Uncle Heini is 99.

We get off at the train station in Solln and are met by Chris and Alice and they are quite obviously enjoying each other's company. There's no Andy and Jess or Bobby, because Andy, recently returned from Botswana, has to meet a deadline. Anne and Kate have not graced us with their presence either.

Alice and Eve seem pleased to see each other.

We arrived at Stohr Strasse and I am looking for the big Spruce in the middle of the garden, but then remember that it was chopped down. Rose greets us:

Inside, I show Eve:

- "This is where we slept when we came the first time in 1967."

Down the steps into the big basement, now more or less a store room. It was late autumn and they put heavy eiderdowns on top of us. We three little Kenyan boys wake up in the morning sweating.

Heini is standing on the landing, gesturing to us. He is dressed smartly in a well cut, dark green Bavarian suit. Rose, and Heini, must both use walking sticks, but Heini refuses to have a stair-lift installed.

He walks down to greet us. It takes him a little moment to realise who we are.

- "Where are you from?"

- "London, Heini.

- "Yah?"

And we exclaim.

-"Heini, you are 99. Happy Birthday!"

And he looks back at us, astonished.

- "My Gott! Yes. 99!"

And then later, laughing:

- "To be, or not to be, now that is the question".

His English is better than our German. Whenever he loses track of who is who, he never asks us directly. His manners are very elegant. As we gradually form in front of him, he smiles more and looks pleased. Finally, I am Phil, and Chris is Chris and Teresa is Teresa - but our girls are still just the girls.

The neighbours come in to wish Heini Happy Birthday, and in comes chatty Ulla, Rose's sister.

* * *

The Lake is not in the middle of the city at all. It is not in the English Garden, as I thought. It is a long way outside town. I am sitting with Heini in the back of their vehicle on the way to the lake and Rose is in front, Ulla is driving.

- "I love this road." Heini said. "It's a beautiful road."

On either side is thick forest - mixed pine and deciduous trees.

- "Up ahead we should see the Alps," said Rose, "but it's cloudy today. What a shame"

Heini climbed mountains in his youth and even at the age of 83, he reached Everest base camp - 16 years ago, now.

We get out of the car and the restaurant is right by the lake. Far away there a church with a little onion dome on the other side and yet more forest. A garish Jet ski is moored by a long grey wooden jetty which stretches out over the grey water.

- "On a clear day you can see the Alps, from here, but not today. What a pity" Ulla echoes Rose.

For a while, we drink white wine and play spot the retired actor. I buttonhole a smooth faced, bearded old gent in a tweed jacket. He stoops, but is still tall. No, he doesn't know Heini, but his wife does.

- "Is that man an actor?" I ask him. Pointing at someone in a blue suit with a red shirt and a goatee.

- "How can you tell?" He asks me.

- "By his clothes and manner."

Dryly, he comments:

- "Well I don't know him, personally, but he is very famous here in Germany. He's on the TV a lot. That's how I know he is an actor, but I can't tell someone's profession merely from the way they look, as you seem to be able to do."


The gentleman in the red shirt, I think his surname is Dorf, is sitting next to me at Heini's table, my back is to the room. Ulla chats to Tere at length.

Nine years ago mom, dad and the twins celebrated Uncle Heini and Granny Lisa's 90th birthday on a boat on the same lake. Lisa and Heini's little jape was to arrive at the party dressed up as "old people" with sticks and caps and scarves. And then to throw off their disguises.

I toast Lisa with Heini. Perhaps I should propose a toast to her to the general assembly. I think I should. But we Halls take a back seat for a change. After all, we are there representing Lisa and mom and dad, as much as anything else. That much is clear.

This is high German cuisine; the cook is wearing a smart white suit with a double row of silver buttons. We start with a sashimi prawn, herb salad that reminds Chris and I of all the green things we used to eat from gardens and roadsides. We really like it.

I think:

- "What could you add? Clover, geranium leaves, grass stalks, flowers with nectar still in them, elderberries?"

But it is hard for some of the guests to eat this herb salad gracefully and some have succulent strands protruding from their mouths. My linen suit meets its predestiny. It is is flecked with Vinaigrette; my Canary yellow shirt is spotted with olive oil. The actor and his retired actress wife Lola, eat only the prawns, which are sweet and raw. Later, when a tall, blond Masai waitress passes by, he raps at her.

The next course is fish fresh from the lake: It's skin is bronze-like, its flesh is moist and delicious and I love the knobbly potatoes. The desert is fried curd cheese with a little caramel and fresh strawberries.

A woman in her late seventies comes up, throwing winning smiles across the table. I smile, uncertainly, back. She is yet another famous doyenne of Bavarian stage and screen- come to greet her old friend.

Rose tinkles her glass.

Heini is seems distracted, but like the doormouse in Alice in Wonderland, suddenly perks up. He starts to speak, but without standing up. Unlike the doormouse he is eloquent and talks at length. He is gesturing. Occasionally he breaks into tears and, as we can't understand German, it is all rather perplexing.

Perhaps he is talking of his life in the theatre and the important things young actors should remember; about his dead colleagues; he is telling anecdotes about the Theatre. His friends laugh and we we sub-vocalise along with them.

Heine ends up with a quote by Goethe from Faust. Someone gives us an attempt at a translation:

- "It is better to die than to live beyond your time..."


They all shout:

- "Nein!" and that marks the end of the speech.

We wander off to the lake while Heini carries on talking to a close circle that has gathered about him.

I find Renata and Ruth who are sitting on a bench looking out over the lake. They are mom's cousins. I have heard their names for more than 40 years, but never met them before.

Ruth has an open face and a soft hair. Renata is dark haired and wears dark glasses. She smiles winningly, nervously. Mom came to Shlitz when she was 15 and they were all teenage girls together for a couple of months.

- "You look just like your mom.", says Renatta.

I admit I am too effusive when we part. The sisters are very close. They live in Munich, but still have an old house in Shlitz, which they visit every summer.

We have to go. We leave to see Granny Lisa, Grandpa Richard and Great Granny Gobel's grave by the black forest behind the house. In front of the cemetery is a massive field of yellow rapeseed flowers. The cemetery is full of giant poplars. Are they poplars? We find the grave and Andy calls my cellphone as we as look at the gravestone and Tere removes dry leaves and weeds.

Then we walk a way into the forest together for an hour or so.

 

















* * *

A day or so later, when Chris and Alice are back in London and Eve and Tere are tired from a day knocking about Munich and tucked up in bed. I walk to Stohr Strasse from the hotel. Rose wrenches Heini from his evening TV to sit with me.

- "Where is everybody?" He asks. And I tell him Chris and Alice are in London and Tere and Eve at the hotel.

Rose goes looks up the S-Bahn Sunday timetable for me. We sit. And the conversation loops on the subject of where everyone is. I wish I could speak German. On the table is the biography of the goatee sporting actor from the lake party. So I pick it up and flick through it to demonstrate.

- "Heini, I am writing a book about you, Lisa and Eveschen. What else do you think I should say."

He looks at me; makes a puzzled clown's face, (he was a famous clown for a while), and then motions cranking his brain, which just won't start. No. We don't understand each other for the moment.

Finally, we both call out for Rose.

Rose, who organised the whole event with her sister despite all her serious health difficulties, comes down with the timetable details and packs together sweets and chocolates for my Eve.

Heini flickers and switches on, and squeezes my forearm and declaims:

"Little moments make an hour
Little words a book
Little seeds a tree or flower
Water drops, a brook"

- "I learned it in school." he said. We both cheer up.

- "Wonderful."

And because we can't talk, we recite this little poem in unison several more times as Heini takes me to the gate to see me out. Rose stays behind. It's dark, but not cloudy. You can see the stars and smell the night flowers.

- "Go down the street and then go to the right. Make sure you go to the right. I'll stay here to make sure you do."

And so I wave as I turn right. And, theatrically, he waves back.