Post by ivyflight on Jan 1, 2012 18:22:23 GMT -5
Hey everyone! So as I've been trolling all around these boards even in the last 24 hours, you might know that I'm writing a novel set in WWII. Here's a little-quickie summary, and then I have the first part of my first chapter, if you are interested:
Isolde is the main character, and she lives in Linz, Austria in 1942. Her parents take in a Jew. His name is Gabriel Frei, and he's sixteen, her age. She doesn't believe in what Hitler's doing, but she also has two younger siblings that mean the world to her and she knows sheltering a Jew can get them killed, so she's a little resentful, both toward Gabriel and her parents for making this decision without considering Alfred and Katrina, as she sees it.
But it turns out that Gabriel is a pianist. A pretty excellent one. He loves music, just like Isolde. And he's also a pretty nice boy.
And she kinda-maybe-might be-falling in love with him.
So I've been writing (obviously) and I have part of my first chapter typed up, which I thought I would share. I started in 3rd person, but then changed it all to 1st, so let me know if it sounds awkward/weird. I hope you enjoy!
~~~~~
Chapter One-Calamus Gladio Fortior (the pen is mightier than the sword.)
“Hey! If you and that stupid horse trample the squash, my father will kill you!”
I rolled my eyes, getting a nice view of the azure Austrian summer sky, the golden fields around me, and the cross-armed boy standing in the vegetables.
“Your father loves me, Claus. Not likely.”
Claus, with hair as golden as the stalks behind him but dirtied from a long day in the fields, spat in the ground. A clear gesture on how he felt about that statement. I smirked, and Claus laughed, rubbing Bucephalus’ broad shoulder fondly.
“But really, Isolde. We’re almost done with the corn. I can’t leave now.”
Bucephalus shifted beneath me, as anxious as I for a race towards Linz against Claus and his own fleet-footed horse, Vogel. It was no fun racing alone. Well, maybe a little, but we’d already flown past the Ackermanns, the Fausts, the Walters and their farms multiple times.
“If you’re almost done, your father probably doesn’t need you too badly…” I needled, even as Claus wiped the sweat from his brow. He had pushed his white sleeves up, revealing strong, sun-warmed arms, but it hadn’t saved the material from the rich earth he worked with all day. He was about to reply, likely something about how farming was never easy, even if you were almost done. Something I would never really understand. I had been born in Linz, where papa worked, at the forefront of a newspaper firm. We had inherited the Reinhardt farm when Opa had died and earned a little money off mother’s vegetable garden, but it was the firm that was the main source of income.
Sometimes I wondered at how different I might be if we had never moved to the countryside, just at the edge of the woods. Many of my girlfriends from school lived in the city, but none of them knew how to ride or what bird sounded like what. Granted, they also didn’t have to get up as early as I to feed their horses and small herd of goats and walk the distance to school. C’est la vie, as maman would say.
“Claus! Where the devil are you, boy?”
The question was simply used for emphasis, as heavyset Herr Ackermann stalked out of the corn towers, limping but as proud as ever. His sunburnt face was dirtied, but his mustache, gray as ever, twitched as he looked up at me. I smiled, knowing my cheeks would dimple, and most adults would then proceed to melt with whatever I asked. I remembered using those handy dimples and my curls, lighter even than Claus’ messy hair, to solicit extra cookies from my family from a young age. They had proved to have many other uses, too, it seemed. Like convincing Claus’ stubborn father to let him out to ride or her teacher that they didn’t really need work to do over the long weekend.
“Guten tag, Herr Ackermann.” Faults aside, Herr Ackermann was a horseman. Or, had been, before the first war. Claus had once told me how his father had taught him to ride before he could run properly. We were well matched in our races. “I was wondering if perhaps I could borrow Claus? We haven’t been riding in… well, a while.”
For a moment, I thought I had him. He pulled his hand through his sweaty, graying brown hair, then replaced his cap, and it was never hard to convince him to let Claus go. He was as lanky as Claus, and despite his limp, struck a formidable presence to all and still loved his horses. He usually loved waving us off, happy to watch his son enjoy the same thing he had enjoyed doing before the shrapnel hit.
But, sadly, it didn’t always work. “Sorry, Isolde. We’re not done with the corn, and we still have the strawberries. Doubt Alaric and Bayard have done anything of use…”
He fell off into muttering about Claus’ two younger brothers, troublemakers of the worst variety. I doubted that there would be any strawberries left if Alaric and Bayard had been in charge of picking.
Oh, they would have picked all right, but none would have ended up in the baskets.
He raised his hand in a dutiful salute, his voice clear and strong as he “Heil Hitler”d, no matter his concern about how much food they would have come winter. The knot, always present in my stomach these days, tightened. After dutifully mirroring the gesture, I watched him limp away. I wondered when the Nazi salute had become acceptable as a proper goodbye. He was clearly expecting Claus to follow him back into the cornfield. He looked even less pleased about the prospect of more fieldwork than before.
Claus took a deep breath; smiling despite the small glimmer of hope I had seen playing on his freckled face before Herr Ackermann had spoken. He had a smile like the sun-it lit up and took up-his whole face. I could see his father’s actions still reflected in his brown eyes, but Claus had never been one to dwell on things he didn’t agree with. Like the Nazis, for one.
“Nice try,” he said, chuckling, “but you might be getting a little old to play angel.”
I sniffed, the scents of clover, horses, and sunlight making it hard to stay frustrated despite the let down. “I will always be an angel,” I teased. “And none shall ever escape my wrath!”
“Somehow, I feel like those two ideas don’t connect, dummkopf.” Claus retorted, rubbing Bucephalus’ muscled, black neck before stepping away. He was so tall and wiry, a cornstalk himself with that sunny hair, and my friend only ever looked small next to Ceph. I nudged him backwards, wheeling when I was sure I could get to the road without trampling any of the Ackermann’s carefully tended crops.
“Tschüss, Isolde.” He called.
“Bis später. You better give me some strawberry preserves on my birthday.”
We both laughed at the sound of a shout, and some very vocal protests from two boys. “If there are any left!”
“There better be!” I called, still grinning as I nudged the horse’s broad sides. “C’mon, ‘Cephalus. We can still race the wind!”
Still, I couldn’t wait until the frost. Racing was just so much more fun when you were actually competing with someone.
*******
“Ich konnt nicht widerstehen und brach das Blümelein
und schenkte es dem schönsten herzliebsten Mägdelein…”
“Isolde?”
There was a soft knock at the door. It was papa, leaning in the doorway. He looked especially drawn tonight, his thin, clean-shaven face lined. Coffee had been hard to come by of late, and he often woke up early to get to the firm early. He was never too tired to give me an extra copy of some poetry submitted to the paper or tell me about something especially interesting he had uncovered in the hordes of stories that piled in his office each day.
“Ja?”
He held his cap in his hands, turning it over in the absence of any pen. While Herr Ackermann was a commanding presence, always upright and at attention from his youth in the army, papa had never been very similar. He always had something in his hands, either a pen or a hat, if there was nothing to tinker with. Maman always told me that he was a dreamer, like me, that when his eyes unfocused, it was always on something that wasn’t in the room.
“I passed Herr Ackermann on the way home.”
The knot tightened again, like a cancerous growth. Had my salute been off? Was he tired of my bothering Claus? I had been joking with him, but I had honestly thought that I was well received in the Ackermann house whenever I stopped by to visit. I stepped away from the mirror, finding its position next to the bed a little too cramped when this thought occurred. I had been trying on my blouse, newly mended after I had snagged the rough fabric on a nail in the barn. I would be wearing it to our next Hitler Youth meeting. God, was there nothing the Fuhrer didn’t have to meddle in these days?
“He said you were out riding awfully late.”
I exhaled heavily, trying to smile as I flopped onto the bed. “It was still early, papa.” I rolled over, pushing my curls back to get a better look at him. “The sun had simply gone down. And I brought Ceph in soon after.”
“Schatzi…” he murmured, coming to sit next to me. The bedsprings creaked as he settled his weary form down on the quilts. I frowned. He wasn’t himself. Sure, he was always tired when he came home from work, but he looked so worn. It had to be the war. It was taking its toll on everyone. But with his hunched shoulders and grey face, I didn’t brush him away when he rested his hand on my curls. It was just like I was six again and still ran to him when I had nightmares, but this time it was almost as if he was the one who needed comfort. “You know it isn’t the safest time to be outside alone.”
Normally, I would have pouted and told him exactly what I thought of safety, but he already looked so… old. I couldn’t bear the thought of making him feel any worse.
He was a small man, father. Short and lean. His family had been poor in his youth, and I doubted he had ever gotten enough to eat. When I had started school he told me about how hard he worked to gain a good position to provide for us, trying to encourage me to do well no matter what. Despite his height and the half-moon glasses that tottered on his thin nose, papa had always been a good person to have around. He respected people, and in turn, they respected this diminutive man from Linz’s countryside. Like her hair and eyes, I had inherited maman’s height-average, but still taller than father, and at sixteen, we stood eye to eye.
Still. It wasn’t the safest time to do anything. Only yesterday I had been skipping to school with Katrina on one hand and Alfred on the other, singing their favorite song,
“Blue, blue, blue are all my clothes
Blue, blue, blue is all that I have
So I love anything that's blue
Because my love is a sailor, a sailor…”
But a man had extended his arm, as rigid as those tall Nazi boots, hitting me in the chest and pushing us all to an ungainly halt. Seeing only a man, and then the ugly green uniform, I pulled them behind my back. He had cold eyes, and a colder voice.
“This isn’t the place for frivolity,” he scolded, crossing his arms as he stared down at us. I had felt Trina and Al pulling behind me, somehow knowing that this was a figure to be frightened of. The thought of this man, this Nazi getting any closer to them had my face flushing, fists forming at my sides.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I had said between clenched teeth. How dare this man scare Katrina and Alfred-were children suddenly against the law? Was singing a crime, too now? Behind him I could see Rachael and Helga, staring from their apartment step. They were the only ones I recognized amid a gathering number of onlookers. Oh, few stopped to watch, but they all were looking at the tall man, his crisp uniform, the SS pins on his collar. The children at his feet. “It must have been moved. Would you mind telling me as to where it is now?”
His face contorted, and he swung.
I stumbled backward as his palm connected with my face, the slap bringing tears to my eyes. Bells rang in my ears, but somewhere, it sounded like someone was shouting. I pushed Katrina and Alfred away, further from the Nazi, even as I felt arms encircle me from behind.
“Let me go!” I had screamed, tears blurring her vision as I jerked, thrashing to get away from my captor. “Let me go!”
“Isolde, it’s me! Stop it, it’s me!”
I twisted around, pulling my arms away. My vision was blurry, but there was no mistaking those eyes or that flyaway hair. “Claus?”
The Nazi was smirking, I could see that now, even as Claus pulled me away. I kicked, aiming at his legs, but he succeeded in dragging her to the next corner. I would never let him get away with this.
“Did you see that?” I hissed. “Claus! He-”
“Is a Nazi,” he said into my ear, voice fierce. “What the hell did you think you were doing? Dummkopf.”
To my fury, I could only escape once he decided to let me go. I jerked my cardigan back into place, face still smarting. I smeared at her tears with my sleeve, startled and hurt and furious. Claus stood before me, arms crossed. Clearly, I was not the only angry one, but I always won our arguments. Al and Trina were yanking on my skirt.
“Isolde?” Katrina whispered in her sparrow’s voice. “Is your face hurt?”
“I’m fine.” I muttered, brushing them off to fix my skirt, then my hair. Anything that would keep me from turning around and telling that Nazi arschloch what I really thought of a man who enjoyed hurting my siblings. “You take Al. Keep walking.”
“But-”
“Do it.”
Ever the obedient younger child, Katrina did, and I watched them link hands and begin to walk. They both kept casting glances behind them, and I waved them on.
Claus had been furious. My face still hurt, even today. I had told her parents that I had tripped and slammed into the rocky dirt road that led to our house on the way to school. Fortunately, Claus too had kept his tongue.
I didn’t want to live in a world where you couldn’t sing. And I knew that wasn’t the worst of the Nazi regime.
“I’ll be careful, papa.”
His lined face deepened with a smile, ruffling my hair just as he had when I was the youngest in the family.
“Good. Maman says dinner is ready.”
~~~~~~
Is the transition between Isolde's memory of the Nazi and her conversation with her father awkward?
Thanks for reading!
Isolde is the main character, and she lives in Linz, Austria in 1942. Her parents take in a Jew. His name is Gabriel Frei, and he's sixteen, her age. She doesn't believe in what Hitler's doing, but she also has two younger siblings that mean the world to her and she knows sheltering a Jew can get them killed, so she's a little resentful, both toward Gabriel and her parents for making this decision without considering Alfred and Katrina, as she sees it.
But it turns out that Gabriel is a pianist. A pretty excellent one. He loves music, just like Isolde. And he's also a pretty nice boy.
And she kinda-maybe-might be-falling in love with him.
So I've been writing (obviously) and I have part of my first chapter typed up, which I thought I would share. I started in 3rd person, but then changed it all to 1st, so let me know if it sounds awkward/weird. I hope you enjoy!
~~~~~
Chapter One-Calamus Gladio Fortior (the pen is mightier than the sword.)
“Hey! If you and that stupid horse trample the squash, my father will kill you!”
I rolled my eyes, getting a nice view of the azure Austrian summer sky, the golden fields around me, and the cross-armed boy standing in the vegetables.
“Your father loves me, Claus. Not likely.”
Claus, with hair as golden as the stalks behind him but dirtied from a long day in the fields, spat in the ground. A clear gesture on how he felt about that statement. I smirked, and Claus laughed, rubbing Bucephalus’ broad shoulder fondly.
“But really, Isolde. We’re almost done with the corn. I can’t leave now.”
Bucephalus shifted beneath me, as anxious as I for a race towards Linz against Claus and his own fleet-footed horse, Vogel. It was no fun racing alone. Well, maybe a little, but we’d already flown past the Ackermanns, the Fausts, the Walters and their farms multiple times.
“If you’re almost done, your father probably doesn’t need you too badly…” I needled, even as Claus wiped the sweat from his brow. He had pushed his white sleeves up, revealing strong, sun-warmed arms, but it hadn’t saved the material from the rich earth he worked with all day. He was about to reply, likely something about how farming was never easy, even if you were almost done. Something I would never really understand. I had been born in Linz, where papa worked, at the forefront of a newspaper firm. We had inherited the Reinhardt farm when Opa had died and earned a little money off mother’s vegetable garden, but it was the firm that was the main source of income.
Sometimes I wondered at how different I might be if we had never moved to the countryside, just at the edge of the woods. Many of my girlfriends from school lived in the city, but none of them knew how to ride or what bird sounded like what. Granted, they also didn’t have to get up as early as I to feed their horses and small herd of goats and walk the distance to school. C’est la vie, as maman would say.
“Claus! Where the devil are you, boy?”
The question was simply used for emphasis, as heavyset Herr Ackermann stalked out of the corn towers, limping but as proud as ever. His sunburnt face was dirtied, but his mustache, gray as ever, twitched as he looked up at me. I smiled, knowing my cheeks would dimple, and most adults would then proceed to melt with whatever I asked. I remembered using those handy dimples and my curls, lighter even than Claus’ messy hair, to solicit extra cookies from my family from a young age. They had proved to have many other uses, too, it seemed. Like convincing Claus’ stubborn father to let him out to ride or her teacher that they didn’t really need work to do over the long weekend.
“Guten tag, Herr Ackermann.” Faults aside, Herr Ackermann was a horseman. Or, had been, before the first war. Claus had once told me how his father had taught him to ride before he could run properly. We were well matched in our races. “I was wondering if perhaps I could borrow Claus? We haven’t been riding in… well, a while.”
For a moment, I thought I had him. He pulled his hand through his sweaty, graying brown hair, then replaced his cap, and it was never hard to convince him to let Claus go. He was as lanky as Claus, and despite his limp, struck a formidable presence to all and still loved his horses. He usually loved waving us off, happy to watch his son enjoy the same thing he had enjoyed doing before the shrapnel hit.
But, sadly, it didn’t always work. “Sorry, Isolde. We’re not done with the corn, and we still have the strawberries. Doubt Alaric and Bayard have done anything of use…”
He fell off into muttering about Claus’ two younger brothers, troublemakers of the worst variety. I doubted that there would be any strawberries left if Alaric and Bayard had been in charge of picking.
Oh, they would have picked all right, but none would have ended up in the baskets.
He raised his hand in a dutiful salute, his voice clear and strong as he “Heil Hitler”d, no matter his concern about how much food they would have come winter. The knot, always present in my stomach these days, tightened. After dutifully mirroring the gesture, I watched him limp away. I wondered when the Nazi salute had become acceptable as a proper goodbye. He was clearly expecting Claus to follow him back into the cornfield. He looked even less pleased about the prospect of more fieldwork than before.
Claus took a deep breath; smiling despite the small glimmer of hope I had seen playing on his freckled face before Herr Ackermann had spoken. He had a smile like the sun-it lit up and took up-his whole face. I could see his father’s actions still reflected in his brown eyes, but Claus had never been one to dwell on things he didn’t agree with. Like the Nazis, for one.
“Nice try,” he said, chuckling, “but you might be getting a little old to play angel.”
I sniffed, the scents of clover, horses, and sunlight making it hard to stay frustrated despite the let down. “I will always be an angel,” I teased. “And none shall ever escape my wrath!”
“Somehow, I feel like those two ideas don’t connect, dummkopf.” Claus retorted, rubbing Bucephalus’ muscled, black neck before stepping away. He was so tall and wiry, a cornstalk himself with that sunny hair, and my friend only ever looked small next to Ceph. I nudged him backwards, wheeling when I was sure I could get to the road without trampling any of the Ackermann’s carefully tended crops.
“Tschüss, Isolde.” He called.
“Bis später. You better give me some strawberry preserves on my birthday.”
We both laughed at the sound of a shout, and some very vocal protests from two boys. “If there are any left!”
“There better be!” I called, still grinning as I nudged the horse’s broad sides. “C’mon, ‘Cephalus. We can still race the wind!”
Still, I couldn’t wait until the frost. Racing was just so much more fun when you were actually competing with someone.
*******
“Ich konnt nicht widerstehen und brach das Blümelein
und schenkte es dem schönsten herzliebsten Mägdelein…”
“Isolde?”
There was a soft knock at the door. It was papa, leaning in the doorway. He looked especially drawn tonight, his thin, clean-shaven face lined. Coffee had been hard to come by of late, and he often woke up early to get to the firm early. He was never too tired to give me an extra copy of some poetry submitted to the paper or tell me about something especially interesting he had uncovered in the hordes of stories that piled in his office each day.
“Ja?”
He held his cap in his hands, turning it over in the absence of any pen. While Herr Ackermann was a commanding presence, always upright and at attention from his youth in the army, papa had never been very similar. He always had something in his hands, either a pen or a hat, if there was nothing to tinker with. Maman always told me that he was a dreamer, like me, that when his eyes unfocused, it was always on something that wasn’t in the room.
“I passed Herr Ackermann on the way home.”
The knot tightened again, like a cancerous growth. Had my salute been off? Was he tired of my bothering Claus? I had been joking with him, but I had honestly thought that I was well received in the Ackermann house whenever I stopped by to visit. I stepped away from the mirror, finding its position next to the bed a little too cramped when this thought occurred. I had been trying on my blouse, newly mended after I had snagged the rough fabric on a nail in the barn. I would be wearing it to our next Hitler Youth meeting. God, was there nothing the Fuhrer didn’t have to meddle in these days?
“He said you were out riding awfully late.”
I exhaled heavily, trying to smile as I flopped onto the bed. “It was still early, papa.” I rolled over, pushing my curls back to get a better look at him. “The sun had simply gone down. And I brought Ceph in soon after.”
“Schatzi…” he murmured, coming to sit next to me. The bedsprings creaked as he settled his weary form down on the quilts. I frowned. He wasn’t himself. Sure, he was always tired when he came home from work, but he looked so worn. It had to be the war. It was taking its toll on everyone. But with his hunched shoulders and grey face, I didn’t brush him away when he rested his hand on my curls. It was just like I was six again and still ran to him when I had nightmares, but this time it was almost as if he was the one who needed comfort. “You know it isn’t the safest time to be outside alone.”
Normally, I would have pouted and told him exactly what I thought of safety, but he already looked so… old. I couldn’t bear the thought of making him feel any worse.
He was a small man, father. Short and lean. His family had been poor in his youth, and I doubted he had ever gotten enough to eat. When I had started school he told me about how hard he worked to gain a good position to provide for us, trying to encourage me to do well no matter what. Despite his height and the half-moon glasses that tottered on his thin nose, papa had always been a good person to have around. He respected people, and in turn, they respected this diminutive man from Linz’s countryside. Like her hair and eyes, I had inherited maman’s height-average, but still taller than father, and at sixteen, we stood eye to eye.
Still. It wasn’t the safest time to do anything. Only yesterday I had been skipping to school with Katrina on one hand and Alfred on the other, singing their favorite song,
“Blue, blue, blue are all my clothes
Blue, blue, blue is all that I have
So I love anything that's blue
Because my love is a sailor, a sailor…”
But a man had extended his arm, as rigid as those tall Nazi boots, hitting me in the chest and pushing us all to an ungainly halt. Seeing only a man, and then the ugly green uniform, I pulled them behind my back. He had cold eyes, and a colder voice.
“This isn’t the place for frivolity,” he scolded, crossing his arms as he stared down at us. I had felt Trina and Al pulling behind me, somehow knowing that this was a figure to be frightened of. The thought of this man, this Nazi getting any closer to them had my face flushing, fists forming at my sides.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I had said between clenched teeth. How dare this man scare Katrina and Alfred-were children suddenly against the law? Was singing a crime, too now? Behind him I could see Rachael and Helga, staring from their apartment step. They were the only ones I recognized amid a gathering number of onlookers. Oh, few stopped to watch, but they all were looking at the tall man, his crisp uniform, the SS pins on his collar. The children at his feet. “It must have been moved. Would you mind telling me as to where it is now?”
His face contorted, and he swung.
I stumbled backward as his palm connected with my face, the slap bringing tears to my eyes. Bells rang in my ears, but somewhere, it sounded like someone was shouting. I pushed Katrina and Alfred away, further from the Nazi, even as I felt arms encircle me from behind.
“Let me go!” I had screamed, tears blurring her vision as I jerked, thrashing to get away from my captor. “Let me go!”
“Isolde, it’s me! Stop it, it’s me!”
I twisted around, pulling my arms away. My vision was blurry, but there was no mistaking those eyes or that flyaway hair. “Claus?”
The Nazi was smirking, I could see that now, even as Claus pulled me away. I kicked, aiming at his legs, but he succeeded in dragging her to the next corner. I would never let him get away with this.
“Did you see that?” I hissed. “Claus! He-”
“Is a Nazi,” he said into my ear, voice fierce. “What the hell did you think you were doing? Dummkopf.”
To my fury, I could only escape once he decided to let me go. I jerked my cardigan back into place, face still smarting. I smeared at her tears with my sleeve, startled and hurt and furious. Claus stood before me, arms crossed. Clearly, I was not the only angry one, but I always won our arguments. Al and Trina were yanking on my skirt.
“Isolde?” Katrina whispered in her sparrow’s voice. “Is your face hurt?”
“I’m fine.” I muttered, brushing them off to fix my skirt, then my hair. Anything that would keep me from turning around and telling that Nazi arschloch what I really thought of a man who enjoyed hurting my siblings. “You take Al. Keep walking.”
“But-”
“Do it.”
Ever the obedient younger child, Katrina did, and I watched them link hands and begin to walk. They both kept casting glances behind them, and I waved them on.
Claus had been furious. My face still hurt, even today. I had told her parents that I had tripped and slammed into the rocky dirt road that led to our house on the way to school. Fortunately, Claus too had kept his tongue.
I didn’t want to live in a world where you couldn’t sing. And I knew that wasn’t the worst of the Nazi regime.
“I’ll be careful, papa.”
His lined face deepened with a smile, ruffling my hair just as he had when I was the youngest in the family.
“Good. Maman says dinner is ready.”
~~~~~~
Is the transition between Isolde's memory of the Nazi and her conversation with her father awkward?
Thanks for reading!
