Читать книгу Mr. Emmanuel - Louis Golding - Страница 14

Table of Contents

By the time a couple of days had passed, Mr. Emmanuel realized that, so far as the four other German boys were concerned, he hardly existed. He was to them nothing more than a guest of Mrs. Cooper’s, like themselves—which, in a sense, was true. Klaus Bieber was hoping to go into a film studio, and most of his time was devoted to his camera and his lenses and his exposure-meter. It was not at all easy to break down the reserve of Hugo Baum, and Mr. Emmanuel was not encouraged to. The boy had inner resources which kept him secure. Siegfried Jacobson, the Nazi enthusiast, embarrassed him. The youth was too well bred to be actually rude to a fellow-guest, but it was evident he did not set any store by the good opinions of a slightly shabby Jew from a working-class street somewhere in the northern wilds.

There were moments when Mr. Emmanuel felt that this was much the most tragic case among these boys. The others knew of their exclusion, and with varying degrees of bitterness accepted it. Somehow, in the course of time, if they lived long enough, they would come to terms with their fate. Siegfried Jacobson never would. Excluded from the world that had won his blazing devotion, he loathed the world he was relegated to. He was young, but it did not seem any life could be long enough to resolve his dreadful dilemma.

Mr. Emmanuel persisted longer with Heinrich Levi than with any of these. It was impossible not to be intensely sorry for the boy, and Heinrich actually seemed friendlily disposed. He felt it might do some good if he made a party of three out of it now and again, himself and Bruno and Heinrich. Perhaps that might help to purge some of the mischief out of Heinrich’s system. It was Rose herself who requested him a day or two later not to go out of his way to have any dealings with Heinrich. As she spoke, her face burned and her eyes sparkled angrily. He guessed that the boy had been fooling him in some odious way. He sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and left it at that.

During the rest of the time the German boys were at Shipscar, Mr. Emmanuel and Bruno were never far from each other. They sat by each other at meal times and kept side by side in the picnic excursions to heath and forest. Above all when letters were handed out, Mr. Emmanuel saw to it he was close at hand—letters for Jacobson, Bieber, Levi, Baum, letters for Rose, letters for himself, no letters for Bruno Rosenheim.

“You must have patience,” Mr. Emmanuel murmured. “If not tomorrow, then the day after. Be a brave boy, Bruno.”

Bruno turned away his hurt and puzzled eyes.

“Yes, tomorrow!” he whispered. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

On the days when Mary Cooper senior did not bring her nephew to present his compliments to his mother, Bruno and Mr. Emmanuel often went over to Wain Cottage—it was not too much for the old man if he walked one way and got a lift the other. And while the two boys occupied themselves on the lawn with dogs and bricks under the watchful eye of the elders, the elders talked, or carefully did not talk, about old times in Magnolia Street, faces long gone, and troubles long blown over.

Bruno was not unhappy there at Wain Cottage, with Dick and the dogs and the old people, and macaroons for tea, and potato pikelets. He was taken out of himself. But Mr. Emmanuel did not need long to realize that Bruno was furthest from unhappiness when he was most taken back into himself, into the life he had known before his world broke into fragments about his head.

So he let the boy talk, as they went walking on the common, with the warm wind tugging the clumps of heather; or wandered down the paths of the forest, with the plumed bracken on either hand splashed over with gold and the butterflies heeling over between sunlight and shadow. It was chiefly of Haus Anna the boy talked, the bungalow in Lübbenau, summer holidays in Lübbenau, though the family had lived for most of the year in an apartment in the Motzstrasse, in West Berlin. The boy left him with an extraordinarily vivid impression of the place, as vivid as if he had himself spent summer upon summer there.

The red-tiled roof projected a great many feet beyond the walls. The tiles ran up to each other prettily, like little waves on a beach. The bungalow was surrounded on all sides by a deep edge of flat red tiles. There was a portico in front; on both sides you stepped straight out through latticed French windows. On the left there were two forms with a table between them, all of which were fixtures. They would usually eat there, when they did not take their meals in the punt with them. On that same side there was a row of pear trees, and when the petals fell they got into your hair and you looked like the Christmas Man. At the back the ground went down to one of the channels of the Spree—there were hundreds and hundreds in those parts.

They had a punt moored under a weeping willow. You steered it with a thing that was not a pole and not an oar. They would be in the punt sometimes all day, in and out of the water, or sunning themselves in clear spaces. They had a stove with them, and they would cook dinner on the bank, and Father would fry steaks and Mother would make omelets; she made omelets like feathers, better than anyone in all the world; and there would be several sorts of cake—he was always a great one for pastry—Käsekuchen and Streuselkuchen and Nusstorte. But often he would spend the whole day on land instead, at Fritschke’s mill, or at one of the farms, for the farmers were such friendly people. He loved going into the barns and stables, and talking to the horses and cows and brushing the flies from their faces. Or he would help bring in the hay, and he would be so thirsty, and Father would send drinks out to the haymakers, beer for them and for him a glass of süsser Most, sweet cider. And in the night-time Mother would sing at the little standing-up piano—they had a big one in the Motzstrasse—and the lamplight falling on her hair as she sang made her so beautiful he would be frightened, for fear she was not after all human, and one moment she would be there and the moment after there no longer.

But old Jo was there. He was always there. There was a good deal in Bruno’s memories regarding Jo; he figured second only to Frau Rosenheim herself. He was a valorous white rabbit, a Kosciuszko among rabbits, a Don John of Austria. A seasoned traveller, too, the way he travelled about from Berlin to Lübbenau, and back again to Berlin. In the Motzstrasse they used to keep his hutch on a balcony they had at the back of the apartment, overlooking the interior courtyard. But nothing would prevent him from walking into the sitting-room, large as life, whenever he felt like a little company. You could always tell, however, when holiday-time got round, for Jo would get restless and start drubbing with his hind legs on the floor as if it were a drum. On the journey between Berlin and Lübbenau he would settle down snug in his hutch like a king in his coach. He preferred Lübbenau, of course; the rest of the year was just intervals between Lübbenau. So it was for Bruno, too, in a manner of speaking. He used to dig deep holes for himself, this Jo, in the roots of the trees and alongside the fences. But you wouldn’t expect a poor rabbit not to try to make himself comfortable, would you?

Oh, a great fellow this Jo was; one ear up he had and one ear down, and a tiny plumed puff of a tail, and he had black eyebrows and big white whiskers and round, brown eyes with blue-grey pupils. His hind legs were like sledge-hammers—you should see him careering upstairs—and claws that turned round and grew backwards, so you had to cut them with Father’s razor-blades; even so he could dig up a hole in the garden like a sand-pit. He was as good as gold, really, but he could not be trusted with carrots, though he liked anything crisp, he would eat greenstuff all day, and he was very naughty with sweet pea shoots and shoots of young raspberry.

A local dog attached himself to them once at Haus Anna; his name was Fips; and it was grand to see how Jo would chase poor Fips round and round, and if Fips stopped to put up a fight, Jo would be round with his teeth in his hind legs quick as a flash. He could not abide cats, either; he would chase them off and they would run for their lives, except for the cat from the next garden; they were great friends, and it was pretty to see them drinking together from the same bowl. Then he would wash himself, as if he were just another cat, turning his head to lick the back of his neck; or, lifting his paw to his mouth, sometimes his leg stuck up straight behind his ear like a gun. Oh, but prettiest of all was to see my mother with a leaf of lettuce between a thumb and two fingers, and Jo nibbling closer and closer till he got down to Mamma’s finger-nails, and he would stop then, as if he must not hurt her.

I hope he is well, Mr. Emmanuel. I hope they are looking after him at Lübbenau, whoever has our bungalow now. No one can wish to do him harm.

No one could do him harm, Bruno. Is he not like a little lion? Have you got your Mundharmonika with you? Play me again that Pim-pam-pam. What? It is not Pim-pam-pam? How do you say it? Pim-pam ... No, I cannot. Play it for me again, Bruno.

So they walked through the English forest, by brakes of harebell and foxglove and tall hemp agrimony, the old man and the small boy, to the wild and silly and magic melody:

Die geliebte Pimpanulla

Schreit einmal Hula! Hula!

Und flugs ist sie im Walde

Und hakt den Schnabel ein.

Hula! Hula! Hula!

Sie hakt den Schnabel ein.

“Pim-pam ... pim-pam ...” Mr. Emmanuel tried again. “No, I cannot say it. It cracks my teeth.”

Now and again Mr. Emmanuel talked too; not for the reason that he was by nature a loquacious person, but because he thought it wise not to let the boy relapse into the moodiness that sometimes befell him, even within a few moments of a flare of gaiety. Mr. Emmanuel’s life had been Doomington, the Board of Guardians, the two pavements of Magnolia Street. But it was not of these things that he talked. He knew they would be to Bruno without meaning and without colour, like a foreign language spoken by dull people. Finding his gaze blocked as he looked into the past, he let his eyes rest on the future and, seeing Palestine there, talked of Palestine. He was making the journey, not because Zion was a mainspring of his heart, but because he seemed to have come to a dead end in Doomington, and one of his two surviving sons was out in Palestine and had called him over. He had read a good deal about the country, both the new towns there and the new colonies, but he had rather a hazy idea of it all. The pictures he painted for Bruno’s edification were incorrect, but they were enthusiastic, and for two reasons: he could not talk for long about anything without getting enthusiastic about it, and there was no hope of cozening Bruno out of his unhappiness with anything but bright colours and gay images.

The whole of Palestine in Mr. Emmanuel’s account, from Lebanon to Sinai, was one Vale of Sharon; orange groves massed their bronze lamps over all the uplands of Judea and Galilee; in the Vale of Esdraelon chickens laid eggs as prodigally as cows gave milk; picturesque Arabs in flying head-dresses performed equestrian feats worthy of Hagenbeck’s in the environs of their villages; Dizingoff’s Tel Aviv was a city of enchantment like Harun al Rashid’s Baghdad. The result of all that was that he began to discover in himself a certain excitement with respect to his migration to Palestine that he had not been conscious of before.

“And when you are grown up a bit,” he added, “maybe you also will come over to Palestine, Bruno, on a visit. And you will stay in my son’s colony; Ain Charod, they call it. My son has a quarter of a house there, with his wife and his children, God bless them, and it will be his father there also, and what a welcome it will be for you, Bruno, oi, what a welcome! And perhaps you would like to milk the cows there, yes? My son will let you. He is the Sar-Hachalav there, the big one for the milk. Perhaps even there will be a rabbit like Jo. Do you think there are no rabbits in Palestine?”

The boy sighed.

“There is only one Jo,” he murmured. “I wonder where Jo is now. I hope they are not forgetting to cut his claws when they are growing backward.”

Mr. Emmanuel studied the boy through narrowed eyes. Nothing meant anything to him, he saw, nothing that was not his mother or was not Germany. They were, in fact, the same thing. He might as well have talked of Doomington or China as of Palestine. He might as well have read out a tale from a story-book.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” he said to himself, “Rose will be getting another letter from the Committee in London. There may be something we can tell him he should have a little comfort. Please God!”

Mr. Emmanuel had wasted no time in fulfilling the promise he had made to Bruno within a couple of hours after their first meeting. The very next day he addressed a letter to the Committee in London that had in hand the affairs of the German refugee boys in London. The letter, endorsed by Rose, and stating the official position he had till lately occupied in communal affairs in Doomington, asked for all the information they had it in their power to give in the matter of Frau Rosenheim, the mother of the boy Bruno.

The reply was frank and friendly. The Secretary stated that her Committee was happy to note Mr. Emmanuel’s interest in Bruno. They regretted they could give no information at all respecting the present whereabouts of Frau Rosenheim. The last letter dispatched by her to either themselves or her son had been dated March 11. Since then they had written to her repeatedly at her address in the Motzstrasse in Berlin, but there had been no reply of any sort. A disturbing element in the situation was the fact that not one of their letters had been returned. Aware of the extreme unhappiness of young Bruno, they had addressed an inquiry to the offices of the Jewish Community in Berlin, though this would in any case have been done as a matter of routine.

After a long delay, a reply had been received to the effect that inquiries had been made in Berlin along the lines indicated, and it was regretted that no information whatsoever could be supplied. The tone of the letter, as well as its contents, was very discouraging. The Committee had not thought it wise to conduct any further researches into the matter. However, if fresh facts from any source should come to light, they would be pleased to communicate with Mrs. Cooper, who had taken so warm an interest in these unfortunate boys. Doubtless Mrs. Cooper would keep Mr. Emmanuel informed. Doubtless, too, she had let him know all that was known about Bruno’s father, regarding whom only one fact was certain—that he was dead. Since October of the previous year, it was desired to add, the Committee had undertaken complete responsibility for Bruno’s welfare. The Secretary begged to remain his sincerely.

No further letter from the Committee on the subject of Frau Rosenheim came to either Rose or Mr. Emmanuel during his stay at Shipscar. The idea occurred to him more than once that it might be of some use to address to the Community offices in Berlin a more urgent and personal letter than perhaps had so far been sent them. But he dismissed it. It seemed hardly wise or decent to go over the heads of the Committee in that fashion. There was nothing to be done or said, nothing to tell Bruno, that might be a crumb of comfort for him. So a fortnight went by, at Shipscar and Wain Cottage, in heath and forest, with mouth-organ and solitaire board. The boy did not lack courage, the old man did not lack tenderness. They had value for each other.

Then, on the morning of Monday, the nineteenth of August, two communications reached Rose. One was a wire from her husband John, announcing that his ship had arrived at Southampton. Would Rose and the girls go down and pick him up that evening at five o’clock at the company’s offices?

The second was a note from the Refugee Committee. It stated that they had been able to arrange to send the greater part of the boys under their care to several holiday camps throughout the southern counties. They wished to express their profound gratitude to Mrs. Cooper for having given such generous hospitality over so long a period to no less than five boys. They had received from all of them glowing accounts of the marvellous time they had had. None the less, the Committee had felt it to be a real imposition, and they were pleased to be able to transfer the burden of hospitality elsewhere.

One camp, on the south coast near Eastbourne, had volunteered to take on three boys for the remainder of their holidays. This was run by Father Wedlake, a parish priest from Poplar. Another camp, run by a Colonel Gillespie near Margate, would take on the two remaining boys. If Mrs. Cooper would be so kind as to divide up the group in the way she thought would be happiest for the boys, the Committee would be most grateful. There followed various details regarding equipment, times of trains, and renewed assurances of gratitude.

Out on the veranda Rose and Mr. Emmanuel discussed the two communications. The young people were scattered up and about the place. Bruno was not far off, his nose in a picture-book.

“I think he’s two days ahead of time,” said Rose. She was talking of John, her husband. “Of course, there’s not much fruit to bring back from South Africa this time of year.”

“It will be such a pleasure to see him!” said Mr. Emmanuel. “Such a pleasure! We will talk about old times! I wonder if he remembers. He should have given away once a gold watch——”

“A gold watch?” asked Rose vaguely.

“Let be! Let be!” Mr. Emmanuel dismissed the matter. “It is good I shall see him before I go back to Doomington!”

“Before you go back to Doomington? But you mustn’t talk of going back yet! You’ve only just come!”

“You don’t remember why I came, Rose? Now that the boys are going away, what for should I stay? You have had enough already with visitors!” There was a certain sadness in his voice. He was aware that his being there had made exactly no difference to most of those boys. Had he, after all, let Rose Cooper down? There was, however, Bruno. Yes, certainly, there was Bruno.

“But boys or no boys—” she began. Then she stopped. She did not want him to suspect the degree to which the boys had been a pretext. “John would be furious,” she continued, “if you ran off merely because he came home.”

“They will be happy in those camps, yes?” His mind was off on the tack of the boys. “The other boys will not make a fun of them because they do not talk like we do?”

“You mustn’t worry, dear Mr. Emmanuel. The Committee will have made quite sure they’ll be properly looked after. I hate losing them, but we’ve got to think of it from the boys’ point of view, haven’t we? It’ll be much more exciting for them, with games and sea-bathing and that sort of thing.”

“You’re right, Rose.”

“We have to divide them up, Mr. Emmanuel. Three and two. How would you do it?”

“Where Bruno is, neither Jacobson nor Levi,” said Mr. Emmanuel sombrely.

“Yes, I agree with you. Then it’s Klaus, Hugo, and Bruno at Roman’s Bight, the two others at Margate. Oh, but look! You know what Siegfried is. How will that be for little Heinrich?”

“He can give as good like he gets,” returned Mr. Emmanuel shortly.

“You know,” said Rose, “it’s a good thing the letter came today, the same time as John’s wire.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Of course I never asked John about putting up these boys. There wasn’t a chance, was there? Not that he’d have objected for one moment, the darling.”

“Why do you say it is a good thing?”

“I don’t know. I’m probably doing him an injustice. But the fact is—he has such a completely masculine time on board ... you know what I mean? If it was five little refugee girls now. No. That’s not fair!” She turned eastward and north towards Southampton, as if she were apologizing to John somewhere across there in the docks or the shipping offices.

“Of course, my dear,” Mr. Emmanuel protested gently. “I understand. It will be nice for him when he comes back he should be alone with his wife and his daughters! Who would not, with such a wife and such daughters!”

“And such a son!” she reproved him.

“And such a son!” he corrected himself. “You should forgive me. I forgot!”

“You’re not the only one who forgets!” she said a little tartly. Mr. Emmanuel looked up. “I’m sorry!” Rose was muttering. Her cheeks were as red as beetroot. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today! The things I’m saying!”

Mr. Emmanuel regarded her with fond eyes.

“Underneath you’re a bit excited, Rose. Isn’t it only natural? Isn’t he coming back today?”

“Oh, how right you are!” she exclaimed impulsively. “He’s only been away for six weeks and it feels like six years! I’m an old woman with four children——”

“Tscha! Tscha!”

“—and each time he comes back I’m as excited as I used to be, oh, hundreds of years ago, when I was a little girl in Doomington!”

“God bless you!” murmured Mr. Emmanuel. He fumbled in his breast-pocket for his handkerchief. There was a mist over his eyes, and in that mist he saw the blurred lineaments of a picture; he saw a hearth in a Magnolia Street kitchen, but no fire burned in it; he saw a table laid for one, and strange hands had laid it; he saw a spectacle-case on a sewing-machine, but no hands extracted those spectacles from their case any more.

“Oh, it was so funny!” Rose was saying. “Do you know, when he came back from sea, we used to hide in a café miles away on the other side of Doomington, in case anybody from Magnolia Street should see us!”

“Yes, yes. I think it was a talk once! How they used to chatter, those women! They have other things to talk about nowadays!”

“They don’t have to go till Wednesday,” said Rose. “Those boys, I mean!” The anecdotal mood had passed. She was suddenly practical again. “We’ll have to get another car for the luggage. Major Townley might give us a hand. He’s such a darling! Or we can send it on in advance by the carrier. Mr. Emmanuel! What are you looking so depressed about?”

“Depressed? Such nonsense!”

“Of course! What an old gasbag I am! You’ll miss little Bruno frightfully, won’t you? How stupid of me!”

“I was not thinking of myself. Have I not a lot of preparations to make? Is it round the corner, Palestine? I was thinking of Bruno. He is a little boy; you can hurt him so easy like you hurt a small kitten. He will be happy, you think, in a camp? A lot of boys playing jokes in tents and running about like lions and tigers?”

Rose looked concerned.

“You’re right. He’s a delicate little chap. I wonder whether it wouldn’t be too much for him?” She stopped and pursed her lips. Then an idea struck her. “Why on earth shouldn’t he stay out his holidays here? Why on earth shouldn’t he? I’ll fix it up with John today. Then I’ll write to the Committee. What do you think of that, Mr. Emmanuel?” She did not give him time for a reply. “Oh, good Lord!” she exclaimed, rising from her chair. “I’ll have to go and get that boy’s bed out of his den! Then I must run over and pick Dick up. I don’t know what John would say if he knew he was at Mary’s all this time! You go and play with Bruno, Mr. Emmanuel!” she requested, and disappeared into the house.

Mr. Emmanuel sat there a little glumly, his neck tugging on its tendons.

“I know what he will say about Bruno,” he muttered, “that strong man. A boy should learn to stand on his own legs. A boy should go into the world, he should knock off the rough corners. Perhaps also he is right. Who knows?”