The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  I shook my head. I hadn’t been there since the last argument with my mother. ‘I’m not ready,’ I said. ‘Besides, I doubt it’ll stay in my hands.’

  ‘She’d never do that,’ she said, her tone brisk yet warm. ‘When are you due to see Frederik?’ Frederik Müller was my mother’s lawyer. Although she had considered him a friend, he hadn’t attended the funeral.

  ‘In a couple of weeks. I need to be back in London.’

  ‘Wedded to your work? Always the same excuse.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, realising several months had passed since I had last seen Vivienne.

  ‘Oh don’t worry about me,’ she said smiling, although I could see the disappointment shadowed in her eyes. ‘The way you push yourself, you’ll never meet someone.’

  ‘I date.’

  ‘Once in a blue moon, Max.’

  ‘I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you?’ I shrugged off the faint echo of pain. ‘It’s not as if I have the time, with everything going on.’ The truth of it was, I never gave enough time to the few girlfriends I’d had, and Lana, a girl I met during my summer sailing trip, had since returned to the US.

  Vivienne arched an eyebrow at me as she removed her hat, revealing thick white hair drawn into its usual loose bun.

  ‘You’re the benchmark anyway,’ I said, half serious. In my case, with most of the girls I met, when you rubbed away their sheen, there was nothing much left. ‘Can we just leave the subject?’

  Vivienne gave up her fussing. ‘I know you can’t wait to leave, but you can at least join me for tea before you go.’

  I opened and shut my mouth before smiling at her. ‘Am I that obvious?’

  ‘You sometimes forget I know you inside out. Anyway, you can tell me about the photograph your mother sent you. I need something to take my mind off things.’

  Rather than return to Vivienne’s house, we settled on an anonymous cafe at the lower end of Hietzinger Hauptstrasse. I told her about the letter, my incredulity over its content, the way my mother had approached me, telling me how she’d always loved me.

  ‘But of course she did,’ Vivienne said, as I protested once more at her view of my mother. She put her cup of tea to one side and placed her hand on mine. ‘It’s just the way she was, the way she became. She had to harden up. But deep down she was always the same Annabel.’ Her voice faltered at the mention of my mother’s name, so I quickly moved on to describe the accompanying photograph with the words You knew written on the back. I was certain she would know of Oskar Edelstein and what my mother had wanted to tell me.

  ‘I know she wished to reach out to you. I imagine she wanted to say the same thing I’ve told you now,’ Vivienne said.

  I pressed her on the photograph – the missing link, as my mother had phrased it.

  After thinking some more, she said, ‘I do recall her mentioning this Edelstein fellow. Come to think of it, she was quite agitated. That’s the word. All she said was that he had some information. I’m not quite sure what. And as for the writing on the back …’ She brought her cup to her lips, hesitated, then put it back down on its saucer. She was about to say something but shook her head, a subtle shake as if to rid herself of something brewing in her mind. ‘Perhaps she wrote those words as a child.’ She fell silent and glanced towards the window, observing the remnants of blue sky nudging the clouds away. ‘Oskar Edelstein … I’ve no idea who he could be. Can’t have been a relative. A childhood friend perhaps, though no one I knew. But it seemed important enough for her to enlist your help.’ She turned back to me. ‘Please find him, won’t you?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘All right. For you.’ I wondered why she considered it important to find the man, particularly given the likelihood that he would no longer be alive. I could only think that she wanted closure after my mother’s death. She never liked loose ends, and Oskar Edelstein was just that.

  After dropping Vivienne off at her house on Veitlissengasse in Ober St. Veit, I drove out towards the airport. I gazed at the passing architecture, taking in the switch from pre-twentieth century to post-war, low-rise office and residential blocks lining the outer districts of Vienna. If I were a tourist, I think I would like the city – its history, its grandeur. With the luxury of time, perhaps, I would come to be more accepting of it as the place of my birth, my hometown. But I had no such affinity with it now and any creeping sentiment was brushed aside when I joined the throng of traffic on the motorway. The blur of chemical refineries and industrial plants turned my mind to other things – to work mostly: the next set of meetings, our transaction pipeline, revenues and the all-important bottom line.

  Air traffic congestion, the endless circling, the waiting for a gate at Heathrow and a snaking line at passport control were the usual greetings from the UK. By the time I got into central London it was late at night, and although it was raining, I needed to stretch my legs, so I asked my cab driver to drop me off on the Marylebone High Street. From there I walked the short distance to my home on Wimpole Street. I had lived in Marylebone for a few years, attracted to the area for its absence of statement cars and boutiques. I enjoyed its relative anonymity, the way it set itself apart from the wealthier London enclaves. I considered it to be London’s best-kept secret. I liked the buildings too: the milieu of red-brick Queen Anne and Georgian town houses, many of them now converted into apartments. My place was in one of those, with a Coade-stone head above the white portico. With his long tresses and stern face, he reminded me of the Greek god Zeus. From time to time I would give him a nod, and I did just that on my return. Seeing him filled me with something like relief, and on entering my apartment I felt the same. On the surface, it appeared contemporary: white walls, stripped wooden floors, chic. Almost. Over the last year or so, the wear and tear betrayed my landlord’s cheap renovation. That said, I still liked the place. I always tried to keep it simple and uncluttered, far away from the ornate world of Vienna and my mother’s house.

  I checked my messages before slumping in front of the television to catch CNBC and its bleached-toothed pundits drone on about the market’s trajectory, but I couldn’t really concentrate on what was being said. My thoughts strayed to the conundrum of Oskar Edelstein. It felt like a tenuous link with my mother, one that I didn’t need. I would rather have forgotten about him. But I couldn’t, not after Vivienne’s request. Feeling frustrated, I switched off the television and went to bed.

  For a while, the city’s symphony of traffic and sirens kept me awake. When I eventually drifted off, I found myself wrestling with a dream sequence running on autoplay. Interspersed with flashes of gravestones, wreaths and ravens, I heard a muttered reference to darkness as I stood alone at the edge of my mother’s grave. All the other graves and memorials had disappeared, leaving behind a wasteland swept by a breeze that rattled the branches of charred trees. Dusk had fallen, a golden streak spliced through the sky. I looked down at my mother’s coffin. I took one step, and then another, my heart skipping a beat as I let myself fall inside, bracing myself for the collision that never came. I plunged deeper and deeper until I landed on my bed in my mother’s home. Now I was a child again, woken in the middle of the night by a small stranger crouching in the corner of my room. I screamed out for my mother, but she didn’t come, so I screamed and screamed again.

  I woke up at the same point in the dream each time. After it had played through several times, I got out of bed and went for a run around Regent’s Park. It was four in the morning but I didn’t care; I cared even less for the scenes that featured in my dream. Still, as I ran through the paling darkness, I couldn’t put thoughts of my mother out of my mind, nor her reference to Oskar Edelstein and the photograph with the words You knew on the back of it.

  OBER ST. VEIT, VIENNA, 1937

  Papa and Annabel sit on her bed. It’s their morning ritual, with Papa visiting her room the mornings he’s home. Usually, they chatter about her day, his day, how her day’s far more interesting than his day. When
she knows he’s home, she jumps out of bed before Maria clatters in. She washes her face, pulls on her clothes and does her best to make something of her mass of platinum curls, which never seem to grow out as Mama keeps promising. This day is no different, other than the fact that it’s Christmas Eve. She’s wearing a new dress – red satin and lined so it doesn’t irritate her skin – and she has a new pair of black shoes with a red bow at the toe, made by Rudolf Scheer & Söhne on Bräunerstrasse, which, to Maria’s and Mama’s surprise, she had declared she simply loves.

  Presents will come later this evening, but there’s a package which Papa clutches behind his back.

  ‘What’s that?’ Annabel says, twisting around, but it’s too late – Papa moves the parcel away before she grabs at it.

  ‘What’s what?’ he says, laughing, happiness shining on his face. He casts his hand up in the air, the package on show. Annabel springs up on to her bed to try to reach it.

  ‘Not so fast, meine Prinzessin.’

  Giggling, she grabs Papa’s arm and then he grabs her and tickles her, burying his head in her hair. And then he kisses her cheek and she squirms from the sandpaper touch of his cropped beard, as light in colour as her hair. He lets go of her and laughs as she runs her little hands over his suit jacket and turns her attention to his head.

  ‘Papa,’ she says, ‘your beard is thicker than the hair on your head.’ Her seriousness borders on severity – one of the many things she’s learned from her English governess,

  ‘Really? I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told me.’ He looks at his daughter with the same solemnness she is showing him, then whispers, ‘What should I do?’

  Annabel gets up from her bed and begins to pace her room. Rubbing her chin, she glances up at him. Bright-eyed, she says, ‘Let’s make a Christmas wish.’

  ‘You know, you’re absolutely right, meine Prinzessin. Where would I be without you?’

  ‘Well, you’d be incredibly sad for a start,’ Annabel says, her tone making her sound older than her years.

  ‘That wouldn’t do, would it?’

  Annabel shakes her head.

  ‘Come here,’ Papa says. She perches on his knee and nestles her head against his chest, listening to the cadence of his heart. He holds out the golden-wrapped gift, tied with a red ribbon that matches the colour of her dress. ‘You really want to know what it is?’

  Annabel weighs it in her hands, turns it over, runs her fingers around its edges, trying to guess what it could be. She gazes up at him and he nods to tell her to open it. So she does, picking at the ribbon which comes loose easily. Unfolding the paper she takes out a deer-hide-bound notebook with thick, cream-coloured sheets inside, waiting to be filled.

  ‘I know you like to daydream and to draw. Rather than taking my paper …’ Papa looks at her like Fritz does at times when he pretends to turn a blind eye to her mischief. ‘I thought you could make better use of this. Do you like it?’

  ‘I do, Papa. It’s the best gift in the world.’ Hugging him, she thinks of all the things she’ll use it for: drawings, practising her handwriting, creating stories. She’s so glad it isn’t a doll or some other tiresome toy she’s outgrown.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A week after the funeral, emptiness burrowed its way through me. While work offered some respite, my focus lapsed. Some people noticed, including my boss, but they chose to leave me alone. So I continued regardless, trying to apply myself to my job. Yet this only served to intensify my exhaustion. The descent into depression took me by surprise. Up until that point, I had never experienced anything as extreme. To discover that I could feel this way and be enveloped by something so crushing, pushed me down further.

  My affliction couldn’t have come at a worse time. Work had picked up significantly, and I was dealing with a high profile transaction for my firm. With one more meeting to go to finalise the whole thing I thought I could manage it. I placated my boss and colleagues, assuring them that I was more than capable. All I needed was a good sleep the night before the meeting – something easier said than done. When I finally fell into the depths of unconsciousness, my alarm chimed minutes later, dragging me to the start line of another day. I blinked in the light yet remained flat on my back. It felt as though my body was trapped under a rock.

  Time ticked by; the rumble of rush hour faded away. It was the intermittent blare of a car alarm that made me clamber out of bed. In the bathroom I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth, shaved. Things that usually came naturally now required effort. The shower did little to revive me so I twisted the tap to cold, willing the jet of water to shake me awake. Like a shockwave, it worked, though I knew the effect wouldn’t last.

  The meeting was in our offices on Fleet Street. I managed to make it with two minutes to spare, ignoring my colleagues’ grim faces as I took my seat. I didn’t think to utter an apology. No doubt they took my blankness for nonchalance, which I’m sure irked them more. I should have bowed out then. But of course I didn’t. I thought I could pull through.

  My concentration lapsed after five minutes. I could feel myself ebb back and forth to the room and discussion. My team had little idea of the exertion it took to hold on to strands of conversation. Details, terminology, numbers floated about me. Once or twice I felt a dig under the table indicating that it was my turn to answer a question or to make a point. In response, I sat up, at once alert and attentive. Even that lasted only a moment.

  The fact was, I couldn’t help feeling that I didn’t belong there. My gaze drifted around the room – the chestnut table, bordered by the Eames leather chairs, the suits, the ties, the watches. They all seemed to jar. A stream of sunshine bounced off the stainless-steel coffee machine standing on top of a side table at the back of the room. Someone asked a question. I caught the gist of it – something about valuation – but I was too distracted to answer. Then a voice in my head said, You don’t need to be here. I got up, quietly excused myself and left the room.

  My boss confronted me after the meeting, of course. He stormed into my office and slammed the door shut behind him. His wild gesticulations were enough to create an afternoon show for the junior analysts and associates sitting in their cubicles out on the floor. The more he shouted, the more his New Jersey background whipped through his words. Throughout it all I remained silent, watching him pace my office. There was very little I could say to defend myself, and I think eventually it was my passiveness that brought him to a halt.

  He shrugged. ‘You’ve had it tough recently. Take some time off. Take as much as you want. Come back when you’re ready.’ He then shot me a look. ‘But if you pull a stunt like that again, you’re out.’

  He had given me a second chance. My boss was old school, not in the English sense of the word but in the way he looked out for me. I was in my early thirties and coming into my own at the firm. But despite my achievements and age, in his eyes I would always be the awkward Princeton graduate with the faint hint of a German accent I tried to disguise with an East Coast lilt. I’m not sure I would call this second chance he gave me an act of grace. What I do know is that if I were someone else, I would have suffered a different fate.

  So I decided to go to Vienna. My mother’s lawyer, Frederik Müller, had contacted me several times to arrange a date for me to see him. I had put off returning his calls due to work and, I admit, fear of the inevitable. My mother’s desire to disinherit me had been no secret, and confirmation of it served little purpose. Nonetheless, I had promised Vivienne that I would return to Vienna. We had spoken on the telephone a couple of times since the funeral. Although she would never have said so, I could hear the loneliness in her voice. Each time we spoke she would ask, Have you found Oskar Edelstein? And each time my answer was the same: No time, but I will. Now I had little excuse. Before I left London, I hired an agency to trace him.

  I arrived into Vienna International Airport on the morning of my meeting with Frederik Müller. I entertained notions of stopping by my mother’s hous
e beforehand, but decided against it. I saw little point. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be there: I did. It was a contradiction that I tussled with, because the thought of losing the house chipped away at me. It was a piece of history that I wanted to hold on to – the way it represented the Belle Époque, a defining time when art, architecture and medicine broke boundaries. Its high-ceilinged rooms entertained all of that, with my grandparents playing host to the great and good of Viennese society. The house transcended the years. Situated on the hilltop of Ober St. Veit, it appeared oblivious to the changes happening around it, as modern residences and social housing had sprung up during the post-war years. I laughed out loud to think of my mother’s dislike of those changes – the move into a different time, of new people arriving. So cheap, she had said on some occasions; A disgrace, on others.

  I took a taxi to the First District and asked to be dropped off at the Hotel Sacher. For all its splendour I should have disliked it, but it seemed suitably placed in its location next to the Opera. I even went inside the red-canopied cafe to buy its famed cake to take back with me to London as a sort of peace offering to my colleagues at work. I then walked the short distance to Frederik’s office on Neuer Markt, weaving around the huddles of tourists milling in Albertinaplatz and the Opera. Although it was late September, the sun had decided on one more encore before the onset of autumn, encouraging me to shed my pullover. Tying it around my waist, I took in the immediate sights as if I were a tourist, absorbing the hum of traffic, the footfall and chatter about me. It all carried the promise of summer again.

  I turned up at Frederik’s building ten minutes late for our meeting. I regarded the beauty of the building, the swirls of the cast-iron gate barricading the entrance. Apparently Frederik owned the entire nineteenth-century block, a piece of prime Viennese real estate. I looked upon it with a little envy. He had built up his practice from almost nothing and was now renowned as one of the leading lawyers in Vienna. Added to that, he had made a few investments along the way, which had proved quite fruitful. He would normally be the type of person I’d look up to, but by virtue of his relationship with my mother and my move abroad, I’d kept my distance.