February 10, 1938
The snow is gone, but a dense fog settles over Leipzig during the night in its stead. As dawn breaks, I leave the house for school, stepping out into the damp gloom. The usual sounds of morning are muffled. Car headlights are dimmed, and the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves are oddly detached from the ghostly dark shape that slowly emerges from the pallid mist.
It would be easy to let my imagination get the better of me. I start and turn at muted sounds, but ghouls and murderers remain hidden in the nebulous atmosphere. I pull my coat tighter around me and hurry across Kirchplatz and into Gohliser Strasse. A tram rumbles and screeches around the bend behind me, drowning all other sound, so when a figure emerges unexpectedly from a recessed doorway, I scream, wild with fear.
“For Christ’s sake, hush!” hisses the figure, wrapped in a coat and scarf, hat pulled low. “It’s me!”
“Walter? Jesus, what the—”
He grabs my arm and marches me quickly along the street. The tram rolls away. People pass us, heads down against the weather. Before we reach Nordplatz, Walter guides me across the road and down Prendelstrasse.
“Where are we going? I have to be at school in ten minutes!”
Walter continues to propel me in the opposite direction.
“You’re not going to school,” he tells me firmly. “You’re going to spend the day at the zoo with me.”
“This is ludicrous! What if they call my parents? Why did you come to find me? You know we can’t see each other . . . Has something happened?”
I look up at him. All that’s visible is a small section of pale, pink cheek between his black scarf and gray felt hat.
“Shh. All in good time.” He turns toward me, and now, finally, I see the twinkling blue of his eyes and my stomach plunges.
“They’ll think it odd if I’m not in school. I’m not like some who hardly ever attend anymore. It’d be out of character for me. This is dangerous, Walter.”
He takes my arm again and we recross the road. A few yards away is a phone booth.
“Go in there. Call the school. Pretend to be your mother and say: Herta is unwell today. She won’t be coming in.”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can.”
His gaze is steady and I find myself pulling open the door. He puts a few coins into my hand.
Dry mouthed, I pick up the receiver, insert the coins, and ask the operator to be put through to the office at the gymnasium.
Through the door Walter, hands in his pockets, nods and smiles encouragement.
There’s a ringing tone, then a click and “Good morning,” in a stern voice, then silence as the woman at the other end waits for my reply. I stare at the dirty floor.
“Good morning,” I say, in an unnaturally low voice. I try to mimic the soft inflection Mutti puts on certain words. I hope the line isn’t too clear. “I would like to inform you, my daughter, Herta Heinrich, is unwell today. I’m afraid she has a fever and won’t be able to come to school.”
“Thank you for informing us, Frau Heinrich,” says the voice. “We hope she will feel better soon.”
“Yes, thank you. Good day.”
The line clicks as the speaker at the other end disconnects. I replace the receiver and can hardly believe the brazen thing I have just done.
“It worked!”
I fling myself into Walter’s arms and laugh. We shall have this whole morning together and nobody will know. Hidden from the road behind some rough shrubbery outside the zoo, we kiss, and kiss, and kiss.
“You make me braver than I could ever be on my own,” I tell him. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I have missed you, too. And you make me reckless, Hetty. Reckless like I’ve never been in my life. Love makes us do crazy things, doesn’t it?”
I laugh, my breath instantly cooling, hanging in the air.
Love.
He looks down at me and as his eyes lock with mine, there is such understanding between us. I would follow him anywhere. To the ends of the earth, if he asked me.
They’re unlocking the gates to the zoo. Walter pays the entrance fee and we walk into the deserted grounds, linking arms as we head straight down the center path.
“I’ve been so worried, without any news from you.” I steal a look at him.
“But you told me not to get in touch. I was certain they’d come for me. I didn’t dare go out. My mother was so angry with me when I told her I’d been seeing a German girl. Couldn’t tell her it was you, of course. She even made me hide in the attic for a couple of days. And all I could do was stay there, mad with worry about what might be happening to you. But nobody came, so I dared to come downstairs, then I dared to venture out. I can hardly believe it, but it seems Tomas didn’t report us,” he says, and we huddle together for warmth. “After a few weeks I crept about, like some sort of criminal, trying to see you. I spotted you a few times going in and out of school. It was unbearable watching but not being able to speak or hold you. Two months without you has been a grueling eternity. I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to take the risk.”
“I’m so glad you did,” I whisper. “Tomas never said a word because I think he has a soft spot for me.”
“What a genius you are.” He winks.
“Still. We need to be extra careful.”
“Absolutely.” Walter looks serious. “We were reckless before, but we can be more clever about meeting, vary the time and place. We can use Lena. She is totally trustworthy. She’s even kept our secret from my mother and father. She knows my parents would forbid it, if they found out.”
“Isn’t it an awful risk for her? Why would she?”
“You aren’t the only one who has other admirers, you know.” He winks again.
But the chill of the day intensifies when I remember Karl’s words of warning, and I glance behind me into the shape-shifting fog.
There are aviaries on either side of the path. A bedraggled owl perches in one; small birds flit about in another, and in the largest are some wading birds, standing on the edge of a small pond sunk into the concrete floor. I check again over my shoulder.
“Relax, Hetty. No one is here. Tomas has done nothing, we’re in the clear,” Walter says, hooking his arm through mine. I nod, but I can’t shake the sense that someone is lurking unseen in the amorphous shroud.
We carry on in silence, deeper into the zoo, past the otters and the North American beavers. The only other people around are zookeepers, handing out breakfast to the hungry inmates.
We watch a couple of huge hairy bison standing near the fence eating hay, then continue along the winding path until we stand in front of two vast grizzly bears pacing back and forth in their enclosure, passing each other without acknowledgment. They are silent on their dinner-plate-size paws, sniffing the air now and then with pointed, damp-looking snouts. They are magnificent creatures, and I pity them for being here, when they should be in a forest somewhere, wild and free.
The fog begins to thin; a ray of sunshine penetrates, dousing the swirling cloud in soft amber. Perhaps Walter is right. Here we are alone; I should make the most of this opportunity to enjoy his company.
I smile into his eyes and the tension I felt lifts, floating away with the mist.
“You know,” he says, the bears padding back and forth in front of us, “when you smile, you are the most beautiful creature in all the world.”
I poke him in the ribs. “Don’t tease.”
“I’m not teasing. It’s the truth. I’ve thought it often enough, but I haven’t dared to say. I figure, if I don’t tell you this stuff now—”
“Shh.” I put my finger to his lips. “Don’t say you might never . . . Just, don’t say that.”
“Okay. I won’t. But if I want to tell you how much you mean to me, and how beautiful you are, you can’t stop me.”
I feel my face flush under the intensity of his gaze.
“And you can feel free to tell me anytime,” he continues, “just what a dashing chap I am, how you love my dazzling company, or how good my jokes are . . .” I giggle and we begin to walk on. “In fact, it’s time for a little joke, now, I think,” he says. He pauses a moment, then says, “Göring has attached an arrow to the row of medals on his tunic. It reads, Continued on the back . . .”
“You really do tell the most appalling jokes . . .”
He’s smiling. “It’s just what we do. It’s sort of how we get by, I suppose.”
Walter looks around, then pulls me behind the trunk of a large tree so we are hidden from view of the path. He slips his arms around my waist and we are kissing again, our bodies melting together, his hardness growing against me. It’s both wondrous and terrifying, this power I have.
But, if I were to give myself to him, would the magic, the mystery, the wanting, all be over? After so long apart, I want him to want me. Above everything, and everyone. When the kiss is over, we stand for a long time, foreheads pressed together, breath mingling in the cold air.
“Do you ever think of doing ‘it’?” I whisper.
“You are joking, aren’t you? Do I ever not think of it?” He pulls me closer. “Would you want to?”
The air is still and quiet. Water drips from sodden leaves.
“I don’t know . . .” But I do know. I desperately want it.
The weight of the idea, the vastness of it, hangs over us, heavy and penetrating as the fog, yet lighter than air. The impossibility. The idea of his bare skin on mine. The touch of his hands, the surrendering of myself to him.
The mingling of our blood.
“Hetty, it’s okay. We don’t have to. We shouldn’t. We won’t. I’d never do anything you didn’t want.”
And after that, we don’t talk of it anymore. He simply holds me, and I breathe him in.