It was an afternoon like all others. That day instead, the gloomy weather gave up to the bright sun. The spring came at last. After a long winter, the frozen souls and bodies would eventually revive, returning to life. Yet, what for a living would this be? Torment and fear day by day. Since being alive in the early spring of ’45 was nothing but suffering. There were rumours too; the war will be soon over.
The bombings, though, won’t stop for many of the coming days. The people, exhausted, crawled like shadows through that abysmal reality. For losing the war, nobody really gave a damn anymore. We all just wanted it ended for once, so we could have a life again.
We, as children, could still enjoy that sunny afternoon. Eager to play, I took Mani, my younger brother, and getting out, I shouted to my mother: “We are playing outside!”. “If …, you know what to do, isn’t it?” she said while washing our clothes. Yet, clothes were too much to say, rather, the remnants left after so many years of war. Almost six. As many as I was. Being born with the war, and I knew nothing besides. Mani, he was nearly three.
So, we ran out on the street happy to play with some sticks and broken tin buckets.
At that time we were living in Vienna, somewhere near the city centre, in a damp and cold basement. There we got shelter when our home had been wrecked in a previous airstrike. After so many brutal assaults, it was no more possible to recognise any layout of the streets. Just ruins and debris. The residents of this once beautiful city were troubled and starving and dull, digging like worms in the rubbish, hoping to be lucky enough to find something still worth using.
Despise that, the street we were living in, still stood. By a miracle, it escaped the havoc of bombardments. Still.
I stopped playing for a moment, sitting down on the sunny pavement to warm myself up. I glanced to my feet, propping my heels on the ground, lifting and spreading my toes that came out of my shoes. My poor toes. In the warmth of the sun, they were beginning now to thaw. In the winter was the worst. I wore only this thin and completely fatigued shoes, summer and winter along. Though many people were still barefoot. Others wrapped their feet in rags, or pieces of tarp.
I was once barefoot, too. Luckily, it was no winter. The shoes I ware now, I found lost in a niche, next to a heap of rubble. Worn-out and shabby. I took them. Still better with than without. Before too big, later shrunken, squeezing my poor toes.
In wintertime, mom used to warm our chilled paws on her face. I felt her eyelids, her eyelashes, her lips, warm and moist. Then she put our little feet against her chest. It was so good, I recall. Like this, me and Many could fell finally peacefully asleep. Our feet warm, a hugging mother. Her feet? I don’t know if they were warmish. Nobody was there for her. Dad rested on the front. For good. I can’t even recall him. After that, my mother’s eyes were almost incessantly sad. Just for a moment, they were lighting up when she looked at us. Then they went dark again.
Playing, we didn’t notice how the time flew. The sun was gone, the dusk still shedding its light. In the distance, I heard a clogged sound. Being all ears, I distinguished a humming. As of a bumblebee. Could that be …? I couldn’t even bring my thought to an end as a crashing roar of sirens began. Its sound cut through mind and soul, making them scraps.
Suddenly, I grabbed Mani his hand and, dragging him after me, we ran to the nearest underground bomb shelter. Never looking back. That’s what mom said. Run like hell!
With us, many others were running, approaching the shelter. Two guards were guiding us at the entrance to avoid a stampede. We entered a deep and dim-lit cellar. It was almost full. People sitting on the floor or on the wooden boards fixed in damp and mouldy walls. Sad faces, looking for redemption, into themselves. Mothers with babies crying in their arms. Petrified.
The first bomb fell in some distant area. I looked for mom. Was she hiding somewhere, too? Here, she was not.
Shortly, the explosions were getting closer. I held Mani tight in my arms. We huddled together, shaking of fear. “Everything will be fine, Mani!” I said. “In few minutes this will be over”. Quiet. The trembling and whimpering stopped. A stench of fear, sweat, and urine. A choir of shaken breaths. The horror embedded everything. A shared experience. And not the first one. Hitherto, put in this situation countless times, we were waiting for the end… of the attack …, war …, death.
Soon the shells began to explode right over our heads. The ground beneath shook, the walls trembled, and our hearts struggled. Do we ever get out of here, out of this hellfire? Thick dust filled the space, and in the faint light, the cellar was like a crypt; for the alive ones.
After a while, the sirens roared again. The door to the shelter shut open, and we left. Mani’s face was soaked with tears. I hadn’t heard him crying. He cried in his heart, for he still did not understand what was happening. I do. I didn’t understand why.
Dust, smoke, fire. Only if I could see something. We run heading home, wishing to find mom. Everywhere was just rubble. Groans and cryings of pain and grief scattered the dense air.
I knew I just stand in front of our house. Well, it was no more house. The whole street disappeared. What was left was only a pile of bricks and burning stuff. And mom was nowhere. We walked around for a while, with Mani hurrying after me, searching for her. We were crying. For mom. But our cry was lost in a sea of cryings for other moms, children, brothers or sisters.
It began to rain. The soot and dust mixed with rain covered us with a slime smelling like death. We waited on the streets for some time, hoping to find mom. Hungry and tired we were, looking for shelter in the cold night. I saw a gutter opening, still free from debris. We went down. Well, we were not the only ones there. The sewer was full of many others, homeless like us. We squeezed into each other, lying the cold. Even if we didn’t know each other, it was a little better. Tomorrow will be another day. Perhaps mom is protecting herself somewhere, too.
Next morning I woke up in the sunlight that entered down the gutter. It was time to go; to look further. Sunny, but not. The sun remained hidden under a thick layer of smoke, for the fires were still burning. In the whole area, there was nothing left standing. No house, no wall. Nothing.
We remained on the streets for several days, hanging around, trusting we will find mom again. With no food or a proper place to rest, we went exhausted. Especially Mani. He couldn’t stand anymore. A woman, driving a red-cross truck, saw us wandering with no scope. Put us in the carriage and brought us to one of its centres. Red Cross Centres.
There were huge lines of people in need of every kind of help. Being so small, they brought us directly to the front desk.
Then I lost track of what exactly happened. We were registered, received a blanket and a serving of hot soup. By the evening, another truck took us with the other children heading to an orphanage outside the city.
In the end we were lucky. At the orphanage, it was good for us. Protected from rain and wind, we had a meal every day, albeit thin, and a mattress where I slept with Mani together. But not for a long time.
For mom, we waited every day, and every day I asked nurses if she didn’t come. They invariably answered: “No, not today, maybe tomorrow”. And so, almost one year passed, and no one came for us. Would mom still be living?
The war was now over, and hope arisen in all hearts. My mother remained a shadow in my heart. In the beginning, I thought of her every day. Then I started thinking about other things, too. After a while, they took Mani. A family adopted him. I continued my life there at the orphanage. For me, nobody came.
One day, the American Red Cross came with aid transport. Clothes and shoes. And a little beet of chocolate. Everyone got something. I got shoes. New ones. I was so excited! It was as if I caught God by the legs. Sitting there, on the front stairs of the orphanage, I embraced and hugged the new shoes as a little treasure. A priceless commodity. I dreamed of it all these years!
A bright light awoke me from the dream. A flashlight. A picture was taken. Of me. A bold statement of a joyous child’s who, at after a disastrous war, received a pair of new shoes.
I met Manfred (Mani) forty years later.
I’m … Volker.
I wrote this fiction inspired by a photo of a child, full of joy for receiving a pair of new shoes. A tale that has undoubtedly been a reality for thousands and thousands of children in World War II, a reality full of fear, cold and hunger. A reality that no child of this world deserves to live!
14. January 2020 – by Diana