Child of All Nations

by Michael Hofmann

  The table in our room has turned into a restaurant. The waiter came and spread a white tablecloth over it, and some glasses and wine and plates and so much food. My mother had ordered it, and now she hasn’t drunk anything or eaten anything. She’s asleep, she’s changing back.

  I don’t like any of the food on the table. Maybe my guinea pigs would like it, though? I’m dying to look under the wardrobe, to see if they’ve had their babies yet. But I’d better not, otherwise the same thing will happen as happened with the fire-beans. Once I planted some fire-beans in a pot of earth so that they might make fire-flowers. Then I kept turning up the earth to see what was keeping the flowers. That way I disturbed the fire-beans so much that they never made any flowers.

  My mother told me: ‘You have to learn to wait and have patience. Things must be allowed to develop by themselves, everything must happen of its own volition.’ Everything must happen of its own volition. I’m going to leave my guinea pigs in peace, and I’m not going to wake my mother.

  There’s a lovely coloured postcard under my mother’s bed. It’s from my father, and smells of my father. He writes: ‘Kisses. Be patient. Courage.’ And underneath that Manya wrote: ‘Best wishes.’

  When my mother woke up, she was better. Her eyes were mild and blue, her voice blew like a puff of soft wind across the room. She asked me: ‘How many people did I call, how many people did I shout at? Oh dear, Kully, I must have been possessed!’

  In not very many minutes, it’s possible to offend an awful lot of people and make them angry with you. It takes much longer to talk them round afterwards. It’s not even certain you’ll succeed.

  My mother’s on the phone. She’s not screaming any more, she’s talking very softly, she wants everyone to forgive her. Well, she offended Herr Krabbe, and three poets who sometimes visited us. Also Frau Brühl, with whom we sometimes go and drink coffee. She was angry with me too, and gave me a slap, but I’m her daughter and I can’t complain.

  She’s on the phone and curling her hair. She’s on the phone and putting on the black silk dress with white lace trim. She’s on the phone and powdering herself. She’s shining and gleaming and smelling of violets. She kisses me very energetically and she’s different again. ‘I want to live, Kully, sweetheart, I love you – do you love me?’ I always love my mother, only sometimes I worry about her.

  She gets my guinea pigs out from under the wardrobe; they haven’t had any babies yet. There’s a lot of food on the table, including lettuce. The guinea pigs are allowed to eat whatever they like.

  My mother wants to feed the guinea pigs herself, but they are tired and would prefer to sleep and die. They lie down on our tablecloth all silky-soft. They aren’t eating anything; maybe they’re dead, or maybe they’re having babies. You have to leave them in peace.

  A black bird is flying in my mother’s hair, which is her hat. She doesn’t eat anything but drinks a glass of wine. The guinea pigs don’t budge. I intended not to disturb them, but I carry them back under the wardrobe, and give them some lettuce leaves – maybe that’ll bring them back to life.

  My mother’s going out, and says: ‘Wait here for me.’ She kisses me again. Her mouth is as soft and open as a bed with the corners turned back. But I’m not ready to go to sleep yet. My mother appears in the doorway. She’s holding a piece of paper in her hand, a telegram form.

  ‘I’ve already written a telegram, Mama,’ I say. My mother stares at me, as if she hadn’t understood what I was saying, then she hands me the telegram suddenly and says: ‘No, I’m not sending it; will you tear this up for me, Kully?’ And she very quickly walks out. The telegram is addressed to Émile Jeannot, and it says: ‘Yes, please come.’

  On my mother’s pillow are a letter and a picture of a man I don’t know. He’s like a real uncle, but not at all nice to look at. His eyes look sad, but maybe he was just tired. I always feel tired myself when I get my picture taken – it’s too bad. The only people I know are the ones my parents see in the daytime. At night my parents meet many other people whom I never get to see, because I’m asleep.

  I wonder whether I should rip up the letter and the picture. The man writes to my mother in French. Was she able to read it? Normally, I have to translate for her. What he writes is this:

  Madame, I have never forgotten you. Do you remember how we were at the Viking in Paris a year ago, drinking champagne? You were beautiful and gay. Your husband had gone to Boulogne and left you in my care. I hope you weren’t bored, Madame. A few days ago, I saw a mutual friend from Amsterdam. He has seen you. You are alone, he says, alone and unhappy. If you are in need of a friend, Madame, and a servant –

  My mother comes back and takes the letter away from me. Her cheeks are flushed, and she has stuck some live carnations on her dress. She says Monsieur Jeannot is a friend of my father’s too, and I ask her: ‘Is he a writer as well?’ My mother says yes, but he hardly ever writes novels, only poems. He is French, and he owns a French factory.

  I like factories, with their purring machinery. It’s too bad that we know so few factory owners. And there are so many factories too. Once I saw a cigarette factory. Books are made in factories as well, but only after they’ve been written.

  ‘What sort of factory does Monsieur Jeannot own, Mama?’

  ‘Oh, don’t ask so many questions, Kully,’ says my mother. ‘He has a coffin factory.’

  If Monsieur Jeannot is a friend of my father’s, perhaps he’ll give us some coffins from his factory. Only what would we do with them? Perhaps when we’re dead we can be buried in his coffins and not have to pay. What happens to all those dead people who don’t have any money?

  My mother said birds and other wild animals die too. What happens to all the dead birds? I remember a big forest where lots of birds were singing, but I didn’t see a single dead bird lying around. Seagulls die too, and don’t receive a burial. Where are all the dead seagulls and pigeons? Perhaps they fly up so high they never come down, and lie dead on the clouds. A lot of dead animals get eaten by people. At least those are accounted for.

  A telegram arrives from my father. He is almost in Holland – he is in Belgium. The Dutch won’t let him in, though, because he can’t show them lots of money. They say they don’t want to admit any more refugees. My mother and I can’t stay here any longer either. But nor can we join my father in Belgium, because we don’t have a Belgian visa.

  My father brought a whole gaggle of people with him from Prague and Poland, where they were all living in fear. But we have just as much fear here. I wish my father was back. If he could travel as far as the Belgian border, and we travelled as far as the Dutch border, then we would at least be able to see each other, and wave. Herr Krabbe says if there’s a war now, we’ll all be locked up and shot.

  A lot of people are coming towards us in the hotel lobby. We met them in Austria, in Prague, in Poland. Suddenly almost all of them are here in Amsterdam, and crying and saying: ‘You’re so lucky.’ At that my mother starts crying too.

  Outside the hotel is the big café, where people sit out in the open on wickerwork chairs and drink coffee. The lawn is a luminous green and everything looks shiny. The trams talk to the cars by shimmering and hooting and tinkling their bells. It’s grown so warm, we don’t need coats and rugs any more. If you give someone your hand, it’s quite likely to stick to them. But soon it’ll get colder again.

  Sometimes my father rings from Brussels, and says: ‘Be calm, children, be calm.’ My father never cries.

  It’s warm and we’re hungry. We can’t leave, because we can’t pay the hotel bill. We can’t enter any other country, but we can’t stay here either. Perhaps we’ll be thrown into prison, and then we’ll be fed.

  Uncle Kranich is in prison too. We met Uncle Kranich in Vienna. Then he suddenly turned up here. He was old and fat, and wore a golden ring. My mother had a golden ring once, which we sold in Nice, because we were out of soap and toothbrushes. I don’t really mind not having soap. But in big cities
you get dirty very quickly, almost without doing anything.

  Uncle Kranich would sit in our café with us in the sunshine, with a jaunty tie. He recited poems against the German regime, and so he was forced to leave Austria. Just like a Red Indian, he crawled across the border to Holland. Now he’s being kept in prison. When he gets out, he won’t be allowed to stay in Holland. He won’t be allowed to enter another country either.

  People tremble when they buy newspapers and magazines: what’s going wrong with the world? I’d so much like to have another child to play with.

  At night my mother holds me so tight it hurts me, and I can’t sleep. So many cars are rushing past our window. ‘Kully, I can’t stand it any more,’ my mother shouts, and she jumps out of bed, and orders a trunk call to Cologne. She wants to talk to my grandmother.

  ‘Oh, Mama,’ she cries, ‘how are you? Everything is so awful!’ I always thought of my grandmother as just my grandmother, but it seems she’s also the mother of my mother.

  My mother orders a huge breakfast up to our room; we eat till we’re not hungry any more. Breakfast in Holland is enough for lunch and dinner. My mother says: it doesn’t matter any more. She holds me tight, but in her mind she’s somewhere else. She says words I don’t understand and doesn’t answer when I ask: ‘Is it war?’

  My mother doesn’t even open the latest hotel bill. She’s putting lovely curls in her hair. Sometimes she sits in the corner of the lobby, where there are glass tanks full of little fish that swim delicately and silently. Some of them look as though they have little lace trimmings as they stare at me out of their round eyes. Sometimes two fishes swim straight at each other, and kiss. That’s the best.

  There’s a man with dark eyes who’s often to be found at my mother’s side. He holds her hand tight and kisses it. My mother’s hand trembles slightly, like the fins of the littlest fish. Her eyes have become huge and blue.

  She doesn’t want to be alone ever. But my being with her isn’t much help. Because I’m not able to talk about Mussolini and Hitler and Chamberlain, which are all names of various statesmen. That was all my mother was able to explain to me. But they’re somehow all connected to the war. When I’m grown up, I’ll be able to understand it. But what’s the point of growing up, if it’ll only make me sad? My mother said once that along with being grown up you become guilty; and there’s nothing in the world as sad as being guilty.

  I think what makes my mother saddest of all is not having my father with her. When my father’s kissing her and stroking her hair with his hand, then she’s always in a good mood. Sometimes now she wants to be lost to my father, and embark on a new life. Often she feels feverish and dead. Only my father’s coming will make her live. It was never as bad as this.

  Perhaps if war comes, we will never see my father again. That thought frightens my mother. She thinks he’ll desert us and not love us any more. The café in front of the hotel already has soldiers in green uniform running around, but not with guns. Everyone thinks it will be war soon. They want to flee to America or Sweden, or they don’t want anything at all, they just wait.

  I’m not afraid, because I’ve got my mother with me. The waiter who brings us our breakfast in the morning has said he’s not afraid either, and there isn’t going to be any war. And if there is, and we are put in a camp, then he will continue to bring us our meals.

  We know a Dutch family, because my mother used to go to the same boarding school as the Dutch woman, in Germany. They have two children. I don’t get on with them at all, because they like screaming and hitting and pulling hair. I’d much rather play, myself.

  Once I brought my doll’s kitchen along to their house. My mother had given me an old blue silk blouse of hers, for us to make curtains and blankets out of. I also had some cigarette cartons to make furniture with, and silver paper to cut stars out of and lay on the blue carpet. That way we could have played heaven too.

  But the children first laughed, then they screamed, and they jumped on my doll’s kitchen and pulled my hair. I told them very calmly that if they did that again, I would have to take out my big pocket-knife and stab them.

  And then the two of them went running to the grownups. The grown-ups weren’t able to hear what they were saying, though, because they were listening to the wireless. There was a horrible yelling coming out of it that I really didn’t like to hear. It was from Germany, and it was someone speaking about the war. The man who was speaking was Hitler. He wanted to have a new country, called Czechoslovakia.

  When things got quieter, the Dutch woman wanted to go out and buy beans, lots and lots of beans, to eat with her children during the war. The children stopped pulling my hair, so I let them live. They were put to bed, and cried. Later, their father wanted to smack me, but I said he’d better not do that, otherwise I’d stab him as well.

  Now I’m not allowed to consort with that Dutch family any more. My mother says she doesn’t know what got into me. I don’t think anything has got into me, myself, because I don’t have a tummy ache. I won’t stand having strange people and their children hitting and smacking me, when I’m a good girl and only try to play with them. My mother said once, you have to pay everyone back in the same coin, but you can’t always do that. For instance, when the mosquitoes stung me in Italy, I couldn’t sting them back. I could only squash them against the wall.

  Didn’t I say it, didn’t I say it! My father’s back.

  My mother got up very early in the morning because of feeling so restless, and needing to see what was happening with the war. I huddled down in bed, where it was warm, rolled up like my guinea pigs (who really did have babies, but they were confiscated by the hotel management, the parents as well, and without me being paid a penny in compensation). I was thinking I might be able to make bookmarks out of cigarette packets and sell them on the street.

  So there I was lying in bed, when the telephone rang. I didn’t want to go, because this early in the morning it’s usually Herr Tankaard. He wants to know whether my mother has got the cure for hair-loss yet, from Germany. Herr Tankaard writes poems but in Dutch, and he’s always thinking about his hair because he hasn’t got any. I would so like to sell him mine. But I think he wouldn’t be able to transplant my hair. Anyway, he couldn’t afford it.

  When I picked up the phone, it was my father, speaking very fast. ‘Not one word, Kully, you’re not to tell anyone I’m here. Get in a taxi and go to the Pension Vandervelde.’

  We had to go a very long way, past Vondelpark and the Amstel. The streets got quieter, the houses smaller. When the taxi came to a stop, there was my father, pulling us out. ‘Annie, call me Pierre; Kully, don’t say Papa – best not to say anything at all till we’re upstairs.’

  He dragged us inside – the stairs were narrow, the passage was high and unlit, filled with a dreadfully fat woman in a yellow flowered dress. ‘Can’t have that,’ said the woman, barring our way. Her stacked-up hair quivered on top of her head. ‘No female company allowed in the bedrooms.’

  ‘May I introduce Madame Vandervelde,’ said Papa, ‘a charming lady. But you would have even more charm and, dare I say it, sex appeal too, if you were to borrow some French savoir faire. If you should travel to France, Madame, then take my advice: if you want to appear honourable and trustworthy, then on no account stay in your hotel for longer than three days without receiving a young gentleman, or even an elderly gentleman, in your room. Even if it’s just for the sake of appearances…’

  My mother groans, the fat lady goes into a rage and yells: ‘Don’t forget you’re in Holland now, and kindly follow Dutch customs.’

  ‘But of course, Madame,’ says my father, and all of a sudden he’s terribly serious. ‘Now don’t force me to take extreme measures. Underneath my raincoat, I am completely naked. If you don’t let us pass right away, I will be forced to take it off.’

  My father drags my mother and me past the woman and up the stairs. He unlocks the room, and says: ‘Please see to it that we’re not distu
rbed. Did I tell you, Madame, you remind me of Catherine the Great – you should have been a tsarina instead of marrying a building inspector. Stalin might have been your Potemkin, but you have expended your vast political energies on red velvet fittings. I know you’re proud and good-hearted. And now you’ll run out and fetch me a half-bottle of rum and something to eat, won’t you, there’s a dear. The little girl here is hungry, and I’m thirsty.’

  ‘There,’ says my father. He locks us into the room. ‘Now either she’ll bring masses of food, or else she’ll be back with the police.’

  Then we stand there in silence and look at each other. All of a sudden my father looks terribly pale and tired. He sits my mother down on the bed, and then he falls down. His head is on her knees. My mother lays both her hands on his hair.

  There is silence. The room is small, cold, ugly, with no carpet. On the brown floor are some squeezed-out tubes of paint – blue, green, red. On a tiny wobbly table is a bunch of roses, and everything smells of dust and cellars. Under the roses there are seven little booklets. Hey, those are passports; we’ve got seven passports!

  ‘Don’t touch them, Kully,’ calls my father. He’s sitting on the bed next to my mother. He gives her a kiss and laughs. Then he gives me a kiss as well. He pulls on a shirt and a pair of trousers. He’s laughing and talking.

  There’s a knock, and my father opens the door. Outside the door is a tray, which he picks up and brings inside. My father pours out a water glass full of rum for himself, while I start to eat. My father doesn’t look quite so pale now, his hair doesn’t look so sick and fibrous.

  No one’s to know that my father’s here. He has an assumed name, and got into Holland on a Belgian passport. And he’s not a writer any more either, he’s a painter and interior decorator, but that’s just pretend. He found some friends in Belgium who lent him their Belgian passports. Now he’s loaning them on to some poor people who are not allowed to stay here any longer. With the Belgian passports they can get into France.