I was mesmerised by the navy and white stripes on his pyjamas, far too big for his body, and all lopsided around his shoulders. It looked like he was drowning in them. His eyes were hard open as he stared at the scary looking clown on the wall – a doctor’s waiting room. Inland had its own.
Oskar was rolling more cigarettes on his lap, one leg over the other. He searched in his pockets for the make shift Zigarettenfilter and matches that always seemed to be misplaced.
I grabbed Tomas’ hand to steady mine. He smiled in an inappropriate and deadly way, but not smugly. He smiled to hide his fear. More like a reflex action.
Tomas could be best described as a smile.
He smiled then.
He will smile now.
And simply because he believed that life was too short not to. You can cry, but don’t waste time on such nonsense.
Oh, how I wished I was like my brother back then. I know I was thinking it as I desperately tried to fake my best smile.
The silence of the waiting room made my blood as cold as the air that crept through the open window. The leaves outside were stubborn, refusing to be moved by any wind, and hung limply until they fell of their own accord. There was no whispering noise or rustling. It was all as if nature conspired to keep us in the dark, not daring to whisper the reassurance we craved. Oskar sat with a face like a polished stone.
A doctor would come.
There would be an examination.
The boy from the van would also take part.
He was fragile. His arms were like twigs, and he wore a potato-sack shirt. I thought that if he were to spin too fast, his limbs might snap off. It was hard to get his attention under the mop of dark hair that dominated his narrow face. I was sure that there were eyes in there somewhere. He held himself tightly, and his clothes looked at least a size too small for him, only exaggerating his skinniness.
He looked like a boy lost in a crowd. I wanted to know his name, but Mother told us we shouldn’t speak to strangers, so I sat beside the words and stared.
When our time came, Oskar escorted us down a long, narrowing hallway. Nearing the end, we met a slender nurse. Her hair was grey and her eyes were bulging; the staring kind that always seemed to be jumping out of their sockets – caused in some degree, perhaps, by the black-rimmed glasses she wore around her neck. Father referred to them as the ‘virgin glasses’. If you wore them, you wouldn’t be planning on having sex for the next hundred years.
She took us into the examining room.
“Stand here. The doctor will be with you soon,” she instructed us. Her voice was significant and direct.
My hands were clammy.
The doctor was much the same. Most adults in Inland were all the same. He walked in with a face like a brick. His movements were all sharp and with purpose. Examining our clothed bodies for a few seconds, he looked up, and a careless smile flashed across his face. “You boys are fortunate to be chosen to attend Inland.”
Luck had nothing to do with it. It had more to do with a cruel twist of fate. Twisted words. Twisted people. Twisted colours. Everything in Inland was twisted.
The doctor looked at me with a sharp nod. “You have dangerous golden eyes, boy.” He would not stop sneezing and sniffing, and he did not wear gloves.
Golden eyes were not desirable in Germany at the time.
Nothing different was.
“Where did you get eyes like that?” I didn’t answer. Luckily for me, golden hair was in trend. My hair lit up the colour of acorns when it hit the sun that shone through the blackened window. “The rest of you is… pure Aryan,” the doctor said.
**ARYAN**
The word Aryan gave me some degree of confusion. For although Hitler and the Nazi party certainly popularised it, it was not Hitler who created it. The idea wasn’t a new one. It was taught throughout history, long before the night of the broken glass.
Yes, welcome to a history lesson by Josef.
The earliest known Aryans came from prehistoric Iran and later emigrated to India. So, no, the first Aryans did not have blond hair and blue eyes.
I will give you a moment to audibly gasp and recover from the shock. It’s big news.
Now, if you’ve fully recovered, we will get back to the story.
The doctor lifted my face with his thumb. Left. Right. Left. Right. The thickness of my lips were measured.
He smiled at Tomas for so long; after a few moments, what remained were only teeth. Brown ones. “You’re a gift to the Führer -– beautiful blond hair and blue eyes.”
The nurse was beginning to secure her black-framed glasses, to get a better look. She folded her arms across her pigeon chest, nodding intently.
Tomas stood in submission. It didn’t seem fair to me that he was a gift to the Führer, but I had dangerous eyes. The only thing I knew for certain about my eyes was that I got them from my father. Now, I added “dangerous” to the list.
Lastly, it was the boy’s turn. The doctor made him turn his head from left to right and back again in the same fashion. He was taller than both of us and looked at least two years older. The doctor didn’t say a word to him, but his expression said enough. I could feel it.
He weighed and measured us as the nurse wrote it all down in a brown notebook. Even our teeth and nose shape were taken into consideration. I didn’t know there would be a test.
That was the easy part.
It was nothing compared to the humiliation that was to come.
“Remove your clothing.” The doctor’s voice spun on a chair.
All three of us looked at each other. The window was open. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to run. All were reluctant to get undressed first, searching in each other’s eyes for the mutual sympathy we craved.
The doctor decided on me.
“Josef, zieh deine Sachen aus,” the doctor said. “Josef, clothes off.”
I forced myself to bring down my trousers with rattling hands. The sneezing doctor pressed at me to keep me moving. Tomas shuffled in like he was going to help, but thought against it.
I stood in just my underwear and one sock. The other must-have got lost in the snow. During the examination, I couldn’t help but think of that small, solitary sock, alone in the snow forever. Indeed, a scene from a painting.
“And the underpants.”
“What?” My hearing worked fine.
With much discomfort, they similarly came down, and it was with an amplitude of humiliation that I stood in just my skinniness, with my self-respect around my ankles.
The tall nurse started hurrying Tomas and the dark-haired boy now, too. Their faces were wooden. I was afraid to look down but felt my eyes drifting anyway. My eyes also worked fine.
I hadn’t noticed before, but in that tiny room, standing so vulnerably by my brother’s side, I realised that he was at least half an inch taller than me. I suppose I hadn’t looked up at him until that point. He held his head higher. His back was straighter, and he stood so proudly that one was ashamed to do otherwise after him.
I stood like hands were pressing down on my shoulders, as if my very thoughts weighed me down.
The room was cold.
We stood, shivering.
Three naked boys were examined.
“Move your hands now,” the doctor instructed.
Tomas did as he was told immediately, with a nervous grin. I refused to move my hands.
“Why?” I asked. I breathed it rather than spoke it, so neither the doctor nor the nurse heard me.
“I said, arms out!” He sneezed into his hand.
They had to make sure we had both balls in there.
I pried my hands away from my penis and held my arms.
“It’ll only be for a second,” the nurse promised. “You’re going to be part of the Führer’s new master race. That’s exciting, isn’t it?”
Master race?
I didn’t feel like I was part of any master race, and if such a master race did exist, that doctor would be the first
to go, with all his sneezing and rudeness.
Luckily, though, I didn’t speak.
The doctor cupped our genitals.
“Breathe in.”
He gave us instructions we were to follow promptly.
“And out.”
Our examination came to an end with our photos being taken for our new identity cards and birth certificates, the nurse doubling as a photographer. The camera’s mechanical whirring and clicking startled me.
“Noch einen. Noch einen.” I blinked, so the photo was retaken.”One more. One more,” the nurse said.
I thought about the family photos we had taken yearly.
How Mother dressed and washed us pristinely. Nothing was out of place, despite us playing in the summer puddles a few hours before. Father made us laugh for the photo. He never liked the fake, polished smile that usually came with photographs – preferring for us to smile naturally. So, every time he gazed upon the photo, he would be reminded of happiness. Pure, unconditional bliss that only young children can master. We try to censor our joy a lot more as we get older, covering our mouths like we reject the idea altogether.
“Twinkle, twinkle little cow. What? Cow?” Try as I might, I was unable to suppress the laughter.
“Tomas, did you change the words again?” Father sang so exuberantly.
I can still remember the sound of my little brother’s laughter, the way the words and the bright, vivid, yellowish colours bounced off his teeth. It created the colour of music. I’m reminded of that day often.
That was our father, and we loved him.
My eyes fogged up. I wiped a small opening, just enough to see out.
“Lächle. Lächle,” the nurse instructed. “Smile. Smile.”
My face smiled, but my eyes couldn’t.
Stripped of half our dignity, we were allowed to put clothes on again, which we did in record-breaking time, might I add. We were given hand-me-down clothes. My shirt had a large hole at the bottom of it, so I tucked it into my trousers.
As we left, we could hear the discussion taking place in our honour. From the side, I listened to the cotton colours, but when I turned, they were gone.
“I’m thinking the first and second one. The third one isn’t fit.”
The nurse hesitated before mumbling in agreement. “…They… happy with the first and second.”
I frantically tried to remember who was first and who was second, but my mind failed me.
“What numbers were we, Tomas? Do you remember?”
“I think I was second, so…” He shrugged.
Was I first? Second? Third? Was Tomas first? Was he third? Please don’t let him be third.
“We’ll be alright,” he finally answered, putting his hand on my shoulder. Panic rose.
But the doctor knew who was first and second. The nurse knew. The monsters did. You know. Even I did, to some extent.
Soon after, Oskar came back out and took Tomas and me into one room, and the boy was led into another.
I never saw him again.
And I didn’t even know his name.
10
The Forgotten Name
*French Rose*
We were no longer to call ourselves Josef and Tomas ____, which you already know I have no memory of. The new name was beaten into our heads, forced on us like an unwanted kiss from an aunt at a Christmas party.
“Tomas Schneider,” Dohman pointed to my little brother. “And you – Josef Schneider.” Our previous names were not German enough. The way he held his lanky frame and gestured with his hands screamed comedy. The man seemed to sink into his forties like an old armchair.
In a somewhat ironic turn of events, the name Schneider was also of Jewish decent.
“That’s not our names,” Tomas argued. “Our names are Tomas and Josef_____” You don’t want to be the kid who argued with Dohman.
“Shut up,” Dohman said, cutting his sentence in half.
“Those were poor excuses for names.” He was polishing his glasses with spit, stamping authority.
Tomas nodded. His face was cracked. After a few minutes, he gathered up the courage to speak again. “Herr Dohman, where’s Mama and Papa?”
Dohman put his glasses back on. He thought about the answer until he decided on a simple one.
“Gone.” Blue, lantern eyes stared at his desk. “And there will be no speaking of your Mama and Papa either, ja?”
“Why not?” Perfect unison.
I sank further into the chair, hoping that it would swallow me whole. Playing with the buttons on my shirt, peeling them off by their tiny threads, gave me some comfort. The urge to speak out or punch him was growing on me, like weeds. I could feel Tomas’ gaze.
“Don’t interrupt me,” Dohman said sternly. It seems that all adults don’t like it very much when children talk over them.
“Mama and Papa are dead. From now on…”
“What? Mama and Papa aren’t dead. We saw them… just a few hours…” Tomas’ words were swift, and he came to a moment of realisation.
The gun.
He also heard it.
He wept some more.“Josef…”
“What did I just say about interrupting?” Dohman looked down at his desk, like he would be able to fashion a suitable response from the papers littered on it. “They were hung for their crimes against the Reich.”
Crimes? For wanting to keep their children? For marrying each other? For swearing?
Eyes down.
“You two are better here than with those traitors.” The wall now seemed to have answers in its shadows for Dohman eyeballed it. Germans at the time could never escape the shadows. Aware of who had fathered us, Dohman had conflicting thoughts that day. He plucked the shades of grey in his mind like harp strings. The colours coloured his behaviour, but it was messy and didn’t keep inside the lines. His face spoke, even when his lips didn’t move. “If Jewish people are inferior, then how could these children have Jewish blood and still appear to look Aryan?”
To reconcile this dilemma, Dohman propagated the idea that we were descendants of pure German blood, and we had more of our mother’s traits, despite that being untrue. The guilt convinced him that the Nazis were not stealing children, but reclaiming what was always theirs.
“It was our duty to remove you from such an environment, so you could grow the proper way,” Dohman spoke to his desk.
“No. No. No.” Tomas repeated.
“I’m sorry. W-what do you mean?” My eyes diverted between Tomas and Dohman. “You can’t mean that… that they…?”
I cried as if the ferocity of it might bring our Mother and Father back; as if, by sheer force, the news could be undone, the words could be unsaid.
“They couldn’t be dead.” I tried to scream, but the words were unable to come out, no matter how much I forced them to. I often found myself shouting at the words, telling them to leave my lips, but they were stubborn and refused to listen.
Dohman looked to Oskar, prompting him to help, but Oskar couldn’t hear under the tobacco fumes.
“No, they wouldn’t do that. They loved us…” Tomas’ voice was cracking. So, too, were his eyes. They were like the sky. His voice changed mid-sentence.
“Why did they have to die?”
You can’t blame them for dying, Tomas.
My cries were then replaced with silence, and my silence was a lie.
“Don’t cry.” Dohman seemed to collect his words in his hand, flatten, and throw them across the room at Oskar.
Everything was silent for many more difficult breaths. Not the kind of silence where nothing happened, but the kind where everything happened. All at once. A collection of colours, sounds, and smells.
Then Oskar entered the script.
“You understand him, ja?” Oskar finally said, placing a hand on my brother’s head.
“Yes,” Tomas promptly agreed. Quick answers were appreciated here in Inland.
“And you?”
I nodded my head, sa
lt on my tongue.
Dohman pulled a small, ceramic bowl of sweets from his drawer and held out the peace offering. “Take some.”
Our sadness reached into the bowl and picked out a sweet. I chose one, Tomas picked up three. Our hands were of frailty and caution.
“Ah!” Dohman’s voice was a whistle. “What do we say?”
“Danke,” Tomas delicately spoke. I could hear his pain. He could feel it in his throat. And occasionally, it would work its way up in the prickly form of a sharp cough.
But I didn’t speak.
I couldn’t. I looked at Dohman with my mouth slightly opened.
“Excuse me. What do you say?” He loomed over his desk and whispered it to me.
Still nothing.
“You sure they didn’t send us a retard?”
Oskar sighed, leaning forward on his chair.
The bowl was pulled from my reach, and I was forced to drop the sweet.
“You will get one when you learn some manners.”
I knew my manners, but I didn’t show them to adults that didn’t know theirs.
Oskar was in mid-roll of a cigarette when Dohman called upon him again.
“Frederick!” I jumped. “Take these two outside and show them what we do to boys with no manners.”
Before he did so, Oskar clicked his heels together, shot his right hand in the air, and said in a deep, loud voice,
“Heil Hitler.”
Dohman copied him.
What do they do with boys that cry?
In Inland, the way love was shown happened to be strange. It involved being beaten, with fists and words.
But this didn’t happen to us. Not yet.
“Don’t worry – I won’t hurt you,” Oskar said, with kind eyes and a cigarette in his mouth.
“But if you don’t stop crying,” he poked Tomas’ Stupsnase, Tomas’ button-nose, “he will.”
The beatings made us forget our names, and almost ourselves, too. We wrote line after line when the other kids were playing.
“My name is Josef Schneider.”
The Boy Who Saw in Colours Page 7
