by Otto de Kat
“Matteous! Do come in, how good to see you!” She did not wish to overwhelm him with enthusiasm, but was unable to hide her delight at his coming. She had explained how to get to Barkston Gardens, and had written the address and the telephone number on a slip of paper, just in case. The note was in his hand. He put it down in front of her and said: “I can’t read, Miss, or write,” as though confessing to a crime.
Kate moved it out of sight as quickly as she could, mortified by her thoughtlessness. It had never come up at the hospital, but of course he couldn’t read or write, what did she expect? She found herself infected by his shyness, and for several minutes they strove to find a new balance.
“What I really want, Miss, is to be able to write a letter by myself. So I could send it to a newspaper, or a radio station. I have heard that people sometimes find their families that way.”
A black boy from an African wilderness, illiterate in a world steeped in the written word. It was enough to render anyone taciturn, timid, powerless.
It dawned on her that Matteous was asking her to teach him to write. A letter that would say what he had thought and lived through during all those years. A letter explaining his life, a letter home, to his mother, Kate imagined. Writing: arranging the words so that they would say what he wanted to tell his mother, although he could hardly expect her to be able to read his letter. But somebody could read it to her. And Kate pictured his mother listening to what he had written, a letter resembling a musical score, a Congolese dance, a prayer for rain, or a song for the dead. “She won’t be alive anymore, Miss, will she?” he had said the day before, making it sound halfway between a statement and a question.
Would he like something to eat or drink, she asked, for she was persuaded that he was always hungry or thirsty. She could not resist making the offer, and he said yes so as not to have to say no. “No” was a word he said with difficulty, not wishing to sound disrespectful. He was wearing an old jumper of Oscar’s which she had given him, and black army trousers from the hospital. Matteous had approached her with great caution, his tread as soft as if he were stalking a wild animal. So he was asking her for help: teach me to write, then I can go back home.
Kate went to the kitchen, made tea, put some homemade biscuits on a plate and brought it all through on a tray to the balcony.
“Come, let’s sit outside.”
Two chairs and a small table were all the balcony could hold. Matteous stood waiting for Kate to take a seat, and did not sit down until she urged him to. After a while she said that, yes, she would be happy to teach him for as long as he liked, for as long as he stayed in England. Was that alright with him? And she promised him that the day would come when he would write that letter.
She had not known it was possible to weep so noiselessly. It was not weeping in the usual sense, for his face was unchanged, there even seemed to be a hint of a smile. The tears spilled from his eyes as though following a logic of their own. He did not try to check them, they ran down his cheeks in rivulets, his head held high, his hands on the armrests of his chair as he faced her. She returned his gaze, made no move to console him or take his hand. She made no gesture whatsoever that might discomfit him. She saw the young soldier, the boy in the forest, the man far from home, the wounded patient in bed. She saw the son of a mother who had disappeared.
Events he had only touched upon in the past now came out in the open, in fits and starts.
“Suddenly they were there, Miss, they stormed into the houses and killed everybody they could find. My father shouted for me to run away into the forest. ‘Don’t look back, Matteous, don’t look back,’ he said. I ran, but I also looked back, and then I saw him standing there, surrounded by men raising their axes against him.”
He had joined a band of children roaming the forest, in flight from their village and what had taken place there. He might have been seven years old. He had forgotten a lot, the worst had been washed away. He did not know how he had ended up in Élisabethville. Who had helped him, who gave him food, how he came out of that forest alive – it was all a great gap in his memory. He took huge leaps across time: at one moment he was seven, at the next seventeen, now he was playing in his village, now in the dancing halls of the city. Élisabethville. The way he said the name gave it something equivocal: there was wistfulness, and also a hint of a shudder, at least to a sensitive ear. To Kate’s ear. She heard everything. He had never spoken in this way before. Between nostalgia and horror, in bits and pieces, a story that had neither end nor beginning. He floundered, broke off, began again. His childhood, his years in the copper mines of Elisabethville, the daylight that he only saw on Sundays. He had done what everybody did: kept his head down. They were years of hardening the heart, and of denial. Years of slow preparation for – well, for what? Matteous groped for the words. And what he had been unable to say yesterday now poured out of him all of its own. That saving the officer’s life had not been a question of courage, but more one of despair. He thought he would run into a knife, or a gun, or a bayonet, get killed in action. He had nobody left anyway, they were all dead and gone. And when the bullets hit him he had almost been glad. His time had come, all would be forgotten. Hoisting the officer over his shoulder had not been hard, he had carried the man as a father would his child. Run, Matteous, don’t look back, go and hide in the impenetrable forest, in the darkness where nothing is.
But he had pulled through it all, willy-nilly. The Belgian officer, the strange white man with his gloves and his watch and his good shoes, had thanked him and vowed that his rescuer in turn should survive. Matteous had laid him carefully on the ground before collapsing at his side, overcome with pain. That was how they had been borne away, side by side on narrow stretchers, beyond the range of the enemy, beyond the range of death at any rate. He had not set eyes on the white man again.
He had been shipped to London for reasons he did not understand. The Belgian government-in-exile would take care of him, he was told. But that government was not his, it had nothing to do with him. He had drifted from Africa to Europe on tides of randomness, just as he had been sucked into the advance northwards, with an army of strangers set to fight another army of strangers.
Matteous lapsed at last into silence, his eyes fixed on Kate. She had not understood everything, but she had heard his story, told in the language unique to him, complete with gestures and stammerings and bits of words.
In the street beneath them life went on as usual with its everyday sounds, with sunshine and the screech of gulls high above the buildings. He touched the sleeve of her cardigan, pressed her arm. Kate had a strange sensation of blankness in her head, could feel the blood rising to her cheeks. It was as if somewhere far away, in the unconscionable depths of her being, parcels were being unwrapped, mysterious envelopes torn open, stacks of papers riffled through. Why was it just as if Roy was sitting there, clasping her arm? Roy, who had been dead for so long, and buried in a bottomless pit. The Roy of all those mornings on their balcony in Rome, just off the Corso.
“I’ve sat down, Kate, come and join me.” The invariable invitation. Ten o’clock in the morning, church bells ringing out all around them, a fraction off synchrony. Always lovely weather, always together. In his arms, beneath him, on his knee, his hands in hers, his body in complete abandon. Nothing lasts, nothing stays the same, nothing is lost. Where had they been that last time? She thought it was the Caffè Greco, the café which had become too highly recommended in the guidebooks, but which was largely unspoilt in their day. They had stopped there on their walk to the railway station. He would be away for a couple of days, she would not accompany him. The café was all but deserted at this early hour. They chose a two-seat banquette upholstered in purple velvet, the cardinal among café furniture. A clutter of small tables, mirrors, paintings, chairs, created an obstacle course for the waiters. Their evenings in Caffè Greco, when it was packed with people, all Italians, all discussions and laughter and gesticulations, how Roy and she loved going ther
e.
The heat had been intense that morning, the ceiling fan whirring to little effect. They had sat there as though it were the train compartment in which Roy would soon depart, first class. Kate held both her hands clasped round his upper arm, as she often did. To him the most endearing of her gestures. They had said little, just stared into the heat, idly aware of the people trickling in. Roy had stroked her hair. There was nothing in the least unusual or untoward, they were in ample time for Roy’s train, just two days and he would be back with her again. From Rome to Milan and back. He was to address “a bunch of diggers” on recent developments at the Forum excavations, and he also had an appointment with a Dutch journalist whose name escaped him, but whom he would see in his hotel.
Thus their hour in the café had passed, after which they resumed their walk, holding hands probably, to the Stazione Termini, where a porter had taken charge of his bag. Had she accompanied him down the platform? She thought not. She disliked waving goodbye on platforms. There had been no high-flown words on parting – why would there be? Just a kiss on her mouth.
Suddenly, Kate felt the pressure of his hand on her arm. Matteous.
Chapter 10
They were flying at night, which was not normal practice. Neutral airlines flew during daylight hours, out in the open, so the Luftwaffe would not mistake them for the enemy. The sun was rising as they prepared for landing on the airfield at Bristol. Oscar was asleep. He was jolted awake as the wheels of the aircraft hit the tarmac. That had never happened to him on a plane before. His nerves jangled. First he would call Morton, he thought, then go to Kate’s flat. He wanted to surprise her.
Bristol, six a.m., Whitchurch Airport. The hands of the giant clock in the arrivals hall stood as stiffly to attention as the guards at Buckingham Palace. Oscar had plenty of time. He took the train to Paddington. Morton was expecting him, but there was no point in presenting himself at the ministry before nine. He did not really want to go there at all; he would ask Morton to meet him elsewhere. He closed the narrow door of his compartment. In England he always had the feeling of travelling on a private train, as if yours was the only compartment behind the engine. There was no corridor, no door to the adjoining compartment, no ticket collector. Ten people in a plush-lined box, a chocolate box on wheels. The first train of the day was still fairly empty, and the only other person in the compartment was a young soldier sitting by the window. Beside him was a large kitbag with his army greatcoat draped over it. Oscar saw two closed eyes in a pale, unshaven face. A desolate sight. Everything was desolate: the dark roof of the station, the slow tread of the stationmaster, the blurred, metallic tannoy announcing departure. Oscar saw a few late-comers running along the platform and leaping onto the train.
Lately he had spent more time travelling on trains than ever before. Since their days in the mountains he had seen Lara several times, taking turns to meet at his home in Berne and at hers in Fribourg. The first time was a week after they had separated. He picked her up at the station in Berne. How were her binoculars, he wanted to know.
“Idle, sitting on their ledge by the window,” was her prompt reply.
To see her again – since their departure from the Oberland he had been able to think of very little else. In Berne, too, the snow was piled high in the streets, but it was nothing compared to their village up the mountain. Oscar took her to Della Casa, an inconspicuous restaurant in the Schauplatzgasse within walking distance of the station. He had lunch there sometimes with Swiss contacts, it was “spy-proof”, and unknown to German agents, apparently. The proprietor was a “good” Swiss.
“Herr Verschuur, welcome! It has been a while since you were here last – how good to see you.” The waiter’s warmth was sincere. He bowed to Lara, took her coat and Oscar’s, and led them to a table in a separate angle by the Russian stove. From the kitchen in the back came the rattle of pans and crockery. The small dining room was still empty of clients, but would soon fill up, and by two o’clock they would all be gone again. Rhythms of peacetime.
At first, all he could do was look at her. She did not seem to mind this, it was as though she understood. She said as little as he did. Oscar and Lara, in the glassy quiet of their niche.
She allowed him to observe her. He found her breathtaking, of a beauty so new to him that it was almost frightening. In the sequestered world of the mountain village he had been less conscious of it than here, on a weekday in the city. That she had made the journey especially to meet him, that she wanted to see him again, that she had taken the train, put lipstick on, ironed her blouse, glanced in the mirror before she left – unbelievable. He floundered for words.
“I was up in the mountains every day.” Oscar’s voice was hesitant and low, as though afraid of being overheard. “Doing all the walks in my head that we would have done had we stayed.”
“I was there too. I followed you from the terrace, but you were impossible to catch up with, a bit like those chamois.”
They had left the Jungfrau behind unscathed, the village had not been cut off. Unscathed? Ha, anything but. In their minds they had been cleaved together. They resumed their oblique declarations of love.
At half past twelve the regulars started to drift in, long-time patrons whom the waiter dispersed across the homely dining area with practised efficiency. Soon all the tables were occupied, and the air was alive with the gurgles of Swiss German. The conviviality that prevailed, the effusive waiter, the sensible eaters, the bountifulness and contentment – Oscar saw and heard it all, yet he was hearing other things: sirens over London, sirens over Berlin.
He told Lara about his eternal struggle with the feeling of being in one place and simultaneously in another. Being able to talk with her, and at the same time with someone else, his daughter Emma for instance. Lara nodded. Not-quite-blue was the colour of her eyes, or rather a soft green, the shade of the earliest spring. In Café Eiger they had been bluer; here in the city they were more green. Here everything about her was a shade different from the way it had been in the mountains. Ski trousers, jumpers, jackets and gloves, they had been nothing but camouflage, disguise.
Those few hours in the Berne restaurant had passed strangely. From half past eleven until two, when they both had to get back to work. The next day he could not remember whether he had said anything to her that made sense. And Lara had said little. The opening skirmishes with a few poignant remarks had led to a timid exchange of questions and answers, after which a hush had fallen, a mime show in which every movement counted. The least utterance seemed out of place. Even the waiter stayed in the background, observing silence as he served them. At length Lara laid her hand next to her plate, palm up, and they both knew it was time to go. He covered her hand with his, carefully, overwhelmed by the occasion they had created for themselves. The long-deferred touch. His heart pounded, he saw the pulse throbbing at her wrist.
*
The pale soldier opened his eyes. Oscar, sitting diagonally opposite, nodded a greeting. The boy looked outside. The stretch between Bristol and London was familiar to Oscar from the time he visited veterans at their homes as part of the research for his thesis. Veterans from a silent film, survivors of a war that had long been forgotten and long since overlaid by new wars. The boy in his uniform had been drafted in to an age-old system: the call to arms. But he was probably thinking only of his sweetheart, or his parents, or having had to get up at the crack of dawn. Involuntarily, Oscar flicked through the history books stored in his brain. No matter where you lived, they came to get you, young as you were, strong and unafraid. Asia, Africa, Europe, here we come, we will attack, we will not give up. The tragic propensity to interfere, to bring succour, to conquer, to rule. Arrogance was an alcohol brewed in the bosom of families, in churches and schools and clubs. If there was a God, He would have to speak English to make Himself understood, and to give orders. But God seemed a very long way away.
“Right now we need Churchill more than God,” Morton had said during their last e
ncounter. “We call it practical Christianity.” They had met briefly at Morton’s club in August ’39, when Oscar and Kate were looking for somewhere for her to live in London.
From Bristol to London, at each modest little station on the way more passengers took seats in the compartment. Amid the smoke, rustling newspapers, coughs, women’s voices, Oscar and the soldier were absorbed into a run-of-the-mill English morning.
At Paddington Station he telephoned Morton at his ministry: they arranged to meet for coffee at the Travellers Club at Pall Mall. Morton could spare him one hour.
It was raining. Did it ever stop? The rainy season here seemed to go on for twelve months of the year. After the heat of Portugal he was unprepared for this. He shivered in his summer jacket, and had come without a hat, at usual. Shouldn’t he give Kate a ring, let her know he was in London? But she was probably at her hospital by now, no point in disturbing her. He would simply go to Barkston Gardens and wait for her there. “Everything’s fine with Emma, don’t worry,” he would start off by saying, to avoid undue alarm. Thinking ahead came automatically to him, forewarning, assuring that everything was alright. But it was not alright. Everything was a shambles, it was impossible to think straight. Shortly before his departure he had telephoned Lara and told her he had to go to London, there was a meeting he had to attend. He was aware that he did not sound convincing.
“Isn’t that rather sudden? Take care.”
He wished he could hop on the train to Fribourg. Take care, look ahead, then you’ll see me and I’ll see you. A medley of anticipation. Take care. Her voice had been like an embrace.
“Mr Morton is in the garden room. Please follow me.”
Oscar knew the Travellers from the days before he knew Morton. It was a club for diplomats and politicians, established more than a century ago, and of a growth that had kept pace with that of the British Empire. Whitehall not far away, the departments within lunching distance. From the garden room you could see trees and a well-kept lawn, beyond which you knew St James’s Square to be. War or no war, the Travellers served coffee and port at all hours. He entered to find a fire burning in the hearth, the shaded lamps lit, and Morton sitting with his back to the door, sticking his hand up at the sound of approaching footsteps.