“Promise?”
I was shocked, but only mildly.
A feeling so strange; it stretched through my whole body. It was overwhelming, yet made me feel full. It had no bound nor length nor depth; it was just absolute. It felt like I was in a dangerous fire but completely safe at the same time. I felt sick.
I couldn’t explain it.
I had only one thought: curse blue-eyed, hand-holding boys.
“Promise.” I nodded.
A few minutes later, Oskar returned, wearing a face of stone.
“What is this?”
“Nothing.”
His face softened.
“She almost killed me.”
She, of course, was Teichmann, and she very nearly did kill him. The word Arschloch made its appearance regularly in the administration of his punishment. She slapped him with her rolling pin and made mincemeat out of him.
I roared with laughter as he told us.
“Ssshhhhh. We have to be quiet, little man.”
There was a slight flash of a smile on Von’s face.
“Good night, Arschloch.”
A quiet one-syllable laugh.
“Good night, Oskar.”
27
The Word Whisperer
*Wisteria*
Von should’ve spent the next few days in bed, as instructed by the doctor, but he refused and came to school anyway. He even joined us on our early morning jog, and as usual, I raced him. On Saturday, I walked with Von around the doors of Inland with our new shared secret.
We knocked the doors, ran away before anyone answered, hid in the bushes, and laughed as the towel-wrapped heads and walking-stick men complained. Von further stirred the older villagers by throwing his ball into their gardens.
“God damn kids!” a voice from the window cut in. “If that ball comes into my garden one more time, I’ll pop it, ya little cunts.”
Imagine calling a thirteen-year-old boy a cunt.
The man had tiny swastikas on his tie.
A bizarre addition, but I remember it.
As I got Watschen in the cabin from Oskar, Von smiled at me, and I tried not to laugh.
Tomas walked with Stefan Rosenberger.
He “fried his brain,” as Tomas put it.
No one would walk with him, and since Von had called dibs on me, he didn’t see a reason not to.
There was a reason not to.
The boy carried a small notebook, marking off the houses they had already visited and noted what the people of Inland had given them and said to them. People in town knew that they had to be careful what they said around Stefan. He would have no problem reporting them if they stepped out of line.
The gate of the Shultzes remained guarded by the teddy-bear dog and, walking past it, Tomas would greet him. “Hallo, puppy.”
Tomas later told me that Stefan would also comment on the homes that didn’t hang up their flags. “I will tell the Führer about you,” he would say, his blood pumping around his tiny veins. All for the Führer.
Tomas would keep his head down and try to restrain a smile.
The boy was dead devoted.
Tomas liked it.
Little boys like Stefan Rosenberger were Hitler’s purest creations, beholden only to him, unaware of a non-Nazi past and unable to see the propaganda being throwing at them from various channels.
Hell, none of us did.
Perhaps the only reason I questioned it was because of my Papa and the stuff we were force-fed about the Jews.
When the materials were collected, the pair made their way to the River Seehund which flanked the town of Inland, and ate sandwiches and some precious Fliegerschokolade they had managed to liberate from the kitchen. The bitter-sweet chocolate came in round tins with a bright red and white label on the lid, screaming SCHO-KA-KOLA. It was normally reserved for troops at the front, but the elite status of Inland had obviously enabled Kröger to pull some strings.
The river ran in the direction of the camp, which we only learned about from scary stories, and later, we would get a front seat look at the suffering.
Yes, calm down. We will get to that soon.
But for now, we will talk about Stefan.
I think he deserves to be remembered.
Don’t you?
THE SHORT LIFE OF STEFAN ROSENBERGER
Stefan didn’t have a happy beginning, and you could argue whether he had a happy ending.
He and his brothers were taken from his young mother when he was four years old and placed in a children’s home, waiting for his new family.
Apparently, his mother was crazy. It turns out she was just young. Very young.
He delivered the information to Tomas that day on the river.
He came home from school on a rainy Friday afternoon, and his brothers were no longer there.
And he never saw them again.
“Do you remember them?” Tomas asked, wiping the flakes of sweat off his forehead.
“I remember them.” He started playing with the badge on his belt. “But they are with new Mamas and Papas now.”
Tomas looked out across the river, his heart aching from Stefan’s memories of his lost childhood.
Tomas tried to explain to me why he was sad, but nothing came out when he tried to speak, and he realised that he didn’t know why either.
But I did.
**Compassion.**
Tomas always wore it like a cloak.
He tried to change the subject.
“Are you excited about Christmas, Stefan?”
This was a little more appropriate for a ten-year-old to be thinking about.
“Fuck Christmas!” Stefan shouted. “And fuck St Nicholas, too.”
Tomas didn’t expect it. He almost choked on saliva.
“Oskar said he doesn’t come here.” The boy was cut, his knees to his chest and head on his palms.
Tomas looked out. The river was everywhere.
Stefan remembered it clearly, the day he arrived in Inland.
Aged nine and a half, he was taken, hand in hand, by his foster mother up a tree-lined driveway, smartly dressed in a suit with sleeves too long. His blond hair neatly brushed and styled. In front of them was a country house. Stefan thought he was going to the doctor’s. He was sick. His foster mother spoke to a lady he didn’t know, and then, with only a trunk, three shirts, and a pair of pants, he found himself alone.
A scared, lonely boy. That’s how careers in Inland usually began.
He was taught to be self-reliant, stone-cold, and hold himself high and poised. They taught him how to conquer the world in the name of the Führer, and suddenly, for the first time, he had meaning, and he belonged. He had a family – a home.
He was taught to cry on the inside, behind closed doors, in the dim of the candlelight. If no one sees your pain, does it mean you’re in pain at all? Much like when your Führer bombs a country, killing thousands of innocent people because of his stubbornness. Just because you can’t hear their screams, you could almost believe that it didn’t happen at all, right?
Stefan Rosenberger was not alone.
The majority of Germany had the same mentality.
You might call us cowards.
Call us fools.
I called us humans.
Scared humans.
That didn’t make us good guys. We were still assholes. We had a good reason for being assholes.
Stefan was a broken soul in the body of a happy boy.
I could smell it in his laughter.
Such a sad existence.
To never feel true happiness.
To not know how real love looked.
Tomas played trappers and Indians that evening. He was the team captain and chose Stefan first.
Later, when we met each other again, Tomas hugged me.
We even invited Von along.
“Are you coming or not?”
“You’re letting me come?”
“What did you want? My permission?”
>
We walked to the back of Inland as we usually did. Von tried to be a gentleman and carry my paint set for me, but I knocked him out of the way. Von walked to my left, Tomas to my right. They both usually engaged in a conversation about the latest game of trappers and Indians, Von’s parents, or anything else that came mind. Occasionally, I would give some input, but not very often, and not unless Von or Tomas called upon me. I didn’t always find it easy to make words, especially when others were telling their stories so well. I questioned my voice and wondered if speaking out would cause more trouble than needed. I tried to break through their words, but more words came and stood in my way, keeping guard. So I simply sat in an ocean of unspoken thoughts and waited. I’m not sure for what or whom I was waiting.
Inland was darkening. The cold rising from the hills.
We got to our destination, and I sat on the grass, taking out my paint set.
“What’s wrong? Is this it?”
“No, he’s just stopping for fun.” Tomas teased, adequately out of character I might add. Not only was the language catching on fast, but so were the personalities. Yes, the building itself had its own unique personality, and it was rubbing off on us all.
Von settled into the long arms of the grass, laying back on it. For a while, he watched me paint, watching as I did the basic outline of the figures on the paper in a lighter coloured pencil and then began adding detail.
When I was first gifted the paint, I wanted to ask Teichmann for some water. Nearing her cabin, I heard the roll call of scorn coming from the kitchen, and I ran. She was probably talking about something pleasant, but it sounded threatening. I would not accept my fear as an answer, though, so I made the brave choice to put out the anxiety altogether and steal the water when she wasn’t there.
My painting was surreal, using shades of blues, blacks, and reds. They worked together in perfect harmony to bring out the visual illusions and abstract figures. That, or clash together in a violent frenzy. Either way, I knew it would be beautiful. Just three colours perched on the page, working together.
“That is beautiful, Josef.”
That’s what Von thought when he watched me paint, but teenage boys don’t know such a vocabulary.
For now, Von Bacchman’s fourteen-year-old mind could only manage three words.
“That’s shit, Josef.”
Naturally, I punched him in the shoulder, and we all laughed. “It’s the best I can do, Von. I paint how I paint.”
“Show us the book then.”
Ah, yes. The book.
Von’s secret.
Admittedly, it would have been engulfed in the flames of the 1933 book burnings, and the Führer would stare in awe at the beautiful chaos. When people think of Nazi Germany, the image that floats to the surface is generally fire. Go on, try it for yourself.
We didn’t start that many fires.
Thousands of people stood clear of the volcanic scene. The smell was grotesque.
Some watched in unwavering, patriotic excitement, the Nazi songs tattooed on their hearts. Others watched from afar, hands in pocket and heads bowed, their guilt anchoring their heads.
Nazi flags flew, rising upwards with the warm German heat. Speeches made by suit-wearing, roaring humans, all beginning with the same words.
“Heil Hitler.”
All starting with the same right-armed salutes.
A fire was lit.
And an evil spirit of the past was burned.
Smoked out.
But see, Hitler didn’t just burn the books that day, he burned everything. History, culture, life, death, and peace. All up in smoke.
What was left was the ashes, and German citizens would breathe it all in as they cried. The weak-kneed people would try to cram in as much information as their brains would allow – eating the pages. The brave ones would hide books.
Von’s Mother was one such human.
She hid every book she could find in every nook and cranny in the shoe-box like house; above it, under it. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was they were unable to be found.
As mentioned before, Von’s mother was teaching her children English and French before her middle child and only son was taken to Inland. Or rather, Von volunteered to go.
Von Bacchman: the boy who never stood still.
Never stood still and let the people he loved suffer, never stood still when he was holding an assembly, listening to Dohman mumbling on, and never allowing his thoughts to stand still. I imagined them dancing in his mind. At first apprehensively, then growing comfortable with the familiar ideas.
His family was poor, and Von knew that going to Inland would give them a small allowance. The choice was an easy one for him to make.
Von’s Mother, Maria, would write to him. Children in Inland often got letters from their parents. The letters were carefully read by youth leaders first, and any messages that contained anything suspicious, un-German, let’s say, were discarded, and a fake letter sent in its place.
At first, Maria’s letters appeared normal, appropriate for a flourishing Nazi to be reading. But secretly, just like the books, a small message was written in English.
“Keep learning.”
Von told us the meaning. “Lerne weiter.”
He ran his hand along the indents on the paper like it was the most fragile thing in the world.
Also enclosed on the hill were the secret picture books, which fascinated me. Since English books for children were difficult to come by, Maria decided to make her own. It was expensive and took some time, but occasionally she would, and sent it to a man who owned a small farm near Inland, who would exchange it when the time was right.
Von stumbled over the words. He sat lost in that book. The only thing alive. I made occasional sideways glances until I realised in a toe-curling panic that he noticed.
He smiled.
I stopped.
I listened.
Everything I heard sounded like an indecipherable code with bizarre, mysterious intonations. It sounded like an imperious series of declarations and resonated like a landscape of rolling hills. So many little words have big jobs. So many little words have long rules. Although, some of the words were very similar to their German counterparts: father – Vater; water – Wasser; I have – ich habe.
You get the idea.
Almost identical.
The two languages were like distant cousins. They had changed, intermingled, and drifted apart due to many invasions of Europe, but they were still family. Their core was the same.
Well, compared to when Von would speak French, and every R he said sounded like he was choking on a large piece of fromage.
“However” was a problematic word. It was too soft and round: nothing my mouth touched when I said it. I had to pretend that I had a ball in my mouth to remind myself that I couldn’t close my teeth.
Hawovever.
“Is that how you say it?”
Von laughed into himself. “No, but keep saying it.”
Years later, I would be saved by the words and an apple, but they saved me in my youth, too. Or rather, Von Bacchman saved me. From what, however, I’m not entirely sure, but it was certainly something. Perhaps from my loneliness and the what-would-be thoughts of fear, had he not entered my life at the opportune moment. Von Bacchman saved me from me. He rewrote my story by being my friend.
“Fuck,” Von said.
“What’s wrong?”
“I keep forgetting this one word.”
“I have an idea,” I said, as I turned to the back of my sketchpad, ripped a sheet out and started writing. I drew a little stick man, with very skinny legs, in the centre of the page.
“What are you drawing?” Tomas asked over my shoulder. Von, too was interested.
“It’s you, Von.”
My eyes returned to the page.
“A for what?” I said.
Von smiled.
Now he was catching on.
“A for …” He thought. “
Apple.”
I smiled back at him and wrote the German word for apple in big letters.
Apfel.
I drew a line opposite it and shifted the page onto Von’s lap, and he wrote the English word.
Appel.
Well, he tried to at least. He spelled it wrong. I didn’t know it was wrong, so I nodded. Tomas etched closer, took the pencil and drew a misshapen apple under the word.
We all laughed. Tomas was no artist.
“I’m blinded by how shit that is, Tomas.”
“Shut up! Now for B,” I said.
As we progressed through the alphabet, Von’s grin grew larger. He had done this before with his mother, but it’s always better with your friends. I knew he liked to watch my hand write the words, and he loved watching Tomas construct the primitive sketches.
I couldn’t explain why his happiness made me happy. Tomas and I didn’t know what any of the words meant, but that didn’t matter, for we could surely feel them. And more than anything else, we had fun.
I have never been so attracted to something I couldn’t understand.
“Oh, come on, Von!” I said later when he was having trouble.
“Something that starts with P! I’m very disappointed with you.”
I wasn’t, of course. I didn’t know English at all, so I couldn’t have been angry at Von. But when Tomas and I would forget silly things when we did our homework at home, Mama would say, “You know this one! I can’t believe you don’t know it. I’m very disappointed in you,” which always made us remember the thing we couldn’t remember. I thought the same thing would work in this instance.
He couldn’t think.
“Come on, Von,” Tomas joined in. “Something that starts with P.” His words played with Von.
That was when a word stuck on his face. A reflex grin crept up. “Pussy,” he shouted before roaring with laughter, then quieted when he realised we didn’t know what that meant.
He explained, we joined in on his chorus.
Scandalous.
Tomas’ cheeks grew red as he realised he didn’t know what to draw for that one, and the laughing commenced again, but louder. We drew nothing.
The Boy Who Saw in Colours Page 18
