The Forbidden Love

Chapter One

Germany, Germany, Germany! That's all I ever read in the books I learn from with Mr. Krause. I used to learn about the colour beyond this grey country but now everything and everyone around me seems to be stuck in this dull life. It's as if everyone has forgotten that there is life and movement out of our little safe haven. Mrs. Weib used to teach me of the different cultures and ways of life. It was like every time that I opened a book of hers I would be taken to a new country and swamped by the aromas of new food and sensations of new air. Every day after my usual chores, I would be transported to a new world where everything seemed beautiful and there wasn't a care in the world. Sometimes Mrs. Weib would even bring foreign food that seemed daring to my potato and bread sensitive taste buds. Naan bread from India, crepes from France, tomatoes from Italy. This excited my salivated mouth and sent me to a world of bliss. But after the war began, Mrs. Weib's visits became shorter and scarcer and eventually displaced. When Mr. Krause was sitting at the table for our first lesson, I questioned mother as to where Mrs. Weib had gone. She told me that her services were required elsewhere but I didn't believe that for a second. Of course, I daren't argue because mother only ever did what was best for me and if Mr. Krause's lessons were what she wanted for me than that was what I was going to do. Within 20 minutes of Mr. Krause's first lesson I was overly bored and disinterested. I had to flick myself every time I felt the urge to drift off into a sleep. There were no pictures, no engaging or imaginative texts. It was just page after page of how this war was going transform the nation as we knew it and how Adolf Hitler was the most influential leader Germany and even the world had ever seen. I thought that maybe this was going to last for one lesson. Like how Mrs. Weib focused on one country in one lesson but the German propaganda books continued to flood in and I continued to tune out and watch the man in the stripy clothes shakily refill our wood heap. That was another change that the war brought, these men started to show up with stripy clothing that cooked and cleaned. Of course I know now that they are the prisoners that "we despise and hate and that don't belong in society" but when they first started arriving I tried to speak with them, ask what they were doing, who they were. Every time I got the same response. They looked at me in a nervous way, put their heads down and walked away briskly. I got a scolding for creating conversation but I knew no better. I still don't understand the whole concept but I just try to ignore the cruelty of the whole thing because I don't like getting involved in my father's work. When I don't have lessons with Mr. Krause, father takes me down to the camp where there is a small fenced area used for soldier training. When he told me that he is going to be spending more time with me I thought he meant we would go into the city together or build forts. Those were the kind of things all the other boys that I used to go to school with did with their fathers. I wasn't expecting for him to try and train me with a gun so that I can use it to kill innocent people in the future! He says that I am going to be a soldier just like him. He said that it will happen when I finally realise my genes and eventually put them into use. But you see, I have no interest in being a soldier. In fact, that is the last thing in the world that I want to do. I want to cook and travel and explore. I want to see what I saw in Mrs Weib's books for myself. Touch it, smell it, experience it first-hand so that when I have children and we are all sitting around the dining table for supper, I won't tell them stories of the lot of 'scoundrels' that I killed that day but instead the amazing and vibrant places I had visited and what amazing adventures I had there. But that is obviously not what father has in mind for me. There are also so many rules now!

1. Do NOT speak with the prisoners.

2. Books, other than those of Mr. Krause's, and any form of communications are forbidden for my sister and me.

3. Do not play anywhere outside apart from the courtyard.

4. Only go down to the camp with permission and whilst being accompanied by a soldier.