The Two Loves of Sophie Strom (eBook)

Max woke with a start and almost fell downstairs. He was lying on the top step and when he opened his eyes he saw the staircase unfurling vertiginously below him. His heart was racing. What had woken him? A noise, he thought vaguely. A sound in his dream? He caught the fragments just in time, before they vanished: the fire in the shop, the scream, the sound of a window breaking. Max shuddered. His nightmare had seemed so real.

And then he heard something else: voices outside, glass smashing. He heard the piano lid slam shut and his mother ask: ‘What was that?’ His father reassured her: ‘Only some drunkards in the street.’ Sitting up, Max stared at the grandfather clock behind him. Eleven minutes past one. Was he still dreaming? He touched his right cheek: the skin smooth, unhurt. He examined his palm and saw no dried blood, no cut. ‘But what about those reports on the radio today?’ his mother asked anxiously. ‘You heard what Katharina was saying, didn’t you? About the new laws in Germany …’

Max sat paralysed as his parents appeared at the bottom of the stairs. His father switched on the landing light, put his arm around his mother’s shoulder and said: ‘Oh, you know Katharina – she does tend to make elephants out of mosquitoes. Anyway, this isn’t Germany.’

The clunk of their shoes on the wooden steps, their tipsy smiles: Max had not witnessed any of this before, yet he felt certain that it had all happened – every moment, every impossible detail – in his dream. Catching sight of him on the stairs, his mother stopped. ‘Max!’

His father sighed. ‘Time for bed,’ he said, making a movement with his fingers that Max knew meant: Vanish.

But his mother knelt and touched Max’s forehead. ‘Max, what’s the matter? You’re all pale and clammy. Are you sick?’

In a faltering voice Max told them about his dream. He watched the series of expressions on his mother’s face as he spoke – puzzlement, concern, tenderness – but somehow he knew he hadn’t been able to convince her of what the dream meant. That it was a warning, a premonition.

‘Max, you’re not a Kleinkind anymore,’ his father said, slurring his words slightly. ‘It was only a dream. Just go back to bed and everything will be fine.’

‘Franz, I’m not sending him to bed like this. He might have another nightmare.’

‘Oh, come on, Ana …’ Franz slid his arm around her shoulder, nuzzled his mouth against her neck.

Shaking her husband off, Max’s mother took him by the hand and led him downstairs. ‘I’ll make you some cocoa.’

In the kitchen Max heard the purring sound that he’d heard in his dream. He looked up at his parents: they’d heard it too. His mother nervously stirred the milk in the saucepan. ‘I think you should go down and take a look, Franz.’

‘Seriously?’ Franz kneaded his forehead. ‘All right, all right, I’ll go.’ He lifted the trapdoor. No wave of smoke. ‘See?’ He climbed down the steps, walked around the office, shouted up that everything was fine, then stopped. He’d heard something. They watched as he opened the door to the shop and smoke blurred the air. He slammed the door shut and his feet hammered up the stairs.

‘We need to leave.’ Franz’s face was pale. He looked suddenly very sober. ‘Now.’

Max felt his elbow grabbed. He was pulled out of the kitchen and through the living room. At the foot of the staircase, his father crouched beside him, eyes fierce. ‘Max, go to your room and find some warm clothes, then come straight down. Be as fast as you can.’

Max ran upstairs and collected an armful of sweaters, trousers, socks and underwear from his chest of drawers. He was on his way out of the bedroom when he spotted his violin case amid a battalion of toy soldiers on the floor. He squatted down to pick it up, sliding his thumb under the handle, and saw Peter Pan under the bed. His mother shouted his name, an edge of fear in her voice. ‘Coming!’ he called, abandoning the book and hurtling downstairs, clothes spilling from his arms.

‘I’ll get them,’ his father said. ‘Max, put your shoes on and go outside with Mama.’

Max looked at his father, who was holding his trumpet case and the old cake tin that contained their cash savings. Suddenly he felt optimistic: everything was under control. There was even something quite exciting about it. Just wait until he told Josef about this … And then he remembered that his friend was in the apartment above theirs, that he and his parents were probably asleep. ‘The Müllers!’ he said. ‘We have to warn them.’

‘I’ll do it,’ his father replied. ‘I’ll meet you in the courtyard. Go.’

A minute later, as Max and his mother were making their way from the courtyard to the street, eyes fixed with horror at the flames pouring from the windows of the shop, his father caught them up and said he’d rung the bell and banged on the door of the Müllers’ apartment but there had been no answer. ‘And the door was locked. I’m sorry, Max, there was nothing else I—’

Franz stopped talking as they emerged onto Prinzenstrasse. He was staring straight ahead. Max followed his gaze. A line of people standing on the far pavement. Neighbours, friends, strangers. And there was the Müller family, watching expressionlessly as their home was consumed by flames. Max wanted to run to Josef, to ask how he was, how they’d escaped, but that felt like the wrong thing to do. They crossed the road and took their place among the silent audience.

Max could hear sirens in the distance but he knew it was too late: the blaze had already reached the first-floor windows. Sweat glued his pyjamas to his skin, and when he touched his face his fingers came away black with soot. His mother held his hand; her grip tightened as she watched the Bösendorfer burn. The embers started to crumble, like incandescent dominoes. Max remembered the girl who’d sat at that piano only hours ago. What would she think when she came here to play a duet with him and there was nothing left? Would he ever see her again?

‘Ana! Franz! Max! You’re safe!’ Frau Schatten was running towards them, her husband trailing behind. ‘Oh, I’m so relieved. My neighbour called to tell me there was a fire on Prinzenstrasse and I said to her, surely it can’t be the Spiegelmans, we just left there! I can’t believe it. Your beautiful home …’

They all turned to look at it, and Max thought about Peter Pan. His mother had given him that book for his tenth birthday. There were so many memories in their apartment, being devoured one by one. The whole of his childhood.

‘Where will you stay tonight?’ Frau Schatten asked.

‘I don’t know. We’ll find a hotel, I suppose,’ said Max’s father.

‘A hotel? No, you must stay with us. For as long as you like.’

‘Katharina, that’s very kind of you,’ Max’s mother said, ‘but we—’

‘Oh, nonsense! It will be our pleasure. Won’t it, Helmut?’

They all turned to look at Herr Schatten, who was watching the blaze and did not appear to have heard.

Later that night, Max was lying in a dead boy’s bed. He could hear Karl Schatten breathing, close by. Max’s parents were in the spare bedroom down the hall and he wished he were with them instead, but Frau Schatten had been adamant that he should take Oskar’s bed. Karl would be thrilled to have a roommate again, she’d said. Max remembered the cold look on Karl’s face when he had come in late from his Scout meeting, still wearing his beige uniform, and found these people in his home. He recalled the strange atmosphere in the living room soon after that when Frau Schatten had gone to the kitchen to make tea and he and his parents had been left alone with Karl and his father, who stared at them, silent and unsmiling. Still, it was only temporary, until they found a new apartment. And at least the bed was comfortable, the sheets smooth and fresh.

Suddenly exhausted, Max closed his eyes and the memory of his dream returned to him in flashes. The burning door. The hot floorboards. The horror when he realised it was too late to save his parents … He sighed and turned over. They were all safe now. His muscles relaxed and he started to drift round and down into the black whirlpool of sleep and then he coughed, so hard it half-woke him, and when he opened his eyes the room was in daylight and Frau Schatten was sitting in a chair next to the bed, reading a magazine. Max realised that he must be dreaming again. He felt as if he were floating a few inches above the mattress: a strange but pleasant sensation. There were plastic tubes attached...