Whispers And The Wind

Bored listening to this loser I looked up and day dreamed Looking through not too clean widows at a perfect Mediterranean sky.
Not even a good thief the stupid sod kept getting caught.
As with all good thieves he had started life early by being delinquent. Running away from home. Sleeping anywhere he could.
Teddy annoyed me. There was no need. His Mother had struggled and his Father had known nothing but surviving.
A family that had fought and had born every pain with varying degrees of success. Apart the shame from their thieving son.

It started before Teddy was born. Just after 1945 a young man wandered into a peaceful village by the forest in Poland. A quiet guy very good at fixing things. Kept himself to himself. No one was surprised when he married one of the village girls. No one was surprised when within 5 years they were a family of six.

Everyone was amazed when he told his wife that he was a Jew. Not a religious Jew. He had given up on God. God had given up on him. Life began with his footsteps into the village. Nothing before. It was all erased. The Germans wanted to erase every memory of all thing Jewish. Teddy father wanted to too.
Despite their efforts both failed.
Teddy’s wife then did the strangest thing possible. She demanded that this stranger took her and her children to a strange land and to live with strange people.
He was forced to come to Israel.
He insisted that they were brought up as Catholics. She reluctantly agreed but slowly the kids became Israelis. In the army they became Jews. But Teddy’s father’s past was locked.

No one knew his name. The family name was unknown. They did know that he went to bed only after he made sure that were a few slices of bred hidden away. Bread was never thrown out. Teddy’s father never really trusted anyone. Drifted in and out of jobs but provided. A tense closed man. Always angry and disappointed at Teddy’s behaviour.

So we sat as I heard some more inane explanations about how Teddy could beat the system. No shame no sorrow. I was drifting letting the hours pass by. Both Teddy and me were playing the Therapy game.
He came.
I listened.
Both of us knew that this was a waste of time.
But that was what I did. Not every therapy works.

Like every one else I got annoyed at Teddy. So annoyed I attacked him. Because I was annoyed and I am human.
‘If you’re such a good thief how the hell do you get caught so often?’
Spiteful but as I said I am human.

The answer was – well you judge. I’ll just say that I never expected it.

‘I like standing outside the house I’ve burgled, in the shadows and watch the Police arrive?’

‘You do what !?‘
‘I stand in the shadows under the trees and watch. I wonder if they’ll catch me.’

‘Just like in the forest. Teddy , you must really love your Dad if you want to be so much like him.’ That wasn’t spite. I was awe struck.

They say a picture tells a thousand words. Teddy face was a picture of revelation, a picture of amazement and then a picture of aching sadness. Shadows flitting across his face , winds whispering in his memories and emotions rustling in a breeze of feelings that were always there but locked. Thousands and thousands of words. None spoken. Just like his Dad. You can say so much by saying nothing.

Teddy never stole gain.

If this was a story I could invent that the father and son bonded. They didn’t. Teddy made a lousy marriage. He had two kids. He showed tremendous strength by bringing up his children on his own. Teddy’s a great dad.

Teddy’s mother died. She was buried as a non Jew. Around her grave were at least twenty children, grandchildren and great grand-children.
All of them Jews.
All because of her.
Beneath the ground a non Jew.
Above it, in heaven she was a great Jewess.

Before she died Teddy’s father told them all his story. Who he was, where he’d been, what he’d done and what he was called. They kept it to themselves.

Teddy’s dad has one person in this earth he talks to. Teddy’s nephew. One day Teddy’s dad was very ill. We thought that he was going to die.
He didn’t but he said some thing.
Teddy’s nephew is religious. He has a beard.
Teddy’s dad suddenly said ‘My grandson reminds me of my father. He was a religious Jew too. ‘

In the woods in Poland. In the echoes, if you listen you can hear the sound of a lonely Jewish child crying.