The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  ‘She found out a month or so before,’ Vivienne said when I asked her about it. ‘The disease was quite far gone. As usual, she’d left it to the last minute to see her doctor. She felt that time was against her. She spent hours in the attic, sorting through boxes. She threw an awful lot out. It was as if she wanted to unburden herself of everything. And what she had to tell me – well, in the end, it came out in quite a jumble.’

  ‘And you really think there was substance behind what she told you?’

  ‘It was the way she looked. There was Annabel the actress and the real Annabel. I knew your mother inside out. Her mannerisms, the expression in her eyes, the subtle move of her lips or eyebrows always let me know what she really thought. She was …’ Her voice faltered. ‘She was frightened, Max.’

  Who was I to argue with Vivienne about whether or not my mother’s words carried any significance? I was the estranged son with a mother who became more of a stranger to me as the years went by. But without anything more concrete from Vivienne, I found it hard to know what to read into my mother’s desire to unburden herself. Perhaps I didn’t want to.

  In the week after our meeting, I didn’t hear from Oskar. Holding out a faint hope that he would choose to share something with me, I was disappointed by his silence. On the other hand, what did I really expect? We barely knew each other. Whether I trusted him or not, I dare say he hardly trusted me. If I were in his shoes, I don’t think I would have either. Despite the temptation to contact him again, I thought better of it. Rather than hound Oskar until I wore him down, I wanted to earn his confidence. I would wait a while for him to approach me before reaching out to him again, and perhaps return with a more pleasant keepsake to help jog his memory, as Vivienne had suggested.

  During the month of October, I busied myself with researching suitable architects to renovate my mother’s house. There were a few recommendations from friends and contacts that I explored. In the end I settled on a Vienna-based one – Matthias Ropach – whom I had also read about in some Austrian lifestyle magazines. He understood my brief: to modernise without compromising the house’s period features. With a couple of projects already under his belt in Hietzing, he knew the area well.

  ‘I want to change the cellar,’ I said. ‘That’s my biggest priority – it’s a rabbit warren down there. The space could be used better.’ The chill, the stench and the child of my imagination floated back, triggering the tremor in my hands. This was the right decision.

  ‘I’d need to see the house ahead of our meeting in December,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, of course – that makes sense.’ I tried to bury the image of the child.

  ‘It’ll give us time to nail down the plans before we meet.’

  I pictured him wandering around the empty house. ‘Perhaps someone could go with you.’

  Matthias sounded nonplussed. ‘You should see some of the sites I see. It’s not as if the house is falling apart. I’ll be fine. Just some plans and the keys would be helpful.’ He told me he had some free time in November to visit. I promised to arrange access and to send him the plans that Frederik Müller had given me.

  The project gave me something to cling to: the focus on change, bringing the house into the present. Being back in London also helped to put me at ease. I couldn’t say I felt altogether better, but being away from the house in Ober St. Veit brought some normality to my life. The cloud lifted from my mind; I could think more clearly, and the familiarity of my environment – of Marylebone, of my apartment – put things into perspective for me. I even toyed with the idea of returning to work following a conversation with my boss.

  ‘If you’re ready, you’re ready. If you’re not, you’re not,’ he had said, before going on to impress on me that neither he nor the firm had any intention of abandoning me. So I plunged back into work. I also read articles about bereavement and its different manifestations. Slowly, I began to see how my experiences at the house may have been part of the grieving process, and not as unique or disturbing as I had first thought. And with this understanding, the photograph’s mystery also lessened. It was a kind of solace, but still I couldn’t quite forget about Oskar. While I tried to see the man as a conduit to my family’s history, there was something about him, the things he said and didn’t say. And like an unshakeable fever, though I tried to fight thoughts of Oskar away, they always came back, plaguing my mind, holding me back from truly moving on from my mother’s death.

  OBER ST. VEIT, VIENNA, 1938

  Annabel hasn’t seen Oskar for days and with Eva gone almost two months, boredom finds her too easily. Mama said that they ought to do something about it.

  Instructing Maria to get Annabel ready, Mama says, ‘I can’t bear it any longer.’

  ‘Are we going to the orphanage, Mama?’

  ‘No, my dear,’ says Mama, taking Annabel’s hand in hers as they walk a few steps down Himmelhofgasse and in through the Edelsteins’ front gate. A large truck, its back wide open, fills most of the driveway, and Annabel can’t help but peer into the cavernous space filled with furniture and paintings.

  ‘Are they moving, Mama?’

  Mama doesn’t answer and Annabel tugs at Mama’s sleeve, but still she doesn’t get an answer. The Edelsteins’ front door is also thrown open and Mama seems to have forgotten all formalities as she enters without knocking.

  ‘Claudia?’ calls out Mama, lines now scoring her forehead, which Annabel thinks makes Mama look older – and ugly too. They see Claudia Edelstein upstairs. She comes running down towards them. Annabel watches the two of them embrace.

  ‘Where’s Oskar?’ asks Annabel.

  As if by magic, his nanny appears from behind her, takes Annabel by the hand and leads her into the living room where there are more paintings shrouded in white sheets. One of the maids scuttles into the room after them and whispers in the ear of Oskar’s nanny, who frowns and whispers something back. Oskar’s nanny makes Maria look like a teddy bear by comparison, and to tell the truth, Annabel’s always relieved whenever Oskar and his mother visit them, rather than the other way round.

  ‘Oskar’s outside. Run along now. I’ll be with you shortly,’ she says.

  So Annabel’s left to make her own way to the garden. For a moment she’s distracted by the objects hidden under their coverings and she really can’t help it: she lifts up one of the sheets. Underneath is the picture of the phantom lady and her children that used to hang in the Edelsteins’ hallway. Annabel always comes up in goosebumps whenever she sees it and today is no different. But she’s not scared. Up close, there’s something about the swirls of dark brown and black behind the woman that draw Annabel in. She reaches out to feel the bumps and lumps of the oil paint, reading the woman’s expression with her fingertips, knowing full well she’d be on the receiving end of a slap if she were caught in the act. There’s something funny about the picture too: something to do with the children sitting on the lady’s knee. They look like two little harlequins, trying to make her laugh. Just as well, because she needs cheering up, Annabel thinks, turning to another shrouded painting, twice as big as her. Her curiosity stoked, she ducks under the sheet to take a good look. It’s only when she moves her head back that she can see two bodies, nude, legs splayed out, hairy genitalia on display in all their raw frankness. She finds herself recoiling, thrust out from under the sheet.

  There were many such paintings that used to hang shamelessly around the Edelsteins’ home. Papa always expressed his disapproval. ‘It’s that Zuckerkandl woman,’ Annabel had heard him say to Mama over breakfast one day, after Mama had given an impassioned defence of the Austrian Expressionists. (What they expressed, Annabel had no idea.) ‘The hold she has over you and the Edelsteins makes me wonder.’ In reply, Mama had simply dabbed her mouth with her napkin and walked out of the dining room, leaving Annabel to imagine the exotic wonders of Bertha Zuckerkandl’s salon.

  Annabel daren’t look at the other paintings; who knows what else she’ll discover.<
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  ‘That’ll teach me,’ she says to herself as she runs through the living room and out into the garden where she finds Oskar brandishing a wooden sword.

  ‘Take that!’ he says, pointing its blunt tip at her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A familiar noise rang out. I stirred for a moment before plunging back into my drunken sleep. The ringing stopped, only to resume minutes later, its harsh tone shrilling through my ears. I straddled limbo and the depths of a muddled dream. This time I was a school boy, sitting in an examination hall staring at a blank sheet of paper, unable to answer the essay question, Discuss the key rights and implications of the 1955 Austrian Independence Treaty. I couldn’t recollect my history lessons and cursed myself for the scant attention I had paid in class. The prospect of failure worsened with the sound of a mobile phone ringing through the hall. Musical notes appeared on my answer sheet, first as faint shadows, before turning darker. Entrenched on the page, they danced to an unknown tune. The ringing was incessant as I tried to erase the notes, my despair increasing with each tick of the overlarge clock hanging on the wall. My heart skipped a beat and I hit something hard.

  I had fallen out of bed.

  I picked myself up and searched for my glasses in the neon-edged darkness. I found them on my pillow, thankfully intact.

  Then I remembered: some friends from work had dragged me out. Lana, the girl I had met on the sailing holiday back in the summer, had also been there, which had given me further incentive to go. I hadn’t returned to my flat on Wimpole Street until the early hours and must have fallen asleep fully clothed on my bed. My mouth felt as if it were stuffed full of cotton wool and the telltale signs of a hangover were beginning to reveal themselves. Stumbling over to the kitchen, I berated myself for staying out so long and for drinking too much. The ringing had since stopped and I didn’t think to check my phone. All I wanted was to dilute the hangover poised to swallow my body whole.

  I looked at the clock on the oven door. It was close to six – way too early in the morning to be harangued by phone calls. My mobile rang again. I went through to the hallway and found it on the table. Lana had sent a text message to say that she had left the keys to my apartment on the nightstand in my bedroom and that she looked forward to seeing me again soon, signing off with hopes that my head would feel better in the morning. Seeing her message gave me a momentary lift, until I saw several missed calls: two unknown, the rest from my mother’s lawyer, Frederik Müller. I couldn’t fathom why he would call me repeatedly, and at that time of day, unless it was something important. I called him back.

  ‘Max – thank God.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ My voice was nothing but a croak, and I struggled to hear Frederik over the din in the background. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at your mother’s – your – house with the police and forensics. There’s been an incident. A break-in.’

  I blinked, trying to make sense of what Frederik was telling me. I stood quite motionless, unable to move. The house’s contents, its works of art flashed through my mind … The Schiele. I suddenly realised how detached I’d felt about these things until now. To think it had taken a robbery to inject the responsibility of ownership into me.

  ‘There was no alarm – Christ!’ I had meant for one to be installed, but since my return to London, work and discussions with my architect had consumed all of my time and before I knew it, October had slipped by. It was a poor excuse. Thinking of the priceless work of art, the words careless and stupid came to mind, along with a slew of swear words.

  ‘What’s been taken?’ I asked, bracing myself for the answer.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Thank God, I thought to myself.

  ‘Around three a.m.,’ said Frederik, ‘the police came across a white transit van abandoned in front of the house with its back doors wide open. All the things that were taken from the house were still inside it. They saw the light switched on in the hallway. The front door was unlocked. They found …’

  ‘Frederik?’

  ‘The place looks as though a hurricane ripped through it,’ he said eventually.

  My throat constricted; my mouth filled with saliva. Phone in hand I rushed to the bathroom and retched into the toilet.

  ‘Max? Max? Are you all right?’

  I slumped against the bathroom wall, pulling down a towel from the hook above my head to wipe my mouth. ‘I’m okay.’ For a moment I was lost for a response. ‘What’s the damage?’

  Frederik spoke in short bursts. ‘The art’s fine. The banister on the first floor’s damaged. It’s as if someone fell through it or flung something against it.’

  ‘Who’s behind the break-in – do they know?’

  ‘There’s speculation, but nothing concrete.’

  I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t picture my mother’s pristine house, ransacked. In fact, the whole conversation, with me sitting on the bathroom floor, had a surreal quality, like I had jumped from one bizarre dream to the next.

  ‘They also found a book that had been taken from the library,’ said Frederik.

  ‘So they’re after a thief with a literary bent?’

  ‘Max …’

  ‘This isn’t the time. I’m sorry.’

  ‘There was something written inside.’ He fell quiet.

  ‘What exactly?’

  He hesitated before answering. ‘You really need to come and deal with this yourself.’

  I sighed. ‘I’ll see what flights are available and get there as soon as I can.’ Before hanging up, I said, ‘I’m sorry it was you they called first. I appreciate you being there.’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s hard for me to leave your mother behind.’

  I couldn’t tell whether it was tenderness or resignation that I heard in his voice, but there was something about the way he spoke that I’d never picked up on during past conversations. It wasn’t implausible that he had been attracted to my mother – according to Vivienne a lot of men were – but my mother had seldom shown much interest in men after my father died.

  I arrived at the house in the early afternoon. Frederik stood in the driveway with a man whom he introduced as Thomas Schmidt, the detective in charge. He had a haggard air about him: hunched shoulders, dishevelled hair and a face stained by a permanent five o’clock shadow. Frederik, too, looked far from his best with the dark smudge of fatigue under his eyes. Not that I was in any position to judge: on my way over, I had downed a combination of paracetamol and ibuprofen to stem the throb of my head, but my hangover still lingered, threatening to strike back. It was made worse by the realisation that I may have encouraged the break-in.

  There was something about that taxi driver, Zoran, and his observations that had continued to eat away at me. But now … it all made sense. How could I have been so stupid? There is someone there? That’s what he had asked. He claimed to have seen someone by one of the windows, but what if, what if, he had been fishing for information? So much for his sympathetic act, his innocent questions. There is someone there? Rattled by my state of mind, my exhaustion, I had told him the house lay empty, thinking he too had glimpsed a presence when he was merely establishing the facts.

  ‘We just sent the third reporter away,’ said Schmidt, his voice pulling me away from thoughts of Zoran. ‘News in Vienna is quiet at the moment. The slightest sniff of a story gets them out like a pack of wolves.’ His cigarette habit revealed itself in the rasp of his voice and nicotine-tinged breath. He nodded to a couple of police officers ambling by the gate. ‘They’ll stay until the fuss dies down.’

  ‘We’ve given them a few facts to keep them happy,’ said Frederik. ‘Attempted break-in and so on.’

  ‘Evidence in the van points to a Serbian gang. We think they’re linked to three or four robberies,’ said Schmidt.

  I looked up at the house. I couldn’t tell them about Zoran. Not just yet.

  ‘Feel free to go in. Everyone’s left.
Just to warn you though – it’s not pretty.’

  Frederik put a hand on my back as we walked up the steps. ‘We’ll get it cleared up. Don’t worry, Max,’ he said.

  The police and forensics team had finished their initial work and we were alone in the house. I surveyed the leftovers from the break-in and investigation: the white evidence signs, the powdery finger-printing marks on the walls and furniture. I gazed up to the first floor gallery with the banister ripped away. In its place was police crime-scene tape rippling in the draught from the open door.

  ‘It’s like they were possessed,’ I said.

  Frederik nodded. ‘And if they really leapt down, they can’t have escaped uninjured.’

  I took in the remnants of a shattered Chinese vase, the walls, stripped of their works of art. Only the sculptures of the angel and saint remained intact, like silent witnesses to the scene.

  I walked through to the drawing room. Broken glass and china ornaments littered the floor, and the back wall appeared vulnerable without the Schiele.

  ‘Even though it’s no longer my home – it feels …’

  ‘It’s a personal violation, I know,’ said Frederik. ‘You were lucky.’

  A conflict played out in my mind: the violation, as Frederik put it, mixed with guilt for failing to oversee the property adequately and the information I had unknowingly slipped to Zoran. ‘I hope they find the bas …’ The expression in Frederik’s eyes stopped me short. Just then, Schmidt came into the room.

  ‘Frederik told me the thief had written in a book. Where is it?’ I asked him.

  ‘Let’s go into the kitchen. The light’s better there.’

  Schmidt and I sat down at the table while Frederik busied himself finding glasses and a jug for water.

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ I said. They both looked at me. I told them about my conversation with Zoran, giving as best a description of the man as I could.