Chasing the Harmony of the Wind E-Book

Simone Malacrida

• Herausgeber: Simone Malacrida
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The vortex of life unfolds in multiform verses, sometimes following random rotations or precise directions, as is typical of the nature of the wind.
Sixteen characters alternate against the background of their single day, representing completely detached cultures and sensibilities, ages and experiences, perhaps united among themselves only by an invisible, elusive and eternally changing harmony.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Chasing the Harmony of the Wind

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SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ Chasing the Harmony of the Wind”

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

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I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

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In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. Such events and such characters really happened and existed.

On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

The vortex of life unfolds in multiform verses, sometimes following random rotations or precise directions, as is typical of the nature of the wind.

Sixteen characters alternate against the background of their single day, representing completely detached cultures and sensibilities, ages and experiences, perhaps united among themselves only by an invisible, elusive and eternally changing harmony.

“No wind is favorable for those who don't know where to go, but for us who know even the breeze will be precious.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

​I

TRAMONTANA – North

Salzburg, February 2, 2002

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It was just after midnight.

Kurt was certain of this because he had heard the chiming of the grandfather clock in the tavern, whose dull sound made the air reverberate at a low frequency that was imperceptible to the normal human ear, which his was not.

Age had not affected his hearing, as it usually does with old people.

He rolled over and tried to sleep.

He didn't like to think that another year had passed and he was making a round number again.

Eighty.

An impressive number when you think about it when you were young.

He felt a general sense of disgust.

His wife Eva, who stood next to him, was a simple peasant woman from the countryside surrounding Salzburg.

She knew little about the world and much less about her husband.

Stupid, maybe.

Beautiful for sure, at least when she was young.

For this reason Kurt had married her in 1952.

“It will also be our fiftieth wedding anniversary,” we said at the beginning of that 2002 that seemed to be passing by identically to the previous one.

Eva was ten years younger than him and remembered little of the war.

She had lived through the entire period from the Anschluss to the arrival of the Americans at an age ranging between six and thirteen, shaped by school and propaganda, but without really understanding what had happened on the battlefields.

Kurt, on the other hand, had seen the war up close.

He had been conscripted at the age of nineteen and his baptism of fire had taken place on the Russian front.

There he marched east for hundreds of kilometers, arriving near Leningrad, only to remain there for the next two years.

Only in 1943 did he manage to change his destination, thanks to one of his best features.

The coldness.

He had never lost his cool in his life and had never gone out of control.

He calculated and let his emotions flow outward.

Thus he had remained alive despite the strenuous resistance of the Bolsheviks and thus had made himself noticed, already during the advance.

He hit every target he was told to shoot down.

Whether they were soldiers or civilians, men or women, old people or children, Poles or Russians, Jews or Slavs.

Sleep took over the rest of the night and Kurt stopped remembering.

He knew that his mind was slowing down and he had been aware of this in the past years when, having taken off the clothes of the modest postal employee, he had gradually withdrawn further and further into his certainties.

Of course, he would not have been recognized by his old comrades now.

Neither by soldiers nor by Party members.

And certainly none of them would have remembered Kurt Huber, a common and unknown name.

Kurt Huber had been an invention.

A great expedient in March 1945.

A fictitious identity to take over.

There had been a Kurt Huber born in Salzburg and fallen on the Russian front during the battle of Kursk, precisely in that 1943 that had seen the not yet Kurt leave the Leningrad front to be diverted to higher duties.

Kurt Huber was perfect.

Without brothers or sisters, orphaned and raised alone, he had sent only two letters from the front and had never received one.

He was one of those destined to perish without leaving any trace.

Neither a son nor a girlfriend.

He was already dead and nobody knew it.

What better opportunity for Hans Gruber, whose past was full of facts that would have been of great interest to both the Americans and the Soviets?

So young Hans, a twenty-three year old full of damned common sense, had decided to sever ties with the past.

He had removed Kurt's photograph from official documents and replaced it with his own, after which he staged a transcription error at the central offices of the now dissolving Wehrmacht.

Thus Hans Gruber had died on the Kursk front, having been transferred from there before mid-1943 after having spent almost two years in Leningrad, while Kurt Huber had survived all this and would return to Salzburg with a renewed identity.

A new body inside a dead man's name.

He had to give up his home and see his parents, who would die by the mid-1950s, ten years after the end of the war, but this was a lesser evil than being hanged or imprisoned.

He had rebuilt a respectable life for himself, without ever betraying himself or letting his ideas leak out.

Kurt's baptismal certificate was present in Salzburg and was not difficult to obtain at the wedding.

So, without anything, he had met a beautiful girl with few pretensions and had led a normal and anonymous life.

Eve rose long before dawn.

Her intentions were those of a housewife accustomed to domestic work and taking care of chores well in advance.

Outside there was a deathly silence.

No one was moving and no one was around yet.

It was Saturday, it was cold and a biting wind was blowing from the mountains.

Who would have ventured into that land?

After some attempts at self-persuasion, he returned to bed.

At least another hour, if not two, he could afford without affecting his mental schedule.

She looked at her husband and let him sleep.

Kurt had always been like this.

Once asleep, not even a cannon shot would wake him.

He lay down and got back under the covers.

They remained warm.

The sensation was extremely pleasant, as befitted the woman's impetuosity.

Eva remembered how cold she had been as a child.

In the countryside, there were no such comforts and even the first years of marriage had been hard.

Kurt owned nothing except a modest job and had to provide for Eva's father to support the new couple.

After that, in the late seventies there was a stroke of luck when they inherited everything and the two moved into the new single-family home.

A small piece of garden, a secluded position from the city centre, a constant view towards the hill that once hosted the Hohensalzburg at its summit.

This was what the two had dreamed of and what Gustav, their only son, had never experienced.

The house was purchased exactly two years after Gustav, who had been living in Linz since the early 1980s, had finally left home.

He worked there and returned to Salzburg only to visit his parents and bring his grandchildren there, at least until they were minors.

The light of dawn would come late.

Early February still saw a limited amount of daylight, a far cry from what happened in the summer.

Eva told herself she would stay alert, but ended up, as always, falling asleep.

These were intentions that were destined to disappear, but the woman always stuck them in her head.

“You don’t have enough willpower,” her husband had always told her, but if he had wanted to pursue a goal, he would have always followed through.

He ruled the world, or so he thought.

As for his objectives, he had limited himself so as not to be discovered.

Eva reached out and felt the cold air of the house that had almost become the same as what was outside.

None of them would leave their homes except during the hottest hours, but that day they were expecting visitors and everything would take place in those rooms.

Before throwing a leg out of bed, Eva asked herself whether Kurt's character would change, at least during that day.

Eighty years was quite an achievement, although her husband had no interest in growing old.

She knew that the best years had been lived without her presence, since they had married Kurt when he was already thirty and her husband's first experiences had been with other women.

They were the ones who possessed his deepest soul and his earliest memories.

Eva didn't think much about all this, but only in some particular moments.

Her husband's birthday was one of them.

Actually, Kurt Huber was born on February 2, but Hans Gruber was not.

The year was the same, but not the date, as Hans was born in mid-April 1922.

For this reason, the man felt so apathetic on a day that everyone thought was his, but only his mind was aware of the false signal.

Everyone had always thought that it was all because he was an orphan.

Kurt had been abandoned as a newborn, probably the son of an illegitimate couple, and the surname Huber, as well as the name itself, had been given to him by the nurse who had found him and cared for him for the first few months in the hospital.

From there, once he had escaped the danger of survival and had been baptized, Kurt was entrusted to one of those institutions that survived thanks to donations from private citizens and the few donations from the Catholic Church.

It must have been a very hard life and everyone understood his state of mind and why he didn't talk much about that period.

Even school was not a topic to be discussed and no one wanted to know much about the war.

Kurt Huber was literally born in May 1945 when, after the war, he moved to Salzburg without ever meeting anyone who knew him personally.

His wife had never wondered about this isolation and where the friends and companions of his childhood and adolescence had ended up.

They had grown up in an environment where no questions were asked and so she had stuck to it.

Stick to the rules and never break them.

He went to the bathroom to wash and get dressed.

Only when breakfast was ready would she call her husband, but before then there was much to do.

Prepare the house to welcome guests.

Which were always the same after all.

Their son Gustav, a forty-eight year old engineer, and his second wife Krista, a very fit forty year old and much more lively than his first wife who was the mother of their two grandchildren.

Lothar and Magda were about to go and live on their own, taking advantage of friends and university acquaintances.

None of them thought about getting married.

He didn't use it anymore.

Lothar, the eldest, was twenty years old and was studying Biology at the University of Linz, the same city where Gustav had moved to years before.

He would leave his girlfriend at home for the day and drive up with his father for Kurt's birthday.

They were joined by Magda, who was instead thinking of moving to Lampach, where her mother, who had also remarried, worked as a teacher for children.

Two years younger than Lothar, she was finishing high school, but had no clear ideas about her future.

She had remained closer to her mother, but she didn't know if it was a good idea to retreat to a country town.

Considering Gustav's schedule and habits, as well as the route they would have to take, they would be there shortly before lunch, so as to leave Eva time to prepare everything.

Five people wasn't a lot, but they certainly didn't see each other often at the Hubers'.

Eva went about her business with her usual eagerness and, in short, had carried out a myriad of small tasks.

Meanwhile, Kurt was about to wake up.

He used to reach out and feel around for someone.

It was a habit he had never lost since he was little and his mother always told him so.

He had never felt guilty for never coming home and for having upset his parents.

“Better them being old than me.

I have a life ahead of me.”

It was said cynically.

Only as time passed did she realize that her parents had died very young and that her son would soon be the same age as them when they passed away.

Kurt Huber knew how to respond to all of this.

With a shrug.

This is how all the great speeches in the world ended.

He had been used to seeing too many people get into trouble when no one understood how fragile life was.

How many people had he taken their breath away?

He had never counted them.

Nor did he remember them or their names.

Sometimes, especially when he first woke up, he saw them appear, but not in their entirety, but rather with some particular details.

A hand, a nail, a lock of hair.

Or some peculiarity in clothing.

A handkerchief or a scarf.

An unstitched jacket pocket.

They were shreds that emerged from a past that was supposed to remain hidden and dormant.

He heard the clinking of plates and spoons.

“The damn breakfast.”

The first ten minutes awake were the worst.

The ones where everything seemed like crap.

The house, life, men.

He stood up reluctantly, but he knew he had to.

He looked outside.

It was still dark, but not completely black.

The outline of the city and its surroundings could be seen and a wind was whipping across the plain.

“Damn cold. Damn wind. Disgusting nature.”

He had never forgotten Russia.

Compared to those who had been deployed following the armies positioned in the center or south of the front, they had walked fewer kilometers, but the cold was also more intense.

The first winter posted outside Leningrad had been terrible.

There were days, even weeks, when the ice did not melt even during the hottest hours, and remained a compact, slippery and thick sheet.

And when the wind whistled, everything was in vain.

The damn thing funneled everywhere, no matter how many layers of clothing you had.

For this the Russians were cursed.

Them and their land, damned and dirty.

Kurt walked slowly to the bathroom and would emerge in fifteen minutes, wearing the outfit Eva had prepared for him.

He wasn't hungry.

Appetite yes, but hunger was different.

Nobody in Austria knew what hunger was, real hunger.

Kurt knew it, in fact Hans had made a banner out of it.

For a piece of bread, he had seen prisoners slaughter each other, while he stood by laughing, waiting to pull out his pistol and kill someone at random, or all of them.

The blood that soaked the remaining pieces of bread, frozen or muddy depending on the season, was a sight worth any price.

Seeing guts and brains leaking and then waiting for the flies to arrive.

Those damned things were always present, even in the middle of winter.

Who knows where they were hiding.

Kurt slapped himself on the face to finally wake up.

He moved to the kitchen where Eva was waiting for him.

“Happy birthday my love.”

Kurt smiled.

He sat down at the table where he found his usual breakfast.

Pitch black, boiling hot coffee, lightly sweetened and with nothing else added.

A plate with a scrambled egg, a sausage and a slice of toasted bread.

An orange to peel.

Finally, a biscuit, which he immediately took to quickly dip into his coffee.

The usual gestures accompanied Kurt's life, even on that day.

He had never complained to his wife about the arrangement of the objects, since it was their ritual.

Before he started eating, Kurt moved everything around.

He turned the handle of the coffee cup from left to right, rotated the plate ninety degrees and flipped the cookie the opposite way.

Rituals are now standardized and impossible to change.

Only after finishing breakfast did Kurt get up and clear the table.

That day he hugged Eve.

He loved her, unlike the few other women he had had before her.

He had never cheated on her since they met, as cheating was not in his nature.

He had always been faithful to his life, to his ideology and to his love.

The three things that had kept him alive.

Survive, whether as Hans or Kurt.

To be consistent with what he had chosen in his youth, that is, the great ideals of National Socialism.

To love Eva, a girl he had chosen and placed on top of a mountain to adore.

“What time will they arrive?”

Kurt wanted to be sure how much time they had.

“Not before eleven, maybe even eleven-thirty.”

Eva answered precisely.

Anyway, Gustav would call before leaving.

That way they wouldn't have to worry about it and they would be prepared.

Their son had always been methodical and precise.

Since he was little, he had been distinguished by his order and desire for rules and Kurt was pleased with this.

However insignificant that name might have been to him, he had given Kurt Huber, whose body lay lost in some swamp on the border between Russia and Ukraine, a son worthy of the Reich.

Gustav knew nothing about his father's past.

He imagined him as one of those soldiers sent to the front by a mad, bloodthirsty and dictatorial regime and who found himself, against his will, having to endure a long war that had devastated the people.

After all, he was an Austrian, not a German.

It was the Germans who had done all those disgusting things.

Unaware of their true history, of the location of many concentration camps on Austrian soil and of the actual collaboration of many young people with the SS, they had struggled in this illusion for the entire post-war period, the period in which Gustav was born and raised.

Austria was officially non-aligned, although it looked much more to the West.

The economic system was capitalist and the location was “this side” of the Iron Curtain.

Kurt's grandchildren, on the other hand, reflected modern times.

Anarchists under constraints, they thought they were free to live wherever they pleased and with whomever.

Distinctions, especially in Europe, had fallen away.

From Linz you could reach the former East Germany in a short time and from Vienna, then, in less than a hundred kilometers you were in Bratislava.

This continental union did not displease Kurt, as it was nothing new.

When he was young, Germany had already unified all this territory.

The crux of the matter was the difference in approach.

On this Kurt had to suppress his instincts and his true ideas.

Democracy, rights and the rejection of violence were cornerstones of contemporary society that Kurt did not share.

Even the respectability that was common in Salzburg itself, a city now sweetened by the memory of Mozart and full of music and young people.

All this was not the true face of what he had experienced in his youth, but the desire to survive had had similar consequences.

Accept compromises, without ever exposing yourself.

How many like him were there around Germany and Austria?

Many.

More than people imagined.

However, each of them had holed up.

Closed and isolated in his shell with no more gatherings or associations.

Thus the multitude was diluted and absorbed into the normal social fabric.

Partly because no one wanted to know the full story.

Digging into the past would have meant looking at husbands and wives, parents and grandparents, brothers and friends with different eyes.

Who would have had the same opinion as Kurt if they had known what he had done?

Would Eve have stayed with him knowing that he had slaughtered three women, one of them pregnant just because they were Slavs or Jews?

Probably not.

And his son would have been horrified.

By now his age would have allowed him to avoid prison, but he had not remained silent for more than fifty years to throw away the last part of his life.

When she finished tidying up the kitchen, she saw a strange glow.

They were the first lights that, timidly, were appearing.

“It will be a peaceful day,” his wife concluded.

The blue sky would have contrasted with the still bare and dry trees, whipped by a cold breeze that would not have stopped the whole time.

Many would have crowded the ski resorts.

“Suckers,” Kurt called them.

Those who had endured the cold like the war veterans would never again subject themselves to such torture.

The mountains and the snow were banned from the list of places that Kurt and, therefore, Eva could visit.

Gustav, on the other hand, loved the peace and quiet of the mountains and had passed this passion on to his children.

For one weekend, they would have given up the traditional trip, just to go to Salzburg.

They didn't go there often, despite its proximity and easy access by motorway.

“I’m going to get some wood.”

Like every single house in those parts, next to the modern gas system, everyone had a fireplace or a wood-fired stove.

It was a way to stay anchored to the traditions of the past, when everyone moved to the nearby woods to keep them clean and, in the meantime, stocked up for the winter.

The joyful world of summer brought with it entire families who travelled in groups.

Women were responsible for preparing meals and looking after the children, while men would do the heavy lifting, with boys helping out with the occasional chores.

An entire community would move in waves of four or five outings and everyone would come away satisfied.

After that there was the final part that everyone did at home.

Reduction into pieces of pre-established size and stacking.

Now, however, everything was less prosaic and more industrialized.

There were specialized companies that carried out similar wood collections under regional license and with the authorization of various bodies.

Customers simply ordered the quintals they needed and the only option was to pick them up at the factory or have them delivered to their home.

Kurt had it brought home and then calmly placed it in the woodshed located outside the house, but connected by a corridor so as to avoid exposure to the elements.

From year to year, the quantity ordered decreased as gas became more convenient and economical.

By now the stoves and fireplaces were lit only on special occasions and Kurt had always done so on his birthday.

It seemed to him that the family was more united this way.

Eva peered at him out of the corner of her eye.

By now he had gotten into the habit of following him step by step.

She had imagined that, sooner or later, she might stumble or fall or that she might collapse.

Advancing age played such tricks and the rumours of acquaintances who had left for trivialities were long.

Kurt didn't notice.

He had a goal in mind and he was going to accomplish it.

He took four pieces in plain sight and placed them in the container he used for transport.

“Here it is.”

He rubbed his hands together, anticipating the warmth that the wood would generate.

Meanwhile Eva was preparing the living room.

The table had been extended and he was dusting it.

After that he would take plates, forks and glasses and arrange them on the table, already adorned with the festive tablecloth.

Once everything was finished, she would head into town with Kurt where she would order what she needed for lunch.

The delivery was supposed to be at your home by the scheduled time, around 1pm.

She knew that Gustav would provide dessert, and it had to be a Linzer Torte, which everyone was crazy about.

Even more than the strudel or the Sacher, the Linzer Torte was a symbol of the Huber house.

To tell the truth, Hans Gruber had always preferred strudel.

The one his mother used to make and which she accompanied with fresh homemade cream, the milk of which came from the farm next door.

The transformation from Hans to Kurt had brought about these necessary changes, although, once a year, Kurt used to set aside half a day to indulge in a pastry strudel.

This had mainly occurred during his work as an employee at the Salzburg post office.

For years, the same routine, interrupted only by the innovation that had advanced.

Typewriters, photocopiers, telexes, faxes, printers, punched cards and finally personal computers.

Kurt had stopped there before retiring in the early 1980s.

Now he would no longer recognize the postal system, which was increasingly focused on cell phones and Web technology.

This was a world alien to Kurt and his generation, and even difficult to understand for Gustav, who had lived through the great computer era.

It was something that was mainly the prerogative of the grandchildren, especially Magda, whose cell phone use was compulsive.

She was always on the lookout for some plan that would allow her to send messages and make calls without having to pay a fortune.

Eva turned on the radio.

It was a habit he had always had and Kurt enjoyed listening to classical music when he was locked in his house.

Not that he hated her, on the contrary.

Wagner was his favorite, but when he was still Hans.

Now he said he preferred Bach, but that wasn't true.

The problem with music was, at least according to the eighty-year-old, when they embroidered it.

Festivals, concerts, performances.

All false and do-gooder.

“I’m going to get ready.”

So Eva would disappear for half an hour and then leave her place to her husband.

In the city one had to behave with a certain demeanor.

Comb your hair, dress your best.

It was the image, a part that Eva had always taken care of.

He also forced Kurt to be that way.

They were no longer young.

Kurt's rangy physique was a thing of the past and his gait was more like a hunched limp.

The same could be said of his hair, once blonde and thick and now white and sparse.

The skin on his face had become sagging and his ears had become elongated, as had the tissues in general become flaccid.

Eva, who was ten years younger, had dry and wrinkled skin, especially on her hands and arms, while the roundness of her face and body helped hide wrinkles and aging.

She was certainly no longer the woman she once was, with her firm, small breasts and slender legs.

Clothes could hide and help, but bathing was like laying yourself bare in the face of reality.

She had always been disgusted by old men's bodies, but now she had become accustomed to her own and her husband's.

On the other hand, if they could not show the physical part, the two spouses would have nothing else to show.

Their culture was modest, not possessing great educational qualifications and having no particular interests.

They read little and were little interested in cultural life.

Cinemas, theatres and concerts were deserted of their presence and so they had spent a secluded life with little stimulation.

“I’m ready...”

Kurt had been partially dozing off and was now awake.

Eating always had this effect on him.

He calmly headed to his room, where he found the clothes Eva had chosen for him.

Even though it was his party, he didn't have much choice or say since he had to say and do what was imposed on him by others.

It was a symbolism of his life, common for over fifty years.

Wearing a mask and someone else's clothes.

To be, ultimately, someone other than oneself.

The flagship of the Huber family had always been Gustav.

Well educated, first to go to college, with a good job and married.

On the other hand, Gustav had given his parents two great disappointments.

He had moved to Linz and then separated.

But these were things that he had in common with many other children of other couples.

Eva had heard very similar stories from some of her friends, all with a common background.

A marriage that seemed happy and then something cracked.

Why does it happen so much today compared to the past?

“Young people are not satisfied,” Kurt had decreed.

In Eva's mind there was only a small difference from such a setting.

“They don’t know how to be satisfied,” he thought more and more often.

And it was all accelerated as his grandchildren fared even worse than Gustav's generation did.

Following such conjectures, there would be no more stable families and the exception would be a marriage like the one involving Kurt and Eva.

"Let's go..."

Kurt showed up looking perfect.

When he wanted, he knew how to achieve his goal.

They put on a heavy coat, gloves and hat.

Eva would have driven.

Kurt didn't feel like it anymore, at least not in the winter.

By now they only owned one car since two would be unused.

None of them moved alone and they always went together everywhere.

Kurt was not one of those men who did not want to accompany their wives to the grocery store or any other errand.

The light was now bright and made the ice crystals scattered everywhere sparkle.

On cars parked outside, on roofs of houses, on unused roads, on fields and trees.

“It's cold,” Kurt complained.

Even though the car was in a closed garage and the heater was on full blast, you could feel the biting cold outside.

The Volkswagen Polo maneuvered through the streets leading into the city.

The target was the trusted rotisserie, located on the right bank of the Salzach, the river that crossed the city and which saw, during the spring and summer seasons, thousands of people crowded on its banks or along the cycle/pedestrian paths located at the side of its bed.

"Cursed..."

Kurt railed against the cell phone that was ringing in his pocket.

He would have forced him to take off his gloves and answer.

It didn't matter that it was his son Gustav.

“Hi Dad, happy birthday, how are you?”

Kurt made a fake surprised face and sketched out some kind of response, then continued.

“We’re going to order food.

We’re in the car, your mother is driving.”

In Kurt's view, such a sentence should have ended the call, but Gustav had other sensibilities.

“I'll give you Lothar and Magda.”

His grandchildren wanted to wish him a happy birthday directly.

Kurt dismissed them with a generic thank you.

He wasn't even curious about the gifts he would receive.

By now his age allowed him to be above these things and the greatest gift he had given himself years before, changing his identity and managing to escape the corrupt justice of the victors.

Gustav picked up the communication again.

“We’re leaving in five minutes, just enough time to get in the car.”

No mention of the new wife who, evidently, would have remained at home.

She didn't like spending time with her in-laws, especially because she thought they were absent and distant.

It was one thing to accept a husband with two children already, and for her it had already been a huge step to take charge and be welcomed by Lothar and Magda.

Gustav's daughter in particular had hindered her in the early days, given that the separation and the new marriage had come at the turn of the girl's early adolescence.

After that, as she grew older, Magda had become more and more detached from her father's business and, if she had left home as she intended to do, it would have resulted in a general detachment.

Indeed, if she had gone to Lampach to her mother, it would have meant a break even with Lothar.

Putting aside such thoughts for that Saturday, the three were about to leave, as Kurt ended the call.

“The usual.”

Eva smiled.

In the past, her husband and son had often clashed over certain views, but then age and distance had smoothed everything over.

“Here, park here.”

There weren't many people around yet and the distance to be covered on foot could be reduced to an incredible extent.

The couple got out and entered the rotisserie, greeted with a smile by the owner.

They were old acquaintances and, when they showed up, there was no shortage of orders.

“Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Huber, how are you?”

Kurt smiled as Eva took charge of the situation.

He began to scan the counter, as always, but he already knew what to get.

“We would like one of his famous beer-braised shanks with rosemary potatoes.

Let's make three portions.

Then the grilled sausages with sauerkraut, another three portions.

Melted and fried cheese, two servings.

And finally, candied apples with cinnamon, four servings.

Can you deliver everything to our address by 1pm?”

The owner took note.

“Of course, Mrs. Huber.

Special occasion?”

Eva replied.

“It's Kurt's birthday.”

The owner shook his hand.

“If so, I will give you a bottle of red wine expressly sourced from the hills around Vienna.”

He stepped away from the counter and went to get a bottle and handed it to Kurt, who came over to pay.

It was a welcome gift, since Gustav did not understand wine and did not generally drink.

Kurt could have tasted the bottle, right after having downed his usual beer, a drink that was never missing with meals.

He didn't think it was the first gift he had received.

He had never noticed such trivialities in his life.

Kurt considered himself a down-to-earth, no-nonsense man who had always hated appearances and affectations.

One of those who were no longer around, a man of other times as they used to say of someone respectable.

Of course, no one knew about his past and it was to remain that way for the rest of his days.

They walked out of the shop and the wind swept over them.

“You damn bastard, die.”

It was an epithet he used often and which took him directly back to his best past, not those spent at the front but in the rear, rounding up enemies of the Reich.

An expression he used as the last words a victim heard.

He smiled.

He had gotten away with it and had outwitted the whole world.

Eva drove the car safely, despite the increasing traffic.

They went back home and made themselves comfortable.

Kurt took the beer and put it in the fridge, then waited.

Eva would not decorate anything, as it annoyed her husband.

She sat down next to him and, without speaking, they looked at each other.

They had spent a lifetime together and this made them proud.

Soon they would not have time to rest as their grandchildren would overwhelm everything with their vital energy.

It was impossible to ask young people to stop.

It was against nature and they knew it, having been young themselves, even if in times now remote.

As always, time sped up and slowed down at its own pace, without asking anyone's permission.

Gustav's car racked up miles on the highway, hurtling toward the final goal, while his children remained isolated in their own world.

Only Lothar interacted with his father, occasionally, while Magda sat in the back seat and texted at breakneck speed.

She was texting her boyfriend and her friends, explaining that she wouldn't be available in the afternoon, but maybe she had some free time in the evening, just not early.

It was a compromise between family duties and personal pleasures.

On the one hand, she knew that her grandparents wouldn't be around forever, and that made her sad, but on the other hand, any little commitment that took her away from her world was perceived as annoying.

The driving engineer took the correct exit.

They were almost there, but now they had to slow down.

Strange feeling where you always feel like you are standing still.

“Shall we call them to warn them?” Lothar asked.

For Gustav it wasn't necessary.

They knew they had left and the calculations regarding the movement left no room for doubt.

This desire of the new generations to over-communicate left him speechless.

It was the same at work, with new hires.

They were sending emails and making phone calls over the smallest of errors and it was eating up their time for secondary pursuits.

She didn't answer and Lothar let it go.

He turned onto the road home.

Everything was the same as always, only Nature changed its appearance, following the seasonal cycles.

“They’ve arrived.”

Kurt, listening intently, recognized the car's engine.

He could distinguish them from a distance, since each one had its own timbre.

Cylinders and pistons, bodywork and vibrations, wheels and ignition system gave a particular tone to what most people called noises.

Eva went to open the door.

Lothar was the first to get off, followed by Magda, while Gustav lingered.

From the trunk he had taken out the cake and a gift for his father.

It was a glass beer mug he had brought back from Bohemia, which he had visited a few months earlier with his new wife.

Knowing his father's aptitude for the drink, he was almost certain that he would use it and not consider it useless, relegating it to a place in some forgotten cupboard.

Eva hugged her grandchildren, who entered the house, out of breath because of the cold.

Less intense than before, but the car ride had accustomed them to the warmth.

Lothar and Magda wished their grandfather a happy birthday and waited for Gustav to enter.

“This goes in the kitchen and this is for you.”

Kurt hugged his son and looked him over.

He was becoming fully mature, almost elderly already.

He was no longer the boy he once was.

He took the package and opened it.

The mug was well made, blunt and round, with raised workmanship.

“It's roomy.”

It was heavy, too, but Kurt had never complained about the effort.

On the Eastern Front he was nicknamed “the mule” by his comrades.

He could walk for miles without feeling tired or carry burdens without complaining.

That mule had done a lot of harm to the enemies of the Reich.

Deployed elsewhere, his zeal and faith in the ideology had made him an important link with the SS and the Gestapo.

“I want to inaugurate it today.”

He went into the kitchen, washed the mug, dried it and placed it triumphantly on the table.

In the meantime, the grandchildren had already taken over the sofa.

“Move out of here,” Gustav said, interpreting his father’s thoughts.

Magda snorted and threw herself into the chair, while Lothar took the opportunity to take a walk around the woodshed.

There wasn't much to do there.

No entertainment and the season didn't allow for much outdoor time.

An hour was a long time to pass before lunch and the two grandchildren would have been bored.

It would have been worth it as they knew the rotisserie was perfect for their tastes.

They didn't know the menu yet, but whatever was on it would be fine.

The other great feature of that place was that it was punctual, in fact always early.

In fact, they showed up ten minutes early.

The grandchildren rushed to the entrance to lend a hand to the clerk who had arrived there in his van.

They adopted an ingenious system to keep food warm.

“Give strength to the table.”

The chronic hunger of the adolescents called everyone around the banquet.

Kurt poured himself a beer that he would drink with the shank, the first dish they would eat.

Then, he would move on to wine.

The words became excited and then the satisfied silence of someone filling their stomachs took over.

Lothar devoured the shank and his grandfather wondered how long it had been since he had eaten.

Those portions would have been enough for a week on the war front, while, at that rate, there would be nothing left.

Magda was more frugal, but not with potatoes, which she was crazy about.

Once he had finished his shank, Kurt stood up and opened the wine.

“Everything was delicious, grandma.”

Who knows why the grandchildren were so obsessed with thanking Eva.

The woman had no merit other than knowing the place and ordering.

He had paid Kurt, even though it was his party.

Once the belly was filled, the conversation turned to the usual stuff.

Health and work for adults, love and study for young people.

The classic questions of every parent and grandparent.

The answers, equally obvious, from the subjects questioned.

Anything to avoid talking about the hosts, especially the birthday boy.

Kurt didn't like being the center of attention and his family knew it.

He had always considered the limelight as a problem, since it could be synonymous with being discovered.

He had never been close to his little country village, in fact he had never been within a thirty kilometre radius of it.

It seems impossible, but he had managed to stay away from us for more than half a century.

Even now, when there would be little chance of being recognized given the advanced age of his peers, he did not dare to want to return.

It was an area outside its own limits, as were the whole of Poland and Russia.

“Anyone want to finish?”

Eva was gathering the leftovers from the meal into various bowls.

Neither she nor Magda would gorge on anything anymore, while Gustav, Kurt and Lothar would nibble on something.

In the end, there would be very little left.

“We need room for dessert!” everyone commented.

No one would have given up on the Linzer Torte.

“It's your favorite,” Lothar commented to his grandfather.

If only that little boy had known!

Kurt looked out the window.

He saw a special light in it.

Reflective and flickering.

The windows were rattling under the dual action of the expansion of heat and wind.

There was a barrack east of Warsaw, one of those used as storage and temporary accommodation during the advance of 1941 and which would later become a hub for the orderly retreat, where Hans used to stay between the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944.

He was awakened by the same sound of glass and wood.

When he left that place, the reasons were few.

“We need an incentive,” they told each other.

The incentive was to find someone who would be an ideal target.

Some remote farm to raid.

“Dad, dad...”

Gustav and his suffocating speech.

If he could, Hans would have put a bullet in his head, but Kurt would have opposed it.

She had to listen to him.

It was a triviality like any other.

How it felt to have made it “round”.

Kurt had never understood such comparisons.

First of all, he was two months younger and would celebrate alone on April 15th, as he had always done.

It was on that date that he indulged in his much-loved strudel and it was the only day when he returned to being fully Hans Gruber, with his ideas and convictions.

Furthermore, Gustav had distracted him from a great thought.

Since they had found some Jews hiding in a farm and had raided them.

First they had all their food and belongings handed over to them, including money, gold and clothes, which they would resell on the black market.

Then they raped the women present, including the fourteen and fifteen year old girls.

Finally, they set everything on fire and, finally, they put a bullet in everyone's head.

It was February 2, 1944, if his mind was not mistaken.

Kurt smiled and his family took this as a good sign.

They handed him a knife to cut the cake without knowing that Kurt would easily slaughter everyone despite his age.

Determination and will were everything, much more than physical strength.

Gustav took a film camera, one of those that would now become obsolete due to the new digital cameras that were coming onto the market, and took a couple of exposures.

He had never seen his father so happy during a birthday party and he was happy.

No song or music, but a simple tasting.

Kurt would have gladly opened a wine to accompany it, but he had already drunk a mug of beer and a bottle of red wine alone and deemed the additional alcohol load to be excessive.

Everyone did an encore and Kurt was almost forced.

The dessert wasn't bad at all.

Linz wasn't a beautiful city, at least according to Kurt, but that cake was spectacular and worth the visit.

The young people were the first to get up from the table and give their grandmother a hand.

Now would come the most relaxing and boring moment, when the food and the heat from the stove would make the environment ideal for a healthy sleep.

Magda didn't like it.

She would have gladly gone out and gone to Salzburg but she was aware of the distance and, above all, the cold.

In two hours it would get dark again and Gustav would take advantage of this to start packing up.

On the other hand, if the girl had wanted to meet up with her friends, she should have quickly left there.

She would have missed dinner and at least half an hour would have been made up.

Who still wanted to eat after that lunch?

Kurt and Gustav went off to one side.

“Nice piece,” the father remarked, picking up the mug.

He would keep the item in plain sight and use it for special occasions.

“When do you think you’ll be back?”

Another obvious question.

Given the season, they wouldn't have been long.

There was always the danger of ice or snowfall, even though the weather forecast had ruled out any precipitation.

Gustav gave the further reason of his wife waiting for him.

She had been busy, so he had excused himself.

Whether it was true or not mattered to few.

Magda didn't stress her father since, for once, his new wife would play in his favor.

Coming back early would have meant being able to go out.

Lothar was less impatient, as his Saturday evening would be spent as usual.

He had the house free and, on those occasions, his girlfriend would go to his place to spend the night.

No plans to go out other than cuddling and then making out before falling asleep, then continuing the next morning.

After breakfast, she would return to her house and they would both take advantage of the opportunity to study.

The university faculties they attended were different, but the effort they had to put in was the same.

Like many of their peers, they were interested and encouraged to do better in order to aspire to a high-level job.

Thus Lothar had absorbed the teachings of his father, whose figure was sought after and certainly had no problems with lack of work.

Gustav, if he had only wanted, could have resigned to join the competition.

He had specialized in industrial engineering and Linz was the city with the highest number of factories in which he could apply his knowledge.

The two men began to discuss trivialities mixed with facts of life.

Of the past, but not the remote one.

About how things were years ago and what had changed.

Kurt wasn't very keen on Europe or the new currency that had come into circulation.

He still thought in shillings and hadn't budged from that.

His whole life had been measured in shillings, except for the period in the Reich where he had become accustomed to using marks.

The euro was not in his DNA.

And who said you had to be brothers?

He had never felt close to a Frenchman, even though he had never seen one in his life.

It was a way of being, or at least his idea of what people different from his own were like.

Gustav had travelled, but not too much.

Certainly more than his father, but less than he would have liked.

Lothar, on the other hand, had moved around a lot in the last two years with his girlfriend, especially during the summer.

They had visited Paris and Rome, Berlin and Amsterdam.

In the summer they went to Croatia, a low-cost and relatively nearby country.

They preferred that coast to the Italian one, even though the signs of the war that had ended only a few years earlier could still be seen.

As the generations progressed, the propensity towards Europe increased and this was a distinctive sign that distanced Kurt from his family.

If they had known what Hans really thought, they would have trembled and taken to their heels and never set foot in that house again, and Eva would have done the same.

The wife had always been unaware of her husband's past and had never asked questions.

A city girl would have been more astute, but Eva, since she was little, had been accustomed to thinking of few houses.

The house, the family, the kitchen and the children.

Churn out children to raise.

Kurt had been reluctant after Gustav.

One was more than enough, above all he didn't want females.

The male child would have been a re-enactment of him, but the female child would not, as she was intrinsically different.

He had imposed on his wife a prolonged period of abstinence or methods to avoid becoming pregnant.

This for quite a long period, about a decade.

Eva, although unhappy, had conformed because that was the role she had been taught.

It had to be done just like that.

Between chatter and pretend work, the light was fading and the shadows were lengthening.

Nothing serious could happen under that roof and everyone was waiting for the right time to cancel the banquet.

Not too early to avoid being rude and thus saving appearances, and this was true for both the hosts, fearful of appearing inhospitable, and for the guests, fearful of appearing like freeloaders.

If only they had spoken openly, none of this would have happened, but Kurt had shaped a family in his image.

No questions.

No arguments.

Keep quiet and let time pass for a quiet life.

Meanwhile, Magda and Lothar continued their messaging activity, as if they were already elsewhere.

Gustav took the reins of the discussion and began the slow procedure of greetings.

Gathering up what they had worn, tidying up tables and sofas, finishing the last meaningless conversations.

“Bye, see you soon.”

“Let me hear from you as soon as you arrive.”

“Say hello to your mother and your wife.”

Empty words with no real interest, just said for the sake of it.

Gustav started the car, with his children occupying the same seats as before.

“Leaving. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Time to change and I’ll be right there with you. Meet me at the usual place.”

Magda sent yet another message.

The evening was saved.

Out with friends to see some movies, party or go check out some boys.

Lothar wrote to his girlfriend telling her he would be there in a couple of hours.

Kurt turned to his wife as the car disappeared from their sight.

“Everything as always.”

Eva had noticed that her grandchildren had grown and changed.

Lothar was more of a man and Magda had become a complete and finished girl.

From that moment on they would have matured and he would have seen them for how long?

Ten, fifteen, twenty years maximum.

No further.

Reaching ninety was something inconceivable for those of her generation and she considered herself lucky to have an eighty-year-old husband who was still in great shape.

Slowed in movement and thought, as was normal, but without any serious form of illness or paralysis.

Kurt, the way he was built, could not have tolerated being half a man, physically or mentally.

He had left word and writing that they should have suppressed it, even though the laws were clear on the matter.

Without direct intervention by the individual, who could commit suicide at any time, others had little right over his life and how to decide about it, except in exceptional cases of vegetative life, but that was not what Kurt meant.

For that man, just being unable to move and having to be confined to a wheelchair was reason enough for suppression.

Besides, he had sent to the Creator people in much better shape and with far fewer problems.

The sun had already set and darkness was once again taking over.

It was a different darkness, brighter than the morning one, even though it was now increasing.

There were artificial lights in the distance.

Noises of celebrations and of those who still had the vitality to defy the wind and the cold.

Having fun, despite everything.

Against age and time, boredom and loneliness.

Being different, not made with a cookie cutter and not with all the same days.

Something that Eva, at times, envied in others and that she had never had in her life.

That had been the price to pay for having conducted every moment in the name of regularity.

Human metronomes, as Gustav's new wife had called them, before leaving the house from which she had been rejected.

There was something strange about that environment.

Of non-human.

Kurt checked the stove.

The wood had run out and the last of the heat was being given off.

“How did you find Gustav?”

His wife was interested in his opinion, but Kurt had little to say.

He was still their usual son.

With his precision mania and his life controlled by a higher entity outside his body.

“The boys have changed...”

They hadn't seen each other since Christmas, barely a month and a half; and yet, Grandma had noticed imperceptible changes.

Eva suffered a little from this distance and from this similar isolation, especially in winter and in this final part of life.

For over thirty years she had been used to seeing Kurt go out in the morning and come back in the evening, managing the entire course of the day independently, but since he retired everything had changed.

Not for the worse, but it was certainly different.

“What do I do? Do I heat up the leftovers or do we save them for tomorrow?”

Kurt didn't feel like eating anymore.

One of those herbal teas that Eva always made would have been enough for him.

They were strange herbal infusions that he bought from some herbalist in the city and whose composition was unknown.

Pompous Latin names that hid common plants and aromas, but which served to raise the price.

Pure marketing that everyone fell for.

Kurt sat down.

His mind went back to his early youth, even before his departure in war.

In the countryside, one grew up early and Angela had welcomed him into her warm chest.

She was a girl two years older than him and who had weaned, at least sexually, most of the boys in the neighborhood, in exchange for food or clothes.

Kurt, then Hans, had won her over with a batch of twelve eggs stolen from what his mother had prepared for that day.

The woman had noticed the shortage, but she said that Hans had resold it under the counter for some sweets he was crazy about.

She had let it go, because if her husband found out, Hans would get a beating.

So Hans had his first sexual intercourse in a barn and discovered the joys of the female body.

How many years had passed?

He was seventeen and now eighty.

An entire life, almost entirely in someone else's shoes.

One who was certainly an outcast compared to his initial condition, but who had provided him with a new identity.

Hans had lifted Kurt's anonymous past into a good family man, a model employee, someone who had bought a single-family home and now had two grandchildren, who spat on the past that had allowed their grandfather to be like that.

“Ungrateful young people, cursed products of a miserable society!”

He would have said this out loud, but he only whispered it in his mind.

With the herbal tea hot and steaming, Eva sat on the sofa and rested her head on her husband's shoulder.

How could you be so stupid as not to notice that you had another person next to you?

Kurt didn't know and preferred not to look into it further.

They turned on the television to listen to the news.

What did this disgusting, pusillanimous world propose?

After that, they would search through the various channels for a film, one that they both liked.

Nothing serious, nothing historical, nothing psychological.

A thriller with lawyers and murders could have been fine, or one of those stupid, vulgar comedies that would make you laugh out loud.

Outside, the world continued its whirlwind.

Being transported here and there without a reason.

Magda was already with her friends in some trendy club in Linz, while Lothar was in the company of his girlfriend, kissing and waiting for something else.

Gustav had retired with Krista and was going to enjoy the evening alone, while his first wife in Lampach was having dinner at a local restaurant with her new husband.

Broken and separate lives, disconnected and disunited.

An icy wind blew through the valley where the city of Salzburg had been located for centuries.

Looking closely, the peak of Hohensalzburg dispersed the dust it raised, creating an aura of opacity that stood out against the starry sky.

Spooky, gothic fairytale atmosphere full of wolves and forests.

Perhaps once upon a time, when today's society had not yet defaced a natural environment.

A woman got out of a car.

One Saturday night she was travelling towards Munich, but tired from the journey she had taken a break.

He had already visited Salzburg, but in spring, when the Mirabell Gardens were in full bloom.

A look towards the horizon, nostrils open towards the transport of aromas, ears numb from the cold.

It was the breath of the world flowing.

He closed his eyes and thought about his life.

At the same time, the movie ended and Kurt turned off the television.

They would go to bed shortly.

Nothing significant had happened, not even that day, as had been happening since 1946.

​II

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BORA – North North East

Liège, 3 March 2003

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Early in the morning, Isabelle left the house alone.

He took the car, started it and headed to a specific place.