‘Well you could do worse. You could be like them. You could read books with pages torn out of them and think you’ve stumbled upon truth. You could subscribe to a belief system. .’
‘Beliefs kill,’ he said.
‘Yes, like beauty.’
Their eyes met. She tossed her pigtail from her shoulder — as she must do when she mounts her horse, he thought, or when she climbs into bed. She put a hand out as though to touch his shirt. He thought she meant to move in to kiss him.
‘This is the wrong thing to do,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she said in a soft, mocking voice. ‘That’s why I’m doing it.’
But she was only seeing what sort of an ethicist he was.
‘He’s more naive than he ought to be,’ she wrote the following morning in her report, ‘and more fragile. We ought to get a move on.’
They arrived to music, laboured to music, trooped to the crematoria to music. ‘Brüder! zur Sonne, zur Freiheit,’ they were made to sing. ‘Brothers! to the sun, to freedom.’ ‘Brüder! zum Lichte empor’ — ‘Brothers! to the light.’ Followed, maybe, by the Blue Danube in all its loveliness, or a song from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, not that any of them cared where he was from. Music that ennobles the spirit revealing its ultimate sardonic nature, its knowledge of its own untruth, because ultimately there is no ennobled nature. What was the logic? To pacify or to jeer? Why ice-cream vans, the arrival of which, playing the ‘Marseillaise’ or ‘Für Elise’ or ‘Whistle While You Work’, excited the eager anticipation of the children? To pacify or to jeer? Or both? Between themselves, the parents cannot agree on the function or the message. The vans, for now, are better than the trains, some say. Shame there isn’t actually any ice cream for the children, but be grateful and sing along. Others believe the vans are just the start of it. We have heard the chimes at midnight, they believe.
FIVE. Lost Letters
i
July 8, 201-
Darling Mummy and Daddy,
It was so lovely to be with you last weekend. I am only sorry that you didn’t feel the same way about seeing me. I didn’t, and don’t ever, mean to cause you vexation. What I said came from my heart. And you have always encouraged me to follow my heart. You will say that the opinions of others, especially Fridleif, have made that heart no longer mine, but believe me — that is not true. My decision to take up a secretarial appointment at the Congregational Federation of the Islands is mine alone. It is a purely administrative post and therefore purely secular. I have not left you. Of course I have been influenced by people I have met up here. Isn’t that bound to be the effect of an education? Isn’t that precisely what an education is for? You, Mummy, said you should never have let me leave home — ‘wandering to the furthest ends of the earth like some gypsy’, as you chose to put it, though I haven’t left the country and am no more than four hours away, even at the speed you drive — but what’s happened isn’t your fault just as it wouldn’t have been your fault had I gone to New Guinea and become a headhunter. I just wish you could consider what I’m doing as a tribute to the open-minded spirit in which you brought me up. My thinking is a continuation of yours, that’s all. And I am still your daughter wherever I live and whoever I work with.
Your ever loving
Rebecca
THIS WAS THE first of a small bundle of letters Ailinn’s companion gave her to peruse. ‘Don’t for the moment ask me how I came by them,’ she said, ‘just read them.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
The second letter was dated four months later.
November 12, 201-
Dearest Mummy and Daddy,
Up until the final minute I hoped you would turn up. Fridleif had tried to warn me against disappointment — not in a hostile way, I assure you, but quite the opposite. (You would love him if you would only give yourself the chance.) ‘You must understand how hard it must be for them,’ he said. But I hoped against hope nonetheless. Even as we exchanged our vows I still expected to see you materialise at the church door and come walking down the aisle.
There, it’s said. The church door.
How did that ever get to be such a terrible word in our family? What did the church ever do to us? Yes, yes, I know, but that was like a thousand years ago. Is there nothing we can’t forgive? Is there nothing we can’t forget?
Try saying it to each other when you go to bed at night. Church, church, church. . You’ll be surprised how easy it gets. Do you remember the finger rhyme we used to play together? ‘Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the people!’ The word seemed innocent enough then. No one sent a thunderbolt out of the sky to punish us for saying it.
But if it can’t be innocent to you now I’m a big girl couldn’t you at least learn to hate it a little less for my sake?
Open the door and see all the people!
Let’s get it all over and done with, anyway. I married the man I love in a church. In the presence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit we exchanged vows. And I am now Mrs Macshuibhne, the wife of the Reverend Fridleif Macshuibhne. A bit of a mouthful, I agree, but you’d get used to it if you only tried.
Please be happy for me, at least.
Rebecca
‘How did you come by this?’ Ailinn wanted to know.
‘We agreed you wouldn’t ask.’
‘No, you agreed I wouldn’t ask.’
‘Just go on reading.’
March 24, 201-
Dear Mummy and Daddy,
Still no word from you. Must I accept that you have abandoned me?
What have I done that is so terrible? What shame have I brought on you?
I accept that there was a time when we needed to show solidarity with one another. We were depleted and demoralised. I knew that. Every defection was interpreted as a sign of weakness and exploited — how could I not know that given the number of times I heard it. If they don’t even love one another, people said — or we feared people would say, which isn’t quite the same thing — why should we love them. But that was a long time ago. No one is trying to exploit us any more. No one even notices us. We are accepted now. We have never been more safe. I know what you will say. You will say what you always said. ‘Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Remember the Allegory of the Frog.’* Daddy, if I remembered the Allegory of the Frog I would never stay anywhere for five minutes at a time. If I remembered the Allegory of the Frog I would never know a moment’s peace. And the water isn’t hot here any more. It isn’t even lukewarm. Yes, I know you’ve heard that before. I know it was what our grandparents said the last time. ‘Here? Don’t make us laugh. Anywhere but here.’ Until the eleventh hour, until eleven seconds before the eleventh minute before the clocks stopped for us, as you’ve told me a thousand times, they ignored the warning signs, laughed at those who told them it was now or never, refused what stared them in the face. Here? Not here! ‘And you know their fate, Becky.’ Yes, Daddy, I know their fate, and I owe it to the memory of all those who suffered that fate — whom you speak of as though they were family though none of our family perished, I remind you — never to forget it. But that was then and now is now. And that was there and here is here. You used to laugh at me when I came home from university — ‘Here she is, our daughter, life president of the It Couldn’t Happen Here Society.’ And I called you, Daddy, ‘honorary chair of the Never Again League’. Well, I don’t disrespect you for believing what you believe. It is right to worry. But you cannot compare like with unlike. If you could only see how I am treated up here. The kindness! The consideration!