Gosling splutters with laughter.
‘Felix can cope alright,’ he says. ‘You should see him dissect a pig.’
What I’m not coping with so well is that after Neal tops up everyone’s tea, he takes me off to show me a special locomotive.
I’m not really interested in locomotives. I’m more interested that Neal has got that expression on his face again, as if there’s something else he’s worried about telling me.
He hands me a small piece torn from the page of a newspaper.
‘We printed this yesterday,’ he says.
It’s just a few paragraphs and it looks like it’s from the bottom of a page.
I read it.
It’s about how a guard at a military air base near Sydney was found a couple of days ago with his throat cut.
I read it a few more times, then fold it up and give it back to Neal.
‘It might be nothing,’ says Neal. ‘But just to be safe, I tried to contact that Mr Chase and Mr Petrie you told me about. Hard fellas to get onto. So I left a message. Haven’t heard back.’
‘It probably is nothing,’ I say, feeling sick.
‘A coincidence,’ says Neal.
‘Absolutely,’ I say.
I tell myself to stop being silly.
Military guards must get into fights all the time. Squabbling over money or alcohol or girlfriends or cricket. And they probably prefer to fight with knives rather than guns so the senior officers don’t hear them.
Anyway, Sydney is hundreds of miles away.
‘You OK, Felix?’ says Neal.
I nod.
I don’t say anything else because sometimes, as Gabriek taught me, you have to concentrate on the most important thing.
And I don’t want Neal worrying and cancelling the photo shoot tomorrow. I want to be in lots of photos for the Australian government, to make sure Gabriek and Celeste get a place on the first available boat.
Plenty of time after that to worry.
the stress of this will give me a heart attack. Maybe they’ll end up doing the university medical lecture about me.
It’s my fault.
I should have said something to Neal yesterday. That I was worried sick when I read the newspaper report about the dead guard with the slit throat.
The minute we arrived here at the university this morning, I regretted I hadn’t.
As soon as the staff told us the news.
‘A man,’ said one of the secretaries. ‘We didn’t know who he was. Hanging around the Faculty Of Medicine yesterday asking about a Polish boy called Felix Salinger.’
‘Did he have an accent?’ I said.
Another secretary nodded.
I felt sick again.
Neal looked a bit pale too.
‘Cripes,’ he muttered.
It’s torture, waiting in this small room while Neal’s off trying to find out more. I’ve told him how dangerous Zliv is, but I don’t know if he really understands. Luckily there’ll be government people here this morning for the photo shoot, but still.
Someone knocks on the door.
My internal organs twitch.
Neal comes in.
‘Couldn’t find out any more about the bloke,’ he says. ‘But I reckon I know who it is. I should have twigged before, when they said accent. There’s a journalist, Irish mongrel, chief political reporter at the Herald, always trying to muscle in on my stories. When I get my hands on him, I’ll kill him.’
I stare at Neal, taking this in.
When a man with an honest face tells you something that’s very likely true, you’d be foolish not to believe him.
I think that’s what Gabriek would say.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I feel much better.’
‘So if he pops up again,’ says Neal, ‘I don’t want you saying a word to him, right?’
‘Right,’ I say.
Maybe I’ll faint.
Maybe just stepping onto the stage of this huge lecture theatre will make me pass out.
Not because of the jars of body parts on the shelves. Not because of the gleaming operating table in the middle of the stage. Not even because of the dead body lying on the table, all marked up for study and dissection.
What I’m worried about are the live people.
Lots of them in rows and rows of seats, stretching away so far I can hardly see the ones at the back. Students, mostly, who’ll soon be wondering why a kid is showing off on stage when he didn’t even go to high school.
Anya and Ruby and Gosling and Mrs Prejenka are up the back somewhere. So, Neal reckons, are a few people from the Australian government. But as I peek in through this door at the side of the stage, I can’t see any of them, not even with my glasses polished.
‘OK, Felix?’ says Neal, slapping me on the shoulder.
I nod, not speaking in case my voice wobbles.
‘The photographer’s here,’ says Neal. ‘We’re just waiting for the professor who’s going to make an entrance with you. It’ll be a great photo.’
Neal glances at his watch.
‘I’d better go and make sure the prof’s on his way,’ he says. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back.’
He’s gone before I can ask him if professors of medicine have pills to calm wobbly tummies.
I try to do some deep breaths.
It’s what Gabriek taught me to do when I was living in a hole under his barn and I’d hear people arrive at the farm who might be Nazis.
Deep breaths.
While you do it, you have to think only about your breathing.
‘Australian boy,’ hisses a voice.
Hard to think about breathing when a clown like Gosling sneaks up behind you and grabs you. He probably thinks this mucking around is helping me relax.
Idiot.
‘At last,’ hisses a wet voice.
A cruel voice.
Speaking Polish, which Gosling doesn’t.
I freeze.
Then I do the technique that Yuli taught me. The one that gets you away from somebody who’s got their arm round your throat.
But Zliv’s skinny arm is like steel rope.
I try something else. I kick one heel up into where I think his private part will be.
It is.
His arm slips and I’m under it, crashing hard through the door into the lecture theatre.
Neal didn’t tell me about the step.
I trip and fall flat.
The rows of students are staring, stunned, and then they start yelling. This tells me that Zliv has come through the door.
I roll to one side, hoping he’ll miss with his first lunge and I’ll have a chance to grab a weapon from the shelf like a scalpel or a jar of brains.
But he doesn’t miss.
His hand feels like a steel claw as it lifts me off the floor.
His arm clamps round my throat again, this time with the glint of a knife in his other hand as he drags me backwards out through the doorway.
The last thing I see before the door swings shut is the body on the operating table, its head lolling, a pink incision line across its throat.
‘Normally,’ hisses Zliv into my ear, ‘you would be dead already. But this is for my brother. So we do it slowly.’
It’s hard for me to see what he’s doing now because my glasses have just fallen off and his arm is so tight round my neck my eyes are seeing light only in bubbles.
I hear something scraping.
I manage a glimpse over my shoulder.
We’re in front of a lift. Zliv is sliding the criss-cross metal doors open. He must want to take me up onto the roof or somewhere private like that so he can do his dissection without any professors watching.
I hear people bursting out of the lecture theatre.
Zliv throws me inside the lift. My head bashes on the floor. I hear him pulling the lift doors shut.
Then I hear another sound.
The safety catch being released on a gun.
‘Come out,’ yells a v
oice.
I see Zliv reach into his pocket with the hand that’s not holding the knife.
I roll into a corner.
A gun goes off.
Zliv slams into the back wall of the lift.
Through the lattice metalwork of the lift doors, I try to catch a glimpse of the person outside.
Not Anya, surely?
No, a man. One I’ve seen before. In a familiar dark government suit.
Mr Chase.
The lift isn’t going up. Zliv starts to slide down, leaving a slime of red on the lift wall. He lunges forward, grabbing at the brass handle on the lift control box to stop himself hitting the floor.
Both his hands slam onto the handle and for a few seconds he hangs there.
The lift starts to go up.
With a tortured screech, the weight of Zliv’s body tears the control box off the wall, wires sparking.
The lift stops.
Zliv crashes to the floor.
The doors don’t open. I can see through the lattice that we’re between floors. I pull the control box from under Zliv’s body and frantically work the handle but nothing happens.
The lift is stuck.
I can hear muffled voices shouting above and below. And another sound. Much closer.
Zliv’s wet breathing. Like a milkshake being sucked up a straw.
I scramble to my feet.
My first thought is to get away from him. My next thought is to grab his knife or his gun and make sure he never kills another innocent person.
But then I stop.
He’s lying on his side, his breath bubbling, no other part of him moving. I’ve been around a lot of unconscious people, and he’s the most unconscious I’ve ever seen.
Carefully I roll him onto his back.
The wound in his chest is huge. Ribbons of flesh mixed up with ribbons of cloth. Lots of meat showing. Broken blood vessels spewing blood.
I hesitate, but only for a second.
His fingers, I see, are yellow from cigarettes.
I feel in his pockets until I find his cigarette lighter. I grab his knife from the floor and do a heat. No time for clean. As soon as I have heat, I seal the first pumping blood vessel in a stanching cloud of sour smoke.
More heat.
Another cloud.
I’m not doing this fast enough. I’m kneeling in blood and more is spewing out.
Heat.
Smoke.
Heat.
Smoke.
He coughs blood over the lighter, a throatful of it, and I feel for his pulse while I’m waiting for the lighter to spark again.
I’m still feeling for his pulse when the lift gives a big jolt and the doors open and hands grab me.
I start sobbing, but I don’t stop feeling for the pulse even after I realise there isn’t one any more.
Because you don’t.
Not in this job.
today Mrs Prejenka will stop looking at me as if I’m her son and she’s my very proud mother.
No, I don’t think she will.
‘Felix,’ she says. ‘Let me cook you another egg.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Prejenka,’ I say. ‘But I’ve had two already. I’ll use up all your rations.’
‘Aurelina,’ says Mrs Prejenka sternly. ‘My name’s Aurelina.’
Ruby does a loud burp on my shoulder, which gives me a good excuse not to try and say Mrs Prejenka’s name and get it wrong again.
‘I have plenty of eggs,’ she says. ‘What have I told you? You get eggs if you work in a pub.’
What she told me was, you get eggs if you work in a pub and give people drinks after the six o’clock closing time.
‘When Celeste and Gabriek get here on the boat,’ says Mrs Prejenka, ‘they should work in a pub.’
I smile. I’m pretty sure Gabriek will have other career plans.
Ruby does another burp.
Gently I wipe milk off her chin with her bib.
Mrs Prejenka sighs happily.
She picks up the tattered newspaper from the kitchen table and tenderly brushes the crumbs off. I think she loves this newspaper article even more than the first one.
‘I showed this to the boys in the pub,’ she says. ‘They want to give you eggs too. When Anya and Tyrone get back from their walk in the park, we’ll go to the pub.’
I smile again.
‘When they get back,’ I say, ‘we’ve got to study. High school starts next week.’
‘To be a good student,’ says Mrs Prejenka, ‘you need eggs.’
She kisses me gently on the forehead and taps her finger on the newspaper.
‘We hope to see him back here in a few years,’ she says, quoting her favourite bit, ‘said the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.’
‘He was just being kind,’ I say.
‘He was being sensible,’ says Mrs Prejenka. ‘He knows what you did in that lift.’
I sigh.
I know what she’s going to say next, and part of me thinks she should stop saying it, but the truth is I don’t want her to stop.
‘In that lift,’ she says, ‘you were a doctor.’
Ruby does a big burp and I can feel warm baby milk running down inside my collar. Which is a useful thing when you might be getting a bit ahead of yourself.
Mrs Prejenka hurries out to get a clean bib.
I lift Ruby off my shoulder and hold her to my chest.
I look down at her angel face, which has never known things that are bad, and for a moment it feels like I haven’t either.
I have of course.
But when I think about the future, things feel good.
Very good.
Even very very good.
Maybe.
Dear Reader
My plan is that one day there will be seven in Felix’s family of books and then my work with him will be done.
Maybe brings the total so far to six. It joins Once, Then, After and Soon in exploring Felix’s early years as he struggles to keep his friends and optimism alive through World War Two and what follows.
Between writing Then and After, I wanted to find out how the experiences of Felix’s youth, in particular the terrible years of the Holocaust, would shape his adult life. So I wrote Now, in which the 80-year-old Felix, still battling and still optimistic, revisits his early years in an unexpected and life-changing way.
The seventh book, Always, which I plan to write in the next couple of years, will bring Felix’s story full circle. Felix will have the opportunity for an act of courage and generosity bigger than anything he’s attempted before. A final chance, perilous but irresistible, to say thank you to the many special people in his life.
There are two reasons I call this a family of books. The first is that years ago, when I started my work with Felix, I quickly came to see him and his friends and the brave adults who look after them as just that, a family.
The other reason I hesitate to call these books a series is that I’ve tried to write them so they can be read in any order. Most of us prefer reading to waiting, and sometimes we can’t choose exactly when we get our hands on a particular book.
If Maybe is your first encounter with Felix, please don’t be perturbed. After reading it you’ll know a few things about his earlier years, but not enough to spoil the other stories.
Thank you Kathy Toohey for the research advice. For the publishing, editing, design, marketing and distribution of Maybe, my heartfelt thanks to Laura Harris, Heather Curdie, Helen Levene, Tony Palmer, Dorothy Tonkin, Tina Gumnior and Kristin Gill. And my warm appreciation to everyone else at Penguin Random House in Australia and the UK, and to many teams at publishing houses in other countries, all of whose skill and dedication help Felix on his journey into the hands and hearts of readers.
Felix’s stories come from my imagination, but also from a period of history that was all too real. I couldn’t have written any of these stories without first reading many books about the Holocaust and what came after. Books that are full of the real
voices of the people who lived and struggled and loved and faced death in that terrible time.
You can find details of some of my research reading on my website. I hope you get to delve into some of those books and help keep alive the memory of those people.
This story is my imagination trying to grasp the unimaginable.
Their stories are the real stories.
Morris Gleitzman
May 2017
www.morrisgleitzman.com
ONCE
Once I escaped from an orphanage to find Mum and Dad.
Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house.
Once I made a Nazi with toothache laugh.
My name is Felix.
This is my story.
‘ . . . moving, haunting and funny in almost equal measure, and always gripping . . . ’
The Guardian
‘This is one of the most profoundly moving novels I have ever read. Gleitzman at his very best has created one of the most tender, endearing characters ever to grace the pages of a book.’
Sunday Tasmanian
‘ . . . a story of courage, survival and friendship told with humour from a child’s view of the world.’
West Australian
THEN
I had a plan for me and Zelda.
Pretend to be someone else.
Find new parents
Be safe forever.
Then the Nazis came.
‘ . . . an exquisitely told, unflinching and courageous novel.’
The Age
‘[Gleitzman] has accomplished something extraordinary, presenting the best and the worst of humanity without stripping his characters of dignity or his readers of hope.’
The Guardian
‘Gleitzman’s Felix and Zelda are two of the finest and sure-to-endure characters created in recent times.’
Hobart Mercury
NOW
Once I didn’t know about my grandfather Felix’s scary childhood.
Then I found out what the Nazis did to his best friend Zelda.
Now I understand why Felix does the things he does.