Kindergarten
Page 6
It was when he was outside alone that he felt the pressures of the outer world. He felt the weight of other people all around him. Every time he left the house, he had to prepare himself. A walk across the Green involved a need to greet and smile at half a dozen people. Because he was small and serious, adults often took it upon themselves to coax a smile out of him when he was alone with them. They all seemed to be taller than he was. He dreaded being alone with Mr. Arundel, the newsagent. He sometimes longed for a shop where he could go in and not be known, just buy a magazine or a packet of sweets, as he could in that shop in Lowestoft, without the need for the smile, the greeting, a few polite enquiries, the need to be good-natured, nice, a brave and well-brought-up boy.
Over coffee, in any one of a dozen houses in Southwold, he would have been a subject of interest and concern. Women he hardly knew, who passed him in the street and said “Hello, Corrie,” or “How’s your grandmother,” would be looking him up and down as they smiled and passed a few polite words. They would report back to each other in an interested, casual way, a subject for conversation, well meant, wanting to help, but they would report back. I saw Cornelius this morning. How is he now?
“He seems to be taking his mother’s death very well.”
“He’s been so mature about the whole thing.”
“Wonderful with Jo and Matthias…”
WHEN JO finished singing, they moved out towards Church Street to make their way back home.
Faintly, the voices had come out of the darkness and across the emptiness, high and clear in the cold air, shrill little voices singing of hope and steadfastness. The fir-tree is a symbol of faith. It is always green, in summer, and in winter also, when it is snowing. It is noble and alone. It comforts and strengthens us.
five
HIS COPY of Grimm’s Fairy Tales was an awkwardly large volume to read in bed. He had tried to read it lying on his side, but he had to use both hands to hold the book, it was so heavy, and his wrists ached painfully and gave way. He ended by sitting up in bed, the book opened against his upraised knees beneath the bedclothes, his music notebook lying on top of his school atlas on the bed beside him.
He looked at Lilli’s illustration for “Hansel and Gretel” on the wall at the side of his bed, studying it as he often did, lying in bed before he went to sleep.
DR. ERNST JACOBY
Berlin-Charlottenburg
24th November 1938
Dear Sir,
Please allow us to tell you about our position, and about our hopes. We hope you listen kindly to the situation in which we and our family find ourselves. Mrs. Katherina Viehmann has told us about your school, and about your kindness, and we have looked at your prospectus with great interest. We are friends of Mrs. Viehmann.
You know, dear sir, how matters stand with us in Germany, and since the events of this month the situation for Jews in this country is developing and becoming worse. We were compelled to give up our practices as doctors here, and, though it is now difficult to leave Germany without having a very particular reason for doing so, we hope to get government permission to emigrate to the United States. We need somewhere where our children will be able to continue their education and wait in safety while we try to carry out our plans. We ourselves make all efforts for leaving Germany, so that, within sight, the children could return in their father’s house. It would also be good for them, for their English and for their health in the summer, because there are forbidden all the swimmingbaths and all the parks.
We think our plans may take about a year to work. We do not know how long we will have to wait before we can leave the country, and, when we go to the United States, we do not think we could take the children with us, as it will be difficult for us at first to settle there and begin again.
We have three children: a girl of thirteen, a boy of twelve, and a girl of ten. They do not know any word of English, and if they learn well for a year, it will help them to settle in a school in America.
We have many questions to ask, which we hope do not trouble you.
Is it possible that you manage with our children, who do not know English? They know much, much less than Kurt and Thomas Viehmann when they first came to your school. Will it be too difficult for them with strangers in a foreign place? Is there, perhaps, a teacher who can speak German, so that, when, in the first time, they may feel unhappy, they would have someone who could listen to them? My wife and I speak English quite well, and we shall instruct our children so that they will have a little basis, and not feel so lonely if they can talk to their comrades. We will show them pictures so that England can become a place they can imagine. The oldest boy and girl have learned French and Latin in their “Gymnasium.” We do not know, perhaps this will help to learn English for them.
We are worried about the holidays, as the children will have no home. The children, as Jews, can only have passports which prevent them coming back to Germany again. Where could they go? Could they stay in the school? We know no one in England.
Your prospectus says the fee of 90L per annum. This part is difficult for us to write. We have a severe loss over the last five and a half years because of the situation here, and we are limited in our money. We will be allowed to leave Germany with a very little amount only, which we need to begin a new life in America. If you would be able to allow a special agreement for three children it would be valuable to us. We think we would be able to spend at the very maximum 20L per month for all the three children. This payment will be safe when we are in America, because whatever new restrictions are made on the transfer of money from Germany this cannot be affected. Until this time, the children’s grandmother in Warsaw, and a friend who is now living in Prague have agreed to pay, though it will be difficult for them. We do not think that we will be able to pay, ourselves, from Germany. We know the difficulties that Mrs. Viehmann had.
Need we buy new clothes for them, the uniforms and the equipment, if they will be only in England for a year? What should they bring in the way of suits and other necessities? Do the boys generally wear long trousers? What do they require for sport? Must they buy the required English school-books already over here, or are they supplied in the school? Would they be allowed to wear ordinary clothes? It would be difficult for us to spend the money on many new clothes. Their clothes are not fashion clothes, but are suitable for children, and practical for school. Please excuse all these questions, but once the children are in England, they will have no money to buy anything.
If all works well, we hope our children can be at your school for the January term. When does the term begin? Could they stay somewhere before the term begins?
We hope you will listen to our questions with sympathy.
We ask you to tell us quite frankly whether you have any reason why you would prefer us not to send our children over. After recent events, you might see things from a different point of view, and we are anxious not to cause you or your school any difficulties. The position in Germany is such that we cannot make any firm promise to you about what might or what might not happen in the future, and the chances are that things will not turn better.
Our children are good and decent little people, and behave very well. You will not regret taking them into your school. Please don’t mind the trouble we cause you. We love our country, but we must leave Germany.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Ernst Jacoby and
Dr. Madeleine Jacoby
HE OPENED Grimm’s Fairy Tales again at “Hansel and Gretel,” and then turned the pages back to “The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids,” thinking of earlier that evening, when he was sitting on the step beside Jo, listening to Lilli reading. He had a reproduction of a Bewick woodcut as a book-plate in the book. Four little boys sat astride engraved and listing gravestones, riding them as though they were horses. They were dressed as soldiers.
He had just started rereading the story when he heard Jo moving about in his room next door. As he listened, he heard the school c
lock strike a single note, half past eleven, its deep note followed by the higher single chime of the restaurant clock. The music did not play on the half-hour. Jo and he were the only people in Tennyson’s: Matthias was sleeping in Lilli’s house.
There was a louder bang from the next room, a sound like the bed being shifted.
He wondered if Jo had had another nightmare, and then if he were suffering from asthma again. He had looked a little hunched-up earlier in the evening—the whole upper part of his body shrivelled in on itself—and had gone to bed early, about half an hour after they had arrived back from the churchyard.
He pulled his dressing-gown on and walked through into Jo’s room.
The bedside light was on, and Jo was standing beside his bed, pulling at the bedclothes.
“Hello, little Cornelius.”
“Hello, minuscule Johann.”
“You got me all excited then. I thought Santa was coming back for a second visit.”
“Have you done it again?”
Jo pulled a wry face, and nodded, indicating the wet sheets he was removing from the bed.
“Santa Claus had better wear wellies if he does call again.” He began to sing, “I’m dreaming of a damp Christmas.” At irregular intervals, he had started to wet his bed, and there was a settled routine to be gone through when it happened.
“You get rid of the sheets, Jo. I’ll remake the bed for you.”
“Perhaps I should have been trained with one of those musical potties. The ones that play a tune when you’ve produced something.”
“I always thought they were a rather sinister idea.”
“Brave New Po.”
“And I should think a lot would depend on the tune they chose.”
“What if they chose the national anthem?”
“It could have disastrous consequences in later life. Just imagine, every time you heard that tune you’d…”
“…burst with patriotic fervour.”
“It could ruin a promising career in the diplomatic corps.”
“It could ruin several dozen pairs of socks.”
“And the dangers of a short circuit…”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
The replies came rapidly, automatically. Jo could go on to automatic pilot, and carry on a conversation for a long time, with his mind completely absorbed elsewhere.
He had already washed himself and put on a dry pair of underpants. He slept in a T-shirt and underpants, the pants being easier to clean if he wet himself. He had a wide range of T-shirts with illustrations and slogans. The one he was wearing at the moment had “This Space to Let” printed on its front. He stood across the bed from Corrie as they bundled together the sheets and the waterproof cover. He always held himself very upright, like a small child being reprimanded, just as Corrie did.
“I thought you were putting up some Christmas decorations in here.”
“I decided it was not in the nature of boys to do that kind of thing.”
Jo walked out and went towards the bathroom as Corrie took the spare sheets from the shelf in the cupboard, left ready by Lilli. There was the sound of a tap being turned on.
Jo came back in as Corrie was smoothing out the bottom sheet on the mattress, and stood looking at him for a moment. Corrie smoothed and smoothed the bottom sheet until it was absolutely free of wrinkles. Jo replaced the pillow on the bed, and took the other side of the top sheet.
“Can you think of any uses for a blanket?” Corrie asked as they began to tuck one into the sides of the bed.
Mr. Passenger had asked Jo’s class once to spend an English lesson in writing down as many different uses as they could think of for a barrel, a paper-clip, a brick, and a blanket. Jo had thought of 117 uses before time had run out. Corrie had seen his list later. A barrel can be used to float over the Niagara Falls. You have to be inside it, though. N.B. (1) You can get famous this way. N.B. (2) You can also get killed. A barrel can be used for making go-karts and things like that. Boy scouts do this. Greggers is a boy scout, but I don’t think he makes go-karts out of things. You had better ask him. Better still, I’ll ask him, and the next time I do a piece of work for you I’ll put at the top whether he does or not. You can laugh at a barrel. You can have a discussion group, and talk about barrels. You can ignore a barrel. You can roll your trousers up and climb inside a barrel, then roll down a hill, shouting “Cheese!” or something like that. (It needn’t be “Cheese.” You can shout whatever you feel like shouting.) The suggestion that Corrie had liked best was that a brick could be a Bible for an atheist.
Working together, in silence, they finished making the bed.
“Look at this,” Jo said, turning round and pulling down the waistband of his underpants as he climbed back into bed. “Age 7” was printed on the label in broad black lettering beneath the manufacturer’s name. “Humiliating, isn’t it?”
“It’s no fun being a dwarf.”
“I found a poem about you the other day. ‘A Considerable Speck,’ it was called.”
“Oh yes. Robert Frost and I often went swinging on birches together, until he fell off and killed his parrot.”
There was a long silence.
Jo sat up in bed arranging the sheets about him, like a child ill in bed in the middle of the day.
Corrie sat in the cane rocking-chair, pushing himself backwards and forwards. Jo’s clothes were neatly folded on the trunk at the bottom of his bed. The front of the thin sand-coloured jacket he had changed into when they got back from the churchyard was covered in metal badges: “I Am 2.” “Head Girl.” “Netball Captain.” The badge with Shakespeare’s head and “Will Power” on it was from when they had gone to see the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, during a short holiday the previous year.
The painting Lilli had given to Jo, one of her illustrations for “The Six Swans,” hung above his bed. The wall around the painting was covered by large blown-up black-and-white photographs of family and friends which Jo had taken and developed. His own face, and the faces of Dad, Mum, Matthias, Lilli, Sal, his cousins Michael and Lincoln, Judith, Cato, and many others regarded Corrie from across the bed. He thought of Lilli’s dining-room, and the intense close-up examination of the faces of the many people in all the paintings. The baby’s face in the painting Lilli had given Jo was at the very front of the picture as it lay in its cradle beside its sleeping mother, and the evil Queen, her face hidden by a looped curtain at the other side of the room, was walking towards the baby, her hands just beginning to lift up from her side. There was a full-length photograph Jo had taken of him directly opposite. He was wearing the high-heeled boots he wore to make him look taller, and jeans, and his hands were thrust into the slanting pockets of the hooded zip-front sweat-shirt he was wearing. He was pulling a funny face.
He walked across the room.
“I pray you sit by us, and tell’s a tale,” he said, sitting on the bed beside Jo.
“Merry or sad shall’t be?”
“As merry as you will.”
“A sad tale’s best for winter.”
He looked at Jo’s T-shirt.
There was a fashionable shop in London selling T-shirts with the symbol of the Red Phoenix terrorists—the flame and the fist—on them. In the music magazine that Cato bought, next to an advertisement for teenage spots, Corrie had seen a special offer placed by a mail-order company for T-shirts with a line of bullet-holes printed across the front, to make it look as if the wearer had been machine-gunned. The shirts could also be ordered with bullet-holes printed on the back as well as the front, to look as if the bullets had gone right through the wearer’s body. This cost fifty pence extra.
Jo looked ill, strained. There were dark lines under his eyes.
“O.K.?” Corrie asked.
Jo nodded.
“I thought your asthma had started when I heard you moving about.”
He told Jo about Matthias standing like Rupert the Bear, and they sat in silence for a while.
Corrie shook his head. “No. They just said again that they wanted the other terrorists released from prison before they’ll set anyone free.”
“And the government won’t let anyone be released?”
Corrie nodded.
“Just the same.”
“Just the same.”
“They can’t do as the terrorists want, can they?” Jo asked. “Release the prisoners? Because if they do, it’ll happen again.”
“It will anyway.”
“How do you stop it happening in the first place?”
“You can’t, can you?”
“The German government isn’t going to negotiate, whatever happens.”
“Do you think they’ll storm the building?”
“It’s the only thing they can do.”
“The terrorists say they’ve got the children spaced out in different rooms. Imagine it in school here. Even if they got to one group in time, the other terrorists would have time to kill the children with them. They’ve got four whole classes. Nearly a half of the school. Could the army attack all the different rooms simultaneously?”