Always, page 17
‘Sorry,’ I whisper to the bones.
I don’t say anything to the treasure.
It’s not even treasure really. Because who’d want to take it. Who’d want to be rich if you had to push aside the bones of murdered children to get your hands on it.
I wipe my eyes and hurry out of the carriage, back down the steps.
I want to get out of here. As quickly as I can.
No time any more for tunnel digging under the pile of booby-trapped rocks.
I walk towards the rocks, trying to see if there are gaps and where the best ones are.
Up high, I think.
I’ll have to climb.
Then, as I get closer to the pile of rocks, I see why I’ll have to be very careful while I’m climbing.
At the base of the rocks is another big pile.
Of rusty metal boxes. With hundreds of black wires attached to them.
On each box is one word.
EXPLOSIVE.
I take a deep breath. At least I know where they are. All I have to watch for while I’m climbing are the wires.
I turn and take one last look at the train.
I wish I had a camera so I could take a photo for Felix. So at least he could see Zelda’s final resting place. But I don’t.
All I can offer Felix are my words.
I stare at the train.
I want to scramble away from it.
Get away from it forever.
But before I do that, there’s something else I must do. I’m Felix’s witness. I need to make sure I forget nothing and can tell everything. I need to remember every detail.
Including inside the train.
I go back, for one more look.
For Felix.
too late.
That’s the story of my life.
For Jumble. For Genia. For Doctor Zajak. For Pavlo. For Zelda.
But not this time. Not even if it ends my life.
I crash through the bushes, flailing at them with my bush stick. My legs are weak with terror. My cardiovascular system is struggling. A frantic shout doesn’t come easily but I do several anyway even before I get to the cliff wall and the rocks.
‘Wassim,’ I yell. ‘Wassim.’
No explosion.
Yet.
‘Wassim,’ I shout, sinking to my knees in front of the rocks to save energy for my voice.
I look up at the rocks and at the greenery still covering most of them.
No signs that young feet have scrambled up there, thank God.
‘Wassim.’
I only manage a few more shouts, then I have to catch my breath. Which is when I hear it.
A tiny distant voice from the other side of the rocks.
‘Felix?’
‘Wassim,’ I yell. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in here,’ says Wassim, sounding so small, so far away. ‘In the cave. With the train. I can climb out through a gap. Up high.’
‘No,’ I yell. ‘Absolutely not. You mustn’t climb anywhere. Not high up or anywhere. Do you hear me? Do you understand?’
I wait, panting, for him to say he understands.
But that’s not the sound I hear.
The sound is behind me.
A click. A sound I know well. The safety catch on a gun.
I turn.
Standing there with an amused look on his face and a gun in his hand and about twenty Weasels behind him, is Kcruk Szynsky.
‘Don’t fret, dear old Jew-buddy,’ says Kcruk. ‘We understand.’
The Weasels laugh, their voices echoing off the broken rocks.
They take me back to Otto’s car.
Otto is slumped against the front tyre, handcuffed, cradling his arm across his chest.
About a dozen other vehicles, mostly big old Mercedes, are parked a short way down the hill.
The Weasels handcuff me and push me towards Otto. I stumble and slump next to him against the front of the car.
‘Sorry,’ mutters Otto. ‘They crept up on me.’
I don’t say anything.
All I can think about is Wassim.
Kcruk comes over and grins down at us.
‘Good work with the treasure train, you two,’ he says. ‘You accomplished in twelve hours what we failed to do in twelve years. Respect. Take it easy now and leave the heavy lifting to us. Top of the pile I think is the preferred way in, am I right?’
‘It’s riddled with explosives,’ I say. ‘Ancient wiring, a couple of molecules away from self-destruction. Go too close and you’ll be history.’
The very thing I was planning not to tell them. But it’s all I’ve got to keep Wassim safe.
Please let it be enough.
Kcruk looks at me, slowly shaking his head.
‘Oh, Jew-buddy,’ he says. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you? Never lie to a liar. Because we’re the experts. We learned from the best.’
‘I’m not lying,’ I say, my voice cracking with desperation. ‘Go and look. You’ll see the wire.’
Kcruk smiles sadly.
‘Already seen it, buddy-boy,’ he says. ‘Oldest trick in the book. Throw a bit of wire around and the feeble-minded go weak at the knees. Now, please excuse me, I have to leave you, work to do, but Dad will keep you company.’
Cyryl Szynsky appears from behind a group of Weasels. A couple of them are helping him get his walking frame over the rough ground.
‘Please, Cyryl,’ I say. ‘Tell Kcruk I’m right. You were around back in those days. Tell him how when those Nazis did a job, they did it properly.’
Cyryl gives me a cold look and wipes his lips with his wrist stump.
‘Please!’ I say, my voice shrill with panic.
‘I think we can leave this to Kcruk,’ says Cyryl. ‘He’s a big boy.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ says Kcruk.
Kcruk snaps his fingers and one of the Weasels hands him a folded picnic chair. Kcruk unfolds it and puts it down a few metres from me and Otto.
‘Dad,’ he says.
Cyryl sits in it, facing us.
‘Thanks, son,’ he says.
Kcruk takes his gun from his pocket and gives it to Cyryl, who holds it in his remaining hand as if he’s had some practice shooting left-handed.
‘Prefer you don’t kill them just yet,’ says Kcruk. ‘Well, not Jew-buddy. But your call.’
Kcruk snaps his fingers again at the Weasels, and they all follow him back towards the cliff.
‘Don’t,’ I scream at them. ‘The boy’s in there.’
‘We know he is,’ calls Kcruk over his shoulder. ‘Looking forward to seeing him again.’
And they’re gone.
I yell a lot more things.
Pleading. Threatening. Cursing. Sobbing.
Finally, Cyryl raises the gun and points it at me.
‘They always said you vermin were smart,’ he says. ‘But I never thought so. You haven’t even worked out what’s been going on, have you?’
Cyryl looks at me, amused, eyelids pink and wrinkled, eyes as cold as the first day I met him.
‘I didn’t write that message to you for revenge,’ he says. ‘Kcruk thought I did, but I didn’t. I don’t give a rat’s scrotum about revenge. I wrote it for him. Kcruk couldn’t find treasure on his own if it was stapled to his appendage. I did it because he’s my son. And because his vision of the future is my gift to the world.’
Cyryl gives me a sad smile
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You haven’t got a son, have you. Not a real one.’
I can’t speak. Or breathe.
Otto is quietly sobbing now.
Through my own tears, I see Cyryl put the gun on his knees and hold it steady with his elbow and click off the safety catch.
Then he puts his hand in his pocket and throws something towards me. Something that lands near my feet with a faint metallic sound.
I wipe my eyes.
Something gleaming on the ground.
Two shiny keys.
Cyryl raises the gun again, aimed at my head.
‘This must be very painful for you,’ he says. ‘Helpless and hopeless. Imagining what Kcruk will do to the boy here in front of you. As one old man to another, let me give you a way out. Win-win. You get the chance to unlock your cuffs and overpower me. I get the chance to kill you in self-defence. Whichever happens, we’ve both acted nobly. Our mortal souls remain unsullied.’
On Cyryl’s face, I can see exactly what he thinks will happen.
The gun in his hand is trembling, just a little. Partly with old age, mostly with excitement.
I pull the front of my coat over my head and blot him out.
Not so he won’t see my fear.
So he won’t see my hands. Sorting through the bundle of lock picks. Feeling for the one I need. Slipping it into the lock of the handcuffs. Muffling the sound of the cuffs opening.
No time for fear.
I need several deep breaths to steady myself, but I only take one.
I fling my coat at Cyryl, then the handcuffs.
The coat surprises him, the handcuffs slam into his face, knocking him backwards off his chair.
He hits the ground heavily.
I grab the front of the car and haul myself up.
I know I probably haven’t got enough time, but all I can do is try.
‘Doc,’ says Otto.
He’s looking up at me, pleading.
I grab the keys and unlock his cuffs. He heaves himself onto his feet, but then staggers, blood loss taking its toll.
‘Come on,’ I say.
But even before I can turn and propel myself towards the cave, towards Wassim, I hear a scream.
The distant scream of a grown man.
A Weasel scream.
I’m too late.
I grab Otto and push him, both of us staggering, back onto the ground. I flatten myself next to him, hoping all the bits of us are behind the car.
The ground shakes.
I sob a wordless prayer for the boy who’s not my son, but who I love anyway.
Then silence.
I look up, just in time to see Cyryl, on his knees behind his chair, gun gripped and pointing at me, become surprised, then alarmed.
Then, as the universe roars and the rock storm slams into us, he becomes a red mist, then nothing.
Same, I fear, as everything else.
hopeful.
That’s how I’m trying to be, despite everything. Despite the voice inside me saying hopeless.
Because without hope, there really is nothing.
Otto and I haul ourselves to our feet, clinging onto the little that’s left of Otto’s car, our battered good protection.
We stumble towards the pile of rocks.
Which is mostly gone.
Well, dispersed. Rock chunks flung everywhere, small fragments crunching underfoot as we pick our way towards the cave, through tangled shreds of trees and bushes, some still green, some half-black and all of them spattered with tiny globules of human cellular matter.
Just Weasels, please, just them.
The entrance to the cave is wide open, huge and jagged and swirling with dust.
Silent now.
‘Wassim!’ I yell.
So does Otto, over and over as we stumble in.
There it is. The train. Huge and jagged too, and shattered. The locomotive a twisted carcass.
Oh, Wassim.
Behind the locomotive is what must have been a carriage.
Just a chassis now.
Everything that was on the chassis is a carpet of fragments under our feet.
Metal, wood, canvas, and countless other tiny pieces, some struggling pitifully to gleam.
I stare at the fragments.
Crouch and study some of them more closely. Confirm that I’m seeing what I think I am.
Bone.
A few slightly larger pieces just recognisable as fragments of human bone. Small human bones.
Children.
And now I understand.
My whole life has been a journey to this place, and this moment.
Everything, my best and my worst, our best and our worst, hanging in perilous balance as we wait to see which of them will fall and which will rise.
And now I let myself fall.
Knees finally giving up, and other parts of me too, my cheek against the fragments.
Every one of them precious.
I close my eyes.
All I hoped for was to offer my ancient life to protect the life of a single child.
Oh, Wassim.
A sound.
So small and distant and painful, I fear it’s just a memory reaching out to torment me.
‘Felix,’ says the small voice. ‘Uncle Otto.’
I open my eyes. Turn my head.
Nothing.
No one.
Just a pile of sand like a freshly dug grave in a small cave off the main one.
Grains of sand tumbling now, with what looks like tiny pieces of train and treasure tumbling too, as a figure with a length of rubber tube dangling from his mouth slowly emerges from deep in the precious sand.
A hiding hole.
Wassim stumbles towards us.
Otto grabs him first, big arms wrapped around him, blubbering joyfully, dabbing with what’s left of his own coat at the blood on Wassim’s ears, but after hugging Otto back, Wassim says something and Otto lets him go.
Wassim comes to me.
‘Look, Felix,’ he says.
I see the gardening trowel sticking out of his torn coat pocket. But that’s not what he gives me.
‘This was in the driver’s cabin,’ he says.
He hands me the tattered bundled remnants of an ancient linen bag, stained with age, and points to a faded piece of handwriting on the fabric.
‘Grandpa Amon’s writing,’ says Wassim.
I recognise it as the same handwriting I read the very first day Wassim came into my life and we began our time together.
On the fabric is just a single word.
Zelda
My hands are shaking too much, so Wassim helps me. He gently unwraps the bundle and shows me the small and perfectly preserved bones.
I’m speechless.
But Wassim’s face has fallen.
‘I’m sorry, Felix,’ he says. ‘The bag was empty. So I chose some bones. I know that might be wrong and I understand if you feel she’s probably not here. But they could be hers, couldn’t they?’
I gaze at the precious bones in my hands, but when I’m finally able to speak, it’s Wassim I’m looking at.
This brave boy who’s given me so much.
Who’ll give so much to so many.
His dear concerned face, his thin trembling shoulders shielding the hopeful heart that is our human future.
‘Oh, Wassim.’ I say. ‘She’s here.’
take your time when you dig a grave.
Specially when you’ve got a proper spade like this one they gave me.
And specially when an official gravedigger at this cemetery, who is kindly letting me do the digging myself, is nodding to show how much he agrees with my motto.
‘Good work, boy,’ he says.
I think Mum and Dad agree too.
A warm breeze is gently lifting my ear flaps. The ones they sewed on my beanie together. Smiling as they did and telling me that to do a good job, all you need is good tools and love in your heart.
I think they were talking about my life as well.
I’m glad we decided to wait until spring. The soil here next to Mum and Dad’s grave is soft and fragrant, and I know that’s what they’d want for Zelda’s final resting place.
It’s what Felix wanted too.
As I finish digging, Felix comes over, smiling.
‘Thank you, Wassim,’ he says. ‘You’ve done a very beautiful job.’
The official gravedigger agrees.
‘You’re welcome,’ I say to them both. ‘And you’re welcome too, Zel.’
‘Thank you, Wassim,’ says Zel, who arrived from Syria only a few days ago, which is the other reason we waited until spring.
Uncle Otto lifts me out of the grave.
He gives me a squeeze, which makes my bones crack a bit, which I’m really pleased about because it shows his arm is almost totally healed.
‘I’m proud of you, Wassim,’ he says.
‘Thanks, Uncle Otto,’ I say. ‘I’m proud of you too.’
I am, a lot. The little casket he made for Zelda is brilliant, and all from real timber.
Everyone gathers around the grave.
Felix says some words about Zelda and her life.
We stand in silence for a while, thinking about her. Then Felix and Zel lower her casket onto the flowers in the grave, and we all sprinkle our soil and silently say our own words.
Afterwards, when the others head off to the big tree in the sunlight to get our picnic ready, Felix stays to help me finish.
I let him put the first few spadefuls in.
‘Let me, now,’ I say when I see him getting tired.
Felix hesitates, then hands me the spade with a smile.
You know how sometimes two friends look at each other, and they know without saying a word that whatever happens in the future, and wherever they go, and whatever they do, even if it’s not together, even if there are other friends in their life too, even if one of them falls in love one day and even makes a new family, even if one of them dies, that both of them will always remember this moment and each other, and that the younger one will do everything he can for the rest of his life to be as kind and friendly and brave and hopeful and good at stories as the older one?
That’s happening now to me and Felix.
knew, of course I did, that I’d be here one day.
On this side of the sheets.
Not just sitting on the corner of the hospital bed any more, talking to the person in it, letting them know what we’ve done for them, what remains for us to do, what might happen, always reassuring them that whatever does happen, they will be held safe every moment they’re in this hospital, lying in this bed.
Like I am now.
‘Fill the room,’ I’d often say to them if I knew they had plenty of family and friends. ‘As many as you like.’
And often they did.
With flesh and blood, and hopes and memories.
