Once (10 page)

The man does.

I stare in amazement. I take my glasses off and wipe them on my shirt and put them back on.

Barney is a dentist.

Mum went to a dentist once. Me and Dad met him in his waiting room. He was very different from Barney. He was a thin bald man with a squeaky voice who didn’t do house calls.

“Felix,” says Barney, “over here, please.”

I jolt to attention. Barney wants me to help him. I’ve never been a dentist’s assistant before. Will there be blood?

I squeeze through the people until I’m next to Barney. He’s taken the top off the lamp and is holding the tip of the drill in the flame. Heat kills germs—I’ve read about that.

“Felix,” says Barney as he dips the drill tip into the water the man has spat into the bowl, “tell the patient a story, would you?”

The water bubbles as the drill cools. My brain is bubbling too, with confusion.

A story?

Then I get it. When Mum went to the dentist, she had an injection to dull the pain. Barney hasn’t given this patient an injection. Times are tough, and there probably aren’t enough pain-dulling drugs in ghetto curfew places.

Suddenly my mouth feels dry. I’ve never told anyone else a story to take their mind off pain. And when I told myself all those stories about Mum and Dad, I wanted to believe them. Plus, I didn’t have a drill in my mouth.

This is a big responsibility.

“Open wide,” says Barney.

He starts drilling.

“Go on, Felix,” he says.

The groans of the patient and the grinding of the drill and the smell of burning from the patient’s mouth make it hard to concentrate but I force myself.

“Once,” I say, “a boy called William lived in a castle in the mountains and he had a magic carrot.”

The patient isn’t looking at Barney anymore, he’s looking at me.

“If the boy held the carrot right,” I go on, “he could have three wishes. About anything. Including parents and cakes.”

Barney knocks on another door. A big door at the front of a big building.

“This one will be different,” he says to me. “But you’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” I say.

My feet blisters are hurting and I’m a bit worried by the Nazi flag flapping over our heads.

Barney puts his hand on my shoulder.

“You did a really good job back there,” he says. “Poor Mr. Grecki was in a lot of pain, but your story helped him get through it. Well done.”

I feel myself glowing, which I haven’t done for years, not since the last time I helped Mum and Dad dust the bookshelves and straighten up the folded-down corners of pages.

It’s true—Mr. Grecki was very grateful. He and his family looked very sad when I asked them if they’d seen Mum and Dad and they said they hadn’t.

The door opens.

I nearly faint.

Glaring at us is a Nazi soldier.

Barney says something to him in Nazi language and points to our dentist bag. The soldier nods and we follow him in. As we climb some stairs, Barney whispers to me.

“This patient is German. Tell him a nice story about Germany.”

Suddenly I feel very nervous. I don’t know much about Germany. I think I read somewhere that it’s completely flat and has a lot of windmills, but I could be wrong.

“I don’t speak German,” I mutter to Barney.

“Doesn’t matter,” says Barney. “Say it in Polish and I’ll translate.”

The soldier leads us into an upstairs room and I feel even more nervous.

The patient is a Nazi officer. Not the one who did the shooting when we arrived in the city, but he could be a friend of that one. He’s sprawled in an armchair holding his face, and when he sees us he scowls and looks like he’s blaming us for his toothache.

Barney sets up the drill. He doesn’t ask for salt water. I think this is because the Nazi officer is swigging from a bottle. Whatever he’s drinking smells very strong. He’s doing a lot of rinsing but no spitting.

I don’t understand. Why is Barney drilling a Nazi’s teeth? And why doesn’t the German Nazi army use its own dentists? Perhaps the officers don’t like them because they’re too rough and they use bayonets instead of drills.

Barney picks up a lamp and looks inside the Nazi officer’s mouth.

That’s amazing. I’ve never seen that before. The lamp is connected to a wire. It must be electric.

“Go on, Felix,” says Barney.

He wants me to start. My imagination goes blank. What story can I tell to a Nazi officer in a bad mood? I want to tell a story about how burning books and shooting innocent people makes a toothache worse, but I’d better not risk that.

The soldier comes back in with a bulging cloth bag. Poking out the top is a loaf of bread with hardly any mold on it and some turnips and a cabbage.

“Thank you,” says Barney as he starts the drill.

I understand. This is why we’re giving this Nazi dental treatment when we could be giving it to a poor Jewish person.

To earn food.

I think of the kids back in the cellar. I didn’t tell them a story before, but I can tell one for them now.

“Once,” I say to the Nazi officer, “two brave German booksellers, I mean soldiers, were hacking their way through the African jungle. Their mission was to reach a remote African village and help mend a, um, windmill.”

Barney translates.

I start making up the most exciting and thrilling story I can, with lots of vicious wild animals and poisonous insects who say nice things about Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi officer seems to be interested. Well, he’s not shooting anybody. But he could at any moment.

I try hard to stop my voice wobbling with fear.

I want to do a good job so this patient will be as grateful as the last one was. So that afterward, when the drilling and the story are over, he’ll feel warm and generous toward me.

That’s when I’ll ask him if he knows where Mum and Dad are.

  a dentist stopped me from asking a Nazi officer about my parents and I was really mad at him.

I still am, even after a sleep and a long sit on the bucket.

I want to break this stupid toothbrush he made for me into tiny pieces. That’s why I’m scrubbing my teeth so hard.

The Nazi officer was smiling by the time I was halfway through the story. By the time I’d described how the two German soldiers turned the windmill into a giant water pump and built a lake for the African kids to go ice-skating on, he was laughing. He made me carry on with the story even after Barney finished drilling.

At the end the Nazi officer asked me to write the story down so he could send it home to his kids.

Of course I said yes.

I told him it would be in Polish and it would take me a couple of days. The Nazi officer didn’t mind at all, just asked me to drop it off when it’s finished. I don’t think he’s a friend of the other Nazi officer, the murderer. I think when he hears about what’s happened to Mum and Dad he’ll want to help them.

But before I could start telling him, Barney grabbed me and the bag of food and we left.

“Too dangerous,” Barney told me in the street, but he wouldn’t say why.

This toothbrush is unbreakable. It’s only wood and bristles, but Barney must have some dentist’s secret of making it really strong.

“Felix,” says a muffled voice.

I look down.

Zelda has joined me at the teeth-cleaning bowl. Her mouth is already foaming with Barney’s toothpaste that he makes from chalk dust and soap.

“When you went out with Barney last night,” she says, “did you find our parents?”

I don’t know what to say.

Her eyes are shining hopefully above the foam and suddenly I feel terrible. Here’s me moaning about waiting two days to have a conversation with a Nazi officer, and poor Zelda still doesn’t even know her parents are dead.

Her face falls.

“You didn’t find them?” she says.

I shake my head.

We look at each other. I try and think up a story about how parents aren’t really that important, but I can’t because they are.

“I know a place we can see them from,” says Zelda.

I smile sadly. At least she’s learning how to use her imagination.

“Up there,” she says.

I look up to where she’s pointing. A needle of daylight, bigger than the others, is coming in through a crack where one of the walls meets the ceiling.

“Jacob says that from up there he can see outside into the street,” says Zelda.

I sigh. Everyone’s a storyteller these days.

“It’s true,” says a voice behind me.

Jacob is climbing off his sack bed, blinking very indignantly. Several of the other kids are waking up too.

“It’s easy,” says Jacob. “You make a pile of beds and climb up. I did it last night.”

“He did,” says Zelda. “But he wouldn’t let me.”

I look at them both. I can see they’re telling the truth. When people lie, their toothpaste foam droops.

“Let’s do it now,” says Zelda excitedly.

I peer over at the other side of the cellar. Barney is still in bed, snoring. When he’s been out at night he usually sleeps pretty late.

“All right,” I say.

It’s worth a try. And not just for me. It might be good for Zelda too. She might see an aunty or uncle or something.

“I can’t see my mummy and daddy yet,” says Zelda. “Can you see yours?”

“Not yet,” I say.

I get a firmer grip with my bare feet on the wobbly pile of beds, hold Zelda’s arm tighter so we don’t both fall, press my glasses harder against the crack in the wall, and try to see something that isn’t feet and legs. That’s the problem with looking out into the street at ground level, you don’t get to see the tops of people.

It’s very confusing. I can see hundreds of feet and legs milling around out there. With this many Jewish people in Poland, how come Mum and Dad’s shop didn’t do better?

“I can see my mummy’s feet,” yells Zelda. “Over there, in her brown shoes.”

“Shhh,” calls Chaya from down below. “You’ll wake Barney.”

“It’s all right,” says Jacob, his voice strained from helping Chaya prop up the pile of beds. “Barney’s a heavy sleeper.”

Zelda’s eyes are pressed to the crack in the wall.

“Over there,” she squeaks. “Mummy’s feet.”

I know how she feels. I thought I saw Dad’s dark green trousers. Until I saw another pair. And then three more.

I try to see if any of the feet and legs look as if they’re doing the sort of things that Mum and Dad do, like carrying big piles of books or having discussions about books or reading somebody else’s book over their shoulder.

I can’t tell. The feet and legs could be doing anything. I can identify those two pairs of legs over there. They belong to two men who are wrestling on the ground over a piece of bread. And those there belong to another man who’s just collapsed and is lying on the cobbles while people step over him. But the rest of the feet and legs could belong to anybody. The only thing I can tell for sure is that none of them belong to kids.

I press my nose to the crack in the wall and try to get a whiff of Mum’s perfume.

Nothing.

I cram my ear to the crack and try to hear Mum’s and Dad’s voices.

All I can hear is trucks arriving and people yelling. Some of them sound like German soldiers.

Suddenly all the feet and legs are scattering and running away.

“Mummy,” yells Zelda.

She’s jiggling up and down. The pile of beds underneath us is toppling.

“Look out,” yells Jacob.

I plummet toward the floor.

Luckily the beds break my fall. So does Jacob. When my head stops spinning and I find my glasses, I help him out from under a sack. And almost step back into Barney, who is standing there, hands on his hips, glaring at us.

I can’t give him my full attention yet, not till I’ve made sure Zelda is all right. If she landed on this stone floor…

Phew, there she is, crawling around on her hands and knees.

“Where are my slippers?” she’s saying. “I need to put my slippers on so I can go and see Mummy.”

I look at how desperately she’s searching and suddenly I know I have to tell her. I don’t want to, and I don’t know how to, but I have to. The poor kid can’t go on like this. She needs to know the truth.

“You’re sure they were both dead?” says Barney quietly as we watch the other kids put the beds back into position and Zelda put her slippers on.

I nod.

I tell him about the feathers I held under their noses.

“They’d been shot,” I say. “So had the chickens.”

I try not to think about the blood.

Barney frowns.

“You’re right,” he says. “Zelda does need to know.”

I wait, but he doesn’t say anything else.

“Will you tell her?” I say.

Barney frowns some more.

“I think it’s better if you do it,” he says. “You’ve been through a lot together and she trusts you. And you were there.”

That’s what I’ve been dreading he’d say.

“I don’t know how to,” I say quietly.

Barney looks at me. I haven’t noticed before how red his eyes are. Must be because he works at night a lot.

“Just tell her the story of what you saw,” he says. “You don’t have to make anything up.”