The Boy Who Saw in Colours

by Lauren Robinson

  When in the hell did I become so boring? Afraid to take chances or break the rules? And afraid to live?

  I think the exact moment I died was at age twenty-three when I received a letter penned from a trusted hand.

  I died three times in total.

  It was past curfew, and Tomas kept watch. He was terrible.

  Von and I entered the cabin, not even considering that Teichmann might be there. Her green-eyed glare hunted us down in the dark. The rocking woman sat on her chair with a cat for company – a stray.

  “Scheisse.”

  She dragged us both by the ear to Oskar, who whipped us back into shape. We did drills around Inland, to which we grew accustomed. One-hundred push-ups and fifty sit-ups. I must say I enjoyed it.

  We were punished with chores, too. Well, it indeed began as a punishment, but for me, it became something of a gift. I would help Teichmann in the kitchen after school every day.

  God help me.

  “Come.” Oskar dragged me and the words roughly, with calloused hands. “Since you like to cause so much trouble, you can help out in the kitchen. No more fun.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t ‘but’ me, Josef. If Kröger got his hands on you...”

  “I know.” I stopped him because I knew how the lecture would end. “Yes, Oskar.” I heiled my best heil yet.

  “Yes Oskar,” he jokingly repeated. Oskar was great imitator. A passionate one. “And don’t do that. I want to talk to a human being, not a… a robot.”

  “Sorry, Oskar.”

  A few steps later. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice at you.” He was concerned that I would report him to the Gestapo. You had to watch out for friends betraying you back then.

  “Yes, Herr Frederick.” Saying those words were a good way of staying out of trouble in Inland, as was doing as you were told, and from then on, after class, I would make my way down the Inland courtyard. At first, Teichmann gave me a solitary job, washing dishes outside, out of sight. She complained a lot about everything. “Make sure you use the soap and give them a good scrub.” Her sentences practically glared at me. “Those bastards will come for me if they see so much as a speck of dirt on that plate.”

  “Okay.”

  “You hear me?”

  “Yes. I heard you the first time.”

  “Don’t give me lip.”

  I got a Watsche for that one.

  She could complain about the entire school in that kitchen: the men, the women, the little pricks and the bigger ones, too. To the pots and pans, knives and forks. Even the walls covered their ears.

  Von and Tomas also got a punishment, but theirs was different. Tomas was forced to tag along with Kröger in the village of Inland and help him shine shoes and listen to him complain about his back pain. Kröger took him under his wing. Again, what started as a punishment would soon become a surprise reward for Tomas. He told Kröger he had nothing to do with our plan that night. He always had trouble with the truth. I hated my little brother for it. The truth certainly hurts, but I deduced that it was the lies that hurt more.

  Von became a youth leader at the age of fourteen. “Danke, Mein Herr.” It was the first time Von was given the title – I knew he liked it a lot. Undoubtedly, the only reason Von accepted the new role was down to vanity. In the age of the Reich, we were all a little vain.

  Mirror. Mirror.

  I like to think about it – beauty – in terms of its cultural connotations: who it includes, who it excludes, the prejudices involved, who is favoured, and who isn’t?

  Who is: blond-haired, blue-eyed, slim, small-nosed, robotic Aryans.

  I was beginning to take extra care with my appearance. I was proud of who I was and how I looked. Despite this, I was plagued by the whole idea of attractiveness, and deep, deep down, I wanted to look like my peers. You likely understand self-obsession – you are human. However, it made me feel greasy. A selfish thought. A not-very-Josef colour.

  All of the new responsibilities meant that our time together would have to be postponed and used wisely. It turned to the mornings, just before I had my shift with Teichmann. And although we were only being punished, I was not yet done with breaking the rules.

  One of those rules was broken just days after the administration of our punishments.

  I was washing the utensils from the evening meal, being hurried, and told to speak up as usual. “You’ll never get on unless you speak up.” Her hands moved fast with the knitting needles. “Like the Führer.”

  “I’m speaking as loud as I can!” My blood was loud that evening. “Fuck the Führer!”

  I was waiting for the saucepan fist to chase me through the kitchen. It never did.

  “The cheek of this one. You should never talk about the famous Hitler that way.” The strange voice sounded like an eye roll.

  “Sorry.” I looked at my boots.

  “My husband is in the SA; my eldest son is in the army, and my daughter is part of the NS women’s organisation.”

  I knew Teichmann didn’t have a daughter or a husband, but I played along. “Do you ever see each other?”

  “Oh, yes. We meet up every year for the Nuremberg rally.”

  I laughed. She reached out and ruffled my hair.

  Teichmann sat like a ghost in the rocking chair next to the sink. She was knitting. The sound of those threads stitching themselves together appealed to me greatly, and I hurried to finish washing the fork, for I had a question. At first, I was afraid, but after the question made itself at home in my mind, It was delivered as I stood.

  “Can you teach me how to do that?”

  I was met with tremendous resistance. “Knitting?” I could tell that word sat behind her ear and peeked over from time to time.

  Faggot. Boys don’t knit.

  “I can’t. You’re left-handed.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Faggot. Faggot.

  The blackness in Teichmann’s eyes melted and grabbed hold of my shirt. “Come, sit down. I will show you only once.”

  I shied towards the coat rack woman and watched with such concentration; I thought my eyes might bleed. The needles pressed and created an itch.

  “Like this?” I said fifteen minutes later, when she gave me control.

  “No. No. Like this.”

  We continued for two hours, and I realised that I had missed our daily hill meeting. I asked Teichmann if I could make a scarf for Tomas, Rouvon, and Oskar. She agreed.

  I brought the needles back to the cabin and continued working on the scarfs. I was folded on the ground. The boys were also partaking in the weirdness that is boyhood. I liked a little spice in my humans. I hate ordinary people.

  I was staring and laughing with my brown eyes, throwing in comments here and there, that almost always went ignored. I felt so much love, and I didn’t even know it. If only I could be that naïve again.

  Rouvon unexpectedly gifted me a compliment. “You have nice eyes, Josef.” Von always stopped to listen to me, and being in my moment had enabled him actually to hear what I was saying. Others were more concerned with loud, great words, and since listening to me required patience and silence, they chose not to listen at all.

  Embarrassment rendered me speechless, but it didn’t take long to find the words. “I want blue eyes, like yours.”

  Von shook his head at the floor. “You shouldn’t.”

  A shout across the room that echoed for miles. “Stefan, what’s your favourite eye colour?

  “Purple.”

  The whole room turned to stare at him.

  It continued like this for months.

  Until everything went wrong.

  And right.

  When I had finished the scarfs, I stitched a V, an O, and a T.

  33

  The First Black Moon

  *Fresh Air*

  Most air raids took place at night, and they gave us boys jobs. We were called upon to go door-to-door and examine houses to
see whether they would be suitable for housing air raid shelters. Anyone that protested would have a visit from the Gestapo, but I would never report them. I’d write their house down as unsuitable: ungeeignet.

  The Schultz family happily offered up their basement, and soon there was a scattering of air raid shelters in Inland. More were needed. You could never have enough. We were stationed outside them, waiting for the bombs to arrive, but they never did. Our one order was this: do not surrender.

  The bombs would come. They were being carried over Germany by the red, white and blue stripes and roundels, and soon they would be dropped on Inland. Stars would be everywhere, dripping down on everyone’s caved-in faces.

  We were given helmets that didn’t fit our heads. I remember when we first received them, Stefan would jump from the top of his bunk to the floor, hoping that some non-existent wind would carry him and his makeshift bedsheet parachute away. This only ended in bruises and disappointment.

  “I told you that wouldn’t work,” Derrick said, composing his best attempt at a love letter to the girl in the village.

  “Maybe if I try again.”

  Children make no sense.

  Memories like these are the ones that torment me the most. They harass my memory. Boys as young as Stefan should never have to worry about air raids, and they certainly shouldn’t be forced to witness them from the front seat and be told that surrendering would make them weak. Children turn to the adults to guide them in life, but in times of war, adults act like maniacs. So, what chances do the children have?

  Oskar and I watched the first bombing of Inland from our usual smoking position; a night like the rest. The air felt different, though. I could taste it. Oskar’s face screamed as he exhaled the smoke. I wish I could tell you what was happening inside his brain, but we are not given such powers. A sense of relief washed over him as his eyes found my sketchbook. I sketched a moon, deciding that this moon should be black. I rubbed black and white paint between my fingers until the shade was just right. It made the pencil lines’ charcoal just right. I smiled. My art wasn’t great, it was good. I was no child prodigy. What I did possess, however, was the ability to try. I figured that if you do what you know, then you shall learn the truth you need to know.

  Oskar leaned over. “Is that painting mine?”

  I didn’t want to lie. “No. I’m sorry. Yours is coming.”

  “So are the ’50s, Josef!”

  I transferred blue paint to the paper. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Oh yes, being a boy is very time consuming indeed.” When he wasn’t looking, I gently touched his arm with the brush and watched as it dripped down and onto the grass.

  I was sucked into his grin.

  The word flash: “Faggot.”

  Oskar: “What’s wrong?”

  Me: “Nothing.”

  Then the first bomb, a hideous red glare, transforming the spring night and its full moon. “Um gottes Willen, was zum Teufel war das?” Oskar said. “For God’s sake, what the hell was that?” I had never seen a face so pale The trees were scattered in the dark.

  “Oskar?”

  “Fuck.” He said. The sirens arrived a few seconds later. They were late. Oskar’s hair stood up, and his blue eyes grew grey.

  Heavy breathing. “Oskar?”

  His thoughts were chaotic as he bent over to catch his breath. “How could Inland be a target?”

  The simple answer: we were not.

  In the sky, men spoke with voices we wouldn’t understand. To the horizon, I could see a trail of light and smoke, presumably where one of their own went down. I pointed and tried to get the attention of Oskar, but he was not there. His mind was with the men in the plane. He tried not to show the severity of his fear.

  When I looked up, I saw them. The British men.

  The sky was the colour of madness.

  The need to weep filled them and the plane shook ever so slightly.

  But there was no time for such things.

  Black, reds and yellows were coming. We were coming. They had to get away.

  The men had a decision to make.

  Humans always arrive too early or too late, particularly when in distress. They miscalculate or over calculate. Who could blame them? Wives and children were awaiting their safe return. They had Tomases and Oskars of their own to hug.

  They dumped their bomb loads on what they presumed were empty fields, enabling them to gain height and speed to make good their escape from the Luftwaffe Nachtgeschwader pilots hunting them in the moonlight.

  They could not see my friends asleep in their beds or the midnight smoking lessons.

  Inland was merely a town caught in the crossfire. We were victims of a nightly air raid gone wrong.

  The men in the sky collectively exhaled when their plane was successfully in the clear, but their relief was short-lived. The guilt would chase them for decades.

  We heard the muffled bombs announcing their arrival in the background. “What do we do?” I asked, knowing full well what we had to do, but fear was speaking. Stefan Rosenberger clutched to Oskar’s side and tried not to cry. In the end, I noticed that we had all been clinging to Oskar, and embracing each other just for a moment. Our duty to the Reich tapped us on the shoulder. It forced us to our feet. We glued our helmets to our heads, and we ran to the wreckage, the people, and the colours.

  The flawless sky was a gigantic sheet of fire and a flash came before my eyes. The bombs were delivered to the village, and I should note that they were never directed at the school. But it would take us twelve minutes to run to the civilians, so that left twelve minutes that the victims at the scene had been gasping, gagging, and dying.

  Groans and screams came from perhaps ten boys in front, and when I got closer, I could see the origin. A cow lay dead at the side of the road. I knew Tomas would stare and cry for several minutes. I looked for him, but he could not be seen. The war was gaining on Inland, and I was being dragged along for the ride. I brought along hope in my coat – a pocketful. My grandmother’s paintbrush among them.

  By ten that night, most people had already made it to the shelters, but a few stragglers limped through the streets, and we directed them. One woman had two young boys – one in her arms and one by the hand. “Young man, what about our homes? I cannot afford to be homeless for the summer with these two.” I did not turn to her. Instead, I talked to the rubble and my grip on her hand tightened. “You won’t be.”

  My reassurance charmed and shocked her.

  “How would you know that?”

  “If we have to rebuild your house brick by brick, then we shall do it.”

  As we parted and I delivered her to the shelter, she kissed my hand and whispered, “Bleibe sicher.” The cherry tobacco flicked my ear. “Stay safe.”

  A roll call was taken before making our way back to the cabins, and when I reunited with my brother and Von, no words were needed because our faces spoke. We were afraid. Later, Tomas managed to speak. “Josef, Manfret thought he was shot.” I laughed about it, thinking it was fiction, but a few days later, I learned it was the truth.

  The boys were stumbling, crying, and guiding. Steadying giant buckets on their heads and hoping a bomb wouldn’t come. One tried befriending them a few minutes later. It was still too far away to cause them harm, but it disturbed the brickwork on the ground and one came for Manfret. A thump on the helmet. “I’ve been shot!” The boy fell to the floor. Tomas grabbed him by his armpits and dragged him to safety. “You’re not shot.”

  “I’m sorry,” Manfret spoke through his fringe of brown, curly hair. We wiped snot from his nose. “I’m useless.”

  “You’re not useless.”

  Panic was pushed aside in some boy’s minds. When they knew they were out of peril, they teased Manfret. I would have chosen some choice words and torn a new one for them, but Tomas was not such a boy. Possibly an easily led boy, but not a rude one. The words were ignored, but Manfret held his knife, blood and honour overflowing in h
is veins and busting open.

  Arms were linked, and we went home.

  Yes, home. For Inland became our home. With the friends that became family. We were a strange-looking family.

  That night, I reimagined my painting as I listened to the silence of the cabin. It was eerie. My friend’s conversations usually served as great background music for painting. When I painted the red sky, I thought about poking them or shaking them to make them speak. I didn’t. Von Bacchman peeked his head down to my bunk but didn’t say a word.

  I searched for him. “Von?”

  “Ja?”

  It felt like I had melted in the bed and sunk into myself. The starry outline of colours. This time, more vibrant.

  “Nothing.”

  34

  The Dangerous Kiss

  *Dark Lava*Dark Sea Green*Dark Raspberry

  A lot of things were dangerous in 1943 Germany.

  Being in love with a boy was one such thing.

  Keyword: boy.

  Many changes occurred that year, and for me, they can be summed up like this.

  Flak gun crews were manned solely by the boys, and when Kröger called upon him, Tomas had no trouble volunteering.

  Kröger, I thought. He did this. It wasn’t him at all. He just pointed at the sky, and Tomas wanted to fly.

  I was fifteen. My painting ability had improved greatly, but I had a long way to go before I could be great.

  My voice was deeper. And I realised the best things in life make you sweaty and breathe loud. Socks went missing on a regular basis.

  Tomas sightings were getting more and more scarce as he preferred to spend his time with Kröger, training. There was an altercation that involved Tomas, two boulder-like boys, and a bridge.

  Tomas said it went something like this.

  The art of the fight.

  “Where’s your fag brother?”

  “My brother is not a faggot.”

  A push into a fence. Tomas almost broke it. His face also began to break.