GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2021/22
WAYNE CONNOLLY
‘The Life and Sulphurous Death of Theo D.’
Theo as a boy: Hamburg, 1947
I never liked the boy. He was stupid and he was dirty. He always smelled of sour milk and piss. I could never wash it off him. We would not have taken him if he wasn’t the son of our son, the one who didn’t come back from the war. Then his mother disappeared and we felt there was no choice. I always said she was a whore from the docks and so she proved when she left. Probably with a sailor from one of the foreign ships. He was a clumsy boy and he broke things. He didn’t know how to hold a spoon properly, or a cup. He did not sit straight or look you in the eye. Even when I scolded him, which was often, as I had to, he stared at the floor or at his shoes smiling to himself. And he was dirty. He used to piss in the yard in corners, leaving his wet marks on the wall.
It is true that his Oma did not love him but Theo was a good boy. It is also true that he stained the walls, but what man does not enjoy the freedom to piss on a wall from time to time? He was his father’s son and that was enough for me. On Sundays I would put my hat on his head and take him walking. We walked along the U-bahn and I showed him the sections that I was rebuilding: the tracks on the streets, the underground stations, the tunnels. We saw some of the old carriages that had been burned out in the firestorms. I taught him the names of all the stations, and even though he could not read he would remember them and recite them in order. Theo was not good with words, but I taught him how to count and how to measure correctly, and I taught him how we laid tracks one rail after another. We would stop at a bakery on Wagnerstrasse to buy bread. Then I took him to meet my friends in the bierkeller where we sang songs about hunting in the old times, and I would say:
“Here is Theo! When he is grown he will work with us on the railway. One day he will be a great engineer!”
Theo’s disgrace: Hamburg 1962
The passenger:
Of course I remember Theo. Everyone who used the U-bahn in those days knew him, or rather they would have seen him and maybe spoken to him. He worked in the newspaper kiosk in the underground station at Wagnerstrasse. No matter how early your journey to work, or how late the last train home, he was always there wearing a black hat with a feather, the kind old men used to wear. The old line on the U-bahn was very poorly kept at that time. Some of the trains had been running when the railway was built over fifty years before. The stations were dirty and full of litter, but Theo’s kiosk was clean and tidy. He kept his newspapers and books in order and the tobacco and cigarettes were always stacked up neatly.
One thing that puzzled me about Theo was that I don’t think he could read, or if he could read he could not read well. I watched him one day as he stared at an advertisement for automobiles on the arch opposite his kiosk. He was mouthing the sounds Bee Em Vey over and over, as though he was trying to fix them in his mind or force them to mean something. But he knew the names of all the U-bahn stations, and all the streets and districts on the lines. If anyone asked him for directions he answered quickly and with great confidence. He must have learned them and gathered them in his head like a map. You might wonder, though, how he managed to sell newspapers and books if he couldn’t read the titles, but his regular customers knew they had to point at what they wanted. Others would get annoyed and shout at him. Theo looked terrified until he understood what they were after. I am afraid that some people would torment him by asking for something and then standing to watch the panic grow in his face. I probably did that myself once or twice; I am not proud of that.
But Astrid was always kind to him. She was a young photographer who lived in my apartment block. She was beautiful, and moved with the ease and grace that only young people have. She always carried a camera and she watched the world all the time looking for the shape and gesture she wanted to capture. She was one of the few people who talked to Theo, and she might have photographed him as well. I guess he looked interesting in an odd way. I like to think that he can still be found in one of her pictures, maybe in a book or an archive. He will never be seen here again, that’s for sure.
Astrid had a companion at that time, a young English man named Stuart. She said he was a painter and that one day he would be a famous artist. He was a handsome boy, and they were such a fine looking couple. I heard that he was also a musician who played with a rock and roll group in the bars and cellars. Needless to say that meant nothing to me, but I know that Astrid spent a lot of time with them all. Stuart used to talk to Theo when he bought his cigarettes from him, though I can’t imagine what they spoke about as they had little language in common. But I remember seeing them together and Theo was saying “Ja, ja” and Stuart was echoing him “Yeah, yeah … yeah”, laughing at themselves and each other.
I mentioned that Theo kept his kiosk and his part of the station very clean. He was always gathering scraps of paper and litter from the floor and tidying them away. One day I noticed that when he picked up used matchsticks he put them straight into his jacket pocket. It was such an odd thing to do, and after I had seen him do this a few times I asked him why he wanted them. He looked at me as though this was a very interesting question and said, “I am building a model railway. These are for making wooden carriages, but I need very many of them. Do you know how many carriages there are on the Hamburg U-bahn?” I assumed Theo was going to tell me, but he leaned closer and confided, “I don’t know yet. I am still counting.”
After that I came into the habit of saving my matches for Theo. After I lit a cigarette, I put the spent match back into the box and when the box was used up I left it on the counter of his kiosk as I was passing. I didn’t stop and talk, as I knew he would start on a long description of the U-bahn - which stations were built first, which was the biggest, or the busiest, and his latest count of the number of carriages. Besides, by this time Theo had started to develop a strange odour on himself or on his clothes. He always appeared clean, but he began to smell quite sulphurous. He had the taint of scorched matchwood and old fire about him. Other passengers and passers-by must have noticed as well, but I suspect I was the only one who knew the reason.
It was a few months later, in April of that year, when I heard of the disaster at Wagnerstrasse. The station was closed as I was going to work and I had to walk to the new line at Wartenau instead. On the train people were talking about a fire on the old underground platform. They said it had started at the newspaper kiosk and I immediately thought of Theo. It took no more than a day before people were blaming him, saying that he always looked a strange type and that they never trusted him. Rumours always fly quickly when nobody has any facts. At first they thought that he had died in the fire, but no body or remains were found. Some stupid people said that he always smelled like a devil and that he had jumped into a tunnel when the flames started, back to where he belonged. I also heard that he was seen running from the station, heading down Hamburger Strasse towards the harbour.
Nobody saw Theo again but he had certainly left his mark. There was a black stain from the fire on the platform that was not cleaned for months. There was a scorched calendar on the wall whose date was never changed again. It showed 10 April 1962. Later I realised that was the day that Stuart died.
Theo in exile: Liverpool, 1965
The landlady:
I don’t know why he came here, and he wasn’t able to explain. He could hardly speak any English when he arrived. There was something about a train, something about a boat, and something about a man called Stu. I’ve no idea who that was because he didn’t seem to have any friends. It was hard to talk to him. If he didn’t understand what you were saying he would say “Yeah, yeah, yeah” and laugh to himself. This was the kind of thing that got him into trouble - that and his funny hat. More than once he came in the worse for wear after someone had battered him in the street. His German accent didn’t help.
He started doing a night shift in a bakery, and he’d come home in the morning with bread and cakes that he’d share. We hardly saw him really. I think he spent a lot of time at Lime Street watching the trains. I saw him there once or twice when I was going to Chester to visit my sister. He always looked very lonely. Then he worked in a hospital as a cleaner. There was no bread any more, but he brought home these horrible smells instead. You knew when he had come in the front door and walked up the stairs, even without hearing him. When he left, his room was clean and tidy but I had to leave the window open for days. He said he was going to Crewe; something to do with trains. The last thing he said to me was “Did you know that eighty-seven trains are at Crewe every day?” Well I didn’t. Who would know a thing like that?
The ticket inspector:
Theo? That funny German one? He was always at the station. Always asking questions. Where has that train come from? Where is that train going? I didn’t really know what he wanted. I’d point him at the information board, but that didn’t seem to help. Mostly he sat watching the trains, eating bread from his pocket, counting the carriages. There were a lot of spotters in those days. Mostly boys with notebooks writing down the train numbers. You could pay a penny for a platform ticket then. I said to him once “Why don’t you go and ask them? They know all the trains.” “No,” he said, “they do not understand the railway and they do not know how to count correctly”. It was a pity, really. They might have talked to him. Nobody else would.
Theo's good heart: Haltwhistle, 1978
The cafe owner:
Haltwhistle is the exact centre of the country. Did you know that? Theo told me that if you cut out a map and hang it up and draw a line straight down, then do it again from two different places, the centre is where the lines cross. Isn’t that clever? He came into my cafe one day and when I asked him what brought him here, he said, “I wanted to see what it was like where the lines crossed.” He never said very much, so that was quite like poetry for him.
No one knew where he had come from, but he stayed around and set himself up in an empty bothy on the edge of the forestry. He threw a tarp over the broken roof and tied it down and that was where he lived. He wasn’t bothering anyone so people let him be, except for some small boys who threw stones at him and called him names. He never did anything about it so I shooed them away most of the time.
He used to come in for a cup of tea now and then, but he only ever had a few coppers on him. He was very thin and looked all scooped out in the middle, so one day I had an idea and asked if he would wash some pots to pay for the tea and a cake. Well, he was at them straight away and did such a good job I got him to come back again. Soon he was cleaning for me every day, just for an hour or so, and I could tell he knew his way around with a mop and bucket. I couldn’t afford to pay him much but I always sent him away with some leftover scones or a sandwich.
Considering how he lived he kept himself tidy enough. He smelled like a clod of earth and pine needles most of the time, but I didn’t mind that. There are worse smells in the world. He must have been growing vegetables – potatoes and carrots and the like – near the bothy, because he started bringing them in for me as a present. One day he brought some flowers he had picked and gave them to me. “Oh, Theo,” I said. “I’m old enough to be your mother!” And he smiled the sweetest smile, but there was a dampness in his eyes as well. The only time we fell out was once when we were in the little kitchen together and he leaned in as though he was going to kiss me. I gave him a stern look and he left very quickly that day.
Mostly he was a quiet one, but he got very excited once. He had heard about the new Metro they were building in Newcastle, and came in shouting, “They are going to have a U-bahn!”. I didn’t know what he meant until he told me about his granddad’s railway when he was a boy. After that he would catch a train into the city now and then to watch them digging the tunnels and laying the tracks. That was when he was happiest, I think.
Then one day he just scarpered. He got into some trouble with the forestry workers and they came looking for him in the cafe one morning. They said he had been scraping the red paint off the trees they had marked for cutting down. When Theo came in later I asked him what he had done, and he said, “They shouldn’t be destroying things. Trees, living things, or anything!” I told him that was their job, but he wouldn’t have it. That was the only time I ever saw him angry. And as it turned out that was the last time I ever saw him at all.
When I came in the next day there was a small bag of potatoes by the door, but no sign of Theo. Later I walked down to the wood and I could see the tarp on the bothy had been on fire and smoke was coming out of the roof. I’m not sure if the men from the forestry burned him out or if he did it himself. I don't suppose it really matters now either way.
I never expected to hear about him again, but one day my neighbour Winnie came back from Newcastle and said she had seen Theo on one of the new Metro trains. She didn’t recognise him at first because he was dressed in neat clothes and was wearing a black hat with a feather. He was riding up front near the driver, looking like a lord, she said, like he owned the train. I was so pleased. He had a good heart really, and deserved to make better of himself.
Theo in tears: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1990
The gallery attendant:
I was working as a volunteer at the Side Gallery at the time. It was a great place, run by people who really cared about photography, and we held a lot of exhibitions, by new photographers as well as some of the big names. It was a very social place too. People used to come in to see the pictures and videos, or to use the library, and sometimes just to sit and talk. You would get to meet all sorts and that’s one of the reasons I liked it so much.
After I had been there for about six months, a German chap started coming in regularly. He was always dressed a bit oddly and looked a bit like an old hippy with his embroidered waistcoats and his hat and his long curly hair. We got talking and he told me his name was Theo. I could tell he was a photographer because he always had that vinegary smell about him that you get from a stop bath. He said he had a darkroom at home and he developed his own black and white prints. He was keen to show them to me and said he would bring some in. When he did it was a suitcase full, and every single picture was of a railway or a train. A lot of them were details of trains: wheels, windows, seats, doors, luggage racks, everything. He told me proudly: “I have 3,216 pictures of the Newcastle Metro. Next week I will bring in some more”.
It turns out he had a job on the Metro, but not as a driver or anything technical. He worked every night in the depots cleaning the graffiti off the trains. He’d been doing it for ten years. I didn’t even know that was a job, but it’s all Theo did, every night.
Anyway, we had an exhibition coming up by the German photographer Astrid Kirchherr, the one who lived in Hamburg at the same time as The Beatles. She had taken a lot of the early pictures of them. Theo had mentioned that he was from Hamburg and I thought he was about the right age to have been in the city then. I was looking forward to seeing him to ask him if he was there at the time. I wondered if he might even have seen them.
I went into the gallery on the day the exhibition opened and the other attendant, Lucy, said “Your friend Theo’s upstairs”. I went up to the main room on the first floor and I could see him walking along looking quickly at each photograph, in a real hurry. Then he stopped in front of one picture and stood staring at it for a long time. He was so focused on it that I didn’t want to disturb him, so I waited a while and then walked up behind him. It was a portrait of Stuart Sutcliffe, the one who died. I said “Hey, Theo”, and when he turned around to look at me I could see his face was wet with tears.
Theo redeemed: County Durham, 2015
The neighbour:
The first time we saw Theo he was pushing his heavy old bicycle up the path towards us. We knew it was him; it couldn’t have been anyone else. He was wearing a short green jacket and matching trousers that ended just below his knees, with long socks and black patent shoes. A small animal horn, a hunting horn of some kind, was slung over his shoulder on a leather strap and a tall feather stood up on his hat. His hair was long and curly and jet black.
When my wife and I moved into the small estate in the Derwent Valley, several people had said, “Have you met Theo yet? You will before long. You won’t mistake him. But be careful, if you talk to him you’ll never get away.” We soon found out that this was true. Theo liked to talk, but only about one thing. “Hello,” he said, “how are you today? Did you know this used to be a railway line? Railways are very fine things. I have a model railway in my house. I made it myself. All with my own hands. Would you like to see it?”
Of course we made the mistake of talking to Theo. Everyone did. It was hard not to when he set his bicycle in the middle of the path and waited when he saw you coming. You couldn’t easily pass by without exchanging a few words. “Hello, how are you today? Did you know there was a railway line here until 1966, and fourteen trains took coal from the mines down to the river every day. I have a model railway in my house…”
To try and avoid the topic of trains and railways, I once asked Theo why he always pushed his bicycle up the path’s long incline instead of riding it. His answer was very simple: “I am only 60 kilograms!” Then I could see that he was thinner and older than I first thought. His face was hollow and lined, and when he took his hat off there was a stripe of white in the middle of his dyed black hair. There was a chemical smell in the air around him, like glue and paint thinner. “Did you know I have a model railway in my house? It is all made by hand.”
We started avoiding Theo and took care to check that he wasn’t coming in either direction before setting off on a walk. But there was always a chance that he would appear around a bend in the path or that we would see the unmistakable shape of his feathered hat coming towards us in the distance. I became more terse and abrupt each time we met, refusing to do more than nod in passing. One day he called out as we walked away, “I am very lonely, you know!”. Of course I knew, but I couldn’t carry the weight of his loneliness in my conscience.
I saw Theo for the last time when I was out walking alone one day. I stepped down onto the path from an old railway bridge and saw him underneath the arch, peeing against the wall. He looked more ragged than before; there were stains on his jacket and his shoes were scuffed. He heard my footsteps and saw me as he turned and buttoned his fly. He grinned like a small boy caught in mischief then picked up his bicycle and wheeled it away.
After a few weeks we realised that Theo hadn’t appeared for a while and I asked a neighbour if he had seen him. He said he hadn’t, but asked if I knew that he had put a video on YouTube, something to do with his model railway. I would find it easily, apparently, just by searching for his name. Of course I couldn’t resist looking for it. Although Theo talked about his railway all the time, I had never been tempted to ask him about it, much less to go and see it. But I was intrigued by the idea that he would have anything to do with YouTube.
The video was easy to find, it was first in the list when I looked for his name. The title was The Hamburg U-bahn: a real model, all hand made, and it began with a shaky image of a station platform. The lighting was gloomy and the picture had low resolution, but I could see figures wearing clothes from the fifties or sixties sitting on a bench and waiting at the platform edge. There were pieces of litter strewn in corners and grime on the tunnel wall where there was a poster advertising BMW. The gravel between the tracks was dark with spilled oil and dirt. After a long wait, a light appeared in the distance of a tunnel and an old red and white U-bahn train came silently towards the platform and stopped. Nothing moved; the figures remained eerily still. Then the train started again and moved off.
After this sequence repeated twice more, the camera moved along the track until it reached another station, also with people and their luggage. There was a newspaper kiosk with tiny newspapers and books, and stairs to another level. As the camera moved up the steps a street scene came into view with buses, cars, shops and larger buildings. The underground stations could be seen in cut-away sections beneath the pavements, with more trains moving around the U-bahn at street level, stopping, starting and stopping again. The camera continued its journey, following the trains as they passed through the stations and on the open tracks between the buildings.
Gradually the shot pulled away and the city was revealed, stretching out beyond the edge of the screen. The only things moving were the trains, appearing and disappearing between the buildings. It was hard to grasp any sense of scale now and the miniature figures and vehicles became even smaller as the scene expanded. A harbour and the sea began to appear in the periphery of my vision. I could almost see mountains and clouds.
Then, with a jolt of surprise, I saw the edge of a table with the back of a chair leaning against it. The camera moved up and around to survey the room, taking in the whole of the model city which filled it from wall to wall. There were pictures hanging from a rail - old landscapes and hunting scenes. Everything in the room looked dark and old. As the scene continued to rotate, a mirror appeared on an opposite wall and Theo came slowly into view with a small camera held in front of him. As he caught sight of himself in the mirror he stopped and there was a look of panic on his face, as though he had seen a stranger looking back at him. He dropped out of sight below the edge of the table and the picture jumped sharply, becoming dark and unfocused.
Nothing happened for several seconds, and I could see from the timer on the screen that the video was coming to the end. But then slowly the camera moved upwards, creeping over the table top, up over the railway track and the platform, above the small figures with their luggage and the passing red and white trains. It tracked up to the street, over the cars, the buildings and the city until it reached the wall and the mirror where Theo stood smiling, with his arm extended over the expanse of all that he had made.
Theo’s apology: here, today
I apologise for nothing.
For being born, for the life I lived,
and, in all probability, for the death I will die.
I do not apologise for carrying the odours of the world with me.
When I worked on trains, I smelled of the railway.
When I worked in the bakery, I smelled of yeast.
When I cleaned the hospital, it was shit and death.
These things were absorbed into my skin and clothes.
It was not my choice.
There are some things I regret.
I am sorry that I did not kiss Astrid
and I am sorry that I did not kiss Stu.
They were my only friends.
Nobody touched me and I have touched nobody
since I held my Opa’s hand sixty years ago.
I do not apologise for leaving my stains,
or for the things I destroyed.
I have spent my whole life cleaning and rebuilding.
Did you know there are 374 carriages on the Hamburg U-bahn?
One day the flame of a single match
will take them all again.
The trains, the stations and the city.
Along with my sulphurous self.
And I make no apology for that.