Tuesday Tale: Escape

I escaped, and nobody knows. For years I have carried this secret like a stone in my shoe. I would stand in line at the shop, with my basket of eggs, cheese, milk and rye, look at the boy ahead of me and wonder, does he know? Does the cashier sense what I have harboured in silence? Will the security guard stop me as I leave and demand I empty the pockets of my mind?

 

            People are strike me as odd, especially in modern times. They have no curiosity, except for malice. I think that’s why there is a preponderance of tabloid media available wherever you look. That frightens me, to be honest. If my story surfaced as a headline on one of those dailies, I might die of embarrassment. What I lived through is better suited to the kinds of things snobs read.

            I don’t know why I am telling you this. Something about your face – no, your eyes, makes me feel I can trust you. This is a story that few will ever hear, and I am counting on you to listen. It may surprise you to know that it’s all true.

            I never featured much as a boy. I was slight and invisible for the most part. That’s how I felt, in any case. It became a pastime of mine to spy. I found I was rather good at it. It allowed me to discover the secrets of others. You remember what I said about people not being curious anymore? I have always been curious. When the cook made biscuits at Hanukkah and the visitors proclaimed that they would give their eye teeth to discover the ingredient that made it special, I made it my business to find out what it was. It was usually cinnamon. When my father said that I was too young to understand adult conversations, I stole his newspapers and read them so that I would have something to say at dinner. I suppose you could call me resourceful.

            You are probably wondering about my escape? I’ll get to that. I first need to explain how I got to that point, and so on. Are you keeping up? The real start to all this lies with a woman. Imelda. She was a maid in my parents’ house. One of her jobs was doing the laundry and I loved watching her lean over the basin, bosoms heaving, as she worked the stains out of our clothes. I encouraged my father to build me a lookout in one of the trees in the garden. I told him it was for watching birds and he never suspected which bird I had my eye on.

Imelda did not seem to be able to control her hair. It slipped out of her cap and hung around her face like tassels. She smelt of lavender and Herr Baumann’s hair oil. I should interrupt myself at this point and explain that Herr Baumann was the school master. We joked that he used a ruler to make sure his centre parting lined up with his nose. I have no beef with him, except that I cannot abide hair oil since he exposed me to the stench.

            Imelda’s other job was cleaning my room. She liked to take her time in there. I once caught her picking up my trains – I had a collection on a shelf above my bed – and admiring them. I didn’t mind that so much. It was when she dropped and dented my favourite locomotive that I saw red. I screamed at her and stood close enough to see my spittle land on her chest. She stayed away from me after that. I know she waited for me to go to tennis with Rolf before she cleaned my room again.

Rolf always asked me about her. He was good at drawing and made funny pictures of Imelda. Well, her bosoms. It was all good clean fun. Nothing like those heave-ho pictures on the computers now. Don’t look so surprised. I have grandsons. One of the things I discovered about Rolf, which I don’t think anyone else knew, apart from his mother, is that he really had no interest in Imelda. He was more interested in Herr Baumann, but he knew he could never say that out loud. So he asked me about Imelda and drew pictures of her, but his eyes lit up when I told him what kind of suit Herr Baumann wore, or what kind of flowers he brought Imelda when he visited her on a Saturday night. I wonder what happened to Rolf. I doubt he survived Mengele’s wave.

I can see you are impatient. Well, I was watching Imelda with Herr Baumann one Saturday evening in October. They were standing by the tree – the one with the lookout – and she was crying in his arms. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she kept slicing the air with her hands, as if to say: not a chance. I felt chilled when I saw her step back from Herr Baumann. On his arm he wore a band of red, black and white. I remember thinking: so they got him too. I knew from what the newspapers were saying that things were changing. The political landscape was becoming more of a slope as everyone tilted their views in one direction. It was the wrong time to be in a family like mine. My parents had been arguing for weeks over whether to stay. Imelda left Herr Baumann clutching his cheek after she slapped it. I saw her stumble in the direction of the service entrance. He seemed agitated after the initial shock wore off and he stood there smoking.

It was too good a story to leave, so I rushed down to the kitchen. It was still Shabbat, so I wasn’t supposed to run but I doubted anyone would notice. I found her in the corridor, heaving as she cried. Her breast trembled beneath her shirt, giving the impression that the flowers on the print were waving in a breeze. I don’t know how long I stood there before she saw me.

           “Go to bed.”

           Her eyes and nose were red. She looked sick rather than sad. I didn’t move.

           “Why are you crying?”

           “What’s it to you?”

           I find that not saying anything sometimes makes people tell you what you want to hear. They’d rather ramble than deal with silence.

           She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Franck – Herr Baumann – says I will have to find a new job soon. Your family is being deported to Warsaw.”

            Panic constricted my throat. “When?”

           “Tomorrow.” She took my shoulders. “You need to get out of here. Before they come. Don’t tell your parents. Just go. Take whatever you have that’s valuable and sell it.”

            “I can’t do that. I am only a child.”

            She laughed. “That’s why you must do as I say.”

            “What about my parents?”

            “Herr Baumann will notice if they leave. He’s standing guard to make sure nobody escapes. He won’t see you.”

            “Why are you telling me this?”

            “I don’t know.” The tassels fell about her face. “Maybe because I like you.”

            I am ashamed to say that I believed her. I went back upstairs and threw my trains into a knapsack. I took my birthday money and emptied my sister’s piggy bank. It wasn’t much, but it would buy me a ticket out of there. I later wished I had thought to pack clothes, but we leave the women to consider those things.

            Back in the kitchen, Imelda handed me a bag of food. “Find your way to England. If you can get there, you’ll be safe.” She kissed me on my forehead and I felt her teeth graze my skin.

You are wondering, I’m sure, how I went through with this. And why I did it. I told you, I read the news. I knew what was happening. I was tall for my age and I guessed I could pass for eighteen. Imelda gave me the chance to discover a new life, and to travel. I didn’t want to end up bitten to death by fleas in Warsaw, nor did I want to walk around feeling ashamed of who I was. So, I shed the skin of Heinrich Waller and became Henry Waller. I said I had been studying abroad and lost my accent and my papers during a raid. It was a passable story. I think the immigration official took pity on me because I was skin and bone by the time I arrived. I won’t bore you with the details of my journey. There are things no man should have to relive. Once in England, I joined the army and went to Africa.

            I survived, you see. And the guilt I have because of that haunts me. After I married my wife Sarah, I went back to my childhood home. It had been turned into a hotel and was a stop on our honeymoon. We slept in my bedroom, and made love metres from where I played with my trains as a child. I found out the name of the head of the records office while I was there. It was none other than that bastard Franck Baumann. He survived too and escaped all punishment because he’d been in a Russian prisoner of war camp for three years.

          When I got back to England, I wrote to him, asking after the family that lived in the hotel – my former home. He was efficient in his response. All accounted for except for one son, Heinrich. The rest – my sister Klara, my brother Hans and my parents – went to Poland. Their first stop was the Warsaw Ghetto; after that, Birkenau. Part of me is glad that their ashes have fertilised the grounds of that site of horror.

Sonny, people like me are two-a-penny these days. Everyone’s coming out of the woodwork with some or other grand admission. Guilt does that, I suppose. So maybe the next time you wheel your trolley past my door you’ll stop seeing me as an old fart who has trouble using the bathroom on my own. Forget Harry Potter; I am the boy who lived.

That’s my wife Sarah. The pretty one in the picture. Did I ever tell you the story of how we met?