Diaspora, Part 4
Diaspora
Chapter 4
Thank you for your patience! I've had this story beta ready by the brilliant Killslay, who brought it more in line with historical accuracy. The first three chapters have been re-written, available at my ff.net accound and here, here and here. Also, I've kinda screwed with the timeline here, so things are not going to be happening in movie-canon order. There will be Raven, but not for a while yet.
They sit side by side out of the wind come lunchtime. Erik should go back home for lunch, but Charles has brought his lunch with him and is happy to share. And he talks, so Erik thinks this will be good English practise just keeping up with him.
"You are not going home?" This part of the grounds is bare earth, their shoes scuff the dirt.
Charles picks up a stick to draw patterns in the dust. "I don't live in the city, I get picked up after school, but it's a waste of time otherwise."
He doesn't look too bothered by this, Erik doesn't blame him;- he's got enough food packed to feed Erik, the twins, and probably Moshe as well. Charles gives a sheepish smile, "They always give me too much, here;" he leans over to point out the sandwiches. "That's chicken, and that one's ham, and that one's egg."
He doesn't seem to mind sharing and he must have seen Erik's thoughts because he gives a small shrug. "I don't have much chance to share anything."
Erik grins. "You must not have any brothers or sisters."
Charles shakes his head, Erik takes a chicken sandwich. It's delicious, "Do you?" Charles asks.
Erik nods hard and swallows. "Yes," he counts them off, "One older sister, two younger sisters, one younger brother, one baby sister. And we're living with my aunt too."
"And you all came over from Poland?" Charles looks eager. That's fair, Erik is pretty curious about this generous only child too.
He nods, "Only a few months ago, my mother was worried about Them." He swallows another mouthful of sandwich.
"Them?"
"In Germany, you know. The Nazis."
"Oh." Charles blinks, "I thought they weren't going to invade Poland. They made a deal with the English Prime Minister not to, didn't they?"
Erik has no idea, "I don't know. I don't read newspapers." He probably should. He's not sure which would be worse, the row to end all rows there would be at home if They didn't invade, or what would happen to the family in Poland if They did.
"So you all came over? Your whole family?"
Erik gives a short laugh, "No, hardly any of us really."
"How many were you?" Charles is smiling.
How many? Erik has no idea. "A lot, the village were lived in were almost all part of the family." It's a pang, and he quickly scrambles for something else to say. "Have you always lived here?"
Charles nods, "Not in the city, just outside it. I'd love to live here."
Erik smiles. "Yes, it's very good here." A moment of silence as they look around at the city around them.
"Want another one?" Charles is offering a ham sandwich.
He can just imagine Great-Grandmama's reaction to that and he shakes his head quickly.
"Oh." Charles puts down the sandwich and looks a little lost.
Erik hadn't meant to hurt the kind boy's feelings and scrambles around for an explanation. He could lie, Mother's warning still rings in his ears, but this boy might just be his friend, and what's the point of having a friend if you lie to them? "I'm Jewish."
"Oh!" This time Charles brightens. "Have this one then." An egg sandwich. Erik takes it with a smile. "Is that why you left?"
Erik nods. And then he's talking, in somewhat stilted English, about the village and the house, and the family. Then about the rows and the decision to leave-
"- And my sister told me it must be serious, because my grandfather gave me his old chess set, and it's very old and important to him, so he must have wanted to get it out of the way-"
"Do you play?"
"A little." Not very well: Erik still hasn't found many to play with.
"I'll play you, if you want. I keep trying to start a club here, but no one's interested."
The bell goes, they get up and stretch cramped legs, the rest of the lunch is packed away. Charles frowns, "Won't your parents be worried you didn't come back for lunch?"
Erik hesitates, "Maybe." Probably was more likely. "I'll bring my own lunch next time. Thank you for letting me share yours."
"It's fine." A blinding smile that makes Erik grin back. "They seem to think I'm Cain, and pack accordingly."
"Who is Cain?"
"My stepbrother. We'll be having maths now; I hope you're good at it because I'm rubbish-"
Erik never had a friend like Charles. Most of the children back in Poland were either family or people he sort-of knew, but was never close to. Charles is more like family, only Erik hasn't known him all his life.
And it's nice. It's nice to know he will always have a partner for schoolwork, and someone to sit with in the courtyard. Someone to talk about schoolwork and families with (Charles never says much about his, but Erik supposes he doesn't have much to say, with only one brother and that a step-brother). They are the only thirteen year olds in the class, and stick together against the taunts from their classmates. They check over homework together before classes, find books together in the library. And talk. About everything.
Since Erik admitted he didn't read newspapers, Charles started bringing them to school for them to look over. They don't make much sense, although Charles is always eager to point out why something was happening like this and how last week this politician had said the exact opposite. Flicking through today's offering, Erik feels uncomfortable. All of this is going on around them and he's stuck in school. There's a picture of a Them parade and Erik hurriedly turns the page, he doesn't want to know, not when he's here and can't do anything.
"Can I see?" Erik hands the paper back. Charles flicks back to the page in question and blinks at it. "That was yesterday?"
Erik shrugs. "It's their country, they have parades." As long as they stay to their borders.
Charles blinks. "That was here." The paper is pressed flat to the dirt so Erik can see it. "See? Manhattan."
Erik sees, and is suddenly feeling very, very sick. He hopes his mother didn't get the paper today. He hopes Father didn't get the paper today. Hopefully the row would be over by the time he gets home.
"There was a fight apparently. Some protesters didn't like the march." Erik must have looked very fierce because Charles smiles without looking up from the paper. "You think you could have stopped them?"
"I could have tried."
Charles stretches, "Maybe you could have brought your family along, then we might have had a chance."
Erik manages a smile. "We would have had to build a barricade."
"We could have stolen tables and chairs from the school."
The plan of what to do if the German-American Bund invade the school keeps them busy until the bell goes, and they go into school still debating the virtues of roof tiles over chair legs as missiles, and whether guns were a realistic option.
(.org/wiki/German_American_Bund)
Erik waves goodbye to Charles at the end of the day. The other boy is waiting to be picked up, and Erik needs to be home for dinner.
The atmosphere in the house is even colder than the February wind outside and Erik makes two quick realisations. Firstly, his hopes that the newspaper went unnoticed were in vain, and secondly, he isn't really that hungry and the library will still be open for another two hours.
"I think I left something at school." He yelps out and runs before anyone can say anything. He thinks something was called after him, but he's too quick, clattering down the stairs and out the door before he can actually hear anything.
The two hours in the library are mostly spent reading books on cars and buildings, two of Erik's favourite topics, but his eyes keep sliding off the page and wandering over to the people around him, or the clock. It's getting late, and he's getting very hungry indeed. Would dinner be finished yet? What if they were waiting up for him when he came home? In Poland it would have been easy to climb in directly through his window, but not here.
Finally, Erik gives up, it's been more than an hour and the library will be closing too. Hopefully there'll some left-over food in the kitchen-
Charles?
Erik blinks at the figure he's just seen turn a corner. It can't possibly be, but it had looks so much like-
"Charles?" He calls out, and jogs over to the corner, looking down the way the figure had gone.
No one. Erik blinks and shakes his head. It can't have been. Anyway, what would Charles have been doing here? He'd heard that you could hallucinate if you were really hungry, maybe that was it.
Erik's luck was out. His mother was waiting up in the dining room.
"Erik."
Erik tries not to cringe. He's thirteen, he shouldn't cringe, but it's his mother.
To his shock, his mother gets up, walks over and pulls him into a hug. Erik blinks, vaguely surprised that his head reaches her shoulder easily now. The hug is tight and lasts a long time, his mother rocking his gently as though he was a child. Erik is so surprised it doesn't even strike him to be embarrassed.
"Oh Erik, I'm sorry." She releases him and pushes his hair out of his face. "I've had a word with your father, we can't go on like this."
Erik is very glad he wasn't there for said word. He hasn't a clue what to say and so stares at his feet instead.
"Well, having your son run out on you is an incentive, I suppose." She pushes him gently towards the kitchen. "Eat; I left out some food for you. You were at the library, I hope."
Erik nods, eyes lighting up at the plate of food.
"Well, no more rows, I promise. We have to be all in this together, and I think your father understands that now."
Erik is regretting taking grandfather's chess set to school. Things aren't too bad, maybe the fact that there are two of them make the bigger, nastier boys in their class reluctant to directly attack them. But they often get shoved in the corridors, their bags kicked to pieces, and their lunches stolen. What they'd do to the ancient, beautiful chess set isn't worth thinking of. But he really wants to show it to Charles, and if he's really careful with it, surely it's worth the risk.
He doesn't tell anyone he's taking it, just in case.
Charles is waiting for him at the gates; and smiles when he sees Erik. It's hard not to smile back: Charles has the brightest smile Erik has ever seen in anyone. "Here." He says in greeting, and takes Charles behind an outhouse and unwraps the chess box from his coat.
It was completely worth the risk. Charles' face lights up and he takes the box reverently from Erik, sitting down on the ground and opening it on his lap to see the figures. First a pawn, then a rook, then the white queen, going over them in tiny detail while Erik stands over him, feeling so proud it's like a balloon's welling up inside him.
Charles looks up at him, another wonderful smile. "Sit down." He encourages. Erik sits next to him, and takes the queen from him. "They're perfect." Charles breathes. "Are they any good?"
Good for what? Erik's smile fade, Charles sees it and quickly continues, "How do they play? Do they let you win? My father-" Charles breaks off, looks away. Erik says nothing, this is the first time Charles has mentioned his father. "He said every great chess player has a game they always win with."
"Maybe this was my grandfather's good game." Erik looks back at the pieces with new appreciation. Then he frowns, remembering all the games he lost in the hotel. "I haven't won much with them."
"Oh." Charles pauses, then a flashing grin again. "Well, maybe they're not used to you yet, maybe they still think you're your grandfather. Want to play?"
Erik doesn't think he'd ever turn an offer down, particularly from Charles. Even when he doesn't have anyone to play with, he likes to set them up on the board and just look at the pieces, all lined up perfectly. He's so used to it that it's the work of a few seconds to set the pieces up.
Then the bell goes. "Damn." Charles mutters, Erik looks at him in surprise, and he blushes . "At lunch?"
Erik nods, and the pieces are quickly packed away.
The last class before lunch is Latin. "-I would like it a lot more." Erik is more thinking aloud than talking, but Charles is listening anyway. "If it was taught like a language, like French. Then- yes."
"How many languages do you speak?"
It's maybe a little embarrassing to admit. Charles can speak French and German and is so good at Latin he might well be fluent in that as well. Erik's Latin is ghastly. "Just three. Polish, German, and English."
"That's still a lot, I can't speak Polish." One of the larger boys shoves past them and Erik stumbles, clutching the precious box to his chest. Charles steadies him, then looks up and down the corridor. Erik pauses, and looks at him, confused. No one is paying attention to them. Then Charles grabs his hand- his fingers are shockingly warm- and pulls him through a door that turns out to lead to a cupboard filled with mops and buckets.
"Charles, what-"
"Shh." Charles presses a finger to his lips, barely hiding his smile, eyes dancing. They are so close their shoulders are brushing, and Erik can see Charles' shaking with barely suppressed laughter. "You want anyone to hear you?"
Erik glances at the door, and decides to play along. He's not sure if Charles really believes half the things he says, about chess pieces being partial about their players and hiding like spies, but it's always been fun so far.
"We've got to get to behind the outhouse." Charles whispers. "We can't let anyone see us. They'd love to spoil our game if they saw us."
Erik nods, he's not sure if Charles really means the other boys or if they're pretending to be fighting Nazis again, but never mind. "If we take the stairs to the first floor, they'll think we're hiding inside again. But then we can take the fire escape down and then we can get-"
"Behind the sheds to the outhouse." Charles finishes, nodding. He takes Erik's hand again, his nails scraping Erik's palms. "Come on!"
It takes them five minutes to cover a distance of no more than ten meters, but they're red-faced and laughing breathlessly by the time they get behind the outhouse. Erik quickly sets up the pieces and Charles digs out their lunches.
Charles' lunch is huge, but it never changes. It's always sandwiches, an apple, and a chocolate bar (Cadbury's, always the same). Erik's is, as always, the leftovers from last night's dinner, in this case a small pot of boiled potatoes and turnips and a rather bruised tomato.
"White or black?" He offers.
"White." Charles drops down opposite Erik, his back against the wall, and immediately pushes a pawn forward. Erik sits down with his back against the outhouse wall, and starts with his favourite gambit, jumping his knight out.
They're a dozen moves in, when there's a horrible rapping noise. One of the boys in the class above them, a hulking boy with his nose smashed flat from football, is grinning at them with three of his cronies. Erik freezes, and Charles' face goes white.
"Wooo." The boy whistles. "Ain't this fancy."
Charles tries to smile, "Look, Alan, we're not in your way. We're just sitting here."
"Maybe we want to sit here. You're always in the way." The boy- Alan, takes a step forward, foot landing only millimetres away from the chess board. Dirt is scuffed across the shining ebony and white marble tiles. "And you stole my chess board."
Erik grits his teeth, blood flushing hot under his skin, reaching forward to grab the set. Charles catches his hand. "Come on Alan, you know you don't play. It's Erik's." He's trying to sound reasonable, but his voice has gone up and sounds more desperate.
"I wanted to start. And my father bought me one. And I lost it. And I see you got your kike friend to steal it." He leans forward, "What's the matter? Haven't got a daddy to buy you one, Charlie?"
Erik tries to get up, but his legs are tangled under him and Charles' digging his nails into his arm, a quick desperate look of don't.
Erik doesn't care, he doesn't care that this boy is twice as big as him and backed up by three boys almost as large. The set is his it was grandfather's it's his he is not letting anyone take it from him. "It's mine!" He spits.
The boy doesn't answer him, just reaching out a hand almost as big as Erik's head and shoving his head back to slam against the wooden wall. Erik tries to twist his hand free from Charles' desperate grip and bite the boy, but can't get a grip with his teeth. Behind them, the shed creaks loudly.
"Ugh." Alan lets go and looks at his hand. "He drooled on me. Is that a kike or a dog? Charlie, your dog got my hand dirty."
"Just leave us alone, Alan." Charles pushes Erik behind him. "We're not doing anything."
"You're messing around with my stuff." Alan is grinning. Erik bares his teeth, wanting to find something to snarl back, but everything he's coming up with is Polish.
"It's not your stuff!" Charles says desperately. "It's not even a chess set!"
Of all the things Charles has said, this is by far the most absurd. Erik tries to push him out of the way, maybe if he was fast enough he could grab the board and most of the figures, and he might be able to come back and find those he couldn't, assuming he could outrun Alan and his boys-
"Oh it's not, is it?" Alan sneers. "What is it then?"
"It's- it's- it's nothing. There's nothing there." Charles flourishes his hands as though performing some impossible magic trick.
And then Alan blinks and looks at them, then back at his cronies, then back at them. His sneer fades to confusion. "What?"
"There's nothing there." Charles repeats, still trying to hide the set with his hands.
A moment's silence, Alan looks around as though they're not there at all, back at his friends, then turns away. "Come on."
The stunned silence lasts until Erik starts coughing up an impossible laugh. Charles shakes his head, mouthing something soundlessly. He swallows, "How did- I don't-"
"How stupid are they?" Erik rubs his head where it's still aching from being rammed into the wall. "How stupid can anyone be?"
Charles shakes his head again, then hunches up and puts his head between his legs. He motions Erik to do the same. Erik obeys, turning his head to look at Charles upside down under his leg. The ground around them is covered in iron nails, some of them stuck in splinters of wood.
"Doctor's say it's the best way to calm down." Charles interrupts his thoughts, his colour is returning, and more than usual, his hair hanging out from his head.
Erik sits up and rubs his face, then starts packing the chess set away, brushing the nails off the board. The boys might be the most stupid people on the face of the earth, but he is not about to take chances.
Charles sits up reluctantly and smoothes his hair back. "It really helps," Charles insists, "It really helps when you're scared."
"I'm not scared." Erik snaps the case shut and wraps it in his coat. "I was angry, you should have let me-"
"I know their kind." Charles puts in quietly. "They would have really hurt you, and they would have taken your chess set anyway. I saw someone like that break a boy's arm once."
Erik scowls. "So what do we do, we just let them-" He waves his arm to encompass their little area, and what just happened.
Charles smiles sadly, and gets up, picking up their bags and brushing the dirt off it. "What did you used to do, in Poland?"
Erik hesitates, no one would have dared try. Most of the boys either had fathers working for some member of Erik's family, or was a member of Erik's family. It would have ended with the parents having a screaming match, or an actual fight, like when Erik's second cousin twice removed called Elsa a whore. He explains it to Charles, who laughs.
"I don't think your father could do that here. They'd throw you out." He sounds wistful.
Erik sighs, and helps Charles up. "Could we go to other schools? Does this happen everywhere?"
Charles nods, "Everywhere I went to."
Erik sighs, and stokes the chess box. If anything had happened- he doesn't want to know what his father would have done to him, but Erik knew he would never have forgiven himself. "I'll have to keep it at home." He says sadly, then brightens, "You could visit me and we could play there."
Charles blinks, and maybe he does smile, but it disappears so fast, Erik isn't sure it was there. "I can't come. I get picked up after school. I really can't."
"Couldn't you ask them to wait? We always make more for dinner; there'd be plenty for you."
Charles shakes his head hard, "I can't, really. I'm sorry."
Erik is about to argue further, but Charles seems almost afraid, and he doesn't continue.
That day, the entire school has to stay behind when the shed Chares and Erik were playing behind collapses, the nails holding it together all neatly pulled out and lying in the dirt between the shed and the wall.