HELPLESS

Worry and fear kept us all awake that night. In the early hours I climbed into bed with Mama, because I couldn’t sleep. She stroked my hair and we both lay there without speaking, lost in our own troubled thoughts. All I could think about was Gestapo Headquarters, the grey building by the river. I kept seeing Wolff’s grin, and my brother being dragged inside, taken into a dark, damp room, and the door slamming shut behind him.

First thing in the morning, Opa and Mama went to that place again to find out if Stefan was there. After all the visions I’d had last night, I couldn’t settle until they returned, and when they did, Opa stormed into the kitchen and tore the Nazi party badge from his shirt. He threw it down on the table, saying, ‘Barbarian!’

‘What is it?’ Oma asked. ‘What happened?’

‘He won’t tell us anything. It’s as if we’re speaking a different language.’

‘Nothing at all?’ Oma asked.

‘Nothing.’ Mama pulled out a chair and sat down. She picked up Opa’s badge and held it out to him. ‘Put it back on,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to lose anyone else.’

The grown-ups talked and talked until there was nothing else to say, then they went about doing the things they would usually do, but there was a restless tension that fizzed through the house. It was as if we were sitting on top of a bomb that might blow up at any minute. We all wanted to know what had happened to Stefan, but at the same time, we were afraid to know.

I went upstairs to my bedroom and looked at the books sitting on the chest of drawers.

Mein Kampf was still there, face up, the Führer looking at me with a stern expression.

‘It’s your fault,’ I said.

The picture just stared. The Führer’s gaze burned through me as if he were there in the room, watching me.

‘I hate you.’ I turned the book face down. ‘I hate you.’

Downstairs the murmur of voices, and the clatter and scrape of housework and cooking went on, but when I heard the front door close, I went to the window to see Opa striding along the street, and guessed he was going to Headquarters again, to see if he could find out anything.

I glanced across at Lisa’s house and wished she were here. I had waved at her when she left for school and I could hardly wait for her to come back. I wanted to get out of the house, but didn’t want to go out alone, and I had so much to tell her about what had happened. I hadn’t known her for very long, but somehow, it felt as if she was the only person I would be able to talk to properly about everything.

After school, Lisa came straight round. I’d spent all day stuck in the house, thinking about what had happened to Stefan and Mama, and about the conversation I’d had with Oma last night, so it was a relief to jump on my bike and ride away from the town.

‘Everyone was talking at school,’ Lisa spoke as she pedalled alongside me. ‘They said some people were in trouble with the Gestapo last night. I don’t know what they did, though. Someone said they got caught helping an escaped prisoner, then Ilse said it was because they were—’

‘It was Stefan,’ I said, almost bursting to tell her. ‘Stefan and Jana. He and some of the others were putting leaflets through letterboxes. You know, the ones that fell from the plane the other night.’

‘So it was Edelweiss Pirates?’

‘Yes. And I went out after them and we got chased by Hitler Youth boys and I didn’t warn them in time and—’

‘Wait, slow down. You were there when he got caught?’

‘Yes. Well, no. Well … oh, it’s all my fault.’

As we cycled out of town, I told Lisa everything that happened last night – about sneaking around in the dark and my brother putting things through letterboxes and about the chase and the hiding, and Wolff coming to the house and Stefan being there after all, but then Wolff finding the leaflet in my book.

Lisa didn’t say anything; she just listened to the whole story.

After a few minutes, we had left the houses behind us. If I’d been at home, in the city, it would have taken much longer. There, the buildings went on for ever and we would have passed the anti-aircraft guns and the sandbags and the walls draped with Nazi flags. Here, though, everything looked just about normal.

It was as if there wasn’t a war at all.

We took the wide road through the cemetery, cycling in the cool of the church’s shadow, and I showed Lisa the place where Jana and I had hidden last night. It all felt as if it had happened a long time ago.

Heading along the road by the river, we came to a stop opposite the large grey stone building that had filled my nightmares since Wolff took Stefan away.

Gestapo Headquarters.

There were five shuttered windows on the first floor, and at ground level a heavy door was set into a shallow porch and flanked by two arched windows on either side. To the right of the building, was a lawn, edged by shrubs and trees. A gate in the thorny hedge hung open, and a path led to the door beside which a Nazi flag hung like a limp handkerchief.

Looking at it now made my skin tingle and my hairs stand on end, and I had to push away images of my poor brother lying curled in the dark somewhere inside.

‘Do you think Stefan’s in there?’ I couldn’t help whispering.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe I should go and ask?’ I was desperate to know if my brother was safe, but I wasn’t sure I had the courage to even knock on the door of that place.

‘No,’ Lisa said. ‘Leave that to your opa. You’d only get into more trouble.’

As we cycled away, I tried not to imagine Kriminalinspektor Wolff watching us from one of the windows, and I pedalled faster to put the place behind me as quickly as possible.

We rode past the train station, through the tunnel and out into the country, continuing for a mile or so before we followed a track down to an orchard.

There were lines of trees as far as I could see, so we propped our bikes against the nearest one and sat down in the long grass to take off our boots and socks.

The sun was warm and the sky was clear, and the air was so clean and fresh that it felt like we were a world away from everything.

‘I would have come out with you,’ Lisa said. ‘You should have told me.’

‘I didn’t know he was going, and … where do you think he is? Why won’t they tell us?’

‘They didn’t tell us anything when they took Papa last year. That’s the worst thing; not knowing where he is. And not being able to do anything.’

‘That’s exactly how I feel,’ I said. ‘It makes me …’ I tried to think of the right word. ‘Angry. Like I could explode. I don’t know where Stefan is, and even if I did, there’s nothing I could do about it. There should be something I could do, but I’m just me and they’re the Gestapo and the SS and the army. They just do whatever they like and we have to put up with it and it’s not fair.’

Lisa listened and nodded and then turned to stare out at the meadow on the other side of the road.

‘It’s not fair,’ I said again. ‘I thought everything was going to be so good and now everything’s turned so bad, and it’s all my fault.’ I grabbed a fistful of long grass and twisted until my palm was wet with its juices.

‘I used to think it was my fault,’ Lisa said. ‘When they took Papa. I thought I must have done something. But it isn’t my fault. It isn’t your fault either, you know – about Stefan, I mean.’

‘So why did Wolff come to our house? How did he know Stefan is an Edelweiss Pirate? He said someone told him and I keep thinking I must have let something slip … maybe that day when he saw us at the parade.’

‘You didn’t tell him anything. I was there, remember?’

‘So how did he know, then?’

‘Someone else must have told him.’

‘Like who?’

‘I don’t know. He could have been lying. Maybe no one told him anything. Maybe he knew because he’d seen Stefan with other Edelweiss Pirates. Maybe he just wanted you to think someone told him. But it isn’t your fault,’ Lisa insisted, ‘it can’t be.’

‘I don’t know. If I hadn’t kept that leaflet in my book, Wolff would never have found it and Stefan would still be at home.’

‘Then you could just as easily say it was my fault,’ Lisa argued. ‘I gave you the leaflet.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘It isn’t your fault, Karl Friedmann. If it wasn’t for Wolff and the Hitler Youth and that horrible man Hitler, none of this would have happened.’

I ripped the fistful of grass from the ground, pulling a clump of earth with it. The soil was dry and showered across my leg as I struggled with what I was going to say next. The words didn’t want to come out. They seemed to lodge in my throat, making me feel sick, but I plucked up all my courage and forced them out, because I had to say them. I had to tell Lisa what I had done.

‘I reported him once,’ I confessed in a whisper, staring at the grey dirt on my pale skin.

‘What? What did you just say?’

‘Stefan. I reported him once and—’

‘Your brother?’ There was shock in her voice. ‘Why?’

I twisted the grass in my fist and remembered what had happened, telling it to Lisa with a mixture of shame and relief.

We had been coming back from an exercise with the Deutsches Jungvolk, all of us crammed into open-backed trucks. We hadn’t won that day, so we were nursing our bruises and complaining that we’d been cheated out of a victory.

Coming into the city, we had stopped at a crossing, the winners’ truck pulling up behind us. Axel Jung, our Hitler Youth group leader, was riding in the cab of our truck, and he started shouting from the open window. A ripple of interest passed through those of us sitting in the back, so one or two stood up for a better look, and it wasn’t long before the boys around me were jeering and shouting insults.

When I eased to my feet, legs aching, I saw three long-haired boys standing outside a café, and felt a sudden rush of embarrassment. One of them was my brother Stefan.

He was standing quietly, watching the truck, with a half-smile on his face, maybe thinking that we would move on soon enough. But one of his friends wasn’t as patient, and he stepped forward, shouting, ‘Stupid Nazis.’

The boys around me in the back jeered louder, telling them to get their hair cut, calling them Jew lovers, but somewhere in all that shouting, I heard the cab door pop open. Axel Jung stepped down from the truck and crossed to the café in a flash. He raised a fist to hit Stefan’s friend, but was met with a solid punch that knocked him to the ground.

In the back of the truck, everyone fell silent. We would never have expected to see Axel Jung knocked down by anyone, let alone a longhaired coward like that. But as we stood there and watched, the other Hitler Youth boys jumped down from the cab and went to his side, as did the boys from the truck behind us, so there were six brown shirted boys circling Stefan and his friends.

At first they started shoving each other about, trading insults, then one of them stepped in and grabbed my brother, twisting the front of his shirt in his fist. With his other hand he tried to hit Stefan, but he missed and Stefan hit him back. Right on the nose.

The Hitler Youth boy staggered backwards, blood pouring down his shirt and then the street erupted into a great scuffle of kicking and punching. Some of the Deutsches Jungvolk boys started jumping down from the trucks, eager to join in. Stefan and his friends must have known they couldn’t win, so they broke away, sprinting off and disappearing from view. Axel Jung and one or two others gave chase, but it wasn’t long before they returned.

When everyone was settled back in the truck, Axel climbed up on the rear bumper and looked about at us, asking if anyone had seen the boys before. I could feel Ralf and Martin looking at me, urging me to tell him, but I couldn’t do it. Not because I wanted to protect Stefan but because I was ashamed of him; I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I wanted to be like Axel Jung, not like Stefan Friedmann.

All the way back, though, my friends badgered me, telling me it was the right thing to do. I had to tell Axel. I had to.

So I did.

When we arrived back at Hitler Youth headquarters, Ralf and Martin came with me to Axel Jung, and stood beside me as I told the group leader that he had been fighting with my brother Stefan.

Lisa sat in silence while I told her, and when I had finished, she looked at me as if she felt sorry for me.

‘I hate myself for doing it,’ I said. ‘As soon as he was sent away, I was ashamed of myself. I never told my family it was me. I didn’t realise what they’d do to him. I tried to keep it a secret but everyone knows and—’

‘It’s not your fault. You had all that silly Deutsches Jungvolk stuff in your head, confusing you. My papa said it’s like poison.’

‘I thought it was the right thing to do … but then I knew it was bad, too. I didn’t really know what to think.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t do it now,’ Lisa said. ‘That’s what matters. You’re different now.’

‘I can’t believe I ever thought Stefan was a bad German. He’s the bravest person I know. It’s no wonder no one trusts me.’

‘I trust you.’

I looked at her. ‘Really?’

Lisa smiled and shrugged. ‘Of course I do, Karl Friedmann. We’re friends aren’t we?’

‘Yes. We are.’

Knowing that Lisa trusted me gave me a good feeling, which settled among all the awful ones swirling inside. There was something else, as well: relief. Just like last night when Oma told me they all knew what I had done, there was a sense of being able to get rid of the awful, black secret that I had been carrying. It had been hard to find the courage to tell Lisa what I had done, and I had been scared that she would hate me for it, but she didn’t hate me, she trusted me. And I knew she was right when she said I was different now. I had changed.

I watched her lie back in the grass, then I did the same and we stayed like that for a long time, with the sun on our faces, and our eyes closed. The shadows from the leaves above us danced on my eyelids. The breeze shifted in the treetops, the birds sang and the whole world felt peaceful. For a moment, I let myself enjoy the light feeling of relief and the thought that I had a good friend beside me. Not a soldier or a comrade, but a friend.

‘We should call ourselves Comanches,’ Lisa said after a while. ‘If we’re going to be Edelweiss Pirates, we should have a name. There’s Navajos in Cologne and Apaches here, so we can be Comanches. They’re an Indian tribe too.’

She sat up and plucked a daisy from the grass at her feet. She shortened the stalk by pinching it with her fingernail, and leaned over to tuck it into one of my buttonholes. Then she plucked another and did the same to one of her own buttonholes.

‘It’s not an edelweiss,’ she said, ‘but it’ll do. And I’ve been thinking; maybe we’re not so helpless.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, maybe there are some ways of getting back at Wolff. Especially now that we’re Edelweiss Pirates.’

‘Like what?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ she shrugged. ‘I have a few ideas.’