The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  On Sunday afternoon I arrived at Oskar’s home, more relaxed this time around, though it was butterfly-edged with my ever-revolving speculation about what this next meeting might reveal.

  Angela answered the door and showed me through to the living room. ‘Mr Edelstein will be with you shortly. He’s just had a nap,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit under the weather. I’ve been staying overnight the last few days to keep an eye on him, although the doctor doesn’t think it’s anything to worry about. I think it’s the time of year, to be honest.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ I said. ‘It’s like a fist squeezing out daylight – I find it soul-destroying.’

  ‘Gets us all down, doesn’t it? I can’t wait for spring to arrive.’

  I struggled to imagine Angela ever being down. She had a pleasant smile on her face, and as she left the room, she hummed one of those Christmas songs which play non-stop at that time of year.

  I put my mother’s notebook on the coffee table next to a copy of The Sunday Times Magazine. While I waited for Oskar, I leafed through it, stopping at a black and white montage that captured the poverty of a favela. For a moment, I was drawn to the images of children peering out of doorways, or playing football in something akin to a large cage, blithe and at ease. Their innocence echoed the expression on my mother’s face in the photograph with Oskar. It struck me then that childhood, that feeling of freedom, the ignorance of boundaries, was universal. This was far from a eureka moment, but it was a kind of realisation: childhood slips by without us noticing. It’s only after the passage of time that we identify the point when we step from that innocent state to the first stage of adulthood, that something beyond our control moves us from one state to the next, like an invisible hand. Perhaps some refer to this as God; for others, it’s fate, or a combination of both. I found myself wondering if my grandmother’s decision to spend the rest of her days in a sanatorium had pulled my mother away from her own childhood. For Oskar, maybe it was his family’s flight from Austria. For me, it was the death of my father and brother which put an end to that part of my life.

  My reflection was put on pause as Angela pottered back in with a tray bearing a cup of coffee for me and some tea for Oskar. She had already added milk to my drink, remembering how I took it from my last visit. A few minutes later, Oskar walked in.

  In spite of his smile and the geniality of his handshake, his movements were more laboured; he lowered himself into the seat as if he were afraid he would break. When I got up to help him, he stopped me.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the cold getting to my bones. It takes a while for everything to wake up.’

  The physical change in him, in just a matter of weeks, came as a shock to me. He appeared frail, thinner than before, attesting to a physical deterioration that I never would have expected. Only his eyes retained a glimmer of energy: at once incongruous with the fragility of his body, they seemed to reflect his fight against death.

  ‘It should be me doing that,’ he said as I poured him some tea. He watched me with a veiled look of amusement as I went about it. ‘I was in Cornwall for a couple of weeks – Prussia Cove – do you know it?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. My only experience of England outside of London was a rainy four-day camping trip somewhere in the Lake District.

  ‘Doctor’s orders,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a bit of heart trouble. Seems to be getting worse. But that’s old age for you.’

  He accepted his cup of tea, taking a few sips, all the while regarding me. Then he looked towards the door. As if on cue, the pad of Ripley’s paws could be heard along the hallway. The dog nosed the door wider, trotted in and sat by Oskar’s feet to let his master ruffle his ears.

  ‘Some friends have a cottage down there,’ he went on. ‘They persuaded me to stay with them. Air’s good, managed to go for my walks … I felt a great deal better, so I persuaded them to let me return to London.’

  We continued to talk about Cornwall and when I admitted to my unwillingness to visit other parts of Britain, he laughed it off.

  ‘You simply must visit Cornwall, at least Prussia Cove – you’ll be surprised, you know. I certainly was.’

  I said that I’d consider it one day and my response seemed to suffice. Our small talk helped us neatly sidestep the elephant in the room. He didn’t even seem to notice my mother’s notebook on the coffee table. I should have realised it was me doing most of the talking, regaling Oskar with tales of my miserable camping experience. Before I knew it, almost an hour had gone by without mention of Oskar’s reason for his wish to meet. Our conversation eventually waned and we fell into a brief interlude of silence. I took the opportunity to observe Oskar more closely – his absent-minded stroking of Ripley’s head, his slow blinks, his shallow breathing.

  ‘You said you had something to show me,’ I said after a few moments.

  He nodded, then said, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? How you and I had never met before.’ He turned to the window, with its view of his garden in the winter gloom. ‘This photograph of your mother’s …’ He returned his attention to the room, to me. ‘Much as Cornwall was a refuge, I couldn’t stop thinking about that blessed photograph. You see, it’s the image – of me, the young boy – the fact that I look startled to death. And then those words. I felt they accused me of some wrong-doing or other.’

  I wondered whether the photograph and my request to meet had precipitated his ill health. My face must have been an open book.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself for my heart problems,’ he said, smoothing down the fabric of his trousers.

  I tried to believe him, but then I glimpsed the slight shake in his hand and my self-reproach trickled back.

  ‘I wish I could forget about the photograph – let sleeping dogs lie, as Catharine would have said. But I can’t. There are strands of memory here and there, but when I grasp at them they seem to fade.’ He stretched out his legs, then pushed himself up. Ripley followed suit, his tail wagging in anticipation. ‘You know, I haven’t been out today. The sky’s slate grey, but I think the weather will hold. What do you say we go for a walk?’

  I readily agreed. My legs were also in need of a stretch. I had been running longer and harder most days, and the regular sparring I’d recently taken up had left my muscles the worse for wear.

  ‘I have some letters to show you. I’ll bring them with me,’ he said.

  A kind of hope skipped inside me, as I assumed the content of Oskar’s letters would shed light on the missing link that my mother had referred to in hers.

  I picked up the notebook and followed Oskar and Ripley out of the living room, listening to him call out to Angela to kindly fetch those letters. I noticed how Oskar struggled with his coat. He just stood there, his arms dangling in his coat sleeves, unable to shrug the garment over his shoulders. I jumped to help him, catching the disquiet in Angela’s eyes as she came out of one of the other rooms.

  ‘Don’t be out too long, will you now, Mr Edelstein. They say it’s going to rain.’ She touched me on the shoulder as we stepped outside. Lowering her voice, she said, ‘Make sure he doesn’t overdo it.’

  ‘I heard that,’ Oskar shot back, looking over his shoulder with a grin on his face. ‘As a matter of fact, the doctor said walking is good. And I’m not going to stop doing one of the things I still enjoy.’

  Angela nodded, keeping that smile of hers pinned to her face. But I could see her worry as she watched Oskar and Ripley head over to the gate.

  For all Angela’s cautioning and Oskar’s weakened demeanour, he adopted a brisk pace up Parliament Hill. Ripley, too, seemed to share Angela’s concern, keeping at Oskar’s side, even when his master bent down to unclip his leash.

  We didn’t talk, our own quiet mirroring the general stillness around us, save for the wind bustling through the trees and wild grass of the Heath, and the distant rattle and hum of traffic. I rubbed my thumb back and forth over the deer-hide cover of my mother’s notebook. The feel of its slightly
ridged surface made me feel closer to her again.

  Once at the top, we settled on a bench away from the handful of people milling around. Pulling a slim bundle of letters from his pocket, Oskar said, ‘When I returned from Prussia Cove, I went digging through the attic. I got Angela to help me. I think she rather enjoyed the whole exercise, likening it to a treasure hunt. My wife and I had cleared away a lot of things long ago, but a couple of boxes remained.’ He glanced down at the letters cradled in his hands. ‘I came across some correspondence between your grandmother and my mother. The two of them were indeed good friends. Then the letters stopped. I’m not sure whether it was on account of our house moves during the war.’

  ‘My grandmother was sent to a sanatorium before the war ended. She died there,’ I said.

  He simply nodded before handing the letters to me. ‘I don’t know what it was that I was hoping to find. A clue, perhaps, to why I looked the way I did in that photograph of your mother’s. There’s mention of the picture – that was something at least. I thought you’d be interested, nonetheless.’

  I loosened the coarse brown string that entwined them and flipped through the three envelopes. Peeling Nazi censor tape edged a couple of the letters; one had been left unadulterated. All were addressed to Oskar Edelstein’s mother, Claudia, in an unrecognisable but elegant hand; two were blemished by a series of postage stamps with Hitler’s glowering side profile.

  ‘You remember what I said to you last time – about digging up the past?’ asked Oskar.

  I nodded.

  He watched my fingers hesitate over the bundle. ‘One of them … well, perhaps it’s better if you read them in your own time,’ he said.

  It seemed as though sadness transcended his words, making me feel as if I’d perhaps gone a step too far, and the initial thrill of stumbling across items shedding further light on my family history quickly petered out. Other than the notebook, there was little I could offer to lift his mood.

  ‘I wanted you to see this,’ I said, passing it to him. ‘I thought it would be nice to share it with you. The first few pages reflect on your friendship with my mother.’ I hoped that something in her words or sketches would trigger more than a snatch of memory.

  Oskar opened the book. Turning to the first page, he recognised himself as the young boy in my mother’s first drawing. A smile edged its way across his face.

  ‘She remembered me then,’ he said.

  He didn’t stay on that page for long though, and continued to go through the book, page by page, reading extracts from my mother’s short diary entries. I couldn’t read much into his expression and as he reached the latter stages of the notebook, it seemed that my mother’s teenage drawings and words bored him, until, that is, he arrived at her renditions of the Schiele. Examining them brought out an altogether different reaction. He traced the drawings with his fingers in the manner of the art historian he once was. Although his mouth twitched at the corners, he remained mute, the lines on his forehead deepening as he analysed her work. He tapped at the page as he read the words of my mother’s verse, then shook his head impatiently, before snapping the notebook shut.

  ‘Why choose that painting to copy?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘It was a prominent feature in the house. It could well have fed her imagination.’

  ‘I see.’ Oskar didn’t make eye contact as he handed the notebook back to me, his gaze resting on an anonymous point in the distance. Ripley, still sitting by his side, stood up, thinking it was time to go. He turned to Oskar, then looked towards the view, as if trying to fathom what it was his master was so entranced with. But once he realised we weren’t going anywhere, he wandered off, leaving Oskar’s side for the first time during our outing.

  ‘Is there anything in here that jogs a memory or two?’ I asked.

  He turned to me. ‘There doesn’t seem to be.’

  I wanted to believe Oskar, but his silence, the way he studied those pictures at the back of the notebook suggested otherwise. Nonetheless, it wasn’t in me to push him. Perhaps I would have done if we had met under different circumstances. But here I was, seated next to a frail man, someone who was little more than a stranger to me, and I couldn’t bring myself to challenge him. Despite his reticence, and the fact that we had only met twice, I liked him. It wasn’t out of pity – Oskar wasn’t someone you’d feel sorry for. His life, as far as I could tell, remained quite rich, and in spite of the dip in his health he had a get-on-with-it attitude that I admired. I wondered, then, that if young Oskar had been smiling in that photograph, would the message on its reverse have been seen as a joke? If my mother were still alive, the matter would have been resolved in a flash and we could all have moved on.

  If.

  A plane made its near silent descent below the clouds, its distance from us making it look like a small toy that I could cup in my hand. For an instant I wanted to do just that, to reach out and grab hold of it.

  ‘I found a message in a book at my mother’s house,’ I said. ‘O kneels, rats die. The handwriting’s the same as on the back of the photograph.’ I offered up the bare facts – no made-up theories, no mention of the break-in.

  Oskar nodded, all the while directing his gaze towards the financial district. His brow creased slightly and I thought I glimpsed a tease of a smile.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ he asked without looking at me. I couldn’t tell whether there was a touch of humour in his voice. But when he turned to face me, his countenance was straight-faced, without a wrinkle of mirth or suchlike.

  At first, my shock swallowed up any ability to speak. I glanced away from him, searching for the right words. Yet I could feel his gaze on me, as though he was studying my reaction.

  ‘Do you?’ I replied. It was all I could manage, not wanting to expand but wanting to buy time.

  Oskar hesitated before answering. ‘Perhaps. Sometimes I wish I could see the ghost of my wife, Catharine. To see her one last time. Dreams aren’t quite the same, and even then, I feel she’s slipping away.’

  ‘You were together a long time, weren’t you?’ I already knew the answer but hoped to distract him from his original question.

  ‘We were. Although looking back, our time together seems so fleeting.’ He turned to me. ‘Do you believe in them or not?’ His tone was crisp and I felt like I had a spotlight shining on my face.

  I removed my glasses and rubbed my eyes. I didn’t dare answer him. At the same time, I couldn’t skirt around the truth. I put my glasses back on, trying to sort out the various conflicts in my mind. ‘I didn’t …’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until recently.’ And there it was: my admission, my confession.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It goes against everything I believe … But there’ve been things at the house. Things that I’ve heard and seen. I can explain some of them, or at least, I can explain them away.’

  ‘And then there are others that you can’t,’ Oskar said.

  The handwriting in Young Gerber sprang into my mind.

  A young couple, dressed in trainers, jeans and hooded tops, ambled over towards our spot. Oblivious to the two of us sitting nearby, the boy kissed the girl on the cheek and gave her a gentle caress. It seemed their embrace triggered other memories for Oskar.

  ‘Catharine used to admire this skyline,’ he said. ‘This was one of her favourite spots.’ He watched the couple as they walked away, arms draped around each other’s waists. ‘When we mourn, we … I take it that it was your mother you saw?’

  ‘No. A child, a young girl. At least I think it was a girl.’ There was my next admission, sliding out as easily as the first.

  ‘A young girl, you say?’ His voice was quieter now.

  My gaze returned to the view, to searching out that tiny plane again. I struggled with what else I should say. Luckily, Oskar didn’t press for more details. Nevertheless, my brief words of disclosure couldn’t be clawed back. My thoughts, doubts, now spoken out loud,
were no longer the grainy visuals I tried to push away.

  ‘There are times when I think it’s me – my state of mind and so on.’ I tried to sound relaxed, but my tone of voice let me down.

  ‘You seem sane enough to me,’ he said.

  Part of me still wanted to believe that everything that had happened could be explained away, but with it now out in the open, my struggle to cling to a rational explanation became that much harder. It felt like I was teetering on the edge of a precipice, unable to look down for fear of falling.

  ‘You kindly invited me to the house,’ he said, taking off his glasses. He chewed one of the curved ends as he had done the first time we met. ‘Is that invitation still open?’

  I nodded slowly, wondering at his change of mind.

  ‘Well then, perhaps I’ll come just before Christmas. I hope that won’t inconvenience you?’

  ‘Not at all. I appreciate you agreeing to visit.’ My reply sounded rehearsed, a mere platitude, and I hoped he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I’m due to attend an event at a gallery in Vienna – I think I may have mentioned it to you – on the seventeenth of December. Perhaps you and I can meet the following day.’ Oskar stood up and re-tied his scarf, nudging it up his neck. He indicated to the darkening clouds curtaining the distant reaches of Canary Wharf. ‘The rain’s coming in. Angela, as ever, was right.’ He called out for Ripley, who promptly came bounding back, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, his tail wagging.

  And so we headed back, walking at the same pace as before, despite the lean of the wind, which had since picked up. I tugged up my jacket collar and dug my hands into my coat pocket. Oskar chattered away, as if our discussion about ghosts had never happened. I remained silent, lost in my own world, my mind flipping through the different cards in this game of mine: the house, the photograph, the message, the notebook, the presence. I tried to think about the letters, now wedged inside the notebook, and the information they contained, but it proved difficult to focus on them. Oskar’s sudden desire to visit the house left me unsettled. At our first meeting, Oskar had spoken of other doors that would beg to be opened. I didn’t want to find any more doors. Oskar was right. But it was too late to turn back. I couldn’t renege on my invitation to Oskar, not now that he’d accepted and we’d agreed on a date.