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Mind Your Please and Queues

Norm Hudson

    He didn’t mind his please and queues. That’s not why I killed him. I didn’t recognise him at first. He was just another German tourist visiting Lake Garda for his summer holiday. Why were there so many Germans in this part of Italy? I should have known. It was close to Austria. Austria. The place I could never go back to. Where Hershey and I had lived. Before the war.
    It was 1985. The war had been over forty years and I told myself there was no good in holding on to the hatred and bitterness of the past. Germans today were different. Tolerant. That’s what I had told myself in the safety of my adopted home. England.
    I should have stayed in the safety of my adopted home. But my daughter was grown up, had left home and was now caring for my granddaughter. I was free to travel. Free.
    The early morning sunshine already held a promise of the heat to come. The cypress trees seemed glad of the space between them and their neighbours to grasp what little remained of the cool air. There was a subtle stillness over the lake. It should have soothed me but instead it unsettled me. As if no good could come out of such a peaceful morning. A scurrying lizard seemed to feel the same as he fled for shelter. It brought back unwanted memories. Of others fleeing.
    I shook off the air of depression by busying myself with getting ready for the long, downhill walk into town to catch the boat to Malcesine. I wanted to give myself plenty of time. I wanted to be early.
    There was no one on the quayside when I arrived. I was first.
    It should secure me a good seat with a good view of the lake, I thought.
    Some straggling tourists strolled towards the quayside, their early morning breakfasts stodgily slowing them down. They formed a relaxed row behind me. It was going to be a pleasant trip.
    I could see the crew were ready. I prepared myself to board the boat as soon as they removed the rope that repelled us, when I was taken completely by surprise. A man appeared as if out of nowhere and snaked past, imperceptibly pushing me, to place himself at the front of the queue, just as the crew members unhooked the rope. He stomped forward onto the boat, laughing and speaking loudly in German to the crew and draped himself over two seats, legs lifted onto a third. The three seats with the best view out over the lake. He was about sixty five, tall, with striking silver hair and a hauntingly familiar, arrogant air.
    I let his behaviour ride, ruefully reflecting on the rude manners of some people. Whatever nationality. And took up a seat in the middle of the stern with no view of the lake. There was no malice. I wouldn’t see him again. I would get a better seat on the way back to Limone.
    I’d had a pleasant, though exhausting day shopping in Malcesine, picking up Italian souvenirs for my daughter, Sara, and my granddaughter, Adina. I was weary as I wandered towards the quay and looking forward to a good seat on the boat with a good view. I’d set off early so I would be first on the quayside.
    There would be no battle to board. No quibble to queue. The other shoppers straggling along the quayside were as weary as me.
    I was looking forward. At the crew releasing the rope. To the trip.
    When someone sneaked past me up the gangplank with a flash of silver.
    It can’t be, I thought. Other boats had departed earlier to Limone. The chances of the same man being on this boat were small.
    Luck had never listened to me.
    He was draped over the same three seats, securing the most scenic view of the lake, an almost victorious smile on his visage. But it was only as the boat departed and he stretched his right hand up into the air that something stirred inside me. The scent of a suspicion. The scent of fear.
    The churning of the boat’s engines as they struggled through the swollen late afternoon swell of the lake suspended any further speculation. I was glad to see the shore.
    For some ridiculous reason I determined I was not crossing the lake again.
    “I’ve bought you a lovely Italian leather handbag,” I told my daughter later that day on the telephone.
    I knew how much she liked leather.
    “What colour?” she said unexpectedly.
    “Green,” I said. There was a green and a blue but I knew you had a green summer jacket so that’s why I got it.”
    “I’ve just put that in the charity bag. You couldn’t swap it for the blue one, could you? I’ve got a new navy jacket. It would co-ordinate perfectly with that.”
    I hesitated.
    It would mean another boat trip across the lake.
    But how could I refuse her? Since Hershey had died, I hadn’t been able to refuse her anything. And it was so little to ask for.
    “Of course I can,” I said. “I’ll do it this morning.”
    If I got the early morning boat, there would be less tourists on it. Less people. Less him.
    I hurried to get ready. Even though it had been a struggle, I was still first on the quayside. I kept my eyes focused on my destination across the lake. And my purpose. It would be nice on my last remaining day in Limone to get a seat at the stern with a good view of the lake.
    I could hear the scrape of sandals behind me but I didn’t turn round. I knew there wouldn’t be many at this time of the morning. The crew and I were both grateful for that. I pressed myself full frontal against the restraining rope and lined up my sixty three year old body like a marine preparing for a D-day assault on a beach. No one could pass me. I was sure of that.
    I’d not allowed for Panzer positioning and masterful manoeuvrability. I was assaulted as if by an armoured vehicle obliterating obstacles in its path. Even as I struggled to regain my balance, I could see he’d already reached the head of the gangplank and was about to slip away to the stern of the boat.
    I avoided the sympathetic stares of the crew and staggered up the gangplank.
    He was facing his three favourite seats in the stern, his back towards me, staring out over the lake. I started to shout “Schweinhund !” at him when he raised his right arm in an exaggerated early morning stretch.
    “Schliemann!” I said instead. “Franz Schliemann!”
    Schliemann. Hershey’s and my neighbour in Austria. Schliemann. Who’d informed the authorities my husband was a Jew. Who’d been there when they’d taken Hershey away in a truck to Auschwitz and looted his jewellery shop. Who’d raised his hand in Nazi salute as the truck pulled away. While I watched helpless. Frightened to go home. Hiding out. Until I got help to go to England. Never to see Hershey again. Never to let him know he had a daughter. A granddaughter.
    He whirled round.
    “Schliemann!” I repeated.
    “There must be some mistake,” he said.
    His eyes were shrewd. Cunning. Clever.
    “My name is Hans. Hans Gerber.”
    For a second I doubted myself.
    What if I was wrong? Sure he’d turned round when I’d shouted. But wouldn’t anyone on hearing a demented voice?
    There was a sudden swell of a wave. Later, when I had time to think about it, I thought it was strange when we hadn’t started moving. Maybe Hershey was hanging around. Schliemann or Gerber stretched out his hand holding on to the rail to steady himself.
    It was then I saw it.
    The ring. The ring I’d given Hershey that last morning I saw him. For his birthday. The ring he’d admired when the new stock had come into his jeweller’s shop. The 18 carat black onyx ring he’d proudly put on his finger, laughing all the time as he did it.
    Not at the ring. At the inscription.
    Even from where I was standing, I could see it.
    Three letters. HER.
    “Is that for Hershey or for her that gave it to me?” Hershey had laughed.
    “Both,” I’d said. “So you’ll never forget me. Like I’ll never forget you,” I added.
    I rushed at Schliemann.
    “Give me back that ring!” I shouted. It’s my husband’s. It’s Hershey’s. You took it from him that morning you betrayed him!”
    “You mean this?” he said, removing the ring from his finger and waving it in the air.
    There was no pretence now. He was enjoying the moment.
    “You didn’t say please. You didn’t beg. Like he begged me that morning,” he said.
    “Schweinhund!” I shouted reaching roughly for the ring in his hand.
    I don’t know whether I knocked him by accident or not but the ring sailed out of his hand and over the rail. Schliemann lurched outwards for it. But he’d reached too far. He lost his balance and tumbled into the water.
    I waited for the shout. But he seemed stunned, scrabbling round in the water for the ring. Either that or he couldn’t swim.
    I heard the stir of the boat’s engines and looked round. There was no one in the stern of the boat.
    I opened my mouth to yell “Man Overboard!” when a wild wave from somewhere deep in the lake flung me onto the three seats Schliemann always occupied at the rear of the boat and I struck my head on the rail. Maybe Hershey had a hand in that.
    The last thing I remember before I passed out was seeing Schliemann disappear into the darkness of the depths of the lake.
    Schliemann was first after all. First to get the best view of the lake.
    I’m back home in England now. With my daughter. And my granddaughter. I’m very careful to teach my granddaughter good manners. They’re so important, aren’t they? After all Schliemann might be alive now. I might never have noticed him.
    If he’d minded his please and queues.

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