Even The Sparrows (eBook)

Johnny Salmons (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
332 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-7145-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Bremen, Germany, September 1943. A chance meeting sets into motion a chain of events that is destined to align the lives of four young Germans. On the run, they must face dangers far from the battlefield as they make their perilous journey across Germany and beyond. To succeed, not only must they evade the Nazi War Machine that threatens to consume the world around them, but confront the shame, anger and secrets that they all hide. A story of survival, friendship, forbidden love, hope and resistance, in the very worst of times.

Johnny Salmons, a teacher of English, History and Media Studies, who now teaches part-time whilst pursuing his love of travel, historical research and writing. 'Even The Sparrows' is his first novel. As a researcher and writer, Johnny likes to explore the stories of the everyday people behind significant events, linking characters' experiences to accurately portrayed historical and contextual detail. He believes that empathetic and inspired fiction is one of the greatest ways to bring history alive, so that we may never forget lessons learnt from the past. Warwick-based Johnny, was born in London, to a British father and a Greek Cypriot mother. He has always been fascinated by the lives of others in testing times: how people cope and find hope in the seemingly impossible. Always passionate about travel, writing has enabled Johnny to visit the settings for his writing and talk to those left behind about their experiences and understanding of their country's past. He is also a firm believer of how a place tells its own story - if you look closely enough! Johnny is currently completing the sequel to 'Even The Sparrows' - 'Pieces' - which tells the tale of familiar characters, picking up the 'pieces' of their lives to make a new life in the aftermath of war.

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Bremen, Germany, September 1943. A chance meeting sets into motion a chain of events that is destined to align the lives of four young Germans. On the run, they must face dangers far from the battlefield as they make their perilous journey across Germany and beyond. To succeed, not only must they evade the Nazi War Machine that threatens to consume the world around them, but confront the shame, anger and secrets that they all hide. A story of survival, friendship, forbidden love, hope and resistance, in the very worst of times. A heartwarming and gripping saga, told in four parts. Through the journeys of Karl, Josef and Rebekka, and Lars, the reader is led through key historical events between 1938-1945 in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. A coming of age tale of the forgotten, the blamed, the condemned, the brave.

Textauszug

Chapter 3

Lars and Josef – “Be Invisible”

Sat upon his stool in front of his mother’s bakery, Lars sighed, violin in hand. The two boarded-up shop windows in front of him, a reminder of a dear friend lost in The Madness, whom he struggled to forget.

Josef had always retained a cheery disposition despite the growing wave of antisemitism. Often, they would chat and joke in the cobbled street that stood between his parents’ store and the bakery, making light fun of the local folk and comparing tales of customers and their funny ways. Shorter than Lars, Josef was a handsome, stockily-built youth, with a thick head of dark brown hair that he would wax back from a middle parting but would inevitably curtain forward, beneath which his dark brown eyes sparkled with intensity, even more accentuated by his high cheekbones. He would turn many a young lady’s eye, Jewish or ‘German’, even in the early years of The Madness. Incomprehensible to Lars it remained, how German eyes changed in The Madness; how funny, beautiful Josef could be seen as ‘less human’, as an ‘inferior being’.

Then how suddenly life seemed to change.

It was 9 November 1938—Kristallnacht. The SA Stormtroopers arrived and a night of violence shattered any illusions of Bremen being safe for the local Jews. Throughout the neighbourhood, the sound of broken glass, smashing wood, cries and screams could be heard, amongst the occasional gunshot. Everyone had guessed who they had come for. Some did not care, a few even went outside to watch or worse, join in, but most like Lars and his mother, Mia, huddled inside, waiting fearfully for them to leave. All understood going outside would achieve nothing, but ensure they too got a beating. Still, Lars sat there sick with shame, as he thought of Josef, his sister, and their parents, and imagined the worse. Mia sensed his guilt and clung onto Lars tightly the whole time. He could not leave her alone. Mia banked on this, she knew how close Josef and Lars had become. Not like brothers, like he was with Leonhard, but close enough.

The next morning, Mia did not tell Lars whether to speak or not to Josef and his family, but simply set him upon his deliveries, the moment he awoke. When he opened his front door, Lars’s heart sank to see the store already closed, the windows boarded up, the broken glass and splinters of wood cleared, silence sitting upon the broken building. Without even checking for prying eyes, he approached Josef’s doorstep on that empty street. Feeling sick to the stomach, Lars finally plucked up the courage and knocked gently twice, then stood hesitantly but expectantly. Answering the door slowly, a large red bruise on his right cheek and a cut above his swollen left eye, told his story. For once, Lars found it hard to read the expression on Josef’s face. Awkwardly, they stood for a moment, Lars so wanting to say sorry and ask if they were all ok but feeling unable to offer anything other than a feeble smile, which Josef, after staring at him for a few moments in a curiously strange manner, returned.

Ah Josef! He was only a year older yet always seemed so much wiser to Lars, then began with a warning of sorts: “Lars, I have come to realise you are a dear friend, but I have also come to fully realise that a terrible sickness has taken hold over Germany. It is truly infectious, dreadful in its symptoms—”

Lars made to speak and interrupt Josef, who raised his right hand to stop him and then continued. Resting a hand upon Lars’s shoulder, he looked directly into Lars’s eyes, his voice wavering with emotion but firm, “Yes, my dear Lars, I know of your immunity, but it is those all around you. You must always be on your guard for your sake and your mother’s. We cannot openly be friends. We are banned from public places, banned from parks, restaurants and now a boycott on our businesses. How can we recover from this? How will we survive? Lars . . . you must never come to my front door again.” Here he paused, dropped his arm and looked down, as did Lars. No searching eyes. Two close friends bereft, with a wall of neither of their making, now thrust between them.

What thoughts flicked through Lars’s mind in that moment—so many, in so few seconds. A blush settled on his cheeks. Tears welled in his eyes. Did the early morning darkness hide them?

But then, Josef continued, as if offering a little hope, a small tangible line for their friendship to cling onto. Peering around keenly, then in hushed and slightly dramatic tones, “Every morning at 5 a.m., the same time I believe you start your deliveries, you may pass and pause in the small alleyway behind our store for a cigarette. You may rest your bike upon the wall and lean back where our outside toilet wall meets the fence. I will wait there each morning, Lars. There will be a small hole in the fence, at the end, by the outdoor toilet wall, from a domestic accident of course.” At this point, Josef could not suppress a boyish giggle. Then in a more earnest voice, “I will wait there each morning. You will be careful Lars . . . very careful. If anyone approaches: a cough followed by a silence will be the warning.”

“And so, we must never talk again!” Josef then proclaimed in a much louder and firmer voice. Then a surreptitious smile and a wink—that old mischievous smile that once charmed everyone so—before turning his back to him and returning to his refuge.

It was not till the next day that Josef told Lars of how his father had been taken with all the other Jewish men from the town. Where? No one quite knew. It was also from Josef that he learnt that, in Bremen alone, five Jews were killed in that night of violence. Horrified that it had to come to this, Lars also felt a pang of guilt in the relief he felt, that Josef was not one of those five.

So, from the next day onwards, Lars started smoking once a day. Sometimes for many minutes, sometimes for what seemed like seconds—a lone cigarette passed back and forth through the accidental hole in the back fence, by the outside toilet. A cough would signal the slightest disturbance that could betray them. And if anyone spotted Lars, it would simply be a young man discretely smoking, out of sight of the prying eyes of his mother!

Lars grew to cherish these clandestine moments, as the bond between Josef and himself grew stronger. With no income, Josef’s family lived off the dwindling supplies of their business and bartering with their fellow Jews. Mia knew but never spoke of their early morning rendezvous. Each morning, she would place several extra rolls and a few scraps in small paper bags in case Lars “got hungry”. These would be surreptitiously pushed through the gap in the fence. Eyes could always be watching.

Sometimes the conversation was light-hearted:

“So, Josef, how is paradise this morning?” Lars would query with mock sincerity.

“Ah, Lars, these four walls offer great insights!”

“Greta asked after you. . . She says, her uncle may say you are animals but if that is so, you are the most beautiful animal she has ever seen!”

Josef would then laugh, “Ah . . . beautiful Greta . . .”

At other times the conversation was darker, the anger resounding in Josef’s voice:

“Ah, Lars, we went to visit my uncle and his family today—such terrible stories and rumours. There is talk of them moving us all, taking everything from us. My parents can’t believe they will go so far but Lars, who would have thought it would be like how it is now? Have you heard how they burned the Great Synagogue in Nuremberg to the ground that night? And many others! We are banned from public spaces, sitting on benches, going to school; they destroy our businesses. They take the men of the town—to where? We dread to think! Surely, we would be fools, to not believe the worse could still happen?”

Slowly the cigarette would be passed to and fro, through the hole, each pass representing an expression of sympathy or understanding. Lars would listen with his heart pounding and fear grasping within him. The incomprehensible occurred too often now—the sickness spreading to those he never imagined.

Josef rarely spoke of his father, but as the days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, his moods grew darker. Then one April morning, his father and some of the other Jewish men returned. Most followed in the coming weeks. Josef said little more than “father has returned.” But something had changed. Josef suddenly seemed more hopeful and Lars could sense Josef was planning.

Even more than usual, Josef warned him on nearly every visit now: these were the times to be silent. times to be ever watchful, times to believe that things too terrible to imagine could come to pass. “Smile and nod and say whatever you need to say, Lars; no time to be a hero, not now! You must be invisible, Lars!”

Then one morning, a few weeks after his father’s return, Josef and his family were simply not there. No one saw anything. Not even his mother. There was simply no explanation. On his rounds, Lars discovered that Josef’s uncle’s family seemed to have gone suddenly too. Had they just left? Surely, Josef would have said something? Had they been taken? Whom would Lars even ask?

How little had he realized that their brief...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.11.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-7145-3 / 9798350971453