Good luck homing pigeon

Chapter twenty three: Once upon a time... (9 January, 45 )

My teachers, all my friends, my family, they all told me I was a born storyteller. That I, amongst few, had the genuine power to weave words and people into tales worthy of the brothers Grimm. Since I was old enough to read and write, I'd been jotting down adventures in notebook after notebook. Piling them into a thick, aged-leather briefcase, barely able to contain the bursting pages under meagre, thin straps. The last time I'd seen that briefcase was when I'd left home; just sitting, undisturbed, leaning against my bedside desk. Since leaving that house in Paris, I hadn't touched a piece of paper or a writing pen. I hadn't even thought up a story-despite all the free, thinking time we had during the mundane hours of Birkenau. However, since there was every chance I could die in a few weeks, I thought that now out of any other time had to be perfect for a story. One I'd been putting off telling for too long.

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl. Neither knew each other at the time; neither had anything in common, neither liked the same subjects or hobbies. But they both had one thing in common; they both knew they made for something different. The boy was tall and slim with fine, light-brown hair and a pair of round, black-rimmed glasses, that seemed to rest on the bridge of his crooked nose every day, as if he was born with them. The boy was smart; intelligence beyond compare in his watery, grey eyes. And in the expensive, private school, attended his father, then his father before him, he thrived in the environment he was destined for.

The girl, was his exact opposite. She was always short, stout, with hands too big, a face too squashed in, and a strength that was always 'too unladylike'. Her mother looked down on her with a cool, unaffected disdain, her father, too scared to show her any real affection, and her sister was the cruellest of them all. She and her despicable friends would label the girl 'bulldog' and throw cakes at her, telling her to catch. The girl was gruff, and though she was smart enough, she was always better off with a hammer and some timber-helping her uncle whenever he had to work.

As the boy and the girl grew from children to teenagers, changes in their lives began to commence more prominently. The girl's uncle, her mentor, her only confidant, became a father at age forty six. The girl was ecstatic! At last, after years and years of trying, her aunt and uncle were blessed with a beautiful, little girl. Golden-haired, emerald eyes; she was perfect in every way. The only problem? She was what they called 'slow'. At four years old, the only two words she knew were 'hello' and 'Heil Hitler'. The rest of the family were disgusted; surely there must've been a reason, they all said, that her aunt and uncle weren't meant to have children. And this was it. But the girl wasn't like her own family. When she looked at her little cousin, she didn't see an invalid, or a retard like her sister called her. All she saw was a gorgeous, little angel whom nobody understood. And so the girl proved her loyalty to her aunt and uncle, by caring for her little cousin in every way she could.

The boy however, was facing a problem of an entirely different sort. Or more specifically-his parents were. Although he grew smarter and more successful with each year he spent at his special school, they noticed that their son had yet to find a lady. He had dates, yes, and he was friends with a great number of girls, but never was there was whom he could be close with. Intimate with. But they just laughed at their worrying and considered the problem as nothing but a passing phase. Little did they know, it'd soon turn out to be one of those phases that stuck, like a leech. Something he'd never 'grow out of' no matter how hard he tried.

When the girl celebrated her eighteenth birthday, life was at its' busiest. It was the 'war to end all wars' and being the only woman working in her family, things began to weigh down upon the girl like never before. With her father and uncle away, the girl soon became bread-winner for her family-this, and caring for her little cousin strained the poor girl-not to mention her sister's complaints about their father's absence, and her mother's constant disapproval. Nevertheless, the girl couldn't help but feel somewhat happy; she always knew she had some sort of purpose within her high-society family, and this had to be it. And her beautiful, little cousin, five years old by now, managed to show some appreciation in her own, little way.