A Small Person Far Away (21 page)

“That’s good.”

“And the sister thinks I should practise getting up a bit, especially as I’m going to the convalescent home.” Suddenly her eyes had filled with tears and she was crying again.

“Mama – what is it, Mama?” Anna put her arms round her, finding her somehow smaller than she used to be. “Don’t you want to go to the convalescent home? Isn’t it all right?”

“Oh, I think it’s quite nice.” Mama blinked and sniffed. “It’s just – the thought of the change. Of moving again. The sister says it’s got a ping-pong table,” she said through her tears.

“Well, you’ll like that.”

“I know. I’m just being silly.” She rubbed her eyes. “I think this kind of poisoning – it is a kind of poisoning, the doctor said so – it leaves one rather confused. Do you know, Konrad was talking about something I once told him, and I could remember absolutely nothing about it. I mean, I couldn’t remember telling him. Anyway –” She sniffed again – “It didn’t really matter.”

“I’m sure it didn’t.”

“No. Well, anyway, I’d better have some things washed and cleaned.” She wrote something more on her list. “I thought I’d ask Hildy.”

“Mama,” said Anna, “when you come back from your holiday – if you’re still not quite all right, or if you just suddenly feel like it – why don’t you come to London?”

“To London?” Mama looked alarmed. “What should I do in London? Anyway, I’m coming to London at Christmas, aren’t I?”

“Yes, of course. I only thought, if you suddenly got fed up—”

“Oh, I see. You mean, if things don’t work out with Konrad.”

“Not necessarily –”

“If things don’t work out with Konrad,” said Mama, “I’m certainly not going to hang round your and Max’s necks.”

There was a pause. Anna could see something drifting slowly down outside the window. “I think it’s trying to snow,” she said. They both watched it for a moment.

“Look, Mama,” she said at last. “I’m sure everything will be fine with Konrad. But if by any chance it weren’t, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I mean, you’d still have Max and me, and your job if you want it, or you could easily get one in another part of Germany. You’ve done it lots of times before.”

“But it would be different now.”

“Well, it’s never quite the same, but – look, Mama, I’m not a child. I do know what it’s like.” Suddenly she remembered with great clarity how she herself had felt, years before, when she had been jilted by a man she loved. “You think that your life is finished, but it isn’t. It’s awful for a while. You feel that nothing is any good, you can’t bear to look at anything or to listen to anything or even to think of anything. But then, especially if you’re working, it gradually gets better. And you meet new people, and things happen, and suddenly, though life perhaps isn’t as good as it was, it’s still quite possible. No, really,” she said, as Mama seemed about to interrupt, “for someone like you, with an interesting job, and no money worries, and us—”

“You’ve described it very well,” said Mama. “But there is one thing you don’t know. You don’t know how it feels to be fifty-six years old.”

“But I can imagine.”

“No,” said Mama. “You can’t. It’s quite true, I could do all the things you say. But I don’t want to. I’ve made enough new starts. I’ve made enough decisions. I don’t want to make any more. I don’t even,” said Mama, her mouth quivering, “want to go to that bloody convalescent home with the ping-pong table.”

“But that’s because you’re not well.”

“No,” said Mama. “It’s because I’m fifty-six, and I’ve had enough.”

The snow was still drifting past the window.

“One of the doctors was talking to me yesterday,” said Mama. “You know, they have all this awful psychology now, even in Germany. He thinks that when someone tries to kill themselves, it’s a cry for help – that’s what he called it. Well, all I know is that when I had swallowed those pills, I felt completely happy. I was lying on my bed – they take a while to work, you know – and it was getting dark outside, and I was looking at the sky and thinking, there’s nothing I need to do. It no longer matters. I’ll never, ever, have to make another decision. I’ve never in my life felt so peaceful.”

“Yes, but now – now that everything’s changed and you’re going on holiday and –” Anna had a little difficulty in getting this out – “if everything is all right with Konrad, won’t you be quite glad?”

“I don’t know,” said Mama. “I don’t know.” She frowned, trying to think exactly what she meant. “If I had died, you see, at least I should have known where I was.”

It did not occur to her that she had said anything odd, and she looked surprised when Anna laughed. Then she understood and laughed too. “Why do you always think I’m so funny?” she said delightedly, like a child who has inadvertently made the grown-ups laugh. “I’m really very serious.”

Her snub nose stuck out absurdly under her tired blue eyes and she sat there in her flowery dressing gown, needing to be looked after.

Later the nurse brought them tea with some little cakes. (“
Plätzchen
,” said Mama. “Do you remember how Heimpi used to make them?”) Konrad rang up to say that he had booked the hotel and also to remind Anna that he would pick her up early next morning.

After this, Mama went happily back to bed and, even though it was now quite dark outside, they left the curtains drawn back, so that they could watch the snow. It was too wet to stick, but of course, said Anna, it would be different in the Alps. Mama asked about her new job and, when Anna explained about it, said, “Papa always said that you ought to write.” She only spoiled it a little by adding, “But this job is just for television, isn’t it?”

Towards seven, the sister came back and said that Mama had had a very tiring day, and Anna shouldn’t stay too long. After this, it became more difficult to talk.

“Well—” said Anna at last.

Mama looked up at her from the bed. “It’s been so nice today,” she said. “Just like the old days.”

“It has,” said Anna. “I’ve enjoyed it too.”

“I wish you could stay longer.”

Instant panic.

“I can’t,” said Anna, much too quickly. “I’ve got to get back to my job. And Richard.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” said Mama. “I only meant—”

“Of course,” said Anna. “I wish I could stay, too.”

She finally left her with the nurse who had brought in her supper.

“I’ll write every day,” she said as she embraced her.

Mama nodded.

“And look after yourself. And have a lovely time in the Alps. And if you suddenly feel like it, come to London. Just ring us up and come.”

Mama nodded again. “Goodbye, my darling,” she said, very moved.

Anna looked back at her from the door. She was leaning back in the bed as she had so often done in the Putney boarding house, her grey hair spread on the pillow, her blue eyes brave and appallingly vulnerable, her nose ridiculous.

“Goodbye, Mama,” she said.

She was almost out of the room when Mama called after her, “And give my love again to Max.”

She came out of the hospital for the last time and suddenly didn’t know what to do next. The snow was trying to stick. It glistened patchily on the invisible grass and, more thinly, in the drive, making a pale shine in the darkness. A taxi drew up, white flakes whirling in the beam of its headlamps, and deposited a woman in a fur coat.

“
Wollen Sie irgendwo hin
?” asked the driver.

It was not yet eight o’clock, and she could not face going back to the hotel, “
Ja, bitte
,” she said, and gave him the Goldblatts’ address.

She found Hildy in a state of euphoria. Erwin was much better and the doctor, who had only recently left, had assured her that he was suffering not from hepatitis but the current form of mild gastric ’flu.

“So we are celebrating with cognac,” she said, handing Anna a glass. “We are drinking to the hepatitis which did not catch him.”

“And also to the brave Hungarians who have defied the Russians,” Erwin called through the half-open door. She could see him sitting up in bed, a glass of cognac in his hand, the billowing quilt covered with newspapers which rustled every time he moved.

“Look at this,” he cried. “Have you seen it?”

“Ach, poor Anna, from one invalid to the next,” said Hildy, but he was holding out the illustrated paper so eagerly that she went in to see. It showed a fat, frightened man emerging from a house with his hands above his head. “Hungarian civilians arrest a member of the hated Secret Police,” said the caption. In another picture, a secret policeman had been shot and his notebook which, the caption explained, contained the names of his victims, had been left open on his chest. There were pictures of dazed political prisoners released from jail, of children clambering over captured Russian tanks, of the Hungarian flag, the Russian hammer and sickle torn from its centre, floating over the giant pair of boots which was all that was left of Stalin’s statue.

“What they have done!” said Erwin. “What these wonderful people have done!” He raised the cognac to his lips. “I drink to them,” he cried, and emptied his glass, which Anna felt sure could not be good for him. But she too was moved, and glad for a moment to think of something other than Mama.

She smiled and emptied her glass also. It was surprising how much better she felt almost at once.

“Wonderful,” murmured Erwin and was refilling both of them from the bottle on his bedside table, when Hildy took over.

“So now it’s enough,” she said. “You’ll only give her your germs.”

She took the bottle and carried both it and Anna off to the kitchen, where she was in the middle of chopping vegetables for soup.

“And so,” she said, as she settled Anna on a stool. “What’s new?”

Anna was not sure where to start. “I’m going home tomorrow,” she said at last.

“Good,” said Hildy. “And how is your Mama?”

The fumes from the cognac mingled with the fumes from Hildy’s chopped onions, and she was suddenly tired of pretending.

“I don’t know,” she said, looking hard at Hildy. “All right, I suppose, if Konrad stays with her. If not… I don’t know what will happen if he doesn’t.”

Hildy looked back at her equally hard.

“So what are you going to do about it?” she said. “Stick them together with glue?”

“Of course not. But—” She wanted desperately to be reassured. “It seems awful to leave her,” she said at last. “But I can’t bear to stay. And I think I’ve really made it worse by being here. Because I told Konrad – I told him something about Mama. He says it didn’t matter, but I think it did.”

Hildy swept the onions into a saucepan and started on the carrots. “Konrad is old enough to know if it mattered or not,” she said. “And your mother is old enough to know if she wants to live or die.”

It seemed an absurd over-simplification, and Anna felt suddenly angry. “It’s not as easy as that,” she said. “It’s easy to talk, but it’s not the same as coping with it. I think that if your mother had tried to kill herself, you’d feel very different.”

There was a silence because Hildy had stopped chopping. “My mother was not at all like yours,” she said. “She was not so clever and not so pretty. She was a big woman with a big Jewish nose who liked to grow
Zimmerlinden
– you know, house plants. There was one that she’d grown right round the living-room window, she called it ‘
die grüne Prinzessin
’ – the green princess. And in 1934, when Erwin and I left Germany, she refused to come with us because, she said, whoever would look after it?”

“Oh, Hildy, I’m sorry,” said Anna, knowing what was coming, but Hildy remained matter of fact.

“We think she died in Theresienstadt,” she said. “We’re not quite sure – there were so many, you see. And perhaps you’re right, what I say is too simple. But it seems to me your mother is lucky, because at least she can choose for herself if she wants to live or die.”

She went back to chopping the carrots. Anna watched the glint of the knife as they collapsed into slices.

“You see, what are you going to do?” said Hildy. “Go to your mother each morning and say, ‘Please, Mama, live another day’? You think I haven’t thought about my mother, how I should have
made
her come with us? After all, she could have grown
Zimmerlinden
also in Finchley. But of course we did not know then how it would be. And you can’t make people do things – they want to decide for themselves.”

“I don’t know,” said Anna. “I just don’t know.”

“I’m a few years younger than your mother,” said Hildy. “But she and Konrad and I – we’re all the same generation. Since the Nazis came, we haven’t belonged in any place, only with refugees like ourselves. And we do what we can. I make soup and bake cakes. Your mother plays bridge and counts the miles of Konrad’s car. And Konrad – he likes to help people and to feel that they love him. It’s not wonderful, but it’s better than Finchley, and it’s a lot better than Theresienstadt.”

“I suppose so.”

“You don’t suppose – you know. Anyway, what can you do about us? Make the Nazis not have happened? You going to put us all back in 1932? And if your mother, with her temperament, says this life is not good enough for her, you going to make her go on living whether she wants to or not?”