Through My Eyes. Again
Copyright© 2019 by Iskander
Chapter 12
Late November – early December 1963
The essay competition was on my mind when I woke. On the bus, I started jotting down some ideas and continued through the school day. If I were to enter the competition, I had to finish the essay in the next couple of days. Col and I sat at the kitchen table, me with some Physics and Col with her history. Glancing over, her book was open to an illustration of a Roman soldier.
“What era of Rome are you studying?” I asked.
“We’re not studying Rome; we’re exploring Empires and my history teacher wants us to think about them from the perspective of the conquered peoples.” Col glanced across at me.
I nodded for her to go on.
“As we had read De Bello Gallico, I decided to study the Roman Empire here in Britain and its effect on the native peoples of Britain.”
“Will you be able to find enough material in the school library?”
Col gave me a wry smile. “I went there at lunchtime, but there was nothing useful. I’m going to the town library tomorrow afternoon.”
“I could meet you there if you like. I could do my homework and work on the essay whilst you did your research.”
Col smiled. “Excellent. I think Lili is coming with me as she wants to study the Russian empire, in particular its colonisation of Poland.”
“Oh.” I paused for a moment. “But it’s still going on, isn’t it?”
Col’s face stilled as she thought. “I suppose so, but Lili wants to cover s couple of centuries from what she was saying.”
“I know almost nothing about the history of central Europe,” I mused.
“Well, it’s important to Lili so I expect we’ll learn something from her.” Col gave me a knowing smile. Lili had proved to be quite a talker with people she trusted.
We settled back into our work. Thermal Physics required a quick read to refresh my knowledge, despite the appalling Imperial units and conversion factors, so I pulled out my notes for the essay. I realised hiding underneath my current ideas was the assumption of a shared cultural language across Europe – for without which sort of understanding was unlikely. It is a truism we are alike beneath the skin, but within Europe, for all the languages and subtleties of Weltanschauung between countries, our similarities greatly exceeded our differences. European wars were always bitter – they were almost civil wars.
We worked quietly together for an hour before Col pushed back her chair and stretched. “Let’s get supper cooking.”
I chopped carrots, swedes and turnips. Col cubed some skirt beef, browned it, dusted it in seasoned flour and put it into the pressure cooker with beef stock. Col pulled three decent-sized potatoes from the sack in the larder and washed them.
“Aren’t you going to peel them?” I asked.
“What can you do with unpeeled potatoes?” She arched her eyebrows.
I thought for a moment. “Baked potatoes. Yum.”
“Yes indeed, but with a German twist, as you’ll see,” Col said enigmatically as she set a clockwork timer for forty minutes, turning the oven on to heat for the potatoes. She took my hand and led me into the lounge room to the sofa. “Can you think of something we can do to keep us occupied for forty minutes?”
Did they run secret classes for girls where they teach them how to gaze at you from under their eyelashes?
I gave her a half-smile and picked up our book from the side table. I received a frown and playful slap on the arm.
“You had something else in mind, my essay perhaps?” I asked, with an innocent smile, returning the book to the table.
“Stop teasing and come here.” Col’s frown disappeared as she grabbed my arm and pulled us closer together.
After quite some time spent sharing kisses, Col turned round, sitting in my lap, and leaning back, her head on my shoulder, relaxing back into me with a sigh.
We sat in intimate and gentle silence.
“You know, we are going to break our promise to Mutti sometime in the future,” Col murmured.
Oh, my.
“I don’t think we should.”
Col stirred. “You don’t want to have sex with me?” Astonishment and a touch of anger vied with an embarrassed blush.
“Shh.” I placed a finger against her lips. “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.”
Col frowned, tensing.
Even though we now spoke our languages well, communication between the sexes still had its problems. “I want to make love with you, not have sex with you.”
Col relaxed.
“But I don’t think we should break our promise to Mutti Frida. When the time comes, we should tell her we are ... moving in that direction.”
“What? You’re going to tell my mother?” Col scrambled to the end of the sofa, a mixture of fear, anger, and accusation on her face. “She’d lock me in my room and never let you in the house – or me out of it.”
I leaned towards her and took her hand. “If we spoke to her, I don’t think she would.”
Col’s face reflected her disbelief.
“What would happen if we went ahead and broke our promise?” I asked. “What would it do to your relationship with your mother?” Col became pensive. “What would it do to my relationship with her?” By now, Col was frowning. “And what would those changes do to the three of us?”
Col’s eyes revealed her pain. Her mouth opened and then closed as she thought, but the kitchen timer’s ping interrupted her.
“Rats.” She went into the kitchen and I followed. Col reduced the pressure in the pressure cooker and opened it. Rich, beefy smells wafted through the kitchen.
“Put in the vegetables.” As I added the vegetables and returned the pressure cooker to the stove, Col, scored a deep cross into each of the potatoes, arranged them on an oven tray and slid them into the hot oven, setting the timer for another forty minutes.
She dragged me back to the sofa. “You think my mother would be less disturbed by us telling her we were going to be...” she paused for a moment and blushed. “Um ... intimate than by finding out afterwards?”
“It’s also about how we feel about her. I do not wish to lie to your mother, even by omission.”
Col sighed. “This is going to be difficult.”
“Big decisions always are.” I took her hand, and we went back and sat side by side on the sofa.
“Our promise to Mutti Frida was not to do something stupid – which I think meant ending up with you pregnant.”
Col thought for a minute. “Yes, I suppose so.” Col’s voice had an edge of frustration to it.
“Well, there are things we can do that can’t end up with you getting pregnant.” Col stayed silent, her dark eyes wide pools filled with unspoken questions and a hint of fear. “When you’re ready, you can ask me.”
Col pondered my words, holding me at arm’s length. After a moment, she snuggled up to me and gave me a gentle kiss and then leaned back, releasing an explosive breath. “It’s so difficult for me. I can see the girls get together and talk about boys ... and things. But I’m not part of that. And the boys boast about what they claim they’ve done.” Her hand smacked down on to the chair in frustration. “I don’t even know what I don’t know.”
“You can ask me,” I ventured. Her head turned and our eyes locked for a long second.
Col paused, contemplating our present and future – and my past, with its experiences. “I need to think about that.” Her voice was laced with uncertainty.
“When you’re ready. I’m in no hurry, nor should you be.”
Col sighed and snuggled into me and we sat until we heard Mutti Frida arrive home. She greeted us, putting a full shopping bag down beside the kitchen table. Smiling at us, she sniffed the aromas permeating the kitchen. “Something smells delicious.”
“Well, you know what it is as you gave us the recipe and pointed out the ingredients yesterday.”
Mutti Frida smiled and we started setting the table. It turned out the German twist to baked potatoes was yoghurt with a mixture of herbs, not butter, which gave the potatoes a refreshingly sharp flavour.
“Of course, it should be sour cream, not yoghurt,” Mutti Frida said, sighing.
How difficult must it be to hide away from all the normal things in your life? Was it the small things like substituting yoghurt for sour cream that emphasised this?
After tea, I went over some of the ideas I had for the essay as we sat around the table. We also talked about the communist party in Eastern Bloc countries. Mutti Frida suggested picking up the pieces of a shattered society after the war was difficult and some central control of the populace was necessary.
“Do you think being part of the ruling elite influenced you?” I was playing devil’s advocate.
Mutti Frida’s head swivelled towards me. “I suppose I was part of the ruling elite ... in a way.” She nodded, ruefully. “Of course, I had no power, but at first because of what had happened to me, who my parents were and then because of my husband, I was around the leaders of the Party in Leipzig.” She gave me a nod of acknowledgement. “My ideas have been coloured by my experience.” Sadness seeped into her face and her voice grew softer. “But the camps were a greater influence. There we had no control and a single choice: to work together or die alone.” Sorrow filled her eyes. “And even when we worked together, most of us still died.”
Col’s hand crept across the table to her mother’s.
“I understand what you are saying,” Col said. “But central control hasn’t been needed in West Germany, has it? And they seem to be doing better the East, from what I have seen.”
“Perhaps...” Mutti Frida nodded. “Though, it depends on how you measure success.”
I lay in bed thinking about our discussion and what it could have meant.
There were clear, some might say irreconcilable, differences between east and west, but could I justify the central argument of my essay?
I hurried to the bus stop after school and caught a number six that would take me into the Herne Bay town centre. When I arrived at the library, I joined Col and Lili at their table.
“Hello, Lili.” She gave me a distracted smile before returning to her notes.
“How is the Roman research going, Col?”
She leaned back, stretching in her chair. “There’s a dearth of information about the Celtic society before the Romans arrived.” She gazed, contemplatively, into the distance. “Perhaps it’s because none of the Celts’ few writings survived. There’s more information about them in De Bello Gallico than any books here.” Col gestured at the books on the table. “In some ways, the Celtic people may have conquered themselves.”
“What?” Lili looked up with a smile: it seemed they had already talked about this.
Col looked pleased to have surprised me. “What I’ve read suggests the Celts adopted the new Roman ways without much pressure from the Romans.”
“What about Boudicca?”
“Well, the military campaign in England lasted about the first forty years and the Romans were here for four hundred. And even during the military campaign, the rulers of the Celtic tribes seemed to adopt the Roman way and set the tone for everyone else.”
I considered this for a moment. “Hmm, I think I see what you mean.” I turned to Lili. “How are you doing?”
She shook her head in frustration. “There’s almost nothing here about central European history. I’ve found a little bit in the encyclopaedia. I’ll have to ask my parents if they can help me find some books.”
I left them to it and went over to the library desk. The younger librarian was on duty – and she recognised me as the boy wanting books in German. Disdain coloured her voice.
“Yes?”.
I pushed down on the annoyance surging up from my young brain. “Do you have an Oxford Dictionary of Quotations here?”
“What?” She hadn’t even raised her head from the desk.
I stopped my eye-roll before it started and repeated my question, keeping the edge out of my voice.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “In the reference collection.” She waved her hand vaguely towards the library stacks.
I could stand here and ask for detailed directions, which would gain me nothing, or I could explore the reference collection. I walked towards the end of the stacks, watching as the Dewy Decimal labels counted down towards zero and the reference section.
“Can I help you?” The older librarian appeared from within the stacks, leaving a trolley piled high with books.
“Thank you, I’m trying to find the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.”
“It’s down here. Follow me.” She started off and then stopped, turning back towards me. “You’re the boy wanting books in German, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
She glanced towards the main desk. “I’m sorry Mrs Price was so unhelpful. She has never properly recovered from losing her husband to the Nazis. They’d been married three months...” Her voice trailed off.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. After a moment, the librarian turned and walked between two stacks. She ran her finger along a shelf, stopping to pull out a familiar, fat volume.
“Here you go,” she said, smiling. “Do you know how to use it?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She handed me the book, a raised eyebrow signalling some scepticism, and walked back to her trolley.
I took the ODQ back to the table where Col and Lili were working.
I plonked the book on the table, making Lili start. “What’s the book, Willi?”
“It’s a book of quotations. I’m trying to find material for an essay on art and culture’s benefit to society.”
Lili raised her eyebrows.
Col glanced up from a map she was poring over. “It’s for an essay competition – in German.”
“Oh.” Lili went back to her homework.
I started searching for quotable quotes, noting down ones I thought useful. After a while, I had a dozen or so, including one by Goethe I thought might be useful to place beneath the essay title.
’Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person.’
I would be suggesting art and music, through our shared European culture, was able to help take us to another country – to Europe, a country we shared.
Col roused me. “Come on Willi, we must head home to get tea ready. I’ll see you in school tomorrow, Lili.”
“I’m not finding anything here for my project.” I heard Lili’s frustration in her voice. “Mama is asking around her friends to see if they have any Polish history books.” Her disappointment at the library was palpable. “I might need to change the topic of my project.”
I shared a sympathetic smile. “I hope your parents can turn up some books to help, Lili.”
On the way out I returned the ODQ to the loans desk. The older librarian was there.
“I hope it was useful.” She sounded a bit sceptical.
I smiled. “Thank you, yes. I have a dozen or so quotations for my essay on European art and culture.”
She didn’t know what to make of it and gave me a blank look.
Outside, we split up. It was about a twenty-minute walk through the town and up the Downs. We chatted about Col’s project and my essay. We started getting tea ready as soon as we arrived home and Mutti Frida arrived not long afterwards.
When we had cleared the table after tea, I pulled out my essay notes.
“If I’m going to get this essay written in time, I will need to work on it tonight.” I hoped she would understand.
“Okay, Willi. I can work on my project.” She retrieved her school bag from her room, and we worked opposite one another, with Mutti Frida’s radio playing a concert in the background.
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