No Light

by Costello, Michael

  At break time I checked my lunch bag - a large piece of bread, a boiled egg, a piece of sausage, an apple and three pieces of caramel that Silke had made. I immediately ate the caramels and threw the disgusting sausage away. I wasn’t sure about the egg. Nevertheless, I scraped off the shell and placed the egg between my lips. I looked around until I caught someone’s eye. When a boy called Hans Klopp saw me I sucked the egg into my mouth and squashed it between my teeth letting all the bits squeeze out of the sides of my mouth. Then I opened my mouth wide and stuck out my tongue out. Hans was in stitches.

  After break we had Mathematical problems to solve. I think Herr Frey was teaching us to become farmers because most of the problems concerned cows and sheep, ducks in a pond and pigs and their litters. Next came music and Herr Frey taught us a song called Tag der Arbeit, The Day of Work.

  This is the new theory:

  work is not misery,

  but high honour.

  Working is not a curse.

  Everyone looks forward to having a job,

  and having the work of Love

  as the garden bears his fruits,

  doing nothing would mean it becoming the emptiest desert.

  Thanks to the work, thanks to the leaders

  of the sacred right of labour

  and the joy of work.

  I didn’t really understand the meaning of the song even though Herr Frey explained how superior German workers were because they loved to work. He also informed us that most of our surnames are connected to particular types of work for example Karl Fisher’s ancestor was a fisherman and Thomas Kruger’s a potter. To make the song even more interesting Herr Frey encouraged us to create mimes of people working like pretending to dig roads and hammer nails. I stood behind Ernst and pretended to hammer a nail into his back before eventually banging my fist on his head in time to the music. For that I received yet another slap from Herr Frey!

  By lunchtime the snow was falling heavily and settling on the playground so we were not allowed out to play. Instead we had to go to the assembly hall and remain quiet. The principal of our school Herr Kohler, a charcoal maker, gave us a speech about studying. I easily imagined him standing on the steps of the witch’s house looking evil and scary.

  A boy called Aaron Kempler sat beside me to eat his lunch. He was not in my class but I knew him because he lived just around the corner from my house in Freising Strabe. He smiled and began eating a large piece of cheese full of holes.

  “Do you like marbles?” I asked him.

  His face lit up and he hurriedly swallowed the remainder of the cheese.

  “Yes.”

  I pulled two marbles from my pocket. They were my champions. One was a large green marble with black streaks and the other was a smaller blue one with white flecks. The green one was called Smasher because I used it for smashing lots of marbles out of the ring. The little one was smaller and was named Sniper because it was good for shooting at single marbles.

  “Do you have any?”

  Aaron nodded and produced three small ones of different colours, plain purple, bright orange and my favourite, a dark red marble. I wanted that one.

  “Would you like a game?” I suggested.

  Aaron agreed and we got on the floor to play Off the Wall. It was a simple enough game. To capture an opponent’s marble you only had to hit it. We tossed to see who went first. I lost and chucked one of my old plain marbles against the wall. Aaron shot his purple one, missed and I used Sniper to try and hit his but I missed and hit my old plain one. I became anxious when I saw Aaron carefully lining up his dark red marble to shoot at Sniper. He fired! The marble hit the back wall and narrowly missed. Now I had a chance and took aim. Aaron’s marble was about forty centimetres away but lying between me and victory was a small piece of bread that someone had trodden into the floor. The rules did not allow me to remove the bread so I had to decide how I should shoot. I opted for a fast shot and closing one eye aimed and let go. Sniper darted across the floor, hit the bread, bounced over Aaron’s marble and continued on for about four metres. At that point some boy ran past and inadvertently kicked Sniper further down the hall to disappear between the legs of a group of older boys. As I rushed between them someone slapped my head and another kicked me. They all laughed. I searched frantically but my marble was nowhere to be seen.

  The bell sounded for the end of lunch and I glimpsed Frau Duerr standing in the doorway telling everyone to return to their class. I ignored her and continued my anxious search. Soon I was alone in the hall with Frau Duerr.

  “Are you going to stand there all day?”She shouted.

  “I have lost my marble.”

  “I know that Ralf. Now get back to your class.”

  She knew? Had she seen us playing? Maybe she had found it. I decided to ask her.

  “Did you find my marble?”

  “Don’t worry you’ll be the first to know if I ever do.” She replied.

  Back in class I spent the rest of the afternoon pining over Sniper. I had little interest in the rivers of Europe or the history of the Romans and I decided to speak to Aaron after school. Maybe he knew something. When the final bell sounded I rushed to the front door and explained everything to Silke. She looked annoyed. Outside the falling snow had become a blizzard. She told me we needed to hurry but allowed me to wait for a few minutes for Aaron. He never came.

  We struggled to get home and often I had to bend my head against the driving snow imagining I was an intrepid explorer trekking through the wilderness with the wind howling around me and possibly wolves lurking behind walls waiting to pounce. When I finally settled in front of the fire I stared at the flames and tried to solve the riddle of my vanishing marble. I recalled the older boys and could clearly see Sniper rolling between their legs towards the back wall but where it went after that remained a mystery.

  Later Silke called me for dinner. Mamma was away singing with her opera. I was eight years old with no papa and I ate alone.

  The next morning I ran most of the way to school. The snow had stopped falling and Silke kept shouting at me to slow down but I needed to reach school before class started to speak with Aaron. When we arrived I spotted him in the playground throwing snowballs. I ran to him without saying goodbye to Silke.

  “Did you see my marble yesterday?”

  “No. You ran after it and I saw those big boys hitting you.”

  I wondered if he was telling the truth. Then a snowball thumped the side of my face and I felt something hard strike my cheek. I stumbled back, my face hurt. I looked up and saw Otto laughing. I was about to retaliate when Aaron shouted,

  “Look!”

  He pointed at the ground. I looked down and was shocked to see a small blue marble with white flecks lying in the snow. I had found Sniper. So Otto had it all the time. He was going to pay for that.

  8.

  1932

  Mother was having another party and the house was full of her friends. Everyone drank wine and talked very loudly. I recognised some of them from before as people she sang with in the opera. She was currently performing in Peer Gynt at the Staatsoper House in Charlottenburg. I sat by the fire in the drawing room alongside Herr Lang and his wife Ingrid who lived next door. Herr Lang was talking to me about school.

  “So, Ralf, how is your new school. You attend the Französisches Gymnasium in Derfflingerstrabe do you not?”

  “Yes sir. I like the school. We are taught in French. Mother says that it will benefit me to have a second language as I may wish to travel in the future.”

  “French is a good language to have Ralf”, Ingrid said. “Our daughter Estelle works in Paris. You remember Estelle don’t you?”

  I had a vague recollection of her as a small thin girl with a rabbit face.

  “Of course I do Frau Lang. Does she like Paris?”

  “She loves being there. She says that Paris is the most civilized city in the world.

  I didn’t want to talk about Estelle so I said I
had to go upstairs to finish my homework. On the way I passed mother talking to a woman I had not seen before.

  “Where are you going Ralf?”

  “To my bedroom”

  The other woman began sniggering.

  “Stop it Emma”, mother retorted. “Have you been helping Silke serve drinks Ralf?”

  I hadn’t but said I had. I could tell my mother was a little drunk. She swayed slightly on her high-heeled shoes and leaned against Emma. She always leaned on somebody when she drank too much wine. She smelled lovely though and I complimented her on her perfume.

  “Isn’t my son a darling?”

  “He is very handsome Cecilia”, Emma replied. “He will break many a girl’s heart. I just love his blonde hair.”

  He gets that from his father who fortunately is no longer with us.

  “Mamma!” I shouted.

  “Well he isn’t…he walked out just after you were born and went to live with that Isobel Ritter in Munich. But we survived, didn’t we my sweet?”

  She bent down and kissed me on the cheek. Her thick black hair tickled my face.

  “I love you Ralf”, she whispered.

  I rubbed the back of my hand across my cheek and continued to my room. Once there I locked the door and lay on my bed. I had been reading a passage from Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Herr Siegler my literature teacher had given the passage as homework, a small section where Mann talks about his central character Gustav von Aschenbach.

  There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection…?

  Is not nothingness a form of perfection? I didn’t fully understand the passage but the words intrigued me. I felt that behind the words lay meanings I was not familiar with. Stimulated by von Aschenbach’s desires I continued to read until a knock on the door interrupted me.

  “Ralf”

  It was Mother.

  “I am reading.”

  “Please open the door.”

  Mother annoyed me immensely when she drank too much because whenever that happened she became obsessed with herself. Normally she was kind and considerate but after too much wine her mood changed and she tilted quickly between extremes of sadness and happiness. It was difficult at times to know who the real person was. I unlocked the door.

  “Any good?”

  “What?”

  “The book.”

  “Yes it’s by Thomas Mann.”

  “Really? Are you able to understand it?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Can you come downstairs for a while? We are about to sing and I would love you to join us.”

  She gave me one of her pleading smiles and we went downstairs to join the guests who were now gathered around the piano. Mother’s latest boyfriend Kurt was sitting on the stool. He began playing Puttin’ on the Ritz. The song was in English. I couldn’t speak English very well so I hummed along. Suddenly, mother’s friend Emma grabbed me and began leaping around like a crazy woman forcing me to jump and down. I immediately tried to free myself from her grip but this only encouraged her further and she began kicking her legs wildly. When the song finished Kurt went straight into Let’s Face the Music and Dance. Thankfully this song was much slower and Emma was unable to continue her insane cavorting. She gave me a sad look and released my hands. I fled at once and managed to squeeze in beside Kurt and the piano. He gave me a big smile and winked. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I was relieved to see mother beside me though my sense of relief was premature. When the song ended mother announced that I would sing. I pleaded with her to be spared the indignity but she ignored me and announced to everyone that this was my favourite song taught to me recently by my grandmother. That was news to me. My favourite song of the moment was one I had made up with my classmates concerning our history teacher Fraulein Bauer and sung to the tune of Frere Jacques.

  Fraulein Bauer, Fraulein Bauer

  Has big boobs, has big boobs

  That I’d love to fondle

  That I’d love to fondle

  Ding dang dong, ding dang dong.

  It became apparent to me that Kurt and mother had discussed my humiliation beforehand. He launched into the opening of All Mein Gedanken and I was forced to begin singing. I was anxious not to forget the words but thankfully some of the guests joined in. This gave me confidence and I managed to continue to the end without any major lapses of memory. I received loud applause and a ruffle of my hair from mother. Kurt continued with Night and Day and I retreated once more to the drawing room to sit around the fire with Herr Lang and his friends.

  “Ah Ralf you’re back. Tell Herr Groer about your school?”

  Herr Groer stood by the fireplace. He was a tall thin man with blonde hair and he looked quite young. I wondered if he was a teacher.

  “What does he want to know?” I replied.

  “Herr Lang tells me that you attend the Französisches Gymnasium in Derfflingerstrabe.” Herr Groer said.

  “Yes. I like the teachers especially Herr Siegler who teaches me literature.”

  “A lot of teachers at your school are Jews are they not?”

  “Jurgen, please! He’s only twelve.” Herr Lang remarked.

  “Almost a man, I’d say.” Jurgen replied

  “Herr Siegler is not Jewish. He is German but there are quite a few who are. My best friend Aaron is Jewish.” I replied proudly.

  “What do you think of Jews Ralf?”

  “That’s enough!” Herr Lang was on his feet now. “You have no business asking him that. We don’t all share your obvious love of National Socialism and the anti-Semitic ranting of your leader.”

  “Oh sit down Herr Lange! I was only talking to the boy.”

  “What is National Socialism”, I asked?

  “The scourge of this country”, Frau Lang replied. This prompted a few nods from the others in the group.

  “Scourge of the country!” Jurgen said loudly. “Herr Hitler is restoring our dignity and courage especially for young people who resent the humiliation imposed on them by their parents after the last War. Scourge indeed. The scourge of this country is that old fool sitting in the Reichstag supported by Jews and Communists.”

  I had no idea who the old fool was or what Jurgen was talking about but it sounded exciting. He seemed passionate and determined.

  “That old fool you refer to is the one who is keeping this country together”, someone shouted.

  “All lies! They have been telling us lies for fourteen years”, Jurgen continued. And the biggest liar is the Jew. Is not their very existence founded on a lie? They call themselves a religious community when in reality they are a race. Schopenhauer called the Jew, The Great Master of Lies and those who do not realize the veracity of that statement or do not wish to believe it will never be able to help us expose the truth.”

  “Schopenhauer! That con man!” Herr Lang insisted. “He used philosophy to promote racism. All his talk about eugenics and heredity was merely a cover up for an elitist anti-semetic view of a world populated by a so-called superior race. None of what he says means anything when held up to scrutiny.”

  “I disagree”, Jurgen replied. “The premise for Schopenhauer’s ideas is self-preservation and that is something the German people are extremely concerned with. We have mass unemployment, the country is in debt to those who have attempted to conquer us while behind them lurks the Jew bankers and money makers. And I would also challenge your assertion that his philosophies are racist. He reminds us that the highest civilizations and cultures are found exclusively among the
white races but he is also against differentiating against races and has always lamented the treatment of black people in America. He realised that black people while naturally inferior to white people and incapable of higher thought and aspirations must be allowed to develop what they are good at namely manual work.”

  I was intrigued by this discussion and even more impressed by Jurgen’s confidence. Herr Lang was principal of the Goethe School in Wilmersdorf and a very knowledgeable man.

  “Ah Jurgen”, Herr Lang stated, “You suffer from the exuberance and folly of youth. Herr Hitler attracts you because he gives you permission to attack the establishment. It is too easy to dip into Schopenhauer’s misguided writings and cherry pick the ones that suit you. That is what Herr Hitler is doing. He is not a philosopher but merely the mouthpiece of the ideas of others. He is an ambitious politician who uses philosophy as a tool to further his cause. The real philosopher may use the ideas of others but he does so only as a means of validating his own original thought. It seems to me that your National Socialist ideals are merely a regurgitation of old ideas and a mish-mash of what went before. They may be imaginative but they are not unique. Ah, Cecilia, you have joined us.”

  “What are you going on about now Peter”, mother exclaimed!

  “Oh nothing, Jurgen and I are only discussing the benefits of philosophy.”

  “How boring.”

  Jurgen looked perplexed and I could see he was anxious to continue the debate but when mother said something was boring then that was the end of it.

  “What do you do Jurgen?” she continued. Are you a friend of Peter’s?

  “No Frau Hartmann I came with Heinz Gerhardt.”

  “Heinz, yes, he is singing with the rest of us in the next room. Do you sing?”

  “Not very well Frau Hartmaan. I am an accountant. My passion is numbers.”

  “Oh I’m sure even accountants are capable of singing. Now Ralf, time for bed. You have school in the morning and I’m sure your head has been filled with enough nonsense for one evening. Say goodnight to our guests.”