Chapter 5 Photographers in Salzburg - 4

That morning, the inner city of Vienna surrounding the middle of the ring boulevard was under the control of the American army, which was responsible for maintaining law and order for a month (Note: At the end of World War II, Austria was divided into four parts: the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. occupied area, the capital Vienna is jointly occupied by the four countries).An American soldier from Kansas sat next to the driver of a jeep parked in front of the brightly lit gates on Carnten Street.Three other members of the international patrol—an Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian—crowded in the back seat.

The car set off in the direction of St. Stephen's Cathedral to perform the fourth round of patrol missions at night.The two bell towers of the church are just beginning to outline in the first morning karma. There was no one on the street, and cars were driving slowly in the middle of the street.That day was June 19, 1945, at five fifty in the morning. The jeep arrives at the Franz Josef Causeway.They looked across the Danube, behind the half-destroyed Baths of Diana and the vast sea of ​​rubble left by the war, the red morning glow against the charred ring of the Platter's Wheel.Turn left, take Gonzaga Lane, then head south.Now they could see the colorful Baroque buildings of the Bohemian Government.

At the same time, they could already see the boy. The Englishman was the first to see him, but said nothing.The Englishman was sulking.He couldn't bear the bitter taste of the Frenchman's cigarettes, he despised the American, and told endless stories about baseball games and the love affairs he had enjoyed during his stay in London before June 1944. He also hated the Russian, who wasn't even Russian, because he had Mongol features and a goofy look.As for the driver, he was an Austrian and a Viennese, which was even worse.The driver's sneering attitude from time to time, especially his refusal to admit that he was a defeated man, made the Englishman almost intolerable.

A few seconds later, the American looked up and let out a cry of surprise.The five people in the car all turned their heads and looked towards a small three-story baroque house.Six windows are opened along the street on each floor, two of which have balconies, and colonnades are built at the main entrance. All the people in the car saw a black figure standing upright with arms outstretched in front of the background of the highest floor of the building, as if Jesus was crucified on the cross.The image took them by surprise.All kinds of factors come together to make people have such an association.The man was tall, but impossibly thin, with baggy trousers and a short shirt dangling from him; he was barefoot, and his already gaunt face was accentuated by two exceptionally large eyes. His eyes were so pale that they were almost white under the searchlight; his mouth was half-open, showing an expression of strain and pain.

This shot actually only lasts a few seconds.The black shadow used the handle of a window to firmly grasp the edge of the cloud and move.After the shadow climbed up the railing of the balcony, it disappeared from the searchlight's aperture.Then, the occupants of the car heard glass shattering and the slight click of a window being opened and shut.Then, everything fell silent again. "A door-breaker," said the Viennese driving the car dryly, "but it's only a boy, despite his size." Its purpose is clear.International patrols could only intervene when the matter involved personnel of the occupying forces, and general minor crimes fell under the purview of the Austrian police.So they notified the police station in the city center.Ten minutes had passed by the time a police officer led two policemen to the scene of the accident.For Reb Klimrod, this time is enough.

The two completely different voices overlapped strangely and reached his ears for twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes. First the sound of reality: the police entered the house, searched from the ground floor to the top floor, opened and closed doors, they walked on the marble floor of the ground floor and the wooden floor of the upper floor, which at the time was polished to a bare tile Bright.As expected by Leiber, the police took the path he had planned for them with the last bit of energy left: They followed Leiber's bloody footprints all the way to the attic on the top floor, and found that there was a door and a half door. The small circular window was open, so it was natural to think that he must have escaped through the window over the roof.So the police went downstairs talking in a louder voice, checked around for the last time, and then left...

This is the voice of reality.Then another imaginary sound surged from memory with a clarity that made Reber shudder: sister Mina ran and danced down the corridor with light steps; Shuber's tune; and their mother's voice, with a slight Polish accent that she never took off, was so calm and gentle, creating a quiet atmosphere around her, like a pebble thrown into a pool of clear water , causing ripples.It was this voice that said to Baba on the night of July 2, 1941: "John, I am taking the children to Lviv. Thank you Ehrlich for getting the passports for us. We will be in Saturday to Lvov and stay there until Monday. John, my parents have never seen their grandson..."

Reb Michel Klimrod's eyes resembled his mother's.Hanna Itzkovich Klimrod was born in Lviv in 1904, the daughter of a doctor.Had it not been for the double handicap of being a woman and being a Jew, she would have almost certainly inherited her father's footsteps.However, she had to go to Prague to study literature, because the university admission quota for Jewish students in Prague is relatively wide.After that, she transferred there to specialize in law on the grounds that an uncle was doing business in Vienna.In Vienna, Johann Klimrod taught her for two years.He was fifteen years older than Hannah; Hannah's prairie-colored eyes had caught the professor's attention, and with her rare quick wit and sense of humor, it was all right.They got married in 1925, had Katarina in 26, Leiber in 28, Mina in 33...

boom! —Reber heard the heavy front door slam shut as the police departed.Then I vaguely heard a few words between the Austrian police and the international patrol team, and then the engine of the car started, and the sound disappeared soon after.Silence fell over the house again.Reber tried to straighten up.He had to slowly twist his body centimeter by centimeter to stand up.When he was a child, he had curled up in this dark corner countless times, gaining mysterious pleasure from this voluntary confinement.The first few times he had to contend with an indescribable terror, forcing himself to cling to the cold and damp as if there were little white worms crawling on the stone wall (at least he thought they were white) , until the terror is overcome.He didn't allow any light there, in order to maintain the mysterious atmosphere, and more importantly, he could appreciate the feeling of being terrified to death, and finally achieve the goal of dominating himself.

Now, Reber's fingers pushed back the shutter in the dark corner.He stretched out one foot, one shoulder, and crawled out of the hole.He found himself in a closet, and from there he went into a room--this had been his room before, but now it was empty and without any furniture.He came into the corridor.To his right is Mina's room; beyond that is Katie's room.Both rooms were also empty, nothing remained.The playroom, the conservatory, and a room that my mother used to use as a study for Leiber were also empty... The same goes for the three guest rooms and the two rooms where a French governess had previously lived.There used to be a number of etchings in frames on the walls, showing the Place des Vosges and the Pont des Arts in Paris, the view of the Loire near Vendôme (where the French governess was born), the Breton Views of the bay and the Pyrenees.Even these engravings are now gone.

On the other floor, only one of the former servants' bedrooms seemed to be occupied, or had been occupied not so long ago.Leiber saw there were two camp beds, and the quilts were neatly folded.There is a faint fragrance of mellow shredded tobacco in the air.Some khaki underwear hangs on a line in the bathroom. Leiber went down the escalator to the second floor. In the past, the second floor has always been where his parents lived.Hannah turned the wide marble corridor into a boundary that neither servants nor children could cross without her special permission.On the side facing the street on the second floor are the common rooms for the whole family, including two living rooms and a dining room.The dining room extension joins a large pantry and kitchen at right angles.At the other end, perpendicular to the dining room is the library.The library is very large, extending to both sides of the floor and connecting them to a certain extent. Reber pushed open the door on the right.It used to be Hannah's exclusive suite, a forbidden area, now empty and empty.Even the tapestry was carefully rolled away.Between the two windows overlooking the inner courtyard, there used to be Hannah's big bed.Reber and his older sister and younger sister were born on this bed.Reber walked parallel to the corridor and entered the mother's inner room.It's empty.And then into her study, where Hannah had studied for her Doctor of Philosophy, with success, of course, some time after the birth of Reber and before Mina's birth.Now, it is also empty. From here, through the bathrooms on both sides, is his father's room.There was a complete set of furniture, but Leiber had never seen these furniture.The bed was also not suitable for his father, because it was too high, and it was impossible for a disabled person to get into it without help. Leiber opened the doors of two closets one after another.There are military uniforms hanging inside, and several of them are decorated with similar star-shaped medals and medals.Shirts and underwear that looked perfectly flat were stacked on the shelves.Reber also saw shoes of various styles, some with lace-up flats.Hanging on the two hangers are undoubtedly several military uniforms.Leiber reached out and touched the casual clothes... ... However, his eyes had fallen on the last door, which led to the library. He turned the handle, but didn't push the door open right away.For the first time since Reb walked into the house, his face was a little excited.His pupils dilated and his lips parted, as if suddenly out of breath.He pressed first one temple, then his cheek against the doorjamb, and closed his eyes.His features were distorted by desperation.He could hear the rubber wheels of his father's wheelchair rolling, the sound so familiar and smooth, with just a little hiss.If there is such a voice at this moment, I am afraid it will not be more real.In the spring of 1931, Reber's father, Johann Klimrod, suffered from hemiplegia and could not walk since then. Reber was not yet three years old.Now, Reber could hear his father talking on the phone or in person with his deputy, Erich Steyr.Or maybe speaking to one of his four assistants or three secretaries.Reber could hear the tinkling of the small elevator that his father used to go up and down from the law office on the ground floor to the library and his suite... ... Reber also seemed to hear his father say to Steyr: "Ehrlich, I am very worried about this trip to Lviv, apparently you managed to get a permit for them..." Reber opened his eyes, pushed the door open and walked in.A long, polished oak table remained in the library, which Reber knew so well, with an old rug on the floor and a rickety chair.The walls, covered with garnet silk above the paneling, still retain the outlines of some of the picture frames that used to hang there.Some bookshelves accessible from the balcony with oak railings have been demolished.There used to be 15,000 to 20,000 volumes of books here, but now there is not even a single one left.These books were collected and accumulated by Johann Klimrod for more than 40 years and his four or five generations of ancestors. One of the ancestors, Klimrod, was in the court of the German King and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. Once a senior official.Their family had previously collected quite a few colored woodcut Madonnas—all slender, smiling, and dressed in brocade.These 450-year-old art treasures are gone now... Dawn began to filter through the cracks in the closed shutters into the looted and therefore echoing library.Leiber walked towards the elevator, his expression seemed to be the last ray of hope... He slept during the day and walked at night, stole something from the farm when he was hungry, and walked more than 150 kilometers from Mauthausen to the Austrian capital on two legs. — arrived in Vienna at dawn.He walked the last thirty-five kilometers in one breath. Many years later, David Setiniaz asked him why he had gone madly to Vienna alone-in fact, he was going back to Vienna, and Setienaz and Taras would certainly help him.Reber replied in his absent-minded tone: "I want to find my father, and I will find my own way to find him." When the elevator was built, in order to conceal it, a panel which had been in a parish chapel shrine in Tyrol or Bohemia was fastened to an ordinary Eustoma panel, and then fitted to the elevator iron. on the fence.The shrine panel was an antiquity of the fifteenth century, and it had not been spared by those who looted the house.Now the panels are gone, leaving only the piece of Eustyl. Reber pushed the panel away.The elevator's metal car was narrow, barely big enough for a wheelchair.The wheelchair is inside, empty. Reb Klimrod was certain that his father was dead.He stood in front of the empty wheelchair and began to cry.