Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul (10 page)

Goat’s Tobacco

When I was about nine, the ancient half-sister got engaged to be married. The man of her choice was a young English doctor, and that summer he came with us to Norway. Romance was floating in the air like moon-dust, and the two lovers, for some reason we younger ones could never understand, did not seem to be very keen on us tagging along with them. They went out in the boat alone. They climbed the rocks alone. They even had breakfast alone. We resented this. As a family we had always done everything together, and we didn’t see why the ancient half-sister should suddenly decide to do things differently even if she had become engaged. We were inclined to blame the male lover for disrupting the calm of our family life, and it was inevitable that he would have to suffer for it sooner or later.

The male lover was a great pipe-smoker. The disgusting smelly pipe was never out of his mouth except when he was eating or swimming. We even began to wonder whether he removed it when he was kissing his betrothed. He gripped the stem of the pipe in the most manly fashion between his strong white teeth and kept it there while talking to you. This annoyed us. Surely it was more polite to take it out and speak properly.

One day, we all went in our little motorboat to an island we had never been to before, and for once the ancient half-sister and the manly lover decided to come with us. We chose this particular island because we saw some goats on it. They were climbing about on the rocks and we thought it would be fun to go visit them. But when we landed, we found that the goats were totally wild and we couldn’t get near them. So we gave up trying to make friends with them and simply sat around on the smooth rocks in our bathing costumes, enjoying the lovely sun.

The manly lover was filling his pipe. I happened to be watching him as he very carefully packed the tobacco into the bowl from a yellow oilskin pouch. He had just finished doing this and was about to light up when the ancient half-sister called on him to come swimming. So he put down the pipe and off he went.

I stared at the pipe that was lying there on the rocks. About twelve inches away from it, I saw a little heap of dried goat’s droppings, each one small and round like a pale brown berry, and at that point, an interesting idea began to sprout in my mind. I picked up the pipe and knocked all the tobacco out if it. I then took the goat’s droppings and teased them with my fingers until they were nicely shredded. Very gently I poured these shredded droppings into the bowl of the pipe, packing them down with my thumb just as the manly lover always did it. When that was done, I placed a thin layer of real tobacco over the top. The entire family was watching me as I did this. Nobody said a word, but I could sense a glow of approval all round. I replaced the pipe on the rock, and all of us sat back to await the return of the victim. The whole lot of us were in this together now, even my mother. I had drawn them into the plot simply by letting them see what I was doing. It was a silent, rather dangerous family conspiracy.

Back came the manly lover, dripping wet from the sea, chest out, strong and virile, healthy and sunburnt. “Great swim!” he announced to the world. “Splendid water! Terrific stuff!” He toweled himself vigorously, making the muscles of his biceps ripple, then he sat down on the rocks and reached for his pipe.

Nine pairs of eyes watched him intently. Nobody giggled to give the game away. We were trembling with anticipation, and a good deal of the suspense was caused by the fact that none of us knew just what was going to happen.

The manly lover put the pipe between his strong white teeth and struck a match. He held the flame over the bowl and sucked. The tobacco ignited and glowed, and the lover’s head was enveloped in clouds of blue smoke. “Ah-h-h,” he said, blowing through his nostrils. “There’s nothing like a good pipe after a bracing swim.”

Still we waited. We could hardly bear the suspense. The sister who was seven couldn’t bear it at all. “What sort of tobacco do you put in that thing?” she asked with superb innocence.

“Navy Cut,” the male lover answered. “Player’s Navy Cut. It’s the best there is. These Norwegians use all sorts of disgusting scented tobaccos, but I wouldn’t touch them.”

“I didn’t know they had different tastes,” the small sister went on.

“Of course they do,” the manly lover said. “All tobaccos are different to the discriminating pipe-smoker. Navy Cut is clean and unadulterated. It’s a man’s smoke.” The man seemed to go out of his way to use long words like
discriminating
and
unadulterated.
We hadn’t the foggiest what they meant.

The ancient half-sister, fresh from her swim and now clothed in a towel bathrobe, came and sat herself close to her manly lover. Then the two of them started giving each other those silly little glances and soppy smiles that made us all feel sick. They were far too occupied with one another to notice the awful tension that had settled over our group. They didn’t even notice that every face in the crowd was turned toward them. They had sunk once again into their lovers’ world, where little children did not exist.

The sea was calm, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

Then all of a sudden, the manly lover let out a piercing scream and his whole body shot four feet into the air. His pipe flew out of his mouth and went clattering over the rocks, and the second scream he gave was so shrill and loud that all the seagulls on the island rose up in alarm. His features were twisted like those of a person undergoing severe torture, and his skin had turned the colour of snow. He began spluttering and choking and spewing and hawking and acting generally like a man with some serious internal injury. He was completely speechless.

We stared at him, enthralled.

The ancient half-sister, who must have thought she was about to lose her future husband forever, was pawing at him and thumping him on the back and crying, “Darling! Darling! What’s happening to you? Where does it hurt? Get the boat! Start the engine! We must rush him to a hospital quickly!” She seemed to have forgotten that there wasn’t a hospital within fifty miles.

“I’ve been poisoned!” spluttered the manly lover. “It’s got into my lungs! It’s in my chest! My chest is on fire! My stomach’s going up in flames!”

“Help me get him into the boat! Quick!” cried the ancient half-sister, gripping him under the armpits. “Don’t just sit there staring! Come and help!”

“No, no, no!” cried the now not-so-manly lover. “Leave me alone! I need air! Give me air!” He lay back and breathed in deep draughts of splendid Norwegian ocean air, and in another minute or so, he was sitting up again and was on the way to recovery.

“What in the world came over you?” asked the ancient half-sister, clasping his hands tenderly in hers.

“I can’t imagine,” he murmured. “I simply can’t imagine.” His face was as still and white as virgin snow and his hands were trembling. “There must be a reason for it,” he added. “There’s got to be a reason.”

“I know the reason!” shouted the seven-year-old sister, screaming with laughter. “I know what it was!”

“What was it?” snapped the ancient one. “What have you been up to? Tell me at once!”

“It’s his pipe!” shouted the small sister, still convulsed with laughter.

“What’s wrong with my pipe?” said the manly lover.

“You’ve been smoking goat’s tobacco!” cried the small sister.

It took a few moments for the full meaning of these words to dawn upon the two lovers, but when it did, and when the terrible anger began to show itself on the manly lover’s face, and when he started to rise slowly and menacingly to his feet, we all sprang up and ran for our lives and jumped off the rocks into the deep water.

Roald Dahl

My Grandfather’s Gift

A
child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.

Chinese Proverb

When I was a child, storytelling was an active part of my upbringing. My parents fostered any activity that might exercise my imagination. As a result of this encouragement, I have indeed become the modern version of a storyteller—an actor.

Surprisingly, not one relative on either side of my family has ever taken up this profession before. The only person to whom I can trace a “storytelling gene” is my grandfather on my mother’s side. This grandfather, in the great tradition of grandfathers everywhere, has always been a source of wisdom in my life.

When I was younger, my entire family would go camping, and as it grew dark, we would roast marshmallows around a fire and listen to my grandfather recite a poem. It was always the same poem that my grandfather would recite from memory.

When my grandfather was fourteen, he discovered the poem in a book of verse. He was working with horses at the time, and he had read the poem only two or three times when one of his horses had gotten loose. He was forced to chase the horse for miles, and somewhere in the course of the chase, he lost the book after only committing the first half of the poem to memory.

He tried for years to find another copy of the poem, but not knowing the author’s name, he gave up his search, content to having memorized only the beginning. “My First Cigar” is a poem about a child’s first attempt at smoking. Neither my grandfather nor I have ever smoked, but the poem contains such an endearing quality of innocent introspection that I was always thoroughly entertained by it.

It was not just the poem that got to me—it was the light in my grandfather’s eye, the lilt in his speech, and the sweeping movements of his arms that passionately involved me in the verse. Each one of these performances would be cut short when my grandfather would shrug and say, “That’s as far as I memorized,” and we would all nod and be left wondering how the poem ended. We accepted his inability to finish because we all knew why he could not.

Last year, about seventy years from the time my grandfather had originally found the poem, he installed a computer system in his local library, free of charge. As a return favor, he asked the library researchers to try to find “My First Cigar.” Several months later, one of them sent him the poem through the mail. I remember reading the rest of it for the first time with joy.

My grandfather has never recited the poem since, and I have never asked him to. Perhaps now that my grandfather knows the poem’s ending, his personal involvement with it is complete. For me, the story was better when it was incomplete . . . when it still had a future. I have since become actively involved in poetry, both reading and writing, and I credit my interest to my grandfather entirely.

There was a wonderful moment not long ago, when I was memorizing Wordsworth’s poem “My Heart Leaps Up” aloud, and my grandfather surprised me when he said, “I know that poem,” and was able to recite it with me. He had enjoyed the poem many years ago—I was memorizing it myself—and it was here that our two generations were bridged.

After seventeen years of knowing my grandfather better than most people I know in my life, every now and then he still decides to open the treasure chest that is his mind, and surprise me with a gift of wisdom.

Rider Strong

My First Cigar

’Twas just behind the woodshed,
One glorious summer day.
Far o’er the hills, the sinking sun
Pursued its western way;
And in my safe seclusion
Removed from o’er the jar
And dim of earth’s confusion
I smoked my first cigar.

It was my first cigar!
It was my worst cigar!
Raw, green, dank, hidebound and rank,
It was my first cigar!

Ah, bright the boyish fancies
Wrapped in smoke-wreath blue;
My eyes grew dim, my head was light,
The woodshed round me flew!
Dark night closed in around me—
Black night, without a star—
Grim death methought had found me
And spoiled my first cigar.

It was my first cigar!
A six-for-five cigar!
No viler torch the air could scorch—
It was my first cigar!

All pallid was my beaded brow,
The reeling night was late,
My startled mother cried in fear,
“My child, what have you ate?”
I heard my father’s smothered laugh,
It seemed so strange and far,
I knew he knew, I knew he knew
I’d smoked my first cigar!

It was my first cigar!
A give-away cigar!
I could not die—I knew not why—
It was my first cigar!

Since then I’ve stood in reckless ways.
I’ve dared what men can dare,
I’ve mocked at danger, walked with death,
I’ve laughed at pain and care,
I do not dread what may befall
’Neath my malignant star,
No frowning fate again can make
Me smoke my first cigar!

Robert J. Burdette

Silent Night, Crystal Night

As we walked, my grandfather said, in a voice tinged with sadness, “This month is very meaningful to me. Three highly significant events occurred in our family in November. Do you know what they are?”

“You mean our birthdays on the same day and Thanksgiving?”

He shook his gray, balding head. “
Kristallnacht
also happened in November.”

“Is that what happened when you were a boy? You’ve never talked about what happened to you growing up.”

With a hint of a German accent he said, “Well, you’re getting older, and it’s time you heard a bit of history by someone who lived it.”

This is the story he told tome during my thirteenth year.

“By 1935, when I was very young, the Nazis had gained great strength throughout Germany. In my city of Magde-burg, their symbols were everywhere. Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of the right of citizenship. We could no longer have telephones, businesses or personal relationships with non-Jews. Non-Jews could not hire us, nor could we have them work for us.

“Soon after those statutes were enacted, store windows and buildings were plastered with signs saying
‘Juden Verboten’
(Jews Forbidden) in huge letters, blaring like trumpets their malicious message. During the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, these signs disappeared, only to return after the games. On the last day that I was allowed to attend school, a Nazi schoolmate threw a rock at my head, hitting me.

“Locating medicines and food had become difficult unless a Jewish-owned business was still in operation. Prominent Jewish doctors, banned from hospitals, worked from their homes; professors, banned from universities, taught classes in secret.

“My parents spoke little about the situation to my younger brother and me. I did overhear them saying that they hoped this madness would soon pass.

“‘After all,’ my father said, ‘our families have lived in Germany for generations.’

“My parents warned us to remain as invisible as possible, to avoid crowds and any commotion in the streets. Can you imagine how I felt as a teenager?

“My mother wrote to her American relatives in Maine, requesting they sign a required affidavit without delay, guaranteeing the four of us freedom in America. This document would also permit us to leave Germany.

“A year later, my country’s situation worsened, becoming extremely dangerous. Jews were required to wear the Star of David on their sleeves, becoming targets for open harassment.

“Around the first of November in 1938, my mother left for Munich to learn fancy hotel cooking in hopes of finding work in America after we received permission to emigrate. My father stayed home to try to run what little business he had left.

“During the night of November 10, while we slept, uniformed Nazi hoodlums organized demonstrations all over Germany. They hurled rocks and firebombs at Jewish-owned businesses and property. People trying to escape the flames were shot. Millions of pieces of glass shattered all over the streets. Desecrated and torched synagogues were blown up. The noise and smell woke me. The stifling smell of burning buildings saturated the air. I jumped out of bed, peeked through the curtain and thought I was in hell. My father came into our room, closed the curtain, and told me to go back to bed and keep the lights off. I finally went back to sleep.

“Throughout that night, countless Jewish men as well as boys my age, natural-born German citizens, were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Some of these men had previously earned medals while bravely serving their country during World War I. Survivors, rounded up the next day, were forced to march to the nearest government office, and received papers demanding payment to the German government for damages to their own businesses and homes. This catastrophe later became known in German as
Kristallnacht
, meaning the night of broken glass.

“When the alarm woke us in the morning, my father wasn’t home. We assumed he had gone out early on business. So I got your Uncle Fritz and myself ready for school. As we were about to leave, a family friend rang our doorbell. When we opened the door, he looked around to make sure that no one else was around to hear what he had to say.

“‘Your father may not be home for a while, and he wants you and your brother to stay in the apartment, and not go to school,’ the friend told us.

“For our protection, he didn’t reveal that my father had gone into hiding to avoid the mass arrest of all Jewish adult males. The friend left. Scared, I remained at home with a terrified eight-year-old brother.

“An hour later, someone pounded on the front door. Opening it, I saw a tall stranger dressed in a dark leather overcoat. He nearly filled the doorway. Intimidated by his size, I looked up shyly as he looked down arrogantly, both of us staring for a moment. Then the six-foot-plus intruder pushed his way inside and announced, ‘Gestapo!’ I can still hear that cold, sharp voice demanding, ‘Where is your father?’

“Scared, I answered, ‘I don’t know where he is or when he’ll return.’ The agent left, threatening to come back.

“Two or three hours later I heard that familiar, dreaded banging at the door. I shivered. I assumed the first caller had returned.

“Upon opening the door, I saw two different Gestapo agents who looked like clones of the first man.

“‘So! Has your father returned?’ one snarled. Then, without waiting for an answer, both pushed me aside, entered our home, started opening bureau drawers, emptying them on the floor, looking into all the closets and searching under the beds. Fritz and I shook with fright. We tried to hide our terror by jamming our cold, clammy hands into our pockets. Not finding whatever they were looking for, they turned without saying a word and left. Fritz and I nearly collapsed with relief.

“A short time later, these same two goons returned, demanding that I accompany them to Gestapo headquarters immediately. I told Fritz to go directly to our family’s friends. I got my coat. Then, sandwiched between the two tall, robotic Nazis who accompanied me, rode a public streetcar, believe it or not, and was delivered to Gestapo headquarters.

“Shoved into a scary-looking office, the first thing I noticed was a uniformed official seated behind a large, highly polished, wooden desk. On the mahogany wall behind him hung a huge color portrait of Hitler, whose eyes seemed to follow the administrator’s every move. Barely looking up from his papers, he shouted in a deep, menacing voice, ‘Wait outside the office until your father turns himself in!’ One of the aides pushed me into a large marble anteroom and ordered me to sit on a bench at the other end of the room.

“‘How long will I have to wait?’ I asked.

“‘For as long as it takes!’

“Only then did I realize that I was being held as a hostage. Shivering from fright and cold, I wrapped my coat around me and kept very still to avoid being noticed. I had no idea how long I had been sitting there before I saw my father pass through the doorway at the other end of the anteroom, disappearing into what must have been another office. Evidently, friends who had watched the apartment had told him of my arrest. He gave himself up in exchange for my release. The Nazis often took children hostage, knowing their fugitive parents would turn themselves in. It was a very effective tactic.

“I sat there for a long time, numb, not knowing what to do. No one paid any attention to me. After what seemed like hours, I got up some courage and approached the deputy who was seated down the hall.

“‘Excuse me.’

“‘What?’ he snapped.

“‘My father has already arrived, and I would like to go home.’

“Verifying my father’s arrival, the uniformed official behind the desk dismissed me with a flick of his pen, warning, ‘It will be your turn next time.’

“My father never discussed his experiences in the camp after his release. If anyone asked, he would address the question with a distant stare and silence.

“Five months before the start of World War II, the necessary papers came through, allowing us to sail to America.”

As we returned for our turkey dinner, Opa, as I called my grandfather, came to the end of his story.

“When the United States entered World War II, I automatically became a citizen, joined the Army and was ordered to Europe as an interpreter for German prisoners of war. I don’t dwell on my boyhood experiences, but today I felt that I wanted you to know. I guess it’s okay to remember those things once in a while.”

“Well, something good came out of all that tragedy, Opa,” I told him.

“Yah? What’s that?”

“Me,” I said, putting my arms around him, planting a kiss on his cheek.

My grandfather never spoke of this again.

Lillian Belinfante Herzberg