Once (9 page)

“Adolf Hitler doesn’t like Jewish kids,” says the girl with the curly hair.

“Adolf Hitler?” I say, surprised. “Father Ludwik says Adolf Hitler is a great man. He’s in charge of Poland. He’s the prime minister or the king or something.”

Zelda gives me her look.

“Adolf Hitler,” she says, “is the boss of the Nazis. Don’t you know anything?”

I stare at her.

“It’s true,” says the blinking boy, blinking harder than ever.

I stare at all the kids, who are all nodding.

If they’re right, this is incredible. I wonder if Father Ludwik has heard about this?

“That’s why we have to hide,” says the girl with the bandaged arm. “All the other Jewish kids around here have been taken away by the Nazis. Adolf Hitler’s orders. And they never come back. The only kids left are the ones hiding like us.”

“Can we get on with the story now?” says Zelda.

I sit on the floor with them, my thoughts in a daze. Suddenly I’m thinking about another story. The one Mum and Dad told me about why I had to stay at the orphanage. They said it was so I could go to school there while they traveled to fix up their business. They told it so well, that story, I believed it for three years and eight months.

That story saved my life.

Zelda and the others are dragging the coats over our heads and making a tent.

“Tell us another story about the boy in the castle,” says Henryk.

“His name’s William,” says Zelda.

“Shhh,” says the girl with the curly hair. She’s brushing it with a hairbrush, over and over, which looks pretty painful. She smiles at me. “Let Felix tell us.”

I try to think of something to tell them. Something to take our minds off our worries. Something to make us forget that the most important man in the whole of Poland hates us and our parents and our books.

“One morning,” I say, “William wakes up in his castle. In his breakfast soup he finds a magic carrot.”

“A magic carrot,” interrupts Zelda. “That means he gets three wishes.”

“It doesn’t have to be three wishes,” says the blinking boy. “It could just be one wish.”

“It’s three,” says Zelda indignantly. “If he holds the carrot right.”

I sigh. I’m not in a story mood. My brain is buzzing with too many other things.

“Look,” I say. “Let’s not have another fight. Why doesn’t everybody just take it in turns to say what they’d wish for if they had a magic carrot.”

“I’d wish for my mummy and daddy,” says Zelda. “Three times.”

“Apart from parents,” says the girl with the bandaged arm.

Everyone frowns and thinks hard.

“Tidy hair,” says the girl with curly hair, still brushing it nonstop.

“Your hair is tidy, Ruth,” says the girl with the bandaged arm. “You’ve got lovely hair.”

Ruth gives a little smile but carries on brushing.

“What about you, Jacob?” says the girl with the bandaged arm to the blinking boy.

Jacob blinks hard. “My dog,” he says.

“Me too,” says Henryk. “And my grandma’s dog.”

The girl with the bandaged arm gives the toddler a cuddle. “What would you like, Janek?”

“Carrot,” says the toddler.

Everyone laughs.

“I’d wish to be alive,” says the girl with the bandaged arm.

Everyone laughs again, except me and the wood-chewing boy.

I don’t get it.

“Her name’s Chaya,” says Ruth, still brushing. “It means alive in Hebrew.”

“Your turn,” says Chaya to me.

I can’t think of anything except for Mum and Dad. And wishing Zelda’s parents were still alive. But I can’t say that either. I signal to the wood-chewing boy to have his go.

He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even look at me. He just keeps on chewing the end of the piece of wood in his hands.

“You’d like the rest of your house, eh, Moshe?” says Chaya gently.

Moshe nods as he chews, not looking up.

“Come on, Felix,” says Zelda. “You have to have your turn. Use your imagination.”

I wait for my imagination to come up with something.

Anything.

It doesn’t.

All I can think of is that if Adolf Hitler hates Jewish kids, perhaps God and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and the Pope do too.

“He’s not going to tell us,” says Ruth.

“Come on,” says Henryk. “Let’s have a lice hunt.”

The kids throw the coats off and go and sit in the needles of daylight and start searching through each other’s hair and clothes.

All except Zelda.

“You’re mean,” she says to me.

“Sorry,” I say.

I flop down on my bed. My imagination doesn’t want to be bothered with stories, not now. All it wants to do is plan how I’m going to get out of this place and find Mum and Dad before Adolf Hitler’s Nazis kill them.

  I escaped from an underground hiding place by telling a story. It was a bit exaggerated. It was a bit fanciful. It was my imagination getting a bit carried away. It was a lie.

“Barney,” I whisper, tugging his sleeve as he creeps up the cellar steps.

He spins around, startled, and nearly drops his candle. He thought I was asleep like the other kids.

“I need to come with you,” I whisper.

Barney frowns.

I start to explain why I have to go with him.

He puts his finger on his lips and signals for me to follow him up the steps. I climb after him through the doorway in the ceiling. And find myself in a huge room full of dusty old machinery.

Barney puts his leather bag down, gently lowers the trapdoor, and locks it with a padlock.

He sees me looking around and points to the machinery.

“Printing presses,” he says. “For printing books. Not now. Before.”

I know what he means. Before the Nazis went right off books. And Jews.

“So,” says Barney quietly, “why do you need to come with me?”

I take a deep breath.

“I need to find my parents,” I say. “Urgently. Because of my rare illness.”

Barney thinks about this. He gives me a look that I’m fairly sure is sympathetic.

This is going well.

“Mum and Dad have got my pills,” I say. “For my rare illness. If I don’t take the pills, my rare illness will get worse and I could die.”

Barney thinks about this some more.

“What exactly is this rare illness?” he asks.

Suddenly I realize what he’s concerned about. The other kids catching it. And him.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It doesn’t invade other people.”

Barney’s eyes are twinkling in the candlelight. He almost looks amused. I feel indignant. People shouldn’t be amused by other people’s rare illnesses.

“If I don’t find Mum and Dad and take those pills in the next two hours,” I say, “I’ll get warts growing inside my tummy and my pee will turn green.”

I stop myself saying any more. I may have gone a bit too far already.

Barney is actually smiling now.

“Zelda’s right,” he says. “You are a good storyteller.”

Poop, I did go too far.

Barney suddenly looks serious.

“She also told me,” he says, “that you haven’t seen your parents for nearly four years.”

I feel myself blushing in the candlelight. What a stupid storytelling mistake. That was as stupid as Father Ludwik telling us Adolf Hitler is a great man.

Desperately I try to think of a way to make the story better. Would Barney believe me if I tell him that I only have to take the pills once every four years?

I don’t think so. This is pathetic. I can’t tell a decent story to save my life anymore. Or Mum and Dad’s.

Barney puts his hand on my shoulder and I wait to be escorted back down into the cellar.

But that doesn’t happen. Barney hands me the candle, picks up his bag, and steers me toward a big rusty door in the wall of the printing factory.

“I’m glad you want to come with me, Felix,” he says.

“Why?” I say, surprised.

Barney suddenly looks very serious.

“I have to confess something,” he says. “I read one of the stories in your notebook.”

I stare at him, stunned. He just doesn’t seem like the sort of person who’d read a private notebook without permission.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I wanted to find out what I could about your parents.”

Before I can say anything about my stories being dumb and not true, Barney grips my shoulder and looks me right in the eyes.

“You’re a very good storyteller,” he says.

I don’t know what to say.

Before I can think of something, Barney goes on.

“The reason I’m glad you’re coming with me, Felix,” he says, “is because I need your help.”

We pause in the doorway of the printing factory while Barney looks up and down the dark street.

In the moonlight I can see his leather jacket has a small hole in the back. I wonder if it’s a bullet hole.

Did Barney get shot once?

Did his family?

Is that why he’s looking after other people’s kids in a secret cellar?

It might not be a bullet hole. A candle flame could have done it, or a rat. Barney might be a teacher or something. The Nazis might have burnt all the books in his school so he brought some of the kids here to hide them.

“This is the dangerous part,” whispers Barney, still squinting up and down the street. “If anyone sees us leaving this building, we’re sunk.”

Or he could be a sailor.

“Come on,” says Barney. “All clear. Let’s go.”

The streets of the city are filthy, scraps of paper and rubbish everywhere. Some of the buildings have got bits missing from them. The whole place is deserted. I know it’s night and everything, but we haven’t seen a single person apart from a couple of dead bodies on a street corner.

I manage not to cry.

Barney makes us cross over to the other side, but it’s all right—I’ve already seen they aren’t Mum and Dad.

“Where are all the other people?” I say.

“Indoors,” says Barney. “There’s a curfew. That means everybody has to stay indoors after seven at night.”

We go down a narrow lane with tall apartment buildings on both sides. I can’t see a single person through any of the windows. I read once that cities have electric lights, but there doesn’t seem to be much electricity going on around here.

Finding Mum and Dad isn’t going to be easy, even if I can slip away from Barney while he’s concentrating on getting food.

“What happens if people don’t do the curfew?” I ask.

“They get shot,” says Barney.

I look at him in alarm. I can tell from his voice he’s not joking.

He holds up his leather bag.

“We’ll be all right,” he says.

I wonder what’s in the bag. Money, maybe. Or something the Nazis need. I hope it’s not guns they could use to shoot Jewish booksellers.

I change the subject.

“Why is there a curfew?” I ask.

Dad taught me to use every new word as much as possible after hearing it for the first time.

“This is a ghetto,” says Barney. “It’s a part of the city where the Jews have been sent to live. The Nazis make the rules here.”

I think about this.

Barney knocks on a door, and while we wait he turns to me with a serious expression.

“Felix,” he says, “you might not be able to find your parents. I know that’s a hard thing to hear, but you might not.”

It is a hard thing to hear.

Luckily he’s wrong.

“The Jewish people who’ve been brought to the city,” I say, “are they all in this ghetto or are there other ghetto curfew places as well?”

Barney doesn’t answer.

Perhaps I didn’t say the new words right.

A woman leads us into a back room in the apartment. There are several people in the room, all wearing coats and all standing around a bed. The man lying on the bed is wearing a coat too, and holding his head and groaning.

“Lamp, please,” says Barney.

Somebody hands Barney an oil lamp. He bends over the bed and looks into the man’s mouth. The man groans even louder.

I glance at the other people. They don’t look very well either, though none of them are groaning.

Barney opens his bag and takes out a bundle of metal poles and leather straps. He fits the poles together using little metal wheels to make a kind of robot arm. From his bag he takes the foot pedal from a Singer sewing machine like Mrs. Glick used to have. He connects the poles to the pedal with the leather straps.

My imagination is in a frenzy. Is Barney going to show these people how to mend their clothes? Their coats are fairly ragged. Or is this a machine he’s invented that helps people grow food in their own homes? There are lots of damp patches on these walls and these people do look very hungry.

After all, this is 1942, so anything’s possible.

“Salt water,” says Barney.

While a couple of the people get water from a bucket, Barney attaches a short needle to the end of the robot arm and pedals the sewing machine thing with his foot. The straps make the needle spin around very fast with a loud humming noise.

Suddenly I realize what Barney has just put together.

A dentist’s drill.

Barney gives the man in the bed a glass of salty water and a metal bowl.

“Rinse and spit,” he says.