The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  Under the bright lights of the airport departure lounge, I returned to the photograph album, my eyes skipping from one image to the next, scanning the handwritten captions squashed under each picture.

  I found Elena Markovic midway through. She was wearing a maid’s uniform, almost lost inside her grey dress and white apron. I searched for Josef and Christine among the brunettes and blondes, the dark and pale-eyed, and eventually found them. Christine was dressed in what seemed to be a school uniform and young Josef was pictured receiving a small trophy for coming first in three races. The common denominator in all three photographs was my grandfather: standing too close to Elena, his hand hovering somewhere behind her back; his arm extended tightly around Christine’s shoulder, his eyes directed not at the camera but at a point on her chest; his giant hand enveloping Josef’s, his fingers digging into the boy’s flesh. None of the children were smiling, their faces like masks that concealed their terror. I dug out the picture I had taken from the study. I compared the other children’s images with Eva’s. The expression on her face mirrored theirs. So now I had evidence. Of course, it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, but for me it was sufficient.

  Yet even with this so-called evidence, I still had little to identify the presence. While the conviction that I had seen a young girl was there, I remained none the wiser about her identity. Was she Elena or Christine? I forced myself to conjure up the image of the girl in the cellar – her face, her eyes – then tried to blink them away. I looked at the pictures of Elena and Christine: they were both light-haired. I was sure the child I had seen had dark hair. But then again, my sighting of the girl had been fleeting. There was something stirring at the back of my mind that I wanted to ignore, but I couldn’t. I revisited the photographs of Elena, Christine and Jacob, and the group photograph with Eva seated next to my grandfather. There was something about her, an air of familiarity. The presence flickered back into my mind, and I wondered if it was the distance of time that further distorted her appearance … I didn’t have it in me to conjure up her image again. I put the things away, willing myself not to touch them.

  Still, my disgust for my grandfather fermented inside me. I thought of my mother. I felt for her. In what I’d discovered, I’d found another piece of the puzzle that probably explained her behaviour. It went a long way towards bridging the gap between us. All I could feel now was a strange mixture of sorrow and admiration: sorrow for the events that had blighted her life, and admiration for her ability to carry on regardless. Now I understood her cast-iron exterior, her determination to protect herself. I still didn’t understand her need to push me away, but at least that didn’t hurt quite as much any more. Perhaps I could close the loop with Oskar and assuage my feelings of guilt and regret.

  But what about Oskar? The man remained a mystery with his unexplained silence, his distance. The words You knew turned over in my head and it left me thinking that he and my mother were inextricably linked.

  FIRST DISTRICT, VIENNA, 1965

  ‘I’m going to take you to Demel,’ says Annabel, her arm looped through Vivienne’s as they walk through Heldenplatz.

  Vivienne nods and presses her handkerchief, streaked with mascara and face powder, to her eyes. Her head rests for a moment on Annabel’s shoulder. Annabel kisses it, breathing in her friend’s familiar rose scent.

  Annabel has taken a break from her work at The Albrecht Trust to spend time with Vivienne, whose relationship with the love of her life lies in tatters, thanks to the mesmeric beauty of a local girl who stole his heart in Lima. Only yesterday, Annabel toyed with the idea of getting on a plane just to scream at him for hurting her dearest friend. She was quite serious, but Vivienne’s horror at the idea and her pleas to stay put, anchored Annabel to Vienna and her friend’s side.

  Morning rain slicks the statue of Archduke Charles sitting astride his leaping horse, and both man and steed glisten in the sun’s rays, now peeping from between the clouds. Only a few people wander around the opulent Hofburg Palace, mostly po-faced officials and a straggle of tourists.

  Annabel unbuttons her mackintosh, and the crimson wool and silk of her dress flares out. She cares about neither the unfashionable hemline nor the cut. What mattered, when she discovered it a few days ago, was its lack of moth holes and its fit. In it, she feels like Mama.

  Just then, a commotion breaks out close to the entrance of the Hofburg Palace.

  ‘Will you look at that,’ says Vivienne staring at a blue duck – a Citroën 2CV – that had arrived from out of nowhere.

  Annabel looks over and laughs as a suited man, painted white from head to toe, steps out of the car. A black bolt of lightning zigzags down his back and front. He walks through the open courtyard of the Hofburg Palace followed eagerly by a group of men and women younger than Annabel and Vivienne, their clothes, their manner, their attitude, rebellious against the status quo. Two or three onlookers – tourists, perhaps – charmed by the pop-up entertainment, tag along.

  Annabel and Vivienne look at one another.

  ‘We might as well,’ says Annabel, grinning.

  For the first time in days, Vivienne smiles and the two hurry after the one-man show, giggling like schoolgirls at the double takes of passers-by, the whispering behind cupped hands, the pointing fingers, the clicking cameras. But the parade only makes it as far as Michaelerplatz, where the white man is stopped by a huge double-chinned policeman bedecked in a shapeless raincoat. There’s a terse conversation, a lot of nodding, some gesticulating. The scene draws an even larger crowd, people jostling for position in front of the Roman ruins. But there’s little to see: no shouts, no scuffling, no handcuffs. Five minutes later, they shake hands. A taxi pulls up, hailed as if by magic, and the white man gets in. Sighs ripple through the crowd, the weight of collective disappointment as heavy as the muggy air. Within seconds, everyone has dispersed.

  As Annabel and Vivienne pick their way along the cobbles, a man brushes Annabel’s elbow.

  ‘Oh, I do apologise,’ he says with a cut-glass English accent.

  He can’t even be bothered to say it in German, Annabel thinks. Offering a brief nod, Annabel walks on with Vivienne in the direction of Kohlmarkt and her precious Demel, but annoyingly, the man sticks by her side.

  ‘You see, I’m a little lost. Would you mind pointing me in the direction of Albertinaplatz?’

  Annabel stops. She eyes him with the severity of one of her old school teachers, yet it only makes him break into a lopsided grin. If Vivienne wasn’t with her, she would pause for longer. Instead, she rattles off directions in English that’s almost as perfect as his, leaving him open-mouthed and flustered. Then she turns her back on him and quickly walks away, clutching Vivienne’s arm for dear life.

  After four cups of strong coffee, much talking and more tears from Vivienne, Annabel spies the same Englishman in Demel. He’s tucked away in a corner pretending to read a copy of Die Presse. He catches her eye and gives her that lopsided grin of his again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Back in London, I struggled to keep my unease at bay. When work began on the house, I thought I’d feel better, but instead, my anxiety worsened, making a show of itself in my on–off hand tremor and my short fuse with people at the office.

  The smallest remark would ignite my temper. After a heated conference call with colleagues in New York, I ripped out my telephone and hurled it against the wall of my office. Suffice to say, my uncharacteristic display caused ripples of alarm across the floor. Seeing the heads of the others bob up above their cubicles reminded me of some meerkats I’d seen in a wildlife documentary, and in that moment I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, which, in turn, caused my assistant’s face to pale.

  Matthias Ropach and his project manager kept me updated on the house. The initial structural work seemed to be progressing well, and in spite of my misgivings regarding the house and the cellar, neither of them mentioned anything untoward. Hearing of their unhindered progress was a small consolation
, but it did little to settle the whispers in my head.

  I had been clinging to the belief that work kept me sane, and I purposely spent more time at the office to avoid going home to dwell on my family’s secrets. But work felt like an uphill trudge. Such was my schedule that I went from meeting to meeting, country to country, client to client as though I were a robot with flagging batteries. Our efforts were paying off though. The firm was doing well, and while the-powers-that-be spoke of the need for humility, no one paid much attention as they awaited their bonuses, greedy-eyed and salivating with inflated expectations.

  In the bathroom at the office, I got into an argument with a colleague over a passing remark he’d made about linking female staff bonuses with their looks.

  ‘Lighten up, will you?’ he said. ‘I’d be careful. People say you’re losing it.’

  I couldn’t swallow my rising anger. I grabbed him by his collar and tie and shoved him against the wall. I wanted to punch him, to throttle him, and I found my hand edging around his neck, my grip tightening. I could smell his fear, feel his shuddering breath on my face, see the panic flaring in his eyes. If someone hadn’t walked in, I would have continued. I let him go. He straightened his shirt and tie and threw me a look that spoke of unfinished business. I went into one of the cubicles and slumped against the door, unsure of what I’d done in those few seconds, shocked by the side of me I’d just glimpsed.

  A week before I left for Vienna my boss summoned me into his office. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, tipping back in his chair as he waited for an answer.

  ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  I took my time, trying to weigh up what I should and shouldn’t say. ‘What would you do,’ I said eventually, ‘if you learned something that undermined everything you believed?’ I cringed at my question.

  ‘Are we about to get into an existential debate here?’ He fixed his eyes on me.

  I glanced away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  I shifted in my seat. Two or three times I opened my mouth to speak and couldn’t find the right words. But there was no way my boss was going to let me leave his office without a plausible explanation.

  ‘I learned things recently about my family,’ I eventually said. ‘Shocking things.’ I still couldn’t look him in the eye.

  ‘Care to elaborate?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Something to do with the whole Nazi thing?’

  ‘No! Nothing like that! I mean … no.’

  My boss rubbed his temples, then rested his chin on his hand. I couldn’t share what I’d learned. It felt like everything my grandfather had done had tainted me and I didn’t want the stain to seep deeper by telling others. ‘Just things I wish I’d never found out. I don’t know … I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said, stuffing my trembling hands in my pockets.

  He nodded. I’m not sure he understood, but he had the sensitivity to avoid asking for more details. As I got up to leave, he said, ‘There’s something else.’

  I sat back down.

  ‘I can’t keep defending you the whole fucking time.’

  I looked up at him.

  ‘You’re not making it easy for me.’ He shrugged. ‘The co-heads in New York want you to go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I tried to persuade them to change their minds. You’ll get your bonus, your gardening leave.’ He looked out the office window. ‘They’ll let you resign, Max. So long as you leave quietly.’

  My mouth felt like a river run dry. ‘I worked so hard for this firm. I’ve never let you down. I’ve …’

  He turned back to me again. His face had hardened; it was smooth, still. ‘You’re unsettling too many people. What if it’s a client you lash out at next?’

  ‘Out of everyone, it was you I looked up to, you I trusted.’ I said, watching him copy a number from his computer screen onto a scrap of paper. It was like I was a spectator in someone else’s life.

  ‘Here,’ he said, sliding the paper across his desk towards me. ‘It’s a counselling helpline number. There’re people you can talk to. Professionals.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, barely swallowing all the things I wanted to hurl at him and the firm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Max.’

  I left the piece of paper where it lay, and quit his office and the building without a word or a glance at the others.

  Three days after my unceremonious dismissal from my firm, Oskar called me. He apologised for taking so long to get in touch but kept his reasons vague. He wanted to confirm our visit to the house and told me that he would be staying at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna.

  I said that I would rent a car for the day and offered to collect him from his hotel. ‘We could perhaps drive around Hietzing – I thought you might like that.’

  ‘I would, very much.’ Then Oskar appeared to hang back, to pause for breath. ‘There’s something else – but on reflection, perhaps it would be better to talk it over when we see each other.’

  ‘Actually, there’s something I want to ask you,’ I said, but before I could get my question out, I saw another call come through on my mobile. ‘I’m sorry, Oskar. I’ve another call that I need to take.’ I frowned at the phone.

  Oskar glossed over my apologies for ending our conversation prematurely. He didn’t sound disconcerted at all. Indeed, I thought I could hear a wisp of relief in his voice. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing the house – and you, of course. The time feels right this time around,’ he said. He sounded firm down the phone and his tone was brighter, as if he had well and truly recovered from his ill health.

  The other call was from a lawyer renowned for winning tough unfair dismissal cases, and notoriously hard to get hold of. It was only on account of Lana’s connections that he agreed to take me on. I didn’t pay much attention to his untrammelled thoughts on the way the firm had acted, catching only his mention of discombobulation, probably because of the merry-go-round playing out in my own mind. I was too mired in my own frustration at not being able to probe Oskar further, at not getting the opportunity to raise the subject of the letters. I even considered making up an excuse to cut short the conversation to try to call Oskar back, but I didn’t. So I made a mental note to call Oskar again later that day. Petty administrative battles between myself and the firm’s human resources team, however, thwarted my attempts to find time to pick up the phone. The only person I really wanted to talk to was Lana, who let me rail against the firm’s injustices. I could have confided in her then, told her about my mother and the things I’d discovered, but in my head they seemed like a loony set of excuses for the way things had turned out at work. In the end, although I tried to call Oskar several times in the days that followed, we only got to play a frustrating game of phone tag.

  On the seventeenth, the day before I left for Vienna, I got a call from Matthias Ropach.

  ‘There’s a room down there after all,’ he said. ‘Two doors – one steel, the other wood – leading to a tunnel.’

  I sat forward. Was it possible?

  Matthias carried on talking. ‘It looks like a reinforced room. Could be an old war bunker – it’s difficult to say.’

  My grandmother’s letters drifted into my mind. I felt sick.

  ‘You didn’t have any luck, did you?’ he asked.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With the plans.’

  ‘I tried.’ I had spoken to Frederik but I hadn’t mentioned the plans. I had thanked him for restoring my mother’s house after the break-in, but his tone did little to encourage me to ask another favour of him.

  ‘It’s important that you have some title deeds, boundary documentation or whatever,’ Matthias said. ‘There’s no physical marker. I’m not an expert, but …’

  The rest of his words faded out as I vaguely recalled my grandmother’s words: Sebastian decided to build a war bunker … With my grandfather’s name attached to this thing, it seemed polluted with ulterior motives. To call
it a war bunker seemed too neat, too innocuous.

  ‘But do make sure you call your lawyer,’ Matthias urged, keen to impress that point on me. He ended the phone call by saying that I should feel free to take a look since I’d be in town that weekend.

  ‘I will, it’s just …’

  ‘It’s all okay down there. Just be careful where you step.’

  I was curious about the room. Part of me wanted to explore what they’d uncovered. Yet even when I tried to reason away any ulterior motive for the hidden room, I couldn’t stem the sickness in my stomach. I decided to call Frederik, hoping a conversation with him would plug further thought of it.

  ‘I’ll have someone look around for older documentation,’ he said. ‘How urgent is it?’

  I told him about the renovation work and the discovery of a room and a tunnel in the cellar.

  ‘Interesting … I never believed it.’ His voice was almost a whisper.

  ‘You’ve seen some other plans?’ I asked, my hopes rising a notch.

  ‘No. What you have is the sum total of what I’ve seen,’ he said. ‘Either myself or one of the others will get back to you, but it won’t be today.’ The call was over within five minutes. There was no further discussion, no speculation about the house. It seemed to me that Frederik was distancing himself from us, from my mother in particular.

  For the rest of the day, news of the room and tunnel stirred up the murmuring voices in my head, feeding my sickness. This latest discovery made the upcoming trip to my mother’s house feel like I was being sent to the bleakest prison imaginable. Thinking of it as one last hurdle before the Christmas break didn’t do much to ease my anxiety. Each time I caught sight of my watch or the clock, time seemed to be slipping away.

  That night, I couldn’t help taking another look at the paraphernalia connected to the house’s unsavoury past. I’d kept it all in a drawer in the spare room, along with the paperwork that Frederik had given me the day I learned of my inheritance. Sitting on the floor, I began to sift through it. There were a couple of formal envelopes from two banks and a third from the Dorotheum, which I assumed dealt with my mother’s art collection. Much as I expected, there were no plans or title deeds evidencing the existence of the room or the property boundary. Catching sight of my grandmother’s correspondence lying in the open drawer, I put the official papers to one side. I reread her letters several times over. They sucked me back in time and I felt like a shadow following my grandmother. I wanted to bring her and the children to the present where no one could hurt them and where Thaddäus would still be alive.