The Mascot (19 page)

M
y flight was the last in a long queue waiting at Narita airport on the outskirts of Tokyo. I closed the shade and curled up in my seat, covering myself in a blanket. Almost immediately I began to feel anxious, as if everything I had gone through in Tokyo had been lying in wait.

I wanted to know more about the triumvirate of men—Commander Lobe, Jekabs Dzenis, and Sergeant Kulis—who had played a critical role in my father's fate during the war years, and whose influence had extended into his new life in Australia. The shadow that loomed most heavily over me at that moment was that of Commander Lobe. I'd grown up believing him to be a kind and heroic person who had figured strongly in what I now knew to be the false version of my father's rescue. The female interviewer on the tape had stated with absolute certainty that Lobe had been not only a high-ranking Latvian Nazi but also a war criminal notorious for his cruelty. He had never been punished for his crimes. She had made particular mention of two mass exterminations at places called Slonim and Rumbula. I had never heard of them, and, of course, my father had made no mention of either of these locations, or exterminations of any kind, in his fictionalized version of life with Lobe.

It was still not clear to me why my father hadn't come clean about Commander Lobe after the war had ended, when he was free to do so. Why had my father maintained the fiction that he was a pigherd boy discovered by soldiers? I wondered whether the intimidation my father had suffered in Australia had been more pervasive than he'd suggested. Clearly, there was much more to discover.

I had, in fact, gone in search of Lobe in Stockholm, in the early 1980s, to thank him for his kindness to my father. From London, I'd excitedly phoned my father in Melbourne to tell him of my plan. He'd been hesitant rather than pleased, claiming that I'd disrupt the peaceful life of an elderly couple who did not enjoy good health. As I continued to express my determination to visit the Lobes, he protested more vehemently against my plan. I chose to ignore what I saw as an irrational objection.

It was my first visit to northern Europe in the winter.

Stockholm was blanketed in snow and, even though it was the middle of the day, it was almost pitch-dark on the streets. As a student, I didn't have much money, but I managed to find a room in a fleabag hotel near the main station. That first night I had to sleep in my overcoat, and when I woke in the morning, my blankets had a thin layer of ice on them.

When I left the hotel the next morning, I found a public telephone in the park opposite. I dialed Lobe's number, but there was no reply. During that day, in between sightseeing, I must have dialed the number at least a dozen times.

The following morning I tried again, but again nobody picked up. I wondered if Lobe had moved or, even worse, recently died. I was very disappointed because I wanted to express my gratitude to the hero who'd rescued my father from the terrors of the forest. Therefore, I resolved to make my way to Lobe's address on the off chance that he might still be there.

I got directions from the receptionist at the hotel and boarded a tram that would take me directly to the suburb known as Handen, where he lived. I got off the tram and headed in the direction of what turned out to be public housing.

I located Lobe's building and finally found my way to the right floor in a dingy, barely lit elevator. The smell of human urine in the rear corner was so overpowering that I had to cover my nose and mouth with my hand.

I knocked on the front door of what I thought was the right apartment. There was no answer. I waited several moments and then knocked again, more loudly.

There was still no answer, but this time I was convinced that I'd heard a shuffling sound inside. I placed my ear to the door and just at that moment it sprang open violently, still on its chain. I got the shock of my life. Through the gap I could see part of an elderly man's face. His rheumy eye examined me.

“Yes?” he asked me in Swedish.

“Herr Lobe?”
I replied in German.

At first he didn't answer me. His one eye continued to evaluate me. Then he spoke. “What do you want?” he asked me in perfect, formal German.

“You are Mr. Lobe, aren't you?” I asked.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I am Mark, the son of Uldis Kurzemnieks,” I replied, using my father's Latvian name. I'd expected the expression in his eye to change upon hearing this, and for him to welcome me with open arms.

Instead the eye looked startled and darted about. “Go away!” he hissed.

I was greatly shocked.

“Sir,” I said. “You remember Uldis Kurzemnieks, don't you?”

“I told you, go away from here.” He spat out the words.

“The little corporal!” I pleaded with him. “Remember?”

“Go away or I will call the police!” he warned me. Then he slammed the door shut in my face.

I was completely mystified by his attitude. “Surely he couldn't have forgotten,” I thought. I rapped loudly on the door, calling out “Commander Lobe” and pleading with him to open up, when suddenly, still on its chain, the door flew open again. The long blade of a carving knife came violently through the opening, waving about.

I jumped backward. Without uttering a word, Lobe continued to brandish the knife. I backed farther away, totally bewildered.

Why hadn't the mention of my father's name allayed his fears? I wondered. Was he sick? Suffering from some sort of dementia? I could only conjecture. I left.

As I boarded the elevator, I was shaking from head to toe. When it stopped during its descent and the doors opened to two elderly women, they took an abrupt step backward, eyeing me suspiciously: I must have looked shattered. One of them waved her hand at me, indicating that they'd wait for the next ride.

I hurried out of the building without looking back. There was nothing else to do but return to the hotel. And on the way back I hatched a plan.

When I got up the next morning, I wrote a note. In it I apologized to Lobe for frightening him and explained again who I was. I wrote that I knew he had saved my father's life and that I wanted to thank him for that. I folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and sealed it.

I headed back to Handens. I slipped the envelope under Lobe's door and stepped away to wait at a safe distance. From where I stood, I could hear movement inside. Several moments passed.

Then I heard the lock click. The door opened, this time more gently, although still on its chain. Lobe's partly hidden face again appeared in the gap. His eye still appraised me, but it was less wary. He must have been satisfied by my submissive demeanor because when the door closed for a moment, I heard the sound of the chain being removed. Finally the door opened to reveal the full figure of Commander Lobe.

He was short and fairly rotund, no longer the fit and dashing commandant he'd once been. He looked like any other man in his seventies, apart from the fiery expression etched into his face over the years. “Please come in,” he said, shaking my hand rather formally.

I stepped inside.

The interior was cozy, what the Germans call “gemütlich,” but also quite shabby. It was clear that he was not well-off. An elderly woman was standing rather awkwardly behind him. He introduced her as Mrs. Lobe. She seemed kindly, smiling warmly at me, and then, as Auntie used to do, she stepped forward, took my face in her hands, and kissed me on both cheeks.

“Little Uldis!” she exclaimed. “A perfect angel.”

Lobe gave a chuckle. “A little rascal, that's what I remember,” he said.

“He looks like his father, doesn't he, K
rlis?” Mrs. Lobe continued.

I felt Lobe appraising me more closely. Then he grunted in response to his wife's words.

Mrs. Lobe ushered me further into the room. “You must be freezing,” she said. “Come and sit by the heater.”

I sat down on the shabby sofa and Lobe sat down next to me. Suddenly he was full of bonhomie.

“May I offer you coffee?” he said. “Or something stronger? Schnapps! That'll warm us. Dearest! Glasses!”

Mrs. Lobe brought the drinks, and the commander proposed a toast to my father. After that we chatted about him. The curious thing was that Lobe seemed to know so much about my father's life in Australia: his job, that he had three sons, that I was the oldest.

What followed was mystifying at the time and has stayed with me all these years.

“My father has spoken of how you found him,” I told Lobe. Immediately he went on the alert; I could sense his tension.

“Did he?” Lobe said. “What did the corporal say?”

I told him only what I knew at that time: that soldiers on patrol had found a small boy in the woods, dressed in rags. And so on.

You could almost see the tension leave Lobe's body. He laughed loudly at what I'd recounted and poured himself another schnapps. But there was one tiny part of him that was still on guard, and coolly observing my movements.

Then Lobe started to add to what I'd just told him, describing how my father couldn't remember his name, not even his first name, or where he was from. All the boy knew was that he was a pigherd who'd lost his animals. He told me how his soldiers chose the boy's name and birthday.

“What was I to do?” he said. “I couldn't let this child wander alone in the forest. He would surely have died: if he didn't starve to death, the wolves would have devoured him, and if not that, then the partisans would have captured him. They were ruthless—they would have cut his throat on the spot, the partisans. Make no mistake about it!”

By that stage, Lobe was drunk, and he became slightly aggressive for a moment. “Nowadays,” he grumbled, “those partisans are looked back upon as heroes. Not us, though! After the war the Soviets portrayed us as devils.” He paused for another swig of schnapps.

“Tell me,” he said, “if we were villains, then why did we worry about a little boy in the forest? Who cared whether he lived or died? We did! Nobody else! We, the devils, took him with us.” Lobe laughed harshly.

He rambled on incoherently about the war so that I thought he'd forgotten that I was sitting beside him. I let him talk. I'd begun to nod off in the stultifying heat of the room when suddenly he gripped my forearm tightly. I snapped awake. For a second I wondered where I was and what he was talking about, when I heard him say, “He was a brave little boy and what a soldier!”

I laughed because I'd never thought of my father as a soldier. He'd always made it sound as if he were a Boy Scout. I was a little unnerved by the description.

“No!” Lobe exclaimed. “He was! He looked magnificent in his uniform. We called him our mascot.”

The heat and the alcohol must have gotten to him, because then he, too, drifted off to sleep. I sat silently on the sofa listening to his snores and waiting for him to come round. Finally, his wife, who'd been quietly listening to our conversation, left and returned with coffee. She woke him. The doze seemed to have reinvigorated him, and he picked up another thread.

“I am still considered a hero in Latvia,” he said. “There were so many requests from patriotic Latvians all over the world, even old members of the Eighteenth Battalion—‘Why don't you write about your life?' ‘We want to hear of your feats in the struggle for independence,' those sorts of things—that I decided to write my memoirs.” At that, he rose heavily from the sofa and disappeared into another room.

He returned moments later with a box. I noticed his labored breathing as he sat down beside me and gently placed the box on the coffee table in front of us. It appeared to be nothing more than an old cardboard grocery container.

“My box of memories,” he said, patting it lovingly, as if it were a loyal old dog. He lifted off its lid and delicately removed a book. Then he passed it across to me. It was a copy of the memoirs he'd just spoken of. I opened it, and the frontispiece carried a photograph of him, taken perhaps when he was in his fifties. I wouldn't have said that he was a handsome man—his expression was far too austere—but he did have a commanding presence, even on the page.

He reached across for the book and flicked through it until he found what he was searching for. He cleared his throat in between his ponderous intake of air and began to read a passage aloud, translating into German, about how my father was found by the soldiers.