her father’s neck. She was pressing herself to him, her face hot against his cheek.
“Oh, no, Daddy, please, please, no. I don’t want to go there. I want to stay right here. Oh, please—”
She was not crying. Her chin and lips fought against the quivering that beset them, her arms pressed tighter. “I don’t want to go there—” And again he was at the station, hearing little Editha Wolff’s voice cry out against her unnamable fear. The first time a child meets fear, feels slipping out of its grasp all that is safe and known…
He remembered so well how it could be once when he was no more than five, no bigger than this frightened little Ilse, he had been roused from sleep by his mother in the middle of the night.
There was a fire blazing near the city’s gas supply, and the alarm had gone out—it was possible the great gas tanks might explode. He had been rushed into some clothes, half blind and staggering with the reluctant and stubborn sleepiness of a little boy; with his mother and father, he had gone running forth into the streets, to get as far as possible from the neighborhood.
They were the same streets he knew, that he played on and walked on. Yet he was never to forget the terrible quality of strangeness, because it was the middle of the night, because a lurid half-light glowed in the sky from the great fire beyond the houses, because—just because this was new, different, monstrous. He wanted only to reach out to his father, to his mother, to climb into somebody’s lap and hide his head and cry to them to stop all this Thing that was happening. But they were half walking, half running, and he had to go with them. Soon he heard his own sobbing voice in the air in front of him; he hadn’t meant to behave badly; he loathed himself for being a crybaby, but he simply could not check the awful feeling in his heart.
He remembered hearing his mother say, “Carry him, the poor child is tired,” and that then he was scooped up into his father’s arms and held against his shoulder, his own small knees hooked up against his father’s plump and comfortable stomach. He remembered, as if the memory were still somewhere in the muscles of his arms, how his small-boy’s arms had gone tight around his father’s neck, clinging, hanging to him as if to some God-given safety.
And here was little Ilse with her first fear. No menacing sky casting a fearful glare, no rushing through newly strange, nighttime streets—but a child’s terror was the same, whatever the cause. The very absence of tears told him that she was feeling no everyday kind of misery.
“Why don’t you cry, if you like?” he suggested quietly to her. “If you feel so badly, you can cry, you know, a little girl like you.”
She looked up at him, searching, and he smiled down at her. He had never talked that way about crying before, really he never seemed to notice one way or another before, as though it didn’t matter. He certainly never made fun of crying, the way other children’s fathers did. Something went all easy inside her, and she put her face back into his big shoulder and cried, and cried, but even that seemed all easy. Her arms went soft, the hard feeling left them, and she felt she had never loved this father so much and if he wanted them to go to another country, it was all right.
Paul had been patient, waiting. Now he began questioning again, and Franz explained as clearly as he thought he should. After a moment, Ilse’s weeping edged off into long, indrawn sobs and then quieted completely.
“It’s something that happens to very many people,” Vederle was saying, “that they decide for some reason to move from one house to another, or one city to another, and sometimes even from one country to another. Only when they move to another country, then they usually stay there much longer. That’s what we may do. We may come back here to Döbling before very long, or it may be that we shall stay in America instead, for
“Oh, no, Daddy, please, please, no. I don’t want to go there. I want to stay right here. Oh, please—”
She was not crying. Her chin and lips fought against the quivering that beset them, her arms pressed tighter. “I don’t want to go there—” And again he was at the station, hearing little Editha Wolff’s voice cry out against her unnamable fear. The first time a child meets fear, feels slipping out of its grasp all that is safe and known…
He remembered so well how it could be once when he was no more than five, no bigger than this frightened little Ilse, he had been roused from sleep by his mother in the middle of the night.
There was a fire blazing near the city’s gas supply, and the alarm had gone out—it was possible the great gas tanks might explode. He had been rushed into some clothes, half blind and staggering with the reluctant and stubborn sleepiness of a little boy; with his mother and father, he had gone running forth into the streets, to get as far as possible from the neighborhood.
They were the same streets he knew, that he played on and walked on. Yet he was never to forget the terrible quality of strangeness, because it was the middle of the night, because a lurid half-light glowed in the sky from the great fire beyond the houses, because—just because this was new, different, monstrous. He wanted only to reach out to his father, to his mother, to climb into somebody’s lap and hide his head and cry to them to stop all this Thing that was happening. But they were half walking, half running, and he had to go with them. Soon he heard his own sobbing voice in the air in front of him; he hadn’t meant to behave badly; he loathed himself for being a crybaby, but he simply could not check the awful feeling in his heart.
He remembered hearing his mother say, “Carry him, the poor child is tired,” and that then he was scooped up into his father’s arms and held against his shoulder, his own small knees hooked up against his father’s plump and comfortable stomach. He remembered, as if the memory were still somewhere in the muscles of his arms, how his small-boy’s arms had gone tight around his father’s neck, clinging, hanging to him as if to some God-given safety.
And here was little Ilse with her first fear. No menacing sky casting a fearful glare, no rushing through newly strange, nighttime streets—but a child’s terror was the same, whatever the cause. The very absence of tears told him that she was feeling no everyday kind of misery.
“Why don’t you cry, if you like?” he suggested quietly to her. “If you feel so badly, you can cry, you know, a little girl like you.”
She looked up at him, searching, and he smiled down at her. He had never talked that way about crying before, really he never seemed to notice one way or another before, as though it didn’t matter. He certainly never made fun of crying, the way other children’s fathers did. Something went all easy inside her, and she put her face back into his big shoulder and cried, and cried, but even that seemed all easy. Her arms went soft, the hard feeling left them, and she felt she had never loved this father so much and if he wanted them to go to another country, it was all right.
Paul had been patient, waiting. Now he began questioning again, and Franz explained as clearly as he thought he should. After a moment, Ilse’s weeping edged off into long, indrawn sobs and then quieted completely.
“It’s something that happens to very many people,” Vederle was saying, “that they decide for some reason to move from one house to another, or one city to another, and sometimes even from one country to another. Only when they move to another country, then they usually stay there much longer. That’s what we may do. We may come back here to Döbling before very long, or it may be that we shall stay in America instead, for
Similar Books
