White Lies

by Rudolph Bader

  Their mutual declaration had given him encouragement, so he began to lift up her jumper and her shirt and eventually he pulled them over her head, which she readily allowed. She even helped him by lifting her head slightly. Then she took the discarded articles from him and threw them away on the carpet.

  In the dimming afternoon light, with the flame of the candle tinting the room in an orange hue, Manfred now admired her upper part in its natural state. He had never seen a woman’s breasts naked, and what he saw now made him gasp with pleasure. He began to kiss her belly, then slowly moved his lips upward until they reached her breasts, kissing first one nipple then the other. What absolute bliss! Anna enjoyed this. He could feel her shivering with pleasure. When she shivered her breasts wobbled slightly, which he considered particularly captivating. He spent a very long time just kissing her in a relaxed way and stroking the soft white velvet which her breasts represented for him. He was convinced that he could spend the rest of his life just caressing her lovely breasts.

  It was natural for her to take off his upper clothes, so they continued their kisses and caresses with the pleasure of having this exciting and reassuringly beautiful skin contact. Like this, they lost themselves in their loving activities for the following three hours, forgetting everything else in the world during this time. It was what they had both been wanting for quite some time. Now, at last, they were together.

  * * *

  On a Tuesday morning, about four weeks later, Anna came up to him before their first lesson at school. She took him aside and whispered in his ear.

  “Have you heard the news?”

  He didn’t know what to answer. Ever since they had begun their intimate phase he had hardly ever listened to the news on the radio. He knew their teachers and the Hitlerjugend leaders would tell them everything anyway, so he could shut himself off in order to concentrate on his more academic schoolwork and dream of Anna and their kisses.

  “What happened?”

  “There has been a Jewish attack. In Paris. Against Germany.”

  “How can there have been an attack on Germany in Paris? That’s in France.”

  “I don’t remember the details,” Anna shrugged her shoulders, “but I’m sure the teachers will tell us everything. I just wanted to tell you. I hope there won’t be a war now. It would be terrible if we couldn’t be together, wouldn’t it?”

  She looked him in the eyes with such an expression of worry that his heart went out to her. Looking round to make sure nobody could see them, he quickly hugged her to comfort her. Then they entered the school-building together without touching. But they both knew that they belonged together.

  “Yesterday, our country was attacked by a treacherous Jewish conspiracy,” Herr Mollenhauer, their young Latin teacher, announced at the beginning of their first lesson of the morning. “They sent one of their agents, a seventeen-year-old Jew called Herschel Grynszpan to kill one of our diplomats in Paris. The Jew was as filthy as his name suggests: Grünspan, verdigris. May he rust and rot away in hell!”

  “Herr Lehrer! What’s going to happen now?” one of the boys in the first row asked.

  “Well, naturally, our government is in uproar. And justifiably so. Some act of retribution is now called for, I am sure.”

  Manfred felt a twitch in his left shoulder. He was extremely uneasy. But there was nothing he could say or do to feel any better.

  After school, he sought out Anna, and they went for a walk along the Elster to discuss the political situation, something they had hardly ever done. Normally they discussed things that concerned their personal lives, their families, their common interests, or they talked about things that helped them to get to know each other better. But today, the tense atmosphere that seemed to lie on the town like a dark blanket affected them like most other people. When he held her close, he could feel her nervousness.

  “What do you think is going to happen now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed, and they realized their own smallness within the order of things. Within this world, they were so tiny and probably so insignificant. But for each other, they mattered enormously. Again, Manfred was reminded of his old question: Why were people doing what they were doing? Why were the Jews trying to destroy their Fatherland?

  He reached home alone, because Anna had to go to her own home to do some schoolwork and to help her mother with some household chores. They didn’t have a charwoman like the Weidmanns, so Anna had to help sometimes.

  He was surprised to find his elder brother at home.

  “Oh, it’s only you, Freddy,” Thomas mumbled as he looked up from the kitchen table where he had his leather things spread out for cleaning and polishing. He held up his waist-belt to check its shine in the light of the lamp over the table. Then he spat on it and started polishing it again.

  “Are you here for longer?” Manfred asked.

  “Don’t know. Just getting ready for things tomorrow.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions. It’s nothing for little boys. But if you have to know, well, you must be aware of the necessity to act against the filthy Jews now.”

  “Oh,” Manfred was surprised. “Are there any concrete plans already? Is there going to be a war?”

  “Of course there won’t be a war, silly. But we were ordered to be ready for a big action tomorrow night.”

  “What big action?”

  “As I said, nothing for little boys.” And with this curt comment he stood up and put on his belt. He put his feet in his polished boots and arranged his uniform. The swastika on his sleeves looked brilliant. Manfred did not know whether to be afraid or proud of his brother in his resplendent brown uniform. He looked so fierce, but then he was only doing his duty for their beloved Fatherland, wasn’t he?

  Hardly had Thomas left the house when Manfred turned on the radio. There was music. Wagner, he recognised that at once. When the music finished there was a programme to commemorate Ernst vom Rath, the diplomat who had been shot in Paris. His life and career were highlighted in a detailed report. It was clear that the death of this brilliant man, who would have achieved great things, had he lived, was a very sad loss for his family and for Germany. Manfred listened to the whole programme, before he switched off and began to prepare something to eat. His father would probably be home later, so he heated up a pork stew and some potatoes from the day before, sat down at the kitchen table to enjoy it and made sure he left enough for his father.

  On the following day, a Wednesday, everything appeared to be normal, at school, in the streets, all around, but Manfred’s sensitivity registered a strange atmosphere of impending doom. He couldn’t put his finger to it, but he was convinced something was going to happen soon, something that would concern them all. It was a sort of end-of-the-world mood which lay in the air.

  After school, Anna came home with him. From her general attitude as well as from her relative silence during their walk home, he registered that she shared his assessment of the general mood.

  When they were in his room, lying together, the upper parts of their bodies bared, their caresses began very tenderly and slowly, both of them savouring every moment, but after a while they both became more excited, more passionate, more desperate. It was as if the general mood had affected them in such a way that they felt they might as well give up all their restraints because the world was coming to an end anyway.

  Manfred lay on top of Anna, grasping her breasts with both hands and nuzzling his face between her now flat mounds, fully enjoying their softness on both his cheeks, when he realised he wanted to know more of her. Slowly he shifted to her side, slid his right arm under her back and with his left hand began to stroke her legs, first over her thick skirt, then down below her knees, from where he moved upwards along the inside of her thighs. He gently unfastened her suspenders and r
olled down her woollen stockings, discovering areas of her naked skin he’d never believed would be so soft. She helped his movements by lifting her bottom, and when her stockings were completely removed she began to pull down her skirt. He took it from her and threw it on the floor beside the bed, where the other clothes already lay in a heap. As he saw she was now only wearing her knickers he realised it was unfair that he was still wearing his trousers. So he took them off, too, and they caressed each other for a while like this. Eventually, his hand moved down from her bellybutton and slid under her knickers, where he was surprised to find such a thick bush of hair. When his hand moved further into this most intimate region of her body and he discovered her wetness he felt himself go crazy with desire, and his own underpants could hardly hold his stiffness. He withdrew his hand and moved it up to her breasts again, kissing her deeply, both of them beginning to moan softly. He pulled his mouth from hers very gently and whispered into her ear.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, it’s so wonderful. Don’t stop. I’m so happy!”

  She sat up and took off her knickers. Then she grabbed his underpants and pulled them down, too. He could tell she was surprised, perhaps a little shocked, but also very happy to see his enormous erection. They took a moment to enjoy looking at each other’s beauty completely naked, an experience they would never forget for their whole lives. Then they lay down and embraced, kissed and caressed each other.

  She emitted a light squeak, with pain and pleasure combined, when he at last entered her slowly and carefully. Then the world enveloped them both in a whirlwind of passion.

  Outside, daylight was fading away, and the November evening began to sink into ever deeper darkness. The lovers were utterly unaware of what was going on in the outside world. It was only when the noises of breaking glass, the shouts and the cries became louder and more desperate by the minute that the outside world entered their awareness again.

  At first, Manfred thought he was dreaming. He rubbed his eyes while he was reluctantly loosening his body from Anna’s. His mind was still a bit dizzy, even though he was fully aware of what they had just done. He didn’t regret anything, and when he saw the blissful smile on her face in the dim candlelight he knew that she didn’t have any regrets either.

  “Listen! What’s that? What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “It sounds like some drunks smashing windows in the street.”

  “Yes, but it’s not in our street, it must be down near Berliner Strasse. There must be lots of drunks if they can cause such clamour.”

  “Let’s get up and see,” she suggested. “I have a bad feeling something terrible is about to take place.”

  While they were getting dressed, all the lovely feelings of a short while ago gone, he remembered what Thomas had insinuated. Was this the beginning of a war? No, it couldn’t be, but it sounded pretty awful. Especially the loud cries, which indicated that people were in terrible agony.

  As they reached Berliner Strasse, they realized that the main noise was coming from the town centre, so they turned left and walked along the tramlines towards the centre, marching quickly and holding hands.

  What awaited them was mayhem. The streets were full of running people. There were lots of uniformed men with sticks, clubs and guns. They smashed shop-windows, they yelled commands and they caught hold of some of the terrified men and women running from their houses and shops. Lorries drew up, and many of the civilians were manhandled brutally and thrown onto those lorries. Only very few of them fought back, but to no avail. The uniformed men were stronger. It looked as if all these people were being arrested. What for? Manfred wondered. Anna turned white and nearly fainted. She held onto her lover, and they withdrew into an empty doorway. On the left, down a narrow alley, they could detect a fire.

  “What’s that?” he asked, well aware that she wouldn’t be able to answer him.

  They spent more than two hours in dark corners and doorways, looking with open mouths, Anna no longer able to hold back her tears, Manfred so shocked he couldn’t make any comments on what they were witnessing. They saw shops being ravaged and looted, windows broken, houses set on fire, and they saw the local synagogue going up in flames. All the time they heard the barking voices of the brown uniforms and the terrible cries and desperate wails of the people trying to escape this hell.

  Later, they couldn’t remember how they ever got home, but it was late at night.

  * * *

  When Manfred woke up, it was still dark outside. He looked at his alarm clock on the bedside table and saw that it was half-past five in the morning. As his mind was crossing the bridge between sleep and wakefulness, the events of the previous day and the night slowly began to sink in. He began to realize that within the past twenty-four hours - even less, the past fifteen hours or so - he had experienced the greatest happiness in his young life and witnessed the most shocking scenes in public life. What a terrible contrast! How could he cope with such extremes? Again, he returned to his repetitive question: What made people do what they were doing? This enigma could be applied to both extremes, the intimacy of their love-making as well as the horror of the brutal scenes they had seen in the streets of their home town.

  What made Anna give herself so completely to him, what made her offer her body and mind to him in such a wonderful way? Yes, it was love. But still, it was such a complete surrender in a way. Was that what women always did when they really and truly loved a man? If this was the climax of pleasure that his life as a man had to offer him, indeed, he could face anything in the future. The mere knowledge of such bliss and the satisfaction of such an experience would always give him strength and confidence. He could do anything, achieve any high goals he could ever aim for, put his stamp on the world, render his life meaningful.

  And what made men destroy other people’s houses, their shops, their livelihoods, even their lives? There had to be very powerful forces behind such naked hatred. Manfred felt divided between pity for the families whose lives were destroyed so brutally and critical empathy for the perpetrators. If men could be driven to such extremes they must have very good reasons. Their fury might appear blind, but it could have sprung from frustration and then been channelled by their leaders into such action as he had witnessed. If the Jews hadn’t pushed so many good citizens to the brink of poverty, and if Jewish arrogance hadn’t robbed so many hard-working men of their self-respect, surely such outrages could never have taken place. It had to be a case of the underprivileged people reaching their breaking-point.

  Through his ruminations and evaluations of the recent events, Manfred’s subconscious ego told him that he could personally gain insight from what was going on. Really, what he had experienced - at both extremes of the scale of human experience - was educational. This was how one learned about the world. What had happened must have some larger meaning. He never thought of himself as a religious person, but he suspected that the recent events - his private erotic experience as well as the public escalation of civil conflict - had an element of holiness about them. Some higher force had directed them. It wasn’t a divine creature or such humbug, but it was some higher force.

  The important question that presented itself to him now was how to cope with this. How to behave in the near future? How to ensure that the wonderful state of things he had reached with Anna could be maintained into eternity? On the other hand, how to react to what was happening to his home town, his country, his beloved Fatherland? In both spheres, he became convinced, it would be best to be patient, to wait and see. In Anna’s case, he would first get to the bottom of her feelings. He wouldn’t take such liberties with her again until he was totally and completely convinced of her own free willingness, her ardent desire to repeat what they had done and to continue doing it into the foreseeable future. In the case of the current state of things in his country, he would wait and do nothing, say nothing, make no commen
ts to any of the other boys, give no sign of his own position. Only when things became clearer, would he decide on his own course of action. Lie low and keep one’s mouth shut, that was the watchword of the day, he was now convinced. When he reached this conclusion at last, he felt he was ready to get out of bed and face the world.

  As he was getting up, stretching his body in its upright position, he wondered at the twitching of his left shoulder.

  * * *

  Of course, when Manfred walked to school he could still see a lot of evidence of last night’s destructions. Some of the buildings had broken windows, some had black marks on their façades. He could see a few people standing around in small groups, probably discussing last night’s events. He wondered on whose side they were. But he couldn’t understand what they were saying, and he didn’t dare to approach them. He had to find his own place within the general chaos of emotions and attitudes. Every individual was now thrown back on his or her own resources.

  At school, naturally, everyone had something to say about the situation. Some boys were very loud and voiced their satisfaction over what had at last been set right, while others discussed things more quietly and with serious faces. Manfred realized that not a single word or a single argument that was uttered by his peers could influence his own opinion. He had come to his conclusion in the early morning. He wouldn’t let anyone else shake him out of his own solution.

  The teachers dealt with the events in their different ways, but the general tenor was one of satisfaction. What had happened had at last put the Jews in their proper place. It was the right of good citizens to take things in their own hands and teach a long-overdue lesson to those Untermenschen who still lived in the town.

  The media were full of praise, too. After a while, Manfred caught the name that was given to the events by the authorities. They called it Reichskristallnacht, the Imperial Night of Broken Crystal Glass. For a brief moment, he thought that it was quite a beautiful name, too beautiful for such horrible things that had been done, but he dismissed the thought immediately. After all, important events had to be remembered in the history books by the vehicle of memorable names, while the sordid details were buried. Otherwise, no historian would be able to study the events of the past without being blinded by those details - which could be a lot more horrible than the recent events if one came to think of all those wars of the past, the Greeks fighting the Persians, the Romans fighting the Goths, and many other big historical conflicts - and the historians would be led astray from the true interpretation of those events. That was surely what it was.