A Childhood by Jona Oberski

Author:Jona Oberski [Jona Oberski]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782271147
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2014-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Trude came along. She asked where my mother was, and I said she was in the shack. She ran in. A little later she came out again and asked me if I’d told my mother to go straight to the infirmary. I said I’d forgotten. My mother came out and asked why I hadn’t given her the message. I said she’d been on duty and I’d been lost and besides I’d forgotten. She said she was going out and I should wait in the shack for her and she couldn’t say when she’d be back. I said I wanted to go with her, but she said I couldn’t. She said my father might die and that wasn’t anything for babies. I said I wasn’t a baby, and he was my own father and I had a perfect right to be there when he died and all the children I knew had been there when their fathers died. My mother asked: “Who for instance?” I pointed at one of the boys, but she said his father was still alive. Luckily another boy said he’d been allowed to be there and a girl said so too. They were brother and sister, but I didn’t tell my mother that. Then my mother said: “All right, but only until it happens; then you’ll have to leave.” I promised I would. We ran to the infirmary together. I ran ahead and showed her the shortest way, but she wanted to take the way she knew for fear of getting lost.

The doctor opened the door to the infirmary. He said: “At last. You’re lucky you’re not too late.” I told my mother she could see for herself that my father was still there. The doctor pointed to a bed farther down, and he himself went the other way. My mother went to my father’s bed. He was sleeping. She put her hand on his forehead and whispered his name in his ear. But he went on sleeping. The doctor came over. My mother was crying. “If only I had come sooner,” she said, “I could have talked to him.” The doctor asked her why she was so late, and she said I hadn’t told her. The doctor said that Trude had gone to tell her early that morning, but it wouldn’t have made any difference because my father was so far gone he had slept the whole time and he couldn’t have said anything. But the doctor said anyway he was glad my mother had come in time. He nodded his head in my direction and asked my mother: “Does he know…?” My mother said I knew my father might die and I wanted to be there because he was my father and because I’d heard from other children that they’d been allowed to stay there while their father was dying. I said it wasn’t true and I had just wanted to be with my father and my mother, because my father had told me to take good care of her.

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