Listen for the Singing

by Jean Little

  For Ellen S. Rudin, my editor

  and

  for Ellen, my friend.

  Several years after I finished writing From Anna, I wondered what happened to the Soldens when Canada and Germany went to war. I was especially curious about Rudi, Anna’s brother, who left Germany when he was twelve. He would be old enough to enlist. I wanted to know how they were and, in order to find out, I knew I would have to visit them. I could write just a page or two, I thought, to see what was going on. I began to type and found myself writing about Anna starting high school. Before I knew it, I was writing this book.

  — Jean Little

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Anna wakened to hear someone walking from the bathroom back along the hall.

  “Is that you, Papa?” she said.

  She did not need to ask. Even half-asleep, she knew his step.

  “Yes. Go back to sleep, child. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

  “I was awake already.” It wasn’t a lie exactly, just a polite fib. “Why are you up so early?”

  This time, he made no reply. Anna, from the curtained-off alcove that served as her bedroom, heard him going back down the stairs.

  She was settling down, preparing to doze off again, when she realized that this might be the very chance she had been hoping for: time alone with her father. As far back as she could remember, whenever she was in trouble too big to handle alone, she had gone to him for help. The two of them were so close that often he understood before she was well into her explanation. And if ever she were facing trouble, it was right now, looking ahead to school beginning on Tuesday morning. Maybe Papa could think of some way to make it less terrifying or her more courageous. Even if he couldn’t, simply talking it over with him would help. She could count on him to take her seriously when someone else might scoff.

  But could she? Hadn’t Papa changed lately? When had he last taken time to listen to her as though she mattered to him in a special way?

  “Papa’s Pet,” her big brother Rudi used to call her. He had teased and taunted her with other names too — Awkward Anna, Dummkopf, Pickle Face, Little Stupid, and always Baby because she was the youngest. Those mean names had hurt and humiliated her, making her sometimes feel as awkward and stupid as Rudi said she was. “Papa’s Pet,” however, she had never minded. Each time he said it she smiled inside, knowing it was true.

  At least, it had been true. Now …?

  It’s still true, she told herself sharply. It’s only that Papa’s been so worried about the news. I’d better get down there before the paperboy comes!

  Before she sat up even, she reached for her glasses and put them on. The world around her, a blurred, unreal place before, sprang into sharper focus as she looked at it through the thick lenses. Suddenly she was able to distinguish the pinkish stripes in the faded wallpaper, the many-coloured squares in her patchwork quilt, the kitchen chair on which she had laid her library book face down, open at her place. Less clearly, she could make out the chest of drawers at the foot of her bed and the tall, narrow wardrobe jammed up against it, in which her dresses hung.

  Although she had worn glasses for nearly five years, it still astonished her that she had ever managed without them. Now, putting them on was the way she started every day, and she did not take them off, except to clean them, until she was in bed for the night. Even while she slept she kept them placed within easy reach.

  But this was no time to be thinking about her eyes!

  She got out of bed and was feeling about for her slippers when she heard something that made her freeze.

  Please, let it be only my imagination, she prayed. Please, don’t let it …

  Her prayer went unanswered. She heard it again, an unmistakable, all too familiar, sharp crackle of sound. Static! Papa had turned on his detestable radio! She was already too late to talk to him.

  Anna climbed back into bed. She punched her pillow to make it the right shape to lean back against. Then she pulled the sheet over her knees and sat glaring into space. No, she was glaring at her father, even though he could not see her. She could see him! She did not have to be in the same room to know exactly what he was doing and how he looked doing it. She must have seen him a million times. He was sitting in the shabby, sagging armchair, his head bent close to the big shortwave set he had bought for himself over a year ago, his face closed off from everyone and everything around him as he listened to the latest news broadcast.

  How amazed they had all been the night he brought that radio home, Papa who never bought anything for himself unless Mama made him. The set was expensive too, even though he had got it secondhand.

  “Is the Depression over?” Fritz blurted out, staring at it.

  Everyone understood why he asked. For years and years, there had been hard times. There was always enough to eat, but seldom second helpings. There had been no money for extras for anyone. How Anna had begged for an Eaton Beauty doll the Christmas she was ten! Till Mama told her sharply to stop hurting Papa by asking him for something he couldn’t afford to get for her. Yet, that night, there stood Papa with this big shiny radio!

  “No, the Depression’s not over. Not yet,” her father had said, clearing a place of honour for his new possession. “But it will be before long.”

  “When?” Fritz asked.

  “When the war begins,” Papa answered matter-of-factly.

  As though he knew there was no way out, Anna thought now, with the same quick shiver of fear she had felt that evening. Yet so far there was still a depression and Canada was not at war.

  Of course, there was some fighting going on in Europe. Over the last many months, Anna had seen it in newsreels at the movies. They showed Adolf Hitler screaming speeches at wildly cheering mobs, German troops goose-stepping and giving the now famous “Heil, Hitler!” salute, and German forces moving across borders to occupy neighbouring countries.

  As she sat in the darkened theatre and watched the flickering black-and-white pictures, Anna felt nothing in common with the people she saw there, even though she and her family had come from Germany to Canada only five years ago. She dimly remembered a time when Frankfurt had seemed the whole world and German the language everyone spoke. Now Toronto was the real place, and she spoke, thought, and even dreamed in English. The hysteria of the German people caught by the newsreel camera mystified her as much as it did the rest of the audience. Papa claimed it was a madness which threatened the peace of the world, but Mama scoffed at such foreboding. Anna did not know what to think. If Mama went to the movies and saw for herself, she might be more afraid. Still, it was all happening on the far side of an immense ocean.

  The day before yesterday, German soldiers had invaded Poland. All that meant to Anna, right at this minute, was that Papa was too worried to remember that she, his youngest, his “pet,” was about to start high school — and she was terrified at the pros
pect.

  How can he forget? she thought, feeling betrayed by her father for the first time in her life. I’ll bet he doesn’t know a single, solitary person in Poland!

  Downstairs the clock chimed the hour. Anna counted the strokes. Why, it was only six o’clock! Papa must be crazy.

  She yawned. It was far too early to be awake. She slid down a little so her head rested against the pillow. She would go back to sleep after all, since Papa had no time to spare.

  What was that? Had someone cried out?

  “Klara! Klara, come!”

  Then, before that made any sense to her, Anna heard her father calling from the foot of the stairs.

  “Rudi! Anna, wake Rudi. Call everyone. Quickly! Do you hear me, Anna?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  Springing out of bed, Anna ran not to waken the others but to stand where she could look down from the landing. Her father had not waited. He was back in the living room. She could hear, faintly, a slow measured voice speaking. Not Papa’s. A British voice. Frightened, she strained to catch the words:

  “… God bless you all and may He defend the right.”

  “Papa,” she cried out, starting down to him, “what is it? What’s wrong?”

  Her father appeared in the doorway which joined the living room to the front hall. Anna, two steps down, stopped where she was and stared at him. What had happened? He stooped as though he were old, old or sick. He looked like a stranger.

  “It’s come. Britain has declared war on Germany,” Ernst Solden said.

  So Papa had been right. All those times, when he had warned them war must come, and Mama had been angry with him for talking so foolishly — he had been right. For one instant, Anna felt glad, glad her mother had been the foolish one and her father the one who really knew. Stunned by what he had just told her, still not really understanding anything of what it meant, she almost smiled.

  Then the light from the window shone full on her father’s face and, in spite of her poor vision, she saw the shine of tears on his cheeks.

  She fled back up the stairs.

  Chapter 2

  “Rudi!” she shouted, flinging open the door to the boys’ bedroom. “Rudi, wake up. Wake up!”

  Fritz reared up wide awake, but Rudi did not even open his eyes.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep and profoundly uninterested.

  Anna’s fear vanished; excitement rose up in its place. For once in her life, she had the advantage over her oldest brother.

  “There’s a WAR!” she announced. She felt like someone in a play, a messenger with one crucial line to say. “Papa says to come downstairs. Hurry!”

  She dashed along the hall to rouse her sisters. How shocked, how disbelieving their two faces were as she hurled her news at them! How wonderful that she had been the first to know.

  “Hurry up,” she urged, glorying in being bossy while simply obeying Papa.

  She rushed down the stairs. Rudi was already there, standing next to Papa, both of them listening to the radio.

  “Where’s Mama?” she asked.

  “I called her. Isn’t she here?” Papa said. He did not even look around to see.

  Her parents’ bedroom was downstairs, on the other side of the dining room. Anna opened the door and saw her mother deep in sleep. She went up to the bed and put her hand on Mama’s shoulder, the way she used to when she was little and felt sick in the night. For anything else she went to Papa, but Mama was best when you were sick. Klara Solden came awake at once, as Anna knew she would.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, raising herself on her elbow and peering at her youngest with worried eyes.

  “Papa wants you,” Anna said. “He got up early to listen to the news because of Poland …”

  “That man!” Mama snorted. “As if we don’t have enough troubles of our own.”

  “Mama,” Anna said, steeling herself, “it’s war now. Britain against Germany. Just like Papa said.”

  She had braced herself for nothing. Mama got up quietly, put on her robe, and automatically ran a comb through her hair.

  Anna stood by, wondering what she should be doing.

  “Come,” Mama said, stretching out her hand to take Anna’s. They went together to the living room. Fritz and Frieda were there too, and Gretchen was hurrying down the stairs.

  “What Anna has said … she has it wrong somehow?” Klara Solden asked her husband.

  “Listen,” Papa said. “They’re rebroadcasting Mr. Chamberlain’s speech.”

  Anna knew Mr. Chamberlain was the Prime Minister of Britain. He was the one who had gone to meet with Hitler at the conference in Munich and come back promising England “peace in our time.” Papa had called him a blind fool because he had believed Hitler would keep the promises he made not to invade any more of Europe.

  Fool or not he sounded tired and sad to Anna. She recognized his as the voice she had heard earlier:

  “May God bless you all and may He defend the right.”

  Before the speech was over, Mama had collapsed into Papa’s chair in tears. Papa put his arm awkwardly around her shoulders. The announcer’s voice went on, but finally Papa had ceased to listen.

  “Can I turn it off, Papa?” Rudi asked, looking at his mother. “There won’t be anything new for a while, I guess.”

  Papa nodded. Anna watched Rudi take a step forward. His hand fumbled and it was a second before he could silence the announcer’s voice. He jerked his hand away and knotted it together with his other one behind his back. Anna, startled, stared at him but although he looked stern and perhaps pale, how else would he look? War! She tried to make it have some reality for herself. It still seemed something Papa talked about, something far away, nothing to do with her.

  Like Judgment Day, Anna thought, and was glad the others couldn’t see into her mind.

  “Will we still have to start school on Tuesday?” asked Fritz.

  A wild hope sprang up in Anna. But Rudi reacted unexpectedly again by snapping at his brother, before Papa had a chance to answer.

  “Of course we will. Don’t be such a fool!”

  Anna took off her glasses, polished them hurriedly on a fold of her nightgown, and put them back on. Through them, she stared at Rudi again. Was he really as angry as he sounded? He did look fierce, ready to fight with somebody.

  “What use would you be in a war? You or any other kid?” Rudi raged on as though Fritz was arguing.

  Before Fritz could come to his own defense, Papa answered the fear behind Rudi’s words.

  “You are barely eighteen, Rudi. Of course you will continue your education.”

  Mama gasped, her horrified glance leaping from man to boy. Anna felt confused until she heard Rudi say loudly, his voice scornful,

  “I was not thinking of myself.”

  She knew he was lying. He had never been able to lie successfully. And she wanted to laugh at the silliness of her brother imagining that anybody would want him to leave school to fight.

  Fritz would be a far better choice. Rudi couldn’t even peel a potato without cutting his finger. He was good looking. He could work out complicated abstract problems in his head. Gretchen assured them he was a terrific dancer. He talked well.

  But he wasn’t a soldier. As far as Anna could see, Mama had nothing to worry about.

  “They might start school a day late or something,” Fritz muttered. “That’s all I meant.”

  Nobody paid any attention to him this time.

  Rudi had started to whistle through his teeth, not loudly, but tonelessly so that it grated on your ears. He had raised his head now and was gazing fixedly at something outside the front window. Anna looked too but saw only a blur of white curtains and the early morning light. Of course, Rudi could see much better than she could, even with her glasses, but she had a feeling he was not looking at anything just as he was not whistling anything.

  “I’ll fix some breakfast,” Gretchen said suddenly, taking up the burden of being the elde
st daughter. “Aren’t you hungry, Mama?”

  Mama did not seem to have heard her. She was looking at the silent radio.

  “Ernst,” she said, “could there have been a mistake?”

  “You heard it yourself, Klara,” her husband answered simply.

  “I can’t understand it,” she said.

  Frieda turned her head away from her mother’s dazed face. “I’ll help you, Gretchen.”

  The two girls moved slowly toward the door. They did not want to leave their mother, and yet they were uncomfortable staying. Uncomfortable and helpless. Anna knew how they felt because she felt it too.

  And we’re all talking in jerks, she thought. They must all feel as she did. Her throat felt tight, too small for words to come through and sound normal.

  “I’m starving,” Fritz put in, sounding blessedly himself. “Make lots, Gretchen. How about eggs and sausages?”

  “I’m making this for Mama, not you,” Gretchen answered but she gave him a grateful smile. He fell in beside her, obviously planning to persuade her further.

  “Let me help,” Rudi said suddenly.

  He did not wait for his sister’s reaction but strode out of the room ahead of them all. The three girls and his mother stared after him, their faces identical in their expression of astonishment. Not even trying, Rudi had managed to snap Mama out of her trance.

  Papa chuckled, then sobered.

  “Yes, let him help,” he said. “He doesn’t know what to do with himself. After all, this is his first war. You know, Mama and I have already been through one. That’s when we met.”

  Mama actually laughed. “You were so conceited in your uniform,” she teased. “Such a strutting young peacock!”

  “You couldn’t resist me,” Papa reminded her. “You weren’t the only one either, you know, but I took pity on you.”

  Mama hit at him, lightly.

  “Pity, was it?” she scoffed. “I remember you down on your knees — and all these children are the result of my feeling sorry for you!”

  Reassured by the laughter, the two older girls left, Fritz following them. Anna, alone with her parents, watched them and had trouble believing her eyes and ears. She had seen first one and then the other in tears within the last hour, and now they were laughing, laughing about Papa going to war.