Gabe - Sixteen

Gabe

I tried. Believe me, I tried so hard not to ask Erich about his past. I had held off for months, and honestly I had convinced myself I didn’t want to know. It wasn’t fair to pry into his life if I wasn’t willing to talk about mine, and God knows I wasn’t ready to talk about my own scars. But everything that had happened that week was rotting away at my mind. All I had thought about for days was why Erich would possibly be so afraid of air raids.

I had thought I could drop it, but his tantrum about the shortened semester had kept me going. Whatever he didn’t want to go back to was really awful, I knew that much. But, as much as I would never admit it to him, I cared about Erich. I could tell he was just as damaged as me. And I had been thinking for a while now about the idea of never seeing him, never seeing any of the guys, again after school ended. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I just couldn’t make leave Wellington’s without knowing that, when all this was over, Erich would be okay. And if that meant risking getting thrown off the roof for asking about his past, so be it.

But in the end, I didn’t have to say anything. Erich came to me. “Gabe?” My name, a mumble carried by the wind, came from across the roof.

I had to shake my head to make sure I had heard him. Rarely did make contact by his own free will during these nights. “You okay?” I asked, thinking something must be really wrong.

            If I squinted, I could see him shaking his head, hunched against the chimney with his elbows draped over his knees. “No,” he said hesitantly, shakily. “I’m not.” Erich lifted his head, and through the dark I could see the conflict in his blue eyes. He looked almost as panicked as last night, and I realized right then that Erich was really breaking down.

            “What is it?” I asked, tentatively sliding towards him, still a little afraid that he could hurt me if he really lost it.

            Closer up, I saw Erich’s hands were starting to shake. “It’s eating me alive, Gabe. It all just gets jammed up inside until I can’t barely breathe.”

As much as I wanted to know what he was talking about, I knew I wasn’t really equipped to handle this right then. “You’ve had a tough couple of days, Erich. Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

“No!” his head snapped up and I recoiled immediately. “I have to talk about it, see? I’ll go crazy if I don’t.” He drooped again and he brushed his hair uncomfortably over his eyes. “Can I tell you, Gabe? Will you promise not to tell the guys?”

This was all I ever wanted: for Erich to trust me. I nodded, wondering if he could even see me, and said softly, “I promise.”

He was quiet for so long I thought that might be the end of it, then in a voice so small I could barely believe it came out of Erich Amery, he said, “Her name is Brigitte.” His voice was faltering and hesitant, but he did not stop until he had gotten the whole thing out.

I didn’t really know where to take it from there. I just said the first thing that occurred to me. “‘Is?’” I asked. “So, she’s still around?” For a while I had thought maybe he had lost whoever she was.

Erich nodded, still staring at the floor. “You could say that. She’s still alive if that’s what you mean.”

I wasn’t sure if he would be okay with my input, so I started small. “So you… you ran away from her?”

Erich did not look up, but he didn’t ignore me anymore either. “No. It wasn’t her I ran away from. I mean, some of it was. But more than anything, it was really my dad. My Führer. I told you, how we had to call him, didn’t I?” I nodded, and he kept talking even though he wasn’t looking. “He started beating up on me so long ago I don’t remember when it stared. Really, I can’t remember a time when he didn’t. And he used to hit Christian, my older brother, until he figured out the two of them were just the same. He hit my mom too.” His shoulders tensed up, and I could tell how angry it made him just to think about it. “I could take it when he came after me. I could fight back. But when he hit her… God, how do you do that to someone like her?” He took a deep breath, and I could tell he was slowly forgetting I was there. “She’s the only person who ever cared about what happened to me.”

            “I never wanted to be like him,” Erich went on. “But I could only hold out for so long before I got just as angry as he was. Even just looking at us you could tell me and Chris and him were all the same. Just big and blond and mean. Mama at least was pretty when she wasn’t bruised. Anyway, I started fighting back when he hit me when I was fourteen,” he paused just long enough for me to realize there was something he wasn’t telling me, but I knew better than to ask now. “I actually think he was proud of me.”

“When I was a kid, my mom told me about how he got to be the way he was. He was in the war when he was our age. Saw some things that would wreck your mind. And everything he went through made him obsessed with making me and Chris into men. All he ever told us was we ought to be fighting more or drinking more or f*****g more. It got so bad I convinced Chris to buy me a hooker when I was thirteen. Just to get him off my back. So when Hitler took over, I wanted to join more than anything. I wanted to make him proud. I wanted to be a man for him. I went into the youth when I was twelve.”

            “And Brigitte, she was the daughter of the head officer in charge of my jugend corps. I met her at a party after a rally two years ago. She was fifteen and I was sixteen, and we were both drunk as hell. She was wearing a black dress. I only remember that because I remember tearing it. We found an empty room and just… fucked. Fucked like animals. Just because it felt good.” Erich’s voice caught a little, and I could tell the story was getting harder for him to tell. I was too wrapped up to really think about what any of what he was saying meant. “I don’t know if you’ll get this, but in a place like that, you’ll do just about anything to feel something.”

             I answered before I could think about it, before the whole thing was even out of his mouth. “I do.”

            He turned his head over his shoulder and I caught a glimpse of the pain in his eyes. Erich, who was usually so cold and guarded, looking so lost and sad, was so unsettling I was immediately silenced. “Brigitte and I, it meant nothing. But it was still everything. Understand?” He didn’t wait for an answer this time. “We needed something to hold onto. Her father was even worse than mine, if you know what I mean. Neither of us had ever felt like were worth anything, until we had each other. For some reason being with someone who hated herself as much as I hated myself made life more bearable. She was… horrible. A terrible person. God, she wasn’t even pretty. She was skinny and bitter and just vicious.”

He was getting angry just thinking about it, I could tell. He was picking up speed. I was completely out of his mind now. Whoever he was telling the story to, it sure wasn’t me.  “But it only worked because I was horrible too. We both drank too much and fucked too much and fought like dogs. But I thought it made me a man like my dad wanted. Drinking and fighting and f*****g.  And she slept around. I know she did. But I didn’t even care. By the end I had to be drunk to even touch her.” Erich took a deep breath and slowed his pace before going on. “But she was always there when I needed her. She took my mind off my father and the war and the future and just took care of me.” He laughed to himself. “I really thought I was going to marry her.”

I was too enthralled to have the courtesy not to interrupt him. “So what happened?”

Erich whipped his head around and turned to partially face me, looking angry but answering the question emotionlessly. “What do you think? The government cut off the supply of condoms to civilians. The only ones I could afford were so cheap they were totally useless anyway. And you can guess that didn’t stop us.

My stomach dropped. “You don’t have a…”

He shook his head immediately “No, I don’t. But she did get pregnant. I was stupid. I told her it wasn’t mine even though we both knew it was. I knew she used condoms with the other guys. Hell, I found them. Anyway we got in a hell of a fight. I ended up throwing her on the ground. And when I looked down at her, her lips were shaking, and I knew she was going to cry. In two years I had never made her cry.” Finally he turned all the way around to me, burying his face in his big hands. “Then… then I knew I was just like my father. Goddamn it, I was just like him. I should have stayed. I know I should have stayed. God, I should have at least helped her up. But I ran away, went down the fire escape and left her there.”

There was a long pause on his end, and I thought that was the end of the story. But after a huge gulp of air, Erich squeezed his eyes shut and went on. “I went out to blow off some steam with some friends before going home. Didn’t get in until one or two in the morning,” more he wasn’t telling me, more I wouldn’t ask about. “Next thing I know, Führer is screaming at me, throwing me into walls and just… going insane. He was so mad he knocked Mama out for a minute when she tried to throw him off me. It took a solid twenty minutes of fighting before I even knew what he was mad about. He had heard from Brigitte’s father. She nearly got herself killed trying to kill the baby with a contraption she got from some crackpot doctor.”

Erich’s massive shoulders started to shake and I had to look away. I couldn’t watch him cry, I just couldn’t. But the sob was tearless, and he went on again after a couple of shaky breaths. “She told them I made her do it. She said I had threatened to do it myself if she wouldn’t get rid of the baby” He looked at me, his face begging for consolation. “I didn’t do it. I swear to God, Gabe, I didn’t.” He wanted me to believe. He cared what I thought of him. I was so consumed by that idea, I nearly missed what he said next. “I said some bad things to her but I never told her to do that. I don’t know… I don’t even know what she used. All I know was she still had it… up inside her when her mother heard her screaming. I know she was bleeding so bad they thought she would die. And… I know it worked. The baby was dead.” Another tearless choke. “My baby was dead.”

“But my father didn’t care about that. I had destroyed his reputation and Christian’s. Brigitte’s father was my father’s commanding officer. This would destroy his military career. The army was all my father had, and I took it away from him. He said he would kill me. He said it over and over. We tore the apartment to pieces fighting. Then I got in one good punch and somehow got out the door. That was the last time I saw him.”

My voice returned, and I managed to choke out: “where did you go?”

“The only place that made sense. Back to Brigitte’s. I climbed up to her room and looked in the window. She was laying in bed with her makeup just streaming down her face. All that greasy junk she wore on her eyes just melting off. It was the worst thing I had ever seen. The only way I had been able to treat her like I did was to believe she had a heart of stone. And there she was, hurt and crying and weak. I knew I had ruined her life. And I knew the only way I could make it right was to get as far away from her as possible.”

“I couldn’t do it without talking to her one more time. I went in through her window. She froze up when she saw me. Then she threatened to scream. I calmed her down a little. I know I should have apologized. I should have said something to fix it. But all I asked was why she had told them I made her do it.” I looked at Erich and I knew he was hearing her voice. “And said, she said I had made her do it. She said I had made her realize that she would be better off dead than the mother of my baby.”

Erich shook his head angrily, his lips a tight, angry line. “How do you say that to a person? I tried to keep talking, but she yelled at me to get out. I was dumb. I didn’t go. So she yelled louder, so everyone downstairs could hear. Then I didn’t have a choice.”

“I ran. I just ran and ran. I only got a few blocks before people were literally chasing me. It would have been over then, but then the sirens went off. Everyone scattered then. Everyone but me. I had to keep running. Everything just went black. There was just the ground under my feet and screaming.”

“Screaming?”

“The sirens. But in my head, it was Brigitte. And my mother. And every other person I had hurt. Screaming.”

There was a long pause on Erich’s end, and I thought that was it. After all, that was what he meant to tell me, wasn’t it? Why he was afraid of air raids. But he went on. “I laid low with a friend I trusted for a few days. Then Mama came. She hugged me like when I was little and Führer would hit us. God, it was like I was eight and not eighteen. I almost cried right there in front of my own mother. She’s an angel, my mom. She had a plan.”

“She had tried for years to get me out of the country, before the war got underway. She knew I didn’t want to be like Führer and Chris. She remembered Wellington’s from when she lived in England and she had forced me to apply in the fall. By some stroke of luck I got in, but then I was too wrapped up with Brigitte to care. That day, she brought me Chris’s papers to get me across the border. We look just the same, me and Chris. She told me to get out of Germany get to England as fast as I could, and she would write to Wellington’s and beg them to take me for the spring.”

“And they did?” What a stupid question.

“And they did,” he nodded. “Even with Chris’s papers it took me ages to get to England. I left at the beginning of January and didn’t get here until almost March. I was only a week off the boat when I got to school.” He paused one more time, then said, “and that’s everything.”

For me, the story was only just beginning to sink in. I had been wrong. Erich wasn’t as damaged as me. He was worse. He had a lifetime of abuse behind him, a childhood marked by violence, an arrest warrant on his head, a dead child. All I had was Leo. And at that moment, I felt so insignificant I could barely think of anything to say. “Erich,” I began, “why didn’t you tell me?”

Erich snorted. “Why don’t you tell be about Italy?”

My stomach knotted and my breath froze in my lungs. Even after he had told be everything, I knew I could never tell him my own tragic story. “Nothing happened in Italy,” I said unconvincingly.

He scoffed again, seeming to relax a little more. “Exactly.”

I knew I had to end the conversation, then, if I wanted to avoid getting into my own past. “Well, thanks for telling me,” I said, crawling back to my usual spot.

Erich nodded and sighed. “It just… ate away at me. I can keep most things quiet but that… I had to talk about.” He sat back up and looked at me from across the roof. “You won’t tell Banhart and Abrahamson?”

“I swear.”

“Good,” he nodded. The next words sounded almost like they were punching their way out of his mouth, like he didn’t want to say it but knew that he had to. That happened to him a lot, around me, I had noticed. “I don’t trust a lot of people, Gabe. But I trust you.”

What could I say to that? I should have said I trusted him too, or that all I had ever wanted from him was his trust, or how unbelievably happy I was to hear those words come out of his mouth. Instead, I said, “thanks.”

It only took a few second for us to return to our usual spots, as if nothing had been said. After another minute, his voice came across the roof one more time, harsher than before. “I don’t want to talk about it again. We’re going to go back down in the morning like nothing ever happened. This doesn’t change anything, understand?”

I nodded through the dark, “I know.”

But we both knew it was a lie. This changed everything.

Author's Note

Watch for new chapters. I've officially reached the meat of the Wellington's plot

Reviews

[Arianna]

THAT WAS AWESOME
and depressing
and un exspected
and im excited
and sad
and happy
and curious
and THAT WAS AWESOME
i must have more :)
i cant wait!
:) i love this book