Of A Lonely Man

It was closed night when Josh broke into our house and took my mother and me out of the city limits. I remember my mother shouting at him to help her pack my father’s papers. He shouted back there was no time, they had to get me safe. They’d come back to get it when the risk was over, he said. There was not going to be a war over such a stupidity, he said. Uncle Josh was never one to make good predictions.

He drove us out Berlin to some lost town nearby. Josh knew some people there who gave us a bed to sleep in and some food as long as it took them to figure out who we were. Back then I didn’t understand what was all the fuss with who my dad was, but, then again, I didn’t understand half the things that were going on around me, so that didn’t bother me too much.

After a week in the lost town, mom, Josh and I moved to la Bretagne in France. We lived there the first two years of the War without noticing. Josh and mom sold every traceable device they owned and we all lived happily in the countryside out of milk from a bad-tempered cow called Inna and what Josh would find in the woods or in the rivers. It was a beautiful place to grow up in. Unlucky me, we moved out when China started invading France by the Bay of Biscay.

The fresh valleys of France where then replaced by hot beaches in Spain. We tried to take Inna with us because we had all grown fond of her, but she “ran off” during the journey. We then ate cow meat until we got to what was before the war known as Valence. I might as well add we were a bit short of money.

Mom and Josh always fought over the future. It was certain China was going to try to colonize the Mediterranean as well, but there was not many free lands left to go to so we stuck around until we saw the Chinese sea army arrive. Only then we hurried across Spain to what still then was Galicia. We stayed one week in Cedeira, waiting for a ship direction England. England was not a neutral country in the War, but it was the last relatively safe country we could go to.

We did not stay there more time than the necessary. We crossed England and went to live in another valley, now in Northern Wales. I loved the smell and the weather there, it reminded me of my time in la Bretagne, but mom was not too happy to be in Wales.

All I knew of my father back then was that he was Welsh and that he was Josh’ brother, even though that was not something Josh’ was happy about. My father disliked him to the point of hatred and my mother was worried that he would find us. Back then I didn’t make connexions between the father who was Josh’ brother and the one we were being prosecuted for, I just somehow managed to have two fathers and my mind didn’t explode.

Some weeks after we got to Wales the war was over, at least officially. Josh went to Cardiff to sort out some business, they never really told me anything. Why would they? I was only ten.

We never saw him again.