A Small Person Far Away. Judith Kerr

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СКАЧАТЬ might be the place where Papa lay buried. If Mama died, she supposed she’d be buried with him. If Mama dies, she thought suddenly with a kind of impatience, I’ll be the child of two suicides.

      There was a click as something was put down on the folding table in front of her, and she became aware of the stewardess standing nearby.

      “I thought you might like some coffee,” she said.

      Anna drank it gratefully.

      “I was so sorry to hear of the illness in your family,” said the girl in her American voice. “I do hope that when you get to Berlin you will find everything better than you expected.”

      Anna thanked her and stared out at the brilliant sky and the melting clouds below. But what do I expect? she thought. Konrad had only told her that Mama’s condition was unchanged, not what that condition was. And in any case, that had been last night. By now… No, thought Anna, she’s not dead. I would know if she were.

      As the time of arrival approached, she tried to think what it would be like meeting Konrad. One thing, it wouldn’t be difficult to find him, because he was so tall and fat. She’d see him over the heads of the other people. He’d be leaning on his walking stick if his back was giving him trouble as it so often did, and he’d smile at her with his curiously irregular features and say something reassuring. He would be calm. Anna imagined him always having been calm. You’d have to be calm to stay on in Germany under Hitler as a Jewish lawyer defending other Jews, as he had done.

      He had even remained calm when they sent him to a concentration camp. By being calm and unobtrusive, he had survived several weeks, until his friends managed to get him out. Nothing too terrible had happened to him, but he would never talk about what he had seen. All he would say was, “You should have seen me when I came out,” and he would slap his paunch and grin his lopsided grin and say, “I was thin – like a Greek youth.”

      He would certainly have made sure that Mama had the best possible treatment. He was very practical. Anna remembered Mama telling her that in England he had supported a wife and two daughters by taking a job in a factory. The daughters were grown up now, but he seemed not to care too much for any of them and seldom went home.

      “We are now approaching Tempelhof airfield,” said the stewardess, and all the lighted messages about seat belts and cigarettes flicked on.

      She looked out of the window. They were still quite high and the airport was not in sight. I suppose all this is still East Germany, she thought, looking down at the fields and little houses. They looked like anywhere else and presumably would have looked just the same under the Nazis. I only hope we land in the right place, she thought.

      The last time she had landed in Berlin had been with Richard. They had arrived at short notice, to tell Mama that they were getting married. It had been a curious, edgy visit, even though she’d been so happy – partly because she so hated being in Berlin and only partly because of Mama. Not that Mama had been against the marriage – on the contrary, she had been delighted. Only Anna had known that for years Mama had secretly dreamed of her marrying someone quite different.

      In Putney, when Papa’s health was failing and everything seemed hopeless, Mama had had a kind of running fantasy about this marriage. It would be to a lord – a very grand kind of lord with a big estate in the country. Anna would live with him at the castle, and Mama would live at the dower house (there always was a dower house, she had explained to Anna). There would be an apple-cheeked housekeeper to cook muffins for Mama to eat in front of the fire, and on fine days Mama would ride about the grounds on a white horse.

      Of course she hadn’t meant it. It had just been a joke to cheer them both up and, as Anna had frequently pointed out, Mama couldn’t ride. Even so, when she told Mama about Richard, she knew that somewhere in her mind Mama was regretfully relinquishing the image of herself prancing about on this great bleached beast, surrounded by grooms or hounds or whatever she’d imagined for herself, and it had made Anna nervous.

      Another thing that had made her nervous was that Mama did not really understand Richard’s work. She got most of her information about England from Max who, as a rising young barrister, seemed to her a more reliable source than Anna with her art, and Max had told her that he did not have a television set, though they were considering buying one for the au pair girl. This had made Anna nervous of what Mama might say to Richard, or even when Richard was anywhere near, because Mama’s voice was so loud.

      It was silly because Richard was quite able to take care of himself. But she had been grateful to Konrad for steering Mama away from dangerous subjects. As soon as Mama got started on literature or drama (she tended, in any case, only to quote Papa’s views, and not always correctly) he had looked at her with his nice, ugly smile and said, “It’s no use talking about these things in my presence. You know perfectly well that I’m illiterate.”

      The plane tilted to one side. Anna could see Berlin, suddenly close, above the wing, and the airport beyond it. We’ll be down in a minute, she thought, and all at once she felt frightened.

      What would Konrad tell her? Would he blame her for not having written to Mama for so long? Did he even know why Mama had taken the overdose? And how would she find Mama? Conscious? In an oxygen tent? In a coma?

      As the ground came towards her, it was like the first time she’d jumped off the high diving board at school. I’m going into it, she thought. Nothing can stop it now. She saw with regret that there was not even a veil of cloud to delay her. The sky was clear, the midday sun blazed down on the grass and tarmac of the airport as it rushed up towards her, then the wheels touched, they roared briefly along the runway and stopped with a shudder. There was nothing to be done. She was there.

      Konrad was standing near the door of the arrival lounge, leaning on his walking stick as she had expected. She walked towards him through the blur of German voices, and when he caught sight of her he came to meet her.

      “Hullo,” he said, and she saw that his large face looked worn out and somehow skimpy. He did not embrace her, as he normally did, but only smiled at her formally and shook her hand. She was at once apprehensive.

      “How is Mama?” she asked.

      He said, “Exactly the same.” Then he told her flatly that Mama was in a coma and had been ever since she had been found on Saturday morning and that there had been some difficulty in treating her because for a long time no one knew what she had taken. “I cabled Max this morning,” he said.

      She said, “Shall we go to the hospital?”

      He shook his head. “There’s no point, I’ve just come from there.”

      Then he turned and walked towards his car, slightly ahead of her, in spite of his bad back and his walking stick, as though he wanted to get away from her. She hurried after him in the sunshine, more and more distressed.

      “What do the doctors say?” she asked, just to make him look round, and he said wearily, “The same. They simply can’t tell,” and walked on.

      It was all much worse than anything she had imagined. She had thought he might blame her for not having written to Mama, but not to the extent of wanting nothing to do with her. She was appalled at the thought of coping with all the horrors to come alone, without his support. (If only Richard were here, she thought, but cut the thought off quickly, since it was no use.)

      When he reached the car, she caught up with him and faced him before he could put the key in the lock.

      “It was because of me, СКАЧАТЬ