The Foreigner

by P. G. Glynn

  Hugo wasn’t sure how to handle the situation. He was also concerned about the fact that if Papa intended making his home with them they would have insufficient space for their new baby. As it was, in their three-bedroom cottage, they were almost bursting at the seams. He asked Helena in bed one evening: “How do you think we are going to manage if this goes on?”

  She, heavily pregnant, snuggled up to him and said: “I don’t know how, but we will manage. After all your father’s been through, it’s the least we can do.”

  “I suppose so. I worry, though, that Papa thinks money’s more plentiful than it is. He can’t seem to understand that its source isn’t infinite.”

  “Why would he, when he has never had to understand that?”

  “I’d have thought the war would have taught him differently. He has seen so much suffering, so much hardship and tragedy. His experiences have aged him outwardly, yet inwardly … ”

  “ … he’s still boyish. All credit to him for that. He has a sunny nature that shrugs off unpleasantness and appreciates each new day afresh. I really admire him – and don’t forget that one day he’ll be able to return to Bohemia. Then, unless we’re there with him, we’ll miss his presence and wish he were still here.”

  “You’re so wise,” Hugo said, kissing her, “and I’m sure you’re right. But for me the best solution would be if he and Mama were to get back together.”

  “For you, yes, but let’s want what’s best for them.”

  +++++

  Otto was growing restless. He also felt in the way. Hugo and Helena were so short of space that they all kept tripping over each other … and he certainly didn’t want to be around for the birth of their baby. Already overcrowded, their little home couldn’t accommodate him and another offspring, besides which Gilchrist was too restrictive.

  And it was filled with memories of Marie. Wherever he went, he was conscious of her presence. She might not be here physically but this was her birthplace and in the village everyone asked after her. He knew they were actually asking more than that and he had no answers. On his one visit to ‘Beulah’ Janet had had plenty to say about her wayward daughter so at least that had not changed! He had seen Lucy on a number of occasions but had not bothered with Alice. Suzy was quite another matter. She was a new generation and yet her grandmother all over again. When Otto looked at her his heart lurched for he felt as if he were gazing at Marie at the same age. And she was capricious, as he felt sure Marie had been from the beginning. Echoes of Carla were certainly evident but for him she was his darling girl … and he was in danger of becoming too attached to her.

  Attachments were bad when they were in the wrong place. They only led to more heartache. So, all in all, Otto must move on. The sole question was where to go, given that he had no actual home at the moment. He was tempted to go back to London and win the battle for Marie all over again, but on reflection didn’t feel as if he had enough fight in him at present. Then, walking one morning on Gilchrist mountain, his gaze on the surrounding hills as a mist came in, he saw eerily rising from within the mist a tall steeple and domes and spires reminiscent of the east. He saw these and knew with a sense of homecoming where there would always be a place for him.

  “Vienna?” said Hugo, when acquainted with his father’s plans. “Why are you thinking of going there? Aren’t you happy with us here?”

  “I am – and you and Helena have made me so very welcome, for which I’m thankful, but you have your lives to lead and I have mine. Until we can all return to Bohemia, where could be better for me than the city of Sieczynski’s dreams?”

  55

  Hugo had financed Papa’s return to Vienna and seemed to have been financing him ever since. He received regular telegrams soliciting funds and these irritated him in that they were so much more costly than letters. Why could Papa still not grasp the desirability of budgeting? Why could he not write, rather than telegraphing? But his repeated pleas fell on deaf ears and he was becoming resigned to his role as his father’s chief provider. He now knew that he wasn’t the sole one, because Mama had told him that she too received demands for money (which she ignored!) … and he had gathered from Papa that Tante Lenka, who apparently lived in a stylish apartment in Vienna’s First District, contributed now and then. Papa was obviously not selective about his source of income. Hugo found this whole approach to living incomprehensible.

  Not that he dwelled on it. Since the boys’ advent his attention had been taken up with other things. What a surprise it was, when Helena delivered twins! Never in his life had he been more surprised than when invited into the delivery room to find his wife holding two babies – one in each arm. Even the midwife and doctor had had a shock when, after Robert was born, Daniel came along. There had evidently not been so much as a hint of twins and nor was there any history of them on either side of the family. Perhaps it was because he had remained hidden for so long that Daniel was now the noisiest, most boisterous boy in existence. He was making up for having been eclipsed by Robert for nine months.

  Hugo was discovering that sons were very different from daughters. They were predictable and loved rough-and-tumble, whereas Suzy was given to sudden whims and to wholly unexpected mood-swings. She was also fastidious and a born mimic. Aunt Lucy kept saying how she was an actress in the making. Hugo wished he could stop her saying it. The last thing he wanted for his precious daughter was that she would leave him to go on the stage. He wanted nothing more than to keep her near and protect her from predators. But she was such an adventurous child, and so strong-willed, that he frequently wondered where her future would lead her. It seemed increasingly certain that the Bergers were not destined to return to Czechoslovakia.

  With the red Russian flag flying from the Hradschin and the country absorbed within the Soviet Union, no welcome awaited them there. Since the fall of the coalition government in 1948 and the takeover by the new regime, private ownership of land and property had ceased. No sooner had a desperately sick Onkel Rudolf and Tante Anna taken residence again after the horrors of Goerlitz than the Communists were in power, seizing people’s homes … and converting Schloss Berger into dozens of small apartments for factory workers. They had even changed the name of the village, so that in effect Herrlichbach no longer existed.

  It was tough coming to terms with events. Tougher still was the knowledge that compensation had yet to be paid for the family’s linen empire, the castle and its vast acreage. Papa should not have to be living on handouts at his age – especially not through the Bergers losing their estates. It seemed beyond belief that first the Nazis and then the Communists could take people’s property without payment but they had. Family friends – such as were left – were of course similarly affected. The life they all lived pre-war was just an elusive memory and they had Hitler to thank for that. They had him to thank for so many things.

  Papa wrote that there were painfully few Jews in ‘his’ city now. The Holocaust had extinguished the whole Jewish culture that had existed for hundreds of years, stretching once from the shtetls of Lithuania to the salons of Vienna. Millions of Austrians, Poles, Russians, Germans and Czechs had died, too, in concentration camps but there was still an Austria, a Poland, a Russia, Germany and Czechoslovakia whereas Europe’s colourful Jewish civilisation had vanished. And Onkel Ludwig had helped in that. He was beyond forgiveness, as were all Nazis for the part they had played in changing the pre-war world beyond recognition.

  Hugo had read that in Auschwitz there were roll calls ending with an officer asking: ‘Wieviel Stuck?’ A corporal would then tell him the number of ‘pieces’ present, adding that all was in order. But they were not referring to things. They were referring to humans destined for gas-chambers. Small wonder that these days one referred to Nazis in the past tense because there were supposedly none left. Except for the war criminals tried at Nuremberg and subsequently imprisoned there was nobody now who would admit to having been a Nazi.

  It was different for Papa, who had worn
their uniform briefly and unwillingly. His unwillingness made the difference. Hugo thought it galling, though, that as Onkel Ludwig’s widow Tante Lenka was rich while Papa was poor.

  Not that Papa saw himself as a pauper. He thought more as emperor than beggar and wrote as if he owned Vienna. With Viennese air to breathe and her coffee to drink he had riches, he said. Fresh air was free, as were the feelings stirred by his city’s awesome architecture, so he could not see why people attached so much importance to money. Papa certainly didn’t treat money as important – spending Hugo’s as if this gushed from an infinite source!

  Hugo had heard from Ferdinand, who was now married to Helga and living in Austria, that Marinka had been killed in Prague’s private war and that Onkel Rudolf and Tante Anna had died within days of each other in Teplitz, soon after their second eviction from Schloss Berger. Omama’s brother, Franz, was long gone and Hans Berger from the farm at Mohren had lost one of his sons to the Nazis, as had the Bergers at Oberaltstadt. Looking back, Hugo felt a deep sadness that his childhood home had changed beyond recognition and that except in dreams it could not even be revisited. He wondered about the gardens where he used to pick snowdrops with Omama. Who tended them now and what had happened to Dora, Herr Beck and Herr Raiman? It seemed impossible that a whole way of life had been obliterated, yet Hugo knew it was not only possible but also true. He had to accept that his heritage was no longer his to inherit. This in itself did not trouble him, for he had seen the effects on Papa of inherited wealth. But he was troubled by thoughts of trespassers along the castle corridors.

  Helena said he could change his thinking and to some extent he had succeeded in changing it. By concentrating, he would picture himself walking in the snow with Omama, searching for the first snowdrops, or playing with Helga in the castle grounds. He would recall talking to dear old Dora in her big kitchen and being given titbits to tide him over until luncheon, tea or dinner. He would walk again in the Giant Mountains with Papa, or ski there, and he would take the path to the farm where he could be guaranteed a rapturous welcome from ‘his’ dog, Bobo. Sometimes he would sit with Mama on the Rosenzimmer balcony, wishing that she loved him like she loved his sister … and would then be glad to remind himself that that was all in the long-ago and that he was now a man with children of his own.

  Yes, it was better to be in the present than in his past existence because back then he had not met Helena or been given the precious gifts of Suzy and the twins. And he was as happy here with them in Gilchrist as he could ever have been had events evolved differently, enabling him to take them to Bohemia to live. Perhaps he was happier. Perhaps a man’s happiness depended on people, not on places … or things.

  “Please let me, Daddy!”

  He returned from his reverie to Suzy, who once again was pleading with him. At the age of six she had long been able to twist him round her little finger. Those flashing eyes, that winsome smile – was there a father alive who could resist her? But he must somehow continue to resist this. “No,” he said, “not yet.”

  “When I’m seven, then?”

  “That’s still too young, my love. Children can’t travel on their own to London until they are at least … twelve.”

  “Twelve?” she pouted. “I can’t wait till I’m that age to go and stay with Nama.”

  “Then you’ll just have to make do with seeing her when she comes here.”

  Suzy looked mutinous. “This isn’t London.”

  “I know it isn’t … and wish she hadn’t filled your head with the idea that London is somehow better than Gilchrist.”

  “It is.”

  “That’s silly. A big city can’t compare with the beautiful countryside in which we live. It’s filled with buildings and traffic … and it’s noisy. I expect that when you do go there you’ll just be disappointed.”

  “No, I won’t. When can I go?”

  Tiring of the merry-go-round they were on, Hugo said against his better judgment: “When you’re ten, I suppose. At least then you’ll be in double figures and on your way to being grown up.”

  “Ten?” she echoed in a disbelieving tone. “I’ll never be ten!”

  “Yes, you will – and sooner than you think. Don’t go wishing your life away, though. Childhood is a very precious time and you can’t have it back, once it has gone. I want you to be my little girl for as long as possible.”

  “I want to be a big girl,” Suzy told him, her expressive eyes alight. “I want to be ten already and go to see Nama.”

  Hugo sighed. “She’ll be coming to see you next week … unless you aren’t seven then?”

  Clasping her hands together as the boys bounded in asking if tea was ready, Suzy looked skywards and said: “Of course I am! I’m seven next Tuesday and Nama has promised to bring me a special present. I wonder what it is.”

  +++++

  Marie was wondering how Suzy could possibly be seven already. She decided it must be true that the older you were, the more time flew. It seemed seconds since 1949 and yet they were already nearing June of 1950. There were times when she wanted to stop the clock and hold on to a particular hour, or a day, but there was no stopping time’s relentless passage or the changes made along its way.

  Suzy had changed again in Marie’s absence. She was now growing up at an alarming rate and demonstrating a fierce independence. It was interesting to witness the interplay between her and Hugo, who was putty in her hands, and think back to the battles she herself had once fought with Mam. Hugo and Mam had a similar distrust of London, although Marie suspected that Hugo’s was linked with a wish to remain the kingpin in Suzy’s universe. Possibly for the same reason, he clearly hated it when anyone suggested that like her grandmother Suzy was a natural actress. Currently, with two front teeth missing, she lisped in conversation and was more appealing than ever when she grinned. Carla apart, she was the most enchanting child who ever lived.

  Marie wished she could see more of her. Each parting seemed harder than the last. Why, though, was she thinking of partings, with this birthday party in full swing? Suzy was wearing the white dress Marie had bought her in Selfridge’s and looked pretty as a picture in it. With a matching bow in her hair, which Marie had coaxed into ringlets, she was every inch the birthday girl and clearly basked in being the centre of attention.

  It was just as well that the weather permitted tea on the lawn, since the little living room could not have accommodated them all. Suzy’s maternal grandparents were here, along with her great-grandmothers, Great-Aunts Lucy and Alice, assorted Gwyns and two of her school-friends – not to mention Helena, Hugo and the twins! Marie glanced over the low stone wall separating them from the rolling lawns and pastures attached to the big mansion that was a fraction of the size of the castle that had been snatched. In Schloss Berger there had never been a problem with restricted space, although of course there had been many other problems. Life was curious in the way it evolved. Here was Hugo, heir to what had once been a huge Bohemian estate, now seemingly heir to nothing and living in Wales! And there was Otto, over in Vienna, consorting again with Lenka and living off charity without complaint. Who could have predicted any of this, back in 1938?

  Who, back when Marie knew him in 1919, could have foreseen that little Guy Brodie would witness the horrors of Hiroshima? She had been shocked beyond speech to meet him again after his homecoming, long after VJ-Day, and discern his pain. There was almost no flesh on him and his eyes were haunted as if he were still seeing the atrocities he had seen. One look at him suggested it was a miracle he was alive … and from his story it was obvious his survival was miraculous. Serving with the army in Singapore, behind fixed guns that were pointed out to sea as a defence against Japanese attack, he was among the thousands forced to surrender when the Japs approached from the north through what was thought to be an impenetrable jungle. What a debacle Singapore’s fall had been … what a wholesale tragedy! As for the unspeakable acts perpetrated against prisoners-of-war in the camps that littered
Japan – these Guy had experienced first-hand in his camp amidst the swamps of Sumatra. Existing on a cup of rice and a bottle of water per day, he had endured privations that took one’s breath away. He had also seen his friends succumb to the guards’ brutality, to dysentery, malaria and plain starvation … and, with death ever-present, he had helped to dig their graves. He had almost died himself on the merchant vessel taking him via Colombo to freedom but had been saved, he had told Marie, by a dream.

  From Guy’s vivid description she felt almost as if she had dreamed with him. He spoke of standing on the bank of a beautiful, fast-flowing river and watching a kingfisher snatch a fish from the water before flying with it to a perch and beating it against the branch of a tree. The bird then, resplendent with its blue-green and orange plumage, flew to Guy offering him the fish and telling him that in the river of life there was plenty of pure water to drink. Deeply touched by the gift, Guy accepted and ate it … drinking from the river until his thirst left him. Awakening, he found that his brow was cool again and that he felt extraordinarily at peace with himself. He also felt a renewed faith and strength.

  Now, buoyed by his sons and presumably by Judith, he had put on weight and resumed a life with some degree of normality. Marie had noticed, though, that in company he often drifted off to somewhere he could not be reached - perhaps back to the kingfisher and the source of his spiritual sustenance.

  “Nama, where are you?” asked Suzy indignantly.

  Brought back to the party, Marie smiled at the birthday-girl seated next to her and said: “I’m here again now. Just for a moment I was miles away.”

  “Were you at the castle?”