debut - nicaise 6/3
Mar. 6th, 2017 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saumenschThe sky is crying ashen snowflakes that burn a little when they touch skin. It’s fitting that it should be. The world has ended and the sky knows it. It drops the snowflakes to the ground where they mingle with the ash and dirt that is now all that’s left of a street once named after Heaven.
They’d said the basement was too shallow. It hadn’t passed the inspection but this time it does enough. While the rest of Himmel Street sleeps and dies, a fourteen year old girl is in the basement, fallen asleep sprawled against dust sheets, paint tins and words. The pages are neatly printed and completed, her whole life painstakingly written out in pencil. Liesel has fallen asleep on the book. The bombs fall and the earth is shattered apart, and in seconds 33 Himmel Street is a pile of rubble instead of a home.
She wakes and she thinks, for a moment, that she’ll suffocate and die down here, amongst the words and the broken section of wall with a painted sun on it. Max drew that, she thinks. Max drew it without having seen the real sun in years and now it’s broken. Slowly, she realises what has happened, why the basement is suddenly collapsed in around her. The radio was sleeping just like everyone else when the warnings should have come, too little too late.
Papa.
She feels like the world is slipping away but she remembers silver eyes and an accordion, and she cries. Liesel cries until she hears voices, until the rubble shifts and strong hands pull her up and out. Hot air and a red sky greet her and Liesel screams in earnest seeing the wreckage around her. Papa. She beats at the LSE worker trying to calm her, small fists flying. She needs to see him. He’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, rolling a cigarette, and he’ll look up at her and wink and her nightmares will be chased away.
Only there is no kitchen table anymore.
“Is this still Himmel Street?” she asks the man once she catches her breath. He nods and says sorry, but she’s already stopped listening to him.
“We have to get my papa,” she says, the words insistent. “And mama. We have to get Max out of the basement. If he’s not there he’s in the hallway, looking out the window. He does that sometimes when there’s a raid - he doesn’t get to look much at the sky, you see. I have to tell him how the weather looks now. He’ll never believe me…”
The LSE man reaches for her at the same time as her knees buckle and she slides to the ground, like all of her energy has been taken on those words. She feels the numbness sliding over her as her brain refuses to acknowledge what’s happened, even with the word bomb ringing in her ears.
Her hands sting and she looks down, sees the book still clutched tightly in her fingers. The words. She still has the words that saved her.
Liesel closes her eyes, lets the LSE man drift away. The ground is moving beneath her, a gentle rocking motion, like it’s trying to soothe her. But when she opens her eyes it’s not the ground that rocks her but a train.
She turns to her side and she can see Werner, one eye closed, the other open and staring. He’s sprawled across the seat next to her, just like she remembers. It’s a dream, she thinks. A nightmare. This particular nightmare hasn’t plagued her since she forgave Frau Hermann on the steps of the mayor’s house but it’s here now, vivid as it was when it happened for real.
Liesel tears her eyes away from the vision of her brother long enough to look out the window. The train is slowing, pulling into the station. Into Molching, where Mama and Papa will be waiting. Papa will play the accordion and Liesel will roll him a cigarette and the rubble of Himmel Street will just be a new nightmare. The train stops, and Liesel reaches under the seat to grab hold of her small suitcase, her few precious belongings. She pulls it out and it’s not her suitcase, but Papa’s accordion case. It’s broken, blown apart with the instrument peeking through from the inside.
Taking it tightly in hand, Liesel looks one more time for Werner but he’s gone again, buried in snow. She whispers a quick goodbye, more than she ever got to say last time, and moves to get off the train.
The cold when the doors open is familiar, but that’s where the similarities stop. This isn’t Molching, it can’t be. The streets are much too busy and the buildings too unusual. No one pays her any attention as she steps off the train, eyes wide, face still covered in streaks of ash. Liesel steps onto the platform, the broken accordion case glued to the fingers of one hand, her book in the other.
“Papa?” she calls, looking around for his tall frame, his silver eyes. She looks for Rudy, for lemon-coloured hair and an impertinent grin, or Max, with a head of feathers. She doesn’t see any of them, nor does she recognise anybody who walks past.
“Wie bitte?” she asks, tucking her still-warm book under her arm and tugging on the coat of a person standing nearby. “Can you help me?”
They’d said the basement was too shallow. It hadn’t passed the inspection but this time it does enough. While the rest of Himmel Street sleeps and dies, a fourteen year old girl is in the basement, fallen asleep sprawled against dust sheets, paint tins and words. The pages are neatly printed and completed, her whole life painstakingly written out in pencil. Liesel has fallen asleep on the book. The bombs fall and the earth is shattered apart, and in seconds 33 Himmel Street is a pile of rubble instead of a home.
She wakes and she thinks, for a moment, that she’ll suffocate and die down here, amongst the words and the broken section of wall with a painted sun on it. Max drew that, she thinks. Max drew it without having seen the real sun in years and now it’s broken. Slowly, she realises what has happened, why the basement is suddenly collapsed in around her. The radio was sleeping just like everyone else when the warnings should have come, too little too late.
Papa.
She feels like the world is slipping away but she remembers silver eyes and an accordion, and she cries. Liesel cries until she hears voices, until the rubble shifts and strong hands pull her up and out. Hot air and a red sky greet her and Liesel screams in earnest seeing the wreckage around her. Papa. She beats at the LSE worker trying to calm her, small fists flying. She needs to see him. He’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, rolling a cigarette, and he’ll look up at her and wink and her nightmares will be chased away.
Only there is no kitchen table anymore.
“Is this still Himmel Street?” she asks the man once she catches her breath. He nods and says sorry, but she’s already stopped listening to him.
“We have to get my papa,” she says, the words insistent. “And mama. We have to get Max out of the basement. If he’s not there he’s in the hallway, looking out the window. He does that sometimes when there’s a raid - he doesn’t get to look much at the sky, you see. I have to tell him how the weather looks now. He’ll never believe me…”
The LSE man reaches for her at the same time as her knees buckle and she slides to the ground, like all of her energy has been taken on those words. She feels the numbness sliding over her as her brain refuses to acknowledge what’s happened, even with the word bomb ringing in her ears.
Her hands sting and she looks down, sees the book still clutched tightly in her fingers. The words. She still has the words that saved her.
Liesel closes her eyes, lets the LSE man drift away. The ground is moving beneath her, a gentle rocking motion, like it’s trying to soothe her. But when she opens her eyes it’s not the ground that rocks her but a train.
She turns to her side and she can see Werner, one eye closed, the other open and staring. He’s sprawled across the seat next to her, just like she remembers. It’s a dream, she thinks. A nightmare. This particular nightmare hasn’t plagued her since she forgave Frau Hermann on the steps of the mayor’s house but it’s here now, vivid as it was when it happened for real.
Liesel tears her eyes away from the vision of her brother long enough to look out the window. The train is slowing, pulling into the station. Into Molching, where Mama and Papa will be waiting. Papa will play the accordion and Liesel will roll him a cigarette and the rubble of Himmel Street will just be a new nightmare. The train stops, and Liesel reaches under the seat to grab hold of her small suitcase, her few precious belongings. She pulls it out and it’s not her suitcase, but Papa’s accordion case. It’s broken, blown apart with the instrument peeking through from the inside.
Taking it tightly in hand, Liesel looks one more time for Werner but he’s gone again, buried in snow. She whispers a quick goodbye, more than she ever got to say last time, and moves to get off the train.
The cold when the doors open is familiar, but that’s where the similarities stop. This isn’t Molching, it can’t be. The streets are much too busy and the buildings too unusual. No one pays her any attention as she steps off the train, eyes wide, face still covered in streaks of ash. Liesel steps onto the platform, the broken accordion case glued to the fingers of one hand, her book in the other.
“Papa?” she calls, looking around for his tall frame, his silver eyes. She looks for Rudy, for lemon-coloured hair and an impertinent grin, or Max, with a head of feathers. She doesn’t see any of them, nor does she recognise anybody who walks past.
“Wie bitte?” she asks, tucking her still-warm book under her arm and tugging on the coat of a person standing nearby. “Can you help me?”
