“I always thought that when my life flashed before my eyes, I would see you, Mama, Papa.” He drew on the dirt with a stick.
“How I learned to run and fight with Kröger, and maybe there would be girls.” His words were alive in the paint. “But, I saw nothing.”
The world will always want to change you from time to time for the worst of reasons. Fight it. Even if it breaks your body, it’ll never break your soul. Not unless you let it. It is who you are inside that matters, and the rest of the world will never change that. Not to me.
A Final Exchange Between Brothers
Tomas: “We should go get some Pfennig frogs.”
Me: “We should.”
Tomas: “To the red-haired-shop owner.”
Me: “Red-haired-shop owner.”
Tomas: “Let’s go.”
Me: “Let’s go, Tomas.”
48
The Last Colours
The colours are fading now. Both for myself and the young boy you have come to know. My life was good. It was fleeting, beautiful, and over in an instant. And the people, the people were so good. They changed my life. They saved me, made me believe that I was worthy of such love, and permitted me to give it to another. Goodbye is the emptiest and the fullest thing I can think of.
My throat ached and my heart slammed.
The sirens must have gone off. They must have. They should have. Regardless, I heard nothing.
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
The cabin was dead, muted punctuation catapulting through the walls. We were asleep and innocent. Stefan’s little toes stuck out from the bed; Derrick Pichler slept with his mouth open. Oskar slept, waiting. It came.
The only words I could understand were Oskar’s words. They were tame and polished; warm wool was melting everywhere. “They are here. Run.”
Defeat was imminent, and the Führer was shaking. His bride of two days slumped beside him on the sofa, dead of cyanide poisoning; her blue dress was wet. The bunker, too, was shaking. I hope it hurt. I hope his complexion was ashen and sunken in tone to something so lifeless it would scare me to look at him. There were over forty assassination attempts on Hitler’s life, and in the end, he took his own. Five shots stitched across his back.
I got a great sense of loneliness from that moustache man, and I was glad. The speakers announced it. First, quiet, sombre music and then a shaking voice. “Hitler is dead.”
The news rattled me, shook me awake. Women sobbed with Hitler salutes. One such woman was sitting in the rubble that used to be her home, rollers in her hair, and sucking on a cigarette. Not to worry, Germans. There will be another Hitler. The world is spoiled for tyrants. My friends were already digging the bodies out. There was something vague and incoherent about me that day. The edges were blurred, and I was formless, simply doing what needed to be done, helping whoever needed help.
For the first time in my life, I got emotional walking through those country lanes of Inland. All the bends and swoops I’ve come to know my whole life – the village, the stars, all of it.
Our bravery was reckless. Stefan was given a hand grenade, and he would use it. However, when his time came, and he saw the Americans’ faces, he ran and cried. It was much easier to hate the other side when they were faceless.
Boys were already captured, and no time was wasted. I hid behind the life-saving wall. They held each other. Even when they were told to keep their arms above their heads, they did not. Those teenagers got two bullets – one in the head and one in the Inland crest. Teichmann arrived, and I imagined her saucepan hands taking all those Americans, one-punching them with her words. She pleaded for the boy’s lives, but there was no mercy.
They held her back, and she watched each boy die. In the end, she walked into rifle fire herself. No one can live forever, but I wish she could.
I don’t want to die.
“Tomas,” I thought. “I have to find Tomas.”
No time. For soon, the bombs would arrive. Then, the cameras and shouting people.
It came. I felt my lungs inflated with rubble, air, words, and pain.
Once I was alive.
Death told me: “Come with me and be free.”
“Not yet,” I screamed in its face. I should have died. Since you can only die once, I would have chosen to die there under that blood-red sky. I was surrendering just as I was pulled out of the rubble. I was carried. “Tomas,” I whispered. Adrenaline and fear took over next. I struggled so hard; the man dropped me. English words. “What’s wrong?” There was a woman, too. “What’s the matter, little one?” She spoke a little like me, but not entirely.
“Tomas,” I said.
We’ve only got so much time. I’m pretty sure that it would kill me if he didn’t know that pieces of him are pieces of me.
There was a light, a flash. It stung my eyes. I carried waywardly on.
The camera arrived. I covered my eyes with my hands. I tried to rub them, but it did no good. I could not see. “I’m scared.”
More fluorescence. I struggled horribly to breathe. The air was death.
God, the pain. The screaming. Please make it stop.
Picture it: a sobbing boy, stumbling blindly through the streets of Inland, grabbing at the shadows and begging for his brother. The man found me again, but I pulled away. Then they all arrived. More English speakers. Their sentences ended with so many esses. It was mostly gibberish, but some words could be understood. “What, boy, come.” Another camera flash. I held my eyes and screamed.
“Wo sind meine Augen?”
No one understood. “Where are my eyes?”
“Ich will meine Augen. Bitte.” I looked like a human dipped in white. Everything was dusty. “I want my eyes. Please.”
“You just have dust in them.” The female voice attempted to clean them with water. It did no good. “We need to get him to a hospital.”
A desperate breath that told me I was alive.
When they pulled Tomas out of the ruble, he didn’t do what was expected of desperate humans. He didn’t wail or scream for me, nothing like that. Shock and the soldiers managed to keep him in their powdered hands. They took him to the remains of the church, fashioned into a makeshift hospital, and it wasn’t until he realised I wasn’t there did he begin his song of sorrow.
“Where’s my brother?”
The Führer told us we could fly, so why are we here, drowning?
He was covered in the colours but tearing apart at the seams.
Yellow coats answered. “Who?”
“Josef.” Quick breath. “You have to find him.”
It would be another five years before Tomas would find me.
The stench-filled hospital played with my senses. I saw without seeing. I heard without listening. Colours without colours. People with voices, not faces.
They told me the blast rendered me blind. I needed surgery.
I was so frightened. The German translator was not there, so the Americans had to make do. “Mein Bruder. Ich will meinen Bruder. Tomas.” I spoke in riddles, as did they.”My brother. I want my brother. Tomas.”
They brought me belongings of the dead. I could feel them.
A tobacco pipe. “Nein.”
A ring. Or maybe a bolt. Fuck me, I can’t recall. “Nein.”
A scarf. The scarf. Scarf. Scarf. Scarf.
Tomas.
“Ja. Der Schal. Ist es Rot?”
“What?”
“The scarf. Is it red?”
“Yeah.”
A hand led me. The hallway dragged me with it. I walked into walls, frustration making me cry. I kicked it. Seemingly, the Americans mistook me for a younger boy with my youthfulness, for they used big, friendly words.
The room had the kind of silence that stinks. The body they knelt me beside felt large, not Tomas-like. “Nein.”
“What do you mean?”
“Das ist nicht Tomas.”
“Darling, we can’t understand you.” The consciousness arrived just in time.
Red, knitted scarf. The needles. Teichmann’s stories. “Oskar.”
I only have him in my stories, and he knows I’ve told them right.
Oskar didn’t get to see the man he made. He wasn’t there with me. Sometimes, I think I see the way he looks and speaks. I still spot him in crowds with his nothing, more than nothing colour. Why are some people forgotten? Oskar was a man I will always remember.
Stefan clung to Oskar as the Americans arrived. Even as Oskar pushed and pried his fingers away, they would not move. “I won’t leave you.”
English words stamped on Oskar’s head.
Stefan’s scream.
Both men agreed that Stefan should not see it. His college was called upon, unclenching each of the boy’s fingers from Oskar’s coat. Secretly, Oskar wanted to pull him back; just one more hug, but he didn’t. The saliva and tears fell on his forehead, and the boy was dragged away. It happened in seconds. There was no fine goodbye – nothing like that.
Then the sound of bullets, like sand sweeping through fingers.
“Oskar, it’s my turn now. My turn to chase those monsters away.”
I was glad I couldn’t see because I could not have looked at Oskar Frederick. His eyes could never be cold. He had warm eyes, not dead ones. I rubbed his foot and cried until I was gently taken away.
One day I will grieve for him, but first, I would have to accept he is really gone.
“Oskar, please don’t leave me.”
It broke my heart, but I was still glad I was there.
I asked for his coat. “Oskar’s Jacket, bitte. Können Sie mir es bringen?” After some confused silence, they brought it to me, and I drowned in its largeness. It helped me feel safe. Ironically, it would also be the clothing item that gave me away – Nazi symbols on the cuffs.
“Him.”
“Eh?”
“Arrest him?”
“He’s just a child.”
“He’s a Nazi.”
I understood the word Nazi, so I pulled the words together as I was dragged. “Nicht Nazi.”
I was taken to a liberated Dachau. The poor people that first made the discoveries must have knelt and wept under that burning sky.
Brutality, torture, murder, starvation. I was tortured because I wore Oskar’s coat. My friend’s coat. Store owners that flourished due to the rise of Hitler were also subjected to this horrific abuse. It wasn’t me they hated, but Hitler. We had to pay for what he did.
I don’t care what country you live in; your news is propaganda. It’s fear and misdirection. They tell you who to hate, who should live and die – show you how the enemy is barbarous, and the powers that control your life are heroes.
Maybe they have names you can’t pronounce and no-one to speak for them. Maybe they call their God by a different name than you do. Maybe they pray differently, eat differently, have a different family structure. Do any of those things mean they should die? Be expendable in war? Does it mean they should be allowed to starve to death? Are they so good at dehumanising the ‘enemy’ that you will turn a blind eye or even support war? If you were to meet these ‘enemies’ in real life, you might become firm friends very quickly.
Love is the answer, not hate. Let’s have grace over intolerance; critical thinking and genuine research over ignorance and impulsiveness. If you were back in Nazi Germany, how would you avoid being swept away with anti-semitism? How can you avoid hating people you don’t know? Likely people from another culture and religion? Are any of them expendable? For a fraction of what we spend on war, we could save them all.
There was a kind man. One that did not make me stand naked making Hitler salutes, one that didn’t tell me I was a criminal.
I wish I had a face for the name. I do not. His name was Stephen, and he sounded like the sun. He brought me an apple. “It’s alright. You can have it.” I was looking through a cracked screen. I studied it before I realised it was safe. “Appel.”
I heard his face shoot up. “Do you speak English? Eh – Englisch?”
More conversation
“How old are you?”
I thought for a moment before I started counting. “Ein, zwei, drei, vier… fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.” Seventeen. I could see the blurry American’s fingers counting along with me.
“You’re seventeen?”
He said something in English. I didn’t understand. Then something I did.
“Jesus Christ.”
We spoke a language both of us understood.
Kindness.
I wished I could understand him fully. He spoke to me so carefully, knowing that I couldn’t understand him. The only comprehensible words where. “Child. Boy. Fourteen. And one sentence. “I will get you out.”
And that he did.
The sun stung my eyes.
I’m not sure how, but he found the Müllers. They took me in. Frau Müller cried when she saw me. They tried to touch me, but I wouldn’t let them.
Questions.
“Is there anything we can get you?”
The first thing I said was Tomas. The second was paint.
I felt and tasted the photos of the children they had saved in the past. I threw up a meal from Frau Müller before asking again. “Can I see the paint, please?”
The houses were jammed together, like the ones from my family street, and neighbours would tell stories over the years – stories about a boy.
My voice cracked like the paint I had messily strewn on the page; most of it landed on the carpet and walls, much to the dismay of Frau Müller. Her husband managed to gently wrestle the brush from my shivering hands and held me as he listened to the nonsensical ramblings of the would-be Oskar painting.
Being a blind painter is not recommended.
“I’m sorry I didn’t paint you anything, Oskar.”
“It’s alright.”
“It’s not.”
These nightmares were worse than the Inland ones, for they didn’t just happen at night. A glass smashing on the floor was enough to send me into a panic.
Every night, a scream would come from my room. I’d be hanging off the bed when Herr Müller arrived. My sweat was sweet.
“Do you want me to stay with you until you fall asleep?”
Nodding.
I’m sure you want to know about the others, as much as it might break your heart.
Derrick: he was captured. A forced surrender. Someone’s little boy was taken from the world that night. He didn’t die, but his soul did. It was so beaten at that point, and it tasted bitter. I sat in the sky and watched him breathing for the last time. I watched the stars and the stripes, the bends and sways, the heartbreak and heartache. The French took him to their camp because he was wearing a coat with the tainted symbol. He married the girl from Inland two years later and lived painfully among his memories. The strongest was that of his brother.
Manfret: if he could have burned the words from the past few years, he would have burned them. He stumbled around and helped dig out bodies after the war. He never forgave his parents. No wonder: they stole his childhood and replaced it with uniforms, routines, and structure. They didn’t let him dream and forced him to be mediocre. All under the guise of wanting greatness for him. That was wrong. It still is wrong. They wanted silence and resilience. Don’t they know how cruel that is?
Stefan: as much as I couldn’t imagine it, Stefan Rosenberger did grow up. But first, the pain and confusion. He was delivered to another foster family at fifteen. When they removed the framed photo of Hitler from above his new bed, he wept. How do you un-indoctrinate a boy?
They loved me and left me. I remember them.
I remember the games that were our childhood: the hopscotch with the stolen chalk, the stones that were free, and the memories we would never forget. Yes, my childhood remembered me.
And don’t think I forgot the most important cast member.
Tomas.
My brother, best friend and secret keeper.
49
Tomas.
S
*Tulip*Tumbleweed*Tuscan
Tomas was the best of us. The kindest soul in our strange little family. The rest of us were a mess.
He remembers that night well. Everything seemed to be falling apart because it was. Kröger’s veil was lifted, and Tomas knew he was scared.
“What’s happening, Kröger?”
The eye turned. “We’re done, my friend.”
Tomas, sensing Erich Kröger’s discomfort, wouldn’t pry any further. He hugged him around the shoulder, and he left without looking. How could he do that? He wanted to kill him and save him at the same time. Before leaving, Kröger told him, “if they catch me, they won’t catch me alive.”
The buildings bent over and fell to their knees, while the walls howled for blood. People were flattened on the road. The red-haired sweet-shop owner was scissored. Tomas searched through the colours for me, but he could not find me.
“Why did you leave me here? Why didn’t you take me with you?”
He realised, I left him so he could look after what I left behind, and make a life I would never have.
After a few years, I began to fade. I know they say that people don’t fade, but I did. Maybe that’s the reality of it all.
Germany changed.
The Germany of my childhood no longer existed.
We went from burning pride to not being able to wave our country’s flag.
The people of Germany changed, too. Many of them fled after the war. Many learned English to help fit in with their new country. The colour was a grey fog of shame.
But there was no feeling sorry for itself.
It stood itself up, marched on, and tried to act as though nothing had ever happened.
That’s how it had to be.
No.
No German.
No German here.
Keep walking.
For many children, being a German was to be a bad person.
But the thing is, you must live.
In 1952, when the war had ended, and we were far enough away from the destruction of Inland, I worked for Herr Müller in his paint shop. I wasn’t of much use, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the distraction. I was in my early twenties with a twelve-year-old’s thought process.
The Boy Who Saw in Colours Page 29