February 11, 1934
The gray streets of Leipzig are hidden beneath a deep layer of crystal white. Delicate ridges line every branch and twig of the cherry tree, transforming it into the sugar-coated world of The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King.
It’s the first day of the school winter holidays and Tomas, thinly dressed for the weather, hops from foot to foot on the doorstep. His lips are tinged blue.
“Come out with me,” he says. “I hardly see you these days.” He wrinkles his nose and pushes his glasses up.
“I’ve a lot more homework now.” I hold fast to the doorframe. His eyes are too big for his thin face, and they protrude, like an owl’s. Behind me, the house is warm and Bertha is making zimtsterne cookies; the smell of hot sugar and cinnamon drifts from the kitchen.
“We could build a snowman in Rosental.” His breath fans and coils above his head. I think of how Karl has ditched Walter and how I vowed not to do the same with my friends.
“All right, I’ll come,” I say, and as he smiles, his eyes crinkle and disappear.
I pull on my boots and coat. Selecting a pair of warm gloves, I think of Tomas’s bare hands. There’s always a whiff of mold about him. A faint hum of sweat, grime, and misery. But we were once poor, and I mustn’t hold it against him. I pick up a second pair of gloves and a woolen hat, too.
“Here, you can use these.” I hold them out for him. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t give them back,” I add.
He takes them and strokes his fingers across the wool.
“Thanks, Hetty,” he mumbles, looking down. He pulls the hat over his ears and then puts on the gloves. “Warm as a hot potato now,” he says, clapping his hands together and giving me a shy smile.
Snowflakes peacefully float from a low granite sky, drifting onto the mounds piled against the railings. We cross Pfaffendorfer Strasse and walk toward the big iron gates at the entrance to the park. On the side of Tomas’s temple is the large, mottled, yellowy-green remnant of a bruise. I wonder, like an apple repeatedly dropped to the floor, if he is all brown and rotten on the inside, too.
“My father lost his job,” Tomas says as we kick our way through the fresh, untrodden snow.
“Oh dear. Has he got another?”
“There’s none to be found.” Tomas runs my glove along the top of a railing, the snow mounding in front until it falls off the end. “We’ve had to move in with my uncle’s family above his cobbler’s shop on Hallische Strasse. We couldn’t pay the rent for our old flat, so we got kicked out.”
“He could join the Sturmabteilung,” I say, remembering how Vati had talked of a big SA recruitment drive not so long ago. “The Brownshirts always need loads of men,” I tell him confidently.
Tomas half chokes, half laughs. “He’d rather we starve than join the SA. He’ll have nothing to do with those thugs.” He spits out the word. “Even though they have a uniform and weapons, like a proper army.” He looks wistful now, at the thought of weapons.
There’s trouble with Röhm, I recall Vati recently saying to Mutti. Two million hungry men. Out of control. It’ll need to be dealt with . . . If only I’d listened properly.
“What does your mother think he should do?”
“She doesn’t care, provided he puts food on the table. And he’s not even doing that at the moment. Just slouching about, like a good-for-nothing.” He sucks in a long breath.
We cross the road and walk between the tall stone pillars marking the entrance to the park. The wide expanse of Rosental stretches away so blindingly white, it hurts my eyes.
“Can’t he even get a job in a factory?”
Tomas shakes his head. “I told you. There’s none to be had. You’re so lucky to be . . . Wow, this snow is thick.” He kicks at it and ventures off the path into untrodden snow and sinks to the top of his boots.
We try to run and stumble. Laughing, we gather armfuls of the fluffy white powder.
There’s a swooshing noise and a snowball hits Tomas in the back of the neck with savage force. Gasping for breath, he scrabbles at the lump of snow and ice wedged between his bare skin and the collar of his thin coat. A second one, stingingly accurate, hits the side of his head.
“Ow!” He rubs the spot where it hit. Mouths open, whooping and yelling, four boys run from behind shrubbery, pelting us with hard lumps of gritty snow. I recognize the Brandt brothers from our old school. They’ve always had it in for Tomas. Just our luck to bump into them now.
The boys surround Tomas, nudging me out of the way. I stand outside the circle while they murmur in low voices. One of them kicks lumps of snow at Tomas’s skinny, bare knees. A knot of anger forms in my belly. There’s four of them and one of him. How’s that fair?
“Poor baby Tom Tom,” Ernst Brandt says. “His vati won’t let him join the Jungvolk.” He laughs. “He’d never survive it if he did. He’d get beaten for wetting the bed!” The other boys laugh too.
“I don’t wet the bed, stupid,” Tomas says, throwing his shoulder against Ernst, trying to shove his way outside the circle.
Ernst is on him in an instant, the other boys yelling encouragement. He’s twice the size of Tomas and anger boils in me, red-hot fury at the bullies who always pick on scrawny Tomas. In my mind, the months fall away and I’m back on the street behind our old block of flats with Tomas, when it was us two against the dirty swine who beat him to a pulp just for the fun of it.
I launch myself at Ernst’s neck, digging my fingernails into the soft flesh beneath his chin. The three of us drop to the ground, Ernst beneath me but reaching back to grab some part of me. He lets out an almighty yell and tries to push me off, but I’m clawing wildly at his face.
“STOP THIS AT ONCE!” shouts a woman’s voice, fierce and loud. Hands grip my shoulders and pull me away from Ernst. I’m spun around and the hands let go.
“Fräulein Herta! Fighting with boys like a dog! You should be ashamed of yourself.” Bertha, her cheeks blotchy purple, eyes looking like they might pop out of her head, stands in front of me. “What on earth would your mother think?” Her chest rises and falls as her breath puffs out like steam from the big, black kettle on the range.
Ernst and Tomas disentangle themselves and slowly get up, covered in snow. The other three Brandt brothers stand still, gawping at Bertha.
She shifts her gaze to Ernst and gasps. His face is a mess. My nails have dirt and bits of his bloodied skin beneath them. Tomas scrabbles in the snow, finds his broken glasses, and shoves them, lopsidedly, back on.
“Look what you’ve done to that boy’s face!” Bertha exclaims. “You’ve drawn blood!”
“But it was Ernst who started it, Bertha.” My mouth forms the words slowly, as though chill and shock have made it work at half speed. “He attacked Tomas. I was trying to save him. That lot”—I point at the other brothers—“they yelled encouragement and would’ve joined in, if I hadn’t . . . The odds were unfair.”
Bertha looks at Tomas. “Is this true?” she asks crisply.
Tomas nods and stares at the ground.
Ernst dabs his bloodied cheek with his handkerchief and says nothing.
“Hmm,” she says with a grunt. “You should know better than to fight with a girl,” she goes on, looking at each of the brothers in turn. “You’d better get off home before I cuff the lot of you.”
Ernst thrusts his shoulders back and juts his chin out as he saunters off, his brothers trailing behind him.
“You’re pathetic,” Ernst hisses at Tomas as he passes. “Need a girl to fight your battles for you.” He spits on the snow.
Bertha watches him go, her arms crossed over her chest. She looks at me, her face softening. “That was brave, fräulein,” she says, “to stand up for a friend. But silly all the same. You’re a young lady, and young ladies do not go in for fighting. That’s all there is to it. Now, off home with you.”
Tomas and I, unlikely friends thrown together long ago through lack of alternatives, walk slowly back to my big house on Fritzschestrasse. From there he will carry on to the tiny flat above his uncle’s shop on Hallische Strasse.
“Thanks,” he mutters, when we reach my iron gate.
“S’alright.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“Maybe . . . Bye, Tomas.”
“Bye, Hetty.”
I take the steps two at a time and close the front door behind me. I lean against it for a moment, knowing Tomas is still standing outside my gate, looking at the air I just ran through.
Hoping I’m going to come back.