The Bus Stop
7 April, 1943
9:15 a.m, at bus stop #371, Breslau St., on the outskirts of Berlin.
More than likely you weren’t there.
But had you been, and if then was now, you’d surely notice sitting next to you a girl. Or woman. Hard to tell, all bundled up as she is. If you were forced to guess, you’d probably guess this young girl/woman must be somewhere between fifteen and twenty. A bit on the frail side. She’s sitting there on the bench, just an arm’s length away, just to your right, waiting for the down town bus.
Her name is Lena, and she’s what we—you and I, here in her future—what we’d call developmentally challenged. Most people just call her, “that retarded girl,” or “that idiot Judenfraulein.”
Of course you couldn’t possibly know all that; as she sits there across the bench from you, faintly humming a tune. It’s a soft, simple tune which, though you’re not familiar with it, has all the universal childlike qualities of a nursery rhyme. Of course it doesn’t even cross your mind that she’s a haflung—a half-breed Jewess—what with that one stray sandy blonde lock spilling out from under her hood, trickling down off her shoulder as if a bit of Germanism might be leaking out and running down her coat.
Only the profile of her unmistakably Aryan nose and her brave Nordic cheekbones, pink from the chill, poke out beyond the frayed hems of her woolen hood. Her eyes remain hidden from you, for the moment, leaving you free to gaze and wonder what lies hidden from your view. The fact of it is, as you’ll momentarily see, it’s her eyes alone, two pools of liquid obsidian, that link her to her ancestors—Abraham and Sarah.
Luckily today, thus far anyway, those eyes—eyes which seem to impart the sense that she can’t remember what it is she’s happily surprised about—those eyes haven’t yet betrayed her. Even when they do call attention to themselves, and they surely will before long, the mere genetic circumstantial evidence of eye color alone is not (not yet anyway) sufficient to outweigh what would appear to be her quintessential German-ness.
But, of course, you’ve no way of knowing all that. Truth be told, it’s the lack of access to those eyes, the burqa mystique, so to speak, compelling you to wait, and stare, with impunity—waiting for just the merest of glances, for just a flash of that irresistible thing, that utterly unique essence, which your mind can never in a million lifetimes imagine, a priori, on its own: her universally singular womanliness.
Neither can you see her aching hands trembling, stuffed as they are, deep into the warm refuge of her heavy wool coat—a wool coat much too large for her hungry frame. Nor do you detect under the almond wool the faint, steady quaking of her shoulders.
But you do notice the coat itself, evidently bright red when it was new, yet faded and threadbare now, from the many seasons comforting Lena’s grandmother, then her mother, and now Lena herself. You wonder if this girl won’t be the last to wrap herself in this clunky, yet oddly graceful, jacket. The sad thought occurs to you, as you sit there in the biting chill, that this coat may be the last of the hand-me-downs handed down a centuries-long line of mothers and daughters; the bittersweet exchange of dresses and plates and chairs and beds and shoes, passing them forward, mother to daughter, down the ladder of generations and right into the here and now. Your mind drifts and you see them, these hard, square-jawed women, marching down through the brutal middle ages in their so-typically soldier-like German-ness; sometimes happily, sometimes doggedly, yet always faithfully rearing up one generation after another of Lena’s Jewish German folk. You close your eyes for a moment and you see this woman’s cozy jacket Lena’s great-grandmother helped Lena’s grandmother into on the day she knotted the last threads now comforts Lena, sheltering her from the gusty, frozen breeze. But, far more importantly for Lena, this gift from the past hides her inherited imperfections.
Right now it’s her closest friend. Maybe, in fact, her only friend now, as far as she knows. And as you watch and wonder what she’s thinking about, she’s remembering her Mutti wearing that same jacket. She remembers hanging on to the same pockets which now hide her hands. She remembers tagging along behind her Mutti on mornings just like this, hiding from the frigid gusts behind its long, once-plush skirt. You see a slight movement inside her hood he looks out from her woolen hiding place, remembering, gazing at a playful little leaf-strewn whirlwind, no taller than the bus stop you share, as it meanders down the lane, zigzagging along toward the bench you and her share.
The tiny little twister ducks around a corner, hiding momentarily in the leeward refuge of an apartment building’s stairs, reappearing only to duck once again behind a broken down milk truck. It sucks up a few more leaves and a scrap of a brown paper bag to dump on top of the two of you as it makes its way down the quiet street.
Lena watches it bobbing and weaving, like a drunken ghost, towards her. She fights the quaking in her shoulders, exacerbated now by the thought of the windy chill it brings with it. She knows better than to draw attention. But, if you look closely, you’ll see she’s losing the battle with her unruly muscles. With no medicine for three days now, her jaw, though clenched tight, shivers, and she’s unable to hide it when she turns away from the harmless little twister; and in so doing provides you a fleeting glimpse of her face.
---------------------------------------------------------------
You flinch inside, unable to conceal the sympathy you feel upon seeing the pain she’s enduring. And after the initial shock there’s pity, but only for a moment—till your better judgment takes over. Yet, in that brief moment of pity, you realize you have an almost overwhelming urge to wrap your arms around this poor girl, take her home, take care of her.
Almost overwhelming; but you’ve been trained for moments like these, and you’re prepared. "You must be willing," they drilled into you at the Hitler Youth meetings, "to cast your emotions aside, to trample your own proclivity towards pity, for it is a weakness we cannot afford."
But what thoroughly confounds your sensibilities is her eyes. Is it because, though pain racks her face, her eyes reflect only kindness, and goodwill? No, that’s not it—it’s something else—you can’t put your finger on it, at first. Quickly though, you seize upon the ambiguity, the confusion. But you see it’s on your part—not hers. Her eyes are at once the beautiful, beckoning eyes of a young woman in her prime, yet at the same time they are the eyes of a child—trusting, happy, imploring, eager.
But lets not get the cart before the horse, as they say.
I should tell you, since you obviously have no way of knowing this either, that until this blustery morning Lena has been living with a crotchety old widow, the Frau Beckenhauer. Actually she’s been living in frau Beckenhauer’s house till this morning. The poor old woman gave up the ghost four months ago now, a mere two weeks short of her ninety-third Christmas. Oma, as Lena called frau Beckenhauer, had living on her own since she lost her husband, and her sons, and virtually all the remaining men in her family during the Great War, almost thirty years ago now. In a way, you see, Lena and Frau Beckenhauer were both sort of orphans—"folks without folks" as Lena's mother put it to her—and there was an unspoken agreement between them, to take care of each other.
Lena came to live with Oma three years ago, in 1940, when two men in white coats from the sanitarium showed up, unannounced, at the house where Lena and her mother lived. They told her mother they were there to pick up the retard and “take her to a safe place.” Lena’s mother replied in no uncertain terms that Lena’s current place of residence, namely with her, was plenty safe enough, thank you and have a day. At which point they pardoned themselves and promptly dialed up their boss. Fortune, however, smiled on Lena that morning—toothless and bittersweet, yet a smile, nevertheless. For when the whitecoats couldn’t find Lena the Gestapo took over and pressed her mother for the girl’s whereabouts. Her mother, of course, simply crossed her arms across her ample bosom and said, “What retard?” Then took her mother away instead, “just to answer a few questions,” they reassured the neighbors.
Of course that’s not the lucky part. You see, it was Tuesday when the whitecoats showed up for Lena; and as luck would have it, just as she’d done nearly every Tuesday morning since she was twelve, Lena was cleaning Oma’s house. Now, sometimes it seems, when the chips are especially down, luck comes in pairs. For Lena, on that fateful day anyway, it came like a smiling set of sneaky twins—exactly when and where she needed them most. Because if Tuesday’s chore was the first bit of luck, the location of Oma’s cottage was the second.
Continued
Marrs Maniteaux
7 April, 1943
9:15 a.m, at bus stop #371, Breslau St., on the outskirts of Berlin.
More than likely you weren’t there.
But had you been, and if then was now, you’d surely notice sitting next to you a girl. Or woman. Hard to tell, all bundled up as she is. If you were forced to guess, you’d probably guess this young girl/woman must be somewhere between fifteen and twenty. A bit on the frail side. She’s sitting there on the bench, just an arm’s length away, just to your right, waiting for the down town bus.
Her name is Lena, and she’s what we—you and I, here in her future—what we’d call developmentally challenged. Most people just call her, “that retarded girl,” or “that idiot Judenfraulein.”
Of course you couldn’t possibly know all that; as she sits there across the bench from you, faintly humming a tune. It’s a soft, simple tune which, though you’re not familiar with it, has all the universal childlike qualities of a nursery rhyme. Of course it doesn’t even cross your mind that she’s a haflung—a half-breed Jewess—what with that one stray sandy blonde lock spilling out from under her hood, trickling down off her shoulder as if a bit of Germanism might be leaking out and running down her coat.
Only the profile of her unmistakably Aryan nose and her brave Nordic cheekbones, pink from the chill, poke out beyond the frayed hems of her woolen hood. Her eyes remain hidden from you, for the moment, leaving you free to gaze and wonder what lies hidden from your view. The fact of it is, as you’ll momentarily see, it’s her eyes alone, two pools of liquid obsidian, that link her to her ancestors—Abraham and Sarah.
Luckily today, thus far anyway, those eyes—eyes which seem to impart the sense that she can’t remember what it is she’s happily surprised about—those eyes haven’t yet betrayed her. Even when they do call attention to themselves, and they surely will before long, the mere genetic circumstantial evidence of eye color alone is not (not yet anyway) sufficient to outweigh what would appear to be her quintessential German-ness.
But, of course, you’ve no way of knowing all that. Truth be told, it’s the lack of access to those eyes, the burqa mystique, so to speak, compelling you to wait, and stare, with impunity—waiting for just the merest of glances, for just a flash of that irresistible thing, that utterly unique essence, which your mind can never in a million lifetimes imagine, a priori, on its own: her universally singular womanliness.
Neither can you see her aching hands trembling, stuffed as they are, deep into the warm refuge of her heavy wool coat—a wool coat much too large for her hungry frame. Nor do you detect under the almond wool the faint, steady quaking of her shoulders.
But you do notice the coat itself, evidently bright red when it was new, yet faded and threadbare now, from the many seasons comforting Lena’s grandmother, then her mother, and now Lena herself. You wonder if this girl won’t be the last to wrap herself in this clunky, yet oddly graceful, jacket. The sad thought occurs to you, as you sit there in the biting chill, that this coat may be the last of the hand-me-downs handed down a centuries-long line of mothers and daughters; the bittersweet exchange of dresses and plates and chairs and beds and shoes, passing them forward, mother to daughter, down the ladder of generations and right into the here and now. Your mind drifts and you see them, these hard, square-jawed women, marching down through the brutal middle ages in their so-typically soldier-like German-ness; sometimes happily, sometimes doggedly, yet always faithfully rearing up one generation after another of Lena’s Jewish German folk. You close your eyes for a moment and you see this woman’s cozy jacket Lena’s great-grandmother helped Lena’s grandmother into on the day she knotted the last threads now comforts Lena, sheltering her from the gusty, frozen breeze. But, far more importantly for Lena, this gift from the past hides her inherited imperfections.
Right now it’s her closest friend. Maybe, in fact, her only friend now, as far as she knows. And as you watch and wonder what she’s thinking about, she’s remembering her Mutti wearing that same jacket. She remembers hanging on to the same pockets which now hide her hands. She remembers tagging along behind her Mutti on mornings just like this, hiding from the frigid gusts behind its long, once-plush skirt. You see a slight movement inside her hood he looks out from her woolen hiding place, remembering, gazing at a playful little leaf-strewn whirlwind, no taller than the bus stop you share, as it meanders down the lane, zigzagging along toward the bench you and her share.
The tiny little twister ducks around a corner, hiding momentarily in the leeward refuge of an apartment building’s stairs, reappearing only to duck once again behind a broken down milk truck. It sucks up a few more leaves and a scrap of a brown paper bag to dump on top of the two of you as it makes its way down the quiet street.
Lena watches it bobbing and weaving, like a drunken ghost, towards her. She fights the quaking in her shoulders, exacerbated now by the thought of the windy chill it brings with it. She knows better than to draw attention. But, if you look closely, you’ll see she’s losing the battle with her unruly muscles. With no medicine for three days now, her jaw, though clenched tight, shivers, and she’s unable to hide it when she turns away from the harmless little twister; and in so doing provides you a fleeting glimpse of her face.
---------------------------------------------------------------
You flinch inside, unable to conceal the sympathy you feel upon seeing the pain she’s enduring. And after the initial shock there’s pity, but only for a moment—till your better judgment takes over. Yet, in that brief moment of pity, you realize you have an almost overwhelming urge to wrap your arms around this poor girl, take her home, take care of her.
Almost overwhelming; but you’ve been trained for moments like these, and you’re prepared. "You must be willing," they drilled into you at the Hitler Youth meetings, "to cast your emotions aside, to trample your own proclivity towards pity, for it is a weakness we cannot afford."
But what thoroughly confounds your sensibilities is her eyes. Is it because, though pain racks her face, her eyes reflect only kindness, and goodwill? No, that’s not it—it’s something else—you can’t put your finger on it, at first. Quickly though, you seize upon the ambiguity, the confusion. But you see it’s on your part—not hers. Her eyes are at once the beautiful, beckoning eyes of a young woman in her prime, yet at the same time they are the eyes of a child—trusting, happy, imploring, eager.
But lets not get the cart before the horse, as they say.
I should tell you, since you obviously have no way of knowing this either, that until this blustery morning Lena has been living with a crotchety old widow, the Frau Beckenhauer. Actually she’s been living in frau Beckenhauer’s house till this morning. The poor old woman gave up the ghost four months ago now, a mere two weeks short of her ninety-third Christmas. Oma, as Lena called frau Beckenhauer, had living on her own since she lost her husband, and her sons, and virtually all the remaining men in her family during the Great War, almost thirty years ago now. In a way, you see, Lena and Frau Beckenhauer were both sort of orphans—"folks without folks" as Lena's mother put it to her—and there was an unspoken agreement between them, to take care of each other.
Lena came to live with Oma three years ago, in 1940, when two men in white coats from the sanitarium showed up, unannounced, at the house where Lena and her mother lived. They told her mother they were there to pick up the retard and “take her to a safe place.” Lena’s mother replied in no uncertain terms that Lena’s current place of residence, namely with her, was plenty safe enough, thank you and have a day. At which point they pardoned themselves and promptly dialed up their boss. Fortune, however, smiled on Lena that morning—toothless and bittersweet, yet a smile, nevertheless. For when the whitecoats couldn’t find Lena the Gestapo took over and pressed her mother for the girl’s whereabouts. Her mother, of course, simply crossed her arms across her ample bosom and said, “What retard?” Then took her mother away instead, “just to answer a few questions,” they reassured the neighbors.
Of course that’s not the lucky part. You see, it was Tuesday when the whitecoats showed up for Lena; and as luck would have it, just as she’d done nearly every Tuesday morning since she was twelve, Lena was cleaning Oma’s house. Now, sometimes it seems, when the chips are especially down, luck comes in pairs. For Lena, on that fateful day anyway, it came like a smiling set of sneaky twins—exactly when and where she needed them most. Because if Tuesday’s chore was the first bit of luck, the location of Oma’s cottage was the second.
Continued
Marrs Maniteaux
posted by Jefferson | 9:45 PM
1 Comments:
Great noddlings! and I am sure alot of truth there- keep them coming I get a kick out of your great writing style. You really should write a book- blogs won't last forever.
-DB
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