A Small Person Far Away (18 page)

“I think I can imagine,” he said. “She’s often told me about it. The worst time of her life, as she calls it. I know how she talks, but it must have been quite difficult for her as well as you.”

He stopped the car outside the hotel, switched off the engine, and they sat for a moment without talking. In the silence she could hear a faint, distant tremor. Thunder, she thought, and her stomach contracted.

“That’s one of the things I feel worst about,” he said.

“What?”

He hesitated. “Well, look at me. I’m not exactly a film star. With my paunch and my slipped disk and my face like the back of a bus. Hardly the sort of man for whom women commit suicide. And yet, somehow, I’ve driven your mother…”

The thunder was getting closer. She could see the drawn expression on his face, very pale in the light of a street lamp.

“… I’ve driven her to do something which, even during the worst period of her life, she was never tempted to do.”

“How do you know?”

“That I drove her to it?”

“No.” Part of her was too angry to think, but another part knew exactly what she was saying. “That she was never tempted to do it before.”

He stared at her in the dimness of the car, and she stared back. There was another rumble of thunder – strange in November, she thought – and then she suddenly realized that it was not thunder at all.

“Listen!” She could hardly get it out. “It’s gunfire.”

His mind was still on what she had been saying, and he did not seem to understand.

“It’s the Russians!” For a moment it was like water closing over her head. Then she felt quite calm. Goodbye, she thought. Goodbye, Richard. Goodbye, everything she had ever wanted to do. Mama and Berlin for always. It had caught up with her at last, as she had always known it would.

“The Russians?” said Konrad, very surprised.

She was struggling with the window and finally got it open. “Can’t you hear it?”

“My dear,” he said, “my dear, it’s nothing, you mustn’t be so frightened. That’s not the Russians, it’s the Americans.”

“The Americans?”

He nodded. “Artillery practice. Every other Thursday – though usually not quite so early in the morning.”

“The Americans.” She couldn’t have breathed for a while, for she felt as though her lungs had stuck together. Now she opened her mouth, and a lot of air rushed in. “I’m sorry,” she said and felt herself blush. “I don’t normally get so panicked.”

“It was perfectly natural.” His face was even more drawn than before. “I ought to have warned you. But living here, one forgets.”

“Anyway, I’m all right now. I’d better go to bed.” She made to get out, but he put out his hand.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“What?”

“Various things. First of all, I think you should go home.”

Her heart leapt. “But what about Mama?”

“
Nu
, she is no longer seriously ill. Of course I should have been glad of your support a little longer, but I had not realized how difficult all this has been for you. Could you still stay over tomorrow?”

“Well, of course.”

“Good. Then we will book you a flight for Friday, and I’ll send a cable to Richard that you’re coming.”

Suddenly she no longer felt cold. She could feel the blood rushing into her toes and fingers, warming them. Her whole body was aglow with relief, and she looked at Konrad’s pale, heavy face, filled with an almost physical affection for him.

“Are you sure?” she asked, knowing that it was quite safe to do so.

“Absolutely.”

The day after tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow, really, for they were already well into Thursday. Then she realized that Konrad was still talking.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” he said. “But you understand that it’s important for me to know. After all, I am very much concerned.”

To know what?

He hesitated how best to put it. “Has your mother ever, previously… Did she ever, before, try to kill herself?”

What did it matter, now that she was going home? She wished she had never brought it up. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t.”

“But you were saying earlier—”

She could simply deny it, she thought, but he was looking at her with his worried eyes, blaming himself. She did not want him to feel so guilty.

“There was something,” she said slowly at last. “But I don’t honestly think it was very serious. In fact I’d forgotten all about it until today.”

“What happened?”

So, as lightly as possible, she told him about the Professor’s pills. “I think she knew they wouldn’t work,” she said. “I think she just had to do something, and so she pretended. After all, if she’d really tried to kill herself, I wouldn’t have forgotten.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Well, of course not. It would have been too awful to forget.”

“Or too awful to remember.”

Nonsense, she thought.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve seen as many bad psychological thrillers as you have. I have no wish to act like an amateur – headshrinker, isn’t it called? But those pills were supposed to be poison, and your mother did take them.”

“I’m not even sure of that.”

“I think she took them,” said Konrad.

She had wanted him to feel less guilty, but he seemed almost exultant. There was an edge to his voice which she had not heard before, and she suddenly wondered what on earth she had done.

During what was left of the night, she slept only fitfully. She dreamed endlessly of Mama – Mama wandering on a mountainside, in the streets, through the rooms of an ever-expanding house, and always searching for Konrad. Sometimes she found him and sometimes she only glimpsed him for a moment before he disappeared. Once Anna found him for her, and Mama hugged her on the beach and laughed delightedly with the sun on the sand behind her. Another time he slipped away from them in Woolworth’s while Anna was buying Mama a hat.

She woke uneasy and depressed, much later than usual, and found the breakfast room deserted, with only a few dirty cups and plates still cluttered on the tables. The proprietress, engaged half-heartedly in clearing them away, stopped at the sight of her.

“Have you heard?” she said. “The Russians are leaving Budapest.” As Anna looked at her, uncomprehending, she repeated it in her thick Berlin accent. “
Sie gehen
,” she said. “
Die Russen gehen
,” and produced a newspaper to prove it.

Anna read it while the woman scurried about, clattering the used crockery and turning the stained table cloths. Incredibly, it was true. She could hardly believe it. Why? she wondered. The West must have acted. A secret message from the White House, leaving no room for doubt. All the free countries together, united as they had never been against the Nazis until it was too late. She looked for news of Suez, but only found a small paragraph. Nothing much seemed to be happening there.

“They’ll be happy today in Budapest,” said the woman, putting down some coffee and rolls before her. “Dancing in the streets, it said on the radio. And they’ve pulled down a great statue of Stalin – whatever will they do with it, do you suppose? And they’re going to change everything and have things just the way they want them.”

Anna drank her coffee and felt suddenly better. It was all going to be all right. Unlike the Nazis, the Russians were not going to get away with it. Mama was alive and almost well again. She was going home – Konrad had said so. Just as long as nothing happens to stop it, she thought.

“I can just imagine how they’re feeling in Hungary,” said the woman, lingering by the table with the empty tray in her hands. “When I think of what the Russians did here…” And she embarked on a long rambling story about a soldier who had fired six shots into a stone gnome in her front garden. “And he was shouting, ‘Nazi! Nazi!’ all the time,” she said in a shocked voice. “After all, the gnome was not a Nazi.” After a moment’s thought she added, “And nor, of course, was I.”

Anna struggled to keep a straight face and stuffed herself with the rolls and butter. She did not want to be late for her visit to Mama, especially if she were leaving the following day. Even so, she missed her usual bus and had to wait ten minutes for the next.

It was cold, with dark, drifting clouds which every so often erupted into drizzle, and when at last she arrived at the hospital, the warmth of the entrance hall enveloped her like a cocoon. The receptionist smiled at her – I’m beginning to belong to the place, she thought – and Mama’s little room, with the rain spitting on the double windows and the radiator blasting away, was welcoming and snug.

“Hullo, Mama,” she said. “Isn’t it good about Hungary?”

“Incredible,” said Mama.

She was looking much brighter, sitting up in bed in a fresh nightie, with a newspaper beside her, and began at once to ask about the party and about Max’s departure. “So Konrad drove him straight from the party to the airport,” she said when Anna had described it all. It was the bit that pleased her most.

There were new flowers on her table, as well as a lavish box of chocolates from her office and a coloured card with “Get well soon, honey” on it and a lot of signatures. Konrad had rung up earlier, while she was in her bath, but had left a message that he would ring again. She leaned back into the pillows, relaxed for the first time since she had got better.

“By the way,” she said in the warm, no-nonsense voice which Anna remembered so clearly from her childhood, “the nurse told me what you did when I was in a coma – about you being here so much of the time and sitting on my bed and calling me. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. One doesn’t remember, you see.” She added with curious formality. “She says you may have saved my life. Thank you.”

Anna found herself unexpectedly touched. She cast about for something to answer, but could think of nothing adequate so she grinned and said, as Max might have done, “That’s all right, Mama – any time,” and Mama giggled and said, “You’re dreadful – you’re just as bad as your brother,” which, coming from Mama, she supposed was the nicest thing she could have said.

She looked so much more like herself that she decided to broach the question of leaving.

“Mama,” she said, “I’ve been here nearly a week. I’d really like to go home. Do you think, if I could get a flight tomorrow, you’d be all right?”

She was about to add various qualifications about keeping in touch and not going unless Mama was absolutely sure, when Mama said, in the same sensible voice, “I’m much better now, and after all it’s only ten days till I go away with Konrad. I think I’ll be all right.” Then she said, “But I’ll miss you,” and touched Anna’s hand gently with her fingers. “I’ve hardly talked to you.”

“You were talking to Max.”

“I know,” said Mama. “But I see him so seldom.” She said again, “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll write every day,” said Anna. She had decided this in advance. “Even if it isn’t very interesting. So that if you’re feeling low or Konrad is busy or anything, at least you’ll know that
something
will happen.”

“That’ll be nice,” said Mama. She thought for a moment. Then she said, “I’m sorry – I realize now that all this has been a lot of trouble to everyone, but, you know, I still can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t have done it.”

Anna’s heart sank.

“For God’s sake, Mama—”

“No, listen, let’s not pretend. Let’s talk about this honestly.” Mama was very serious. “I’m fifty-six, and I’m alone. I’ve done all the things I had to do. I brought you and Max up and got you through the emigration. I looked after Papa and I’ve got his books republished, which I promised him I’d do. Nobody needs me any longer. Why shouldn’t I die if I want to?”

“Of course we need you,” said Anna, but Mama gestured impatiently.

“I said, let’s be honest. I don’t say that you wouldn’t be pleased to see me occasionally, say at Christmas or something, but you don’t
need
me.” She looked at Anna challengingly. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me honestly, what difference would it have made if I had died?”

Anna knew at once what difference it would have made. She would have blamed herself for the rest of her life for not having, somehow, given Mama enough reason to go on living. But you couldn’t ask people to stay alive just to stop you feeling guilty.

“If you had died,” she said after a moment, “I would have been the child of two suicides.”

Mama disposed of that in a flash. “Nonsense,” she said. “Papa’s suicide didn’t count.” She glared at Anna, daring her to disagree.

“One suicide, then,” said Anna, feeling ridiculous.

They stared at each other, and then Mama began to giggle.

“Honestly,” she said, “can you imagine anyone else having a conversation like this?”

“Not really,” said Anna, and somehow they were back in Putney, in Bloomsbury, in the cramped flat in Paris, in the Swiss village inn – a close, close family surrounded by people different from themselves. As the familiar sensation enveloped her, she suddenly knew what to say.

“I’ll tell you what difference it would have made,” she said. “Though you may not think it enough of a reason. But whenever anything happens to me, anything good like a new job or even something quite small like a party or buying a new dress, my first thought is always, I must tell Mama. I know I don’t always do it. I don’t always write, and when we meet I’ve maybe forgotten. But I always think it. And if you were dead, I wouldn’t be able to think it any more, and then the thing that happened, whatever it was, wouldn’t be nearly as good.”