Boy 23

by Jim Carrington

  Father Frei makes a face like he doesn’t believe me. ‘So how did you learn to speak English?’

  ‘The Voice,’ I say. And as soon as it’s out, I know I’ve said too much. The words The Voice spoke to me when he left come back to me. Avoid people. Say nothing. Why did I say anything?

  ‘The Voice?’

  I say nothing. I don’t even move.

  ‘Did you meet this person?’

  I shake my head. That’s hardly even lying, is it?

  Father Frei looks puzzled. And for a while he gawps at me, waiting for me to say something, before he smiles and says, ‘Fascinating.’

  The only sound for ages is the crackle and spit of the fire and the tick-tock of a clock.

  ‘Jesper, you were hit by a car belonging to New Dawn out in the forest. How did you get there?’

  ‘I walked.’

  ‘From your home? Is your home in the forest?’

  I’ve said too much already. I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. I woke up in the forest.’

  Father Frei leans forward, his forehead creasing. He clears his throat before speaking. ‘You were found without an identity card or a medical card. Did you lose them?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know what those are.’

  Father Frei raises an eyebrow. ‘You also had a bag, Jesper.’

  I nod.

  ‘There were a lot of things in the bag, Jesper. A torch, a knife, a telescope.’

  Silence.

  ‘Where did those come from?’

  And I don’t know, do I? So I shrug. ‘I found it in the forest.’

  ‘You didn’t steal any of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You realise it was all very high-specification equipment. Not the kind of thing a boy like you would usually own . . .’

  I don’t say a word.

  For a few seconds Father Frei says nothing too. His eyes examine me, and it makes me uneasy because I don’t know what he’s thinking. ‘You’ve been brought to the best place, Jesper. St Jerome’s is a children’s home. You won’t be alone here. We have a hundred children like you – wild children, orphans, refugees. Here we give them a new chance to be worthwhile citizens through work and prayer.’

  I have no idea what that means but I say nothing.

  ‘You’ll be given a bed and food, and in return we expect you to attend daily Mass at church in the morning and the evening, and in between to work. Do you understand?’

  I nod. I think I do.

  ‘St Jerome’s is full of sad stories, Jesper. Some of the saddest are to be found in the medical ward you were in until just now. Many of the boys there are locked inside their own minds. Some of them are wild children, abandoned and left to fend for themselves, no more than savages or animals.’

  I nod, thinking of the hound-boy.

  ‘Let us pray you’re not to be another sad story. God willing, yours will be a story of hope and redemption.’

  I nod, even though I don’t have a clue what he means.

  Carina

  The corridors are quiet as I carry a crate of cauliflowers to the kitchens. Suddenly I feel an arm on my shoulders, and I’m so startled that I let out a squeak of surprise and almost drop the crate. I spin round to see who’s there. Staring back at me from the shadows is Father Liebling. He puts a finger to his lips and then pulls me into the shadows.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ he whispers, eyes darting around to see if anyone is listening in. ‘I couldn’t talk in front of the others.’

  ‘Is it about Sabine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it? She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  He nods. ‘I’m sorry, Carina.’

  I feel tears coming. I fight against them.

  ‘Medics did all they could, but she was too ill. She died peacefully, Carina. I gave her the last rites.’

  Despite my best efforts, a tear leaks from my right eye and I feel it run down my cheek. I quickly wipe it away. ‘Was it Marsh Flu?’

  Father Liebling shakes his head. He looks around again before leaning in closer. ‘It was very much like Marsh Flu,’ he says in a whisper, ‘but Sabine had been inoculated when she first came to St Jerome’s, as everyone is.’

  ‘Then what was it?’

  His eyes dart around furtively once more. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this. Blood tests indicate it wasn’t Marsh Flu, and there have been similar cases. It seems like it might be a new disease, Carina.’

  He stops talking because the sound of footsteps starts to echo through the corridors as children come in from the fields. Father Liebling looks around and then slips away and I join the stream of children carrying vegetables towards the kitchens.

  Jesper

  I’m taken to a room bigger than any I’ve ever been in. It’s filled with hundreds of dirty-looking children sitting on rows and rows of benches, set out either side of wooden tables. All of them are wearing the same grey clothes as me. And what they’re doing is stuffing their faces with food – spooning some brown slop from bowls into their mouths.

  And the noise in the room is something else. It makes me panicky, cos it sounds like every single one of them’s talking at the top of their voice or laughing or shouting or crying, all of them using their words that I don’t understand. That isn’t the half of it though, cos there’s the smell as well – so thick and meaty that I can almost feel it on my face as I walk through the room.

  It’s too much. Too many people. Too much noise. My brain tells me to run, to get away. Only that isn’t gonna happen, is it? Cos right next to me is another priest – Father Liebling – and he’s hobbling through the gaps between the rows of benches, leading me along.

  I flinch at every movement, jump at every shout or burst of laughter from the children as we squeeze past them. But Father Liebling keeps limping on, taking me to the front of the room, where two other priests stand behind a table, spooning food into bowls. As we reach the front table, Father Liebling talks to them in his words. The priests fill a bowl with the brown lumpy stuff and put it on a tray for me together with a hunk of bread and a glass of water.

  Father Liebling nods to me, looking at the tray, and I work out that means I should pick it up, so I do. He leads me back across the hall, until we stop at a table where there’s a space.

  He speaks to the children already sitting there in the words I don’t understand. They say nothing to him, just go on stuffing their mouths.

  The priest looks at me. ‘I’ve asked these children to look after you,’ he says in my words.

  I nod. I look at the children. The hard looks on their faces make me think they don’t want to look after me.

  ‘You sit here,’ Father Liebling tells me. ‘I’ll get you when you’re finished and take you to your dormitory.’

  I watch as he hobbles off again, until he’s gone out the door.

  And I’m left here, all on my own. Except I’m not on my own, am I? Cos I’m surrounded by other children, who sit and stuff their faces, who gawp at me like I’m the weirdest thing they’ve ever seen. And maybe I am. I know I’m not the same as everyone else.

  And all I can do is squizz down at my food, at the brown slop and the bread. I start to scoff, not looking up, not wanting to see any of the other children. And as I’m eating, they talk to each other and I don’t understand. It’s me they’re talking about though. I know that cos they gawp at me and laugh and sometimes say things to me.

  I don’t answer. I keep my eyes down, keep scoffing, trying to get this over as quickly as possible, so I can get out of here, go to my room and be on my own.

  Only when I’m finished, Father Liebling doesn’t turn up, does he? And the kids sitting at the table keep on and on and on so much that I have to put my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut to block them out.

  When he finally does come and get me, Father Liebling puts his hand on my shoulder and I let out a scream, like an animal. I open my eyes and see that it’s him and he’s
holding the bag I had in the forest. He passes it to me and tells me to follow him. He hobbles right through the room where everyone’s eating and out of another door into another huge room. On either side there are wooden stairs. Father Liebling leads me towards the set on the right and hobbles up them, and I follow.

  At the top of the stairs we pass doors on either side of a dark corridor until eventually we stop by one. Father Liebling pushes the door open. And it takes me by surprise, cos I didn’t think that the door would be unlocked. Through the door there’s another big room, with rows of beds and wardrobes on either side. Loads of them. Twenty on each side probably. And I get a churning feeling in my guts, cos I’m not getting a room on my own, am I? This room’s for all the boys. Including me.

  We walk into the room, between the rows of furniture, until halfway along the room we stop.

  ‘This is your place,’ Father Liebling says.

  I squizz at it – a bed and a wardrobe and a little table next to the bed with a drawer in it.

  ‘You can put your belongings in the wardrobe and your drawers,’ he says. ‘The lights go out at nine o’clock exactly. Prayers are at five in the morning and five in the evening. You’ll be assigned work tomorrow. Sleep well.’

  He hobbles off again and leaves me in the empty room.

  The room doesn’t remain empty. Soon enough it fills with boys; some of them I recognise from the room downstairs. And the first thing they do when they come into the room is gawp at me and talk and make noise. And I can’t handle it. I just want to be left alone. So what I do is, I close my eyes and curl into a ball on my bed and I wait and I wait and I wait. And eventually the noise quietens. I figure it’s safe to open my eyes and I see I’m alone in the room again. I get down from my bed, kneel beside it and say a prayer:

  Dear God,

  Please keep me safe from temptation and evil spirits. Help me find the patience to choose the right time to get away from this place, to find my way back to My . . .

  Only my prayer’s interrupted by noises. Footsteps approaching. Voices close by. A shushing noise and laughter. I open my eyes, squizz around to where the sound’s coming from.

  And what I see is a group of boys.

  They’ve been prying on me, haven’t they? One of them – a tall boy with blond hair – points, says something to the others in words I don’t understand and laughs. My guts tie themselves in knots.

  They yomp towards me, laughing, saying words I don’t understand. And I realise that my hands are still together in prayer, so I quickly put them by my sides and get up from the floor.

  And before I can do anything, before I can even think, they’re surrounding me. Five of them. Laughing and gawping and talking.

  ‘Was machst du?’ says a smaller boy with brown hair. ‘Betest du?’

  I stare at him, not understanding his words, but knowing, from the look on his face and the way he and the other boys are laughing at me, that he doesn’t like me.

  He speaks again, more violent-sounding words. And then he nudges me in my side with his knee and I fall over on to the floor.

  Inside me, embarrassment and anger start to build. But I try not to look at the boys cos maybe if I ignore them, they’ll ignore me.

  Only that doesn’t work, does it? Cos they stay near me, laughing and saying things and nudging me while I’m on the ground. And anger keeps building up inside me so that I feel like I’m going to explode.

  I try to get up from the floor and I feel a foot in my side and I fall again. They laugh. And when I try again to get up, the blond boy kicks me in the guts.

  And something inside me snaps. Before I can even think about what I’m doing, my body makes a decision and I get up from the floor and I lunge at the boy. And as though my body knows what to do automatically, my fists fly, clouting him round the face, knocking him straight to the ground. And I think he can’t have been expecting it cos he just lies there for a few seconds, shocked. And I stand over him, panting, tears springing from my eyes.

  For a second or two no one does a thing, like we’re all too shocked to act. But then they close in on me. I’m surrounded. I try not to look at them, except I can’t help it, can I? They gawp at me as though they’re gonna do me harm.

  Slowly the boy I knocked over props himself up on his elbow. Blood leaks from his lip. He puts his free hand up to it and touches the blood, squizzes at it. And then he gawps at me, and there’s a look in his eyes like he wants to kill me.

  He gets to his feet and takes a step towards me and the others close in on me as well, so there’s nowhere to run, and I realise I’ve made a mistake. The blond boy bunches his fingers into a fist. And I know it’s coming so I brace myself.

  WHUMP.

  His fist hits me in the stomach, folding me in two, making me feel like all the air’s been knocked out of me, like I’m gonna vomit. Another fist smacks into me, lands on my cheek, and I feel the pain surge across my face. And then a kick to the legs and I’m lying on the floor again.

  I gasp for air. I feel tears running down my face. A second passes and I’m hoping they’re done – that they’re gonna leave me alone now. But I feel a kick in the guts and another and another and all I can do is curl into a ball to try to protect myself.

  The kicks keep coming, thudding into my side and my legs and my neck and my head. And there’s pain all over me now. I start to think that they’re not gonna stop, that they’re gonna keep kicking me until all the breath has left me, till I’m dead.

  Only then there’s a voice.

  And it’s the blond boy, isn’t it?

  And he says, ‘Hören Sie auf.’

  Which must mean stop, cos that’s what they do.

  But I stay curled in a ball. I’m not moving till I know they’ve left me alone.

  And then someone leans in towards me. I feel a face coming close to mine, smell the bad breath.

  A voice hisses something in my ear.

  I don’t say anything. I stay curled up.

  There’s another kick, in my side, and another surge of pain. Hands grab me, pulling me up to standing, and there’s nothing I can do. So I stand there, feeling sick and dizzy and sore, but I don’t look at him.

  ‘Wie heiβt du?’ he says.

  And I know what he’s asking me, even though it’s in his words. I open my mouth and speak: ‘Jesper Hausmann.’ It comes out sounding broken and croaky and like I’m gonna cry.

  And it makes them all laugh.

  He speaks again, saying things fast in his own language so that I don’t understand.

  I stay silent, gawp at the floor. I squizz up at his face, at the blood leaking from his lip, drying on his face. He turns to the others, who are waiting either side of him, all gawping at me, and he gives a command.

  They all start moving, going through my wardrobe and the little table beside my bed. One of them finds my bag and tosses it over to the blond boy. He smiles at me, then opens the toggle at the top of the bag. I lunge forward to get it from him, but two of the other boys grab my arms to stop me.

  So I just gawp as the blond boy goes through my bag. He sniffs my blanket and screws his face up, letting it drop to the ground, tosses the water bottle and the notebook across the room. He takes out the firelighting kit and looks at it, opens it up, turns it round and then finally hits the metal against the stone and sends sparks flying. He does it a few more times, sending the sparks flying in my direction, so they land on my skin. He pockets the kit, then looks again. And one by one he takes the rest of the items out of my bag.

  When he puts his hand in the bag for the final time, his eyes light up as he discovers my knife. He opens out all the blades, and chooses the longest and sharpest. He lunges at me as though he’s gonna stab me, only stopping at the last moment. He tucks it in his pocket and then throws the empty bag at me, so it hits me in the face and drops to the floor.

  ‘Ich heiβe Markus,’ he says.

  The boys let go of me with a shove and they all move away.

&
nbsp; The light went out ages ago. Everything’s still and silent. All the other boys are in bed, have been for ages. And I’m as sure as I can be, without checking on every single one, that they’re all asleep.

  All except me.

  Because now is the time to get out of here, isn’t it? How is The Voice going to find me in here? I need to get out and find The Voice.

  I throw back the covers of my bed, still in my clothes, cos I never changed into pyjamas like the others, did I? I grab what’s left of my stuff – bag, stuffed with bottle and blanket and notebook and pen – and step across the room, in the direction of the boy’s bed, ignoring the soreness and pain from the kicking I got earlier. Markus, he said his name was. He was the one that took all my things – the firelighting kit, the knife, the torch and the telescope. And they’re things I’m gonna need when I get back into the forest.

  The floor creaks and I feel nervous as hell. But no one wakes and I make it across the room to his wardrobe. Only there’s a problem, isn’t there? Cos on his wardrobe he has padlocks. Even in this dim light I can see the doors are shut and locked and there isn’t any way I’m getting in there unless I find the key or smash the doors in. And if I do that I’m gonna wake everyone, aren’t I?

  What do I do? I need those things. I need to be able to light a fire and cook food. But I also don’t want to wake anyone up and get found out.

  A wave of panic washes over me.

  So I do what I have to do, and that is I creep across the room, towards the door Father Liebling brought me in through, which no one locked. I reach out, turn the door handle and in a second I’m out of the room, free, walking along the corridor which echoes as I creep along it. I pass rows and rows of doors and I don’t see another person. It sends a tingle of something right from the top of my head all the way down my neck and my back, cos in a few minutes I’ll be out of here and on my own. And that’s the way I want it.

  It takes me hardly any time to sneak along the corridor to the stairs. I take a squizz around me before I step down them, carefully and quietly, thinking there could be someone hidden, prying, listening.

  But I get to the bottom and I see the doors to the outside, and there isn’t anyone. Just shadows and darkness and silence and me.