The Silent Children

by Amna K. Boheim

  ‘No.’ I fixed my eyes on Matthias. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’

  ‘Any changes you want to make to my plans?’ he asked.

  ‘No. None.’ I gripped my coffee cup to stem the tremor in my hand. ‘Any news on the contractors?’

  ‘One can start before Christmas – at least with the cellar. I’ll get a structural engineer in too.’

  ‘Very good.’ Relief flooded me with the comfort of the hot drink I sipped down. Seeing my old home play its tricks again made me regret my nostalgia for the house of old.

  While we were tidying up in the kitchen, Vivienne said, ‘You just want to forget, don’t you?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I want to forget too. I’ve been trying. But it’s a little bit too much, even though I hate dwelling on things – so did your mother, at least she did, until the end.’ She patted my arm. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just tired. Maybe I’ll have a nap.’

  ‘It’ll do you good.’ Then she said, ‘It’s funny. When I saw the Schiele again, it brought back memories of when your mother bought the piece – it was quite a steal at the time.’

  ‘I thought it belonged to my grandparents?’ As I thought about it, I realised I’d never really explored the provenance of many of the things in my mother’s house. ‘I assumed it’d always been in the family?’

  ‘She bought it from a gallery desperate to get rid of it,’ Vivienne said. ‘It was just before you were born. Schiele and others were out of favour for a while. That’s why I thought it strange that she chose to copy that painting in her notebook. And now – well, it’s astonishing to see their value. I don’t think we could ever have imagined it. Your mother regretted not buying more.’

  Her comment prompted thoughts of storage before the renovation began.

  ‘Do you really think it’s necessary to put the paintings in storage?’ she said.

  Her reaction struck me as a little offhand and I said as much, trying my best to mask my irritation.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose after the break-in it makes sense. I’ll call the Dorotheum and arrange it for you. Now – why don’t you go upstairs and get some rest.’

  I put Vivienne’s nonchalance down to her age. She was of a different generation, when doors could be left unlocked and trust was more commonplace. Still, given her earlier remark about the Schiele, I couldn’t work out why removing it and the others seemed so unimportant to her. But I couldn’t stay annoyed. The scene in the drawing room continued to play on my mind.

  Up until then, the things I had experienced left me feeling unsure of myself. But what I felt when I saw Vivienne in that state in the living room pierced me with a fear that I had never felt before: pure, cold fear. It was the presence, threatening someone I loved dearly, and the horror of being utterly powerless to do anything to protect her that caused it. I thought back to the cellar, the figure – the child. Was it really a girl I had seen, as I had told Oskar? I remembered hearing the child’s cries in the attic. At least, I thought that’s what I heard. Was she good or evil? I didn’t know, but from what I had seen earlier that day, the ghost seemed to have morphed into something else, something altogether malevolent. Picturing Vivienne again, what I saw … I blinked the image away – or tried to. Fear wrestled in my stomach and my hands trembled. The words my grandmother had written in that final letter of hers, my mother’s apparent restlessness, her guilt, her sorrow in her final days, followed by what I had witnessed earlier on – everything I had seen and heard – seemed more than just figments of my imagination brought on by the emotional chaos of mourning and exhaustion. And then there was the glimpse of the tiny hand, too. It made me think that the presence in the drawing room and the child I had seen that night in the cellar were related.

  If that was the case, I needed more information to cement this link. I wanted to know why there was a presence. And if it did in fact take on the guise of a young child – a girl – as I now believed, then I needed to know more.

  The following morning I called Thomas Schmidt, the detective. It was a rather stunted conversation and a bit awkward to say the least.

  I cut straight to the chase and told him about the three murders. ‘I want to get more involved in The Albrecht Trust, like my mother would’ve wanted, and I came across these incidents. I just want to know when they happened and why they went cold.’

  Schmidt’s pause hung between us down the phone. ‘Do you know how long that would take? It’s not as if I or anybody else here has time on our hands.’ He broke into a hacking cough. ‘Those cases would’ve been closed long ago. Why’s it so important? Is one of the deceased’s relatives asking?’

  ‘No. But I am,’ I said, chopping at his reluctance. ‘I think they’re connected. I think …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I know who did it.’

  He cleared his throat. I pictured him processing what I’d just said.

  ‘You do realise, don’t you, the seriousness of this?’

  ‘Yes, it had crossed my mind.’

  ‘You have evidence, I presume?’

  I knew that the proof I had would amount to nothing in his eyes. ‘Yes and no.’

  He laughed. ‘Can you be more specific?’ I told him about my grandmother’s letter, revealing only that she had identified someone who could have committed the crimes, and how she was wrongfully locked up in an asylum after the death of her son. I couldn’t bring myself to mention my grandfather.

  ‘Is the murderer still alive?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m still unsure how much, if any of it, is true, given what happened to my grandmother.’

  ‘I’d need to see the letter,’ he said. ‘And anything else you’ve got.’

  ‘There’s somebody else – he’s still alive – who could help too.’

  ‘Who’s that? When can I see him?’ The abruptness in his voice put me off. So far it had been just Oskar and I travelling along this path.

  ‘It’s taken me a while to find him,’ I said. ‘It hasn’t been easy for him. He’s only just agreed to meet me.’ I’d told so many white lies so far that this one slipped out without any effort.

  ‘This is a police matter.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s an old friend of the family’s. It’s a bit delicate,’ I said. ‘He’s due to visit soon. I’ll mention you want to meet him then, if that’s okay?’

  He puffed down the phone. ‘Give me a name, at least.’

  So I relented and told him about Oskar, and about my mother’s desire to reach out to him before she died.

  ‘I’d need that letter of your mother’s too. When’s this Oskar Edelstein coming again?’

  I gave him the date. I could hear the scratch of pen on paper.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘that book – Young …’

  ‘Gerber. What about it?’ I said, wishing the casual inflection in my voice didn’t sound so forced.

  ‘The message … Has that got anything to do with this?’

  I told him I still had no idea, sticking to the pretext that my mother had done it.

  ‘You know, none of us can work it out still – we even have a wager on it. I reckon it’s …’ I could hear the scratch of his pen again.

  ‘So you’ll help me – on the other stuff?’

  ‘Let me see what I can do,’ he said. It felt like he was indulging a spoilt child. ‘But I’ll need the letters and anything else – and I’ll need to speak to Oskar Edelstein. I’ll make sure I’m around.’ After I put the phone down, I wondered whether it was the right thing to do, to loop in Schmidt. I didn’t want him to confront Oskar unexpectedly with rounds of questions, so I thought it best to warn him.

  That said, I’d still been struggling to reach Oskar. When I eventually tried again, it was Angela who picked up.

  ‘He got all your messages, Max,’ she said. ‘He’s away at the moment but he’ll be in touch when he returns. Is there anything else you want me to pass on to him?’

/>   ‘No. It’s okay, Angela. It would be good to talk to him. That’s all.’ My urgent need to speak to him was ever-present; to compound it, there were other things that were pressing.

  I had noticed that Vivienne had become withdrawn and I was worried about her. It was as if she was mourning again. She did her best to hide it. She still played music, but it was back to the Requiem again. Later that day, as I watched her from the doorway of the living room, she seemed lost in her own thoughts, and her eyes, while directed at the novel she was reading, didn’t appear to absorb a single word on the page. When I went in to join her, she erased the look from her face. She closed the book, removed her glasses and mustered up the semblance of an apologetic smile.

  ‘I thought I knew your mother inside out,’ she said.

  ‘Would you have done anything differently if you knew everything about her? From the moment you met you were such a good friend to her – there when she needed you. What more could she have asked for?’

  Vivienne shrugged her shoulders, then turned to sorting through the newspapers on the coffee table, as if she needed something else to focus on.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ I said.

  She sat back down on the sofa and patted the seat next to her. ‘It’s you I worry about.’

  I joined her, fiddling with the tassels on one of her velvet cushions. ‘Why don’t you come back to London with me?’ I suggested.

  ‘And after I’d been to all the museums and galleries, what would I do, with you in the office from morning until night?’

  She had a point. I dropped the idea. Lana and I had talked about getting away for a week during Christmas, but nothing was set in stone and much as I wanted to spend time with her, in this instance, it didn’t feel right.

  ‘How about after my visit with Oskar, I’ll stay on with you over Christmas?’

  ‘Weren’t you meant to go away with your new girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s not exactly my girlfriend …’

  Vivienne shook her head at me, but I could see the cheer unfold on her face. ‘Are you quite sure?’ She clapped her hands and the sparkle returned to her eyes. ‘That’s simply the best news. I thought Lana and work would keep you in London.’

  Her delight partially made up for the knowledge that Lana would be less than pleased at my decision to stay with Vivienne, and it made me realise that I should have opened up to her about what was going on; she was more of a girlfriend than I admitted, even to myself. Before the Christmas break: that would be when I’d try to explain a few things to Lana. I made a promise to myself.

  For the rest of the day, Vivienne maintained her good humour, chatting about her plans for the holiday period. Not wanting to alter her mood, I didn’t mention my conversation with Schmidt, nor my intention to drop by the house on my way to the airport.

  When my taxi arrived, I asked the driver to take a slight detour towards Himmelhofgasse. He didn’t seem to mind either way, uttering a grunt in response. Once at the house, I told him I’d be less than half an hour. He grudgingly agreed to a fixed price, but judging by the look in his narrow eyes, I couldn’t be sure whether he’d honour our arrangement. With a loud sigh, he switched off his engine, tapped open his packet of cigarettes and drew one out.

  I went inside, swallowing down the lingering fear. I didn’t think about the what ifs. I didn’t want any thoughts to crawl into my mind at all.

  I went first to the study. I looked at the photographs on the bookshelf. The one I had left lying in its broken frame all those weeks before had been put into a new frame – all thanks, I assumed, to Frederik. I took it down from the shelf and had a closer look at it. My grandparents sat in the centre. Next to them, on either side, sat some children, the smaller ones sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of them. A rather severe-looking lady, her hair pulled into a neat bun, stood to the side of the group. I assumed this was the Frau Werner that my mother referred to in her notebook. I studied the children: they all wore white shirts; the boys were in dark shorts, the girls in dark pleated pinafores. None of them resembled the children in the articles – there seemed to be no Josef Frank, no Christine Hintze, no Elena Markovic. All of them looked anonymous, their faces made up of smiles or straight lips, wide or narrow eyes, their heads half-cocked or held high.

  I homed in on the image of my grandfather. He was sitting very straight-backed, a little removed from my grandmother. He looked like a giant of a man. I examined his eyes. They were bright, soft, less piercing than my own. Were they the eyes of a monster? I felt the knot tighten around my chest again. I wrested my eyes away from his. Then I noticed something else. One of his hands rested loosely on his lap while the other lay by his side, his little finger and ring finger appearing to touch the girl sitting next to him. I scrutinised it further, concerned that my new knowledge of him was prejudicing my interpretation of his body language. Turning the frame over, I slid open its back and removed the photograph. On the reverse was a month and year: July 1937. Written in pencil, in the handwriting I now recognised as my grandmother’s, were the names of the children: Henriette Bertelsmann, Gretel Moser, Jakob Hass … Seated next to my grandfather was Eva. Eva Schwartz. I flipped over the photograph. There she was, a dark-haired girl with an awkward smile on her face, her eyes staring at the camera. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old, and although she sat with the same straight back of her peers, the subtle twist of her shoulder away from my grandfather’s body screamed louder than anything else in the picture.

  I took the photograph with me, leaving the empty frame on the bookshelf and headed out to the hallway. Outside, the winter sun was fading, so I switched on the light, the soft sparkle from the chandelier banishing the gloom indoors. I felt better with the additional light, less wary about my next task as I jogged up both flights of stairs to the attic door, which, in turn, opened effortlessly. It all seemed so easy, something that I was glad about, and any remaining anxiety I had fizzled away.

  I went straight to the pile of boxes and tugged down the first one. I should have taken more care rummaging through it, but I was aware of the taxi driver waiting and I didn’t want to waste much time. I leafed through letters and loose photographs hoping to find something, but everything seemed to date back to the 1960s. There were letters from Vivienne, notes from my father, images of my mother wearing thick black eyeliner and short dresses, and one of a man sporting a chalk-white face, with dark paint oozing down his head and the length of his white suit. I put them back and pushed the crate to one side. Just as I reached up for the next one, the attic door at the foot of the stairs slammed shut behind me.

  My breath caught in my throat; my fingers gripped the box’s edge. I couldn’t stem the tremble in my hands as I wrestled to open it up. While this one contained more old letters and photo albums of one sort or another, at first glance, they appeared to date back to the early 1900s. There was nothing amongst those things that seemed to be of any use to me and I quickly moved on.

  After rooting aimlessly through three crates, despair set in. Outside, rain began to fall, each minuscule drop tap-dancing on the slate roof and window. The happy-go-lucky rhythm goaded me, as though it were clear that I’d little chance of finding anything significant. My search felt all the more futile as I’d little idea of what it was I should be looking for. I hurried through the fourth box, throwing old books and even more letters to one side. Doubt nagged at me and I couldn’t shake it off. And neither could I ignore the silence of the house, the way it seemed to bear down on me, like a pillow pressed upon my face. I had to get out, but I couldn’t leave empty-handed. My fingers, now clammy, stumbled through pages of old magazines and yet more damned photo albums. What was I doing? What did I think I’d achieve rifling through old possessions? I looked to the fifth box, hoping that I would find something. In desperation I raked through endless paper straw, accidentally ripping useless newspaper cuttings, finding nothing. Until, that is, I felt the tough leather binding of another photo album
. I pulled it out, my hands now shaking uncontrollably.

  Please. Please let this be the one.

  I dusted it with my sleeve and looked inside.

  It contained photographs that appeared to commemorate my grandparents’ patronage of The Albrecht Trust. There were prize-givings, sideways profiles with stiff handshakes, sports days, a vee of skinny boys in vests and shorts sprinting towards a finish line, children in uniform, standing with matriculation certificates in their hands, grins pinned on their faces. Names and dates were written underneath. I scanned them, looking for the names now ensconced in my head: Josef, Christine, Elena.

  The faint rumble of the car engine outside put a halt to my search. I wedged the photograph from the study into the album, snapped it shut, and ran down the attic stairs to the door. I turned the handle. It was stuck. Panic fluttered through me. I tried again, yanking it with such force that it flung wide open, slamming against the wall. Just as it was about to swing closed, I slipped through the gap and ran out on to the landing. My heart skipped a beat. All the lights in the house had gone out. I flew down the stairs and into the hall, hearing the slow crunch of the taxi’s wheels on the gravel as it pulled out of the driveway. I raced out of the house towards the car and banged on the boot. The vehicle screeched to a halt, throwing me off kilter.

  I stumbled around to the driver’s window. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I yelled.

  He stared back at me, shrugging his shoulders. I ran back to the entrance, jamming the key around in the lock until I heard the click. Spotting my bag dumped at the foot of the steps, I grabbed it and got into the car.

  ‘Christ, why did you drive off?’

  The driver blinked at me through the rear-view mirror. ‘I saw the lights in the house go off. I rang the doorbell several times. Then I tried the door, but it was locked.’

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear more. I dropped my head back against the headrest, thankful that he hadn’t left me behind. My heart took a while to settle. Only the knot in my chest and stomach remained, tightening then loosening, tightening then loosening.