Orphan Monster Spy

by Matt Killeen

  “There’s no just about it. Raising the next generation—nothing is more sacred or important. We must be fearless and bright as she-wolves.” Her eyes were fierce. “You think that fat mass of blubber Bauer and his staff of twisted rodents are the future of this country?” The Ice Queen pointed up the path. The sun broke through the low clouds behind her. “You think there’s anything to learn from them? With their rulers and their sticks and their wrath focused on the weak and pointless, like your friend the Mouse? That traitor Foch is the closest thing to a real National Socialist, and he’s a jibbering wreck who should have had a bullet in his brain in nineteen thirty-four.” She stopped and softened. “No, what we do is the real lesson here. We find the strongest and purest. We don’t waste time on the chaff.”

  The sun disappeared behind a cloud, and the warmth vanished from the air.

  But, thought Sarah.

  “But we have a problem,” the older girl went on. “For some reason, the school has formed the idea that you’ve defied me somehow. It’s all my fault, of course, allowing Rahn to get carried away, but this is not in anyone’s interests. An experiment that failed. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “No.” This was the logic of the madhouse. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “It’s unfortunate, as you had potential, but I need to re-establish the hierarchy. The physical challenge, the River Race, would have suited you, but I’m afraid you will have to fail. You’ll have an accident, all very unfortunate, but you’ll live. You’ll probably be back next year while I’m walking through the ruins of Paris.”

  Sarah stopped. Just let it go, let it happen, ask for forgiveness, beg for mercy. Instead the mounting bitterness and wailing hysteria deep within escaped the box, even as she pressed the lid down. She felt the heat in her teeth and ears and tried to keep her voice low.

  “I won’t fail. Then what will you do?”

  The Ice Queen smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Oh, interesting . . . but, no.”

  The laughter of their approaching classmates began to fill the air. The Ice Queen cocked her head toward the school.

  “Time to start running, Haller.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They got chocolate cake for dessert. As a treat. It was foul.

  Elsa, the Ice Queen, and the others weren’t eating it. As the Mouse had suggested, they ate and exercised alone. However, the elite of Rothenstadt were sitting on a table at the head of the hall, too remote, too beautiful, and laughing too loud. Elsa was younger than the others but made up for that with volume, though her words were lost in the din of the hall.

  Sarah looked at the rest of the school, at the merely average cream of German youth trying to enjoy dessert, and wondered if she should be feeling grateful that the Ice Queen had chosen her as a test subject. Certainly there didn’t seem to be any way of approaching Elsa Schäfer otherwise. The act of walking up and starting a conversation would have been beyond her, although Sarah was no longer sure if the mission was befriending Elsa or just surviving. Being Jewish in a Nazi school seemed almost beside the point.

  The Mouse was talking. The Mouse was always talking. It should have been overwhelming and irritating, but Sarah found it oddly calming. Sitting with her was better than being alone. The Mouse didn’t ask many questions, but Sarah sensed that wasn’t because she wasn’t interested. She was giving Sarah space, in the only way she could.

  Sarah interrupted her. “What is the River Race, Mouse?”

  “It’s the last race of the term. There’s a trophy and everything, three kilometers to the bridge and three kilometers back on the other side. It’s for the big girls, really, but we’re all supposed to cheer them on. The Final Year girls organize it.” The Mouse prattled on. “They choose one girl from each class. Liebrich wants it to be her, as she’s the Schlafsaalführerin, but everyone thinks she’s too slow.” She giggled. “Not that it matters. The older girls will win . . .” The Mouse stopped, as an unpleasant idea occurred. “Oh . . . is the River Race your challenge?”

  “It appears so.” Sarah pushed a sour cherry around her plate.

  “I’m sorry, Haller.”

  “I might win,” she said, with the confidence of a fox cornered by hounds.

  “No. No, I don’t think so.” The Mouse fell silent and concentrated on trying not to make her fork shriek against the plate.

  “What’s wrong with Sturmbannführer Foch?” Sarah changed the subject.

  “I don’t know. He cries a lot. I think he wishes they’d shot him along with the others,” the Mouse mused. “I hear he did something to survive, something horrible.”

  What could be worse than being an officer in the SA? Sarah nearly said out loud. She didn’t trust herself to talk further.

  The Ice Queen’s retinue left the room with great ceremony. Some First Year girls even stood up as they went past.

  “What do you know about her?” Sarah asked, waving a fork at Elsa as she left the room.

  The Mouse made a face like they might be overheard and replied hurriedly, “I don’t know anything about her . . . Why?”

  “No reason. She’s younger than the others . . .”

  “It’s not about age.” The Mouse scraped her fork and drew reproving catcalls from the next table. “Really not very interesting,” she added. “How is your cake?”

  Sarah made a face and sighed. “Why is the food so bad?” she mumbled to the gritty brown mess on her plate.

  The Mouse brightened and leaned in toward her. “Apparently, Herr Bauer is taking all the money—well, most of it, the money that comes from the Reich Ministry of Education. You see, the Napola schools were created in such a hurry they didn’t check anyone out properly, so Bauer managed to talk his way in, but he’s on thin ice now, so it’s only a matter of time before—” The Mouse stopped, panic in her eyes. She dropped her head.

  “Mouse, how do you know all this?” The small girl was absurdly well-informed. A girl who liked secrets almost for secrets’ sake. A girl after Sarah’s own heart.

  “Well, my father is . . . important . . . to do with schools and things like that . . .” the Mouse stammered.

  Sarah looked around, but the conversation didn’t seem to have been overheard. She realized why the Mouse, so small, so limited, was at a school for the strongest, fastest, most intelligent. She closed in. “Mouse, are you here as a . . . spy?”

  The Mouse was shaking gently behind her hair. “Just to notice things . . .”

  Sarah laughed—a big, hearty chuckle—and couldn’t stop for a minute. “Hey, come on, it’s all right. I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered.

  “Promise?” demanded the Mouse in a tiny voice.

  “Promise. Would you like some of my cake?” Sarah proffered a dirty spoon.

  “Really?” The Mouse brightened.

  “Really.”

  The two spies sat side by side and tried to enjoy the bitter, gritty brown lump and spoiled fruit, surrounded by oblivious monsters.

  Jungmädel Ursula Haller is to report to Sturmbannführer Foch in Herr Bauer’s office at 1400 hours.

  * * *

  • • •

  Sarah waited outside the door, feeling the need to catch her breath, as if she was about to dive into the Müggelsee on a cool day. But the air seemed false, inadequate. Sarah found Foch’s interest in her discomfiting. He was a storm trooper, wearing the uniform of beatings, broken windows, and fire, but that wasn’t quite it. He was also emaciated, coarse, and ugly. In any normal circumstance Sarah would have laughed at this. The evil that she had seen, and the wanton hatred she’d experienced, were often immaculately dressed and superficially attractive. But he felt wrong, broken, unpredictable, and there was something else she couldn’t quite fathom that made his proximity unbearable.

  She raised a hand to knock, but before she could make a noise, a voi
ce ordered:

  “Enter.”

  She took one last gulp and turned the cold doorknob.

  Sturmbannführer Foch was standing at the window, hands clasped behind his back. Sarah closed the door and stepped to the piano, holding her music to her chest like a shield.

  It’s a recital, just a recital.

  When did I play a recital?

  You’ve seen recitals. The audience applauds and wonders how the soloist can dare stand up in front of everyone. They feel embarrassed in the opening silence. They are frightened. Feed on their fear.

  The lid was open, the music stand was clear. Everything was waiting. Her audience stood in silhouette at the window.

  Don’t look at the audience, dumme Schlampe.

  She sat on the stool, dwarfed by the instrument. She needed to adjust the height of the seat but wanted to get started. Sit, play, leave. Placing the sheet on the stand, she studied the staves, the notes, the accents. She let her brain slide through the melodies she knew so well, looking for the minute changes where her memory had blurred or erased the detail. She allowed herself to become irritated. She loathed notation. It was a corset that made music wheeze. Like someone explaining a joke.

  She hammered the keys with mock melodrama, but there was no light and dark, just noise. She kept time with a vehement precision but couldn’t reach the pedals properly, so all the subtlety was lost. Here’s your damn music, Sturmbannführer.

  “Lovely, Gretel. Slow down.”

  His words, so close behind her, were like being doused with cold water. He had moved with a catlike silence once again, and now his breath was audible between the notes. She slowed at his command, the scent of oranges filling the air.

  Who is Gretel?

  Ignore the audience.

  “Ursula, sir.”

  Had Gretel sat on this seat, played this piano?

  She stared at the approaching forest of notes and ran for their cover. Lauf.

  Had he stood this close to her?

  “Slowly, Gretel,” he whispered.

  She broke into the fast section and attacked the keyboard.

  Make it stop.

  Shush, dumme Schlampe. Shut up and play.

  Something touched the top of her head, and a chill ran down her scalp like a falling insect. Her shoulders tensed and rose to touch her ears. Her fingers kept moving, but her elbows retreated to her sides, shaking her rhythm.

  His fingers ran softly down the outside of her hair, taking in the curves and bumps of her braids, brushing her loose strands flat, and sliding his hands toward her neck. The sensation was like hearing a steel knife across a plate.

  Stop touching me.

  She tried to move forward, to shrink from his touch, but couldn’t seem to escape, as if she was being held. She began to lean over the keys.

  Stop playing and run. Lauf!

  Her neck grew warm as his hands reached its nape and began again at the top. She was still playing, now merely repeating the same phrases over and over. Her chin started to quiver, so she bit her tongue until it stopped, but to her mortification a slow gurgling whimper began to escape from her throat. She shut her eyes before any tears could appear.

  Stop. Touching. Me.

  She didn’t trust herself to speak without crying out.

  Please. Stop.

  Her hands were now shaking so much she couldn’t press the keys.

  “Don’t stop, Gretel,” Klaus Foch whispered, his voice shaking.

  Who is Gretel? What happened to Gretel? What is happening to me?

  Sarah stopped her whimper. As she did, she heard the man behind her crying. She pulled her head away from his hands and retreated to the edge of the stool.

  “Gretel . . .” he sobbed.

  She slammed the lid of the piano closed with a smack. The strings protested with a cacophonous howl as she fled for the door. Papers were carried off the desk as she passed. The rug tried to slide away from her feet, but then she was at the door and pulling at the handle with sweaty fingers.

  She was out of the room and down the corridor before the sound from the piano had faded.

  FOURTEEN

  THE ROOM WAS silent except for the noise of pen nibs on rough paper and Fräulein Langefeld’s sensible shoes clopping slowly across the floorboards as she prowled among the desks.

  Sarah looked at her still-blank sheet. A letter home. She tried to imagine what her ink-stained hands might possibly write.

  Dear Captain Floyd,

  I thank you for enrolling me in an asylum for the insane. In my short time here, I have become the plaything of one of the Furies of antiquity and been strangled by her attack dog until my eyes bled. The food is poisonous, the teachers are psychopathic, and as for the music staff,

  Nausea threatened to overcome her.

  Take me away. Get me out of here. Take me to a clean kitchen with warm bread and cold sausage, fresh sheets and a safe room with no windows . . .

  Sarah bit her tongue and drove the weakness away.

  The next time I go running, I could disappear into the woods and never be found.

  If I had somewhere to go, yes.

  Anywhere but here.

  I have a job to do. There’s no home, no safety, nothing to run away to, until it’s done.

  The job? And what’s the plan? Defeat the Ice Queen? Save the Mouse? Lead the chosen people out of Egypt?

  Go to class. Blend in. Make friends. Wait for an opportunity. Survive.

  Make enemies, more like.

  Maybe. Just commit to the move.

  And if I fall?

  Then you break and you burn.

  The Mouse was scribbling furiously. What was she saying? Was she detailing the wickedness? How could her father leave her in this place? If she was spying for him, why had nothing changed?

  “Haller! What are you doing?” Langefeld’s voice cut the air in two.

  “Nothing,” Sarah called, and concentrated on her blank sheet. Langefeld slapped her stick across the desk. It missed Sarah’s hands, but the impact sloshed the contents of her inkwell onto the desk.

  “That much I can see. What is so interesting about Mauser?”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll concentrate.” Make it better, make it go away.

  “No, there must be something. Why would you be so transfixed?” Langefeld strode toward the Mouse, who shrank away from her. Sarah quailed as the teacher tore the letter from her desk. “Mauser! This is illegible. What is it supposed to say?”

  “It’s—just a few—” the Mouse stammered.

  “You’re hopeless. A waste of skin. What are you?” Langefeld leaned into the Mouse’s face.

  “A waste . . .” the Mouse said softly.

  “Speak up, I can’t hear you,” Langefeld snarled, little flecks of spittle flying from her mouth.

  “I’m a waste of skin!” shrieked the Mouse.

  “Stand up.”

  “Oh no, please, don’t, I’m sorry.” Tears were already running down the Mouse’s face.

  “Hands out.”

  Sarah watched the woman tensing up and raising her stick, her eyes alight with cruelty.

  “No . . .”

  Sarah began to write. She added each word deliberately and slowly, as the slaps and the stifled cries began.

  Dear Uncle,

  Thank you for sending me to this excellent institution. The very cream of our shared and golden future is being prepared for what awaits us all.

  “Sarahchen . . . Sarahchen. Where are you?”

  Sarah crawled out from under the table, noting that the stove had gone out again. “Mutti, I’m coming.”

  “Sarah . . .” Her mother’s voice was weak and rasping but had lost none of its needle-like effect on Sarah. To resist it would have cut her in two. She stretched as she ran to the
bedroom.

  Her mother had walked into this room when they moved to the top-floor flat and had never left it. It wasn’t the SA driving them from their apartment in Giselhergasse that had pushed her over the edge. It had been selling the piano to a predatory neighbor for a knock-down rate. The instrument that had propped her in a seated position for three years, physically and emotionally, had gone. She and Sarah had shared the bed at first, but the scent of alcohol had grown overpowering. When her mother wet the bed the first time, Sarah slept in the kitchen, beginning an ongoing campaign against Vienna’s most insistent cockroaches.

  They had been lucky to escape to Austria, but then Germany had followed them, swallowing its neighboring country in the Anschluss, the Joining. And it had all started again, only worse.

  Sarah pushed the bedroom door open, hit once again by the smell of whisky and urine. Her mother was bolt upright in bed, hair escaping its clips, eyes red and glistening in the muted, curtained light.

  “Mutti, what’s wrong?”

  “Sarahchen, my medicine has gone.”

  There was an empty bottle and a cracked tumbler on the nightstand.

  “Mutti, that was full yesterday. Surely it hasn’t all been drunk?” Sarah wailed. That bottle had cost a teapot and, most painfully of all, half a loaf of bread. “Mother, the last of the piano money has gone. We don’t have anything left.”

  “You’re a clever girl, you’ll think of something. All this time you’ve run the house while Mutti’s been sick.”

  “What about the car, Mutti? It’s worth—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll need the car when we leave.” Her mother’s voice was dismissive.

  Sarah pushed her nails into her palms. She tried again—had to try again—but knew inside where the trail would lead.

  “Mutti, when are we leaving? They check papers now crossing the bridges, going to the shops. Soon they won’t let us leave at all.”

  “We wait for your father; he’ll come, he’ll help us . . .” Her mother’s attention was seeping away.

  “When? We haven’t seen him for eight years.” Sarah’s frustration at the hopeless fairy tale spilled over. “Mutti, he’s never coming back . . .”