And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

She could only ask, "But why, Paul? Why?"

He reached out for her hands and held them so tightly that it hurt. "I don't know why ... that's the hardest part. I don't remember anything at all beyond the last few years."

Flip tried to make it seem unimportant—to say something, anything that would make Paul relax. None of this was as serious as he thought—lots of people had poor memories. Anyway it had nothing to do with their friendship. "Paul," she began—but he was not listening. He was not even conscious that she had spoken.

"I don't want to frighten you," Paul said, "but Flip I have to tell you—I don't know who I am."

CHAPTER FOUR

The Lost Boy

Flip did not say anything. She just stood there and let Paul hold her hands too tightly and she felt that somehow the pain in her hands might ease the pain in his mind. Then he dropped her hands and started to walk again, but more slowly. When he began to speak she listened intently, but it was impossible to make it seem real. The story Paul was pouring out to her now was like a movie, or something read in a book. The concentration camps. The children and the children's parents gassed and burned. The cold and the hunger, and afterwards the lostness. The children in the DP camps. The children roaming and scavenging the streets like hungry wolves.

"I was one of the lucky ones," Paul said in a low voice. "My mother and father found me. I mean—Monsieur and Madame Laurens.... You'll have to understand Flip, if I keep calling them my mother and father—but that's the way I think of them now, and I don't remember anyone else for a mother and father."

Flip nodded, and Paul continued, his face tense in the starlight. "They found me in a bombed out cellar in Berlin when my mother was singing there for the troops just after the war was over. I'd been trapped there somehow and I was nearly dead I guess, but I kept on calling and they found me and rescued me. And for some reason I didn't want to be rescued. It's like sometimes when you try to save an animal he snarls and bites at you before he realizes that you aren't going to hurt him more. A dog was run over on our street once—not Ariel, another dog—and he kept trying to bite at me for a long time until he realized that I wanted to help him. His back was broken and I had to chloroform him. Dr. Bejart helped me." Paul stopped talking and continued to walk so rapidly that Flip almost had to run to keep up with him. She looked up through the bare trees and the last color had drained from the sky and the full flowering of stars was out and they seemed to be caught in the topmost branches of the trees like blossoms. By their light she could see Paul quite clearly but she knew that she must not say anything to him. They had walked beyond the chateau now and behind her she could hear an owl calling forlornly from one of the turrets.

"I don't really remember anything before my mother and father found me," Paul said. "Sometimes I remember bits of the concentration camp. Aunt Colette thinks its because of the concentration camp that I'm afraid of institutions. I might as well admit it, Flip, I am afraid of institutions. I think if I could remember I wouldn't be afraid. Sometimes when I'm in the chateau I feel as though I were going to remember but I never do. I remember bits of the camp, the way you sometimes remember bits of a nightmare, but when I try really to remember it's like going out of a bright room into a dark room and you can't see anything in the dark except strange shapes and shadows...."