by Alan Gratz
I turned just as Fritz connected with a right hook to the side of my head.
The blow staggered me, made my eyes cross, but I didn’t go down. I had enough experience in dirty, behind-the-gymnasium fights to know that when you went down, the fight was over but the beating wasn’t.
I kept my feet while Fritz came at me again. There was a dull look in his eyes now, as if my punch had knocked something loose in his brain. I guessed it was his common sense.
Fritz opened himself up again, and I punched him in the nose. Hard. Blood spurted all over his clean, pressed Hitler Youth uniform, and he dropped to his knees, one hand on the ground. The monsters around me howled. They’d finally gotten to see what they came for.
“It’s over,” I told Fritz. “Stay down.”
Fritz got back up.
I punched him in the gut before he could even take a swing at me. Fritz doubled over and crumpled to the ground again.
I felt disgusted at what I’d done. What the Hitler Youth had made me do. I spat at Horst’s feet. “We’re finished here,” I told him. “Call it off.”
“No! No, it’s not over!” Horst yelled, half laughing with delight. “Get up, Fritz! You’re going to fail the test if you don’t get up again and fight!”
“No, it’s over,” I told Fritz. “Stay down. You passed.”
Fritz ignored me and pulled himself up again. He staggered for a moment, blood still dripping from his nose, and took another wide, slow swing at me.
I didn’t even raise my gloves. I stepped back out of the way and let Fritz’s follow-through send him crashing to the ground. He was done.
“For God’s sake, Fritz,” I begged, “stay down.”
But Fritz got back up again. And he was going to keep getting back up. I was going to have to finish this the way I’d learned to back on the playground of St. Paul’s. I was going to have to put him down so he couldn’t get up for more.
I hit him in the face again, but before he could fall I punched him in the stomach. He dropped to his knees and vomited. But he wasn’t done, and neither was I. I punched Fritz in the back of the head, sending him down face-first into the puddle of sick. When he moved to get up again, I straddled him and punched him in the back of the head. The laughter and the jeers from the other boys dwindled away to nothing as I punched the back of his head again, and again, and again. I savaged him, fueling each new punch with some new hatred. I hated Hitler for starting this war. I hated the Hitler Youth for their constant bullying. I hated Fritz for making me hit him again. I hated myself for hitting him.
When at last I stopped, Fritz lay motionless on the ground, completely and totally beaten. All around us was utter silence. I looked up, eyes afire, chest heaving, arms tensed for another fight. Horst took a step back in fear. I had managed to scare even the monsters, and when you can scare monsters, you can be sure you’ve become one yourself.
I sat gingerly in a chair in my Da’s study. I was sore and bruised from the fight, my right eye swollen and black, but it was nothing compared to how I’d left Fritz. They’d had to pick him up and carry him to the nurse’s tent. He couldn’t even stand up on his own.
Simon walked circles around Da’s desk, stretching his legs and testing his ankle. I’d checked and double-checked the door this time to make sure it was locked, but I was still nervous every time Simon was out of his hiding place. He was more and more restless from being cooped up in there all day.
“Did you take the test where you have to jump into the pool?” Simon asked.
“No. Not today. It’s tomorrow.”
Simon nodded. “Just remember what we’ve been working on. Distract yourself. Remember that you’ve been that high before, up on the roof, and survived. And remember why you’re doing it. To get close to Fritz and get those plans.”
I nodded lamely. Fritz. The boy I’d pummeled within an inch of his life. The boy who hadn’t said a word to me the rest of the day, because he couldn’t. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon in the nurse’s tent.
“How did you like The Maltese Falcon?” Simon asked.
I shrugged. “It was okay, I guess.”
Simon raised his eyebrows. “Okay you guess? It’s one of the best books ever written. What about that part where Spade pops Joel Cairo in the nose and takes his gun away from him? I love that bit.”
I stared at the floor.
“Michael, what’s wrong?”
I sighed. There was no use hiding it from him. He had to know sooner or later.
“It’s over,” I told Simon.
“What’s over?”
“Me and Fritz. The SRD. The jet fighter plans. Everything!” I told him what had happened at the Hitler Youth trials. About me beating Fritz down. Again and again and again.
“It doesn’t matter if we both pass the rest of the tests now, and both of us end up in the SRD. I put him in the hospital, Simon. He’s never going to speak to me again. Not even if we were the last two boys in all of Germany. I wouldn’t, if I was him. If my mission was to buddy up to Fritz so I could steal the plans for Projekt 1065, I messed it up royally.”
Simon sat on the edge of Da’s desk, looking glum. “It does sound bad. But don’t be down on yourself, Michael. You did what you had to do—even if doing it meant doing something wrong.”
I flipped the edge of the oriental rug up and down with my foot. Doing what you had to do, even though it meant doing something wrong, seemed to be what this war was all about.
“There’s always a chance you can make it up to him somehow,” Simon said.
I looked at him doubtfully.
Simon got up and paced again. “Before the war, I was stepping out with a beautiful young woman named Mary. We had a wonderful time, Mary and me, going to the cinema, lingering about in cafés, taking moonlit walks along the Thames. But when her parents caught wind of it, they didn’t approve. They told her to stop seeing me.”
“Because you’re English?”
Simon smiled at the latest salvo in our long-running insult contest, but his smile disappeared quickly. Whatever the reason was, it was nothing to laugh about.
“No,” he said. “Because I’m Jewish. They may not be carting Jews off to concentration camps in England the way they are in Eastern Europe, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a great deal of anti-Semitism there. Someone won’t let you stay in their hotel, or eat in their restaurant. Or marry their daughter.” Simon’s face tightened. “Mary’s parents forbade her marrying me. Said they would never speak to her again if she did. Mary said she didn’t care. Said she’d run off with me and get married over the anvil at Gretna Green if I liked. But her friends and family shunned her, and it was so hard on her. I could see that. It was killing her inside.”
“What did you do?”
“What I had to do—and the wrong thing,” Simon said quietly. “I broke things off with Mary. Told her we were finished. I admit, it’s not like beating another person senseless. But in some ways it was worse. A broken heart is harder to mend than a broken nose. And I ended up breaking two hearts in the bargain. Then the war began, and I was whisked away by the RAF. I haven’t seen her since.”
Simon looked off into the distance, as if he could see all the way across Europe and the North Sea to England. “Perhaps I should have fought for Mary. Perhaps I should have let her give up everything for me. But I wasn’t out to change the world, and neither was she. We were just two kids in love.” He sighed. “Who knows? Perhaps after this war, we’ll get a second chance. And perhaps you will too, with Fritz.”
I hoped he was right, for both of us, but I’m not sure either of us really believed it.
Simon went to his little hideaway and brought back a book. “Here’s your next one. Perhaps the greatest English novel of all time.”
“Well, that’s not saying a lot,” I said, trying to lighten things up again with another dig. It was a book called Kim by Rudyard Kipling. “Is it another detective novel?”
“No,” Simon said, and I groaned. Now
that he’d got me hooked, I didn’t want to read anything else.
“Don’t worry. You’ll like it. It’s all about an Irish boy who becomes a spy.”
Simon’s words about second chances stayed with me the next morning. Whatever it took, no matter what I had to do, I was going to get Fritz to give me a second chance.
It was another bright, clear morning for the second day of the Hitler Youth initiation tests. More Führer weather. I scanned the waiting crowd of boys for Fritz. Even though he was a head shorter than everyone else, I found him quickly near the front.
He was the one with his head wrapped in white bandages.
There was a red spot on his bandages, near his temple. Fritz’s broken nose had been reset and taped. Both his eyes had huge black rings around them, and one of his ears was swollen and bruised.
This was going to be even harder than I thought.
Fritz caught sight of me and pushed through the crowd toward me. People were so afraid of him they moved out of his way. Not because he was so ugly, I realized. Because he’d gotten back up again when they wouldn’t have.
The crowd parted for him and watched as he marched over to me, all of them clearly expecting another fight. I braced myself for a punch, ready to take a bloody nose if that’s what it took to put us back on the path to, if not friendship, then at least acceptance. Speaking terms.
Fritz threw his arms around me and hugged me instead.
I stood there, stunned, my arms still tensed for a punch. Fritz was … hugging me?
Fritz let go, and slapped my shoulders as if we were comrades.
“You’re—you’re not mad?” I asked.
Fritz looked shocked. “Mad? Why would I be mad? We passed our boxing tests! Just one more test to go!”
I shook my head. Frankly, Fritz was starting to scare me too. “You’re certifiable,” I told him. He didn’t understand my British idiom. “You’re crazy. You don’t have any cups in your cabinet.”
Fritz just frowned. He still didn’t get it.
“I just beat the ever-living snot out of you!” I told him. “You should hate me right now!”
Fritz shook his head. “You just did what I asked you to.”
I shook my head again. There was something not right with Fritz. But I wanted those jet fighter plans, and if he was going to forgive me and still be friends, I would accept it. I shook his hand.
“Now,” said Fritz, “I’m going to do what you asked me to do. I’m going to help you get through the courage test.”
The test of courage.
I’d been so upset about blowing my chance to steal the plans for Projekt 1065 that I’d forgotten all about it. The ultimate distraction.
But there was no ignoring it now.
The tower beside the pool was two stories tall and made of crisscrossing wood. A rough ladder went straight from the ground to the top, and boys waited in line on it until there was room for them at the top. From there they plummeted twenty feet to smack down into the icy cold water below.
I stood at the bottom rung of the ladder, hands on the sides, trying to take deep breaths and failing miserably.
“I can do this,” I whispered. “I can do this. I can do this.”
But I couldn’t do it. My foot wouldn’t lift up off the ground.
“Nope. Can’t do it,” I said. I let go of the ladder and tried to turn away.
Fritz took me by the shoulders and turned me back around. “Yes, you can, Michael. You have to.”
“No. No way,” I said. My head spun. My heart raced. I was too worked up. I was getting hysterical.
Fritz dragged me away from the other boys waiting in line. “Michael. Michael! Snap out of it. You can’t let them see your fear. Do you understand me? If they see you’re weak, they’ll eat you alive.”
I nodded. I knew he was right. If you were tough, people left you alone. If you showed the slightest sign of fear, they would attack. I closed my eyes and tried to control my breathing the way Simon had taught me. I wished he was here right now, but then I remembered why he couldn’t be, and why it mattered so much that I overcome my fear of heights and follow Fritz into the SRD.
“You climbed up that ladder in the farmhouse when we were looking for that downed airman,” Fritz said, almost reading my thoughts about Simon. It startled me, but I realized there was no way he could know Simon was hidden in my house.
“But even if I get to the top, then I have to—”
“Don’t think about that,” Fritz said. He guided me back to the bottom rung of the ladder. “One step at a time, right?”
One step at a time. That’s what Simon had said too. Small steps. I breathed slowly and deeply and lifted my right foot onto the ladder. Then my left. One step at a time. Small steps. Fritz climbed up right behind me, whispering encouragement. We moved up the ladder at a snail’s pace, but that was fine by me. I kept my eyes closed and thought about all the insults the English boys had used on me in the school yard in St. Paul’s, and all the insults I’d hurled at them in return. They were great motivation—and a great distraction. I made a mental list of a few choice ones I’d use to tease Simon with when I got back.
If I got back.
And then we were at the top. I froze, eyes still closed, but Fritz was there to guide me forward. I took little half steps. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t on top of a two-story-tall wooden scaffold, but I was losing the fight. It creaked and swayed. I couldn’t do this.
“You’re okay,” Fritz told me. But I wasn’t okay. My stomach seized up, and I felt my breakfast begin to rise in my throat. I dropped down and flattened myself out on the platform. I was never going to move from this spot ever again.
“Come on, Michael,” Fritz said. “You just have to do an Arschbombe.”
He was trying to make me laugh. Trying to lighten the mood. Arschbombe meant “butt bomb.” It was the German expression for what we called a cannonball—when you wrapped yourself into a tight ball and dove into a pool. Hitting the water with your butt like a bomb.
The mental image distracted me for a few seconds, but then I remembered where I was and why I would never be doing a butt bomb here or anywhere else. I shook my head. I couldn’t speak, for fear I would throw up.
“If you don’t pass the courage test, you can’t be in the SRD,” Fritz said. “You can’t even be in the regular Hitler Youth!”
I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t do it. The Nazis were going to build a jet plane and the Allies were going to lose the war, but I just couldn’t do it. I kept my eyes and my lips screwed shut tight.
“Okay,” Fritz told me. “It’s okay, Michael. You don’t have to do it. I’m sorry. I’ll help you back down. We’re coming back down the ladder!” he called. “Everybody climb back down!”
I heard the cries of annoyance from the boys waiting on the ladder as Fritz helped me stand up. Just getting back down the ladder was going to be impossible.
Fritz guided me, one hand on my arm, the other on my back. “Just keep your eyes shut, Michael,” he said. “You don’t want to see this.”
I nodded, dizzy at the mere thought of looking down the ladder. With Fritz’s help, I inched back toward it, eyes shut tight.
“I’m sorry, Michael,” Fritz told me.
I shook my head. Fritz didn’t need to apologize. I was the one who couldn’t overcome my fear. He was the one who would become an SRD. Not me. I was the one who’d failed.
“No, I mean, I’m really, really sorry,” Fritz whispered, and he pushed me off the platform.
I would like to tell you that I fell bravely. That I found a sense of calm, a sense of peace, as I plunged two stories into the pool.
The truth is, I screamed in terror the whole way down. I screamed like a baby who’d dropped his pacifier. I screamed so loud, people probably started running for their cellars in Berlin, thinking I was an air raid siren.
I hit the freezing cold water belly-first, slapping the scream and the rest of my breath right out of me. I
swallowed a lungful of water, and would likely have drowned in stunned horror if two Hitler Youth boys hadn’t fished me out of the pool. I lay on the ground beside it, soaking wet and sobbing for air. At least the icy water streaming from my plastered hair hid my tears.
I never heard the whoop behind me, or the splash. I never saw him fished out of the pool by the Hitler Youth boys. Somehow, Fritz just appeared above me, bandages dripping with water. He covered me with a blanket.
“You did it!” Fritz said. “You overcame your fear!”
I shook my head. We both knew the truth—I hadn’t overcome anything. It had all been Fritz. Without him, I never would have done it. I’d be headed home right now, if not in tears like the weaker boys, then at least as ashamed.
But it didn’t matter. I’d taken the plunge, and the judges had seen me do it. I was still in the Hitler Youth. Whether Fritz and I made the SRD was another matter, but at least I was still in the Hitler Youth.
I remembered Fritz hugging me and shaking hands after I’d given him the beatdown of a lifetime. Now it was my turn. I offered him my hand, and he took it, pulling me to my feet.
“Thank you,” I told him.
Fritz smiled and shook my hand. We had made it. Together.
Now it was time to get our daggers.
The Hitler Youth initiation ceremony took place in a massive electrical power plant just outside the city. One wall was filled with switches and dials and little gauges with moving needles. Another was covered with Nazi flags and red, white, and black bunting, over which hung a banner that read WE WERE BORN TO DIE FOR GERMANY. Huge turtlelike generator housings stood in the background like giant sentinels, electrical gods there to watch our induction into the Olympic pantheon. They thrummed with a frantic, hidden energy. The whole place held a sense of power, of modernity, of the future—which I guess is why they held the ceremony there in the first place. The youth were all those things to Nazi Germany—its strength, its break from the past, its hope for the future. Even I was impressed.
