Razzia means: they’re coming to get my dad
A giant tree it was, a Dutch elm. Its rusty trunk stood like a sentry, its crown dwarfing the house we lived in. Its thickest branch reached out to the little dormer window on the roof. It was my window. My escape route when I wanted to crawl out of the bedroom on a late summer evening. Of course, I was supposed to be asleep with my two brothers, but they slept with the two of them in one bed, whilst I, being eight and the oldest, always slept on my own.
That summer evening I had climbed through the open window into the branches of the elm, the leaves hiding me but also scratching my bare arms, their strong fragrance tickling my nose. During the day I had dragged some weathered planks from the tiny wood stack in the backyard to my tree. Only three planks, as the war was on and any plank had to be kept for fuel for our potbelly stove. But it was sufficient for my own cubby house in the tree, sufficient for my dreams to build a castle. Now, I could stand up and imagine myself a powerful lord surveying the sea and the ships and the airplanes, even though the houses on the opposite side of the street blocked most of my view.
I saw a dark figure coming from around the corner of our narrow street. The sound of heavy footsteps echoed back from the brick wall on the other end of the street. When the figure came closer I saw the moon reflecting on his green helmet, which seemed to wobble on his head. A German soldier, drunk, like the ones I had seen outside the café’s. I felt the tree jerk when he banged his head against it. I heard the soft sound of peeing and I had to pinch my nose closed against the rising smell of piss. Why did he have to use our tree? But as sudden as he had come, he went back, the clanking of his boots fading away. The street was quiet and mine. If I waited long enough I should be able to hear the far-away drone of the bomber-planes from England flying over, long enough before I would hear my mother yell for us kids to come downstairs and seek safety in the small pantry under the staircase. We were always there when we heard the engine noise from planes above and the shooting from anti-aircraft guns below. We would pray those endless prayers hoping that we might be saved from exploding bombs.
I sat still and listened for a while, but I became bored and climbed down a branch to look downstairs into the lounge room of our house. My father sat in the corner reading a book, the one with the curled edges he had read many times before. When he had turned the page, he closed his eyes. I could hear him snore.
Don’t fall asleep, man. It’s too early. It was my mother’s voice. She sat across from him, knitting a jumper from leftover wool. It would be another disaster for me to wear to school. The other kids would show off their perfectly knitted, brown jumpers their mums had bought in the shops of the German sympathizers. But my dad and my friend’s dad next door and the other men down the street wouldn’t allow the women to visit those shops.
The rippled edges of the bark started to cut into my bare feet and I tightened my hands around the branch above to alleviate the pain. How I wished to be one of the other kids, to wear their white runners with rubber soles, and their straight, brown jumpers. My dad and my friend’s dad were the stupid ones, always missing out, forever losers. We were probably the ones to be hit by a stray bomb from the planes from England
I am not sleeping, mensch. I am reading. I could see him jerking his back straight, his hand turning another page. He couldn’t have read the previous page yet. He was a sucker, my dad. Always listening to my mum. Never telling her to shut up and to mind her own business. With us it was different. He told us off in no uncertain terms. I remember him swearing at us when my mate Nathan and me wanted to join the Hitler-Jugend. We had seen the other kids marching and running and wearing those white runners and singing German songs and afterwards drinking large bottles of cool lemonade, causing us to piss behind the hedge where we were hiding. My father’s Come home, you fucking kids came with that harsh, guttural sound we tried to imitate in neighbourhood fights.
There is a razzia tomorrow, he said all of a sudden without looking up from his book.
I saw my mother dropping her knitting onto her lap. I could hear the tingle from the needles. She looked at my father, watching his face, waiting for more.
All men over forty, he said, have to stand outside… two o’clock… work camps in Germany
Over forty, over forty, I gasped. That old. I looked around me into the street, but there was no one who could have heard me.
It had to happen, my mother sighed. I’ll have some food and clothes ready. Tomorrow is Saturday. Only half a day’s work. When you come home from work, I’ll have it ready.
And that on Saturday, she repeated. I saw her hand rubbing her face. Closing my eyes I could smell their stale onion-odor.
My father kept looking in his book. He never looked at her when he couldn’t stop the hurt. I remember that from the bike-shed when I helped him killing our cat and the manner that he looked away from my mother when he told her that he had caught a rabbit. I had wanted to tell her that we had meat again, but his big hand hit me over the ear. Why hadn’t he just told her? We didn’t need the bloody cat anymore. He wasn’t a coward, my dad, just someone I couldn’t brag about to my mates.
I pulled one leg up onto the branch above me and adjusted the grip of my hands. I put my stomach against the bark and slowly lifted my body. Then edging forward, feeling the green moss filling my navel, I climbed back into the little window opening. I stood still for a moment and then, hoping that nobody would have heard me, crawled back into my bed.
That night I didn’t hear the drone of the far-away bombers, because I dreamt to be the pilot. I flew the big plane over the beach. My mates building their sandcastles were pointing at my plane. I waved, but they didn’t see me. Slowly, pulling back the steering wheel, I lowered the plane to just above the water. The heads of the swimmers were corks bobbing on the waves. There, just before the water break, my father swam. He didn’t look at my plane. I pulled and pushed the instruments, wanted to stop the plane, jump out to be in the water. The parachute, tight around my neck, wouldn’t open. I wanted to dive into the water, close to where my father was, but I kept on floating in the air. I never came down.
No school on Saturday. For us kids Saturday was a feast! But there was no feast in our street. Nathan, Sam and all my other mates were indoors. It was dead calm, the leaves of the elm quivering in the hot summer wind. My father had left for work at six o’clock, and would be home at twelve for his lunch and his nap. I don’t remember his usual early morning shouting that the fucking stove was buggered again. I don’t remember seeing my mother running around, trying the knobs of the gas stove, blowing into the small rubber hose to dislodge an air bubble. I do remember being in the street, trying to whistle with my thumb and finger in my mouth, but I hadn’t mastered it yet. When Nathan finally appeared from the lane beside his house, I had to tell him immediately.
There is a razzia today. My dad has to go.
I know. My dad is home. Getting ready.
Did you know they are old? Over forty!
It’s not fair.
My father was sitting in his corner of the kitchen, just opposite the passageway that led directly to the front door. Head was resting against the mantelpiece, his curly-edged book on his knee. From above my plate with red cabbage I looked at him carefully. He picked his nose and then rubbed the stubble of his unshaven face. He never shaved on Saturday. It was his day of feasting too. My mother was running in and out to the clothesline outside, carrying hankies and large flannelette singlets. I saw her pushing them into a jute sack. When she looked up I quickly stuck my head down into the plate of red cabbage. Nobody talked, but then my father, at this time on Saturday was always asleep. The slightest noise would result in a scornful reproach: Get outside, quick. Your father is asleep. I didn’t want to go outside. Not now. Soon the German soldiers would be coming. Through the open window I could see my brothers playing in the backyard. Dumb kids. I wasn’t going to tell them my secret.
My mouth was full and I was scraping my plate empty, when I heard the yelling and swearing outside in the street. I was up from my chair and helping mum pushing the clothes down the jute sack before I realized it. She told me to take the sack to the front door. As I dragged it along the passage I saw my father open his eyes, just for a second, but he didn’t move, didn’t say anything. I opened the front door, trying to lift the sack over the doorstep, but dropped it. There were soldiers everywhere. Nathan’s father was out in the front of his house with a similar grey sack as I was trying to lift. Two soldiers stood in front him studying some papers. Slowly Nathan’s father shuffled towards the middle of the street, joining a small group of men. Women scurried in and out their front door, coming out with cheese sandwiches, half wrapped in paper. Kids were running everywhere, all the time being pushed aside. The soldiers had their rifles hanging from their shoulders like toys. They yelled constantly: Schnell, schnell. But the men moved slowly, as if tired. Too tired to embrace the women, too tired to kiss the children. They just took their spot in the queue.
I bent over to lift the sack again and swore at the rotten doorstep. That is when I saw the black boots of two soldiers only inches away from my eyes. Blood rushed to my face. I looked back at my father for support, but he didn’t move. My mother was trying to wake him up.
Come, man, come. They’re here…The rest of her words got smothered in her hands rubbing her face.
Schnell, schnell. The yelling of the soldiers went high above my head into the passage. I looked again at my father. He picked his nose, but didn’t move. Only when I felt the cramp in my stomach starting to hurt, did he open his eyes.
I stay put, he said without moving his head. I am sick of you bastards… Got kids to feed. He just turned a page of his worn-out book.
I felt the beginning of an explosion in my throat. All I saw was the rifles. I craned my neck to see the faces underneath the helmets, but stopped in the middle of my action, as the faces had stopped yelling. They talked to each other in German which I didn’t understand. Maybe it was their feast of Saturday as well, because they looked at the walls of the passage, the wooden clothes hangers, the broken mirror, the frayed bit of tapestry, but they didn’t look at my mother. Their last look was at my father. Then they turned around and walked back around the great elm into the street, suddenly yelling again at the small group of men in the middle, pushing them along towards the corner.
That evening I climbed again into the elm. Piece by piece I took the planks away, slid them through the little window and hid them under my bed. The next day I chopped them up, my blunt axe, for an instance, causing a shower of sparks when it hit the concrete. I have never climbed that Dutch elm since.
END
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