Once: Pages 99–111 Summary & Analysis

That night, while the other children sleep, Felix tells Barney that he needs to leave the cellar with Barney. Barney takes Felix through the ceiling door into a room full of machines, which Barney explains used to be a print shop, “before.” When Barney asks why Felix needs to go with him, Felix claims he has a “rare illness” and needs medication in his parents’ possession to survive, so he needs to find his parents. Barney grins and says Zelda’s right about Felix’s storytelling skills. Then, sobering, he says Zelda told him Felix last saw his parents almost four years ago.

Felix assumes that Barney will take him back to the cellar. Instead, Barney gives him a candle and admits he read a story from Felix’s notebook, trying to learn about Felix’s parents. He says that Felix spins good stories and that he needs Felix’s help. They go to the door of the print shop, where Barney looks around carefully. Felix sees a hole in Barney’s jacket. He wonders whether it’s a bullet hole, whether Barney or his family was shot, and whether Barney is caring for strangers’ children because his family was murdered. Barney tells Felix that it will doom them if anyone spots them leaving, and then he tells him to move.

The streets are empty except for corpses, which Felix checks to make sure aren’t his parents. Barney explains that they’re under curfew. People who violate curfew are shot, but he and Felix will be fine; he gestures with his bag as an explanation. Felix speculates about the bag. Then he asks why the curfew is in place. Barney says that this neighborhood is a Jewish ghetto run by Nazis. Barney knocks on a door, waits, and then tells Felix he may never find his parents. Refusing to believe it, Felix asks whether all Jewish people in the city live in this ghetto or whether there are other ghettos. Barney doesn’t answer.  

A woman takes Barney and Felix into an apartment. Inside, a crowd is gathered around a man moaning on a bed. Barney examines the man’s mouth. Then he removes some objects from his bag and assembles a machine out of them. Barney asks for salt water, tells the man to rinse his mouth, and starts foot-pedaling the machine, which whirs. Felix realizes that it’s a drill, and Barney is a dentist. Barney orders Felix to tell the man a story. Felix realizes that Barney has no anesthetic and wants a story to distract the man from his pain—something Felix has never done for someone else and which feels like a “big responsibility.” He launches into a story about a boy named William who found a magic carrot that granted him three wishes.

At the next door, Barney praises Felix for how he helped the first patient, which makes Felix proud. Then he warns Felix that the next patient will be “different.” A Nazi soldier opens the door and leads them upstairs. As they climb, Barney whispers to Felix that the next patient is German, so Felix should invent a “nice story about Germany.” Felix knows almost nothing about Germany—he thinks it may be full of windmills—and points out that he doesn’t speak German; Barney says he’ll translate.

When Barney and Felix enter the upper room, Felix discovers that the patient is a scowling Nazi officer, swigging from a bottle. Felix, wondering why Barney would help a Nazi, wants to launch into “a story about how burning books and shooting innocent people makes a toothache worse,” but he realizes that’s a dangerous idea. The Nazi soldier who showed them in proffers some food, and Felix realizes Barney is helping the Nazi officer to get food. Felix starts a story about German soldiers traveling through an African jungle to repair a windmill. He hopes he can make the Nazi officer grateful enough that he can ask the officer about his parents.