The One I Was (28 page)

He looked from of us to the other.

‘Off you go.’

He spat at me. I stood back so that the globule landed on the slush at my feet. I watched until I was sure his dark shape had left the garden. I switched off the recorder on my mobile. ‘I don’t know if this will be admissible after all these years.’

‘What will?’

‘His confession to deliberately running over a woman in 1981.’

She let out a gasp.

‘Let’s go in,’ I said. ‘I want to check on Benny.’

I ran upstairs, not even bothering to take off my boots, Sarah following me. He slept on. I washed my hands in his bathroom and found gauze swabs, which I dipped in water.

‘What’s that for?’ Sarah asked, from the doorway.

‘Moistening his mouth.’ I removed Benny’s oxygen mask. ‘He’ll be finding swallowing hard now.’

The doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be the police,’ Sarah said. ‘They said they’d be quick, as we’re two women alone with a very sick old man. They must have had a car in the area.’

‘I don’t want them to come into the house and disturb …’ I blinked.

She squeezed my arm. ‘Go out and have a quick chat with them. I’ll take over here.’

I looked at Benny. ‘He probably needs the mask back on. But …’

‘I know,’ she said. Our gazes met. ‘He told me very clearly he didn’t want to be kept on oxygen when it was completely hopeless.’

She stood there with the mask in her hand. ‘Let me think about it.’

I sat with the police in their car. ‘I can’t stay long,’ I told them. ‘I’m nursing a patient who is going to die very shortly. He needs me.’

‘Tell us about this intruder.’ The female officer’s voice was very gentle. ‘You said you know him?’

I told her about Cathal and Mum and the fire. ‘I don’t know how far back your records go. You might have notes about what happened here thirty years ago. I hit him on the head when I was a child, by the way. He’ll tell you that. I had to. He seemed to want my mother to burn to death. My father dug up some stuff about him after her death as well,
suggesting he’d been exploiting vulnerable people.’ I sensed uncertainty in her kind face. ‘I know it sounds paranoid. You need to hear this.’ I dug out my phone and played the recording I’d made on my phone.

They sat, looking restless for the first minute. Until they heard Cathal’s sneering voice calling Smithy an old Sappho-worshipping dyke, and admitting that he’d deliberately knocked into her bicycle and run over her. The atoms in the police car became charged with something more purposeful.

‘I’m going in now,’ I told them. ‘To my patient. Thank you for coming out.’

‘We’ll go and see if we can pick this Cathal up,’ the woman officer told me.

‘We’ll need a witness statement from you,’ her male colleague added. ‘Lock your doors and wait to hear from us. I’ll make sure someone drives past the house again in half an hour and regularly through the night.’

I went into the house and upstairs to Benny. Sarah sat beside him, holding his hand. He looked wide awake now, the oxygen mask still off. Relief flooded his features when he saw me.

‘Glad you’re here. Stronger … Might not be again.’

Sarah stood up. ‘You sit here, Rosamond.’

‘Need you … read something,’ he whispered. ‘My past.’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ I said. ‘Nobody wants you to return to events that are distressing.’

‘Needs telling.’ His breaths were coming in gasps now. ‘Most myself when I’m writing.’ He struggled for air. I reached for the oxygen mask.

‘Don’t speak any more for now. Rest.’

‘No.’ He turned his face away so that I couldn’t fit the mask. ‘Laptop.’

It was there beside him on the bed. I switched it on.

‘Files … “Rudi Lange”.’ He gasped in a breath.

‘First you’re going to put this on.’

This time he let me attach the mask. I waited until his breathing settled before searching the few files loaded on to it. The first three seemed to cover Benny’s financial and legal arrangements and his funeral wishes. Three other files were entitled ‘Rudi Lange1’, ‘Rudi Lange 2’ and ‘Georg Lange’.

‘I’m opening the first Rudi Lange file,’ I told Benny.

33

If you’re reading this it’s because I’m almost dead, in my last hours, probably. Cancer wouldn’t have been my preferred way to die. But what would? Dying of a quick heart attack, perhaps. At the same time as the death of my beloved wife, Lisa. But fate didn’t intend that for me.

        
Writing this account of my last days in Germany in the form of a third-person narrative is a coward’s way out, but it’s the only way I can return to the events of January 1939. Kristallnacht was only seven weeks past. Those friendships between Jews and non-Jews still existing were severely tested. But some remained strong.

        
The story starts with an Aryan boy, Rudi Lange, offering to assist his Jewish friend Benny, who wanted to travel on a Kindertransport to Britain. Benny was already sick with what turned out to be diphtheria, so Rudi took his place at a medical examination, essential for permission to emigrate to Britain. The boys had feared that a full examination of Rudi would expose the fact that he hadn’t been circumcised and concocted an explanation. In the event the doctor, a kindly man, didn’t seem interested in anything below Rudi’s waist and had stamped the form with no more than a searching look at him.

        
The boys’ plan was for Benny to collect the completed medical form, and go on to the railway station the following evening. Both of them had probably assumed that Benny, who’d hitherto been fit and healthy, would throw off his sickness.

        
But Benny’s condition grew worse. He didn’t reappear at the Langes’. So next morning Rudi played truant from school and took the tram to a part of town he hadn’t visited before, to find his friend.

        
The buildings looked different with their crumbling plaster and unwashed steps. The people on the streets wore old clothes like Benny’s, with the exception of a few women in smart coats and hats who might have belonged in the smarter cafes in the town centre.

        
At school they’d be reading the register now, before racial theory. There’d be a storm when Rudi’s name was called and he didn’t answer. He’d say a sudden illness had struck him on the way to school and he’d sat on a park bench, too feeble to return home until the faintness had passed.

        
The tram was slowing, the conductor removing his cap and rubbing his head in an anticipatory way. This must be the last stop before the tram turned back to the town centre. Rudi jumped off. Who to ask about Benny? A small group of men in faded black suits stood on a corner. He asked them. They looked at one another before one of them answered, in short sentences, not meeting Rudi’s eye. Nobody had heard of Benjamin Goldman.

        
‘He’s only been here a short while,’ Rudi insisted. ‘Have you seen a new boy round here?’

        
More suspicious looks were exchanged. They knew someone like Rudi shouldn’t be here. Perhaps they thought he was spying on them for the authorities. Sometimes you heard about children doing that. He walked off, feeling the men’s eyes on his back. Across the road, observing him, was one of the older Jewish boys who’d once let him play football. Herschel had always been suspicious of Rudi. He didn’t look that welcoming now.

        
‘Herschel?’

        
The older boy was thinner than Rudi remembered, and the challenge in his eyes was like a dagger. ‘What do you want, Lange?’

        
‘I want to see Benny.’ Rudi put a hand into his pocket and pulled out the bread roll. ‘I’ve got food.’

        
‘A bit of bread? Your leftovers from breakfast?’ Herschel bared his teeth into an expression that might have been either a smile or a snarl. ‘Benny used to eat the best. His mother ordered their bread from that smart bakery in the marketplace. Know how I know that, Lange?’

        
He shook his head.

        
‘My father used to own that bakery. What do you want with Benny, anyway, apart from giving him your leftovers?’

        
‘I’ve got his signed medical form. For the train tonight. To England. He needs to go, doesn’t he?’

        
Herschel slumped against the boarded window of the shop behind him and studied him in silence for a moment. He nodded along the street to a doorway. ‘Through that courtyard. Second door on the right. Third floor, apartment six.’ He shuffled against the boarding. ‘But you shouldn’t go up there.’ He said it grudgingly. ‘Benny’s ill. Really ill.’

        
Rudi managed a shrug. Herschel’s aggression seemed to shift to something less hostile.

        
‘Good luck.’

        
Rudi didn’t know whether this was intended for him or Benny.

        
He walked through into the courtyard, past the lidless dustbins, scrawny cats and lines of washing. The second door on the right led to a staircase. He climbed the
stained stone steps. By the time he’d reached the third floor the smell was making him gag. Blocked drains. And something else, something sickly, like meat left out too long. He thought someone might be watching him and spun round to look down the steps. Nobody. Probably just another stray moggy running downstairs.

        
The apartment door opened to a push. Nobody answered his quiet greeting. Where was Benny’s aunt? Trying to find work or food, Rudi guessed. He walked through a room that seemed to be bathroom, bedroom and kitchen combined. A woman’s hat on a small table. Green lino on the floor, but worn away in large patches so that it looked like lace. A pair of shoes under a chair, Benny’s probably, soles curved up like bananas. A further door opened at the end of the room. Rudi opened it and went through, blinking to accustom himself to the dark.

        
Benny lay on a couch with a brown blanket over him. On a small table next to him stood a jug of water, a glass and a photograph of himself as a toddler with his parents. Benny had never talked much about his father. They’d come for Herr Goldman a long time ago now.

        
Benny’s face was the colour of paper. It was only by watching him intently that Rudi could see his abdomen actually rising a millimetre or so every few seconds. ‘Benny.’ He spoke the name in a whisper, still afraid to break the silence.

        
No response. Rudi moved closer and laid a hand on the other boy’s arm. ‘It’s me, Rudi.’

        
Benny’s eyes opened slowly, as though they were weighed down. ‘Why did you come here?’ The words were hard to make out. Benny was speaking as though someone had stuffed a cloth down his throat. One of his hands pulled at the sheet. Rudi stood back. Benny’s neck was like a bull’s: misshapen and swollen. Around his mouth the skin looked blue.

        
‘I brought you some bread.’ Rudi took out the bread roll. ‘But you probably can’t eat hard stuff.’ He put it on the table. ‘And I’ve got your medical form.’ He patted his satchel. ‘Stamped and signed.’

        
Something crackled underneath the blanket. Rudi could make out the edge of more papers and Benny’s identity card. The effort made Benny slump back for a moment before he pulled the papers out. ‘Please.’

        
Rudi took them from his friend’s trembling hand. One was a sheet with what looked like English words on it, with a photograph of Benny stuck to it. Benny coughed, a horrible long rasping sound, and a thin yellow liquid ran from his mouth. He gasped, making no effort to wipe it away. There didn’t seem to be a handkerchief. Rudi watched the yellow thread run down Benny’s chin and onto the pillow.

        
‘You must be on that train, Benny,’ Rudi said. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to get you there, though.’

        
Benny didn’t seem to have an answer either. Rudi touched his arm.

        
‘Wake up.’ Benny was very still. Rudi watched him closely. His chest wasn’t moving. Rudi put a hand on Benny’s cheek and touched it. No response. He ran to the door. Herschel might still be out there in the alley, he’d know what to do, how to wake Benny. There must be a doctor somewhere round here. Or they could take him to the Jewish hospital where Benny’s mother had gone. Rudi sprinted down the three flights of stairs to the courtyard. Herschel was still where Benny had left him, slouching against the boarded-up shop. He started when Rudi shook his arm.

        
‘Benny’s not moving. He needs a doctor.’

        
Herschel ran past him, reaching Benny’s rooms with Rudi in pursuit. He sank to his knees beside the boy’s couch, shaking Benny’s shoulder and calling his name,
putting his head to Benny’s chest. His shoulders sagged. He turned very slowly to Rudi, looking both older and younger at the same time.

        
‘He’s gone.’

        
‘Gone?’

        
‘Dead.’ Herschel pulled the blanket over Benny.

        
Benny couldn’t be dead. Not the boy who could whack a ball into the goal from halfway across the park. Rudi shook Benny’s shoulder under the blanket.

        
‘You won’t wake him.’ Herschel spoke quietly. ‘Go now. It won’t be good for you to be found here. There are things I need to organize.’

        
‘What do we do with the papers?’

        
Herschel seemed to be daydreaming, his face losing some of its hardness. He looked at Rudi as though he’d forgotten who he was. ‘Papers?’

        
‘For England.’

        
Benny had wanted to take this train so badly. And now it had all come to nothing.

        
‘It’s probably too late now.’ Herschel seemed to be thinking it over. He walked into the other room and searched among the few objects in it, finding a scrap of paper and stub of pencil. ‘This man works for the Reichsvertretung, a Jewish Organization. You’ll find him at the orphanage.’ He scribbled something on the scrap. ‘Here’s the address. Tell him Benny’s dead and give him the papers.’ Herschel returned to where Rudi stood, staring at Benny’s shape under the blanket. ‘There’s probably not enough time to find another kid, though.’