by Gaby Koppel
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
About Honno
Copyright
REPARATION
by
Gaby Koppel
Honno Modern Fiction
To Stephen
Acknowledgements
In loving memory of my mother, Edith, and my father, Jindi. This book could not have been written without the unswerving support of Stephen Brown, and my children Rivkah, Sarah and Dovid. Huge thanks are due to Jonathan Myerson, Louise Doughty and colleagues at City University, also to Kate Dunton, Leonie Sturge-Moore, Kate Worsley, Elizabeth Elford, Elizabeth Davidson, Hannah Michell. My friends and readers who helped me keep faith over the years include Sue Cohen, Sarah Cusk, Mikey Cuddihy, the much missed Fiona Freedland, Robin Oppenheim, Susannah Reichenstein, and Kath Libbert. Thanks to everybody at Honno, to my agent Veronique Baxter and publicist Emily Burns.
Prologue
Budapest 1944
From the car she can make out the militia, rifles in hand and ragtag uniforms. Facing them, a huddled crowd of prisoners, faces white in the sharp air, some clutch whimpering children. One man with a cloth hat in his hands, wringing the life out of it. The commanding officer is the biggest brute of a brutal bunch, though hardly more than a boy. He strides up and down the shivering assembly, shouting, face contorted in anger.
– Istenem, istenem, mutters her mother. Oh God. Then louder, Stop the car. Stop here.
–No! Too dangerous, Kovács Bacsi drive on. And turning to her mother –Sit down. Don’t be a fool.
Her mother is clutching the letter in trembling hands, and by now the foolscap is looking crumpled, the ink on the envelope is smeared. She prises it out of her mother’s grip, opens her bag and slides the letter in, then closes the brass clasp with a loud click that reverberates in the tense air.
As the car passes the huddled mob, both women gaze out towards the river bank, scanning the detainees’ faces one by one. It’s all too quick, too distant. The motor bumps over the cobbled road. Is that him? No. Of course not. It’s just another middle-aged businessman. A fat one, in a long coat with an astrakhan collar, who reminds her of a bank manager. He is altogether more charismatic. He would stand out from the crowd.
A little further along, Kovács manages to pull up, tucking the car into a side street. Her mother looks pale and frightened – as white and fragile as that precious letter. Aranca straightens the older woman’s hat, and with her finger wipes off some stray lipstick. Checking the pavement in each direction, the two slip out of the vehicle and cross the road. By now, a small crowd has gathered to watch the scene that is taking place beside the river. The dishevelled prisoners must know what’s about to happen. The people watching certainly know.
There’s a drop of three metres from the quay. It will take them a second or two to fall, she thinks, but for them time will slow right down from the instant the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun. They will know their last moments, millisecond by millisecond. Bang. She wonders whether you hear the gun going off when it’s pointed at you. She’s heard you don’t. A burning, tearing pain in the guts. Momentum of the shot knocking you off your feet. The spinning whoosh as you fall through the sharp air. You can feel yourself hit the water, with a jarring splash. The half-iced hardness makes you gasp, as your body breaks through the surface and your stunned lungs pull at – nothing. The current drags you under. You are fighting for breath, every last desperate gasp. But the water is raging. The cold is paralysing and there’s a roaring pain in your chest as your lungs search for air in the void. You are fighting to pull yourself to the surface, but as your lifeblood mixes with the murky water, strength ebbs, and blackness is all that is left.
She gazes, transfixed, at the surface of the river, thick with ice floes in a myriad different sizes, large white rafts surrounded by smaller pebbles, that are constantly moving and realigning themselves as they glide along, pushed by the merciless current.
He is there, she realises with a jolt. Standing slightly apart from the others. And yes, he does look distinguished. It won’t help him now, his dignified air but the letter might, if only she could work out who she is supposed to give it to. The name on the envelope doesn’t mean anything to her – she’s trying to remember what they were told about Colonel Farkas. She feels a quivering hand grab her arm. Oh yes, her mother has noticed too. The older woman is gulping great mouthfuls of air, groaning. She’s about to shout out. The word hovers around her lips. Istenem – Oh God – but no sound comes out. They know the forged papers in her pocket won’t fool anyone. If they are going to save her father, they are going to have to break cover now, but her gut is warning her it is too risky by far.
She takes her mother’s hand in her own, roles reversed – she’s in charge despite her tender years. Seeing her now, few would guess she really ought to be in school. But that was another life, before a false step could cost everything. She squeezes her mother’s trembling hand hard enough to hurt.
– Shhh, she says, looking her in the eye. Don’t draw attention. Not here, not now. She’s scanning the scene – where is he, this mysterious Colonel? Surely he’s not the scrawny yob commanding the squad. She looks around for a more senior officer but can’t see any, just the brute of a youth who is probably illiterate anyway, judging by the way he’s going on. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She stifles her own moan, pulls back on the tears so hard it makes her eyes hurt.
Her mother pulls at her arm.
– The letter, she rasps.
Heads in the crowd turn towards them. Aranca makes a face at her mother telling her to be quiet. There may be informers around to betray them. They can’t just walk up to a bunch of militiamen and tell them to release her father because – because what? Because they have a letter from someone really important to somebody really important? They’ve got to leave before they are spotted. Keep on the move. But Mother doesn’t budge, her feet have grown roots. She was always a stubborn woman, today is no different. On the quay, the prisoners are being tied together in threes.
The boy commander walks up to one, apparently at random. It’s the bank manager in the coat with the astrakhan collar, which is now dragged off him. Underneath it, his double–breasted, pinstriped suit is crumpled and torn, and as he turns she can see that his face is bruised on one side. He looks terrified. The leader yanks him by the lapel, and coshes him over the head with a gun. As the man collapses with a yelp of pain, she can feel the crowd around her flinch. The commander shouts something at the man on the ground. In the crowd, hands go to mouths. Two soldiers take turns to kick the man on the floor, then jerk him to his feet. The leader looks at the distant crowd, grinning. The bastard, she thinks, he’s performing to an audience. He wants us to see this. This obscenity. But she can’t leave. Not now. He shouts out again, and his men grab two others. One is a working man with a grey moustache
and shabby clothes, the other a slight young woman. Two militiamen bundle the two prisoners towards the edge of the quay and tie them up to the bank manager, so they make a ghastly trio. The commander screams at them, and all three remove their shoes. Obedient, she thinks, why so obedient? They can’t still be hoping.
There is a moment’s pause. She feels fast, hot breaths on the back of her neck, the person behind her inching forward to get a better view. The commander takes a pistol out of his belt, holds it to the bank manager’s head and pulls the trigger. The crowd seem to shudder in unison as the shot reports along the quay, before the militiamen push his sagging body into the river. Pulling the other two with him. Makes the bullets go further. The crowd would get that. The soldiers’ laughter cuts through the air. One of them kicks a stray shoe into the water. But he has missed its pair. Scuffed brown leather, worn at the heel and toe. It lies there on the quay, orphaned and accusing.
Her legs are about to buckle. She concentrates as hard as she can on keeping them rigid. Never before has she been so conscious of the muscles in her thighs and each side of her knees. She focuses on each one, pushing her mind between the sinews and counting one–two–three–four–five. Think of the numbers, she tells herself, the digits ascending with their beautiful symmetry, think of them and nothing else. Clasping her mother’s hand, she uses all her remaining strength to wrench her away towards the car. As they accelerate off, they hear muffled gunshots half-drowned by the sound of traffic.
And now the letter is in her hands though she doesn’t remember taking it out. Hot tears drop onto the blue ink, the writing puckers and swirls, becoming fainter and fainter.
Chapter 1
Cardiff, 1997
It’s the middle of the night and my mother’s gone AWOL in a field wearing patent leather loafers.
Two years after my father sells his business at a loss, Mutti has been despatched to Ibiza on a mysterious mission to do with their prized holiday flat but never gets any further than Rhoose, and is reported missing near the airport perimeter. It later turns out this isn’t just another one of her little mishaps, it is the beginning of a whole new chapter in all our lives.
Dad’s at home warming up the paprika chicken when the police ring to say she’s been thrown off the flight. Sorry? At first it doesn’t seem to make sense. The person at the airport end hesitates, and finally mutters something about excessive alcohol consumption. In plain language, my mother was drunk. When you reflect on the yobbish behaviour air crews actually do tolerate, for them to dump a sixty-something woman brought up to believe that ‘we’ always act like a lady however many gins we may have sunk, she must really have been giving it some. But Dad doesn’t waste time thinking about that as he rushes down there, and to his credit he does manage to manhandle her into the car. But just as they are driving off, she leaps out of the door and disappears into the dark.
So here I am now, sitting in the passenger seat of Dad’s decrepit Datsun as we cruise the airport approach road. The midnight pips sound on Radio 4. By the time we glide past the terminal, a newsreader is intoning the details of Tony Blair’s new cabinet in prayer-like cadences. The fifth time I’ve heard it today. I jab the off button and the whole complex begins to recede behind us. I gaze vainly into the gloom, but there’s no sign of a woman in a car coat with a handbag over her arm, who might happen to be ambling about in the bushes, giving the wildlife the fright of their lives.
“We’ve definitely been along this road before,” I protest.
“Nein, looks the same, but was coming from other side. Porthkerry Road,” says Dad, crunching the gears as we cross the A4226.
“Honestly, we have been here before. An hour ago.”
“So, in an hour she can go a long way.”
“She can barely walk from the car to the supermarket. She’s just not up to walking a mile in the dark.”
“What zatt?” He stops the car.
“What?”
“See, over there.”
I jump out, stride across the verge and peer over the fence. The mulchy grass sucks in my boots. I can’t imagine her lasting long here in patent leather heels. I lean over the fence, and stare into the gloom. Away from the streetlights, everything looks grey. On the charcoal expanse, there’s an ashen shape moving about. It could be a person lying on the ground, writhing in pain. Why on earth didn’t I bring the torch? Then, as my eyes adjust, I make out a pile of bin liners disgorging their half-digested contents onto the grass, the empty bags flailing in the wind. We retreat to the car. At least Mutti’s not dead in this field. We drive onward.
I phone the airport police again. Straight through to voicemail. “I can’t go on like this,” mutters my father. “I will, I will…” I think his lip trembles, or is it a streetlamp passing over the car? “…I will take a powder.” It’s probably the wrong moment to point out that the powder thing doesn’t actually work in English, unless you are talking about Beecham’s but that’s not what he means and it’s irritating. I’m thinking for God’s sake you’ve been here long enough to learn the language now, get the idioms right for once. Of course I don’t actually say anything, but grind my teeth. However grim things have been before, I’ve never heard my father threaten suicide. That’s her style not his.
“Don’t be silly,” I say, trying not to snap. “We’ll get her home, and by tomorrow morning, you’ll feel a whole lot better.”
“Tomorrow I feel better, ja, but then it happens again, and again. I am too old for all this,” he rasps. “You don’t know what it’s like. I finish it now.” He jerks to a halt in the middle of the road, and starts banging his head against the steering wheel. His white mane shudders with each thump. If he carries on, he’s going to concuss himself. I lean over and wrap my arms around him.
My parents have long given the impression to outsiders of having perfectly matched eccentricities. People think of them as sweet but slightly dotty European émigrés. It’s a smokescreen.
“Why don’t you get help?” I ask, as he subdues.
“We’ve had help. What do you think she was doing schlepping to London for years and years to see Dr Hellman? Cost a fortune.”
What a complete waste of money that was. Lies of omission. I bet my last fiver there was never a word about booze in all the hundreds of hours on the couch. Darling Ilse may well have been best mates with Anna Freud, but she was into therapy, not telepathy. There’s a price for being so economical with the truth.
“That was years ago. You need help now.”
“You take her. You try. She won’t listen to me.”
“How bad is it?”
“You’ve seen her.”
“What about your doctor, can’t he help?”
“She doesn’t like him.”
“And?”
“It’s not the same since Ernest retired. He’s just a run-of-the-mill GP.” He screws up his face.
“So she’s right.”
“To be honest he’s a complete arschloch.”
The thunder of an airplane taking off directly above us cuts our conversation. If I can get him over this, then everything will be back to normal. A few rounds of bridge and some Sachertorte could do wonders to restore their sense of equilibrium.
“Why don’t we go back to the airport?” I suggest. “At least we can get a cup of coffee, and talk to the police again – maybe they’ve heard something.” I don’t want to be the person that finds her in a ditch. Whatever mess she’s dragged us through, she deserves better than that.
“The airport?” He’s shouting again now. “Why should she go back there?”
“Because there’s nowhere else to go,” I shout back at him. “Unless she asks the nearest sheep to do her a favour and run her down to the Savoy for a spot of dinner!”
At the terminal, I trip over a familiar looking shoe. Patent leather slip-on with two-inch heels and decorative gold buckles. It stands alone, on the granite floor, orphaned. A few feet away, my Mutti is sleeping with her mouth open, on a
row of chairs near to the police desk. She’s bathed in the pale green glow of fluorescent light, her suitcase and handbag propped next to her. As I lean over, the smell of sweetly decaying booze breath swills over me. The Madame Rochas she’s wearing is no match for it, and has thrown in the towel.
* * * * *
The following day, I wake in my old bed with the alarm going off. I force myself up. I can’t afford to be too late for work, and there’s a hundred and sixty miles of M4 motorway between me and Shepherd’s Bush. I pull on my jeans and stumble down to the kitchen. Mutti’s sitting at the table, cleaning the sticky black nicotine goo out of her cigarette holders with little torn-up twists of tissue, reading glasses pushed down her nose. She’s smoking while she does it, poring over the congealed tar. The bitter smell of nicotine and fresh smoke mingles in the air with the acrid aroma of mocha. A long, quilted dressing-gown of stained rose-patterned fabric is gaping over her round belly. Next to the ashtray full of brown-stained tissue twists lies a pile of crosswords cut out of the Daily Telegraph, and a pencil, which she picks up now and then to write in an answer.
“Good morning,” she says with a bright smile. If she’s got a hangover, she’s hiding it well.
“Morning,” I mumble.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Just coffee.”
“Go on – I make you an eggy.”
A peace offering. For my mother, food has always been love on a plate. She brought me up on streuselkuchen with schlagsahne and when I was fifteen told me I was half a stone overweight. Her. The one in the Crimplene tent. I etched my anger in blood red ink into my diary. I stopped eating. I thought that’ll show her. She can do her thousand calorie a day diet from now until Christmas, but I’ll drop half a stone before she’s even opened that can of Weight Watchers soup. So what if my periods stop. Then she hoiks me off to the doctor, and it turns out they all think I’m pregnant. As if.