Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

  The most serious disagreement I had with my father concerned our conception of the world. I saw it as a sickly, polluted place that needed a good bit of cleaning up, dreamed of seeing only happy, healthy Aryans there one day. My father favoured mediocrity.

  'Boring, boring!' he cried. 'A world where everybody has the same doll-headed children, the same acceptable thoughts, cuts their identical gardens the same day of the week! Nothing's as necessary to existence as diversity. You need different races, languages, ideas, not only for their own sake, but so you can know who you are! In your ideal world, who are you? Who? You don't know! You look so much like everything around you, you disappear. A green lizard on a green tree.'

  My father was so upset this time, I just left it at that, decided not to bring up the subject again. Nevertheless, after I'd gone to bed, I overheard my parents talking in their room, put my ear against the door to hear what they were saying. My mother was worried that my father shouldn't be having these discussions with me, because the teachers in school asked their students what they talked about at home. She said they'd ask in a way I wouldn't realise the danger. I was too young and naïve to know when to keep my mouth shut.

  'There are enough people out there to fear,' my father said. 'I'm not going to start fearing my own son!'

  'You must be careful. You must promise me not to argue with him like that any more.'

  'It's my role, Roswita, to educate my son.'

  'If he adopted your views, imagine what kind of trouble you could get him into.'

  My father admitted that sometimes he forgot it was me he was arguing with — he felt more as if he was talking to 'them'. He said language was more personal than a toothbrush: he could hear it straight off when someone started using someone else's, in a letter, in a conversation, and hearing 'their' language in his little boy's mouth disgusted him.

  iii

  On April 19th, the day before Adolf Hitler's birthday, I was admitted into the Jungvolk (the junior section of the Hitler Youth), as was the custom. My parents had no choice: it was obligatory. My mother tried to cheer my father up, told him I had no brothers, was turning into an only child, it would do me good to get outdoors, be with other children. She pointed out that even the Catholic youth groups were learning to use weapons, shoot at targets, so it wasn't as if it was the Great War and I was being sent to Verdun. My mother, I could tell from her face, found me handsome in my uniform, despite herself. She readjusted my brown shirt and knotted scarf, tugged on my earlobes. My father barely looked up from his coffee to acknowledge me. I couldn't help but think, had I been on my way to the War to End All Wars, he probably would've acted as indifferently.

  That summer we, the Jungvolk, were assigned our first important task. All the books that had promoted decadence or perversity had been collected up from throughout the city and we were to burn them. The temperature that month was hot — at night it was impossible to keep bedcovers on — and with the bonfires we were making it grew intolerable. We, the younger ones, were supposed to carry the books over to the teenage boys from the Hitler Youth, who had the actual privilege of throwing them in. I and the others my age envied them, for that was obviously the fun part. If one of us tossed a book in on our own, just for fun, we were smacked.

  Soon the air around the fire was hot and hard to breathe. The smoke was black, and stank of burning ink. The books didn't take keenly to being burnt; they made eardrum-breaking pops and fired out red-hot bits that threatened clothes and eyes. The established hierarchy didn't last long. In no time, tossing in the books became the task of the pariah. What trouble and toil it was for me with my thin arms to cast book after book, volume after volume, far enough into the blaze. One name caught my eye: Sigmund Freud. I'd seen it before on the shelves of our own library. Kurt Freitag, Paul Nettl, Heinrich Heine, Robert Musil followed, as did a history textbook of mine, probably obsolete. Clumsily, I dropped it close to my feet. The fire knew no limits and that one, too, was promptly smoking, withering, pages flying up in the air, a few somersaults, a last zest for life, glowing, frittering away.

  When I came home there were gaps in our library, leaving me with a vague, uncomfortable feeling, as if the keys of a piano had been pressed down and weren't coming back up. In some places a whole shelf full had collapsed like dominoes to cover up for the missing books. My mother was having trouble carrying a load of laundry upstairs. Trudging back down, she jolted when she saw me. I thought it was because I was black in the face but, going to help her up with the next load, I was shocked to see the basket was chock-full of books. She stumbled over her choice of words, told me it was, um, only in case we didn't have enough newspaper in the winter to start our fires — there was no use burning them now in the hot weather. I was lost for words. All I could think was didn't she know the trouble she could get us into? She told me to take my shoes off, go and have a bath.

  Oddly enough, once my mother was made to attend motherhood classes, the family atmosphere lightened. My father liked to tease her at dinnertime. He hit his fist on the table, held his plate up for another serving, bellowing that it was about time she attended her wife classes! Pimmichen and I loved it when he complained that she was miles away from getting the Deutschen Mutter Orden, the medal mothers received if they brought five children into the world. Mutter blushed, especially when I joined in, 'Yes, Mutti, more brothers and sisters!' — and Pimmichen, 'Should I begin knitting?' Our encouragement redoubled when my mother tucked her thin brown hair behind her ears, softly remarking she was getting too old to have more children. She was fishing for compliments and got them. My father said he hoped they taught her how to make nice, plump babies in motherhood school. Pimmichen slapped his hand but it was no secret to me. I'd already learned all there was to know about these scientific workings in school.

  My father sighed, saying he'd married her too soon — if only he had waited they would have received a marriage loan, a quarter of which would be cancelled with each newborn child. Financially, my mother could've been beneficial. Maybe they could divorce and start again? My mother squinted her eyes in mock anger. Only if she was allowed to buy some new dresses with her play-money, she said. What she meant was the Reichsmark, which still felt foreign in our hands. Her cheekbones were wide and her mouth thin and pretty, but it didn't stay still long; it twitched and contorted until my father's laugh freed her smile. I liked it when my parents were affectionate with each other in front of us. Every time my father kissed my mother on the cheek, I did likewise to my grandmother.

  The gay mood didn't last long. I think it was only the next month, October possibly, that trouble began. It started when a few thousand members of the Catholic youth groups gathered to celebrate a Mass at St Stephen's Cathedral. There were more outside than could fit inside the old stone walls. Afterwards, in front of the cathedral, in the heart of Vienna, they sang religious hymns and patriotic Austrian songs. Their slogan was: 'Christ is our guide' — Führer in German. This demonstration was in response to a call by Cardinal Innitzer.

  I wasn't there, but heard about it at an emergency meeting of our own youth group. Andreas and Stefan, having seen it, gave us vivid accounts. I am honest, as I have taken it upon myself to be, so I will admit that Adolf Hitler was by then as important to me as my father, if not more so. He was certainly more important than God, in whom I'd lost all belief. In the biblical sense, 'Heil Hitler' had a connotation of 'saint, sacred'. We were enraged by the Catholics' bad conduct; it was a threat, an insult to our beloved Führer, a sacrilege. We would not stand around and tolerate it. The next day some of us from the Jungvolk joined in with the older boys from the Hitler Youth to burst into the archbishop's palace and defend our Führer by throwing to the floor whatever we could get our hands on — candles, mirrors, ornaments, statues of the Virgin Mary, hymn books. The efforts to stop us, outside of praying, were minimal, and in some rooms non-existent.

  A few days later I stood in Heldenplatz amid a crowd comparable to the one my father had pulled m
e away from more than half a year earlier. The banners — Innitzer and the Jews are one breed! Priests to the gallows! We don't need Catholic politicians! Without Jews and without Rome, we shall build a true German Cathedral! and others, all on a vast scale — flapped in the wind, creating sounds I imagined a great bird could make. It was too tempting. I decided to climb one of the monuments this time too, fancying Prince Eugen's horse more than I did Archduke Karl's. I elbowed Kippi and Andreas but they reckoned the crowd was too dense to cross. It didn't stop me. I was willing, and small enough. I edged my way between people, and, after some slipping and sliding, succeeded in climbing all the way up the horse's cold front leg. I wrapped my arm around it and held on tight so I wouldn't be pushed off by others who had got up there before me. From above, the yelling was different, almost magic. I watched the mass of tiny individuals below. They reminded me of a tree, noisy and alive with sparrows one cannot see until some enigma sets them off, then no more singing, only a tremendous flapping and it emerges out of the tree, a body composed of countless vacillating points held together by some perfect, infallible force as it turns and twists and dives in the sky, and raises its head as one great creature.

  ***

  Shortly after these incidents I have just described, the November cold came to stay. The sky was clear, the sun a distant point of white, the trees bare. Tension was in the air. It was that November, I remember, that word went around about a Jewish student who'd gone to the German Embassy in Paris and shot an Embassy official. Rumours snowballed, people in the streets sought revenge and many Jewish shop windows across the Reich were smashed. I wasn't allowed to go outdoors to see but I heard about it on the wireless. It was called Kristallnacht and I imagined crushed crystal like snow covering the streets and footpaths of the Reich, hollow clinks and chimes as more fell, stalactites of glass holding fast to window-frames, an arctic decor both shimmering and ominous.

  Afterwards, my father was absent for days on end and whenever he wasn't, his mood was so sour I wished him gone again. There was no more joking at home, especially once the factory, Yaakov & Betzler, abruptly changed its name to Betzler & Betzler. Even my mother and grandmother were careful how they spoke to him. They lowered their voices, enquiring whether maybe he would like some coffee? A little something to eat? They tiptoed in the room he was brooding in, left trays within his reach, didn't bicker about a nibbled-on biscuit put back in the dish with the others. They were acting like mice; he was eating like one.

  I was the only one having fun, away from home and the many complex tensions there. Across future fields of sunflowers, wheat, corn we walked, we sang. To the jealous cries of crows we enjoyed our rations of bread and butter. It never tasted so good as then, with the weak sun just warming our backs. Beyond the vast brown was another vast brown, then still another. We marched further each time, ten kilometres and the sack on my back was heavy, my feet blistered — how they smarted — but I wouldn't complain. Neither would my new friend, Kippi. If his limping grew perceptible, he fought harder to hide it. We were going to conquer the world, for the Führer we would, though I couldn't help but think sometimes that the world was a big place.

  One weekend we went to a special camp to learn how to survive in nature. With less skill than happy chance we found unripe blackberries, caught some small trout, trapped a hare. Our bellies weren't full but our heads were bloated as we sang songs of victory around the campfire. Our night under the open sky was trying; luckily the truck that followed provided us with a more thorough breakfast in the long-awaited morning.

  Our leader, Josef Ritter, was just two years older than us but knew much more. He taught us a new game. He divided us into two colours, distributed bands to be worn around each boy's arm. Pushing someone on the ground made him a prisoner. He designated the terrain before letting us loose.

  I ran as though my life depended on it; it was great fun. Our team, the blues, caught four more prisoners than the reds, so we won. Kippi was heroic — he captured three prisoners, whereas I hadn't caught a single one, just dodged attacks. Then a red began to push Kippi, so I came to his rescue and, with his help, took my first prisoner. After that, I ran about the terrain trying to find Kippi, pushed over two more boys, and was made a prisoner myself. We, the prisoners, were supposed to sit under the skirts of an old spruce, and it was there I saw Kippi with his shoes off, his broken blisters red and raw. I hadn't thought of looking for him there. He cupped his shoe over my face to overpower me, but I got him with the stronger weapon: the smell of mine.

  I came home exhausted, could hardly make it up the steps without tugging on the rail. My mother was alarmed when she saw me, calling me her poor baby, her tired little boy, but I was in no disposition for hugs and kisses. I sat on my bed to take off my hiking shoes, then lay back so I could undo my buckles with my legs in the air . . . they were so heavy. I woke up in the morning still sticky but in clean-smelling pyjamas with a puppy pattern that made me feel silly, partly because I had no memory of undressing myself. I thought I was in someone else's room as I looked from wall to wall and saw apricot instead of olive green. My combat maps, knot chart and gas mask had been replaced by framed posters of blossoming cherry and apple trees. I had soft, cuddly toys in my room then, but they were kept inside a chest. Now they had emerged out of it and were sitting atop my desk: kangaroo, penguin, buffalo, their heads hanging feebly to one side, their expressions apologetic, as if even they didn't take their newly regained status seriously.

  I didn't say anything to my mother, despite her expectant looks. Finally, all I did was ask her where she'd put my pocket-knives, and she took the opportunity she'd been waiting for to tell me, in a manner that came off as well rehearsed, how my room had looked more like a soldier's than a little boy's, a home wasn't a military barrack, and it disturbed her every time she went by my open door because with all my absences she sometimes felt she was a mother who'd lost her son in the war, and after Ute's death she was sensitive, I must understand; she thought I'd be happy about the nice decorating she'd done in my absence. Pimmichen was nodding at each point she made, as though they'd already discussed the issue at length and she was making sure my mother didn't forget any item off the checklist.

  I didn't want to argue, and even thought about not saying anything so as not to hurt her feelings, but I couldn't stop some lower instinct inside me that had to say it was my room. She agreed it was my room, but reminded me, in turn, that my room was in her house. Thus came about a knotty discussion of territorial rights, who was allowed to do what, under whose roof, behind whose door, between what walls. Our respective rights and territories seemed to overlap over that small square considered my room. We argued less rationally in the end, she citing her motherly sentiments of goodwill, and I alleging violations of privacy until she at last concluded, 'The Führer is making war in every household!'

  I came home from school one day to discover Kippi, Stefan, Andreas, Werner and, of all people, Josef, my camp leader, seated around the table, each wearing a pointed paper hat my mother had distributed. I didn't do a good job at hiding my embarrassment, especially when I saw my grandmother wearing one too. She'd fallen asleep in her armchair and was snoring, the hat pulling her hair to one side in a way that made her pink scalp stand out. If my mother had chosen pink balloons to string across the room it was only to match the pink cake, but I would've preferred any other colour, including black.

  My mother was the first to cry happy birthday and throw confetti, dancing about from side to side. Josef, our camp leader, smiled but didn't quite join in, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. Those boys in the Jungvolk, ten to fourteen years old, were called Pimpfe. Just as the word sounds, a Pimpfe corresponded to that awkward age, full of complexes — too old to be a child, not yet a man. My mother was cheering me for candles that could have been blown out by a wink of the eye, swelling with maternal pride as if I'd just achieved the impossible. I felt as though I — and my big twelve years old — were shrinking faster than t
he melting candles.

  After our second servings of cake we actually began having fun, talking about our previous survival camp. That's when my mother insisted I open up my gifts in front of them all. I tried to get out of it but the others wouldn't let me. I knew my mother's and father's gift from the fancy paper and avoided it, first opening those of my friends. The twins Stefan and Andreas gave me a torch; Josef, a poster I already had of the Führer; Werner, the music sheets of the 'Horst Wessel Lied' and 'Deutschland über Alles', practically sold out in Vienna. Pimmichen offered me handkerchiefs with my embroidered initials. Kippi gave me a photograph of Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth Leader of all the Reich. This pleased Josef, which made me feel more at ease until my mother wanted to see it. She asked Kippi if it was his big brother, or wasn't it his father? Instead of dropping it, she insisted she saw some resemblance; but maybe, she guessed, after Kippi had turned every shade of red, it was only the uniform.

  Eventually I had to unwrap my parents' gift, and I must say if I'd received it a year earlier I would have adored it. It was a toy bull-terrier that could bark and jump. I don't know where they found it: supposedly no more toys were being sold in the Reich. My mother had chosen it because I'd always wanted a dog but couldn't have one because of her allergies, so this was a symbolic gift, a compromise. My friends smiled as best they could, but we'd outgrown toys, no matter how cute. I slouched and said thank you, secretly wishing my mother hadn't come to give me a kiss; on top of it all one that sounded moist.

  The boys thanked my mother for her invitation and gathered their belongings. Josef reminded us that the forthcoming weekend we must meet well before daybreak because we had extra kilometres to walk. It was at that moment that my father stepped into the house, tearing off his tie, undoing his neck buttons in a way that made me think he was about to put up his dukes.