Little Hands Clapping

by Dan Rhodes

  On trams around the world the girl will look back at the boy, and for a fraction of a second her eyes will return his smile, and he will say something to her, and sit beside her, and she will start talking too, and they will lose track of where they are, riding around the city until the sound of metal on metal stops and they get out and look up and down a dark street, with no idea which way to go.

  Wearing an exceptionally comfortable pair of pyjamas, Doctor Ernst Fröhlicher was lying in bed. When he had finished reading his latest medical journal, he wrote his daily diary entry, then he opened his bedside drawer and took out a small pile of pieces of paper torn from newspapers and magazines, each one carrying a charity appeal. One by one he went through them, and one by one he wrote cheques proportionate to how sad each plea made him feel. By the time he was finished he had planted several trees, bought a well for an African village, funded eye operations for a dozen Indians and housed a dog. When all the envelopes were addressed and sealed he took some time to relax, flipping through a large album of photographs of all the bodies he had received from the museum. He looked at the overweight man, who had been such a struggle to lift but who had seen him through a whole winter. Then came the woman with the unbearable line of dark fuzz above her upper lip, and on the next page, lying on the garage floor with her eyes closed, was the girl he had kissed.

  As he had laid her out, stripped her and sponged her down, he had been unable to stop himself from wanting her. He had leaned in towards her, and waited for Ute to appear, to glare at him and make him stop, but no vision came, and gently he kissed the girl’s lips, which, despite being still and cold, had an irresistible softness to them. He knew at once that he had to feel this softness again, and he moved in for another kiss. This time he parted her lips with his tongue, and felt her slightly crooked teeth. With his mouth still pressed against hers, his breath trembling, he ran his fingers through her hair, then he squeezed her small breasts and licked her belly, and trying hard not to think about what he was doing, he mounted her, all the time whispering words of love.

  When it was over he wept, and told himself again and again that he was not like that, that he had only tried it once to see what it was like, and besides he had been so lonely and he had thought that it would be like being back with Ute. But it hadn’t been. He finished cleaning her up, and put her in the freezer.

  From then on he tried his best to treat her body as he would any other. He made no mention of this episode in his diaries, and whenever the memory reared up before him he told himself he had made a mistake, that was all, and he was not like that. He ate her more hurriedly than usual, and for once he was not transported by the meat. Instead of the delicious taste that he had come to expect, it seemed to have no flavour, and to be difficult to chew and swallow, and not once did it take him to a world without pain. With every mouthful came a reminder of what he had done, and Ute’s continuing absence was more damning than any appearance would have been. She meant nothing to me, Ute, he said out loud, as he stuffed the meat in his mouth. He wished he could tell her that he hadn’t even known her name, but he had done. He had seen it in her passport. It had been a French passport, and he had burned it until there had been nothing left but a pile of ash, which he had hoed into a flower-bed.

  Over the following weeks, knowing it was wrong to waste food, he hurried to finish her and his patients shook their heads, and said to one another, I do hope Doctor Fröhlicher is taking care of himself. He appears to be gaining weight. It was around this time that he bought a bicycle, and since then, on dry days, he would ride it to work.

  He closed the album, and looked at the ceiling. He hoped Ute would understand, and forgive him.

  A thousand babies will be born, each one a girl, and when the parents have the conversation about what to call her, the fathers will suggest Élodie.

  Why Élodie?

  I just like the name. I think it sounds nice.

  Although it is unusual in Zagreb and Odessa, and in Melbourne, Buenos Aires and Alexandria, the mothers will nod. Yes, they will say, it does sound nice.

  II

  Pavarotti’s wife had engaged a press cuttings service to look through newspapers and magazines for mentions of the museum, and their findings were sent directly to the old man. The first item to arrive had been a feature about short breaks in the city. The article opened with rapturous descriptions of the castle, the river, the shops and the galleries, and went on to devote a short paragraph to the museum, calling it incoherent and insensitive, and saying that at points it came across as a handy advice shop for the emotionally fragile. The old man thought this to be quite a reasonable appraisal, but he knew that if Pavarotti’s wife was to read it she would decide that sweeping and tiresome changes would have to be made. With his long, grey fingers he rolled the clipping into a ball, and threw it into the bin.

  The next mention had also been buried within a larger piece. This time, though, it had been broadly positive, so at the start of the next meeting he had handed it over to the proprietor, whose eyes widened as she stood up to read it aloud. ‘This unusual museum,’ she said, ‘should be commended for bravely confronting a difficult topic.’ That week she didn’t propose any changes.

  The old man wasn’t always able to intercept bad news. Towards the end of one meeting Pavarotti’s wife, who had seemed agitated throughout, held up a copy of an English language guidebook she had found in a shop. Her face was white as she opened it at a marked page and stood up. She cleared her throat, and in heavily accented English she read. The author began innocuously enough, writing that it was an unusual way to spend a rainy half hour, and suggesting that the more psychologically robust reader might like to give it a try, particularly as admission was free and its toilets were kept nice and clean. Her voice got higher and higher in pitch and volume, building into an almost operatic crescendo as she read the concluding sentence: ‘A curious mixture of stark, disturbing realism and high camp.’

  ‘My English is quite proficient,’ she said, catching her breath, ‘but I was unfamiliar with the phrase high camp. I made an enquiry, and I have been informed that this expression means . . .’ She sat down, and fanned herself with a folder. ‘. . . it means extreme homosexuality.’

  Pavarotti looked at the floor, and the old man said nothing.

  ‘Herr Schmidt, as our resident linguist, can you tell me if this translation is correct?’

  The old man wasn’t at all interested in entering a conversation about the nuances of the term, so he nodded.

  ‘I just don’t understand it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It must be a mistake. I shall ask for a correction to be made for the next edition, but for the time being I am afraid you must be prepared for people to come here expecting to find something quite, quite different.’ With another sigh, and a shake of her head, she looked at her notes for the final topic to be discussed: Visits from parties of schoolchildren.

  The old man loathed the idea of parties of schoolchildren parading through the museum, but he wasn’t worried. At a carefully chosen point he would stamp on the idea, citing health and safety regulations. He gave the impression of listening intently, but he could see the shape of the cake tin as it pressed against the canvas of her enormous bag, and could think of nothing but what was inside. After a while her tone changed, and he could tell she was coming to the end of the subject. He tuned back in.

  ‘The earlier we reach people,’ she was saying, ‘the greater chance we have of pulling them back from the brink.’

  She had spoken before about how she was convinced that everybody has within them the potential to end their own life. She believed that most people were fortunate enough never to know of this possibility, that their circumstances kept them from coming close to staring into the darkness. Others, though, would not be so blessed. Whenever she watched children at play she felt her chest tighten at the knowledge that every one of them contained a spark of this awful possibility. She looked at their faces for signs, but they only ever
played as children do, running and shouting, jumping and climbing, unaware of their capacity for dread and despair. She wondered whether she should be less concerned about the more serious-looking children on the peripheries of these scenes, the ones who already seemed to have an idea that the world could be a cruel place; maybe they would be more ready to absorb the blows that life threw at them. She knew there was no way of truly knowing which of them were most at risk, and her plan was to get as many children as she could through the doors of the museum. If ever any one of them was to find themselves desolate and in need of hope, it would rise in their memory as both a beacon of light and a warning of what a terrible mistake they would be making.

  Since her own childhood Pavarotti’s wife’s thoughts had often returned to the ever-present possibility of despair. She knew that like everybody else from her birthplace she was one step closer than most people to slipping into a state of misery. For Pavarotti’s wife had not always lived in the city: for the first thirty years of her life she had lived in a town in which the inhabitants had no choice but to face the horrors of the world.

  She had lived in Hamelin.

  There is a certain kind of historian who is never happier than when offering prosaic explanations of tales that have entered into legend. They devote year after year to sucking the life from some of the oldest, most beloved stories ever told, doing all they can to turn the extraordinary into the ordinary. With hollow glee they announce that their research has proved beyond doubt that there was no King Arthur, or that while William Tell had existed he had missed the apple and shot his son’s ear off, or that Robin Hood was French, and had lived not in the forest but in a charming village in Provence, where he had neither robbed from the rich nor given to the poor, and had been on perfectly cordial terms with the local magistrate. Many of these historians turn their gaze to the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and when each new explanation emerges a fresh round of bickering begins as they do all they can to tear one another’s theories to shreds. Some are adamant that the children lost to the town had died of the plague, while others say they had been killed in a landslide, or had drowned in the river, or been slain on a children’s crusade. No matter how far-fetched their own theory, at no point will any of them countenance the possibility that a disgruntled rat-catcher in brightly coloured clothing might have charmed the children with the music of his pipes, and led them away to their doom.

  There is one thing, though, that these historians do agree on, namely that something awful had really happened, and that many young lives had been lost. Year after year they quarrel among themselves, but the town has long since stopped listening.

  For the most part the people of Hamelin spare little thought for the story that surrounds them, but they can never completely escape it. Sometimes as they go about their business they freeze, thunderstruck by the realisation that if these children hadn’t died then people would never even have heard of their town, let alone visited in their thousands, spending money and bringing prosperity to generation after generation. In sharp focus they see themselves and their neighbours as insects crawling over a mound of tiny corpses, sucking what they can from the sweet, decaying flesh. In these moments they know that the story is not history. In lands that are not very far away, even in their own land, children are suffering because the world they have been born into is not fair. But they know they will continue to grab more than their fair share because they are unable to care quite enough about people they will never meet. They can see with absolute clarity that the story lives on within every one of them.

  Soon this feeling subsides and they feel embarrassed, and remind themselves that they are just ordinary people leading ordinary lives, but these moments of revelation are never far away. It is clear to everybody who encounters them that the people of Hamelin are different from others. Even those, like Pavarotti’s wife, who have left the town behind them still carry these feelings wherever they go. Often people will remark that they look a shade paler than they ought to, as if they have come face to face with something they should never have seen.

  While most of the people of Hamelin are able to keep the lost children in the background of their lives, there are those who find it impossible, who are unable to rid themselves of the image of them being so happy one minute, their little hands clapping and their little tongues chattering, and so frightened and confused the next, unable to understand what is happening to them. Feeling a constant need to know that they are honouring their memory, these people do whatever they can to harness the sadness of the story and the crushing guilt it has inspired, and turn it into something positive.

  For years Pavarotti’s wife had tried to work out what she should do. The charity opera galas had been a start, but they had always left her with a sense that she could be doing more, and it was only when she was struck by the idea for the museum that she knew she had found what she had been searching for. At last she was making amends, one lost soul at a time.

  III

  The old man’s wife had never asked him for money, and he was under no obligation to give her any, but every month half his wages went from his bank account to hers. This way he could not be accused of having treated her unfairly, and his days would not be complicated by formal arrangements, or letters from lawyers. From the remainder of his wages he bought cheese, crackers and laundry powder, and sometimes a new set of clothes or a dictionary, and the rest he put aside, saving for the day when he could afford to walk out of the museum and never return. To bring this closer, he took extra pay in lieu of days off.

  He planned to go in the middle of a shift, leaving the door wide open and taking nothing with him but a small case containing only a change of clothes and a few essential papers, and walking to the railway station and getting on a train to a town far away. It will not matter which town, it will only matter that it is far away. Arriving at nightfall, he will find lodgings with an old woman, the kind who will mind her own business, and he will lie down in his blacked-out attic room and sleep, and stare into the darkness, and think of nothing. Once a week the old woman will leave a slab of cheese, a large packet of crackers and some fresh laundry outside his door. She will know that she is otherwise to leave him alone.

  Shortly after her husband’s name appears in the newspapers the old man’s wife will be tracked down by a reporter. Quite prepared for the knock at the door, she will invite him in and talk openly and at some length about her married life. This will be the only interview she is prepared to give, and she will take care to be thorough.

  The reporter will be able to tell that she is answering his questions honestly and comprehensively, but even so he will be dismayed by how little he learns about the man. He will have been hoping to hear of an underlying problem that might have triggered his unusual behaviour: a domineering mother perhaps, or crippling erection difficulties. Nothing so helpful will be mentioned, and the little that he does learn will serve only to accentuate the man’s elusiveness. In the resulting article, titled A Hunger Too Deep, he will find himself focusing on the doctor, and in spite of the exclusive interview the old man will remain a cold, blank presence. He will find himself padding things out with an interminable passage about sanity, insanity and culpability, and a lengthy summary of cannibalistic activity in Germany through the ages, as if the old man and the doctor had been participants in a rich national tradition. Although he will make a reasonable amount of money from his work, he will be disappointed with it.

  Towards the end of their conversation, the old man’s wife will open a drawer and take out a small bundle of photographs of her husband in his younger days, and in every one he will be sporting an extraordinary moustache. The reporter will be unable to disguise his admiration, and she will acknowledge that she too cannot help but be impressed by the sight of it, even after her abandonment, and the passage of so many years, and having come to learn of the events in which he had been involved. She will say that it had seemed to be the only thing he had ever truly cared about, a
nd once it was gone there was nothing.

  Ever since he had seen a photograph of Kaiser Wilhelm II, it had been his ambition to match his iconic moustache. It had begun as an irregular spread of thin, wispy hair, but soon the down coarsened into bristle, and darkened, and he was able to trim, wax and sculpt it into the style he had been working towards. By the time he considered it finished it was grand, and wide, and its tips were upturned as if defying gravity. It attracted many congratulatory comments, but what nobody mentioned was that for all its perfection it seemed somewhat incongruous on the otherwise smooth face of a twelve-year-old boy.

  While the boy’s face and body changed, the moustache remained the same, and it accompanied him through his studies at university and into his working life, and it was there on the day he married the quiet daughter of his next door neighbour. He had thought that a conventional union would help ease his passage through life, and, to an extent, it did. He no longer had to think about his laundry, and meals would appear before him at their allotted time, but there had also been sighs, and tears, and marital obligations to swiftly and silently fulfil. It soon became clear that he had made a mistake, and without a word of explanation he moved into the spare room.

  He had always known that one day the moustache would enter a decline, and that when it did it would have to go. As he entered middle age and its black bristles no longer matched his hair, which had turned quite grey, he decided that the time had come to take a razor to it, and in a few minutes his life’s work was gone.

  The stranger in the mirror looked back at him in disgust. He could see straight away that this had not been the time, and he immediately started waiting for the bristles to return. When they did they seemed defiant, as if exacting their revenge on him for having doubted them. No matter how sternly he coaxed them, the moment he thought he had returned the moustache to its former glory a stray strand would jump out of place, rendering the overall effect commendable, perhaps even outstanding, but never quite exemplary. It made people think of Edward Elgar, or Umberto I of Italy, sometimes even Le Pétomane, but never of the Kaiser. For months he tried to live with this impostor but one morning, defeated, he shaved it off again, this time for good, and as he stared into the eyes in the mirror he understood that in a moment when judgement is clouded it is possible to make a mistake that can never be put right.