Five Days

So I’ve finally gotten around to posting again!  Here is the first TMA I did for A215, it stemmed from a freewrite on a prompt of “breathing hard”.

 

Five Days

 

Five days I’ve been here now and the only thing worse than the pain and lack of sleep is the isolation.  All the other mums have a constant stream of visitors who bring news from the outside world.  As I lie propped up by pillows in this hospital bed I don’t think I’ll ever see outside again, I feel like I’ve been reborn alongside my son to stay forever in the sterile, humid wards of this alien hospital.

It is gone midday and I catch the scent of gravy and overcooked vegetables on top of the disinfectant smell of hospital.  As I move my gaze to the doorway one of the younger nurses arrives with my medication and silently places the small plastic cup on the bedside table.  Perhaps she has decided, as I have, that words are a waste of her breath when the recipient cannot understand a word you are saying.

I followed my cousin Erica to Berlin seven months ago.  She came to work and I came in order to put half of Europe between my mother and me when I told her that I was pregnant and that the baby’s father was a one night stand.  That phone call has never happened and now a whole new person has come into the world and only one member of my family knows about him.

In the clear plastic crib next to me Alexander stirs and I begin the laborious process of manoeuvring off the bed.  Slowly I roll onto my side.  I thought that nothing could be more debilitating than the ninth month of pregnancy but right now I feel more like a geriatric elephant than a woman of twenty six years.  I try to ignore the feeling that my insides are being torn out and cautiously begin to move to a sitting position from which I can lower my legs to floor.  Slowly, slowly my feet touch the cold smooth tiles and I gradually uncurl to an upright position.  From there it is just two steps to my now screaming child.  Two steps aren’t very far.  I even managed to get all the way to the toilet by myself last night.

“Bist du in ordnung?”  (“Are you alright?”) A portly nurse comes bustling through the door.

In my experience it is always easiest to nod when you are not sure and I do this now.  She comes over anyway chattering incomprehensibly, gathering up a nappy and baby wipes from under the cot as she speaks.  She is like lightening with the nappy.  I tell myself she has had a lot of practice and try to suppress my frustration and rising annoyance at the intrusion.

She is now miming a drinking motion and pointing at her ample chest so I nod again.  The nurse disappears only to return almost immediately with a feeding bottle.  She points to the chair by the bed and I lower myself gingerly until I can grip the armrests and take the weight of my body through my arms.  She bends down so I can take the baby and he drinks greedily.  The nurse nods “Sie können nach hause gehen, wenn sie heute wie” (“You can go home now if you like.”)

I hear the German word for home and hope I have guessed correctly.  I nod and with words I have practised say “Ja hause bitte.  Danke” (“Yes home please.  Thank you.”)

 

A few hours later and Alex and I are ready to leave.  Sat in the chair I turn my mobile phone over in my hand.  Now is as good a time as any.  If it goes badly I can make the excuse that Erica had arrived and hang up.

The telephone rings three times before she picks it up.  I wish I still smoked; I could really use a cigarette right now.

“Hello?  Is it Catherine?”

The words float across the continent from somewhere and someone as familiar to me as breathing.

“Yes, mum it’s me,”  I forced out.  This was hard.  I took a breath and let it spill out “I should’ve told you months ago.  I’ve had a baby; it was horrible.  I had an operation.  I really wish you’d been here!”

“My God!”  she breathed, “you’re not joking are you?  What made you keep this from me?  Take your time and tell me everything.  Your always welcome here with me, you know that.  I’ll always be here”.

I look at my son, so peaceful in his nest of blankets, and know the truth in her words.

Module Result Time!

And very pleased with it I am too!  Here is the short story I submitted for my final EMA.

EDIT:

I have just found out this story is going to be published in Sea of Ink; Ink Pantry Publishing’s anthology of work by former students of A215 October 2011 :-).

A Knock at the Door (Short Story)

One of the first things I wrote for A215 I have recently revisited this story in light of everything I have learned from the course and I hope it is looking alot better now!  It is still a work in progress so any comments much appreciated.

 

It was oppressive in the office with the windows closed against the rain.  The sound of papers shuffling and typewriters clicking were the only audible sounds rising from the closely packed wooden desks.

“Herr Kowalski.”  Jan looked up from the stack of papers in front of him and blinked behind wire rimmed glasses at the heavy set, uniformed man standing in front of him.  Herr Biermann sniffed and the sound of mucus travelling back up his nasal passages made Jan wince silently.

“I need you to stay late tonight Herr Kowalski, is this possible.” It was not a question “I have some papers I would like translating regarding the munitions factory and I would rather it were done promptly”.  He turned to walk away.  Jan sighed a little and nodded.

 

Watching the damp grey suburbs of Krakow shudder past him through a steamed up tram window Jan couldn’t help but feel cheated.  He had had such a promising future ahead of him as a student of Languages at the Jagiellonian University and had always assumed that his future would be a bright one.  Thoughts of University involuntarily led him to the memory of a damp, chilly November afternoon when he had watched from a distance as Nazi soldiers had herded away the academics to answer for the paranoia of the regime.  The lecturers had looked confused as they climbed into the truck, drizzle blurring their features as they were driven away.  Jan shivered involuntarily at the memory.  He should be thankful he supposed that he and his mother had been left alone.  He even worked as a translator at the Germans assumed administrative base at Wawel Castle.

He was disturbed from his reverie by the jolt of the tram as it came to a halt.  With a sigh he reached for the bar and pulled himself to a standing position, stepping onto a dark pavement, glistening like fresh tar under a sheen of unrelenting drizzle.

 

He rose early the next morning, his heart racing in his chest, his guts twisting in the familiar way that that always preceded a meeting with Feliks.  He dressed quickly and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply and enjoying the rough feeling against the back of his throat as he paused to view his reflection in the hall mirror.

“I’ve looked worse,” he thought with grim satisfaction as he took in his sallow complexion against the severe black of his brylcreamed hair.

He descended the stairs to a gaggle of elderly ladies crowded eagerly around Mrs Grabowski, a formidable matriarch with a wild bush of grey streaked hair.  Jan slowed his steps to listen; there could only be one reason that these old crones were holding court so early in the day.

“They came in the middle of the night of course,” Mrs Grabowski was telling the women, “two of them in uniform and one in plain clothes.  I was watching through my peephole couldn’t sleep last night you see my Bogdan was having one of his do’s and I heard the knock next door and knew it would be them”.  She turned and hacked until a glob of fresh phlegm landed neatly outside the door and on the pavement.  “Three grown men for one young girl”, she continued, “shows you how brave the Germans are doesn’t it!”  At this her craggy face cracked into a wry grin and she leant up against her doorway in smug satisfaction.

Jan felt his stomach flip flop.  He slowed some more, flattening his body against the wall.

“Oh Brygida it makes you wonder if anyone is safe anymore!” wailed a woman to Mrs Grabowski’s left.

“Now, now” Mrs Grabowski counselled her friend, taking her bony hands in her much plumper ones, “there’s no use in worrying about what tomorrow will bring.  I tell you we’ve all survived before and we will again!”  Mrs Grabowski unclasped her hands and locked her eyes on Jan creeping down the staircase.  A slow sneer spread through her wrinkles, “although some of us are safer than others!”

A flock of eyes swivelled to appraise Jan’s frozen form on the staircase.

“Just keep walking,” his brain muttered, “the door is only a couple of steps now and they’re only old ladies after all.  They used to be my mother’s friends”.

He lifted his head in answer to their stares and looked down at the small group of matriarchs.  Just as he was about to let the heavy wooden door swing shut behind him he heard Mrs Grabowski’s voice hit him like a slap round the back of his head, “why was it Alina and not you eh?  Alina has done nothing to be ashamed of, not like you, you traitorous bastard!”

Jan leaned against the wall as he reached the safety of the street.  So it had been Alina, his downstairs neighbour, who had been vanished away with the soldiers in the night.  He felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead.  Moments like this brought home to him his own position.  He rubbed his temples and sighed.  He couldn’t refuse Feliks anything.  Why was he trying to prove himself to a person who would never reciprocate even the slightest hint of affection?  He nudged his glasses aside.  He became unnerved every time he heard a story like this.  Alina had made no secret of her involvement with the Polish resistance movement; she deserved to be caught for Christ’s sake!  Well he hoped it was worth it.

He straightened up, brushed down his coat and headed towards the precinct where once thriving shops stood empty, their facades gaping open; musty and staring.  Memories of the sounds of glass smashing, guttural shouts and the acrid smell of smoke drifted into the corners of Jan’s mind.  He turned as he approached the shops and headed down a quieter street where Feliks’s father owned a grocery shop.

The familiar quickening again caught in Jan’s chest as his eyes involuntarily searched the shop window for the blue tablecloth Feliks always laid in front of the display to signal that he should come in to pick up the bag of food as normal.  Even from this distance he could not see the shock of dark blue fabric and for the second time this morning he felt sweat break out as a cold prickle across his forehead, his heart accelerating to a deafening volume.

It could mean anything he told himself.  Feliks could have forgotten…No; of course he hadn’t forgotten that was a foolish thought.  He could have slept in?  Again Jan doubted the truth of this.  Feliks knew what was at stake.

He kept walking as they had always planned.  He longed to go back but his legs refused to perform the necessary action and he just kept walking, his shoes making a clicking noise that Jan suddenly found obscene along the concrete pavements.  He fought the urge to run and struggled with the idea of doubling back.  He could call on Feliks later to check he was unharmed.  If he turned back now he could go to work early, at the very least he’d look eager.

Still he kept walking and he knew he was going to carry out the remainder of the plan just as certainly that he knew that Feliks was gone, along with Alina.

His thoughts fell into disorder as he walked:  Even if they had taken Feliks that didn’t mean they knew about Jan’s involvement, he worked for them for heaven’s sake, he’d have noticed if they had suspected him of anything.  That oaf Herr Biermann could never have disguised that knowledge!  Of course that didn’t mean they hadn’t wrung his name from Feliks overnight.  Damn his perfidious nature; he should have listened to his head when it told him this was foolhardy!  He was doing the right thing now.  He was effectively getting rid of the evidence and there was no point in them all perishing.  Maybe he could survive the camps?  After all some of the German’s at work often said that they were too tolerant on their prisoners.  He kept walking but the prickling sensation that had developed all over his skin did not ease.

Finally he came to the turn off for the back street that led to the modest patch of land his father had owned for growing vegetables when he was still alive.  He let himself in at the gate, the rotting wood spongy beneath his hand, small granules of moss coming away on his fingertips.  He paused at the doorway and listened for signs of life nearby but he only heard the dull rumble of the city trams as the suburbs came to life.  He shook his head slightly and turned the key in the lock, entering the squat building and squinting as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom.  He descended the steps to his right into the cellar were his father had kept his gardening tools and the smell of earth prompted memories of blurred, sunny days in his childhood when he would dodge inbetween the canes of runner beans and help in carrying shopping bags full of potatoes back home to his mother so she could cook a stew.  He could almost taste it.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps and flicked a switch to illuminate a solitary bulb swinging from the ceiling.

“You’re early” remarked a voice from the shadows.

“Yes, there may have been a development…” he let the words tail off as the eyes of the three people in the room fixed upon him.  “I couldn’t get the food” he continued but he suspected that they barely heard him.  A development could mean only one thing to them in their dank prison under the earth.

“You need to leave here” Jan said, “the people who send me to you are most likely captured, it’s only a matter of time before you are found.  Do you remember the plan we advised you of should this occur?”

Eva, a young woman of about 24, her face and clothing covered in dirt, nodded silently through strings of matted hair.  She looked towards her companions.  “We know what to do”.

Jan made his way up towards daylight and breathed the fresh cool air deeply.  He would head to head to work as usual.  If he went home he would drive himself as mad as his mother as well as drawing unwanted attention to himself at work and he lacked the nerve to run and mimic the life of Eva and her ilk.  After all, chances were he had gotten away with his subversion?  Making his resolution final he stepped up his pace.

 

Jan remembered it as the longest working day he had ever spent.  The hours were unrelenting and he spent his time under a clammy sheen of cold sweat.  Herr Biermann, to his credit, remained as monotonous and obtuse as ever and Jan left that evening beginning to believe that he may actually be able to go on with his life as before.

 

He was startled from a deep sleep by the knock at the door in the early hours.