Café talk concentrated on the terrifying speed of the German advance. No army in history had moved so fast. Belgium would be next and then France. At the corner table in the Rue de Tournon, Albert ignored it all and held court.
“Mein Kopf ist ein zwitscherndes Vogelnest von konfiszierlichen Büchern,”24 he said sonorously. Sitting here, he liked to work on his satirical poem of exile, which he said echoed Heine’s account of his German journey. The poem was a useful distraction from his main work, the book he had been writing for so many years. Albert had got Ilse to read the poem out loud to him several times, especially the Hamburg section, which he said made him feel so homesick.
“You see, Ilse, Heine was a rapier, but I’m just a scattergun aiming at all my enemies.
“Ihr Toren, die im Café Tournon sucht!
Hier werdet ihr nichts entdecken!
Die Konterbande, die mit mir reist,
Die hab ich im Kopfe stecken . . .” 25
Albert declaimed.
Denmark fell in four hours and people started making plans to flee. There was talk about sharing cars, pooling petrol, train tickets and where to go. Some carried suitcases with them all the time, even to the café. Wild rumours ran around the room, claims that the German supermen raped all the women and cut off the hands of children so they would not grow up to fight. She heard a bearded man holding forth at the next table about how the Grande Armée was invincible. They would easily defeat the Germans. They would defend Paris to the last citizen fighting on the last barricade. Ilse remembered Willy saying that the Maginot Line was impregnable. He had explained that it was a kind of extended fortress that protected France from Germany. She had asked, half jokingly, what would happen if the Germans invaded France anyway? “Then I will come to France with the Legion and save you,” he had replied. They had laughed about it. Another voice rose, claiming good authority. Hitler had a timetable and by August 1st German troops would be in London. Jews were already fleeing England. A woman called out with a note of real despair, “Then nowhere is safe!”
Ilse went over to where her father sat; he, like Albert, had his regular spot. “Vati, we must leave Paris,” she said. “When are we going to buy your papers?”
“When your mother comes.”
“But we can’t stay here,” she said despairingly. “Nobody is staying here. Can’t we go to America?” Everyone was on some list for America, the promised land, though hardly anyone ever got in.
“Do you expect me to live in a nation of outright capitalists?”
Ilse looked at her father, whose cheeks had grown very red.
“What do you take me for?”
“How should I know what to take you for?” she cried out.
He calmed down at once. “Forgive me. You’re right, Ilse, you’re right.”
“Where are we going to go, Vati?”
“Where does a Jew go?” He said it with a kind of cunning, as if he was trying to catch her out.
“Palestine?” That was where Tante Röschen was and the boys, all safe now.
“Ah, Palestine. We could have done it. We had the money once. But I was against it, and you know why? It was wrong. Because the Jews want to exploit the Arabs and take their lands. Like Winnetou. Like the native Red Indians. Exploited by the white man. They stole away their souls.”
It hurt her, that he said this when his sister was such a kind and good woman. Ilse knew that after Kristallnacht Tante Röschen had tried to help them, sending a large sum of money, which had been confiscated along with the other assets. Vati’s hands, marked with nicotine, were trembling. Ilse could not stop looking at them and then at the faces of the people at the tables beyond, in the real world of today, who were all leaving as fast as they possibly could. Perhaps he had forgotten about their shop, and Grandfather’s business and that lost capitalist life they had led which had seemed so normal and, to her at least, enjoyable.
People at the next table were saying their farewells; they rose to embrace one another. A woman was crying. The café was emptying.
“Vati. Shall we go south?”
“What? It doesn’t matter where we are. There is no escape. Nobody wants me. Not even my wife. An enemy, a German who isn’t a German and a Jew who isn’t a Jew. A null, that’s me. A blank,” and he leant back in his chair, threw back his arms and laughed.
There was, at this moment, a lull in the hubbub. Behind her, Ilse heard somebody call out, “Good old Otto. Nothing gets him down.”
She gazed at her father, seeing how bright his eyes were. Perhaps the truth was something as simple as this. Sitting here, at this moment, he truly was happy. Surely, he had not simply given up?
The weather was remarkable; day after day the sun shone out of cloudless skies. The shops were open and a few elegant women in bright summer dresses and high heels still tip-tapped along the boulevards with their packages, but the streets were empty of traffic. All the rich people in their smart cars were gone. On the 13th of May, German panzers rolled over the border into France. Refugees not already interned had joined the exodus. When Ilse, head down, walked past the Café Tournon, the waiter leant on a broom or swept round empty tables. It was too dangerous to go there now. The French police arrested anyone heard speaking German. Crossing the Boulevard Saint-Germain on her way to Saint-Sulpice, Ilse noticed a huge placard lettered in red: the word “allemand” leapt out. There was another one, down towards the Luxembourg gardens. She went to read it. All “ressortissants allemands”26 were to be interned in “camps de concentration.” Perhaps they were the only three left, still free. All German women, Frau Wolff included, had had to report to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the ice-skating rink, where they apparently remained still, herded like cattle under the great glass roof. Anxiously Ilse wondered if she should just destroy the precious Aryan documents. She could not bring herself to do it, when her mother must have spent a fortune obtaining them. She dared not ask her father, in case he destroyed them himself. She told herself to keep her options open.
She walked for hours on the dusty boulevards, stopping when parched at some little café to buy lemonade, always sitting outside to sip it. They heard that the whole French government had gone to the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame to pray for a miracle. Otto laughed long and helplessly at this, as she had not heard him laugh for weeks. “Sheer animal superstition,” he said.
“These bastards can pray all they like,” said Albert, “but it won’t help. What’s wrong with these people, that they won’t fight?”
“Europe bows to the inevitable,” said Otto. “The French have always been magnificent realists.”
“Can’t we be realists, Vati?”
“Our reality is different.”
“Otto, you are not going to just sit here and wait for the tanks to roll in?”
“I am waiting for my wife,” he said. “Or are you suggesting I should abandon her?”
Ilse winced. When Albert shook his head, his long jowls shook too and he looked more like a bloodhound than ever.
“Otto, are you listening to me?”
“I’m hardly allowed to do anything else these days. I note that you’re still here, my friend.”
Albert had all his visas; yet he, too, lingered. Grateful as she was for his presence, she feared it was on their account.
“Albert, please say,” whispered Ilse, “where are you going?”
“Brittany. I want to get evacuated to England when the British get kicked out. English women are fascinating. Beautiful skin, rotten teeth. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Don’t joke. When are you leaving, really?”
“Very soon.” His face grew serious. “Will you come with me?”
She shook her head, smiled, shrugged. “Just as soon as Vati’s ready,” she said, and moved away to sit with him, because otherwise Albert would press her and she could not bear to discuss it again. Vati insisted that the message had got through. But what if it hadn’t? What if her mother in Hamburg was expecting her, was waiting,
just as they were, hoping for some sign?
Ilse sat beside the radio waiting for the French and British to unite and stop the Germans. But the German army swept across the north of France, heading for Boulogne and Calais, and by May 22nd they were at the English Channel. The British resistance at Arras was overcome. Boulogne came under fire. When King Leopold of Belgium surrendered, the newscaster expressed outrage and said the French would never surrender. Otto smiled his smile. News came that the British were withdrawing, evacuating their troops from Dunkirk. On May 29th, Ilse heard that some French troops were joining in the exodus.
The sun inched across the sky towards the summer solstice. On the first of June, Albert came to the pension and dragged Ilse out onto the stairwell. “The government’s getting out. You’re coming with me. Pack your things, I’ll be back in two hours.”
“What about Vati?”
“I’m sick of telling him. He knows. I’m not going to waste more breath arguing with Otto. Or you. You have to save yourself.”
She looked at him in despair, shook her head.
“Darling little donkey, can’t you see he is glorying in being rejected? Just wallowing in it? He’s lost the will to do anything.”
She did see it. Ilse got out her case. As in a dream, she put on one of her treasured school dresses, smoothing down the creased cotton. She had got over her dislike of dressing and undressing in front of her father, merely turning her back, as he did. She packed the brown cardboard box of treasures under her clothes, then got it out again and looked at the tarnished silver photograph frame with its image of two young people smiling at the photographer. Two little silver clasps on the back twisted round against the soft blue leather at the back of the frame, so the photograph could be replaced. The back came off easily. Inside, concealed behind the photograph, was a green paper, which she took out and opened and stared at for a moment before she understood that it was an American fifty-dollar note. Something small and dry fell onto her lap. It was the little blue flower, Vergiϐmeinnicht,27 which her mother loved so much. Carefully, she folded the flower back into the centre of the note, replaced it and the frame. She touched her mother’s face. Albert’s books made the case very heavy; then she thought that she would not need them, if they were travelling together. It was a happy thought.
“Shall I pack for you, Vati?”
She had long since bought a small case for her father. Now she took it out and opened it, ready, but did not dare touch her father’s few possessions. Otto shook his head. She placed her suitcase at the door alongside the sack of potatoes and the cooking pots and the few dishes they had. Too nervous to remain in the room, she went out into the baking heat. At the Comédie Française they were showing Cyrano de Bergerac. A poster said that that night’s performance was sold out. Though Jews were not excluded, she and her father had not been to the theatre once in her months in France and now she regretted it. Albert would have given her money for a ticket.
All the cars Ilse saw were going in the same direction, heading south and heavily laden, often with mattresses strapped to their roofs, to protect against machine guns. Along the Boulevard des Italiens there was a street vendor selling porcelain figures laid out on a long bench. A middle-aged man crossed the road to look and then bought one. Going closer, Ilse saw that they were dogs. Each little figure had a leg cocked over an opened copy of Mein Kampf. She walked back and, turning into their building, saw a taxi waiting in the courtyard.
Her father did not move. His face was the colour of his grey hair. He sat, a small pale man with outspread hands, touching and retouching his truncated finger.
Albert shook his head. “It’s over, Otto. There are clerks running around filling up cars and vans with their papers. Pushing typewriters onto rubbish trucks. They’re all getting out. We can still get to England. Come on, Ilse.” He put a hand on her shoulder. Then he started shouting. “Now! Get your things!”
Her father shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I have no documents, no visa. I’ll never get out of France.”
“Up and on, comrade, remember? I’ll help you,” said Albert. “You’re not alone.”
“You have papers. You’re a writer. The Allies will take you. They’ll turn us back. They don’t want a Jewish troublemaker. I’m not going like a lamb to the slaughter for the Nazis to finish me off. We’re safer in the city. The people of Paris will fight. I’d rather die on the barricades.” His tone was indescribably bitter.
“Ilse has papers,” said Albert. “She’s below the age of internment. She could get out.”
“The outcome of the war is inevitable, it makes no difference where we are.”
“Otto,” said Albert in a sharp tone. “Let the child go. She at least should be saved.”
“Vati, please! Can’t we all go, the three of us?”
When her father took hold of one hand, squeezing it in his cold one, Ilse realised how moist hers was. Her back was dripping with sweat.
“My old comrade is right. You’re just a child, they can’t intern you. Go with Albert.”
Ilse looked from one man to the other. It had come down to this moment, the shabby room with the dusty potatoes at the door and the dry light falling on her father’s grey skin, this view of Albert turning and turning the signet ring with its blue crest on the little finger of his left hand, something he only did when distressed.
“Vati, please, what shall I do?”
“Go with Albert,” he repeated.
Ilse stayed with her father at the window until Albert’s distinctive lanky figure emerged in the courtyard below. People were trying to commandeer his taxi and Albert was holding them off. “I am going, Vati,” she said. Her voice did not sound real.
“Good luck, my darling girl.” He spoke so tenderly, why did he do that? He squeezed her arm. He embraced Ilse, a dry kiss. His stubble rasped her cheek.
Ilse took her case and went slowly down the five flights of stairs. At each turn there was a window through which she saw brilliant sunshine. At the courtyard she stopped, turned her face up into the light, squinting into the sun. Her father was at the window upstairs, looking down. He waved and smiled, and made motions that she should go. Albert sat in the back of the taxi. His good eye watched her. She looked back up at her father. He was very small. In a moment, when the taxi drove off, he would turn and lie down on the bed. He would never move if she were not there to make him. She could see exactly how he would lie and how he would turn his face to the wall. He would starve to death within a week. Albert, sitting in the taxi between two piles of suitcases, saw. He slumped.
Ilse put her case down on the pavement and embraced her friend. “Break a leg! Good luck!” she said.
“Take this.” He reached into his trouser pocket, shoved a roll of francs into her hand. She saw that he had tears in his eyes. Then she could not prevent tears springing to hers, but she held them back as best she could, unable to utter a word and, waving, watched the taxi go.
Retreating to the shade of the concierge’s little room, she wiped her face. Slowly, she climbed the stairs. Her heart had ceased its racket and was now at peace. She went into their room. Otto was lying on the bed. He gave a sort of convulsive jerk as the door opened and turned his head away. Ilse went and sat next to him, feeling him turn as his slight body sagged towards her on the mattress, breathing in the familiar faint smells of tobacco and the sourness of clothes that needed washing and something that was decaying, deep inside. She reached for his hand.
He squeezed hers back. “Such a good girl,” he said.
SIX
Hamburg, April 1940
Nicolai threaded the black scarf under the collar of the brown shirt, adjusted the leather fastener, put the end of it in his top pocket and buttoned the pocket shut. He pulled the shirt straight, checked in the mirror. He had thrown up from nerves the night before. The Staatstheater was packed, the street outside thick with people, inside would be even hotter. Hundreds lined the stairs where he stood; more waited
in anterooms. There must have been a thousand in all. Girls with braided hair and pink cheeks stood beside boys with hair neatly combed, smelling of carbolic soap and starch and sweat. Two girls lugged around a big tin bucket with a mug hooked over the side, giving people drinks. The prettier of the two made sheep’s eyes at him; he noticed that her lips and cheeks were rouged. He would have liked some for his parched throat, but the water looked cloudy.
“Nothing else you want from me, then?”
“No.”
Laughing, the girls went on. He reminded himself that his grandmother was taking him for lunch at the yacht club; the day could only improve.
The boy at the top, who was leading them in, stood in a kind of trance with his head unnaturally high. The signal was given; Nicolai lifted his standard. By the time he had got up the second flight of stairs, his arms shook from the effort. They were on. To a continuous drum roll, his section marched into the hall from the back, a line three deep going straight into the blinding lights and up the shallow stairs to the platform, tramp-tramp-tramp, the thunder of feet, girls on one side and boys to the other. They lined up, filling the stage from the back, row upon row, to either side of the Hitler portrait. An awed silence fell. He became aware of the huge audience beyond the lights.
“Youth, forward!”
The Children's War Page 12
