by Ken Follett
Carla spread fish paste on her bread. ‘Why do you have to be the same as the others?’ she said. ‘Most of them are stupid. You told me Rudi Rothmann was the cleverest boy in the class.’
‘I don’t want to be with Frenchy and Rudi!’ Erik cried, and to his mortification he felt tears come to his eyes. ‘Why should I have to play with the boys no one likes?’ This was what had given him the courage to defy his father: he could no longer bear to walk out of school with the Jews and the foreigners while all the German boys marched around the playing field in their uniforms.
They both heard a cry.
Erik looked at Carla and said: ‘What was that?’
Carla frowned. ‘It was Ada, I think.’
Then, more distinctly, they heard: ‘Help!’
Erik got to his feet, but Carla was ahead of him. He went after her. Ada’s room was in the basement. They ran down the stairs and into the small bedroom.
There was a narrow single bed up against the wall. Ada was lying there, her face screwed up in pain. Her skirt was wet and there was a puddle on the floor. Erik could hardly believe what he was seeing. Had she pissed herself? It was scary. There were no other grown-ups in the house. He did not know what to do.
Carla was scared, too – Erik could see it in her face – but she was not panicked. She said: ‘Ada, what’s wrong?’ Her voice sounded strangely calm.
‘My waters broke,’ Ada said.
Erik had no idea what that meant.
Nor did Carla. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘It means my baby is coming.’
‘You’re pregnant?’ Carla said in astonishment.
Erik said: ‘But you’re not married!’
Carla said furiously: ‘Shut up, Erik – don’t you know anything?’
He did know, of course, that women could have babies when they were not married – but surely not Ada!
‘That’s why you went to the doctor last week,’ Carla said to Ada.
Ada nodded.
Erik was still trying to get used to the idea. ‘Do you think Mother and Father know?’
‘Of course they do. They just didn’t tell us. Fetch a towel.’
‘Where from?’
‘The airing cupboard on the upstairs landing.’
‘A clean one?’
‘Of course a clean one!’
Erik ran up the stairs, took a small white towel from the cupboard, and ran down again.
‘That’s not much good,’ Carla said, but she took it and dried Ada’s legs.
Ada said: ‘The baby’s coming soon, I can feel it. But I don’t know what to do.’ She started to cry.
Erik was watching Carla. She was in charge now. It did not matter that he was the older one: he looked to her for leadership. She was being practical and staying calm, but he could tell that she was terrified, and her composure was fragile. She could crack at any minute, he thought.
Carla turned to Erik again. ‘Go and fetch Dr Rothmann,’ she said. ‘You know where his office is.’
Erik was hugely relieved to have been given a task he could manage. Then he thought of a snag. ‘What if he’s out?’
‘Then ask Frau Rothmann what you should do, you idiot!’ Carla said. ‘Get going – run!’
Erik was glad to get out of the room. What was happening there was mysterious and frightening. He went up the stairs three at a time and flew out of the front door. Running was one thing he did know how to do.
The doctor’s surgery was half a mile away. He settled into a fast trot. As he ran he thought about Ada. Who was the father of her baby? He recalled that she had gone to the movies with Paul Huber a couple of times last summer. Had they had sexual intercourse? They must have! Erik and his friends talked about sex a lot, but they did not really know anything about it. Where had Ada and Paul done it? Not in a movie theatre, surely? Didn’t people have to lie down? He was baffled.
Dr Rothmann’s place was in a poorer street. He was a good doctor, Erik had heard Mother say, but he treated a lot of working-class people who could not pay high fees. The doctor’s house had a consulting room and a waiting room on the ground floor, and the family lived upstairs.
Outside was parked a green Opel 4, an ugly little two-seater unofficially called the Tree Frog.
The front door of the house was unlatched. Erik walked in, breathing hard, and entered the waiting room. There was an old man coughing in a corner and a young woman with a baby. ‘Hello!’ Erik called, ‘Dr Rothmann?’
The doctor’s wife stepped out of the consulting room. Hannelore Rothmann was a tall, fair woman with strong features, and she gave Erik a look like thunder. ‘How dare you come to this house in that uniform?’ she said.
Erik was petrified. Frau Rothmann was not Jewish, but her husband was: Erik had forgotten that in his excitement. ‘Our maid is having a baby!’ he said.
‘And so you want a Jewish doctor to help you?’
Erik was taken completely by surprise. It had never occurred to him that the Nazis’ attacks might cause the Jews to retaliate. But suddenly he saw that Frau Rothmann made total sense. The Brownshirts went around shouting: ‘Death to Jews!’ Why should a Jewish doctor help such people?
Now he did not know what to do. There were other doctors, of course, plenty of them, but he did not know where, nor whether they would come out to see a total stranger. ‘My sister sent me,’ he said feebly.
‘Carla’s got a lot more sense than you.’
‘Ada said the waters have broken.’ Erik was not sure what that meant, but it sounded significant.
With a disgusted look, Frau Rothmann went back into the consulting room.
The old man in the corner cackled. ‘We’re all dirty Jews until you need our help!’ he said. ‘Then it’s: “Please come, Dr Rothmann”, and “What’s your advice, Lawyer Koch?” and “Lend me a hundred marks, Herr Goldman”, and—’ He was overcome by a fit of coughing.
A girl of about sixteen came in from the hall. Erik thought she must be the Rothmanns’ daughter, Eva. He had not seen her for years. She had breasts, now, but she was still plain and dumpy. She said: ‘Did your father let you join the Hitler Youth?’
‘He doesn’t know,’ said Erik.
‘Oh, boy,’ said Eva. ‘You’re in trouble.’
He looked from her to the consulting-room door. ‘Do you think your father’s going to come?’ he said. ‘Your mother was awfully cross with me.’
‘Of course he’ll come,’ Eva said. ‘If people are sick, he helps them.’ Her voice became scornful. ‘He doesn’t check their race or politics first. We’re not Nazis.’ She went out again.
Erik felt bewildered. He had not expected this uniform to get him into so much trouble. At school everyone thought it was wonderful.
A moment later, Dr Rothmann appeared. Speaking to the two waiting patients, he said: ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m sorry, but a baby won’t wait to be born.’ He looked at Erik. ‘Come on, young man, you’d better ride with me, despite that uniform.’
Erik followed him out and got into the passenger seat of the Tree Frog. He loved cars and was desperate to be old enough to drive, and normally he enjoyed riding in any vehicle, watching the dials and studying the driver’s technique. But now he felt as if he were on display, sitting beside a Jewish doctor in his brown shirt. What if Herr Lippmann should see him? The trip was agony.
Fortunately, it was short: in a couple of minutes they were at the von Ulrich house.
‘What’s the young woman’s name?’ Rothmann asked.
‘Ada Hempel.’
‘Ah, yes, she came to see me last week. The baby’s early. All right, take me to her.’
Erik led the way into the house. He heard a baby cry. It had come already! He hurried down to the basement, the doctor following.
Ada lay on her back. The bed was soaked with blood and something else. Carla stood holding a tiny baby in her arms. The baby was covered in slime. Something that looked like thick string ran from the bab
y up Ada’s skirt. Carla was wide-eyed with terror. ‘What must I do?’ she cried.
‘You’re doing exactly the right thing,’ Doctor Rothmann reassured her. ‘Just hold that baby close a minute longer.’ He sat beside Ada. He listened to her heart, took her pulse, and said: ‘How do you feel, my dear?’
‘I’m so tired,’ she said.
Rothmann gave a satisfied nod. He stood up again and looked at the baby in Carla’s arms. ‘A little boy,’ he said.
Erik watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion as the doctor opened his bag, took out some thread and tied two knots in the cord. While he was doing so he spoke to Carla in a soft voice. ‘Why are you crying? You’ve done a marvellous job. You’ve delivered a baby all on your own. You hardly needed me! You’d better be a doctor when you grow up.’
Carla became calmer. Then she whispered: ‘Look at his head.’ The doctor had to lean towards her to hear. ‘I think there’s something wrong with him.’
‘I know.’ The doctor took out a pair of sharp scissors and cut the cord between the two knots Then he took the naked baby from Carla and held him at arm’s length, studying him. Erik could not see anything wrong, but the baby was so red and wrinkled and slimy that it was hard to tell. However, after a thoughtful moment, the doctor said: ‘Oh, dear.’
Looking more carefully, Erik could see that there was something wrong. The baby’s face was lopsided. One side was normal, but on the other the head seemed dented and there was something strange about the eye.
Rothmann handed the baby back to Carla.
Ada groaned again, and seemed to strain.
When she relaxed, Rothmann reached under her skirt and drew out a lump of something that looked disgustingly like meat. ‘Erik,’ he said. ‘Fetch me a newspaper.’
Erik said: ‘Which one?’ His parents took all the main papers every day.
‘Any one, lad,’ said Rothmann gently. ‘I don’t want to read it.’
Erik ran upstairs and found yesterday’s Vossische Zeitung. When he returned, the doctor wrapped the meaty thing in the paper and put it on the floor. ‘It’s what we call the afterbirth,’ he said to Carla. ‘Best to burn it, later.’
Then he sat on the edge of the bed again. ‘Ada, my dear girl, you must be very brave,’ he said. ‘Your baby is alive, but there may be something wrong with him. We’re going to wash him and wrap him up warmly, then we must take him to the hospital.’
Ada looked frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know. We need to have him checked.’
‘Will he be all right?’
‘The hospital doctors will do everything they can. The rest we must leave to God.’
Erik remembered that Jews worshipped the same God as Christians. It was easy to forget that.
Rothmann said: ‘Do you think you could get up and come to the hospital with me, Ada? Baby needs you to feed him.’
‘I’m so tired,’ she said again.
‘Take a minute or two to rest, then. But not much more, because Baby needs to be looked at soon. Carla will help you get dressed. I’ll wait upstairs.’ He addressed Erik with gentle irony. ‘Come with me, little Nazi.’
Erik wanted to squirm. Dr Rothmann’s forbearance was even worse than Frau Rothmann’s scorn.
As they were leaving, Ada said: ‘Doctor?’
‘Yes, my dear.’
‘His name is Kurt.’
‘A very good name,’ said Dr Rothmann. He went out, and Erik followed.
(vi)
Lloyd Williams’s first day working as assistant to Walter von Ulrich was also the first day of the new parliament.
Walter and Maud were struggling frantically to save Germany’s fragile democracy. Lloyd shared their desperation, partly because they were good people whom he had known on and off all his life, and partly because he feared that Britain could follow Germany down the road to hell.
The election had resolved nothing. The Nazis got 44 per cent, an increase but still short of the 51 per cent they craved.
Walter saw hope. Driving to the opening of the parliament, he said: ‘Even with massive intimidation, they failed to win the votes of most Germans.’ He banged his fist on the steering wheel. ‘Despite everything they say, they are not popular. And the longer they stay in government, the better people will get to know their wickedness.’
Lloyd was not so sure. ‘They’ve closed opposition newspapers, thrown Reichstag deputies in jail, and corrupted the police,’ he said. ‘And yet forty-four per cent of Germans approve? I don’t find that reassuring.’
The Reichstag building was badly fire-damaged and quite unusable, so the parliament assembled in the Kroll Opera House, on the opposite side of the Königs Platz. It was a vast complex with three concert halls and fourteen smaller auditoria, plus restaurants and bars.
When they arrived, they had a shock. The place was surrounded by Brownshirts. Deputies and their aides crowded around the entrances, trying to get in. Walter said furiously: ‘Is this how Hitler plans to get his way – by preventing us from entering the chamber?’
Lloyd saw that the doors were barred by Brownshirts. They admitted those in Nazi uniform without question, but everyone else had to produce credentials. A boy younger than Lloyd looked him up and down contemptuously before grudgingly letting him in. This was intimidation, pure and simple.
Lloyd felt his temper beginning to simmer. He hated to be bullied. He knew he could knock the Brownshirt boy down with one good left hook. He forced himself to remain calm, turn away, and walk through the door.
After the fight in the People’s Theatre, his mother had examined the egg-shaped lump on his head and ordered him to go home to England. He had talked her round, but it had been a close thing.
She said he had no sense of danger, but that was not quite right. He did get scared sometimes, but it always made him feel combative. His instinct was to go on the attack, not to retreat. This scared his mother.
Ironically, she was just the same. She was not going home. She was frightened, but she was also thrilled to be here in Berlin at this turning point in German history, and outraged by the violence and repression she was witnessing; and she felt sure she could write a book that would forewarn democrats in other countries about Fascist tactics. ‘You’re worse than me,’ Lloyd had said to her, and she had had no answer.
Inside, the opera house was swarming with Brownshirts and SS men, many of them armed. They guarded every door and showed, with looks and gestures, their hatred and contempt for anyone not supporting the Nazis.
Walter was late for a Social Democratic Party group meeting. Lloyd hurried around the building looking for the right room. Glancing into the debating chamber, he saw that a giant swastika hung from the ceiling, dominating the room.
The first matter to be discussed, when proceedings began that afternoon, was to be the Enabling Act, which would permit Hitler’s cabinet to pass laws without the approval of the Reichstag.
The Act offered a dreadful prospect. It would make Hitler a dictator. The repression, intimidation, violence, torture and murder that Germany had seen in the past few weeks would become permanent. It was unthinkable.
But Lloyd could not imagine that any parliament in the world would pass such a law. They would be voting themselves out of power. It was political suicide.
He found the Social Democrats in a small auditorium. Their meeting had already begun. Lloyd hurried Walter to the room, then he was sent for coffee.
Waiting in the queue, he found himself behind a pale, intense-looking young man dressed in funereal black. Lloyd’s German had become more fluent and colloquial, and he now had the confidence to strike up a conversation with a stranger. The man in black was Heinrich von Kessel, he learned. He was doing the same sort of job as Lloyd, working as an unpaid aide to his father, Gottfried von Kessel, a deputy for the Centre Party, which was Catholic.
‘My father knows Walter von Ulrich very well,’ Heinrich said. ‘They were both attachés at the Germa
n embassy in London in 1914.’
The world of international politics and diplomacy was quite small, Lloyd reflected.
Heinrich told Lloyd that a return to the Christian faith was the answer to Germany’s problems.
‘I’m not much of a Christian,’ Lloyd said candidly. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so. My grandparents are Welsh Bible-punchers, but my mother is indifferent and my stepfather’s Jewish. Occasionally we go to the Calvary Gospel Hall in Aldgate, mainly because the pastor is a Labour Party member.’
Heinrich smiled and said: ‘I’ll pray for you.’
Catholics were not proselytizers, Lloyd remembered. What a contrast to his dogmatic grandparents in Aberowen, who thought that people who did not believe as they did were wilfully blinding themselves to the gospel, and would be condemned to eternal damnation.
When Lloyd re-entered the Social Democratic Party meeting, Walter was speaking. ‘It can’t happen!’ he said. ‘The Enabling Act is a constitutional amendment. Two thirds of the representatives must be present, which would be 432 out of a possible 647. And two thirds of those present must approve.’
Lloyd added up the numbers in his head as he put the tray down on the table. The Nazis had 288 seats, and the Nationalists who were their close allies had 52, making 340 – nearly 100 short. Walter was right. The Act could not be passed. Lloyd was comforted and sat down to listen to the discussion and to improve his German.
But his relief was short-lived. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ said a man with a working-class Berlin accent. ‘The Nazis are caucusing with the Centre Party.’ That was Heinrich’s lot, Lloyd recalled. ‘That could give them another seventy-four,’ the man finished.
Lloyd frowned. Why would the Centre Party support a measure that would take away all its power?
Walter voiced the same thought more bluntly. ‘How could the Catholics be so stupid?’
Lloyd wished he had known about this before he went for coffee – then he could have discussed it with Heinrich. He might have learned something useful. Damn.
The man with the Berlin accent said: ‘In Italy, the Catholics made a deal with Mussolini – a concordat to protect the Church. Why not here?’
