The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 61

They stood watching through the ocean-facing windows as the two old folks sat together and talked. Madison inched closer to Ben, reached across and took his hand, squeezed it.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘This is happening because of you.’

‘Ouch.’

She realised what she’d done. ‘Oh — I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—’

‘Shh. Look,’ Ben said, pointing with his good hand.

Madison looked back out onto the veranda and put her fingers to her mouth. ‘Oh my God.’

Rigby was getting out of his recliner. Arm in arm, he and Miriam stepped down the three wooden steps that led to the white sand. Five years his senior, she was the one who had to steady him; but he was on his feet and walking, by his own volition, somewhere other than the short journey to the bathroom or his bed.

Madison couldn’t help herself. She gave a sob, and then the tears came flooding. Ben put his arm around her shoulders and she squeezed close to him, crying and beaming and sniffing and laughing all at once. ‘Look at them. Aren’t they beautiful together?’

‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Yes, they are.’

‘If only this could have happened years ago.’ Madison shook her head, following the two white-haired figures as they moved slowly along the empty sands with the blue ocean and surf beyond. ‘This is a moment I’ll never forget,’ she said. ‘Again, thank you.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he replied.

‘You only think that, because that’s who you are,’ she said. ‘I’m thanking you. Like a gift. You have to accept it.’

‘Or else?’

She smiled. ‘Or I’ll kick your limey-half-Mick ass so hard, you’ll be wearing it as a ten gallon hat.’

‘Then you leave me no choice. I accept your thanks. But I had a pretty good backup.’

‘Neat team, you and me, huh?’

‘We ought to do it again sometime.’

Madison pressed closer, reached up with her lips and kissed him.

‘Another thank you?’ he said.

‘Or something.’

Later, Rigby was exhausted from his stroll on the beach and retired to his room for a lie down. As the sun began to descend over the ocean, Miriam Silbermann sat in the beach house with Ben and Madison, and they talked. ‘I can’t express my gratitude to you for agreeing to come visit Dad,’ Madison said, for the hundredth time. ‘I could say you don’t know what it means to him, but I guess you do.’

Miriam was sitting perfectly upright in an armchair with the manuscript on her knees. Ben noticed the way she kept touching it.

‘It has been quite a day for him,’ Miriam said with a warm smile. ‘And for me.’ She looked down at the manuscript. ‘It certainly has come a long way, hasn’t it?’

‘Nobody will ever know for sure where it’s been,’ Ben said. ‘But now it’s back where it belongs.’

Miriam nodded. ‘It belongs with your father,’ she said to Madison.

‘That’s too much,’ Madison replied, shaking her head. ‘I couldn’t possibly expect you to give it up. Neither would Dad.’

‘Please. I insist. I ask only that you let me hold it a while.’

Even as sundown came, the warmth of the day permeated the beach house and Miriam had finally surrendered to the heat by rolling up the sleeves of her Givenchy outfit. Her arms were thin and pale, but still toned and strong-looking. She wore a gold Cartier on one wrist and a platinum chain bracelet on the other, but it was something else that Ben had noticed. Miriam caught him looking, and Ben felt embarrassed; but instead of trying to hide it, she raised her left forearm to let him see the faded blue tattoo on its underside, midway between wrist and elbow. The tattoo was a six-digit serial number. Beneath the number, a small triangle had been indelibly inked into her flesh.

‘Memories,’ she said. ‘Better never to forget them, Mr Hope. Reflecting on our past, no matter how painful, reminds us of who we are. That is the reason I chose not to have it removed.’

The tattoo could only mean one thing. Ben had seen pictures, but he’d never seen one, literally, in the flesh before. During the Nazi Holocaust only one concentration camp had adopted the policy of marking its prisoners that way on arrival. Miriam Silbermann had been prisoner 135287. The triangle was a way of telling the Jewish inmates apart from other groups, such as Gypsies or political detainees.

‘You were sent to Auschwitz,’ Ben said. ‘You and your family.’

Miriam Silbermann closed her eyes again, and held them shut for so long that Ben began to think she must have drifted off to sleep. Then she opened them again, and the blue-green light seemed to penetrate through him. She said, ‘Yes. After the internment camp at Drancy, we were put on a train along with thousands of others. I will never forget that train. The noise, the darkness, the smell of fear. There were so many of us crammed into the carriages, like cattle. We all knew where we were going. To the death camp. To Auschwitz.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Madison said.

‘So much has been said about that place, and yet nobody can understand who was not made to suffer it. Neither of my dear parents survived, of course. My mother died in the first month, my father a month later. Me, I had to make myself strong. To will myself to survive, God willing, no matter what horrors took place there. And so, I did. I was the only one who returned, after the Red Army liberated the camp on January 27th, 1945.’

‘Weren’t there four of you?’ Madison said. ‘Dad told me you had a brother. Gabriel.’

The old woman was silent for a beat, then another, then she slowly shook her head. ‘Gabriel was never in the camp. I have to thank the Lord that he did not have to endure that torture. His suffering was brief and merciful by comparison.’ Again, she passed her long, slender fingers over the stain on the manuscript.

‘This is my brother’s blood,’ she said quietly. ‘The day the Germans came, he wouldn’t let them take our family treasure. And so, they shot him. Murdered him with a bullet, in his own home. I was not even allowed to touch his body before they took us away. It was the single most terrible moment of my life, and I have had many. Too many.’

‘That’s why you wanted the manuscript so badly,’ Ben said. ‘Not because of what it was. It was all you had left of Gabriel.’

Miriam nodded. ‘I wanted nothing more than simply to touch him, one last time. Now I feel him again with me. There is no need for me to keep this.’

She gently placed the manuscript on a sideboard next to where she sat. ‘When your father awakes, please express to him my undying thanks and give him this token of my gratitude, and my love.’

‘He loved you,’ Madison said. ‘Right from the moment he met you.’

Miriam’s lips curled up at the corners. ‘I know. Of course, I always knew. He is a wonderful man, your father. He would not give up, even after the search for the manuscript had broken him in body and spirit. I hope he will be happier now, bless him.’

‘I think so.’

Then Miriam Silbermann heaved a long, long sigh, as if the pain of the ages had been stored inside her body and now at last she was able to exhale and release it all. She gave Madison and Ben each a beaming smile. Her teeth were white and even, like shiny little pearls. She reached forward with both hands outstretched, patted the arms of the armchair with a decisive flourish, then stood up, from primly seated to rod-straight in one sprightly, flowing movement. There were times when Ben couldn’t stand up that fast. After the death struggle with Zarko Kožul on the floor, this was one of them.

‘And now,’ Miriam Silbermann said, ‘may I desire one of you dear young souls to please call me a taxicab back to the airport?’

Ben had never in his life before been called a dear young soul. He stood with her. ‘Let me accompany you, Fräulein Silbermann. I think Madison wants to be alone a while with her father.’

Late that night, after Ben had seen Miriam’s flight off, he left the airport and walked slowly under the sultry Hawaiian sky and wondered about what he would do next. Choices.

He’d been away from Le Val so long that a day or two longer wouldn’t change anything. A day or two spent by the ocean, taking in the sunshine and relaxing to the pace of island life while his hand healed up. Walking on the beach. Drinking rum and talking history with old man Cahill. And perhaps spending some of that time with his daughter. Ben liked Madison. He liked her a good deal.

But a lot of things that could have been, could not be. Sometimes things were better that way, for everyone. And some choices were really not choices, after all.

Ben walked until he found himself faced with the great black expanse of the ocean. A vast canopy of nebulae and star clusters and galaxies and things he could only begin to imagine filled the infinite sky above him. He stood there, alone in the darkness, and smiled to himself as he thought about Special Agent Maddie Cahill and her father, and a story that had been so long in the telling but finally come out well. Happy endings were a rare and precious thing in this life. Why spoil it?

He could hear the neverending rush and whisper of the surf rolling in. He could hear its voice calling him. Somewhere across that ocean was home. Friendship, a bottle of French wine and a glass or two of single malt whisky. The love of a dog. And a woman whose name was Sandrine Lacombe.

Ben smiled to himself once more, and then slipped into the night.