Sufferance, page 15
That was good, but when I bought the evening paper to read over my lunch, I found a new regulation had come into force that day with immediate effect: anyone wearing the badge would not be allowed into public buildings, into cafés or restaurants, or on buses or trams.
When I got home my wife took me aside and said there had been no problems with checks on identity-cards, but that as she and the girl were coming back for lunch, the concierge had given them a malign smile and remarked as if to herself: I wonder if we’ve forgotten something.
This was very alarming. We both interpreted it to mean that the girl should be wearing a badge. Our one comfort was that she had no evidence—as far as we knew—that the girl belonged to the community. Without that, she would surely not risk reporting the matter to the police because she must realise that if her suspicions were unfounded, she would not only annoy the authorities but irritate all the occupants of the other apartments on whom she relied for tips and various other favours.
* * *
The following afternoon the two younger girls went out to buy something just before we had supper. My wife and other daughter and I began to discuss the morality of the new laws on ‘ethnic hygiene’. My wife and I talked of how stupid and nasty they were, but my daughter disagreed and said: It seems to me that different kinds of people need to stay within their own groups. The mixing of blood is not a good idea. I said that might be true of dogs or cattle but not human beings. I wondered who had been putting such ideas into her head. I was horrified that a child of mine would express such sentiments. And it occurred to me that if she really believed those things, she was likely to prove an obstacle to the resolution of our problem.
* * *
The next day was a Friday, and my wife and I discussed in private whether to let the girl go to the café since it was in the city-centre. We decided that the probability of an inspection of identity-cards was relatively low since I had seen very few, and so the girl and I took the tram and got there at five. When we came in, the proprietor looked at us without smiling. Of course, he knew the girl was not wearing the badge as she should have been. In that moment it suddenly struck me that our visit was pointless since her parents—assuming they were wearing the badge—would not be allowed into the café anyway.
I insisted we stay no longer than the bare minimum. When we rose to leave the proprietor hurried forward and drew me out of earshot of the girl. In a low voice he asked me not to bring her again because he didn’t want any trouble. He seemed genuinely embarrassed and apologetic.
As we were waiting at the tram-stop, two members of the auxiliary police came along. To my dismay they stopped and asked us for our identity-cards. I had anticipated this eventuality, and my wife and I had prepared a response. I handed my card over but with a glance at the girl I said with a smile: My daughter has just told me that she has left her card at home, the foolish child.
One of the men copied my name and address into his notebook and asked for the girl’s name. I gave that of my younger daughter, which was what I had previously decided to do in such an emergency. They told me my daughter would have to report to the local police-station by noon tomorrow with her card and walked on. My heart was thumping, and when they had got some paces away I had a sort of nervous reaction in which the terror I had been holding at bay overwhelmed me. For several minutes I was struggling for breath and could not speak. The girl, in contrast, seemed completely unaffected, and I felt a strong sense of anger towards her—irrationally, as I knew even at the time. She could hardly be blamed for failing to realise how much danger we had been in—even though it was because of her.
I could not avoid telling my wife, and she was angry and upset at what had happened and at the fact that my action had implicated my younger daughter.
I told the girl we would not return to the café next week, and she threw a tantrum. I had to promise to go there every Friday in case any of her family appeared—though I knew that was not going to happen. And I had to agree to pass her house at least once a week to make sure that one of the café’s cards was still visible. In fact, I had decided it was too dangerous to go back to the café even alone since the proprietor knew of my connection with the girl, and if enquiries had led the authorities to him—which was perfectly possible since several people probably knew of the family’s visits there—he could tell them that I came there late on Friday afternoons.
* * *
The next morning I gave my younger daughter instructions and then accompanied her to the police-station in our district, where all she was required to do was to show them her identity-card. It was endorsed with a stamp saying the holder had been warned for failing to carry it and a further offence would be punished.
As I walked her to her tram-stop, I found I couldn’t speak and my eyes were filling with tears at the thought of what I had exposed my beloved child to. Suppose one of the officers who had stopped us yesterday had happened to be in the station and had noticed that the girl was not the one he had seen the previous day? By impersonating the girl she had committed an offence which, if discovered, could have resulted in very serious punishment for both of us. It was one thing to risk that for oneself, but for a parent to have put his child in that position was deeply shaming.
For the next few days, we dared not let the girl leave the apartment even for the comparatively safe streets of our district. With that stamp in our daughter’s identity-card, we could not use the same trick again.
* * *
I was walking from the office towards my tram-stop one day when I met a woman who had been employed in another section of my department. Because her work-place was near mine we had chatted occasionally, but she had been dismissed when the new regulations came into force because she had been unable to produce the required proof of an exclusively Christian heritage. We now talked for a while, and she showed me her new identity-card. It had a big yellow symbol on the cover, and when she showed me the page with her photograph I noticed that instead of referring to the bearer as a citizen, as all identity-cards had hitherto done, it described her as ‘an alien residing in the country by virtue of the goodwill of the national population’.
* * *
The next time I passed the girl’s house I almost failed to notice that the original poster had been covered by a new one which looked almost identical. The wording, however, was significantly different: Following the relocation of the original occupier, this property has been restored to the ownership of the nation.
Perhaps unwisely—but I couldn’t bear to deceive my wife—I told her that I was now sure that the girl’s father was not wealthy and that he was not going to return.
She told our elder child, and her response was impulsive and I’m sure she didn’t mean it: she said we should get rid of the girl, even if that meant just taking her to another part of the city and abandoning her. I refused and pointed out that she would be picked up by the authorities and would lead them straight back to us.
* * *
About now something I had foreseen happened. It was announced that the laws of ethnic hygiene were being tightened. From this point onwards, anyone without all four grandparents of what was called ‘ethnic acceptability’ suffered the civil penalties of those who had only two or fewer grandparents meeting the required criteria. Moreover, anyone married to someone in that category would suffer the same sanctions. I instantly thought of my brother-in-law. His wife was now in the ‘unacceptable’ category and so was he since a spouse, even with the required certificate of ‘ethnic acceptability’, suffered the same penalties as the person to whom he or she was married. Since he was a public employee, that would mean dismissal from his post with loss of pension rights.
* * *
Then one afternoon as I came into the building with my elder daughter, I passed the concierge’s son lounging against the wall with a couple of men who were wearing the uniform of the auxiliary police. They all stared at me in a boorish manner without returning my greeting.
That was a worrying development. If one of those thugs happened to be present when the concierge demanded to see the girl’s identity-card, it might be impossible to resist.
There was something else that I was worried about. I didn’t at all like the way the young lout looked at my daughter.
* * *
On the very day we had agreed to allow the girl out again provided she stayed close to the apartment, the wireless announced at breakfast that yet another regulation was about to come into effect. This one required that the concierge in apartment buildings note all comings and goings of tenants and their visitors, and it gave him or her the authority to check the identity-card of all non-residents. We all stared at each other in horror. The regulation came into effect in precisely two weeks. We had no time to discuss its implications before the three of us had to hurry off to catch our trams, but they were obviously ominous.
As we passed the concierge’s hatch she popped out and gave me a thin-lipped smile of triumph. I managed to smile back at the evil old crow and to say: In two weeks you will have your desire and be able to examine all the identity-cards you wish to. I said that in order to give the impression of breezy unconcern.
She said: How is your wife’s little niece, or perhaps I should say your little niece? Or your cousin or whatever it is this week. I never see her leave the apartment. Is she still there? Is she unwell?
I said: She has been a little unwell. Thank you for your solicitude.
As I travelled to the office I asked myself: Could an identity-card be bought on the black market? Could one be forged in the name of my cousin’s daughter? Could the girl’s identity-card—which was no longer valid since it showed she was over fourteen and which, because of the revealing surname, was very dangerous—be changed by forgery into an acceptable one?
One option I ruled out was returning to my former colleague and accepting his terms for getting her registration legitimised. Something that had been at the back of my mind now came to the forefront. During the three weeks following my meeting with him, I thought I saw him several times—twice in the street and once in a restaurant. On this very day I saw him again near my office and he looked at me—as he had not done on the previous three occasions—and made a grimace with his face that I took for a malevolent smile. How strange that having not seen him for a couple of years, I now kept glimpsing him. I could not stop myself wondering if he was following me. What did that leer mean? Was he inviting me to offer him the bribe? Was he commiserating with me after guessing that it was I and not some friend of mine who needed help? Was he threatening me? Or was he warning me of some danger which he knew of but I did not? Since he was working in the Department of Protection, I wondered if he had some idea of what was being planned for the ‘protected community’.
* * *
That evening there was yet another new announcement on the wireless. No member of the minority community was henceforth allowed to own a business of any kind or any real estate outside the Old City. All such assets would be confiscated by the authorities and sold to those with proof of citizenship. I had foreseen that, since it was the logical culmination of the vast process of accounting for assets that my department had been engaged upon. I realised it would hugely increase our workload.
* * *
Later that night my wife and I discussed the consequences of the new regulation about identity-cards. It meant we would have to keep the girl in the apartment all day, and she would be able to leave only at night when the concierge was asleep—and even that would be risky since she might choose to stay awake in order to check on us. And the girl would have to carry our younger daughter’s identity-card if she did ever get past the evil old woman and manage to go out. Moreover, since there would be few people about at night, the risk of her being checked would be high and the impersonation might be spotted.
Her health would assuredly suffer without either exercise or daylight. We had somehow to find a solution to the problem, and we had less than two weeks.
For some time it had happened that I would occasionally wake in the middle of the night and find my wife crying quietly beside me halfway between sleeping and waking. I had at first wondered whether to speak and try to comfort her, but I hadn’t done so. As the weeks passed, I found myself becoming less sympathetic and actually angry at her weakness and self-indulgence. Yet even at the time I knew that what was upsetting me was not her misery but my own sense of guilt.
* * *
The next afternoon I happened to overtake my elder daughter coming back from her tram-stop. As we entered our building, I saw that the concierge’s son was again hanging around the entrance with two of his auxiliary police friends. I went up the stairs but realised that my daughter had stopped to talk to them. I waited, but she did not look at me and seemed engrossed in her conversation. I continued up to our apartment. When she came in a few minutes later, I asked her what she thought she was doing paying any attention to a ruffian like that. She said she had talked to him a few times and he was more intelligent and pleasanter than I realised. She accused me of being a snob.
I hesitated to tell her not to speak to him again because it occurred to me that if she suddenly snubbed him, it would annoy him and increase the likelihood of his making trouble for us. Besides, I suspected she would not obey me.
My wife agreed with me later that night that our daughter showed signs of rebelling against the values and traditions we had taught her. For several weeks she had been making remarks about being nothing more than a downtrodden worker now that she was slaving for a pittance in a low-skilled job. And on several occasions she had sneered at us and her sister for what she called our ‘bourgeois assumptions’.
* * *
Our lives were being dramatically changed because of the presence of the girl. Almost without making a conscious decision, we had taken measures to hide her existence from people who came to the apartment. We had asked her not to answer the door if anyone knocked but instead to go to her room—at least until we knew who it was. We had started to discourage unannounced visits and had virtually stopped inviting people to our home. As a result, we found ourselves being asked out less and less often. That was only partly because of the privations of the wartime situation, which meant everyone found it difficult to offer hospitality. My wife and I accepted our increasingly restricted lives with resignation, but our daughters resented it and blamed it on the girl.
I calculated that by now the real value of my salary had dropped to half of what it was before the War began. And that did not take into account the extra expenses incurred in feeding and clothing the girl. The measures we had to take to save money were having a greater and greater impact on our lives. I often walked back from work to avoid paying the tram-fare. And since the number of trams had been reduced, it was often not much slower than waiting for one.
It was hard to blame my daughters for wishing the girl was out of the apartment, but I did try to stop them making their feelings known to her. Yet when they made such remarks to her face she fought back fiercely and would tell them how much she loathed being in our ‘tiny cramped little hovel’ and eating our ‘nasty badly-cooked mess’. Sometimes my wife and I would begin by defending her against our own children until her contempt for all of us became so offensive that we would round on her, and then the argument would end with her throwing a tantrum and uttering a tirade of insults after which she would run to her room.
Perhaps she should stay there the whole time, my elder daughter remarked after one such scene.
Her sister endorsed that in the most heartfelt terms.
How bitterly I wished I had paid the bribe that my former colleague demanded. If I had, the problem would have been solved by now.
* * *
Things were steadily getting more difficult for members of the girl’s community and even for people who did not regard themselves as belonging to it, but whose affiliation was now revealed on their identity-card. My head of section had seen the implications of the rules on ‘ethnic hygiene’ and had started threatening certain people with this argument: You are one-quarter alien but we can overlook that if you tell us where your fully alien cousins are hiding.
I could not stop worrying that if such pressure were applied to my brother-in-law over his wife and children, he might be forced to reveal I was concealing an unregistered member of that community. Not having heard from him for a few weeks, I decided to ring him from my office at his place of work. The colleague who answered the telephone at the hospital told me that my brother-in-law had been suspended ‘while he sorted out his private life’. When I asked what that meant, he said his marriage had turned out to be an ‘impediment to his career’.
I knew what he meant. I had heard of several cases where men who had married women who were wholly or partly alien were required to divorce them or face dismissal.
How ironic! I had confided in him only because his wife was compromised in that way but by doing so, I had put all of us in danger.
I decided it was not fair to keep from my wife the fact that I had told him about the girl and that he was now in trouble with the authorities.
Late that evening my wife and I sat in the living-room until one o’clock, and I told her what had happened with my brother-in-law. She was worried for his and his wife and children’s sake but also saw the danger to ourselves. We agreed that we had to resolve the problem of the girl, and we discussed various options at considerable length.
