Sufferance, page 17
My wife overcame her ingrained habit of reserve and started to gossip with the neighbours at every opportunity.
I played my part by sitting through whole evenings in a café diagonally opposite our building from which I could see its entrance and the windows of the concierge’s apartment.
That occasioned something which gave me further cause for alarm. On the third evening, I noticed a man in the café whom I seemed to half-recognise. Was he the individual who had been watching the girl and myself in the Viennese café? In that case, was it just a coincidence that he was here? Or was he spying on me?
We now had nine days left before the concierge had the right to demand anyone’s identity-card, and that was a short space of time to work out someone’s pattern of behaviour—especially a weekly cycle.
* * *
And then we had a stroke of luck. My wife picked up from a chatty woman on the first floor—the clockmaker’s wife—that every Friday afternoon after lunch, the concierge went to visit her sister on the other side of the city and arrived back a couple of hours later. The next day was a Friday, and the girl and my wife watched through the window. Sure enough, a taxi pulled up shortly after two o’clock, and the concierge boarded it.
She returned late in the afternoon. For all that time her hatch remained closed and dark.
The following Friday would have to be the day on which we carried out our charade. It was cutting it fine since the regulation giving her the right to demand an identity-card came into effect the day after that.
* * *
During the week-end my brother-in-law paid us a visit. He was deeply depressed as he told us that he and his wife had agreed a speedy divorce would be the best option. That way he would at least retain his post and therefore be able to pay for his wife—ex-wife, rather—and children to move into an apartment near his own.
When he had gone, my wife and I agreed that of course his family’s situation was pitiable, but we admitted our relief that it looked as if there was no reason for him to be tempted to report our breach of the rules.
* * *
On Sunday evening, the nine o’clock news had yet another announcement: No member of the ‘protected community’ was permitted to live anywhere inside the metropolitan district (which included a large rural area around the city) except the ‘protected area’ of the Old City. That rule would come into effect only one week from today. I listened in horror and out of the corner of my eye saw the girl’s face remain impassive, as if she did not see what it meant. But my elder daughter remembered the girl’s sneers at the poorer pupils who already lived there and said: It seems you might have to lower yourself to go and live with your own kind.
The girl stared at her as if she had not understood the words.
Late that night when we were going to bed, my wife pointed out that my brother-in-law’s plans would be thwarted since his wife would have to move to the Old City with their children. It was worrying, but I told her that, by the same token, there was a chance we might be able to get the girl off our hands and into the Old City. I would look into it.
* * *
We had an unwelcome visitor a few days later. There was a knock at the door just after supper, and when I opened it I found our former domestic standing there with a nervous smile. Without thinking, I asked her to come in, and my wife and I entertained her in the sitting-room. It was odd to be sitting with her while my wife waited on her, bringing her a cup of coffee and a plate of cakes. The girl had, of course, hidden in her room when the doorbell went. I made an excuse to go to the kitchen but popped into the children’s room and told her to stay there.
Our two daughters were perfectly happy to talk to the domestic—particularly the younger, who had always been a favourite of hers. The woman said she thought about all of us a great deal and had come merely to find out how we were in these ‘troubled times’. After a while she asked where the girl was, and since I had been expecting that question, I instantly said that she had left us and gone back to her family.
To my relief she showed no further interest in the subject. It had struck me as soon as I saw her that she had come specifically to find out about the girl—perhaps having heard that there were rewards for turning in unregistered aliens. She had certainly been aware that the girl was a member of that community.
Later I wondered if she had merely dissembled her interest in the girl in order to avoid arousing our suspicions. I didn’t think so, but it could not be ruled out.
She stayed only about forty minutes and said nothing about making a return visit.
* * *
On Tuesday afternoon, on the way home, I made a detour to the Old City and found that there were now only two entrances. The others had been sealed off by blocking streets with sturdy barriers and by bricking up doors. I stood at the eastern gate and watched as dozens of people arrived from other parts of the city or from the countryside. I saw the poor with their scanty belongings in a few battered suitcases, some pushing handcarts piled high with their possessions and often with chickens or ducks or rabbits in cages. And there were plenty of middle-class people getting out of taxis or being dropped off by friends with cars. As each passed the control-point, his or her identity-card was carefully scrutinised and compared with a list of names, and now and then some of them—including children—were made to stand aside for further checks. A few of those were taken away in the back of a police-van, a line of which was waiting nearby. It was clear to me that the girl would not be able to enter the Old City without it being discovered that her identity-card had not been renewed and, even more important, that the name on it revealed she was the daughter of a man of considerable interest to the authorities. They would want to know where she had been and who had been giving her shelter.
To bring her there and let her face that check-point would be to bring disaster down upon our own heads.
People were being allowed out of the Old City but only after going through another scrupulous check. I got close enough to listen, and the rule was that those who could prove they had legitimate employment which was considered to be useful to the state were permitted to leave as long as they returned by nine o’clock. All such employment for members of the ‘protected community’ was being phased out, however, and soon the only work that would be permitted would be inside the sealed perimeter.
That evening my wife mentioned at dinner that she had happened to pass the couturier where my daughter had worked, and it had shut down. When she asked at a nearby shop what had happened to the owner, she was told it had been raided a few days ago, and its owner and one of the staff had been taken away.
I looked at my elder daughter, but she continued to eat as if she had not heard her mother.
* * *
For some time there had been rumours about the planting of bombs in other cities and about similar terrorist acts of destruction in our city. So it was not a complete surprise when, the next day, there was an announcement on the evening news that had a dramatic effect on our lives—on the lives of everyone in the city, in fact. There would be a curfew with immediate effect. From eleven o’clock tomorrow night, nobody was to be out on the streets. There were no exceptions. Anyone found on the streets before six in the morning would be arrested or, if he or she tried to flee, shot on sight.
Also with immediate effect, there was to be a universal blackout in case of air-raids. At dusk the next day no street-lights would come on. Cars would be allowed only masked headlamps. No light could be shown by any private dwelling. To enforce that, a system of local wardens would be set up to patrol the streets looking for any chinks of light. Householders who contravened the rule would be severely punished.
Those were terrifying pieces of news. And yet at the same time they gave us a tiny thread of hope. If the authorities really believed there was a danger of the city being bombed, it implied the War was going against them very badly. And the introduction of the curfew suggested some sort of underground resistance was functioning.
What was certain was that our lives would become more inconvenient—perhaps more dangerous. We would be even less able to go out in the evening, given that we had to be safely home by eleven, and all trams, buses, and taxis would be off the road before that hour.
* * *
At last Friday came—the day on which we had to carry out the charade and the day before the regulation giving the concierge the right to demand an identity-card came into effect. And then disaster struck. When my wife went in to wake the younger girls, she found our daughter flushed and feverish. The doctor came later that morning and confirmed she had flu. Our plot depended on her, and so we had to postpone our plans for at least a week, thereby incurring the additional danger created by the new regulations.
My younger daughter could not be moved and had to have the bedroom to herself, so the girl was accommodated in that of my elder daughter. It was a small room, and she had only a mattress on the floor. This created friction since my elder daughter naturally resented the invasion of her privacy. Stuck in the apartment all day, the girl became bored and restless. Now that her attention was not to some extent absorbed by her relationship with my younger daughter, she became even more difficult and seemed constantly to be trying to provoke a quarrel. My elder daughter had never needed much provocation, and the temperature in the apartment rose.
* * *
To get away from the stifling atmosphere—a sick sister, a quarrelsome outsider, and two worried and I’m sure very irritating parents—my elder daughter started to spend even more time with the concierge’s son during the course of this stressful week. On several occasions they went over the road to his favourite bar and passed the evening there. It seemed strange to me that she was fraternising with the son of the woman who had appointed herself our enemy and whose malign interest in us was putting us in so much danger.
Eventually when she came in late that Wednesday evening after everyone else had gone to bed, I raised it with her. She was very indignant and said that by befriending the young man she was helping to avert suspicion and also finding out what he and his mother knew about us. I asked what she had learned, and she said he had not mentioned the girl and she was certainly not going to raise the topic. I felt reassured by that, but I pointed out that she was setting a bad example for her younger sister by drinking in bars late at night and in the company of idle riff-raff and sleazy collaborationists. She flared up and said I was a snob and they were ‘good lads’ who had failed to find any other employment. And far from being collaborationists, they believed that working for the auxiliary police was a way of serving their country. Then she brought up the old theme: she had no desire to live up to the hopes and expectations of her parents and did not have the brains to do it even if she had wanted to. She told me I should place all my hopes of that kind on her younger sister, who would probably become a brilliant scholar or lawyer or something like that. She would be content if she could just run her own little dress business. Of course I told her I loved her and would love her whatever she did with her life, and it ended with both of us in tears hugging each other. All the time we had to keep our voices to a whisper to avoid waking the others.
Thinking over what she had said, I realised she was very unhappy. Her hopes of entering the world of haute couture had been thwarted by the War, what work she could find was not much more than slavery, and she had nothing to look forward to since even if—or when—the Occupation came to an end, what followed might be as bad or worse.
* * *
My younger child recovered after a few days, and when the following Friday arrived, we all knew what we had to do. The plan was this: My elder daughter and I would leave the building earlier than usual—at 7.45 instead of 8. At that time of day, the concierge was busy with breakfast. We hoped she would hear us passing and assume my younger daughter was with us. In fact, she would remain in the apartment. She would have trimmed her hair—already fairly short—and dyed it the previous day on getting back from school.
I would take the afternoon off work by feigning sickness. Just before getting home for lunch, I would order a taxi from the stand a few streets away and tell the driver—a man we had often used in more prosperous times and knew to be reliable—to come at half-past two precisely. I would emphasise the need for punctuality.
If I saw the concierge on the way in, as I hoped I would, I would mention that I had come back early to take my cousin’s little daughter to the station, as she was going home. My wife would be accompanying her on the train and would stay with the child’s family overnight and come back the next day.
To avoid the danger that the concierge might decide to cancel her weekly visit to her sister just for the sake of inspecting the girl’s identity-card—which seemed unlikely—I would tell her that the girl was not leaving ‘for a few hours’ so she would assume she would be back in time to catch her.
That afternoon, the taxi would collect the concierge at around two if she kept to her usual routine. Not long after, as soon as the taxi I had ordered arrived, our younger child, looking as much like the girl as possible, would hurry down the stairs accompanied by my wife and myself carrying the suitcases. Anyone seeing our daughter would take her for the girl. If one of the neighbours tried to speak to her she would hold a handkerchief to her face and pretend to be weeping at the prospect of leaving us. She and my wife would get into the back of the taxi and make sure her face was not visible. I would deal with her luggage and also do something that I was dreading but accepted was necessary.
We needed to create some sort of scene in order to impress upon the memory of the neighbours the fact that the girl had driven off in a taxi. So I had agreed, very unwillingly, to provoke an argument with the taxi-driver.
I would angrily tell him he was late and we had agreed he would come at ten past two. He, poor man, would insist I was mistaken. I would have to raise my voice and shout at him—but not so offensively that he refused the fare altogether, and to prevent that happening, my wife would take his side and yell at me. The neighbours would certainly hear the row and look out of their windows. We would then drive off and be dropped at the station. We would pass through it and leave by another entrance where there were taxis waiting. (We didn’t want our driver to be able to gossip about our odd change of plan.) One of them would take us to a small boarding-house in a suburb on the other side of the city that I had already visited to arrange a room. There my wife and daughter would be left with the luggage. (One of the suitcases would contain nothing but my wife’s overnight things and my daughter’s school uniform. The other suitcase would be empty and would be sacrificed for the sake of the deception, and be thrown away by my wife.) My wife would stay there that night but my daughter would wait for an hour during which she would do her best to dye her hair back to its natural colour. It would be shorter, of course, but not very noticeably so. She would put on her school uniform, whose hat would cover her hair, and then set off for home by tram.
About an hour after leaving the house, I would return as if I had come back from the railway-station and then my younger daughter would get home at the normal time as if from school. My wife would return the following afternoon and mention to neighbours that she had escorted the child back to her parents’ village.
* * *
We had examined the plan from every angle and believed we had anticipated every eventuality. Of course, we were mistaken.
We did everything precisely as we had agreed: I came home, ordering the taxi on the way and telling the concierge my cousin’s daughter was leaving later that afternoon. From our window we watched the old woman get into her taxi and drive away, and when ours arrived promptly at half-past two, we three hurried down the stairs. However, the grille in front of the hatch was open, and as we passed it the concierge’s son called out to us: Stop. I need to check that kid’s identity-card.
I gestured to my frightened wife and daughter to go on ahead as planned, and they hurried into the street and boarded the taxi.
The lout came scuttling out from his mother’s apartment, but I blocked his way so he could not get to the street. I told him he was an impertinent oaf and had no authority to demand to see anyone’s identity-card. He shouted that he was deputising for his mother and therefore had her powers under the new regulations. I laughed at that and told him he was talking nonsense. As we argued, the people in the other apartments on that floor opened their doors, and I heard the same happening above us. I loudly said that all the tenants in the building were potentially inconvenienced by his attempt to arrogate such power to himself, and I heard murmurs of approval from the others.
He threatened to call the police, and I decided to brazen it out and said: You’re welcome to bother them and bring them round here on a fool’s errand, but I’m not going to let my cousin’s daughter miss her train. And you have no power to stop us going.
He stood with his great jaw hanging open, and I simply turned and hurried into the street. A moment later he came after me, but I jumped into the taxi and slammed and locked the door and told the driver to start. The churl grabbed the handle of the vehicle’s door and peered in as it drove off.
My heart was thumping, and as the taxi turned the corner the three of us laughed with relief and hugged each other. At least I had not needed to stage an argument with the poor taxi-driver. The concierge would hear all about that scene as soon as she got home.
