The Ghost Keeper

by Natalie Morrill

  He tells me then, and I look out the window, through light filtered past peach-coloured drapes. A word that means to me “the ends of the earth”—that’s what it is. The other side of the universe.

  “Shanghai.” I try it out in my mouth. “China.”

  “I know,” Friedrich says, “it’s hard to imagine. But they’ll take people. With almost no conditions. And there are advantages to being so far away.”

  I peer at him awhile, into the light in his eyes, still clear in these days. And I say, “No Nazis in China.”

  13

  AT THE WESTBAHNHOF A MAN CALLS OUT, “THIS IS the five o’clock,” through steam, and Friedrich carries Anna’s bags, one in each hand. I watch. He won’t let me lift them—“The contagion,” he says, and “The baby”; and if I don’t press him, it’s in part because I know I’m not strong enough to carry a bag. But there is my Anna: she watches me. She holds my little son on her arm, and I can hold this; I can hold on to this moment after this long while spent apart.

  When Friedrich first told her about China, near midnight, sitting in her mother’s front room, he told me she was quiet a full four minutes. He wanted to talk into that silence, he said, but he sensed that she needed it. At last she said, “Josef thinks we should go?”

  “He agrees with me,” Friedrich told her. And then another long silence, and the dark of the house listening to them breathe.

  “Tell me about Shanghai,” she said. “How the people live there.”

  And Friedrich did his best, I think. It was what he thought he knew—word from friends or friends of friends who’d travelled east on business; stories from magazines, from his childhood, from a dream. A great crowded city, he told her. Wide rivers. A snaking riddle of a language, to his ears. Beautiful dark-haired women in silk dresses. But plenty of English and French too, all scented and spiced with imperial sensibility; the Europeans came to carry it back west. And White Russian refugees, he tells her. Jews, probably. Possibly it wouldn’t feel too different from Vienna, in places. Perhaps, he suggested, she’d feel right at home.

  He knew, it was true, that Shanghai was an occupied city; he’d read bits and pieces about the brutality of the Japanese towards the Chinese. Anna had no doubt read about it too, he understood. But there were no Nuremberg laws in China, after all. And it was a city that would receive them.

  She looked, he said, like a sergeant in the army—the way her face hardened and showed nothing. But she told me later that it was a war to her, this proposition. Because Shanghai was a terrible nothing—so far outside Europe, so far from home. Everything she’d ever heard about it sounded strange. She had no friends there. And to go alone, with a baby—but what was the alternative?

  When she asked this of Friedrich, he said, “This won’t be your home for long, Anna.” And what did he mean by that? Her mind filled in the possibilities. Homeless. Without rights. And without friends—could it ever come to that? Surely not everyone would leave. Here, she knew the language. She could introduce herself, she could ask for work. She knew what kind of work people did. Could she pass for a Gentile? Was that the only problem?

  “Anna.” She told me his voice was so tired, but he pleaded. “For your son’s sake, please. Get out of Europe. Go as far as you can.”

  And now we stand with trains hooting and hissing around us, these trains bound for everywhere and this train bound for Italy, which is where my wife and my son will go. The ship will meet them at Genoa. For a long, long while it will steam away east, into strange oceans, dragging its trail of foam like a spool of thread winding out from my heart.

  The men in square-shouldered coats, the women with curled hair like little golden wings around their faces—all of Vienna surrounds us, and my wife says to me, “Smile for me before I go, Josef.” She is smiling for me, beautiful. And I do smile. I say, “This is the start of a very big adventure.” And she smiles a different smile, and she whispers it, my words, into Tobias’s little ear: The start of a very big adventure.

  “And you will write to me,” I say, “every day, won’t you?”

  “Won’t we, Tobias?”—and the baby makes a cooing noise, his eyes focused on Anna’s shoulder.

  An old couple brushes past us, carrying their lunch of smoked meat and dumplings, feeding us home with the smell of it. It is all, for an instant, so ordinary. Could it be that we imagined everything dangerous?

  But I know: because it wasn’t Friedrich’s visit that convinced Anna to go. He left that evening after she said, “I will have to think about this.” When he got home, I heard him moving through the house, but he didn’t come up to my room. The night spent itself slowly, made me think I was getting sick again. I watched the little window come alive through shades of blue-violet and gold in the hours before I could expect Friedrich to wake up.

  In the Leopoldstadt, Anna looked after her mother and the baby. She did not want to leave. She saw more reason to stay: her mother needed help, her husband could not travel, and all her family were here. When her mother asked her what Friedrich had suggested, she first said—too quickly, almost angry: “Nothing.” But then later, when she said, “China, Mama”—she began to cry, and her mother held her.

  Ella Dükmann said to her then: “Don’t be afraid to go, Anna.” And told her that now was a time to be brave. It was better to go if she could. Ella herself would not go: “I’ll stay here till they lay me down beside your old father,” she said. “I am so old. But the two of you should make a new life while you can.”

  Through all this, though, Anna could not see herself leaving. She thought, We can wait until Josef is better, at least. We should all go together.

  And this she thought until two mornings later, when she woke to the sound of people gathered on the street—and saw, when she opened the front door, the crowd of men who were carrying her mother’s neighbour and his son into their home. Both were dead: the man, a little older than she was, and the eleven-year-old boy. And the people who watched didn’t wail or cry, but were silent. Their hands and their clothes had turned red. They were all so solemn, so calm, that Anna—as she might at a family gathering—felt herself compelled to call out: “Do you need help?”

  One of the men wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, painted it with blood. “You could bring some clean cloths.”

  When she brought a pile of clean linens over to them, joined them in the kitchen—the two bodies laid out on benches, the table pushed against the wall—she asked what had happened. At first no one said anything, just cleaned and wrapped the bodies. The mashed and crushed faces of the man and his son, shapeless as old footballs, they covered. At length a man said to Anna, “They were walking through the park, I think.”

  She swallowed before she said, “What will the police do?”

  And this man answered, “Nothing more to these two, at least, I pray.”

  At home, a half-hour later, she was sick in the bathroom for a long time. When her mother awoke, they sat in the front room together. Somehow, this morning, the baby slept on. Ella held her daughter’s hand, prayed faintly through just-parted lips. After a long while she said to Anna, “I want you to take my grandson away from here.”

  I heard from Anna in a note that evening, and by phone that night. They would go on the next ship, if they could. I said to her, “Don’t be afraid.” And I said also, “I will come to you soon.”

  FRIEDRICH NOW IS telling her that the train will leave shortly. Still I haven’t kissed her: I’m afraid of hurting her, or the baby, in this last moment of contact. Really, I’m not meant to be out of the house; the doctor wants me quarantined another two weeks, but today Friedrich did not even ask if I wanted to come with him to the train station—just helped me with my coat, let me lean on his arm down the stairs and to his car.

  He drove us today. Earlier, he paid for Anna’s berth on a ship. “At the end of all your letters, he wrote that he’d pay for everything,” Anna told me on the phone. And I knew by the gentleness in her voice that she
was asking me: forgive him, now, once and for all. But I forgave him months ago. I am now nothing but helpless with gratitude.

  But in this moment I could forget it, because I don’t want them to go.

  Anna smiles at me. “It’s time, Josef.”

  Can I breathe, can I speak—but I do, and I say, “All right, my love.” I ask if she has everything she needs—ticket, money, passport. She and Friedrich both check, and all is well.

  Friedrich turns away—to give us privacy, I realize, and now I must make myself understand the moment has come. This brief widening of my life, this time spent with this woman, is ending. It wells up through my chest—can I speak? No, not now. My Anna, my love—I can’t say it; I only hold her eyes with mine.

  She shifts the baby onto one arm. She kisses the fingers of her brown leather glove, a sweet, long kiss. Presses the kiss, her fingers, to my cheek. My hand to her hand. Anna, don’t go: every part but my tongue will say it. But she only slides her fingers out of the glove, leaves me holding it against my skin.

  “We’ll see you soon, Josef,” she says.

  “Soon.” I cough. And then, from some unstopped well of grief: “There will never be anyone but you, Anna.”

  And she—mercy—leans through this space between us and kisses my lips. Our son’s hand finds my shirt collar. Coal burning as we breathe. She leans away. I am still kissing her, bending into her, but she has to step away and to Friedrich, who takes her two bags to the compartment for her.

  When Friedrich appears again, without the bags, he kisses Anna on the cheek. She puts her arm around his neck and draws him down to kiss his lips, gentle. They both smile, and are sad. But Friedrich comes towards me, hands in his pockets, and Anna does not.

  Anna has the baby propped against her chest so that he’s looking away from me. His black hair grows in all directions like cotton fluff. She stands watching me as if waiting for something.

  But—as the world is jostling me side to side, as the men and women pass with bags and children and trunks and with their hats pulled low—what can I give her? Steam hisses out above us, away down the platform, up into nothing. My back is straight, yes, but I doubt I could speak; not to save my life, not even if someone were to hold a pistol to my head. But she only sees me staring with this hard, straight face, because this face can’t hold the feeling I have.

  There is the train hissing, whistling, and the conductor shouting and people nudging past each other and the police, here and there, terrible as sharks, and there is Friedrich’s hand on my shoulder because, at last, Anna is turning from me. She watches as long as she can, but then she is gone, heading up the steps.

  And in the small moment after she turns, there are the baby’s eyes; he has his hand in his mouth and he’s watching an old man’s hat. He sucks his hand and he watches the hat and he rises up the steps in my wife’s arms, little life—and then they’re gone.

  The train whistles. A door closes.

  My life snaps to; it’s a dream that’s over. The world is small again.

  14

  A MOMENT OF LIGHT WHEN ANNA’S POSTCARD ARRIVES from Italy:

  Beautiful start to our vacation: nothing but sunshine since the border, and the customs man made friends with Baby. The mountains were just like I knew they would be, but more so. I miss them already.

  We wish you were here with all our little hearts. Feel better soon, sad fellow.

  Love always,

  Your A

  It knocks the wind out of me, imagining them at the border. All my prayers have been aimed towards this. I’ve heard such terrible stories—the way they search people, the shame of it—but see, Anna did get through. I wonder, staring out the window of my bedroom at the view that’s been, for some time now, the whole outside world for me, how much she leaves out of her writing. And then I think: of course she must leave things out. She is better at this than I am—better at surviving.

  I fold in on myself with prayer: Let me live, my heart says; for them, if nothing else. Let me not be a fool.

  15

  BUT SEE THIS, TOBAK: THAT IS NOT ALL. SET IT DOWN plainly, every piece, or else it won’t hold together.

  There—I have set myself a task. I will see it done right.

  I have not written everything I ought to about that time.

  IT’S AROUND THE same time, early autumn, perhaps, that Friedrich receives at his house a letter from Paris, addressed to me. He does not open it himself, but carries it rather to his friend who sits shrivelled and preoccupied in one of his guest rooms.

  When he hands it to me, he has not fetched himself a drink, as he usually would before coming upstairs. He sets the envelope in my hands and says, “From your sister, I suppose.”

  The return address and the penmanship are hers, indeed. I sit up in my armchair as he sits on the bed across from me, and I realize it would not occur to him to leave me in privacy with this letter.

  “I could have some funds transferred to Paris,” he says. And adds, as I read without looking up or responding: “I’m glad she knew she could write to you here.”

  It is not so simple, though, what my sister is asking—not simple, and not so quickly resolved, when (all these years later) I recall it. But when I first read her letter, I don’t, can’t, know that—and the matter does not seem so ominous, after all:

  Dear little J,

  —Zilla writes by hand, tight, angled loops.

  I hope very much that you’re being well looked after chez Frédéric, and that your wife finds it in her to forgive you for this long separation. I hope it’s not unreasonable for me to write to you; I realize I’ve been a bad, bad correspondent, but you understand that very little in me can remain backwards-facing. (Paris is not so awful. One or two thinking people, at least. You ought to come join us here.)

  But your dreadful old city is still chasing me, dear J. Do you remember our cousin Sarah K? I doubt you do—she insisted on spurning you lot, of course, after Papa turned up his nose at her. I can hardly blame her.

  All this to preface my real purpose: Mrs. K has fallen on hard times. (As have we all, you will say.) Her employer has let her go. The standard idiotic reason, in addition to which, it would seem, she has only a Czechoslovakian passport. It makes one vulnerable, I understand. When last she wrote to me, she seemed almost in despair. She didn’t dare ask for help, and I didn’t dare offer any. But here I am writing to you, little J. To be precise, I am hoping you might mention this to our old friend FZ. It may be he has among his affairs some little position, currently neglected, which a sharp and responsible (if perhaps humourless) kind of lady might fill, one who has a mother and daughter to feed. She has her pride, but I suspect she will not be too choosy.

  I do hope FZ is willing to hear out this request if you put it to him reasonably. I appreciate that he serves new masters now and it may be that I don’t know any longer who I am talking about. And yet there you are with him, little J, and as best I know he hasn’t turned you out on your ear or had his cook bake you into a pie. It may be he will understand. It may be he’ll remember our friendship and help a cousin of ours for our sake. I do hope so. With that hope, I’ve noted Mrs. K’s current address on the reverse of this page. You might write to her if something can be arranged.

  Mutti and Papa send their love, insofar as they know how. They are adjusting as best they can to their new home. I heard Papa speaking French the other day and was almost impressed by his accent. Who knows? He may be home at last in France, our old Austrian assimilator.

  Get well fast, dummy.

  Z

  “I suspect I know a good lawyer in Paris, if she needs one,” Friedrich says as I finish, leaning in towards me as if he might read the letter through my eyes.

  “I think you could help her,” I say to him. “But she’s asking on our cousin’s behalf.”

  “Oh.” Something in his eyes flickers, shrinks, recovers. “What is it, then?”

  I tell him, and he takes the letter from me, reads it ti
ght-jawed. “I know it isn’t easy,” I tell him as he reads. “Perhaps it isn’t clear to them in Paris how much things have changed.”

  “Never mind all that.” He folds the letter, folds it again, slips it into his pocket, and I almost reach out to stop him (this slip of my family, something flying away from me as he takes it to himself), but then think: After all, he needs her address more than I do. “Well, I have no one looking after the paintings just now, after all. Good luck that you got sick, then.”

  “Oh.” And it does seem, for a moment, almost like good luck. “So you can manage it?”

  “It isn’t so complicated.” (If he’s angry, is it at me?) “It’s a little matter. I couldn’t say that it’s sustainable. But yes, fine, I can find an old mother an odd job or two.”

  “I’ll write to Zilla right away. That’s marvellous,” I tell my friend. “She’ll be grateful, I’m sure.”

  “Why shouldn’t I write to her myself? And why, for that matter, shouldn’t she write to me? This is nonsense. She knows me better than that.”

  I want to tell him, It’s not so simple, but my throat is all prickles, and I can only sputter as he strides out through the door with this piece of my sister he can’t let me keep.

  AND IT IS a thing one can almost forget in the midst of this madness, for don’t I have a hundred and one prayers to offer for my wife and my child, and isn’t this business some triviality in the midst of it—but it isn’t quite so, understand. I can’t effect a single movement in the world, and yet here is something that was offered to me, was asked of me. And have I carried it out? It surfaces in my mind and I pray.

  A DAY THREE weeks later when Friedrich brings me another letter from my sister in Paris.

  “But I did write to your cousin,” he tells me as he hands me the letter—not sitting, this time, but pacing in front of me. “If she didn’t receive it—Perhaps I could have done more. But I did use the address . . . Ah, I might have found someone who knew better—”