Hans Reiter (Benno von Archimboldi) and Klaus Haas

Hans Reiter, later known as the writer Benno von Archimboldi, is Klaus Haas’s maternal uncle. Their relationship is first conveyed through Klaus’s incomplete childhood knowledge of a man who has disappeared from the family’s life, and much later through a reunion between Archimboldi and Klaus’s mother, Lotte. Klaus’s imprisonment in Santa Teresa turns that old absence into an urgent family question: Lotte fears for her son and asks her returned brother to take responsibility for what comes next, while the narrative leaves Archimboldi’s response beyond the scene unresolved.

Family Identity and Early Knowledge

Klaus’s understanding of his uncle begins with fragments rather than a family history. After Klaus’s grandmother dies, he asks Lotte about the uncle he has never been told about. Lotte is surprised by the question and answers vaguely: her brother was about ten years older than she was, his way of making a living was not a model for young people, and the family had heard nothing from him for a long time because he had disappeared. The information establishes both the kinship and the gap at its center. Archimboldi is not an active presence in Klaus’s childhood; he is a missing relative whom the family can describe only in uncertain outline.

Lotte later adds that, as a little girl, she imagined her brother as a giant. The image is not Klaus’s own memory of Archimboldi but a recollection inherited from his mother, and it lends the absent uncle a scale larger than the few facts available about him. That childhood image will return in a different form when Klaus, years later, dreams of a giant coming to rescue him from prison.

Klaus also asks Werner about his uncle. Werner describes Archimboldi as quiet and observant, while Lotte says that he had not always been so: the war’s artillery and gunfire had made him quiet. Asked whether he resembles his uncle, Klaus is told that they are both tall and thin, though Klaus’s hair is much blonder and his eyes may be a brighter blue. The family’s scattered descriptions connect nephew and uncle through appearance and war-shaped temperament, but they do not close the distance created by Archimboldi’s long absence. Klaus eventually stops asking questions, and his life continues without a relationship with the man whose likeness he partly shares.

The Uncle’s Absence and Klaus’s Crisis

The family’s limited account of Archimboldi contrasts with Klaus’s increasingly consequential life. As a teenager, Klaus gets into trouble with two friends over a stolen car and a later sexual-assault case involving an Italian woman who worked at a small medical-supply factory. Because Klaus is not yet legally an adult, he is sent to a reformatory for four months; there he works in a repair shop and learns to fix appliances. Back home, he takes a job in his father’s shop and for a time stays out of trouble. These episodes belong to Klaus’s own history, but the uncle remains a family absence rather than a participant in it.

That distance becomes more consequential when Klaus is imprisoned in Santa Teresa in connection with the murders of women. Fifteen days after arriving at the prison, he holds a press conference attended by Mexico City reporters and much of the Sonoran print media. He reaffirms his innocence and says that interrogators used substances and torture to obtain a self-incriminating statement that he does not remember signing. He also warns that events in Santa Teresa will demonstrate that he is not the killer. The account places Klaus’s fate before the public, while his uncle is still elsewhere and the family’s knowledge of him remains largely retrospective.

When Archimboldi finally returns to Lotte’s home, Klaus’s imprisonment is no longer an abstract family concern. Lotte speaks about the killings in Santa Teresa and about her son’s dreams of a giant who will rescue him from prison. She tells Archimboldi that he no longer looks like a giant. He answers that he never was one. Their exchange brings the childhood image of Lotte’s brother into direct contact with the rescue fantasy attached to Klaus: the figure who once represented extraordinary stature is now an old man confronted with a danger he may not be able to undo.

Reunion with Lotte and the Appeal for Help

Archimboldi’s return gives the relationship its first direct family scene, although Klaus himself is not present. Lotte answers the door to a man who identifies himself as her brother. They talk until dawn. She speaks about Klaus, the women killed in Santa Teresa, and the dreams in which her son sees a giant coming to save him. The reunion therefore carries two absences at once: Archimboldi has been gone from his family for years, and Klaus remains physically separated from his mother in prison.

Lotte’s account is also marked by fatigue and fear. She says that she does not know what to do, that she lacks strength, and that what little she understands frightens her. She worries that Klaus will die and describes the prison as horrible, though she has become used to it. She remembers Mrs. Bubis as kind, even while saying that her son is in a Mexican prison and asking who will look after him or remember him when she is dead. The plea makes the family bond concrete: Lotte is not simply recounting Klaus’s situation to her brother but confronting him with the possibility that she will not be there to protect or remember her son.

At dawn, Lotte asks Archimboldi whether he will take care of it all. He asks for a beer; she says she has none, and repeats the question. The scene does not supply a spoken promise or a narrated decision. Instead, the repeated appeal leaves responsibility suspended between the siblings, giving Archimboldi’s return emotional weight without converting it into a confirmed rescue.

Departure and Narrative Significance

After leaving Lotte, Archimboldi goes to Hamburg, intending to take a direct flight to Mexico. The flight is not until the next morning, and he spends the interval in a park, reading, eating, and ordering a Fürst Pückler ice cream. The practical detail of the planned journey connects the family reunion to Klaus’s imprisonment in Mexico, but the narrative does not show Archimboldi reaching the prison or intervening in the case. His departure establishes direction, not outcome.

The relationship is consequently built from delayed and mediated knowledge: Klaus learns about his uncle from Lotte and Werner; the reader learns about Klaus’s danger through the public account of his press conference and then through Lotte’s private fear. The giant image passes from Lotte’s childhood memory to Klaus’s prison dreams, while Archimboldi’s denial of the image punctures any assurance that family resemblance or literary stature can guarantee rescue. The final question—whether he will take care of it all—makes the reunion a point of possible responsibility, but the evidence leaves the answer open as Archimboldi sets out for Mexico.