My Brother's Secret

by Dan Smith

‘Of course,’ said the woman beside her. ‘Your husband is quite safe, I’m sure.’ She patted Frau Oster on the arm and gave her a sympathetic look.

  ‘Hitler’s definitely got them on the run if they’re trying tricks like this,’ Herr Finkel agreed. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll have the Russians soon enough.’ He crushed one of the pieces of paper in his hand and threw it down. ‘Then the British will surrender and your husband will be home.’

  ‘They can’t fool us with this nonsense.’ Frau Oster grabbed her young son’s hand and ushered him home.

  Herr Finkel watched her go, then turned to walk back to his apartment over the shop. When he was away from the crowd, though, he snatched up one of the leaflets, glanced around, then folded it in half and slipped it into his pocket.

  As I watched him, the wind blew one of the leaflets against my foot, so I bent to pick it up. When I stood up again, Herr Finkel had disappeared into the darkness and I stared for a while at the place where I had last seen him.

  ‘Mama says it’s propaganda,’ Lisa whispered, breaking me from my thoughts. ‘Things to make us feel bad about the war.’

  The piece of paper in my hand was about twice the size of a postcard but printed on flimsy paper. The image on the front shimmered in the reddish glow of the dying flares and I turned it so I could see it better, wanting to know why it had upset Frau Oster so much; why Herr Finkel had slipped one into his pocket.

  It flapped a little in the breeze, but I recognised the figure in the picture straight away.

  The Führer looked very smart. He was wearing his military cap, his long leather coat and his shiny black boots. His hands were clasped together in front of his chest as if something had pleased him very much.

  At his feet, and all around him, lay a pile of dead soldiers wearing German uniforms. Some had their arms outstretched; others were curled up as if they were asleep. Three of the dead men, right at the Führer’s feet, were on their backs with their mouths open. Their unseeing eyes stared up at their leader.

  In the sky, beside the Führer’s head, words were printed in blood-red ink.

  Hitler is killing your fathers

  ‘That’s like what it said on the wall.’ Lisa leaned close to get a better look at it. ‘And see who it is,’ she whispered and raised a finger to tap the Führer’s head. ‘Look at him smiling.’

  I stared at the picture.

  ‘What’s on the back?’ Lisa nudged me and made me turn over the leaflet where there was a whole page of print. ‘What does it say?’ she asked, leaning closer still.

  Her hair wasn’t plaited like it had been when I saw her earlier, and the breeze played with it, blowing it across my cheek. It tickled and I brushed it away so I could read the words.

  ‘… put it down.’

  ‘Hmm?’ I turned to see Stefan looking at me.

  ‘Put it down,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Now.’

  Oma and Opa were watching me. Mama, too. All of them staring at me.

  ‘Put it down,’ Stefan said again, and he reached out to swipe the leaflet from my hands. It snapped from my fingers with a crack, and dropped to the pavement before it was caught by the wind and tumbled away.

  ‘Ow.’ I furrowed my brow and watched the leaflet flutter down the street to join the others. ‘Why did you do that? What are you—’

  ‘Someone will see,’ he said, looking around.

  ‘I was just reading it. I want to know what it says.’

  Lisa stood beside me, watching Stefan. She looked almost as if she was in awe of him and I couldn’t help thinking I would like her to look at me that way.

  ‘We should go back inside,’ Opa said. ‘You too,’ he spoke to Lisa. ‘Someone will be along to clear this up soon enough. Best not to be outside when that happens.’

  I started to complain, but Stefan grabbed my arm and I knew there was no point. I could struggle, but I’d only embarrass myself even more in front of Lisa. My brother was much bigger and stronger than I was.

  ‘See you tomorrow, then?’ Lisa said. She looked disappointed but I couldn’t decide if that was because I was leaving or because my brother was.

  I nodded, saying, ‘Tomorrow,’ and then Stefan whisked me into the house and closed the door behind us.

  ‘Ow!’ I snatched away from him. ‘What’s that for? Why did you make me—’

  ‘Because you don’t want people to see you reading those things, you idiot.’

  The way he raised his voice at me, made me flinch and take a step back.

  ‘You don’t want anyone to think you kept one. If they tell someone, then who knows what would happen to us? To you.’ He stressed that last word with a finger pointed at my chest. ‘If the Gestapo finds out you’ve even read it …’ he took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘Everyone’s probably already watching you. Going out on your bike and getting caught by that man. Do you know how much trouble you’ve already caused for Oma and Opa?’

  ‘That was an accident. I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Then try thinking about someone other than yourself for a change.’ Stefan’s voice was getting louder and I took another step back.

  ‘You’re scaring him,’ Oma said.

  ‘Good,’ Stefan told her. ‘Maybe he needs a good scare. Maybe I can scare some sense into him.’

  ‘Please.’ Mama spoke so quietly her words were almost inaudible, but everyone stopped and looked at her. ‘Please,’ she said again. ‘No more shouting.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Opa agreed. ‘I think that’s enough.’ He put a hand on Stefan’s arm.

  ‘Why don’t you boys go into the kitchen?’ Oma said. ‘I’ll take your mama upstairs and then come down and make us a hot drink. I think we’ve had enough excitement for one night.’

  Stefan was as agitated as I’d ever seen him. He didn’t sit down, but paced the length of the kitchen, hair hanging over his eyes, watching his feet. Up and down on the black and white checkerboard tiles. Up and down. Up and down.

  I sat at the table, beside Opa, and watched Stefan.

  When he finally stopped, he leaned back against the sink and put his hands behind him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking up at me as if he were about to burst. ‘I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just … No. Actually I’m not sorry. I don’t think you understand what’s going on.’ His voice grew louder with each word. ‘I don’t think you know how much trouble you can get into for the smallest things.’ He lifted a hand and squeezed it into a fist. ‘They take people away just for saying what they think, Karl. Or because their nose is too big or their hair is too dark or because they keep their children away from the Deutsches Jungvolk.’

  ‘I know about—’

  ‘Well, did you know they took away your new friend’s papa?’

  ‘What? Lisa? No.’ I leaned away from him. ‘I thought he was a soldier, fighting in the—’

  ‘He was a schoolteacher,’ Stefan shouted and slapped his fist into the palm of his left hand. ‘Not a soldier; a schoolteacher. He refused to join the party and said things he shouldn’t have – things about your Führer – so they called him a Communist and took him away and nobody has seen him again.’

  ‘He was a Communist?’

  Opa shook his head. ‘No, Karl, he was a teacher; until Wolff took him away.’

  ‘Then he must have done something to—’

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ Stefan snapped. ‘When are you going to get that into your stupid, thick head?’

  ‘That’s enough Stefan.’ Opa held up a hand.

  ‘No, he needs to hear this.’ Stefan glanced at Opa, then focused on me again. ‘It’s time to stop pretending. He needs to know that you don’t have to do anything. You just have to say something, think something. All it takes is for one person to tell the Gestapo and that’s the end of it. Some people even report their own family.’

  He stared at me and I felt myself shrivel inside as he continued to shout.

  ‘And do you know what happens to the people they take
away, Karl? People like Lisa’s papa? They torture them at headquarters. They make them sign their own imprisonment orders, and they torture them, then they send them to camps; but they’re not like the one I went to. They’re worse. Much worse. People don’t come back like I did; they starve to death in those places. That’s what your Führer does to people who think the wrong thing.’

  ‘Starve? No.’ I shook my head. ‘No. They come home. They just go there to learn how to be better Germans. To exercise and …’

  ‘They go there to die, Karl.’ He slapped his fist into his palm again. ‘Just like the poor soldiers are sent to Russia to die. Soldiers like Papa. That’s how much your Führer loves us.’ Stefan sniffed hard and looked away for a moment before turning back to me. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. ‘Do you really think Papa wanted to go and fight?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Of course he bloody didn’t. Papa didn’t want to go away, he wanted to stay here with us. He can’t take care of us when he’s thousands of miles away, can he?’

  ‘I don’t understand …’

  ‘The Nazis made him fight. He had to go. He wanted to stay here with us but they took him away, don’t you understand that? Your Führer made him leave us. He sent him to fight. He killed him. The leaflet is right.’

  When he stopped, silence hummed in the room and my brother’s words echoed in my ears.

  Stefan took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again he looked at me and shook his head. ‘Please tell me you understand now.’

  I nodded, but my mind was spinning with thoughts of guilt and betrayal and the idea that I had been a part of something terrible. I was thinking about how awful Lisa must have felt when her father was taken away; that it was too horrible for her to even talk about, and what must she have thought of me in my uniform? I was thinking about Johann Weber’s tears and about Axel Jung kicking dirt in his face. I was remembering how Stefan had been taken away, and I felt a chill run through me at the thought that he might never have come home. And I was seeing those words, over and over again, spinning in my head. Those white words that had turned blood-red.

  Hitler is killing our fathers.

  LEAFLET

  I didn’t mention any of it to Lisa when she came to call for me the next morning. I didn’t know what to say or how to feel; everything was such a muddle in my head. I could hardly even think straight.

  ‘Good to see you’re not in that uniform again,’ was the first thing she said.

  ‘Not such a little soldier any more, eh?’ Stefan came up behind me and tousled my hair, making me pull away from him. It was Saturday and he had the morning off work.

  ‘What’s the matter, little brother? Am I embarrassing you in front of your girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

  Stefan whistled and raised both hands in surrender. ‘Sor-ry.’ He rolled his eyes at Lisa, which made her giggle.

  ‘Come on.’ I stepped outside. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ Stefan said before he closed the door on us.

  The street was clear, the sky was blue and there was only a wisp of cloud. Everything was so different from how it had been last night; we might have been on another planet. There were no leaflets fluttering about, so someone must have come in the dark and cleared them all away. The only hint that anything had happened, were the odd corners of paper that protruded from the guttering, or the ones that had stuck in the roof tiles and chimney pots.

  As we set off, I looked back at the kitchen window to see Mama standing there with Oma. She still looked tired and ill, but at least she wasn’t stuck in her bedroom.

  ‘Your mama’s feeling better?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She smiled. ‘Come on then, let’s go and get your bike. You remember what street it was on?’

  I only knew the names of a few streets other than the one I now lived on, so we decided to go back to the school and walk from there.

  When we were just past the alley running alongside Oma and Opa’s house, Lisa took my hand and pressed something into it. ‘I brought this for you. Put it in your pocket.’

  ‘What is it?’ I glanced down at the folded piece of paper.

  ‘One of those leaflets from last night.’

  It was as if she’d given me a small lump of electricity. The piece of paper seemed to come to life and tingle in my palm. I wanted to open it up right then and discover its secrets. I wanted to know what was written on the back and I wanted to see that picture again; the one of the Führer standing among the bodies of our dead fathers.

  ‘Don’t look at it now,’ she whispered, speaking as if she was trying not to move her lips.

  Remembering what Stefan had been so angry about last night, I looked round to see if we were being watched, then jammed the piece of paper into my pocket and stuffed it right down to the bottom where it lay like a dark secret.

  ‘Don’t you have a meeting today?’ I asked, trying not to think about the leaflet. ‘Jungmädelbund?’ It was the girl’s version of the Deutsches Jungvolk and they were all supposed to join.

  ‘There’s one this afternoon, but I could not go if you want.’

  ‘Not go?’

  ‘I do that sometimes. ‘

  ‘Don’t you get into trouble?’

  ‘Usually, but it’s not too bad. They make us parade up and down the yard for a while if we miss a meeting, but that’s no worse than all that exercising and talking about motherhood.’ She looked at me and pulled a face. ‘Bo-ring. You boys get to play war.’

  Ralf and Martin and the others would probably be playing one of those war games right now, but I didn’t feel as if I was missing out. Not any more.

  ‘I don’t want to play war,’ I said. ‘I want to fix my bike and go for a ride.’

  Lisa smiled at me. ‘Good idea.’

  ‘But maybe you should go this afternoon,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to get into trouble because of me.’

  ‘Because of you? Who says it’s because of you?’

  ‘No one, I just thought …’

  ‘I’m teasing,’ she nudged me. ‘Of course it’s because of you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re funny, Karl Friedmann.’ She laughed and hit my arm saying, ‘Come on,’ then made as if to take off down the street, but I grabbed her sleeve to stop her.

  ‘Look.’ I said, feeling my mouth go dry. ‘Over there; outside Herr Finkel’s place.’

  At the end of Escherstrasse a group of five or six people had gathered close to the shop. By the side of the road was a small grey truck with a hard, enclosed back, and behind it, glinting in the summer sun, Kriminalinspektor Wolff’s Mercedes was hunched at the side of the street.

  Just the sight of it made everything Stefan said to me last night come flooding back; the way he had shouted at me about the Gestapo and torture and camps and people never coming home.

  ‘Something’s happening,’ Lisa said. ‘Something bad.’

  A shiver ran through me and my scalp prickled. ‘Like what?’ And even though I wanted to know, I was also afraid to find out.

  ‘Let’s see.’

  As we moved closer, more people began to stop near Herr Finkel’s place. There must have been at least twenty of them on the street now. Frau Amsel and Frau Vogel were there, standing with Frau Oster among the bystanders, shopping baskets in hand and—

  We stopped when we saw the SS soldiers.

  Two of them; stationed right outside the shop. Tall and menacing in their black uniforms, they stood to attention with submachine guns slung from their shoulders. Their faces were set like stone, their eyes staring straight ahead.

  ‘You think Herr Finkel’s in trouble?’ There was a tremble in Lisa’s voice.

  ‘I don’t—’ Then it hit me. After the raid last night, I had seen Herr Finkel pocket one of the leaflets. Perhaps I was not the only one to have seen it. Perhaps someone h
ad reported him.

  Without thinking, I put a hand to my pocket, where the folded leaflet lay like a guilty secret.

  As I touched it, a voice called from inside Herr Finkel’s shop. The two SS soldiers left their post and entered the building.

  For a moment there was an eerie hush over the onlookers, then came the harsh sound of a man’s voice shouting inside.

  Nobody dared move on the street, and I felt very frightened for Herr Finkel.

  The voice shouted once more, loud and vicious, followed by a brief pause, then the terrible sound of things being smashed. It was impossible to see what was happening inside the shop, but the noises made my blood run cold; the repeated crashing of glass, the clatter of breakables, and the thunder of wood splintering.

  And beneath it all, I was sure I could hear an old man begging to be spared.

  The bystanders on the street started to push back, as if the windows might explode outwards at any moment, showering the pavement with glass. Or as if they were afraid they might be drawn into the terrible things happening inside the shop, but then the sounds stopped almost as suddenly as they had started.

  A quiet hush fell over Escherstrasse once more.

  When the shop door opened, the soldiers re-emerged into the street with Herr Finkel between them.

  The shopkeeper’s right leg dragged beneath him as he shuffled across the pavement. His movement was slow and difficult, and when he slipped, the soldiers grabbed him, shaking him and shouting at him.

  ‘Hurry up!’ they ordered. ‘Walk straight!’

  Herr Finkel’s head hung between slumped shoulders as he tried and failed to do as they instructed, and eventually he collapsed to his knees. For a moment he knelt on the hard stones, with his head bowed. He swayed for a moment, then keeled over to one side, hitting his head on the pavement.

  ‘Stand up!’ the guards shouted at him. ‘On your feet!’

  They took hold of him with a tight grip, holding an arm each as if they were going to tear them right out of their sockets, and dragged him to his feet.

  That’s when I saw what they had done to him.

  Herr Finkel’s left eye was swollen shut and there was blood smeared around his mouth and nose. When I looked closer, I could see spots of it on the pavement where he had collapsed.