It’s not like they’re my friends, not really. And when the other kids see Mum and Dad are alive, they’ll know I haven’t been truthful with them. I’ll have to say goodbye to everyone here soon. The idea that I wouldn’t is so crazy it makes us both chuckle. But these are hard times and food is scarce and even when your tummy’s stuffed with joy you still have to force it down.ĭodie grins. Part of me wants to give my soup to Dodie because his mum and dad died of sickness when he was three. ‘Grow up, Dodek,’ says Marek, but in his eyes there’s a flicker of hope that he might get some too. Over his shoulder, Marek and Telek are sneering. He’s sucking his teeth and I can see he’s hoping my soup is up for grabs. ‘Don’t you want that?’ says a voice next to me.ĭodie is staring at my bowl. I’ll miss them when Mum and Dad take me home and I stop being Catholic and go back to being Jewish. Sister Elwira doesn’t notice either because she’s too busy serving the last few kids and being sympathetic to a girl who’s crying about the amount of ceiling plaster in her soup. Mother Minka doesn’t see my smile, she’s too busy glaring at the Saint Kazimierz table, so I give Sister Elwira a grateful smile too. When they were bringing me here, they told me how in all the years Mother Minka was a customer of their bookshop, back before things got difficult for Jewish booksellers, she never once criticised a single book. There were two reasons Mum and Dad chose this orphanage, because it was the closest and because of Mother Minka’s goodness. It was good of her to make a joke to draw attention away from my carrot. When everyone has gone back to eating, I give Mother Minka a grateful smile. They must have sent the carrot up here with Father Ludwik to surprise me. I’m so happy I don’t care that my fingers are stinging from the hot soup. I try not to look like a kid who’s just slipped a carrot into his pocket. Others are frowning and wondering what’s going on. ‘If you’ve found an insect in your bowl, just eat it and be grateful.’ ‘Don’t fiddle with your food, Felix,’ says Mother Minka. It’s Mother Minka’s voice, booming at me from the high table. If the other kids find out mine aren’t dead, they’ll get really upset and the nuns here could be in trouble with the Catholic head office in Warsaw for breaking the rules. Everyone here is meant to have dead parents. If the others see my carrot there’ll be a jealousy riot. Luckily the other kids are concentrating on their own dinners, spooning their soup up hungrily and peering into their bowls in case there’s a speck of meat there, or a speck of rat poo. To let me know they’re coming to take me home.ĭizzy with excitement, I stick my fingers into the soup and grab the carrot. To let me know that after three long years and eight long months things are finally improving for Jewish booksellers. They’ve sent my favourite vegetable to let me know their problems are finally over. Thank you God, Jesus, Mary, the Pope and Adolf Hitler, I’ve waited so long for this. Then I realise what the carrot means and I have to sit down quick before my legs give way.Īt last.
Except it can’t be because miracles only happened in ancient times and this is 1942. For a few seconds I think it’s a miracle. So if a whole carrot turns up in this place, first it gets admired, then it gets chopped into enough pieces so that sixty-two kids, eleven nuns and one priest can all have a bit.Īt this moment I’m probably the only kid in Poland with a whole carrot in his dinner bowl.
We can’t grow vegetables up here in the mountains. Even the nuns don’t get whole carrots, and they get bigger servings than us kids because they need the extra energy for being holy. Three years and eight months I’ve been in this orphanage and I haven’t had a whole carrot in my dinner bowl once. It’s floating in my soup, huge among the flecks of cabbage and the tiny blobs of pork fat and the few lonely lentils and the bits of grey plaster from the kitchen ceiling. I feel for the edge of the table and put my bowl down and wipe my glasses. I hold my bowl above my head so other kids can’t pinch my soup while I’m fogged up and I use Dodie’s slurping noises to guide me in. I use my ears for navigation.ĭodie who always sits next to me is a loud slurper because of his crooked teeth. You know how when a nun serves you very hot soup from a big metal pot and she makes you lean in close so she doesn’t drip and the steam from the pot makes your glasses go all misty and you can’t wipe them because you’re holding your dinner bowl and the fog doesn’t clear even when you pray to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Pope and Adolf Hitler? Once I was living in an orphanage in the mountains and I shouldn’t have been and I almost caused a riot.
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