People Like Us

by Louise Fein

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Mutti jerks around and gives me a hurt look, as if I’ve roughly woken her from a pleasant dream.

  ‘Vati will be angry and forbid it if he catches you.’

  ‘But he won’t be back from Berlin until this evening.’ She sighs. ‘Working on a Sunday too.’ She arches her back and stretches her arms out behind as though she’s been hunched over her writing desk for many hours already.

  ‘What about Ingrid? Is she here?’ I stare at the doorway, in case she’s hovering just outside.

  ‘No, I’ve given her the whole day off. But what’s Ingrid got to do with it?’

  I sigh with relief. The book will be safe beneath my mattress, for now anyway. ‘Why don’t we do something today, Mutti? Go out together. We could both do with some fresh air.’ She looks back to the letters on her desk.

  ‘I must finish these… Perhaps later.’ She gives me a quick smile. ‘There’s so much work to do, setting up one of these ventures. All the paperwork. And finding the children. One must do it right.’

  ‘What do you mean, finding the children? If they’re orphans, wouldn’t they just be handed in?’

  ‘I should say, finding the correct children. It’s sorting the desirable from… the others. They are developing tests, physical assessments, to check the purity of the children. They’re very thorough – sixty-two separate checks to be made on each child. It’s most rigorous. But it means we have to look far and wide to find appropriate children.’

  ‘What about the ones who don’t pass the tests?’

  Mutti regards me vaguely. ‘Well, they… go to other places. Oh,’ she says, turning to me fully. ‘I nearly forgot, that boy called for you early this morning. I told him you usually walk the dog in the park on Sunday mornings, but that today you are unwell.’

  ‘Which boy,’ I ask, my breath catching. Walter called for me! He must have come here after I didn’t turn up. What a risk he took… surely, he wouldn’t have?

  ‘Oh, that old friend of yours from Volksschule, I forget his name. The unfortunate one,’ she adds, waving a hand.

  ‘Oh, you mean Tomas.’ My heart sinks. How stupid. Of course Walter wouldn’t call for me here.

  ‘That’s it. Tomas. What happened to him after… That awful business?’

  ‘You mean with his father. His uncle threw his mother and all seven children out. They live in Plagwitz now. Tomas had to leave school and get a job. At least he has an apprenticeship now.’

  She tuts. ‘Well, he’s scrubbed up all right. Looks as though he manages a wash and a decent meal. Always so underfed, as I remember.’

  Not Walter.

  Just Tomas.

  How wretchedly disappointing. Mutti’s pen begins to scratch the paper again. I wander over to the sofa and sink onto it, curling my legs beneath me.

  ‘Do you miss Karl terribly?’ I ask.

  Mutti sighs. ‘If my right arm had been severed, I would miss it less,’ she says wistfully. ‘The house is so quiet and empty without him.’ She smiles at me. ‘Thank goodness I still have you.’

  The unexpected intimacy is a warmth which spreads through me like soup on a cold day. It reminds me of how it used to be, before we moved to this house. Before she became so busy with her charity work; a satellite around planet Vati, and a distant presence to me.

  ‘Still,’ she says, ‘it is the passage of life. We prepare our sons to set them free into the world. That is the point of it all.’

  ‘And your daughters?’

  ‘Our daughters never really leave us,’ she laughs. ‘They may live in different houses, but they will always be around to share our grandchildren and take care of us when we are old.’

  ‘But what if I should want to work in another city? Or marry a man who lives far away, just like you did?’

  ‘That won’t happen. Besides, why would you want to?’ she asks, her forehead folding into a little frown.

  ‘I would like to travel the world. To do something more interesting and important than simply marry and have children.’

  Mutti gives me a scathing look. ‘What can be more important for a woman than marrying and having children? Besides, you know Vati wants you to give up this notion of having a job. It isn’t appropriate for a girl like you to get a job, let alone travel the world.’

  ‘And is that what you want for me, Mutti? To marry young and give you lots of grandchildren?’

  ‘I would like you to be happy, Hetty,’ Mutti says as she looks out of the window across the leaf-scattered lawn. ‘But what I think, or what you think or desire, doesn’t matter. What you have to do, is your duty. As we all do. Firstly, to the Führer. Then to Vati, and one day, to your husband. You are almost sixteen, Hetty, I should hardly have to explain this.’ She continues to stare out of the window and I study her profile. Always poised, refined and elegant, she rarely speaks her mind. It seems almost preposterous that she is a person in her own right, with thoughts and opinions which might be different from Vati’s.

  What lies beneath her skin? How can I find a crack in her armour, the real Mutti?

  ‘You are a sweet girl, Hetty.’ She tears her gaze from the window and back to me. ‘You are clever and thoughtful, but you have much to learn. You must curb your tongue and control your impetuous nature. These are not good qualities in a woman these days. But my dear Maman, she would have loved you.’ She smiles at the memory of poor, dead Oma Fabienne.

  ‘Tell me some stories from your childhood in France,’ I beg. ‘When Oma Fabienne was alive and you were little.’

  But Mutti shakes her head. ‘Another time, Hetty. I really am awfully busy.’ She turns back to her letters, and our conversation is over.

  *

  Vati telephones to say he will be catching the four o’clock train, to arrive in Leipzig shortly after five thirty. Tomas also telephones, asking if I’m feeling better and would I like to go to the cinema with him.

  Not really. Not now.

  Instead, I decide to walk to the Hauptbahnhof to meet Vati off his train.

  As I get close to the station, the pavements swarm with people, making it impossible to hurry. When I finally reach the main concourse, I see from the board that Vati’s train arrived five minutes ago. I scan heads as people stream from the platforms but it’s impossible to find anyone amongst the crowds and I can’t see him anywhere.

  I give up and edge my way out of the station into the flow of people heading slowly towards the city centre. My shoelace is loose, so I stop outside Breuninger stores for a moment to tighten it. In the window is a display of new winter fashion. A little drab, colour-wise, grey and navy blue, but the style is attractive; clean, slim lines, with nipped-in waists and belts.

  I stand up, turn, and there is Vati, just a few feet away. He looks towards me, smiling and laughing. He seems so happy, all the stress and worry he normally carries wiped from his face – he is almost unrecognisable. But he hasn’t seen me. He’s looking at a woman with her back to me. I open my mouth to call out, but Vati flings his arms around the woman. They stand in a close embrace, their bodies pressed together, foreheads touching.

  His name freezes in my throat and I shrink back against the shop window. Everything blurs. Sounds merge and fade. All I can see is Vati embracing the woman. She shifts slightly, and I spot what I missed a moment ago. A little girl, perhaps two or three years old. She is propped up on the woman’s hip, staring at me over her mother’s shoulder. She has enormous bright blue eyes and loose blonde curls, fine as silk thread, tumble about her angelic face.

  Vati says something to the woman, but I don’t hear his words. He turns his attention to the little girl. She pulls her eyes from mine and reaches up towards him. He tenderly takes her in his arms.

  How strange that Vati would want to hold a child. He’s never been interested in children. I can hardly remember receiving so much as a hug from him.

  The girl wraps her fat little arms around his neck and whispers something in his ear, giggling. Such an int
imate thing for a child to do. It’s as if she knows him.

  All at once, in a terrible moment of realisation, I understand. I slap a hand over my mouth to stop myself from crying out.

  The woman wears a tight black skirt and, although I can’t see her face, in that instant I know who she is. The fat behind gives it away.

  It never crossed my mind to wonder why Fräulein Müller had disappeared as suddenly as she arrived, replaced with an older, middle-aged secretary with glasses and a grey bun.

  Fräulein Müller was pregnant with Vati’s child.

  I gag. Swallow the vomit in my throat.

  No, no, no!

  I cannot bear to see any more. Jaw clenched, I turn away before either of them notice me and merge into the crowd streaming in the opposite direction.

  People, stinking strangers, press their bodies against me. There is no air. They’re squeezing tighter and tighter and I’m suffocating. I elbow and push my way through, desperate to get out onto the street, and away, far away, as fast as possible. I stumble out of the crowd and into the path of cars in the road. Horns honk and vehicles veer around me. I dodge a horse, and a man on a bike swears at me. The buildings close in. All I can see is the little girl’s big eyes staring at me and the way she snuggled so comfortably into Vati’s arms. I can’t go home. How can I? Mutti will be sick with worry, and Vati angry that I’m not home for dinner, but I don’t care. I will not go home and look Vati in the eye, not after what I just saw.

  Mutti!

  Poor, poor Mutti.

  Can she know?

  Should I tell her?

  I walk and walk without any idea where I’m going, or what I’m going to do. I pass through alleyways and streets, past churches, shops, schools and apartment blocks. Daylight fades and the lights of the city illuminate my path. Time loses all sense of meaning. The shadow of Vati’s contentment with that bundle of strange child in his arms hovers everywhere I look.

  Finally, drained and bone-weary, I dry my tears and slowly make my way back home.

  *

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Mutti is crying, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy.

  ‘I ran into a friend,’ I mumble. ‘We went back to her place. Sorry, I lost track of time.’

  ‘What were you thinking, Hetty?’ She is shouting now, wringing her hands in despair. ‘Disappearing off like that in times like these?’

  What should I say to her? How can I possibly put into words what I witnessed?

  Vati’s face is blotchy red, piggy-eyed with soft, wobbly flesh. ‘We’ve been content for you to roam around this town with your friends. But, if they are a bad influence or it leads you down the wrong path, we’ll put a stop to it. Immediately. There’ll be no more hanging around town with your friends. This is a warning, Fräulein.’

  I hate you. I hope he sees it in my eyes.

  A vision of the pretty, blonde, curly-haired girl is etched in my memory. My sister! The word is alien on my tongue. Schwester.

  ‘Sorry, Vati.’

  ‘You deserve a beating for causing your mother such alarm,’ he continues. ‘Go to your room. I don’t want to set eyes on you until morning.’

  Gladly. I don’t want to set eyes on you either. You make me sick. If I deserve a beating for causing Mutti alarm, what do you deserve for being unfaithful?

  I turn and silently climb the stairs. I reach for my diary under the mattress:

  I cannot tell Mutti what I saw. It will destroy her. It will destroy everything. It’s clear, she can never, ever know. How I wish Karl were here. I can just picture him, his eyes kind, his head close. ‘Don’t worry, Little Mouse,’ he would say. ‘I’ll deal with Vati’. But Karl is hundreds of miles away and I’m all alone.

  *

  Walter takes me into his arms and whispers in my ear that he will make everything all right. Leave your parents, he urges. Come and live in America with me. I’m leaving the house for the last time, inexplicably wearing a Luftwaffe uniform. Mutti refuses to say goodbye and Vati is happy to see me gone. I turn back for one last look and see Vati, seated on the sofa, bouncing the cherubic, golden child on his knee. Only the child acknowledges my leaving, with a look of victory in her glacial blue eyes.

  I snap awake, extinguishing the vision of Vati and the girl-child. I’m stiff and cold sitting on the bed, the diary open on the floor. My head swirls with exhaustion and a dull ache pulses in my temples. I pick up the journal, close it, and hide it away, climbing into bed without bothering to change.

  But now I’m wide awake and the night crawls by; the darkness expanding and contracting. A stone lies in the pit of my stomach. A rock of pity for Mutti, a great slab of loathing for Vati. And all the while the walls of the house pulse and throb in time with my beating heart.

  12 October 1937

  I sit at the back of the classroom as we are read Mein Kampf as a class. Frau Schmidt insists on it, ever since half the teachers at school were dismissed for using un-German texts. We studied it last year too. Now we have gone right back to the beginning and started again. The book was long and slow-going the first time. It’s soporific the second. And now we must go through it all again, tedious chapter by tedious chapter.

  Frau Schmidt no longer bothers to initiate discussion. Instead, blessedly, she skips chunks and then quotes salient parts out loud to the class.

  ‘ “If we consider how greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how he has squeezed and sucked the blood again and again; if furthermore, we consider how the people gradually learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his existence as nothing but a punishment of Heaven for the other peoples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew.”’

  Frau Schmidt ploughs on, appearing to neither notice nor care whether any pupil in the class pays attention or not.

  ‘ “The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people…”’

  With every mention of the word Jew, Walter’s beautiful face swims into my mind.

  Could Satan really be crouching beneath his peachy skin?

  ‘What if he isn’t black-haired, Frau Schmidt?’ I ask when she nods at my raised hand.

  There is a collective rustle as the class turns to look at me.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand your question, Herta.’ Frau Schmidt pauses and removes her glasses.

  ‘I mean, what if he has blond hair and doesn’t look like a Jew at all. But he is one. What then?’

  She stands, looking baffled, as if not sure how to answer.

  ‘What if he looks Aryan,’ I press, ‘and acts like one too? What if he has the best of manners and is courteous and brave. What if he believes in Germany just as we do? Is he still a danger then?’

  Nobody makes a sound.

  Thirty sets of eyes rest on me.

  ‘Why would you ask such a question?’ Frau Schmidt’s voice is strained, her cheeks flushed. ‘Because of course, you know the answer, don’t you? There is no difference, however the Jew may look. His true character will belie the outer casing. His blood cannot be anything but inferior. His mind can be nothing but flawed, and his intentions will have the same aim of self-betterment, whether he be fair or dark.’ She grips the side of the teacher’s table until her knuckles turn white. ‘I hope I have answered your question adequately, Herta,’ she adds, and replaces her glasses.

  She’s afraid I’ve set her a test. She knows who my father is and fears I will report her. These days a teacher has more to fear from a student than the other way around.

  ‘Yes. That is most clear. Thank you.’

  Erna nudges me in the ribs.

  ‘What did you ask that for?’ she asks, and I shrug, because I don’t fully understand myself.

  *

  After sch
ool, back at home, I go to my room and retrieve my journal from its hiding place. Within its geometric covers, I can be entirely honest. It’s my only true, trusted friend and I write:

  Oh, how I miss you Karl! The house is different without you. The air inside its walls is stilled, as if frozen without your life to fill it with warmth and movement. Sometimes the floorboards creak or a curtain swishes in the breeze and I think it’s you. But there is no one there. Perhaps it’s the ghosts of past inhabitants, their misery trapped, seeping out of the masonry, infecting our lives with bad luck. Please come home soon…

  The telephone rings in the hallway.

  ‘Would you like to go to the cinema to see Operation Michael?’ Tomas’s voice is fuzzy at the end of the crackling line.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m in the mood.’

  ‘Please come, Hetty. I’ve already asked Erna and she said yes. It’s a war film,’ he adds, as though that would tempt me.

  I suppose anything to take my mind off the girl-child and that revolting husband stealer; off Walter and the wretched Kafka which still lies, unread, beneath my mattress.

  Erna and Tomas are waiting for me outside the cinema.

  ‘Hurry up, snail!’ Erna calls, waving as I run from the tram stop. ‘It starts in five minutes.’

  Our seats are in the middle row. The lamps are dimmed and voices become hushed. Above our heads a shaft of white light from the projector cuts through the darkness, illuminating the big screen at the front. Clouds of cigarette smoke rise and curl through the beam.

  The projector whirs into life and I settle back into my seat between Tomas and Erna to watch the newsreel. Tomas leans towards me and nestles his arm against mine on the velvet armrest between us. I glance at him but his attention is focused on the clip Festliches Nürnberg. His head is close to mine, but angled away so I can see the thousands of marching soldiers on the screen weirdly distorted through his glasses.