"Except in your generation there are not heaps of men. Only Dane." "Due to the fact Mum left my father, I expect. She never seemed to get interested in anyone else. Pity, I think. Mum's a real homebody; she would have liked a husband to fuss over."
"Is she like you?"
"I don't think so."
"More importantly, do you like each other?"
"Mum and I?" She smiled without rancor, much as her mother would have done had someone asked her whether she liked her daughter. "I'm not sure if we like each other, but there is something there. Maybe it's a simple biological bond; I don't know." Her eyes kindled. "I've always wanted her to talk to me the way she does to Dane, and wanted to get along with her the way Dane does. But either there's something lacking in her, or something lacking in me. Me, I'd reckon. She's a much finer person than I am."
"I haven't met her, so I can't agree or disagree with your judgment. If it's of any conceivable comfort to you, Herzchen, I like you exactly the way you are. No, I wouldn't change a thing about you, even your ridiculous pugnacity."
"Isn't that nice of you? And after I insulted you, too. I'm not really like Dane, am I?"
"Dane isn't like anyone else in the world."
"You mean because he's so not of this world?" "I suppose so." He leaned forward, out of the shadows into the weak light of the little candle in its Chianti bottle. "I am a Catholic, and my religion has been the one thing in my life which has never failed me, though I have failed it many times. I dislike speaking of Dane, because my heart tells me some things are better left undiscussed. Certainly you aren't like him in your attitude to life, or God. Let's leave it, all right?" She looked at him curiously. "All right, Rainer, if you want. I'll make a pact with you-no matter what we discuss, it won't be the nature of Dane, or religion."
Much had happened to Rainer Moerling Hartheim since that meeting with Ralph de Bricassart in July 1943. A week afterward his regiment had been dispatched to the Eastern Front, where he spent the remainder of the war. Torn and rudderless, too young to have been indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth in its leisurely prewar days, he had faced the consequences of Hitler in feet of snow, without ammunition, the front line stretched so thin there was only one soldier for every hundred yards of it. And out of the war he carried two memories: that bitter campaign in bitter cold, and the face of Ralph de Bricassart. Horror and beauty, the Devil and God. Half crazed, half frozen, waiting defenseless for Khrushchev's guerrillas to drop from low-flying planes parachuteless into the snowdrifts, he beat his breast and muttered prayers. But he didn't know what he prayed for: bullets for his gun, escape from the Russians, his immortal soul, the man in the basilica, Germany, a lessening of grief. In the spring of 1945 he had retreated back across Poland before the Russians, like his fellow soldiers with only one objective-to make it into British- or American-occupied Germany. For if the Russians caught him, he would be shot. He tore his papers into shreds and burned them, buried his two Iron Crosses, stole some clothes and presented himself to the British authorities on the Danish border. They shipped him to a camp for displaced persons in Belgium. There for a year he lived on the bread and gruel, which was all the exhausted British could afford to feed the thousands upon thousands of people in their charge, waiting until the British realized their only course was release.
Twice officials of the camp had summoned him to present him with an ultimatum. There was a boat waiting in Ostend harbor loading immigrants for Australia. He would be given new papers and shipped to his new land free of charge, in return for which he would work for the Australian government for two years in whatever capacity they chose, after which his life would become entirely his own. Not slave labor; he would be paid the standard wage, of course. But on both occasions he managed to talk himself out of summary emigration. He had hated Hitler, not Germany, and he was not ashamed of being a German. Home meant Germany; it had occupied his dreams for over three years. The very thought of yet again being stranded in a country where no one spoke his language nor he theirs was anathema. So at the beginning of 1947 he found himself penniless on the streets of Aachen, ready to pick up the pieces of an existence he knew he wanted very badly. He and his soul had survived, but not to go back to poverty and obscurity. For Rainer was more than a very ambitious man; he was also something of a genius. He went to work for Grundig, and studied the field which had fascinated him since he first got acquainted with radar: electronics. Ideas teemed in his brain, but he refused to sell them to Grundig for a millionth part of their value. Instead he gauged the market carefully, then married the widow of a man who had managed to keep a couple of small radio factories, and went into business for himself. That he was barely into his twenties didn't matter. His mind was characteristic of a far older man, and the chaos of postwar Germany created opportunities for young men. Since his wedding had been a civil one, the Church permitted him to divorce his wife; in 1951 he paid Annelise Hartheim exactly twice the current value of her first husband's two factories, and did just that, divorced her. However, he didn't remarry.