Buttons

My father is a large man. Larger than a normal man. He's very important. People say so, but they don't need to. I can tell he's important. He knows so. He wears a uniform. A fancy uniform with big, brass buttons and a silver belt. The news says silver is hard to find. It also says soap and buttons are hard to find. But we have plenty of that here. Plenty of soap and buttons. The buttons barely shine and the soap has an odd smell, but I'm clean. The people in the striped clothes aren't though.

My family lives in a small house. Not too small, but not very big. It's always cold here though. Father says we are not to use the fireplace often. We used to, but the trees have all been cut down. They're all dead. Just open fields. Mother can still use the stove though, but not for much. We eat from cans, unless father comes back from hunting with food. But that doesn't happen very often. It snows a lot here. I miss Germany. I don't have friends here. The sons of Father's friends are all grown or gone.

***

I woke one night and it was snowing outside. Far across the field there's a small, black building. I'd never noticed it before. It lay beyond the fences. The fences are sharp, made of wire and metal. Through the window of the building I could see an orange glow. Orange and bright. Like fire. Outside there stood a small line of people wearing striped clothes. Like a clown's clothes but black and white. Sad colors. They marched slowly into the building, led by a man wearing the uniform of my father. A shadow passed over the glow. Soft music, a single violin, pierced through the night, loud and shrill, the same three notes. A song with no meaning, no emotion. The man in the uniform shut the door. Soft sounds rang out into the air. The music couldn't cover them. Six soft pops, like the sound my cap guns made. The shadow moved and the glow returned. The music died mid tempo. Black smoke billowed out from the chimney. The door swung out and my father exited the building with three other men. They spoke a few words and parted. My father approached our house. He wore his gloves that night. There was something on them. Something red. Dark red, almost black. He glanced up into my bedroom window as he passed. I scrambled into bed, pulling the sheets up to my chest.

Outside I could hear my father walk, his heavy boots beating against the wooden floorboards. Beating in quiet rhythm, like a tribal drum. I opened one eye and glanced across the room. Through the crack below the door I could see the light from the hallway. My father's footsteps stopped. His shadow blocked the light of the hallway. He stood there for a long time. I shut my eyes. I may have fallen asleep. When I opened them again, he was gone.

***

My father has a gun. A Luger, he calls it. It's very beautiful. Silver and black. He's a policeman, he says, and a guard. He carries the gun in a brown holster he clips to his belt. It's always loaded, he tells me, ready to fire. It's a beautiful weapon. From afar it sounds a little like a cap gun.

***

I was walking in the snow one day, bundled up in two coats. Mother insisted I wear them both. I passed through the empty field and headed towards the camp. The silver fence shined under the sunlight that made its way past the clouds. The black building stood beside the northern fence. Smoke spilled from the chimney, not as strong, never as strong as when night fell. The smoke, the fires, never stopped. At the corner of the gate a boy around my age sat huddled in the snow, hugging himself. His striped clothes looked too big to fit him. He glanced up as I approached, just for a few seconds, then he looked away. I sat across from him, my hands resting on the fence. I spoke first.

"I'm Severin."

He didn't lift his head as he spoke.

"Olaf."

He shivered in the cold. I removed my first jacket.

"Are you cold?"
"Yes."
"You can have my coat."
"Ok."

I tried to toss the coat over the fence. It was so high up. It bounced off and drifted back to the earth. On the third try it landed atop the barbwire and stuck there, halfway free, halfway trapped.

"I'm sorry," I said.
"It's ok."

He wore a yellow star on his sleeve. A set of numbers were imprinted in his skin, like cattle. Branded. I stared at the star.

"You're a Jew."
"Yes."
"My father says you're evil."
"Mine says the same about yours."

He clutches something tight in his hands. I recognize the dull shine. A button.

"Where did you get our button?"
"It was my brother."
"Your brother is a button?"
"Now he is. Buttons and soap."

I shook my head. He wasn't making sense. I watched the smoke rise from the chimney of the building behind him.

"What do they burn in the fires?"

He didn't speak. His arms shook.

"Where is your father?"
"They took him. They took him today."
"What-" I began, then the music started to play.

The haunting tune, those same three notes, rang through the cold air. Olaf covered his ears, still clasping the button tightly between his fingers. Far across the camp, men in striped clothing emerged, ten in all, from different bunkers, marching slowly and deliberately, staring off into the distance. They stopped in the middle of the square, before a large statue of our leader. They stood side by side, as though they'd rehearsed it many times before.

From a chain gate five men in uniforms like Father's approached, holding rifles at their sides. They halted before the men, about twenty feet away, lining up in a row.

The ten men watched the guards. Some with wide eyes that darted back and forth, their bodies shaking. Six were Jews, their yellow stars standing out clearly amongst the white snow and striped clothing. The man I watched, a Jew around Father's age, stood still, his eyes shut. A small smile, peaceful and serene, crept across his lips. The men in uniform shot him through the head. The ten men fell beneath the fire. When the gunfire fell silent, they lay in the snow stained red with their blood, their yellow stars bright, their dead eyes turned up towards the sky.

The violin continued to play.

A single man lay moving, clutching his throat where the bullet had pierced it. A guard slowly crossed to where the man lay, carefully stepping around the bodies. He drew his Luger from its holster and casually wiped the barrel with his sleeve. Then he shot the man twice through the chest. The man's breaths stopped and his hands fell.

Olaf was screaming, beating his hands against his head. I stood still and watched them die. Watched the uniformed men drag them into the building. The smell of death rose with the smoke. A hand fell upon my shoulder. I turned. My father stood before me. I broke from his grasp and sprinted through the snow. I could hear him calling my name. He didn't follow. I ran until the cold air choked me. The small camp was far off in the distance, a pin point with smoke drifting from it and into the sky.

I sat in the freezing snow, my head bowed, struggling to breath. A soft shadow stretched across the ground. I glanced ahead. A single tree arose from the snow covered earth. Bare of all leaves and thin, the tree rocked with the wind. It was beautiful. The only tree neither burned nor cut, a weakling shivering in the cold. Alone. Alone in the world but possessing an unknown strength to survive. I crawled to the tree and huddled beneath it, my back against its thin trunk. I buried my face in my hands and began to cry.

***

Mother wants me to wash. They force me to now. Wash with soap. I can't stand it. I walk the path near the fence every afternoon, hoping to find the boy. But there's never a sign of him. He's gone. My jacket vanished as well. I hope he took it. I hope he's warm and safe. But I'm scared. The smoke still rises from the chimney every night, with the smell of death among it. The fires have to die eventually. How much must we burn? I tell myself it can't last forever, but everyday more shipments of buttons and soap are shipped out. So many buttons. Do we really need that many?