Flowers of a Wolf

Chapter 5

24 YEARS EARLIER

Gregor Robertson grew up in Glasgow in the 90s and early 00s. His school friends called him Greggy. His father remarried when he was a little boy, which in Gregor's mind also signaled their arrival in Scotland. And while little Gregor lost his accent readily, his father never lost his German accent.

The three of them, Gregor remained an only child, lived in a small flat on the ninth floor of a council tower and his father worked for a family-run electrical company, fitting alarms on rich folks' houses. His Papa always worked long hours - though Gregor learned as time went on that his father combined his working hours with his drinking hours. Gregor knew his Papa was an unhappy man. Whenever he cursed at home - especially in the evenings - it was always in their native German.

Gregor was six years old when his father first touched him that way. Whenever he remembers those nights, the smell of beer and his Papa's sweat was tied to the memories, pervading the images. To this day, Gregor cannot stomach drinking beer.

One day when he was twelve, everything about the father and son's relationship changed. It was summer, and the everyday rains had left Glasgow alone that day. Young Gregor had spent a happy morning at the Barras with his Ma - the memories of the doughnuts still fresh like the sugar-touched smudge on his brow from his Ma - when Gregor spied the unlocked door to his Papa's den. In any other flat in the tenement, it would have been a bedroom, or maybe a dining room like Mrs. Willis on floor four. She used to look after him when his Ma was working late. But in their flat, it was Papa's den - and only Papa was allowed in it. Nor even Ma was allowed in to clean the room.

That fateful day when he'd returned with his Ma from their shopping, he'd walked past the room and saw that the padlock on the door wasn't snapped shut. He knew his Papa wouldn't be home for so many hours yet.

Waiting till his Ma left the flat with an "I"m off to see Mrs. Willis. Now you behave Gregor..." "O'course Ma!" he found himself alone, with the whole of the flat to himself. And his opportunity to enter that most secret of secrets, Papa's den.

The room had grown to such large proportions in Gregor's imagination over the many years, he struggled to take in its beige-flecked wallpaper reality - the stench of his Papa so strong he could almost imagine he was standing there behind him. He stared around the room, trying to take everything in at once: the battered filing cabinet, the small wooden desk - not unlike his teacher's at school - but here, laden with stacks of folders, and one ashtray overfilling with Silk Cut butts. Papa had often sent him to the shops to get him his favorite cigarettes.

But Gregor's roving eyes fixed on two things. One was a large red flag pinned on the wall above the desk. He didn't remember seeing the flag before, yet something about it was familiar. It was odd as the big red flag had another flag inside it. Against its deep red background, a white shield stood. And on it was a picture of a man's hand holding a gun, like a rifle. On the end of the rifle, there was a long knife too. Which Gregor thought was pretty cool. In fact, all guns should have knives, he decided. And attached at two points to the gun was another flag flying, a red flag with horizontal stripes in black and yellow. This was no flag he'd been shown at school, but he knew it somehow. The second thing that caught his attention was a knife in a sheaf lying under the flag. It was really big, like something he'd seen in a Rambo film. It was a hunting knife.

Before he knew it, he was holding the knife in his hands, the leather sheath forgotten on the table, its bare blade catching the one light in the room. It felt so heavy to him. He tried to slash the blade through the air, but it felt wrong. He gripped the handle closer to the blade, his small fingers pressed close to the great blade's guard. He tried again, slicing through the air, and this time it felt right. Exactly right.

His mind was so focused on the knife, and all the things he could imagine doing with it now he held it, he did not hear the front door opening, and his Ma returning to their flat. A few moments later the door to the small room opened, creaking on its hinges. All Gregor heard was the sudden crack from behind him, of enemies unseen. Spinning and slashing, he met his enemies with steel and speed.

His Ma stood there, surprise on her face as the blood leaked from her neck and her one raised arm, blood soaking through her sad pink cardigan, its crocheted wool weeping crimson.

Three hours later, the ex-Stasi agent of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik - known more commonly as East Germany - stood staring down at his dead wife in the open door of his private den. He followed the bloody footprint trail into the kitchen, where he found his little Gregor eating a bowl of rice krispies at the stained, Formica-clad table. There on the table was his most prized possession, his hunting knife. Clean, with no blood on it.

He stared down at his son who looked up at him with those strange gray eyes of his. His son had managed to do the one thing he'd failed to do all these years, and remove that stain of a foolish wife.

"Ahh mein süßer Gregor" he began, then with a big smile added "du bist das Schiled und Schwert und der Partei*. Ya!"

He sat down at the table opposite his son and tousled his hair.

"Mein süßer Gregor."

*Translation: You are the shield and sword of the Party.

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