Love and Hate Page 2

  My father was well known for his drunken brawls and bad conduct. They never questioned my reasons for shooting him.

  But I had to lie about shooting my mother; I told them that Father had shot my mother after boiling her alive. I told them I had picked up the gun when he laid it down after shooting my mamma.

  I felt the Polizeidirektor knew the truth. He stood there looking at me suspiciously, like he knew my secret. He stood with no judgment; he understood my reasons. But he refused to accept or act on his own conclusion. They didn’t want to believe that a nine-year-old boy could kill his mother, even if out of sympathy and love. The story was already a tragedy as written. Why make it worse?

  And so I was put in an orphanage and offered for adoption.

  I was a handsome boy, or so people told me, tow-headed with curly hair and blue eyes. I was tall for my age, and I thought I knew many things, many more things than I did in fact know. But I no longer talked about my thoughts on the books I read, and I didn’t interact with the other boys at the home.

  It was a nasty place called Bücher Boys’ home, a brown building, ugly, with a flat roof and a gutted interior. I say it was gutted out because there were just brick walls. It looked like a bomb shelter. It was one very large room with stained concrete floors. We slept on cots, and there were partitions between the bedrooms, restrooms, and the open areas. Movable partitions, because nothing was static there. A boy came and disappeared the next month. An uncle, or perhaps an aunt or godparents would pick him up. I didn’t have an uncle or aunt to pick me up. My mother was an only child, my father was severely estranged from his family, and I never heard them speak about religion, so no godparents either. It isn’t like I cared anyway; I wasn’t looking to get picked up.

  The orphanage was run by kind nuns. We occasionally called the head nun, Sister Margaret, “Mother.”

  One night I was hungry, and one of the other boys dared me to go into Sister Margaret’s room to find her keys to the food pantry. I figured she would be asleep, and I could easily slip in and out without being noticed.

  What I saw disturbed me a great deal at the time, though I understand now. Sister Margaret had her window open, and moonlight was gently lighting her room. At first I didn’t know what was happening. Then I heard and knew.

  Sister Margaret was moaning with pleasure, and there was a man on top of her.

  Repulsed, I tried to exit but stubbed my toe on the table and said, “Damn it.”

  The man stopped. Sister Margaret and the man covered themselves with the sheets on the small bed.

  I had walked in on my father once. He had asked me not to tell, and I had kept that promise. I wish I had broken it, I wished I had told; maybe Mamma would have left him then, and maybe she would still be alive.

  I said through gritted teeth, “I am going to tell.”

  I was suddenly angry that she could not keep her vows, just like my father, that she would bring a man into the orphanage secretly in the night.

  I ran out of the room before she could say anything, yelling down the hall, “I am going to tell, I am going to tell, I am going to tell...”

  Sister Claire caught me in the hallway. She stopped me and asked me what was wrong.

  “Sister...” I was out of breath from the anger seething out of me. “Sister Margaret is sleeping with a man.”

  I don’t know what I expected, maybe shock or something else. I couldn’t have predicted what came out of her mouth. She leaned down to get to my eye level.

  She said simply, “Who made you God to judge?”

  I was not angry; my anger had dissipated completely upon her uttering those words. Dissipated because I did not understand.

  “But why are you, but what are you...?”

  “We all have secrets here, son. Come, follow me.”

  I followed her as she led me to her cot surrounded by thin partitions. Only Sister Margaret had a proper room.

  She bent down and extracted something from under her bed. She kept it out of my sight momentarily, cradling it in her arms, and then she unfolded her arms carefully.

  It was my diary.

  I grabbed for it and yelled, “That’s mine, how could you...?”

  She held it to her chest and said, “It didn’t have your name in it, and it was left outside after lunch yesterday.”

  “Then how do you know it is mine?”

  “You just confirmed that it is.”

  My heart was pounding, and I was suddenly petrified. I knew where this was going. I wondered when the police would arrive to take me to jail. I started crying.

  She put down the small, brown, ragged diary, dog-eared but loved. It had been mine since before I was here. Since before. I had it long ago and wrote beautiful and terrible memories in it about my time with Mamma. Mamma with platinum blonde hair and a tender face. And Father. He was in there too. So was the night that the most terrible thing had happened—that was in there as well.

  “I think you are a very talented writer,” she said as she leaned down and wiped my tears with the palms of her hands.”

  But I was shaking now with fear. Tremors were making me arch my back. She hugged me, and the tremors left, but the tears came back more heavily than before, and I sobbed.

  “I don’t want to go to jail, I want to...I want Mamma back...I miss her so much.”

  “I know you do Hans, I know. I am so sorry for what happened to you. I want you to know that it wasn’t your fault. God isn’t judging you.”

  “He’s not?”

  “No, he is not. Nor am I. And you are not going to jail. The police are not on their way.”

  “Have you not read it? Do you not know what I have done?”

  “Yes, I read it,” she said softly. “I know, but you are no monster, like you say you are in your diary.”

  She sat on her cot, moved the pillow, and patted for me to sit next to her.

  “You see, Hans, I understand why you did what you did. And so does God.”

  I had stopped crying and was listening intently. I wanted to be judged, worthy or not. I didn’t want to hold this secret burden alone any longer.

  “Sister Margaret has been a nun since she was sixteen. I know that seems old to you, but it is not very old, not old at all. Her parents are very religious people, like we are. They forced her to become a nun, without her agreement. She wanted to obey them, to honor them. She thought that Jesus would want her to do that, and so she became a nun. But she was in love with a boy. The man you saw in the room with her. He is that man.”

  I was silent and didn’t know what to say or what this had to do with my diary.

  “You see, Hans, we all have secrets, you have yours. I will keep it with me to the grave.” She gave a gentle smile and hugged me.

  A sense of gratitude washed over me, like I was healed after a long illness. She had dressed and cleansed my wound. It was still there, but it was scabbed over and healing already. I would never get over my mother’s death, but I could get over the guilt from killing her. I had been racked with guilt.

  “But why, Sister?”

  “Why what, Hans?”

  “Why doesn’t she leave and go be with him, with this man that she loves?”

  “Because she believes in her vow. She bends it for a night. She bends it so that she doesn’t have to break it completely. You see, God loves his children, and I believe he forgives more than we know. You are not to blame at all for what happened.”

  “I love you, Sister Claire,” I said tearfully.

  “I love you too, Hans.”

  She hugged me warmly, and right as she did, Sister Margaret came in.

  “Sister Margaret, I think Hans understands.”

  I ran up and hugged Sister Margaret. She and I cried while we held each other, and I said, “I will never tell. I will never tell, Sister. Never.”

  And I never did.

  Chapter 5

  I felt the most like myself when I was writing. Or perhaps I felt like I could be my best self
. I could write about things that happened, and I did. But I could also paint pictures, portraits of life as it should be, as it could be. When Sister Claire had told me I was a good writer, it opened a world for me. A world of my imagination, one where Mamma wasn’t dead and where I had a brother and best friend. Where there was laughter and where I was loved and able to love. Outside the walls of the orphanage. I didn’t just read to escape; I now wrote. I carved a way out of the partitions with my pencil, using it as a scalpel to cut away the bad parts of life, retaining only the best memories to use as fodder for my stories.

  All the best memories were with Mamma, without Father. Like one time, when Mamma and I went to the park in Passau’s city center. I couldn’t have been older than six. We had gone by bus to the park. At the bus stop there was a pastry shop. Mamma told me she would buy me a delicious treat on our way home before we boarded the bus. My little mind thought of all the different colors and shapes of pastries I’d seen in the shop window. I didn’t know what they all were because I’d never had any. Father was always out of work, so there was no money for such luxuries. I remember that I told her I wanted one of each. She laughed, a golden sound. I looked to her for protection as we crossed the street. At the park we played tag, hide and go seek, and then sat on a park bench. She read to me there, stories like “Hansel and Gretel.” I listened intently, well, as intently as little boys listen. When we went to the bakery, I chose the strudel. It was wrapped for me in brown paper. I didn’t make it to the bus stop before I had stuffed my mouth full. Sugar was sticky on my ruddy cheeks. I was happy in a way that only little boys and girls can be. Content in the moment—not feeding the future with worry, not regretting the past. I just was. I was happy because my little tummy was full of treats, and I was with Mamma, who I loved, and I told her so.

  “Mamma, I love you so much.”

  “Hans, I love you too. You are the apple of my eye, my sweet boy.”

  She kissed my cheek and protectively wrapped her arms around me. As we rode the bus home, I imitated sounds the bus made. “Vvh, vuhphhhh.”

  I exaggeratedly hopped up and down as the vehicle hit potholes. I laughed.

  Mamma laughed too and copied me, hopping up and down as she said, “Vvh Froom, vuphhhh.”

  There were also parts I surgically removed, like the tumors they were.

  Soon we were home. And I was a fool. Father came home this night. Drunk, of course, on money we did not have.

  He slurred, “Where’s dinner?”

  He gave my mother a kiss on the cheek.

  That made my little heart sing. I was happy; it was how I wanted them to be. I had not yet given up on Father.

  I told him what we’d done today, about the park. He laughed at me hopping up and down to show him how I had ridden the bus on the way to the park and back. I told him about reading “Hansel and Gretel” with Mamma.

  He then noticed something as I was speaking—the sticky, sugary sweetness that still lingered on my face. Just a little, since Mamma had wiped my face.

  When he asked, I told him about the wonderfully tasty joy-filled things called pastries and how I had eaten one of them. I wish Mamma and he had one too, I said.

  That was when he stood up and with the back of his hand slapped my mother out of her chair and onto the floor.

  He stood over her sneering and shouted, “You bitch. You know we don’t have the fucking money for this, these children’s treats, these pastries! We can hardly eat!”

  I stood there, helpless, silently crying, I knew this was my fault. I shouldn’t have eaten the pastry. She looked over at me, her face already swollen, scared and worried. She wasn’t worried or scared for herself; she was concerned for me.

  Father came over to sneer at me. He wet his finger with his tongue and wiped the remaining crusted sugar from my face. He licked it off his finger, saying, “Mmm, this is good. Why didn’t you save some for Daddy?”

  “I, I am sorry, sir. Please forgive me, this is all my fault.”

  He leaned down and said, “I wish you’d never been born. You are worthless trash. Do you know why I am not going to beat you?”

  I shook my head.

  He made his feelings about me even more clear. “Because as much as I hate you and would beat you, I hate her more for having you. I told her to take care of you, to get rid of you before you were born.”

  I cried and asked him to please leave Mamma alone. But his rage was back. He told Mamma that he would only hit her once more to be merciful.

  She steadied herself for the blow. He backhanded her again, and she gritted her teeth because she knew he was not only a fiend, but a liar. They all are, the men who beat women. They are two things: cowards and liars. Always.

  And sure enough, he slapped her one more time. This time she passed out and went limp as her head hit the wall. My father was suddenly concerned; he thought she might be dead. He had no desire to go to jail, since he still valued his life just a little at the time, a little more than the others around him. Once he checked her breathing, he left her there—alive but black and blue on one side of the face.

  He left to go get more beer. Beer that cost much more than my pastry.

  I was heaving, crying, snot-nosed. I went over and patted her on the head.

  “I love you, Mamma,” I said.

  Chapter 6

  I was writing in my new journal when they came. It was the journal that Sister Claire had bought me for my birthday. I was now ten years old.

  “Double digits!” she had proclaimed.

  I smiled wide as I unwrapped the small package. It was black with white cream paper and had my initials on the outside, H.F.: Hans Fischer. Encased in gold leaf, I thought it was real gold, or I was as excited as if it was.

  Grateful, I said, “Thank you so much, Sister Claire.”

  She said, “There’s more.”

  I opened the leather first, to the very center of the diary, and smelled the pages where the binding met. I loved the smell of new and old books. They have distinct smells, different but both special in their own way.

  Sister Claire laughed as I sniffed the new pages. They smelled of soft pulp.

  She urged me again, “Look in the package.” Inside I found a fountain pen.

  I couldn’t believe it and hugged her.

  She told me, “A new life, this is a birthday gift. But it can be the start of a new life for you too, you know. I threw that old diary of yours in the trash.”

  I was very cross for a moment, forgetting about my gifts entirely. “What? Mamma’s memories, my memories of her, they are in there!” I raised my voice.

  She quietly lifted her finger to her mouth. “Shh, my boy.”

  She handed me papers she had hidden behind her back, saying, “Here, this is your final gift. Remember the good parts. Forget the bad.”

  I thumbed quickly through the papers, searching for stories I had written. Precious memories of Mamma were there. The pages with all the bad parts were gone.

  I got up and squeezed her tightly. “I am sorry for being cross. I am so thankful, Sister Claire. What did you do with the rest of my diary?”

  “I burned it in the furnace.” She leaned down to peer directly into my eyes. “That’s where it belongs. You need to move on from that life. You are getting a new life.”

  “A new life?” I asked.

  “Yes, a new life in Jesus.” She smiled. “You don’t have to feel guilty any more,” she said with a smile.”

  And so that was what I was writing in, the day after my birthday, May 5th, 1924. I had written it at the top of my page.

  But what I found out when they came was that I was to get a very different life. Sister Claire had known when she gave me my gift that there was more to come. She didn’t just mean a new life in Jesus. She meant a new life on earth.

  Chapter 7

  They showed up in a silver Mercedes. A beautiful car. Only rich people had cars then; they were certainly a luxury item. It had a license plate on the
front marked MN-23-12. I remembered small details like that. I scribbled it in my journal as they pulled up to the circular drive in front of the orphanage. All the boys rushed outside, oooing and aaahing. I sat back, I painted a picture of the car in my journal with my words.

  It had spoked silver wheels. The front had four headlights, two in the front, and two on each wheel cover. There were ridges down the sides of the car to let the engine emit heat, I imagined. It had wiper blades on the top of the windshield, like eyebrows. The car looked like a regal old man, silver as it was. A regal, wealthy man. And it had a convertible black top.

  Little did I know that I would soon find out what the interior looked like too.

  I watched out the window, scribbling in my journal as the man got out of the car first. He was wearing a thick gray jacket, with a thin black tie and a starched white dress shirt. He had a vest on and two large pockets on his jacket. He had black hair, parted in the middle and slicked down and slightly backward. He was clean-shaven, with tanned skin. He opened the door for a woman. She was wearing a long fur coat. I looked at that first. It came midway down her shin. She was wearing high heels. Then I looked up and saw her curly blonde locks that were mostly obscured by her hat. She was beautiful. The older boys thought so too as they murmured dirty thoughts to each other. She had a soft face with a proud chin. The fur encircled her neck, showcasing her rich beauty. She had pearls, almost taut around her neck, resting on her collarbone.

  She is magnificent, I wrote in my journal. I saw a small black-haired boy hop out last, almost falling on his face. His father (I supposed) caught him. The boys all laughed. He looked angrily embarrassed. His cheeks were red from the cold wind and the indignity, splotchy red.

  Sister Margaret and Sister Claire came out to meet them. Sister Margaret shook their hands. But Sister Claire received a hug and a kiss on the cheek from both the man and the woman! What was going on? I was too curious now to continue to write in my journal. I closed it and went outside with the other boys. The woman, man, boy, and the Sisters walked up the driveway toward the house. All the boys’ chattering ceased. Sister Margaret told us all to disperse.