by Alan Gratz
“Didn’t you hear?” I said. “There was a potato famine a hundred years ago.”
The truth was, even though we were in an embassy and could afford the best of what was available, the war made food as scarce here in Germany as it was back in the British Isles, and we both knew it.
“Did you get inside his house?” Simon asked between hungry bites of bread.
He meant Fritz, of course. The jet fighter plans. I shook my head. “But I think I’m getting closer. We trained after school. After we did some exercises, I taught him how to fight.”
“Fighting. The other Irish pastime,” Simon said. “After drinking, of course.”
“We wouldn’t have gotten so good at either one without the English as neighbors,” I told him.
Simon lifted his cup of tea to me in salute. He enjoyed our verbal sparring as much as I did. I smiled. The other Catholic families we had known in Dublin were big, lots of sons and daughters, and in my daydreams I had an older brother who would joke with me, wrestle with me, stay up late with me discussing deep thoughts. Defend me when the bullies ganged up on me in the school yard. For a moment, I imagined Simon like part of our family, saw a future, long after the war, where we were great friends who got together in London pubs to talk about our jobs, our families, what books we were reading.
“I finished The Golden Spiders,” I told him.
Simon swallowed down a too-big bite of bread. “Already? Not too painful, then, I take it?”
“It was great,” I said. And it really had been. It was about a boy in New York who sees a woman in a car call for help, a woman wearing earrings that look like golden spiders, and he goes to the famous detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, for help. “I like Archie a lot,” I said. “Wolfe’s smart, but he’s a jerk.”
Simon laughed. “Yes, he is. What was your favorite part?”
We talked about the book for a few more minutes while Simon inhaled what was left of the food and drink.
“I think next,” he said, going back inside the little closet with all the forbidden books, “we’ll try something by Agatha Christie.” He scanned the shelves, looking for the book he wanted. “A locked-room mystery.” He smiled and gestured at his tiny apartment. “Seems appropriate. Or no, wait—here. The Maltese Falcon. You’ll love this one.”
Suddenly the doorknob to Da’s study turned. The door cracked open. I flung the secret bookshelf door closed on Simon and threw myself backward against it to make sure it was closed as someone knocked and stuck his head inside the door.
It was one of the Nazis from dinner. SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer, the man I’d sat beside at the automaker’s dinner. A man whose job was to find the Jews still hidden in Berlin.
“Hello?” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer said. “I was looking for a telephone.”
My heart raced, and my chest heaved as if I’d just run a marathon. I could have sworn I locked that door!
“Ah, there’s one,” Trumbauer said, spying the phone on my father’s desk. He went to it, picked up the receiver, and told the operator the number he wanted. He watched me like a cat while he waited.
“I-I just came in to find something to read,” I said. I held up The Maltese Falcon, then realized it was a banned book and quickly hid it behind my leg. This was a disaster. Had he seen the title of the book?
SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer smiled faintly. “You really do look peaked,” he said, still staring at me. I could feel myself sweating from the roots of my hair. He looked down at the empty plate of food on the table. “But at least you have your appetite back.”
He was playing with me. I was sure of it. He knew Simon was here, and he was playing with me. I started to panic. What should I do? Call for my mother? And what would she do? Drug him too? An SS official, at a state dinner at the Irish embassy?
“Yes,” Trumbauer said into the phone. His call had been put through by the operator. “One moment.” He looked up at me. “If you would excuse me?” He wanted to be alone. To talk on the phone, or to search for Simon?
I peeled myself off the bookcase and walked stiffly across the room.
“I hope you feel better,” SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer called to me as I left. “We need more boys like you to join our cause if we’re to succeed.”
But I didn’t feel better. I felt worse. And I wasn’t going to feel any better until I was sure Simon was safe.
Pennants with the words FIGHT!, SACRIFICE!, and TRIUMPH! emblazoned on them fluttered in the cold February breeze. The day of the Hitler Youth initiation tests was bright and clear, the gray clouds of winter parting to reveal an almost blindingly blue sky. It had been two days since the dinner party. Two days since I was sure SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer had come into my da’s study looking for Simon. But if the Nazi had gone looking for him that night, he hadn’t found him, and in the days that followed, the Gestapo hadn’t knocked down our door and come tromping in to arrest Simon—or us. Maybe in my fear of getting caught, I was imagining things, but my visits to Simon in the interim to talk books had been shorter and more cautious.
SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer’s words echoed in my ears: We need more boys like you to join our cause if we’re to succeed. If I had really believed in Nazi Germany, if I had really thought, the way some Germans did, that Adolf Hitler was sent by God to save the German people and rule the world, I might have believed today’s beautiful weather was a sign. An omen. I might have believed this was what they called Führer weather—the way the rain and snow and clouds seemed to miraculously disappear any time something important happened, like the annual party rally in Nuremberg, or the Berlin Olympics in 1936, or whenever Hitler gave a speech. As though God was winking at Nazi Germany.
But I was pretty sure God didn’t have anything to do with Nazi Germany.
Fritz and I stood together in line, waiting to enter the testing ground. Did Fritz really believe the Nazi propaganda? And what about all these other boys? How many of them really wanted to be Nazis when they grew up, and how many of them hated all this nonsense but had to join because it was the law? You never knew the real Nazis from the fake ones, and you couldn’t exactly ask. Everybody had to pretend to be excited about the initiation even if they weren’t, for fear of the SRD spies who walked up and down the line. The junior Gestapo that Fritz was so desperate to join. And me along with him.
The boy ahead of us in line was stopped by one of the SRD. Apparently, his father had been heard making jokes about Hitler in a beer hall one night, and neither of his parents were members of the Nazi Party. The Jungvolk boy made excuses, but the SRD boy cut him off.
“You will not be permitted to continue in the Hitler Youth until this situation is satisfactorily resolved,” the SRD boy said. “Admittance denied.”
I thought the boy had gotten off lucky, but he ran away in tears. Either he was one of the true believers, or he just knew he had no future in Germany if he wasn’t in the Nazi Party.
Fritz gave me a horrified look. Getting kicked out of the Hitler Youth was his worst nightmare.
I was next. I hated Hitler and the Nazis, but I still held my breath and prayed I wouldn’t be sent away. I shouldn’t have worried. My parents couldn’t be in the Nazi Party because they were foreign diplomats, and I could trace my family line far enough back that I was declared genetically “pure” enough. Fritz too.
We were in. All we had to do now was pass the tests.
First up were the “Intelligence” tests, which we both passed easily. We recited facts about Hitler’s first glorious yet illegal attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923. Quotes from Mein Kampf. “Evidence” of the Nazi biological theories. More propaganda about how the Führer had saved Germany from the humiliation and economic depression of losing World War I.
I remembered all of it the way I had remembered the words and numbers on the Projekt 1065 blueprints with only a glance. It made me sick to my stomach to repeat all the Nazi lies as facts, made me want to scream that non
e of it was true and every brown-shirted boy among us was the world’s biggest joke, but I had to remember why I was doing this—to get close enough to Fritz to see the rest of those plans.
The physical tests were much more demanding, particularly for Fritz. Each Hitler Youth candidate had to meet minimum requirements in different events, and SRD candidates were expected to be among the best. We had to run 60 meters in twelve seconds, long jump 2.75 meters, and throw a softball 25 meters. I did all these with ease, and spent the rest of the time rooting for Fritz. He struggled to meet the minimums, but he was running, jumping, and throwing faster and farther than he ever had before. He had a wild look in his eyes, like he refused to fail. Like he wanted this more than any other thing he had ever wanted in the world. I wondered again what was driving him to not just be promoted within the Hitler Youth, but to want to be in the SRD. Most everybody else dreamed of ending up in the Air Hitler Youth, the special youth division of the German air force, where you got to fly gliders and train to be a pilot.
One boy was even weaker than Fritz. He clearly had asthma, and by the time we got to the gymnastic tests he was so out of breath he couldn’t go on. He begged for another chance, begged for time to get his breathing under control, but the Hitler Youth boys in charge of the tests were merciless. “You aren’t fit to be a Nazi,” they told him, “which means you are unfit to live!”
I saw a flicker of doubt dull the wild look in Fritz’s eyes as the asthmatic boy ran away, gulping down tears. I knew Fritz was imagining himself failing the physical tests and sobbing all the way home. He was so wound up about all this, I worried he would kill himself if he didn’t make it. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on,” I told him. “We’ve trained for this. You can do it. Both of us can.”
Fritz nodded, and the steel came back to his gaze. He had done better than either of us had expected, but we both knew he wasn’t in the clear yet. The real test for me was still to come—the dive off the two-story tower into water. But the real test for Fritz came first.
The boxing test.
Fritz and I watched as two boys punched and jabbed at each other in a little makeshift boxing ring. When kids weren’t performing their physical tests or cheering for their friends, this was what they all came to watch. Boxing was the one thing where you could demonstrate the glorious “spirit of aggression” and “overcome your fear of pain” all at once. After invading defenseless countries, it was the Nazis’ second-favorite sport.
“It all comes down to who they pick to fight you,” I told Fritz. One of the two boys in the ring was bigger than the other, and was giving his opponent a right beatdown. The boy in charge of the pairings and evaluations was our old friend Horst, the sadistic boy who’d been the leader of our Jungvolk group. He smiled like a donkey as the big kid knocked the little kid to the ground and kept beating him while he was down. Horst hated Fritz for his weakness, and was sure to give him the biggest, meanest opponent he could.
Something in the boy on the ground went crunch from a blow from the bigger boy, and the color drained from Fritz’s face.
“Just remember what I taught you,” I told him. “Keep your legs apart so you don’t get knocked down as easy. When you fall down, it’s over. Keep your weight on your back foot. Turn sideways so there’s less of you to hit. Tuck your chin, keep your elbows in, and your hands up. No hooks. No uppercuts. They take too long. Short, straight jabs.”
Three days wasn’t enough time to teach someone how to really fight, but I hoped it was enough for Fritz to at least survive. That’s all he was hoping for too. He took up the stance I’d taught him and practiced a few jabs while the previous loser was carried out of the ring.
“All right, let’s see who’s next,” Horst said, consulting his clipboard. “Ah! Fritz Brendler!” His eyes lit up with the anticipation of violence. “And who will we choose to fight you?” His hungry eyes swept the crowd, stopping on the biggest and toughest-looking boy of them all. He was a head and a half taller than Fritz, with arms thicker than Fritz’s neck, and a crooked nose that said he’d been in more than his fair share of fights.
I thought I heard a squeak come out of Fritz.
“Fritz Brendler, your opponent is … ” Horst announced, drawing it out, “Michael O’Shaunessey!”
I was stunned. Me, fight Fritz? No!
“That’s right, mick,” Horst said, giving me his donkey-toothed smile. “No more fighting little Three-Cheeses-Tall’s battles for him. Now he has to fight you!”
I thought Fritz would be freaking out, but he just nodded at me and climbed calmly into the ring. Then I realized why he was so unfazed. Horst had made a huge mistake! He thought we were going to beat each other senseless, but now we could take it easy on each other. We would put on a good show, each get in one or two light jabs, and then we’d be done—and Fritz wouldn’t have to take a beating from one of the animals who smelled fresh blood.
We tied on our boxing gloves and circled each other, pretending to look for openings. I nodded and smiled slightly at Fritz to let him know I understood.
Bam! Fritz hit me with a hard right jab that snapped my head back and made me see bright spots in my eyes. The boys around us cheered and laughed. Watching the Irish “mick” get beat up was second only to watching the little runt Fritz get beat up. This was high entertainment.
Bap-bap! Fritz fired another right jab and followed it up with a left, just like I’d taught him, but this time instinct took over and I blocked the shots with my gloves.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
Fritz didn’t answer. He came at me again, raining a hail of punches on me. Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap! He never punched hard enough to get through my defenses, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Fritz was throwing everything he had at me. Any idea that we were going to take it easy on each other was out the window, and soon everybody on the field was clustered around us, jeering us on.
I kept my gloves up, defending against his attack without taking a swing, and the crowd booed me. “Just what I thought,” Horst yelled. “The mick’s soft! Looks like he’s not going to pass his boxing test.”
I heaved an exhausted sigh. They were going to make me hit Fritz. And it would be easy: He was already falling back on all the bad habits I’d tried to drill out of him. I waited until he dropped his gloves and reared his arm back for a long slow hook, and I popped him once on the nose with a sharp left jab. I held back, not wanting to hurt him, but he was so small and so surprised he staggered back. The crowd roared. They were loving this.
I gave Fritz a look that said, Okay? Cut it out! but he didn’t get the message. He flew at me, even more furious now, gloves flailing. He had abandoned all the things I’d taught him by now and was just beating on me wildly. It was easy to duck away from, and the boys booed again when I didn’t take another punch.
Fritz grabbed me around the shoulders the way boxers sometimes do when they’re tired, locking up my arms. I thought he was just taking a breather, but he’d been trying to get close to my ear. Over the jeers of the crowd, I heard him whisper, “We can’t show weakness. You have to fight me for real.”
I pushed him off me and stared him down. He couldn’t be serious. Why couldn’t we just spar with each other for a few minutes and be done with it? Why did it have to be for real?
Fritz came at me again, this time remembering some of what I’d taught him. He peppered my face with jabs and I kept up my gloves, but then he got in a hard uppercut to the gut that I couldn’t block in time.
I doubled over in pain, and Fritz went for the top of my head. I put my hands up, trying to protect myself, but I was too winded. He was getting in too many good shots. The boys in the crowd were cheering him on and calling me every name you could think of and a few more I’d never heard before.
For two years, I had been the only Irish boy in my entire class at St. Paul’s Grammar School in London. And did I mention, the Irish hate the English, and vice versa? Every day at recess I had been dragged beh
ind the gymnasium and thrashed by some hulking lout of an English boy while all the other boys hooted and hollered and laughed at me.
And then, one day, I fought back.
I was like Fritz at first, all desperate anger and flailing arms. I got myself a right proper beatdown that day, for a bully enjoys nothing more than when you try to fight back and fail miserably. But I got up, wiped off the blood, and fought back the next day. And the next. And every day I got a little better, learned a little something more, and one day I gave as good as I got, and the boys stopped dragging me behind the gym for my daily beating.
Because a bully hates nothing more than when you fight back and win.
The constant pounding, the jeering, the familiar queasy feeling I had from the punch to my stomach—it was like being back in the school yard at St. Paul’s, taking another beating behind the gymnasium. And I didn’t take beatings like that anymore.
I met Fritz’s jaw with a vicious uppercut, striking him with all the righteous strength and brutal rage of a boy being bullied. His head snapped, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he toppled forward, hitting the ground at my feet like a sack of potatoes.
The boys all around me thundered their approval, their bloodlust ignited, and I stood over Fritz feeling their hunger for more violence. I panted with the deep, furious heave of a prizefighter ready for more. I wanted him to get back up, wanted to hit him again, to punish him for picking a fight with me. I wanted to punch him, kick him, bite him. I wanted to hurt Fritz, deeply and permanently.
I blinked, realizing with a start what I was thinking. I shook my head, trying to clear it. How had I slipped into being one of these monsters so easily? How had I forgotten so quickly that I was a human being?
I turned to Horst. “It’s over,” I said. “I won.”
Horst pointed to something behind me. “Not yet!”
