A KNOCK AT THE DOOR

We managed to slip from Headquarters without being seen. The soldiers were returning from Feldstrasse, tired and dirty, and we hid in the shadow of the thorny hedge until they had disappeared inside the Gestapo building.

When everything was quiet, we sneaked away from that awful place and Lisa and I finally made it back to Escherstrasse, but our street felt like a different place now. We felt different.

As soon as I was home, I washed my hands and face, and hid my dirty clothes before climbing into bed. I didn’t sleep at all. Lying there, staring at the ceiling, ears ringing, I couldn’t shake the fire and explosions out of my mind, and I kept seeing images of Stefan locked in that horrible cell. His bruises and the dried blood on his face. I was frightened that putting him back behind bars had been the wrong thing; that maybe he would be taken away and I would never see him again.

The next morning, Oma put breakfast on the table in the kitchen. She talked with Mama and Opa about the bombing, and about Stefan, but I kept quiet. I didn’t say a word about what had happened to me last night, even though it pressed down on me like a terrible weight.

I picked at my bread, not feeling hungry. I was too scared to eat anything. Too scared to say anything. All I could think about was poor Stefan, and how I had locked the cell and left him in that horrible prison.

When three knocks came at the front door, my heart jumped.

Everyone looked round at each other, worry and fear clear in their eyes.

The knocking came again and Opa pushed back his chair. ‘I’ll get it.’

Mama stood up too, lifting a trembling hand to her mouth as she spoke. ‘Who is it? Is it him?’

We followed Opa into the hallway and watched him unlock the door.

He glanced back at us before pulling it open.

Standing on the step, flanked by two SS soldiers, Stefan looked even worse in the early morning light than he had in the dull electric glow of the bulbs in the prison last night. His eye was swollen shut, bruises shone on his face, and his short hair made him look like a prisoner from a camp.

One of the soldiers stepped forward and held out a piece of paper.

Opa took it from him, fumbling it open with shaking fingers. He looked at it for a long moment, then turned to show it to Mama.

‘A release order,’ he said.

Mama let out a gasp and hurried straight to Stefan. She wrapped her arms around my brother and stood there on the step, holding him as if she would never let him go.

‘You’re safe,’ she sobbed. ‘You’re safe.’

The soldiers didn’t say a word. They turned and walked away, boot heels clicking on the pavement.

Opa took Mama’s elbow and guided her inside with Stefan, closing the door before bringing them into the kitchen where he sat them at the table. Oma and Opa then pulled up chairs so that they were all sitting around Stefan. They checked his bruises and asked him question after question. They wanted to know where he had been and what had happened to him.

Stefan looked over their shoulders to see me standing by the door and our eyes met. He nodded once at me and I felt a massive sense of relief. It was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my heart.

I watched them fussing over Stefan, then went upstairs and took my copy of Mein Kampf from the top of the chest of drawers.

I stared at the face of the man I had come to hate, and thought about all the things that had happened since my twelfth birthday. It had only been a matter of days, but it felt as if it had been years, and my world was not the same any more. All those games and parades and uniforms and medals weren’t exciting now; they were not things to be proud of, but things to be afraid of. They were the things that had made us laugh at Johann Weber and beat him to the ground; things that caused Stefan to get arrested and Lisa’s father to be taken away.

They were the things that had killed Papa.

‘Only one thing to do with you,’ I whispered as I picked up the book and went outside.

The sun had not been up for long and the air was cool outside. There was still a faint smell of burning drifting on the breeze, but otherwise, it was a beautiful day.

I placed three brown folders on the grass at the far end of the garden, and put Mein Kampf on top of them so the Führer was looking at the sky, then I doused him with paraffin from Opa’s supplies.

As I took a match from the box, I heard footsteps and turned to see my brother coming across the lawn.

‘I was so scared,’ I said when he stopped beside me. ‘Last night.’

‘Me too.’

‘I thought I might never see you again.’

Stefan looked down. ‘Are those our files?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the release order? That was you, wasn’t it? You filled it out.’

‘There was only just enough time, the soldiers were coming back. I left it on Wolff’s desk, but I didn’t know if it would work; the signature was really bad.’

‘The signature was really good.’ He looked at me. ‘And when they couldn’t find my file and Wolff was gone …’ He took a deep breath. ‘Thank you, Karl.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘You’re braver than you look.’ He smiled, then shifted his eyes towards the files and the book. ‘And you’ve really finished with all this?’

I nodded.

‘But you know you’ll still have to go to Deutsches Jungvolk meetings? They’ll still try to get inside your head.’

‘They won’t be able to. Everything’s different now,’ I said. ‘Everything.’

When I put a match to the book, the flames burned blue and flickered in the wind. The folders went up well, but the book was thick and it took a while for the fire to work through it. The pages blackened and curled as the Führer turned to smoke.

‘I should go and tell Lisa,’ I said without taking my eyes off the fire. ‘She’ll want to know you’re home.’

‘She’s a good friend,’ Stefan said.

‘Yes, she is.’

Stefan and I watched the paper burn for a while, then he put his arm around my shoulder and we went back into the house.

Mama was still in the kitchen with Oma and Opa.

‘What were you two doing outside?’ she asked as Stefan went to sit with her.

I looked at her for a moment, then shrugged and smiled. ‘Just putting out some rubbish.’