Budapest
1873-07-06
It was one of the most beautiful summer mornings Austria had ever woken up to. The sun was shining through the window and the heat felt lovely when it reached his face. The window had been open all night, it had been so hot lately that it had been necessary.
Suddenly Austria felt something move next to him. It was Hungary who breathed and stretched before she opened her eyes and squinted against the sun.
"Austria, can't sleep a little longer today?" She asked and snuggled a little closer to him and finally placed her head on his arm and her own arm around him.
Austria just nodded and turned himself to place his arm around Hungary ...
Bergen-Belsen
1945-03-17
... Austria fell to the floor from the top bunk of a bunk bed with three floors. He hit the floor pretty badly and awakened all of his "roommates". Just a second later they heard the trumpet out there and then everyone got a great hurry to get ready. Anyone who was not out there at second trumpet was sent straight to the gas chambers farther south, everyone knew that. But right now Austria was thinking that perhaps that was better than staying here and continue the suffering.
For months it had been with a great disappointment Austria had opened his eyes in the morning. Every night when he climbed into his bed, at the top of a three-story bed he prayed to God that he would not wake up to a new day ... but he did always. Although this morning had started even worse than the others. That dream of Hungary had been the best dream he had had in a long time, if he was sent to the gas chambers maybe he could continue to dream it forever.
On the other hand, if he continued to fight maybe they would see each other again. Although they were divorced they didn't hate each other. In fact the reason that they had separated was that they had discovered that they fit better as friends.
Austria had survived much longer than most of the others prisoners who were here. Probably, he thought this was partly because he had always been quite strict with rules and discipline. He had no new routines to work on as some of the others who had been living a less structured life. The only thing that was new to him in that way was the knowledge that the person who did not behave in that way got a bullet in the head, and of course that constant hunger and the fear of getting sick.
Austria couldn't help but sob as he thought about the diseases. A few months ago, he had met a little girl in her mid-teens. She had introduced herself as Anne Frank and she had told him things that Austria hadn't even dared to hope for. Apparently, the Allies had landed in Normandy only a few days after that he had been deported.
Now Austria had stopped hoping again. Anne had been dead for several days, she would never see the end of the war, and Austria wondered sometimes if he would be that happy. Then he also felt a constant concern about what would happen to his people if he died. That concern was most of the time the only thing that made him continue.
Although that rules and discipline had always been a part of him, this was also the first time that he had got trouble following them. Especially one rule was about to kill him, music were banned. Twice he had been beaten very rough after a guard had caught him humming. It was probably the worst. He missed his music so much that it hurt.
In the beginning, he had several times thought of Italy. On the way he had treated him when he was little and lived with him. He wished that he would get to meet him one last time, and apologize to him for those times. Although he could actually without feeling quilty for telling lies say that he had not been as hard on Italy that the guards here were to their prisoners. He had tried to think strategically, if he would try to smuggle out a letter to his friends outside the camp, what would be most important that he got to? But as time went on the thoughts of wanting to apologize to Italy had exchanged for that eternal desire to avoid having to wake up to a new day, a new day that always came.
What had actually happened, he realized after a few months. Was that the truth had caught up with him. Italy was part of the Axis Powers, who was one of those things that were responsible for him ending up in this place - and this hurt. And it didn't help to know that also Hungary was a member of the Axis. The possibility that Germany would help him, Austria hadn't even thought about, and then it was Prussia. What Prussia knew or was responsible for could Austria not even guess, or he could but he didn't, it was enough to be in the middle of something that he knew would go down in history as something terrible and to know that he might not come out of it alive, and if it would be that horrible, Austria knew that he would be the biggest joke in the World history. Not even the Black Death had managed to kill him, he could almost hear Prussia joke about it ... if they would even know why and where he had disappeared, if he ended up in the ovens Austria didn't even know if there would be anything left to find.