In the solitude of his kitchen-turned-apartment, Otto didn’t hear the footsteps on the terrace, and as the door creaked opened, tea from the pot splashed and scalded his hand. He’d forgotten to turn the key in the lock.
The brown top of a head appeared, then a small face. The boy could have been the ghost of another.
‘I heard someone,’ the boy said. ‘Are you a tramp?’
Otto looked and then quickly turned away. The boy’s arrival was a shock in his afternoon, but even greater was the shock of the resemblance.
At Sachsenhausen, Dr Metzger had rigged up a mechanized hammer that could deliver a blow to the head every five seconds. Before he died from his injuries, Jakob – a bright-eyed boy who’d once lived with his mother, his baby sister and a pet goose called Gigi – went insane.
‘Am I a tramp?’ He ran cold water over his hand. ‘No …’
‘You look like a tramp.’
‘That’s because I am a painter, and the two are easily confused.’
‘Why does your hair look like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like it does.’
‘I cut it myself. I’m getting quite good. I don’t even need a mirror.’
‘You do,’ said the boy. ‘You do need a mirror.’ He peered into the kitchen, observing its odd state: the table pushed up against the wall; the mattress in the middle of the floor; the vegetables and drawings that littered the countertops.
‘Have you stolen those vegetables from the Park?’
‘I have.’ His heart was leaden. Go, go, he wanted to say. But he lowered himself to his haunches, and met the boy at eye level.
The boy stepped past him. ‘Why do you keep your shutters closed?’
‘You know already: I am a shameless vegetable thief. This said, I would be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone I was here stealing vegetables because the police would lock me up.’
Philip didn’t want to say that he, too, understood the fear of prison. ‘Are you foreign?’ he asked.
‘Do I sound foreign?’
‘You do a little.’
‘Well, that’s because I’m Welsh.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Now then!’ He went to the sink and rinsed out a second cup. ‘Tea?’
Philip nodded. Tea was foul but no one had offered it to him before in a grown-up way.
The following day, three cheery taps sounded on the door, and he appeared again, bearing his sketchbook. ‘Father Christmas brought it,’ he said, and, in that moment, something crossed his face. ‘Were you here on Christmas Day?’
‘I was,’ said Otto.
‘Alone?’
‘I’m rather good at being on my own.’
‘Without any goose or presents?’
He smiled. ‘I am Jewish, you see, and we have different holidays.’
‘You’re a Jew?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A Welsh Jew.’
‘A Welsh Jewish painter?’
Otto nodded. ‘A Welsh Jewish painter vegetable thief.’
‘Why do you say “Velsh”?’
He could see the boy trying not to laugh at him. ‘It’s the vay ve speak in Vales.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Truly. For example, you and I would say “Paris”, but Parisians themselves would say “Paree”. It is the same only different.’
‘I can never draw a Spitfire.’ He clutched his sketchbook to him.
‘They are tricky … I may be able to assist. But first, you must tell me your name.’
‘Philip,’ said Philip. He reached into his pocket and held out a boiled sweet. ‘Have it. I don’t mind.’
And Otto saw again the small red lozenge stuck to Jakob’s clenched, dead palm.