A Small Person Far Away (10 page)

There was sand between her toes, and her woollen bathing suit clung to her wet legs and to her sandy body where Mama was holding her.

“
Hoch, Mami! Hoch!
”

She flew up into the sky. The sea was like a great wall at the end of the beach, and Mama’s face, suddenly beneath her, laughed up from the shining sand.

“She always enjoys everything so much,” said Hildy.

“Yes,” said Anna.

She could still see Mama, the brilliant blue eyes, the open, laughing mouth, and the blazing beach behind her. Like a vision, she thought. And then it faded, and there was Hildy at the other side of the table, looking concerned.

“I don’t want Mama to die,” she said childishly, as though Hildy could arrange it.

“Well, of course you don’t.” Hildy refilled her cup and stirred more sugar into it. “Drink,” she said.

Anna drank.

“I think your mother won’t die,” said Hildy. “After all, however it may seem just now, she still has very much to live for.”

“Do you think so?” The hot, sweet tea had warmed her and she was beginning to feel better.

“Of course. She has two nice children, a grandchild already, perhaps more to come. She has a job and a flat and friends.”

Anna nodded. ‘It’s just – she had a bad time for so many years.”

“Listen!” Hildy peered at her across the tea-cups. “My Erwin worked at Nuremberg. I know what happened to the Jews who stayed behind.
They
had a bad time.” And as Anna looked at her in surprise, “When you’ve finished your tea, you go to the hospital, and I hope your mother – I hope the pneumonia will be not so bad. And if she can hear you, you tell her it’s time she got better.”

“All right.” For the first time she found herself laughing, because Hildy made it all sound so simple.

“That’s right.” Hildy finished the last crumbs on her plate. “People,” she said, without explaining exactly whom she meant by them, “people shouldn’t give up so easy.”

At the hospital she was received by the nurse who had been on duty that morning. “Your mother is calmer now,” she said in German, and led Anna up the familiar corridors and stairs. For a moment, after her vision of Mama on the beach, it was surprising to see her grey-haired and middle-aged. She was lying quietly under the covers, her breathing almost normal, so that she might have been asleep. Only once in a while her head turned restlessly on the pillow and the untethered hand twitched.

Anna sat down on the bed and looked at her. She’s fifty-six, she thought. Mama’s eyes were tightly closed. There were deep frown lines between them, and two further lines ran to the pulled-down corners of her mouth. The chin had lost some of its firmness, it was pudgy now rather than round. The hair straggled on the pillow. But in the middle of it all was the nose, tiny, snub and incongruously childish, sticking up hopefully from the ageing face.

When I was small, thought Anna, I used to have a nose like that. Everyone had told her that her nose was just like Mama’s. But then, some time during her adolescence, her nose had grown and now – though it certainly wasn’t a Jewish nose, Mama had said – it was straight and of normal length. Somehow Anna always felt that she had grown up past Mama along with her nose. Hers was a more serious nose, an adult nose, a nose with a sense of reality. Anyone with a nose like Mama’s, she thought, was bound to need looking after.

Mama stirred. The head came a little way off the pillow and dropped back again, the closed eyes facing towards her.

“Mama,” said Anna. “Hullo, Mama.”

Something like a sigh escaped from the mouth, and for a moment she imagined that it had been in reply to her voice, but then Mama turned her head the other way and she realized that she had been mistaken.

She put her hand on Mama’s bare shoulder, and Mama must have felt that, for she twitched away very slightly.

“Mama,” she said again.

Mama lay motionless and unresponsive.

She was about to call her again when, deep inside Mama, a sound began to form. It seemed to rise up slowly through her chest and her throat and finally emerged roughly and indistinctly from her half-open lips.

“
Ich will
” said mama. “
Ich will.
”

She knew at once what it was that Mama wanted to do. Mama wanted to die.

“
Du darfst nicht!
” she shouted. She would not allow it. She was so determined not to allow it that it took her a moment to realize that Mama had actually spoken. She stared down at her, amazed and with a kind of anger. Mama tried to turn her head away, and the strange sound rose up in her again.

“
Ich will
,” she said.

“
Nein!
”

Why should she remember, now of all times, about the pencil sharpener that Mama had stolen from Harrods? It was a double one in a little pig-skin case, and mama had given it to her for her fourteenth or fifteenth birthday. She had known at once, of course, that Mama could not possibly have paid for it. “You might have been caught,” she had cried. “They might have sent for the police.” But Mama had said, “I just wanted you to have it.”

How could anyone be so hopelessly, so helplessly wrong-headed, stealing pencil sharpeners and now wanting to die?

“Mama, we need you!” (Was it remotely true? It didn’t seem to matter.) “You must not die! Mama!” Her eyes and cheeks were wet and she thought, bloody
Dr Kildare. “Du darfst nicht sterben! Ich will es nicht! Du musst zurück kommen!
”

Nothing. The face twitched a little, that was all.

“Mami!” she shouted. “Mami! Mami! Mami!”

Then Mama made a little sound in her throat. It was absurd to imagine that there could be any expression in the toneless voice that came from inside her, but to Anna it sounded matter of fact, like someone deciding to get on with a job that needed to be done.

“
Ja, gut
,” said Mama.

Then she sighed and turned her face away.

She left the landing in a state of confused elation. It was all right. Mama was going to live. Your little brother will play the violin again, she thought, and felt surprised again at the corniness of it all.

“I spoke to my mother and she answered me,” she told the nurse. “She’s going to get better.”

The nurse pursed her lips and talked about the Herr Doktor’s opinion, but Anna did not care. She knew she was right.

Even Konrad was cautious.

“It’s obviously an improvement,” he said on the telephone. “I expect we’ll know more tomorrow.” He had heard from Hildy Goldblatt about her moment of faintness in the
Königsallee
and was anxious to know if she were all right. “I’ll come and pick you up for supper,” he said, but she did not want to see him and told him that she was too tired.

Instead, she ate scrambled eggs served on a not-very-clean tablecloth in the deserted breakfast room and thought about Mama.

The bow-legged proprietress hovered nearby and talked – about the Nazis (she had never been one, she said), about the concentration camps of which she had known nothing, and about the bad times just after the War. No food, she said, and such dreadfully hard work. Even the women had to clear the rubble.

Her Berliner voice, a bit like Heimpi’s, like all the voices of Anna’s childhood, went on and on, and, even though Anna believed little of what she said, she did not want it to stop. She answered her in German and was surprised to find that when she really tried, she could speak it almost perfectly.

“
Is’ doch schön, dass es der Frau Mutter ’n bischen besser geht
,” said the woman.

Anna, too, was glad that Mama was a little better.

“
Sehr schön
,” she said.

Tuesday began with a telephone call from Konrad. Anna was still in bed, when she was wakened by the knocking at her door, and she had to run down to the telephone in the hall with her coat thrown over her nightdress, the crumbly lino chilling her bare feet as she said, “Hello? Hello, Konrad?”

“My dear,” Konrad’s voice sounded much more positive, “I’m sorry I woke you. But I thought you’d like to know straightaway that I’ve just spoken to the doctor, and he says your mother is going to be all right.”

“Oh, I’m so glad.” Even though she had been sure of it, she was surprised by the wave of relief which flooded over her. “I’m so glad!”

“Yes – well – so am I.” He gave a little laugh. “As you can imagine.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I just thought I’d tell you. So you could have your breakfast in peace. I’ll meet you at the hospital at nine-thirty.”

“All right.” It felt like an outing, a party, a celebration. “And thanks, Konrad. Thanks for letting me know.”

She hurried back to her room to put on her clothes, and had hardly got them on before she was called to the telephone again. This time it was Max, from the airport.

“Max,” she cried, “it’s all right. Mama is going to be all right.”

“I know.” He sounded in control of the situation, as always. “I’ve just spoken to the hospital.”

“Did they tell you—?”

“The overdose. Yes.” There was a pause. “It’s funny,” he said. “I’ve been sitting in planes and at airports for two days with nothing to do but think about Mama, but that possibility never occurred to me. I just kept wondering whether she’d be alive when I got here.”

“I know.” She could hear his breathing through the telephone – fast, shallow breaths. He must be dead tired.

“Do you know why she did it?”

“Konrad,” she said. “He had an affair.”

“Konrad? Good God.” He was as amazed as she had been. “I thought it was something to do with us. I hadn’t written for a bit.”

“I know. I hadn’t either.”

“Good God,” he said again, and then became very practical. “Look, I don’t know what sort of transport I can get from here, but I’ll get to the hospital as soon as I can. You meet me there.”

“All right.” The odd feeling of it being a celebration returned to her as she said, “See you then.”

“See you then,” he said and rang off.

She rushed through her breakfast with only the briefest replies to the proprietress who was determined to continue the conversation of the previous night. Even so, when she arrived at the hospital, Max was already there. He was talking to the nurse behind the desk and she recognized not only his back, but also the expression on the nurse’s face – that special smile, denoting pleasure and eagerness to help, which he had been able to induce in almost everyone he met since he had been about seventeen.

“Max,” she said.

He turned and came towards her, looking tired but unrumpled in his formal suit, and most of the visitors and patients looked up to watch him.

“Hello, little man,” he said, and in answer to the old endearment, left from their joint childhood, she felt a glow spread through her, and smiled back at him much as the nurse had done. “What a lot of trouble,” he said as he kissed her, “Bringing up our poor Mama.”

She nodded and smiled. “Have you spoken to Konrad?”

“Just for a moment. He gave me your number. He said something about taking full responsibility. I couldn’t think what he meant.”

“He feels very badly about it.”

“Well, so he should. Though perhaps… Mama isn’t easy.” Max sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Has he said anything about what he’s going to do?”

“Not exactly. But he said the affair meant nothing to him – that it’s all finished.”

“I suppose that’s something.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. She was conscious of the other people and the nurse behind the desk watching them. “He’s coming here at nine-thirty,” he said. “Do you want to wait for him or go and see Mama first?”

“Let’s go and see Mama,” he said, and she thought how much easier it would be to face going up to the landing now that Mama was better, and with Max beside her.

As they started along the corridor which smelt of disinfectant and polish as usual, she did not feel the least bit sick. “I’m all right today,” she said. “Always when I’ve come here before I’ve felt sick.”

He smiled. “You should have put a clean hankie on your stomach,” and she was surprised and touched because he did not usually remember much about the past.

“I think it only worked if you got it out of the drawer,” she said.

They had reached the stairs and she was about to go up, but he steered her past them, towards another passage.

“Room 17,” he said. “The nurse told me.”

“Room 17?” Then she realized. “They must have moved her now that she’s out of danger. They must really be sure.”

He nodded. “The nurse said she’d be very sleepy. She said only to stay a minute.”

“She’s been on a kind of landing till now.” For some reason it seemed important to explain. “Where everyone could see her. And of course she’d throw herself about and groan and I was shouting and trying to get through to her. It was rather horrible.”

But they had come to the door of Mama’s room and he was not really listening. “All right?” he said with his fingers on the handle, and they went in.