Wait for Me. Caroline Leech

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СКАЧАТЬ looked down at his hands and picked at a dirty hangnail on his thumb, and Lorna wished she’d kept her mouth shut. He took a deep breath.

      “My father was ein Uhrmacher, a clockmaker, before the war. In Dresden.” He suddenly looked up at Lorna. “You know of Dresden, Fräulein Anderson?”

      Lorna shook her head no, but then, perhaps she had heard something about Dresden quite recently. But where? At school? No, she didn’t think so. Perhaps a news report on the BBC?

      “Dresden is very beautiful, very old,” Paul continued. “The River Elbe goes through the city, and there are many churches and art galleries. And parks, many parks. But you know, life in Germany has been difficult for some time, even before the war began. We had little to eat, and what food my mother could find was expensive to buy. And there was much to fear. But before that, I can remember a time when life was better. When my life was good.”

      He was smiling now. Lorna could see it in his eyes, as well as on his mouth. How could she ever have thought it was a sneer?

      “When we were little children, our parents took us on a Sunday afternoon to the Zwinger museum sometimes. And after, if we were good, they took Lilli and me to a coffeehouse for chocolate cake. Lilli loves chocolate cake, but I know she has not had chocolate cake for a long time.”

      Lorna rested her hip against the pen gate. His tone was wistful. It must have been a long time since he’d last talked to anyone about his home and his family, she realized.

      “In the summer, we all went to ein Biergarten, a beer garden, to hear the music, and our parents drank big glasses of beer, with lots of … Schaum.”

      Paul looked at Lorna questioningly and waved his fingers over the top of an imaginary beer glass held in his other hand.

      “I am sorry, I do not know the word in English. The white on the top of the beer?” He mimed again. “Schaum?”

      “Oh, um.” Lorna was caught off guard. “Do you mean froth? Or foam?”

      “Froth?” Paul repeated. “Beer with much froth, yes.”

      Lorna smiled back at him before she could stop herself.

      “Of course, we were too young for beer with froth,” he continued, “so we ate Bratwurst instead.”

      “Bratvoo …?” Lorna’s attempt to repeat the word made Paul laugh. It was the first time she had heard it, a deep rumble in his throat, and it was unnervingly infectious.

      “Bratwurst,” Paul repeated. “German sausage. They are very delicious. I think you would like them as we did, Fräulein Anderson. But that was before the war, before my father went away.”

      He was quiet now, the laughter gone.

      “Your father went away?” Lorna prompted.

      “Yes. In 1939, he was called to the Wehrmacht, to the army. He left us on Christmas Eve. In April, he was already dead.”

      “Oh!” Lorna gasped. What could she say to that?

      For a while, the silence was broken only by the soft suckling of the lamb in Paul’s arms.

      “After, life was hard for my mother, so when I became sixteen, I left school to work. A friend of my father said I would learn to be a clockmaker too.”

      “You were an apprentice?” offered Lorna.

      “Apprentice?” Paul tried the word. “Is that a young man who learns when he works?”

      Lorna nodded, and she could almost see Paul filing that new word into his mental dictionary as he had done earlier with froth.

      “It was difficult work, very … small.” Paul squeezed his fingers together as if to demonstrate. “But I liked it. For two years I learned about clocks and about watches, how to carve faces, grind cogs, cut jewels, and how to mend other makers’ pieces. Sometimes I felt my father sitting at the table beside me, holding my hand as I worked.

      “But then it was January of 1944, my eighteenth birthday, and I was taken away from my work and away from Dresden, and I too entered the army of the Third Reich.”

      As Paul lapsed into a thoughtful silence, stroking the lamb’s neck with his thumb, Lorna realized that she wanted to hear more. She opened her mouth, only to close it again. And it felt strange, standing over him, so she sat down on a small wooden stool just inside the pen.

      Paul looked up as she sat, and it seemed to bring him back from another place and time.

      “You must miss your father,” Lorna said simply. “I can’t imagine what I would do if my dad …”

      Paul was very still and Lorna regretted saying anything. But now that she had, she needed to keep going.

      “And you must worry about your mother and sister too. I know I do. I mean I worry. About my brothers.”

      “Yes,” he said quietly, “I miss my father and yes, I worry.”

      There was silence again, and Lorna determined that she would not break it this time with another silly …

      “And your mother?” He was studying her now. “Do you miss her?”

      Lorna’s throat contracted. She hadn’t expected this. “My mother died a long time ago.”

      “I know,” he replied. What had Mrs. Mack told him? “But still you can miss her?”

      Lorna shrugged. She didn’t have any memories of her own, only those borrowed from the stories her brothers told about their mother. How much could she think about missing her mother when her brothers were so far away and in such danger?

      “I miss my brothers more,” she replied.

      Spoken on a breath held tight, her words were barely audible, even to herself.

      Paul waited, but when she said no more, he prompted her again.

      “And will you tell me of them? Have they been at the war for a long time?”

      Could she tell him? Should she tell him? Wouldn’t this be “careless talk”? But suddenly her desire, her need, to talk about them became overwhelming and she wanted desperately to talk about John Jo and Sandy, and how much she missed them. And who else was there who would listen?

      “John Jo’s the oldest of us, and has been away the longest,” Lorna said, and the release of her breath came as a relief. “He could hardly wait to be part of it. He volunteered for service on the morning he turned eighteen, in ’forty-one. Of course, he’d tried to sign up the summer before, lying about his age, but by chance, the sergeant at the recruitment office had been at school with Dad. Can you believe it? So he knew John Jo wasn’t old enough to join up. John Jo was so furious, we didn’t dare go near him for days after.”

      Lorna found herself smiling at the memory, and Paul smiled too.

      “John Jo was a ruffian.” She noticed Paul frowning at the word. “I mean, СКАЧАТЬ