THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED

. . .   Even though it was a very sad day, Mother still looked very beautiful. Her teeth were blinding, eyes like topaz and her paisley dress was like a moth with crystal wings who tried to fly but fell to the ground and shattered into a million pieces. I kept trying to think of a way to tell her, but every way I thought of seemed weird and wrong, so I kept it to myself.

Father had a white, waxy face with dark whiskers. He hadn’t shaved in weeks.

“We must be quiet, Josef,” Mother finally said. “Show the Rabbi respect.” His hat was funny, and he was awash in lidless starlight, speaking somberly. I stared at it for the remainder of the service and wondered what his head looked like underneath as shadows gathered in shifting sunlight and rose deadly and decided. For the majority of the day, I painted achromatic smiles on sad muses.

As much as he tried to conceal it, Father’s pain came out from his throat, wavering at first but becoming steadier, lapping at the river without a sign of stopping. Like he hit a wall and tried to scream, but his voice was melted by the sound of the silent wood.

. . .   Muffled sobs wracked against his chest. His world turned into a blur, and so did all the colours. The sounds. The tastes. The smells. Everything was gone. A last painful emotion slammed against him before he lost the feeling of feeling and finally stood, breathing it all in.

The Rabbi’s hand rumbled in passage as it reached for the stranded wavy bittercress. It collapsed into itself, and the snow and clay that was once animated spilt onto the riverbank. We shimmered and faded into grey.

I squeezed my father’s hand and daydreamed about a man they called the Führer. He kept me company on the radio as I painted, and his words lingered in my memory. But I never finished his speech before Mother turned the channel to Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, and violins raced voices in a five-minute epic.

In the dream, I attended a ceremony at which he spoke, listening contentedly to the torrent of words spilling from his mouth. His sentences glowed in the dark. In a quieter moment, he crouched and pinched my cheek. “So you’re an artist, little one?” he asked.

As I began my response, I was shaken from the dream by the shovels hacking into the snow. The men’s words slashed my skin.

Digging to my brother’s right, the older one warmed his hands and cursed the snow.   

. . .  A few minutes later, we left. Mother thanked the Rabbi for the ceremony. I kept looking back, watching as my little brother stayed.

Tomas Schneider, with hair lighter than mine and a rounded face, crouched beside the burial site, frost-bitten hands in his coat pock, and looked so tiny amongst all the snow. He was two years younger than me—ten years old.

His blue eyes sparkled like storm clouds right before lightning hit. Clouds of grey and blue threatened floods and fury while his pupils dilated in misery, eyelashes catching the snow.

In shock, his tiny hands reached for us. “Come back,” he said.

“Come back.” He wept nice and hard, welly boots in the snow. “We can’t leave her here…”

Within seconds, the snow carved into his skin. His knees were purple, his nose was red, his teeth chattered, and the wind bit his face.

Somewhere in all the snow, I saw his broken heart in two pieces; each half was glowing and beating under all the white. He realised Mother came back for him when he felt the boniness of her hand on his shoulder. A warm scream filled his throat, and my mother and brother sat frozen in the snow as she rocked him gently. When it finished, they promptly stood, embraced, and breathed.

A final, forlorn farewell was let go, and we turned around and left the wood, looking back several times to a place we would never return.

Hours wore out and fell away. We hurried to the platform and boarded the next train to Berlin just before four. Mother and Father made us walk in front and lifted us into the belly of the carriage. Woollen caps and puffy coats, the crowd further bloated, chewing out vowels, trudging through whoever was in their way. We collided, ricocheted, burst in each others’ peripherals, tangled and untangled, meshed and unmeshed. Snowflakes hummed inside my head, bumping to and fro. The stinging sky met soggy ground, and nothing seemed to stick. In places, it was dusty pink with the setting of the evening.

. . . I saw people walk past the train carriage like a piece of the night, like someone carefully cut around them and peeled them away, leaving only their blackness behind.

My head was resting on Father’s shoulder, and my legs were on my grandfather’s sleeping lap. Once in a while, Grandfather’s lips contacted my scalp and brushed hair from my forehead. I was sure he carried the memory of Grandmother heavy on his lips. His eyelids were like raisins. Always, I heard the muted rattle of Father’s books in his satchel, and in the air we breathed, dust stirred.

Tomas and Mother slept opposite. She held onto him for dear life, felt the hot, lumpish weight of the boy on her chest.   . . .