Jakob’s Colors

by Lindsay Hawdon

  Behind her she heard the nurse’s steps running back along the path, felt the space where she no longer was. They would come for her. She knew they would come soon enough.

  “Please, Mother. Take me from here,” she pleaded again.

  “No need to end it, my darling. You can bear it,” her mother said and she took up the blade from the toolbox, pulled up Lor’s sleeves and slowly dragged it across her wrist, an old scar opening up as it trailed across her skin.

  “There. Everything will be all right now,” she whispered, as slowly she disappeared into the shadows of the room’s corners. “You can bear it, where I could not. You always have. Go live amongst the roses, my love.”

  Lor watched the beads of blood forming on her arm. Felt the stilling calm. She sat there in the silence, more at peace than at any time over the past months, perhaps years. All that there was were the colors, nothing else: no pain, no loss, no fear. Just a room of colors, each one as simple and as beautiful as the next.

  She would have stayed that way, were it not for the fact that he came as she sat upon the stone floor, aching for her mother. The boy with his shaggy clothes and defiant stare. He stood, as she had stood moments before on the threshold to the workshop, and it took a while for her to register that a shadow had been cast against the light. She lifted her head, looked up expecting to see the nurse, but instead he stood there, staring at her. His eyes were gray, not a thread of color in them. Clear as glass. They looked from her to the cluttered walls, then back again, as if he was absorbing a scene that was familiar to him, but with the startling addition that she was now in it. Once again she took in his clothes, workman’s clothes that seemed too big for him, the pants folded above his ankles, the shirtsleeves folded above his wrists, loose at the seams. Her tears rolled from her chin. She felt them falling into her hands.

  “So, you are crazy?” he asked eventually, looking down at her cut wrist. He did not seem surprised. His look was quizzical, thoughtful. When she said nothing, he continued. “No matter. They saying that of me. But I knowing I not crazy. This place more crazy than I. Been here years ’nough to know it.”

  “These are yours?” Lor asked him of the colors in the room. He did not answer. His face seemed laid bare as if suddenly intruded upon. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For being here.”

  He shrugged. He had not taken his gaze from her face the whole time. Eventually he came toward her, knelt first upon the floor beside the bed and then pulled from beneath it a rusted metal box. It was cluttered with strange bottles full of liquids of ochre and darkest brown, leaves and flowers that floated in jars of water. He twisted the lid off one of them, brought out a white flower, the sort she recognized growing at the sides of country roads. He moved to sit down beside her and after crushing it in the palm of his hand, he began gently to dab the juices across the cut on her wrist. She flinched slightly.

  “Be still,” he told her. “It’ll numb that pain. Won’t trouble you so much when you sleeping later.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “They call it white yarrow. Soldiers used it to stop their bleeding an’ to clean their dirty wounds.” Afterward he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around the cut, took his time to tie it tightly, glancing every so often at the door. She felt the weight of his fingers on her, felt his rough calloused skin.

  “They’ll come for you soon enough,” he told her. “Best I’m not here. They got me working on stuff now, fixing them gardens, fences an’ outdoor things. Been giving them no cause to trouble an’ they got no place else to put me.” He paused and looked at her again. “Them treatments gonna take the life out of you.”

  Then he stood, lingered on the threshold as if he was about to say something more, but in the end he turned and walked back down the path, leaving her alone again in his room of colors. She sat in the space where he had been, felt the sudden emptiness of his absence, and only then did she recognize that underneath it all, he, like her, found existence hard. That he, like her, knew the sort of sadness that did not go away. It seemed that between them, like a pool of clear water, lay the knowledge of loss.

  All this, before she was discovered. Before there was the rush of thudding feet down the path, an intrusion of bodies in the tiny space, arms around her neck, too tight, heaving her up from the floor, dragging her away. She screamed for her mother, who did not come. All that was left was Dr. Itzhak’s calm assertion that she was not ready, a setback in the treatment, dangerous for her own well-being, which in time they would deal with accordingly.

  “Too soon, Glorious. I am sorry, it was too soon,” he said, more to himself than to her. Swiftly she was dragged from outside to in, was again strapped down, this time upon a board where she was doused with iced water, felt it pouring over her face, until she was left choking, stunned with the swiftness from peace to chaos, from the brightness of colors to the gray clear sting of her own tears. She choked on bile. Then muted her screams.

  “See, my dear, you are calm again now,” Dr. Itzhak said when they were done, and she, too limp to respond, simply closed her eyes and let the delirium take her.

  Long Before

  SWITZERLAND, 1929

  So they packing me off to my new home, to a house in a town nothing but a short trot away from that Pro Juventute I been kept in, and though things be different here, they not better. Not better at all. My foster pa has eyes like alabaster, white lashed like an angel. But he ain’t no angel. He’s a barri man, a big ’un, with a fist that’d punch the light out o’ you. Drinking all evening, and smoking brissagos, swallowing that smoke an’ coughing so hard it come back up out into the air. Sitting in his big chair with his belly all hanging out around his pants, so hairy an’ damp, even from where I is sitting I can smell him. All salt an’ sickly sweetness.

  Works in that steel factory, my barri man, hot an’ fiery as he bends that rigid steel, singeing that rough skin o’ his with sparks, so he bringing home a roaring rage, burning them singes out on me with his brissagos and his fists. I feel the pain o’ that right in the soori of me. Like it burning all the good away inside. And still when it come to them mealtimes we thank the Lord Almighty for this stinking world he made for us. Ain’t no one up in that blue heaven gonna blame me for running again, I reckon. Not God, nor Jesus who suffers all us little ’uns to come unto him. His wife stands small an’ meek and sometimes I see she feeling sorry for me, but is too afraid to go showing me so. One time, in the kitchen, when I come carrying in the coal, big heavy sackfuls that I lug ’cross that yard. Them sacks be weighing maybe fifty pounds, and sometimes I lug ’em ten miles into town.

  “Bet it’s been a long time since you had something sweet?” she says. Been so long I had something sweet, I’ve half forgotten what it tasting like. “Here,” she says, and hands me a spoonful of sugar. I put that sugar in my mouth, the whole spoonful of it. Can feel it on my tongue, fizzing so sweet, half stinging, and my body all a-buzzing, like some sort of wily spell in my fingers an’ my toes. And that lady, she gives me a smile that she dares not give when her barri man’s around. Part of me is longing to put my arms around her waist, feel the warmth of her wrapping around me, soft as dough, her skin all hot an’ milky scented. But I never have no courage to be doing that. And she don’t either. So we stay with a good distance between us, smiling at each other. And that is like a spoonful of sugar in itself.

  She come reading to me one day. Reading a book she says her pa used to read to her. About a lion, strong an’ solid as a tree, who even if you rest your whole body ’gainst, will not hurt you. We sit reading by the fire, an’ life not so bad to be living while her voice sounding off them pages.

  We do this maybe three times before her barri man discovers us. Then there’s a fire in his eyes as he starts asking her what she wants, reading to me, when I meant to be out in that yard. Beats me then. And beats her, and next time we see each other our faces are all bruised an’ swollen and she won’t be looking at me no more. Never
no story of that lion. Never no spoonful o’ sugar. After that, my barri man he puts his brisagos out on my arm more times than before, and he hits me harder, a cuffing at my ear, a cuffing at my jaw. Don’t sleep so sing-song after that. Am more fearful of my life now, and wanting to hold on to it tight, ’cos I been reminded what it feels like to have a little kindness.

  When my barri man is greasing his belt one day, I know what he has in mind, ’cos I can smell that liquor on his dirty breath, and I know I not gonna make it if I sticking around, not this time.

  Remember what I been taught as a young ’un.

  Te den, xa, te maren, de-nash. When you are beaten, run away. Run Away.

  So I slip out small an’ mute and run fast as my hungry legs gonna carry me. Get to the end of the street before I hear him shouting, his voice all a bellow an’ a rage, and them neighbors come hollering to his aid, catching me like it’s better for my health. But I kick an’ scream, and run on down the next street an’ the next an’ the next one after that. Keep running till I get to the middle of that town that be all hustle ’bout me. Men in bars, dirt smeared an’ hardworking. Hookers standing around showing more leg than is rightful, smelling of vanilla bean an’ sweet tobacco. Feel more safe with them folk who don’t talk ’bout how good for nothing I am, nor ’bout how good for something they are. They talk raw an’ true ’cos they had the lies of life knocked out of them.

  Get to befriend them Italian boys by the end of that long day. They standing on their scaffolding, all dust covered an’ sing-songing, reminding me that there is a beauty in the dirt an’ murky colored. They giving me a space upon their floor for this night and the others and I sleep softly, drowning out the past for a good few weeks.

  But them Authorities be out looking for me with their beady eyes. Grabbing me in the street one day. Come out of them shadows. Hold me down too tight. And I act so crazy they think no one gonna calm the devil out of me, ranting an’ raving an’ pummeling my fists into the air. Show them the burns on my arms, the bruises on my back, and in the end they don’t send me back to my barri man, and they don’t send me back to that Home, neither.

  Send me to a different country altogether. A place where the walls are so white they blinding me the first time I see them. Place where them corridors stink of chemicals that make your eyes sting, and toilets that stink o’ shit an’ piss. Place where I see women cradling babies in their arms. Only there ain’t no babies. They just seeing them ’cos they can’t be bearing the loss of their own. There’re people in this place shouting an’ hollering more loudly than I ever could, more mad than I ever seen, rocking back an’ forth and laughing when there ain’t nothing to laugh ’bout. Strapped down by their hands an’ feet, and screaming so hard their faces are all puffed an’ reddened. I am half missing my barri man by the time they finish with me in this place. This Institution that they calling it as if it were something white an’ clean.

  Who are you? them screaming women ask me, over an’ over again. Who are you? And I knowing in myself who I am, but I won’t be telling them. Nor them men in white coats. Keep my memories like a locket, only to be opened when I choose. Tell them I remember nothing. Look cheerful, like things of no matter. Like life’s worth living.

  Sometimes I drift so deep inside o’ myself, all them words lose their meaning and only a silence is left that keeps my soori safe, like no one ever gonna be able to get to me again. Fills my head with memories. How one day, my pa gathered up them white crosses in their rows an’ rows. Put a spade to the strut of every single one, pushing his foot down hard so that it dug deep into the ground, and with one shove, pulled up each an’ every one of them. Clearing them away, for them new gravestones that’d be arriving, stones that’d be lasting for the end of all time.

  Afterward, that mound of crosses so high it blocks out a whole lot of sky, and my pa knows he can’t be leaving it to rot in the wind an’ the rain. Them crosses touched the bones of all the lives he fought with. So he fetches our horse, and together they set about dragging each an’ every one of them crosses from that killing field, down the lane to our kampania. Working in the rain that poured down. Working in the heat of that shining sun. But nothing gonna stop my pa with that task he got in hand.

  He never believed in that bloody war. Not from the start to the finish. Nothing but a bewildering nightmare to him. Seeing men alive even though their legs an’ arms gone whirling off, lying out in the fog with drilling guns blasting in their bleeding ears. Such a place, he told me, even the birds had left it. Only a memory of green grass ’gainst a field all muddied. Told me how he held his best friend in his arms. Held his entrails in his hands. Seeked to push them back into that black hole that had opened up in his stomach. Held him till he breathed his last, shuddering breath. Such a sight of wretchedness a terror screamed inside of my pa with not a way to make it ever hush itself. Hears it from then on, alongside the day to day, a shrieking in his head.

  So, he got himself a plan. A plan for them white crosses.

  Long Before

  AUSTRIA, 1931

  Yavy came that night and stood outside her window up at the Institution. The wind was a bluster, whistling through the crevices, and she was not sure whether it was this that stirred her, or that through a drug-induced sleep she somehow sensed him there. She turned her head and saw him behind the glass, simply standing, watching. He seemed again to be studying her with the timeless confidence of the invisible. As if he were unaware she could see him. Slowly her heavy eyelids closed again as a mist of sleep drew her under, unsure in the end whether she had really seen him at her window or simply dreamt it.

  But he came the next night. And the next. Almost as a ritual. As if he were waiting for something. Finally, when she was strong enough to rise, she crept from her bed and pushed up the window, as she had that first night when he stood in the rain. She felt the chill breeze on her hands and heard him shiver.

  “You are cold?” she asked him.

  “No matter.”

  “You come to see me?” He nodded. “And they do not know it?”

  “They knowing little besides their own thinking. They should watch more. Think less.”

  “But you risk much with it.”

  He shrugged and she found herself again trying to hide the scars on her arms. He glanced at them.

  “Been watching crazy people come and go from this place,” he said finally. “For years now. You’re not one of them. Them scars ’long your arms, they’ll be healing. An’ one day they won’t be there no more. Time changes. Nothing staying the same. You lost your balance, is all. You fell some with the loss of it.”

  “You do know that I see my own mother?” Lor said, surprised by the harshness of her tone. “I see her in front of me as clear as day. But you should know my mother is dead. Do you still think I am not crazy?”

  “You loved your mother?” he asked. Lor nodded. “Then you are not crazy.” He hesitated, seemed afraid of what he was going to say next. “Can take you from here, if you wish it,” he said finally. “Been here long ’nough to know they gonna knock the life out of you if you stay.”

  She fell silent. What he was saying was insane. He was insane, surely, even to think it, let alone speak it.

  “How? How can you?” she asked.

  “I can. If you wish it.”

  “I am afraid of you.”

  He bowed his head. When he looked up, he was smiling. “Remember,” he said. “Nothing staying the same. Best you sleep now. Rest yourself. You don’t know it yet, but you can be trusting me.”

  “You are Yavy,” she said.

  “Yes. I am he.”

  And then he was gone, defiantly striding out from the shadows and out across the moonlit lawn, and she was left knowing that she alone did not have the strength either to stay or to go. That her life was broken either way, and that if he had the will for it she would go with him. The world was no longer recognizable to her. It did not matter where she was in it. She lived now too far inside he
rself to care.

  This Day

  AUSTRIA, 1944

  When Jakob wakes the following morning, there are whispered discussions going on next door. Markus is there, a conversation between all three of them. He cannot make out what they are saying to one another. He stretches the stiffness from his knees, strains to catch their words, which seem to be a collection of negatives: … no … not … none … never.

  When Markus brings Jakob his meal later on that day it is filled to the brim and sloshing.

  “We have been talking,” he tells him.

  “I have been listening.”

  “I am afraid they will soon discover you. You have heard: they are suspicious. I cannot even clean a window in my own house. It is not safe for you all to stay here any longer, Jakob. I am going to get some help for you to cross the border. I am going to send word and we will see what comes of that. But first you must eat. You will not get there as thin as you are, so you must get stronger, you hear me?”

  A hole opens up in Jakob’s stomach, a fist full of dread. What is there but this cupboard? What is there but this black scented space? Despite this, he nods, wanting to please, hearing the conviction in Markus’s words.

  “Now eat. It has begun. I am to strengthen you up. Day by day.”

  “How did you find us more food, Markus?”

  “I have some things that I can sell.”

  “Things that are precious to you?”

  “What else would be worth selling for you? You will be strong, my boy. You will be strong enough to run fast.”

  Jakob can remember the sheer delight of running fast. His small legs pumping up the brow of a hill, his sister beside him, racing to the very crest, where they hovered momentarily, took in the sky, before running back down over the other side. Through high grasses, both light enough for the balmy wind to pick them up, lift them in leaping bounds over mounds and ridges down the grassy slopes, running until they fell, their feet entangled as if nature had tripped them. Yes, to run fast would be good. He remembers that to do that was always good.