During what was left of the night, she slept only fitfully. She dreamed endlessly of Mama – Mama wandering on a mountainside, in the streets, through the rooms of an ever-expanding house, and always searching for Konrad. Sometimes she found him and sometimes she only glimpsed him for a moment before he disappeared. Once Anna found him for her, and Mama hugged her on the beach and laughed delightedly with the sun on the sand behind her. Another time he slipped away from them in Woolworth’s while Anna was buying Mama a hat.
She woke uneasy and depressed, much later than usual, and found the breakfast room deserted, with only a few dirty cups and plates still cluttered on the tables. The proprietress, engaged half-heartedly in clearing them away, stopped at the sight of her.
“Have you heard?” she said. “The Russians are leaving Budapest.” As Anna looked at her, uncomprehending, she repeated it in her thick Berlin accent. “Sie gehen,” she said. “Die Russen gehen,” and produced a newspaper to prove it.
Anna read it while the woman scurried about, clattering the used crockery and turning the stained table cloths. Incredibly, it was true. She could hardly believe it. Why? she wondered. The West must have acted. A secret message from the White House, leaving no room for doubt. All the free countries together, united as they had never been against the Nazis until it was too late. She looked for news of Suez, but only found a small paragraph. Nothing much seemed to be happening there.
“They’ll be happy today in Budapest,” said the woman, putting down some coffee and rolls before her. “Dancing in the streets, it said on the radio. And they’ve pulled down a great statue of Stalin – whatever will they do with it, do you suppose? And they’re going to change everything and have things just the way they want them.”
Anna drank her coffee and felt suddenly better. It was all going to be all right. Unlike the Nazis, the Russians were not going to get away with it. Mama was alive and almost well again. She was going home – Konrad had said so. Just as long as nothing happens to stop it, she thought.
“I can just imagine how they’re feeling in Hungary,” said the woman, lingering by the table with the empty tray in her hands. “When I think of what the Russians did here…” And she embarked on a long rambling story about a soldier who had fired six shots into a stone gnome in her front garden. “And he was shouting, ‘Nazi! Nazi!’ all the time,” she said in a shocked voice. “After all, the gnome was not a Nazi.” After a moment’s thought she added, “And nor, of course, was I.”
Anna struggled to keep a straight face and stuffed herself with the rolls and butter. She did not want to be late for her visit to Mama, especially if she were leaving the following day. Even so, she missed her usual bus and had to wait ten minutes for the next.
It was cold, with dark, drifting clouds which every so often erupted into drizzle, and when at last she arrived at the hospital, the warmth of the entrance hall enveloped her like a cocoon. The receptionist smiled at her – I’m beginning to belong to the place, she thought – and Mama’s little room, with the rain spitting on the double windows and the radiator blasting away, was welcoming and snug.
“Hullo, Mama,” she said. “Isn’t it good about Hungary?”
“Incredible,” said Mama.
She was looking much brighter, sitting up in bed in a fresh nightie, with a newspaper beside her, and began at once to ask about the party and about Max’s departure. “So Konrad drove him straight from the party to the airport,” she said when Anna had described it all. It was the bit that pleased her most.
There were new flowers on her table, as well as a lavish box of chocolates from her office and a coloured card with “Get well soon, honey” on it and a lot of signatures. Konrad had rung up earlier, while she was in her bath, but had left a message that he would ring again. She leaned back into the pillows, relaxed for the first time since she had got better.
“By the way,” she said in the warm, no-nonsense voice which Anna remembered so clearly from her childhood, “the nurse told me what you did when I was in a coma – about you being here so much of the time and sitting on my bed and calling me. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. One doesn’t remember, you see.” She added with curious formality. “She says you may have saved my life. Thank you.”
Anna found herself unexpectedly touched. She cast about for something to answer, but could think of nothing adequate so she grinned and said, as Max might have done, “That’s all right, Mama – any time,” and Mama giggled and said, “You’re dreadful – you’re just as bad as your brother,” which, coming from Mama, she supposed was the nicest thing she could have said.
She looked so much more like herself that she decided to broach the question of leaving.
“Mama,” she said, “I’ve been here nearly a week. I’d really like to go home. Do you think, if I could get a flight tomorrow, you’d be all right?”
She was about to add various qualifications about keeping in touch and not going unless Mama was absolutely sure, when Mama said, in the same sensible voice, “I’m much better now, and after all it’s only ten days till I go away with Konrad. I think I’ll be all right.” Then she said, “But I’ll miss you,” and touched Anna’s hand gently with her fingers. “I’ve hardly talked to you.”
“You were talking to Max.”
“I know,” said Mama. “But I see him so seldom.” She said again, “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll write every day,” said Anna. She had decided this in advance. “Even if it isn’t very interesting. So that if you’re feeling low or Konrad is busy or anything, at least you’ll know that something will happen.”
“That’ll be nice,” said Mama. She thought for a moment. Then she said, “I’m sorry – I realize now that all this has been a lot of trouble to everyone, but, you know, I still can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t have done it.”
Anna’s heart sank.
“For God’s sake, Mama—”
“No, listen, let’s not pretend. Let’s talk about this honestly.” Mama was very serious. “I’m fifty-six, and I’m alone. I’ve done all the things I had to do. I brought you and Max up and got you through the emigration. I looked after Papa and I’ve got his books republished, which I promised him I’d do. Nobody needs me any longer. Why shouldn’t I die if I want to?”
“Of course we need you,” said Anna, but Mama gestured impatiently.
“I said, let’s be honest. I don’t say that you wouldn’t be pleased to see me occasionally, say at Christmas or something, but you don’t need me.” She looked at Anna challengingly. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me honestly, what difference would it have made if I had died?”
Anna knew at once what difference it would have made. She would have blamed herself for the rest of her life for not having, somehow, given Mama enough reason to go on living. But you couldn’t ask people to stay alive just to stop you feeling guilty.
“If you had died,” she said after a moment, “I would have been the child of two suicides.”
Mama disposed of that in a flash. “Nonsense,” she said. “Papa’s suicide didn’t count.” She glared at Anna, daring her to disagree.
“One suicide, then,” said Anna, feeling ridiculous.
They stared at each other, and then Mama began to giggle.
“Honestly,” she said, “can you imagine anyone else having a conversation like this?”
“Not really,” said Anna, and somehow they were back in Putney, in Bloomsbury, in the cramped flat in Paris, in the Swiss village inn – a close, close family surrounded by people different from themselves. As the familiar sensation enveloped her, she suddenly knew what to say.
“I’ll tell you what difference it would have made,” she said. “Though you may not think it enough of a reason. But whenever anything happens to me, anything good like a new job or even something quite small like a party or buying a new dress, my first thought is always, I must tell Mama. I know I don’t always do it. I don’t always write, and when we meet I’ve maybe forgotten. But I always think it. And if you were dead, I wouldn’t be able to think it any more, and then the thing that happened, whatever it was, wouldn’t be nearly as good.”
She looked at Mama expectantly.
“That’s very sweet of you,” said Mama. “But it’s not a reason to go on living.” Then she sniffed, and her eyes were suddenly wet. “But it’s very sweet of you, just the same,” she said.
After this neither of them knew quite what to do, until Mama grabbed hold of the box on the table and said, “Would you like a chocolate?”
Anna made a great fuss of choosing one, and Mama told her, as she had often told her before, about a governess she had had as a child, who, for reasons of daintiness, had insisted on always eating chocolates in one bite. “So you never found out what was inside them,” said Mama indignantly, as always when she remembered the story.
They were just choosing another chocolate each when the telephone rang on the bedside table.
“That’ll be Konrad,” said Mama, and as she put the receiver to her ear, Anna could hear him saying, “Good morning, ma’am.”
“Give him my regards,” she said, and went over to the window, so as not to look as though she were listening.
It was still raining outside, and she could see the tops of the trees, now almost bare, blowing in the wind. Someone had tried to sweep the carefully laid out paths, but already the leaves were drifting back across them from the grass.
“Oh yes, I’m much better,” said Mama behind her, and went on to talk about what she had eaten and what the doctor had said. Some birds—sparrows, she thought – had found an old piece of bread and were pecking at it, jostling each other and pushing each other away. She could see their feathers glistening with the rain, but they did not seem to mind.
“Have you fixed up about your leave?” said Mama. “Because, if we’re going to book the hotel—”
The piece of bread, pecked by one of the birds, rose up into the air to land a foot or so away, and all the rest half-hopped, half-flew to follow it.
“What do you mean?” Mama’s voice suddenly sounded different. “What do you mean, see what happens in the office first?”
Anna tried, without success, to keep her mind on the sparrows who had now pulled the bread in half.
“But you said – you promised!” Mama’s voice was rising. Stealing a glance at her, Anna could see that her face was flushed and upset.
“Well, I’ve been ill as well. Don’t I deserve some consideration? For heaven’s sake, Konrad, what do you think I’m going to do?”
Oh God, thought Anna. She took a step towards Mama with some idea of offering support, but at the sight of her face, closed to everything except the crackle from the telephone, abandoned it.
“Yes, I know the work is important, but this is the one thing that’s kept me going. Surely Erwin could manage. Why are you suddenly so concerned for him?” Mama was biting back her tears, and her voice was almost out of control, “Well, how do you know it is serious? Are you sure it’s really Erwin you’re worried about and not someone quite different?” The telephone crackled, and she shouted, “No, I don’t believe you. I don’t know what to believe. For all I know, she’s there with you now, or listening on the extension.”
“Mama—” said Anna, but there was no stopping her.
“I’m not hysterical,” yelled Mama. “I’ve been ill, and I nearly died, and I wish to God I had.” She was crying now, and angrily wiping the tears away with her hand. “I wanted to die. You know I wanted to die. Why on earth didn’t you let me?”
The telephone spat, and her face suddenly went rigid.
“What do you mean?” she cried. “Konrad, what do you mean?”
But he had rung off.
Anna went over to the bed and sat cautiously on the edge. “What’s happened?” she said in as matter of fact a voice as she could manage. She suddenly felt very tired.
Mama took a trembling breath. “He hasn’t applied for leave,” she brought out at last. “He doesn’t know if he can get away.” She turned her head away. “I always knew,” she said indistinctly into the sheets. “I always knew it was no good – that it could never come right.”
“Mama,” said Anna, “what exactly did he say?”
Mama looked at her with her hurt blue eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something about Erwin being ill. And then, at the end—”
“Erwin is ill,” said Anna. “He was sick yesterday. Hildy told me.” But Mama was not listening.
“He said something about it not being the first time. I said I wanted to die, and he said – I couldn’t quite catch it, but I’m sure he said, ‘Well, it isn’t the first time, is it?’” She stared at Anna, her face working nervously. “Why on earth should he say that?”
Anna felt as though a huge stone were rolling slowly towards her and there was no way of escape. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps he was just upset.”
“It didn’t sound like that.”
“Oh God, Mama, how do I know what he meant?” She suddenly wanted nothing further to do with it, not with Mama, not with Konrad, not with any of them. “It’s not my business,” she shouted. “I came here because you were ill, and I’ve done my best to make you better. I can’t do anything more. It’s too complicated for me. I can’t tell you how to run your life.”
“Nobody asked you to.” Mama was glaring at her and she glared back for a moment, but could not keep it up. “What’s the matter with you?” asked Mama.
“Nothing,” she said, and then, to her relief, there was a knock at the door and a nurse came in.
“Excuse me,” she said. (It was the friendly one.) “I’d like just to take a peep at your telephone.”
They both watched her walk across to the bedside table, and heard the tiny ping as she adjusted the receiver on its support. “There,” she said. “The cord had caught under it.” She smiled at Mama. “Dr Rabin telephoned for you. We couldn’t get through to your room, so he left a message with the switchboard. He’s on his way to see you.”
“Now?” said Mama.
“That’s right. I told him he mustn’t stay long because it’s nearly time for your lunch, and then you must have your rest. All right?”
“Yes,” said Mama, looking confused. As soon as the nurse had gone, she turned to Anna and said, “It’s no distance in the car. He’ll be here in a moment.”
“I’ll go.”
“Could you just – I’d like to wash my face.”
“Of course.”
She climbed out of bed, looking as she had looked in the mornings in Putney, the pink nightdress clinging to her middle-aged legs (they were short and chubby like Anna’s), the childlike eyes tense. While she poured water on her face with her hands and nervously combed her crisp grey hair, Anna straightened the sheets. Then she helped Mama back into bed and tucked the bedclothes round her.
“All right?” she said. “You look very nice.”
Mama bit her lip and nodded.
“I’m sure it’ll all be fine.” She tried to think of something else to say – something that would give Mama courage, that would make her say all the right things to Konrad and at the same time, somehow, exonerate herself – but there was nothing.
“See you later,” she said. Then she smiled hypocritically and left.
As she passed through the entrance hall, she saw Konrad coming up the steps outside. For a moment she thought of intercepting him – “Please don’t tell Mama that I told you…” But what was the use? Instead, she went and stood behind a group of people buying flowers at the kiosk, and he stumped past with his stick without seeing her. She did not dare look up until after he had passed. From the back, with his thinning hair disarranged by the wind, he looked old – too old, she thought, to be involved in a love affair, let alone a triangular one.
Outside, the cold stung her face and she walked as fast as she could down the wide, windswept road. It was no longer raining, but the temperature must have dropped several degrees, for her coat seemed suddenly too thin. The wind blew right through it, round her shoulders and up her sleeves, and since she had no idea, in any case, where she was going, she turned down a side street to escape from it.
Here it was more sheltered, and she slowed down a little, though still keeping her mind on her surroundings and on putting one foot in front of the other. She had no wish to think of Mama’s room in the hospital, or of what she and Konrad might now be saying to each other.
“I can’t cope with all that,” she said aloud.
There was no one to hear her except a dog loitering in the gutter. No people. They were all at work, she supposed, rebuilding Germany. She passed only two or three cars, a boy on a bicycle and an old man swathed in jackets and scarves, snipping away in one of the overgrown gardens which edged the pavement.
What shall I do? she thought, sinking her chin into her collar against the cold. She couldn’t go on walking about for ever. Sooner or later she would have to go back to Mama – and what would happen then? I’ll have to find out from Konrad what he said to her, she thought, but her heart sank at the prospect.
At the end of the street, the view became more open. A main road led to a square with shops and buses and a taxi rank. Roseneck said a sign, to her surprise. When she was small, she had come here once a week for her dancing class. She had come on the tram, the fare money tucked inside her glove, and when the conductor called out the stop, she had jumped off and run across – where?
The trams were gone, the square had been rebuilt, and she recognized nothing. She stood disconsolately in the icy wind, trying to work out where the tram stop would have been, so as not to think, instead, how Mama was probably feeling about her at this moment, but it was no use. It’s all gone wrong, she thought, meaning both the business with Mama and her unrecognizable surroundings. She longed for somewhere familiar and reassuring. A sign in the road said, Richtung Grunewald, and she suddenly knew what she wanted to do.
It felt strange, giving the taxi driver the old address, and she half-expected him to look surprised. But he only repeated, “number ten,” and drove off.
Hagen Strasse, where buses now ran instead of trams, Königsallee, with the wind bending branches and tearing through the awnings outside the shops. Turn right into the tree-lined side street, and there they were. It had taken no time at all.
“That’s the house,” said the driver, as she lingered on the pavement. He seemed anxious to see her actually go in, and only left her there reluctantly. She watched him drive away and disappear around the corner. Then she walked a few steps along – there was nobody about. She found a tree to lean against and stared across at the house, waiting for some kind of emotion.
The house stared back at her. It looked like anywhere else, and she felt put out. There are the steps I used to run up, she told herself. That’s where the currant bushes used to be. That is the slope where Max taught me to ride his bicycle.
Nothing. The house stood there like any other. There was a crack in one of the windows, some yellow chrysanthemums were shivering in a flower bed, and a dog was barking shrilly somewhere inside.
But I remembered it all the other day, she thought. She wanted to feel again as she had felt then, to sense with the same ghostly clarity what it had been like to be small, to speak only German and to feel utterly secure in the knowledge of Mama’s existence. It seemed to her that if only she could do this, everything would come right. Everything between Mama and herself would be the same as before.
I wore brown lace-up boots, she thought. I had a satchel on my back and I used to run up those steps after school and shout, “Ist Mami da?”
“Ist Mami da?” she said aloud.
It sounded merely silly.
On the other side of the road a woman had come out of a house with a shopping bag and was staring across at her. She began to walk slowly down the street. The house next door had been completely rebuilt. Funny, she thought, that she hadn’t noticed it the other day. The one beyond that she could not remember at all. Then she came to the corner and stopped again.
At least this still looked the same. There were the rowan trees, now quite bare, and there was the place where the sandbox had been. There was even the lamppost, unnoticed by her before, which Max had once climbed in a game of pirates. She stood looking at it all for a long time. Someone had played here once, she thought, but it did not feel as though it had been her.
At last she became aware of the wind in her back and her feet which were almost frozen. Well, that’s over, she thought without knowing exactly what she meant by it. She turned and walked briskly back up the street, a young Englishwoman in a thin tweed coat. It was really cold, as though it might be going to snow. In the Königsallee she found a cruising taxi, and asked the driver to take her to Konrad’s office.
JRSO – the Jewish Restitution Successor Office – was housed in a brand-new building not far from the Kurfürsten Damm. There were two receptionists, one American and one German, presiding over a mass of forms and pamphlets which explained how to claim restitution for anything of which you might have been robbed by the Nazis, including your nearest and dearest. A few people sat round the walls, waiting for appointments. There was a plan showing the various departments, and arrows pointing the way to go.
She noticed that the mention of Konrad’s name was received with respect, and it was not until she was actually going up in the lift that she remembered about his secretary. Christ, she thought, I suppose she’ll be there. What on earth will she say? Somehow, she imagined a whole gaggle of girls – I might not even know which one it is, she thought – but when she opened the door to his outer office, there was only one. She was sitting behind a typewriter, talking to a man in a shabby coat, and seemed relieved at the interruption.
“Guten Tag,” she said with the formal bow of the head that even women practised in Germany. “Can I help you?”
She was only a few years older than herself, thin, with a slightly spinsterish quality, her face plain but not unpleasant. Was this Mama’s deadly rival? Anna introduced herself, and it was clear at once that she was. The girl tensed up and said stiffly, “I believe I spoke to you the other day on the telephone.” Then she said, “I am glad that your mother is better,” and added, “it has all been a great worry to Dr Rabin.”
It appeared that Konrad was not yet back.
“He had to go out unexpectedly to attend a meeting,” said the girl, apparently believing it, and Anna settled down uncomfortably to wait, while the girl went back to the old man in the coat.
She had never been in Konrad’s office before, and while the man mumbled what sounded like a long list of names, she took in the filing cabinets covering the walls to the ceiling – Abrahams, Cohen, Levy, Zuckerman, read the labels on the drawers – the piles of letters on the girl’s desk, the sound of typing through a half-open door.
“I know,” said the girl in her slight Berlin accent. “But there is really no need. You gave Dr Rabin all this information earlier this morning.”
The old man seemed troubled but insistent. He had a big brown envelope and kept putting a shaky hand inside it to feel for something.
“It’s the spirit, you see,” he said. “The names – well, they’re just names, aren’t they? Name, age, last-known address – I thought they ought to see…” He lost touch with what he was saying, and Anna saw that his hand with its bony knuckles and wrinkled skin now held a sheaf of ancient photographs.
“It’s the faces,” he said. “You can’t understand without the faces.” He suddenly put the photographs on the desk in an untidy spread, disarranging a pencil and some papers. The girl drew back slightly.
“My cousin Samuel,” he said, pointing. “He was an electrician with the Post Office. Age 36. Last-known address Treblinka. My brother-in-law Arnold, 32. My young niece Miriamne and her brother Alfred—”
“I know, Herr Birnbaum.” The girl was clearly put out. “But you see, it isn’t necessary. As long as we have the information on the forms, there is no problem about compensation.” Her hand moved towards the photographs, wishing to return them to him, but did not quite dare. “We have all the facts we require,” she said. “The matter is being dealt with.”
Evidently she liked things tidy.
The old man looked at her with his tired eyes. “The gentleman I saw this morning—”
“He’s not here,” said the girl, but he went straight on talking.
“I think he understood. Please—” He touched one of the pictures with his hand. “I should like him to see.”
The girl hesitated. Then, perhaps because she remembered Anna’s presence, she gathered them up in a pile. “I’ll put them on his desk,” she said.
He watched her while she opened the door to the inner office and put them inside. “It really isn’t necessary,” she could not help saying when she returned. You could see it had upset her. But the old man’s face had spread into a quavering smile.
“Thank you,” he said. “I shall be easier now.” He still seemed to feel that he had not properly explained. “It seems the least you can do,” he murmured, “that they should be seen.” Then he clutched the empty envelope to his coat and shuffled out of the door.
The girl glanced at Anna after he had gone. “He was here for an hour this morning, talking to Dr Rabin,” she said, perhaps fearing that Anna had thought her impatient. “And it isn’t even Dr Rabin’s job. There is a special department to deal with people like him, but he was so insistent…” She adjusted her hair in its neat bun which did not need adjusting. “Dr Rabin always helps people,” she said. “But they wear him out.”
“He’s a very kind man,” said Anna.
The girl lit up at once. “Oh, he is,” she said. “He certainly is.” She was clearly bursting with examples of Konrad’s kindness but, realising that Anna was hardly a suitable confidante, picked up some papers on her desk. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with my work.” She put a sheet into her typewriter and began to type.
Anna watched her surreptitiously – the broad, competent hands moving efficiently across the keys (Mama could never type like that, she thought) the tidy blouse, the earnest, dutiful expression. She reminded her of someone, but she could not think who. It was hard to think of her as a rival to Mama, and yet, she thought, if one were very tired…
“Dr Rabin may have gone straight out to lunch,” said the girl. “Would you rather come back later?”
But before Anna could answer, the door opened and Konrad stumped in. He looked startled at the sight of her, but quickly recovered his balance.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” he said in what she supposed must be his official voice. “I wanted to speak to you.” He added, “I see you’ve met my secretary, Ilse.”
Ilse was already disposing of his coat and stick. “Did you have an interesting meeting?” she asked, as though it really mattered to her.
He avoided Anna’s eye. “Quite interesting,” he said, and plunged quickly into the list of messages which she had noted down for him. He sighed at her account of Birnbaum and his photographs. “All right,” he said. “I’ll think of something to do with them.” Then he looked at his watch. “Time you went for your lunch. And perhaps you’d ask them to send us up some sandwiches. Oh, and Ilse, afterwards you might like to have a word with Schmidt of Welfare. I met him in the lift just now, and I was talking to him about the arrangements for your mother—”
Anna did not listen to the details, but whatever arrangements Konrad had suggested, they were obviously very welcome.
He waved Ilse’s thanks aside. “Off you go,” he said. “And don’t forget the sandwiches.”
She paused for a moment at the door. “Ham?” she said, blushing a little and smiling. It was clearly a joke between them. He did not catch on for a moment. Then he laughed loudly. “That’s right,” he said, “ham,” and she went.
Once in his office, he waved Anna into a chair and sank into his own with a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been a difficult morning. As you can imagine.” He absently fingered the photographs on his desk. “You needn’t worry about your mother,” he said. “I’ve calmed her down. I’ve told her that, whatever happens, I’ll take her away for a short holiday within a fortnight. She was quite happy with that.”
She felt a great sense of relief. “What about Erwin’s illness?” she asked.
“Oh—” He gestured impatiently. “Hildy rang me this morning in a great state. It seems they had to call the doctor last night, and he mentioned that it could he hepatitis. It probably isn’t. Erwin sounds better already. But of course I’ll have to cope with his work, and Ilse threw a small fit – about that and other things – and then poor little Birnbaum… I’m afraid it all got on top of me.” He had picked up one of the photographs and showed it to her. A small, dark-eyed face, faded and blurred. “‘Rachel Birnbaum, aged six.’ No wonder he’s a little crazy.”
“Did he lose all his family?”
He nodded. “Fourteen relations, including his wife and three children. He’s the sole survivor. The thing is, he doesn’t want compensation. We’ve already sent him quite a large sum. He just put it in a drawer.”
“What, then?”
He raised his eyebrows ironically. “He wants them to understand what they’ve done,” he said. “Only that.”
There was a knock at the door of the outer office, and a boy appeared with sandwiches. Konrad divided them between two paper plates with a napkin on each.
“Well, now,” he said as they began to eat, “I’ve got your ticket. Your plane leaves at nine tomorrow morning. I’ll drive you to the airport, of course.”
She was taken aback. “But Mama – are you sure Mama will be all right?”
“I told you.”
“But what about—?”
“If you mean the business of the Professor’s pills which I so stupidly alluded to on the phone, I’ve persuaded her that she told me about it herself.”
“And she believed you?”
He nodded, almost regretfully. “Oh yes,” he said. “She believed me.”
She felt confused and not entirely reassured.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Forget you ever told me. It didn’t matter anyway. You’ve made me feel less guilty, and for that I’m grateful.”
“And you’ll look after her?”
“Of course.”
“Because without you—” She still was not quite sure.
“Without me, she can’t carry on. I make her feel safe.” He sighed. “I make everyone feel safe. Her. Ilse. My wife and daughters. For heaven’s sake,” he said, “I even make Ilse’s mother feel safe.”
She laughed a little, uncertain what to say. “What will you do about her?” she asked at last.
“Ilse’s mother?”
“No.”
“Look,” he said, “I can only do my best. I’ve found her another job. With more pay. She starts in a fortnight.”
“And she’ll be content with that?”
He was suddenly on the defensive. “It’s as I told you,” he said. “I can only do my best.”
After they had eaten, he got a file from one of the drawers and said in his official voice, “You know of course that your family will be getting compensation. I advised your mother on the claim – perhaps you would like to see.”
She had known, but forgotten, and now it seemed somehow incongruous. The file had Papa’s name on it, and he saw her looking at it.
“I met him once, you know,” he said.
“Really?” She was surprised.
“At a refugee function in London. Of course I didn’t know your mother then. I admired him very much.”
“Did you?” she said, touched.
“He was so witty and interesting. And the things he knew. And his enthusiasm – just like your mother. They were very good together. Both emotionally and intellectually,” said Konrad ponderously, “I have never been in their league.”
“But Konrad—”
“No,” he said, “I haven’t, and I know it. I have no feeling for nature, I’d rather see a Western than opera any day, and these days especially, I get tired.”
“But she loves you.”
“I know,” he said. “I make her feel safe. And that’s the most confusing thing of all because, as you may have noticed, I’m really a rather unreliable fellow.”
Somehow the words “unreliable fellow” sounded very odd, pronounced in his refugee accent.
“You’re not,” she said, smiling to make it all into a joke.
He only looked at her.
“But you will look after her?”
“I told you,” he said, and opened the file.
They looked at the papers together. There were claims for her and Max’s interrupted education and a string of things for Papa: loss of property, loss of earnings – he explained it all, why he had claimed in this way rather than another, and how much money they could expect to get.
“Is there nothing for Mama?”
He bristled slightly, thinking that she was criticizing. “She claims in your father’s name,” he explained. “As his widow, all this money will come to her. It should help her quite a bit. Why? Should there be something? Is there something she should have claimed for that she didn’t tell me?”
“I don’t know.” She felt suddenly silly. “Loss of confidence?”
“Nu,” He threw up his hands. “If one could claim for that, we’d all be claiming.”
He insisted on coming down in the lift with her to get her a taxi, and as they went out through the big glass doors of the building, they met Ilse coming in. She was carrying a Thermos flask and looked flustered when she saw them.
“You’ve already eaten,” she cried. “And I’d got you this. It’s from home – they filled it up with coffee for me across the road.”
“Wonderful,” said Konrad. “I’ll drink it in a minute.”
“You need it, this weather,” said Ilse. “I’ve got some sugar in my pocket. And I know where I can borrow a proper china cup.”
She smoothed the Thermos with her hand, looking house-proud and faintly self-satisfied, and Anna suddenly knew of whom she reminded her. Apart from being so much younger, she looked remarkably like Konrad’s wife.
It was even colder when she got out of the taxi at the hospital, and she had to wait a few minutes before seeing Mama.
“Sister is with her,” said the nurse, and when she finally went in, she found Mama sitting up in a chair. She was wearing the flowered dressing-gown she had bought soon after going to Germany and was making some kind of a list. Even though it was only early afternoon, the day had become very dark, and in the light of the table lamp Mama looked frailer than she had done in bed.
“They want to move me to the convalescent home next week,” she said. “And then I’ll be going away with Konrad. I must organize my clothes.”
“So everything’s all right.”
“Oh yes.” But Mama still looked jumpy. “It was just this silly business of Erwin’s illness. And Konrad – I do realize all this has been a great strain on him. And of course he’s having a lot of trouble with the German girl. He’s found her another job, you know.”
“Yes,” said Anna.
“He’s booking our hotel this afternoon. It’s right up in the mountains. We’ve been there before – it should be lovely.”
“That’s good.”
“And the sister thinks I should practise getting up a bit, especially as I’m going to the convalescent home.” Suddenly her eyes had filled with tears and she was crying again.
“Mama – what is it, Mama?” Anna put her arms round her, finding her somehow smaller than she used to be. “Don’t you want to go to the convalescent home? Isn’t it all right?”
“Oh, I think it’s quite nice.” Mama blinked and sniffed. “It’s just – the thought of the change. Of moving again. The sister says it’s got a ping-pong table,” she said through her tears.
“Well, you’ll like that.”
“I know. I’m just being silly.” She rubbed her eyes. “I think this kind of poisoning – it is a kind of poisoning, the doctor said so – it leaves one rather confused. Do you know, Konrad was talking about something I once told him, and I could remember absolutely nothing about it. I mean, I couldn’t remember telling him. Anyway –” She sniffed again – “It didn’t really matter.”
“I’m sure it didn’t.”
“No. Well, anyway, I’d better have some things washed and cleaned.” She wrote something more on her list. “I thought I’d ask Hildy.”
“Mama,” said Anna, “when you come back from your holiday – if you’re still not quite all right, or if you just suddenly feel like it – why don’t you come to London?”
“To London?” Mama looked alarmed. “What should I do in London? Anyway, I’m coming to London at Christmas, aren’t I?”
“Yes, of course. I only thought, if you suddenly got fed up—”
“Oh, I see. You mean, if things don’t work out with Konrad.”
“Not necessarily –”
“If things don’t work out with Konrad,” said Mama, “I’m certainly not going to hang round your and Max’s necks.”
There was a pause. Anna could see something drifting slowly down outside the window. “I think it’s trying to snow,” she said. They both watched it for a moment.
“Look, Mama,” she said at last. “I’m sure everything will be fine with Konrad. But if by any chance it weren’t, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I mean, you’d still have Max and me, and your job if you want it, or you could easily get one in another part of Germany. You’ve done it lots of times before.”
“But it would be different now.”
“Well, it’s never quite the same, but – look, Mama, I’m not a child. I do know what it’s like.” Suddenly she remembered with great clarity how she herself had felt, years before, when she had been jilted by a man she loved. “You think that your life is finished, but it isn’t. It’s awful for a while. You feel that nothing is any good, you can’t bear to look at anything or to listen to anything or even to think of anything. But then, especially if you’re working, it gradually gets better. And you meet new people, and things happen, and suddenly, though life perhaps isn’t as good as it was, it’s still quite possible. No, really,” she said, as Mama seemed about to interrupt, “for someone like you, with an interesting job, and no money worries, and us—”
“You’ve described it very well,” said Mama. “But there is one thing you don’t know. You don’t know how it feels to be fifty-six years old.”
“But I can imagine.”
“No,” said Mama. “You can’t. It’s quite true, I could do all the things you say. But I don’t want to. I’ve made enough new starts. I’ve made enough decisions. I don’t want to make any more. I don’t even,” said Mama, her mouth quivering, “want to go to that bloody convalescent home with the ping-pong table.”
“But that’s because you’re not well.”
“No,” said Mama. “It’s because I’m fifty-six, and I’ve had enough.”
The snow was still drifting past the window.
“One of the doctors was talking to me yesterday,” said Mama. “You know, they have all this awful psychology now, even in Germany. He thinks that when someone tries to kill themselves, it’s a cry for help – that’s what he called it. Well, all I know is that when I had swallowed those pills, I felt completely happy. I was lying on my bed – they take a while to work, you know – and it was getting dark outside, and I was looking at the sky and thinking, there’s nothing I need to do. It no longer matters. I’ll never, ever, have to make another decision. I’ve never in my life felt so peaceful.”
“Yes, but now – now that everything’s changed and you’re going on holiday and –” Anna had a little difficulty in getting this out – “if everything is all right with Konrad, won’t you be quite glad?”
“I don’t know,” said Mama. “I don’t know.” She frowned, trying to think exactly what she meant. “If I had died, you see, at least I should have known where I was.”
It did not occur to her that she had said anything odd, and she looked surprised when Anna laughed. Then she understood and laughed too. “Why do you always think I’m so funny?” she said delightedly, like a child who has inadvertently made the grown-ups laugh. “I’m really very serious.”
Her snub nose stuck out absurdly under her tired blue eyes and she sat there in her flowery dressing gown, needing to be looked after.
Later the nurse brought them tea with some little cakes. (“Plätzchen,” said Mama. “Do you remember how Heimpi used to make them?”) Konrad rang up to say that he had booked the hotel and also to remind Anna that he would pick her up early next morning.
After this, Mama went happily back to bed and, even though it was now quite dark outside, they left the curtains drawn back, so that they could watch the snow. It was too wet to stick, but of course, said Anna, it would be different in the Alps. Mama asked about her new job and, when Anna explained about it, said, “Papa always said that you ought to write.” She only spoiled it a little by adding, “But this job is just for television, isn’t it?”
Towards seven, the sister came back and said that Mama had had a very tiring day, and Anna shouldn’t stay too long. After this, it became more difficult to talk.
“Well—” said Anna at last.
Mama looked up at her from the bed. “It’s been so nice today,” she said. “Just like the old days.”
“It has,” said Anna. “I’ve enjoyed it too.”
“I wish you could stay longer.”
Instant panic.
“I can’t,” said Anna, much too quickly. “I’ve got to get back to my job. And Richard.”
“Oh, I know, I know,” said Mama. “I only meant—”
“Of course,” said Anna. “I wish I could stay, too.”
She finally left her with the nurse who had brought in her supper.
“I’ll write every day,” she said as she embraced her.
Mama nodded.
“And look after yourself. And have a lovely time in the Alps. And if you suddenly feel like it, come to London. Just ring us up and come.”
Mama nodded again. “Goodbye, my darling,” she said, very moved.
Anna looked back at her from the door. She was leaning back in the bed as she had so often done in the Putney boarding house, her grey hair spread on the pillow, her blue eyes brave and appallingly vulnerable, her nose ridiculous.
“Goodbye, Mama,” she said.
She was almost out of the room when Mama called after her, “And give my love again to Max.”
She came out of the hospital for the last time and suddenly didn’t know what to do next. The snow was trying to stick. It glistened patchily on the invisible grass and, more thinly, in the drive, making a pale shine in the darkness. A taxi drew up, white flakes whirling in the beam of its headlamps, and deposited a woman in a fur coat.
“Wollen Sie irgendwo hin?” asked the driver.
It was not yet eight o’clock, and she could not face going back to the hotel, “Ja, bitte,” she said, and gave him the Goldblatts’ address.
She found Hildy in a state of euphoria. Erwin was much better and the doctor, who had only recently left, had assured her that he was suffering not from hepatitis but the current form of mild gastric ’flu.
“So we are celebrating with cognac,” she said, handing Anna a glass. “We are drinking to the hepatitis which did not catch him.”
“And also to the brave Hungarians who have defied the Russians,” Erwin called through the half-open door. She could see him sitting up in bed, a glass of cognac in his hand, the billowing quilt covered with newspapers which rustled every time he moved.
“Look at this,” he cried. “Have you seen it?”
“Ach, poor Anna, from one invalid to the next,” said Hildy, but he was holding out the illustrated paper so eagerly that she went in to see. It showed a fat, frightened man emerging from a house with his hands above his head. “Hungarian civilians arrest a member of the hated Secret Police,” said the caption. In another picture, a secret policeman had been shot and his notebook which, the caption explained, contained the names of his victims, had been left open on his chest. There were pictures of dazed political prisoners released from jail, of children clambering over captured Russian tanks, of the Hungarian flag, the Russian hammer and sickle torn from its centre, floating over the giant pair of boots which was all that was left of Stalin’s statue.
“What they have done!” said Erwin. “What these wonderful people have done!” He raised the cognac to his lips. “I drink to them,” he cried, and emptied his glass, which Anna felt sure could not be good for him. But she too was moved, and glad for a moment to think of something other than Mama.
She smiled and emptied her glass also. It was surprising how much better she felt almost at once.
“Wonderful,” murmured Erwin and was refilling both of them from the bottle on his bedside table, when Hildy took over.
“So now it’s enough,” she said. “You’ll only give her your germs.”
She took the bottle and carried both it and Anna off to the kitchen, where she was in the middle of chopping vegetables for soup.
“And so,” she said, as she settled Anna on a stool. “What’s new?”
Anna was not sure where to start. “I’m going home tomorrow,” she said at last.
“Good,” said Hildy. “And how is your Mama?”
The fumes from the cognac mingled with the fumes from Hildy’s chopped onions, and she was suddenly tired of pretending.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking hard at Hildy. “All right, I suppose, if Konrad stays with her. If not… I don’t know what will happen if he doesn’t.”
Hildy looked back at her equally hard.
“So what are you going to do about it?” she said. “Stick them together with glue?”
“Of course not. But—” She wanted desperately to be reassured. “It seems awful to leave her,” she said at last. “But I can’t bear to stay. And I think I’ve really made it worse by being here. Because I told Konrad – I told him something about Mama. He says it didn’t matter, but I think it did.”
Hildy swept the onions into a saucepan and started on the carrots. “Konrad is old enough to know if it mattered or not,” she said. “And your mother is old enough to know if she wants to live or die.”
It seemed an absurd over-simplification, and Anna felt suddenly angry. “It’s not as easy as that,” she said. “It’s easy to talk, but it’s not the same as coping with it. I think that if your mother had tried to kill herself, you’d feel very different.”
There was a silence because Hildy had stopped chopping. “My mother was not at all like yours,” she said. “She was not so clever and not so pretty. She was a big woman with a big Jewish nose who liked to grow Zimmerlinden – you know, house plants. There was one that she’d grown right round the living-room window, she called it ‘die grüne Prinzessin’ – the green princess. And in 1934, when Erwin and I left Germany, she refused to come with us because, she said, whoever would look after it?”
“Oh, Hildy, I’m sorry,” said Anna, knowing what was coming, but Hildy remained matter of fact.
“We think she died in Theresienstadt,” she said. “We’re not quite sure – there were so many, you see. And perhaps you’re right, what I say is too simple. But it seems to me your mother is lucky, because at least she can choose for herself if she wants to live or die.”
She went back to chopping the carrots. Anna watched the glint of the knife as they collapsed into slices.
“You see, what are you going to do?” said Hildy. “Go to your mother each morning and say, ‘Please, Mama, live another day’? You think I haven’t thought about my mother, how I should have made her come with us? After all, she could have grown Zimmerlinden also in Finchley. But of course we did not know then how it would be. And you can’t make people do things – they want to decide for themselves.”
“I don’t know,” said Anna. “I just don’t know.”
“I’m a few years younger than your mother,” said Hildy. “But she and Konrad and I – we’re all the same generation. Since the Nazis came, we haven’t belonged in any place, only with refugees like ourselves. And we do what we can. I make soup and bake cakes. Your mother plays bridge and counts the miles of Konrad’s car. And Konrad – he likes to help people and to feel that they love him. It’s not wonderful, but it’s better than Finchley, and it’s a lot better than Theresienstadt.”
“I suppose so.”
“You don’t suppose – you know. Anyway, what can you do about us? Make the Nazis not have happened? You going to put us all back in 1932? And if your mother, with her temperament, says this life is not good enough for her, you going to make her go on living whether she wants to or not?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna again.
“She doesn’t know,” said Hildy to the carrots. “Look, can’t you understand, it’s not your business!” She swept the carrots into the pan with the rest and sat down at the table. “You want something to eat?”
“No,” said Anna. “I mean, thank you, I’m not hungry.”
Hildy shook her head. “Pale green, you look.” She picked up the cognac and filled up her glass. “Here, drink. And then home to bed.”
Anna tried to think how many glasses of cognac she had already had, but it was too difficult, so she drank this one as well.
“I would just like –” she said, “I would just like to know that she will be all right.”
“Nu, that you know. Konrad is a good man, and they have been together so long. He will certainly stay with her, at least for a while.”
“And then?”
“Then?” Hildy raised both hands in the age-old Jewish gesture. “Who can worry about then? Then, what do we know, everything will probably be quite different.”
It was snowing more than ever as the taxi drove her home to the hotel. She leaned back, dazed, and looked out at the flickering whiteness racing past the window. It shone when caught by the light, broke up, whirled, disappeared, touched the window from nowhere and quickly melted. You could see nothing beyond it. You might be anywhere, she thought.
Her head swam with the cognac she had drunk, and she pressed it against the glass to cool it.
Perhaps out there, she thought, is a different world. Perhaps out there, as Hildy said, it really had, none of it, ever happened. Out there Papa was still sitting in the third row of the stalls, Mama was smiling on the beach, and Max and the small person who had once been herself were running up some steps, shouting, “Ist Mami da?”
Out there the goods trains had never carried anything but goods. There had been no torchlight processions and no brown uniforms.
Perhaps out there Heimpi was still stitching new black eyes on her pink rabbit. Hildy’s mother was still tending her plants. And Rachel Birnbaum, aged six, was safe at home in her bed.