Tell Tale: Short Stories

My abiding memory of Berlin was not the Opera House, or even the Brandenburg Gate, but a concrete monstrosity that stretched like a poisonous snake across the center of a once united city.

“I want you to imagine,” said Mr. Costello, as we stared up at the Wall, “a twelve-foot barrier being built from the Mersey to the Humber, and you never being able to visit any of your family or friends who live on the other side.”

The thought had never crossed my mind.

After a few days in Berlin, we boarded a charabanc for Dresden, but never once left the coach as we stared out of the windows in disbelief to see what was left of that once historic city. It made me feel that perhaps at times the British had also behaved like barbarians. I was pleased when the coach turned around and headed back to Berlin.

The following day was a schoolboy’s dream. After driving to Regensburg, we spent the morning on a coal barge trudging sedately up the Danube, billowing black smoke as we made our way to Passau. After lunch, we took a train to Munich, where we spent three days in a youth hostel with young women actually sleeping in dorms on the floor below us. The next morning we explored the capital of Bavaria, and there wasn’t much sign that this had once been the birthplace of the Nazi party. I much admired the Residenz, the vast palace of the Wittelsbachs, where Mark Bairstow looked so relaxed he might have been visiting an old friend at home.

In the evening, we went to the Cuvilliés Theater to see La Bohème, my first introduction to opera, which was to become a lifelong passion. It would be years before I appreciated how much I owed to Mr. Costello, a teacher whose lessons stretched far beyond the classroom.

The following day, we visited the Alte Pinakothek, and I can’t pretend I was able to fully appreciate Dürer or Cranach, as I couldn’t take my eyes off a group of girls who were being shown around the gallery by the same guide. One in particular caught my attention.

My extracurricular activities in Bavaria included my first experience of beer, frankfurters, attending the opera, and being kissed good night by a girl, although I don’t think she was overwhelmed. I just wished we’d had another week as she was clearly in the class above me.

On our final day, Mr. Costello brought us all back down to earth when we boarded a bus that didn’t announce its destination on the front. We must have traveled some fourteen miles north of Munich before we reached a small town called Dachau. Of course, I knew my closest friend was Jewish, but I only thought of him as a classmate, and we never quarreled about anything except who should open the batting for Yorkshire. And when Ben once told me that his grandmother kept a packed suitcase by the front door, I had no idea what he was talking about.

When the bus came to a halt outside the entrance of the concentration camp, we all got off in an uneasy silence and stared up at the uninviting rusty gates. I didn’t want to go in, but as everyone else trooped after Mr. Costello, I meekly followed. Our first stop was at a vast black wall, where a thousand names had been chiseled into the marble to remind us who had been there only a few years before, and not during a holiday excursion with a tour guide. I saw Ben weeping quietly as he stared at the thirty-seven Levys, three of whom hadn’t lived as long as he had. I looked across to see Mark Bairstow looking thoughtful, but apparently unmoved, while the rest of the group remained unusually silent.

The young German guide then took us through the huts that had remained untouched since their occupants were liberated by the Americans. Row upon row of four-tiered bunks, with inch-thick mattresses and no pillows. At one end of the hut, a half-filled bucket of water that had been the lavatory for the fifty-six occupants, emptied once a day. But worse was to come, because Mr. Costello had no intention of sparing us.

We climbed back on the bus and took the journey to Hartheim, where our young guide led us into a large soulless concrete building, where we entered a cold eerie room where time had stood still. He pointed to the holes in the ceiling where, he explained, the gas was released into the chamber, but only after the prisoners had been stripped and the doors locked. I felt sick, and didn’t have the courage to enter the final room to view the vast ovens that our guard told us had been built in 1933 soon after Hitler had come into power, and where the bodies of his innocent victims were finally turned into dust.

When Ben eventually emerged, he fell to his knees and was violently sick. I thought of his grandmother, and for the first time understood the “packed suitcase.” I rushed across to join my friend, surprised to find Mark Bairstow already kneeling beside him with an arm around his shoulders, trying to comfort a boy he’d never spoken to before.

* * *

I was delighted to follow Mark Bairstow as school captain, even if I couldn’t hope to emulate his style and panache. I worked diligently during my final year and, with the conscientious help of Mr. Costello, was offered a place at Manchester University to read history. I accepted the offer, even though for a Yorkshireman to cross the Pennines into Lancashire in order to further his education was tantamount to high treason.

By the time I graduated, I didn’t need Mr. Costello to tell me the profession I was best suited for. And if this tale had been about a schoolmaster, and the years of fulfillment he gained from being a teacher … but it isn’t.

* * *

I was teaching at a grammar school in Norfolk when my wife became pregnant, and I had to explain to her why she would have to travel up to Yorkshire to give birth to our son otherwise the lad couldn’t play for the county. Not that she had any interest in the game of cricket. It turned out to be a girl, so the subject was never mentioned again. However, I took advantage of being back in Leeds to look up my old friend Ben Levy, now a local solicitor, to suggest we spend a day at Headingley and watch the Roses Match.

Being Yorkshiremen, we were in our seats long before the first ball was bowled, and by the morning break the county were at 77 for 2. “A spot of lunch?” I suggested as I rose from my place in the Hutton stand and glanced up at the President’s box to see a face I could have sworn I recognized, despite the passing of time. But he was wearing a dog collar and purple shirt, which threw me for a moment.

I touc

hed Ben on the elbow and, pointing to the box, said, “Is that who I think it is?”

“Yes, it’s Mark Bairstow, the new Bishop of Ripon. Still loves his cricket.”

“But I always assumed he was destined to be the next chairman of Bairstow’s, the finest iron forgers in the county.”

“And therefore the world,” laughed Ben. “But when he went up to Cambridge, he changed courses in his first term and read theology. So no one was surprised he ended up as a bishop.”

* * *

Like Mr. Costello, I too organized an annual trip to Europe, and after excursions to Rome, Paris, and Madrid, I felt the time had come to return to Berlin and see how much the German capital had changed, since the Wall had finally come down.

I found the city was transformed. Only one small graffiti-covered section of the Wall still stood firmly in place, an ugly monument to remind the next generation what their parents and grandparents had endured, which they were now studying as history.

Dresden turned out to be a modern city of steel and glass, and you would have had to search Munich to believe the Germans had ever been involved in a war. And when we visited the Cuvilliés Theater, two of the boys showed the same excitement that I had felt when I saw my first opera.

When the final day came, I considered, like Mr. Costello, it was my duty to visit Dachau, as anti-Semitism was once again rearing its ugly head in my country. I was just as apprehensive as I had been the first time, although I tried not to let the boys and girls know how I felt. When the bus came to a halt outside the main entrance, I silently led the children through the even rustier gates and into the camp, and as far as I could see nothing had changed. My young wards spent some time staring at the names on the memorial wall, and when I saw the thirty-seven Levys, I thought of Ben. The huts remained untouched, and I could see the look of disbelief in the children’s eyes when they saw the water bucket at the end of the room. They would never complain again about their cramped dormitories.

Our guide then took us into the museum, where we studied the photographs of prisoners whose black-and-white striped pajamas hung on their skeletal frames, and of the bodies of lifeless men and women being dragged from the gas chambers to the ovens. There was even a photograph of Himmler to remind us who had carried out Hitler’s orders.