all will be well (fic!)
this won't make sense unless you've read not a soldier. (and possibly a great miracle, which is kind of the sequel.) my grown-up novel that i was never going to write used to be the romanaunovelthingofdoom - now it's the story of oskar and conrad. this is unresearched (except for five minutes spent googling for german last names) and unbeta'd and some of it came to me in the shower so consider yourselves warned for first-draft-ness. i don't like the title, but at least it has one.
November, 1945
Munich
It is the end of November, I am standing on the front steps of Conrad's parents' house, and I am more terrified than I have ever been in my life. He might not be here. He might not even be in Munich. He could be a prisoner of war in some camp somewhere, waiting to be sent home.
He could be dead.
I swallow my fear and knock on the door. I knock three times before someone answers, before the door creaks open and Conrad's mother peers out at me.
She is wearing a house dress and she is smaller than I remember, her lovely blonde hair gone ashy, her face thin. She looks at me suspiciously. She does not recognize me, and I do not blame her. I made sure to shave - wearing a beard made me feel like an old man, and being able to wear a clean face seems to me a sign of civilization - but I am older and thinner and no longer resemble the Oskar she once knew.
"Frau Maurer," I say. Her expression does not change. "Is. Is Conrad home?"
My voice is shaking. I want to blame it on the cold but the truth is that I am afraid and I am worried and after all these years, to stand on this stoop and ask for Conrad as if we were still boys and I wanted him to come out and play is absurd. But I just want to see his face. I just want to know he is still alive.
Conrad's mother now looks as if she is trying to remember something.
"Frau Maurer," I repeat, my voice still shaky but trying to be gentle, "you do not recognize me. I am Oskar Nadel. I was - "
"Oskar," she breathes. She covers her mouth with both hands. Now she looks as if she has seen a ghost, and in a way I suppose she has. They no doubt thought me dead, after I was taken with the rest of my family to the camps and did not return. I do not know if they have heard the same things I have - millions of my people dead, starved, shot, gassed in Hitler's Final Solution - and I do not want to know. I always thought Conrad's parents good people and I do not want to know what they heard and saw and understood and ignored.
I just want Conrad.
I have walked far and I am tired, and I am about to ask if I might come inside when he appears - my Conrad, older and more hollow in the face, but still handsome, and hopefully still mine.
"Mother?" he says, just as I say his name, and he looks at me, confused. He does not recognize me either.
"The blackbird flies at midnight," I tell him, our old childhood code. My voice is hoarse, near to cracking, and suddenly he is standing right in front of me, and then his arms are around me and he is whispering my name in my ear, over and over, holding me tightly, holding me up.
I bury my face in his shoulder. His sweater is scratchy. He smells of wool and cigarettes and soap. My heart aches with the heat of his body pressed against mine, the solidity of him, the reality of standing here with my arms wrapped tight around him. I was afraid to want this for so long, and now that I have it, it doesn't seem real.
"I was so scared you were dead," Conrad whispers. "I would never see you again."
"I wrote you letters," I tell him, ridiculous as it sounds. "I couldn't mail them, so I kept them. I lost some of them, I'm sorry."
He laughs. It sounds like a sob.
"Write me every day. Leave letters on my bed, or next to my plate at supper. Put them in my shoes. Never leave me again, Oskar."
"I walked from Paris to see you." I was always honest with him, and now I cannot tell him that his memory kept me alive - all the things I have seen and done and experienced, every time I thought they might kill me, I was preserved by my faith in the god of my forefathers and my faith in Conrad's love for me.
And so I tell him this the only way I can articulate, by mentioning the distance I have walked in my need to see his face once more.
He laughs again, this time with genuine mirth, and now I can hear his mother in the doorway behind us, inviting me inside. I let Conrad lead me into the parlor, take my coat, set me on the sofa, and sit next to me. He keeps touching me - my hand, my arm, my shoulder, my knee - and I cannot keep my hand from him either.
"You walked," he repeats.
"I did. From Paris. I saw it liberated, Conrad. I saw Americans marching through its streets and I thought Germany will be next, and I will go home."
"I dreamed of this," he says softly. "You and I, in the same room, alive and together."
"I did not. I could not. For a long time it was enough that god let me live. But I dreamed of you. You were always young and beautiful, and you loved me, and that was enough."
"I am no longer young." His face is sad. "I do not think myself beautiful. But I do love you, now and all the years I didn't know where you were. I loved you and I missed you and I thought about you all the time. I hoped you were alive. And here you are - skinny and different but mine, always mine."
I want to kiss him so badly my lips ache, and I am only prevented from doing so by the arrival of his mother with a tea tray. She sets it down on the table, pours tea, offers me a pastry. It is a simple, habitual, hospitable gesture, no different from the way she would treat any guest in her home, but I have been starved for years and this one thing, this small sign that my world has been set to rights, has me near tears.
Conrad's hand on my arm is reassuring. His mother does not seem to know what to say to me, and I understand. I do not know what to say to her either, now that I am here in her parlor sitting next to her son. Only "Thank you" when she hands me a delicate porcelain cup.
We sit for many minutes, sipping our tea and eating our pastries. I can hear the clock ticking. I wonder where Conrad's father is. I feel stifled, suddenly. Suffocated. I want to leave. I want to grab Conrad's hand and drag him out of this house and away from this country and I want to start over, and I want to run and I want to be gone.
And then Conrad's mother smoothes her skirt, dabs at her lips with a napkin, and sets her empty teacup on the tray.
"Oskar," she says, "you will... you will stay with us tonight, yes? I am sorry we have so little to offer, but I will make up a bed and you will sleep here. You will be safe." She stands, starts collecting the tea things. "I am glad you are well."
I am not well, I want to tell her. I was sent to a camp and after I escaped I lived in the forest with the partisans, and I walked from Poland to France, which I always wanted to see but which had no use for me as either a German or a Jew, and I walked from Paris to Munich and my entire family is dead and for seven years I have been afraid my own death was just around the corner and yes, I am alive, but I am not well.
But with the grace of god and the love of your son I will be.
That night I remake my bed on the floor, a soft mattress having become an alien thing I cannot sleep on. But Conrad sneaks into the room, coaxes me and the blankets back onto the bed, and lies down next to me. And now I do kiss him, and he kisses me back.
And I have been starved for this as well. Oh, how I have been starved.
"Oskar," he tells me eventually, "I had them reassign me." I have no idea what he is talking about. "I lied and I sucked up to my superiors so I could be taken off active duty and sent to an office. I was a coward and I was scared of dying, but I... I didn't believe. I didn't want to have to shoot anyone. I didn't want to have to watch people being rounded up and sent off in cattle cars. I couldn't desert - I would've been shot and it would've broken my mother's heart - but I couldn't fight. They used me as a draftsman. They taught me to be a junior architect." He chuckles. "My education saved me."
I touch his face. I don't care what he did during the war. I only care that he survived it.
"Let's go to Switzerland," he whispers excitedly. "You'll go to school and become a doctor. I'll work and support us. I'm done with buildings. Hitler and Speer took something natural and organic and turned it into propaganda. Something that should serve the individual person was made to serve the state."
I let him talk. I have never imagined what might happen beyond this point, after I have found Conrad alive and well, but it seems that he has. So perhaps we will go to Switzerland. We cannot stay here. I will not. And Switzerland did not rise against me and mine as did the country of my birth. The Swiss have no career prohibitions against Jews. I can learn medicine. Conrad and I can live like normal people, somewhere safe, somewhere together.
He falls asleep first. I watch him breathe, hoping that when I wake up in the morning, I do not discover that this has been a dream, and I am in fact hiding in a hayloft or in the back of someone's unlocked car. Or worse, I am in a relocation camp and have not walked anywhere at all.
I do not dream when I finally sleep, and when I wake, Conrad is still there beside me.
My world is slowly righting itself, my god is still looking after me, and my Conrad still loves me. All will be well.
November, 1945
Munich
It is the end of November, I am standing on the front steps of Conrad's parents' house, and I am more terrified than I have ever been in my life. He might not be here. He might not even be in Munich. He could be a prisoner of war in some camp somewhere, waiting to be sent home.
He could be dead.
I swallow my fear and knock on the door. I knock three times before someone answers, before the door creaks open and Conrad's mother peers out at me.
She is wearing a house dress and she is smaller than I remember, her lovely blonde hair gone ashy, her face thin. She looks at me suspiciously. She does not recognize me, and I do not blame her. I made sure to shave - wearing a beard made me feel like an old man, and being able to wear a clean face seems to me a sign of civilization - but I am older and thinner and no longer resemble the Oskar she once knew.
"Frau Maurer," I say. Her expression does not change. "Is. Is Conrad home?"
My voice is shaking. I want to blame it on the cold but the truth is that I am afraid and I am worried and after all these years, to stand on this stoop and ask for Conrad as if we were still boys and I wanted him to come out and play is absurd. But I just want to see his face. I just want to know he is still alive.
Conrad's mother now looks as if she is trying to remember something.
"Frau Maurer," I repeat, my voice still shaky but trying to be gentle, "you do not recognize me. I am Oskar Nadel. I was - "
"Oskar," she breathes. She covers her mouth with both hands. Now she looks as if she has seen a ghost, and in a way I suppose she has. They no doubt thought me dead, after I was taken with the rest of my family to the camps and did not return. I do not know if they have heard the same things I have - millions of my people dead, starved, shot, gassed in Hitler's Final Solution - and I do not want to know. I always thought Conrad's parents good people and I do not want to know what they heard and saw and understood and ignored.
I just want Conrad.
I have walked far and I am tired, and I am about to ask if I might come inside when he appears - my Conrad, older and more hollow in the face, but still handsome, and hopefully still mine.
"Mother?" he says, just as I say his name, and he looks at me, confused. He does not recognize me either.
"The blackbird flies at midnight," I tell him, our old childhood code. My voice is hoarse, near to cracking, and suddenly he is standing right in front of me, and then his arms are around me and he is whispering my name in my ear, over and over, holding me tightly, holding me up.
I bury my face in his shoulder. His sweater is scratchy. He smells of wool and cigarettes and soap. My heart aches with the heat of his body pressed against mine, the solidity of him, the reality of standing here with my arms wrapped tight around him. I was afraid to want this for so long, and now that I have it, it doesn't seem real.
"I was so scared you were dead," Conrad whispers. "I would never see you again."
"I wrote you letters," I tell him, ridiculous as it sounds. "I couldn't mail them, so I kept them. I lost some of them, I'm sorry."
He laughs. It sounds like a sob.
"Write me every day. Leave letters on my bed, or next to my plate at supper. Put them in my shoes. Never leave me again, Oskar."
"I walked from Paris to see you." I was always honest with him, and now I cannot tell him that his memory kept me alive - all the things I have seen and done and experienced, every time I thought they might kill me, I was preserved by my faith in the god of my forefathers and my faith in Conrad's love for me.
And so I tell him this the only way I can articulate, by mentioning the distance I have walked in my need to see his face once more.
He laughs again, this time with genuine mirth, and now I can hear his mother in the doorway behind us, inviting me inside. I let Conrad lead me into the parlor, take my coat, set me on the sofa, and sit next to me. He keeps touching me - my hand, my arm, my shoulder, my knee - and I cannot keep my hand from him either.
"You walked," he repeats.
"I did. From Paris. I saw it liberated, Conrad. I saw Americans marching through its streets and I thought Germany will be next, and I will go home."
"I dreamed of this," he says softly. "You and I, in the same room, alive and together."
"I did not. I could not. For a long time it was enough that god let me live. But I dreamed of you. You were always young and beautiful, and you loved me, and that was enough."
"I am no longer young." His face is sad. "I do not think myself beautiful. But I do love you, now and all the years I didn't know where you were. I loved you and I missed you and I thought about you all the time. I hoped you were alive. And here you are - skinny and different but mine, always mine."
I want to kiss him so badly my lips ache, and I am only prevented from doing so by the arrival of his mother with a tea tray. She sets it down on the table, pours tea, offers me a pastry. It is a simple, habitual, hospitable gesture, no different from the way she would treat any guest in her home, but I have been starved for years and this one thing, this small sign that my world has been set to rights, has me near tears.
Conrad's hand on my arm is reassuring. His mother does not seem to know what to say to me, and I understand. I do not know what to say to her either, now that I am here in her parlor sitting next to her son. Only "Thank you" when she hands me a delicate porcelain cup.
We sit for many minutes, sipping our tea and eating our pastries. I can hear the clock ticking. I wonder where Conrad's father is. I feel stifled, suddenly. Suffocated. I want to leave. I want to grab Conrad's hand and drag him out of this house and away from this country and I want to start over, and I want to run and I want to be gone.
And then Conrad's mother smoothes her skirt, dabs at her lips with a napkin, and sets her empty teacup on the tray.
"Oskar," she says, "you will... you will stay with us tonight, yes? I am sorry we have so little to offer, but I will make up a bed and you will sleep here. You will be safe." She stands, starts collecting the tea things. "I am glad you are well."
I am not well, I want to tell her. I was sent to a camp and after I escaped I lived in the forest with the partisans, and I walked from Poland to France, which I always wanted to see but which had no use for me as either a German or a Jew, and I walked from Paris to Munich and my entire family is dead and for seven years I have been afraid my own death was just around the corner and yes, I am alive, but I am not well.
But with the grace of god and the love of your son I will be.
That night I remake my bed on the floor, a soft mattress having become an alien thing I cannot sleep on. But Conrad sneaks into the room, coaxes me and the blankets back onto the bed, and lies down next to me. And now I do kiss him, and he kisses me back.
And I have been starved for this as well. Oh, how I have been starved.
"Oskar," he tells me eventually, "I had them reassign me." I have no idea what he is talking about. "I lied and I sucked up to my superiors so I could be taken off active duty and sent to an office. I was a coward and I was scared of dying, but I... I didn't believe. I didn't want to have to shoot anyone. I didn't want to have to watch people being rounded up and sent off in cattle cars. I couldn't desert - I would've been shot and it would've broken my mother's heart - but I couldn't fight. They used me as a draftsman. They taught me to be a junior architect." He chuckles. "My education saved me."
I touch his face. I don't care what he did during the war. I only care that he survived it.
"Let's go to Switzerland," he whispers excitedly. "You'll go to school and become a doctor. I'll work and support us. I'm done with buildings. Hitler and Speer took something natural and organic and turned it into propaganda. Something that should serve the individual person was made to serve the state."
I let him talk. I have never imagined what might happen beyond this point, after I have found Conrad alive and well, but it seems that he has. So perhaps we will go to Switzerland. We cannot stay here. I will not. And Switzerland did not rise against me and mine as did the country of my birth. The Swiss have no career prohibitions against Jews. I can learn medicine. Conrad and I can live like normal people, somewhere safe, somewhere together.
He falls asleep first. I watch him breathe, hoping that when I wake up in the morning, I do not discover that this has been a dream, and I am in fact hiding in a hayloft or in the back of someone's unlocked car. Or worse, I am in a relocation camp and have not walked anywhere at all.
I do not dream when I finally sleep, and when I wake, Conrad is still there beside me.
My world is slowly righting itself, my god is still looking after me, and my Conrad still loves me. All will be well.