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rainbowfic2024-01-19 08:57 am
freevistas) wrote in rainbowfic2024-01-19 08:57 am
Entry tags:
Teary-eyed #8: Didn't save
Story: Without Homeland
Colors: Teary-eyed #8: Didn't save
Word Count: 1122
Rating/Warning: T (corporal punishment, abuse)
Notes: A bit of Karol's backstory; references the Września school strikes; sort of loose interpretation of the prompt
Karol’s mother cursed the police and the Germans as she worked her way through the stock of food she’d preserved and stored for the winter; Karol’s little sisters followed suit, at least when they were out of their mother’s earshot, but Karol didn’t join in. The only one he was angry at was his father.
Karol hadn’t wanted to participate in the school strike in the first place. He liked school, and though he could never admit it to anyone, he actually liked learning German, a language that he believed would open up the world to him far more than Polish could.
And Karol liked his new teacher, Miss Wolf, a young woman so unlike the rest of the women in Września that she might as well have been from a wondrous, distant planet, not a small town outside of Königsberg. But Karol seemed to be the only one who treated the new teacher with anything but outright contempt. His classmates, surely encouraged by their parents, were merciless with her, experimenting with various forms of impish disobedience to see who could make her blush and stutter the most.
Miss Wolf never yelled at the boys, even when they were at their most recalcitrant, and it wasn’t until a couple months into her tenure at the school that she grudgingly resorted to the cane that the headmaster had been encouraging her to use from the start. Her attempts at using corporal punishment to restore order in the classroom backfired, though: she couldn’t seem to bring herself to give the boys proper lashings, and they could barely stifle their giggles when she tried. When she dropped her cane one morning, and Marek, who’d been bent over awaiting his thwack, reached down to pick it up for her with a flourish of mock chivalry, the class erupted in laughter.
Gradually, more and more boys began disappearing from the classroom and spending their days in isolation rooms, emerging for the afternoon walk home with entirely fabricated stories of medieval torture they’d endured at the hands of the cruel German headmaster, thus elevating themselves to heroic status in their classmates’ eyes.
Perhaps it was because Karol never joined in the students’ laughter or the pranks that elicited it; perhaps it was because he was the only one in the group who took Miss Wolf’s lessons seriously, the only one who earned high marks and the occasional pat on the head when his colleagues weren’t looking; perhaps it was because he and Miss Wolf silently empathized with each other in their experience of being the main objects of the boys’ derision and hostility. Whatever the reason, Karol began returning home from school with new German books hidden in his satchel: poetry, mostly, but some religion and philosophy too. Gifts from Miss Wolf, who’d sensed that the boy longed for more than what little she was able to teach in the chaotic classroom, longed for the kind of escape that romantic poetry and solitary study had provided her in her own less than pleasant schoolgirl days.
It wasn’t long before one of his sisters ferreted out a copy of Goethe and presented it to their father. That night, Karol felt a rain of blows much harder than anything Miss Wolf had inflicted on even the most devilish of his classmates.
“It’s bad enough they have to learn German in the schools,” Karol heard his father bark to a small huddle of neighbors in the street later that night. “But now they’re trying to force it down our throats in our own homes.”
The strikes started on Monday; an electric current of giddy anticipation seemed to flow between some of the boys as they trotted to school that morning, eager to unleash this new form of mischief their parents had sanctioned and encouraged; others marched toward the building with their chests puffed out, arms crossed, jaws locked in proud defiance, apparently convinced by their parents of the righteousness of their patriotic disobedience.
Karol dragged his feet, trailing far behind the group of boys that had already begun to gather on the school’s front steps, refusing to go inside. A small crowd of parents had formed on the street in front of the building to cheer on the children.
Maybe if he dawdled long enough, Karol thought, the strike would blow over by the time he got to school; or maybe if he arrived once the inevitable chaos had already begun, he could slip into the building unnoticed, and he and Miss Wolf could discuss Novalis alone in a blissfully silent classroom.
But his father had stormed up the road behind him, shoving a meaty hand into the hollow of his back and pushing him toward his destination. He found a spot on the edge of the group massed on the school steps just as the headmaster emerged from the building, cane clasped behind his back, spittle and German invective flying from his mouth.
A roar rolled up from the crowd of parents as the headmaster began grabbing boys by their shirt-collars and dragging them inside; women clutched their husbands’ arms and tried to hold them back until the sound of childrens’ cries from behind the schoolhouse door caused the parents’ rage to boil over.
Karol didn’t see what happened next. He’d hear about it later, of course–from his mother, his sisters, his classmates. He’d hear how his father had stormed into the building, had bloodied the headmaster–with the headmaster’s own cane, according to some versions of the tale–before the police arrived and hauled him away along with a few of the other mothers and fathers who’d made it into the school.
Miss Wolf had been watching through the window of her classroom on the building’s second story as the chaos unfolded below. Her notes for the day’s lesson were already written on the chalkboard; she’d told herself, as she did every morning, that today was going to be a better day than the previous one. That even if her lessons were lost on the majority of her students, there was at least one who understood and appreciated what she was trying to do.
From her classroom window, Miss Wolf watched Karol slip away from the group gathered in front of the school, dart past the parents rushing toward the schoolhouse door, disappear around the corner.
Somehow Miss Wolf knew, even in that moment, that Karol wouldn’t return to school. With his father in jail, he’d need to work to put food on the table for the family.
Karol ran.
And years later, when he’d saved up enough of the money that was left over from buying food and clothes for his sisters, he’d keep running. All the way to America.
Karol’s mother cursed the police and the Germans as she worked her way through the stock of food she’d preserved and stored for the winter; Karol’s little sisters followed suit, at least when they were out of their mother’s earshot, but Karol didn’t join in. The only one he was angry at was his father.
Karol hadn’t wanted to participate in the school strike in the first place. He liked school, and though he could never admit it to anyone, he actually liked learning German, a language that he believed would open up the world to him far more than Polish could.
And Karol liked his new teacher, Miss Wolf, a young woman so unlike the rest of the women in Września that she might as well have been from a wondrous, distant planet, not a small town outside of Königsberg. But Karol seemed to be the only one who treated the new teacher with anything but outright contempt. His classmates, surely encouraged by their parents, were merciless with her, experimenting with various forms of impish disobedience to see who could make her blush and stutter the most.
Miss Wolf never yelled at the boys, even when they were at their most recalcitrant, and it wasn’t until a couple months into her tenure at the school that she grudgingly resorted to the cane that the headmaster had been encouraging her to use from the start. Her attempts at using corporal punishment to restore order in the classroom backfired, though: she couldn’t seem to bring herself to give the boys proper lashings, and they could barely stifle their giggles when she tried. When she dropped her cane one morning, and Marek, who’d been bent over awaiting his thwack, reached down to pick it up for her with a flourish of mock chivalry, the class erupted in laughter.
Gradually, more and more boys began disappearing from the classroom and spending their days in isolation rooms, emerging for the afternoon walk home with entirely fabricated stories of medieval torture they’d endured at the hands of the cruel German headmaster, thus elevating themselves to heroic status in their classmates’ eyes.
Perhaps it was because Karol never joined in the students’ laughter or the pranks that elicited it; perhaps it was because he was the only one in the group who took Miss Wolf’s lessons seriously, the only one who earned high marks and the occasional pat on the head when his colleagues weren’t looking; perhaps it was because he and Miss Wolf silently empathized with each other in their experience of being the main objects of the boys’ derision and hostility. Whatever the reason, Karol began returning home from school with new German books hidden in his satchel: poetry, mostly, but some religion and philosophy too. Gifts from Miss Wolf, who’d sensed that the boy longed for more than what little she was able to teach in the chaotic classroom, longed for the kind of escape that romantic poetry and solitary study had provided her in her own less than pleasant schoolgirl days.
It wasn’t long before one of his sisters ferreted out a copy of Goethe and presented it to their father. That night, Karol felt a rain of blows much harder than anything Miss Wolf had inflicted on even the most devilish of his classmates.
“It’s bad enough they have to learn German in the schools,” Karol heard his father bark to a small huddle of neighbors in the street later that night. “But now they’re trying to force it down our throats in our own homes.”
The strikes started on Monday; an electric current of giddy anticipation seemed to flow between some of the boys as they trotted to school that morning, eager to unleash this new form of mischief their parents had sanctioned and encouraged; others marched toward the building with their chests puffed out, arms crossed, jaws locked in proud defiance, apparently convinced by their parents of the righteousness of their patriotic disobedience.
Karol dragged his feet, trailing far behind the group of boys that had already begun to gather on the school’s front steps, refusing to go inside. A small crowd of parents had formed on the street in front of the building to cheer on the children.
Maybe if he dawdled long enough, Karol thought, the strike would blow over by the time he got to school; or maybe if he arrived once the inevitable chaos had already begun, he could slip into the building unnoticed, and he and Miss Wolf could discuss Novalis alone in a blissfully silent classroom.
But his father had stormed up the road behind him, shoving a meaty hand into the hollow of his back and pushing him toward his destination. He found a spot on the edge of the group massed on the school steps just as the headmaster emerged from the building, cane clasped behind his back, spittle and German invective flying from his mouth.
A roar rolled up from the crowd of parents as the headmaster began grabbing boys by their shirt-collars and dragging them inside; women clutched their husbands’ arms and tried to hold them back until the sound of childrens’ cries from behind the schoolhouse door caused the parents’ rage to boil over.
Karol didn’t see what happened next. He’d hear about it later, of course–from his mother, his sisters, his classmates. He’d hear how his father had stormed into the building, had bloodied the headmaster–with the headmaster’s own cane, according to some versions of the tale–before the police arrived and hauled him away along with a few of the other mothers and fathers who’d made it into the school.
Miss Wolf had been watching through the window of her classroom on the building’s second story as the chaos unfolded below. Her notes for the day’s lesson were already written on the chalkboard; she’d told herself, as she did every morning, that today was going to be a better day than the previous one. That even if her lessons were lost on the majority of her students, there was at least one who understood and appreciated what she was trying to do.
From her classroom window, Miss Wolf watched Karol slip away from the group gathered in front of the school, dart past the parents rushing toward the schoolhouse door, disappear around the corner.
Somehow Miss Wolf knew, even in that moment, that Karol wouldn’t return to school. With his father in jail, he’d need to work to put food on the table for the family.
Karol ran.
And years later, when he’d saved up enough of the money that was left over from buying food and clothes for his sisters, he’d keep running. All the way to America.