My grandfather Joseph Kaprun died in Germany 4 October 1943. The records do not disclose his status or cause of death. At home his name, out of grief or shame, was never mentioned.

We were there already.

The dull air seeped into me, making me restless. I spotted a sign with the name of the place and followed it.

My journey ended in front a commonplace entrance, a gate that could well lead to a public park or a nursery. How all of this resembled a school ground. Half expecting a bell chiming the end of recess, I entered.

Thick German fog covered the deserted camp and the grass cast a pallid green hue under the wolfgrey sky. Invisible from outside, slender barbed wire drooped over the fence. The camp had been revamped to look exactly like it did in operation, in its heyday. About the grounds there was an unanticipated neatness. The living quarters consisted of some forty houses. Inside, enemies of state had slept in wooden compartments that filled the barracks from floor to ceiling. A scent of freshly hewn oak wafted across the quarters; the original barracks having been torn down, I stood inside a piece of scenery. In spite of the barbed wire, the ovens, an aura of a public school or a summer camp clouded Dachau. About them the guard towers had an almost paternalistic air. There had even been a camp song.

Outside, the camp was as desolate as an English seaside resort in winter. I was born into one of the few periods of respite history grants us, an interval between the acts where disputes are settled without mercy. I had experienced this century not at first hand but by hearsay.

Dachau fell short of the grandeur of tragedy, located as it was in the middle of those outskirts. From where I stood I could see houses, old houses. I'd imagined the camp in the middle of a dark forest, hidden in shame; from their windows the locals must have seen over the fence. Perhaps they drew their curtains at night.

Here was no Beatrice, no Virgil to guide me, no paradise I sought, terrestrial or otherwise, nothing of poetry or glory of song, no hope to be abandoned. Dachau, I expected, would speak to me, overwhelm me, ancestral voices lamenting their stolen lives. The tedium of the guards was easier to grasp than the suffering of the prisoners.

Dachau was a

I might as well have been in the Red Light District of Amsterdam, gawking at prostitutes in picture windows. Signs admonished:

Fastidiously tricked out, as if for his own confirmation, the barker stood sentry under a liquid-red sign promising a live sex show. An unctuous smooth-limbed Mediterranean type, he studied the passing crowd with some ulterior purpose as he extended perfunctory invitations to step right in. He fixed his roving eyes where mine had been and smiled a sated, content smile. The girl stared ahead. I overtook her, marching at the barker, bent on ramming him back into his fuck-farm. He darted in as he saw me coming. His eyes were well trained.

It was that night in Berlin when the wall fell. She patted me on the shoulder and all thoughts of the conscription notice faded from mind. She rode with me from Berlin and we made love on the train. The next day was her birthday and we had

My ancestor, a

On a visit to Calcutta my grandfather witnessed how the British treated their hosts and could not conceive of Hitler being any worse. For some reason, perhaps my grandmother's ancestry, he hung a portrait of

A murmur of voices behind me, a man and a woman waiting for the bus to take us from Dachau. I recognized them from the lonely train. With the deliberation of foreign speakers they exchanged whispers in a language that sounded like Spanish. The man wore a heavy dark-blue coat and English glasses.

A foreigner himself, he'd detected my accent too easily. The bearish features and scruffy beard clashed with his benign smile and murky grey hair too long for a man in his sixties. He repeated every word to his wife in flawless German. Time had redressed her somewhat plain looks. Their matching royal blue overcoats offered the impression of uniforms. Once inside, I sat far from the them.

On the train I found them seated opposite me.

"You speak good German for an

"My father was German."

As I watched the train roar out of sight, it dawned on me this man had been in Dachau before, his wife as well. That was why he had studied theology after the war. I don't know whether he was a victim or oppressor. But he'd returned to the scent of fresh oak in the barracks, to confront fear with a greater judgment. And for this I admire him more than words can describe.

Outside the

His spindly arms covered his head, his knees drawn to his stomach, the swastika on his lapel kissing his cheek. I scurried away, ashamed of myself for the second time that day.

The train for Berlin departs in the morning. Or the noon express will bring me through the foggy hills to Belgrade and I'll be at the conscription office two weeks late. The repercussions won't be severe as I've been abroad. Either way, it doesn't matter. I have no country, no religion, no race. I am the twentieth century.

That German fog, flimsier than the real thing, colder than any mirage, wraps the