In Ravenswald, Goering’s Guns for Butter campaign had begun to bite. It was impossible to get real butter or cream now. Everything was ersatz, a substitute. There was ersatz butter, ersatz rubber, even ersatz fabrics. People joked about buying a new suit and having green leaves sprout from the lapels, or buying a dress that grew branches.
Tonight, at dinner, Hermann had thrown away his bread and margarine in disgust. “This is shit!” he had shouted, and practically spat it on to the plate. “I would rather eat my bread dry than eat this muck!”
There were only three of them at the table; Dieter was now with the Sixth Army in Russia. During the summer Hitler had opened a second front and invaded the Soviet Union. In August they received a letter from Dieter saying that he was in Smolensk, and that he would be celebrating Christmas in Moscow. The newspapers were full of Russian names; Bialystock, Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad. The radio crowed about victory after victory as von Bock and his generals converged on the Russian capital.
“We will show those communists a thing or two,” Hermann announced later that night from his armchair as he read the letter. “Dieter says there are lines of prisoners as far as the eye can see! It’s a good job we have Poland or we would have nowhere to put them!” He laughed at that. It was a good joke.
Apart from the ersatz butter, the only other problem for Hermann and Inge was the motor car. They were still paying their five marks every week, but as yet there was no sign of their promised Kraft dürch Freude Wagen. The factory had been finished in 1939, as Hitler had promised, but by then the war was under way and the factory was fully occupied producing vehicles for the German army.
As Hermann dozed in his chair, the newsreader announced that new legislation had been enacted in Berlin concerning the Jews. Marie started in her chair with such violence that Hermann sat bolt upright. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“Nothing,” she said, but her mind was racing. “Nothing.”
As from today, Goering had told the Reichstag, no Jew under the age of sixty would be allowed to leave the country.
Netanel’s last avenue of escape was gone.
Chapter 7
It was Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights. Netanel lit every candle in their dwindling store, two dozen bright white flames chasing away the shadows in the tiny room that had defined their lives ever since Kristallnacht. It was extravagant, but he justified it by assuring himself that in another two weeks they would no longer need them. They would be on their way out of Germany.
Everything except the day-to-day essentials was packed. Netanel had stuffed two suitcases with clothes; household goods, sheets, crockery and linen had been crammed into the wooden chests shoved one wall of the room. Everything had been ready for almost a month, ever since Netanel had returned from Berlin with the precious visas. Now there was just the waiting; listening to the snow falling from the roof, the howling of the wind.
“Your father should be home soon,” Frau Rosenberg said.
Poor Mutti, Netanel thought. How will she cope with the journey? How will she cope with living in a new and alien country?
All he knew about Cuba was a listing he had found in one of his father’s encyclopedias: it was in the West Indies, the capital was Havana, and the economy was based on sugar and tobacco. What would happen to them when they got there? Would Mutti still ask when Josef was coming back from his card game? Would she still expect Hilde to fetch her afternoon kaffeel.
It seemed unreal. Yet the visas were stamped, and their tickets for the passage between Hamburg and Havana were on the mantelpiece above the fire. He knew what his last act on German soil would be: as he stepped off the dock onto the gangplank he would save one mouthful of good Jewish spit for “the Fatherland”.
He heard tapping on the kitchen door. Marie! He hurried through the drawing-room to the kitchen. He threw open the door and ushered her inside. A draught of bitterly cold air followed her. He slammed the door shut behind her.
“Your cheeks are red,” he said, grinning, and hugged her. It had been almost a week since he had seen her.
She pulled away. He knew straight away that something was wrong.
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer him. She held out the package concealed under her coat. “Veal and liverwurst and bratwurst. I’m sorry I could not come before. You must be starving.”
“Thank you.”
She took off her coat. Netanel hated himself for this; he should never have allowed her to continue with this. Each time he told her that this must be the last time; but the truth was, neither he or his mother could survive without her. She bought groceries with the money he gave her, stole meat from her father’s shop, had even told him about Cuba and how to get the visa. She would have given him much more, if he had let her.
She went into the living-room. “You’ve lit the candles.”
“It’s Hanukkah. When I was a child we had them blazing all over the house.”
“You should be saving them,” she said, and Netanel heard the alarm in her voice.
Frau Rosenberg looked up from the fire. “Who’s there?”
“Guten Abend, Frau Rosenberg.”
“Netanel! We can’t have gentiles in the house!”
“But, Mutti, look what Marie has brought us!” He held up the parcel of meats.
“Herr Rosenberg will be back from his cards very soon. We can’t have gentiles here when he gets home!”
Marie went into the drawing-room. It was where Frau Rosenberg slept; Netanel had dragged one of the beds down from upstairs for her. She sat down on the edge of the bed, folded her arms across her knees, hugging herself. She could not meet his eyes.
It’s bad, Netanel thought.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
“Father thinks I am at the cinema.”
“One day he will catch you out.”
“He has caught me out before. I just make up another story. If I told him the truth he would never believe me.” She laughed, a nervous tremolo.
He sat on the bed beside her. “Something’s wrong.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know how to tell you.”
“Just do it. Please.”
“Liebling, what are we going to do?”
“Tell me what’s happened!”
“It was on the radio tonight. They have cancelled all emigration for any Jewish person under sixty years old.”
Netanel sighed and hung his head. It wasn’t as if he was that surprised; he had almost been expecting it Cuba had never seemed very real anyway.
“What are we going to do?” Marie said.
“You are going to go home, and you are not going to come back.”
“You have said that before. You don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it. You’re just too stubborn to listen.”
“There must be some way!”
“No. They have slammed the last door in our faces. Unless I wait out the thirty-five years. I will be old enough then.”
“Don’t give up hope, liebling. Go back to Berlin. There must be someone you can bribe.”
“What with? I have sold everything. The car just paid for the visas to Cuba. There is nothing left to sell.”
“You still have the house. You can offer the deeds.”
“Perhaps.” He would try, of course. But where would they live? Whoever bought the house would want the deeds straight away for cash. He was convinced now that they would never get out of this hell.
Marie took his hand. “Don’t give up hope.”
“What hope?”
“Netya, I don’t understand. They say they don’t want any Jews, but now they won’t let you go.”
“I think they would miss us if they did not have us around to kick any more. They would have to find someone else to blame for everything that goes wrong.”
“You’ll get out. You’ll find some way, I know you will.”
“The hell of it is, a part of me does not want to go. I don’t want to leave you behind.”<
br />
She put her arms around him. He wanted her so badly. Take her, he thought. You might only have this moment. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. If you get away, if you don’t, either way you lose. But this might be the last chance, for both of you. If you’re careful, she won’t get pregnant.
Could you be so selfish, Netya? Your kiss is the kiss of death. Your very touch is the mark of the pariah.
“I love you, Netanel.”
He pushed her away. “Go now.”
“Please ...”
“No! We won’t starve. Frau Hochstetter still leaves parcels now and then and sometimes one of the townspeople comes by and throws bread on the driveway. It’s very uncomplicated. They don’t say they’re sorry, we don’t say thank you. Perhaps it’s better that way.”
“I mean it. I love you. I never stopped.”
“In the end it doesn’t make one any difference. I’m a leper and you can’t touch a leper, no matter how much you love them.”
“But I want to touch you,” she whispered.
He stood up. “Just go!”
She went into the kitchen, put on her coat, wound the scarf round her cheeks. She went to the door, hesitated. Her eyes flashed with anger. “I don’t need you to make my decisions for me! You can’t stop me coming here. I love you, and I’ll love you till the end. I’ll never betray you. Never!”
After she had gone, Netanel stood there a long time, his fists opening and closing at his sides. Then he went back into the living-room and snuffed out the candles, one by one, until just a single candle was left burning, the only light on this long winter’s night.
Chapter 8
Marie saw a thin man in a grey cloak overcoat and a Tyrolean hat walking past the shop. A massive chestnut draught-horse, standing stock still on the cobbles outside, turned its great head to one side and pushed the man into the window. The man yelped and lost his balance. He scrambled to his feet and hurried away.
“Spritzer,” Marie said.
Emmerich, the carter, was halfway through the front door. He saw the passer-by fall and swore under his breath. Then he saw Marie and removed his denim cap. “That horse has the foulest temperament of any animal I ever saw.”
Perhaps because you beat him all the time. “What can I do for you today, Herr Emmerich?”
“I came to see your father, Fraulein.”
“He’s out the back. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
Hermann was butchering a pig carcass. He came out and waved Emmerich into the back room. Marie went outside. Spritzer stood in the street, tossing his head against the traces of the heavy cart, the breath from his nostrils crystallizing on the chill March air.
“Spritzer, it’s me, Marie. Do you remember?” She produced two sugar cubes from her apron. She usually kept them as treats for any small children who came in the shop. “I’ve brought you something.”
The old horse studied her with malevolent pink eyes. If he did remember her, it seemed the recollection did not have pleasant associations for him. But a sugar cube was a sugar cube. He accepted one, then the other, without grace, then sneezed on her hand.
Satisfied that she had nothing else to offer, he showed his gratitude by ignoring her, instead of trying to push her through the window. She tried to stroke his mane but he jerked his head away. Spritzer was tough. He could be tamed but he could not be bought.
A customer went into the shop and she had no time for further seduction. “Be good, Spritzer,” she said and he snorted in disgust.
“What did he want?” Marie asked after Emmerich had left.
“Just business,” Hermann said.
“We shouldn’t do business with people like that. He’s a pig.”
“You watch your tongue. His son is an important man now.”
“Doing what exactly?”
“Secret work,” Hermann said, and nodded profoundly as if he were Albert Speer and privy to such secrets.
“Is he fighting the Russians like Dieter?”
“The SS is one of the elite units.”
“Should I be impressed?”
Hermann clucked his tongue, impatient with her intransigence. “Young Rolf Emmerich kept a torch burning for you for many years. You missed your chance there.”
“You know how it is. I was distracted by nausea.”
“Such a clever tongue you have now you have been to university! Look where it has got you. You are nearly an old maid. A girl your age should be married by now.”
“It’s not my fault, Father, it’s Hitler. He wants all the nice young boys for his army.”
“So what do you do with your life? You go to the cinema every week. Inge wants to know when you’re going to make us grandparents.”
“Does she have any suggestions?”
“What about Rudi Hoettges?”
“He is half blind and congenitally stupid. The army refused him, even as a clerk. Even the Gestapo didn’t want him!”
He lowered his voice. “Don’t make jokes about the Gestapo!”
“Any young man left in Ravenswald is either a cripple, a mental defective or Jewish. Perhaps you’d like me to go back to Netanel Rosenberg and ask him if he’d still like to marry me?”
Hermann turned pale. “Be still! If you even so much as mention his name again in my house I will beat you black and blue!”
Hermann looked up and saw Herr Netzer, the postman, on the other side of the street. He went around the counter and threw open the door. “Guten Morgen, Herr Netzer!”
Netzer waved. His job had become much harder since Hitler had opened the Russian front. Everyone wanted letters, handwritten ones. It was the ones with the official stamp of the Reichstag everyone dreaded.
“Anything for me this morning?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry.”
Hermann closed the door. Over a month since they had heard from Dieter. There had been reports on the radio of glorious victories at Kharkov and in the Crimea. But the last they had heard from Dieter was a long, rambling diatribe about truck radiators freezing and men losing toes and fingers to frostbite.
Hermann disappeared into the back room. Marie heard the chop-chop of the cleaver as he continued with his work.
There was just one candle to light the Seder. This Passover there was no matzo, no bitter herbs, no wine for Elijah. Instead they ate black bread with ersatz butter, sweetened with a thick treacle made from beets.
As Netanel recited the story of the exodus, he stared at the Jewish Star that a stormtrooper’s knife had carved into the surface of the table. Let my people go. Five thousand years and nothing had changed, except this time there was no Moses to lead them, and no God to avenge them with his ten plagues.
He recited the stories and the prayers, and they ate in silence. When he had finished they all whispered, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Netanel wondered if there would be a next year, in Jerusalem, or anywhere else.
“I have to go home now,” Marie said.
Netanel kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Thank you for coming.”
“You should not allow gentiles in the house,” Frau Rosenberg said. “Your father will be home soon.”
Chapter 9
“Where did you go last night?” Hermann said.
I was at a Passover. Oh, you know, just with some Jews. “I went to the cinema,” she said.
“It’s all you ever do these days.”
Marie put on her apron. “Shall I open the shop?”
“What did you see?”
“It was a western. Tom Mix.”
“America! They are our enemies! And the cinema shows Tom Mix westerns!” He snorted with disgust and went into the back room. There was a carcass laid out on the bench. That’s the biggest cow I’ve ever seen, she thought.
“Who did you go with?”
“Ilse.” Ilse had been told to cover for her. She thought Marie was seeing Rudi Hoettges and didn’t want anyone to know; Ilse was even more stupid than Rudi.
“Ilse! That girl could
frighten away a gorilla! How do you hope to meet young men if you keep company with girls like that!”
“Ilse is very sweet. You shouldn’t talk about her like that.”
“You’re not getting any younger,” Hermann grumbled.
“Who is?”
“You always have an answer. I should never have sent you to university. All you learned was how to talk back to your father.”
She folded her arms and stared at him. “Why did you send me then?”
He took a large knife from the wall and began to sharpen it. He didn’t answer her.
“What sort of animal is that?” Marie asked him.
“It’s a horse. What does it look like?”
“Horse? You’re selling horsemeat?”
“Keep your voice down!” He looked around the corner of the door to make sure there were no customers in the shop. “Who’s going to tell the difference?”
“Why do we need to sell horsemeat?”
“It’s cheap! There’s a war on, if you didn’t notice! Times are hard. A clever man finds ways to make a little extra profit for himself if his family is not to suffer. If I had a pawnbroker’s shop I would be rich by now. But as I am only a poor butcher, I have to do the best I can.”
“Where did you get this poor beast from?”
“From old Emmerich. I did him a favor. I paid him more than the knacker would. Once he’s in the bratwurst, who’s going to know?”
Spritzer.
She heard the bell ring in the shop. The postman, Netzer, stood at the counter. “Just one for you today,” he said. He handed her the letter and hurried out.
The typewritten envelope bore the eagle and swastika emblem of the Reichstag. It was addressed to her father, but she immediately tore it open, her fingers trembling. Perhaps Dieter is only wounded.
She read it and walked into the back room.
Hermann saw the letter crumpled in her fist and put down the cleaver. “Dieter?” he said.
She nodded.
He looked around desperately like a drowning man searching for driftwood to cling onto. He put a hand to his mouth and made a sound like a sneeze as he tried to choke back his grief. Marie stared at him, horrified. She had never, ever, seen her father cry. “What are we going to do?” he said.
Freedom (Jerusalem) Page 6
