Becoming Hugo Forst

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Martin Price

© Martin Price 2016

Smashwords Edition

The right of Martin Price to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, no part of this e-book publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events are all from the author’s mind. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental

© Cover design by Carmine Trip

Excerpt from the poem Derjenige Sein ( Be the One ) by Elena Jollenbeck, used by kind permission of the Jollenbeck family

Also by this author:

The Reason I’m Still Here

Flowers from a Different Summer

Luvya Getcha

Sad’s Place

Steam

Marsha’s Bag

As the Flies Crow

A Twisted Pair ( Marsha’s Bag & As the Flies Crow in one book )

Short Stories:

Africar

Bad Return

For Katie

If I could, I would snip off my shadow, set it free, so that it could become what I could never be – Elena Jollenbeck 1844 – 1923

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

The End / Back to Top

Chapter One

He was not Hugo Forst from Germany, he was Jack Twinterman from England. But after having his face rebuilt and with a glass eye now sitting in his new face like a blind, shiny jewel, he supposed it was still a lovely life, no matter who he was. And today not even Fräu Stoppelbein could change his mind on that.

She tried, though. ‘So, who are you today?’ she asked, pushing her book cart with the squeaky wheels up to the side of his bed. ‘Are you Hugo Forst, or are you that Jack Twinterman fellow? You know, that funny little Englishman who lives up here?’ She twirled a finger around the side of her head, her head upon which was a bun the size of a cake. She wore earrings that were big, gold crucifixes. She had an overhanging top lip. Her eyes were like stones.

Hugo Forst, with his hands laying gently on the bedclothes, said, ‘Well, if you must know, Fräu Stoppelbein, then I will tell you. Today I am Hugo Forst, and I have decided, for better or for worse, that I will always be Hugo Forst – Hugo Forst, once of the German army, who will soon be leaving this hospital and returning to his apartment in Neukolln.’

‘Soon?’ Fräu Stopplebein said.

‘Yes, soon,’ Hugo Forst said. ‘Actually, today. A girl called Pia Wedekind is picking me up. I have never met her before. She used to live in the apartment across from mine, so I believe.’

‘But you don’t remember her?’

‘No,’ Hugo said. ‘I don’t remember her, or anyone else, or anything at all, as a matter of fact, about my life in Berlin, and that would be before the war, during it, and up until now. But frankly I am fed up with insisting that I am Jack Twinterman from England. So I am Hugo Forst, and once and for all. And here, you can have this…’ He handed back Fräu Stoppelbein a book, which last week he had borrowed from her little library. ‘It’s Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which is a somewhat fitting book for me to end my time on in here. After all, I feel a little bit like K, the main character in the book, who is summoned to a trial without being told why, and thus, he spends his time trying to work out what his crimes might be.’

‘What does that have to do with you?’ Fräu Stoppelbein asked.

‘Well, I am here, and I don’t know why.’

Fräu Stoppelbein put the book in her cart and laughed. ‘You are a funny man, Hugo Forst. I will miss you.’ She leaned into him then, and he could smell her perfume, like a fragrant, tickly dust. She whispered, ‘And I haven’t told you this before, but I will, as today is your last day in here. The surgeon, the ever so talented Leonard Ursler, he has given you a face a bit like the actor Einar Hanson. He was very handsome. Swedish, you know. He died in a car crash some twenty years ago, after having dinner with Greta Garbo.’ She laughed again, but quietly and secretly, into his ear. ‘In fact, perhaps you are neither this Twinterman fellow from England, or Hugo Forst from Berlin, but rather, Einar Hanson, reincarnated!’

‘God, but your imagination gets away from you, Fräu Stoppelbein,’ Hugo said.

‘My imagination?’ Fräu Stoppelbein said, pulling back. ‘And here you are, both Hugo Forst from Berlin and Jack Twinterman from England, and you have the cheek to say that my imagination gets away from me? Oh yes, but you are a funny man indeed. Good luck to you, in whatever you may do, and in whoever you may be. And you will need luck. You will need much of it.’

~

Off she went, wheeling her cart with the squeaky wheels, off to visit someone else by their bed, to offer them some other life, there, within a book that undoubtedly would be a better life than the one they were living in here – in here with its smells of soap and floor polish and disinfectant and detergent, and those smells, they were not in any way thinned out by the cool breeze, which blew through the sash windows after passing across the pretty grounds outside, and actually, the breeze only made those smells stronger, and mixed in as they were with the smells of rotting flesh, and mending flesh, and bandaged flesh, and ointments and creams and lotions and potions, so the combination was sickly, which Hugo Forst should have been used to after all his time in this place. But he wasn’t, and never would be.

And men coughed, and moaned and groaned, and sometimes they would let out a scream, and of the kind that sometimes made Hugo Forst’s heart jolt. Some men lay still, perfectly still, as if they had already passed over, and there they were, just waiting to be buried. Others simply stared about with mad, hollow eyes, like the horrors they had been through were still around them, about to cut them down. And some of them cried as well. Just couldn’t stop. It was all a man could do to resist telling them to shut up and to pull themselves together.

There were other sounds, too. The distant banging of doors. The marching of feet. The squealing of wheelchairs. The clattering of trolleys. The gentle noise of nets rustling and curtains fluttering. And from outside, the conversations of men who were somehow living with the horrors and trying to piece their lives back together, even now, in 1947.

All of us are broken, Hugo Forst thought, and it’s a hell of a road when you think about all that we are stuck with, even if we are one of those who are blessed, and war is another matter, war is for those who were not blessed, who were born in the wrong time and place, and it is a further burden to the one they already carry.

And so it was that Hugo Forst had his burden, too, and more.

~

They rode together on the tram, did Hugo Forst and Pia Wedekind. Her face drooped a little on one side. Her right hand hung down like a tiny, broken hinge, the kind you might find on a jewellery box out of which, when you raised the lid, would pop a dainty ballerina, and she would begin to dance to a sweet, tinkling tune, just as long as you turned the key. Pia Wedekind was wearing a dress with big yellow sunflowers on it, and over that, a coat that was duck-egg blue. Her hair was blonde, closer to white, actually. It was long and wavy and thick, as well, but so thick, Hugo thought, that probably anything would stick to it, like an insect, a fallen leaf, or a scrap of paper blown there by the wind. She seemed very small for a girl of nineteen, and very shy, and very nervous. With her left hand, which was a normal, useful left hand, she was always playing with her coat buttons, and although the tram ride was rickety and full of people chatting, Hugo was sure he could hear Pia Wedekind making clucking noises with her tongue, a sound that was like the distant clip-clop of hooves.

Her legs were together as if glued, and when she was not playing with her coat buttons, she was always smoothing her dress down. From what Hugo had seen, which was not much, she seemed to have nice legs, too, a bit thin, but shapely enough. Her shoes were flat at the back, no heel. It seemed she wished to have no attention drawn to her legs. It was cramped on the tram, but Pia Wedekind somehow managed to keep a full three-inch gap between herself and Hugo Forst.

I’m only twenty-five myself, he thought. How can she be frightened of a man – of a boy, really – who is not much older than she is, and who is weak, and thin, and who is struggling to be Hugo Forst when he is actually Jack Twinterman?

But he left the question there, along with all the other questions in his head to which no answers had ever been forthcoming, and he thought that questions in this world, in this life, were like balloons with no air in them, anyhow – they did not float to anywhere.

~

On the journey, half the buildings seemed to be missing, with many shops, stores, restaurants, bars, cafes gone, like teeth that had been pulled randomly from a healthy mouth, and the gums were still bleeding. Of course, the economy had gone to the dogs, and probably it would be years before these bomb sites were built on afresh. But Hugo Forst, or rather, the part of him that was Jack Twinterman, felt no loss or sadness for any of those buildings. He had never been part of what used to be and what would never grow back.

It was an ache that gave him no pain.

But Pia Wedekind kept her head down the whole time, like she had no desire to see those missing buildings, which must be filling her with sadness, all right, Hugo thought, although, even when the tram had rumbled past pretty parks and tree-lined avenues further back, Pia had not raised her head. She had just played with her coat buttons and smoothed down her dress and clucked, and clucked, and clucked. To be honest, when she nodded at him to let him know it was time to get off the tram, he felt an unreasonably enormous relief flood through him. People had started to look at the two of them on that seat, together but somehow not together, like they were strangers.

And of course that was exactly what they were.

~

‘So, here we are then,’ Hugo said, standing outside his apartment block that looked like no kind of apartment block he had been in before, despite the fact it was impressive, with grand steps leading up inside and with gorgeous tiled walls and floors in the entrance. ‘Do you have the key?’

‘Hello, yes,’ Pia Wedekind said, and so quietly that Hugo could barely hear her. She bent down and put the key on the steps in front of him.

Hugo looked down at it, a little annoyed. ‘Well, you could just have given it to me. I have a hand, you know, and it doesn’t bite.’ But what he heard was cluck, cluck, cluck, and he’d had enough of that, and so he picked up the key and went inside, with Pia Wedekind walking behind him, several strides back, her head down, always down.

There was a lift in here, one of those that ran up between the stairs, and you could see through the metal bars, and there was a sliding, metal gate that you had to close to make the lift work. It was small, this lift, but still big enough for two. Hugo got inside, Hugo along with his little brown suitcase. He waited for Pia Wedekind to get inside, too, but she didn’t. She just stood outside of it with her head down, her right hand hanging there like a broken wing.

‘Are you getting in?’ Hugo asked.

‘No,’ Pia Wedekind said in her little, timorous voice. ‘Just press the button with the number three on it.’ Then she began to walk up the stairs, and when Hugo closed the gate and pressed the button with the number three on it, the lift followed her, with Hugo gazing through the metal bars, confused. The lift was slow, and Pia was in front, and so Hugo was looking up at her, and it was clear she didn’t like that. She smoothed down her dress and then stopped on the stairs until the lift, rattling and creaking, had passed her by. Then she carried on walking, which meant that Hugo was now looking down at her.

On floor three, he got out of the lift, thinking that of all the people to get stuck with it was her, Pia Wedekind, and on this his first day out of the hospital. But he would not give up on her. When you gave up on people, it was you who lost, not them.

‘So which one is it?’ Hugo asked, when she made it to the top of the stairs.

Pia Wedekind, with her normal, useful left hand, pointed to a black, shiny door with the number 25 on it.

Twenty-five, how strange, Hugo thought. Twenty-five years as Jack Twinterman. I wonder how many years I will get as Hugo Forst?

He put the key in the door and opened it.

The first day and the rest of his life as Hugo Forst began here.

~

‘Bye-bye,’ Pia Wedekind said, the moment Hugo took a step inside the apartment, and with no time to even have a look around the place, he turned and saw her going back down the stairs.

‘Wait, Pia, wait!’ he said.

‘Hello, what is it?’ she said, and despite being six steps down, she did not look up at him, even then. Her head was still down.

‘Well, this is silly, is it not?’ he said, putting his little brown suitcase down on the floor. ‘Won’t you come in for a moment?’

‘No,’ she said, and although her voice was still timorous, there was at least a little clarity to it now, and a strength, and words that came together and flowed along, at last. But still she did not look up. She said, ‘I have cleaned your apartment for you, and it was quite dusty, after being empty for so long. I have put fresh linen on your bed, too. And I brought provisions for you, such as milk, bread, cheese, sausage, potatoes, coffee, and matches so you can light the stove and the boiler. And you are lucky. This block did not get bombed, and so the water supply, the gas, the electric, and all of that, is still in good working order. Still, you might find a few cracks in the ceiling, where the shocks have shifted the building around a little. But what are a few cracks when there are big holes in some people’s lives? And money, you are fine for that, I believe. Your mother and father had money, did they not, and now it has been passed on to you?’

‘Yes,’ Hugo said. ‘I have a bank book in my pocket which a lawyer, Herr Kunkel, gave me last week in the hospital. I am quite rich, so it would seem.’

‘Yes, so it would seem,’ Pia Wedekind said. ‘Bye-bye.’

‘Stop!’ Hugo said, suddenly feeling oddly desperate. ‘Can I see you again?’

‘Hello, why?’

‘Because I want to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…because…’ Think, you idiot, think! ‘Because…because…’

She turned and walked down the stairs, to the landing there.

‘Because…’ he said once again, and tamely.

And so she kept on going, and Hugo dashed over to the lift, so that, through the metal bars, he could see her going down the stairs, and he thought yet again, Think, you idiot, think! And all at once it came out of his mouth, clumsily, but there, anyhow. ‘Because…because really I am English…I am an Englishman called Jack Twinterman…but you know me, don’t you? You know Hugo Forst, anyhow, and I don’t.’

Pia Wedekind stopped, and abruptly, so that her left leg became suspended in the air. Her shoes shone brightly. She smoothed down her dress. Her right hand dangled there, a limp claw. Her shadow stretched down the stairs like something Hugo wished he could put his foot on to trap it in place. She fiddled with her coat buttons for a moment, and then, cluck, cluck, cluck, and this clucking, it seemed to go on forever, at least to Hugo Forst it did, when in reality it lasted no more than ten seconds. Then finally, and still with her head down, she said, ‘Hello, you can meet me in Korner Park. Tomorrow. Twelve-thirty. Bye-bye.’

And Hugo Forst thought he would die of the relief. Just die!

~

It was 12:30. No sign of Pia Wedekind. It was 12:35. No sign of Pia Wedekind. It was 12:40. No sign of that Pia Wedekind girl. It was 12:45. No sign of that bloody Pia Wedekind girl. It was 12:50. No sign of that bloody Fräulein Wedekind girl! It was 12:55. No sign of that bloody Fräulein Wedekind girl with her stupid head always down and always cluck, cluck, clucking and always saying, Hello, bloody, hello!

~

It was one o’ clock. Here she came, her, Pia Wedekind, and with her head down of course, which Hugo Forst thought was actually really quite sweet, and probably she’d be cluck, cluck, clucking as well, and that was actually really quite sweet, too. So here he was, sitting on a bench, but right at one end, so that Pia Wedekind could have a lot more than just the three inches she had gotten on the tram yesterday. She would be able to sit at the other end of the bench, and she would like that, she would find that very considerate of him, he thought. And why not? He was a very considerate person, was Herr Hugo Forst.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I am late. Hello.’

‘Hello,’ said Hugo, and he watched as she sat down, not right at the other end of the bench, but in the middle, but even so, it still gave her a lot more than just three inches. Three feet, probably. But of course, here in Berlin, it would be a metre. Yes, a metre. There was a metre between them.

His view of her was sideways on. She was sitting very primly with her legs pressed tightly together, as was usual for her. Her feet were together, too, and firmly flat to the ground. Her coat was the same one, duck-egg blue ( with lots of those big round buttons down the front of it for her to play with ), but her dress was black today, black with a white, lacy apron over the top, and, using her normal, useful left hand, she smoothed down the dress and the apron. And there was a box on her lap, Hugo now noticed, which was tied up with a ribbon.

‘Hello,’ she said, looking down at her feet, not at him. ‘I have a cake for you, a Bienenstich, which in English means Bee Sting. It is made of a sweet yeast dough, it has a baked-on topping of caramelised almonds, and it is filled with vanilla custard. Have you eaten a Bienenstich before, in the hospital, maybe?’

Hugo laughed. ‘In the hospital?’ he said. ‘Oh no, that was all basic rations, my dear, with the occasional treat here and there…like sugar in the tea.’

‘So, would you like to try it?’

‘Indeed I would, it sounds delicious!’ Hugo Forst said. ‘Thank you, thank you so very much.