A Small Person Far Away

  “Of course,” she said. She told him the number of her flight and he said that he would meet it.

  Richard, listening beside her, said, “What about Max? Has he told him?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “What about Max?”

  Konrad said that he had not yet cabled Max – that must mean that there was no immediate danger, thought Anna – but that he would do so if necessary in the morning. Then he said in his concerned refugee voice, “My dear, I hope you’re not too upset by this. I’m sorry to have to break up the family. With luck it won’t be for long.”

  She had forgotten that he always referred to Richard and herself as the family. It was friendly and comforting and she suddenly felt much better.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Richard sends his love.” There was something more she wanted to ask him, but she had trouble remembering what it was. “Oh yes,” she said. “How did Mama ever develop pneumonia in the first place?”

  There was a silence, so that at first she thought he had not heard. Then his voice answered, and even through the distortion of long distance she could tell that it sounded quite different.

  “I’m sorry,” he said flatly. “But your mother took an overdose of sleeping pills.”

  Sunday

  Anna’s feet were so heavy that she could only walk very slowly. It was hot in the street and there was no one about. Suddenly Mama hurried past. She was wearing her blue hat with the veil, and she called to Anna, “I can’t stop – I’m playing bridge with the Americans.” Then she disappeared into a house which Anna had not even noticed. She felt sad to be left alone in the street like that, and the air was getting hotter and heavier all the time.

  It shouldn’t be so hot so early in the morning, she thought. She knew it was early because Max was still asleep. He had taken the front wall off his house to let out the heat, and she could see him sitting in his living room with his eyes closed. Beside him, his wife Wendy was blinking drowsily in a chair with the baby in her arms. She looked at Anna and moved her lips, but the air had become too thick to carry the sound and Anna could not hear her, so she walked away, along the hot, empty street, with the hot, empty day stretching before her.

  How did I come to be so alone? she thought. Surely there must be someone to whom I belong? But she could think of no one. The heavy air pressed in on her, so that she could hardly breathe. She had to push it away with her hands. And yet there was someone, she thought, I’m sure there was. She tried to remember his name, but her mind was empty. She could think of nothing, neither his name nor his face nor even his voice.

  I must remember, she thought. She knew that he existed, hidden in some tiny wrinkle of her brain, and that without him nothing was any good, nothing would ever be any good again. But the air was too heavy. It was piled up all round her, pushing in on her chest, even against her eyes and her nose and her mouth. Soon it would be too late even to remember.

  “There was someone!” she shouted, somehow forcing her voice through the thickness. “I know there was someone!”

  And then she was in bed with the sheets and blankets twisted all round her and a pillow half over her face, and Richard saying, “It’s all right, love. It’s all right.”

  For a moment she could only lie there, feeling him close and letting the horror flow out of her. She half-saw, half-felt the familiar room, the shapes of a chair, a chest of drawers, the faint glint of a mirror in the darkness.

  “I had a dream,” she said at last.

  “I know. You nearly blew me out of bed.”

  “It was that awful one when I can’t remember you.”

  His arms were round her. “I’m here.”

  “I know.”

  In the glow from the street lamp outside the window, she could just see his face, tired and concerned.

  “It’s such an awful dream,” she said. “Why do you suppose I have it? It’s like being caught in some awful shift of time and not being able to get back.”

  “Maybe some trick of the brain. You know – one lobe remembering and the other not picking it up till a fraction of a second later. Like déjà vu, only the other way round.”

  It did not comfort her.

  “Suppose one got stuck.”

  “You couldn’t get stuck.”

  “But if I did. If I really couldn’t remember you. Or if I got stuck even earlier, before I’d learned to speak English. We wouldn’t even be able to talk to each other.”

  “Yes, well,” he said, “in that case we’d have other problems as well. You’d be about eleven years old.”

  At this she laughed and the dream, already fading, receded into harmlessness. She could feel herself aching from lack of sleep and remembered clearly, for the first time, about the previous day.

  “Oh God,” she said. “Mama.”

  His arms tightened about her. “I suppose all this worry has stirred up things you’d almost forgotten. About losing people – people and places – when you were small.”

  “Poor Mama. She was awfully good then, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish to God I’d written to her.” Through the gap between the curtains the sky looked black. “What time is it?”

  “Only six o’clock.” She could see him peering at her anxiously in the darkness. “I’m sure it would have made no difference whether you’d written or not. There must have been quite other reasons. She must have been worried about something, or terribly upset.”

  “D’you think so?” She wanted to believe him.

  “And then, maybe, she thought of your father – how he had died – and she thought, why shouldn’t she do the same?”

  No, it wasn’t right.

  “Papa was different,” she said. “He was old, and he’d had two strokes. Whereas Mama… Oh God,” she said, “I suppose some people have parents who die naturally.” She stared into the darkness. “The trouble is, you see, I don’t suppose Max has written either, or if he did, the letter may not have got there from Greece.”

  “It still wouldn’t be a reason to commit suicide.”

  Outside in the street there was a clinking of bottles followed by a clip-clop of the milkman’s horse as it walked on to the next house. A car started up in the distance.

  “We were all so close, you see, all those years,” she said. “We couldn’t help it, moving from country to country with everything against us. Mama used to say, if it weren’t for Max and me, it wouldn’t be worth going on – and she did get us through, she kept the family together.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish I’d written to her,” she said.

  Richard came with her on the bus to the airport. They said goodbye in the echoing lounge which smelled of paint and she left him, calmly, as she had planned.

  But then, quite suddenly, as she pulled out her passport ready for inspection, despair swept over her. To her horror, she found tears pouring down her face, soaking her cheeks, her neck and even the collar of her blouse. She could not move but only stood there blindly, waiting for him to catch up with her.

  “What is it?” he cried, but she didn’t know either.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I really am.” She was horrified at having frightened him so. “It’s not having slept,” she said. “And I’m getting the curse. You know I always weep when I’m getting the curse.”

  Her voice came out quite loud, and a man in a bowler hat turned and looked at her in surprise.

  “I could still come with you,” said Richard. “I could get a flight later today or tomorrow.”

  “No, no, of course not. I’m really all right.” She kissed him. Then she took her passport and ran. “I’ll write to you,” she shouted back to him.

  She knew it was stupid, but she felt that she was leaving him for ever.

  Once on the plane, she felt better.

  She had only flown twice before and still found it exciting to look down on a world of toy-sized fields and houses and tiny, crawling cars. It was a relief to
be out of it all and to know that Berlin was still some hours away. She looked out of the window and thought only of what she could see. Then halfway across the North Sea, clouds appeared, and soon there was only a blanket of grey below and bright, empty sky above. She leaned back in her seat and thought about Mama.

  It was curious, she thought. Whichever way one imagined Mama, it was always in movement: the blue eyes frowning, the lips talking, Mama clenching her hands with impatience, tugging her dress into place, dabbing violently at her tiny snub nose with a powder puff. She did not trust anything connected with herself to function properly unless she kept tabs on it, and even then she always felt it could be improved.

  Anna remembered how, during one of her visits from Germany, Mama had once brought Konrad round to her digs for lunch. Anna had cooked the only dish she knew, which was a large quantity of rice mixed with whatever happened to be on hand. On this occasion the ingredients had included some chopped-up sausages, and Konrad had said, politely, how nice they were. At once Mama had said, “I’ll find you some more,” and to Anna’s irritation she had snatched up the bowl and rootled through it, to toss a succession of small sausage pieces on to his plate.

  How could anybody so obsessed with the minutiae of every day suddenly want to stop living? Not that Mama hadn’t often talked about it. But that was in the last years in Putney when she and Papa had been so utterly wretched, and even then it had not seemed like anything to be taken seriously. Her cries of “I wish I was dead!” and “Why should I go on?” had been so frequent that both Anna and Papa had soon learned to ignore them.

  And the moment things improved, the moment the endless worry about money was lifted from her, her enthusiasm for life had returned – both Anna and Papa had been surprised how quickly. She had written long excited letters home from Germany. She had gone everywhere and looked at everything. She had translated so well for the Americans in the Control Commission that she had soon been promoted – from Frankfurt to Munich, from Munich to Nuremberg. She had wangled lifts home on American troop planes to arrive with presents for everyone – American whisky for Papa, nylon stockings for Anna, real silk ties for Max. And she had been thrilled when at last the British Control Commission had decided that Papa, too, should make an official trip to Germany.

  Hamburg, thought Anna. Did the flight to Berlin pass over it? She peered down at the flat country which showed every so often through gaps in the cloud. It was strange to think that somewhere down there might be the place where Papa lay buried. If Mama died, she supposed she’d be buried with him. If Mama dies, she thought suddenly with a kind of impatience, I’ll be the child of two suicides.

  There was a click as something was put down on the folding table in front of her, and she became aware of the stewardess standing nearby.

  “I thought you might like some coffee,” she said.

  Anna drank it gratefully.

  “I was so sorry to hear of the illness in your family,” said the girl in her American voice. “I do hope that when you get to Berlin you will find everything better than you expected.”

  Anna thanked her and stared out at the brilliant sky and the melting clouds below. But what do I expect? she thought. Konrad had only told her that Mama’s condition was unchanged, not what that condition was. And in any case, that had been last night. By now… No, thought Anna, she’s not dead. I would know if she were.

  As the time of arrival approached, she tried to think what it would be like meeting Konrad. One thing, it wouldn’t be difficult to find him, because he was so tall and fat. She’d see him over the heads of the other people. He’d be leaning on his walking stick if his back was giving him trouble as it so often did, and he’d smile at her with his curiously irregular features and say something reassuring. He would be calm. Anna imagined him always having been calm. You’d have to be calm to stay on in Germany under Hitler as a Jewish lawyer defending other Jews, as he had done.

  He had even remained calm when they sent him to a concentration camp. By being calm and unobtrusive, he had survived several weeks, until his friends managed to get him out. Nothing too terrible had happened to him, but he would never talk about what he had seen. All he would say was, “You should have seen me when I came out,” and he would slap his paunch and grin his lopsided grin and say, “I was thin – like a Greek youth.”

  He would certainly have made sure that Mama had the best possible treatment. He was very practical. Anna remembered Mama telling her that in England he had supported a wife and two daughters by taking a job in a factory. The daughters were grown up now, but he seemed not to care too much for any of them and seldom went home.

  “We are now approaching Tempelhof airfield,” said the stewardess, and all the lighted messages about seat belts and cigarettes flicked on.

  She looked out of the window. They were still quite high and the airport was not in sight. I suppose all this is still East Germany, she thought, looking down at the fields and little houses. They looked like anywhere else and presumably would have looked just the same under the Nazis. I only hope we land in the right place, she thought.

  The last time she had landed in Berlin had been with Richard. They had arrived at short notice, to tell Mama that they were getting married. It had been a curious, edgy visit, even though she’d been so happy – partly because she so hated being in Berlin and only partly because of Mama. Not that Mama had been against the marriage – on the contrary, she had been delighted. Only Anna had known that for years Mama had secretly dreamed of her marrying someone quite different.

  In Putney, when Papa’s health was failing and everything seemed hopeless, Mama had had a kind of running fantasy about this marriage. It would be to a lord – a very grand kind of lord with a big estate in the country. Anna would live with him at the castle, and Mama would live at the dower house (there always was a dower house, she had explained to Anna). There would be an apple-cheeked housekeeper to cook muffins for Mama to eat in front of the fire, and on fine days Mama would ride about the grounds on a white horse.

  Of course she hadn’t meant it. It had just been a joke to cheer them both up and, as Anna had frequently pointed out, Mama couldn’t ride. Even so, when she told Mama about Richard, she knew that somewhere in her mind Mama was regretfully relinquishing the image of herself prancing about on this great bleached beast, surrounded by grooms or hounds or whatever she’d imagined for herself, and it had made Anna nervous.

  Another thing that had made her nervous was that Mama did not really understand Richard’s work. She got most of her information about England from Max who, as a rising young barrister, seemed to her a more reliable source than Anna with her art, and Max had told her that he did not have a television set, though they were considering buying one for the au pair girl. This had made Anna nervous of what Mama might say to Richard, or even when Richard was anywhere near, because Mama’s voice was so loud.

  It was silly because Richard was quite able to take care of himself. But she had been grateful to Konrad for steering Mama away from dangerous subjects. As soon as Mama got started on literature or drama (she tended, in any case, only to quote Papa’s views, and not always correctly) he had looked at her with his nice, ugly smile and said, “It’s no use talking about these things in my presence. You know perfectly well that I’m illiterate.”

  The plane tilted to one side. Anna could see Berlin, suddenly close, above the wing, and the airport beyond it. We’ll be down in a minute, she thought, and all at once she felt frightened.

  What would Konrad tell her? Would he blame her for not having written to Mama for so long? Did he even know why Mama had taken the overdose? And how would she find Mama? Conscious? In an oxygen tent? In a coma?

  As the ground came towards her, it was like the first time she’d jumped off the high diving board at school. I’m going into it, she thought. Nothing can stop it now. She saw with regret that there was not even a veil of cloud to delay her. The sky was clear, the midday sun blazed down on the gr
ass and tarmac of the airport as it rushed up towards her, then the wheels touched, they roared briefly along the runway and stopped with a shudder. There was nothing to be done. She was there.

  Konrad was standing near the door of the arrival lounge, leaning on his walking stick as she had expected. She walked towards him through the blur of German voices, and when he caught sight of her he came to meet her.

  “Hullo,” he said, and she saw that his large face looked worn out and somehow skimpy. He did not embrace her, as he normally did, but only smiled at her formally and shook her hand. She was at once apprehensive.

  “How is Mama?” she asked.

  He said, “Exactly the same.” Then he told her flatly that Mama was in a coma and had been ever since she had been found on Saturday morning and that there had been some difficulty in treating her because for a long time no one knew what she had taken. “I cabled Max this morning,” he said.

  She said, “Shall we go to the hospital?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no point, I’ve just come from there.”

  Then he turned and walked towards his car, slightly ahead of her, in spite of his bad back and his walking stick, as though he wanted to get away from her. She hurried after him in the sunshine, more and more distressed.

  “What do the doctors say?” she asked, just to make him look round, and he said wearily, “The same. They simply can’t tell,” and walked on.

  It was all much worse than anything she had imagined. She had thought he might blame her for not having written to Mama, but not to the extent of wanting nothing to do with her. She was appalled at the thought of coping with all the horrors to come alone, without his support. (If only Richard were here, she thought, but cut the thought off quickly, since it was no use.)

  When he reached the car, she caught up with him and faced him before he could put the key in the lock.

  “It was because of me, wasn’t it?” she said. “Because I hadn’t written?”

  He lowered the hand with the key in it and looked back at her, utterly astonished.