The Prosperous Thief

by Andrea Goldsmith

  Towards the end of the conversation it emerges the men have the same birth date, although Martin is five years older.‘My special twin,’ he says.

  Not long afterwards, Martin falls asleep. The coughing begins around midnight and continues for a couple of hours, but between spasms he says he knows he’ll live. Finally the noise stops, and wrapped in Heini’s coat Martin falls deeply asleep. Heini watches. The breathing, so shallow and rapid a short time ago, quietens to such an extent that Heini bends his head to Martin’s chest and listens. He wipes the sweat from Martin’s face and adjusts the coat, then he settles himself down for the night.

  Around dawn, Heini rises from his forest bed where he has not been sleeping and stands looking down at Martin. The Jew might survive and he might not, but whether he lives or dies he will be very sick for several days. Heini has his own future to consider. Such slow progress they will make and his food store already depleted, and the countryside filling with Americans and Russians, French and British, all of them bristling with victory. There’s his own future to consider, he tells himself as he squats down and lays his hands one each side of Martin’s head. He twists. It is over in a moment. He unravels his coat from the dead man and rolls him gently into a grassy hollow. Heini then gathers his belongings and turns away from Berlin, heading instead towards the displaced persons’ camps in the south.

  A Meeting in Melbourne

  Alice Carter arrived in Melbourne in the summer of 1995, her file from the Kindertransport archive tucked into her hand luggage. She had boarded the plane not in San Francisco but Toronto where she’d been attending a series of meetings for conservators. She now regretted what had seemed to be an efficient plan for a woman short of time. For the flight to Australia had been interminable, the hours distended by dull films and duller food, and through it all a continual debate between her desire to meet Henry Lewin and her determination to let old losses lie. By the time she stepped into the Melbourne morning she had decided at least a dozen times she would see him and a dozen more times she wouldn’t. She was stale, exhausted, desperate for a shower, and resolved to wait as long as possible before she again travelled by air for more than a couple of hours.

  Raphe had offered to accompany her but, having still not told him about Henry Lewin, Alice persuaded him to change his mind. As it happened, when the time came to leave, Raphe preferred to stay home. He had met a woman he was already describing as the love of his life. This was the one, he told Alice, the one he planned to marry, the one who would bear his children. It was not his failure at relationships that had kept him unmarried for so long, he said, rather he’d been waiting for perfection. Perfection’s name was Juno, and while Alice thought she was a rather loud, contrived young woman, Raphe was happy, and that was all that mattered.

  So here she was in Melbourne alone. She had arranged to stay in a serviced apartment three or four miles from Henry Lewin’s home and a short walk from the city’s Botanic Gardens. She had rather fancied walking through tropical greenery while she decided whether or not to see Henry Lewin. She had considered contacting him from America, had toiled for weeks over a letter, but the words simply wouldn’t come. And while she knew her approach was risky when dealing with a man in his eighties, in the end she decided to keep her options open. She had, however, arranged to meet with a couple of colleagues in case she needed some diversions.

  A serious case of jetlag meant it was a few days before she was ready to talk to anyone. Without warning she would find herself falling asleep or rather falling out of consciousness, a mental vacancy while her coffee went cold, or the news programme she’d been watching finished, or the shopping strip she’d been strolling along became a stretch of apartment buildings. At two o’clock in the morning she would find herself wide awake, too wired to read, too wired for middle-of-the-night television, would wait out the wakefulness with a bared-teeth irritation, finally falling into a swampy blackness around six. She took long solitary walks in the Botanic Gardens, down into damp fern gullies and over wide lawns, past huge old eucalypts and beneath a multitude of fruitbats hanging from the trees like flags of sun-dried leather. A fabulous variety of flora and fauna, but not much in the way of tropical species. Indeed, when she first arrived in Melbourne, nothing about the place was tropical. It was summer, but she needed a jacket in those first days, and while soon there would be a blast of heat straight from the equator, she had not yet learned about Melbourne’s jittery weather.

  She woke, she slept, she wandered the Botanic Gardens and she thought about Henry Lewin. Such a jangle of thoughts, wonderful far-flung possibilities of how this man had known her father, vying with the old losses and a wad of new disappointments. To see him or not? The decision seemed beyond her. Then on the fourth evening and without knowing why, she returned to the apartment, lifted the phone and dialled Henry Lewin’s number.

  The call was answered by a youngish sounding woman.When Alice asked to speak to Mr Henry Lewin, the woman introduced herself as Laura Lewin, his daughter. She said her father was out taking a walk but would be home shortly. Would Alice like to leave a message? Alice explained she was a visitor to Melbourne, that it was possible Henry and her family had known each other before the war and –

  The daughter’s excitement burst down the phone. How she hoped there was a connection. Her father had emerged from the war with no one left, not a single relative. How exciting if after all this time … Yes, yes, she’d get her father to ring as soon as he came in. And then after a brief pause she invited Alice to join the family for a barbecue on Sunday.

  Henry Lewin called back within thirty minutes. In stark contrast with the daughter, he could hardly have been less interested. He said at the outset he was sure there was no connection, but nonetheless, and with his daughter’s urgings quite audible in the background, he reiterated the invitation to Sunday lunch. Alice accepted, more for the daughter than herself, and spent the rest of the evening trying to escape her disappointment. In the end she took herself off to a local cinema where she sat through two hours of a hefty Czech film which was in its finishing throes before she realised she hadn’t even bothered to put on her glasses. And through the elegant drear on the screen the same old questions: When would she stop adding to old losses? When would she stop picking at old scars? And why couldn’t she be satisfied with the infinite possibilities of dreams?

  The next day was Saturday.Alice kept herself busy with one of her old colleagues, a gallery director, whom she soon realised was flirting with her. When Malcolm McKellar suggested lunch the following day she was sorely tempted, not only because she was enjoying his company, but she found herself increasingly reluctant to meet Henry Lewin, whose own reluctance, she decided, was all the evidence she needed to show he had nothing to reveal. But there was no getting out of it. She decided to put an appearance at the Lewin barbecue, leave as quickly as possible, and yes, she said to Malcolm, she’d be happy to meet him later in the day.

  Sunday was a scorcher. Alice chose her lightest sundress, left the apartment with a jacket over her arm, then thought better of it and threw it back inside. Sitting in the taxi she composed herself into her ‘I’ll do the right thing then get out of there as soon as possible’ mode – an adult version of the perfect child model.

  And she would have succeeded if not for the daughter. If only Raphe could meet her, his girlfriend problems would be over forever. Laura Lewin was lively, attractive, a good talker and highly entertaining. Henry, in contrast, was silent, gruff and unforthcoming. Every time Laura tried to direct the conversation to the past – and it was she alone who was interested in Alice’s past, she alone who was interested in making connections – Henry wrenched it back to the present. It seemed to Alice that Henry Lewin preferred to talk about anything – fishing in San Francisco Bay, the exact composition of acrylic paint, the quality of Californian oranges – anything other than the past.

  The son, Daniel, wasn’t much better. He wore a yarmulke, and to Alice’s secular eyes seem
ed very religious. A friendly enough man, but reserved, and by his own admission much more interested in the future of Judaism than the past. His son, Henry Lewin’s grandson, a boy in his late teens, seemed to share his father’s convictions, while the granddaughter, a slender, sulky adolescent, stayed close to the mother, whose good looks and forty-something elegance she would one day inherit.

  But it was Laura Lewin who charmed. She was a lawyer working in human rights and social justice – Raphe would like that – and much the same age as Raphe. There was a marriage long in the past, but no children and no desire for children – Raphe would like that too. Laura was ideal. So much so that Alice was scheming how to separate Raphe from his new love and transport him out here to meet Laura Lewin, when Nell Bartholomew arrived, similarly attractive, similarly lively, and introduced as Laura’s partner.

  ‘And what sort of business do the two of you have?’Alice heard herself asking.

  But Nell, it turned out, was Laura’s partner in life. Laura Lewin, perfect for Raphe in every respect, was not in the matter of sexual preference.

  Soon afterwards, Alice made her goodbyes with no intention of ever seeing the family again. She stifled her disappointment, she stifled all thought as she hurried through the heat to meet Malcolm McKellar. He was waiting for her as arranged in the café at the Botanic Gardens. She deflected his enquiries about her lunch and threw herself into art and gossip. It wasn’t long before she felt herself relax. Indeed, she and Malcolm had so much in common and talked so easily that when afternoon tea drifted into dinner, she found herself thinking the trip to Melbourne had not been entirely wasted.

  Perhaps it was the wine with dinner or simply that she was enjoying herself, but when Malcolm again asked about her day, she told him of her meeting with the Lewins. And soon she was talking about the parents she hardly remembered and the past she had deliberately buried, revealing far more than she ever intended. Not that it seemed to worry Malcolm. He listened closely, sympathetically, occasionally asking a question, but mainly just letting her talk. She spoke about growing older, how the dreams which had sustained her for so many years were not as effective these days. She admitted how disappointed she was about Henry Lewin.

  ‘It’s hard to accept there’s nothing left to discover. Or –’ and a long pause as a new thought occurred to her, ‘perhaps everything to discover, but no way he’s going to cooperate.’The words came slowly, her voice very quiet.

  Malcolm leaned forward and took her hand. ‘Even if Henry Lewin does have something to divulge he might not want to in front of his family.You know better than I that some of these survivors are burdened with experiences they’d prefer to keep to themselves.’

  Alice so hoped he was right. For having finally summoned the courage to look back, she didn’t want the trail of her past to be rubbed out with a gruff old survivor in Melbourne, Australia.And Malcolm’s point was apposite: it was possible, even likely, that Henry Lewin had plenty to reveal, just not in front of the children.

  Alice was calm the following morning when she telephoned Henry Lewin and arranged to see him alone later in the day. But by the time she stepped out of the taxi and entered his front garden she was shot through with jitters. She stood on his verandah for a few seconds, pulling the air into her lungs and plastering herself with a sturdy composure, and then she rang the bell.

  From the moment he opened the door, this was a very different man. He was softer, more solicitous, and while still looking much younger than his eighty-five years, his face appeared tired and his large frame was sagging. As he prepared coffee and sliced some plum cake, she saw how the muscles of his arms and legs were draped in swathes of loosened skin. There was something inexplicably pathetic about this.

  Neither of them talked much as they drank their coffee and ate the cake. It seemed to Alice he was waiting for her to begin. Finally she plunged in.

  ‘I know you knew my father.’ Her voice was calm. ‘So, why don’t you tell me about it?’

  There was a long silence during which he sat motionless, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasping his head. His eyes appeared to be shut. A minute passed, maybe more, and just as Alice was about to rephrase the question he began to talk, still avoiding her gaze, still turned in upon himself.

  Later she would tell Raphe she thought Henry must have wanted to confess, for once he began to speak there was no stopping him. His words poured out. Yes, he said, he had known her father, had known him at the end. He told her how sick Martin had been, how he had dragged himself out of Belsen. He spoke of her father’s strength, how he had been determined to find his wife and then travel to England for his daughter. He talked about her father’s last days and she let him talk, she let the new information sink in.And when he started to speak about his own early life, still she listened, nothing must stop the flow of information. Here was a German who became Jewish, a German with a childhood more impoverished than anything she had ever known, a German who had fought as a German in the war, a German with no prospects as the war was ending. He told two stories: Martin Lewin’s last days and Henry Lewin’s life.And as he talked she struggled to bring the two of them together. On the one hand her father, and on the other, this man who shared her father’s history and his name. She skirted so many possibilities, although nothing, nothing would have steered her to the truth.

  ‘Some things will always defy the imagination,’ she would say to Raphe later.

  Although she had no need for guessing. Henry Lewin told her the truth. Henry Lewin told her exactly how her father died. It was like being inside a lead-lined capsule. All that existed was this German-sounding voice intoning unbelievable, unbearable acts; the rest was blackness. Ten minutes was all it took to reveal the final moments of her father’s life, and then Alice was running from the house, catching a cab back to the apartment and sitting for hours, stunned, numb, her whole body shut down. But as the night wore on, the shock began to loosen and the horror blustered in: her father killed by a low-life German, mercilessly killed as if his life were nothing more than a purse full of change. Her father murdered by a common thief, murdered by Henry Lewin. Henry Lewin now eighty-five, with his grown-up family and comfortable home in comfortable Australia. Henry Lewin with a daughter of his own with whom he could talk and laugh and shower with fatherly love. Henry Lewin who had deprived her, Alice Carter, of all his own daughter had enjoyed. How Alice wanted to make this man suffer.

  She returned to his house the next day exhausted and raging and out of control. He was expecting her, this man who had murdered her father, and sat in silence while she slammed into him. All her losses coalesced in him. She attacked, she accused, she condemned, and he did not flinch.

  ‘He knew he deserved it,’ she told Raphe later.

  She returned day after day. She branded him with his sins, she picked him to pieces, she made him relive every minute, every second of what he had done to her father. And she forced him to do it over and over again. Once in her rage she tripped on a rug and he reached out to save her. She felt his hand on her skin, just a moment when both felt the burn of the past, then quickly she pulled away. And on she went, a tireless machine grinding away, day after day, week after week. And through it all Henry answered her questions and bent to her will, an old man growing older as she offloaded her losses.

  Finally, and not long before Henry’s own death, she asked the question which had dangled like a hangman’s noose throughout the long interrogation.

  ‘Was it worth it?’ she asked him, quite calm now. And said again, each word a tidy stab, ‘Was it worth it?

  ’ He hesitated, his reluctance was painfully clear. Finally he spoke: He’d had a good life.Yes, it was worth it.

  ‘But my father, why did he have to die? After all, it was a story you needed, not papers, not even a specific identity, just an authentic story, a credible tale. Why did my father have to die?’

  Now Henry did not hesitate.‘Because he knew the truth about me, and b
ecause he would have slowed me down.’ Then after a pause,‘There were two of us. But given my prospects and the state of your father’s health, only one future.’

  That a man should have died for such paltry reasons. Alice couldn’t get away fast enough. She was out of the house and in the street, had no idea of where she was going, but could not vouch for her actions if she stayed with him a moment longer.

  Only one future. Only one future. And her thoughts tripped and slithered and plunged into the darkness of a little girl being sent away from her parents.A six year old sent alone into the world to a foreign country to live with foreign people. Only one future. Such dreadful words cutting the memories. Only one future. Such happenings, such decisions have no relation to this life.

  She was out of breath when she stopped at a small intersection in an undulating suburb of pretty homes and gardens. There was a light breeze playing and birds twittering, and on the verandahs of the homes were children’s bikes and kennels for happy dogs. The lawns were neat, the cars were new. And it was not as if the events from the past could not be understood, they could, in all their terrible horror, they could: Henry Lewin killed her sick father in order to ensure a future for himself; Renate and Martin Lewin put their six-year-old child on a train and sent her to England to ensure her future while they lost their own. So many people and so few futures, and a pragmatism of quite a different quality than late twentieth-century pragmatism. This trading in futures, this trading in life stocks, this worth of a life.