That’s happening to me now.
But it’s not a dream.
Cyryl is pushing his way towards me, wet lips smirking.
‘Your Hitler Youth friends can’t help you now, Jewboy,’ he says. ‘The police have arrested your vermin family.’
I stare at him, panic and confusion like a huge noisy crowd in my head.
‘Your stupid aunty and your stupid sister turned up at our shop with that Jew-lover Krol,’ says Cyryl. ‘The Nazis have had suspicions about him for ages. So when he walked in this morning and tried to buy clothes for a boy, my mother called the police.’
Dread slices into my guts like a bayonet.
‘That aunty of yours is a thug,’ says Cyryl. ‘She hit my mother. And your vermin sister bit a soldier. The Nazi police had to drag them away.’
‘Where did they take them?’ I say.
Cyryl does a big wet grin.
‘Town square,’ he says.
The town square is packed with people but I see Mr Krol straight away.
Oh.
Oh no.
Then I see Zelda and Genia.
I pray it’s not really them. I pray that any second they’ll come up behind me and give me a hug and Zelda will tell me off for having smudgy glasses and not being able see clearly.
She won’t.
Because I can see clearly. Even with smudged glasses. Even with tears.
Oh Zelda.
Oh Genia.
The breeze turns them gently and now they’re facing me.
Please, Richmal Crompton, do something.
If I go over there and lift them down from those posts and take those ropes from round their necks, it’s not too late is it?
I close my eyes because I know it is too late.
I can’t move.
I’m numb.
All I want to do is stay numb for ever. So I just stand here until some Nazi soldiers tell me to get lost and shove me away.
Then I’m not numb any more.
Then all I want to do is kill.
Then I went to Mr Krol’s farm.
No sign of Dov in the house.
I call his name while I look for a cellar or an attic or a hole in the barn floor. Finally I find him in the turnip bunker.
I tell him what’s happened and what I want to do.
He doesn’t take it in at first. He’s too busy staring at the wall and swearing and throwing turnips and crying and going on about what a good person Mr Krol was.
I tell him again.
‘I want to kill as many of them as I can,’ I say.
Dov looks at me.
This time he gets it.
He reaches under some turnips and pulls out a bag and unzips it.
I’ve seen that bag before.
‘All right,’ says Dov. ‘Let’s do it.’
Then we did the planning and the preparations, and then we went to get our revenge.
I should be scared, I know.
We walk towards the Nazi orphanage through the darkness. The big house ahead of us is all lit up. I can see guards at the gates. Soldiers and officers strutting around inside. All with guns. All trained to fight. And Hitler Youth vermin who say they’ll protect innocent kids but don’t.
I should be scared, but I’m not.
All I’m thinking about is how many of them I can kill. And how many of their families I can hurt. Families suffer a lot when fathers and sons are blown to pieces. Sometimes they go mad. Sometimes they starve.
Good.
‘Slow down,’ hisses Dov.
I know what he’s worried about. Us looking suspicious. Or slipping in the snow and going sprawling and showing the Nazis what we’ve got hidden under our coats.
I slow down.
We stroll up to the main gate. Dov says hello to the guard in German. The guard looks at us.
The blood on our Hitler Youth uniforms is on the back so the guard can’t see it. Dov was clever, shooting them that way.
The guard says something to us and waves us in.
We stroll through the gate, trying not to look too fat. It’s not easy when you’ve got six grenades taped to your chest and tummy.
My coat starts to slip off my shoulders and I yank it back on. I need it in position, partly to disguise the fatness and partly because of the other grenade in the side pocket.
The one I’ll explode first.
The one that will make all the others on my chest explode.
We reach the house. Dov looks at me. I look at him. This is where we split up. Him in the front. Me in the back. Two human bombs in two different parts of the house.
That way we’ll kill more of them.
Dov isn’t crying now. His eyes are hard. Mine are too. He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. There’s nothing to say.
Dov goes up the front steps.
I hurry round to the back of the house. I find an open door. Inside is a corridor. I go down it, listening for voices.
I want lots of voices.
I want a room packed with Nazis.
A thought hits me. What if Dov explodes himself before me? What if the Nazis in this part of the building all run away before I can blow them up?
I grip the grenade in my pocket, my finger through the ring of the pin.
Yes.
Voices.
I push open a door. A room full of Nazis. Some of them turn and stare at me. I hesitate. They’re mostly Hitler Youth.
Doesn’t matter.
I start to pull the pin.
‘Wilhelm.’
A voice behind me.
Dov?
I stop. I turn.
It’s Amon. He’s staring at me, his face all upset. Does he know? Has he guessed what I’m here to do?
‘Wilhelm,’ he says in a strange voice. ‘Come. I have your book.’
He grabs my shoulders and steers me back out into the corridor. I start to pull the pin again.
I hesitate again.
There’s something about Amon’s expression. He’s not looking scared, he’s looking sad. Plus he’s closed the door behind us. Now it’s just him and me in the corridor.
‘I tried, Wilhelm,’ he says. ‘I tried to save your sister but they wouldn’t listen to me.’
He’s holding something up in front of my face. Something that glitters in the corridor lights.
‘This was in your sister’s coat,’ he says. ‘Wilhelm, I’m sorry.’
I take it from him.
A locket.
Not silver like Zelda’s. A gold one.
It’s open. Inside each half is a tiny drawing. A boy on one side, a girl on the other. They’re facing each other. Under the girl is the letter Z. Under the boy is the letter F.
I stare at it.
My birthday present.
I stare at it for a long time.
Then I take my hand off the grenade in my pocket.
Then I grabbed Amon and dragged him down the corridor towards the back door.
‘What are you doing?’ he says.
I don’t answer.
As we burst out into the night, a huge explosion smashes through the house.
Screams.
Frantic shouting.
Rubble falling.
I realise I’m lying on the ground with pain in my ears and gravel in my mouth.
I find my glasses and put them on. They’re cracked, but I can still see.
Amon is on the ground too, staring at me in shock.
All around us, chaos.
Dust.
Panic.
People staggering around.
I pull the unexploded grenades off my chest and wriggle out of what’s left of the Hitler Youth uniform.
Amon is saying something, but I can’t hear what. I see the Richmal Crompton book I gave him, sticking out of his pocket.
I take it.
I still don’t speak.
I get to my feet.
I run.
Then I came back here to the barn and climbed into the h
iding hole and pulled the kennel over me and I’ve been here ever since.
Nearly eleven months.
The Nazis didn’t come looking for me so I think Amon must have told them I was blown up with Dov. If he did, I’m grateful to him.
I’m even more grateful to Gabriek.
He brings me food once a night and takes my wees and poos away and washes me sometimes and we have very good talks and sometimes we read Richmal Crompton stories to each other.
He always calls me Felix.
Sometimes we talk about Genia, which makes us sad but also happy because of how lucky we were to have her.
My legs are a bit weak and so are my eyes. I don’t get to use them much here in my dark hiding place.
But my memory is strong.
I’ve kept it strong by telling the story of me and Zelda in my head as I lie here on the straw. It’s what I do all day. It’s how I’m keeping my promise to Zelda. It’s why I decided to live.
I’m Zelda’s evidence.
She helps me. She stays in my mind all the time. I don’t even have to ask her.
One day in the future, when Richmal Crompton’s army defeats the Nazis, I’ll climb out of here and be the best human being I can for the rest of my life.
To show people what Zelda was like.
‘She was only six,’ I’ll say, ‘but she had the loving heart of a ten-year-old.’
And if people carry on hating each other and killing each other and being cruel to each other, I’ll tell them something else.
‘You can be like her,’ I’ll say. ‘Don’t you know anything?’
Let’s see what they do then.
Dear Reader,
As with Once (the first book I wrote about Felix and Zelda), this story comes from my imagination, but it was inspired by a period of history that was all too real.
I couldn’t have written this story without first reading many books about the Holocaust. Books full of the voices of the real people who lived and struggled and loved and died and, just a few of them, survived in that terrible time.
I also read about the generosity and bravery of the people who risked their lives to shelter others, often children who were not members of their family or faith, and by doing so saved them.
You can find a list of these books on my website. I hope you get to read some of them 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
June 2008
morrisgleitzman.com
puffin.com.au
Morris Gleitzman, Then
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