The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  OBER ST. VEIT, VIENNA, 1944

  Papa’s back. The front door’s just slammed and there’s an exchange of terse words with Fritz, which Annabel can’t make out from her bedroom. She’s been reading a letter from Mama – at least, it’s signed by Mama – but there’s so little of Mama in it, and the handwriting’s different. There isn’t even an I love you, my dearest heart, which was the way Mama always used to end her letters.

  Annabel hears the door handle turn. Her body trembles. The door opens and Papa is silhouetted in the doorway. She knows there’s little she can do, of course. She can’t scream; she can’t run. This is how it feels when an animal’s snared. All she sees is him drawing closer. His lips are open and if words slide out of his mouth, she doesn’t hear them.

  But then he stops. He’s staring over her shoulder at the wall behind her bed. He tries to say something, but his words choke in his throat and he clutches at his collar, tugging at the starched strip of white. Beads of sweat dot his forehead as he stumbles backwards, grasping the doorframe.

  ‘Help me,’ he says to Annabel. But Annabel remains on the bed, watching him. He staggers out of the room. There’s a clatter of footsteps, then silence, then a shout and a crash. Annabel rushes out and peers over the broken banister to see Papa’s body sprawled on the floor below, his open eyes staring up at the atrium.

  Then she feels it: a chill in the air that wasn’t there before. Instinct prompts her to look over her shoulder, back towards her bedroom. Someone is standing in the doorway.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As we left for Himmelhofgasse the following morning, Vivienne gave my arm a friendly squeeze, but it made me feel worse rather than better. While neither of us mentioned my grandmother’s letter, it hung between us. Tension dug into my shoulders, and the food in my stomach churned, a sensation that only grew worse as we neared my mother’s house. The proximity of the place compounded everything I felt, the revolving questions and doubts, and the admission I had made to Oskar Edelstein about the existence of a presence. As we walked uphill, this thought and others whispered in the breeze. At one point, I tried to laugh them away. Vivienne turned to me with concern in her eyes.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said.

  She gave a small shake of her head, then adjusted her pale green shawl about her shoulders.

  I hadn’t noticed the cold until then. I fastened the top button of my coat, and drove my hands into my pockets. The sky was almost cloudless, the crisp December air brushed against my skin. It should have felt good, but it didn’t.

  Turning into Himmelhofgasse, she said, ‘When it’s like this, the cold doesn’t matter so much.’ She made it feel like we were taking one of our normal strolls together, with her casual chatter and questions about Matthias Ropach, his background, his growing recognition. I found her talk helped me relax a bit.

  When we reached the house, we both fell silent. As we walked through the gate, a flock of birds appeared above us, their swirling synchronisation briefly captivating Vivienne.

  ‘Like a wave floating to and fro in the sky,’ she said. ‘Quite marvellous, isn’t it, how they do that. Which one’s the leader, do you think?’ She shielded her eyes as she tracked their motion.

  I left her side and headed over to the entrance, in a hurry to get the visit over and done with.

  ‘What a contrast!’ said Vivienne, her voice echoing in the stillness of the house, as did the click of our shoes on the marble floor. No trace of the break-in remained. A smell of cleaning fluid hung in the air. The walls had been wiped down and all of the artwork had been returned to its rightful place. The new banister above us looked as though it had always been there, carefully crafted to match the original. Damaged frames had been replaced or restored; broken china, ornaments, where possible, had been repaired. Even the saint and the angel in the hallway had a polish to them. The blacks of their eyes now gleamed; the despondent gaze that I remembered had vanished. Frederik had gone beyond the call of duty and I realised my tactlessness in failing to acknowledge the extent of his friendship with my mother. I would call him to say thank you – it was the least I could do.

  Yet as I walked about, it struck me that the house had disappeared into itself. The creaks, the stretch and contraction of the wooden eaves, the stammering pipes – all the familiar noises had vanished. This silence was altogether different. It wasn’t the silence that spoke of anticipation or of secrets; it was as if the clean-up had sanitised it. What’s more, part of me missed it. The house felt dead – that was it – and to think of it like that took me by surprise. I glanced across at Vivienne as we walked back from the living room to the hallway.

  ‘She’s well and truly gone,’ she said, sitting down on the bench. ‘This – it’s sealed her passing for me.’ Her eyes remained dry; there was no sadness written on her face. In fact, she showed little emotion at all.

  The chime of the doorbell announced Matthias Ropach’s arrival. He walked in, long and lanky with an ear-to-ear grin, laden with a bag and laptop, his easy air putting a halt to our own brooding. He looked about him, glancing this way, then that, the delight evident in the dance of his eyes. I imagined him envisioning his plans, stripping the house bare. It triggered a surreal tug of war in my head: a radical overhaul versus rekindling the soul of the house.

  Even though Matthias had seen the house before, he wanted to take another look with us to, in his words, bring his ideas to life. Such was the transformation of the place since the break-in that I led the way upstairs to the second floor without the slightest bit of hesitation. All the rooms up there felt quite normal, and I was so absorbed with identifying what was now missing about the house that I only half listened to Matthias and his patchwork of comments. Everything had been tidied up, even the attic, which had been swept clean. The wooden crates that had been in the centre were now stacked against the wall. They all looked the same and I couldn’t identify the one in which I had found the notebook. And as for the relics of furniture – the cradle, the wardrobe, the trunk, and puppet theatre – they all carried a shine and looked nearly useable again.

  The same could be said of the first floor. All appeared neat and orderly. The bedrooms looked like refurbished hotel rooms, ready for their first guests. I smiled to myself. The combination of cleaned surfaces, starched linen, the way the furniture had been put back, all polished, positioned to perfection was such that, if she were still alive, my mother would find little to fault.

  We stepped into my bedroom, except it no longer felt like the room of my childhood. My model cars had disappeared from the windowsill, the bookshelf lay half empty and the desk was bare, apart from my Pentax camera sitting on top. Noticing a crack in the lens, I picked it up. Its broken state stung a bit. I turned it over in my hands. The compartment for the film was also damaged. Its sorry state made me feel like it was well and truly the end of a long companionship. Thinking of the moments I’d captured with this camera pushed me down. It was like it had recorded a more carefree life, one that lay far away from the one I was leading now. I tried not to think of it by paying more attention to Matthias, and soon, both Vivienne and I were salting the discussion with our own views, pronouncing our shared passion to ensure that he retained the library. Fortunately for all three of us, Matthias had left that untouched in his plans.

  Back downstairs, the architect indicated to the cellar. ‘Shall we take a look?’

  I turned to Vivienne. ‘You don’t have to come.’

  She didn’t put up a fuss and I didn’t blame her. There was little for her to see and she was quite content to wait for us in the drawing room. So it was just Matthias and I.

  This time, he took the lead, jogging down the stairs. I paused at first, watching the bob of his head as he made his way to the stairwell. My stomach lurched. He looked up, waiting for me. I forced a smile and nodded, before going down to join him.

  It seemed I had nothing to be afraid of. Frederik’s restoration had extended to the cellar. The naked light bulb i
n the stairwell shined brighter, throwing more light into the corridor. If it wasn’t for the chill, I would have gone almost so far as to say that the new light gave a bit of life to the space. Even so, I hovered at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Each time I’m down here, the more sure I am that this has to change,’ I said, cursing myself for sounding too cheery.

  Matthias just nodded before disappearing from view, his footsteps growing fainter. I hesitated again before seeking him out, hurrying over to join him at the far end of the cellar where the corridor narrowed. He had his back to me, and for a moment, his stance reminded me of the child, its image inching its way from the back to the front of my mind. Matthias eventually turned around, just as I remembered the child had done … I blinked the picture of her away. A frown replaced his grin as he told me the extent of the work required. Then he turned to face the wall again.

  ‘Is there another room behind here?’ he called out.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ I said, watching him run his hands around the edges of the wall, knocking in various places. ‘My mother never mentioned anything.’ I went over to him, my curiosity nudging me on.

  ‘Funny, there seem to be tiny gaps – here, and here.’ He indicated various places. I struggled to see what he was talking about. Matthias shook his head at me, as if I were playing dumb. ‘This wall’s thin and hollow. If you touch here, there’s a draught. Can you feel it?’

  I put my hand where he pointed and felt the tickle of air against the edge of my palm. I hadn’t noticed it before, at least I didn’t think I had. I remembered how, that night I thought I saw the child down here, I’d felt along that very same wall after the presence had gone. Perhaps the cold was such that I hadn’t noticed any difference.

  Matthias turned to me. ‘Are there any other plans of the house?’

  ‘Just the ones I gave you.’

  ‘When were they drawn up?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. I suspect when my mother remodelled the place.’

  ‘Is there anyone you could ask?’

  My thoughts went to Frederik. After he had overseen the clean-up of the house, I didn’t want to bother him again. I was certain he wanted to move on, yet here I was, doing my best to prevent him from doing that.

  ‘It’s no big deal. We’ll find out soon enough,’ he said, glancing up and down the length of the corridor.

  ‘I better go back and check on Vivienne,’ I said, eager to return to the light of the ground floor.

  ‘Go ahead. I just want to have a look at something else. I won’t be long.’

  I rounded up the stairs before Matthias could ask another question. As I passed along the hallway I looked up at the atrium: a veil of grey cloud now obscured the crisp blue sky of earlier. The dim light transformed the mood of the house. But there was something else. I noticed that all the doors to the rooms were shut when I was sure that almost all of them had been left open. Worse, it seemed the sterile silence had been replaced by an altogether different stillness that was at once familiar. It was like the house, the air, were closing in on me. And as I approached the drawing room, I had the distinct sensation that I was being followed.

  Before entering, I became aware of Vivienne’s voice. It sounded like she was on the phone, yet her words seemed slurred and thick with sleep. Then I heard her laugh tinkle through the closed door, and a smile broke out on my face. I slipped inside, careful not to disturb her.

  The closed curtains censored the daylight, throwing a shroud of honeyed darkness over the room. There was a chill too, which floated in and around me, sending a faint shiver down my spine. Once my eyes had adjusted to the changed light, I saw Vivienne perched on the edge of the sofa. She had shed her coat, which now lay draped over the armrest. Her shawl hung from her shoulders and her back was slumped. She looked as if she had been drugged.

  She was smiling, but it was a smile that didn’t belong to her, making her look as though she’d had her memory erased. Her vacant gaze was transfixed on the corner of the room. I followed her line of sight to the curtains. I was about to draw closer when they seemed to move. I froze. I thought I saw a hint of a small body crouched behind them, tugging the material tighter around itself. The child, the girl I’d seen down in the cellar flickered through my mind. My stomach knotted.

  No, it can’t be.

  I strained to see exactly what it was, fighting against the part of me that didn’t want to know, when a small pale hand snuck out. I blinked. It was still there, its fingers clasping the curtain. It looked quite real, and even in the weak light I could make out a wound scored black around its wrist.

  Vivienne spoke – not to me, I quickly realised. ‘Why don’t you come closer so I can see you better?’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘There’s no need to be afraid.’ Her voice teased, like a child at play.

  I glanced back to the curtains. They shifted in response. Vivienne chuckled, but like her smile, her laugh wasn’t hers. ‘You want to show me something? Very well, I’ll come to you.’

  I felt sick. No, Vivienne, I wanted to shout.

  She pushed herself up from the sofa, her shawl slipping from her shoulders to the floor. She looked like a marionette: at first her body was loose, then it pulled taut with every step she took. Only her eyes remained focused, trained on the corner of the room.

  ‘And where will you take me?’ She tilted her head to one side, waiting for an answer as she moved forward.

  I looked again to the curtains. This time they appeared to move only slightly.

  ‘Where? Down there?’ Vivienne giggled.

  I tried to call out to her but her name choked in my throat. I tried again; the words came out as a whisper that only I could hear. Fear coiled around me. Vivienne was only a few metres away, but I felt as though I had been paralysed. I fought against it, my alarm growing as I watched the presence behind the curtain play puppet-master to someone I loved.

  Vivienne tripped forward. The alien smile, still fixed on her face, broke. ‘You don’t have to be alone any more,’ she said.

  I reached out to touch her on the shoulder just as the doorbell rang but she didn’t respond and her lurch forward continued. It seemed that something in the house gripped us both. Vivienne was being propelled in her world, while I was trapped in mine.

  The doorbell rang again, seemingly louder, its echo bouncing off the walls.

  Vivienne turned around. Suddenly her eyes were wide open, fully conscious. Her mouth opened, as if she was about to say something, only for confusion to cloud her face. She looked at me, then at the sofa, then back at me. We both turned towards the corner of the room, to the curtains. They hung as they should, no bump or bulge otherwise disturbing their form.

  ‘Why on earth are you looking at me like that?’ she said, her gaze wandering from me to the sofa, then back to me. The familiar facial expressions had returned and she was back to the Vivienne I knew.

  Images and words tumbled over in my mind. I attempted to explain, but my voice wouldn’t work. I just stood there, blinking at her.

  She scratched her head and frowned. ‘I must have nodded off. But how … Was I sleepwalking?’

  I found myself nodding, and her concern didn’t seem to last long. She showed no recollection of having had a conversation, nor of being coaxed towards the French windows.

  ‘Old age – some things continue to surprise me,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa.

  The only thing I could do in response was to hug her. I didn’t realise until then that my whole body was shaking.

  ‘Max, there’s no need to worry.’ She rubbed my back, then gently pulled away from me and looked at me with eyes betraying an inkling of vulnerability.

  ‘It’s just the house. Even with Mama gone, and that letter, I still feel this grief steeping inside me. And seeing you, just now …’ I couldn’t tell her.

  ‘I’ll be quite all right. And so will you.’

  Just then, Matthias walked into the drawing room, scratching his forehead.

/>   ‘Weird,’ he said, ‘I popped out to grab something from my car but when I got back, the front door was locked. I rang the doorbell a couple of times, and when no one came, I tried the door again and it opened – just like that.’ He looked at me, then at Vivienne. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Just a funny spell, that’s all,’ said Vivienne.

  I summoned up a smile. ‘Perhaps it would be better to do this at Vivienne’s.’ I turned to her. ‘You can rest there.’

  I led the way out, keen to leave the place where I’d witnessed the spirit’s latest turn. I noticed that all the doors on the ground floor were now open again, just as they had been before Matthias and I had headed to the cellar. The atmosphere had changed too – clearer, lighter, as though a blast of fresh air had been let in. But it did little to lessen my fear.

  Back at Vivienne’s place, we congregated in the warmth of her kitchen. Even though I relaxed a bit in the security of her home, when Matthias rolled the house plans out on the table, my mind flicked back to Vivienne and the glimpse of the childlike hand. I forced myself to ask questions about the project, but it was clear my interjections made little sense. While Matthias politely answered my muddled queries, Vivienne glanced at me now and again, her face lined with worry. I got up to make some coffee, yet I still couldn’t focus. Matthias’s drawings seemed to hover off the page and I didn’t absorb much more about the redesign. It was only when he mentioned ambitious transformation that I realised he was referring to his plans for the cellar. I looked up at him.

  ‘Is there anything wrong, Max?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘It’s fine. All fine.’ I could barely string a sentence together. ‘Oh, there was something else I forgot.’ I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. ‘How much will all this cost? You know, approximately?’

  I didn’t hear what he said, but I heard Vivienne stifle a gasp.

  ‘Let’s just go ahead,’ I said.

  She stared at me. ‘Are you sure? Don’t you want to think it over?’