The Ghost Keeper

by Natalie Morrill

  But I am not listening to him; I am with someone I know well in a faraway room, talking quietly:

  Dear J,

  The trail of correspondence in this mad case defies belief. Since I last wrote to you, you talked (I presume) to F; he wrote to our cousin Sarah K; she has written to me, and now I write again to you! J, our mutual friend has underestimated how disturbing it might be for the persecuted Mrs. K to receive an offer of work from someone in F’s position. I did tell her he was an old friend; I told her he was looking after you, but she will not reply to him. She asks why you could not write to her, if you were so well looked-after. She wonders what will become of her, of her daughter, if they are known to someone like F.

  Will you do something to look after this situation, little brother? I imagine that even if she could speak with you, hear from you what kind of person F is, she would be more willing to trust. (I have told her what I think, but she protests—perhaps wisely; who can say—that I knew our friend only before the annexation.) Would it put you very much in danger, little brother? Would it put her in danger? I’m not certain how contagious you’re meant to be.

  You might write back to me. I realize it seems I have forgotten you—writing only when I need something from you, terrible Z—but it isn’t so. I worry about all of you. I wish you would get out of Vienna. I wish you would go anywhere. Forget it all, everybody you care about, and be selfish, be safe, so I can sleep easy. Consider it, little J.

  Until then, I judge you to be an old-fashioned idiot. I invite you to prove me wrong.

  Z

  “Oh, Friedrich,” I say to him, “you frightened her.”

  It isn’t exactly like that, I’ll later learn; Sarah Kostner isn’t so easy to frighten. Cautious, even suspicious, but it will be some time yet before fear in fact directs her actions.

  But my friend stares at me like a hunted creature, so I must tell him what the letter says. (I do not tell him all, note—I won’t give up this letter to him. That paragraph at the end, the softest declaration from Zilla I can remember, such that I strain even to fit her voice to the words—this he won’t take from me, won’t even read.)

  “You can’t just write to her like that.” In this instance I would like him to defer to me, grant that I might understand better—and yet to stand against him, after these months, is impossible.

  “And still Zilla won’t write to me. Why will she not write to me? My help is still welcome, of course. Look after her brother, certainly—find work for this or that old bat on request . . . but correspond with her? Unthinkable!”

  “Friedrich—” A dozen things I would like to say, and all of them true, and none of which would appease him—and then at last some little light shining up out of the rubble, and I can hand it to him: “She’s a married woman, Friedrich. This changes things. She can’t simply carry on a correspondence with you as before.”

  The pacing stops. One can see it, the trail left by the ache that runs through him, departing his forehead and running down to his gut. He holds one hand against his chest. But, “No,” he says. “I see that. I see.”

  Now he sits on the bed, curled forward as if to mirror me, and rests his face in his hands.

  “It’s all right. I forget myself, that’s all. Forgive me.” All of this, quiet. “It’s no one’s fault but mine. I introduced her to him. And I never . . . I didn’t ever really . . . Well.” Sitting straighter, breathing deep: “He was bold, and I wasn’t. There. It’s done now.”

  “I’m sorry, Friedrich,” is all I can say.

  A pause before he says, “So she thinks you should speak to this woman.”

  “I’ll write to her now,” I tell him. “It might be enough.”

  SO I WRITE to Sarah Kostner. (Clear offers, gentle words.) I think: My family failed you before; my father wanted nothing to do with you—and here I am asking you to trust me. Will my word be enough? How hard it is to build confidence through an exchange of letters. I write at the end of the message:

  Could we meet, I wonder? My sister dearly loves you, and I’ve regretted for many years that there remained this rift between us. I feel responsible. Only I cannot leave this house. I understand that you might be reluctant to visit this address. Is there some arrangement that could be made?

  AND AFTER I send it: nothing. A whole week.

  —UNTIL (ON A Thursday, cold) her letter:

  It is indeed hard to trust, Mr. Tobak. But circumstances are what they are. I begin to understand it.

  So be it.

  It shall be arranged. I will meet you.

  AUTUMN HARDENING INTO frost the morning I finally meet my cousin. It makes better sense for me to wait by the old servants’ entrance than have someone else answer the door for her: in the time it would take me to wheeze my way down the stairs to her, she would bolt, I imagine—besides all of which, a part of me is well aware, it’s the height of imprudence to let one such as her and one such as me meet in Friedrich’s house.

  In the delirium I feel on wobbling down these stairs, the world is not quite real. This fool of a man who imagines he might have a civil conversation with his relation in their oppressor’s doorway—does he see himself clearly? Does he dream himself rational?

  The doorway at the base of these narrow stairs is painted white, and a little window looks into the lane between the house and the tall spiked fence. Branches hang over it. Here there’s no chair to sit in and so I’ve folded down to perch on the stairs. Just that strip of the outdoors visible from this angle, but it’s different from what one can see from the upstairs window and so it comes to me as unfamiliar, like a different country.

  There is a bird that keeps swooping by, fleck of ink. And is it that it has repeatedly swooped by, as it seems to me, or that I imagined it? Shade wavers on walls. My stomach lifts and falls like the surface of a lake. The whole house sways, or perhaps it is my breathing.

  When a dark coat passes at last in front of the window, at first it’s only more birds, and when the knock comes, it comes through water. Though I’m six feet from the door, she must knock twice before it reaches me. And then at last—wobble to my feet, totter to the lock.

  She is sharp, thin, so serious, her hard, slender face turned up to look at me. Right away she says: “Mr. Tobak, yes?”

  “That’s right,” I tell her. “And you are Mrs. Kostner?”

  “Sarah Kostner.” She stands with hands folded in front of her, clips her words and barely blinks. “I shouldn’t stay long.”

  “Yes.” (This wooziness one can’t shake but must speak through.) “I’ll get straight to the point. I appreciate your hesitation to accept help from Mr. Zimmel. But it’s good you’ve met me here. He isn’t what he seems to be in public, I promise you. These are strange times indeed, but—”

  “You don’t seem well, Mr. Tobak,” she interrupts.

  It makes me cough, the way she says it. “Pardon me. I’m recovering from illness. But no longer contagious, they assure me.” I smile at her, but her face is a wall.

  “It doesn’t bode well.” She peers down the narrow lane, both ways.

  “Mrs. Kostner—Sarah,” I say (though taming my own pulse that rushes at her words), “it was Mr. Zimmel who helped me when I was sick.” More coughing. Oh, Lord—there is a Josef Tobak apart from me, half-delirious, and he is laughing at this. Still, one must try to speak. “I would have fared so much worse. I might be dead.”

  “I understand you,” she says. Calm but hard, this woman. No part of her yet has yielded. “But I understand, too, what these men are made of. A bit of shame, perhaps, at the way they must now treat their old friends. But it passes, you see. It doesn’t overwhelm them. And when their masters call on them to demonstrate their position, there won’t be any question, Mr. Tobak. They’ll make an example of individuals like us.”

  The birds dart overhead. My throat itches. It’s hard to speak.

  “If you had only my word, you’d be quite wise to say this. Quite wise. But recall that my sister, who�
��s always been a friend to you—she recommends this too.”

  She clicks her tongue. “Away in Paris, yes. Zilla barely understands, of course. Besides which, she doesn’t see— It’s different when one has a child. It’s different when it isn’t just one’s own life being risked.”

  “Ah—but see, I understand that.” I reach out, touch her shoulder, and I can tell that she isn’t certain about this touch, but I need it as much to steady myself as to reassure her. “I have a child. Even now, my wife and my son are entrusted, in a sense, to Mr. Zimmel. And he has been very good. And they will be very safe.” (Very safe—speak it aloud.) “And if my child had been sick and in need of care, as I am now, I’d have been afraid.” Swallow, and then say it truthfully: “But I would have been so grateful to have Mr. Zimmel’s help. I would have accepted it.”

  “Easy enough to say,” she says, eyeing me from that low angle.

  “I can’t make you trust him,” I tell her. “But my conscience will be troubled if I don’t insist on this. Here is a man who means you no harm. He wants, indeed, to prove himself worthy of my sister’s trust.” (And here’s betrayal, I think, but I must say it.) “He’s in love with Zilla, in fact. Did she tell you? He always has been. It doesn’t matter that she’s married. Not for your sake but for hers, certainly, he’ll keep being a man he imagines she could love.”

  She stares at me a moment. “But he’s already joined the Party.”

  “So now it’s all the more vital.” It’s hard to make myself understood. A part of me doesn’t see my friend as worthy of this defence, but another part seems to have rehearsed the words well. “You see? To show himself, and show her, that it’s all just a ruse. Everything since this annexation, for Mr. Zimmel, has been a reckoning. And he’s been trustworthy. He remembers his friends. He remembers himself.”

  She takes a sharp breath. “I don’t believe the real tests have come yet, for their type.”

  “Sarah,” I say, “it’s simply a job he’s offering you. Take it. Disappear if he seems unworthy of trust. Unless he cares about you to protect you, you’re no one to him. He wouldn’t track you down.”

  Sarah Kostner stares into my eyes a moment. “I don’t imagine you know what you’re suggesting, Mr. Tobak,” she says at last. “No doubt you’ve suffered. But you don’t see. I have no rights. And it’s not simply that I’ve been dismissed more than once in these past months. I’ve learned that I open myself to blackmail. My last employer—I cleaned for him, a doctor with a small office, but after the first week he stopped paying me. I was afraid to bring it up. This man—he’d mention my mother and my daughter every time he spoke to me. And he’d refer to our home by its address.” She watches my face as she says it. I don’t know what she sees. “I won’t tell you what else he suggested to me. It doesn’t bear repeating. Men are— Well. You understand, perhaps, Mr. Tobak.”

  Do I? I would like not to. I rub my eyes.

  She says: “I had to get out of that in a hurry. And to a new apartment, on top of everything. Though of course no one will rent to me.” She laughs once, without humour. “Thank the Lord, I found another flat by a miracle, from a friend who was leaving town. She slipped out without giving her landlord notice, told us to move in quietly and keep paying the rent. No one’s said anything yet. But it’s only a matter of time, Mr. Tobak. And if I don’t have the rent money next week, I—”

  Her throat seems to close mid-sentence, and only now does she look away from me. Though my own voice is like gravel, I say: “You’ve come here as a last resort. I understand.”

  After a pause—“I wonder if it’s not simply a gesture of defeat.”

  “Sarah,” I say—gently, as I hope a stranger might speak to Anna in her exile, “Mr. Zimmel invented this position for me. He doesn’t need to take advantage of anyone. He only wants to help. And since I got sick, and I can’t work— Well. Here is something that seems almost readied for you in advance.”

  A long, narrow-eyed look she gives me then. “You’re a religious man, Mr. Tobak?”

  Even in these days, a moment’s hesitation. “I am, yes.”

  “Then tell me once, for certain,” she says, “knowing that more than one person’s safety may hang in the balance, and that I’m your flesh and blood, and a mother without a husband to protect her, besides—can you vouch for this man’s honour?”

  I tell her, “I can. I do.” It is simple to say. It’s true.

  She peers at me awhile. We’ve been speaking quietly, and the laneway is quiet, and the birds and the leaves make their small noises. I will need to sit soon, but until this woman leaves, it seems to me I must be someone steady.

  “Very well,” she says at last. “I will write to him.”

  I nod, and smile, and kiss her cheeks before she goes, and as she disappears from sight down the back laneway, checking over her shoulders as she walks, I feel myself touched by something weighty and golden. Look here, sad fellow, says this feeling. You aren’t gone just yet; there is still a work or two of good you might accomplish in this life.

  With the door closed again, I sit a long while on the stairs, breathing slow.

  SHE WRITES TO my friend. He hires her right away. I barely hear about Sarah Kostner in the time that remains for me in this city—but it is a matter Friedrich can write about to Zilla, and it’s a light I can hold in myself.

  You have changed something, I can tell my sad heart, when still no letter has come from Anna, when I lie coughing in the dark. Someone in your family, at least, is safer, thanks to you.

  Circumstances will let me cherish this thought a long while.

  16

  IN THE LAST DAYS OF OCTOBER, A LETTER FROM ANNA arrives:

  Dear friend,

  Hello from China! I hope this letter makes it to you, and quickly. I imagine you must be concerned for us after such a long silence. Rest assured that our cruise went as smoothly as could be hoped. We made friends on the ship with an old Swedish couple who used to work as diplomats: they practically adopted Baby, but at the last moment I suggested his father might object. Among the ship’s staff were a few very nice young Italian men, and they were of course keen to hear all my stories about my Austrian husband who’d be joining me very soon.

  We arrived in Shanghai a week ago. Disembarking was a little funny and I’ll have to tell you about it sometime, once I’m confident in the postal system. (It will take some paper.) They’ve got a nice little group of people here who spend all their time helping new arrivals, and these people led us to a perfectly snug little room in the French Concession. I’m sure you’ll agree when you see it: local charm aplenty! I’ve got some flowers on the sill now, and if Baby doesn’t eat them, they’ll keep me happy through the rest of the week.

  We wish you were here. Rest well (but not too long). Please be confident that you have all our love.

  Josef writes two copies of his reply, then copies it out another two times, directs two to each of the addresses Anna has given him. When Friedrich goes out to mail them, Josef reads and rereads his wife’s letter. How she writes as if strangers might open and read it—and strangers likely did read it, he thinks. Now in every line he can find her sadness hidden between words.

  Josef himself is sick again—not as before, with fever, but a continual cough and a weakness in his limbs. He can’t deny it, though he tries, and Friedrich has him stay in his room. The thought of a ship sends his mind reeling—he watches the ceiling and sighs. If such are the conditions of escape, he starts to think . . . But it’s a thought he has trouble finishing.

  (How awful to set it down: in those days I’m consoled by the thought that my wife could raise a child quite capably as a widow.)

  THINGS WE CANNOT yet know, here in Vienna: that miles away, where Germany’s border meets Poland, the misery of refugees denied flight in either direction will leave a refugee’s son in Paris so afflicted and hopeless as to enter the office of a German diplomat with a gun. A rose of blood on the wall of the embassy—but on the Poli
sh border, and throughout Germany, there won’t be any pity. November of 1938 will spill out: graffiti, blood, a galaxy of shattered glass.

  ON A WEDNESDAY night, November the ninth, Friedrich comes into Josef’s room and says, “I’m going to have to rethink things. It’s chaos out there.”

  Josef in his armchair looks up from his book, a Russian story, one with a sad romance. (The hero seems ready to die in Italy.)

  “The news on Monday,” Friedrich tells him, “was that a Polish Jew in Paris murdered a German diplomat in his office.”

  Josef can only grip his book. “Oh.”

  “Yes! Damned foolish boy. What did he think would come of it? What—” Friedrich holds the back of his hand to his lips as he regards the wall a moment. “He wanted the world’s attention. He didn’t think. It’s inevitable now—Goebbels all but ordered a pogrom throughout Germany.”

  An alarm sounding against Josef’s ribs. And there is Anna’s mother’s face, and Jakob’s and Chaim’s before his eyes, and his cousins’, and every one of his neighbours, his friends—so, “What should we do?” he asks.

  Friedrich sits on the edge of Josef’s bed. “I don’t know,” he says. “I have to think.”

  “I should warn my family,” Josef says, mostly to himself.

  But, “How do you plan to do that, Josef?” Pain or anger in Friedrich’s eyes. “You wouldn’t make it across the canal.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s never enough.” Friedrich says it, quiet. “Never mind trespassing through a political minefield, getting impossible tickets, impossible papers. It’s nothing.” He stands.

  Josef stands with him. “Please. I haven’t asked for anything.”

  “Of course not. You’ve never had to, have you? I’ve made sure of that,” he says. “We act as if the world still worked the way our minds do, but it doesn’t.” His forehead hardens as he speaks. “Perhaps it never did.”