The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  A draught grazed my face. I waited. Then I opened my eyes, careful not to move anything else. I saw – or I thought I saw – a shadow skim across the pool of moonlight, fleeting, retreating towards the bedroom door. Fear knotted itself around my body, squeezing the breath from me. I waited for the sound of an opening door. It didn’t come. I waited some more. Locked in my bed, I gulped in air, trying to slow the beat of my heart. I searched the darkness, but without my glasses I couldn’t see anything other than the straight-lined silhouettes of the furniture. As I lay there, the sounds of the house and outside seemed louder: the gentle wind disturbing the leaves on the trees; the creak and stretch of the house; the faint crackle of electricity through the wires. There was nothing to suggest that someone else was in the house. I tried to tell myself it was no more than my imagination, and that was the mantra I forced myself to repeat until my limbs loosened up. Then I reached for my glasses on the bedside table. With them on, I relaxed a bit. Whatever I sensed earlier had gone.

  Tension seeped out of my shoulders and I switched on the lamp next to me, its light bringing back the familiarity of my old bedroom and belongings. Still, the experience left me unwilling to go back to sleep. In need of a distraction, I went to my bag in search of some reading for work, then returned to bed.

  At first I found it difficult to concentrate, but as the nocturnal normality of the house grew on me, I was soon able to immerse myself in the research report on the company we planned to take public. Before I realised it, almost two hours had skipped by. It wasn’t quite sunrise, but already I could hear the soft prelude to the dawn chorus. I’d had enough of reading. My headache had returned and the growl of my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten for some time.

  I wandered downstairs. As I turned into the kitchen I noticed I’d left the light on. A casual drip told me that I hadn’t properly turned the tap off either. Feeling parched, I filled a glass with water. Above the rush of the water’s flow, I thought I heard something else. I lessened the stream and concentrated on the noise, but I still couldn’t make out what it was. I turned off the tap. There it was again: a soft but incessant knocking. It didn’t come from outside. Nor did it come from the kitchen. I glanced behind me, then turned around to face the empty gloom of the hall beyond the kitchen. A cold breeze wrapped itself around my bare legs. I shivered. As I moved to the doorway, the sound grew louder, conspicuous in the silence. Wood against wood: musical, a lullaby. It seemed to come from the direction of the drawing room. I walked down the hallway and paused under the atrium. I listened once more.

  Knock-knock, knock-knock.

  Its rhythm grew more urgent, hammering out some sort of code that I couldn’t ignore. It seemed to surround me, and whether it was the noise or my tiredness, for a few moments I felt disorientated, as though I were standing on sinking mud, not solid marble. I wheeled around and felt the draught again, coming from the drawing room.

  I went into the room, where my eyes immediately fell on the French windows. The doors were wide open and banging against the walls as though they had been flung open by a storm raging outside. Yet I felt nothing other than the same gentle breeze that had been blowing earlier in the evening. Still, the French windows swung violently back and forth as if they had a mind of their own. I went to shut them, fighting with the curtains which fluttered up like petticoats dancing to the doors’ acoustic tune. Once closed, I pressed my forehead to the glass. The sky was edged with the faint pink of dawn, but the looming clouds made daybreak appear further away, and it was difficult to see anything through my ashen-faced reflection. I strained my eyes but there was no sign of an intruder. I stepped away from the windows, frowning at my own image staring back at me. I rubbed my eyes. My reflection mirrored my action. So did the stranger standing behind me.

  I shouted out, jumping away from the window, my arms flailing to regain my balance. I shot a glance over my shoulder, scanning the room. Panic twisted my insides; my heart thumped against my chest. There was no one in the room except me and the figures gracing the Schiele on the back wall.

  I couldn’t think. My body shook, whether on account of the cold, the shock, or both I didn’t know. I sat down on the sofa in front of the French windows, trying to regain some composure. My fingers trembled. I clasped them together, fingers clenching fingers, pinching at my skin. What was it? Real, imagined? The moment was swift, yet sent such a jolt of fear through me. I couldn’t even begin to describe what I had seen, other than the blur of a face that wasn’t my own. My brain processed the events of the nocturnal hours just gone by. That I heard something – yes; that I felt something in my bedroom – I couldn’t be sure; that I saw someone – I couldn’t have.

  But. But …

  I fought against my denial by ticking off my symptoms. Exhaustion had taken hold of me. I hadn’t slept properly in days. I remembered a similar experience during my slog as a junior analyst when I had worked round the clock. There were times then when my weariness had played tricks with my mind. I just needed a break – that was all.

  But.

  It took a while for me to force myself off the sofa. When I did, it must have been close to six or seven in the morning. The start of a car engine on the road outside brought back a semblance of the everyday, of the real world, and helped restore my sanity. I left the drawing room and headed back upstairs to my bedroom and I climbed into bed. Pulling the duvet over me, I reluctantly drifted into another fitful sleep.

  OBER ST. VEIT, VIENNA, 1938

  Maria has a fever and is lying in bed with a flannel on her forehead. So Mama has put Eva in charge of Annabel, and that has made Annabel’s day. Oskar has since come over with his mother, Claudia Edelstein. They’ve played endless rounds of hide-and-seek, but Mama’s instructed Eva to take them upstairs because she simply must have some peace and quiet to talk to Claudia.

  Sleet blurs the windowpane of the nursery and the dishwater gloom outside has turned everything grey inside. Annabel and Oskar are bored of playing with the toys on hand, including Annabel’s puppet theatre; besides, Oskar wants to play with soldiers and Annabel has had to tell him innumerable times that she doesn’t have any, and that’s that. Eva intervenes and asks them to teach her a word or two of English.

  ‘I like the sound of it: how do you do?’

  They all giggle because Eva has an uncanny ability to mimic everyone and anyone, including Annabel’s English governess.

  ‘We’ll play word games,’ declares Annabel.

  ‘I don’t like word games,’ says Oskar.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so down in the dumps, Oskar. I’ll make it fun.’ So Annabel sits down at the table and writes out the letters of two familiar words, each one drawn carefully before she turns them into an English phrase. Oskar and Eva look on and Annabel glances up at them, catching the awe in their eyes, and she can’t help but glow with pride.

  Oskar reads them out loud, struggling to enunciate each word.

  ‘It’s a silent K, silly,’ says Annabel. ‘Kneels. Not K-neels.’

  Eva can read and does so silently over their shoulders. ‘What does that mean, Fräulein Annabel?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything, Eva. They’re just words, you see?’

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re just too clever for your own good,’ says Oskar, folding his arms.

  ‘Sometimes I think you can be just too grumpy,’ says Annabel and she gets up to play with her doll, Esther.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When I eventually woke up, it was late morning. In need of some fresh air, I opened my bedroom window and breathed in the sweet smell of damp grass, feeling my unease peel away. Rain sprinkled in from outside so I closed the window, knocking one of the model cars off the windowsill in the process. As I put it back in its place, I hesitated. All the cars were positioned with their fronts pointing to the window. They didn’t look right at all and I turned them around, with their bonnets facing the room.

  As I was on my way out to find a bite to eat, Vivienne calle
d me on my mobile. She was rushing to the Albertina where she volunteered as a guide.

  ‘You knew she’d leave me the place, didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘As I always told you.’

  I heard the jingle of keys in the background.

  ‘But are you quite all right? You don’t sound yourself,’ she said.

  ‘I’m tired … and hungry too.’ I came to a stop at Wolfrathplatz. ‘Where should I go to eat?’

  ‘I’m sorry Max,’ Vivienne said, ‘you could have come over. I should have asked someone else to take my place today. And then this blessed bridge match this evening – we always lose.’ She muttered instructions to her cab driver. ‘Come tomorrow, won’t you?’

  ‘I promise. But where can I get food?’

  ‘Biedermayer – you remember it, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s still around?’

  ‘Of course – you never noticed?’

  I hadn’t. I only recalled the few times Vivienne had taken me there when I was younger. On walking through the door, I saw that very little had changed: the familiar smell of fresh brioche mingling with the aroma of coffee; even the clientele looked the same. I sat down and ordered a breadbasket, with a side order of prosciutto and cheese. When the food arrived, I tucked in as if I hadn’t eaten for days. My late breakfast made me feel a thousand times better. I smiled to myself: the more I thought about it, the more the previous night resembled a fading dream.

  After breakfast, I walked down to Schlosspark. The rain had stopped and I meandered around the park’s many paths, avoiding the area by the colossal Neptune fountain where most tourists congregated. I tried not to think of anything in particular, just wanting to keep my head clear as I walked up to the colonnaded belvedere. I regarded the honeyed walls of the Schloss Schönbrunn down below, toying with the idea of staying for a coffee, but I didn’t. There seemed to be a definitive shift in seasons – a cool wind gusted through the park while grey cloud hung low overhead – and here and there, ravens, perched on the ground in groups of twos and threes, lessened the welcome of the place.

  Once back at the house I wandered through the rooms, opening up the curtains, letting in more light and air. I wanted the house to breathe again, to renew itself. Yet I still couldn’t bring myself to go into the study. That’s where they had found my mother and I couldn’t help imagining her slumped over her desk, her eyes wide open. So I turned my back on the study and went to the library instead.

  Three of the room’s walls were home to hundreds of books from my grandparents’ time, to which my mother had since added. Many were collector’s items that she had catalogued and restored and kept to one side of the room. I decided to pick a book at random, so I walked around the library, running my fingers across the spines, taking in the smell of old paper from long ago.

  My hand came to a halt at a copy of Young Gerber by the Austrian writer Friedrich Torberg. On opening it up, I saw that it was a first edition. I remembered reading it as a set text at school and despite my addiction to thrillers, I had enjoyed this book with its tale of teenage angst and suicide, driven by an archaic school system. Coming across it again, I had the urge to reread it, so I pulled it out of its resting place and went through to the drawing room. There, I kicked off my shoes and lay on one of the sofas, arranging my mother’s precious cushions behind my head. I hadn’t read a novel in German for a while, but once I got used to its style, I was soon immersed in it. I wasn’t going to finish it in a day, but it didn’t feel right to take it back to London with me, so I put it back in the library, promising myself I’d pick up where I left off on my next visit.

  Although it was still early in the evening, tiredness nagged at me, so I decided to go to bed. Before heading upstairs, I checked and double-checked all the windows and doors, ridiculing myself as I went along. I half thought that I’d succumbed to madness, but laughing at myself helped, and as I settled into bed I felt my mind and body float into deep sleep.

  I awoke with a start to the sound of shattering glass. I checked my watch. It was close to three in the morning. I slipped out of bed, reached over for my glasses, then crept towards my bedroom door and out on to the landing. Noticing nothing other than the rain pattering down on the atrium, I glanced over the banister to the hall below. There didn’t seem to be anyone there, yet I was certain I’d heard something.

  Caution made me hesitate before I walked downstairs, and when I did, I couldn’t help pausing at every other step. At the foot of the staircase I stopped. The sound of scrapes and scratches against a windowpane rose above the rain. And from somewhere on the ground floor, a door creaked on its hinges. I surveyed the hallway. All the doors were shut, apart from the one to the study.

  My curiosity pushed against my reluctance to enter that room. For a few moments I stood where I was, a tug of war playing in my brain. I shook my head in a bid to empty it of the grotesque pictures of my mother and approached the study. As I did so, the rain turned into a downpour, ferocious and brief, before it gave way to a lull that filled the space around me. Face to face with the door, I gave it a nudge, then pushed it a bit more, then gave it another shove, until it swung wide open.

  The curtains were open, as was the window. I went to close it, checking for signs of anyone outside, but there was no one. Not wanting to linger, I tugged the curtains across the glass, thinking that intruders must have tried to enter the night before too. Perhaps they were checking the place out and I’d disturbed them. Perhaps I really had seen someone after all … I tried to blank out the image. If my mother had had an alarm installed, this could have been avoided. I never understood why she hadn’t got around to fitting one, but that was the way she was. I decided to call the police to report the attempted break-in, yet when I picked up the telephone on the desk, the line was dead. At least I have my mobile, I thought, swallowing my flit of panic. But it soon resurfaced. Something didn’t feel right.

  The desk, the bookshelf behind it – all seemed to be in order, with its array of files, books, photographs and family heirlooms of one sort or another. But it was the gap on one of the shelves that caught my attention. As I stepped behind the desk, the sole of my foot caught on something sharp. I winced and brushed the sole of my foot. Noticing a smear of blood on my finger, I glanced down at the wooden floor. A silver photograph frame lay face down, surrounded by a halo of splintered glass. I picked the frame up and turned it over. The sepia print showed my grandparents sitting amidst a group of young children who I assumed once lived in the orphanage. All grins. The picture of happiness.

  My mind went to the task of clearing up the broken glass. I searched the kitchen and utility room for a dustpan and brush, but could find neither. The only place left to look was the cellar, a space so drab and uninviting that I could count on my fingers the number of times I had been down there. As I switched on the light in the cramped stairwell, the cellar appeared more neglected, damper, chillier than I remembered. Certainly, the naked light bulb’s dirty yellow glow did little to cheer up the space, and the strange stale smell hanging in the air didn’t help either, triggering a faint jolt of alarm inside me.

  All the doors running along the right-hand side of the cellar corridor were closed, save the one leading to the furthermost room. I hurried over to it and found what I was looking for. Halfway back up the stairs, I heard what sounded like paint pots clattering to the floor. I stopped. More than anything, I wanted to tidy up and return to the comfort of my bed, but I couldn’t shrug off the noise I’d just heard and so I went back down.

  I flicked the light back on in the stairwell. This time, its beam appeared duller, emitting only a pitiful gleam at the entrance of the corridor. I peered towards the room I had left. Just get on with it, I thought. I went in and opened the cupboard where I had found the dustpan and brush. Nothing had fallen over – metal cans or otherwise.

  I couldn’t understand it. I had heard something. I was certain. I looked beyond the room to where the corridor narrowed towards the wall at the
far end. It was now blanketed in darkness. Although a part of me longed to leave, I kept going, tripping over forgotten household equipment and cardboard boxes. The corridor stretched another few metres or so, but in the feeble light, the distance seemed much greater, and the further I went, the more I felt the ice cold of the stone pervade the soles of my bare feet. It seemed, too, as though the stale air had morphed into something else, taking on a fetid odour. The narrowing space, the low light, the drop in temperature, the smell – combined, they sent a wave of despair down my spine that I tried hard to ignore. I moved on nonetheless, tugged along one step at a time.

  Then something stopped me in my tracks. There seemed to be a pile of bedding or clothing on the ground in front of the wall. I drew closer.

  It wasn’t bedding or clothing.

  I took another step. It looked like a person curled up on the floor.

  It can’t be.

  I edged forwards. I pressed my hand over my mouth and nose, suppressing the stench and swallowing the sick that was pushing up my throat. I took another step and crouched down.

  Oh God.

  I fell back against the wall, smarting from the shock. I stole another glimpse. It appeared to be a child’s body. Small, frail. Decomposing.

  I retreated, my back slamming against the wall, fear sucking the breath out of me. The light behind me blinked on and off, creating random snapshots of the corridor and the body in front of me. It lasted only a few seconds, then darkness rushed in. I stood up, shivering as I backed further away, sliding along the wall. After a couple of paces the light flickered on, the bulb throwing a needle of light across the floor. I looked to where the body lay.

  It was gone.

  I couldn’t have been more than three metres away, but there was nothing there: no pile of clothing, no body. Just a vacant space in front of the wall. I was certain of what I saw. I couldn’t believe that I had imagined it.