_The Lost Boy_
Flip did not say anything. She just stood there and let Paul hold her
hands too tightly and she felt that somehow the pain in her hands
might ease the pain in his mind. Then he dropped her hands and started
to walk again, but more slowly. When he began to speak she listened
intently, but it was impossible to make it seem real. The story Paul
was pouring out to her now was like a movie, or something read in
a book. The concentration camps. The children and the children's
parents gassed and burned. The cold and the hunger, and afterwards
the lostness. The children in the DP camps. The children roaming and
scavenging the streets like hungry wolves.
"I was one of the lucky ones," Paul said in a low voice. "My mother and
father found me. I mean--Monsieur and Madame Laurens.... You'll have
to understand Flip, if I keep calling them my mother and father--but
that's the way I think of them now, and I don't remember anyone else
for a mother and father."
Flip nodded, and Paul continued, his face tense in the starlight.
"They found me in a bombed out cellar in Berlin when my mother was
singing there for the troops just after the war was over. I'd been
trapped there somehow and I was nearly dead I guess, but I kept on
calling and they found me and rescued me. And for some reason I didn't
want to be rescued. It's like sometimes when you try to save an animal
he snarls and bites at you before he realizes that you aren't going
to hurt him more. A dog was run over on our street once--not Ariel,
another dog--and he kept trying to bite at me for a long time until
he realized that I wanted to help him. His back was broken and I had
to chloroform him. Dr. Bejart helped me." Paul stopped talking and
continued to walk so rapidly that Flip almost had to run to keep up
with him. She looked up through the bare trees and the last color had
drained from the sky and the full flowering of stars was out and they
seemed to be caught in the topmost branches of the trees like blossoms.
By their light she could see Paul quite clearly but she knew that she
must not say anything to him. They had walked beyond the chateau now
and behind her she could hear an owl calling forlornly from one of the
turrets.
"I don't really remember anything before my mother and father found
me," Paul said. "Sometimes I remember bits of the concentration camp.
Aunt Colette thinks its because of the concentration camp that I'm
afraid of institutions. I might as well admit it, Flip, I am _afraid_
of institutions. I think if I could remember I wouldn't be afraid.
Sometimes when I'm in the chateau I feel as though I were going to
remember but I never do. I remember bits of the camp, the way you
sometimes remember bits of a nightmare, but when I try really to
remember it's like going out of a bright room into a dark room and you
can't see anything in the dark except strange shapes and shadows...."
"Oh, Paul," Flip whispered. She could think of no words of comfort or
reassurance so she whispered "Oh, Paul...." again to let him know that
she was listening and caring.
"It's like being blind," Paul said, "not remembering. When people talk
about the five senses they forget memory. Memory's like a sense....
Flip, I have never said these things to anyone before." He turned
sharply and they started walking back to the gate house. After a while
he asked her, "Are you cold?"
"No," Flip said.
"You must be cold. You wouldn't be shivering if you weren't. We'll go
back and roast some more chestnuts." She walked along beside him and
suddenly he turned to her and smiled and his voice was Paul's voice
again, "We're going to have wonderful times this winter, Flip!" he
said. "When you learn how to ski we can go skiing together. And in the
spring we can go for trips on the lake and in the summer we can go
swimming. I'm glad you came to the chateau, Flip."
"Oh!" Flip said, "supposing I hadn't."
2
The next afternoon the sky clouded over and it began to snow and it
snowed all afternoon and all night and the following afternoon skiing
began. Fräulein Hauser met the beginners in the ski room, and told them
the various parts of the skis and the ski sticks, and how to take care
of them. Flip clutched Eunice's discarded skis and felt happy with
the excited kind of anticipation that comes before Christmas. Somehow
she knew she would be able to ski and maybe if she turned out to be a
really wonderful skier the girls would like her better and then she
would begin to like school and she would be better able to help Paul.
But when they got out on the gentle slopes where Fräulein Hauser taught
the beginners it wasn't at all the way she had imagined and hoped it
would be. Instead of all at once being able to fly over the snow like a
bird as she had dreamed, she found that no sooner was she on her feet
than she was flat on her back, skis up in the air, or with her head
buried in the snow, or doing a kind of wild splits. Fräulein Hauser was
not unkind, but after a while she said,
"You don't seem to have much aptitude for this, do you, Philippa?"