Pool Side
The pool room at the hotel downtown smelled so strongly of chlorine that my eyes turned red upon entering. It did not take me long to discover the source, obviously knowing it was the pool itself, as I lowered myself into the water every microscopic injury on my person began to sting like I was taking an antiseptic bath. I quickly opted for the whirlpool instead and as I sat there relaxing he came in with his son.
Had I not just seen him come in I might have thought the color of his face, a deep red, was due to the toxic level or chlorine in the air. But since it wasn’t, I began to wonder. He had kind of German features. Big bulbous nose, round head, light colored hair, very tall. His son was a little tubby and had long hair like the kids are wearing these days. He was a tad on the old side to have a child this age, maybe 10 or 12 and as the kid swam, he and I both looked to his father for recognition of his antics, neither of us found it.
I filled his mind with my thoughts. “Why did your mother ever have to have you?”
He was 5 or 6 when the war began. It had turned his father into a fearful and angry man. His father up to that point in his short life was doting and vigorous in his way of living. He doesn’t remember it now but there are pictures that prove they had many wonderful adventures playing in the jagged sloping hills of his village. The same ones his grandfather had shown his father and generations before that, the only living thing longer on those hills were the mountain goats God put there Himself.
But now they were leaving the lovely shadow of their beautiful mountains and moving to a place he could not imagine no matter how many times his mother answered the question “Where are we going again?”
The city of Frankfurt was busy and grey. He barely had time to miss his home before the hustle and bustle around him distracted his mind and filled it with wonder. Tall buildings and many cars and people dressed like they were going to church. But he did not see a church, and it wasn’t Sunday. Then they arrived at the home of his aunt. He had met her a few times but had never been to her house. It was tall. That was all he could think. The ceilings were so far above his head that he almost fell over backward trying to see them. He stumbled and his mother said something to him in English that he didn’t understand. That was when he noticed the other men in the room.
They had on the same kind of clothes; it looked like they were matching on purpose. The stood very straight and had very serious looks on their faces. They were speaking in German so he understood what they were asking but he had no idea why they would be asking such questions in such a way. They almost shouted, “Where did the Kleinfeld’s go?” He noticed his aunt glance at his mother and then at the floor. His father tried to interject but the two men forcefully moved him aside. They asked the question again only louder adding, “Tell us where they have gone or we will take you instead!”
With no response the two men grabbed his aunt and his father and rushed them out of the house. He was confused and then overcome with sadness at the look on his mother’s face. She was lying on the floor making a face that said she was crying, but no sound was coming out. He didn’t know whether to run after his father or run to his mother, so he just stood there.
And even though his life went on and he eventually came to live in America and have what he assumed all men were working for, a wife and home and children, he never let go of the pain. And he never was kind to his wife. And as he was finally persuaded to have a child by her, he never let himself love the boy.
Then I saw him smile at his son. And everything was right again.
