by Ken Follett
Frieda had another brother, Axel, who was seven; but he had been born with spina bifida, and had to have constant medical care. He lived in a special hospital on the outskirts of Berlin.
Mother was preoccupied on the journey. ‘I hope this is going to be all right,’ she muttered, half to herself, as they got off the train.
‘Of course it will,’ Carla said. ‘I’ll have a lovely time with Frieda.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I’m talking about my paragraph about Hitler.’
‘Are we in danger? Was Father right?’
‘Your father is usually right.’
‘What will happen to us if we’ve annoyed the Nazis?’
Mother stared at her strangely for a long moment, then said: ‘Dear God, what kind of a world did I bring you into?’ Then she went quiet.
After a ten-minute walk they arrived at a grand villa in a big garden. The Francks were rich: Frieda’s father, Ludwig, owned a factory making radio sets. Two cars stood in the drive. The large shiny black one belonged to Herr Franck. The engine rumbled, and a cloud of blue vapour rose from the tail pipe. The chauffeur, Ritter, with uniform trousers tucked into high boots, stood cap in hand ready to open the door. He bowed and said: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich.’
The second car was a little green two-seater. A short man with a grey beard came out of the house carrying a leather case, and touched his hat to Mother as he got into the small car. ‘I wonder what Dr Rothmann is doing here so early in the morning,’ Mother said anxiously.
They soon found out. Frieda’s mother, Monika, came to the door; she was a tall woman with a mass of red hair. Anxiety showed on her pale face. Instead of welcoming them in, she stood squarely in the doorway as if to bar their entrance. ‘Frieda has measles!’ she said.
‘I’m so sorry!’ said Mother. ‘How is she?’
‘Miserable. She has a fever and a cough. But Rothmann says she’ll be all right. However, she’s quarantined.’
‘Of course. Have you had it?’
‘Yes – when I was a girl.’
‘And Werner has, too – I remember he had a terrible rash all over. But what about your husband?’
‘Ludi had it as a boy.’
Both women looked at Carla. She had never had measles. She realized this meant that she could not spend the day with Frieda.
Carla was disappointed, but Mother was quite shaken. ‘This week’s magazine is our election issue – I can’t be absent.’ She looked distraught. All the grown-ups were apprehensive about the general election to be held next Sunday. Mother and Father both feared the Nazis might do well enough to take full control of the government. ‘Plus my oldest friend is visiting from London. I wonder whether Walter could be persuaded to take a day off to look after Carla?’
Monika said: ‘Why don’t you telephone to him?’
Not many people had phones in their homes, but the Francks did, and Carla and her mother stepped into the hall. The instrument stood on a spindly legged table near the door. Mother picked it up and gave the number of Father’s office at the Reichstag, the parliament building. She got through to him and explained the situation. She listened for a minute, then looked angry. ‘My magazine will urge a hundred thousand readers to campaign for the Social Democratic Party,’ she said. ‘Do you really have something more important than that to do today?’
Carla could guess how this argument would end. Father loved her dearly, she knew, but in all her eleven years he had never looked after her for a whole day. All her friends’ fathers were the same. Men did not do that sort of thing. But Mother sometimes pretended not to know the rules women lived by.
‘I’ll just have to take her to the office with me, then,’ Mother said into the phone. ‘I dread to think what Jochmann will say.’ Herr Jochmann was her boss. ‘He’s not much of a feminist at the best of times.’ She replaced the handset without saying goodbye.
Carla hated it when they fought, and this was the second time in a day. It made the whole world seem unstable. She was much more scared of quarrels than of the Nazis.
‘Come on, then,’ Mother said to her, and she moved to the door.
I’m not even going to see Werner, Carla thought unhappily.
Just then Frieda’s father appeared in the hall, a pink-faced man with a small black moustache, energetic and cheerful. He greeted Mother pleasantly, and she paused to speak politely to him while Monika helped him into a black topcoat with a fur collar.
He went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Werner!’ he shouted. ‘I’m going without you!’ He put on a grey felt hat and went out.
‘I’m ready, I’m ready!’ Werner ran down the stairs like a dancer. He was as tall as his father and more handsome, with red-blond hair worn too long. Under his arm he had a leather satchel that appeared to be full of books; in the other hand he held a pair of ice skates and a hockey stick. He paused in his rush to say: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich’, very politely. Then in a more informal tone: ‘Hello, Carla. My sister’s got the measles.’
Carla felt herself blush, for no reason at all. ‘I know,’ she said. She tried to think of something charming and amusing to say, but came up with nothing. ‘I’ve never had it, so I can’t see her.’
‘I had it when I was a kid,’ he said, as if that was ever such a long time ago. ‘I must hurry,’ he added apologetically.
Carla did not want to lose sight of him so quickly. She followed him outside. Ritter was holding the rear door open. ‘What kind of car is that?’ Carla asked. Boys always knew the makes of cars.
‘A Mercedes-Benz W10 limousine.’
‘It looks very comfortable.’ She caught a look from her mother, half surprised and half amused.
Werner said: ‘Do you want a lift?’
‘That would be nice.’
‘I’ll ask my father.’ Werner put his head inside the car and said something.
Carla heard Herr Franck reply: ‘Very well, but hurry up!’
She turned to her mother. ‘We can go in the car!’
Mother hesitated for only a moment. She did not like Herr Franck’s politics – he gave money to the Nazis – but she was not going to refuse a lift in a warm car on a cold morning. ‘How very kind of you, Ludwig,’ she said.
They got in. There was room for four in the back. Ritter pulled away smoothly. ‘I assume you’re going to Koch Strasse?’ said Herr Franck. Many newspapers and book publishers had their offices in the same street in the Kreuzberg district.
‘Please don’t go out of your way. Leipziger Strasse would be fine.’
‘I’d be happy to take you to the door – but I suppose you don’t want your leftist colleagues to see you getting out of the car of a bloated plutocrat.’ His tone was somewhere between humorous and hostile.
Mother gave him a charming smile. ‘You’re not bloated, Ludi – just a little plump.’ She patted the front of his coat.
He laughed. ‘I asked for that.’ The tension eased. Herr Franck picked up the speaking tube and gave instructions to Ritter.
Carla was thrilled to be in a car with Werner, and she wanted to make the most of it by talking to him, but at first she could not think what to speak about. She really wanted to say: ‘When you’re older, do you think you might marry a girl with dark hair and green eyes, about three years younger than yourself, and clever?’ Eventually she pointed to his skates and said: ‘Do you have a match today?’
‘No, just practice after school.’
‘What position do you play in?’ She knew nothing about ice hockey, but there were always positions in team games.
‘Right wing.’
‘Isn’t it a rather dangerous sport?’
‘Not if you’re quick.’
‘You must be ever such a good skater.’
‘Not bad,’ he said modestly.
Once again, Carla caught her mother watching her with an enigmatic little smile. Had she guessed how Carla felt about Werner? Carla felt another blush coming.
Then the car came
to a stop outside a school building, and Werner got out. ‘Goodbye, everyone!’ he said, and ran through the gates into the yard.
Ritter drove on, following the south bank of the Landwehr Canal. Carla looked at the barges, their loads of coal topped with snow like mountains. She felt a sense of disappointment. She had contrived to spend longer with Werner, by hinting that she wanted a lift, then she had wasted the time talking about ice hockey.
What would she have liked to have talked to him about? She did not know.
Herr Franck said to Mother: ‘I read your column in The Democrat.’
‘I hope you enjoyed it.’
‘I was sorry to see you writing disrespectfully about our chancellor.’
‘Do you think journalists should write respectfully about politicians?’ Mother replied cheerfully. ‘That’s radical. The Nazi press would have to be polite about my husband! They wouldn’t like that.’
‘Not all politicians, obviously,’ Franck said irritably.
They crossed the teeming junction of Potsdamer Platz. Cars and trams vied with horse-drawn carts and pedestrians in a chaotic melee.
Mother said: ‘Isn’t it better for the press to be able to criticize everyone equally?’
‘A wonderful idea,’ he said. ‘But you socialists live in a dream world. We practical men know that Germany cannot live on ideas. People must have bread and shoes and coal.’
‘I quite agree,’ Mother said. ‘I could use more coal myself. But I want Carla and Erik to grow up as citizens of a free country.’
‘You overrate freedom. It doesn’t make people happy. They prefer leadership. I want Werner and Frieda and poor Axel to grow up in a country that is proud, and disciplined, and united.’
‘And in order to be united, we need young thugs in brown shirts to beat up elderly Jewish shopkeepers?’
‘Politics is rough. Nothing we can do about it.’
‘On the contrary, you and I are leaders, Ludwig, in our different ways. It’s our responsibility to make politics less rough – more honest, more rational, less violent. If we do not do that, we fail in our patriotic duty.’
Herr Franck bristled.
Carla did not know much about men, but she realized that they did not like to be lectured on their duty by women. Mother must have forgotten to press her charm switch this morning. But everyone was tense. The coming election had them all on edge.
The car reached Leipziger Platz. ‘Where may I drop you?” Herr Franck said coldly.
‘Just here will be fine,’ said Mother.
Franck tapped on the glass partition. Ritter stopped the car and hurried to open the door.
Mother said: ‘I do hope Frieda gets better soon.’
‘Thank you.’
They got out and Ritter closed the door.
The office was several minutes’ walk away, but Mother clearly had not wanted to stay any longer in the car. Carla hoped Mother was not going to quarrel permanently with Herr Franck. That might make it difficult for her to see Frieda and Werner. She would hate that.
They set off at a brisk pace. ‘Try not to make a nuisance of yourself at the office,’ Mother said. The note of genuine pleading in her voice touched Carla, making her feel ashamed of causing her mother worry. She resolved to behave perfectly.
Mother greeted several people on the way: she had been writing her column for as long as Carla could remember, and was well known in the press corps. They all called her ‘Lady Maud’ in English.
Near the building in which The Democrat had its office, they saw someone they knew: Sergeant Schwab. He had fought with Father in the Great War, and still wore his hair brutally short in the military style. After the war he had worked as a gardener, first for Carla’s grandfather and later for her father; but he had stolen money from Mother’s purse and Father had sacked him. Now he was wearing the ugly military uniform of the Storm troopers, the Brownshirts, who were not soldiers but Nazis who had been given the authority of auxiliary policemen.
Schwab said loudly: ‘Good morning, Frau von Ulrich!’ as if he felt no shame at all about being a thief. He did not even touch his cap.
Mother nodded coldly and walked past him. ‘I wonder what he’s doing here,’ she muttered uneasily as they went inside.
The magazine had the first floor of a modern office building. Carla knew a child would not be welcome, and she hoped they could reach Mother’s office without being seen. But they met Herr Jochmann on the stairs. He was a heavy man with thick spectacles. ‘What’s this?’ he said brusquely, speaking around the cigarette in his mouth. ‘Are we running a kindergarten now?’
Mother did not react to his rudeness. ‘I was thinking over your comment the other day,’ she said. ‘About how young people imagine journalism is a glamorous profession, and don’t understand how much hard work is necessary.’
He frowned. ‘Did I say that? Well, it’s certainly true.’
‘So I brought my daughter here to see the reality. I think it will be good for her education, especially if she becomes a writer. She will make a report on the visit to her class. I felt sure you would approve.’
Mother was making this up as she went along, but it sounded convincing, Carla thought. She almost believed it herself. The charm switch had been turned to the On position at last.
Jochmann said: ‘Don’t you have an important visitor from London coming today?’
‘Yes, Ethel Leckwith, but she’s an old friend – she knew Carla as a baby.’
Jochmann was somewhat mollified. ‘Hmm. Well, we have an editorial meeting in five minutes, as soon as I’ve bought some cigarettes.’
‘Carla will get them for you.’ Mother turned to her. ‘There is a tobacconist three doors down. Herr Jochmann likes the Roth-Händle brand.’
‘Oh, that will save me a trip.’ Jochmann gave Carla a one-mark coin.
Mother said to her: ‘When you come back, you’ll find me at the top of the stairs, next to the fire alarm.’ She turned away and took Jochmann’s arm confidentially. ‘I thought last week’s issue was possibly our best ever,’ she said as they went up.
Carla ran out into the street. Mother had got away with it, using her characteristic mixture of boldness and flirting. She sometimes said: ‘We women have to deploy every weapon we have.’ Thinking about it, Carla realized that she had used Mother’s tactics to get a lift from Herr Franck. Perhaps she was like her mother after all. That might be why Mother had given her that curious little smile: she was seeing herself thirty years ago.
There was a queue in the shop. Half the journalists in Berlin seemed to be buying their supplies for the day. At last Carla got a pack of Roth-Händle and returned to the Democrat building. She found the fire alarm easily – it was a big lever fixed to the wall – but Mother was not in her office. No doubt she had gone to that editorial meeting.
Carla walked along the corridor. All the doors were open, and most of the rooms were empty but for a few women who might have been typists and secretaries. At the back of the building, around a corner, was a closed door marked ‘Conference Room’. Carla could hear male voices raised in argument. She tapped on the door, but there was no response. She hesitated, then turned the handle and went in.
The room was full of tobacco smoke. Eight or ten people sat around a long table. Mother was the only woman. They fell silent, apparently surprised, when Carla went up to the head of the table and handed Jochmann the cigarettes and change. Their silence made her think she had done wrong to come in.
But Jochmann just said: ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome, sir,’ she said, and for some reason she gave a little bow.
The men laughed. One said: ‘New assistant, Jochmann?’ Then she knew it was all right.
She left the room quickly and returned to Mother’s office. She did not take off her coat – the place was cold. She looked around. On the desk were a phone, a typewriter, and stacks of paper and carbon paper.
Next to the phone was a photograph in a frame, showing Carla
and Erik with Father. It had been taken a couple of years ago on a sunny day at the beach by the Wannsee lake, fifteen miles from the centre of Berlin. Father was wearing shorts. They were all laughing. That was before Erik had started to pretend to be a tough, serious man.
The only other picture, hanging on the wall, showed Mother with the social-democratic hero Friedrich Ebert, who had been the first President of Germany after the war. It had been taken about ten years ago. Carla smiled at Mother’s shapeless, low-waisted dress and boyish haircut: they must have been fashionable at the time.
The bookshelf held social directories, phone books, dictionaries in several languages, and atlases, but nothing to read. In the desk drawer were pencils, several new pairs of formal gloves still wrapped in tissue paper, a packet of sanitary towels, and a notebook with names and phone numbers.
Carla reset the desk calendar to today’s date, Monday 27 February 1933. Then she put a sheet of paper into the typewriter. She typed her full name, Heike Carla von Ulrich. At the age of five she had announced that she did not like the name Heike and she wanted everyone to use her second name, and somewhat to her surprise her family had complied.
Each key of the typewriter caused a metal rod to rise up and strike the paper through an inky ribbon, printing a letter. When by accident she pressed two keys, the rods got stuck. She tried to prise them apart but she could not. Pressing another key did not help: now there were three jammed rods. She groaned: she was in trouble already.
A noise from the street distracted her. She went to the window. A dozen Brownshirts were marching along the middle of the road, shouting slogans: ‘Death to all Jews! Jews go to hell!’ Carla could not understand why they got so angry about Jews, who seemed the same as everyone else apart from their religion. She was startled to see Sergeant Schwab at the head of the troop. She had felt sorry for him when he was sacked, for she knew he would find it hard to get another job. There were millions of men looking for jobs in Germany: Father said it was a depression. But Mother had said: ‘How can we have a man in our house who steals?’
