Through My Eyes. Again
Copyright© 2019 by Iskander
Chapter 3
Mid Dec– 22nd December 1962
December rolled on towards Christmas. Frau Schmidt found a job in a dress shop in the High Street. Final term marks were posted on the classroom noticeboard for every subject and I found I had made top of the class in all but one subject – French. But then, I was competing with a boy called Leurmet, a native French speaker whose father was a French diplomat of some kind. The following day I had confirmation of what I had already guessed: I was top of my class overall.
I don’t enjoy Christmas shopping, but this year trying to find something for Frau Schmidt and Col provided the spice I needed. My small weekly pocket money didn’t leave me with much, but after school one day I went a bit further on the number six bus so I could wander along the High Street.
In a toy shop was the perfect gift for Col – a Matchbox car model of an E-type Jaguar coupé – painted British racing green. I had no idea what to give Frau Schmidt, so I meandered along, sampling the various shop windows.
I spied a scarf in swirls of black and crimson blending into one another. It was tied around a mannequin’s neck. When I asked, I was told it wasn’t for sale, but a prop used to enhance an outfit. I explained I wanted to buy it as a Christmas present for my friend’s mother as it would go with her dark hair and eyes. The owner of the shop showed her surprise at this. She let me buy it for four shillings, a huge sum of money to my young self. On my way back up the High Street, I acquired some blue tissue paper for wrapping and then walked to Col’s house. I pulled my homework books out of my satchel with some care to keep the presents secret. In my bedroom I wrapped the scarf and model car ready to put under their Christmas tree.
Three days later, Col proudly showed me a newly installed phone sitting on the hall table. I wondered how they had managed such a feat – it usually took months for the GPO to install a new phone line.
The winter term ended a week before Christmas and I knew my school report would be arriving by post any day. Because of the bullying at school and beatings at home, schoolwork in my old life had been my lowest priority – so I had continually been close to the bottom of my class. My terrible school term reports had been a cause of some of my father’s most explosive rages – accompanied by thrashings. In my previous life, nothing I did made any difference and I had struggled through school, escaping from home into mindless clerical work before discovering I had a brain. At school, I would try to concentrate and might manage for perhaps a week; then my father would beat me for some supposed infraction ... and school passed in a blur. I escaped into books, books taking me into another world were my saviours. I dreamed of opening a door and finding my way into Narnia or passing through Alice’s looking glass. I knew these were phantasies, but I ached to escape. Ultimately, they were not enough, and I found myself beside the railway track baring my forearms as a train approached.
But this term, this report, I hoped topping the class and glowing reports from my teachers would make a big difference. My anxiety when the report arrived was present but muted.
The report arrived the Monday after school broke up for the holidays. Sitting at the kitchen table when he arrived home, my father opened my report and read through it. I was watching his face and it did not soften. He flipped back to the beginning.
“I will be contacting the school to check on these results as they cannot be correct. You were at the bottom of your class last term. This report must be a mistake – or you have somehow forged it. As a result, you are forbidden to visit your friend Col and you will stay home and study at my direction.”
My mother sat there, saying nothing, her faced closed.
“No.” I fought to control my surging anger. “You cannot do this to me. I’ve done well this term and you dismiss it as nothing.”
My father’s eyes narrowed, a storm brewing behind them, but I held my ground. Taking a breath, I stared back at my father. Rage blazed through me, but I managed to contain it. “You cannot keep me from seeing my friend because you cannot keep me in the house – unless you tie me to my bed.”
I sensed my father’s temper rising – and I no longer cared. My anger at his injustice had carried me beyond fear.
“You are no better than the bullies at school, but they at least have the excuse of being children.”
I took another breath as my father towered over me. “William,” he growled.
I leaned back in the gusting wind of his menace but held my feet in place. “You no longer control me because I do not fear you.” Our eyes were locked together in anger and hatred. “I despise you.” The truth of my feelings about him lay naked between us.
I knew the blow was coming. He hit me hard and sent me sprawling across the kitchen floor, with a ringing in my head. I ended up against the sink. Trying not to cry I pulled myself up. The bone-handled carving knife lay on the drying rack.
My eyes moved from it to my father.
I heard a sharp intake of breath. My mother understood the threat I was making; there was confusion and fear in her eyes.
Without hurrying, I walked to the back door. It was freezing outside but I hardly felt it. I fought to contain the anger threatening to surge through me and blank out all rational thought. The siren call of the carving knife disturbed me. I walked along the road and turned on to the cliff-top path away from the town. I knew my father would search for me at Col’s house, so I could not go there, at least, not yet. My fury ebbed, and I started crying. Not the wracking sobs marking the end of a melt-down, but steady tears of endless sadness at my strange situation, my terrible father and my loveless home. Starting to feel the cold, I turned back along the clifftop allowing me to approach Col’s house from the opposite direction. The coast was clear: no sign of my father.
I arrived at Col’s door and knocked. The outside light flicked on and Frau Schmidt opened the door to a shivering, weeping boy.
“Willi, what are you doing here at this time of night?” Then she saw the shivers and tears and whisked me inside to sit in the kitchen. Col appeared in the doorway.
“Quick. Get a blanket for your friend.”
Col reappeared with the blanket and they cocooned my shivering body.
“What is going on, Willi? Your father was here earlier, looking for you,” Frau Schmidt’s gentle voice asked.
I shook my head ... I couldn’t speak.
Frau Schmidt picked up a tea towel and started dabbing the tears from my face – and then I watched her caring eyes change as the handprint on my face registered. They filled with concern, her brows forming a frown.
“Willi, who hit you?” she asked.
Col pulled up a chair beside me and clasped my hands in his, rubbing warmth into them.
Frau Schmidt stemmed my tears. Col went to the sink and filled a glass with water and brought it to me. I took a sip and handed it back, so Col sat and again held my hands in his.
“Can you tell me what happened, Willi?”
I heaved a shivering sigh and found a wavering voice. “My school report arrived, and my father said I had forged it.”
“But weren’t you top of your class?” Col asked.
I nodded.
“Did your father hit you?” Frau Schmidt asked.
I stared into her eyes. “Yes.” My voiced hardened. “I told him I despised him.”
Frau Schmidt blanched at my vehemence.
“And then he whacked me across the kitchen.”
Col wrapped his arms around me, resting his head on my shoulder. Frau Schmidt’s face held something I had never seen there before: something bleak.
Someone banged on the front door.
“I expect it’s be my father,” I said, retreating deeper into the blanket.
Frau Schmidt glanced at the door. “Willi, does your father speak German?”
I shook my head.
“Well, if I need to say something to the two of you, I will speak German.”
A volley of hard thumps rattled the door.
“Go into the lounge room but leave the door ajar so you can hear – and unlock the veranda door, so you can escape. Go.”
From the lounge, we heard Frau Schmidt slip on the safety chain and then open the front door. It slammed back against the chain, leaving the door open a few inches.
“I want my son,” my father shouted, angrily.
An arm reached through the gap, trying to snag the chain and release it.
“Why? So you can hit him again?” Frau Schmidt’s voice held an edge I’d not heard before – hard, uncompromising.
“You Nazi bitch – give me my son.”
Frau Schmidt gave a low, contemptuous laugh. “Ach so. Because I am German you think I am a Nazi?” Her voice slowed, dripping derision. “You have no idea how wrong you are.” She rolled up her left sleeve, baring her forearm.
“See these numbers? I expect you know what they signify.” She paused. When she continued, her voice was low but intense enough for us to hear. “They mean you cannot scare me. I had Elfriede Muller and the other SS scum in Ravensbrück at me for five years and you think you can scare me?” Her voice was contemptuous. “You are a bag of wind. Go home.”
“John. John.” My mother arrived behind my father, panting for breath. “Please stop this and come home.” Her voice cracked. “Please John, come home. You’re making a spectacle of yourself. We can deal with this in the morning when things will be clearer.”
Frau Schmidt stood there. “Yes, go home. I will come tomorrow to your house and we will talk. Tonight, Willi stays here.”
“Please John.”
My father’s arm retreated, and Frau Schmidt stood there staring out into the darkness. I heard some muffled conversation beyond the front door and then footsteps fading down the path. After a minute Frau Schmidt closed the door, walked into the kitchen and sat down. Col and I came out and sat down with her at the table. Her eyes were closed, and her fingers were trembling.
“They have gone,” Frau Schmidt said, opening her eyes.
Her left forearm was still bare. In blue dye, six blurred numbers were tattooed there. From my seventy-year-old perspective, I knew what they meant, but not Frau Schmidt’s story.
“What are those numbers?” I asked, pointing at her forearm.
Frau Schmidt glanced down. In reflex, she brushed her sleeve back to her wrist, covering the tattoo. Her eyes closed as she stared through the walls across the years.
“Col knows a little of this, but Willi, have you heard about the Nazi death camps?”
I shook my head. Col’s hand snuck into mine and he leaned against my shoulder.
Frau Schmidt stared over our heads, pinned by her memories, lost far from the present. “They put people they feared, the undesirables – people they wished to punish or kill – into camps. My parents were communists. They executed my father, but my mother and I were sent to other camps and finally to Ravensbrück, a camp for women and children. To the guards, we did not have names, we were numbers.” She paused, sliding her fingers under her sleeve, tracing the tattoo on her forearm.
“The camps were bad from the start with brutal women guards, but as the war turned against the Nazis, the camps got worse.” Mutti Frida swallowed and her voice became distant. “So much worse.” She was no longer in the room with us but standing inside the wire with thousands of emaciated women and children shuffling into rows to be counted as guards shouted and vicious, slavering dogs barked, straining against their leashes.
She rubbed her forehead, her eyes filled with sadness and pity.
“Many prisoners were killed, and many died from beatings or sickness. Some simply ... gave up. Hundreds starved.” She paused, taking a breath. “My mother was one of them.”
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
“We had to work, to earn our food, to earn our life each day, one day at a time. I had the job of taking out the slops and carrying food to some special prisoners kept separately from the rest of us – amongst them English girls sent to France as spies and captured by the Nazis. I started to learn English there.” She took a shuddering breath.
“Those girls had such courage. They had been beaten and tortured and knew they were going to die, but they befriended me and did not show me their fear. The Nazis didn’t care if I spent time sitting on the floor outside their cells, talking with them through the meal hatches. The SS kept some of them alive for months, but the day would come and one or two of the cells was again empty. They had been shot or hanged and their bodies burned. Death was everywhere in the camp, every second of every day – a close companion. As the Russians approached, the remaining English girls were murdered.” Frau Schmidt paused; eyes closed as terrible memories rushed through her. “And then they started on the rest of us.”
Frau Schmidt stopped her harrowing story, conscious of the two young people listening. Her voice lightened when she continued. “But then, for some reason, the SS released most of us German prisoners, several thousand women and children, into the spring countryside. Possibly they wanted no witnesses to the final slaughter.” She paused, remembering the sudden freedom. “I was picked up by Russian soldiers after a day or two hiding in the woods. I learned from their officer they had been told to watch for women wearing the red triangle the Nazis used to label communist prisoners.” She turned to Col. “I turned sixteen in May. Half of my life had been spent in camps.”
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