The Boy Who Saw in Colours

by Lauren Robinson

“Yes, him.”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Well, I’m not an artist like you, you know.” Oskar said.

  “We can’t all be great, Oskar.”

  Others were now gravitating to my bed; they all watched and smiled.

  “Now, write.” He handed me the chalk. I wrote in big letters.

  “Thy name makes the enemy tremble.”

  I didn’t write very well, but it was definitely readable.

  “And when you get stuck on something, write it down here, ja?”

  “Yes, Oskar.” My eyes grew large.

  Others watched me as I filled the floor with blue and white chalk.

  As I completed my homework, telling Tomas about the event was heavy on my mind. I wanted to run to the cabin a few doors down and show him.

  The only anxiety Oskar Frederick ever gave me was the fact that he was always going out – for a cigarette – especially during the night. Oskar often had a hard time sleeping, because sleep required peace.

  After a few months, the nightmares had quietened down, and Tomas and I had settled into our new lives as nicely as you would expect. Of course, we still missed our mother and father every day, but there were comforts now too.

  Oskar.

  Von Bacchman.

  The morning runs through the countryside.

  And escaping it all in the evening with my brother.

  All of this resulted in some form of contentment, and would soon be built upon to approach the concept of being happy.

  Of course, there were still nights where I’d see my brother’s dead eyes staring at me in the darkness, and I’d wake up screaming.

  Oskar would always be waiting at the bottom of my bed, pulling at the sweaty fabrics of my pyjamas.

  When he had calmed down the seething mess of my night terrors, he’d go outside, and the frost would keep him company while he puffed on a cigarette or two – or three.

  Sometimes there would be stars.

  On those occasions, he would wait a little longer before a voice from the cabin called him back, or the stars would disappear and dissolve back into the vast German clouds.

  “What a fine night this is, world,” he said.

  I’d look at the moonlight shine through the crack of the wooden door that Oskar hadn’t closed properly, lie on my back, and wait for him to return before going back to sleep.

  On a particular life-defining night, I had a distinctly unpleasant dream, and I followed him into the moonlight. I couldn’t explain it, but knowing he was close made me feel at peace.

  I couldn’t understand how I couldn’t explain it.

  I stood and stared as he gazed down at a photo of a pretty dark-haired woman he pulled out of his shirt pocket. He didn’t yet notice that I was there. Oskar looked at that photo often, especially at night, when no one was looking. I thought about asking him who the lady was that night, but I didn’t.

  The sky was usually like a spillage – cold and heavy, slippery and grey – but once in a while, more colours would have the nerve to appear. Dark blue, like a piece of velvet, had been lined over the sky and sprinkled upon by shining gems.

  “Hallo, little man,” Oskar said, when he saw my small stature standing at the door. “It’s okay. Go back to bed.”

  I remained upright and didn’t speak.

  “Or you can come sit by me,” he smiled.

  I smiled back at him.

  “But we’ll have to be quiet, okay?” he whispered. “Don’t want to wake the others up.”

  Kissed by the rain and glistening, the wet ground was cold underfoot. One sock on and another barely hanging on, I stepped off the path and into the shaggy grass. I felt the squelch of the mud beneath. The water rose and ran between my toes.

  “Do you know how to roll a cigarette?” Oskar turned as I sat.

  “Nein.”

  By the end of the twenty minutes it took Oskar to smoke a few cigarettes, I could roll moderately well.

  “Why do you smoke so much?” I asked.

  “Trying to kill myself quickly, Josef,” he answered, puffing on the end. “It calms me down.”

  “Like painting calms me down?”

  “Ja, I guess so.”

  I felt the kind of sadness that seeps into your bones. Oskar’s face studied mine, scratchy hand on whiskers, and then the light.

  “Want to try?”

  “No. I’m not allowed to.”

  “Says who? Your teacher?”

  I stared at the cigarette between his fingers and took it. At first, I didn’t even inhale. I didn’t know I was supposed to. I just sucked in, held the smoke in my mouth for a few seconds, and blew out.

  Oskar rolled his eyes and told me to stop wasting it.

  “Just get it in your lungs already!”

  A sickening image: a twelve-year-old boy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

  As I sucked in the smoke, the hardest part to get over was the psychological sense of breathing in something that wasn’t air – like breathing underwater. It tasted horrible. It was very dry and stung my throat. It was pointless to stifle a coughing fit.

  Oskar laughed.

  “Shut up,” I coughed.

  But then, through the coughing and the burning, I wasn’t thinking of my Mother and Father anymore. I wasn’t thinking about how they abandoned us or how much I missed painting. My headache went away. I didn’t even know I had one.

  It was relaxing – clarifying.

  That was the beginning of the midnight smoking lessons.

  Beginning with supposed happiness and ending with devastatingly cruel sadness and a beat-up man.

  Cheery, I know.

  In Inland, 99.5% of boys were indoctrinated to the Nazi ideology.

  That left the 0.5% that still had questions. But they were only half questions – half thoughts. Our childish inquisitiveness was peaking, and we became very fond of specific, curious phrases. Considering most of them were answered with a hiding, most boys kept their mouths shut. It took me longer to catch on.

  Tomas was an intelligent boy, well beyond his years, so he could comprehend rather quickly.

  The price to pay for not comprehending was the bruising. But nothing was as bad as the Watschen he got in his first few days in Inland. Kröger not only learned to stand the boy, but he actually grew to like him. My brother remained quiet and listened.

  Together, we’d fill up the entire floor with facts about the Führer. The progress I was making was respectable – or so I thought.

  No paintings lived in Inland, and there was little to no talk about art at all. Everyone was so opaque. They forbade me to nourish even the slightest of hopes that I’d someday be able to study art. The best I could do was pretend to paint in the cabin at night with my grandmother’s paintbrush when all the other children had gone to sleep. I spoke the colours under my breath before I was told, in no uncertain terms, to shut up by the other children who woke up from all that mumbling. The colours spoke back. I recited the pages in my grandmother’s book in a way I couldn’t with other words. I remember the painted handprint birds, the beautiful colours of yellows, blacks, and reds.

  Handprint birds.

  What you’ll need:

  Poster paint in a few colours.

  Fine paintbrush

  Medium paintbrush

  An old magazine or newspaper

  A lot of creativity

  After the day’s lesson had finished, at two, Tomas and I would come back to my cabin, and he would help me with homework. We sat with the words and watched as the sunlight shone through the windows, setting the ground alight. Many times, Von would enter and try to join us before we told him to get out. We screamed at him. A lot of the time, he was trying to egg us on.

  On a Thursday, at 6:15 pm, we were preparing for our usual evening on the hill, but Von had other plans.

  “Tommy is playing soccer with us today. We need more players.”

  He looked at me and grinned. “Not you, Josef. You’re
horrible at soccer.”

  “Sorry, Von, I’m going with Josef.”

  Von had his hands in his pocket and didn’t even bother looking up from the ground. “What? Come on.”

  “We’re going to play dominoes,” I said. I handed Tomas a steadfast smile.

  Now we had his attention.

  “Can I come?” A cutout smile.

  Tomas was thinking, almost considering it.

  “No, you can’t come.” I butted in. “You’re horrible at dominoes” This wasn’t true at all. Von was rather good. I just wanted my words to sting.

  Children can be so cruel.

  Soon, we were on the main courtyard, passing brown shirts and upright walkers. Just as we were about to turn the corner, I looked back to find Von still watching. When we locked eyes, he shouted out, “I hate you, Josef,” putting his hands to his mouth to amplify the sound. Some older boys stared, but Von didn’t care.

  “Dickhead,” I laughed under my breath.

  Von’s eyes followed us until we were out of sight.

  No one hated me more than that boy.

  21

  Handprint Birds

  *Hollywood Cerise*HelioTrope*Hegarty

  In a classroom with sun overflowing on the walls, names were rattled around in the shaker-box that was Frau Simons’ head. She stood at the back like a human smoke detector, just waiting for someone to slip up so she could begin her cries.

  “Pichler, Wünderlich…”

  Each boy in turn stood up, walked to the front of the class, and rhymed off the oath to our Führer. The words rolled off their tongue. They made it look effortless.

  “Bacchman.”

  Von stood confidently, with his hands behind his back and answered. He was surprisingly good.

  “Brilliant, Rouvon.” Frau Simons looked down at her book. She wasn’t finished with Von just yet. “And I don’t suppose you could tell me what are some characteristics of the Jew?”

  He didn’t even flinch.

  “Hooked nose, like the shape of a number six,” he said, tracing out the shape of six. It was velvet purple. “Ugly, puffy lips, a deceitful look, and fleshy eyelids.”

  He was showing off now, one eyebrow raised.

  “Fein gemacht, Rouvon,” she answered. “Very good, Rouvon. Sit down.”

  He looked and smiled at me, but I would not return the smile. I looked at the desk and went over the words. The wrong ones kept blocking them, and the colours. “Draw different colours onto each finger-tip.”

  No, Josef!

  The oath.

  Throughout the test, I sat with a mixture of trembling anticipation and hot fear. I desperately wanted to measure myself. To find out, once and for all, how my learning was advancing. Was I ready? Could I even come close to Von and the others?

  Each time I sensed the teacher looking at me, a string of nerves tightened in my ribs. It started in my stomach but had worked its way up my chest, and soon, it would be around my neck.

  “Very good class.” Frau Simons picked up her ruler and spoke once more. “Now, let’s move on to…”

  I raised my sweat-soaked hand to explain. “No, Frau, I have been practicing,” but she took no notice.

  Von Bacchman intervened.

  “Josef has his hand up.”

  He didn’t shout out of maliciousness or to embarrass me, but because he was proud of me, and he wanted me to prove myself to everyone – but most importantly, to myself. “He can do it. I’ve heard him.”

  Frau Simons wasn’t impressed.

  “How dare you call out without permission in my classroom.” Two strikes on the hand were a severe enough punishment for speaking out. But he didn’t care. He rubbed the Watschenabdruck – the slap mark – and continued.

  “It’s not fair. Give Josef a try, Frau Simons.”

  “No, no, Rouvon. Josef can’t …” I was a lost cause in her eyes.

  A Mischling.

  A stupid child.

  No.

  I am no lost cause.

  Determination caused me to raise my hand. I cleared my throat and spoke with quiet defiance; it shocked me.

  “I can do it now, Frau Simons.”

  I left behind a drawing of Frau Simons on the page. The majority of the other kids watched in silence. A few of them snickered quietly.

  She had enough of me. “No, you cannot, Josef. What are you doing?”

  By then, I was already on my feet and walking to the front. Looking down at my boots, I turned. A swirl of light and faces. I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at Simons.

  “I want to do it.”

  “Okay, Schneider. Do it then.”

  I could do it.

  I smiled and looked down at my boots again – just for a second.

  When I looked up again, the room was pulled apart, then squashed back together. The children were growing wider and then mashed again. In a moment of brilliance, I imagined myself reciting the oath in a faultless, fluency-filled triumph of which the Führer himself would be proud.

  Yes, that’s what I imagined.

  “Come on, Josef!”

  Von broke the silence, clapping me, not caring what the consequences might be.

  I started well.

  “Adolf Hitler, you are our great Führer.”

  I coughed.

  “Thy name makes the enemy tremble.”

  I looked down at the undone laces. I swayed gently. It soothed me enough to continue.

  “Go on.” Von mouthed it this time. “Go on, Josef.”

  My blood loudened. My words blurred.

  “Bitler…thy… oh.. Hitler…”

  Suddenly, in my head, the words appeared in another tongue. The colours were blurring, and it didn’t help that tears were now forming in my eyes.

  And that sun. The sun was awful. It burst through the window; glass was everywhere – a light shone directly into my useless body. It shouted in my face.

  “Hurry, up, Josef. We don’t have all day.” Simons said. Her body smugly stood in the back.

  Children were now taking part in the beautiful art of childhood snickering.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  I just stood there frozen.

  Mental pictures were blurring in my head, and my mouth tasted like alphabet soup. The urge to cry was strong, but I was determined. I would stand in front of that classroom forever until I got it right.

  What should I do?

  I looked around for inspiration.

  Inspiration also slapped Frau Simons in her face. A Watsche from her hand.

  “Now children, this right here is an example of some un-Aryan characteristics.” She used a pointer, talking at the classroom, not to it. I looked down at my hands, hoping more words would reveal themselves, but none did. My mind twirled, but my body could not make any sense of what I saw.

  Simons continued in typical movie Nazi smugness. “His eyes, for one.” A blue river of sadness leaped in front, drowning the classroom. Von mirrored it. He spoke again. “Frau Simons. No…” She would not let him finish. A ruler came down on the table.

  “His eyes are brown mud piles.”

  More children added. “Ugly.”

  Do something, stupid. I said to myself.

  Something.

  “When they are finished with the rest of them, they will come for him.”

  Anything.

  A quoted song.”When the Jewish blood splashes on the knives, things will go twice as well.”

  Tears started to blind me now.

  “Is he crying?” Came a voice.

  “He’s crying.” Another.

  “Shut up. That’s not nice.” The voices seemed to be originating in the walls, not the children.

  The snickering was getting louder now. I couldn’t hear over them.

  In my hand, I held a paper bird, and written on it were two words.

  “Be brave.”

  Then it came to me – a solution. Not a good solution by any means, but while I was up there, standing
in hand sweating misery, any solution would do.

  I wiped my blurred eyes.

  Breath. I breathed. In and out.

  I began rhyming off every page from my grandmother’s book. Every page, jigsawed together in my mind. None of it made sense.

  “Cut a wave out of a piece of cardboard to make the template.”

  “Make sure the template is a bit bigger than the paper.”

  “Paint the lines onto the pap...”

  “Josef, stop it!” Frau Simons’ voice called from the back of the classroom, but I wouldn’t. I looked her in the eye.

  “Dip the marble into the paint.”

  “Josef!”

  I heard grandmother’s voice in my head, reading to me.

  “Repeat with different colours.” My U cracked.

  I listed them off – every useless fact. Every. Single. Useless. Fact.

  “Josef Schneider!”

  It ended.

  Von Bacchman and several others joined in on pity applause.

  “Outside now!” Simons demanded as she pinched my ear in her bony hands.

  Maybe if I’d kept my mouth shut, the punishment might not have been so severe. But in true Josef fashion, I opened my stupid mouth and let the stupid words spill out. And I had to suffer the consequences.

  “Fuck this stupid oath!” I said it in my loudest words yet. “I don’t want to be a soldier. I want to paint.” She dragged me on, not hearing a single word.

  As I was given twelve Watschen, I could hear them all laughing inside the classroom between Simons’ striking hand. I saw them. All those mashed children, grinning and laughing, bathing in the sunshine – all of them laughing but Von.

  I thought it was over at twelve – a strike of the clock – but Simons had another idea. I didn’t know what would be next, and I wished it would have stayed that way. When she returned, Erich Kröger marched alongside her, and as soon as I saw him, I quickly shielded my head with my hands – a reflex action.

  But it was useless.

  “Come here!” Kröger’s eyes were narrowed and set hard on me.

  By now, my knees were shaking. Kröger shook me so violently that the room fell on top of me.

  “You little bastard.” He took off his belt. I didn’t even notice. No time. For before I did, the metal buckle came down on me. His hammer-hands too delivered punishment. Red marks looked like footprints, and they burned. I didn’t stand a chance. From the ground, I pleaded to his feet.