My brother’s keeper

My brother’s keeper

I run into George once in a while. He and I were at school together in a place far away, in Budapest, in another world. We exchange pleasantries, do you remember this one or that one, what happened to him, is he still alive, and so on. The name ‘Drac’ cropped up.

‘Do you remember him?’ George said. ‘You must remember him. He was in your class. We called him Drac, short for Dracula.’

The name came back. I don’t know how he earned this nickname perhaps I never knew. It might have been his prominent fang like front teeth, or something about pretending that the red syrup he drank was blood, one of those school boy stories now forgotten. It was a name I had completely put out of my mind.

We started school the same day. We both transferred from other schools for different reasons. Starting in a new school, a high school, an academic school with its own ethos, is never easy. We were put in the same class, seated next to each other. Perhaps they had expected that the two of us, both new, both strangers, would be able to face together the hostile world of young teenage boys. All the other boys had known each other since they had entered the school as first year students two years before. They had all forged bonds, friendships and loyalties. We were outsiders. Yet somehow, we didn’t get on. There was something about him that made me uncomfortable. I acquired my own group of friends, boys who shared my interests, politics, books, above all football. I didn’t have much to do with him.

‘He is in big trouble’ George said. What kind of trouble an old man, my contemporary, could be in? Being still alive is already quite something. His daughter apparently wrote to the old boy network. The boys who had matriculated together at my old school kept in touch. I had left the school long before they matriculated, so the old boy network didn’t include me.

She wrote that her father, an alumni of the high school, was in dire need of help. He had driven a taxi for many years, but he was losing his eyesight and could no longer work. He is living on his own in a small Council flat, she explained, with no one to look after him. His wife, her mother, had left him many years ago, and she, his daughter, was in no position to help.

What do you think?’ George asked.

What did I think? Here is $10, or perhaps $100? Would a little money help?

‘Perhaps you could phone him, talk to him’ he said. ‘You were in his class. A word from you might cheer him up.’ I couldn’t imagine why. We had not talked to each other since we were boys.

‘A phone call wouldn’t hurt. Next time you are in Auckland you might look him up. The guys who were at school with him are concerned about him. I’ll let them know that I talked to you. If his daughter needs someone to turn to she could give you a ring.

‘Look’ I said, ‘I don’t want to get involved. I hardly remember him. We hadn’t kept in touch. There is nothing I can do for him.’

I asked George why he himself couldn’t help. Had he seen this man? Were they in contact?

‘Well, yes’ he said, ‘some years before, they had met by chance.’ Somehow they fell out. No, he didn’t harbour any grudges any more, but Drac could find it upsetting if he rang. He didn’t want to elaborate.

The man might need some help, I don’t deny that, but I am not ‘my brother’s keeper’. Yet, what did I mean by that? Is the phrase ‘not my brother’s keeper’ just another excuse for doing nothing, for thinking only of myself? My days, like all our days, are numbered. If, when the time comes, people will remember me, it will be for what I had done for others. Do these ‘others’ include people I do not care for? Should I not be there for anyone in need?

I could not put Drac out of my mind. I thought of him sitting in the living room of his small Council flat, the place in a mess, helpless, unable to tidy up because he can’t see. I thought of loud music thumping in the background, the building full of young hoodlums with nothing better to do than getting under the skin of a poor blind lonely old man. I imagined him scarcely capable of looking after himself. His daughter might call once in a while. She lives a long way away. She has her own life. She can’t give up her time to look after her father. Perhaps they were never close. Her parents had split up. There might have been some bitterness. Did her mother feel cheated that the dashing young man with the charming sophisticated European manners, full of promise, whom she had married, had become just a worn out, tired, old taxi driver with no ambitions?

What did Drac hope to make of his life here when he arrived as a penniless 23 year old refugee all those years ago? He had to learn Russian at school, but not English. How did he get by? Surely he, a graduate of an elite school, hoped for more than driving a taxi until he was too old and blind to continue. He probably didn’t even know how to drive. None but the very well connected had cars where he came from. What skills did he have to earn a living? He had probably a middle ranking office job back home. He would have kept his head down, kept out of politics. He might have had some qualifications from a polytechnic, but was unlikely to be an academic. Here, in New Zealand, he would have had to take whatever work he could get. Pouring concrete, climbing scaffoldings, lugging heavy loads was probably not for him unused to heavy physical labour. With his polished manners, well groomed looks, hospitality, work in a hotel might have been more appropriate. Once settled, he might have sought advice from immigrants who had arrived a few years earlier, who already knew the lay of the land, knew how to get by. One of them might have been in the car business already, fixing cars, buying and selling them. Perhaps he thought that there was money to be made from cars, driving them, hiring others to drive them, ultimately running a fleet of cars, limousines for rich visitors. And then something might have gone wrong, costs too high, an expensive car breaking down, an accident, and the dream of wealth would have come crashing down. What did I know about him? All this was just conjecture, snippets made up of other people’s stories. His wife, a fairly attractive girl when young, might have got bored with him, a taxi driver always too tired to go out and have fun. They probably had little in common. All I knew was that now life was difficult for him, with his eyesight impaired, his livelihood gone.

If I phoned him what would I say? I would have to explain that very many years ago we were at school together, sat at adjoining desks. I tried to imagine the conversation. I would tell him who I am. There would be a long pause. He probably remembered me no more than I remembered him. Then he might ask me what I wanted. I just thought that phoning him might reconnect us. I wouldn’t want to intrude. Perhaps we could talk again, even meet should I ever be up his way, I would say. But I didn’t phone, I couldn’t go through with it.

One day, however, I happened to be in his neighbourhood. I had to fly to Auckland to sort out some business for one of my old residual clients. I had retired from the firm, but some of my old clients preferred to deal with me rather than with the brash young men and women who took over the practice. Almost as a favour I agreed to deal with the matter. Old men can sort things out without being confrontational. When I turned up, the young woman at the desk asked me to come back in a couple of hours, the senior partner I came to see was delayed.

This is how, filling in time and wandering around, I found myself outside the large block of Council flats where my old school mate lived. I looked through the list of tenants. Some of the names had faded, some were scarcely legible, one or two were defaced, but there at №31, I spotted his name, Des Marsh. It was not the name I knew him by, but I was sure that this would be him, Des for Dezso and Marsh, an obvious abbreviation of his old name, the name of the remote village where his family might have come from a generation or two back.

I hesitated. Should I go up and knock on his door? I heard, I would say, that you live here and I happened to be nearby.

It’s been a long time, I thought, a very long time since we had seen each other. Having come this far I had to find out what happened to him over the years.

I went up the stairs to the first floor. The place had the smell of genteel neglect. There were a few signs of vandalism, there was a little rubbish blowing around, but by and large, it was not a threatening place. It had the air of old people, passing uneventful lives day by day. Some might have lived there since the building, then innovative and modern, was built decades ago.

№31 was the second from the end along the uncovered walk way. An old man, nosey, looking around might have aroused suspicion. What would I say, I thought, if someone asked me what I was doing there. The building was quiet but I felt unseen eyes following me.

An uncombed grey head and a few days’ old stubble popped out from №30. ‘Gone’, he said. ‘Do you have any idea when he might be back?’ I said. ‘Gone!’ he said ‘He is gone.’

I shouldn’t have come, I thought. Had he been there I wouldn’t have recognised him. Was I there just out of curiosity? It was a boy of 14 that I knew, and let’s face it, didn’t much like, not the old man I expected to meet.

A stout woman with a goitre and double chin joined the conversation.

‘Are you a friend?’ she asked. I told her that a long time ago, a life time ago we were at school together.

‘It is nice of you to care. No one ever looked in on him’ she said. ‘That no good daughter of his came sniffing around as soon as he was taken away, but was never there when he needed help. We could hear him shouting, screaming in his own language. He was a very private person, didn’t talk to anyone. He was not well. He was terrified. He must have been through a lot in his life. He called the police, said that there was someone lurking in his flat trying to kill him. That was when the police came and took him away. Poor man,’ she said, ‘he will never come back.’

Screaming in his own language, I thought, retreating into his past, terrified, he was haunted by his demons. We, all who survived the war and tried build new lives from the ruins, had our demons, memories we had to put behind us to keep on living. These memories receded further and further into the past, but they never disappeared. Poor old Drac, when there was nothing left for him to make him want to keep on living, his demons caught up with him. I couldn’t help him, no one could.