Erich - Seven

Erich

 

            Damn, was ever ready to get into London and get a real drink. The whiskey stash was exciting for about a day, but it was cheap ration stuff, and I was sick of drinking it.

            “This had better be good,” I said as we stepped onto the deserted bus. It was a warm Sunday evening, and after a whole day of watching families arrive on campus, I was ready to walk to London if it meant getting away from Wellington’s. Unfortunately, the bus only came by at six in the morning and five at night, mostly for the professors who escaped the school and returned to their flats in the evening.  “I’m going to the first bar I see once I get to London and if you wankers don’t like it you can piss off.”

            Hersch dropped his bag on a seat in the back. The rest of the guys had packed, but I had no intention of sleeping that night, and all I brought was the pack of cigarettes rolled into my shirt sleeve. “Calm down, Amery. We never said we wouldn’t drink with you.”

            Jim sat next to him and grinned. “I’m with Amery on this. But let’s find a bar with some call girls, huh? Maybe a couple of dancers on stage?”

            “Ha! I don’t care if they dance, just as long as they take their clothes off. Right?” I joked, elbowing Gabe as he sat down next to me. He gave me one of his weird looks and a forced, almost sarcastic laugh.

            My mood was improving for the first time all weekend. Believe me, bad quality booze wasn’t the only thing driving me to drink. Once I was alone on Friday, I had finally read the letter (though I debated throwing it out unopened) from my older brother, Chris.

            There was a second, when I first saw the name on the envelope, when I thought Führer had written me. After all, Chris was really Christian Lukas Amery the Fourth, firstborn into the fourth generation of the angry, violent Amery men, named after and forever favored by our pathetic excuse for a father. If that had been the case, I would have not just thrown it out but burned it, buried it, and probably taken a piss on it. But when I saw it was sent from the air base, I knew who it was.

            Christian was about the second to last person in the world I wanted to hear from, after my father. I was always tempted to tell the guys, when they thought I was out of line, that my brother made me look like a saint. If he were at Wellington’s, not one of my roommates would have lived through the first week, and that is the God’s honest truth. He was only three years older than me, but already an air bomber for the German forces. Führer was so proud.

            The letter was short, blunt, and reminded me why I never wanted to see the battered streets of Berlin again. I don’t even know how he found out where I was. No one was supposed to know. But, being Christian, he had figured it out. I had been running his words (in German, of course. Damn it, just when I was getting used to English he had to throw me off) over in my head all weekend until all I wanted to do was punch someone and drink.

Erich,

            Don’t be too surprised, little brother. I know where you are. You’re at that school where Mama wanted to send you last fall, when you were too busy with Brigitte to notice. She has a new boy now, by the way, Brigitte. Seems happy. Little w***e moved on pretty quickly after what happened. I was surprised she could still walk.

Dad’s furious. But, then, when is he not? He guessed that Mama knew where you were. Pushed her around for a few weeks until he lost interest. Says you’re a disgrace to the family. Says to never come back. I wouldn’t come back if I were you, little brother. She’s all he’s got now, and I think he misses having someone who fights back when he hits them.

I never did get to talk to you about what happened. You’re so stupid, Erich. You didn’t have to do it like that, a*****e. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done the same, I just would have been smarter about it.

            I don’t know if this will reach you, but I’m betting it will. I’m also betting that you won’t write back. But you’re not done with me, little brother. Keep your eyes on the sky. We’re hitting London more and more every week. I might even drop in for a visit.

Pvt. Christian L. Amery IV

            I had almost forgotten Chris’s condescension, his casual spitefulness, his ability to know exactly what he had to say to get to me. What did he care if I went back? Who the hell was he to say anything Brigitte? How could he still talk about Mama like that?

            But it wasn’t even the threat of a visit from him that really had me steamed. He may have been the youngest pilot on the force, but he didn’t control where they bombed, and there was no way in hell they would ever choose to blow up a pointless place like Wellington’s.

What really got me was what he said about what had happened with Brigitte. He said he would have done the same. It made me sick. Not just the thought of how he would have done it, but the fact that he thought we had the same take on the situation. It was close to the last thing in the world I wanted to have in common with Chris, and that is saying something.

More than anything, there was the underlying implication that made me want to fly back to Berlin just to punch him in the face. Chris believed that I had done the horrible thing to Brigitte. Just like everyone else. We had never, ever gotten along, but I would have thought my own brother might believe me when it came to something like that.

“Hey,” Gabe’s voice snapped me out of my angry daze, “what are you sulking about now?”

I wasn’t about to tell them anything about Christian’s letter. “What? Nothing, don’t be stupid,” I grumbled, “just, uh, thinking about the girls we’re gonna see tonight.”

Jim wiggled his eyebrows. “You’re not the only one.”

We all laughed as the bus jolted around a corner. “Oh man,” I breathed, taking a drag from my cig, “I might die tonight if I don’t see any… any…” I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know the word in English.

Hersch looked at me confusedly, “Any what?”

I was disgusted with myself. The word I wanted was one I had said a million times in German. But it wasn’t exactly the kind of word Mama had taught me. Now I had tried to say it in front of the guys, and I was about to become the running joke of the trip. “Nothing,” I mumbled, keeping my eyes on the floor.

“Aw, come on, Erich,” Gabe said.

“Um,” there was no way out, “any…” I racked my brain for the word, and this time something came to me.

“Tats,” I said confidently, before I could think about it.

Their faces didn’t exactly reflect understanding. “What?” Gabe asked.

S**t. Was it the wrong word? I had to try. “You know,” I didn’t have any other way to show them what I meant, so I tried to demonstrate, holding my hands out from my chest, mimicking the general shape. “Tats.”

This time they got it, and all three of them exploded with laughter. All I could do was watch as I felt my face get redder and redder. Finally, between gasps of laughter, tears streaming down his face, Jim looked up at me and wheezed:

“Tits, Amery. It’s tits.”

They just kept laughing at me while I seethed in my seat. I felt my face twisting, jaw locked, teeth grinding, fists clenched. In my mind, I ordered myself to stay calm, to let it go. But I hated being embarrassed, especially in front of guys who were supposed to be below me. I could hit Gabe, scare the other ones, easy target, wouldn’t fight back…

“Hey,” I leaped out of livid silence to Gabe giving my arm a flimsy punch. “Calm down, Erich. It’s no big deal.”

I just snorted angrily at him. The other two were still laughing, but somehow knowing that someone else was on my side kept me from boiling over. “Jesus, Amery,” Jim laughed, “who the hell taught you English?”

“My mum,” I said before I could think of an answer better than the truth. “And I’ve been speaking English for as long as I’ve been speaking German, so you can piss off!”

“No wonder you don’t know that word,” Hersch snorted.

“How the hell does your mom know English?” Jim asked.

Damn it. Talking about my family was even worse than being laughed at. But there was no way out. “She’s from England. Met my dad during the Great War and went back to Germany with him.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I promised myself that was all I would ever say about them. No one would ever know anything else.

“Huh,” grunted Jim, seeming to have not paid attention. “How’d you learn, Hersch?”

“My dad,” he said, looking out the window. “Spoke Polish, English, and Hebrew back home. He came here for school same as us. Absolutely loved it. Would have stayed here forever is he hadn’t gone back to Poland after graduation for the last of his things.”

“What happened then?”

Hersch took a drag off his cig before answering. “Met my mum. Got married, had my sister and me and never saw England’s shores again.”

“Ah,” Gabe said, “what does he do now?”

“Lies six feet under the ground,” Hersch said matter-of-factly, “both of them. Dead last year.” His jaw tightened, and I could tell he felt less calm than he was trying to appear.

“How?”

“War.” He didn’t elaborate, never took his eyes off the window. No one pressed him, though we were all thinking the same thing. Two more dead Jews in Poland shouldn’t have meant anything to me, but I felt myself biting my cheek and swallowing something that might have almost been an apology.

It was quiet for a minute. “Mine too,” Gabe said finally, looking up from the nail he was biting. “Not directly by the war, I guess. Got their auto hit by an army truck two years ago.”

“Really,” I said. For some reason I was more curious about Gabe’s life than Hersch’s. For one thing I was less scared to ask him questions. “What did you do?”

He bit his lip and looked down. “I got shipped off to Italy to work at my uncle’s vineyard. They were both Italian, my parents, but they moved up to England before I was born. Never taught me a word, though. I didn’t speak the language and didn’t know s**t about grapes.”

“I’ll bet that was fun,” Jim snorted.

Gabe scoffed. “I’m glad to be gone, that’s for sure. No matter how fucked things at Wellington’s are there’s always someplace worse I could be.” He stopped for a second, clearly afraid he had said too much. “At least for me,” he amended.

“I think we can all agree on that,” Hersch muttered.

“Hey!” Jim yelled excitedly, interrupting the awkward moment, making us all jump. “There it is!”

We all flew over to Jim’s window and pressed our noses against the glass. The lights of London’s skyline stood right in front of us, a huge black presence looming against the orange sunset.

I couldn’t suppress my smile as I looked around at them. All weekend I had been worried that the stress from Chris’s letter would ruin my night out. But when I looked up at that skyline I knew we were going to have the time of our lives.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A very powerful letter. Brother's was direct and cold. I like that some of the family history of the boys is coming out. The chapter was very entertaining. Giving strength to the characters. No weakness in this excellent chapter.
Coyote