The German Girl

by Lily Graham

  ‘I – er – we—’ began Asta, her eyes darting to the door, signalling a message silently to her twin, who nodded.

  He was a short man with a rounded belly, dark hair and full lips. He made to stand before the door. ‘Not this time.’

  Asta closed her eyes in horror. ‘Please,’ she cried. ‘Just let us go – we won’t bother you again.’

  He raised a brow. ‘You know I should turn you both in – this is breaking and entering.’

  They breathed in. ‘Please, Herr Hausman, we don’t mean any trouble…’

  To their surprise, he laughed. ‘You two? Your middle names are trouble.’

  They were silent, and he frowned. He acknowledged, ‘At least, it used to be. Tell you what – why don’t you tell me why you are both sleeping in my taxi and then we’ll decide what to do with you both, hmm?’

  The twins shared a look; they didn’t know if they could trust him or not but they had no choice. He was bigger than they were, tending towards the burly side, and though the twins were young and fit, and could easily have outdistanced him in a race, up close they weren’t exactly a match for him. Up close it was strength that mattered, which is why they’d always avoided being caught, till now.

  ‘Did you get into an argument with your parents, is that it? Caused too much trouble back home and they threw you out?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Our – our parents were taken,’ breathed Asta.

  Jürgen looked at her in surprise, but then nodded. They might have run from Polgo and terrorised him in the past, but that was because he was the sort of man whose anger seemed more like hot air. They’d seen him laugh just as hard as they had at some of the outfits they had put on his mascot, Frederick, the stuffed gorilla.

  Polgo Hausman blinked. ‘Taken?’

  They nodded. ‘My father resisted having the names on his documents changed so they arrested him and my mother.’

  Hausman stared, then closed his eyes for a moment as he realised. ‘You’re Jewish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But – couldn’t you go stay with family? Why are you here?’

  ‘We were warned that if we went home the police could take us too.’

  Hausman swore under his breath. ‘It’s like the world has gone mad,’ he said. Then he looked at them. ‘Well, you can’t stay here.’

  They nodded. Asta reached for their small pile of belongings.

  Hausman frowned. ‘I don’t mean on this boat – I mean here in Hamburg.’

  They looked at him in surprise.

  He sighed. ‘I always knew you two would cause me more trouble.’ Then he said something in a language they didn’t understand. Switching back to German, he said, ‘I can help you get out of the city – maybe take you to family somewhere else or to friends? Where do you need to go?’

  ‘Denmark,’ said Asta.

  He blinked. ‘Jesus.’

  They swallowed, but he just shook his head. ‘It’s fine. That just might take some time.’

  They stared at him. ‘You’ll help us?’

  He stood thinking for a long time. It was like he was trying to decide whether he should risk his neck or not, which they could well understand.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Jürgen.

  ‘I – well, I’m a bit like you – though all I have to do is keep quiet about it. Unless someone betrays me…’

  They frowned, and he shook his head. ‘I’m not Jewish.’ He sighed. ‘But, well, they’ve decided that people like me shouldn’t exist either… that we shouldn’t be allowed to love who we love.’

  They stared, but he didn’t offer up any explanation.

  ‘I can get you as far as Elmshorn, I think. It’ll be in a few days, so you’ll have to stay here till I get things ready. There’s someone I know who can probably take you through the border.’

  Asta was touched more than she could say. ‘Thank you, Herr Hausman.’

  Jürgen nodded, clasping the man’s hand, too choked to speak. The twins looked at each other. Behind them was their beloved city, with more canals than Venice. It was home, it was everything they’d ever known, and now they were going to leave it all behind. Asta dashed a tear away. Would they ever see it again? Would they ever know what home was again?

  9

  Snekkersten, Denmark, December 1938

  Trine paused, jamming a pen between her teeth, as she looked up from the copy she was editing. She wondered, once again, why it was that the journalists always felt the need to put too many commas into things. For people so consumed with facts, you’d think that they would appreciate the value of a full stop once in a while. And it was quite possible they believed that the semi-colon was something to do with the foreign office.

  She sighed, and fixed another problematic sentence. It was written by Henrik Jensen, a young up-and-coming reporter who did everything on the run, from eating, to speaking, to dressing and, of course, checking his work. She was sure he hadn’t quite meant that Malmö had a new dime syndicate that was taking over the streets… she changed the word ‘dime’ to ‘crime’, and grinned. Still, she enjoyed finding the mistakes, and fixing them. Unlike her predecessor, who had quit on the spot after one of the features writers described an exhibition of the beloved visual artist Anna Ancher’s work as ‘pleasant’ several times in the same piece. She’d thrown a thesaurus at the features desk, which had hit someone on the head. Sadly, they still hadn’t quite got the memo about overused words… though Trine was quite sure no one ever used the word ‘pleasant’ again.

  She fixed another stray comma, and took a sip of cold coffee. She needed to get through everything before the morning’s deadline, which was when the Elsinore Gazette would go to print.

  A noise outside, though, caught her attention. Her view took in the still ocean, where a lonely seagull flew past. Her eye roamed from the water to her barn door, which seemed to be juddering on its hinges.

  She frowned, then picked up her shotgun, and went to put on all the items she’d only recently taken off after the short crossing to her drive. She’d kept the weapon close ever since she’d decided to walk out on her marriage, five years before – just in case Uwe came back and tried to change her mind.

  From his dog bed, a golden retriever named Bjørn jumped to full alert, padding after her. The snow had been cleared earlier in the day, and Trine was careful not to make a sound. What anyone might want from her barn was anyone’s guess, but thieves in winter weren’t unheard of, even out here.

  She gritted her teeth, then kicked the door open wide, where it slammed into the wall, making a loud crash.

  There was the smallest intake of breath, and the hairs on her neck told her two things. She wasn’t alone, and whoever it was was frightened.

  Still, Trine did not lower the shotgun. There was no telling what a scared person might do. ‘Show yourself,’ she warned. ‘Or I’ll shoot.’

  Nothing happened, and Trine kicked the door again. There was another sharp intake of breath, and Bjørn stopped growling, inching his shaggy blond self forward.

  ‘No, Bjørn,’ shouted Trine, but it was too late. He’d gone past her to a small lump in the heart of the barn. Just beyond, the dun-coloured mare, whose eyes were rolling in fear, stamped her hooves. And suddenly from behind the rearing horse a figure emerged, clothed in what looked like filthy rags, with long matted hair.

  Trine blinked, then lowered her weapon.

  It was a young girl.

  She stood up, unsteady on weak legs. Her eyes seemed glazed and feverish. Her lips were dry and cracked.

  ‘I-I’m sorry,’ she said so faintly that Trine struggled to hear. ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble.’ At last the words penetrated. Trine frowned. The girl was speaking German. She stared at her in shock.

  ‘If you don’t want to cause trouble why are you in my barn?’ asked Trine, sharply. It had been some years since she’d spoken the language, despite it being her native tongue, so she was a bit
rusty.

  The girl stared at her, not saying anything for some time. Her eyes were huge, haunted.

  ‘I – I was cold, it was late, and I didn’t know if I should wake you—’

  ‘Wake me? Why would you come wake me?’

  The girl swayed on her feet. ‘It took so long – to – to—’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To find you,’ she said, weakly. Then she folded in on herself like a crumpled shirt, into a total faint.

  Trine stood for a long moment, frozen. Bjørn was barking wildly and the mare was hovering far too close to the fallen girl for Trine’s liking. Finally, with shaking limbs, she set the shotgun down. She calmed the mare, easing her away from where a stray hoof might cause even more damage to the poor girl lying on the floor. Then she knelt down and picked the girl up, hoisting her over her shoulder. Her arms and legs shook from the effort, despite the fact that the small bundle in her arms was painfully thin. Trine was feeling every bit of her fifty-year-old self as there was a painful twinge in her lower back when she straightened up.

  ‘I might regret this in the morning,’ she told Bjørn. She wasn’t only referring to her back.

  It took some time to get the girl inside, as she kept mumbling feverishly and crying out.

  Trine put her in her small bedroom, then went to fetch some water. When she returned with the glass she heard the girl mumble something and she began to thrash wildly on the bed.

  ‘Shhh, shhh,’ said Trine, coming to sit by her.

  She put the glass on the bedside table and stared at the girl. She was even younger than she first imagined. Possibly only just fourteen, but not more than sixteen, surely?

  She frowned. Then looked at the girl sharply as the girl’s words penetrated, repeating a name, ‘Jürgen.’

  She lit a candle and brought it closer to the girl’s face, and her heart started to pound in sudden fear. It couldn’t be, could it?

  The light fell on the girl’s face, and it was as plain as day. Trine clutched a hand to her chest in shocked recognition. ‘Asta?’ she asked.

  10

  Hamburg, 1938

  Polgo Hausman was as good as his word. Three days later, he returned, with food, clothes and a plan.

  ‘I can take you as far as Elmshorn. From there, a friend of mine will meet us and take you both to Silkeborg.’

  The twins were surprised that they wouldn’t be going by boat, and asked as much. Polgo had shaken his head. ‘It would raise far too many questions, trust me. Besides, this boat won’t go far on the open water.’

  They left at dawn, on a Sunday. The twins saw the last of their city through the back window of Polgo’s small cream-coloured Volkswagen, which looked a bit worse for wear, the interior cracked and faded by the sun, the paint scratched from what looked like an attack by wolves.

  ‘My blasted dogs,’ said Polgo, in explanation. ‘They would eat it if I let them – it’s their dog bed during the day.’

  Asta began to sneeze as soon as she climbed into the back seat, and was soon covered in long brown hair.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she said. And it was. Not that the twins had ever been particularly impressed by material possessions, but they had come from a rather wealthy home, and the sort of cars their parents’ friends drove were high-end luxury vehicles. But right now, the beat-up runabout might as well have been a Rolls-Royce, to them. He handed her a tissue from the glove compartment. ‘Allergic?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry.’

  Seeing her now-streaming eyes, he winced. ‘Sorry, there’s a clean blanket back there you can lie down on. That might help.’

  ‘It’s okay, Küken loves animals, she wants to be a veterinarian some day – despite the fact that she’s allergic to most of them.’

  Asta shrugged. It was true.

  Polgo looked from Jürgen to Asta, and they saw the expression of surprise, mixed with something like pain, but it was soon gone, and he smiled. ‘Well, I hope you get to fulfil your dream one day.’

  Asta looked down. Would she ever be able to, really? Would she ever have the kind of life that allowed for things like dreams again? Right now, all she wanted was to be able to see her parents again, to have a heart rate that wasn’t racing as if she’d spent the whole day sprinting, and a full night’s sleep – to feel that peace again that she’d known as a child, before someone had decided that everything about her and her family was somehow ‘wrong’. Those were her dreams now – and they meant more than all the old ones combined.

  Polgo cleared his throat, and started the engine, which spluttered into life in a series of wet coughs, before progressing on to a gentle idle. ‘If we get stopped, you are Anna and Frederick – my niece and nephew,’ he said, pulling out two birth certificates. ‘These are forgeries – and they aren’t particularly good ones, I’m afraid. There was someone who owed me a favour. A retired secretary from the home office – they should, hopefully, fool the local police but questions might get asked if we’re stopped by the SS.’

  Jürgen frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re trained to spot that sort of thing.’

  At the twins’ blank stares, he continued. ‘It’s the paper – it’ll give you away, it’s not the same, the ink too – they’re on the lookout for just that sort of thing.’

  Asta took a breath. It would buy them time, but that was all. Hopefully it would be enough.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t thank me yet.’

  He switched on the radio, and backed onto the street. The station was reporting the news, and the broadcaster spoke of a world that seemed vastly different to the one they lived in. There was music, and the sound of excited speaking. Then a long ramble about their great Führer and the progress that had been made, and the beautiful country that they lived in.

  A muscle flexed in Polgo’s jaw, and he switched the radio off with his fist. ‘Damn propaganda – how people swallow this nonsense is beyond me, they’d twist in shame if they heard what’s being reported about us overseas.’

  ‘What is being said?’ asked Asta, looking at him, a small flare of hope in her eyes. It was illegal to listen – and you could be sent to a camp or put to death just for doing it.

  ‘The truth – but I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ he said, pointing at the radio. ‘They have a way of twisting things to suit themselves, and they just keep getting away with it.’

  Jürgen was silent. It was true, what had been happening had been going on for years… no one had said or done anything to challenge it. Though that wasn’t true – those who had – those who’d tried – had found themselves in prison or worse, put to death. Perhaps Polgo meant the world – or Europe – no one was coming forward to stop him.

  As if Polgo could read his mind, he nodded. ‘No one wants another war – so they’re just giving in to him… even after he annexed Austria, I thought… surely now they’ll have to act, but no.’ He shook his head. ‘And it’s not like we can either.’

  The twins stared at him. They hadn’t, if they were honest, thought about how much the Nazis had affected the ordinary citizens of Germany, not really, but they knew it wasn’t easy for them either. ‘I’ve known people branded as traitors – people I used to take across the canal – businessmen, journalists, good men and women, friends – but they squash anyone who dares to go against them. The stories I’ve heard…’ He broke off. ‘Well, let’s just say that they’re not having an easy time either.’

  He was thinking of one of the men he used to transport across the canal every week. Ludwig Gendal, an editor of a well-known Hamburg tabloid. He was a fat, jolly man with a handlebar moustache, and a shining bald spot. He used to laugh uproariously whenever he saw the latest outfit the twins had illegally dressed the stuffed gorilla Frederick in, and the two would talk about politics, books, and culture. But over the years, as the Nazi Party gained more ground, he became thin and withdrawn, and like the twins, who stopped breaking into Polgo�
�s taxi to dress the mascot, after a while he disappeared too, until they found his body in the canal one day. Some said it was suicide, but Polgo never thought so. The last time he’d seen him, Ludwig had said something about a duty of care to the public, and that Polgo must be sure to check the paper the next day for details. Polgo had – the front-page story had been a puff piece about Hitler’s rise to glory. They’d killed him and whatever he’d planned to say.

  Ludwig wasn’t the only one. Books by anyone who was critical of the party were burned. Intellectuals and free-thinkers had found themselves imprisoned at worst or without a job at best. You could find yourself in dire straits or lose your life simply by disagreeing, so it was safer, far safer, to go with the flow, to not question, to buy into the belief that Hitler was their saviour, the one who had turned the economy around. There was no denying he had, but at what cost? In the end what had it been worth, if Germany had to pay the price of it for ever?

  Polgo changed the channel. Classical music was playing. Mozart. None of them listened.

  The roads were quiet, but every car they passed made Asta jump.

  Polgo looked at her from the rear-view mirror. ‘Listen to me, both of you. That’s not going to work.’ He sounded angry, but there was something else beneath that anger. It was fear. Fear for the two of them.

  Jürgen and Asta looked at him in surprise. ‘W-what do you mean?’ asked Asta.

  Polgo held the steering wheel steady with his knees, then pulled up his sleeve.

  Jürgen saw what looked like a faded black stain. The skin, faded to a dull gunmetal grey. A tattoo.

  He blinked. Only criminals had tattoos, didn’t they? Or was it sailors too?

  Polgo saw him staring, and nodded, as if he could read Jürgen’s mind. ‘I didn’t always operate a water taxi. When I was around your age, I was in and out of trouble so much that I make the pair of you look like saints. Two years. Ebrach Abbey,’ he explained.

  It was a young offenders prison.