Through My Eyes. Again
Copyright© 2019 by Iskander
Chapter 11
26th November - late November 1963
Our house was empty when I arrived, so I took out my schoolbooks and tried to study, lost in tortuous, writhing thoughts. Col had believed my story – but her reaction had twisted into an unexpected and scary direction.
Someone moved around downstairs and my mother slipped her head around my door. “Will, I saw your coat downstairs. You’re back early. Is everything all right?”
It wasn’t, but I couldn’t talk about it with my mother.
“Yes. Col and Mutti Frida are doing something this evening, so I had to come home early.”
“Okay. Supper is leftovers tonight. Come on down in about half an hour – or you could come down and talk to me as I get it ready.”
I needed to spend more time with my mother, but I couldn’t do it tonight. On my desk, Jean Cocteau’s “Les Enfants Terribles” lay open. Its brooding darkness and dysfunctional relationships had seemed to suit my mood when I had picked it up, but I hadn’t been reading it.
“I need to get through this chapter. I’ll be down soon.”
“Okay.” Disappointment showed in her voice
The tortured world created by Cocteau disturbed me and I put it down again. It would take me to places I couldn’t visit tonight.
After about ten minutes, the phone rang. My heart leapt.
Could that be Col already? But it might not be the news I wanted.
My mother was on the phone at the foot of the stairs and I could not make out what she was saying.
After a while, she came upstairs.
“Will, that was Frau Schmidt. Something’s happened and she asked if Col could stay here tonight as she has to go out and could be late. I said, of course, he could.”
“What’s happened?”
“She wouldn’t say.” My mother frowned. “It must be something important, though, for her to have to deal with it at this time of night.” She looked back at me. “Anyway, Col is walking here in a few minutes. Go and help him. He will be carrying everything for school tomorrow.”
I suppressed a fearful shudder.
It’s not something to do with Col’s father, is it?
I grabbed my coat. After I turned the corner into Sea View Avenue, I saw Col emerge from the house carrying her school bag and a bulging duffel bag. I walked towards her. When we met, I could not see her face in the poor light of the streetlamps, so I was none the wiser about how she felt. I reached out and lifted the duffel bag off her shoulder.
“Willi, I am still thinking. Please don’t push me.”
I saw the tension in shoulders and said nothing.
“Mutti’s already gone, walking back into town to meet someone who phoned. I’m worried that it’s something to do with my father.”
Her voice concealed tears and I wanted to hug her, but right now I couldn’t.
She hitched her school bag strap higher on her shoulder, her face in shadow, and set off towards my house. I scurried to catch up.
We walked on in silence. My father was sitting at the kitchen table as we came in through the back door. He glowered in silence as my mother welcomed Col.
“We’ll set up the camp bed in Will’s room after supper, Col,” my mother announced.
I watched Col’s eyes flare for a second before she sent me a frown.
“Take Col upstairs, Will, so he can leave his bags in your room. Come straight back down as supper’s ready.”
When we reached the top of the stairs, Col turned towards me and let fly in German, but keeping her voice low.
“I can’t sleep in here with you,” she spat. “What would Mutti think?”
I knew Mutti Frida wouldn’t like this. “What can we do about it? Do you want to tell everyone that you are a girl?”
“Of course not. Be sensible.” The sting left her voice and she stared at me with pleading eyes. “What are we going to do?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”
“Why can’t I sleep on the sofa downstairs, like when you stay at my house?”
“My mother will think that’s strange. I expect she thinks I sleep in your room when I’m there.”
Col closed her eyes and sat on my bed. “We’ll have to tell Mutti I slept in your room on a camp bed.”
“What? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Willi, think about it. It would be a problem if it came out when our mothers talked. Mutti might be so shocked that she’d let the secret out.”
I raised a doubting eyebrow.
Col scowled back, then sighed in resignation. “Don’t worry. I’ll remind Mutti about our promise and that we are keeping it. I’m sure she will understand, given the circumstances.” She didn’t sound very convincing.
Given what lay between us, I was not expecting any sort of physical contact and I didn’t want Mutti Frida thinking we had broken our promise.
Col sighed. “Come on, we’d better get downstairs. We don’t want to annoy your father.” We traipsed back downstairs in silence and sat down to tea.
I saw Col eyeing her plate of bubble and squeak with beef fritters.
“It’s fried mashed potato and vegetables.” I said in German.
“Stop that.” My father’s voice whipped across the table. “Speak English.”
I watched Col cringe. Her face twisted with fear and shock. My mother frowned at my father. His eyes narrowed, but he remained silent – not in front of the children, I suppose.
Ignoring my father, I turned to my mother. “I’m sorry. I was telling Col what we were eating. We don’t stop to think what language we are using. I wasn’t trying to be rude.”
My mother nodded and the incident passed, but I saw Col shift in her seat and tried to give her an encouraging smile.
The conversation around the supper table was strained and desultory. It stretched across long, agonised silences broken by my mother, asking about how our days had gone. My father’s baleful eye watched me throughout the meal. With the question marks hanging over my relationship with Col, I didn’t feel hungry.
Somehow, I finished my plateful, as did Col, and then we helped my sister with the clean-up, to her apparent disgust with having to associate with us boys. I wondered how she’d relate if she knew Col was a girl.
As we finished, my mother came back into the kitchen.
“Will, you and Col can get the camp bed out of the shed and take it up to your room. Do you remember how to put it together?”
“I think so.”
The camp bed was primitive by the modern standards – canvas stretched across a wooden frame on a set of six legs. There was no mattress. You added a couple of blankets on top of the canvas to soften it. It took us a while to work out how to put it together, despite my previous experience. As we worked together, I could feel Col’s mood thawing, to the point of giving me a tentative smile as we struggled with the wretched device.
“Do you think you’ll be comfortable on this?” I asked, eyeing off the camp bed when we finally had it assembled.
“I expect so.” A cheeky smile lit her face. “Even if I’m not, I won’t be getting in with you,” she laughed and reached across to take my hands. “I’m sorry about earlier – I can see that you are ... you, not a pervert. But I do want to understand. It must be weird inside your head.”
My relief at this was enormous. “Thank you for believing me. Inside my head is odd when my young brain’s emotions war with my old brain. But I’m me – what you see is what you get.” I didn’t understand what had happened to me, so I didn’t know what else I could tell her. “Ask whatever you want, and I’ll try to give you an answer if I have one.”
I squeezed her hand – and my mother appeared with blankets, sheets, and a pillow. For a fraction of a second, she froze, assessing the tableau before her, then she shook herself out of it.
“Here you go, Col. Spread a couple of these thick, woollen blankets on the camp bed and then make up a normal bed on top of that. There’s plenty of blankets, so you can put more on if you feel cold.” She dropped the bedding on the camp bed.
We started making up the bed under her watchful eye as she tried to fathom Col’s and my relationship. Her face hinted at the unasked questions bouncing around in her head.
“Do you want a bath before bed, Col?” she asked.
I watched Col tense. “No thank you, Frau Doktor Johnstone. Mutti made me have one before I left, so I would not be a problem for you.”
My mother gave Col a gentle smile. “You are not a problem, Col. It’s a pleasure to have you here since Will spends so much time at your house.” Again, there was that gazing scrutiny of our relationship.
“Tomorrow is a school day for both of you, so I want you to get ready for bed in half an hour – and when the lights go out, I want you to sleep. No chatting to all hours of the night. Understood?”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“Yes, Frau Doktor.”
Col watched my mother leave and then asked, in German, “If we talk in German, will your mother understand?”
“I don’t think so. We’ve talked about her German. She told me she only learnt a smattering when she was at school before the war.” I paused, not sure if I should continue. “Learning German was not popular once the war started.”
Col sat on the camp bed, taking a few tentative bounces to test it. Then she settled, slipped her shoes off, perched her feet on the edge of the camp bed and wrapped her arms around her shins, resting her chin on her knees.
“Willi, I think your mother is worried about how close we are.”
I nodded in agreement. “I think you’re right.”
Col paused. “Does she think we are homosexuals?”
“Possibly. But I don’t think she will say anything. That subject is so taboo, I think we are safe unless she catches us in bed together.”
Col chuckled. “If she did, she would know we weren’t homosexual.” I saw a faint blush creeping into her cheeks.
I smiled, then raised an eyebrow.
Col shook her head and changed the subject. “Willi, you know the future?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure? You lived it.”
I sighed. “Col, I lived through a future – and, except in some minor details, this world has been the same as the one I know ... knew...?” I shook my head in frustration at a language incapable of expressing my situation. “ ... but there are differences.” I smiled at Col. “You and Mutti Frida are here rather than my Col and his mother. That’s a small difference, I suppose, and there have been quite a few other minor differences.”
I inhaled to suppress the angst. “But the failed assassination of Kennedy is huge. I can see that you being here might be irrelevant to the future, but I can’t see how Kennedy living won’t change the future.”
“Does it matter, Willi, if the future is not the one you know?”
“Yes, it does.” I suppressed a shudder. “You see, in my world, the cold war never exploded into a real, all-out nuclear war.” I was silent for a moment, recalling the occasions when it had been a close call. I saw Col wondering where I had gone to this time and smiled an apology. “Then in twenty-five years, the Eastern Bloc collapses, Germany reunifies, and all the Warsaw pact countries gain their independence. The Soviet Union collapses as well and many of the republics declare their independence from Russia.”
Col’s eyes flared. “Oh Willi, it sounds wonderful.”
“It was a magical time. But Kennedy’s assassination must have had a tremendous impact on things behind the scenes – and all that is going to be different now.” I squeezed my eyes shut, holding things together. “And I’m living through an uncertain, dark future – again.”
Col leaned across and took my hands. “Oh, Willi. But you managed last time, and you can do it again.” She stopped and took a sharp breath in realisation. “Was that ... did that ... you said before that there were ... other times. Was this darkness part of that?”
I tasted my memories of that time. The constant threat of nuclear annihilation was part of the rotten, acrid flavour of my teens and early twenties – but only as a grimy, roiling primer for the canvas on which the chaos of my life was splashed. “It didn’t help, but it was so omnipresent that it became part of the background.” My voice brightened. “And then I moved to Australia, the other side of the world, where the threat was distant.”
“Can you tell me why you ... tried again?” Her voice enfolded me in care.
I trawled through my past, which was again my future. My eyes hooked onto Col’s and I grimaced. “I never felt I fitted in anywhere. I couldn’t be a pilot, but I tried and, of course, failed.” The pain of pulling at the scab of that memory stopped me for a moment. “Something going wrong would reinforce my doubts about my worth in every job I did. And it would push me ... towards that solution.”
Col glanced at the closed bedroom door and then leaned forward, taking my hands back in hers. “Willi, you do fit in – with me and Mutti and now Lili. You must learn to trust yourself. If you don’t fit in somewhere, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.”
I sighed. “I’m worried that this time I am even more different because of what has happened to me.”
“But you have seventy years of experience to help. Seventy years where you ... you didn’t do that, however close you came.”
I had my head down, so Col leaned forward and peered up at me. “Experience has helped you change things with your father and the bullies at school. You even helped me understand what was happening at school, turning Lili into our friend.” Her face was lit with encouragement. “And you excel at everything at school.” I saw her eyes gifting me her support and ... love?
“Yes – but remember, I’ve done it all before.”
“Don’t put yourself down.” There was a fierceness in her words. “Were you ever this good at French and German before?”
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