Childhood's Hour
A memory from a dear friend . . .
When I was six and a half I finished the painful trek that led me, at its' long end, to Auschwitz. I found it days after the great Liberation, before the corpses had been lain to rest. In my eyes, it was beautiful; there was food! And not just the food brought by the liberators, either–I knew already, knew long since, the taste of the dead.
A man came over; a journalist. He looked at the bodies, shocked. I laughed at this: I had seen death constantly for years now.
How he jumped!
Do you speak Lithuanian? I asked.
He looked blank.
"Le parla l'Italiano?" (You speak Italian?) I asked.
"Um . . . no. Sorry, kid."
"Ah, so you speak English! Good, good." I smiled–and went back to the corpse I had been eating. The left arm was almost off: I gave one more tug and it came free.
"What are you doing?" Even more shocked now.
I smiled at something he couldn't see. "You are a newsman." It was not a question, just a statement of fact. "Would you like to hear my story?"
"Yes, I guess I would."
I laughed bitterly. "What fun . . . I was born in Lithuania. My father was a–nobleman, I suppose. Our home was bombed. Destroyed utterly. My parents died, and my little sister and I starved. The house where we had lived became a hiding place for deserters." I spat the last word as though it was a curse–which it was, to me. "They killed my sister, killed our friends."
The newsman looked puzzled. "Why? Why kill a child?"
I took a bite of meat from the arm I had pried loose. "You try eating tree bark for a year, see how you like it. But the joke was on them, in the end; I killed them for their sins."
He looked like he might faint, but pressed onwards. "How can a 12-year-old kill grown men?"
"Twelve? I'm hardly seven yet! I built traps. My father taught me to hunt–he loved hunting, and I've always loved building traps. I used a pit trap, the kind with spikes on the bottom. I wasn't trying to kill them, really; I was hoping a deer or something would fall in. But then again, waste not, want not–two birds with one stone and all that. I'm starting to like human meat."
"What's your name?"
"Lecter. Hannibal Lecter."
I met him again, many years later–soon after I became a prisoner. But he only came out of curiosity, not because he remembered the boy he had seen in the camp, so long ago.
"Hello, sir."
I looked up, uninterested.
"Why did you come here? And tell the truth or I'll know."
He thought a moment. "A coincidence. I met a boy named Hannibal 40 years ago, in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He had killed to survive."
Click. Memories returned. "Not a coincidence, I'm afraid. Didn't you ever wonder what happened to that little boy? Didn't you envision the life of such a child? Yes? No?"
He gaped. "You? You are him?"
I laughed. It was the same laugh that I'd had then, 40 years ago. "I was six, but you thought I was 12, remember? I had on a shirt five sizes too big, remember? I'd taken it from a corpse three hours earlier, but you didn't know that. Funny old thing, life. The names aren't in any way a coincidence, no–but our meeting again after so long is."
He smiled nervously. "So that must mean that I know more about your past then just about anyone."
I nodded. "Yes. And I suggest you keep it that way: I have a hate-list a mile long already, and I don't intend to stay here forever, either."
"I won't tell. But it has been interesting, I admit."
"Fascinating," I replied sarcastically.
He left quite hastily. . .
The End
Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were–I have not seen
As others saw–I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
& All I loved, I loved alone.
Then–in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life–was drawn
From every depth of good & ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that 'round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold–
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by–
From the thunder & the storm, &
The cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
Edgar Allen Poe