The rainbow never sets

"She can stay with Maria," said Mutter. Maria had recently started to help in the house and look after Gerda.

"Will you tell us a story, please?" we begged Vater. Our parents had just finished their afternoon snooze, and Vater couldn't think of a story at that moment.

Vater's stories were not fairy tales. They were usually taken from his own life, or from a book, or even out of his head and then adapted with names changed. We never knew, which it was. He had the wonderful gift to mix fact and fiction, intertwined with his own experience, and he would spin an interesting story for us. We found these stories quite fascinating, and we could never get enough of them. He usually started soon after we left home, and finished just before we got back again.

"I don't know what to tell you." Günter said: "Don't tell us a story this time, we would like to know what life was like here when you were young."

Vater's face turned very serious, and after a while he began: "As you know, your Opa and Oma lived in Antwerp when they grew up. Both their parents had businesses there. As Opa had always loved animals and birds, and his health was rather delicate at that time, his parents thought that it would be better for him to live in the country. He learnt farming from Mr. von Bernut in Borowo and Mr. von Guenther in Gúzybno, who still live there. In 1888 he bought the manor here at Sapowice, which was then known as Eberhardslust, named after the former owner Ebert. Opa and Oma were married in 1890 at Antwerp and moved into the manor house here. They had three boys, Walter, born in 1893, me born in 1894, and Werner born in 1898.

"We grew up here just like you, in the freedom of this beautiful place. When I was four, Walter and I had a French nanny who taught us French in no time. Then we had private tuition until 1905, when Walter and I came to a high school at Posen, he in year three and I in year two.

"We boarded in Posen with an elderly couple, but always came home for the weekends, like you now."

"Except for the times I'm not allowed to come home," I had to interrupt.

"Only because you don't want to learn English. But where was I? Oh yes, coming home for the weekends. In those days there was no railway station at Strykowo. The line hadn't been built yet. We had to take the train to Otusz, on the line to Berlin, where we were met by our coach, seven kilometers from here. During holidays our friends came here, just like yours, and we rode horses, swam, rowed, sailed, played tennis and drove through our property and the woods. I did everything together with Walter. We were inseparable.

"Then something dreadful happened to him. There was an epidemic of scarlet fever here at Sapowice in 1909, and we were not allowed to come home for the summer holidays. When we came home in autumn, we

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