Pennies For Hitler

by Jackie French

  He clenched his fists, then when the action didn’t rock the suitcase clenched them over and over, wriggling his toes too. It would be silly to go to all the trouble of carrying a boy in a suitcase if you only wanted him dead. He wasn’t going to die and Papa wasn’t going to die and Mutti wasn’t going to die either.

  The fat woman had told the truth. She said he had to stay in the suitcase for one night. He could do that.

  How far did a train go in one night? Out of Germany? He should have asked. Would she have told him more if he had asked? What you do not know you can’t tell.

  A-hugachug, a-hugachug went the train around him. There were no other noises. He wondered if everyone was asleep.

  Not morning then. Maybe a long way till morning. Hours before he could move again, breathe fresh air, drink water — cool fresh water. His throat hurt, as though he’d been crying. Could you cry in your sleep? He bit his lip. If he had cried in his sleep someone might have heard him. But he’d have felt the case move if someone had opened it and found him inside.

  He was still safe. But he couldn’t sleep again. Couldn’t risk sleep. If he was found then the Gestapo would know that Mutti was trying to get him out of Germany. If she hid her Jewish son then she must be a Jew too. If he was found it wouldn’t just be the women who carried the suitcase who would be punished.

  He tried to think of a story. One of his favourite ones. The story in which he had a big dog called Bruno … no, that story had Mutti and Papa in it. The story about the Führer and the dragon.

  Not the Führer. The Führer wouldn’t be in any of his stories now. The Führer would never be in the story of a Jude.

  His stories had all vanished. Were they back home?

  The train shuddered and muttered around the suitcase.

  At last he slept again.

  The light was brighter through the holes when he woke up. Again he panicked for a moment, then remembered where he was and realised that once again he must have slept without making a noise, or not one anyone had heard.

  The pain was worse. The whole world was pain. He was half grateful for it. The body could only understand so much pain. When his body hurt this much the things he didn’t want to think about, the things he had to think about, didn’t hurt as much. He heard voices below him: a child called out somewhere; a baby cried. The pain had become part of him.

  A man’s voice barked something. He froze. It was an official’s voice; it was an order. Was it the Gestapo?

  He tried to not even breathe. He waited for the jerk of the suitcase.

  Could he run if they opened it? If he jumped up and ran away he could hide. If they didn’t find him they’d never know he was Mutti’s son. She would not get into trouble for smuggling out her son. But would his cramped, frozen muscles let him run?

  Where could he hide on a train? Under the seat? But people would see him. They’d tell the Gestapo officers, ‘The Jew is under the seat.’ In the toilet? But they’d look there. You always checked behind the toilet door in hide and seek, and there was always some silly kid hiding there because he hadn’t found a better place to hide.

  But there was nowhere else. Not on a train. And suddenly he knew what he would have to do.

  He must open the door. Must face the rushing darkness and jump out into it. He would die — that’s what happened when you jumped off a train. But perhaps no one would find his body till Mutti was safe. If he put his passport down the toilet before he jumped no one would know who he was …

  ‘Passports!’ The order came again, but this time he understood the word.

  Passports. You showed your passport when you came into another country. They must be leaving Germany. He was safe.

  No, not yet. He tried to remember last year’s holiday. They had shown their passports long before the border. He remembered Papa pointing out the guardhouse as they passed. Mutti had been wearing a hat with flowers. She laughed and said, ‘We are in France now.’ Georg had stared out the window but the land didn’t look any different from Germany: the same plots of cabbages; the same cows in fields. Even the trees had been the same, and the old women in their black skirts and ragged headscarves carrying rocks or potatoes in their filthy aprons, their ankles thick and knotted from years of fetching and carrying.

  He shouldn’t have thought of the toilet. Even though he hadn’t drunk anything for hours and hours, he still needed to go. He pressed his legs together. The need got worse and worse then, slowly, somehow, it went away.

  He tried to remember the holiday again. Not the holiday last Easter down at the lake. He would remember every second of that trip, just as it had been — Mutti laughing in her summer dress, her bare arms brown and Papa without his Herr Professor face, laughing too, in white flannels carrying the picnic basket, stopping to kiss Mutti’s neck so she blushed and whispered to him, but looked happy too.

  ‘You are a Rhine maiden,’ said Papa to Mutti. ‘You are a siren who has captured me, a poor Englishman. How can a poet escape the song of a Rhine maiden? One glimpse of her gold hair and he is lost!’

  ‘Mutti has brown hair,’ said Georg.

  Papa laughed. ‘In the sunlight it is gold. And in my heart. In meinem Herzen bist du gold.’ He lifted up the picnic basket. ‘Who is ready for lunch?’

  Mutti spread the picnic blanket, and Papa opened the basket. There was cold chicken and a flask of tea and two bottles of lemonade. No, don’t think of lemonade.

  The thin taste of past happiness fled. Would he fit in a picnic basket?

  Don’t think of that either. Don’t think of baskets or cases or you’ll scream. Don’t think of Papa or Mutti; don’t think at all; just wait for it to go away — for everything to go away. Count to a hundred and then you can scream.

  Eins, zwei, drei … hundert. He bit his lip and began to count again. Hundert. Zweihundert. Tausend … One more thousand and then he really would scream. Eins, zwei …

  The train stopped.

  He waited for the suitcase to be lifted down. But although the voices went further and further away, it didn’t move.

  Had they forgotten him? Would he stay here locked away for days and days?

  Maybe they were too scared to let him out, in case someone saw them and told the Gestapo. Maybe they had left him here thinking, ‘He is a clever boy. He will work out that he has to get out himself, find his own way to England. We are rid of him now.’

  I will count to ten thousand, thought Georg. If no one comes then I will try to get out.

  But how? The suitcase was made of strong thick leather. He couldn’t kick through leather. Maybe if he scratched with his fingernails long enough he could make a hole, and then a bigger hole. Maybe if he yelled someone would come.

  No, if he yelled whoever heard him might call the French police. They might tell the German police who would tell the SS who would know that Mutti had tried to smuggle her son out.

  He would have to wait till it was quiet, till it might be safe to sneak away.

  How long? he thought desperately. Pain no longer mattered, nor did thirst. It was as though he was fading into the darkness of the suitcase. If he didn’t move or make a sound soon he would vanish. There would be no Georg to escape at all.

  The suitcase moved down through the air. There was a very gentle thump, and then a clicking sound that he realised meant he was on a trolley.

  He didn’t know if he felt relief or anguish that the journey was still going. Dreaming of getting out made it worse. Dreaming of freedom made it worse too.

  Think about the movement, he told himself. Up and down and back and forth, then down, clunk. A whistle, a man’s yell. The suitcase moved again. The suitcase was on a trolley, rolling along the platform.

  He tried to listen to the voices all around. Were they speaking German or French or English? He knew a few words of French. Or were they speaking Dutch, perhaps? You could get to England from Holland, and Belgium too, even Poland perhaps. Why hadn’t he asked? Why hadn’t they told him?

&nb
sp; What you do not know you can’t tell.

  Up again, and back and forth, the sound of cars, the suitcase thudding onto something soft and then an urgent voice: ‘See if he’s all right.’

  The lid opened.

  Chapter 7

  The light hurt. His body hurt. He tried to see, to move. He thought, I have gone blind. And then, I am crippled too. But then his eyes began to see.

  He tried frantically to work out what he was seeing. Was he really safe or should he run? If French — or Dutch or Belgian — police found a boy in a suitcase they might send him back to Germany. The French didn’t like Jews either. The Dutch? He didn’t know.

  A young woman’s face peered down at him. She had blonde hair in plaits tied up about her head. She was not the police. ‘Thank God. He is fine,’ she said to a man with a grey beard.

  They were in a car, on the back seat. The young woman began to massage his arms with gentle fingers. The pain made him whimper but he tried not to cry out. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You are safe now. Safe.’

  ‘Are we in England?’ he managed to say.

  ‘No. In France. England soon. But you are safe here.’

  The man with the beard lifted him out of the suitcase and helped him move his limbs to lie flat out on the car seat, his head in the young woman’s lap.

  She smiled down at him. ‘You were very brave,’ she said. ‘And now you’re safe.’

  Her name was Fräulein Schmidt. The man was her brother, Herr Schmidt. Later he was to think that perhaps those weren’t their real names — what you do not know you can’t tell. Schmidt was the most common name there was. But for now the names fitted. They were enough.

  Fräulein Schmidt gave him water. He hadn’t known his throat hurt till he drank it. She gave him a small fresh roll with sausage. He ate because his belly said that he was hungry, but it tasted of dust.

  He looked out the car window at the France that looked like home: shops that might be German shops except for the signs in French; cars that might be German cars on the road.

  It was morning. Somehow he knew it was early morning; there was something about the long shadows, the freshness of the light. It was as though last night had stretched till it was a thousand nights long. It had been a thousand nights. Somehow he knew that as long as he lived that night would still take up years inside his brain.

  Now he knew that ‘nothing’ — seeing nothing, never moving, all sounds muffled — was the most frightening thing in all the world.

  Herr Schmidt got into the driver’s seat. He drove them to a hotel and when they arrived he took out Georg’s suitcase and another from the boot. Then he drove away, leaving just Georg and the Fräulein to go into the hotel, and stand by the reception desk.

  His legs trembled. His hands did too, until he clenched them so they steadied. He wouldn’t cry.

  ‘My little brother is tired from the journey,’ said the Fräulein to the receptionist. He understood her, even though she spoke in French. ‘Georg is good at languages,’ Papa had said. ‘He is good at everything,’ said Mutti. ‘A scholar like his father,’ and she’d kissed his hair.

  The receptionist handed the Fräulein a key.

  The room was small, with striped wallpaper and lace curtains. It looked French, though he couldn’t have said why. There was a bed with a lacy frilled cover for the Fräulein and a trundle bed to pull out for him to sleep on too. He was glad he was to sleep in her room tonight. He’d had too much of being in the dark, alone.

  They ate up there — cups of hot chocolate, fresh bread rolls. She let him dunk the bread into the chocolate, and didn’t correct him when some dripped onto his shirt. He wanted to sleep, but she shook her head. ‘If you sleep now you won’t sleep well tonight.’ Something in her voice also seemed to say, ‘You need to be too tired to be scared. If you are tired you won’t cry for your mother tonight and make people notice us.’

  Later they walked to a park, a young woman and a boy, no one special to notice. He didn’t pat the statues, or even stare at the fountain frothing into the lake. Fräulein Schmidt bought him an ice cream, a big scoop held between two wafer biscuits, asking for it in French. He knew without her telling him that he was not to speak when anyone could hear him. No one must notice a German boy and a Fräulein. No one must notice them at all.

  People spoke French all around them. He watched the pigeons bob and sway as they trotted around on the grass. They looked like the pigeons from back home, despite the French voices all around. He shut his eyes and said to Mutti, I’m watching pigeons. I’m safe. Where are you?

  There was no answer.

  He waited till they were back at the hotel to ask, ‘Could we telephone home, please? I want to speak to Mutti.’

  Fräulein Schmidt shook her head.

  ‘Tante Gudrun’s then,’ he said desperately. ‘I know the number. She will know where Mutti is.’

  Fräulein Schmidt put her arm around him. For a moment he wished he really was her little brother and that she would be there always, at least till Mutti came.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Fräulein Schmidt softly. ‘I don’t know your mother. I don’t even know her name — or your surname either. Shh,’ she added, placing a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t tell me. If … if I am ever caught the Gestapo might hurt me till I give them names. If I don’t know your mother’s name then I can’t say anything that might hurt her. Do you understand?’

  No, thought Georg, I don’t understand. He understood the words, but not how a world could crack and move, like there’d been an earthquake but not in the ground: all around instead. But he said, ‘Yes, I understand.’

  Fräulein Schmidt smiled. ‘You will have to be brave again. You can be brave, can’t you? You have been so brave so far.’

  Georg made himself nod. He wondered what Johann was doing now, and his other friends at school. But they were not his friends now. They had been friends with the boy they thought he was. They would not be friends with a Jew.

  ‘Good,’ said Fräulein Schmidt. ‘Now, will we try pommes frîtes? And roast chicken too.’

  Chapter 8

  FRANCE

  She left him at the gangplank of the ferry to England the next afternoon. She hadn’t told Georg before they reached the wharf that she’d leave him there. She had even taken her suitcase, just like she was going to England too.

  For the first time he felt betrayed. Fräulein Schmidt had said that he was brave. Did she think he would cry like a baby because she said she had to leave him now?

  ‘If the German border guards see “England” many times on my passport they will be suspicious.’

  ‘Have you taken other boys to England?’

  She pretended she didn’t hear. ‘You have got your book? Your sandwiches?’

  He nodded. The book was an English book, about English children, by a man called Arthur Ransome. It had taken a while to find a shop with English books, but he needed to read the language well now.

  ‘You are lucky,’ she said softly. ‘You have an English passport. So many have nowhere they can go even if they escape. No country that will take them in.’ She bent down and hugged him. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘Your aunt will be waiting for you.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. My … brother … telegraphed her. She telegraphed back. Your aunt will be at Dover when you arrive. She lives in London, yes?’

  ‘Yes. She works for a person in the English government.’

  ‘That sounds good. She will take care of you.’ Fräulein Schmidt hugged him again, then pushed him gently towards the gangplank, carrying his suitcase. ‘Goodbye, Georg. Good luck.’

  He wanted to throw the suitcase in the oily sea. He wanted to kick it, destroy it and all its memories. But it held all he owned now. It was a thread that linked him back to Mutti.

  He showed the man his ticket, then ran to the rail to see if the Fräulein was still there.

  She was. She waited till the ferry hooted, and began to sail away. Sh
e waved and he waved back. She was still there when the ferry turned as it sailed out of the harbour.

  He ran to the other side of the ferry, but by the time he had got there she was gone.

  Chapter 9

  ENGLAND

  Aunt Miriam wore navy blue, and a look of annoyance and something else he didn’t understand, but she managed to smile and kiss him on the cheek before she held him at arm’s length. ‘You’re filthy.’

  He thought of the ice-cream stains on his shirt. ‘I’m sorry. I have no other clothes.’

  ‘Well, that can be remedied. Is that your only suitcase?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The porter will take it.’ She hesitated. ‘You are very welcome, George.’

  ‘My name is Georg,’ he reminded her.

  ‘It’s George now.’ She bent and said quietly, ‘I will explain when we get home. Come, or we will miss the train.’

  England looked wet. It was still grey too. Herr Doktor Schöner back at school said the English were weak; and they had only won the Great War because of the Americans.

  School, thought Georg. He had almost lost track of days. It was Monday now. His friends would be at school. Although not his friends now. He should have been at school, reading about the English, not sitting here among them.

  The Englishmen in the train carriage did not look weak. There were two men in dark suits and bowler hats reading newspapers, one at each window, like they were twins, but one was old and one was young, and they did not seem to know each other. Then there were Aunt Miriam and Georg. Aunt Miriam did not speak either, until the guard called out that dinner was being served in the First Class dining car.

  Aunt Miriam stood up and said, ‘Come on, George.’

  He didn’t think that he was hungry, but he was. The soup was tomato, very red. The meat was grey lamb slices in grey gravy, on thick white plates, with crisp-skinned roast potatoes and soggy Brussels sprouts. He ate it all, even the Brussels sprouts, though Mutti would have whispered, ‘You only need eat one.’