They drove through the medina, which Willy explained was the name given to the old part around the great mosque, and skirted the hammam. Everything started early, stopped, went on until late. Some of the passers-by waved and saluted them. Ilse, sitting proudly beside him, saw how the cafés were already busy with groups of men drinking glasses of tea. Others wearing long dresses, which Willy said were called djellabas, led little donkeys to the souk, their panniers charged with merchandise. Young men in Western clothes wove in and out of the narrow streets on bicycles; one woman was modern in a short skirt and heels and stockings, though others wore long robes in bright colours. The big car nosed its way along the Rue de la Route, stopped beside an old stone wall with a tiny opening protected by an ancient metal grille. Below was a sign etched in brass: M. & MME LINDEMANN.
Willy opened a wooden door, which led into a long shady corridor and from there through to a big room. Beyond this was a courtyard lined with colonnades in dusty pink and a garden of an astonishing green. All the houses were like this, he said: plain outside, their treasures hidden away. The courtyard was flanked by two buildings: one had a kitchen and dining and living room, the other bedrooms and bathrooms. The third side was a big shed with ladders and painting gear and room enough to nose the car inside, to keep it cool.
“Quietly, now,” he said. “We don’t want to disturb Toni.”
They crept in.
He balanced the case on his head, carried it Moroccan style into a room with a little white bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers on which stood a cut-glass vase full of white flowers. She washed in the beautiful white-tiled bathroom, took out a clean dress and put it on. Outside, the grass was dew-dropped, iridescent. The sun streamed through the window and slanted across the floor, warming her feet and bare legs.
In the kitchen Marie, a smiling woman with a singsong voice, introduced herself and, clucking that the little one was too thin, made her scrambled eggs with herbs. Famished, Ilse ate the whole panful with piece after piece of bread. At home they had white rolls in the morning and at night Vollkornbrot, or dark rye. This bread was flat and you pulled it apart with your fingers. When Willy came in, Marie made more eggs. She came every day, Willy said, for Toni did not care to have a woman living in. At her name, Marie smiled and nodded, though she did not understand any German. There was real coffee and fresh milk, and a big basket of croissants. Like a Frenchman, Willy dipped his in a big bowl of coffee and ate the soft, crumbling mass with a good appetite.
She was not to be any trouble; her mother had impressed this upon her. Ilse unpacked her case, laying all the things carefully in the chest of drawers, hanging up both dresses and arranging her slippers. There was her present at the bottom. She took out the shoebox, carefully wrapped with brown paper and string, and put it on the chest of drawers. She sat on the bed, thinking that she would open it—but she would just put her head on the pillow for a moment. But when the gentle beat of her heart turned into the sound of somebody knocking on the door, the room was the colour of amber in the setting sun. Though it scarcely seemed possible, she had slept the whole day away. “Come in!” called Ilse.
A head appeared: a child with blond hair hanging down to her shoulders. It wasn’t a child, but a doll. Toni wore a dressing gown, a filmy pretty one in pale blue with a pattern of roses on it that, falling open, revealed golden-coloured legs and throat.
“How are you feeling?” She had a strong foreign accent.
“Fine.”
“Come on, then. We need to talk.”
Ilse rose and followed. Willy had gone to work and come back again, and now he sat on a big wicker chair facing out onto the garden, which was slanted grey and gold, winking at her.
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“If you need me, little mouse, scream. I’ll come and save you,” he said, lighting a cigarette, inhaling deep and smiling through the smoke rings.
The bedroom was Toni’s domain. Her dressing table, a beautiful sleek thing with a mirror on top, held a dozen elegant cut-glass bottles of scent. It was somehow just like Toni herself. A wall of cupboards filled one side of the long room and everything was very modern. In one corner stood a little trolley with glasses on it and ice. Toni picked up a cocktail shaker, shook it vigorously and poured the contents over ice.
“Want one?”
“No, thank you.”
Nobody had ever offered her a drink before.
Sipping at hers, Toni looked at Ilse very carefully. “You’re small for thirteen,” she said. “Like me.”
Ilse smiled. “Thank you for the flowers. You’re very kind.”
“Flowers? Oh, Willy must have bought them.” Toni slipped off the dressing gown and looked at herself in the long mirrors. Ilse admired her wonderful figure. Tiny as she was, her bosoms and hips were womanly, her waist small. Her girdle and brassiere were very modern. “From America,” she said, noticing the look. Her large eyes were a curious hazel colour with golden flecks, like those of a cat.
“So, what’s going on in Germany?”
Ilse shrugged.
“How’s your father’s business doing now?”
Ilse hesitated.
“The import company. The new shop in Krefeld.”
“It’s not his anymore. You know. ‘Wer vom Juden kauft ist ein Verräter.’ ”4
“Who says that?”
“The signs. In the street.”
“They took it over?”
Ilse nodded and looked away. A distant memory surfaced, one she did not care to share with Toni, of her mother bent over papers, cross, her father’s upraised voice: “Do you expect Otto Blumenthal to buy and sell dishes while the world starves?”
“My father’s not a capitalist,” she said.
Toni burst out laughing. “He spent enough time on the shop design. And money. All that glass and concrete. The very latest merchandise, Swedish glass. Italian ceramics. That expensive silverware. I suppose he got bored when it was finished.”
With practised movements, her fingertips finding the hairpins without looking, Toni did up her bright hair in a sleek roll. “I saw the pictures. There was an article, in the Düsseldorf paper. Your mother sent it to Willy. The grand opening party?” She glanced over at Ilse. “I expect you were too young to go.”
Ilse nodded.
“It was a very handsome shop. He should have put the business in your mother’s name.”
“It was Grandfather’s business.”
“So? Your mother isn’t Jewish. She could have run it.”
Ilse hung her head.
“Why not, then?”
“He’s not like that. My grandfather.”
“What is he like?”
“I don’t know,” said Ilse, shrugging helplessly.
“Don’t you know him?”
Another truth to be kept from Toni was that Lore had never met Grandfather Salomon. He had refused to meet the divorced woman his son was marrying, a woman not of the Jewish faith.
“He had to retire,” she said evasively. “He was too old.”
Ilse watched as Toni wiggled herself into a tight dress, which clung alluringly across her hips and thighs. She had seen her grandfather twice. She had a clear memory of a vigorous man in his sixties who was small and stout where her father was skinny. He smoked a big cigar and he smelt very nice, of the smoke and perfume. She had liked him for his clever eyes, eyes that smiled even though the mouth seldom did. She could see that he liked her. He would have liked her mother too, had he not been so stubborn.
“Your parents were coming here,” said Toni. “Willy fixed it. Anyone with any sense got out when the Nuremberg laws came in. They should have sold the business right away.”
“My father fought in the war. He has a medal,” she said.
Toni raised a quizzical eyebrow. “So?”
“Besides, people can’t all run away, can they?”
But they could. Ilse saw it. They could all have been here in clean white beds, go
ing to the cinema, speaking French, eating ice cream. She thought again. “Germany needs people to stay and fight against the fascists,” she said.
Both Toni’s eyebrows shot up. “The fascists? I see. So your father’s still involved in politics.”
“No!” She shook her head violently, her face burning. “Of course he isn’t!”
Toni studied her. “A stateless bankrupt Jew, who could have got out. Still running around making crazy speeches?”
Ilse smiled a smile of sheer embarrassment.
“Well,” said Toni, stubbing out her cigarette, “it’s all too late now. Is your mother as pretty as Willy says she is?” She smoked cigarettes with long filters and every gesture was deliberate.
“Very pretty.” Ilse thought of her mother’s kind face and smile.
“To think, she married him for the money and then this happened. What bad luck.”
“She didn’t,” said Ilse faintly.
“My dear, it certainly wasn’t for his looks.”
“How do you know? You haven’t met them.”
“Don’t get on your high horse.”
Carefully, she put bright red lipstick on her half-open mouth.
Though she might entertain dark thoughts about her father, Ilse could not bear for Toni to voice them. The truth was something even worse. Her father had been in and out of prison for years. He was what he called a “submarine,” living underground and holding secret political meetings, always travelling from place to place. If the police picked him up, they would send him to prison or worse. Communists were banned. He was a Bolshevik and a Jew, doubly an enemy of the Reich.
The state had confiscated everything he owned. When the Gestapo took their house, Ilse and her mother had moved to a room in the Jews’ House. They were lucky to get even that: they did not fit in anywhere. Not being Jewish, her mother still had her German nationality and because of this, Ilse was still permitted to go to school when Jewish children were not. A slate hung beside her classroom door. It read: BOYS 19, GIRLS 18, JEWS 1. She was (yet was not) that Jew. In the Jews’ House she trod softly, fearing to offend these people of whose customs she knew nothing. Trailing home with her satchel one day, she had heard her father’s voice inside. “Lore, please, don’t leave me.”
She had frozen, her hand still on the doorknob.
“That’s rich, coming from you,” said her mother. “Keep your voice down, Otto. The child will be back any moment.”
She had counted to ten. Shyly, then, she had opened the door, clearing her throat and making as much noise as she could. Her father was standing in the corner, smoking, still wearing his dark coat and hat. She reached up to kiss his stubbly cheek. She had not seen him for nearly a year and hardly knew what to say. His nose and chin were sharper, even his eyes more defined, as though he was turning into a cartoon version of himself. Before he even spoke, her mother asked her to fetch cake. Ilse had run all the way up the hill to the shops and breathlessly back, worrying that he would be gone before she returned. She shot up the two flights of stairs, the slice of cake sliding on its cardboard tray, the double fold of wrapping paper starting to gape. Then, more slowly, up the third flight, because she could hear them arguing still. The room was tiny, the house crammed; everyone heard everything.
Ilse had retreated down to the very bottom and waited, sitting on the last step balancing the little parcel on her knees, all the time smelling the rich dark poppy seeds, the black eye of the cake looking at her. She jumped up when anybody entered, stood aside politely to let each tenant pass. It was the usual quarrel. Her mother wanted the three of them to leave Germany and her father would not go. He had no money. Jews’ bank accounts had been frozen long ago and he could neither work nor borrow anything. Her mother had a job as a waitress, enough to feed them and a little surplus. She saved every pfennig. Ilse remained on her stair. When she judged enough time had passed, she went up, pretending she only had just got back. Her father said that she had grown, though she had not. She looked at their faces, marked with all the feelings they tried to conceal in her presence, the way they avoided looking at each other. They drank the coffee, which was cold, and he crumbled the cake but ate none, though it was his favourite. Later it occurred to her that perhaps this was because his throat hurt, as hers did when she was upset. He had left almost immediately.
After this visit, her mother said that they would wait no longer. Ilse had to be sent out of Germany as soon as possible. That was why she went alone: because they could only afford one ticket to Oran. They had agonised over this decision. For the same money they could buy two tickets to France. In France, they would be together but penniless and her mother did not know how she could earn money. Willy had connections. He had achieved the near impossible, a visa for her to enter Morocco and stay six months. Once she was there, her mother had said, it could be extended indefinitely. With Willy, Ilse would be safe.
Toni slipped into black high-heeled shoes, paraded before the mirror, then kicked them off. From the cupboard she got out different shoes, tried them on. Finally she settled on a pair just as high but the red of her lipstick and made of the softest calf. With those shoes on, she was perfect. Ilse stared at her fine features, her skin which was a golden olive colour, her tiny feet and hands. She was the sort of person you could not ignore. You could not stop looking at her, once you had started.
“Why didn’t she divorce him?”
It was the first time Ilse had heard a grown-up express this idea out loud, though it had crept into her own mind on numerous occasions. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Be honest. Weren’t they as good as divorced?”
When they narrowed, Toni’s eyes were just like a cat’s. Ilse studied the carpet. The Gestapo had told her Lutheran Protestant mother to divorce the Jew. Her mother had refused. They had never discussed why. Soon, when she was back in her room, all the things that her mother must have said about her father would come back to her, remarks about his looks and his talents.
“My mother loves my father. She would never leave him.”
Perhaps this was the truth. Behind her back, Ilse crossed all her fingers into four crosses. That undid the fib and also meant that no bad thing could happen.
“Then Lore is even more of a fool than I thought. Willy thought you were all coming years ago. He sent the money, after all. It was bad luck that it was confiscated. Fancy choosing to stay in Germany instead of getting out while she still could.”
Toni picked up her bag, admired her rear view, twirled back round. “Ready?”
Ilse stood up. “She wants to come, she’s working as hard as she can waitressing,” she said. She rushed on, wanting Toni to stop doing that thing she did with her eyebrows. “Once Mutti’s saved up enough for her ticket, she can apply for the exit visa. You have to have the ticket first, that’s what takes so long.”
Toni opened the bag, checked the contents and then snapped it shut.
“Look, when we’re out, don’t talk about these things. You don’t look Jewish. It won’t help with her visa, either, if people sniff it. And don’t look so worried.”
They walked to a nearby café, its elegant chrome tables full of men and women, all French-speaking and laughing and drinking. More than half of them were Europeans and she noticed quite a few Germans. They seemed to know everybody there and she strained to remember the names as she was introduced to this one and that. A very broad man with a kind, clever face took pity on her, told Willy in German to sit the poor girl down and let her absorb it slowly. This man was called Heinz Steinberg and reminded her of Grandfather Salomon. Ilse was grateful. He smelt of a lemony cologne, what she thought was a good, German sort of a smell. He spent a long time filling a pipe, first teasing out the tobacco then tamping it down while telling a joke about Hitler going fishing with Mussolini and Chamberlain.
“The British premier lights a pipe and waits and waits. After two hours he lands a big trout. Furious, il Duce throws himself into the water, catches a mons
ter fish with his bare hands.” Somebody called to Heinz. He laid his pipe carefully in an ashtray, got up and went to another table, looked at a chessboard and moved a piece, then moved to yet another table. He was playing three games of chess simultaneously. In a moment, he returned, recovering the pipe. “Now it’s Hitler’s turn. He orders the pond to be drained. The fish are all thrashing about. Chamberlain says, ‘Why don’t you scoop them up?’ ‘No,’ says Hitler. ‘They have to beg me first.’ ”
The grown-ups around all laughed. Ilse did too, not because it was funny exactly but because it was wonderful that here Hitler was just a joke. She had a citron pressé with spoon after spoon of sugar. She was hungry, but did not want to ask for something, when they were going to a special restaurant for dinner, later, in the old town. Willy bought her an ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry. In the end there was no dinner, for the cream—much too rich and gobbled up too fast—made her sick. They took her back to the house in a taxi.
“Poor little mouse, you’ll be better tomorrow,” said Willy. It was he who stroked her hair, who put her to bed. He tucked her in and pulled up the blanket so nicely. As sleep overtook her, she felt her very bones relaxing from the intense relief of being a child again.
TWO
Hamburg, March 1939
Glittering on the handlebars of his bicycle, the sun made even the grey Elbe sparkle as Nicolai freewheeled home along the Elbchaussee. The big house, freshly whitewashed, was so bright it almost hurt to look at. Dismounting, he pushed open the front gate, wheeled his bike round the side. The sun rolled softly blurring wheels along the white wall, turned a boy with a satchel into a hunchback. He blinked the shadows of the stucco scrolls around the drawing-room windows into faces with puffed-out cherub cheeks. He bumped the bike down the steps, parked it inside the cellar door and squeezed past. The food cellar was crammed. Last year they had just the one cupboard with baking tins and sugar for jam-making and preserves; now a row of them had eaten up the space. His mother, remembering the starvation of the Great War, said that they had to be provisioned. Her first husband had been a career officer and she was understood to have superior knowledge of military matters. He dawdled past her weapons of war, brushing against sacks of flour, trailing a finger along the stack of jars waiting to be filled, their rubber-seal mouths open in surprise. The usual prickle of irritation at her excess was suppressed with the usual effort.
The Children's War Page 3
