It was pointless traipsing around here. Racing around all over Germany. The terrible history I was looking for had been erased, forgotten, swept under the carpet. I was just about to turn back. I had come completely unprepared, I had nothing to guide me but grief and a battered military record. But I hadn’t reckoned on fate, which suddenly intervened. Taking the sandwich I bought at the delicatessen – my way of thanking the owner – I went and sat in a small park for the mothers and children of Landorf. It was empty. I was grateful. I needed to be alone. I already felt more alone than anyone else in the world. Then an old man in cap and slippers, unshaven, came over – the poor creature was just looking for some company. Old men are the same the world over, always looking for someone to talk to, always quick to spot a straggler. ‘Guten appetit!’ He had his opening gambit prepared. ‘Danke,’ I said in the same cheery tone, hoping he might leave me in peace. He sat down next to me and rolled a cigarette, slow as a wet weekend. By the time I finished my sandwich and he stubbed out his cigarette, we knew all there was to know about each other – by which I mean nothing. We looked like tramps sharing a park bench. We talked about the weather, about life, about the Franco–German alliance. His position was straightforward: he had never believed any of that rubbish. To him the French franc was just Monopoly money, but he worried about the mighty Deutschmark, the bedrock of German power, and bitterly resented the rise of the European Union which was slowly but surely chipping away at it. ‘The only ones who make money out of it are conmen and feckless idlers,’ he concluded. I was well used to this kind of right-wing diatribe, Ophélie’s mother comes out with this stuff all the time. ‘Not to mention all the illegal immigrants!’ I egged him on, adopting a racist tone. When I casually mentioned I was part-German, part-French and part-Algerian, his mouth dropped open. What can you say to a chameleon without riling him? You talk about this and that, you chat as though you have all the time in the world. He’d been retired for years, he told me, his beloved Hilda had died in her sleep at seventy and his one dream was to see the Château de Versailles again before he died. I told him I had been in Hamburg on business and had come down because I’d always dreamed of seeing Uelzen, especially the beautiful suburb of Landorf where my father, Hans Schiller, had been born seventy-six years ago. Papa’s name clearly rang a bell. The old man’s face lit up. ‘Did you say Hans Schiller?’ I believe that this man was sent by heaven just as surely as I believe that two plus two equals four. He had known Papa, and Papa’s family and his old friends. Best of all, his memory was perfect, accurate, encyclopaedic. I could not let him get away. I took him to a café for some hot chocolate and bombarded him with questions. Actually, he asked most of the questions, I played it safe, I wasn’t about to wade in and start talking about Papa’s past, I wanted to find out who this man was – was he a former Nazi, a victim of the Nazis or just some poor devil who had come through it all without knowing anything? I wanted to know what his politics were. I played the dutiful grandson, listening wide-eyed to his grandfather’s stories. I let things roll. Nudging him gently, I managed to get him to reminisce, persuaded him to trust me. I painted him an idyllic picture of the Schiller family, the perfect blend of Germany, Algeria and France – three countries with a long history of mutual friendship and mutual slaughter – three countries which had produced my father, my mother, my wife and all the principles I held dear. I made it sound as poetic, as exotic, as I could. A quick brushstroke transformed my Paris suburb into a haven of tranquillity, another transformed Aïn Deb into a glorious oasis where old men lay like lizards in the sun, listening to the song of the wind, watching the dance of the dragonflies. This was how I had imagined Aïn Deb before the massacre of 24 April 1994. ‘Hans Schiller’s son!’ Over and over the old man clapped me on the back. ‘It’s a miracle . . .’