A Song For the Hopeless

BERLIN, GERMANY

How can the world seem perfectly fine one day, then go all wrong the next? It just didn’t make sense. Especially not to Otto.

Well, a lot of things did not make sense to Otto. Like how some people lived cold and hungry in little shacks while others lived in big houses, like his family’s estate. The Wolff estate, his father had once told him, and all ours. All yours. 

That was, of course, when he was still a little boy, and Otto’s mother had insisted that his oddities would pass.

“Why, just look at him, Elena!” The father would shout angrily, “He should be playing with guns instead of sitting around all day with that- that stupid guitar. He needs to learn to be a man!”

“Meine Liebe,” the mother would coax softly, “Otto is only eight. He is just a timid child, but it will pass. It will pass.”

But it did not pass. 

When Otto reached ten years of age his tutor told his parents she was worried; he was still struggling with his letters but knew the guitar scales by heart. His priorities are in the wrong place, she admonished. 

When Otto reached twelve years of age the other boys spoke in excited whispers of artillery units and tanks, while Otto fervently performed his songs for their droopy-eyed dog, Bruno- no one else would listen. 

When Otto reached sixteen the others were already being taken to war, one by one. At school, all the boys were told to line up. Like little ants we are, thought Otto, as each boy was physically and mentally inspected by the physician.

“Take this letter home to dein Vater,” the physician had said to him, a look of pity in his eyes. Otto did not notice.

And so it was that by eighteen years of age, Otto was the only boy left in their neighborhood. “Eighteen and still not serving our country,” The ladies whispered, “How shameful!”

Otto did not hear any of this, for he was far too busy with his new song. A sad one it was, but, as he had not come up with the words yet, he was not sure why. His father, however, had heard all of it.

“Mein Gott!” He begged the physician, “Just let him be drafted! I do not care whether he is ready or not!” The physician shook his head.

“If you truly want Otto to be fixed, admit him to the hospital,” the physician suggested. The father refused. If they had a child in the mental ward it would be the end of them, he decided.

Otto watched the world from the Wolff estate with some interest. He lined his tin soldiers on his bedroom windowsill to match the ones he saw march through the streets. They looked funny in those outfits of theirs. Why, they all look the same, he thought. How were you supposed to tell the difference between a friend and an enemy?

Once, as he sat strumming away in his room, he heard the soldiers return again, and got up to stand by the window curiously.

As they marched in unison, he watched as they all simultaneously raised an arm in salute.

“Heil Hitler!” They shouted.

“Heil Hitler!” He called back, saluting to the men. But it didn’t sound quite right, so he dropped his hand and left the window, uninterested, returning to his spot on the floor.

Two years had passed. The year was now 1943. 

As Otto lay in his bed at night he heard urgent whispers, angry whispers. And as Otto sat at the breakfast table in the morning he saw urgent words in the papers, angry words. His father was angry all the time. “Germany has already lost,” he would say, “It’s hopeless.” At the last part, he would always look at his son as if to say, “it’s you. You are hopeless.” 

Whenever this happened, Otto retreated back into his bedroom, and then nothing could be heard for the next few hours except for the mournful twang of his guitar, saying, “I know, I know.”

Otto was a twenty-year-old man, still living with his parents. Until he wasn’t.

On the fifteenth of August, his father had finally had enough. The mother had cried and begged, but they had all known, perhaps even Otto, that the day would come.

Stumbling out onto the sidewalk, a small suitcase with only some of his belongings was thrown out behind him. A pause. Then, almost like an afterthought, the guitar went too, hitting the front steps harshly and sliding down to land at Otto’s feet. The front door slammed shut, and that was that.

“Get yourself a job, son. And don’t come back.” Otto repeated the instructions given to him under his breath to remember them properly. “Job. Don’t come back.”

It turned out they were both harder to accomplish than previously thought. No matter which direction he turned, his feet somehow walked him right back to the gates of the Wolff estate. He had to scold himself each time and force himself to turn around.

As for a job, he had no idea how to go about getting one.

“I’m here to get myself a job,” he would announce in each store he walked into, looking down at the floor. Each time he was thrown back out, regurgitated like spit-up.

“I know you,” the store owners would growl cruelly. From where, Otto asked curiously, from where? But there was never any answer.

The sun was setting over the tops of chimneys and tall buildings of brick and stone. Otto was hot, hungry, and a little bit homesick.

“Don’t come back,” he reminded himself, and kept walking.

He kept going until the rough pavement under his shoes turned to dirt pathways, and the streets turned to grass-covered hills. Weary, he sat on one of these hills, looking up at the darkening sky, and down again. Which was when he spotted it, not too far off. From his seat, high above the ground, he could see a small, grey establishment. Smoky clouds churned from it. Otto sat up and peered closer, at the long rows of barracks, at the fences that surrounded it. Ah, yes. He knew these- from the pictures in the papers. Camps, they were called.

They look sad, he thought, for something that was supposed to be good for their country. He saw little figures through the fence, all wearing stripes, and he felt sad for them, and for himself as well. Look at us, Otto thought. We are far from home, and we are hopeless. And so Otto did what he always did when he felt hopeless. He picked his guitar up, which lay beside him like a sleeping lover, and began to play. Why not? There was no father there to tell him he shouldn’t. And, he decided, even though he had left Bruno behind there would always be someone listening.

That summer he had finally come up with the lyrics for his sad song, and so he sang them out into the soft dusk.

Not a mile away, at the bottom of a great, grassy hill stood the camp. A boy emerged from one of the low barracks, his striped shirt slipping off one of his thin shoulders. A faraway melody was playing somewhere, sad but hopeful. He stood in the dust in his bare feet and listened.