The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  The ring of my mobile phone from the hallway interrupted my pointless daydreaming. It was Lana. She had been at a work dinner and planned to swing by before she and I went our separate ways for the holidays. I wanted to see her, I really did, but in that moment my head was elsewhere.

  ‘I’ve been held up.’

  ‘Where?’ she asked.

  ‘Just … some place.’ My excuse was so paper-thin, I might as well have held up a sign saying, I am lying.

  ‘Some place?’ she said. ‘Your lights are on at home – did you know that?’

  I glanced out of my living room window. The boy on the fourth floor in the building opposite was at his computer again. Down below was Lana, standing by a cab, her phone pressed against her ear as she looked up in my direction.

  ‘First you cancel our trip and then … after everything … Oh, just forget it.’

  ‘Wait! I can explain …’ The line had gone dead. All I could do was watch her get back into the taxi. I tried to call her but it went straight to voicemail. I dropped my mobile and sank to the floor. My firm had just fired me. My so-called attempt at a relationship now hung in the balance, and here I was, sifting through papers and mementos which had unearthed so many dark secrets that it felt as though I were bearing the guilt of them all. I raced out of my apartment, jumped into my car and drove to Lana’s home. I’d explain everything. No dancing around, no more secrets.

  Yet as I weaved in and out of the night-time crawl of traffic on Park Lane, doubts pecked away at me. How could I even begin to tell her about everything without her thinking I was deranged? Her rationality was more clinical than mine. She’d laugh me out of her home if I mentioned a presence, strange writing, strange photographs. And if I told her about my grandfather, then along with these things, she’d see me as someone forever broken. I was sure she’d want to run as far away from me as possible. It was no use. I circled Hyde Park Corner and drove back home.

  I wanted to let these secrets drift off into the ether, pretend they’d never existed, but I couldn’t. Back in my apartment, I picked up the photo album, along with my grandmother’s last letter to Claudia Edelstein, Torberg’s Young Gerber, my mother’s notebook and the photograph of Oskar and my mother. I wandered into the kitchen and placed them in a row on the table in the order in which they had come into my hands: to the left was the photograph, then the copy of Young Gerber; next to that was my mother’s notebook, followed by my grandmother’s last letter; to the far right was the old photo album. I took a step back. My grandfather played a role in the notebook, the letter and the photo album; he was quite absent from the photograph and the message scrawled in the novel. I opened the book to those two pages. The words O kneels, rats die glared back at me. Then I turned over the photograph where You knew was written on the back. Without question the handwriting was identical – something I had never really doubted. Oskar knew something – that at least seemed obvious – but what he knew I would have to wait until the next morning to find out.

  The message in the book made no sense at all. It had been a long time since I had looked at it: O kneels, rats die. I recalled my conversation with Thomas Schmidt. Before I had cut him off, he had been in the middle of making a remark about it. I grabbed a pen and paper and pulled a chair up to the kitchen table, sat down and wrote out the letters of the message in alphabetical order:

  A D E E E I K L N O R S S T

  I began to play around with them, struggling to form words that made sense. I looked at the message on the photograph’s reverse, then flipped it over.

  Of course!

  I turned over my page and started again. It didn’t seem possible at first, but I thought I’d give it a try. I wrote out the forename and surname, crossing off each letter as I went along.

  O S K A R E D E L S T E I N

  That’s why Oskar had smiled when he saw it.

  I picked up the phone to call the Hotel Bristol. A female voice answered.

  ‘I need to speak to Herr Edelstein,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry, but Herr Edelstein has kindly requested not to be disturbed.’

  ‘But it’s urgent. Tell him that Max Gissing is calling. We’re due to meet tomorrow. He’ll understand. Please?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Gissing. There’s nothing more I can do.’ It sounded as if she were reading from a script.

  That night I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. The whispering inside my head persisted, urging me not to go. My stomach twisted. Time didn’t stretch out as it should have done. Before I knew it, my alarm was ringing, herding me out of bed. I regretted the 6 a.m. flight I had booked. I hoped for Heathrow’s usual delays, but there was barely a queue at security, my flight was on time, and we arrived into Vienna just after nine. Despite my deliberately slow pace I still arrived first at passport control. At the rental car desk, I tried to stall my pen as I filled out the forms, but my hand rushed across the blanks in an act of rebellion. And when I pulled out of the airport and on to the motorway, there were only a few cars cruising its three lanes.

  No one seemed to be in a hurry, yet I pressed my foot down on the accelerator, hurtling towards the lorry in front of me, drawing closer and closer. If it braked, I’d career into it, no problem. I’d nothing to lose. I drew closer, wanting to feel the impact …

  But flashes of memories – the scatter of freckles on Lana’s face, Vivienne’s tinkling laugh – pulled me back from the edge. I slowed right down and pulled into the recovery lane, trying to slow my heartbeat, searching for that precious piece of calm, wanting to return to my old self.

  After that, I deliberately drove in the slow lane, trying to focus on the smoking steel chimneys of the OMV and Borealis plants. They soon gave way to the snaking canal of the Danube and I slowed the car to a crawl. Within moments, the spire of St. Stephen’s Cathedral came into view above the heart of the First District, agitating the sickness in my stomach once more. I didn’t want to collect Oskar; I didn’t want to drive to Ober St. Veit. Yet I couldn’t disregard my mother’s house. It felt as if the house had me on a thread, gently tugging at me to return. Perhaps, I thought, Oskar felt the same.

  I pulled up at the Hotel Bristol, parking the car opposite the entrance on Kärntner Ring. Snow had fallen over the last couple of days. The cold was such that tiny ice particles floated in the air, their doily edges caught in the sun’s rays. I blew on my fingers as I locked the car door, then jogged to the hotel entrance, which welcomed me in with a blast of warm air. The man behind reception informed me that Oskar was in the dining room having breakfast and that he expected me to join him.

  I found him towards the back, tucked a little way from the pink marble buffet wall. He was half hidden by a copy of The Times and when I greeted him, he peeked at me over the top.

  ‘I still can’t bring myself to read an Austrian newspaper,’ he said, folding the paper and placing his glasses on top. The remains of his breakfast lay to one side, next to a postcard of the Donnerbrunnen.

  ‘It’s for Angela,’ he explained, seeing me glance at it. ‘She always insists that I bring back a postcard from wherever I’ve been.’

  I sat opposite him, turning down the offer of a tea or coffee from the waiter. Despite his thick jumper and tweed jacket, Oskar still looked frail – maybe even thinner than the last time I had seen him. I noticed a blister pack of pills lying by a glass of water.

  ‘Ahhh, I’ve been caught,’ he said, putting them in the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘It’s the real reason you haven’t been able to get hold of me for a while. I had a bit of heart trouble again, that’s all.’ He went on to explain that he had been in hospital for several days. ‘You must have thought me rude for not getting back to you.’

  ‘It’s me that was rude with my persistent calling. If I’d known …’

  ‘Quite understandable,’ he said, a flash of amusement in his eyes. ‘They told me you phoned last night. At first I thought you were cancelling on me.’

  ‘I worked it out – the anagram,
I mean. You knew it was your name all along, didn’t you?’

  Oskar gave a small shrug of the shoulders. ‘It was a fun way of learning English, trying to form words from our names. I think it was your mother who came up with that one. She was smarter than me.’

  His attempt to make light of the situation didn’t make me feel any better. ‘I just don’t …’

  ‘You don’t think it’s a good idea to go to the house.’ He leaned back in his chair, his fingers fiddling with the top edge of the newspaper. ‘You told me you believe in ghosts.’

  I nodded, feeling my heart lurch.

  ‘We’ve been presented with a number of things – the photograph, the messages, your mother’s notebook, the letters written by your grandmother.’ I wanted to interject, to ask him if he believed the claim she had made in that final desperate note, but he shook his head, determined to continue. ‘I think the last letter may have arrived too late for my mother to have done anything. The contents shocked me, just as much as I’m sure they shocked you. And that’s my point: the correspondence and everything else you’ve discovered resonated with us, although perhaps in different ways. I believe …’ He coughed, bringing his handkerchief to his mouth. ‘Like you, I didn’t believe in ghosts, but as time’s gone by, things have happened, or items I’ve come across have made me believe otherwise. And I rather think there’s a reason – something left unresolved, unspoken, or hidden.’ He took a sip of water, then put the glass back down on the table and traced the rim with his finger. ‘You don’t want to return to the house. But I do. If I don’t, I think I’ll come to regret it. And when my time comes, I don’t want to have any regrets.’ His eyes fixed upon mine and I nodded as if to say I understood. But I didn’t. Not really.

  We said very little during the drive out to Hietzing. Oskar spent most of it regarding the grand boulevards and the smaller residential streets that lay beyond the First District. I took my time, making a detour around the perimeter of the Schönbrunn, partly to give Oskar a chance to revisit the places he had left behind, but mostly to put off our arrival at Himmelhofgasse. Once or twice he glanced at me, as if questioning my choice of route, but then I think he understood my intention and left me to it. On Elisabethalle I slowed down further. The road ran alongside the ash-stained walls of the cemetery. I briefly toyed with the idea of going in, but decided against it and accelerated again. As I glanced in the rear-view mirror, I saw a vintage silver Mercedes R107 convertible pull out of the cemetery entrance. I was sure it was the same car I had seen the time I went for a run around Schlosspark, but the red Fiesta behind me blocked my view and when I checked again, the car was turning to travel in the opposite direction.

  Eventually I headed towards Hietzinger Hauptstrasse, this time eschewing the side roads and diversions. Children wrapped up against the cold milled alongside parents on the streets, pulling sledges up towards the open fields to take advantage of the snowfall.

  ‘Care to join them?’ Oskar said.

  I forced a smile. ‘Tempted.’

  At the junction of Erzbischofgasse and Himmelhofgasse, I gripped the steering wheel all the more tightly and took a deep breath. Some other words of cheer came to mind, but they felt contrived so I remained silent as we pulled up in front of my mother’s house.

  Oskar got out of the car and immediately walked down towards the neighbouring building, where he and his family used to live.

  ‘Has it changed – from what you remember?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps. But it’s the same overall, I think.’

  I followed as he ventured towards the gated entrance of his old house to peek through the railings. A short-haired Weimaraner appeared at a window on the ground floor. It barked at us, prompting us to return to my mother’s house.

  I went into her driveway, eyeing the winter remnants of the honeysuckle laced across the house’s walls, the weave of its branches like arteries, keeping the house alive. It was an effort to stop myself from surveying the windows. I looked at Oskar, wondering what he thought of the place, what memories it evoked, or whether my mother’s home and the time he spent there remained blurred.

  ‘May we see the garden?’ he asked.

  His question put an end to my speculation and I led the way around the side of the house, bringing us out to the middle of the lawn. The white carpet of snow set against the pale blue sky diminished the harshness of the place, which, together with the soft crunch of our footsteps, helped me to relax a little. I left him to explore the grounds for himself, watching how he stepped back to look at the house, then how he glanced behind him, before heading further down the garden. Despite the thick covering of snow, he moved with a kind of grace, and even though his coat hung shapelessly from his shoulders, there was strength in his movements as he came striding towards me, his cheeks glowing pink from the frosty air.

  He pointed behind him. ‘I can remember it quite vividly,’ he said. ‘We used to run down there to play our games, pretending we ruled over the whole of Vienna. And this’ – he cast his arms wide – ‘was our palace.’ His voice was buoyed by excitement as he recalled that time. ‘I can almost hear our laughter, far from the ears of adults.’

  I tried to picture the scene too: my mother and Oskar playing, their whoops and screams. I watched him take a few paces back.

  He stopped, then glanced again at the house. ‘I’d like to go inside, if that’s all right with you?’

  I fought the urge to say no.

  As we retraced our steps to the front, I talked about the renovation, the plans for the cellar.

  ‘The workmen found a … hidden room,’ I explained. I still couldn’t bring myself to call it a war bunker, yet my avoidance of the term felt like an admission of guilt.

  ‘Hidden, you say?’

  I nodded, expecting him to ask more questions, but he drifted back into his own world, keeping his eyes trained on the ground in front of him, oblivious to my internal conflict.

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ I said as I unlocked the door, swallowing my unease, before letting Oskar in first. With its bare walls, the cardboard covering the marble floor, the absence of furniture and the sentry-like figurines of the angel and saint, the house appeared even more sterile. Oskar took a step back just as he had done in the garden, his eyes sweeping the walls, exploring the atrium, naked without its chandelier.

  ‘Beautiful feature – the atrium, I mean,’ he said. ‘But I don’t remember it. Not really. Interesting, isn’t it – what the brain chooses to retain and discard?’ His voice bounced off the walls, the acoustics carrying his words up to the ceiling.

  ‘I think your memory’s better than mine,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember much about my childhood years. Now and then things come back, but I find it difficult to hold on to them.’

  ‘Perhaps our brains determine what’s important,’ Oskar said. ‘The more I think about it, the more certain I am that memories are kept in storage, as it were, then dusted off when needed.’

  I wondered, then, if this trip to the house was simply an exercise for Oskar to test his ability to recollect. ‘Is there anything in particular you want to see?’

  He took off his gloves and tapped them against the palm of his hand. ‘I’d like to see the Schiele, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Unfortunately it’s in storage,’ I said, catching the disappointment in his eyes. ‘But I’ll take you to the drawing room, so you can see where it hung,’ I added, as if that made up for the painting’s absence.

  Oskar followed me, somewhat reluctantly. I sensed the futility of my offer, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  ‘When everything’s done you’d be more than welcome to come back,’ I said, opening the door.

  When we entered, I felt quite foolish. While the room was as stark as the hall, the Schiele and a couple of other paintings were hanging where they’d always been, appearing all the more striking in their solitude.

  ‘Why on earth would they do that?’ I said, frowning to myself. I go
t out my mobile to call the Dorotheum, readying myself for a heated exchange, but I put my phone away when I saw how Oskar was mesmerised by the Schiele. I couldn’t quite see his expression, but I noticed him touching its edges. His hesitation lingered in the air. He turned to me, his eyes lowered, then he glanced back to the painting.

  ‘There’s something that’s been weighing on my mind,’ he said. ‘That day we went for a walk on the Heath, you showed me your mother’s notebook.’ He turned and looked at me, then shrugged. ‘I think we both know I wasn’t exactly forthcoming.’

  I let him continue, hoping to hear some revelation that might bring this strange hunt of ours to an end.

  ‘The sketches at the back – the renditions of the Schiele that your mother made. They had the strangest effect on me. I’ve no idea why she drew them – that’s not what I mean – but when I saw them I could visualise the Schiele in my head. I could see the brushstrokes, the colours, smell the linseed in the oil paint even. Have you ever had that sensation? Something jogging your senses like that?’

  I nodded, remembering the remnants of my mother’s jasmine perfume in the air.

  ‘So it made me think. Why should a sketch – those pencil copies of your mother’s – make me feel that way?’

  Confounded by his renewed interest in the Schiele, I couldn’t think of anything reasonable to say.