Various boys were now sniggering. By contrast with the angry flush of the master, Jochen was very pale.
“No, sir.”
“Understand, Dressler? I expect you in uniform by the end of the week. This school will have one hundred per cent membership. One hundred per cent. The years of struggle are over. We are all part of the German community now. Tell your father he will be prosecuted if he does not comply.”
“Yes, sir.”
Going home, as he drew level with Jochen, Nicolai backpedalled. The very shape of his body was defensive. Nicolai felt a painful empathy for him, yet knew that such feelings were negligible in comparison to the huge wound he bore daily.
“Jochen.” He sought words to throw at the averted head. What could he possibly say? “Jochen, do you want a go on my bike?” But Jochen never looked up.
When his father was away or working late, Magda laid out supper in the dining room so his parents could eat whenever they chose. Foraging, Nicolai lifted the lid of the pot, sniffed the soup keeping hot over the little tea candles. Everything else was cold. He inspected the veal cutlets in aspic with a parsley sauce; noted the reappearance of the cabbage salad. There was a fruit tart and cream as well as the cheesecake. He dipped a finger in the cream, licked it. Then he took a lemon bonbon from the big crystal bowl and, on reflection, a couple more for later. His mother’s high heels clicked across the parquet of the hall. She generally wore full-skirted evening clothes, in pale blue to match her eyes or in a grey-beige colour she called oyster that suited her golden hair. He was often called upon to admire her but that would not happen tonight; he was supposed to be reading in bed but had not even got his pyjamas on. He slid behind the door as she continued into the study. His parents always had a whisky and a chat before dinner. He could gather some intelligence on how his father’s job was going and when he would have time off for important camera work.
“New shoes? Very fetching,” his father said.
Ice clinked on the drinks tray.
“The others are so shabby. A person can’t manage forever.”
“It’s not a reproach. I like them. Well, what’s the week brought?”
“I’ve engaged a new nursemaid at last, seems quite decent. We can’t afford her on your salary, she’s asking a lot. I’ll pay her out of my income. I hope she’s worth it.”
Why did she sound so angry? His father mumbled something. The heels clicked about some more. He wanted to go nearer. Nicolai took a pace; a floorboard groaned. Bending down, he stealthily undid his laces, wiggled out of his shoes.
“Darling. Did you think any more about what I said?”
“I’ll go to the army when they make me. Not before.”
He splayed dampish feet, was a spider, creeping along unseen and unheard.
“I can’t understand you, Benno. You complain about the mediocrity of the work, yet you want to stay there. And you hardly earn anything.”
“I’m on the top grade.”
“If you’d joined the Party you’d be a professor by now. It’s holding you back.”
“I can’t do it. Must we go over it again?”
There was a long silence. Nicolai waited.
“I only want the best for you,” she said in a small voice.
“They took the best minds away, Hilde, that’s how I got my promotion. How do you think I like that? I’m passing myself off as something I’m not.”
“Darling—don’t.” A chair scraped.
“Just look at this. Just this. A paper at the conference. Go on. Read it.”
“ ‘Heine’s decadent poetry reflects the structure of the Jewish palate.’ Well—it’s absurd.”
“But not impossible. That’s the tragedy. It’s something worse than absurd.”
There came the clink of another drink being poured.
“But if you hate it so much, why do you stay?”
“The university needs a few decent people.”
There was a long silence.
“Hilde, what is it that you want to change? Are you really unhappy?”
His mother made no reply.
“It’s not money. You have plenty, you know you do, your parents’ firm has seldom been busier. Do you still miss the old military glamour, my sweet?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Are you unhappy with me, is that it?” His voice had dropped. Nicolai strained to hear. “Hilde. Don’t let’s quarrel.”
“We’re not quarrelling, darling. It’s just a discussion. Let’s eat. The soup will be quite cold and the cutlets warm.”
The heels clicked across the floor towards the dining room and the spider, scuttling as fast as he could, got away safely, up the stairs, two at a time.
In bed he pondered the best minds, which had been taken away. Where to? That his even-tempered father should pass himself off as something he wasn’t seemed impossible. That sort of thing happened at school, where bullies and cheats got the best reports because they were Herr Blank’s favourites. And why did his father not go to the army? Perhaps he was the sort the boys at school pilloried as turncoats and traitors. This worried Nicolai. He brought to mind Heini’s face, his big cheerful father, then Langenscheidt, whose broad smile showed more teeth than any person could reasonably need, whose father was high up in the Party. These fathers were all going to the armed forces, all except his father, who was a better man than any of them. He pressed his hands to his eyes hard until there was nothing but a dark red world with sparkly scratches. It was hot under the feather bed, he was stifling; he threw it onto the floor.
He crept out of bed, groped across the desk until he felt the Faber-Castell pencil, the unsharpened one, then the torch. Its blunt edge inched the grey metal base of the stationmaster in his smart cap and uniform through the door and right up to the ticket inspector. He turned him, so the two little men faced each other, unblinking in the harsh beam. The ticket money did not add up. The cheat was going to get a real wigging.
“Don’t you have a true sense of National Socialism?” he admonished him.
The little face looked sad. “Are you unhappy with me, sir?”
“I certainly am. You’re passing yourself off as something you’re not.”
He closed the ticket office, trapping both men inside, and set the local train to the fastest speed. While they neglected their duties, it would rocket through, perhaps jump the points, smashing into the buffers, or come right off the bridge and topple onto the autobahn. Innocent passengers would die. He sat on the edge of the rumpled bed, unmoving, waiting for the crash, but the train just whirred on and on and round and round in the dark.
THREE
Morocco, March 1939
Ilse felt down with one foot, then the other, extending the warm part where she lay into the cool part at the end of the bed where the sheet tucked in. As a foolish little child she had been scared of the cold places, never budging from the position she lay in when her mother kissed her good night. These sheets were soft and smelt of sunshine. One pillow was a bolster, the other square. She got up, pulled the blankets straight, folded the sheet carefully back over them, tucked the bedclothes in. A long cord swung from the blinds. She pulled the wooden acorn and light slanted in from a sky the colour of forget-me-nots. The cream bowl on the windowsill, crackle glazed, had a tiny grey mark near the bottom. Dressing, she put all these things into her head. Then she brushed her hair fifty times.
She tiptoed into the kitchen, found a sharp knife and sawed at the knots securing the box. The object inside, wrapped in layers of tissue, was her mother’s leather jewellery roll. It contained her mother’s pearl necklace, her flower brooch in platinum, her diamond ring and three heavy gold chains. She had not seen them for a long time. Ilse had assumed that they had all been sold long ago. There was a heavy object underneath, carefully wrapped in layers of newspaper, which she started to lift out, recognised and returned to its place. The photograph of her parents smiling on their wedding day, elaborately framed in silver, had stood
in the drawing room on the piano. She could not bring herself to look at it. They never should have given it away. She rolled up and fastened the leather roll and put it back in the box and hid the box at the very back of the wardrobe.
She sat on the bed and waited. There was a noise, which might be Marie doing something in the kitchen. Just after seven o’clock there came a tap on the door.
“Come, little mouse,” said Willy. She was to start school that day. He had prepared a little school case for her; a wooden pencil box with her name carved in it held a dozen sharp pencils and a beautiful new fountain pen. He was in charge of her, both father and mother to her now. Straight after breakfast, she took the new pen and wrote to her mother in Wuppertal on Toni’s writing paper, which Willy fetched from the broad cedarwood desk in the sitting room. The cream-coloured paper was very thick and expensive, the envelopes lined with dark blue tissue. The ink was the exact same colour as the lining paper; the slant of the nib stretched out her hasty words into italic elegance. Marie promised to stamp and post the letter on her way home at noon. As soon as she had finished, they tiptoed out, so as not to disturb Toni; glancing through, Ilse saw her sitting at the desk surrounded by papers.
“She starts work early so she can have the afternoons off,” Willy said.
“What is her work?”
“Bookkeeping. She pays the bills, keeps everything straight for my firm. I’ve always been hopeless with figures. I’ve never seen such beautiful accounts. Wonderful writing, too.”
Being poor at maths suddenly became less shameful, because it was a link to Willy.
The school was in the Rue d’Agadir, in the new town, beyond the big shops and banks. It was not far but she could not walk there. Willy would drive her every day. Because the journey might be short and she could not pass the whole day without asking, she blurted the question out right away. “How do I know my parents aren’t dead?”
“Of course they’re not.”
She looked at him very carefully. It did not seem possible that he would lie to her.
“Will they get out?”
Willy let the car float to the side of the road, lit a cigarette. He glanced at her face.
“Your father’s an enterprising man. He’ll find a way, if anyone can. What’s all this about?”
“I found Mutti’s jewellery in my case. Why did she put it there?”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s not sinister. That’s clever. That’s because if they found it in her case, they’d keep it. But she will have reckoned that they might not search you. Did they?”
She shook her head.
“There you are then. She didn’t tell you so you wouldn’t worry.”
It was one of his gifts, knowing how to say the one thing that made everything all right. As they drove on, she remembered how her mother had failed to sell her silver. Though her collection was exceptional, handmade by Danish craftsmen, no German would give a fair price for Jewish property. Glutted with silverware, Herr Mönckeberg am Alten Markt had offered a small percentage of each sale. But nobody bought. When the Gestapo demanded a list of her possessions, her mother decided that the authorities would not get her collection. She polished each bowl and platter, laid them in their blue leather boxes lined with white silk and carried them to the next-door neighbours. Back and forth she went, until Gerhard and Paula had them all.
From their first chance encounter in the Landsweg, these neighbours had been close friends. One spring evening, her parents had taken three-year-old Ilse to jump over the cat’s cradle of strings on sticks that laid out the cellars and stairs of their new house. They had seen a nice-looking couple walking over the adjoining plot with a little girl, just the same age, doing exactly the same thing. Ilse loved that story of how she and Lottchen first met. They moved in on the same day, ran in and out of each other’s houses. When school began, they walked there together every day, hand in hand. Yet when Paula accepted the gift of silver, Lottchen started avoiding Ilse. It was as if Ilse’s mother had done something bad, for which they were both to be shunned. Going home, Ilse pretended not to see her walking ahead, talking loudly with girls who lived much farther away, but whose family trees demonstrated that they were of the pure race. She had spoken to her just the once. That last bitter winter in Wuppertal, she had noticed Lottchen in her Bund deutscher Mädel7 uniform as she passed the gate of the Schloϐpark. Her former friend stood under the bare trees asking late afternoon strollers to donate to the Winter Relief collection for the poor and needy. Two beautiful dogs sat sedately beside her. Ilse, who generally tried to avoid seeing her, had paused just for a second. They were such good, patient dogs, each with a collecting tin for coins round his neck.
In that second Lottchen had seen her and beckoned, drawing her past the sign that excluded Jews. In the most natural way, as if nothing had ever come between them, Lottchen introduced her to Max, the chocolate Labrador, and Moritz, the Alsatian. They were police dogs, so well trained that if you dropped a coin in his box, Max would lift his deep eyes to you soulfully and half raise a paw, as if in thanks. Short as she was of pfennigs, Ilse had to try this and the two girls smiled at each other. Then, stamping icy feet, Lottchen went off to the kiosk where the policemen who had trained the dogs had gone, saying that she was desperate for hot chocolate too. So Ilse was permitted to take her place just for a moment, to stroke the silky ears and back of the gentle creature. Max had eyes that smiled, that were the exact same colour as his coat and he thumped his tail on the ground when he was caressed. From far away she watched them returning across the park, a girl skipping between two policemen and then slowing down, hanging back while they came forward. Something must have been said. Who was she? Why was she not in uniform? Something must have been said about Jews, for the taller policeman drawing near called out sharply that she should not be in the park and the other one gave a loud bark of a laugh and said to watch out, or he might set the dogs on her. Moritz, taking his cue from them, began to growl. His fangs were very sharp. Ilse, fleeing, saw that even gentle Max stood. A dumb animal could not know better; he had to do as he was told.
Willy stopped the car outside a long white building with a neat yard; nuns in long robes went in and out. A group of girls walked by, chattering, one of them swinging books in a strap. They seemed so absorbed in one another. She could not seem to make herself move. Uncertainties weighed so heavily, they glued her to the seat.
“Willy, please tell me. Mutti is coming, isn’t she?”
“Of course she is,” said Willy. He came round and opened the door for her.
“Tell them I’m a Lindemann,” she whispered as they went in. She had always wanted that name. If she had been a Lindemann, the bad things would not have happened.
“Nobody here cares what you’re called.”
“Please.”
“Don’t worry. You can use any name you like. But you are still you,” said Willy.
It was not for her father but because of Willy that she wrote Blumenthal and not Lindemann on the exercise books.
The school had a shady central courtyard where girls played hopscotch at break. There were no boy pupils. Ilse looked at them nervously. She did not make friends easily and never had, so her expectations were not very high. Here, where everybody spoke French, it was bound to be yet more difficult. All the other girls were Catholics. They wore neat cotton dresses and had little crosses round their necks. Of course they all had their friends already.
At break time everybody went out into the big space in groups of three and four. A group started a skipping game, and Ilse stood at a little distance and watched. A girl from her class with long, smooth brown hair came by and smiled at her. Her name was Anne. She asked where Ilse lived. She gathered her courage to reply. Another girl drifted near and listened to her halting French, not in an unfriendly way. Ilse explained that she was the niece of Willy Lindemann.
“Ah,” said Anne, “Lindemann. But I know your uncle.” Her voice was soft and went up and down, as th
ough everything was a lovely surprise. She explained that her father was an engineer who had worked with Monsieur Lindemann’s building firm and that her uncle was très gentil. Together, easily, they watched the skipping. In a little while, when the next person was out and Anne was beckoned in, she pulled Ilse with her. Skipping was something Ilse was very good at.
Every second morning there was mass, an impressive service in a cool chapel adjoining the school. She watched as the others went forward and took communion and had wafers put on their tongues while she remained at the rear. Her class had done their première communion only the term before and on the wall of the classroom there was a big photograph of them all in beautiful white dresses and veils. After the mass, though nobody had asked her what her religion was, she announced that she was a Lutheran Protestant. This caused a lot of interest and she then had to explain it, which she did badly. They seemed to know only about their own religion and Islam and it seemed to her that these girls had probably never heard of a Jew, let alone seen one. She liked being a Lutheran Protestant, felt quietly superior.
The school was strictly run; there was a discipline and order in every detail, which pleased Ilse. Good pupils were rewarded and everybody knew their place. She saw that if she tried hard, she could learn to speak French really well. She listened carefully and spoke when she was spoken to. Her mother had been insistent that she should learn as much as she could. But without real mastery of the language, maths was impossible, history new and quite different, even geography hard because the whole continent of Africa was unknown to her. She knew Europe. A dozen times, Ilse had been made to trace the Elbe, the Rhine or the Donau from their sources to the sea, never managing to get the shapes into her head. Here the places had new names, which flowed from the tongue. Cologne, Bâle, Genève and Milan were much softer than Köln, Basel, Genf and Mailand. Paris was the centre of the universe and next came the départements of France, divided into mellifluous and romantic places all the way from Pas-de-Calais to Tarn et Garonne. She loved the idea of France. Anne knew all these names and when Ilse was called upon to recite them, her new friend watched her, nodding encouragement. She was not irritated when a person did not know things.
The Children's War Page 5
