My Brother's Secret

by Dan Smith

  ‘They’ve beaten him,’ Lisa whispered in disbelief. ‘Beaten him in his own shop.’

  Behind the soldiers and poor Herr Finkel, Wolff emerged into the day, dressed in his dark suit, hat placed neatly on his head, and I imagined I could smell his after-shave. He stopped in front of the shop and studied the crowd with his steel-grey eyes.

  ‘This shop is no longer in business.’ He spoke clearly, so everyone could hear. ‘The contents are now the property of the Reich. Anybody found breaching these orders will be arrested.’

  I felt numb. Seeing someone I knew arrested and manhandled out of his own shop was horrible. I’d heard about these things, I knew it happened, but I had never seen it. And I always thought it happened to the right people; to people who deserved it. But after what Stefan had said last night, and how angry he was about people being taken away for just saying something or thinking something … Herr Finkel was a shopkeeper. He sold chocolate. What could he have done to deserve this? Had it been like this for Lisa’s Papa?

  I glanced at her, seeing her watching in a kind of daze, as the driver of the truck jumped down from the cab and hurried round to open the back of the vehicle. A heavy clunking sound drifted to us on the warm breeze as the lock unfastened and he swung the door open.

  Then something appeared from the corner of my eye. A flash of movement.

  I turned my head to see the two boys run across the road to stand by the truck. They huddled close together, one of them turning his head this way and that, while the other pulled something from his pocket that looked like a brown paper bag. He fiddled with the petrol cap for a second, then tipped the contents of the bag into the fuel tank before replacing the cap. It was no more than a few seconds before the boys had finished whatever they were doing and ran back across the road to stand as they had been, as if nothing had happened.

  I watched them for a moment, confused, then looked back at the other side of the street, seeing the soldiers drag Herr Finkel to the rear of the truck.

  The old shopkeeper raised his head and looked about as if he were seeing everything for the first time; as if he didn’t know where he was, or why his face was covered with bruises and his nose was bleeding.

  With one eye, Her Finkel looked at the people in the crowd – people he had known and served for years. But no one could help him.

  We were all too afraid.

  ‘Take him away,’ Wolff snapped.

  The soldiers forced Herr Finkel into the back of the truck and slammed the door shut, and then Herr Finkel was gone.

  I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Neither of us wanted to see any more, but it was hard to just walk away, so we stayed for a while as the vehicles drove off, leaving the two soldiers to close up the shop, hammering boards across the door.

  On the opposite side of the street, the two boys hung around for a few minutes. They looked disappointed.

  ‘We should go now.’ I spoke quietly and turned to Lisa, but she didn’t respond.

  The colour was completely drained from her face. Hardly blinking, her eyes welling up, she stood as if rooted to the pavement and stared at the spot in the road where the truck had been parked. She looked, for that moment, as if she were lost to the world.

  I watched her, not knowing what to say, and wondered again if it had been like this when her papa was taken away. I wanted to ask, but it didn’t feel right, so I just stood with her.

  When the soldiers fixed the last board in place, they shouldered their submachine guns and walked back along the street. The bystanders began to drift away, and soon it was almost as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Come on.’ I touched Lisa’s arm and she blinked hard, squeezing tears onto her cheeks. ‘We should go.’

  She looked at me and nodded, then wiped her eyes with her hands.

  By the time we went back to the task of trying to find my bicycle, the only evidence of the event was that Herr Finkel’s shop was boarded up.

  And the old shopkeeper’s blood was still on the pavement.

  Lisa and I walked in silence as we followed the route I had taken the day I met Wolff. I glanced at her from time to time, checking she was all right, but she just stared ahead and kept walking, as if she didn’t know I was there.

  After some time, Lisa led me into a narrow lane, similar to the ones I had cycled along the day of the crash. ‘This is where I saw it.’ They were her first words since leaving the site of Herr Finkel’s arrest, and her voice was hoarse. ‘The writing and the flower.’

  I stood beside her and looked at the white smear on the wall. It was the only sign that anything had been there at all. ‘I don’t think I saw it here. It was somewhere else.’

  ‘But it said the same thing? Hitler is killing our fathers?’ Her eyes were red and puffy from the tears.

  ‘Shh.’ I put a finger to my lips. ‘Someone might hear.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Lisa was standing with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders hunched, studying the wall as if something might appear if she stayed there long enough. She was wearing the same dress as yesterday and her hair was in plaits again. It had looked better last night, though, when it wasn’t all tied back. The plaits made her look like every other girl in the Jungmädelbund and that didn’t seem right. Lisa was different, so she should look different.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘I … come on.’ I blushed. ‘We should keep going.’

  Our footsteps were loud on the cobbles. The alley was empty, and the walls were high on each side, so we left an echo as we walked.

  ‘Do you think Hitler killed your papa?’ Lisa’s question took me by surprise and I turned to look at her, but she just stared straight ahead.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, still watching her. ‘I mean, he didn’t do it, but if the war is his fault, like Stefan says, then … well, he wouldn’t have gone away, would he?’

  ‘My papa said it was wrong to fight,’ she sniffed, ‘so they put him in a camp.’

  I hesitated. ‘Do you know where?’

  She shook her head and took a deep breath then stopped and leaned against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. ‘Wolff came in the night and took him away.’ She stared at the ground as she spoke. ‘He said Papa was spreading lies about the Führer so he took him away like he just took Herr Finkel away. I’m scared they might have killed him.’

  An image of the Kriminalinspektor popped into my head. The cold, grey eyes and the thin lips. The strong, sweet smell of aftershave. I could imagine him killing someone, and I didn’t know what to say to Lisa. What could I say that would make any difference? I felt useless.

  ‘I read the back of the leaflet,’ she said after a while. ‘I didn’t understand most of it, but it says he’s lying to everyone. That Hitler started the fighting and could stop the war whenever he wants. Lots of German soldiers have been killed, it says. Thousands of them in Russia.’

  Soldiers like Papa.

  ‘I thought we were winning,’ I said.

  Lisa shrugged. ‘I don’t know if it matters. They should stop anyway. Fighting is stupid and I hate Hitler as much as I hate the people who are bombing us.’

  I’d never heard anyone other than Stefan say something like that, but it didn’t shock me as much as it might have done a few weeks ago. I felt as if a layer of cloud was moving away from everything, and that I was finally seeing things as they really were.

  FRAU SCHMIDT

  We went on to the school, which was deserted now except for a pair of magpies sitting on top of the air raid siren. They chattered at us as we approached, then flew off across the yard.

  From there, I tried to retrace my way to the spot where Kriminalinspektor Wolff had bumped into me. It didn’t take us long to follow the route I’d taken, and it turned out I hadn’t even travelled very far. I recognised the street where the woman who’d helped me lived as soon as we came to it, but the houses were all in a row and looked identical.

  ‘We’ll knock
on a few doors,’ Lisa suggested. ‘Someone will remember you.’

  No one answered at the first house but, at the second, the woman recognised me right away. She directed us to number forty-three, just along the street.

  Number forty-three was the woman who had brought me a damp cloth and a glass of water. She was called Frau Schmidt, and she let us into her house and offered us a glass of milk and a biscuit.

  She ushered us into the kitchen and we sat at the table, both of us silent while she poured milk into two short glasses.

  ‘I was so frightened when I heard the crash,’ she said. ‘Such a loud bang, and when I came to the window and saw you on the road like that, I thought you were …’ she shuddered and brought the glasses to the table. ‘You’re very lucky you weren’t killed.’ She opened a tin, saying, ‘Help yourselves. I made them fresh this morning.’

  Lisa didn’t hesitate. She dipped right into the tin and took a biscuit. When she bit into it, crumbs scattered everywhere.

  ‘I hope you didn’t get into too much trouble,’ said Frau Schmidt. ‘I know what that man can be like. He’s a …’ she stopped herself. ‘Anyway. I hope you’re all right. The injuries not too bad?’ She pushed the biscuit tin towards me.

  ‘Not too bad, thank you.’ I took a biscuit and had a small bite. It was plain and didn’t taste of much, but I was hungrier than I had thought. ‘Thank you for helping me,’ I said with my mouth full.

  ‘You’re welcome …’ she waited for me to tell her my name.

  ‘Karl,’ I said. ‘And this is Lisa.’

  ‘Well, I’m Frau Schmidt and it’s very nice to meet you both.’

  ‘Do you have any children?’ Lisa asked. ‘I might know them from school.’

  Frau Schmidt shook her head. ‘My children are older now.’ She was staring over my shoulder as she spoke and when I turned around, I saw a collection of photographs on the sideboard. Three of them were pictures of men in uniform and were arranged in a line in front of the others.

  ‘Is that them?’ I asked. ‘Are they in the army?’

  ‘My son Joseph was killed last year in France. He’s the one in the middle. The other one is my younger son Max. He’s in Russia, fighting for Hitler.’

  ‘And the other man?’ I asked. ‘Is that your husband?’

  Frau Schmidt sighed. ‘Yes. Another one I lost in France.’

  When I looked back at Frau Schmidt, her eyes were glistening and there was something about her that reminded me of Mama.

  ‘My papa was killed,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you poor boy.’ Frau Schmidt blinked hard. ‘And your poor mother. It gets better with time, but you never forget.’

  ‘I don’t want to forget.’ Since getting the news about Papa, Frau Schmidt was the first person I had spoken to who knew someone killed in the war. ‘Do you think they wanted to fight?’ I asked.

  Frau Schmidt put a hand to her mouth and looked away as if she might be about to cry, so I glanced at the pictures once more and was drawn to one in particular.

  It was a picture of a girl and two boys, holding guitars and standing in front of what looked like an orchard, but I didn’t look at their faces because something about one of the boys had caught my attention.

  His badge. Pinned to the right side of his jacket, I noticed it straight away.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘There.’ I pointed. ‘What is that?’

  Lisa leaned closer to see it, then looked at me. ‘It’s the same,’ she whispered.

  ‘What’s that flower?’ I asked, turning around, determined to know. ‘What does it mean? I’ve seen it painted on the walls.’

  Frau Schmidt came over and took the photo from my hands. ‘It’s nothing. Just some silly thing Max made.’ She held the picture tight to her chest so we couldn’t see it any more.

  ‘And my brother had the same thing sewn into his jacket—’

  ‘Then you should ask your brother what it means.’ She returned the photograph to its place with the others and stood with her back to us, both hands on the sideboard.

  ‘I did. But he wouldn’t tell me. And the next thing I knew, he’d cut the flower off his pocket.’

  Frau Schmidt turned around but seemed flustered. She glanced about the room as if she didn’t know what to say or where to look. ‘Then … then perhaps he doesn’t want you to know about it,’ she said eventually. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t trust you.’

  Frau Schmidt might as well have slapped me hard across the face, and my guilty feelings rose to the surface. ‘I …’

  ‘And we have this.’ Lisa stepped forward to rescue me just like she did that day in Herr Finkel’s shop. She was holding out her hand, and in her palm was the carved wooden flower she had found. It was almost exactly the same as the one the boy in the photograph was wearing.

  Frau Schmidt stared at it. ‘Where did you get that?’ She reached out as if to grab it, but then clutched her fingers tight and snatched her hand away.

  ‘One of his brother’s friends,’ she lied. ‘What is it? A daisy?’

  Frau Schmidt looked at it for a long while. ‘An edelweiss,’ she whispered.

  ‘An edelweiss,’ I repeated, suddenly seeing it. Of course that’s what it was. ‘And what does it mean?’

  She looked up at us as if deciding whether or not to tell us.

  ‘Please,’ I asked.

  Frau Schmidt sighed and opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again and shook her head. ‘You’ll have to ask your brother. He’ll tell you if he wants you to know.’

  PARADE

  We walked either side of my bike, with a handlebar each, lifting the front wheel off the ground. It was so buckled we had to take the weight and let it roll on just the back wheel.

  ‘She was going to tell us.’ I could hardly contain my frustration. We had been so close to knowing.

  ‘She was probably scared.’ Lisa was annoyed too; I could hear it in her voice. ‘But at least we know what flower it is.’

  ‘Except now I’ve got about a million other questions. Like what does it mean? And why did her son have a badge just like it on his jacket? It was almost exactly the same.’ I stopped. ‘And I didn’t like what she said about my brother not trusting me.’

  ‘She doesn’t know you,’ Lisa said. ‘And last time she saw you, you were all dressed up in your stupid uniform.’ She looked at me for a moment and frowned as she chewed the inside of her lip. ‘Anyway, no one trusts anyone – this whole place makes me want to scream sometimes.’ She shook her head. ‘Come on, Karl Friedmann, let’s go home.’

  Lisa knew the way from here, so we headed towards the high street, and as we came closer, I heard the sound of drums in the distance.

  ‘Marching again.’ Lisa grumbled and her frown deepened. ‘As if today wasn’t bad enough already.’

  The noise grew louder and louder as we neared the high street. We could hear trumpets, too, though they weren’t being played very well, and when we turned the final corner, we saw the boys from the Deutsches Jungvolk and the Hitler Youth parading, just like I used to at weekends in the city.

  The boys were all in uniform – black trousers, black scarf and brown shirt. Their belt buckles glinted in the sun and their black boots were tromp-tromp-tromping on the road like the beat of an approaching army.

  Men in hats and suits, and women in dresses lined the pavements to watch them. There were very young children, too, pushing through for a better look. Some people clapped and cheered, while others were not so excited, as if they were just keeping up appearances.

  Most of them were strangers to me, but I recognised some of the faces of people who lived on Escherstrasse – Herr Ackerman, the butcher was there, and Frau Oster was wearing her best hat. She was holding on to her son with one hand and waving her flag with the other. There were a few people whose names I didn’t know but whose faces I had seen passing by the house or waiting in line at the shops. Several of the girls in the crowd waved to Lisa or said ‘hello’, bu
t she ignored them and ploughed on.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she muttered to me and put her head down, tightening her fists around the handlebars as the day’s frustration and anger grew in her.

  There weren’t as many boys parading here as in my group in the city, but what they lacked in numbers, they tried to make up for in noise.

  The first group of nine was marching three abreast, and each of them held a pole with a flag draped from it. Blood-red, with a white circle and a black swastika in the centre of it. There wasn’t much of a wind that day, so the flags just hung there like limp rags.

  A second group of boys – another nine marching three abreast – was right behind the flag bearers, but each of these had a drum and was beating it furiously. Behind them, three boys were blowing into trumpets. Their faces were red with effort and their cheeks were puffed out as if they’d been stuffed with bread.

  Behind the flag bearers and musicians, another fifty or sixty boys marched, black boots stomping hard on the road. They had been arranged so that the younger boys from the Deutsches Jungvolk were at the front and the older, Hitler Youth boys were at the back.

  It was the older ones who started singing first.

  ‘Hang the Jews! Line the fat cats up against the wall!’

  The younger ones started to join in, but they didn’t know the words so they just said the same thing over and over again.

  ‘Hang the Jews! Line the fat cats up against the wall!’

  Not so long ago, marching like this had seemed like the best thing in the world, but now I felt a stab of shame that I had shouted such hateful things.

  I glanced at Lisa, seeing that she was glowering at the boys and shaking her head.

  ‘Stupid parade,’ she said. ‘Stupid Nazis.’

  ‘Shh.’

  As the flag bearers approached, many of the people at the side of the road stood straight and raised their arms in salute, but Lisa and I kept going, struggling with my bike among the bystanders.

  Boots crunched, drums banged, trumpets blasted and the boys continued to sing.