you come back? What do you want?’
Stephomi sighed. ‘I phoned you a while ago and there was no answer,’ he said quietly. ‘I was afraid that something might have happened.’ I gazed at him for a moment, water dripping from the ends of my hair to the floor where he had drenched me. I had meant it last night when I’d told the scholar to get out of my apartment. I’d really wanted to hurt him. And I was still angry with him. Angry for the deception, angry for his spiteful refusal to help me, and angry for his stubborn silence. But yet… I was pleased to see him. Who knows what true loneliness is?
‘I thought about it last night, Gabriel,’ Stephomi said, still watching me warily, ‘and I think there are some things I might be able to tell you without breaking my promise. If you want to go and dry your hair and change your clothes, I’ll wait for you.’
‘No,’ I said at once. ‘Tell me now.’
‘All right,’ Stephomi replied, following me as I stalked through to the living room.
I sat down on the couch, trying to avoid getting any red wine stains on it, wishing my head were a little clearer. Stephomi dropped down onto the other chair.
‘For starters,’ he began, ‘the money that was in your apartment
… is it still here?’
I narrowed my eyes at him and forced myself not to glance at the cupboard in which I had hidden it.
‘All right, don’t tell me,’ Stephomi said hastily, seeing the look on my face. ‘All I was going to say is that it’s yours. You didn’t steal it or anything. I’m assuming that’s what you suspected? But rest assured the money belongs to you fair and square.’
‘And what did I do to get such an amount?’ I asked.
Stephomi grimaced apologetically. ‘All I can tell you is that the money is yours. You were a writer by profession.’
‘A writer?’ I thought back to the typed manuscript I had found in my desk. ‘A less than popular one?’ I asked, realising that if I had ever succeeded in publishing anything, my works would surely grace my own bookshelves.
Stephomi shrugged slightly. ‘Mozart himself was before his time, my friend. Look, I can’t really tell you very much. You can go on hating me if you want and scream at me to get out again, but I just want to emphasise first that… you didn’t do anything to deserve this.’
‘You said that I asked you not to tell me about my past,’ I said, staring at him. ‘Are you saying that I knew I was going to lose my memory? That I somehow did this to myself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? How?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said simply.
‘Where is everyone?’ I asked desperately. ‘Where are my family? Where do they think I’ve gone?’
Stephomi was looking uncomfortable now. ‘I really can’t say any more, Gabriel. Faith is part of friendship,’ he said softly, looking at me closely. ‘You asked me to trust you when I promised not to give you these answers, and I did even though I didn’t like it. I believe you must have had a good reason. Now I’m afraid you’re going to have to trust me when I say I can’t tell you any more. I know it doesn’t make sense, that you have nothing solid to put your trust in here, but that is the meaning of faith.’
I wanted to trust him. I didn’t want to be completely alone here for the rest of my life, spending my evenings counting and recounting the boxes of fish food in my cupboard that I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to throw away.
With a last uncertain, apologetic grin, Stephomi stood up to go, but paused in the doorway to the kitchen and turned back. ‘Please don’t push me away, Gabriel. Leave the past alone and build a new life now.’
I laughed miserably. ‘I want to believe you… but faith isn’t enough for me. How do I know that everything you’ve told me isn’t lies?’
Stephomi paused, considering my question. ‘What can I say? I’m afraid faith will just have to be enough for now because that’s all you’ve got. But what reason would I have to lie anyway? “ The liars and those who distort the truth must perish… and then there may be room for a freer, nobler kind of humanity again. ” To quote Captain Wilm Hosenfeld.’
The name was familiar to me but Stephomi was almost at the front door when horror made me leap to my feet as I suddenly remembered who the man was.
‘You quote a Nazi to support your cause?’ I asked, striding to the doorway to stare at Stephomi in disbelief.
Once again, Stephomi turned about to face me, a small smile on his face. ‘Ah, Gabriel, why do you assume that following Hitler and being a good and brave man must be mutually exclusive?’
‘Listen to yourself!’ I said, appalled. ‘Are you trying to be funny or something? Evil and Nazi are synonymous. To suggest anything else is… it’s blasphemy!’
‘Then, forgive me, by all means,’ Stephomi replied, tilting his head as he gazed at me. ‘But I assure you there was no sin intended. You expect too much from humanity sometimes, Gabriel. We can’t all be perfect, you know. Why don’t you ask Wladyslaw Szpilman about it?’
Stephomi’s initial words had been soothing. I had begun to feel comforted by what he was telling me. But he had ruined it with that quote at the door. To even suggest that a German officer of the Second World War was anything other than a scheming, plotting, greed- and sin-driven demon made me feel utterly sick. Stephomi had described him as a ‘good and brave man’… What on Earth could have moved him to speak such depraved words? Perhaps he didn’t know the full extent of what the Nazis had done? Perhaps he didn’t know about the families murdered in front of each another; the husbands and wives who had been forced to dig each other’s graves before being shot into them; the golden teeth and fillings that were ripped from Jewish mouths before their owners were shot like dogs; the families who had shuffled onto trains together, clutching the one suitcase they were allowed to take, full of their most precious possessions, hoping against hope that, somehow, everything would still be all right and Europe would not soak in its own blood — only to have their cases torn from their fingers before they were shipped off to slaughter houses like cattle… To suggest that anyone even remotely connected with such atrocities had nothing to feel shame for… to even suggest it… disgusts me beyond words.
The name of Wladyslaw Szpilman was vaguely familiar to me and, running a quick gaze down my bookshelves, I saw that I owned a book written by him called SmiercMiasta, translated as Death of a City. It was written in Polish, which posed no problem for me. Indeed I hardly even realised it wasn’t in English until I was halfway through it. Szpilman was a Polish Jew; a survivor of the Holocaust who wrote about his experiences mere months after the war had finally ended. It was later renamed The Pianist. The memoir is quite a slim volume and, after showering and picking all the tiny pieces of glass out of my skin with tweezers, I sat and read it all the way through that day.
The story disturbs me greatly. It appals me, in fact. For the truth of it is that Captain Wilm Hosenfeld was indeed a good and brave man. Can I say that? Is it blasphemy? Or was Stephomi right? Hosenfeld saved Wladyslaw Szpilman’s life at risk to his own, and was ashamed to be German at the realisation of what was happening. He was ashamed of himself for not doing anything about it. He was a schoolteacher by profession, with a love of children, and he absolutely deplored what was being done to the Jews. He deplored it. And he cursed himself for a wretched coward and he cursed his lack of power to do anything. But, really, how very illogical of Hosenfeld to feel that way, for he would have been quite unable to do anything to influence the war even if he’d wanted to.
Six million Jews died during the Second World War. Six million of them. Captain Wilm Hosenfeld’s actions saved Wladyslaw Szpilman’s life. And so what? Six million dead. Hosenfeld saved one. In the grand scheme of things, what difference did it make…? All the difference in the world to Szpilman himself, one supposes.
Captain Hosenfeld, like all other citizens of Hitler’s Germany, had been bombarded with anti-Semitic propaganda for years: the Jews were the cause of all Germany’s problems; the Jews were the cause of all economic crises and political instabilities; the Jews were a subhuman race, who would pollute the purity of German blood if they were given the chance; the Jews were a disease, an infestation, a cancer that would have to be removed from the Earth’s gut. God, what utter madness that anyone should ever have accepted such nonsense. But people love to hate other people and pain comes easier when there is someone to blame.
When Wladyslaw Szpilman’s hiding place was discovered by a German officer, the Jew was convinced that the man’s appearance meant death for him, convinced that he would be shot in the head, as had so many others he had known. But instead of shooting him in the head, this German brought Szpilman food, wrapped up in current
