Interpreters by Sue Eckstein Page B

on top of his papers.
    ‘I like smoking.’ He fills in the gaps on the squared paper that is rough with my increasingly frantic rubbing out. His abandoned cigarette expires, leaving a snake of cold grey ash.
    ‘We had a film about it at school today. It showed a lung full of tar. And then a whole beaker of horrible black sludge. It was disgusting. Smoking kills, you know.’
    ‘Does it?’ my father asks, as he takes out another untipped Player and taps it on the box.
    ‘You should know. You’re a doctor.’
    ‘Yes, dear.’
    ‘Why are you smiling? It’s not funny.’
    ‘No, dear.’ He lights the cigarette with his smooth silver lighter.
    ‘Don’t just say yes dear and no dear . Why don’t you listen to me?’
    ‘I am listening.’
    ‘No, you’re not. What did I just say?
    ‘What, dear?’
    ‘You see, you never listen.’
    ‘Yes, dear. Here – I think this is all correct now.’
    There is a round bald patch on the top of his head that I’ve never noticed before. His skin is grey. His hand shakes as he passes me the exercise book and picks up his glass of whisky. He takes a large sip and shuts his eyes, probably hoping that when he opens them I’ll have gone away and left him in peace. But I don’t want to go away.
    ‘One day you’ll just drop dead of smoking and drinking and stuff and I won’t have ever even known you.’
    ‘Yes, dear,’ he says.
    ‘And if I ever have children, they’ll never even know I had a father.’
    My father smiles again.
    ‘You should care about all that.’
    I can feel my jaw quivering.
     
    ‘Hello. I’m Ben,’ says a small voice. I turn round and there is a child of about four standing just behind me.
    ‘What are you doing standing outside my playroom?’ he asks. ‘And why are you crying?’

IV
    My mother managed somehow – I don’t know how – to save some of her housekeeping money and she’d go with tins of soup and other things to the railway sidings and she’d roll them down the hill to the families with the yellow stars who were living by the railway lines. I used to go with her sometimes. And she was always knitting. She’d knit pullovers and give them to the people who were leaving for Holland and when they got to the border they’d wave them out of the window as a sign and my grandparents would shelter them for a few days before they went on their way.
    Did you wonder why the Jews were leaving?
    Not really. They’d been asked to go, so they were going. I was just glad my mother was making life a bit easier for them. We’d knit together in the evenings when my father was away, but I wasn’t nearly as fast as her. We had such a lovely time together then. Or we’d play duets on the piano – my father forbade any music in the house when he was home. I think he thought owning a piano was one thing – the sign of a cultured household – but anyone playing it – or, worse still, enjoying playing it – was quite another thing. Or I’d practise my English. That was the one thing at school that I was really good at. And it felt so wonderful – to really excel at something. To be better than all of my classmates who had teased me so much when I arrived at the school and sat at the back of the classroom, not understanding a word anyonewas saying. Who had hated the little Dutch newcomer so much. In the end I was better than all of them. At German and English. Better at English than most of the teachers. I had this textbook with a photograph of Trafalgar Square on the cover – with those huge black lions and the fountains and Nelson’s Column – and that was the one place in the world I was desperate to visit. I don’t know why. There was just something so special about it. I wish I still had that book.
    Do you have anything from that time?
    Nothing. No, not nothing. A small red leather notebook. Like a diary. And a tiny wooden angel.
    A wooden angel?
    Once, my father announced that he’d been called to Cologne on urgent business, so my mother