October 12, 1937
I sit at the back of the classroom as we are read Mein Kampf as a class. Frau Schmidt insists on it, ever since half the teachers at school were dismissed for using un-German texts. We studied it last year, too. Now we have gone right back to the beginning and started again. The book was long and slow going the first time. It’s soporific the second. And now we must go through it all again, tedious chapter by tedious chapter.
Frau Schmidt no longer bothers to initiate discussion. Instead, blessedly, she skips chunks and then quotes salient parts out loud to the class.
“If we consider how greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how he has squeezed and sucked the blood again and again; if furthermore we consider how the people gradually learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his existence as nothing but punishment of Heaven for the other peoples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew.”
Frau Schmidt plows on, appearing to neither notice nor care whether any pupil in the class pays attention or not.
“The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people . . .”
With every mention of the word Jew, Walter’s beautiful face swims into my mind.
Could Satan really be crouching beneath his peachy skin?
“What if he isn’t black haired, Frau Schmidt?” I ask when she nods at my raised hand.
There is a collective rustle as the class turns to look at me.
“I’m not sure I understand your question, Herta.” Frau Schmidt pauses and removes her glasses.
“I mean, what if he has blond hair and doesn’t look like a Jew at all? But he is one. What then?”
She stands looking baffled, as if not sure how to answer.
“What if he looks Aryan,” I press, “and acts like one too? What if he has the best of manners and is courteous and brave? What if he believes in Germany just as we do? Is he still a danger then?”
Nobody makes a sound.
Thirty sets of eyes rest on me.
“Why would you ask such a question?” Frau Schmidt’s voice is strained, her cheeks flushed. “Because of course, you know the answer, don’t you? There is no difference, however the Jew may look. His true character will belie the outer casing. His blood cannot be anything but inferior. His mind can be nothing but flawed, and his intentions will have the same aim of self-betterment, whether he be fair or dark.” She grips the side of the teacher’s table until her knuckles turn white. “I hope I have answered your question adequately, Herta,” she adds and replaces her glasses.
She’s afraid I’ve set her a test. She knows who my father is and fears I will report her. These days, a teacher has more to fear from a student than the other way around.
“Yes. That is most clear. Thank you.”
Erna nudges me in the ribs.
“What did you ask that for?” she asks, and I shrug, because I don’t fully understand myself.
AFTER SCHOOL, BACK at home, I go to my room and retrieve my journal from its hiding place. Within its geometric covers, I can be entirely honest. It’s my only true, trusted friend.
Oh, how I miss you, Karl! The house is different without you. The air inside its walls is stilled, as if frozen without your life to fill it with warmth and movement. Sometimes the floorboards creak or a curtain swishes in the breeze, and I think it’s you. But there is no one there. Perhaps it’s the ghosts of past inhabitants, their misery trapped, seeping out of the masonry, infecting our lives with bad luck. Please come home soon.
The telephone rings in the hallway.
“Would you like to go to the cinema to see Operation Michael?” Tomas’s voice is fuzzy at the end of the crackling line.
“I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”
“Please come, Hetty. I’ve already asked Erna and she said yes. It’s a war film,” he adds, as though that would tempt me.
I suppose anything to take my mind off the girl-child and that revolting husband stealer, as well as Walter and the wretched Kafka that still lies unread beneath my mattress.
ERNA AND TOMAS are waiting for me outside the cinema.
“Hurry up, snail!” Erna calls, waving as I run from the tram stop. “It starts in five minutes.”
Our seats are in the middle row. The lamps are dimmed and voices become hushed. Above our heads a shaft of white light from the projector cuts through the darkness, illuminating the big screen at the front. Clouds of cigarette smoke rise and curl through the beam.
The projector whirs into life. I settle back into my seat between Tomas and Erna to watch the newsreel. Tomas leans toward me and nestles his arm against mine on the velvet armrest between us. I glance at him but his attention is focused on the clip Festliches Nürnberg. His head is close to mine, but angles away so I can see the thousands of marching soldiers on the screen weirdly distorted through his glasses.
He turns and I feel his lingering gaze. He whispers, his mouth too close to my ear, “So many soldiers, it’s a wonder there are any civilians left in Germany.” His breath is hot and clammy on my skin.
I lean away and turn my attention to the Nuremburg Rally. Scenes of vast mines of coal and ore, of sprawling factories spewing gleaming cars, clothes, electronics, and appliances. The might of Germany. The inexorable advancement of the German people. Germany, the narrator proclaims, is the envy of all nations. There are shots of endless cheering crowds, and a smiling, proud Hitler announces to the world he only wants peace in Europe. Then the sound of a hundred thousand marching boots. Peace? I think of the wrecked men in the soldiers’ home. There are tanks and guns and the Luftwaffe flying in beautiful formation. My heart skips for Karl. Finally, there is roller skating, folk dancing, and a fire show. The cinema audience spontaneously erupts into cheering, clapping, and shouts of “Heil Hitler.”
Tomas smiles in the semidarkness; carried along with the excitement, he moves closer. “I just hope the war doesn’t start and finish before I can play a part in it.”
“Why does everyone talk of war when Hitler claims only to want peace?” I whisper.
“Because we need to show the bastards what we’re made of!” Tomas waves a hand toward the now blank screen. “The swine out there have to see Hitler means business. War is the only way to do that, so to get to peace, you need to have war, right?” He looks sideways at me.
“The Führer must know what he is doing,” I say, thinking of Karl, vulnerable up there in a metal box with wings.
“Of course he does. He’s the ultimate leader. God among men. He has a Master Plan for all this.”
“Let’s hope he’s better at winning wars than he is at writing books.” I soften my voice so nobody can overhear. Tomas thankfully laughs at my joke and the screen lights up again.
After the scenes from Nuremburg, the main film is something of an anticlimax. My mind wanders. Is Vati with his other daughter? He could, at this very moment, be tickling her round belly and making her giggle. I imagine him smiling at her mother, running his fingers tenderly down her cheek, praising her for giving him this lovely child. Bile rises and stings the back of my throat. The cinema is no sanctuary from my thoughts. Everywhere I go, I’m haunted by that vision of Vati. There is no escape. No respite. I shift uncomfortably in my seat and only now do I notice Tomas has my hand in his. I gently pull it away.
If only it were Walter here beside me, holding my hand.
But then, he wouldn’t be allowed to come in here at all.
It’s dusk when we get outside. We sit on a bench opposite Thomaskirche. Strains of the clear, high voices of the boys’ choir flow from the ancient church across the cobbled square.
“My father is dead,” Tomas suddenly announces, his voice a harsh monotone, breaking the amiable silence among the three of us. A bolt passes through me.
“What happened?” Erna gasps.
“He fell from a prison window,” Tomas answers, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. “He was cleaning it, four stories up. Must’ve leaned out too far.”
“That’s just awful. How horrible,” Erna says. “I’m so sorry.”
“Well, I’m not,” Tomas replies swiftly. “He was a terrible embarrassment. He didn’t fight in the war. He was a Communist. He was anti-Nazi. Truth is, he was a traitor and he got what a traitor deserves.” His cheeks are pink and his smudged glasses have slipped, just as they always used to, halfway down his nose.
Erna looks at him, wide-eyed with shock. “But you can’t be happy that your own father is dead!”
“I’m not happy. Of course not. But he only had himself to blame. He was selfish and we all suffered because of him. Never earned a decent wage. Now we have to live in a shithole in Plagwitz, and my poor mother has to do the work of a man and a woman. Slaving all hours in that goddamn factory, while we live on crap food and factory fumes. You never knew him, Erna, or anything about it. Hetty understands, don’t you, Hetty? We’re better off without him, that’s all.”
I squirm on the bench. If I hadn’t gone to Vati with Tomas, someone else would have, sooner or later. The whole family might have had to pay a price, so the reality is, I helped them.
“We did the right thing, Tomas,” I say softly. “I know it’s been hard for you. But everyone knows you are the hero here.”
Erna looks from one of us to the other.
“I’m sure you did,” she says at last. “But I hear that some of these prison deaths aren’t as accidental as they might at first seem. There are rumors, awful rumors, about what goes on in these prison camps.”
I close my mind to what Walter has said too.
“What sort of rumors?” I ask, irritation escaping into my voice. She’s been listening to her father’s rhetoric, I’m sure. It’s rubbing off on her. The perfect Erna, perhaps becoming less perfect? Was it a mistake not to mention Herr Bäcker’s views to Vati?
Erna’s face clouds for a moment. Then, with a frown she says, “I’m not saying that those who’ve done wrong don’t deserve to be in prison . . . It’s just that, many of the people who were taken into protective custody, due to their political opinions, have been transferred to camps. The conditions are apparently very bad. I heard that, when they are due to be released, those dates get pushed back, or there is a mysterious death, or someone has tried to escape and died for it.”
“And who told you this?”
Erna closes her mouth and gives her head a slight shake.
“Erna, you shouldn’t listen to such talk. You know that,” I say, looking hard into her eyes.
“It’s difficult to know what’s true, and what’s rumor,” she says carefully. “But surely Tomas’s family deserve to know how such an accident could have happened. It sounds suspicious—”
“What could you know about it?” I round on her. “Don’t make things worse than they already are for Tomas.”
“It’s all right, Hetty.” Tomas frowns. “There are a lot of rumors flying about. You mustn’t believe everything you hear, Erna. Bastard enemies of the Reich. They just want to cause trouble.”
Erna is quiet for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry anyway, Tomas.”
We sit in silence again, letting the news about Tomas’s father sink in. It seems like another lifetime when Tomas and I, aged twelve, stood shoulder to shoulder in Vati’s study that day. How much has changed since then. Even little weedy Tomas is becoming a man. Lanky, square jawed, and low voiced.
Through the branches of a tall plane tree, I watch colored light filter through the high, narrow windows of Thomaskirche, while the boys’ voices, honey sweet, crescendo to an impossible high, then abruptly stop. A hush descends over the square.
Erna and I say good-bye to Tomas and walk home through lamp-lit streets, hand in hand, friends again, after our disagreement over the camps earlier. Rain begins to fall, light to begin with, then with full, soaking intent. There is a rich, earthy smell in the air. Cars swish through puddles and lights reflect on the newly wet black pavements.
“Everything is changing, but I want it to be how it was,” I say suddenly, thinking back to how uncomplicated life used to be, before we had to watch what we say to each other; before Walter’s family had to hide in the shadows. Before I knew about Vati and the girl-child.
Erna looks thoughtful for a moment. “Don’t you think the future’s bright then, Hett?”
“It doesn’t feel like it, at the moment.” How much to reveal? I wish I’d not been so defensive about Tomas’s father. Have I made Erna wary?
“Why not?” she asks, her voice falsely bright. “We have loads to look forward to. The Gewandhaus concert. The BDM dance. How about a kiss with a good-looking Wehrmacht officer?” She nudges me. “What more could a girl want?”
She makes me smile, despite the melancholy that has settled deep in my being.
“Really, what’s bothering you, Hett?”
“Oh. Nothing. I suppose I’m just missing Karl, that’s all.”
“Of course you are. How is he getting on?”
“Fine, I think. He doesn’t write to me much.”
“Bet you can’t wait to see him when he’s home.”
“Heaven knows when that will be.”
“Christmas, isn’t it? That’s what he said—” Erna stops mid-sentence.
“What?”
“I mean, I think it would be about that time, wouldn’t it?” She speaks quickly, rushing over her words, but her walking pace has slowed, and even in the dark and through the rain, I can feel she is blushing.
“You just said, ‘Christmas. That’s what he said . . .’” A mist descends. I stop walking. The sounds from the street are muffled, as though I am far away. Then, as if the fog has cleared, I see it. What I missed. How could I not have realized? Perhaps I did, but I didn’t want to know it.
“Hetty . . .”
“How do you know when Karl is coming home?” I snarl. “And I don’t?” Nausea stirs in my belly. The rain is soaking through my jacket, and my shoulders are damp. Water drips from my hair.
“Because Karl wrote it in a letter.”
“A letter? How many letters has he written to you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Three. That’s how many he’s written to me since he’s been away. Three. Is it more, or less, than three, Erna?”
“More than three,” she mumbles. “I’m so sorry, Hett. I knew I should have told you. Karl thought you might be upset, so I kept quiet. It was the wrong thing to do, I know that now.”
“Don’t you dare blame Karl!”
We stare at each other through the wet darkness.
“I’m not blaming him, I—”
“Why would you keep this from me? Why would Karl want to keep it from me? We tell each other everything! You and I tell each other everything.”
“Yes, we do. And I was going to tell you, honestly. I just couldn’t find the right time.”
“That’s pathetic, Erna. You coward.”
So it was Erna’s idea. Karl would never have kept a secret from me. She has talked about it with him. Persuaded him. I imagine her whispering in his ear. Them laughing together, at my expense. Turning him away from me. My own brother! My so-called best friend!
“So you’re his sweetheart then?” I try to keep my voice calm, even.
“Yes.”
I feel a sharp pain in my heart. Karl is mine. I’m his Little Mouse. He kept it from me. She kept it from me. Excluded me. They don’t want any part of me in this thing.
“How long?”
“Not that long. A few months, that’s all.”
“A few months! And you never thought to tell me? What about Kurt? It was all a lie, wasn’t it? And you begged me not to tell your parents. For Christ’s sake . . . What about our friendship? Does it mean so little to you? Were you just using me, to get to Karl?” Rain, spit, and anger, ugly and bitter, spew from my mouth.
Vati. Karl. Erna.
Three of the most important people in my life, and they’ve all betrayed me.
“I’m sorry.” Erna’s voice is pleading. Her sodden hair is plastered to her head, her face shiny and wet. “I never meant to upset you this much. We were going to tell you, but there didn’t seem much point in the beginning, what with Karl due to go away; we thought it wouldn’t last. Then, after the summer camp, it started to get serious, but the time never seemed quite right . . .”
“So you chose to lie about a made-up boyfriend. Why, Erna? What was the point of not telling me the truth?”
“I don’t know. It was stupid. I hated lying to you. Truly, Hetty. I was just worried it would ruin our friendship . . .”
“Well, it damn well has now, hasn’t it?”
I stare at Erna, her shoulders sunken in misery at my vicious words. I’m hurting her and it feels good. She’s the easiest one to take my rage out on. I can’t do it to Vati, or to Karl. But Erna? Eternally good and perfect Erna? I can get to her, all right.
But you haven’t exactly been truthful either.
That is different.
Walter is a secret for his safety.
A different situation entirely.
“Go away, Erna,” I say at last. “Just leave me alone. I hate you both. But mostly you. You’re nothing but a lying pig.”
I turn and run, hard and fast through the downpour. My chest hurts and I’m soaked to the skin, but it doesn’t silence the torrent of voices in my head.
What have you done?
YOU are the villain, for falling for a Jew.
VATI is the lowlife with his secret family.
You’ve just lost the best friend you have ever had.
Hetty Heinrich, you are the biggest fool in the universe.