The Unquiet Heart Read Online Free PDF

dreams?”
    “They’re not like before. I mean I don’t have one of my fits and wake up and find cryptic notes.” I pointed at the pad. Thank god. It had been like living with someone
else in my body, sometimes being taken over and waking from a fugue to find this parasite had left me a message. Usually a nasty one. From the time in the camp.
    “I still get nightmares, but somehow I know that’s what they are. Which makes it bearable. Does that make sense, Prof?”
    “Perfectly. These nightmares – are they about Dachau?” He said it the way everybody does since they showed the pictures; as though voicing those two guttural syllables would
reopen its gates and let evil loose. Or maybe that’s just how I hear it. It still makes me flinch.
    “It’s not that clear. Let me check.” I opened my pad and ran through some of the jottings. “There’s one that keeps popping up. It’s hard to describe.
I’m in a big space without colour or definition. Alone. And I’m being crowded by big boulders. They keep closing in on me. It’s not violent or scary, just oppressive somehow. An
air of gloom and foreboding. Pretty obvious, I guess.”
    “Really? And what might these boulders be?”
    Haggarty had that look in his eye, the one that says I’m interested in what you’re saying but not necessarily because you’re talking sense.
    “I’m trying to get on with my life. But things keep getting in my road. Obstacles…” I trailed away.
    He was nodding. “Sure, sure that could be right. But it might also be that you’re trying to hide something from yourself. And you won’t let it go.”
    “Hide? What would I hide from myself?”
    “Feelings? Recognition of yourself? You went through a rough time. For a while there you lost yourself. A year of your life erased, and you couldn’t connect the time before with the
time after.”
    I nodded. “I could remember who I was, but not recognise who I’d become?”
    “Possibly.”
    “You blokes never come off the fence,” I laughed. “But if you’re right, what do I do about it?”
    “Nothing. You’re sane – as sane as me.” He ignored my raised eyebrow. “You’ve got a job – a strange one, mind – but you can fend for yourself. The
fact you’ve got holes in your memory isn’t unusual. How many of us can recall every bit of our time for the last week, far less a year? From what you’ve told me, you’ve got
plenty enough recollection. And a lot of stuff that’s better forgotten.”
    “So I just put up with the dreams?”
    “Sure, we all dream.” He said nothing for a moment, then leaned forward over the table. “Tell me a thing. What language did they speak… in the camp?”
    “I hadn’t thought about it. All languages. There were Poles, Roma, French, Germans of course… lots of German Jews.”
    “What language did you speak?”
    “I suppose English and French. I took French at school and two years of it at Glasgow Uni.”
    He looked down at my file and casually asked, “ Sprechen sie Deutsch ?”
    “ Ja, ein bisschen. Ich habe… Meine Gott !” I put my hand up to my mouth.
    “Coming back, is it? Don’t be so surprised. Even though you had a hard time of it, you would have picked up the language around you. Like a kid does. I expect you have a good basic
grasp.”
    I wasn’t listening to him. I was lying in my cramped bunk whispering to the other men around me. We were discussing the news filtering through about the progress of the allies. The guards
were getting edgy. The word was they were within fifty miles. It seemed impossible. Seemed wrong to hope. I tugged at the filthy bandage around my head to ease the pressure. I was asking them what
they thought the guards would do. Would they kill us all to get rid of the evidence? Should we try to break out?
    I strained to hear my words and for a moment, my head filled with new sounds and structures. We were talking in German. It might not have been High German, given the polyglot