Dein Hand, in Meine

Chapter 3

Man can be quite foul.

I awoke to the sound of something heavy being slammed. Ah, the door.

I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes with my knuckles.

"I must have fallen asleep."

I whispered, my vision still unclear since I had just woken up. I then realized that whomever had slammed the front door, well, who were they in the first place? I slid off of my quilted bed and placed my feet as firmly and as quietly on the ground as I possibly could. Then I slowly crept to the door.

Reaching my hand out towards the door handle, I gripped it and turned it carefully.

When I opened the door; what I saw on the other side, was a nightmare.

"Gilbert..."

My eyes began to fill with tears.

"Hey Luddy..."

I sprinted from the doorway to the living room and sat on the couch beside my brother.

His right eye was blackened and his left cheek cut up. His hair was all over the place and his pants were torn at the cuffs. He looked almost identical to what father looked like when he had arrived home. Which reminded me; what happened to vater?

"What happened to you?"

I asked, my voice quiet and raspy from the all sobs I was trying to hold in.

"The bakery."

A tear rolled down his cheek, grazing over the slick slice. The bakery? What about the bakery?

"What-"

He cut me off.

"Ludwig. They raided the bakery, ransacked it and took some of the other workers with them, the Jewish ones in particular..."

He then stopped, staring into an empty space.

"Gil..."

I could not believe this, but at the same time; I knew it would happen.

From the day he turned 15, Gilbert had always worked at the small bakery that sat across from our home. It was his second home; his salvation. Gilbert could bake anything from kuchen to strudel and his sweets were never mediocre. The owner of the bakery, was an older man named Aaron Baronoski, who was in his late 40's. He had always admired Gilbert's knack for baking and instantly put him in charge of baking most of everything. This couldn't have pleased Gilbert more. He had always admired Aaron and looked up to him as a mentor.

But now; the dark-haired man with the dark eyes and lips always curved into a smile, he was gone, along with plenty of Gilbert's coworkers.

"Aaron is gone...I feel so helpless..."

He blinked away a few tears and clenched the arm of the couch.

"The stormtroopers told me that I was the new owner of the bakery...and I don't want to be Luddy. I don't want to own a bakery that is not mine. It's Aaron's. Do you know how terrible I'd feel? Immensely terrible."

Gilbert choked on his words and sat there coughing for a few seconds then stared into the open space in front of him.

This was not something rare that occurred here. It had been happening for years, ever since Hitler was elected chancellor. Nazi stormtroopers have been burning books that do not pertain to Aryans, Jewish shops and businesses, and have even looted some of the buildings. Now that another war has started, all of this would probably just keep getting worse. Deep in my gut, I knew it would.

I wrapped my arms around my brother, his tears leaking onto my shoulder. Then I freed him from my embrace and lifted his chin up.

All I could do was stare at his wounds, and he must have noticed it too.

"I fought them Ludwig, I tried to fight them off, to get them to let go of my friends, my coworkers, of Aaron. But they wouldn't. They would not let go. They threatened to shoot me if I did not obey their orders. One of them pushed me to the ground and kicked me in the eye with their boot."

Gilbert pointed to his swollen eye which reminded me to put some ice on it.

I came back from the kitchen and handed it to Gilbert who silently thanked me and held the ice wrapped in a towel to his eye.

"I got scraped up pretty bad, I know that, but it was worth it Ludwig. It will always be worth it."

My brother reached his hand over and messed up my hair with a small smile. He then stood up, the ice still on his eye and made way to his bedroom. Once I heard the small click of the door, I laid back on the couch, and stared up at the ceiling.

My thoughts burst out all at once. But there was one thing I knew for sure; this wasn't something I could just leave hanging. No. I had to fight this. Hitler was incorrect. He was wrong to be doing what he had gotten away with doing for more than 5 years. I had to do something.

I turned over on my side as the couch shifted a bit beneath my body. I tossed my tank top off to the side to reveal my bare chest. I sighed. The more I thought about what happened with Aaron and the bakery, the angrier I grew. My body was burning up and I felt like if someone ticked me off one more time; I'd explode. I punched the cushion.

How could they even stand doing this?

I got up from the couch and stood there in front of the large window that peered out onto the street in front of our home. I stared straight out the window, bowing my head in a state of mourning. Then I looked up, the light from the lampposts glistening and projecting the image of the building that sat across the street onto the large window. I smiled a bit, just like Gilbert had when he spoke about how it was worth fighting. Then and there, staring out at the husk of the old bakery, I realized that my father too, had fought. So if vater fought and bruder too, it had to be worth it.

Laying back down on the dark leather of the couch and slowly drifting off to sleep, I knew that tomorrow I had one objective; to fight.

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