THE LIVING FLAME 

   By Tessa Harvey


    Helga Tischenko looked around the school yard. Students were strolling everywhere or sitting, eating lunch at the picnic tables with their attached wooden benches. Some younger students played on sturdy climbing frames.
    Overall the activity was mostly happy noise, boisterous fun. 
    A boy approached, shyly. "Hello miss. How you do?" "Fine, Gamsiz, thank you. You are speaking well."
    He beamed his thanks. "Beautiful lovely weather, yes?" His accent still strong, but he had worked hard, learning from junior books without complaining. An older student, a girl, had flatly refused. "No, I not a baby," was her angry declaration, even refusing to learn from teenage magazines.
    Ernst came over, drawn by Gamsiz' warmth. He needed a friend.
    His teacher, Albert Stein had treated him almost harshly, declaring in the staff room "he's a little squirt and he gets up your nose!" The others had chuckled, but not Helga. She was near enough to hear him mutter "bastard Jew" under his breath. Stein had been grooming Ernst for months to be a tale-bearer, but the games master had spitefully informed him of the boy's ethnicity.


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