House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  Karl looked at the sheet of figures and rehearsed Otto’s lesson in his mind. He did like numbers, he decided. Numbers didn’t give a shit who you were or who you had been. Much like Otto. Otto was his first great friend. Karl had had army pals and, before that, pals in the hostels and sewers, but it had been more like allegiances. Boys ganged up together for a few days or weeks to see if they could find better food, a better place to scavenge as a crew. One didn’t talk beyond planning where to try for a meal in the morning, or who had seen the most ferocious, fattest rats. Otto wanted to know what he thought and felt about all sorts of things. Often Karl had no opinion. He made them up on the spot, not wanting to disappoint. In whispers, between gasps and coughs, Otto told him about his own world, a different Austria. It sounded nice. Maybe even nice enough to fight for. Maybe. Karl liked it best when Otto told him about his family, his sister Greta. She sounded all right. She sounded as if she would have managed as a Kanaltrotter, and that remained the highest compliment Karl could bestow.

  A little while later the dinner bell sounded. Otto didn’t stir and Karl had to wake him. They walked inside slowly, Otto leaning on his arm. Karl helped him to sit up in his bed, before climbing onto his own next to it. They watched as the nurses pushed a trolley around the ward. It held a bucket filled with thick soup and another with bread. Each man was given a bowl and two slices of bread. There would be nothing else, before coffee and bread in the morning. At Otto’s bed the nurse paused, and pulled out a parcel from under the trolley.

  ‘This came for you,’ she said in French.

  ‘Thank you,’ answered Otto in Russian. His voice was barely a whisper, but the nurse understood the intent and smiled.

  Otto ignored his bowl of soup and turned his attention to the Red Cross parcel. Karl came and sat on his bed, spooning his soup quickly, and carefully cleaning the bowl with the coarse rye bread.

  ‘I’ve had worse meals in the Archduke’s army,’ he observed. ‘What’s in it? Who sent it?’

  Otto turned it over and saw, with a pang fierce enough to bring on a choking fit, his sister’s handwriting. ‘Sender: Mrs Albert Goldbaum, Fontmell Abbey, Hampshire, England.’

  ‘I suppose it only got here because it’s from England. They’re the Russkis’ allies, after all,’ said Karl.

  The parcel had been opened already and thoroughly searched, the contents hastily repacked. The box was large, but mostly empty.

  ‘They bloody steal everything,’ complained Karl. ‘Is there anything left?’

  Otto pulled out a tin of Fortnum & Mason fish soup – clearly no one had fancied it enough to filch it. The gold-embossed label looked oddly out of place.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Karl.

  Otto searched the box and found, wedged at the bottom, a slim volume of Anna Barbauld’s poems. He glanced at it in confusion. He had no interest in poetry, and hadn’t known Greta had, either. He felt a shiver of childish disappointment – what a careless choice to send. Then, as he examined it, he realised that beneath the binding was a letter and a packet. Greta had selected a book that she considered no one would bother to steal. He prised out the envelopes and opened them with fearful tenderness. Seeds spilled onto the white sheet, along with a handful of faded flowers. He sniffed them and inhaled the dry, herbal scent of an English summer. Otto held the letter to his breast. He couldn’t bear to read it. There was nothing she could write that wouldn’t cut through him: he did not want a glimpse of Greta’s life, for it had diverged so distinctly and painfully from his. He willed himself to look down:

  Brew the chamomile flowers in water that is not quite boiling.

  He laughed. It was perfect, of course it was. She had written him the only letter he could read and reread.

  ‘What are those?’ asked Karl, prodding the tiny brown seeds.

  Otto glanced at the letter. ‘Edelweiss,’ he mouthed.

  ‘Let’s plant them by the bench,’ said Karl.

  Otto shook his head, and reached for his pencil:

  They need three months of frost to trigger germination. They want a Russian winter.

  Otto looked at his friend and, for the first time in weeks, hoped he would live long enough to see Greta’s edelweiss flower. He pictured the hospital wreathed in snow, transformed. There would still be soup. A winter here, with walls and a roof, would be better than one on the front. It might be cold, but as he lay shivering beneath his blanket he would think of the edelweiss seeds on the windowsill, slowly stratifying, poised for spring and white flowers.

  The next morning Otto waited for Dr Pytor Makarovich to collect his cheque. A little would need to be added, for the safe arrival of the Red Cross parcel. Otto guessed the doctor had checked the contents and helped himself to a few packages, but he would still expect payment for the soup and book. At mid-morning another doctor appeared; he was thin with an untrimmed beard, more Cossack than surgeon. Otto had not seen him before. The doctor went first to Karl’s bed, tore off the sheet and ordered a nurse to take off the bandage from his foot.

  ‘It’s healing. He’s well enough to travel.’ He turned to Karl. ‘Get dressed, Soldier.’

  ‘He’s an officer,’ said Otto, but no sound came out. He put his finger over the hole in his throat.

  ‘I’m an ensign,’ said Karl, remembering the lie.

  The doctor hit him across the jaw and Karl fell back onto his pillow.

  ‘You address me as “sir”,’ said the doctor evenly.

  ‘I’m an ensign, sir, and Dr Pytor Makarovich ordered rest. I am not to travel.’ There was a tremor in Karl’s voice.

  ‘Dr Pytor Makarovich is gone,’ said the new doctor. ‘You prefer to have your foot amputated? I thought it was healing, but we can cut it off, if you like. Then you can stay.’

  Otto reached out and yanked the hem of the doctor’s coat. He spun around, outraged at the impudence, and drew back his arm to slap the culprit, but on seeing Otto’s yellow, stretched skin and the seeping, undressed wound on his throat, he hesitated.

  ‘You can stay. I doubt you’ll inconvenience us for long.’

  Otto reached for his pad. He began to scribble:

  We had an arrangement with Pytor Makarovich. I am Otto Goldbaum of the House of Goldbaum and I shall write you, Herr Doktor, a large cheque. Large enough to keep your children and wife in comfort for some time.

  The doctor turned to Otto, his face creased with distaste.

  ‘You bourgeoisie fucks think you can buy your way out of everything. Let’s see this cheque, then.’

  Otto wrote out a sum on a piece of paper. His heart beat wildly, his thoughts swam indistinctly, dull with panic. His hand shook as he held the pen, and his signature was wobbly. It did not matter, he told himself; the bank would send the money – they would be much more concerned about his not receiving funds than about the risk of an imposter writing cheques for trifling sums. He tapped the space he had left for the doctor’s name. The doctor took the pen from him and filled it in. Otto felt a rush of relief, like a cool drink of water.

  The doctor held up the paper for Otto to read. Instead of his name he had scrawled the word ‘Idiot’. He tore the sheet into pieces and thrust them in Otto’s face.

  ‘Take this one, too,’ he snapped to an orderly. ‘He wants to stay with his friend.’

  The two men started to pull on clothes. Otto stumbled, exhausted from the effort of fastening his buttons. Karl, naked, caught him. The doctor turned and eyed Karl with disgust.

  ‘A Jew. A dirty Jew,’ he exclaimed, pointing to Karl’s exposed genitals.

  He tugged Otto’s trousers to his ankles and, seeing his circumcision, muttered an expletive.

  ‘These are Jews, not officers,’ he said, swearing and spitting on the floor. ‘They get no privileges.’

  With trepidation, Otto remembered the Russian Ambassador’s words to Henri, on refusing him a visa. ‘We have Jews enough of our own.’

  Finally, dressed in tattered and mismatched uniforms salvaged from other p
risoners, the two men stood to attention beside their beds. Karl’s lip was stained with blood and had started to swell. They had already guessed where they were going. The teplushka train. But beyond that, no one could say.

  NORTH ATLANTIC, NOVEMBER

  Albert sailed for England, once again aboard P&O’s Wentworth. They travelled in a convoy of nearly forty ships – merchant, passenger and two huge American troop ships – escorted by a cruiser, six destroyers, five armed trawlers and a pair of torpedo boats. It was a tense voyage, but the passengers on board the Wentworth all displayed a false gaiety, as though by sipping gin cocktails and swaying unsteadily to swing, hammered out upon a baby grand, they could ward off disaster. Albert wanted none of it.

  In the midst of the North Atlantic two of the passengers fell sick with typhoid. The bursar quickly had them quarantined. But to be safe, the captain banned dances and the piano. There was to be no unnecessary socialising, and meals were served in shifts to reduce the number of people gathering. Passengers were told the hours they could be out on deck, no more than ten or fifteen together at once. The rest of the time they were restricted to their cabins. Everyone except Albert complained vociferously. He was relieved.

  The captain invited him to dine at his table most nights, but Albert couldn’t fathom why. He had little conversation. Mostly he sipped a glass of burgundy and wondered silently how he would face his father. Finally, he asked why he was invited and the captain replied, ‘You are the quietest and most restful dinner companion about this ship. The only one not to complain.’

  Afterwards, they became friends of a sort and the captain allowed him up onto the bridge most evenings after dinner. Albert liked the peace. The second officer rarely spoke, but sat reviewing the ship’s log, while the steady tap of the wireless operator merged with the hypnotic rise and swell of the waves in the darkness. There was no other human sound, only the churning of the engines and the crack and splash of water against the metal hull. The ship’s windows below were covered at night in heavy blackout material, and the bridge itself was lit with a single dim bulb, painted red, so it would not be seen out at sea. Albert could barely make out the other ships in the convoy; he knew only that they were there, hidden in the blackness. He stood and watched the sea, oddly soothed by the bloody glow from the lamp.

  One of the typhoid-sufferers recovered and was glimpsed in the dining room sipping beef broth. Albert watched as the other was quietly and unobtrusively tipped over the gunwale as the ship’s chaplain murmured a prayer. The body slipped into the water, the splash of its entry lost in the churn of the wake. Albert observed it float for a moment, the linen wrappings pale against the black waves, and then it sank.

  ‘A sad business for the family, for him to be buried at sea. But the risk of infection… ’ said the captain, watching alongside him.

  Albert struggled to feel sympathy for anyone else. He was too busy with his own melancholy thoughts. He longed for Greta. She had sent him the design for a special life jacket and urged him to wear it beneath his shirt. He had it made, but it chafed and hung, unworn, in his cabin. She wrote to him about the children, his parents and that the bees were suffering from a sickness brought from the Isle of Wight, but she did not say that she had experienced a change of heart. She told him of her love, but did not say that she wanted him inside her. Albert began to wonder whether seeing her and being unable to touch her would be worse than not seeing her at all.

  The specie room far beneath was empty on the return voyage, its glittering hoard safely deposited in American banks, drawing steady interest. Money is a magnet, and gathers more money to it, thought Albert. All the gold is in America and it calls all other gold to it, slowly, inexorably, across the Atlantic. He found himself thinking more and more of that empty room at the heart of the ship. The war would end, but what of the Old World would remain?

  After dinner one evening Albert joined the captain on the bridge as usual. The captain pointed to a tiny bobbing shape before them. He handed Albert binoculars.

  ‘HMS Mimosa. A Flower-class minesweeper. She’s clearing our way.’ The captain glanced down at his hands and frowned, displeased. ‘I must fetch a clean pair of gloves from my room. You can stay and watch, if you like.’

  The captain left and Albert searched the sea for the ship. He blinked and rubbed his eyes and then, picking the binoculars up, once more focused on a small shadow, several hundred yards ahead, at the precise moment she exploded in a massive whorl of light. For a few moments he saw every ship in the convoy, silhouetted like shadows. Meteors of flame shot up into the sky before crashing into the sea, setting it ablaze in small pools of fire. A moment later another explosion rocked the Wentworth. Albert fell, tossed to the floor like a bag of rice, striking his head against the leg of a chair. Glass from the window rained down upon his back and covered the ground like hail pellets. He struggled to his feet, unsteady as a drunk, feeling the ship list horribly.

  There was a mechanical scream from the engine room and a volley of flaming stars whizzed up into the sky like a macabre firework display. The second officer yelled to the wireless operator to signal SOS, but Albert saw that his cheeks had been sliced open by broken glass. The apparatus was smashed and perfectly useless. The captain returned, pointlessly clutching spotless white gloves. He reached for the voice-tube to give verbal orders to the engine room, only to discover it was also broken. Albert watched with horror as the starboard propeller turned clear of the water. The ship was sinking, the captain could not communicate with the engine room and, with her propellers still turning, she was steadily forcing herself under the water.

  Not waiting to hear the order to ‘abandon ship’, Albert lurched out of the bridge. His life jacket hung in his first-class cabin below. There was little chance of getting to a lifeboat. From a deck nearby came a scream, and Albert turned to see one of the nursemaids from the ship’s nursery yelling for help. He ran. Babies had fallen from their cots and lay crying on the floor, surrounded by a smashed rocking horse and glowing coals from the nursery fire. Albert picked up a pair of infants and tucked them into a wicker Moses basket, already strapped with floats. Clutching the basket, he struggled back out onto the deck.

  The ship now listed at a grotesque angle. The air was full of fire and shrieks. Steadily Wentworth cruised deeper and deeper under the waves, her engines dragging her to the bottom of the Atlantic. Black water rushed in roaring torrents over the sides. Albert clutched the edge of the bulwark, terrified that he would tip the babies out of their basket and into the sea. The waters licked closer. He unfastened a life-ring and, sliding it over his head, slipped over the gunwale, the basket in his hand. The water was so cold it took his breath away; he gasped and blinked.

  He kicked in panic, furious and rapid, unable to tell whether the thundering was his heart or the chop of the waves smacking against them. He forced himself to take long, slow breaths. He gave short, powerful kicks as he tried to propel himself, and the basket, further from the sinking ship. They must not be dragged under as it finally went down. Spray soaked the babies. At a little distance he paused, treading water. There was no sign of the ship. He could make out bundles in the dark. He called out desperately to a man nearby, only to realise as they drifted closer that he had been beseeching a suitcase for help. He could not tell how much time had passed, minutes or hours. He glanced at his watch, but it had misted up, stopped at the moment he had entered the water at a little after half-past ten. The sky was dark and full of clouds, obscuring the stars and the light of the moon. There was no hint of dawn along the horizon. He tried talking to the babies to soothe them, but, breathless, he stopped. He could help them best by conserving his own strength. A nurse could comfort them later. If only it wasn’t so cold. If only their blankets weren’t quite so wet. The infants wailed and then grew quiet. Albert’s teeth chattered violently.

  One of the babies whimpered and cried again, but the other stayed so quiet, Albert feared it had fallen out. He peered into the floating b
asket and saw, to his relief, that it was fast asleep, apparently soothed by the motion of the waves. He brushed his hand across its cold cheek. It did not stir, and Albert marvelled at how an infant could sleep so peacefully at such a time.

  He felt the tide begin to turn. For the first time he glimpsed a lifeboat and then another, but they drifted out of reach, never close enough to see him. He trod water, urging himself not to fall asleep. He understood it was terribly important that he stayed awake. He started to recite his name and those of his family, a prayer against the dark and the cold, and the sumptuous pull of closing his eyes: My name is Albert Haim Moses Goldbaum. My wife is Greta Esther Goldbaum. A shoal of fish floated past, bumping them, only for him to realise that they weren’t fish, but the shoes of drowned passengers. At least he had an answer to his question. Even if Greta wouldn’t let him kiss so much as her elbow, he knew beyond any doubt that he wanted to see her again.

  He was so very cold and so very tired, and the story was all wrong. The Ark doesn’t sink in the Atlantic, and Moses was cast adrift upon the Nile. He stopped shivering and vaguely realised he was no longer cold. It took great effort to think. I am Albert. My wife is Greta. I have two children. Celia is three and Benjamin is a baby. It was terribly important that he remember. He gave a little kick, but his legs wouldn’t move. I am Albert. My wife is Greta. I have two children. Celia and a baby boy. His name is… Albert had been trying very hard to keep his chin above the water, but he couldn’t remember why. He was so very tired. No one could blame him if he had a little sleep. I am Albert. My wife is. I am. I am. I am.

  His eyes closed and he slid ever so gently beneath the surface.