The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  Peter laughed quietly to himself as he read that. “It was the latter, Mum,” he said softly into the darkness. He closed his eyes to rest them a bit and thought of the mistakes he had made in his life. She had reached out to him then, he should have grabbed the hand that offered to pull him out of the flood, but it was too late, he no longer believed in her or anyone else.

  He reached behind himself and turned off the small light he had been using to read the diaries. His eyes ached, and he knew that if he did not rest, a headache and the attendant nausea would preempt his efforts. The darkness surrounded him. From the next room he could hear Barbara’s regular breathing, the ticking of the clock. The sounds of a sleeping city drifted through the window; the regular steps of a patrol punctuated the desultory noise of the infrequent traffic. A dog barked; it sounded like one of the shepherds that the patrols used—perhaps they had spotted some kid violating the curfew or an unsavory character stealing food. In the distance he heard the ominous thumping rhythm of one of the ubiquitous police helicopters. His city. The place of his birth. His homeland. The place where he had spent his youth, had joined the Underground, had found the woman he thought would be his forever. Never once had he walked its streets without fear of challenge by a patrol; never once had he cast a vote for the government that regulated the city’s life; never once had he felt free or at home.

  His thoughts returned to his mother’s words. What had they had then? It had been the summer break, just before his fourth year at the school. There was still fall, winter, and spring term, summer break, and then she would be gone. In fifteen short months—just two weeks before his thirteenth birthday. Their time together was running short; his mother’s time on earth would not last two years from when she wrote those words.

  If only he had known.

  Their lives were so brief and so unsure. How could he have spent the time he had been allotted with them so badly? It was a mistake, he realized, that he was doomed to repeat: the constant arguing with Allison about her dual affections. Wasted time. Words wasted on a future they did not have. Was it happening again? Was that the road he and Zosia were traveling?

  He got up from the couch and went to the table and penned his thoughts in a letter to her. He could not read the words he wrote, nor did he even try; he just used their blurry outlines to keep them straight on the page. He did not expect the letter would be read, he just hoped that by putting his thoughts in print, he might be able to clarify what was happening.

  30

  “HEY, SLEEPY, WAKE UP.” Barbara jostled his shoulder.

  Peter awoke and stretched. His whole body ached and he realized that he had spent the remainder of the night sleeping in the chair, his head on the table. He stretched and yawned and moaned. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly time to open the shop. Did you finish the books?” Barbara set down a cup of coffee in front of him.

  “No,” he sighed. Now he’d have to wait until the evening. Oh, well, he had waited this long in his life.

  She seated herself opposite him at the table and began munching on her Brötchen . It was a day-old roll, anathema to a true German, but neither of them could be bothered to run out to the bakery early in the morning. “And what have you discovered so far?” she asked in between bites.

  “More than I should ever have learned. I learned a lot about my mother. Made me feel rather sorry for her. She had so much promise and then to see it all just wasted like that.”

  “Did you learn anything about yourself?”

  “I’ll tell you about it while we’re working.” He smiled at her as he sipped the coffee. It was nice having someone to talk to, someone so understanding and unjudgmental. Such a sweet kid.

  He blinked away the last of the morning muck from his eyes and glanced down at the letter he had been writing. He could not be sure, but it looked as if it had been moved. Barbara looked away, twisting around in her seat so she could look out the window.

  “Did you read this?” he asked.

  There was a long silence.

  “Did you read what I wrote?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Barbara. I need my privacy.”

  “We’re supposed to be married,” she replied defensively.

  “We’re supposed to act married in front of others. We’re not married!”he snapped.

  Finally Barbara twisted back around so that she was facing him. “I said I was sorry.”

  He rubbed his forehead; he felt tired and had a headache. “I’m sorry, too,” he said at last. “It’s no big deal. Nothing you didn’t already guess, I’m sure.”

  “She doesn’t deserve you,” Barbara stated baldly. “She doesn’t treat you right.”

  “Be that as it may, it’s not your business.”

  “It is if it affects my work, and it does. She doesn’t want you. Not really. You should get a divorce, get your freedom.”

  “I made a commitment that is meant to be a little stronger than that,” he replied unsteadily.

  “She treats you like . . .” Barbara could not summon up an appropriate analogy.

  A lot of words came into his mind. Barbara was only saying what he had thought a thousand times, yet he responded, “I’m not easy on her either.” He wondered at how he suddenly felt obliged to defend Zosia’s honor. Maybe there was more there than he realized. He saw her smiling face, heard her easy laughter, remembered the way she had held him and listened to him on so many difficult nights. He saw her popping a strawberry into Joanna’s mouth, the two of them giggling as they chased each other down a hallway, Zosia’s face white with fear as she heard Joanna hum a dangerous tune. He thought of the beautiful golden curls that never stayed where she put them, the womanly curve of her hips, the lines of knowledge and maturity that made her face warm and beautiful to him. He closed his eyes and imagined what she looked like now growing heavier as their child grew within her. She had looked tired when they had said their goodbyes, weary of the constant load, the burden that could never be put down even for a second. He should have said something else when she had said she loved him. God, how he missed her!

  “You’re not even listening to me!” Barbara huffed.

  He looked up at her, stunned. “What?” he asked, confused. He tried to replay what she had just said, but it was lost.

  “Never mind!” she replied scornfully.

  That evening Peter let Barbara close up the shop and made his way back to the flat so that he could finish the diaries. He had not marked his place and it took him a while to determine exactly where he had been. Finally, he found the appropriate page. Catherine seemed to accept her son’s word that all was well at school and did not comment further on that, though she did continue to wonder at his strange behavior at home.

  Niklaus still not going out much. He plays the piano a lot and is getting really good at it. I’ve found some old sheet music that my mother had and I’ve passed it on to him. Mum looked at me sort of funny and asked if I really wanted the music, but then, she’s always acting queer now. Niklaus seems to really like it, he spends hours and hours each day working on the songs. Just a few, over and over. He seems to be trying to pound them directly into his brain. Really irritating, especially when he first starts learning a new piece, but I don’t say anything.

  That was a bit rich! Peter thought. It was the technique, if one could call it that, that his mother had taught him. No scales, no practice songs, just dive into a difficult piece and learn it bar by bar. Like the sheet music she had given him: itwas far too difficult for him to read and play simultaneously, so he had memorized it bit by bit, and after months he could play one piece. It was also why, after years of absence, he could sit down at Elspeth’s piano and draw up physical memories in his fingers without knowing which note would come out next.

  The entry continued:

  Had to chase Niklaus out of the house again today. I guess he really has no friends left in the neighborhood. I know that is what I wanted, and it’s the best thing for
him, to keep him out of trouble, but still he seems lonely when he’s here. I guess he misses his schoolmates. He doesn’t talk about them much, but when I ask, he assures me he has loads of friends there. He tells me all about them and their families, he just doesn’t visit them over breaks because they live in gated neighborhoods, and as Niklaus so delicately put it, it would be awkward to try and reciprocate with an invitation here. We really should see about moving in or at least closer to those areas. I hear there are satellite neighborhoods that are mixed and don’t require the bloodline proof for residency. They are so much nicer and the crime is so much lower!

  Catherine wrote how she had learned of a production of King Lear, which she hoped Charles and she could take their son to. She was astonished by her son’s reaction to the news, writing how his eyes lit up with anticipation and he spent hours studying the copy of the play that she had acquired for him. In late June they went to see the play, which he remembered so well and which had cost him such humiliation at Karl’s hands. Even as he read his mother’s words, he could hear that single word “Later” hissed at him with such venom. The whistle of Frau von dem Bach’s departing train, the malevolent smile, the subdued threat of “It’s later,” played through his mind so vividly that he nearly missed the impact of his mother’s words:

  . . . told Charles I was really upset. He asked why and I couldn’t really explain. Of course I should have known that if it didn’t explicitly say “in English” that it would be in German, but as much as I should have known, it still bothered me. Why not in English? That’s what the play was written in, that’s what we all speak! Damn it, I’ve been trying for all these years to accept their presence on our island, and now it seems like all that’s been achieved is that it is we who have to be accepted. We’ve become aliens in our own land. I just can’t hide that fact anymore. Charles, for all his efforts, is getting nowhere, and that is the least of the injustices we have seen.

  I look at what we have done over the years and I realize that it is worse than nothing. We have been so ineffectual, our lives have been a waste. I think of my relatives and friends and I can think of not one person who has made a difference. Even worse, we’ve taken out our frustrations onour kids. How could we have accepted this government? This idiotic ideology? It’s corrupt, unjust, unfair, cruel. Nothing but a pack of thugs and murderers and we let them carry on with it all. God Almighty! Niklaus is right, he’s been right all along, it’s no wonder he hates us. I thought we had peace, but all we’ve done is refuse to fight, and what a mess we’ve left for our sons and daughters. We called it peace but there is no peace without justice. There is just this never-ending war that has poisoned us all, and now we’ve passed it on to our children and left them to fight it, alone and without any support or help or understanding from us.

  Peter read and reread those words, finding a comfort in them that was beyond measure. Her words had made it clear that the school was to them what they had said it was: a chance for his advancement, not the secret plot he had always hoped. His disappointment at that discovery could now at least be tempered by her admission: even though they had imposed such a hell on him, his parents, or at least his mother, had come to realize that collaborating with such an enemy was hopeless. He read on eagerly as she described her feelings in more detail. Over a period of days, she apparently had long conversations, or rather arguments, with her husband, the result of which she summarized:

  I’ve agreed to have Niklaus return to school. I’m sure it’s awful for him there, but since Niklaus refuses to say anything, I can’t convince Charles of that. Besides, he says, Niklaus will be entering the Upper School this year, and that is sure to make things better for him. I told Charles that I’ll agree to send him there, but now my intent is for him to learn the ways of the enemy so that he can fight them more effectively! Charles told me not to be so melodramatic. He also said I’d better not say anything to draw suspicion to us, because there are always sorts within the bureaucracy who are looking for ways to get rid of so-called foreigners (meaning us!). He said that some people get arrested on simple suspicion of this or that, and then they just disappear. God in Heaven! I was furious that he hadn’t mentioned anything about this earlier. He said he didn’t want to worry me!! The only reason I didn’t say more was I could see he was truly worried. He doesn’t know what to do—he doesn’t want to lose all he’s worked for, yet if he keeps moving up, he’s afraid that these jealous sorts will target him. He feels completely trapped. We’re going to have to work out what to do.

  I told Charles I was scared and he assured me it’s not as bad as all that. Just some whispers over the years. Still, I’m scared and I’m really and truly angry as well. After all our efforts to fit in, to receive such a welcome! What a waste of our lives.

  As time went on, Catherine’s opinions against their occupiers only hardened. She actively sought out information and began attending clandestine meetingsheld by the Underground to educate the populace. Once such meeting impressed her sufficiently to merit a special entry.

  They had a guest speaker tonight. We’ve been warned about this meetingfor ages and I took extra precautions. The speaker was a man who had been in the military some thirty years ago. SS, I think. He described some of the things he saw and the reasons why he had joined the Resistance. I was nearly sick just listening and I think everyone else felt the same. I don’t think he was lying or that it was exaggerated—at least in part because he broke down in tears. We asked if all this is still going on, and he said he didn’t know, but he did know that they never brought the guilty to justice and that the actions of those years have been accepted as “ necessary” and “for the benefit of the Reich.” As he said, if that’s the sort of thing that benefits the Reich, then I must fight it with all my being.

  There was a handout as well. It was an eyewitness account presented to the American Congress in 1950. I’ll tuck it into these pages as a sample of what I heard that night.

  Peter pulled out the badly printed piece of paper. The ink had faded and smudged, but the words were still readable. It was not unlike some of what he had read in the archives at Szaflary:

  They brought an aged woman with her daughter to this building. The latter was in the last stage of pregnancy. They put her on a grass plot and several Germans came to watch the delivery. This spectacle lasted two hours. When the child was born, Menz asked the grandmother whom she preferred to see killed first. The grandmother begged to be killed. But, of course, they did the opposite. The newborn baby was killed first, then the child’s mother, and finally the grandmother.

  Peter shuddered a sigh and stood up to pace around the darkened room. It was no different from what he had read or heard hundreds of times, yet there were some things to which he could not become inured and this tale in particular stung. If only it weren’t the truth! If only it were some madman’s fantasy that remained nothing but words on a page!

  It was so long in the past that it should not have mattered, but it did. It did. Once he had realized that these words and words like them were the truth, once they had broken through his defensive barrier of denial, then they became a part of him, burning their way into his soul. Now he had his own sad words to add to the tale, and he could inform his mother that, yes, it was still going on, and, yes, it was worth fighting with all of her being.

  He glanced at the clock—three in the morning. He felt fine and would probablybe able to finish the diaries tonight. The thought perturbed him in a way he had not expected. It was as if he were running out of time with his parents allover again. He had only just found them and now there were so few pages left in their lives! He poured himself a drink and tried to slow the pace of his reading.

  Catherine described how the words of that evening stayed with her, how she felt guilty at her own lack of action and virtual collaboration over the past years. When her son came home for break, she began to discuss her ideas with him, and slowly, ever so slowly, he responded.

  Been trying to t
alk to Niklaus. Even though Charles is coming around to my point of view, I find Niklaus is most open when his father is not around. I can tell he’s beginning to let me know a bit of what he thinks— just a little, as if he thinks I might be leading him into a trap and he has to be careful. We talked in generalities about what sort of government should replace this one if a revolution were to happen (neither of us daring to say that we actually thought one should happen) and he had a lot of ideas on that topic. I asked where he had learned about democratic politics and he just cocked his head at me and smiled in that knowing way of his—as if to say, I’ve not yet earned enough trust to have that question answered, but maybe in the future. He’s such a smart boy, yet he is just a boy and I’m afraid he won’t be cautious enough if I tell him all of my thoughts.

  Decided I have to hide my diaries in a more secure place. If Charles might be the target of anti-English sentiment at work, then it is possible this place might be searched on a silly pretext and the words I’ve been writing would be damning. I found a really good place in the shower and I’ve put the first two books that I started before we even got married way up inside the wall. I put them in a crevice that’s so narrow, I don’t think a grown man’s arm could get into it (mine just barely fits). Since all the police are men, I figure they’ll be safe there like that, since even if they find the hiding place, they’re not likely to reach that far into it. I store this diary in there as well, and since it is a nuisance to get it out, I don’t make as many entries anymore, but better safe than sorry. I sometimes wonder why I write anything at all. When I started writing, it was because my aunt had given me the diary; now it has become a habit. I suppose I thought Anna would be interested in my words when she became a mother, but that is long past. I don’t think Erich would have any interest in what I’ve written, but maybe someday Niklaus will—long after I’m gone.