For Amusement's Sake

[sariagray]

So. A million, billion years ago (or...one year) I wrote and self-published a collection of nine short stories. I am pretty sure all of them are crap. I decided to post a random one tonight because I am clearly in need of sleep and want to do something that I'll regret in the morning.

But the story is a true one, as far as I know. My mother told it to me when I was a little girl (the nurse in the story is based on her). Things have obviously been changed, and while I'm not proud of the craft, I am proud of the story itself. Not that I have any right to be.

Warning: This story deals with WWII-era themes, concentration camps, segregation, loneliness, etc. Do not read if you're triggered by such things.

Tailor

She pulled her curly black hair back in a bun, tucked a pen in her pocket, and grabbed his chart. Name: Steinberg, Mordecai. Date of Birth: October 2, 1919. He would be seventy years old in less than a week. He was quickly recovering from his hip surgery, although his chart indicated that he was still on antibiotics and the evening nurse had written that he became confused at times. She sighed, dreading the disheartening task of reminding patients that they were in a hospital. They were afraid of the beeping, the tubes, the sterile walls surrounding them. Still, she couldn’t avoid doing his blood work.

“Mr. Steinberg?” she prompted quietly, stepping into the dark room. “Are you awake?” She heard a stirring followed by a silence. If he was asleep, she would wait until morning.

“What time is it?” The voice was faint, tinged with an Eastern European accent, clouded with age and sleep.

“A quarter to midnight. I came to check your blood work, but I can come back later if you’re tired.”

“No, no. I am awake now. Please.”

She smiled, relieved to find him lucid, and approached his bed while preparing the needle. Laying it on a tray, she took his arm and turned it toward her. She noticed something blurred on his upper arm. She stared at the area for a moment before realizing that the blur was a tattoo of numbers. The once-black ink was now a faded blue; the numbers had shrunk and were obscured by wrinkles of skin.

The old man cleared his throat and she started.

“I’m so sorry…I just…are you…?” she stammered.

He gave a sad, rough smile and nodded.

“Forgive me,” she said, collecting herself. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It is all right. No one here pries when they should. I will tell you my story if you would like to hear it.”

She nodded and pulled the plastic blue chair over to his bedside. She quickly finished drawing a vial of his blood for the lab, and sat down next to him.

“Before Hitler rose,” he started, “I was a tailor. My father was a tailor before me. We had a small shop that he purchased when I was a boy and it did well. The year I turned eighteen, my father died. At the time, I was very upset. Very angry and sad. Now, I am happy. He had his share of war. He died at peace.”

The room was bright and airy, as his father would have wanted it. The windows were thrown open and the fragrant air of spring wafted in, tickling the thin white curtains. Blue sky stretched lazily overhead while puffs of white cloud floated along.

Death, at least its scent, was noticeably absent. It did not bear down oppressively on his chest, it did not fill his lungs, it did not weigh his steps. The day was gauzy, full of light-hearted mirth. He hated it, wishing instead that the weather would rage in protest against this loss of life.
His father was undeniably, irrevocably dead.

His father had left him with a shop, a pair of scissors, and bolts of muted cloth. Of course he had been trained in the task, but the sudden loss had left him feeling unprepared. He did not have his father’s deceptively large, yet nimble hands, those callused and hard tools of the trade that also maintained a level of softness, gentle in their pursuits.

Mordecai was eighteen and his hands were still awkward, fumbling, foreign things. His voice, too, did not have the timbre of his father’s. His own voice faltered and hesitated with uncertainty, while his father spoke deeply with soft reassurance. He was alone for the first time in his life.

Years later, after he had established himself within the small village, he looked back to the time with a nostalgic fondness rather than the anger he had previously harbored. Although he still greatly missed the man who raised him, he had matured in his understanding of matters of death.

“It was when I was twenty-one that I was taken, or maybe twenty-two. I followed all of the rules, so I thought I was safe. We all did. They rounded us up and took us to Dachau, where I was marked as cattle. I labored there for years, like Sisyphus, somehow avoiding the random executions and surviving. But you figured that out yourself. Please…if I am keeping you….”

“Not at all! Please, continue,” she urged.

It had been a cold day, dark grey and bitter. Ice, rain, and snow had been falling since the previous evening and few people went far from their glowing warm fires. Commerce could wait for the weather to clear and, as he had finished his commissions, Mordecai settled himself before a fire with a cup of tea and his accounts to review.

There was a knock at the door, tentative yet urgent. He reluctantly rose from his old plush chair.

“Under no circumstances should one leave the warmth of a fire to let in the cold outside,” he thought belatedly as he carried granite with the muzzle of a gun against his back.

“You know, not all Nazis were bad people. Some of them were there because there was no other choice. Especially as the years wore on and war expanded. It was towards the end of the war, I think the autumn of ‘43, when they decided to move us. We had all heard stories of camps where the only purpose was to kill. Some of us believed, and some of us refused to believe.”

He gave Mira a piece of his mealy roll as they spoke under their breath.

“I think they will move us to a place where we will do more work, maybe harder, but why kill us when we can work?” she asked him around a furtive mouthful.

“Because they hate us. They want to rid the world of us. The things they make us do…we are not doing real work. We are just being humiliated. They don’t need us.”

“But the rock you carry.…”

“Is only for show. We move it across the camp and then move it back. Over and over until someone somewhere needs it. No one’s needed it in a year.”

“You’ve been here so long and you are alive. Why kill you now?”

“Because they can.”

“The morning of our journey, we were all herded into a line at the train station. Before we boarded the cars, we had to be checked off of a list by a commander, the Gruppenführer. As the line shortened in front of me, I gave up hope. I gave up faith.”

The air was warm and sweet-smelling, a delicate breeze raked the scent of new flowers over the dry, packed dirt. A pale orb in the blue sky, the sun was high overhead as they lined up before the waiting train cars. There seemed to be hundreds linked together so far out that no one could tell which way the train was headed.

None of the cars had windows. They were intended for cattle and were made of mere slats of dry wood. Though it was barely spring and the air was not hot, it would be hard to breathe in the cars. The doors on the side were open and remnants of hay were scattered over the floor.

They had been told that the trip would take less than a day and that they would stop for water. This calmed many, but he knew better. He had heard promises before and had seen them broken. His skepticism was his survival. He bowed his head, finally resigned.

“I heard a voice. ‘Herr Steinberg!’ I ignored it, but it continued. ‘Herr Steinberg? Der Schneider? Ich bin Hans! Hans Ziegler!’ I turned towards the voice and saw a man I had not seen for many years. He was a solid man, big and smiling. It was his eyes that I noticed first. I have never forgotten a person’s eyes. He used to come into our shop and my father would make clothes for him. It shocked me to see him standing there. Then the man in charge, he was SS, turned toward us and I feared for my life. Attention in the camps was never a good thing.

“‘What is this about, Oberführer Ziegler?’ the man asked. Hans saluted. ‘I know this man, sir, from my home. He is the best tailor I have met. I would like to buy him for my wife.’”

He stood there, shocked. There seemed to be a silence that stretched for miles as people listened. He didn’t know what they thought and he didn’t care. This was no longer about his people, but about the animalistic need to survive.

Still a skeptic, he waited. His memory having been bludgeoned with images of torture and pain for years could barely recall Hans and he wasn’t sure what kind of master he might be.

The old man coughed a dry, rattling sound that echoed through the dark room. The nurse poured him a glass of tepid water and put it to his lips.

“Thank you, dear. Now…I was embarrassed to be bought as a slave, but I believed that sudden death awaited me otherwise. I did not believe that any Nazi would let me be sold rather than killed. But people are greedy and the purse of money was accepted. I was pulled from the line and dragged out of the camp by Hans. He made a show of beating me on the way, but he never actually touched me. When we got away from the guards, he released my arm. ‘Herr Steinberg, your father was a good man. When my family struggled, he made new jackets for my brothers and me, and new dresses for my sisters out of scrap cloth. He never took money from a family who could not afford it. Consider my family’s debts paid.’ He smiled at me and told me to run. He bought my freedom. He saved my life.”

He stood frozen as the money exchanged hands. He knew death awaited him if he stepped onto one of those cars, knew it with the same certainty that he knew the measurements of a man by sight. Sometimes, he prayed for death to end the torment. He had no decision in the matter.

Hans grabbed his arm and dragged him. It ached, though the pain felt distant, as though someone else was being tugged instead of him. He was still resigned. Fate would have its way with him.

When they stopped and Hans started yelling out of the blue, he was afraid. The man he barely remembered raised his hand and went to hit him, but missed. Again and again. He understood then what was happening. And when he was told to run, he did. Tears stained his cheeks as he flew through the deserted camp. The weather was almost as beautiful as freedom, as a second chance. It sang to him. His heart sang back. The breeze at his back grew strong, urgent, yet it gently pushed him along.

“Thank you, Father,” he whispered.

The old man coughed and continued as the nurse put her hand over his.

“Hans Ziegler was killed by the Russians after they took control of Germany. I was not there to save him, as I had fled to America. He was a good man. I regret it every day, though I don’t know what I would have done.”

He was reading the paper, drinking coffee. When he had arrived in New York, he felt like a lost sheep until he found a community who accepted him. The world was very different than any in which he had ever lived. Buildings towered above like kings and no one seemed to notice the peasantry. Just as well; he was tired of being noticed.

There were reports from Germany all of the time, of Nazi strongholds being taken and Ally forces defeated. When the war finally ended, there were parades and parties. Cheers rose up from the streets like a tidal wave and strangers became dearest friends. Later, when he walked down the block to buy food, people came up to him to shake his hand, pat his back, and make euphoric statements.

“Our boys are coming home!” one woman shouted, tears dangling precariously in the corners of her eyes. “My boys are coming home!”

He smiled at them all and returned their affections. He was glad for them and for the world. He was not glad for all of those who died, who never got to see this day.

Only days later, he was ignored again. It was not a spiteful act, he knew. It was not cruel, or mean, or personal. It just was.

Months passed and he had managed to slip back into oblivion, a chameleon against the grey skyscrapers. That’s when he had overheard the conversation in the tight hallway. He had been carrying a bag of groceries back to his rooms and was looking for his key while two women talked in front of an open door.

“That man. Hans?” one woman mentioned. “I went to look for him when the war ended. I found his home, and there were so many Russian men, and they told me they killed him. They told me to thank them with a kiss and I had heard stories of them, so I heeded them and got away. I’m sorry. He was a good man.”

“He was,” the other woman replied. “I wish…he was a good man. A very good man.”

His hand paused as he recalled the man who saved him and memorialized the death that was more than probable.

“What could you have…you were so far…you didn’t know…” the nurse stumbled.

“Will you make me a promise?” he asked.

“Mary!” The shrill voice from the hallway interrupted the quiet conversation. “Mary, I need you in 18 for an IV; ‘B’ bed. She’s confused and we can’t get her vein. What on earth is taking you so long? We aren’t paying you to sit around!”

“I’m coming,” the nurse retorted around clenched teeth.

She was answered with a grunt and receding efficient footsteps.

“Will you make me a promise?” he repeated.

She nodded.

“Tell your children my story, so that they may not see with eyes blind with hatred for what they do not know.”
The nurse nodded again and took his calloused hand in hers. Smiling softly, the old man fell asleep.

And that is the end of that. Since the books are obviously not going to sell, I may just shrug it off and post all of the stories here, every so often. It's interesting to see how much I've changed as a writer, and how much I haven't. I definitely think I've gotten stronger since I wrote this piece, though. But I've never been a good self-critic.

Comments

[eldarwannabe.livejournal.com]

The holocaust has been on my mind recently (for a few reasons...) and this story is pretty powerful. I will say that I can easily see how your writing has matured since you wrote it, but the emotional impact is definitely there. The fact that the story is true is also amazing.

Also, you published a book??? WHOA. (Self publishing does count!)

[sariagray.livejournal.com]

I did, I did publish a book! A book of nonsense lol ♥

I think it's strange, the amount that's changed and that hasn't. I'm glad you can see the difference in the writing, but that the story was still powerful. :)

[analineblue.livejournal.com]

I can see the differences in your writing now also, but I still think this is a good, solid story, well-told. :) I love that it's true, too.

Where did you self-publish? *curious* (And I think it counts too! ^_~)

[sariagray.livejournal.com]

Thanks :) I self-published through Lulu. It was the cheapest. :D Granted, I got reimbursed by school, which was nice, but still.

[analineblue.livejournal.com]

I did that too, actually! ;) And it wasn't just me, it was a bunch of people - we put together an anthology of fanfic. *nods* >_> We were going to do it every year and then... that didn't happen? But it was fun. I like Lulu. :D

[sariagray.livejournal.com]

I want an anthology of fanfic! :D That's awesome!