The English German Girl

by Jake Wallis Simons

  On the other side of his bedroom wall, on a table, dimly lit in the light of a floral-shaded lamp, stands the Klein family photograph. The glass has been cracked in Rosa’s suitcase, and now a jagged line passes from left to right, splitting each of the figures in two. Next to the photograph is Hedi’s doll, sitting slumped against the bedpost like a commuter. On the floor Rosa is crouching over her suitcase, slitting the lining with a butter knife. Carefully, one by one, she slides out a series of banknotes, English pounds which her father had inserted the night before she left. She gathers them into a modest pile and counts them. Then she takes the photograph from the bedside table, removes the frame and slips the notes behind the photograph. She places it back on the bedside table and tucks herself into bed.

  For a long while she lies open-eyed and freezing, tensing her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Between her legs is a hot water bottle that Samuel gave her before she went to bed. She was slightly taken aback at first – in Germany hot water bottles are only used by invalid old women – but she accepted it anyway and now she is grateful for this slippery lozenge of heat. She traces her fingers up her sleeve until she touches the wristwatch on her bicep. With trembling fingers she prises open the lever; there is a click and it rattles down her arm, coming to rest in the crook of her elbow. She threads the wristwatch out of the blankets and holds it up to her ear. It is still ticking as if nothing has happened, as if it is still in Berlin. Slowly she loops it over her other wrist, pushing it halfway up the forearm where it rests quite comfortably. Then she lies still.

  Rosa is glad for the privacy of her bed, having spent much of the day in the lavatory, wiping her face and blowing her nose on that horrible shiny toilet paper. She is spent, exhausted, wishes she could sleep. The heaviness descends, and her throat begins to knot again. She slides the hot water bottle from under the blankets and places it on the icy linoleum beside the bed. For hours it radiates its heat wantonly into the unfeeling air while she lies cold and unblinking in the gloom.

  18 March 1939, London

  1

  The following morning, Rosa awakes to find that yesterday’s freeze has been replaced by an early spring brightness which strikes her as particularly English. As she steps out into the street, holding her dictionary, she feels vulnerable; she could get lost in minutes and be unable to read the street signs, or ask for directions. She stands on the pavement outside the gate, the round-leaved hedge shoulder-high behind her, and looks left and right, trying to commit to memory her immediate surroundings: the telegraph pole with its little metal plaque, the wine-coloured curtains in the house opposite, the odd wooden fences, the trees with translucent foliage.

  She begins to walk, dictionary in hand. This may be the first time that German shoes have struck this particular pavement, the first time even that a German person has walked along this road. Not a single aspect of the street bears the remotest resemblance to Berlin; there are no tenements stretching into the air, no half-pyramid stacks of stone steps, no lines of stucco along the buildings, no wooden double doors leading into courtyards, no advertising pillars displaying political slogans. Here, instead, there are individual houses with porches and hedges, gates and fences, front gardens and notices about dogs. The smells are different too; the brassy fug of Berlin has been replaced by the scent of hedges and tea, and a coal soot that leaves a bitter film at the back of the throat.

  Rosa walks uncertainly to the end of the road and turns left. The streets are dull and quiet, here and there people stand aimlessly on corners; in the distance, a single barrage balloon drifts like a ripening raincloud. As she walks the streets become busier, people are staring at her, she fights the urge to hurry away, head for a shadowy alley, she carries on as normal, she does not want to get lost. London is truly nothing like she imagined, it is dirty and dilapidated, people seem to take very little pride in their appearance, and things look miniature somehow, rather humorous, the little gardens and trams and policemen, though nothing is miniature at all, of course, and nothing is humorous either. She wonders if her family, in Berlin, had enough food for breakfast this morning; there will be more to go round without her. By now Papa will be walking Hedi to school, and Mama will be doing the laundry, there were many orders to be done yesterday and she hasn’t got Rosa to help her. Heinrich will be off to an embassy somewhere, and Papa will join him later probably, that is a comforting thought, in a way, they are all struggling together, separated by a sea but engaged in the same efforts. And here are two men sitting on a bench, gas mask boxes on their laps, she thinks they are Jews – but so confident! Talking loudly and smoking, their legs stretched out almost into the centre of the pavement, and they seem to be quite well off, they have felt collars and silky hats, and their beards are trim; yes, she is sure they are Jews, ah, one of them has removed his hat to scratch his head, there is the telltale skullcap, she was right. Compose yourself now, Rosa, this is no time to be shy, go forward, forward—

  —I beg your pardon?

  —Yes?

  She fumbles with her dictionary. Tucked inside the front cover is a sheet of Berlin foolscap upon which her father’s narrow-looped handwriting is inscribed in uniform rows.

  —I apologise to inconvenience you, she reads, using Papa’s intonation, but may I beg some minutes to speak?

  The men look up, their eyes glinting beneath the brims of their hats. They murmur to each other, then to her, but she cannot understand what they are saying. One of them tips his hat back on his head, he is holding a silver-topped cane which he rests upon heavily; they suck their cigarettes.

  —I am a Jewish girl coming from Berlin, Rosa continues, and my family is currently requiring a work permit and a visa also, for the United Kingdom. For any household they will be very hard-working and obedient, any type of work they will engage, as a cook or gardener or butler or maid or bottle-washer, in a city or a town, a village or a farm, they do not need much money, enough for surviving only, or even no money at all, just a little food and somewhere to live.

  The men’s faces, under the brims of their hats, wear grave expressions when Rosa, having finished her speech, looks up. One drops his cigarette on the pavement and extinguishes it with the tip of his cane, the other adjusts his felt collar and begins to speak. Rosa tries to catch what he says but can make out barely a single word; she looks at him at a loss, then opens her dictionary, vaguely turning the pages. The man reaches over and plucks her sheet of foolscap from her fingers, suddenly in his hand gleams a fountain pen, he writes something diagonally across the back of the foolscap and returns it to her.

  Rosa looks at what he has written: it is a sketch of an envelope, then an arrow, then the words Baron de Rothschild, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. She looks at the man again, who is miming the act of writing, scribbling zigzags in the air, jabbing a finger at the address.

  —Letter here? says Rosa.

  —Yes, he replies, letter here. Baron de Rothschild.

  Suddenly there is a roaring sound, and a scarlet tram draws up clattering to the kerb. The men are on their feet, they raise their hats to Rosa in a formal sort of way and board the tram, gripping the pole and swinging themselves up. Overhead wires crackle, and the tram lumbers heavily away.

  Rosa walks on, heaviness building in her heart, imagining Heinrich and Mama and Papa standing in never-ending queues; she will write to this Baron when she gets back to the Kremers’, she will use her dictionary and stay awake all night if she has to, translating word by word, or perhaps somebody will help her, the Kremer boy perhaps, Samuel. But for now the search must continue.

  After a while the streets grow an increasingly affluent air. Large houses with bay windows and elaborate entrances stand on either side, and there are motorcars parked in the road. Rosa walks slowly past house after house, scrutinising them from a distance, looking for a sign of Jewishness – ah, here is a house painted a gleaming white, and the door is smart, and there is a highly polished silver mezuzah fixed prominently to the doorpost
; come on, this place is as good as any, the richer they are the better, and this is no time for cowardice, there is no choice but to go on, and what is the worst that could happen?

  Birdsong hangs like fog in the grey air, and Rosa’s heels thud on the clean stone as she makes her way along the path and up the stairs. In the shadow of the stone porch, set into the wall, there is a ring of stone, in the centre of which, like a brass bullet, is a button; Rosa presses it and is surprised by the sound, like a fire engine’s bell; she can feel herself blushing even though the door is closed, perhaps there is nobody at home; then, without warning, the door opens to reveal a fresh-faced maid in a black-and-white uniform. Rosa thinks of a penguin and feels her blushes deepen.

  —I beg your pardon, hello, she says, clutching her dictionary to her chest and enacting a little bow.

  —Yes? comes the terse reply.

  Rosa opens and closes her mouth, unsure of what to say, not knowing if it would be appropriate to address her speech to a maid. But she has no choice. She opens the dictionary and reads from the sheet of foolscap:

  —I apologise to inconvenience you, but may I beg some minutes to speak?

  Without a word the maid disappears into the house, leaving Rosa on the doorstep with the birdsong. She wants to flee, but the maid has left the door ajar, which compels her to stay, and anyway she cannot flee, for there is nowhere to flee to, and what if the people in the house turn out to be the ones who will rescue her family? Then, if she flees, she will have betrayed her family, through her cowardice, and the opportunity will have been wasted, never to come again. Yes, from this moment on, every second she spends fleeing, or reading, or eating, or lying in bed, or laughing even, that may have been the very moment when, somewhere, if she had been applying herself to the search for visas and work permits, without cowardice or laziness, she would have met with success, someone would have said yes, I will employ your parents, I will offer them visas, work permits, freedom.

  There is the sound of footsteps, and the door opens wider. A handsome woman with perfectly straight grey hair stands framed in the doorway.

  —Hello, she says in a lipsticked voice.

  Rosa clears her throat, bows again and focuses on the veins of blue ink threading from left to right across her piece of foolscap.

  —I am a Jewish girl coming from Berlin, she reads, and my family is currently requiring a work permit and a visa also, for the United Kingdom. For any household they will be very hard-working and obedient, any type of work they will engage, as a cook or gardener or butler or maid or bottle-washer, in a city or a town, a village or a farm, they do not need much money, enough for surviving only, or even no money at all, just a little food and somewhere to live.

  The woman looks at her coolly. Just a moment, she says, and reaches behind the door for her purse. She flicks open the catch, removes a pound note and hands it to Rosa, saying something she does not understand. Then the door closes. Rosa stands on the doorstep for a moment, the birdsong loud in her ears. The strange, oversized note lies in her hands, the grainy paper against her palm, the eyes of the monarch regarding her disparagingly. Blood rushes to her face. She wasn’t asking for money, like some common beggar! She won’t have it. She raises the pound note to the gleaming letterbox and slides it halfway in, it remains there like a tongue, she is about to push it through but then she pauses; slowly she removes it, inch by papery inch, and then the flap snaps back. She folds the money carefully and puts it in her pocket. Then, her face red and her head bowed with shame, she walks back along the path and onto the pavement.

  For the rest of the day Rosa continues to knock on doors and stop Jewish people in the street. The sun arcs gradually across the sky, shadows shortening to the west, then lengthening towards the east. The heaviness in her heart increases yet she presses on, from house to house, from person to person, ringing and knocking, repeating her speech, being turned away, on occasion, with sympathy. She does not eat or drink all day, she has not brought anything with her. In the late afternoon she has to sit on the wall of a front garden, her coat hanging on either side of her legs to the pavement, recovering her strength, for she is beginning to feel quite light-headed. As dusk begins to fall, despite her desire to carry on, despite the possibility that behind the next front door may lie her family’s salvation, she finds her way back to the Kremers’ house, as she had promised, in time for tea. Yet she vows to continue tomorrow, and the next day, for as long as it takes, until she finds that single house, that single person, who will help her to rescue her family.

  2

  —Not bad at all, says Samuel, just let me make a few adjustments. Oh, I can’t cross out your words, it needs to be neat. Don’t worry, I shall write it out again. It won’t take a minute.

  The sages have taught that one should not make the slightest physical contact with somebody of the opposite sex. Samuel reaches across the desk and plucks the pen from Rosa’s hand, quickly, as if picking a flower, then lays out a fresh sheet of foolscap. Rosa, at first, does not know what he is doing, but then, as he begins to copy out, very carefully, her letter, making adjustments here and there, she understands and is overwhelmed with relief. Finally someone is helping her, after a day of continuous rejection.

  His brow furrows as he writes, and he runs a hand over his Brylcreemed hair, smoothing the errant locks. Rosa finds herself looking at his face, at every detail – the aquiline nose, the high cheekbones, the small mouth that, when smiling, lends his face a handsome charm, the cocoa-coloured eyes that regard the world head on. And she watches his hand as he writes, the long, powerful fingers guiding the pen in zigzagging movements, the flesh on the end of his forefinger pressing against the barrel, flushing and draining as pressure is applied and released, deep blue liquid forming angles and loops upon his command. It is different, a man’s hand from a woman’s, his hand from mine, it is constructed for a different purpose, it is an instrument for gripping, for tearing, for building things and fighting enemies and protecting the ones that he loves.

  The nib scratches loudly, somehow calling Rosa’s attention to the fact that she is tired. Nobody spoke to her at supper, of course, how could they, yet the stew was so satisfying that she didn’t mind, she just concentrated on eating, filling her belly with mouthful after mouthful of sustenance. Afterwards she did the washing up, at Frau Kremer’s request, while the char mopped the floor around her ankles; then she went straight to her room to compose the letter to Baron de Rothschild, taking the script that her father had written her in Berlin, that she has been using all day, that she almost knows by heart already, and building in a salutation, expository sentences, an introduction, translating word after word using the dictionary. For a while she toiled at her desk by the yellowish light of a lamp, wrapped in her mother’s cashmere shawl, smelling the dying scent of Berlin, her shadow still and steady against the floral wallpaper, the curtains muffling the sound of the windows creaking in their frames, a carriage clock ticking gently to itself on the mantelpiece.

  When there was a knock on the door, she jumped; it was Samuel, he had filled the hot water bottle for her, she accepted it gratefully, and he said something, he seemed to be asking what she was doing, she showed him the letter, and using signs he volunteered to help. And now he sits, brow creased with concentration, strong fingers guiding the pen, forming neat, slanting letters with high, narrow loops, stroking from time to time the shining black shell of his hair.

  —There, he says at last, that should do it.

  He slides the letter across the desk, and Rosa looks at it out of politeness, for she cannot understand a word.

  —Good, she says, good.

  He addresses the envelope for her, slips the letter inside and seals it.

  —I hope it works, he says, placing the envelope on the desk, I really do. Gosh, it’s cold, isn’t it? I thought spring had come today.

  He rubs his hands together; his palms make the sound of the sea.

  —Do you know the word ‘friend’, say
s Samuel, ‘friend’?

  —Friend, yes, says Rosa, Freund.

  —A friend of mine, says Samuel deliberately, from school, has a motorcycle. I’ve been helping him fix it up. Do you know the word ‘motorcycle’?

  He picks up the pen and, on a scrap of paper, sketches a crude semblance. Rosa’s face shows a sudden understanding.

  —Ah so, she says, Motorrad. Motorcycle.

  —Yes, says Samuel, a Coventry Eagle Pullman, jolly good one too. Green as a toad. Understand?

  There is the sound of a doorbell downstairs.

  —I can ride, says Samuel, miming the twist of a throttle, yes?

  —Yes, says Rosa.

  He smiles charmingly and, despite everything, Rosa feels a smile slipping across her lips in return.

  —Do you want to go for a ride with me?

  —I beg your pardon?

  —We can go for a quick spin. It’s a two-seater and everything. What do you say? I’ve only got it until tomorrow.

  —Now?

  —Yes, now. What do you say? It’ll cheer you up.

  —No, no, thank you.

  —What do you mean, no?

  Rosa thinks for a moment, trying to recall her English lessons from a dusty Berlin classroom, all of which seem so remote.

  —I apologise to inconvenience you, she says finally. I must write my letter to parents.

  —Oh, I see. Well, you can get on with that afterwards, can’t you? I’ll help you with it. It’s only eight o’clock.

  There is a knock on the door, and it swings open to reveal Mimi Kremer, wearing a navy headscarf, a long cotton housecoat over her clothes and an expression of disapproval on her face.