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I Wish I May
Roderich and Gilbert
1929
A/N: HOLY SHITTT, Children- It's an update! (Sometimes I do useful things).
Thanks for bearing with my indolence,
BookSlut1994!
Warnings for brief references to suicide, child abuse/neglect/abandonment, bullying, period-typical antisemitism, scapegoating, general historical nastiness, also my shit use of punctuation.
"There is a cruelty in a wish that comes true. It is weighed, it is measured, it is absolute. No less than the words that invoked it, but no more, either.
This is the first thing she learned: Just because someone can love you doesn't mean they will. This is the second: It is worse to know that someone can love you, and that they have chosen not to."
-Kat Howard, Roses and Rot
The day Gilbert Beilschmidt meets Roderich Edelstein, really meets him, they are both nine years old and the ache of sheer, utter loneliness is crushing; they're constantly reaching, reaching, grasping at starlight, ephemeral and fleeting, hoping, hoping for something better than this. When their bodies collide on a cold, rainy day in December, like their lonely-boy souls can sense each other, it's the beginning- the beginning and the end of everything. They are destined and they are doomed. Poor boys. Poor children.
I wish I may
1929 is hard- when the bright, roaring cash-cold stock market fails, it crashes- sparks and explodes like a supernova, apocalyptic in its burnt-out brilliance. Printing presses bleed ink like tears, and Bright Young Things fall from half-built skyscrapers like dead leaves. Gatsby's green light is extinguished forever- maybe it never was, its beguiling gleam a side-effect of the gin, a distant figment of the fever-dream, and when the world wakes up, they're crawling in the same ashes that've been blowing about the edges of their paradise since the end of the war. The stocks fall, then the banks fail, then the Americans stop lending money for the reparations payments.
"So sorry- you know how it is."
How it is
It has been this way forever- for too goddamned long, and the whispers grow louder… When the woodcutter ran out of money, he sent his children into the heart of the forest. The witch, she was waiting with a house made of marzipan- marzipan and blood. German faerie-tales are dark, and scared people are quick to reach for someone to blame. The whispers grow ever-louder- on the radio, in the news, "Be afraid. Be very afraid. You should be, because of THESE PEOPLE." Spin-doctors, witch-doctors sew terror behind citizen's eyes and reflect it back with their magic mirrors:
"Be afraid. Be very afraid."
"Don't be afraid. It's not serious- not like last time, not like EnglandSpainFranceRussiaEverytimeEverywhere."
It's 1929 and stars are balls of gas and gods and ancestors and pretty, pretty candles are for Grandfather and the Hermanns down the street and stupid people, and Herr Professor Edelstein and his family are fine because it's almost 1930, not 1800s Russia and they're not those sorts of people anyway- they're not any sort of religious. They have nothingtofear-nothingtohide. Roderich goes to school; he comes home from school; he talks to no one and no one talks to him; he practices piano and goes to the library- comes home with as many books as his skinny child-arms can carry. He misses his friends in Vienna. He misses his grandparents. In one of his books, the hero wishes on a star and all his dreams come true. When he gets home, he leans out his bedroom window and stares at the sky- the stars are high and cold and the snow falls in heavy torrents, whipping against his face in icy pellets. He screws his eyes shut and makes a wish.
Dear stars, please, I would like a friend-
Just one.
It's 1929 and being abandoned once could be passes off as a mistake, but twice is betrayal. He sits on the scuffed, dark floor of the foyer and stares at the small, screaming mass that is Ludwig- his brother. Tentatively he reaches out and pets its soft, yellow hair. She didn't want it either.
"Bitch," he whispers. He has the vocabulary now, and orphans grow up fast- they raise each other. The nuns would smack him six ways to Sunday if they heard him, but they don't hear or don't care. A lump rises in his throat and Gilbert bites his lower lip until his mouth tastes like dirty copper. The baby keeps screaming.
"Stop crying," he mutters, unsure if he's talking to the baby or himself. His face stings. He'd really believed that she'd come back- she'd said she would. It's only now that Gilbert realizes his mother had never promised to stay.
I wish I may
He curls up in the hallway and cries with his brother until they both pass out from exhaustion. When he awakes to sickly winter sunlight and an aching back from sleeping on the floor, he's hit with another wave of disappointment- like a slap in the face. It never ends, it never ends. It's the last straw, and that day, Gilbert resolves to run away. Anywhere is better than here.
In 1929, Roderich sits in a classroom and chews on the end of a pencil, bored, bored, bored. The teacher drones on about their country's illustrious history, and he can't find it in himself to care until Franz Schumacher pulls his hair and whispers something vicious- it's not the first time Roderich's been harassed, but it's the first time anyone's ever hurt him. He yelps but the teacher doesn't look up from her book. She doesn't hear him, Roderich decides. The desk in front of him is empty- it's been empty for a week. Roderich tips his head back and stares at the ceiling- he's bored.
When he gets home from school, Roderich nearly trips over a newspaper and reads the headline: Boy, 9 and Baby- Missing from Local Orphanage. Police Suspect Kidnapping. It's the kid from his class. Roderich didn't know that he had a brother. He grabs a stack of sheet music and goes to the piano room. The music is almost loud enough to drown out the frantic tone of his mother's phone call to his Aunt in Hungary.
"Yes, yes. We're fine. Yes, I heard… No, you're right- it's terrible… Well, no one really thinks that. No, no… I mean we're not really Jewish anyway."
When she finally comes downstairs and asks about his day, Roderich leaves out the part about Franz- it doesn't matter. He's fine. The relief on her face when she smiles and ruffles his hair is unsettling.
Cold rain falls in an icy sheet from a flat, grey sky; two German orphans huddle in the shadow of a university library- one golden as the sun, and the other the color of snow and blood, and it's like a faerie-tale, but we forget that the old faerie tales are Dickensian and horrific. The older one- the one clutching the baby- wiggles his toes to keep from freezing and takes a step forward, back out among the rows of imposing buildings. He squares his shoulders against the chill and the terror and starts running, lost, lost, lost- here there be monsters. He's been wandering for days, he thinks, or months, or years- he doesn't know. He's so hungry, and at least Hansel and Gretel had breadcrumbs. He doesn't even have that. He can't take care of a baby, and they might die here. The thought terrifies him and he keeps running, because he might not know where he's going, but the chill is vicious and it's run or freeze and maybe the stories are true and all roads lead home.
Maybe the stories are true and bad children get eaten by wolves
He bumps headlong into another human and they crash into the ground. Gilbert screams, terrified, but then he looks up and sees that it's another boy- around his age. The other boy blinks and hands back the baby- which miraculously fell on him and not the street.
"Hello," he smiles politely, "I'm Roderich. You dropped your baby. You're lost. Did you know?"
Gilbert stands there in shocked silence for what feels like a full minute before he reaches out his hands and takes back his brother. "I'm Gilbert, but you can call me Gil."
"I know." Roderich sniffs condescendingly. With his coffee-dark curls and violet eyes, he looks like a prince from a renaissance painting. "You're lost. Where's your coat?"
"Don't have one," Gilbert admits. He hadn't thought he'd need one. He hadn't anticipated getting lost. "Where's your parents?" he counters.
"Vati is working. He's a professor." He sticks out his chin and there it is again- that tone of smug condescension. Maybe that's just how Roderich sounds. "Where are yours?"
Gilbert's stomach twists. "Don't have'em."
"Oh." The other boy stares at the pavement. "I am very sorry for your loss." He takes off his coat and tosses it at Gilbert. His aim is terrible. "You should put that on your baby."
Gilbert takes the proffered object. "It's not my baby," he says, just to be difficult. "Boys can't have babies."
"It's a baby. You're holding it- that makes it yours." The other boy rolls his eyes.
"I guess."
"You should come home with me. We're having strudel tonight."
Gilbert smiles. "Strudel is awesome."
Roderich giggles and takes his hand- the beginning of everything. The end of everything.
Poor boys; poor children. Destined and doomed.
I wish I may