Liep's Father's Trousers

My father only ever wore one pair of trousers. They were matte grey
and had a single corduroy ridge down the front of each leg. I realise
now he must have had several pairs, and that they were all of the same
design, but this is not something a seven-year-old boy thinks
about.

The day after my father vanished we had a dance. They told us to take
off our clothes and put them in a pile and then we never saw them
again. They played folk music over the speakers and told us to dance to
it. The singer's voice was strangled and crackly. Soon they had us
dancing in a circle.

Faster and faster we were goaded, until we outran the rhythm of the
music and were no longer dancing. Several of us linked hands. This was
fun. When they tapped you on the shoulder, however, you had to leave
the dancefloor. Nobody I knew was tapped on the shoulder. That was
mostly older people.

They stopped the dance in the middle of the next song, when even I was
feeling searing pains in my legs. Then we packed up and went back to
our barracks and found our new clothes waiting for us. When I put them
on, I too began to smell of someone else. My brother and I fought over
who had to wear the single pair of damp socks they had provided for the
two of us. I won. He wore them.

I thought I saw my father again the following morning whilst at work. I
was on my knees scrubbing the latrine when he came in and sat down
above me. I could not see his face, but the trousers that gathered
around his ankles were definitely my father's. By the time I had
climbed out, however, they and their wearer had vanished again.

I was determined to see him again, if only to determine why he no
longer saw us. I next saw him late the following night. The last of the
work crews were coming in and they always woke me up. I had the bottom
bunk. We had fought about that too and I had lost. This meant I only
ever saw legs. This meant I only saw his trousers.

I knew I ought not to, but I crept out of bed and followed him. I
didn't know where he was going. I had never been where he took me. The
people in their beds were awake but they said nothing. Their faces were
fearful. I couldn't tell whether some were shaking their heads at me or
just trembling, but I felt safe because I was getting closer and closer
to my father.

They shut the lights down in stages, so that I knew darkness was coming
before it reached me. The last thing I did before the blackness
swallowed me whole was fix into my mind the bunk my father was climbing
into. It was the bottom bunk, seven stalls from me, on the left. I
began to feel my way along the bedposts.

When I reached the seventh, I had no qualms about shaking the occupant
awake because I knew it was my father. Except it wasn't. I could not
see his face but it was not his voice. It was a rough, older voice. And
my father would never have pushed me or grabbed my arm like that. I
cried out.

The barracks were never silent. Even in the middle of the night I could
wake up and hear people rustling or shuffling in their beds, or maybe
someone softly crying. I heard the rapid trickling of their heavy,
approaching boots before I saw the dancing beams of their
flashlights.

In the darkness I just froze. A whisper rose up and passed through the
barracks, but I did not hear what was said. And then the flashlights
were upon me and I was blinded. They grabbed me and pushed me and
pulled me. They also grabbed the man who had used to be my father. When
I could see once more, and the flashlights settled upon his face, I
could see that he didn't even look remotely like my father. Before they
took him away, they let him pull up his trousers. They were matte grey
and had a single corduroy ridge down the front of each leg.

I told them where my bunk was and one of them took me back to it. My
brother pretended to be asleep. When all was dark and silent again, I
felt soft wool against my cheek. I reached up and grabbed it. I
squeezed it in my hands and felt along its length. It was a
scarf.

"It's papa's," my brother whispered. "Keep it to yourself."

I didn't wear the scarf for some time. I just hid it where no-one else
could find it instead. When winter came, however, I was cold, so I wore
it everyday. I never saw that man wearing my father's trousers again,
but I did see them on someone else. Only after I had been wearing the
scarf a few days did I realise it was mine now, just as the trousers
were that stranger's.