Hi! My name's Bailey! I...yeah. Hi.
So I've been gone. Not that anyone noticed. At all. Maybe it's a good thing I haven't been here. But Junior year is not fun. ACT prep, advanced classes, ACT prep, college prep, theatre, and ACT don't allow much room for sleep. Or movies. Or fun. Or anything, really. But while I'm procrastinating, I thought I'd pop on and share a short story I wrote for my creative writing class last month. I wrote it while out-of-state for my Pap's funeral, and I honestly hated the finished project. (And I think you could tell that because I had SOOO many grammatical mistakes.) But I read it again today, and I realized it wasn't all that bad, yada, yada, yada. So I thought I'd fill this blog with something, and here we are...
I don't know
Sorry I suck.
The Old Man
The
gravestone was a simple one, bearing only the necessities: name, date, and the
symbol that indicated his service. The
symbol surprised him: never had they known of his service. Except for the small bouquet of violets and
lilies placed on the side of the tombstone, one would be led to believe that
the man had always been alone. They’d
always wondered that, if he had anyone.
Of course, no one had cared enough to ask, fearing what might happen if
they became too attached. Now Matthew
regretted it. Did he have anyone to
mourn him? To tend his plot? To think about him? He looked down at the grave and back up,
searching for his wife and daughter standing a few tombstones away. He knew they were watching him, and so
indicated to them it would be a while.
Once they turned around and started walking away, Matthew bent down and
began pulling up the weeds that threatened to engulf the small gravestone,
completely forgetting the dampness of the grass or the fact that his suit was
new.
“I spoke about it today.” Matthew was surprised to hear the words come
out of his mouth but found he couldn’t stop the flow of words. “It was…well, it was difficult, to say the
least. I’ve been putting it off for a
while, actually.” He imagined the old
man nodding slightly, seemingly not listening.
But Matt new better. The old man
always listened, whether you were looking for someone to or not. That was one of the many aspects Matt had
secretly admired him for.
“It was harder than I expected…you
know, I changed my name. After the war,
after I moved to the States. I wanted a
new identity, a new life. So I changed
it to Matthew. Not a big change, I
know. But it was enough for me to hide
behind.”
He imagined the old man gently
chiding him. “Mathias, don’t change the subject.
Speak your mind child, but don’t dawdle on unnecessary details.”
Matt
smiled. “But I promise this is on
topic. I changed it because…I changed it
because I hated my past. I wanted
nothing to do with it. I didn’t want
anyone to know. I thought about
converting. I hated…myself.” He picked another weed, then covered up the
hole made by it. “I’m ashamed, Onkel.
I realize that now.” Matt stopped
and sat back on his heels, looking up at the sky and remembering. “You know, today’s the first time I’ve spoken
more than a few words in German. I tried
to forget that, too. I tried to forget
everything.
“I
lived in Rhode Island for the longest time, studied journalism. I met a girl named Susan out on the job one
day. We’ve been married for fifty years
next Tuesday.” He smiled. “Our little girl, Danielle—well, she’s not so
little anymore—she was the one that helped me.
I never told Susan about any of it.
But one day, Danielle came home from school and asked me about it. Not me specifically, but the war in
general. I got scared, mad. For so long I had been safe and no one
knew. But now my daughter, my own
daughter, was going to unwind it all.”
Matthew absentmindedly brushed his fingers against the engraving in the
stone.
“It
wasn’t easy to tell them. It wasn’t easy
to tell myself. I was stiff and lifeless
for months. I retreated inside myself. Susan almost left me. But one day, I looked at Danielle and
realized I had survived, and she deserved to know.” He stopped and took a deep breath, trying to
stop the tears before they spilled down his face. With a clear of his throat, he began again.
“At
first, it was hard to write. I couldn’t
find the right words, I’d slip into German, I’d start crying. This was all new to Susan as well; as far as
she knew, I had lived in America for most of my life and only spoke
English. We’d fight over the fact that I
had hidden another life from her. But
gradually she quit trying to understand and just let me work it out with
myself.
“I
haven’t been here in Germany since I left it in ’46. Not even when I was writing. I didn’t want to come back.”
“Why, Mathias? What were you afraid of?” He imagined the old man asking him this
without looking up, still giving off an air of not caring. But Matt wasn’t intimidated and pushed
through, used to the attitude of the old man.
“I
was unburying a part of myself, but I didn’t want to bring it all back at once.” Matt sighed and began pulling the weeds
again.
“While
I wrote, I remembered things I had suppressed and thought I had forgotten. Even simple things like names and dates
startled me. I had no clue my brain had
rebelled and remembered so much. This,
too, set me back. All this time I
thought I had been living a new, easy life.
But the brain never truly forgets something so traumatic...” He trailed off, carefully picking out his
next words.
“Before
the war, I was a child. Death never
happened. To me, life was permanent and
death was an old wives’ tale. But the
war changed that. The first time I saw
someone shot, I was in shock for days.
How could humanity be so perverted?
But the more and more it happened, the number I became. I saw neighbors, friends, enemies, and
important Jewish figures assaulted, tormented, and killed.” Matt laughed bitterly. “Now-a-days, experts say my generation was
forced to grow up. Do you think that’s
true?” He paused and contemplated the
question. “I suppose so. Children shouldn’t see the kind of things I
did.”
He
shook himself, trying to clear the haunted memories the topic brought up. “Anyway, I remembered details I wasn’t aware
I had remembered. One of them…one of
them was you. And I made a
connection. I never realized I had known
you before. I thought I had just come across
you in the camp…You were the nicest one in the whole place.” Matt furrowed his brow. “No, nicest isn’t the right word. You were the most human one. Or, as human as one could be.
“When
I spoke today, I told them how you watched over a few of us, always made sure
we had food and a chance of survival. I…I
never thank you; I was too scared. I
told them all how you told us the ways of the camps. Rules came in short sentences. ‘Don’t drink the water.’ ‘Stay away from the fence.’ ‘Hold on to that bread.’ ‘Don’t show them you’re weak.’ We all called you Onkel because you were the closest we had to family.”
Matt
stopped, choked up by his tears. After a
few deep breaths, he continued. “No
matter how many memories I buried, at night they all came back. So many times, I saw you being led away to
the gas chambers that horrible day. We
never saw you again. But your face was
so calm.” Matthew cleared his
throat. “I never let myself cry about it
until now. You were so strong, even
though you were so old. You’re the
reason I survived. It’s because of you
that I have Susan and Danielle and my family.
The other boys, I don’t know about them.
We lost contact after the last transport…I don’t even know if they
survived. But I hope they realize what
you did for us.”
Matt
took one last deep breath and wiped the tears from his eyes. “I realize now that death isn’t forever
because someone will always go on remembering.
When I’m not here, Danielle will remember, and hopefully her children
and their children and so on. One day
I’ll get to thank you in person. But for
now, this will have to do. So thank you,
Onkel.” He stood up and felt his wife’s arm around
his shoulder and his daughter’s hand holding his. Susan reached up and kissed his cheek.
“Are
you ready to go, dear?”
Matt
smiled at his wife. “Just about.” He reached down and pulled the last
weed. Smiling, he turned around and,
with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other, said, “How would you
like to see downtown Berlin? It was
always beautiful this time of year.”
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