Free Once by Morris Gleitzman Page B

The Nazis make the rules here.”
    I think about this.
    Barney knocks on a door, and while we wait he turns to me with a serious expression.
    “Felix,” he says, “you might not be able to find your parents. I know that’s a hard thing to hear, but you might not.”
    It is a hard thing to hear.
    Luckily he’s wrong.
    “The Jewish people who’ve been brought to the city,” I say, “are they all in this ghetto or are there other ghetto curfew places as well?”
    Barney doesn’t answer.
    Perhaps I didn’t say the new words right.
    A woman leads us into a back room in the apartment. There are several people in the room, all wearing coats and all standing around a bed. The man lying on the bed is wearing a coat too, and holding his head and groaning.
     
    “Lamp, please,” says Barney.
    Somebody hands Barney an oil lamp. He bends over the bed and looks into the man’s mouth. The man groans even louder.
    I glance at the other people. They don’t look very well either, though none of them are groaning.
    Barney opens his bag and takes out a bundle of metal poles and leather straps. He fits the poles together using little metal wheels to make a kind of robot arm. From his bag he takes the foot pedal from a Singer sewing machine like Mrs. Glick used to have. He connects the poles to the pedal with the leather straps.
    My imagination is in a frenzy. Is Barney going to show these people how to mend their clothes? Their coats are fairly ragged. Or is this a machine he’s invented that helps people grow food in their own homes? There are lots of damp patches on these walls and these people do look very hungry.
    After all, this is 1942, so anything’s possible.
    “Salt water,” says Barney.
    While a couple of the people get water from a bucket, Barney attaches a short needle to the end of the robot arm and pedals the sewing machine thing with his foot. The straps make the needle spin around very fast with a loud humming noise.
    Suddenly I realize what Barney has just put together.
    A dentist’s drill.
    Barney gives the man in the bed a glass of salty water and a metal bowl.
    “Rinse and spit,” he says.
    The man does.
    I stare in amazement. I take my glasses off and wipe them on my shirt and put them back on.
    Barney is a dentist.
    Mum went to a dentist once. Me and Dad met him in his waiting room. He was very different from Barney. He was a thin bald man with a squeaky voice who didn’t do house calls.
    “Felix,” says Barney, “over here, please.”
    I jolt to attention. Barney wants me to help him. I’ve never been a dentist’s assistant before. Will there be blood?
    I squeeze through the people until I’m next to Barney. He’s taken the top off the lamp and is holding the tip of the drill in the flame. Heat kills germs—I’ve read about that.
    “Felix,” says Barney as he dips the drill tip into the water the man has spat into the bowl, “tell the patient a story, would you?”
    The water bubbles as the drill cools. My brain is bubbling too, with confusion.
    A story?
    Then I get it. When Mum went to the dentist, she had an injection to dull the pain. Barney hasn’t given this patient an injection. Times are tough, and there probably aren’t enough pain-dulling drugs in ghetto curfew places.
    Suddenly my mouth feels dry. I’ve never told anyone else a story to take their mind off pain. And when I told myself all those stories about Mum and Dad, I wanted to believe them. Plus, I didn’t have a drill in my mouth.
    This is a big responsibility.
    “Open wide,” says Barney.
    He starts drilling.
    “Go on, Felix,” he says.
    The groans of the patient and the grinding of the drill and the smell of burning from the patient’s mouth make it hard to concentrate but I force myself.
    “Once,” I say, “a boy called William lived in a castle in the mountains and he had a magic carrot.”
    The patient isn’t looking at Barney anymore, he’s looking at me.
    “If the boy held the carrot right,” I go on,