Hannah & Emil

by Belinda Castles

  Emil was on a train across the green country to Dún Laoghaire the next day. He’d been offered a position in Finland, setting up a smaller power plant, and since then he had tested equipment on the ships. He had never known what came of that night, but here was Meier, none the worse. Everyone a little older and wiser. He felt a pang for youth and stupidity. It seemed to him he was not a man to do such things now.

  ‘I almost got my head kicked for that one.’ Meier smiled. ‘And you, you were the ringleader! And then you were away, scot-free.’

  ‘We did no harm. They didn’t discipline you, did they?’

  ‘They could not prove it was me. And since you were gone, they let it go after a few days. But you know, I would do it again. I shall never forget it.’

  ‘No.’ Emil laughed. ‘Me neither.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Meier, offering him another draught, ‘there was a baby . . .’

  ‘Yes, Hans. He’s three now. I’ll see him tomorrow.’

  Meier clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s right. A boy! And your beautiful wife? She’s well?’

  ‘I think so. I’ve not seen either of them for several months. It’s not always easy to tell, from letters.’

  ‘No, that’s true. Still, they’ll put on a fine homecoming for you. You’re lucky to have a family to welcome you. I’m returning for some training. Then back to sea.’

  ‘You are a young man still. Did you never find an Irish girl?’

  ‘Irish girls don’t want to go to Germany. They prefer America. I should know. I asked enough of them.’

  ‘Spend your leave with us. You can stay at my apartment. It’s no good coming home with nothing to do.’

  Meier took a drink. ‘That’s all right, Emil. I won’t be staying in Germany for long. I find I like the sea.’

  Emil felt the whiskey burn close to his heart. In his coat pocket he had a picture of the boy, an old one. He was not much more than a baby, sitting on his mother’s lap for his portrait. Emil had taken them to the studio on his visit before last. It had cost a fortune, but he was paid and fed well, and liked to spend his money on them.

  In the distance was the dark green line of the shore. In his gut spread a small fear. That he did not know his wife. That the boy would look at him as if he were a stranger, after this long separation. And the town might be too much changed to recognise. Father wrote that he was not worried about these Nazis. Or the communists with their little bombs. Each time he detailed something he was not worried about, Emil felt his anxiety drifting up off the page.

  He was a lucky man next to this Meier. Mostly, he felt warm, a heat coming from the green horizon, pulling him towards it, guiding him into the gap in the land at the Elbe, on down into his country, the land not yet frozen for winter, to his town and his woman and his boy, who would launch himself into his arms, then hang off his neck and chatter until the cavernous spaces the sea wind had cleared in his head were blown away entirely.

  A seal barked, bringing him into blackness after the bright confusion of dreams. His eyes were open, his heart quick. His wife’s hand clenched his forearm. There it was again—not a seal, Hans. It was his boy, making this animal sound in the black room. He sat up. Ava was already striking a match for the kerosene lantern.

  ‘Papa,’ the boy rasped from his stretcher on Ava’s side of the bed. She caught a flame on the third attempt and his face was illuminated: slick, white, frightened. The flame trembled as she touched it to the wick of the lamp and Emil skirted the bed in a second, lifted the boy from his stretcher. He was heavier than he looked, and burning, though the room was cold. Emil sat on the bed, clutching Hans’s limp shoulder with one hand, dragging off the blankets with the other. He looked at his wife, close up against him, holding the boy’s long fringe out of his eye, kissing his forehead, murmuring. Again came the barking cough. ‘What is it?’ he asked her.

  ‘The croup. It’s a curse in winter. Early this year.’

  ‘What do we do for him?’

  ‘I’ll boil water. He needs the steam. He’ll be all right.’

  How do you know? he thought, watching her move purposefully into the kitchen. How do you know what to do? He placed a hand lightly on the boy’s labouring ribs, felt the breath grazing the inside of his chest.

  ‘Sit me,’ Hans whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sit him up more,’ Ava called from the kitchen, where she was filling the kettle for the stove. ‘It helps him to breathe. And please distract him. He mustn’t cry.’

  Emil stared into the boy’s face in the flickering circle of light, his body hot against Emil’s arm. He let out the cough again, but fainter. His lids were heavy.

  ‘We haven’t had a chance to discuss my travels, have we, boy? You are always so busy, with your drawing and your ball. Anyway, it may interest you to know I rode the biggest ship ever made in Germany across the Atlantic Ocean. The waves were as tall as three men. Underneath us were sharks and jellyfish. All around, especially after sunset, were pirate ships.’

  The boy smiled sleepily. ‘I like pirates. They’ve got swords. And black hats.’

  ‘Precisely. I saw them through my telescope, and they were watching us through their telescopes, making sure we weren’t coming for their treasure. When they saw me looking at them, they waved their swords in the air.’

  ‘Were you, Papa? Were you after their treasure?’

  ‘Of course. Everybody wants the pirates’ treasure. It’s the most valuable treasure of all. But I had no sword of my own, unfortunately.’

  The boy coughed. It sounded almost like a normal cough. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I watched them through my telescope. If they came too close, I fired a warning shot with my musket.’

  ‘What’s a musket?’

  ‘The kind of gun you need to warn pirates with.’

  ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘Standard issue.’

  Ava appeared at the door with a basin of steaming water, a towel over her arm. ‘Come, Hans.’ She placed the basin carefully on the floor. The boy slipped from Emil’s lap and kneeled before it, breathing in the steam, coughing. She draped the towel over his head. ‘Not too low,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t scald your nose.’

  ‘The cough sounded better then,’ Emil said as she sat down next to him.

  She nodded. ‘It passes quickly. So long as he doesn’t panic. He has learned what to do.’

  ‘Even so, I’ll run and fetch the doctor.’

  ‘Hush, no. The doctor charges a fortune if you wake him.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he whispered. ‘I have the money. I’ll go now.’

  She put a hand on his. ‘No, Emil. Look, he’s all right. It passes quickly.’

  The boy in his pyjamas kneeled under the tent silently. His shoulders were thin. There were the knobs of his spine. After a moment he sat back, pushed the towel onto his neck, took deep breaths from the air in the room, then pulled the towel back over his head. The room was quiet but for the sound of him taking in the vapour. His draped shadow flickered large on the wall.

  ‘Come to bed now, Hans,’ Ava said, after a few minutes. She stood, took the towel, kissed the boy, then picked up the bowl and carried the things out to the kitchen. Hans began to gather his blankets from the floor. Emil stood, leaned down, took them from him.

  ‘Come up to the big bed. You sleep with Mama. I’ll take your bed.’

  Hans regarded him, his arms wrapped around the bundle of blankets, giggling. ‘You’re too big!’

  ‘I can shrink myself. It’s a skill we learn at sea. To hide from pirates.’

  The boy laughed, coughed a little, climbed onto the big bed. ‘Show me!’

  Emil curled up on the stretcher, making himself small, and pulled the blankets over his head, peeking from a gap. The enclosed space smelled of boy: soap, honey cake, earth. Hans was grinning, quilt tucked up under his arms.

  ‘What’s this?’ Ava said from the doorway. She climbed in on the other
side of the boy, leaned across him to turn off the light. Her hair fell across his face, concealing him at the last moment before darkness.

  The stretcher was tiny, and creaked as Emil tried to settle himself. His legs had to stay pulled towards his chest to fit, and he could not shift for fear of disturbing them. He listened for every breath in the dark, until his limbs were cramped from enforced stillness. Hans began to snore lightly, a rhythmic whistle and light rasp. Emil stretched his legs a few centimetres, bedsprings whining, stilled himself again. So he went until morning, listening for Hans’s breath, daring to move only occasionally. When the darkness at the window began to lift, and Ava stirred, he slipped down into the dark, still listening for the sound of the boy’s breathing.

  Emil needed new boots and he took Hans with him to buy them. The boy chose the most expensive pair for him, and he did not have the heart to say no. Walking home, Hans clutching the package of boots to his chest, he wondered what Ava would say. Rather, he knew. She would say nothing, but the counting of the coins for his daily beer would be a fraction slower and there would be harder bread for breakfast, warmed over until it was gone, mould cut out in little snipped corners. It did not matter that he had work. She saw those without it and worried that it would catch. But he had not seen the boy for months, and they were fine boots. They would last longer than the cheap kind, and so were really a sensible purchase.

  It was mild at home after the North Sea. Every dawn had been a blue fog, the ship’s horn lost in a world with no edges. Walking on deck alone before the dark lifted he felt that the edges of himself too were becoming indistinct. The boy was wrapped in scarf and mittens though Emil felt warm, almost hot in his sweater. But then he had been carrying Hans on his shoulders, a boy thin but dense, all his intent latent in his strong little body. Now the boy shed clothing as he struggled valiantly along the pavement with the large package.

  At the door to the apartment building Emil paused for a second but Hans hurled himself against the wood and was off up the stairs. Inside he smelled sausages cooking, stirring the juices of his stomach.

  ‘Mama!’ he heard from above. ‘Look at Papa’s boots!’ and the crackling of thick paper as the boy tore open the package. Ava’s murmur. You never knew what she was saying to him. The boy declaimed, always—‘I am happy!’ ‘You are sleeping!’ (each dawn)—and in response there came the continual murmur of his wife. He wondered whether the words were important or whether it was just an instinctive hushing noise she made, another form of her responses to his own occasional exuberance when drinking or happy. ‘Shhh, Emil, not so loudly now.’ ‘Please, dear. The boy is tired. Let him settle.’

  There was Ava’s murmur but then, this time, an audible sharpness, clear words: ‘Enough, Hans. Play in the bedroom now.’

  There came a protest as Emil grew closer to the second-floor apartment: ‘But, Mama, the boots!’ He heard the thud of them—one, two—hitting the wooden floor above and a slammed door. Hans had been banished and was outraged. So far as Emil knew, such a thing had never happened before. The boy was spoiled by everyone who knew him.

  She was waiting on the landing when he reached it, holding out a card, the light in the kitchen spilling into the stairwell around her. The boots were in the doorway, awry, like the feet of a cripple. Their champion was throwing a football at a wall repeatedly inside the apartment.

  Her arm was thrust at him, rigid, straight. He took the card. Rage filled the close space of the landing. The card, he saw, was a telegram. He held it up to the light coming from behind her.

  Herr Becker. Owing to cancellation of orders, the company will reduce test voyages forthwith. Testing on all remaining missions will be carried out by the chief engineer. Please attend the office in Düsseldorf at your earliest convenience for severance conditions. Thanking you for your service. Herr Faber. Employment office.

  He picked up the boots and entered the apartment, placed them on the small square table that filled most of the space in the kitchen.

  ‘You should have joined the NSDAP,’ she whispered, quickly, as though she’d been waiting to say it, saving it.

  ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’

  ‘They still have jobs. They find them for you when you are a member.’

  ‘You have lost your mind. I’m sorry about the job. Father will put me on to something in the factories for now. At least I’ll be here, with you and Hans.’

  ‘If you go over to the party, you won’t be out of work again. We cannot manage if you’re unemployed. We have no savings. Johanna’s husband was out of work and they got him a permanent position, high up in the party.’

  ‘As a hired thug, Ava. Johanna’s husband will be kicking the heads of Jews in his permanent position. Is that what you’re asking me to do to put bread on the table?’

  ‘Shhh,’ she said, and tilted her head towards the wall. ‘She’ll hear you. She has contacts.’

  ‘Christ! Goddamn her contacts!’ Her hands flew to her ears and she closed her eyes. The repetitive thump of the ball against the bedroom wall had stopped. He spoke more quietly, a finger pointed towards her: ‘Do not believe their filth. I forbid you.’

  She looked down. He did not know himself, like this. But she must see. She was not a stupid woman, not like Johanna, an ignorant peasant who crossed herself when the Jewish schoolteacher passed her on the street. He had been away so much in these last years, since Hans was born. He looked at her face. She had brought her hands down by her side. She was still so beautiful, hair so fair, skin clear and taut across her cheekbones, eyes round and grey and unreadable. He wanted to ask her: ‘And you, what do you think of Jews?’

  This was his own madness now. She was frightened of having no money, and that was all. But he knew how to find work. He had never been unemployed, never, even in hard times.

  After a few moments she went in to the boy and started up with that murmuring. He must go to Father’s office. Father knew—always—where the jobs were. He had a map in his head dotted with factories with little red pins for each body required. No doubt it was easier to hold the map in place in his mind since the American crash, particularly as he did not include Nazi jobs in his inventory. He must go, and yet he did not relish telling his father. He would worry, and it was not his job to worry about a grown man and how he fed his family. On the stairs he heard a wail from above. Emil had left without saying goodbye. Hans was screeching. Ava would have the devil of a time making him quiet again.

  He woke at midday to the alarm, unsure for a couple of seconds why he had been sleeping with brightness bleeding at the borders of the windows. His body was on the brink of sweating beneath the pile of heavy blankets though the air in the room was cool on his face. Hans’s bed was empty and the apartment was quiet.

  He remembered: he was on the late shift. Ava had left bread, cheese, sausage and an apple on the table for him. She would be at her sister’s in Krefeld with the boy. They took the train there on Tuesdays. After he had washed in the bathroom on the landing, he checked the clock and took his satchel. His boots smelled of polish when he pulled them on, and he saw the smudges of Hans’s thumbprints from where it hung on the doorknob.

  It was a decent walk to the factory, he could have taken the streetcar, but he didn’t mind. He had agreed to walk, and Ava saved the pfennigs in a tall glass jar in the pantry between the oats and the sugar against the day when this job too would disappear. The walk took him away from the high street, the women’s domain in the daytime until recently. Now, boys he had known at school hung about, carrying their placards, shouting over each other, occasionally landing a punch on an opponent’s head in a territorial scuffle. He walked away from all that along the banks of the cold brown river, lined with factories and warehouses, the fields of childhood gone as the town had spread. Many of the buildings were quiet now, their flat grey faces silently recalling industry and bustle, hourly deliveries, men shouting, the roar and rhythm of machines.

  His factory was know
n to him from earlier days. He had watched it go up the summer before he started school. Thomas was a presence that he felt as soon as he was in the building’s shadow. In his body, not his mind. He was just there, the memory of his boyhood friend, in the space between the walls, and on the banks of the river, and the little space beyond the building where there was still a narrow strip of pasture and the hummock behind which they had built their den.

  The factory made tools—hammers, screwdrivers, spanners—and nuts, screws, bolts. It was work. Father told him he didn’t have to take it but he couldn’t be fussy. He supervised the shift, checked the machines, signed the men in and out. It left his mind to work over what his eyes had seen since he came home. As thousands of tiny pieces of metal passed before his eyes, the workers’ fingers sorting, pushing, their bodies moving around the machines in synchronicity, he saw men marching in brown shirts with banners, shouting.

  He was free to let his memory pass through the days at sea, and in the countries of the world. He remembered Freetown. There were women on the streets in brightly coloured dresses with dazzling teeth. Children running in the laneways, at the markets, with the smell of smoke and cooking food and bodies and spices making the air thick. And in Ireland everyone moved slowly as though they were as old as time and their eyes had seen it all. The adults, that is. The children were as quick and bad as children everywhere. Stole from building sites. Learned filthy words in German and shouted them over and over again.