Soon

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  Morris Gleitzman grew up in England and came to Australia when he was sixteen. After university he worked for ten years as a screenwriter. Then he had a wonderful experience. He wrote a novel for young people. Now, after 36 books, he’s one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors.

  Visit Morris at his website:

  morrisgleitzman.com

  Also by Morris Gleitzman

  The Other Facts of Life

  Second Childhood

  Two Weeks with the Queen

  Misery Guts

  Worry Warts

  Puppy Fat

  Blabber Mouth

  Sticky Beak

  Gift of the Gab

  Belly Flop

  Water Wings

  Wicked! (with Paul Jennings)

  Deadly! (with Paul Jennings)

  Bumface

  Adults Only

  Teacher’s Pet

  Toad Rage

  Toad Heaven

  Toad Away

  Toad Surprise

  Boy Overboard

  Girl Underground

  Worm Story

  Aristotle’s Nostril

  Doubting Thomas

  Grace

  Too Small to Fail

  Give Peas a Chance

  Pizza Cake

  Once

  Then

  After

  Now

  Extra Time

  Loyal Creatures

  For the children who had no hope

  , I hope, the world will be a safe and happy place.

  This morning it isn’t.

  Over there, for example. On the roof of the apartment building next door.

  Two of them. Or is it three? I can’t see them because we’ve got sacks covering our windows, but I can hear their voices.

  I try to keep my voice as quiet as I can.

  ‘Gabriek,’ I whisper urgently. ‘Wake up.’

  Gabriek mumbles but stays asleep.

  I wish I didn’t have to disturb him. When he hears what I’m hearing, his poor middle-aged heart valves might not make it through to breakfast.

  My heart valves are hammering away like the engines on a plummeting Nazi fighter plane.

  You know how when a war ends and you give a big sigh because you’ve survived and things will be better and you start trying to live a normal daily life but things aren’t better because the city has been wrecked and people are hungry so you lay low on the second floor and pray that intruders won’t barge into your secret hideout and take it and kill you but now it looks like they’re going to?

  That’s happening to me and Gabriek.

  I slide out of bed and crouch low and wriggle over to the window. I open the sack curtains a bit and wipe my glasses and peer through the cracked windowpanes at the roof next door.

  The dawn light is murky, but I can see them.

  Three people.

  They haven’t seen us yet. They’re not pointing and plotting. But they could at any moment. If they see our cabbages and parsley they won’t be able to control themselves.

  This is exactly what we said, me and Gabriek, when we found this place. Perfect except for one thing. The roof next door. The one spot we can be seen from. But the building under it is so wrecked we didn’t think anyone would make it up there.

  This lot have.

  They must be desperate.

  I know how they feel. Me and Gabriek have to move fast to save ourselves.

  I wriggle back to Gabriek’s bed.

  ‘Gabriek,’ I say more loudly. ‘Wake up.’

  While I shake him I look around the hideout, trying to decide what we can take with us.

  The vegetable gardens in the oil drums are too heavy. The firewood is mostly still furniture and we haven’t got time to smash it up. The pickled cabbage? Gabriek’s vodka-making equipment? My medical library? Lucky I’ve only got two books.

  Gabriek sits up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he mumbles groggily.

  He’s a very heavy sleeper. People who drink a lot of alcohol usually are.

  ‘The roof next door,’ I say. ‘Three adults.’

  I hurry back to the window to see if they’re heading this way.

  That’s strange. Something about these people doesn’t look right. It’s the way they’re standing. They don’t look like ruthless violent home-stealers. They look scared. Like fugitives.

  Then I see something else.

  Creeping up behind the people, ducking between broken roof beams and collapsed chimneys, are several men.

  With guns.

  The people haven’t seen the men.

  Suddenly I know who the people are, and the men. I bang on the window and yell.

  ‘Look out.’

  I only yell it once and I don’t manage to get a window open to warn the people because Gabriek, who isn’t groggy any more, flings himself at me and we both thud to the floor.

  ‘Felix,’ he hisses. ‘Are you crazy?’

  Yelling out loud around here is a serious breach of security.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  But part of me isn’t sorry. The war’s over. This is meant to be peacetime. People shouldn’t be shot in peacetime.

  Too late.

  Gunshots echo through the empty shattered buildings.

  I kneel up and see the armed men throwing bodies down into the street.

  Oh.

  Gabriek drags me back onto the floor.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ he growls. ‘One simple rule. Stay quiet and out of sight.’

  Gabriek likes simple rules. Mostly I obey them because he’s such a kind and generous friend and he’s forty-two and I’m only thirteen and he knows how to keep us safe.

  But I know things too.

  I know exactly who those murdering thugs are. I don’t even need to see the badges on their leather jackets.

  Poland For The Poles, the badges say.

  ‘Those selfish bullies aren’t interested in us,’ I say to Gabriek. ‘They’re just after people who aren’t Polish.’

  Gabriek gives me a look.

  ‘We’re warm here,’ he says, ‘and we’re dry and we’ve got food. Everybody’s interested in that. So we don’t want anyone knowing about this place, specially brutal killers.’

  Gabriek’s right. But that doesn’t stop me wishing I could have helped those poor dead people lying in the street. Hunted down just because they were in the wrong country when the war ended.

  ‘Somebody should tell certain vicious pustules the war’s over,’ I mutter. ‘Tell them to stop killing and try a bit of sharing.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ says Gabriek, his mouth very close to my ear. And my nose, which a person shouldn’t do when they drink a lot of cabbage vodka.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I say, sliding away a bit.

  ‘You want to change the world,’ says Gabriek. ‘That’s natural at your age. But only dreamers try to change things when the world’s in this state. Sensible people know it’s as much as we can do to look afte
r ourselves.’

  I don’t argue.

  I know how lucky we are, surviving this long. How lucky I am to have Gabriek’s good protection.

  ‘How do you spot a sensible person?’ says Gabriek.

  I sigh. Gabriek says this at least once a day.

  ‘They’re alive,’ says Gabriek. ‘Sensible people stay alive because they don’t get involved in other people’s business and they don’t take risks.’

  I keep my mouth shut. Partly because it’s what sensible people do when they’re lying on a floor that always has rat poo on it no matter how often you sweep. But mostly because Gabriek wouldn’t want to hear what I’m thinking.

  I’m thinking of all the people who got involved in my business.

  Who took risks for me.

  Barney and Genia and Zelda and the others.

  OK, Gabriek’s right. They’re not here. They can’t be. They’re dead.

  But I’m here because of them, and the best way I can thank them is to be like them.

  , I hope, people won’t have to creep out of their homes each morning like I’m doing now.

  Tense.

  Anxious.

  Scared of being seen.

  I poke my head out into the street and look both ways like Gabriek taught me.

  Good. It’s raining. Not many people around. Nobody being shot.

  Yet.

  Before I slip away, I listen carefully, trying to hear Gabriek snoring two floors above. I can’t, but I know he is. That’s good too. My ears were trained by partisans, so if I can’t hear him, nobody can.

  I hurry away through the rubble, hood up, head down, not stopping till I get into an alley.

  I like alleys. They’re narrow and secret and you find interesting things in them. They smell a bit because of the dead bodies from the war under the rubble, but you can get anywhere in the city through alleys as long as they’re not blocked by bits of buildings or crashed planes.

  And mostly you can do it without being seen. It’s better to move around in secret if possible. It’s safer, and it’s harder for people to kill you.

  They still try sometimes.

  Gabriek would definitely try to kill me if he knew where I was going.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say to an elderly woman. ‘Can I help with that?’

  The woman is sitting on the kerb, hunched over and sobbing. The crowd swirling around us in the square is ignoring her. One of the woman’s fingers is sticking out from her hand at a medically very painful angle.

  This city square is a war zone. It’s the same every time there’s a food drop.

  You’d think experienced international charity relief organisations would know by now that when they hand out food, thousands of hungry people are going to fight and squabble for it.

  The elderly woman gives me a suspicious glare through her tears.

  I see why. Under her coat, gripped tight in her other hand, is a lump of bread.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say, crouching down and touching her arm gently. ‘I’m a doctor.’

  That’s not really true. I won’t be one for years. But I have to say that. Members of the public can’t just go around doing medical stuff.

  I take a small piece of wood out of my medical bag, which I keep hidden under my coat. It’s actually an old flour sack, but it’s all I’ve got for now.

  I kneel in front of the elderly woman and put the wood between her gums.

  ‘Bite on this,’ I say. ‘It’s been boiled.’

  I take a deep breath to steady my hands. I’ve only done this treatment once before, and that time I had some help. There were two partisans holding the patient down.

  I crack the woman’s finger back into place.

  She screams. The piece of wood flies out of her mouth and hits me in the head.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  She holds her injured finger and wails.

  ‘Let me put a splint on that,’ I say. ‘It won’t hurt so much with a splint.’

  The elderly woman kicks me between the legs. The pain makes my head flop forward onto the cobbles.

  Gabriek would probably say, I told you so. But I don’t care. When you’re educating yourself to be a doctor, you need all the practice you can get.

  ‘Now, now,’ says a voice. ‘Be a good patient. The doctor’s only trying to help you.’

  I look up. My eyes are watering and at first I can’t see clearly who spoke. I blink a few times so I can.

  A girl. She’s a bit older than me and she’s wearing a grubby pink coat. She’s holding something black against the elderly woman’s head.

  I blink again.

  It’s a gun.

  The elderly woman is stiff with fear.

  ‘She’s ready for the splint now,’ says the girl.

  My hands are fumbling as I take two more pieces of wood and a bandage from my medical bag. I place the pieces of wood on each side of the woman’s finger and bind it tightly with the bandage.

  The woman is very brave. She doesn’t make a sound. I think she might be in shock.

  ‘All done,’ says the girl, lowering the gun. ‘Except for payment.’

  She reaches inside the elderly woman’s coat and takes the lump of bread. The woman doesn’t say anything or try to stop her. Just stares at the gun. I don’t say anything or try to stop her either. I’m staring at the gun too.

  It’s pointing at me now.

  ‘This isn’t fairyland,’ says the girl.

  ‘Sorry?’ I say.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ says the girl, ‘people were kind and generous. The whole day long. But things have changed.’

  I still don’t understand.

  ‘This is 1945,’ she says. ‘You carrying on like this, being kind for free, you’re taking bread out of other people’s mouths. Keep on doing it, Doctor, and your fairy story will have a very medically sad ending.’

  She taps me on the head with the barrel of her pistol.

  ‘Understand?’

  I nod. She’s saying me helping people with their health is stopping other people earning a living.

  But who? Splint manufacturers? Undertakers? People who amputate fingers for cash?

  Her?

  I don’t ask.

  The girl puts the gun into her coat pocket and walks off into the crowd, the bread under her arm.

  Me and the elderly woman look at each other.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  The elderly woman scowls and walks away. She looks like she wishes she’d kicked me harder.

  I don’t think I was a very good doctor just then. In one of my medical books it says how a doctor should try to make a patient feel relaxed and safe. I don’t think that patient felt relaxed and safe, even before the girl arrived with the gun.

  I turn to leave.

  The crowd in the square is thinning out. The people with food are scurrying away. The people without food are trying to stop them. It’s not working because mostly the people with the food are bigger and stronger.

  Which is how the world is these days.

  I think of Zelda. If she hadn’t died three years ago, would she be like that girl? Tough and violent and greedy?

  I don’t think so.

  Zelda was only six, but you should have seen her loving heart. I know what Zelda would have said.

  That girl’s not the boss of this square. The pigeons are. Doesn’t she know anything?

  Thinking of Zelda makes me smile. Even though most of the pigeons have been eaten.

  Suddenly the day doesn’t seem so bad.

  But only for a moment.

  ‘You!’

  I look up.

  A man is shouting at me as he comes towards me.

  I step back.

  He’s huge and he looks very angry.

  Before I can duck away, he grabs me by the neck and lifts me off the ground.

  For a second I think he must be a relative of the elderly woman, come to complain about the standard of her medical treatment.

  Then I see
an older man standing next to him, and I see the door-lock the older man is carrying, and I know it’s much more serious than that.

  , I hope, the man will put me down.

  But I’ll still be in trouble.

  He’s very big and very furious. The older man with him holding the lock is smaller, but he’s doing a lot of scowling too.

  The people crossing the city square aren’t going to save me. They aren’t even looking at me. People around here always look at the ground to stay out of trouble and so they won’t trip over bits of buildings and unexploded bombs.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ the big man is yelling at me. ‘Your thieving cheating father.’

  He doesn’t mean my real father, who is dead and never cheated anybody. He means Gabriek, who never cheated anybody either.

  I’m starting to go dizzy. The man’s huge hand is still clamped round my throat and I can’t get any words out. Or hardly any air in.

  I look pleadingly at the people hurrying past.

  ‘Where is he?’ yells the man again.

  Even if I could croak it out I wouldn’t tell them. Gabriek goes back to bed most mornings till his head stops hurting from the cabbage vodka. It makes him sound unreliable, but he’s not.

  ‘Put the boy down, Dimmi,’ says the older man. ‘If you break his neck we won’t get our lock mended.’

  ‘Dad,’ says Dimmi. ‘Let me do this.’

  The older man gives him a stern look.

  Dimmi glares at me as if breaking my neck is tempting. But he puts me down.

  I gasp some breaths.

  My head feels wobbly and I’m finding it hard to think straight. But I know the big lock Dimmi’s father is holding is one of ours. Well, I found it and Gabriek fixed it up, which made it ours.

  ‘Good pork fat we paid,’ says Dimmi. ‘Good pork fat for a quality lock. Quality lock, pah.’

  He spits on my boots.

  ‘It is a quality lock,’ I say. ‘Off a castle.’

  I’m not sure if that’s completely true. I got it off the door of a pickle factory. But it’s big, so it could have came from a castle originally.

  ‘Look at it,’ says Dimmi. ‘Two days, broken.’

  His eyes are like angry embers set deep in his big fleshy head. They’re burning so brightly it’s a wonder his beard doesn’t burst into flames.

  He grabs my chin with a hand that’s got more meat on it than I’ve seen on a dinner table since I was four.