‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Absolutely no. I know you have epileptic fits. I’m sorry to hear that. But I don’t want to talk about that. I do want to talk about your life, though. A long time ago.’
He watched carefully, not sure how far or how fast to go. They’d left him alone with him, but maybe there was a major risk? What would he do if the man suddenly had a fit, one of his turns, whatever they were? And he remembered the fear that had filled him once at college when a girl in his year had suddenly started to convulse and had bitten her tongue and bled all over the floor and made the most dreadful noises.
‘How long ago?’
He had to take a chance. There would be no point in being here if he didn’t
‘When you were born,’ he said very deliberately. ‘I need to know how life was for your mother in the sewers in Cracow. I need to know of your first memories after you came out of the sewers, and when you were in Auschwitz. I need to know what your mother told you about the boy and the apples.’
There was a long silence, and all Abner could do was look at the long face and deep eyes staring at him and think, will he tell me? Or will he turn his back on me?
It happened all at once. Just as the round man in the high-collared white coat came bustling in with a tray on which stood two beakers of tea David Lippner started to laugh, not moving in any way but opening his mouth and letting the sound come out in great rolling waves, laughing as though he’d just heard the most exquisite joke of all his life.
‘There,’ said the little man with great satisfaction as he put down the tray on a low table beside Abner’s chair. ‘There, isn’t that nice? It’s lovely to have visitors to cheer you up, isn’t it, David?’
But David said nothing. He just sat there and went on laughing as, beaming with pleasure, the little man went away, leaving Abner to wait until the laughter stopped. If it was ever going to.
Twenty-one
They never did drink the tea. It sat ignored in the beakers, with its milky surface congealing into broken patterns that stained the sides of the cups, as they sat shrouded in leaves and the scent of lilies and talked in the dwindling light of the February afternoon. Because once David Lippner started he seemed unable to stop.
At first a good deal of it was disjointed, a flood of words that leapt from one topic to another as a fly swoops round a table full of food. It was as though he had never had the chance to talk before and again the doubts about the quality of care the man was getting came back to Abner; and then suddenly Lippner said, ‘They tell me to shut up, the others, the empty heads, when I start to talk to them, stupid they all are, stupid, and they say “Shut up”, so I do sometimes, but it’s not stupid. It’s good to talk, good when people listen. I’m glad you came to listen. Who did you say you are again?’
‘Abner Wiseman. I’m making a film.’
‘Oh, yes, a film. We get them here Saturday nights, in winter, Sunday nights in summer, because of shabbat, it goes out too late on Saturday in summer, they say, to start showing films, but we watch the television, or they do, the empty heads, they do, so why not watch films which are better? It’s them, the white coats, they like to take it easy the summer nights, too much trouble to show us films on the proper screen, the big one, not that stupid little box of a telly. What sort of film?’
‘About the war. About what happened to people who were in the labour camps,’ Abner said steadily, watching him all the time. ‘About the things that happened to you and your mother — before you got there — and after — ’
The bony face seemed to go smooth, as though the few lines that were there had been steam ironed and Abner stared, a little puzzled; and then saw the eyes again, and they seemed to him to be darker. That hurt him, he thought. Oh, God, what do I do? Not talk about her because it hurts? But I need to.
‘She died,’ Lippner said abruptly. ‘She was old and it was time and she died. But the idiots here, they say she passed on — it makes me so angry I could scream. I do sometimes. “Passed on!” Dead, dead, she is, dead. Why can’t they say it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Abner said with fervour and for the first time smiled with real pleasure. That was one of his own bêtes noires, people who couldn’t use honest words for honest experiences. ‘Oh, yes indeed. My father died last year and when people tried to wrap it up in fancy language I could have screamed too.’
‘Did you?’
‘What?’
‘Scream.’
‘No.’
‘You should. It surprises them and they get all fussed. Interesting really. They call them my turns but it’s just for the change really.’ And Lippner smiled, a narrow-lipped wicked little grimace and Abner relaxed, letting his shoulders sag into a more comfortable posture. They’d been very tight and his head ached a little in consequence.
‘Hey,’ he said, a little less carefully. ‘Hey, you’re a bit of a bastard — ’
‘What else can I do, stuck here in this chair?’ Lippner said with sudden savagery. ‘I can’t exactly go and work it off on a run around the countryside, can I?’
‘Why the chair?’ Abner asked, feeling more and more comfortable with the man. ‘I know people with epilepsy — they don’t need wheelchairs as a rule.’
‘MS,’ Lippner said. ‘And why should I bother to keep on trying? No point, really.’
‘MS?’
‘Multiple sclerosis. I get shaky, can’t walk right and though it’s a bit better sometimes, I prefer the chair. In my room on my own, I get out of it, walk about a bit but not anywhere else. What’s it to do with them? Anyway, they feel better feeling bad about me this way. So, let ’em. Much I care.’
Abner shook his head slowly. ‘Like I said, a bit of a — but I’m sorry about the MS.’
Lippner shrugged. ‘So? What’s the difference? I’m not fit to live on my own because of the epilepsy. For all their drugs they can’t stop the fits happening and they happen a lot, and I think they’re why I got the MS, though they all say I’m wrong, but it’s my body. I know what goes on in it and I think it’s the fits that started it, and they were started by the doctors in Auschwitz, so there you have it. And what does MS matter when you’re epileptic? Anyway, is that what you came to talk about?’
‘No. I — it’s about the story I heard about your mother. The Rats of Cracow…’
The thin mouth twisted. ‘Oh, yes. The Rats. It’s a good tale, isn’t it?’
Abner blinked and stared at him and David Lippner stared back and there was a sardonic look about him and Abner said, with a sudden sinking sensation deep in his chest, ‘Are you saying it’s not true? The story Mrs Singer told me about the small group in the sewers of Cracow, about you being born down there, isn’t true?’
‘Oh, it’s true all right,’ Lippner said. ‘It happened all right.’
‘Then why that — why did you say it “made a good tale” that way?’
He shrugged. ‘I heard it too often, maybe. All the time I was growing up, I heard it. Over and over. She never stopped telling me. It was her way of dealing with what happened to me. Afterwards.’
‘Afterwards — in Auschwitz?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did happen? Christ, that was a stupid question! I mean, what in particular to you? You said the fits were started by the doctors in Auschwitz — in what way?’
Lippner sat silent for a long moment and Abner thought, I’ve found the worst bit. I’ve gone too deeply into the part that hurts most. But then Lippner said in a dreamy sort of tone, ‘I was two years old, you know? And the incredible thing is I can remember. Not all of it, but some of it. Two years old, and it’s all there, like it’s wrapped in cling film, all stretched over the lights and me and the trolleys and the machines — ’
‘Machines?’ Abner prompted gently, for the silence lasted even longer this time.
‘Mm. Well, I call them machines. I don’t know what they were. All I know is it hurt. They had me on a bed, and I was tied there with straps. I remember the way they felt. Ha
rd and a little bit of stretch, not much, but I remember lifting my arms and thinking I’d lifted them high and they hadn’t moved at all. I’d just felt the leather stretch a little, you know? And they put hard cold pieces at the side of my head and held them tight so I couldn’t move and then they took my hair off. I saw them, you know, because there was a light over the top of the bed, a light with mirrors, lots of little ones, and I could see them and I could see lots of mess, on the bed, and the woman with the razor, cutting all my hair off. And then the doctor brought the machines close and started cutting where the hair used to be on my head, and then I shouted, I remember that, shouting and screaming — ’ He stopped then and smiled at Abner, and it was an extraordinarily sweet smile. ‘It helped then and it still does. Shouting and screaming. So why not do it?’
‘Yes,’ Abner said. There was nothing else he could say.
‘That’s all I remember, though. Just that time, all covered over in cling film so that it never changes inside my head. I don’t remember anything else, much. But the fits started afterwards, I know that. I don’t know how I know, but I know it, and I’ve had them ever since. Couldn’t go to school properly, couldn’t do anything except stay at home with Mama. And she cried a lot, Mama. So I screamed a lot. That was when they sent me to the school in Surrey.’
‘You and your mother went to live in Surrey?’
‘Not Mama. She stayed in Edgware. She was all right in Edgware. They took care of her there, the women, the schul, they took care, so she stayed there. No, it was me. She said it was boarding school to them all. But it wasn’t. It was a place for kids like me, who screamed a lot and had fits. Or such things.’
He sat in a brooding silence for a while. ‘I don’t know what was worse. Going back to Edgware for the holidays or going back to school. Wherever I was it was awful.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Abner said without thinking.
‘Are you apologising or pitying?’
There was a silence and then Abner said, not daring to lie to him, ‘Both. Please forgive me.’
‘Well, at least you said the truth,’ Lippner said. ‘And you should apologise anyway. Look at you — you’re a Jew, aren’t you? And you’re all right.’
He managed not to do it, managed not to tell him of Hyman and Frieda, managed not to hide his guilt behind their pain. He just sat and looked at Lippner.
It was almost dark now as the colours outside drained away to leave a monochrome landscape, and after a moment, needing to be active in some way, Abner got up and went to the door to find the light switch. The place was prettily lit, with lamps with yellow bulbs hiding among the plants. The glow they threw made both of them seem warmer and softer and that helped Abner relax again. He came back to his chair and sat down and said, ‘Your mother. She had a bad time.’
‘She lived to be eighty and gone,’ Lippner said. ‘More than I will.’
‘In the early days. In Cracow,’ Abner said and didn’t look at him, afraid to see the anger in his eyes. ‘They must have been dreadful days.’
‘Oh, yes.’ He sounded bored. ‘Dreadful. Living in a sewer and all.’
‘Did she tell you a lot about it?’
Lippner laughed. ‘Every bloody detail,’ he said. ‘What they ate and when. Once she chewed a candle end and felt so bad and it wasn’t because of eating the beeswax, she said, it was because of having to be in the dark. But it wasn’t always bad. Sometimes they had good food, she said. They used to steal it from the best places.’
He gave an odd laugh then, a low cackling sound. ‘She made me laugh about the first time they ate ham, Westphalian ham, she said. They had it raw, the right way to have it, and she didn’t know what was worse for them all, eating raw meat or eating pork meat. I liked that, and laughed at it every time she told me. Me, I get the gardener here to get me bacon crisps from the pub. I give him money and he gets them and he laughs because he doesn’t like Jews much and I laugh because I’m eating bacon and they’d go crazy if they knew.’
‘What else did she tell you, David?’ Once again Abner was aching to use a notebook, once again he knew he couldn’t.
‘Oh, all of it.’ He began to sound bored. ‘The way they slept all day and only moved around at night, and had to stay in the deepest galleries in case their candle-light shone out round the manhole edges. The way they had to use the water channels for a lavatory, and sometimes fell in, and getting clothes washed was almost impossible. That sort of thing.’
‘Did she tell you about the boy and the bag of apples?’
‘Oh, that — well, yes, of course she did. Once she knew about it.’
Abner tightened. ‘Once she knew what?’
‘It was after they got here. After the camps were opened and they got to the displaced persons’ camps and then got sent here. When they found each other.’
‘You’ll have to explain more if I’m to understand,’ Abner said, and leaned forwards a little to try to make the man look at him, for he had been sitting for some time with his head down, turning the loops of green raffia from the bundle on his lap between his thin fingers.
He did look at him. ‘You’re as bad as the rest of the empty heads,’ he said scornfully. ‘All right, so listen. So she comes here to England with me, right? And they get all excited about us because I’m still a baby and the hair has grown back, golden it was.’ He lifted one hand to touch his thin dust-coloured hair and the green raffia dangled from his fingers like spiders’ legs. ‘They fussed over us, wrote articles in the papers — she showed them to me and they were so stupid, full of fancy language. I tore them up and threw them all away once when I was having a turn, and she got so mad, but I felt better. Stupid stuff it was. Anyway, they found us a flat and money and tried to send me to school, only I screamed a lot and they sent me to Surrey, and she started going to the club and she met this man who was one of the Rats. Came down to Surrey specially to tell me, she did, and to fetch him to see me. Nasty he was. I hated him. I didn’t like his face, and I hated him and screamed at him, so he only came twice. She was all excited and pink about him, silly it was. Excited and pink. I hated him.’
Abner sat silent, afraid to stop the words, which had started to come in a rush now. Lippner was staring over Abner’s head at the lilies in the corner, and seemed to have forgotten Abner was there. He just went on talking.
‘I told her he was a rotten one, but she wouldn’t have it. She went off with him and it was three weeks till the holidays and I had a lot of turns then, screamed and shouted and broke the windows.’ A reminiscent smile curved his lips and he looked pleased with himself. ‘Nice windows, with coloured glass in them and not only a small bit. A lot. Ruined them I did, into tiny bits, with the hammer, and I got the bits in my thumb and it went septic. Oh, those were nasty days. And then the holidays came and it was time to go home and she said she couldn’t if I was ill and screaming so they sent me to hospital and he was there, making her pink and excited — the stupid — I ask you! An old stupid woman and a creature like that, looking like a bluebottle. All shiny and ugly.’
The hatred and jealousy of the small boy who had been David Lippner came echoing down the thin man’s years of brooding past and the venom in his voice made Abner’s shoulders tighten again. And then Lippner stopped staring over his shoulder and focused on him and seemed to like what he saw in his face and produced a thin smile.
‘You’d have hated him too. It wasn’t jealousy. I know you’re thinking I was just a jealous kid but it wasn’t that. I just didn’t like him. A bluebottle.’
‘You’ve never seen him since?’
‘I won’t. He tries sometimes, sends presents, sends cards. I make them send them back, the white coats. They stand there and they bleat at me and I tell them I’ll scream, so they send them back. Food and books, all sorts. Why should I take anything from him?’
‘Why not?’ Abner said, and lifted his brows at him. ‘Maybe he felt he owed you something.’
‘Why?’
‘Becaus
e he came out of the sewers better off than you did. He doesn’t have epilepsy and MS, does he? Maybe he feels bad about you.’
‘Good!’ David Lippner said after a moment. ‘If he does, good. No, he won’t though. It was my mother he was interested in, not me. Old fool.’
‘How old? As old as your mother?’
Lippner shook his head. ‘That was what made me so angry. It wasn’t right. He’d been a boy then, only sixteen. Twenty years younger than she was. And he comes buzzing round her like a bluebottle, telling her tales — ’
‘What sort of tales?’ Abner felt his skin prickle with excitement. It was here, almost here. He was getting something special. This was the authentic thing.
‘Oh, such tales!’ Lippner said scornfully. ‘You’ll like them, you make films, of course you’ll like them. That one about the boy and the apples — it was him told my mother the story of the boy who sold them all for apples. How could she believe him? He told her and she believed him! I told her, if it’s true why doesn’t he say who he is and where he wound up? It was him, the bluebottle, he told Mama that the boy lived here in England now, that he was very comfortable, had a good position — such lies! If it were true, why didn’t the bluebottle tell everyone, get him strung up? “Oh,” she said. “Believe me, he’s got good reason not to tell yet, but one day he will, one day everyone’ll know. But not yet — he’s got his reasons.” And she’d laugh and — faugh — it makes me sick to think of it.’
His voice had started to rise, the deepness in its tone thinning to a tight shrillness and again Abner’s skin crawled, but this time with apprehension. Lippner was getting excited, he was going to start screaming, he knew it, and that meant he had to stop questioning him. There were more questions to be asked, but not now. And perhaps there were other ways to find out more. He’d think about that. But right now he had to get away from this man who was, frankly, now frightening him. And he got to his feet and leaned over the wheelchair and held out a hand.
‘David, I’m very grateful to you. May I come and see you again?’
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