Pennies For Hitler

by Jackie French

  Georg bounced on his toes. ‘Hurry up! We’ll be late!’

  Mutti smiled. ‘No, we won’t.’

  ‘Will there be ice cream as well as cakes?’

  ‘No ice cream, I think.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Mutti laughed. ‘Today is for the University students. Ice cream might drip on their gowns.’

  She took Georg’s hand as they walked out the door. Like all their tables and bookshelves, it smelled of lemon polish. The daffodils smiled at them from the garden, nodding their heads in the spring breeze. The rosebuds were swelling. Röslein rot, red roses, just like in Lotte’s song.

  He would never see them again.

  Papa waited for them in the echoing foyer of the University. All the buildings in the University looked like they had been made for giants. Stone faces with tongues poking out or long hooked noses stared down from the tops of the buildings around the quadrangle.

  Papa said the stone heads were called gargoyles. Georg liked the one with round cheeks best. The others made him shiver — a fascinated shiver as though the gargoyles knew something that the small humans below them did not. Sometimes he imagined that when all the people were gone at night the gargoyles made faces at each other and yelled insults across the grass.

  Papa kissed Mutti’s cheek and patted Georg on the back. ‘You look very fine,’ he said. ‘I’ve reserved you seats in the front row.’

  He led the way up, up, up the two flights of broad stone stairs and through the big wooden doorway into the Hall.

  The Hall was full of women sitting in silk dresses, and hats like Mutti’s, with a sprinkling of proud fathers too.

  Georg stared out the long windows at the tops of the trees outside, then up at the dragons and knights with swords painted on the ceiling. He had hoped the Hall might have a clock where a knight chased a dragon when the clock struck the hour, like the one down in the quadrangle, but there was only a portrait of the Führer on the wall by the stage.

  Georg wondered what the Führer was doing today. It would be something grand. Already he had reclaimed Austria and the Sudetenland for Germany; and Czechoslovakia again; and pushed the arrogant French from the Vaterland. Georg thought of the soldiers in the newspaper. Maybe even now they were marching into Poland to free the Germans in Danzig. Herr Doktor Schöner said that Danzig was a German town, even though it was in Poland. Soon the Führer would free Danzig too …

  Mutti sat next to Frau Doktor Hansmeyer, who smelled of peppermint drops. Georg wriggled onto the chair next to her. His legs dangled. He hoped he would start growing soon.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ said Papa softly. Then he was gone, his black academic gown swishing around his trouser legs.

  Georg watched the students stand in a line in their new black robes. The University orchestra began to play. Gliddle, gliddle, gliddle went the violins. Boom PAH went the tuba.

  The University lecturers strode in, the Rektor in his red robe, the Herr Doktors and Professors in their black. Papa looked straight ahead till he was level with Georg and Mutti, then turned and winked as he passed.

  The lecturers sat in a row on the stage as the music stopped.

  The Rektor gave a speech. It was interesting at first, but went on too long.

  A tall student with blond hair got up to speak. It was a long speech too.

  ‘We also serve who do not fight with guns!’ The student’s voice was fierce and proud. His blue eyes were as bright as the sky. ‘Our swords are words. We fight with pen and page. Even here, in the still heart of learning, we keep faith with our fathers and with destiny …’

  Georg looked at the paintings on the ceiling. Who was the knight? Why did he have to fight the dragon?

  Maybe the dragon had been stealing sheep. The villagers were starving! They implored the knight to save them, to kill the hungry dragon …

  The story began to weave itself. The dragon roared. The trees burst into flame … No, that wouldn’t work. The knight would roast in his armour and his horse might run away.

  Georg started the story over. This time Hitler was the knight, but on a tank instead of a horse, just like the photo in the paper when the Führer entered Prague. A tank would be better against a dragon than a horse …

  At last the student sat down. One by one the students came onto the stage to get their scrolls and to shake the Rektor’s hand. The students shook Papa’s hand too. Papa looked important up there on the stage.

  The last student bowed and smiled, and took his scroll.

  Cream cakes at last, thought Georg.

  The orchestra began to play the national anthem. Up on the stage the Herr Doktors and Professors stood to leave.

  Suddenly the tall student who had spoken earlier ran up onto the stage again. He gazed at the audience and began to sing. ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles …’

  The crowd muttered, startled. Georg wondered if the Rektor would order the student to be quiet.

  Down below the stage a small group of students stood apart. Now they sang too. One by one the crowd began to sing as well. Georg smiled. It must be all right to sing then. Georg joined in; he’d learned the words at school. ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles in der Welt …’

  Germany, Germany above all others in the world.

  All at once the students’ song changed. Georg strained to understand the words.

  ‘Juden ’raus! Juden ’raus!’

  Jews out! Jews out!

  The audience’s singing straggled away. They sat, confused.

  ‘Juden ’raus! Juden ’raus!’

  Jews? Georg looked around. There weren’t any Jews here. Jews weren’t allowed to teach, not even in schools. They couldn’t go to University.

  The group’s song was a chant now. Young men in their black robes — blond hair, brown hair, black hair, some with glasses, one with a moustache — the same intent look on all their faces.

  The crowd grew silent. Even the orchestra stopped playing. No one moved or murmured. It was as though they had been turned into gargoyles too.

  ‘Juden ’raus! Juden ’raus!’

  Suddenly a man at the back of the Hall joined in the chant. ‘Juden ’raus! Juden ’raus!’ Others in the audience yelled too. The sound echoed across the Hall.

  ‘Juden ’raus! Juden ’raus!’

  The tall student ran down the steps. ‘Now!’ he yelled.

  The small group of students began to march. They marched like schoolboys marching into class. Left right, left right, they marched.

  ‘Sieg heil! Sieg heil!’ the students shouted as they passed the photo of the Führer. They saluted, their arms held out. ‘Sieg heil! Sieg heil!’

  The tall student yelled another order. Two of his group grabbed one of the other students by the elbows.

  The young man struggled. His friends tried to pull him back. The band of students linked arms, a wall of black-robed shadows impossible to pass. The two students dragged the young man across the room towards the windows. The chant was even louder now.

  ‘Juden ’raus!’

  Someone screamed at the back of the Hall. Mutti leaped up and looked around. All the adults scrambled to their feet too. Georg climbed up on the chair to see.

  ‘Mutti … Mutti, what’s happening?’ Was the student a Jew? Was that why the other students were dragging him away? But he didn’t look Jewish. He didn’t even have a long nose. There couldn’t be any Jews here!

  ‘Stop them!’ cried Mutti.

  The students stopped at the windows. Suddenly the student vanished, flung out the window by the strong young arms of those who had been his friends.

  His shriek was swallowed in the yells of the crowd.

  Georg thought he heard a thud far down on the ground. The Hall was filled with noise. Noise and hate, he thought, still staring at the students.

  The student executioners smiled, as though they had done good work. Their friends were already dragging a second victim towards the window.

  ‘No!’ scre
amed the young man. The scream went on and on, as though it was a song. Neeeiiinnnn …

  ‘My God. My God,’ whispered Mutti. She gazed up at Papa on the stage, her gloved fingers twisting in anguish.

  Most of the audience seemed dazed too. Only Papa moved.

  ‘For pity’s sake, stop them!’ yelled Papa, reverting to English in his anger.

  He ran down the steps from the stage, his face white. ‘Someone help me!’ he yelled, in German now.

  Three of the students broke from their group. But they didn’t help. They grabbed Papa’s arms. Papa wrenched himself around. ‘Do something!’ he appealed to the Rektor.

  The Rektor stood, uncertain. He glanced at the photo of the Führer. He shook his head.

  The two executioners lifted the second victim up to the window. ‘Juden ’raus!’ they screamed, their voices high in triumph.

  ‘No! I’m not a Jew!’ the young man yelled.

  One of the executioners laughed.

  ‘Nein!’ The young man screamed. He tried to grasp the window sill as they thrust him through the opening. For a moment Georg could hear the scream outside too. Then it was gone.

  Suddenly Papa ducked, forcing his arms free. He ran across the Hall, towards the students at the window.

  ‘Why in heaven’s name are you doing this?’ he began, his voice so furious it rose above the chant.

  They will stop now, thought Georg dazedly. Papa will tell them there are no Jews here. He will explain how poets are above politics …

  The student with bright blue eyes, eyes like the sky in summer, bent to grab Papa’s legs. Papa fell down between the black robes of the students.

  ‘He is a Jew too!’ yelled the student. ‘He tried to hide, but the truth is out! Our Herr Professor is a Jew!’

  ‘Jude! Jude! Jude!’ It was as though the students had only one voice now.

  Mutti screamed. The scream went on and on. She managed two steps towards Papa but Frau Doktor Hansmeyer grabbed her arm. Mutti shook it off but someone else held her too. She struggled and her hat fell off.

  ‘Papa!’ Georg jumped off his chair. He was lost in trousered legs and skirts. He couldn’t see. Someone grabbed his wrist.

  He heard Papa yell, ‘Marlene!’ That was Mutti’s name. Papa called, ‘Marlene, save Georg!’ and then more faintly, ‘Ich liebe dich.’ I love you.

  Georg strained to see between legs and skirts. What was happening to Papa?

  ‘Mutti!’ he yelled. ‘Mutti!’ He couldn’t even see her now. The orchestra played again, as though they tried to drown out the yells.

  Suddenly Mutti wrenched his wrist from the grip of whoever held it. She lifted him up. Georg was much too big to be carried, but Mutti carried him down the Hall, stumbling in her high-heeled shoes.

  Georg tried to look back, to see what had happened to Papa. They had to help him! But Mutti pressed his face hard into her shoulder. She made a strange, harsh noise that might have been a sob.

  Down the wide stone stairs, worn with hundreds of years of students’ feet. Down, down. Behind them people yelled. Someone called, ‘Frau Doktor Marks!’

  Were they trying to help them? Perhaps they had rescued Papa. Perhaps the Hall was orderly again.

  Georg looked back up the stairs. A young man stood there in a black student robe. ‘You have a little Jew rat, Frau Doktor Marks! How does it feel to have a Jew rat for a child?’

  For a moment Georg thought the boy was going to follow them down the stairs. But he vanished back into the Hall. The screams had stopped. The crowd was singing again now.

  Mutti staggered against the stairwell. She put him down, and wrenched off her shoes.

  ‘Run,’ she whispered. ‘As fast as you can, Georg.’ She took his hand, holding her shoes in her other hand. Georg glanced up the stairs again. But no one watched them now.

  They ran, down the stairs, into the foyer. The cream cakes had been set out on the white-clothed tables, and the coffee urn. The women in white aprons stared at Mutti’s feet in their torn stockings, at the running boy and woman with no shoes and hat.

  Mutti pulled him out the door.

  People ran towards them across the stone paving of the quadrangle. Georg felt snow fingers of terror down his back. But the people weren’t chasing them. They kneeled by the bodies crumpled beneath the window. Blood gleamed on the green grass and cobblestones. The bodies looked like scarecrows blown over in the wind.

  ‘Papa,’ he cried. ‘Where is Papa?’

  No, Papa couldn’t be in that crumple of black robes and broken bodies. He would have made the students let him go. He would be running after them.

  ‘We have to wait for Papa!’

  Mutti jerked his hand. ‘Run,’ she panted. Her hair was loose from its pins. ‘Georg, run!’

  The gargoyles stared down, grinning and poking out their tongues.

  Mutti dragged him across the quadrangle and down into the street. She slipped her shoes back on, then pulled Georg towards the tram stop, gripping his hand like she would never let it go. Georg’s mind felt like ice.

  How many bodies lay in that puddle of black and blood?

  Had one of them been Papa’s?

  Chapter 3

  The tram clattered towards them on its tracks. Mutti didn’t seem to notice the wind that whipped her skirts as she glanced back towards the University. Her face was as blank as its stone.

  Papa would come soon, Georg told himself. He had to come soon.

  The tram stopped in front of them with a creak and a clang. Mutti hauled him up the steps, onto a hard wooden seat. She didn’t let go of Georg’s hand even on the tram, though he wasn’t a little boy now whose hand had to be held in case he fell off. But Georg didn’t pull it away.

  Mutti didn’t speak to the conductor either, just handed him money for their tickets. She gazed out as though looking at something Georg couldn’t see.

  They got out at the stop before Tante Gudrun’s house.

  The wind pushed at Mutti’s skirts again. It smelled of flowers, of summer to come. Georg wished the wind would go away. If the wind stopped there might be peace, like in Papa’s poem. He would hear Papa’s voice: ‘Quiet touches the treetops …’

  Mutti still didn’t speak as she hurried him across the road and down the footpath, through Tante Gudrun’s neat white-painted gate, along the path between the yellow daffodils. Mutti pulled the door bell over and over, as though the noise could make up for the words she couldn’t speak.

  At last Tante opened the door; she was wearing her navy-blue silk dress. Tante’s house always smelled of turnips, which was strange, because Georg had never eaten turnips there. Perhaps the servant ate them in the kitchen.

  Tante stared at Mutti’s face, her messy hair. Mutti’s face looked set in stone, like someone had decided to make a gargoyle pretty. ‘Marlene? What is it?’

  Mutti shoved past Tante, into the hall with its soft flowered carpet. She opened the door of Tante’s living room. ‘Stay in here,’ she said to Georg in English. ‘Promise? Don’t move.’

  Georg was so relieved that she could speak he nodded, even though he wanted to yell at her, to ask about Papa, about the Jews. To ask, ‘What’s happening? When can we see Papa?’

  Instead he waited. He sat on the brocade sofa and looked at the flowered carpet. He thought of Papa, of blood and gargoyles. He thought of the bodies on the grass, then forced the thought away. He tried to make his mind empty, to stop the pain. He tried to find a story, any story. The stories were all gone. Even the rest of the words of Papa’s last poem seemed frozen somewhere he couldn’t reach.

  Now and then he heard voices from the kitchen. At last he moved closer to the door, to listen.

  ‘Please, Gudrun,’ Mutti kept pleading. There was a mumble and then, ‘Please help us.’

  Perhaps Mutti wanted Tante Gudrun to ask Onkel Klaus to take his motor to the University to fetch Papa. Papa wouldn’t know that they were here. He’d worry. Mutti should telephone Lotte so that she could tell
Papa where they were when he came home again …

  He remembered the students’ laughter as the young man screamed. Pictures of the bodies seeped into his mind again. He tried to push them out but they seeped back. Bodies and blood, black student robes, red blood, white faces on green grass. The young men’s faces and —

  He thrust his fist into his mouth to stop from crying out. Papa’s face all bloody on one side, the other side the skin all white, the eye staring towards them as though it couldn’t see, would never see again.

  It couldn’t be Papa. It was someone else! It had to be! But if it were … then Onkel Klaus could take Papa to the hospital. The doktors would make him better. They’d bandage up his head so you couldn’t see the red, just like they’d bandaged up Georg’s foot when he had cut it at the lake.

  ‘Your foot has gone white!’ Papa had joked. ‘Poor Georg, one pink foot and one white.’ They’d laugh at Papa’s white head and Lotte would bring in stewed pears with cream …

  The students must know it was all a mistake now. Papa was not a Jew. He was their teacher. A teacher should be respected. They’d say that they were sorry. The tall student would beg Papa’s pardon.

  He tried to tell himself the dragon story again. Stories made time pass. But the world of stories had vanished from his brain.

  There was a series of clicks outside the door as someone pressed the phone to get the operator. He heard Mutti’s voice, fast and urgent. Was she calling the University, to speak to Papa or the Rektor? Was she calling their house to talk to Lotte?

  He couldn’t make out the words. He had never heard Mutti speak like that, as though a shell of iron suddenly covered her, each sound tight and hard.

  Mutti put the receiver down. She opened the door, stepped into the room, then shut the door carefully. He ran to her and she held him close. For a second he was afraid that she’d feel hard and stiff too. But she felt just the same.

  ‘Mutti, what’s happening?’ He spoke English, because Papa might be hurt and so it seemed right to speak his language now.

  ‘The brave Aryan Super-race is getting rid of the unclean.’ Her voice was flat.