The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  It was a miniature coat of arms, comprising two majestic angels holding a shield between them. It was adorned with a silver key, a golden crucifix and a crown, all set against a chequered backdrop of red and white. Engraved at the bottom was the motto, Quaecumque vera doce me – teach me whatsoever is true. The coat of arms belonged to my mother’s family. I regarded it as an odd offering to leave at her grave. For a brief, mad moment I thought I would take it with me, but common sense prevailed and I left it alone.

  So I cast the thought to one side and turned around. Retracing my steps through the cemetery, I ran back into the Schlosspark. With the break in my run, I felt the sweat freeze against my skin, forcing me to push harder, my arms pumping in a bid to warm up. I tried to keep images of my mother, the cemetery and her grave at bay, willing myself to run faster. I picked out point after point: a gate here, a street sign there, the white plaque highlighting Egon Schiele’s old studio on Hietzinger Hauptstrasse. Any meaningful object formed a marker on my race back up to Ober St. Veit. When I got to Vivienne’s house, I checked my watch: I’d been out for just over an hour. Reinvigorated by the air and my speed, I also felt slightly euphoric that I had completed a run almost without the stray thoughts and self-doubt that had encumbered me before. I felt ready to tackle the puzzles of my mother’s notebook and the riddle in Young Gerber, and I waited impatiently for Vivienne to come home.

  OBER ST. VEIT, VIENNA, 1943

  ‘You know,’ Mama says to Annabel, ‘the way you hold your brother makes me think that you love him more than anything in the world.’

  Annabel just smiles and continues to cradle four-week-old Thaddäus in her arms. Mama’s still in bed, weakened by the birth, but Annabel thinks that with her dark hair flowing down her shoulders and her unmade-up face, Mama looks more beautiful than ever. She’s like Mother Nature, and Annabel thinks she ought to sketch Mama when she can bear to put Thaddäus down.

  Her baby brother grips Annabel’s little finger. ‘You’re so strong, aren’t you little man?’ she whispers to him.

  He’s on and off sleeping, and for a moment he opens his eyes and she smiles down at him.

  ‘You’ll smile at me first, I just know it,’ Annabel says, planting a kiss on one of his chubby cheeks.

  He timed his arrival with the sunniest day in July, and just a few days before her own birthday. How his birth has shone a light in her home and in her heart! Dressed in white he reminds her of an angel.

  ‘He’s a little miracle, isn’t he, Mama?’ she says.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Mama says, holding out her arms for her son.

  ‘Just a bit longer,’ says Annabel. ‘Please?’ And she vows to herself that no matter what, she’ll always protect Thaddäus.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The scrabble of a key in the lock announced Vivienne’s return. I went into the hall to meet her, making a play of her entrance. She gave me her coat and handbag, chuckling as I fussed around her. She even let me make her her afternoon cup of tea while she put on some music in the living room. From the kitchen I could hear the stir of Verdi’s Requiem again. When I walked into the living room, my look must have said it all.

  ‘Very well. What about La Bohème?’ she asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Anything but this Requiem stuff.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘It’s music, Max. Not stuff, as you put it. Has everything I taught you vanished from that head of yours?’

  ‘Only the things I don’t need.’ I grinned.

  She changed the CD in the player. ‘You took me to see this in London for my birthday. I’m not sure you’d remember it though. You fell asleep.’ She shook her head at me, a smile ghosting her lips.

  She was right. I didn’t recall the opera, but the music at least was far more playful than the Requiem, the thick molasses of the voices proving a welcome addition to the room, along with the fire I had lit. Vivienne pulled one of the armchairs closer to the hearth and sat down, taking her cup of tea and the slice of lemon I offered with it.

  She took a sip. ‘Just the way I like it,’ she said, all the while watching the quiver of the fire. I asked her about her morning with the children at the Albertina. She laughed as she told me about a little girl called Gabriella with cascading curly black hair who had asked question after question on each piece. She had taken a liking to Vivienne and had clutched her hand as they walked through the museum. ‘I have to say, though, my mind kept returning to Annabel’s notebook,’ she said. ‘May I see it?’

  I handed it to her. She put on her reading glasses, fiddling with their chain while she flicked through the book’s pages. She had a smile on her face and let out little gasps of delight every now and again.

  As she approached the later stages of the notebook, her smile faded. She eventually shut it, smoothing over the slight rifts in its binding. ‘Quite dark in places, isn’t it?’ she said, removing her glasses. ‘I wonder why she chose to copy that painting?’

  I didn’t dwell on her question, moving to the issue more pressing in my mind. ‘You knew my mother at that time, didn’t you?’ I could never remember exactly when they struck up a friendship.

  ‘Our mothers knew of each other, but they moved in different circles. After the war Annabel and I went to the same school; we were in the same class. We grew close quite quickly, and with no parents around, Annabel became one of the family. My mother ended up being her guardian, even though Annabel continued to live on Himmelhofgasse.’

  ‘On her own?’

  ‘Well, there was a skeleton staff. It wasn’t the money – she’d been well looked after in that sense. It was more that she didn’t care to have so many people around her.’

  ‘And no relatives took her in?’

  ‘They came and went. One aunt in particular would come to stay from time to time. She wanted Annabel to move to Graz with her, but Annabel wanted to stay in Vienna for her education.’ Vivienne was quick to answer my unspoken question. ‘Yes – even then, she knew what she wanted.’

  ‘I seem to remember Mama mentioning Fritz and Maria. At least, I remember she talked a lot about Maria. She looked after Mama didn’t she? But I don’t recall her being around when I was born – right?’

  ‘Maria was one of the ones that stayed behind – until she decided to find her family in Poland – sometime during the Sixties, I think it was. She never came back. I think your mother was quite heartbroken. Fritz I didn’t know, but I presume he was your grandfather’s valet or butler.’

  I took the notebook from her, flipping to the last two pages where my mother’s versions of the Schiele were depicted.

  ‘What did my mother actually say when she talked about their deaths?’

  ‘Your grandparents’ deaths?’

  ‘Well, my grandfather’s, and her brother’s too.’

  ‘She was quite matter-of-fact – kept any emotion out of it,’ Vivienne said. ‘That was her way of coping.’

  ‘But these pictures suggest something else, don’t you see?’

  ‘I think she was matter-of-fact about it because they were quite … well, horrifying.’

  I struggled to comprehend what she was trying to say. Vivienne’s expression changed again and her green eyes lost their sparkle.

  ‘It was believed that Annabel’s brother died of something similar to cot death, and that afterwards your grandmother became clinically depressed.’

  ‘Believed?’ I said.

  ‘She …’

  ‘My grandmother had something to do with his death?’

  Vivienne looked away.

  I pinched my eyes, unable to absorb this detail that Vivienne and my mother had kept buried.

  ‘Your grandmother had what we’d now call severe post-natal depression. She suffered from delusions and paranoia. Back then, most people concealed or ignored things like that.’ Vivienne spoke gently in that manner of hers, smoothing over confrontation. ‘I’m the only person she told, and now you know, of course.’

  My shock made me jump to the most ex
treme of conclusions. ‘And did she kill my grandfather too?’

  My question and tone took Vivienne by surprise. ‘No, no, Max,’ she said, sitting forward. ‘She was the one who forced him to send her away to a sanatorium. Your mother never mentioned it, but perhaps they didn’t want to send her to a place as harsh as a psychiatric hospital because your grandmother already recognised she was ill. She never came back – at least, as far as I know. Your mother told me how abandoned she felt.’

  ‘So he died of a heart attack?’

  She nodded, slowly.

  ‘But?’

  ‘There is no but, Max.’

  ‘Then why draw him that way? And why did she write what she did?’ I asked.

  Vivienne sipped the remainder of her tea. ‘She liked to write poetry from time to time. I did too. That was our age, I suppose.’ She put down her cup. ‘And the time we were living in.’

  I glanced down at the page with its short verse. ‘What about the word shame?’

  She shrugged, then glanced away. La Bohème filled more of the room, accompanied by the stutter of the flames. ‘He was a good man, your grandfather. What he and your grandmother built up,’ she said a moment later, sounding quite determined, as if arming herself against a possible riposte from me. ‘Through the orphanage, the Trust,’ she continued, ‘they saved a lot of young children – children left with nothing. One or two arrived on the Trust’s doorstep barely a day old.’

  But Vivienne’s defensiveness puzzled me. I wasn’t sure where this was leading, but I let her go on, not having the heart to interrupt her flow.

  ‘They weren’t like traditional benefactors. They rolled up their sleeves, got involved in the children’s health and education. Some of the girls were sent to Eugenie Schwarzwald’s school. The Anschluss changed all of that, of course.’

  ‘And my mother was quite involved?’

  ‘Yes. She told me stories of how she would go with your grandmother almost every week until … But she continued to go afterwards, on her own, making sure it was run properly, as far as she could. After the war, she wanted to expand it, but she was still young herself so she brought in expertise. And she stopped the apprenticeships, of course.’

  ‘What apprenticeships?’

  Vivienne looked at me, the disappointment quite visible on her face. ‘Really, Max. You should be ashamed at how little you know about the Trust.’

  I shrugged. ‘I wanted to get involved a few years ago, but Mama … Never mind. Giving money was the alternative.’

  ‘The easier alternative.’

  Her words made me bristle. ‘Well, maybe that’ll change.’ I didn’t want to get into a discussion about my involvement in the Trust. ‘So these apprenticeships?’

  ‘Your grandparents would find positions of employment for some of the children, those that didn’t have the aptitude for further education. I think one or two ended up at Himmelhofgasse.’ Vivienne settled back into her armchair, seemingly comfortable with this journey down memory lane. ‘I think your mother befriended them. She talked about those days as being quite lonely, with her parents in and out of the house, preoccupied with their projects and social circles. I expect that through the eyes of a child there were no boundaries. Everyone was a friend.’

  I couldn’t quite picture that, given the impatience I had sometimes seen in my mother’s dealings with Ludmilla. But then perhaps she had just hardened over the years.

  All this talk of the Trust and my mother’s friendships reminded me of the newspaper articles. Vivienne seemed quite animated and at ease talking about the Trust and I debated whether I should show them to her, but she caught me glancing at them.

  ‘I didn’t want to change the subject,’ I said, passing the clippings to her.

  She put on her glasses, pursing her lips as she absorbed the stories.

  ‘Did you know about them?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I was too young to remember. I suppose I only really knew of Josef Frank because of where he was found.’

  ‘I had no idea about that until now,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no reason why you would know,’ she said, tucking some stray hairs behind her ear. ‘I remember it vividly. We were forbidden to play outside on our own for a time. Rumour had it that your grandparents hired a private detective to find the culprit. All I know is that they never found who did it. And then came the Anschluss, and then the war. It turned calm into chaos.’

  I took the articles from Vivienne and glanced through them again. ‘But they were all similar – don’t you see?’

  ‘When you read them together, yes, I suppose so. I suspect at the time they were considered isolated cases.’

  I went back to my mother’s notebook, searching through some of the diary entries.

  ‘Mama mentions an E. Do you think that E could’ve been Elena Markovic? Could she have worked for my grandparents? Were they friends?’

  She drew a blank at my volley of questions. Then she reconsidered, her brow furrowing.

  ‘I’m sure there wasn’t an Elena.’

  ‘Then who was it she spoke of – who was the friend, E?’

  Vivienne shook her head, unable to remember.

  I pushed a little further. ‘But there was a girl who worked in the house?’

  ‘No doubt, and I imagine Annabel befriended her,’ she said. ‘And then she must have gone away, and no one told Annabel until her conversation with this Fritz person.’ She scrunched her forehead again as she scanned through the articles. ‘These numbers – what are they?’

  ‘I wondered the same thing.’

  Her face brightened. ‘Ah – they’re years.’ She tapped on the newspaper clippings. ‘Josef Frank – his murder was in 1937. Hence the thirty-seven.’

  ‘And the other two, murdered in 1935 and 1936,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it’s easy to check.’

  ‘So it can’t have been Elena.’

  At first I didn’t hear her; I was too preoccupied trying to figure out why the articles had been kept aside all these years.

  ‘E can’t have been Elena,’ she repeated, ‘because she says in her notebook that E went away in 1938.’ She seemed to be quite relieved by this, and rather pleased with her detective skills.

  ‘The murders were never solved?’ I asked.

  ‘Josef Frank’s wasn’t. Perhaps the others turned cold too.’ She scratched her forehead. ‘Who would do such a thing to those poor children? I suppose too much time has passed for us to ever find out. But you never forget events like that.’ She fell silent for a little while, then moved on with her thoughts, taking me with her. ‘O kneels, rats die,’ she said. ‘I was mulling it over last night as I was falling asleep. What a curious thing to write.’ She looked at me directly. ‘You really think the handwriting’s the same?’

  ‘It wasn’t there before.’

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  Lost in the world of the notebook, my words had slipped out before I could stop them. ‘Sorry, I’m not making sense,’ I added quickly. ‘I mean I don’t think the writing’s the same. It’s hard to say really.’

  Vivienne looked at me as if she were trying to open a door in my mind. I turned back to the notebook.

  ‘Well, I suppose the police will have their own theories – if they ever find the culprits,’ she said eventually.

  I put on an air of agreement and steered our conversation back to the contents of my mother’s notebook, hoping to learn more about my mother as a child. Reliving the highlights of my mother’s happy-go-lucky childhood with Vivienne carried more weight. I saw them as small revelations, uncovering a side of my mother that made her seem warmer and more carefree.

  Yet despite the stop-and-start nature of the notebook, the change in my mother was quite evident, her steps into adolescence painting her character with darker shades. I began to appreciate the impact of my grandmother’s mental breakdown, her self-imposed exile coming at a time when my mother probably needed her most. And then I recalled how she dealt with my father’s and
brother’s death.

  ‘Her harsh exterior seems to make more sense now,’ I told Vivienne.

  She smiled. ‘We all have faults and quirks. Sometimes there are reasons for them. Don’t punish yourself over how you viewed your mother.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘And I think I need a nap. You don’t mind, do you?’

  I could see that, along with her tour at the Albertina, our foray into the past had made her tired. As I helped her move from the armchair to the sofa, I felt a pang of guilt.

  ‘I’m sorry – for pushing you to remember things you probably don’t want to recall.’

  ‘No matter what you learn about your past or your family’s past, you’re your own person,’ she said, squeezing my hand. She closed her eyes, the corners of her mouth edging downwards. I reached for the woollen throw and draped it over her legs, remaining by her side until she fell asleep.

  Half an hour later, my mobile phone rang. It was the detective, Thomas Schmidt. I hadn’t expected him to call me so soon after the break-in. He told me there was sufficient evidence in the abandoned van to track down the thieves and that they had been caught. They were indeed Serbian; the same gang was linked to a series of robberies in Vienna. It was a major coup he told me, good for the force, and so on.

  ‘And Zoran?’ I asked.

  ‘We managed to track him down. Full name’s Zoran Pavlović. We pulled him in for questioning. I’m sorry to say that your sympathetic taxi driver also had links to the group. Let’s just say he supplemented his income by scouting out a property or two. He was also a courier for them, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Believe me, we went through everything. After hours of denying his connection to the group he finally caved in, although he swore he had no involvement in the raid on your house. I had to laugh as it seemed you made quite a mark on him. He said he’d never forget a face like yours. I don’t suppose you would know what he meant by that?’