Hal felt sick. Not only because he’d been so close to his friend’s murderer, but because he didn’t know what to do now he knew. The police had a man in custody who had confessed to the crime, they had evidence supporting the confession—evidence Hal was certain Goan had planted—and Hal’s only evidence for them being wrong was a vision he had had when an alien touched his arm.
Worse, in the coming nights, the vision he had fought so hard to see before now wouldn’t leave him. Every night he found himself watching his friend as he drowned. Sometimes he stood upstream of the murder, watching Goan hold Shahid under the water, other times he was Goan, pressing Shahid down into the silt, impassively watching as his struggles grew weaker.
HAL’S MUM WATCHED her son become paler each day. She knew he wasn’t sleeping well, hearing the moans of his nightmares as she sat in the living room each night. They had to get out of Quarry Hill.
13
AS THE SUMMER holiday drew to a close, Hal’s mum and Eli married. It was more than convenience, Hal saw that, though the quickness of the arrangement was driven by the events of the summer. He knew his mother could no longer live at Quarry Hill
The ceremony was small, as neither had much family, and what family they did have didn’t all approve of the match—“Whether it’s because he’s a Jew or I’m a widow, they would rather I was alone than happy,” Hal’s mum said to her son one night.
After the wedding, they moved in with Eli’s parents in Leylands. There was no one to say goodbye to when they left. Shahid’s family moved away after the funeral, Mr Foster had gone into care, and they hadn’t lived on the estate long enough to make much of an impression on anyone else.
THE EVENING AFTER the move, they were all sat in the living room. Hal paid little attention to the conversation around him. As was increasingly the case now, he sat lost in thought.
He tried to unpick the other things he had seen, to recognise what was to come before it came. He wondered whether the other Farreter were aware of what Goan had done, had condoned it—they couldn’t have, surely? Even if they had no care for human life, as they had made clear, they couldn’t approve of Goan taking it, either. He had spent all summer trying to know these creatures, learn where they had come from, what they were capable of, and it hadn’t taught him anything. It hadn’t warned him.
“You are deep in thought, grandson.”
Hal’s eyes came back to the room, he had been staring without focus at the tea cup on the table before him.
“I seem always to be interrupting your introspection,” Daniel said. “I suspect it is not golems today.”
Hal shook his head.
“When I was your age, I had a friend, Isaac. When Eli told me about you and your friend climbing the roof, I was reminded of him. When we were your age, all this part of Leeds was terraced houses. I suppose to you it still is, but these houses were smaller, colder things. We lived with my mother’s sister’s family, all ten of us, in a place half this size. In a place like that, you need to get outside—I think you know this feeling well. My friend Isaac and I, we would spend all summer finding the secrets of our neighbourhood. We found that the baker left the window open in his basement to let the cool air in as he cooked. We slipped in there some mornings and took the custard slices while his back was turned. You never forget friends like those.”
Hal’s memories of his first days at Quarry Hill came flooding back, climbing onto the roof with Shahid, exploring the estate, sitting up in his room making plans for the summer. He felt himself well up.
“Come, come,” said Daniel, leading Hal away from the others, taking him to the kitchen. He sat Hal at the table, wiping a tear from the boy’s cheek with his thumb and turning to search through drawers and rifle through boxes. “My son, Eli, told me about what happened to your friend. It is a truly ugly business.” He came back to the table with a long thin candle, a silver candlestick and a box of matches. “You must not feel you have to hide away your feelings. I have lost many people in my lifetime, family and dear friends. It helps to feel those emotions when they come, not drive them down.”
Daniel lit the candle and placed it on the kitchen table. Its light warmed the room. From his jacket, the old man took out a little black cap and placed it on his crown. Standing solemnly for a moment, he began to sing.
Hal didn’t know what to do. Religion wasn’t part of his life and this was, Hal was sure, a prayer. Whether it was for him or for Shahid, it struck Hal as strange. Shahid had been a Muslim and Hal, though his mum was Christian, had rarely been to church. He couldn’t even understand the words.
But then he started to listen, drawn in by the strange words. They seemed to falter and flow like the jumping of the candlelight, sometimes rolling, sometimes flickering. He couldn’t understand what was being said, but he was struck by the compassion of the act: here, in this strange kitchen, his new grandfather prayed for a boy he had never met. As the thought turned in Hal’s mind, he began to weep. The long-pent-up turmoil of guilt and loss seemed to burst and pour from him. The confusion of the weeks since Shahid’s death cleared and, for a moment, in that kitchen, listening to a song he didn’t understand, Hal was able to mourn.
In time his tears ended, and Hal realised he had heard the language Daniel was singing in before. He didn’t understand the words, but the sound and rhythm were so familiar.
He had heard it once, weeks ago, sung in the cloister beneath the boiler room at Quarry Hill.
When the prayer was finished and the candle extinguished, Hal embraced Daniel, holding him tightly in thanks. He cleared his throat and said, “I’d like to ask you something, but, please, you can’t tell anyone about it.”
“Of course,” Eli’s father said, gripping Hal’s shoulder firmly.
“What language was that song? It sounded so familiar.”
“Hebrew. It’s the language of our people, used in all our ceremonies. I’m surprised you found it familiar, though.”
“Is goan a word in Hebrew?”
“Goan?” Daniel said, his eyes narrowed. “It means pride, but it is more than that. It is a mark of respect. The greatest rabbi and teachers are called goan. The wise men.”
“And, what about shande?”
“That’s not Hebrew, that’s Yiddish. It means ‘shame.’ Hal, how did you learn these words?”
“Please, one more,” Hal said. “Farreter?”
“That is also Yiddish. It means ‘traitors.’”
Hal sat at the kitchen table, staring. He finally knew something about the creatures under Quarry Hill, and yet he felt like he was back at the beginning, knowing nothing at all.
14
DANIEL TRIED TO probe his grandson, but Hal remained firm, saying he couldn’t say where he had learned the words. The old man stopped asking after a while, but Hal couldn’t imagine he’d forgotten.
Since the prayer in the kitchen, Hal began to sleep more soundly. He still grieved for his friend, but it felt like he had loosened himself from the images that had haunted him. His mum put it down to them being away from the estate. She put him to work in Ruth and Daniel’s garden each day, while she went to work at the University and Eli was at the family shop.
One day when Hal was working in the front garden, she returned from the university looking perturbed.
“Hal,” she said, “Rose Wheldon came to me today with this for you.” She withdrew a thick envelope from her handbag and handed it to Hal. “When did you two become such firm friends?”
Hal didn’t even make an excuse. He tore open the envelope, which had a Viennese postmark, and walked into the house, reading the first page of the bundle of papers as he climbed the stairs to his room.
To Another Who Knows,
Your letter was forwarded to me by Claus Struker, who was the building manager in our block of the Karl-Marx-Hof when my family lived there in the ’30s. He knew of the building’s secret, but it was my late father who was its author. I suspect that is why he’s asked that I share i
ts story.
My family moved into Block C, Flat 15 on September 16th, 1931. It was a big moment for our family; we had always lived in shared homes, my father’s work at the university brought in only a little money. The Karl-Marx-Hof meant we could have a place of our own. It was the same for many of the city’s Jews.
My father was to continue at the university, but he had secured a place in the apartment block by offering to work at the synagogue after it finished construction. I swear the building manager was a chachem attick, everyone in our building got on the housing list by making deals with him. The Karl-Marx-Hof became something of a commune for Viennese Jews. Many of those that would become his congregation had flats in the estate. Each Friday we would gather in the community hall where he would hold Shabbat. I remember we would turn off all the lights and he would light candles, their warm glow lighting the faces of the assembled people. He would lead the prayers and we would all join in for the songs.
That first winter there was brutally cold. All new buildings have problems, but the Karl-Marx-Hof was one of the largest housing projects in Europe, and many of its innovations were untested. Those cold nights revealed all their flaws. The boiler would fail, gaps in the roofing and window fittings would whistle with wind and drip with water. Many nights we would climb into our parents’ bed for warmth, my brother, my three sisters and I.
One of the nights we’d taken to sleeping with our parents in January, we were woken by banging on the door. My father answered. I remember lying there and hearing him talk in whispered Yiddish. He and the guest made much noise as they gathered up all of my family’s coats and spare blankets, taking them from our beds, leaving only those we slept under in his room. They boiled water and filled the flasks we took with us when we skied in spring. Loaded up, he and the men at the door left the flat. It was the dead of night, and he said nothing of where he was going.
I remember my sister Helen and I were playing with toy soldiers in the living room when my father returned the next morning, long after the sun had risen. He didn’t say a word to us, just took our mother into their bedroom and shut the door. We could hear a muffled conversation, but nothing of what was said.
When they emerged, my father kissed us goodbye and left immediately without taking breakfast. My mother began writing a list, which she gave to my oldest sister, Mila, and sent us to market. Helen and Danka stayed with mother and began baking.
Mila, my brother Poldek and I went to the market with the list and the money she gave us. It was food enough for an army; it looked like we were to prepare a feast for half the Jews in Karl-Marx-Hof.
When we returned I could see all the bread my mother and sisters had prepared. There were loaves cooling on the counter, more in the oven, and fresh dough waiting its turn on the table. We asked what this was all, for but my mother wouldn’t say; only something about unexpected guests and a long journey.
Poldek and I were told to go to the other Jewish families in Block C and ask for spare clothes: shirts, trousers, coats, enough for twenty-seven. It became something of a game to us, we would go to each flat and say, “Have you anything for the guests,” and we’d be handed clothes and blankets. Sometimes, too, there were treats, sweets and candied fruits. We took everything back to our home and separated it into piles, folded all the clothing and linen. Packed the bread into baskets. Helen and I even put our tin soldiers in one of the baskets, a gift for the guests.
Early that afternoon my father returned with three men who also lived in the building. He beckoned over Poldek and me and told us to pick up as many bundles as we could carry and to follow him downstairs. We carried our bundles with great ceremony, I remember, proud we had a responsibility not afforded to my sisters.
Father led us downstairs and directed us to go through to the basement. We had never seen this part of the building before; the doorway was hidden beneath the staircase.
I still remember the smell. The day had built an excitement in us that left me wholly by the last step of the staircase. The sickly-sweet smell of rotting flesh was overpowering. It took all I had not to vomit. The basement had been turned into a makeshift medical ward. Everywhere were men lying prone, horrible sores on their flesh. The sight was overwhelming. I remember realising slowly that the sick weren’t people, that beneath their wounds I could see their faces lacked eyes, noses, ears. Their bodies were too slim, their limbs too long.
I focused on placing the bundles so I didn’t have to look at the ill. They were taller than any man I’d seen, and what unblemished skin I could see was as white as ivory. Men from the building attended the sick. Two of the men I knew were doctors, the other was our butcher. They were cleaning and bandaging wounds, and from the bucket by the boiler I could see they had had to amputate more than one limb. More than the smell, the sense that stays with me is the silence. None of the creatures made a sound through all this suffering.
My father bid us go along the rows of patients and collect up used, dirty bandages. The doctors showed us how to clean the creatures without touching their wounds. On closer inspection, I could see that besides the sores, which looked like frostbite, many of the guests had other wounds. Some had holes punched into their flesh, others had been slashed, leaving deep trenches in their bodies. We filled cups with water and held them to their lips when they wanted to drink. We cleaned the floors, soaked the bandages, and delivered a bundle of clothes to each, making sure each of them had a set to dress himself in.
After hours of this, my father took us aside and said we were to tell no one what we had seen, no one outside our family. We returned to our flat and he went to sleep, promising he would answer our questions when he had rested.
That evening, we sat around our table, the whole family, and he told us how Mr Dresner, the night watchman over the synagogue construction site, had heard a great clatter after midnight. “Like fireworks under water,” he said. Well, Dresner investigated and came across these injured creatures huddled in the foundations. Most bore injuries like gunshots and sabre slashes. Dresner rushed here and woke father, who sent Dresner to get the doctors, the butcher, the coats and blankets.
They took the butcher’s van to the building site. It couldn’t have been more than an hour since Dresner left, but already frostbite had set in—these creatures are far more susceptible to the cold than us. Those that couldn’t walk were loaded into the van and brought back with the doctors. My father and the night watchman led back the twenty or so that could walk. My father said how one of the guests walked with him at the front. He was an uncanny scout, motioning for his brethren to clear the street almost before the car or nightwalker would appear.
When the group reached the Karl-Marx-Hof, father led them to the basement where they’d be hidden and warmest. The rest of the night they did what they could to treat the guests’ injuries.
Father told us the guests would be staying until they could find a safer place and find out why they were here. No one could know outside our community, he told us. ‘The world isn’t a safe place right now for those that are different.’ I didn’t recognise the truth in those words at the time.
Each day my brother, my father, and I would tend to the guests. Their wounds healed quickly, though they left terrible scars. I noticed that as they healed, the guests slipped off their clothes. It was strange; I would catch them shivering as if they were cold, and they would cluster around the boiler for warmth, but still they would not wear our clothes. It was as if they could not bear to.
There were many intriguing things among our guests, but what surprised my father the most was their Yiddish. The creatures picked the language up in weeks simply from listening to us talk. They even took on names for themselves, choosing words from our languages. Their leader chose to call himself Rikhter, meaning ‘Judge,’ which I always thought suited him, he was unbending in his beliefs. We didn’t approve of all their names, they started to refer to their group as ‘Farreter.’ We explained this meant ‘Traitors,’ but they did not chan
ge it. There was also one of their number who sat apart from them, excluded. It was him who aided my father in leading the group back to the flats on that first night. They called him ‘Shande,’ shame. We were never told why he was called this but there was a particular bitterness between him and Rikhter.
The creatures mostly kept to themselves, but Shande would speak with me. Whereas the others seemed to actively avoid contact with us, he would seek out conversation. He wanted to know about our world. I would tell him stories and history, filling him up with cultures alien to him. He had a peculiar fascination with the story of the Golem, a creature created to protect Jews.
Shande and the others told us bits about themselves, but the history was only ever piecemeal, to be assembled in night-time conversations by us, their carers. They had fled a conflict—their people were hunted for their prophetic abilities. An insular people, they weren’t trusted or understood. Nor did those who dealt with them ever wholly trust them; their insights bred envy.
In time, through little suggestions at first, we started to become aware of something our guests could see but weren’t telling. They aren’t a talkative people—you doubtless know this—but when it comes to sharing talk of the future, they are especially cautious. I think it was when they realised they were trapped without our help that they talked. They saw something, something coming, a danger that would eradicate them if they could not escape that basement.
In 1934, we thought the coming danger had arrived. Insurgents fighting in the Civil War barricaded themselves in the building. We all hid in the basement with our guests when the men holed up in the apartments. Not that there weren’t supporters for their cause in our community, but we didn’t want to be caught in any fighting should the army try to force them out. We shouldn’t have given them so much credit: they didn’t send troops in, they fired on the apartments with light artillery. More than a hundred of us hid in the basement with our guests.
Invaders From Beyond Page 28
