Yes, even now, I am reminded of it, and I have kept this story stored away to retell it over the years. I do this as an attempt – an immense leap of an effort – to prove to you that my life was worth it.
The hardest for me was the beginning. Everything has an opening, and everything needs one, but it’s difficult to pick a moment that is the beginning. Once it begins, it’s simple. You just have to keep going.
The only thing I know for sure was that it began with my grandmother, death, and some snow.
Yes, let’s start with that.
Here it is.
My story.
What was it like to hear colours, see scents, and taste sounds?
Come with me. I’ll show you.
If you want to.
1
The Day The World Ended
*Dark Chestnut*Deep Space Sparkle*Deep Moss Green*
It was December 13, 1939.
I was twelve.
The fun that was World War Two had just begun.
My grandmother died.
Empathy whispered to me that she was dying months ago. I asked many questions I got no answers to, so I let them build and build until it would eventually come out in rage.
Things were getting mad. We boarded a boat to an imaginary land, but Grandmother didn’t reach our destination, as you know. Mother and Father went mad, answering questions we didn’t ask and trying to take us to destinations that didn’t exist.
“She’s not in any pain now,” Mother explained. Father’s eyes were narrow with grief. He bit his lip, and his forehead wrinkled like he was trying not to spill the world’s secrets.
I had no idea where I was that day. We were on the train for hours and hours. It was past the city, past the countryside, and the landscape blended into one. It was all white, and for me, that forest was nameless. It was there that my Grandmother, Hedya, was buried. The witnesses: a Rabbi, Mother, Father, Grandfather, Tomas, two shovel-men, and me. We were all stapled together, family strangers, and the trees.
The shovel-men were there for the money, but they still complained.
Everyone wore white shawls of snow. The snow found refuge in my boots. Trees wore thick blankets of ice, and there was more snow to come, judging by the sky.
I painted the scene in my mind, later with my paintbrush. Grandmother taught me how to paint when I was a little boy. Before I ever painted, I learned to draw. If you can draw, you can paint, but it’s hard to go the other way.
The first thing I painted was a colour wheel with secondary and tertiary colours. The second was a single pansy blossom. It was terrible, but it hung over my grandmother’s fireplace anyway.
Everyone was struggling to hold something back: sadness, of course, but mostly anger. Tears flowed steadily and silently down immobile faces. We felt bruised inside.
Numbness. Emptiness.
Meh.
Although she was gone, my soul was unwilling to acknowledge the finality of death. We were never to look upon her face again, or feel her embrace, see the warmth in her eyes, or be surrounded by her love. Words from the Rabbi and speeches brought a fresh onslaught of tears. Well-spoken words, a tribute to my grandmother’s life and loves. A picture painted by me, her young apprentice, was thrown carefully into the dug-up hole in the ground. I had recreated the pansy blossom. The quality improved, but only slightly.
My grandfather watched as the dusty pink roses lowered. “Auf Wiedersehen, meine Geliebte.” His pain still smelt fresh. “Goodbye, my love.”
“Why are we leaving her here?” I asked, staring at the snow. The question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, but it was Mother who chose to dodge it entirely. “I don’t see why we can’t take her home.”
“Yes, darling.”
I tried again. “Why aren’t we burying Oma in a graveyard?”
The reason was probably due to the vandalism – the painted swastikas. The graffiti was tattooed, too, on the faces of my family. I could see it in their eyes.
Mother looked at Father briefly. She answered by patting my back. In hindsight, I realise the sticky situation she was in. How would you explain to a child what an adult couldn’t even comprehend?
Even though it was a very sad day, Mother still looked very beautiful. I kept trying to think of a way to tell her, but every way I thought of was weird and wrong, so I just kept it to myself. I kept a lot to myself.
Father had a white, waxy face with dark whiskers. He didn’t shave in weeks. No money.
“We must be quiet, Josef,” Mother finally said. “Show the Rabbi respect.” His hat was funny. I stared at that for the remainder of the service and wondered what his head looked like underneath.
As much as he tried to hold it in, Father’s pain came out from his throat, one syllable after another, without a sign of stopping. Like he had hit the wall and tried to scream, but his voice was melted by the sound of the silent wood.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” I held his hand.
Why do we always say sorry to the grievers?
The muffled sobs wracked against his chest. His world turned into a blur, and so did all the colours. The sounds. The tastes. The smells. Everything was gone. The last painful emotion slammed against him before he lost the feeling of feeling and finally just stood, breathing it all in.
His hand was squeezed, and I soon started daydreaming about a man they called the Führer. He kept me company on the radio as I painted, and his words lingered in my memory. That was before Mother or Father would shut it off and play their music.
In the dream, I was attending a ceremony at which he spoke. I was listening contentedly to the torrent of words spilling from his mouth. His sentences glowed in the dark. My face glowed listening to them. In a quieter moment, he crouched and pinched my cheek. “So you’re an artist, little one?” Just as I was about to respond, I was shaken from the dream by the shovels hacking into the snow. Their words, too, hacked at my skin.
Digging to my brother’s right, the older one was warming his hands and cursing the snow.
“That snow’s a cunt.” He let his partner do all the work.
“If we didn’t owe you, we wouldn’t be here, Ben. It’s freezing.” I could see his icy breath, Father nodding in submission.
“Should have told Mama to die on a warmer day, Papa.”
My grandfather only had to stare to hush him. “Ben, you know your mother had a flair for the dramatics.” His laugh was strange.
There were no more words from the shovels.
A few minutes later, we left. Mother was thanking the Rabbi for the ceremony. I kept looking back.
I watched as my little brother stayed.
His name was Tomas Schneider. Again, that wasn’t always his last name.
He was two years younger than I was – ten.
He was standing there, frost-bitten hands in his coat pockets, and looking so tiny amongst all the snow. Blue eyes sparkled like storm clouds right before lightning hit. Clouds of grey and blue threatened floods and fury while his pupils dilated in misery, eyelashes catching the snow.
In shock, his tiny hands reached to us. “Come back.”
He wept nice and hard, welly boots in the snow. “We can’t leave her here…”
Within seconds, the snow had carved itself into his skin, his knees were purple and his nose was red.
Somewhere in all the snow, I could see his broken heart in two pieces. Each half was glowing and beating, under all the white. He realised Mother had come back for him only when he felt the boniness of her hand on his shoulder.
A warm scream filled his throat, and my mother and brother sat frozen in the snow for a few seconds. She was rocking him gently. When it finished, they stood, embraced, and breathed.
A final, forlorn farewell was let go of, and we all turned around and left the wood, looking back several times to a place we would never return.
We hurried back to the train platform and boarded the next train to Berlin. We boarded just before four. The crowd was
very crowd-like, trudging through whoever was in their way, all huddled together with frightened faces. I had to be careful not to be trampled. Mother and Father made us walk in front.
The sky was still white, but no snow had fallen just yet. In places, it was becoming dusty pink with the setting in of the evening.
We played with dominoes on the train floor. Not an easy task. Footsteps struggled to avoid walking into us. We wondered if we would stay awake long enough to see who could spot the most rabbits from the train window. It became a game Tomas and I liked to play when we would go on trips. However, not long after boarding, we succumbed to the heavy fatigue in our eyes, as much as we tried to fight it. We were asleep within the hour.
When I awoke, the carriage was quiet and dark – everyone had fallen asleep, and I could hear only the train, the rumble of the tracks, the funeral of the horn, the hiss of the brakes, the clanking of the couplings, the clickety-click of the wheels.
I could see people walking past the train carriage like a piece of the night. Like someone had carefully cut around them and peeled them away, leaving only their blackness behind.
Before I had fallen asleep, Tomas was winning the rabbit spotting game – three, whereas I only spotted one. It was brown, with white spots on its ears. I think. I tried drawing it, but I was asleep before I finished drawing the basic outline. My head was resting on Father’s shoulder, and my legs were on my grandfather’s sleeping lap. I was sure he carried the memory of Grandmother heavy on his lips. His eyelids were like raisins.
Tomas and Mother were asleep opposite us. She was holding onto him for dear life.
Father received a book from a neighbour in Berlin a few months before his mother’s death, but he could never seem to get past the first few pages without putting it down. He placed his hands on his face to disguise the thoughts – a trench-coat and sunglasses, but his words would be tattooed on his hands.
“Such a miserable book,” Father’s hands said. “Who does he think he is?” He never said such things in the company of others.
Another unsuccessful attempt was made on the way home.
Book: 2
Father: 0
The pages were filled with numbers, equations, and various doodles. Father was an accountant, not an artist, so they weren’t outstanding. It would be rather challenging to read a book with blocks of numbers hiding the words.
Lodged in between the pages, something was sticking out from the top, something pencil-sized. I recognised it after a few seconds. A paintbrush. It was glowing under the words and numbers. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
I reached down to loosen it from the book, and as I was making some progress, Father’s eyes shot open. Most people wake up drowsy; some people wake up energised. He woke up dead.
He held a smile for as long as he could. “You’re a curious boy, aren’t you, Josef?”
“What’s th—?”
A finger to the lips. “Shhh. Let’s go get some fresh air,” he said, as he stood and made his way down the carriage.
I had nothing better to do.
On the train, there were people of every stature, but among them, the suffering were the most easily recognised.
Children without mothers.
Wives without husbands.
People completely alone.
And sniffing – there was so much sniffing.
Everyone was leaving their old lives behind, thinking that by the end of the train ride, everything would be different – everything would be better. Some fled wearing nothing but their summer clothes and sat freezing in the German winter snow. Orphaned children relied on siblings and kind strangers to get them to relative safety. You can run away and pretend all you like, but at the end of the journey, you will be left with only yourself, your thoughts, and your problems to keep you company. And what if you have to return to the place that broke you? Then what?
When we finally made it to the back and opened the door, there was a fresh blanket of snow decorating the small platform. I was reluctant to walk out because I didn’t want to destroy its beauty, but Father walked out anyway, his shoes creating patterns in the snow like a beautiful painting.
We stood in silence.
I watched as the snow fell gently to the ground and perched on Father’s shoulder. He tried to light a cigarette with great difficulty. All that human-made wind created by the train. It was his first smoke in three weeks. The older shovel-man gave it to him.
“You want to know what was in my book?” Finally, the light took to the end.
I looked at his tallness, smiled, and nodded.
“Here.” He shrunk in front, his knees carving the snow. The smoke blew me a grey kiss. He stunk, but we all did.
“Your Oma gave it to me, but I know she would have wanted you to have it.”
He held it out. “You’re the only artist left in the family.”
The paintbrush had chipped wood and cracked paint. The bristles were hard and sticking out. Even it looked sad that Grandmother, its proud owner for so many years, was gone.
Everyone has to leave something behind when they die. A child, a book, or a painting, or a house; a wall built, a pair of shoes made, a garden planted.
Or a paintbrush.
Something your hand has touched in some way, so your soul has somewhere to go. And when people look at that house, or wall, or garden, or pair of shoes, or paintbrush, you’re there.
I truly believed that her soul was attached to the paintbrush, and as long as I had it with me, she would always be there too. Somehow.
I held it firmly, examining the coloured stains of blue and green and purple.
“Danke, Papa.”
Father painted a smile on his face.
“Thank you, Papa.”
On the back of the brush, there was a small, painted blue F.
“What’s that?”
Father examined it himself, eyes squinted.
“Freiheit.”
He inhaled the smoke. It further lit up his brown eyes until he blew it out.
“Freedom.”
A barrier of silence stood beside us. I broke it.
“Can I have a smoke?”
Father was surprised.
“Absolutely not. You’re twelve.”
I smiled into the wind.
A SPECTACULARLY TRAGIC MOMENT.
Just after eleven that same night, my grandfather walked up an empty city street in Berlin with a suitcase full of food, warm clothes, and papers. German air was in his lungs.
His last words: “It has to be this way.”
The houses on the street were like milk cartons and squashed together. Some bruised and battered, with smashed windows and painted defamation.
“All Jews’ deser’ve shot dead,” was sloppily painted on a bus stop.
Under it, people corrected the culprit.
The stars were on fire and at peace simultaneously. When grandfather made it halfway, he looked back at our house. He could not see my tiny figure in the bedroom window, but I could see him. I waved, but he did not wave back.
I could still feel his mouth on my forehead.
“Take care of Mama and Papa.” I could hear his breath whispering through heavy sleep. Mother was sobbing in the hallway.
Father’s questions.
“Why do you have to go?” Then to a whisper. “Things might die down later. It couldn’t get that bad. It’s too absu—”
Mother’s voice interrupted. “They won’t be able to make sense of it all.” A pause. “I don’t know what we’re going to tell them.”
More words were exchanged.
There was a silence for about ten minutes, and then nothing but the creaking of the floorboards.
“Opa?” I got up. “Opa?”
But he was gone.
And he did not come back.
When I finally made it downstairs to the kitchen, Father was leaning over the table. His face was swollen with shame and anger. Mother had her elbows planted and covered h
er face. They didn’t even realise I was there.
“Mama? Papa?”
No answer.
They stayed like that for a good thirty seconds – or forever.
The harsh kitchen light was so unkind.
I squinted.
Somewhere near Munich, a suited German was sitting in a cold office, with yellow-stained walls, licking an envelope. The contents inside would seal our fate forever. But we were not taken. Not yet.
A few days later, the men with the uniforms would come, and sometime later, the masked monsters.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
See, on the outside, we looked like a perfectly normal family, seemingly completely intact. Mother would laugh at Father’s jokes, and Father would never lay a hand on Mother. We would eat dinner together, and there was absolutely no bad blood between any two members of the family.
However, desirable this may be, this picture-perfect deception of a close-knit family can be deceiving on many levels. Underneath the smiles and poses, hurt can be found. Mother only laughed at Father’s jokes when we had guests, and I knew Father had laid his frustrated hands on mother on several occasions.
Once, they found her throat.
But it wasn’t always that way.
The rise of hatred made everyone shout and scream at each other, and it made Mother and Father hate each other, too.
See, my mother, Lissette, a German woman from a respected family, was married to Ben, the accountant and, more perturbingly, a Jew.
Given what we know about the thirties, their union was a tragedy in the making. It was a shameful secret.
But let me share with you a story. A short story.
Mother and Father talked about it over the years, and I’ve heard various accounts from characters whose names I do not remember.
Forgive me if I get some of the facts wrong or mixed up. It’s a story of my mother and father’s beginnings. A little background information is always essential, after all. Don’t you agree?
The Boy Who Saw in Colours Page 2