "They laughed at me when I said Paul was still alive." "And then, after twelve years, the letter from America." "At the very moment I was able to forget him for the first time." "That was happiness." "That was real happiness while we were building the Hunsrück highway." "I didn't care that we had to hide everything from the world." "And then I looked at my hand on my drawing-board in the hut and I thought this is the hand that caressed you last night." "I want you to understand me, Otto." "The night before I went to Trier I really believed Paul was dead." "And then I was so scared because I really imagined him drowning going down with the ship from New York to Hamburg." "And then I was so ashamed when I was with you in Trier." "I really believed I'd killed him." "And that's why I had to go?" "I must show you something." "All that belongs to my mum and grandma." "Because of the bombs, you see." "That's genuine Rosenthal china, and real linen, real damask." "It's beautiful." "If you take that, then you must take me, too." "What an idea!" "I can't burden myself with all that in wartime." "Go into the kitchen." "Grandad's so ill and he can't sleep." "Otto, come to bed, you'll catch cold." "You're shivering." "I thought at that time I'd die because of you." "Why, I thought, why does this woman want to be rid of me?" "It's like killing someone when you get rid of them." "I did to you what Paul did to me." "Yet that's the very thing I didn't want to do." "I didn't want to go on living." "Do you know that's why I volunteered for the bomb-disposal squad?" "Just think, Otto we've had a child." "I can't believe it." "I can't take it in." "For four years I've roamed as if terminally ill and had no idea." "To think you can't sense that as a man." "That you don't see it in a dream, or somehow get a sign." "A child like that is really a person in his own right." "Do you remember how we all wore those death's-head rings?" "And they scared you." "I remember that as if it were today." "None of you thought anything of it before the war." "Actually, we never thought much at all." "And you were as thoughtless as the rest." "I've just thrown the ring away." "After I met Ernst, I threw it into a crater." "It's lying 1,000 metres down." "It took so long to do that." "I could get a transfer." "The Todt Organization is taking on everyone they need." "Nobody looks at the right type of nose anymore." "Away from bomb-disposal to the Atlantic Wall." "I'm a good engineer." "Go to sleep." "Asleep already?" "Here, Herr Pieritz, here's something for the journey." "I'll peep at them." "And best wishes to Grandad." "I hope he'll soon be better." "I don't think you'll see him again, Otto." "Maria, nothing's going to happen to me." "I meant Grandad." "Where is the little beauty?" "Over by the turntable." "Under the goods van?" "Tell those soldiers to get away." "Will you defuse it or explode it?" "The engine-shed has been cleared." "We'll look first." " They're just kids." " Germany's last hope." "A 250-pounder, Herr Wohlleben." "Are you sure, Pieritz?" "Could be a triple five." "Herr Wohlleben!" "A thirty second fuse, probably." "Let's hope so." "This thing here must be shifted." "We need someone for the turntable." "Turn it, so we can get at the bomb." " Nothing will happen, will it?" " Course not." "Come on." " Really not?" " We're still with you." "More." "Now take cover." "Thanks." "It's about time I had a go." "No, Pieritz, you're still doing theory." "Don't bother me." "In ten minutes we'll both be over in the café." "I've enough coupons for a hot drink and they've got good jam tarts." "Go and get the tools." "That alarm's overdoing things a bit, but that's your business." "Your gloves, Herr Wohlleben." "Are those tattered things the best you can offer?" "Shouldn't I come with you?" "No, stay with the grandads and look after our truck." "What are you doing here?" "I'm checking this stretch." "Or, rather, I used to check this stretch of track." "Are you on duty now?" "I'm always on duty." "What are you doing here?" "Defusing the bomb." "So that's what a bomb looks like." "Yes, it's a 250-pounder." "Well, let's get on with it." "Better get back a bit." "Can't I stay here with you?" "You've been here far too long already." "Then I'll go now." "Yes." "Has anything happened to you?" "No." "Why?" "What's burning?" "They jettisoned their bombs." "I was watching from the window." "One of our night-fighters got through and shot the Tommy in the belly." "The fire's over at Kaisergarten." "Katharina, what was that?" "There's a fire at the Kaisergarten." "Specht wrote me such a lovely poem." "It was about legs." "About his legs." "No, about my legs." "Two legs prop up my machine-gun, and those I must align." "Two legs that ache too much to run..." "Is he really dead, Grandma?" "Yes, Ursel, he's really dead." "The crater's bigger than the one in Gillweiler." "It's even got water in it." "Jürgen, get over there, I'll take your picture." "More to the middle." "Mother, Karl, Mäthes-Pat." "Now look into the crater, it's big enough." "Just look at it." "ENTRY OF AMERICANS INTO SCHABBACH ON 18TH MARCH, 1945." "H. MUCH AND H. SPECHT KILLED IN ACTION, 12.3.46" "Lucie, where are you?" "Lucie, what have you done to yourself?" "I thought when the Yanks come..." "Edu, what's up with you?" "I had to hand over the Leica." "We must leave the house, too." " What?" " It's commandeered." "We've just ten minutes to get out." "Leave everything behind?" "What do I do now?" "What can I take?" "Only what we're wearing." "I must wear my fur coat." "The blue, no, the green silk dress." "Rubbish, I'll wear all my dresses on top of one another." "Wilfried." "You've had it now." "My fur coat, too." "Germany, Germany above all!" "Wilfried, that's blasphemy, just pack it in!" "Shut up!" "Be quiet, you'll get us all killed." "We've lost everything we've built up." "Thank God it's over." "But we weren't big shots." "We, too, got nothing but suffering out of it all." "Look in the mirror." "See what those years have done." "But, Lucie, I was the mayor of Raunen." "So what?" "There always have to be mayors." " Really?" " Sure." "I must take a look." "Maybe we can get something going with the Yanks." "Wilfried, you must clear out!" "SOLDIERS AND LOVE" "This is our village Schabbach, in the Hunsrück on the left bank of the Rhine, Rheinisches Schiefergebirge Germany, Europe, the world, the universe." "Despite the two World Wars our village still looks like it did 100 years ago." "The war memorial was unveiled in 1920." "I was there." "There I am, that's me!" "That's the Simon family house." "The smithy is to the right." "It was built around 1700." "And that's Mathias, the blacksmith." "He is my grandfather." "He died in the winter of 1945, just before the Americans arrived." "That's his wife Katharina." "She is our grandmother." "That's a nice photo." "Oh, that's our Pauline." "How young she looks there." "That was before the war." "What a funny hat!" "She married Robert Kröber, a clockmaker from Simmern." "She became a businesswoman." "Here, she heard that her husband was missing in Russia." "Who else have we got?" "Lanky Eduard." "They sent him to Berlin because of his lung trouble." "That's where he married Lucie." "They came back to the Hunsrück at the beginning of the Hitler era." "There, he's already in uniform." "They got themselves a huge car and a villa built on credit." "But they don't have to pay the money back now because the war is over." "What's that?" "They tore it in two." "The Simon family and our Maria." "She married Mathias' other son, Paul and they had two children, Anton and Ernst." "That's what Maria used to look like and that's how she looks today." "That's Anton, missing in Russia." "And to the left, that's Ernst." "His plane was shot down over France." "There, Maria with her two sons." "That's the last photo of Paul." "He cleared off in 1927." "We can only see him from behind." "Twelve years later Maria found out that he had become a rich American." "Otto Wohlleben." "He's dead now too." "He was blown up in the war by a bomb he was trying to defuse." "That's him again with Maria." "They had a child, Hermann." "Look how happy Otto is with Hermann in his arms." "Today, he is seven years old." "That's a day I'll never forget as long as I live." "18th March 1945..." "when the Yanks arrived here." "For us, the war was over." "BERLIN END OF APRIL 1945" "Rudolf, it worked, your message reached me." "They found me." "Yes, look at me." "It really is me, Martina, I'm here." "To think you're in Berlin." "Did you want to see me so much?" "Rudolf... in the middle of the fighting, you want to see me." "I thought you were still in Allenstein but they are all retreating now." "Yesterday in East Prussia and today in the capital." "Well, give your Martina a smile." "It's really me." "You're not laughing at all." "Nothing can happen to you here, with walls on each side you're safe." "I've fixed it with Dr. Globirsch from Lietzenburger Strasse." "He's owed me a favour for years and I've asked him to come here." "He'll come as soon as things calm down a bit outside." "He knows the address." "He'll know what to do when he comes." "And now, wait." "I'll stay with you now, Rudolf." "Can you feel that?" "Can you feel my hand?" "You can feel that, you must feel it." "Is that warm?" "Do you feel it getting warm?" "Do you feel anything?" "What can I do if you can't feel anything?" "Do you hear me, Rudolf?" "If you can hear me and see me then do nothing but look and listen and don't stop." "Just keep going, do you hear me?" "Here we go." "This is the all-German radio." "Dear soldiers, dear listeners at home dear friends beyond our frontiers." "For the last time the fanfare for the German army's request programme." "We're calling Rudolf Pollack." "He's slightly wounded and lying in 13 Niehburstrasse in battle-torn Berlin." "Greetings from your comrades in that ducky bunker at 11 Monsenstrasse and even personal greetings from our Führer." "Rudolf, he's not dead he's alive, don't think he isn't." "Dear Comrade Pollack." "Contrary to all rumours I can tell you I am alive." "Did you hear, Rudolf?" "Dear Comrade Pollack." "We send our greetings and make your wish come true with Ilse Werner and her song "There'll be an Eternal Spring"." "There'll be an eternal spring." "Full of fragrant flowers and sunshine." "When you come back to me and kiss me tenderly and always will be mine." "Life will be like fairy-tales." "With you, my charming prince." "THE AMERICAN" "SCHABBACH." "MAY, 1945." "Hermann, where are you going?" "Hermann, what are you doing?" "Stay away from that." "Get off!" "Did you hear me?" "Mama, look what I've got." "What have you found now?" "Lotti, look." "No!" "That's a finger!" "You take that back at once!" "The other way round, Hermann!" " Do you want to get us into trouble?" " But, Mama, that's a German finger." "You come with me." "That's enough!" "Look at the state you're in." "Hermann, that's enough!" "But, Mama, it's a German finger." "Lotti, breathe on me." "That smells good." "What's in their petrol that it smells so nice when they drive by?" "Marie-Goot, I'll tell you something, that's wealth." "Maria, news of Anton." "He's alive!" "I don't understand why, but the letter is from Turkey." ""I can give you news, vouched for by my comrades that your son Anton is in safety and has reached Turkish soil." "I can't send you any more information this way, I'm afraid but I'm sure you'll soon be hearing from your son yourself."" "Martha!" "Where did you get that?" "I just can't get it out of my head." "I no longer know what Anton looks like." "Martha, we've all aged in the war." "SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" "Grandpa!" "A policeman!" "Don't be scared, he wants some more snails." "You haven't seen any German airmen?" "No." "I'm homesick." "Do you still remember that spooky shrine in the hedge between Schabbach and Rhaunen?" "At night you always tried to pass it quickly you whistled aloud." "And in the hedge, the will-o'-the-wisps hovered." "Your brother Anton, who never wanted to fly who kept his feet on the ground, he was never as scared as you." "You always got scared." "I was with you, Ernst when you threw back your Messerschmitt cockpit-cover." "When you fell through the night with your parachute a foreign, shadowy earth coming towards you..." "And you didn't know if it was a wood, a deep ravine or water." "Everything you feared most as a pilot." "Everything a pilot could crash into was rushing towards you." "I was with you at the moment when something tore at your harness with a jolt that went right through you." "And then you hung in that fir-tree loosing consciousness amid the smell of blood and resin..." "Resin from the French tree where you'd landed..." "For six weeks you've been on the run." "No power on earth can bring the Führer back to life." "13TH MAY, 1946." "A MONDAY." "You're Paul." "Come here!" "It's Paul Simon's car." "He's come back." "He must have been the fine gentleman we saw." "Maria must be told the American is here." "Maria is in the forest, getting wood." "Mama, we're ready." "Then go back to the village and wait with Granny." "That boy had no childhood." "He's just starting to be a child now the war is over." "Maria, I know Robert is no longer alive." "Don't be silly, it all depends on you." "Look, I never stopped believing when there was no news from Paul." "But I believed." "Just as I believe now that Ernst and Anton are still alive." "Even if I have no news for ten years, I'll believe." "It's all we women can do." "I wonder if Lotti's Yank has brought her some real coffee." "Wouldn't it be nice to come home to a cup of real coffee?" "Lotti is doing very nicely with the Americans." "They let her wind them round her little finger." "Just wait till she brings you home a little black bundle." "Guess what I've got?" "Real coffee!" "Take your paws off my laundry!" "He's here in Schabbach." " Horst, what are you saying?" " Mama, the American is here!" "Come up at once." "Do you still know the poem you had to learn by heart back before the war when Simon Electric Detroit was going to come the first time?" "You still know it, don't you?" "Listen." "You don't know me..." "You don't know me, I'm only wee, but all the same, I know your name." "Well, Horst, how does it go on?" "Your mother wrote that especially for you." "I'm only wee doesn't fit now." "I'm not small any more." "Horst, don't be so rebellious." "We can easily rewrite it for your present age." "You don't know me, but I know you." "No, that doesn't rhyme." "You went from here a long time ago." "ago... know... wee." "That's not bad at all." "Wee." "What do you think, Eduard?" " Well, say something." " Don't shout like that." "Has he really come?" "I'd like to see my brother." "But you're not mobile, yet." "No, no, Horst and I we'll go to Schabbach and invite him to our house." "I've still got a whole film in it." "I've been waiting for this since 1938." "I've had it since before the war." "To think that the Holy Mother Maria in this dreadful time, gives us this." "Good thing I hid the Ikoflex." "Oh, that's a stroke of luck." "Paul will be so pleased if I take photos." "Since the war ended since I've known what the Yanks are like they're better than us in everything." "It wasn't only their wealth that defeated us." "No, it's something quite different." "That they can go where they like and aren't stuck here in the Hunsrück." "That's the big world, Eduard that's living." "Do you know that we fit into America two thousand times?" " No, I don't believe that." " Well, it's true, though." "Come, Horst, let's get changed." "Drive straight ahead!" "Not so fast!" "Watch out!" "We can go right." "Where is Simon Electric Detroit?" "Drive up to the Simons', they've gone there." "We're coming, too." "This is Lucie, Eduard's wife." "How nice of you to introduce us, Mother." "I'm sorry but Eduard can't travel." "Paul, the boy has got lung trouble again." "Paul, your brother Eduard, I mean my husband and I we own the wonderful big villa that's the headquarters now." "We'd be awfully glad, since Eduard can't travel well, we'd be glad if you..." "may I call you Paul?" "You'd do better to tidy the place." "You know, Paul in 1934 you didn't mean very much to us if I may express it like that." "We had Rosenberg, Frick and Ley for four hours in our house." "We all had no idea what murderers they were what criminals sat on our chairs." "Isn't that true?" "We had absolutely no idea what beasts we were shaking hands with." "Right, Mother?" "We didn't know, did we?" "Lucie, Paul doesn't understand any of that." "He was in America." "Come, Paul, sit down." "Move up, Hermann." "I do understand, Mother." "The Nazi leaders, the Nuremberg trial." "You see, he understands that." "Our Sergeant says, too it was in all the American papers who they were, Rosenberg, Frick and Ley." "They were the very highest of us." "They were like gods, they were." "Now I thank the Lord God in Heaven that he saved us from them." "Imagine, Paul, if they'd taken to coming and going in my house." "I'd never get a wink of sleep nowadays." "To think you're standing here before me in person." "He's sitting." "He's not standing, Lucie, he's sitting." "My brother Eduard, who always went looking for gold what did he do during that time?" "It must be said, Eduard was too good, he had no taste at all for all that." "No, he didn't." "And I'll say one thing although things went the way they did." "We have no enemies today Eduard and I." "Maria, is that him?" "He hasn't changed a bit." "Paul, remember me?" "You've got a black chauffeur and you still remember me." "Marlies is really a little sweetheart." "Anton's daughter, your grand-daughter." "Your grand-daughter." "Yes, Marlies." "Can we take a look, Maria?" "I think it is Paul." " Who are you?" " Klärchen Sisse, I'm from Herne." "Ernst gave me your address." "Are you his mother?" " But he's missing in France." " Yes, but he is on his way back." " He's coming back?" " Yes..." "I mean no." "Well..." "I came here to wait for him." "Just slow down a moment." "My son Ernst has sent you." " And there's no mistake?" " No, he gave me your address." "The Simon family in Schabbach, Bernkastel District, house 49." "And best wishes to his mother." "And his grandmother and grandfather." "And to his brother Anton, if he's back yet." "Our Ernst, Grandma." "Paul, Ernst is alive." " That's your son." " Anton's brother." "Ernst must get his discharge papers from Hamburg then go to Schleswig-Holstein." "Then he'll come home." "He said I'd be in good hands with you." "How am I to manage this?" "Where do I put this young woman up?" "It's typical of Ernst." "Lotti, Martha, I'm sorry, but you'll have to share a room now." "Martha, come here." "Take the girl upstairs." "I'm worn out." "Ernst said you'd look after me." "Yes, you are being looked after." " I'm Lotti." " I'm Martha." "Was Ernst in the war, too?" "I never thought the boys would be in the war." " And where is Anton?" " We must wait, Paul." "As we've waited all these years for you." "Have you got chocolate for me?" "Of course I have some chocolate for you." "Then there was suddenly the smell of real coffee." "We needed it for Hamburg, for the discharge papers so he had lots of it." " Isn't that dangerous?" " I'll say it is!" "Then everything went dark in the train." "And I heard him telling about all his aerial battles how he was shot down and how he made his way through France and I got shivers up my spine." "May I take another slice?" "And I was dozing off, I heard him telling people where he was from and that his family were farmers living in the Hunsrück." "Schabbach, Bernkastel District." "I'll never forget that." " Did Ernst really send you here?" " Of course!" "What an idea!" "Where would I have got the address otherwise?" " Do you bake the bread yourself?" " Yes, in our oven." "You're in good hands here." "That was our house, Rothenbühl, number seven." "That's what it was like afterwards, on 12th January 1945." "These were our neighbours who rescued the injured but my mother was dead." "Is that you?" "No, I wasn't there." "I was away on war service." "That's my mother." "I feel a bit better now." "There we were in Cologne." "And where is Ernst?" "If that man would move his bicycle, you could see him." "He's behind him." "But they are black-marketeers." "Is Ernst doing that in Cologne?" "He got me some silk stockings from that man there because I needed them." " That was in Cologne, too." " It looks like Bochum." " Just like Hamburg." " Those are relatives of ours." "That's Hans Söhnker, the film star, but he's not related to us." "A handsome man." "My father." "He's in Russia, a prisoner-of-war." "Here we're in Duisburg, the big station." "We waited six hours there." "Who's that?" "That's my little sister, but she's dead." "Where is our Ernst now, then?" "I don't know." "Whatever happens, I'm to wait for him here." "That's typical of our Ernst." "Ernst, why don't we visit your family?" "We're very near." "Oh, not today." "Why not?" "Tomorrow we'll be somewhere farther away." "They just wouldn't understand if I bob up after such a long time then push off again immediately." "Or is there a woman waiting there for you?" "I don't think so." "I don't see how this route of yours will get us to Wiesbaden." "Frigga, I know every stone here, every blade of grass." "Do you like it?" "Now recite your poem." "You went from here a long time ago, but we're with you in joy and woe." "But that's not true." "What are you doing here?" " You're Paul." " And you're Eduard." "I saw your car outside." "Paul, let me look at you." ""Old boy"." "That's good." "Now recite it, Horst." "See, Katharina, now you've got all three home." "It's like a miracle." "I can't believe it." "Horst, that's your uncle now." "Dear people of Schabbach." "Dear people of the Hunsrück." "Dear family." "The speech I am going to make today is the one I wanted to make in 1939." "I knew the words by heart then." "But then came the war, and I've forgotten them." "The music that was just played is a greeting to you from the United States and abroad so you also have something to laugh about." "The grocery store cost me a few dollars." "And I had to get an old friend in the Air Force out of bed tonight and he cursed and asked, "Won't tomorrow do?"." ""No, General", I said." "That made you look up, Glasisch." ""Tomorrow won't do..." ""...because today is Saturday and my people can't sleep it off..." ""...and I want my Schabbach to be happy today."" "The older ones among you will remember that in 1923, I was the first person, far and wide to build a radio." "And it worked." "And that was the beginning." "In the United States like everyone else I washed dishes for years until in 1934 I set up my own factory." "But don't think it was very big." "At first it was tiny no bigger than father's forge here in Schabbach." "Then it kept getting bigger and bigger and then I thought of you." "And I said to myself "One day, when I've made it rich..." ""...then I'll go home and say to you all "Here I am."" "Maria..." "Mother." "We had some difficult hours back in August 1939." "Paul has already started." "When I was on the ship in Hamburg and had to wait three days and four nights." "They wouldn't let me land." "Your Hitler didn't want me, he wasn't from the Hunsrück." "Then we sailed to Le Havre but the same thing happened in France." "They wouldn't let us land, either." "And when I went back to the United States I couldn't imagine all this here any more, on the ship." "Seven years have passed since then." "And in those seven years I've kept on thinking about standing here before you like this." "So, people, open up the cans." "Let everyone eat, drink and smoke." "And maybe one of you can make some coffee." "I'm telling you, with the Yanks with the Yanks, we'll get out of this whole mess." "The dream of my declining years is to visit America." "The Wild West, that's living." "Or to New York, and spit from the top of a skyscraper." "And look into the distance." "Up there, one is closer to God." "What are the names of the forty-eight states?" "Pauline, what's the matter?" "Eduard, I just thought of Robert and that he'll never come home again." "But Pauline, you don't know that." "As a woman, you feel it." "No, Eduard, he'll never come back." "Maria, will you dance with me?" "Shall we have a dance, too, Lucie?" "Isn't that blasphemy, so soon after the war?" "No, not today." "You like this, don't you, Paul?" "A homecoming after 20 years, paying everything with dollars." "A pretty daughter-in-law." "A car with a chauffeur." "And everybody applauding." "Paul, this is better than in peace-time." "What's the matter, Paul?" "I'm so cold." "It's summer, Paul." "Just feel." "Your fingers really are cold." "You're not to feel cold, Paul." "But you shouldn't get any ideas either." "Is Otto between us?" "Otto has been dead a long time." "What is it, then?" "Twenty years, Paul." "You can't dispel them just by being cold." "Warm today, isn't it?" "Where is Jakoby's carpenter's shop?" "On the left." "See the door?" "Lt. Ernst Simon, 3rd Fighter Squadron Bitburg, reporting back from action." "My plane was a write-off." "Here are the keys and the logbook." "Simon!" "Man." "You're trying to take the piss out of me." " Stand easy, man." " Colonel." "Simon, the hunt is over." "What do you want here?" "I wanted to bring you the logbook and the keys, and report back." "No stories." "You used to be quite smart." "Now stop this rubbish." "For me the war is not over until I've reported back to you, Colonel." "What plans have you now?" "I've got by for 18 months, from France to here." "I've seen that all a heart could desire still exists only not where it's needed." "It's just a transport problem." "Colonel, I want to fly again." "The air is no longer ours." "You must get used to that." "But we can't crawl around on the ground." "How about applying to the Tommies for work as airmail pilots?" "Colonel I thought you and I might..." "Simon, I was a soldier, and as a result I'm now a carpenter's apprentice." "And for the next 99 years we, as Germans, won't be allowed to fly." "Paul, were you never homesick in America?" "Yes, Mother, often." "What did you do when you had worries and there was nobody to advise you?" "No father, no mother, no brother, no sister." "I had to learn to help myself, Mother." "In that cold country, where they all know what they want isn't that terrible?" "But now you're home again." "Come to the kitchen." "I've made a hayseed infusion for you." "Inhaling that always helped your father when he was ill." "Remember, Paul, when you were so ill as a child?" "You had diphtheria and whooping cough all at once, do you remember?" "As I remember, you almost died." "That was on my birthday." "Yes, you were just seven and you were taken ill." "Doctor Dörr sat by your bed for four hours and he had the surgical instruments all lying ready because we all thought you'd choke, do you remember?" "I didn't know about all that." "And then you suddenly said "Now I'm seven years old and I must die."" "That's when Doctor Dörr's eyes filled with tears, Paul." "I didn't know that." "Come down to the kitchen." "We've got a factory, too, to make barley coffee." "Those are hayseed from last year." "When we brought them home, the whole room was full of Americans." "That was a hot summer when the war was over." "Tell us something about America, Paul." "Is it true there is so much to eat in America, and so many cars?" "Yes, that's no problem." "You were always such a serious, pale child and you wouldn't drink your milk." "I'll put hot water in it." "It's got to be as hot as you can bear." "Is your factory in Detroit really as big as it looks on the letter?" "And you have 800 workers?" "And you're their boss?" "Breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth." "At Christmas, Paul, do you all sing Silent Night, Holy Night as we do here?" "I can't understand it." "It's almost unbelievable." "Paul, have you got a woman in America?" "I mean, one that looks after you if you're ill." "But Paul is married." "Marie-Goot, this doesn't concern you." "If you say so." "Paul, have you a woman?" "See, Marie-Goot, Paul is a normal, healthy man." "The chicks." " What's the matter with Paul?" " He's ill." "Has he tried hot potatoes?" "Glasisch, go to church, it's Sunday." "Helga, look at these lovely eggs." "Better times will come then the farmers will come to us, and get nothing." "No luck here, we'll try this way." "Blonde or brunette, sweet nothing here you'll get." "Black hair or gold, I'd like you all to hold." "Here comes Glasisch." "He's worked thirty years in my fields with the cows, too." "He gets his food and I give him a few marks." "He's a poor devil nowadays." "He's got a nose like a rotten potato." "Wiegand, your place looks like a French castle." "Remember?" "Gobelin tapestries on the walls, and a mirror on the floor." "What mirror?" "Just think, Glasisch I got this ring for two sacks of potatoes." "Good swap." "From those townspeople?" "Watch out, you idiot." "You'll break it." "Alois, won't you go to the Simons to see Paul?" "He is your son-in-law." "As long as Wilfried is in their jail I'm not going to the American." "That's not Paul's fault." "When a man renounces Germany, he's no son-in-law of mine." "Yank, go home!" "No corned beef!" "No chocolate!" "No women!" "No cigarettes!" "Go home across the water!" "They have my Wilfried on their conscience." "But Wiegand, that's not Paul's doing." "When Wilfried comes home, things will be cleared up." "What's Wilfried going to clear up?" "For instance, the German cities all lying in ruins." " Wilfried is going to clear them up." " German diligence is invincible." "Pack it in, we know those slogans." "Marie-Goot, what are you doing?" "Put that outside the window." "She's over-roasted the barley coffee." "Further out or it will blow back in." "Herr Pieritz." "How did you get here?" "Good day, Frau Simon I thought your radio would have the old dial and I've got a new one with AFN on it so as I was in the district..." "I'm sorry just to turn up like this, but Grandma was so pleased." "Hermann, come, I've got another chocolate for you." "You know, Paul, Herr Pieritz was here during the war." "No, earlier, when they built the highway, with Maria's Otto." "He's come from the East Zone." "If you ask me, he's come to get something to eat or he wouldn't have bothered." "To think you're still alive, Herr Pieritz." "I knew my way around the house, as if I'd just come down the stairs." "I'd prefer if you'd leave." "But, Maria, you can't talk to Herr Pieritz like that." "It's all getting too much for me, Grandma." "Look what we've got!" "What's going on?" "A. PIERITZ." "RADIO DIALS AND INSTALLATIONS." "Do you know where you want to go?" "That will sort itself out, but certainly not back to Leipzig." " But your family?" " There's none left." "I'd better wear my beret, it makes things easier in the French zone." "What's that, then?" "Frau Simon, the clever man plans ahead." "That's for Day X." "Then we'll really do big business." "Oh, it's always only the others who do big business." "No, Frau Simon." "This time, we'll be part of it." "I'm through with theoretical training." " What do you mean?" " Everything will sort itself out." "Say goodbye to Maria for me." "Come back again some time." "The whole time you've been here I was determined not to ask you but now I must." "Why did you leave us, Paul?" "The children were so lovely." "And me..." "Didn't you like me, Paul?" "I didn't understand it." "I tried to, but I simply didn't understand it." "Sometimes I used to think, "He's not right in the head."" "Tell me now, Paul." "I'm not silly." "I just want to know." "Or did it have something to do with a woman?" "I just want to understand." "How am I to explain to you?" "At that time, here..." "You needn't explain anything to me." "Forget it, Paul." "I don't know, Maria." "I really don't know." "Perhaps only that I'm here now and can help you all." "We don't need any help, Paul." "I don't understand this Germany any more." "When I see you standing there I'm sure your workers respect you very much." "And they need me, too." "You can hear the tyres singing." "It's wonderful here in the Hunsrück." "Checkpoint, Paul." " Those are French." " They won't do anything to us." "What's he doing with that woman?" "They check everything." "If I hold my hearing aid out, I might understand them." "French." "Yes, they're speaking French." "That's from my factory." "Simon Electric Tone." "With very small valves inside." "Ours are much bigger, at least this big." " Say something into it." " Then you'll burst an eardrum." "Do you understand me, Eduard?" "On this very spot where you're standing Lucie stood when we came from Berlin." "And I sat here and I couldn't tell her how poor we were in Schabbach." "Do you understand?" "It's a very nice place here." "That's Boppard down there." "I often went there on my bike to buy parts for my first radio." "In the middle of the inflation, with Wiegand's dollars." "And then I went along the Rhine, as far as the "German corner"." "It's as though no time had passed at all." "Koblenz is completely destroyed, ruins everywhere you look." "It's even worse than Frankfurt or Cologne." "It's terrible, the war." "Maria has become like a stranger to me." "Mother hasn't changed at all." "But all the others are like strangers." "I'd forgotten how loudly they all speak." "The kitchen is always crowded and the house is much smaller than I remembered." "And everyone is accepted by them everyone who comes in is accepted by them, just like me." "I understood very well why you left the village, Paul." "We had nothing." "But now, you've got a beautiful big house." "Really." "Lucie wanted it that way, before the war." "The house means everything to Lucie." "The American headquarters will be moved out." "The Major promised me." "Why don't we two take a drive along the Mosel or to Wiesbaden in the American Zone and spend a few dollars?" "We'll get through all the checkpoints because you're an American." "You did the right thing, better than all of us." "Let them say what they like at home." "You simply cleared off." "To think you did that." "Shall we drive on a bit?" "Frigga, stop looking across at those two civilians at the bar." "Ernst, do you know them?" "One of them is an uncle of mine." "And the other one, the fatter one?" "I don't know him." "But don't look over there." "She's asked where you're from." "What do they want from us?" "Don't let on you're from the Hunsrück." " You're from the Hunsrück?" " I'm from Detroit." "What are you drinking?" "Paul, I like it here." " It's like peace-time, in Berlin." " Were you in such bars there?" " That's where I met Lucie." " You went dancing with her." "To think there are still such places as this, when everything is gone." "Paul, are you staying a few more weeks?" "You know, when I'm away from Detroit for any length of time I start to worry." "They need me there." "And I thought you'd stay at home with us." "Eduard, life in America..." "So you will stay a bit?" "Look, Frigga, I'll show you something." " Are they real?" " Surprised, eh?" "That's my Nibelungen hoard." "This lot took seventeen months to accumulate." " What will you do with them?" " That's my treasure for peace-time." "In 99 years, I'll buy a plane and fly away." "Are you crazy?" "Don't look across." "I don't want them to see me." "You're funny." "Everybody wants into the countryside, except you." "Where is Beromünster?" "Is it in the Tirol?" "10TH MAY, 1947." "A SATURDAY." "That's my Papa." "Martha, eat something, too." "Anton won't run away." "He'll stay here now, won't you, Anton?" "I know, Maria." "Marlies, let Papa eat." "Just think." "Anton walked 5,000 kilometres." "That's as far as Paul is going on the ship." "Another new age." "There was one after the Great War and then after the inflation, and then 1933." "And when they built the Hunsrück highway in 1938 that was a new age, as new as the road." "And then 1945, they called that Year Zero and now they write in the papers about Day X." "Grandma." "There will be a new currency any day now." " I got it from a reliable source." " Did the captain tell you that?" "Every time we expect it to be better." "There is no end to these new ages." "Six times in my life, there's been a new age for me." "Well, it couldn't go on like this." "Then off it goes again, on tick." "But the main thing is that Anton is back home." "I'm so tired, I'm going to lie down for a while." "Maria, when the coffee is ready, call me." "The coffee is ready." "You know, Joseph, in Koblenz you must see the "German corner"." "It's all destroyed." "Then in Cologne, the cathedral." "And in Remagen, the bridge is destroyed, you can't cross it." "You must go to Holland, then right." "Joseph, can't you take me with you to America?" "Why does everything has to happen at the same time?" "Robertchen, your uncle is going back to America now." " We may never see him again." " Why is he leaving?" "He was just here on a visit." "Are you sad, Mama?" "No, I'm just thinking of Papa." "Paul, it's not right to leave when we haven't yet buried your mother." "I've explained." "There isn't another ship for six weeks and my permit has expired." "What has expired?" "Marie-Goot, my residence permit has expired." "Oh, I see." "And you're going now?" "So you have to go." "Leave Paul alone, Marie-Goot." "He knows what he's doing." "We'll get Grandma buried on our own." "I can help you more from over there than if I stayed here." "Don't say things like that." "Better say goodbye to Anton again." "Pauline, I wish you all the best." "I'll be ten days on the boat and I'll be thinking of you." "Now you're leaving properly, not secretly like before." "I hope things go well for you in Detroit." "I'll write often." "Robertchen, later on you'll get a big car, too." "Wouldn't you like that?" "Where is Anton, Martha?" "Did he go up there?" " No, I think he went there." " Martha, see if Anton is all right." "You're all upset." "What's the matter?" "Anton knows what he's doing." "You must trust him a bit." "He only came home yesterday after 5,000 kilometres on foot." "You've got to realise what he's been through." "Martha, do me a favour and look what he's doing." "Do it for me, or I'll have no peace." " I'm going to set up a factory." " What are you saying, Anton?" "You're setting up a factory?" "What with?" "For that you need capital." "I've got that." "With that thought I left the camp and it brought me all the way home." "Here in my head, I've my capital and the decisive idea." "When we were retreating near Odessa just before I was captured I first hit on the idea, my invention." "Martha, you probably don't understand much about optics." "True." "But what's this got to do with optics?" "Why didn't you speak to your father about it?" "It was too soon." "And you can take out a patent on it?" "You build a ring of patents around it to stop anyone getting at my process." "Twenty or thirty patents are required." "I worked it out as I tramped." "For every idea, I set myself a destination." "At the Turkish border, I was on to Patent Sixteen." "At the Golden Horn, I was having difficulties with Nineteen." "I went back over half a day's walk until I had the solution." "And, Martha, the most important thing I noticed when I got here Hunsrück air." "Have you ever consciously breathed it in?" "You're scaring me." "In the next few months, more people will think I'm crazy." "No, everybody understands." "You've only just come back from a prisoner-of-war camp." "You think I'm crazy?" "Right now, the world is being divided up anew." "Whoever has the imagination to acquire a kingdom he'll get it, too." "I can't follow this." "What has this to do with the Hunsrück air?" "Nothing at all." "It's free of dust, ideal for optical manufacturing." "And what's more, it's rich in oxygen, because of the forests." "A kingdom." "Anton, I'm a bit frightened." "Martha, stick with me, then the good years will come." "THE AMERICAN" "This beautiful picture was painted by Sepp Vilsmeier, Lotti's husband." "The family tree of the Simon family from Schabbach in the Hunsrück." "That's where you come into the village." "That's the Wiegand's house and the memorial, as if you were standing in front of it." "The church, the Simon family house with the forge." "Behind it, Anton's Optics factory and the Schirmer house our grandparents house." "But they were only ever called Glasisch in the village." "There is no picture of them, but they had three children and the oldest, Katharina, married Mathias the village blacksmith." "They are the grandparents of the Simon family." "The grandparents of the Wiegand family are Alois and Martha and they had three children, Gustav, Wilfried and Maria." "Maria was born in 1900, just like me." "Maria married Paul Simon who went to America in 1928." "He just cleared off." "Paul had a sister and a brother, Pauline and Eduard who always had lung trouble, and so they sent him off to Berlin." "There he met Lucie and married her." ""From the best metropolitan circles," Eduard always said." "And they had a child, Horst, but he died young." "He found a landmine in the forest." "Pauline married Robert Kröber, the clockmaker from Simmern and became a businesswoman." "She had two children Gabi and Robert." "Maria and Paul had two sons, Anton and Ernst." "And Anton married Martha in the war." "She was from Hamburg." "And that's Otto Wohlleben." "When they were building the Hunsrück motorway he came to Schabbach, and he fell in love with Maria." "She was on her own at that time." "And they had a child, Hermann." "He is a world famous composer these days and lives in Munich." "That's Klärchen." "She lived for a long time with us in Schabbach." "She was Hermann's first girlfriend." "That's me." "And up there is Marie-Goot." "She is my mother and Katharina's sister but Mäthes-Pat isn't my father." "A lot of them are dead now." "Gustav, Alois, Marta, Lucie, Eduard... they are all dead." "Mathias, Katharina, Pauline who died 1979 Robert Kröber who died during the war and from our relatives from Bochum none of the men returned from the war." "And most of the women died during an air raid." "Ursel died young too." "She died during an air raid." "But her sister, Lotti, married Sepp Vilsmaier... the painter from Munich, who painted this beautiful picture." "And they adopted two Vietnamese children." "Martha and Anton had most children of all a big hoard of children Marlies, Hartmut, Dieter, Helga and Gisela." "Yeah, we were a big family the Glasischs, the Simons and the Wiegands." "THE FEAST OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD" "Ernst, how beautiful she is, lying there." "I was the first to see her and she was still smiling." "And now she's at rest." "Speak to Philipp." "I'll see how your father is." "When Maria was alive, they all left her and now Maria's left us, they've all come." "Lotti, how nice that you've come." "Are those your children?" "May we see her?" "Ernst, I'm so sorry." "Have you just arrived?" "Yes, the autobahn near Munich was jammed." "Isn't Hermann here yet?" "He really ought to be here in any minute." "I'm trying to think who you remind me of." "Not the Simons, but the Wiegands." "You're like your uncle Wilfried." "The bald head's from you." "No, I had a full head of hair when I was fifty." "Are you the relatives from Brazil?" "You just happened to be here?" "Yes, we just happened to be in the village." "We heard about the funeral, so we came at once." "Hermann ought to have been here long ago." "And the pastor's due any minute." "Artists!" "Don't talk like that about your brother." "There'll be a thunderstorm." "Maybe." "Granddad always said when the cellar steps are wet, there'll be a storm and our cellar steps were quite damp this morning." "We are gathered here today to take leave of our sister Maria Simon." "Her death fills us all with sorrow." "Yet we know we have here no permanent home but we seek our future home." "Therefore, let us... ..bear her body to the grave in the hope of the Resurrection." "Almighty God, we thank Thee that through the Resurrection of Thy Son Thou hast shed Thy light on the darkness of the world and of death." "Give us the strength to follow that light in our lifetime until we all come to Thee." "To our Lord Jesus Christ we pray, full of trust, for our sister Maria Simon." "This is useless, let's take shelter." "We're looking for an old cupboard." "We'll pay up to 3,000 marks." "I haven't anything." "There's a nice old piece there." "We'd like that." "Keep your hands off." "No harm in asking." "Get out!" "Why didn't you take an aeroplane from Frankfurt?" "All fully booked." "Take that home." "I'll follow in a moment." "They're sweet." "What's your name?" "I'm Hoa Vilsmeier." "I'm Hou." "I waited and waited." "I thought nobody was coming." "I thought the soup would be finished the meat would be gone and everything would be cold." "I waited." "Maria was a beautiful girl." "She was a beautiful girl, wasn't she, Paul?" "Where is Maria, then?" "Fetch her here." "Well making me wait like that." "Glasisch, we've just buried Maria." "Maria's dead?" "When you get old, you get so stupid." "Where's Anton?" "Anton will come soon." "Just eat something here quietly." "Paul that's poor circulation." "I know from Gertrud." "She's got gallstones." "She's had 120 of them." "I got these from the hospital." "Nice and round." "Look how big some of them are." "But my head's quite clear." "Fever clears the head." " It's just my legs." " We'll raise them a bit for you." "Ernst, I must speak to you outside." " Do you know him?" " Yes." "What's up, Karl-Heinz?" "You think it's proper to clear out the house during Mother's funeral?" "What do you mean by that?" "Don't say you didn't give him orders." "What were you doing in our mother's house?" "The front door was open..." "That gives you a right to walk in?" "I've told you a hundred times, that's not our style especially in Schabbach." "If you don't understand that, you can have your cards." "Now get out." "And I won't have you treating me like a scoundrel, Anton." "You're not laying hands on Mother's house." "You're not my father." "You've always tried to boss me around." "It's had no effect." "I should hope not." "I've as much right to the house as you have." "I'd shove 20,000 marks down your throat rather than let you take one teaspoon." "40.3." "There's gold in the Hunsrück." "I've known that for over fifty years." "You were two." "Anton was four years old." "I've outlived all the old ones." "All died." "I don't feel too well, either." "You've got a long time to go." "Don't smoke so much." "An American pilot landed on the meadow." "He's run out of fuel and Eduard got him some petrol so Paul drove all around the village." "That's Stinker looking for a baby in the midden." "All they found was Wiegand's motor-bike." "Who put it there?" "Do you know?" "I'm not saying but I know." " Now I want to know." " What?" "Why did you leave home back then?" "Smile, please." "Straighten your father up a bit." "Hermann, are you looking for someone?" "Can I help you?" "Where are my relatives buried?" "All over." "Don't you know the Hunsrück dialect any more?" "I understand it, but speaking it is the trouble." "You'll learn it all again." "Knepperscher, Krieschele." "Whortleberries, sloes." "Do you still remember?" "Knepperscher are little wild cherries." "I know that from a poem by Hoffmann." "Hannekelche in the cherry tree Was sitting and Knepperscher, little cherries She was eating"" " And Krieschele?" " They're gooseberries." " And Whortles?" " They're bilberries." "Whortle, whortle, bilberry, who wants to smear his gob like me?" "We used to chant that as kids in the forest." "And sloes, that's the Hunsrück wine." "So sour they shrivel your arse and your shirt-tail with it." "Sit down, little Hermann, we'll keep each other company a bit." "What are you doing now?" "I'm in Munich now, but I'm always travelling all over the place." "All over." ""Father, Mother, children, uncle and the farm-hands."" ""They used to be in one house now they're scattered across the world."" "Aunt Pauline" "Uncle Robert, killed 1945 on the Eastern Front." ""From the lie into veracity, from the darkness into clarity"" "Aunt Lucie" "Uncle Wilfried died 1972." "Then he was fifty-seven." "Little Horst." "What did Aunt Lucy say?" ""He got top marks again in maths and then he found the mine in the forest"" "Seems incredible." "Granddad and Grandma." "I scarcely knew Granddad." "Did you find them, all the relatives?" "More or less." "Goot and Pat." "Yes, in heaven they speak the Hunsrück dialect." " Staying for the fair, Hermann?" " Yes." " Cleaning the steps?" " I always do before the fair." "Nice smell?" "That's 47 13!" "You've got mushrooms." "Where did you find them?" "What's that for?" "Now no one can get in or out." "Anton, who's going to come out?" "What are you saying?" "Rubbish!" "Daddy, on Sunday evening I'm flying to Boston." "Feel how cold my hands are." "They're not cold, they're quite warm." "Why go to Boston?" "My new composition's being performed." "By the Boston Symphony Orchestra?" "They invited me." "And I'll conduct it myself." "All by yourself?" "Just be careful, Hermann." "The public in the States is very demanding." "I'll make it." "Now, listen..." "You try to get some sleep." "It's no good." "I keep thinking about Maria." "Now the two of us no longer have a home anywhere." "We travelled around the world and didn't know it." "We didn't know how beautiful it was when she was still here." "Remember when I came from the States?" "We were all sitting in the kitchen." "Maria put you on my lap and you said..." "And Maria had tears in her eyes." "This afternoon by her grave I heard her voice as she went through the house calling "Hermann, have you learnt your Latin?"" "Kathrin's not living with me any more." "We've been together since '68." "Every morning we had breakfast together." "It's all such a mess." "An now we've separated." "Now I'm alone." "And the other girl?" "She's left me, too." "Hermann, I shan't live much longer, either." "Daddy, stop it." "Don't talk like that." "No, Hermann, it's no fun any more." "I'm eighty-four." "But, Daddy you forgot Mother for such a long time." "You had no other woman, honestly?" "All my life I loved no other woman." "Does that hurt?" "Not on my foot." "Yes, on your foot." "The heart's also in the foot." "Can you feel that?" "You see." "Where does it hurt now?" "Every time I breathe, I get a stitch." "Shouldn't we get Doctor Buschinger?" "He'll only write a prescription." "I feel a bit better." "Why don't we hear something from Bonn?" "I'll go to the office and call the gentlemen in Bonn." "Don't worry." "I remember my way around." "In the propaganda corps we used to have a rule that the German soldiers always crossed the picture from left to right." "Look at any old newsreel." "The Germans always march from left to right advancing or retreating, Eastern Front or Western Front you always see them going from left to right." "That's how I saw it, too." "From Siberia across Turkey, across the Balkans to home." "Like tanks in the war newsreel." "But, Anton, that goes from right to left." "No, Martha." "I'm looking at it like a map." "Inwardly, I used to see my business progress like that." "From left to right goes the future." "And what do you mean by that?" "Now, it's going the other way." "If I don't get the subsidy, the future's there." "Just there, where you heart hurts." "Since Mother's death I haven't bothered about my new patent." "I called the senior civil servant, Fuchs." "He was still in his office." "They're still meeting and they haven't voted on our proposal yet." "Is that all he said?" "He asked if we've put champagne on ice." "What's that supposed to mean?" "There's no point in walking around here like this." "I know you." "Whenever you don't know what to do next you walk around, or you bang nails into something." "Come now." "Martha!" "You're making me dizzy." "Pacing around here won't bring Frau Müller back." "I don't know how else to collect my thoughts." "Leave me." ""Until victory is ours!"" "Plaster." "The construction set." "Supplementary set 0A." "May blooms just once a year, and just once in life comes love." "Anton that looks terrible." "Imagine you were Ernst." "What would people think?" "They wouldn't let him in their houses if his brother didn't trust him." "All right, we'll take it down." "Herr Christ, have you a skeleton key?" "I threw the key inside." "Don't exert yourself like that." "We'll put the boards in the house." "Mother's shoes." "They look as if she's just cleaned them." "All her life she cleaned her shoes here in the barn." "Guess what I've brought you." "Anton!" "Now you've squashed all my nice mushrooms!" "You'll never guess what's in here." "Perfection in a box." "It's the newest colour TV around." "To stop you getting bored." "But Anton..." "I'm not bored at all!" "That thing is for people who want to die." "Now take it off the table." "Just have a look at it!" "It's the first colour TV with a remote control." "You won't need to get up anymore when you want to change channels." "No Anton." "When I go through the village in the evening I see the TV flickering through the old people's windows." "And I always think they'll all die one day in front of that box." "All alone with nobody with them." "Don't do that to me." "It scares me." "Mother, I never know how to please you." "Take it back and come and see me more often." "What's keeping you?" "We're almost ready." "Herr Simon, the door's open now." "I'm just going in for a moment." "I'll go home with Herr Christ;" "come later." "Mother, where are you?" "Have you seen my mother?" "Isn't she at home?" "I've looked everywhere indoors;" "the front door was locked, too." "Heartiest congratulations on your seventieth birthday, Maria." "That's kind of you, Alice." "I never knew you could all sing so well." "I must say something, mustn't I?" "Dear people of Schabbach." "I simply invited you all and I thought  "Now see who comes"." "I wanted to see who will follow my coffin one day." "And now let's have some dancing." "Everything's on me." "Deep in Hunsrück country stands a farmer's house so fine" "There the pig is killed so neat" "And made into sausage-meat" "Lotti, let's dance." " Is that your name?" " Yes, Vilsmeier." "I'm Lucie." "Lucie Simon?" "I've heard a lot about you." "Pauline, I'm quite light-headed." "How are things?" "How is Robertchen?" "He's altered the shop, you'd never recognize it." "The shop windows go right down to pavement now." "Recently, a man came specially from Frankfurt." "He came to us and bought a ring." "You painted a lovely picture, Herr Vilsmeier." "That's in the north of Holland, where Lotti and I spent our honeymoon." "I always longed to visit Lake Garda." "I'm going to see who's come." "Lotti's dancing with Glasisch." "My Ernst." "Marlies and Dieter." "Hartmut." "Enjoying yourself, Alice?" "I said to the dressmaker "Don't mess about, in my profession dresses must be daring."" "I used to be young and jolly lusty, today I'm only jolly." "When you're young you say, for you don't understand if only I were older, wouldn't that be grand?" "And when you're old, all you do is sigh youth is grand, but now it's passed me by." "I'm talking of when I met Eduard, before 33." "Edu came into my salon." "I thought, "He looks so hungry."" ""He'll collapse in bed with the girls."" "So I looked after him and that's how it remained." "And now I sit here and he's lying in the graveyard." "Next to my Horst." "And three graves away lie my mama and my papa." "What a life this is, with all this dying." "When you're young you say to your son watch out for women, leave them alone." "And when you're old, you get what you deserve." "Your son says, Dad, don't poach on my preserve." "Where's Maria?" "You sang very well." "Congratulations on your birthday." " How old do you think I am?" " Middle sixties." "Add another generation, then you're right." " How old are you?" " I was eighty in March." "And now I'll show what I can still do." "Girls, make a space for me." "I fixed that badly." "But that's all a long time ago." "When was the highway built?" "1938." "I was fourteen then." "That's a long time ago." "That's the engine." ""The language of stamps"" ""I'm coming." "I'm waiting for you." "Eternal kisses."" ""Are you angry with me?"" "Anton." "You startled me." "Oh, it's you, Ernst;" "what are you doing here?" "Good evening." "What's that?" "Pulling the house down already?" "That's a drill." "Hermann, knock on it." "That plaque is genuine marble." ""Original Hunsrück half-timbered slate house with forge, complete with fittings built 1773 donated by the Paul Simon Foundation, Detroit, USA."" "Wilhelm that's my fourth commemorative plaque." "The first is in Detroit and it says, "Paul Simon Foundation"" "Oh, you don't understand English." ""The home for the homeless in the world"" "And another plaque hangs in Karlsruhe University doesn't it, Hermann?" "The one in Detroit costs me a mass of money." "150,000 dollars a year." "Then I pay for one in a children's village." "But this plaque is the finest and the cheapest." "Daddy, you should be in bed." "It's not so late." "Paul, in a couple of years you'll get another plaque for nothing." " What do you mean?" " You'll get your name on it." "You'll soon see when you're dead." "Anton, help me out of the car." "Look, Uncle Hermann;" "Bayern-München!" "Daggi!" "You old sow!" "My God, Marion, what are you doing here?" "Come over!" "Bring me a drink." "I'm telling you, I've just had a tough six weeks." "I haven't seen you for at least two years!" "I thought you were at a health farm." "Here we are again in Hunsrück." "God, what happened to the Lautzenhausen we knew?" "I think he recognises me." "Now the farmers are going to the brothel." "Thank God." "Remember how we started out?" "In our youth." "The dollar was worth 4.25 Marks then." "Those were good times." "It's all bad now." "What's he doing making that noise?" "He's remembering the war..." "there was this donkey in Italy..." "I still remember it today although it was so long ago..." "When the big bang comes you'll find nothing but a smoking patch of shale." "Wavy, dark blue, blisters on the top." " Eighty by twenty kilometres." " Sleeping into the Mosel." "The Hunsrück, as naked as God created it." "We'll tighten our belts and carry on." "That'll be no help." "You with your bombs." "I've got stones." "My wife's gallstones 120 of them." "Look at that guy over there!" "That's Simon, from Optical Works." "He's loaded!" "It stinks here." "Oh no!" "Someone has puked here." "Are you going to start working in Lautzen again?" "I really don't know." "It's all blacks working there." "They're all Caribbean." "Those sluts!" "The only bit of German they can speak is:" "Do we get another beer or not?" "We are guests here like everybody else." "Just so you know." "Hans, if there really is a big bang then I must make sure I'm a government bandmaster to get into their atomic-bombproof shelter." "There'll be 6,000 privileged people." "Surrounded by the atomic graveyard, with its sixty million corpses with enough great wines and great food for years." "They'll all be demanding entertainment, as you can imagine." "I can well imagine it." "And probably Beethoven will be in more demand than some of my colleagues' music." "I play the markets." "For gold." "You and your one gold tooth." " The price of gold is going up." " What if it falls?" "I want a mouth full of gold." "Have all your riches buried with you." "I want to be cremated and then scattered at sea." "Imagine someone knew you had all that gold in your mouth..." "They'd call Kuston and he'd dive for your ashes!" "When he's on TV, I can't think of anything else." "Me too." "What about sport?" "I like the 800 metre runners best." "When they're standing on the podium the winners when they play the national anthems..." "The Americans always put their hand on their heart." "Now I'm blubbing." "When I bite the dust it won't be with gold teeth!" "Feel." "See what I mean?" "Look Marion." "Lightning." "That's just the carousel lights." "My psoriasis has been getting worse recently." "Have you tried dandelion ointment?" "Is that what they call it now?" " Don't act so stupid!" "Be ladylike." " I am!" "It's best to show a bit of flesh." " No don't." " Why not?" "Firstly, I'm cold and secondly, think of your psoriasis." " He can't see it." " But he'll feel it." "He's not reacting at all." "He'll react." "I swear." "That's connected somehow with flying." "We two love our freedom more than anything else, do you understand?" "What do you mean?" "Perhaps you can't understand that, your mother's not dead yet." "When someone dies, you get the strangest thoughts." "I, for instance, suddenly thought, "See, now it's got you."" " Who?" " The Hunsrück." "All my life I wanted to get away." "I wanted to be free but now it's too late, I have run out of fuel." "With women, it's been just the same." "Always just a quick touch-down, and then take off again." "You know, Irene that's become very clear to me in these few days." "And then I thought maybe it's about time I really made a proper landing." "Naturally, not on the first feed I see but, if I may say so, on a proper airfield with a cosy hangar, where you know your aeroplane's in good hands." " Do you understand me, Irene?" " Was that a proposal of marriage?" "With this thing you can look around corners and you saw my arse, comrade." "Who shut the door?" "Nobody's in there." "Look, Mother." "Father's drunk." "This is the north pole and this is the south pole." "And that's the equator." "He's never done that before..." "with two women." "Shoot me a monkey!" "No, Gisela, I think he must take care of this himself." "Maria I'm so cold." "I think I'm dying." "We must use the back door, go round the back." " Glasisch, you're feverish." " Have you no respect for old age?" "I saw my first corpse when I was six." "My Grandma took me to the morgue." "In the Hunsrück nothing ever happens..." "You've really gone astray, Miss." "Where did you get this funny map?" "You've done us a great favour, Miss." "Martina, did you make the potato cakes?" "Look what Franz is doing." "To Count Baldenau..." "There's gold in the Hunsrück." "More than in the engineers' boxes." "Is that a bomb?" "I just wanted to go for a walk." "When I want to shoot, I look over and press the trigger." "This is the rear sight and this is the fore sight." "I can do tricks." ""Simon guarantees quality, and Schabbach has prosperity"" "Yank, go home!" "Nix corned beef!" "Nix chocolate!" "Nix Fräuleins!" "I have a wonderful view over the capital." "I bought it right next to Dr. Goebbels." "Lieutenant, a left-handed spanner." "Pieritz, the compass." "Maria, where were you so long?" "Mother, there's a fair in Schabbach." "Maria, there you are." "Where's Granddad?" "I don't see him at all." "Maria, don't you remember?" "Granddad's blind." "That's why we don't see him." "Herr Wohlleben now we're together again, like old times." "Pieritz, just go into your room." "From here you can see them all." "Yes, from here you can see everything." "Maria, look." "Anton and Martha, do you see them?" "Anton, where were you for such a long time?" "I was in Russia today, Martha." "There and back in one day." "Anton, one must be able to find short-cuts, too." "And Ernst, too." "You go into the bunker, Hermann, and I'll go into the mountain." "I'll be safer than you, believe me." "I've just told Hermann about the old mine's wonderful acoustics." "When four or five of us sing down there you can't imagine the sound." "What a pity I have to return to Munich tomorrow." "No problem; it's directly beneath us." " Can we go there now, at night?" " Down there it's always night." "In the pit it's always dark." "Gisela, come with us." "It's a surprise." "That's low German for wild cherries gooseberries, bilberries and sloes." "That means "stories"." "Tell me what that is in proper German." "I don't know." "Really beautiful acoustics." "Do you know that my mother is your grandmother?" "That's Glasisch." "He's dead." "What's happened to Glasisch?" "Don't worry, carry on." "We'll put him here until tomorrow, so as not to spoil the fair." " He was a poor man." " A good thing he's gone to his rest." "He was over eighty." "Dad, don't worry." "It's temporary deafness." "Caused by stress and lack of vitamins." "Outside, inside, above, below Special words that we all know." "Here... there... now..." "Piglet... goat... cow..." "THE FEAST OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD"