Interpreters Read online

  ‘I loved the hostel and the Leeds place was quite cosy, actually, and this “Munster House” is a brilliant place to live. And, just for your information, people with cerebral palsy aren’t called spastics any more.’

  ‘I do know that,’ I said, ashamed as usual.

  ‘I know you do,’ he said kindly. ‘And anyway, what’s the point of looking back all the time – wondering how things might have been, what would have happened if things had been different? Things are just how they are or how they were.’

  ‘What’s the point in not wondering?’

  ‘So you can get on with your life.’

  ‘Is that what you are doing?’

  ‘I suppose it is. What I’m trying to do, anyway.’

  ‘And you’re saying I’m not?’

  ‘I didn’t say that at all.’

  ‘But you thought it.’

  ‘I didn’t, actually.’

  ‘You make me feel like some kind of freak,’ I shouted.

  ‘It’s your new hairdo and the tan.’

  ‘Don’t laugh at me.’

  ‘Well, don’t be so daft, then. How can I possibly make you feel like a freak?’

  ‘The way you just accept everything that happens to you. That happened to you when you were a child. The way you just see the good in everything. It makes me sick!’

  ‘I don’t think I see the good in everything. I try to – but it doesn’t always work. Some things that happen make it really hard.’

  He stopped and turned his face away from mine. Each time we met, it was our father’s death to which our meandering conversations returned. And each time we talked about him, Max’s eyes would fill with tears and mine would stay resolutely dry, while I felt a knot tighten in my throat until I thought I’d suffocate.

  ‘It was good Dad died so suddenly,’ I said after a while, when I felt it was safe to try to breathe again. ‘And without any pain or anything. He’d have made a crap hospital patient.’

  ‘You’ll have to watch it. You’re starting to see the good in everything,’ said Max, wiping his face with the corner of the frayed cotton bedspread.

  ‘But don’t you ever wonder who that woman was, at his funeral?’ I couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Which woman?’

  ‘The youngish one with long curly brown hair, standing a bit apart when everyone was leaving the crematorium.’

  ‘I don’t remember any young woman with long curly brown hair.’

  ‘You must do. I pointed her out to you.’

  ‘Given that we know absolutely nothing about Dad’s life apart from what Clara used to tell us, it could have been anyone. His secretary, a grown-up patient, a junior doctor, a nurse, the person from the off-licence where he bought his whisky and fags.’

  ‘But who do you think it was?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But don’t you want to know?’

  ‘Why would I want to know?’

  ‘I don’t know. To make sense of things.’

  ‘How would knowing who that woman was make sense of anything? It’s as though you’re always hoping that something will suddenly drop into place. People aren’t jigsaws. You can’t just look for missing pieces to slot in and complete the picture. Life’s not some kind of puzzle that you have to solve before you can get on with your own.’

  ‘What if she was his secret love-child? Wouldn’t that make you feel different about knowing or not knowing?’

  ‘It might, I suppose, though I’ve always found having one sister quite a challenge.’

  I went up to the window. A couple of magpies were strutting about on the flat roof. Two for joy. I wondered if my father ever felt joy. I wondered again what he felt when his hands began to shake too much to allow him to hold a scalpel, when there were no more press cuttings and publications for his mother to paste into her scrapbooks, when there was nothing left of him for her to be proud of. I wondered what he was thinking in the moments before he shut his eyes and his heart stopped and the cigarette fell out of his mouth.

  I went with Max to the hospital mortuary where my father’s body had been taken. Max went in first. I sat on a red plastic sofa in the little anteroom watching a nurse making notes in a cardboard file at a desk in the corner. From time to time she looked up and smiled at me kindly. There was a little hole in the sofa from which a small clump of white nylon stuffing billowed. I forced it back in and pressed the pieces of torn red plastic together. Then Max came out and sat down next to me. I felt my fingers creeping towards his leg. He took my hand and squeezed it. For a moment I thought we were back in Miss Everett’s class and that everything would be all right. I could feel his body shake as he sat there, crying quietly.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ he said after a while, letting go of my hand and wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand.

  ‘I don’t think I can go in.’

  ‘It was OK, actually.’

  ‘I don’t want to see him dead.’

  ‘I think you’ll regret it if you don’t. It’s important that you see him. Go on. I’ll wait for you here.’

  I draw up a chair to the bed on which my father has been laid out. He doesn’t look dead, just different. I put my hand on his, feeling his long, thin fingers. I can’t remember the last time I touched him. I can’t remember what I said to him the last time I saw him. I hope it was something kind but I’m not sure that it was. I want to say something to him now, even though it’s too late. Something important. I want to say, I told you this would happen, but you never listened. I want to say, I need you to know that I loved you all those times I shouted and threw my books around your study. I want to say, I loved our silent journeys. I loved the crazy meals you made us. I want to say, I wish I’d known you.

  I kiss him on his cold forehead.

  ‘Bye, Dad,’ I say.

  We thought my grandmother would give up and die when her only child – her genius son – predeceased her. At his funeral she looked like a tiny, frail old woodland creature, her rheumy eyes staring at the floor, her gnarled hands clutching the pew in the crematorium chapel. But when Max and I visited her a few weeks later it was as though she’d never had a son. Over coffee and plum cake, she talked about the lamentable decline in available bridge partners; about the new cash registers at the supermarket which none of the stupid girls had learned to operate properly. She asked Max if it was now time to stop all that nonsense work with the down-and-outs and take up his place at art school; or, better still, apply to a proper university. Perhaps it was not too late to do medicine after all. She told me she wasn’t surprised that I hadn’t had the intellectual ability to get into Oxford, but that I’d probably enjoy Edinburgh once I’d learned to understand the horrible accent. And what is this anthropology? Is it really a serious subject to study at university? It is such shame you are too unintelligent to study medicine. To be a doctor. Of my father there was no mention. And then there was Clara Eisenstein who married Arthur Rosenthal 1925, and they had, in 1926, Oscar – no don’t bother to write him down.

  My grandmother was very keen to reach a hundred. She didn’t care about the telegram from the Queen – for in Germany I am already so very famous. In her centenary year, she appeared in a well-received German television documentary about the lives of German exiles between 1935 and 1950. She was awarded some kind of honorary chair at a new medical school in Hamburg. And then, having reached her target during an extended trip to Germany, she came back to Oxford to die. Unfortunately for her, all those decades of swimming and fruit-picking worked against her. Her body refused to obey. Finally, at a hundred and four, she put her papers in order, locked up her house, admitted herself into an upmarket nursing home and, very efficiently, starved herself to death.

  The magpies on the roof were ousted by a group of starlings squabbling over a piece of mouldy bread. I heard the mattress squeak as Max got off his bed and came up behind me. He wrapped his arms around me.

  ‘You’ll be fine. We’ll both be fine.
The sins of the fathers, if there really were any sins, don’t have to be carried down the generations. We can make our own futures. Our own kinds of families in any way we choose. Like I’ve chosen these people here as my family. Hey! You’re finally getting fat! I hadn’t noticed before. It must be all that rice and groundnut stew you’ve been eating.’

  I waited for a few seconds – a few seconds in which Max’s hands tightened round my waist and I felt his warm breath on my neck.

  ‘God! Julia. How pregnant are you?’ he said very quietly.

  ‘Nearly five months,’ I replied, keeping my eyes on the starlings.

  Max went back to his bed and sat down.

  ‘Was that part of the plan?’ he asked.

  ‘I was the one who alphabetised my books, remember? And did fantastically complicated revision timetables. I was school librarian. I loved filing. I’m not exactly the having an accident kind of person. If I were, this would be a little Tony Wealden or some other St Peter’s reject.’

  ‘But you were always pretty crap at maths. And you didn’t think Tony Wealden was a reject at the time. Quite the opposite, I always thought, judging by the terrible noises the two of you made. You used to put me off my violin practice.’

  ‘You can’t possibly have heard us from two rooms away. And this wasn’t an accident,’ I said, lying down beside him and putting my hands over my small bulge.

  ‘So who’s the father?’

  ‘Well, that’s the slightly complicated bit. Well, not really slightly complicated.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. The incredible anthropologist.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘You’re a lot more obvious than you’d like to think. What’s he like?’

  ‘Lovely. And old.’

  ‘Like really old or just a bit older than you?’

  ‘Really old. Nearly sixty.’

  ‘God, Julia! Is this Oedipal or what?’

  ‘And married. With children.’

  ‘Oh, great!’

  ‘About my age – the children are.’

  ‘Isn’t this taking your anthropological research into the family and kinship a little too far?’

  ‘Since when have you been the expert on relationships? With your string of weeping, abandoned women and crazy made-up families of society’s misfits and cripples.’

  ‘I’ve never abandoned anyone. I’ve just never wanted that kind of relationship: just me and one other person living in a little house together. I’ve always been very clear about that, whoever I’ve been with. And we’re all misfits and cripples in some way, don’t you think?’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘Is the baby going to know its father?’

  ‘I hope so. But it’s tricky.’

  ‘Does his wife know?’

  ‘No. And she isn’t going to.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Bad. About the lie.’

  ‘More a lack of truth.’

  ‘I suppose so. Is that better or worse?’

  ‘Don’t ask me – Mum was always the one with the complex theory of truth and lies. Does she know about the baby?’

  ‘Not yet. She’s in transit again, I think. I’ll tell her when she next sends me her address.’

  ‘What do you think she’ll say?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Nor me. So it’ll just be you and the baby?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘It’ll be very hard. Have you really thought about it?’

  ‘Look, it’s not exactly as though our father played a huge part in our childhood. And at least my baby won’t grow up being torn in two all the time. Maybe a father who really isn’t there is better than a father who is there, but isn’t. And maybe a happy single mother is better than an unhappy married one. At least I’ll have the chance to do it right.’

  ‘Mum and Dad didn’t do that badly.’

  ‘I didn’t say they did. But there are lots of things I’ll do differently. And some things I’ll make bloody sure I do better.’

  ‘So what’s his name? The very old anthropologist?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘I can’t. I promised I’d never tell anyone.’

  ‘He can’t make you do that.’

  ‘It was my idea, not his.’

  ‘Why would you want to live with a secret like that hanging over you?’

  ‘If it’s really only me who knows who the father is, then nothing bad can come of it. No one need ever be hurt.’

  ‘How did you work that one out?’

  ‘Look, it makes sense to me, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?’

  ‘What about this one?’ Max asked, pointing at my stomach.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘What’ll you tell the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll work something out.’

  ‘Clara will be pleased that the family name will live on. I’m assuming you won’t be giving the baby its father’s surname?’

  ‘No. And not mine, either.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Just make up a name?’

  ‘I am, actually.’

  ‘Well, that’s different.’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Leave Cameroon, Julia. Come back and live here with me. In my lovely Munster House.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got a career and a life to get on with.’

  ‘What if the baby-with-the-made-up-surname gets some terrible tropical disease?’

  ‘Millions of babies grow up perfectly healthily in Africa.’

  ‘And millions don’t. Live here with me. I’d look after you both.’

  ‘I know you would. And it’s good to know that.’

  Max rested his head on my stomach.

  ‘Does it move at all?’

  ‘Lots. Especially in the evening. And if I’m listening to music. Sod’s law it’ll be musically talented. You can be bloody sure I’ll never let it anywhere near a violin!’

  ‘Hello, baby,’ Max whispered to the little bump. ‘You’re going to need all the help you can get with my crazy sister for a mother. But I’ll be here for you.’

  I took a handful of Max’s blond curls and pulled. Very hard.

  XIII

  Go on.

  I told you. We just ran and walked. From the 22nd of April until the 31st of May.

  (SILENCE)

  Do you want to tell me any more?

  I really can’t.

  You really can’t remember?

  Can’t remember? I can’t forget.

  So tell me. The things you can’t forget.

  And then what? Is that supposed to make me feel better?

  It might. Have you told anyone else?

  Told them what?

  What you did? What you saw? All those things that you can’t forget?

  You keep asking me that. Who should I tell? The postman? The man who reads the electricity meter? Who do I ever see? Who could I possibly tell?

  You’ve never spoken about this to anyone?

  Never.

  You must have told someone.

  No one.

  You have never told anyone any of the things you have told me over the past few months?

  I tell the ghosts. In my head. Over and over and over. They go round and round, year after year – the stories in my head. Over and over and over. Sometimes they change a bit. But not much.

  Try and tell me. Think of me as one of those ghosts.

  (LONG SILENCE)

  We travelled by night, sleeping by day in forests, ditches or burned-out farms. It was unusually warm, the spring of 1945, but the nights were still cold and we’d wake up with numb fingers and blue lips. Every time we stopped to sleep, I’d get out my little red leather notebook and record the date and the name of the nearest town or village if I knew it. I don’t know why. It seemed important at the time. Often we came across young German soldiers wanting to know whether the war had e
nded yet, where the Russians or Americans were, and whether we had any food. On April the 25th we met up with a small group of factory workers and travelled with them for a few days. They were an optimistic crowd, convinced that it wouldn’t be long until the war would be over and there would be an end to all the running. On the third night of travelling together, we’d walked about half a kilometre along a little dirt track when I realised I’d left my notebook in the hollow tree trunk I’d been resting in during the day. I told my mother to go on with the factory crowd and I’d catch them up. I remember it was a full moon and it didn’t take me long to retrace my steps to the tree and there was my notebook where I’d left it. So I stuffed it deep into the pocket of my black trousers with my angel and my identity card. And then I heard this voice – ‘Hey! Germanski!’ And I turned round and there was this Russian soldier. I can still see his face so clearly. Those dark slanting eyes. He grinned at me. His teeth were chipped and tobacco-stained. He took my arm and I jerked it free. He wasn’t smiling any more. He grabbed my wrist and I bit him in the hand, as hard as I could. God, was he angry! I saw him pick up his gun with both hands, and he smashed the butt into my face.

  (SILENCE)

  And then?

  And that’s the end of that particular story.

  Is it?

  It is. So after – after some time – I carried on walking through the forest, hoping I’d find my mother and the factory workers again, but I didn’t. Everywhere I walked, there were scenes of such terrible destruction. Whole villages lying empty; goats and cows with bullet holes through their heads, crawling with maggots and bluebottles; a woman lying dead outside her burning house, her dress around her head. All those bruises and the blood – blood everywhere. Have you ever smelt congealing blood? And then one day the Russians found a group of us searching for food in an abandoned farm and they took us away. They marched us to the edge of a lake where they arranged us into a line along a wooden landing stage. There were eight or nine of us. Men and women and one small boy who was clinging to his mother’s leg and crying. The girl next to me was about my age. We’d become quite good friends over the past few days of scavenging together. And they aimed a machine gun at us. And they pointed to the first man and said, ‘Germanski?’ And he said, ‘Ruski.’ And they laughed. And shot him. And then they pointed at the mother with her child and said, ‘Germanski?’ And she just shook her head and clutched her child, too terrified to say anything. And they shot them both. And then they said the same to me and I said, ‘Hollandski,’ and shut my eyes. And they said, ‘Hollandski! Komm!’ And, as they drove me towards their camp in a nearby farmhouse, I could hear the crackle of the machine gun and the splashes as, one by one, the bodies fell into the lake. (LONG SILENCE) I still remember that girl’s name. The one who stood next to me. Christiana. I can still see her standing there next to me. Even now, when I shut my eyes.