by Liz Kessler
Not a lot. Probably not even enough for most people to notice. An outside observer wouldn’t have spotted a thing. But Leo wasn’t most people, he was Max’s best friend. Had he noticed?
Max’s thoughts were spinning so hard they made him feel dizzy.
What was happening? Why was it happening?
And why did it feel so familiar?
Almost as soon as he asked himself the question, Max knew the answer: Mr Schmidt sounded like his father. Since the day he’d banned Max from playing with Leo and Elsa, Max’s father still hadn’t talked about it much at home. Mother wouldn’t let him. But there had been a few times when he hadn’t managed to stop himself. He’d be reading the newspaper and would blurt out something that made Max itch with embarrassment: blaming Jews for everything that was wrong with the world, ranting about how much better off the country would be without them.
Max forced himself to switch off whenever it happened. Made himself believe that it was just his father, ranting. That he would get over it.
But he didn’t. And now the headmaster seemed to have become infected with the same hatred.
Max could feel his best friend’s eyes on him. He didn’t dare look up, though. He couldn’t bear to look into Leo’s face and see what must be a world of betrayal, hurt and fear in his eyes.
So, his face warm with shame, Max stared at the floor and shifted his body a tiny bit in the direction of the other children. The children who still belonged. A small part of his brain knew that he was letting his best friend down. But the bigger part had a question beating against it.
What if I’m next?
And so, he shuffled closer to a boy on his other side who he had never particularly noticed before, he stared at the floor, and he held his breath until the headmaster spoke again.
LEO
A memory darted into my mind out of nowhere.
My sixth birthday. Papa had taken us out for tea and cakes: me, Mama and my grandparents. Throughout the meal, Papa had been jumpy and constantly looking at his watch as though he were expecting someone.
And then the door had opened and Papa had nudged me. ‘Here goes,’ he’d said.
I remember looking up at the most frightening thing I’d ever seen: a man with a big round face made of chalk, bright red lips that looked large enough to eat you alive and eyes that could see into yours all the way down to your bones.
He was carrying a violin and he came directly to our table, leaned towards me and started playing a scratchy tune.
It was meant to have been a treat but the strange man had terrified me so much a warm liquid had spread down my trousers.
The shame had overwhelmed me.
I could still remember the strength of that feeling now. But as I stood here, in front of the whole school, being told I was an inferior being and feeling all the other children’s eyes on me, I realized I had never known the real meaning of shame till this moment.
I tried to get Max to look up at me. I willed him to tell me this was a big mistake.
Please, Max. Make it all right.
He carried on staring at the floor.
‘Come on, move! We haven’t got all day,’ Mr Schmidt shouted.
My shame deepening another notch, I turned away from my best friend and walked to the back of the hall.
Some of the kids still sitting on the floor stared at us with open mouths as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Others looked away, embarrassed and scared to be associated with the ‘dogs’ that had been sent to the back. A few smiled at me as I passed; others touched my hand in sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry,’ a girl from the year above me whispered as I stepped over her legs.
‘Chin up, it’ll be all right,’ a boy I’d never spoken to in my life said to me from the end of a row as I passed him.
Their words meant nothing to me. Maybe if Max had said them, it would have helped. But these – they were empty words from children who just looked relieved it wasn’t them at the end of the headmaster’s pointed finger.
The twelve of us sat at the back of the hall for the rest of the assembly. And the back of each class for the rest of the day. We talked to each other a little. Not much. We had no words for what was happening to us.
Everyone else ignored us, as they had been told to do.
Even Max.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes all day. We were due to have our last lesson with Mrs Werner but she stopped me at the door. Most of the other teachers had let us into the classes as long as we sat at the back and didn’t speak. Mrs Werner had always been strict and seemed to have used the new ruling to take her strictness to a new level. ‘No Jews,’ she said. ‘The rest of you, come in.’
I stood and watched as my classmates filed past me and Mrs Werner closed the door behind them.
And then I was left standing alone in an empty corridor, wondering what to do next.
Eventually, I decided I might as well go home. I went to collect my coat and made my way to the front entrance. Even now, a tiny voice inside my head was still pleading for this all to be a big mistake. I could almost hear Mr Schmidt’s voice calling me back into school, apologizing for upsetting us. That was what Papa had done all those years ago when the clown terrified me. He’d apologized over and over, while Mama had wrapped me in her arms and stroked my hair.
I glanced behind me.
The corridor was empty. No one was going to call me back. No one was going to wrap me in their arms and apologize.
I turned back to the doors.
And then—
‘Leo! Wait!’
I spun around. Max! At last! He hadn’t deserted me after all. My heart swelled with relief.
He was breathless as he ran up to me.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘I asked Mrs Werner if I could go to the toilet. I couldn’t let you leave without saying goodbye.’ He shuffled from foot to foot. He always did that when he was finding something hard. ‘I’m sorry I turned away from you this morning,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you all day.’ His eyes filled with tears.
‘I understand. You’d have got into trouble if you had done.’
‘I know. But I’m sorry,’ Max said. ‘I’m sorry it’s like this. And I know it’ll be hard, but whatever happens, we’ll find a way to stay friends.’
I nodded. I couldn’t speak. What could I say? Ask him how he thought we might do that now we were banned from speaking to each other at school as well as outside of it?
Part of me wanted to ask him to tell me the real reason we didn’t play together outside of school any longer. I knew in my gut that there was more to it than he had already told me.
But there were too many unspoken words between us and I knew I couldn’t say any of them. To do so would mean facing up to what all of this really meant. It would mean admitting that our promises of friendship for ever were a lie – and I wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.
‘Look, I – I’ve got to go.’ Max glanced furtively around. ‘Everything will be okay,’ he said.
‘I’m sure it will,’ I replied. As he ran back to the classroom, I wondered if he believed it any more than I did.
I couldn’t go home. The school day still hadn’t ended and I couldn’t bear the thought of telling my parents what had happened and why I was home early. So I walked. I went to the park, to the canal, around the streets, walking and walking until my legs burned and my hands were so cold I could barely feel them.
Shame followed me around every corner, clinging to me like a dark shadow. A host of questions weren’t far behind. What had happened today? Why had it happened? Who had made Mr Schmidt behave like that? Had he always hated us and just pretended not to? And what about everywhere else? Other schools? Was it just our school where this had happened? Was it happening in Czechoslovakia? Was Elsa going through the same thing?
Since she’d left, we’d exchanged a few letters and cards. They got shorter each time. A few words on a piece of paper were no
match for the reality of a best friend living a few streets away. But still, I thought about her every day.
For the first time since she’d left, I was glad she wasn’t here. At least she was spared the horror of what had happened to me today.
Finally, after wandering for a while, it was four o’ clock and I could go home without having to answer any questions.
I made my way through the city, blowing on my hands to keep warm as I walked through the cobbled streets. As I neared Stephansplatz, the main square in the middle of the city, I heard noise up ahead. I turned into the square and looked around. There was a crowd of people at the far end. What were they doing? It sounded like they were having a party. Pushing and jostling each other as they cheered and laughed.
So, rather than cutting across the centre of the Stephansplatz to get home as I would normally do, I made my way to the far end of the square to see what was happening.
As I got closer, I recognized a few of Papa’s friends amongst the crowd. Mr Muller, Mr Ferdinand, Mr Weber. They were all there in their big coats and their black hats, laughing at something in the middle of the group. There seemed to be lots of soldiers in uniform too. Some were laughing, some were shouting.
It looked like fun. Just what I needed after today.
The crowd was too big to see through to the middle, so I wriggled between the men until I got to the front.
I would have given everything I had to change what I saw. I would have walked out of school in shame a hundred times over to make it not be real.
There were three men on the ground, kneeling in muddy puddles, arms out in front of them. It took a second for me to realize that they were scrubbing the pavement.
It took another second for me to see that one of the men was my father.
I felt like a cannonball had been hurled at my stomach. I clutched my mouth. I could taste sick in my throat.
‘Harder!’ a man opposite shouted in a familiar voice. I looked up.
No. Surely not.
It was Mr Fischer. Max’s father.
He was wearing a uniform with a white armband on it. The armband had a shape I’d been seeing a lot lately. All the soldiers had them on their uniforms. It looked like an ‘X’ but each arm was bent into a right angle. I knew what it was called.
A swastika.
I’d already suspected the swastika was a thing to be feared. Now, looking at the scene in front of me, I knew it for sure.
Mr Fischer bent down towards Papa. A bit of spit sprayed from his mouth as he shouted again. ‘I said harder!’
My father looked up at him with pleading eyes from where he knelt in the puddle.
Papa.
The man everyone loved. The man who could make anyone smile, who would do anything for anyone.
My larger-than-life Papa, still in his smart suit and waistcoat, was kneeling in a puddle with a scrubbing brush in his hand.
‘I cannot scrub harder, sir,’ he said.
Mr Fischer took a step forward and stood in the puddle right next to Papa. ‘Maybe this will help,’ he said. And then he kicked my father in the stomach so hard that Papa fell forward, his face landing in the puddle.
‘Papa!’ I yelped as the crowd roared with laughter.
From the ground, Papa turned his head in my direction. His white, terrified eyes met mine. His lips moved silently. ‘GO!’ he mouthed, before kneeling again and resuming his scrubbing.
The thought of leaving Papa here on his own horrified me. But the thought of staying terrified me more. So I did what he’d said and inched my way back out of the crowd.
I ran through the square and along the cobbled streets until I could no longer hear the crowd’s baying and jeering.
And then, in the quiet of a deserted street, I leaned against a wall and retched, over and over, until my throat burned and my stomach cramped.
Even so, the pain was nothing compared to the ache in my heart.
MAX
Max sat at the kitchen table with his homework. He’d been looking at the same page for over half an hour but every time he read a line his mind swam with the morning’s events and he couldn’t focus.
Sadness and confusion battled against each other inside his chest.
The strangest thing was that the day had continued like any other. The assembly had been dismissed, children sent back to classes and everything had gone on as normal. As if twelve of their schoolmates hadn’t been called dogs and separated from the rest of the school.
The sound of the front door closing made Max jump. His father was home early. Mr Fischer came to the kitchen doorway.
‘Come here,’ he said to his wife as he crossed the kitchen. She was at the sink preparing vegetables.
Max’s mother wiped her hands on her apron and turned towards her husband. ‘You seem happy,’ she said as he took her hands in his and kissed her.
‘I am happy,’ he said.
‘Good day at work?’
‘An excellent day,’ he said. ‘Very productive.’
Mrs Fischer looked down. ‘Your boots are covered in mud!’ she exclaimed. ‘How did they get like that?’
Her husband waved a hand as if to swat a fly away. ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ he said. ‘Just some dirt that got in my way.’ He laughed as if sharing a private joke with himself. ‘Anyway,’ he went on. ‘I have good news. I have been promoted.’
Max’s mother clapped her hands. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ she said. She turned to her son. ‘Max, darling. Isn’t that wonderful?’
Max forced himself to smile. Even the effort of doing it made him feel like a traitor to his friend. ‘That’s very good news, Father,’ he said.
‘It is. Hitler has singled me out for a new role. I have been instrumental in strengthening his work here in Austria. I have shown an exemplary level of commitment and loyalty, and now he wants me to join the heart of the movement. I am to become a senior SS officer.’
‘What does that mean?’ Max’s mother asked.
Mr Fischer smiled before replying. ‘It means we are moving to Munich,’ he said. ‘We leave next week.’
Max tried to respond, but found that when he opened his mouth, no words came out. If this had been just a day earlier, he would have been devastated to be taken away from his home, from Leo, from everything he knew.
But now? Now he wasn’t sure what he felt.
Maybe moving somewhere new and starting over would help take away the pain of knowing his best friend was so near but he wasn’t even allowed to talk to him. Maybe it would soothe the pain he still felt in the gaps where Elsa used to be.
Maybe it would help ease the guilt that had followed him all day like a heavy burden on his back.
It wasn’t as if he could have done anything at school that morning. It wasn’t Max who had humiliated Leo. It wasn’t his fault. But still, he felt it. The unfairness of it. The fact that he hadn’t even tried to speak up for his friend.
Why hadn’t he? Would he, if he had the chance again?
Max didn’t want to torture himself with questions. He wanted to run from them, run as fast as he could.
He could have a fresh start in Munich. Start again, maybe even make new friends.
They were leaving in a week. Max told himself he would talk to Leo before they left. And he told himself that he would find a way to keep his promise of friendship.
He told himself whatever he needed to hear – even if, somewhere deep down in the depths of his heart, he knew it was all a lie.
LATE 1938
ELSA
Our days are mostly the same as each other. The pattern is strangely comforting.
School; homework; help Mutti with dinner; sew or read together till the light fades; bed.
And through it all, try hard not to think about Vati.
As soon as he comes into my mind, the questions pile in with him: Where is he now? What is he doing? Is he safe? Is he even alive?
I don’t have any answers so I do my best to chase the questions away wit
h routine and chores and helping Mutti.
Otto is doing the same. At least, I think he is. We don’t talk about it, but I can tell. Only, instead of sewing and reading, Otto has become even more obsessed with fixing things. He has been taking woodwork at school and seems to spend every minute at home looking for anything made of wood that he can take apart and rebuild. Maybe mending something helps him cope with all the things in our lives that we can’t fix.
This evening, as usual, we are trying to keep ourselves as busy as possible. I’m holding the end of an old dress while Mutti patches a hole in it. Otto is sitting on the floor with one of the kitchen stools. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, the concentration on his face – his narrowed eyes, his tongue poking out of the edge of his mouth – as he unscrews one of the legs and rubs it with sandpaper before tightening it back into place.
‘That’s better!’ he says triumphantly as he turns the stool upwards and sits on it.
Otto’s wide smile makes Mutti laugh softly. ‘You’re a good boy,’ she says. Reaching out to stroke my arm, she says, ‘What would I do without the pair of you?’
Otto puffs his chest out. ‘You’ll never be without us, Mutti,’ he says.
He says it so sombrely, it hurts my heart. My big brother trying so hard to be the man around the house and look after me and Mutti.
As we sew, I tell Mutti about my day. I’m fitting in well at school now. I’ve made a friend called Greta. Greta has always lived here in Prague and she was assigned to help me out when I started school. She has dark, curly hair and green eyes that sparkle mischievously when she smiles. She smiles a lot, and laughs and dances and talks. I’ve never met anyone like her before; being around her is like having a balloon that is always filled with air.
Last week she called me her best friend. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she would have loads of best friends, but she said she’s never liked anyone as much as she likes me.
I wanted to say the same back to her, but I stopped myself. I was worried it might be disloyal to Leo and Max. But secretly I liked it when she said it, and I think I’ll tell her soon that she’s my best friend, too.
