If playing cards were now the indoor pastime of choice and cinema a regular treat, the Saturday races at Hoppegarten, a short train ride east of Berlin, were everyone’s favourite day out. That included senior members of the regime, especially Goering and Goebbels, who could often be seen in the red-brick grandstand eyeing glamorous equine stars like Nereide, Alchimist and Ticino as eagerly as they would actresses on the red carpet. The only notable absentee was Hitler himself, who had proclaimed on many occasions that horse racing was the last remnant of a feudal society and would, as soon as he got round to it, be outlawed. Perhaps that was why people were making the most of it.
Erich and Clara made their way through the gates towards the viewing paddock. The air was filled with the oniony grease of the Bratwurst stalls and the path resounded to the clatter of wooden-soled shoes and the tinny music of an organ grinder whose wizened monkey surveyed the passing citizens with ancient, liquid eyes. Back in Neukölln Erich’s grandmother was bedridden with emphysema and Clara reckoned it was good for the boy to get a break. Although he was devoted to her, Frau Schmidt had become imperious and demanding in old age and Erich’s life at home was punctuated by her quavering voice, constantly summoning him on some small errand. Rather than be cooped up with an invalid in a stuffy three-room apartment, she decided, the boy needed fresh air.
And Clara needed Erich. Their tradition of Saturday outings, to the cinemas or the lakes or the swimming baths, was one that she guarded jealously. Erich was the single reason she had stayed in Berlin and her greatest respite from the anxieties that war brought. He had grown appreciably in the last year and now, at almost seventeen, he towered over her, his features sharpened, brows thicker and shoulders broader. His good looks attracted glances from the girls they passed and they were glances he returned. Erich was barely recognizable as the slight, nervous child Clara had met in her first month in Berlin, except that he remained the sole person for whom she would do anything.
‘How’s school?’ she asked, cursing herself for uttering the dullest possible question.
Strolling along with his hands in the pockets of his Hitler Youth uniform, Erich shrugged.
‘I know you don’t like me saying this, Clara, but I’ve had enough of it. I like it, you know, but all my friends are the same. What’s the point of studying maths and logic and Kant when we could be doing something useful?’
‘Kant teaches you something useful. The moral law within you. Isn’t that one of his?’
‘Sure, I suppose. But the Categorical Imperative is pretty meaningless when your country’s at war.’
‘I would have thought it was more important than ever.’
Erich sighed and resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. Instead he focused on the betting boards that were tipping Schwarzgold as the favourite in the next race.
‘Anyway,’ Clara coaxed, ‘you do your bit in the Hitler Jugend, don’t you?’
‘I suppose. But HJ work is pretty childish. It’s just collecting scrap metal and delivering ration coupons and draft letters for other people, when actually it’s us who should be joining up. It’s crazy to be wasting time at school when my country needs me. You know how much I want to join the Luftwaffe. I’ve done pilot training and I can fly a glider. You’re pleased about that, aren’t you?’
Clara was, but only because the alternative was worse. The previous year Erich had been offered a position in the Hitler Youth Streifendienst – a corps of hand-picked boys charged with enforcing internal discipline in the organization. The position was pretty much a spying job, investigating misconduct and subversion, inspecting uniforms, and informing the police of unsuitable elements, but it was an honour to be approached and promised a short cut to SS officer training. Yet Erich had turned it down, preferring to focus all his dreams on the Luftwaffe.
‘I hate thinking I won’t get a chance to fly for at least another year.’
Clara hated to think of him flying at all, but if he did she prayed it would not be in the skies above England.
‘You’ll get your chance soon enough.’
For a while they ambled along, people-watching. It was a blisteringly hot day and all shades of Berlin society were out in force, from factory workers relaxing with picnics on blankets to elegantly dressed ladies perched in cane chairs with china cups of tea, all watching the jockeys parading round the paddock, their mounts stamping the turf and tossing shiny heads. Only close observers would have noticed that there were more and finer horses than usual. In the past few weeks hundreds of thoroughbreds had been seized from the stables of the top Paris racing families – the Rothschilds, Sterns, Wertheimers and Wildensteins – and transported to the Reich. It was probably for the best, Clara thought. Cropping alien grass was a small price to pay to avoid being bombed or eaten.
It was not until they reached the course barrier and secured themselves a good viewpoint, that Erich leaned on the railing and said, ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Better not be about joining up.’
‘No.’
‘Or philosophy. I’m afraid I’d be no help there.’
‘No. It’s not that.’
From his top pocket he fished out a square of newspaper, folded and refolded so often that its creases were wearing thin, and angled his shoulder to shield it from prying eyes.
‘The fact is, with Oma being ill, I have to go in her room sometimes. Anyhow, when I was there the other day she asked me to look for medicine in her drawer and although I wasn’t searching for anything else, I found this.’
Even before he had uncreased it, the image lifted from the ancient BZ am Mittag like the sepia glimpse of a ghost. For a moment it appeared to float before Clara’s vision, the teasing smile and complexion Pan-Caked to perfection, the pert nose and high brows above sceptical dark eyes. It was a face freighted with memory and pain. The official Ufa studio portrait of Helga Schmidt.
Helga. The name ached within Clara like a cut that would never heal. Yet again she saw the blood on that Prenzlauer Berg pavement, and the beautiful leaking body that was broken but not quite dead. She saw the inquisitive crowd gathered around, and the open window five floors up from which Helga had fallen like a bird fledged too soon. Above the picture was a headline.
Helga Schmidt plunges to her death. Actress was suicidal, say friends.
For seven years Frau Schmidt had preserved this cutting of her only daughter, whose death, ‘when the balance of her mind was disturbed’, was the last newspaper write-up she was ever going to receive.
‘When I was young,’ Erich said sombrely as if such a time was irretrievably long ago, ‘my friends used to laugh about her. At school I knocked a boy out for what he said about my Mutti.’
‘I remember.’
Clara had been contacted by her godson’s headmaster and was obliged to conjure all her charm – not to mention a school outing to the Ufa studios – to allay the man’s suggestion that Erich was a violent and ungovernable pupil who deserved to be expelled.
‘They said all sorts of things about her. And me.’
‘I know.’
Mother’s boy. Son of a whore. No better than a Jew.
‘I didn’t care what they said about me, but I’d fight them for insulting my mother. But the worst thing, Clara, they said about her was that she was an Enemy of National Socialism.’
So this was the heart of the matter. The ache that would not go away. Erich uttered the phrase like an obscenity, his eyes clouded with pain.
‘It’s a disgusting thing to say, but I have to know, Clara. Was it true? I can’t ask Oma. But was she?’
What was Helga? A free spirit. By turns mordant, merry and vivacious. A girl who had taken plenty of hard knocks in pursuit of her acting dream but was not prepared to abandon it. A woman who looked National Socialism in the eye, understood it, and chose to laugh at it.
‘She was a wonderful woman.’
‘So why do people say bad things about her?’
‘She made jokes. That was her only crime. To make fun of the Führer. And not much fun at that.’
Even as she said it, Clara could see how her words hurt Erich; loyalty to his mother and worship of the Führer colliding and cleaving inside him like some dreadful axe.
‘What kind of jokes?’
Inappropriately a flood of jokes tumbled into her head. What does WHW stand for? Wir Hungern Weiter. We’re Still Hungry. Hitler and Goering are on the top of the Funkturm surveying the Reich. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on the sad faces of Berliners. Goering thinks for a moment then says, ‘Why don’t you jump off?’
‘Just silly things that made people laugh.’
He frowned and corrected her automatically. ‘Laughing at Hitler isn’t silly.’
‘It can be. As you say, I knew her. All your mother wanted was for people to see the lighter side of life. Not to take things too seriously. And she was right.’
For a second a maturity she had never witnessed in Erich seemed to pierce the boyish façade. Reality surfaced, like rocks revealed at low tide. He saw the awkward, jagged complexity of life that could not be labelled, categorized, or locked away. His face was sharp with love for a mother who had refused to fit someone else’s idea of what a woman should be. Then the water returned, his shook his head, and the world was once more black and white.
‘She wasn’t right.’ An angry flush had risen on his cheeks. ‘If she was alive I would have told her. We’re all lucky to live under the Führer. If you don’t take things seriously, you get a decadent society. Everyone knows that. Only a weak nation disrespects its leaders.’
‘And only a bad son disrespects his mother.’ Clara’s voice had an edge of steel. ‘All that matters, Erich, is that Helga adored you. She thought the world of you. She wasn’t some dangerous asocial, she just had a good sense of humour. Laughter was part of her. No one was going to get the better of her.’
‘They did though, didn’t they?’
This was the nearest they had ever come to discussing how his mother had died. Clara had always thought that Erich had no idea of his mother’s liaison with a brutal stormtrooper capable of volcanic violence. Or that the regime had considered Helga Schmidt better off dead. Yet now, it seemed, he knew more than she could have guessed.
‘Whatever happened, you should be proud of her.’
He clenched his jaw. ‘I am. But not that part of her.’
At that moment the ground trembled and a blur of glistening chestnut pelts thundered by, spittle flying from the bits in their mouths, and churned clods of turf bouncing into the air. Ragged cheers arose, making conversation impossible. Once the horses had passed Clara began to speak, but Erich interrupted.
‘If you don’t mind, Clara, I don’t want to discuss it any more. Thanks for explaining.’ He returned the newspaper clipping to his top pocket and produced the betting form.
‘Who are you backing for the next race?’
There was no point arguing. Erich may quote Kant and his knowledge of logic might go back to the ancient Greeks, but to any boy of his age in Germany right then, the logic of the Führer was always going to prevail.