by Louise Fein
“Franz, these things will still be there if you take a few days off to go to the beach. Besides, you are the boss. You must have people who can run things while you aren’t there?”
Vati shrugs. “I only appointed Josef Heiden as editor two weeks ago. I can hardly go off and leave him at this stage . . . Besides, with my SS commitments ever increasing . . .” He pauses. “If Karl wasn’t so busy flying gliders this summer, I could have him work with me at the Leipziger. He would be such an asset. And think what I could entrust to him in the future, which I can’t to anyone else.”
“If you could get him to work with you over the summer, before he leaves . . . I wish with all my heart he’d change his mind. I worry sick about him going.”
Vati shakes his head. “The Luftwaffe arranged it. It’s vital flying experience before moving on to the real thing. Besides, he’s determined to go. I think, in time, he’ll come back to the Leipziger. He’s a young man, Hélène. He must find his own way. He wants to do his bit for the Reich and it’s only right and natural that he should.” He drains his coffee cup.
“I want to do my bit for the Reich, too,” I blurt out. “Perhaps I could work at the paper this summer, Vati? I’m a quick learner.”
Vati looks at me, narrowing his pale eyes. In the strong sunlight, his skin is pasty and sags with fatigue.
“That’s a kind offer, Herta,” he says slowly. “But your place is here, with Mutti. Help her with her charity work. It’s more important, too, that you learn how to run a home than understand the inner workings of a newspaper.”
“But, Vati—”
He scrapes back his chair and the discussion is over.
“Now, I must get to work.”
He leans across to peck Mutti’s cheek and plants a kiss on the top of my head. Mutti hurries out of the room after him, just as Karl arrives, unshaven and sleepy eyed. I ball my fists beneath the table.
“Morning, Little Mouse,” Karl says as he sits heavily on the chair opposite. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No, not really.” I sigh. “Just the same old argument. Vati wants you to work at the paper and Mutti doesn’t want you to join the Luftwaffe.”
Karl helps himself to some bread and spreads it with butter. He places two layers of leberwurst on top, humming a little tune under his breath.
“Why so cheery?” I pour us both some tea and plop a slice of lemon in each cup, plus two scoops of sugar in mine.
“I’m excited!” He smiles broadly and takes a large bite of bread and sausage, chewing vigorously. “No more school and I leave for the Luftwaffe in only a few weeks.”
“Are you that keen to leave home?”
I try to imagine life without Karl. His empty space at the dinner table. The silence without his step on the creaky floorboards. No more us.
“I will miss you so much.”
“Of course you will. And I shall miss you, too, my Little Mouse, but . . .”
“Will you stop calling me that?”
“What? Little Mouse?”
“Yes, that.”
“No.”
“Arschloch.”
“I’ll tell Mutti you used a bad word.” He mimics my voice and we laugh.
“But really, why do you want to go? Vati could have you straight into the SS, and the Leipziger will be yours one day. You’d make a great reporter. With your charm, you could get anyone to tell you anything.”
“But, Hetty,” he says, leaning toward me, his eyes shining, face animated. “Can you imagine anything more exhilarating, more exciting than being a pilot? The Luftwaffe will be the envy of the world. And I’m right here, at the start of it. Why would I want to join those stuffy Black-shirts? No disrespect to Vati. It’s just for me, I couldn’t live without being airborne. No feeling like it in the world. And after all these summers of flying gliders, I’ve got a dreadful taste—no, an insatiable appetite—for the rush of it.”
“It sounds awfully dangerous.”
“And you sound like Mutti. It’s a terrific thrill, that’s all. Our aircraft are the most advanced in the world. Other nations will soon give up, faced with our Luftwaffe. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to take you up flying, Little Mouse. You’d love it.”
I watch his face as he chews, reaching a hand up to sweep his hair back. His bicep swells under his shirtsleeve. Without me noticing he has reached manhood, and now he needs to break free. Become his own person, away from Vati’s dominating presence, away from Mutti’s fussing. Perhaps even away from me. The thought is a physical pain, and for a moment I see how it is for Mutti.
“Come on, Hetty, cheer up,” Karl says, his face earnest and kind. “Let’s make the most of this last summer holiday together, eh? We’ll have some fun, I promise.”
Eleven
July 25, 1937
There’s barely a cloud in the cerulean sky. A lark hovers overhead, a tiny black dot against the sun. Its song, pure and strong, rises and falls, immersing me with its pure, sweet joy.
The long grass tugs at the bottom of my skirt. I lift it high and pick my way, careful to avoid thistles and stinging nettles hidden in the lush pasture. Kuschi leads the way, like a dolphin beneath the waves, his whereabouts revealed only by the disturbance of the grass heads and occasional glimpse of his tail.
“Let’s head for the riverbank, Kuschi Muschi,” I call to him. “It’ll be easier walking up there.”
Reaching the top of the bank, I stop to catch my breath. It’s not yet seven, but there is already heat in the sun’s rays, forewarning another sweltering day. We follow the path along the course of the Weisse Elster, as it winds its way through the vast stretch of allotments spread out before us. I walk slowly, past fruit trees, rows of baby cabbages, canes of runner beans, and tomato plants. In the far distance, the low roar of a car engine starts up and a distant clanking of machinery floats from somewhere beyond the allotments.
“Hetty? Good God, is that you?”
I start in surprise.
A young man, of medium height, approaches from behind a plum tree. He has an athletic figure and is well dressed in dark slacks and a cream shirt. He’s carrying a woman’s basket filled with fruit and vegetables. He peers at me from beneath the wide brim of his hat, his face in shadow.
“Yes . . . it really is you!” he exclaims.
Kuschi, who’d been engrossed with an interesting smell some distance away, rushes toward him, barking furiously. The man removes his hat, revealing a mass of blond curls, and looks hurriedly about.
“Shh!” he says to Kuschi, holding out his hat as if it were a shield. “Shush, or someone’ll hear you!”
The hair gives it away. He’s changed, but not entirely. A rough sketch that has been painted over to faultless accomplishment, its lines developed with painstaking, intricate brushstrokes.
“Walter?”
I’m eleven again, watching my brother’s friend with adoring eyes, willing him to notice me.
He steps closer, eyes uncertain, a hint of a smile. It’s been more than three years since we’ve seen each other. Since that day.
“Quick,” he says, “let’s get out of here. Someone may have heard the dog.”
He covers his basket with his free hand and runs for the gate to leave the allotments.
“Why?” I call after him, glancing around. “Aren’t dogs allowed in here?”
Walter falters, half turns. “Best not wait to find out,” he retorts over his shoulder, picking up his pace to a run again.
I follow with Kuschi bounding and snapping at my ankles, excited by this new game of chase. Managing not to trip over him, we scramble through the gate and don’t stop until we reach a line of trees where the ground once more slopes up into a steep bank. The path runs behind it, right next to the river. On the other side of the bank is a little-used lane, and in front of us is an old humpbacked bridge leading to Trachenbergstrasse, which joins Hallische Strasse, and onward, toward home. We take the path by the river, out of sight now of anyone in the allo
tments or the lane, and Kuschi leaps straight into the water.
Laughter dances in Walter’s eyes as he looks back at me, hooking his basket into the crook of his arm.
“Wow,” he says. “Little Hetty, all grown up . . .”
Under his gaze, something double flips inside and I feel my face flush.
“So . . .” I can’t meet his eyes. “You’re all grown up yourself.”
And you are a Jew.
Unformed thoughts swirl, refusing to fashion themselves into words. He catches my awkwardness and is silent too.
Kuschi explodes from the river, shakes himself at the water’s edge, and runs to me, rubbing his sodden body against my calf. I shriek, shaking the hem of my skirt.
“What a marvelous dog,” Walter remarks.
He crouches down and pats Kuschi’s wet side. The dog wags his tail so violently, it hits Walter in the face. He screws up his nose and teeters backward. Kuschi turns and licks his ear avidly, as though he were a tasty piece of meat, making Walter laugh.
“He’s a character, isn’t he?”
I shouldn’t be with a Jew.
But this is Walter.
My mouth is dry. I lick my lips. “He used to belong to the Goldschmidts,” I mumble. “They lived across the road from us. Jews . . . But one day, they left their apartment and abandoned him. I found him in the snow, shivering and starved.” I think back to that day. Vati didn’t want a Jew’s dog in the house. I had to treat him for fleas and scrub him clean. Eventually he relented, but he insisted I change his name from Flocke. “How could anyone be so cruel?”
Walter strokes the dog and doesn’t reply.
Something in me pings open, like a spring releasing. Long-buried feelings rise up and words flow out, full of shaky emotion.
“What happened, Walter? I mean . . . where did you go, after that day?”
He flashes me a look and waves a hand toward the bank. “Shall we sit for a few minutes? There’s so much I want to say to you.”
You cannot sit with a Jew. Hitler’s voice; Herr Metzger’s; Vati’s. I can no longer distinguish. They swirl and merge together. I look around; the empty lane, the grassy bank and river. The allotments stretching into the distance. Nobody is about, but what if someone comes?
He looks at me expectantly. His face has altered: a man’s jaw, a hint of stubble on his cheeks. Like Karl, he’s eighteen, almost nineteen. But the warm blue eyes are the same. A breath of wind lifts his hair from his forehead. I clutch Kuschi’s unattached leash tight in my hand. An invisible force takes hold, and I’m sitting next to him on the bank. Not too close. I draw my knees into my chest, wrapping my arms around my shins.
“What you did that day, what you said . . .” His voice is low and buttery. “It was very courageous. And generous.”
“I got into awful trouble for bolting out of school, but I meant it, at the time.” I speak to my knees.
Then I did, but I’m older now. Wiser. In the three years since that day, I’ve come to understand the threat, the danger posed by the Jewish race. Now I understand the character, the essence of the Jew. But I don’t tell him.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I never got the chance to thank you.”
“There’s no need.”
A sound in the lane: bicycle wheels. I clutch the leash tighter. It passes by.
“No, Hetty, it was brave, to run out of school like that. To say those words to Freda and me. Especially after Karl cut me off. It meant . . .” He takes a long breath. “So very much.”
I shrug. I was just a child. I had no concept of what I was doing, at the time. I didn’t want Walter to be a Jew. But he is.
“I mean,” Walter is saying, “especially coming from your family. It must be hard. To think differently.” He looks at me and I meet his gaze. That flipping sensation again. Electricity pumps through my veins. “You do still,” he says quietly, “think differently?”
His eyes pull me in and I’m nodding.
Herta Heinrich. Do not forget who you are. Those who serve Adolf Hitler serve Germany. Those who serve Germany serve God.
I look away. My hands tremble.
“What did happen to you?” I ask out of curiosity. “I never saw you again. Or Freda.”
Walter sighs and picks at some grass, letting it fall to the ground through his fingers. “We had to move. Someone daubed Out with the Jews over our front door. The landlord said we had to go. Didn’t want to risk his windows being smashed in. Besides, we couldn’t afford the rent when he raised it. Business isn’t exactly booming for my father.”
“A lawyer, isn’t he?” I ask, remembering. It was only Walter, his mother and father. I met his father once. He was small and thin, compared to Vati, at least. Quiet-spoken. Bookish. He’d been reading the day I met him. What a useless occupation, I remember Vati commenting, although now I wonder if that was in relation to the reading, or the lawyering. I recall feeling sorry for Walter. No siblings and quiet parents; no wonder he spent so much time with Karl and me.
“He was. Banned in thirty-three. Since then he has worked in my uncle Josef’s fur trading company on the Brühl. I work there, too, in the warehouse. Not really what I want to do, but there’s no choice. It’s a struggle—nobody wants to buy or sell from a Jew. The banks won’t lend to us. We still have the remnants of an export business, but it’s hard going.”
“Where did you go to school, after the gymnasium? What about university?”
The questions fall out.
“Me?” He laughs and shakes his head. “There’s no opportunity for someone like me, Hetty. I went to the Jewish school—the Ephraim Carlebach School. I’ve left now; Freda’s still there. As a Jew, I wasn’t permitted to take the Abitur, so I’ve no qualifications. We live in my grandmother’s house on Hindenburgstrasse together with Josef, his wife, and three children. It’s a large house, and luckily my grandmother owns it, so we can live rent-free. It saves the cost of three homes.”
I turn my head. Take him in. I think of the pictures in Fink’s book. Walter bears no resemblance to any of them. If I saw him in the street, I wouldn’t need to cross it. The open-necked cream shirt with his blond hair curling over the collar; a patch of pale skin at the neck. Legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Nevertheless, where once I thought him almost part of our family, now he is a stranger.
He oozes Otherness.
Jew.
Repelling, yet strangely compelling.
Silence stretches between us, thorny and uncomfortable. I spot the basket brimming with produce at Walter’s feet.
“Do you have an allotment?” I nod at the basket. Something safe to discuss.
He shakes his head and looks a little sheepish.
“It isn’t easy these days. If our livelihood is taken away, how are we supposed to earn money for our keep?”
“You stole those?”
“I only took one of each. Just a few things to keep us going. They won’t even notice.”
“But . . . those allotment owners work hard. They are decent, honest people. They’re not rich. Why do you think you deserve their things?”
“We didn’t deserve to be in this situation in the first place,” he snaps, then takes a deep breath, as though he’d like to say more, but doesn’t dare.
So this is what he’s become. A little adversity and he transforms into a thief. True to his nature. Looks are deceiving, blood and breeding can never lie.
I shouldn’t be here.
I feel the weight of his eyes. My throat is tight. The image of a hook-nosed, curly-headed lout, ravaging an innocent, pretty girl, dances in my mind.
“It’s been nice to see you, but I must get back for breakfast.” I stand in a rush. “Come on, Kuschi, we need to go home.”
“Wait, Hetty. Please.”
Walter’s hair droops over his forehead and his eyes are the color of a tropical sea. He is beautiful, desperate, tragic.
If something bad was going to happen, it would have already. Again, I wonder h
ow he doesn’t look remotely like the evil depictions of the Jew in Der Stürmer. The contrast is laughable.
I sit down again, Kuschi pressing his warm, damp body against my legs.
“I’m sorry you think badly of me. Fact is, life here has become pretty intolerable for us. I wish I could leave Germany, like so many others have done,” Walter says, looking out over the river toward the trees on the opposite bank. “But my father refuses. Over his dead body, he says, will he let Hitler take what our family has worked so hard for.” I watch him carefully. Isn’t the reverse true? It’s the Jews who have stolen from hardworking Germans.
“I’ve written letters all over Europe trying to get an apprenticeship or a job of some sort. But I’ve had no luck. Jews aren’t welcome anywhere, it seems,” Walter continues.
This is making my head ache. People only ever talk of getting rid of scheming, thieving Jews. Nobody mentions where exactly they should go, other than Palestine. I stare at the basket and wonder what to say.
“I’m sorry for you, Walter, truly, but stealing?”
“Hetty . . .” He touches my hand; the shock of his skin on mine is electric. He looks hard into my eyes. “The bakery will no longer sell us bread. The greengrocer refuses us entry. Haven’t you seen the signs, NO JEWS, outside so many shops? They permit dogs, but not us. I don’t want pity; I just want you to see how it is. The truth is, we are barely getting by.”
“But . . . There are Jewish shops. And department stores. What about those?”
“Yes, but most have been taken from their Jewish owners, or shut down. If I go there, I risk being set upon by SA thugs.” His jaw is set and his eyes become angry. He laughs harshly, his face red. “And you berate me for stealing a few vegetables?”
His anger hits me like a fist in the belly, and I shrink from him.
“I’m sorry.” He stretches his hands toward me. “I didn’t mean to . . . God, you’re the last person I want to think badly of me.” And there, suddenly, is the Walter who saved my life, open and honest. Not angry at me, but at life. His face crumples. “We just have to hope these times will pass, and things will become . . . normal again.”
