by Andie Newton
Bart’s eyes swung to mine, his jaw tightening, and then Karl answered for him in a heavy tone. ‘We are Germans, Sascha. Gentiles of Jewish descent.’
Bart’s breathing grew rapid, so much so Maria put a hand on his shoulder; then he stood up. ‘I grew up proud of my country after emancipation,’ he said. ‘Now that iron cross I earned fighting for this country doesn’t mean a Goddamn thing.’ His voice crumbled, and he sat back down. ‘Not the way the country is now.’
Karl uncrossed his arms. ‘Papa—’
Bart slammed a closed fist against his knee. ‘Damn the Race Laws. Damn them!’ Maria cringed from the anger in his voice.
‘But if you’re Gentiles why—’
‘The edict is complicated,’ Karl said. ‘If you have a Jewish grandparent you’re legally defined as a Mischling, or mixed blood. It doesn’t matter if you’re German, if you’re a Gentile, or how many medals you earned in the war if you don’t follow the Reich’s demands and do what they tell you to do.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and laced them together at the top of his head. ‘It’s about genetics.’
‘My son and I,’ Bart said, pointing to Karl, ‘run a very profitable company here in Nuremberg called Maschine Arbeitet. That is, until a few days ago when they came after us.’
‘Ach! Do we have to relive this again, Bart?’ Maria lifted her hands up in the air and dropped them into her lap. ‘I don’t want to think about everything we left behind, what we are now.’ Her lips quaked as she talked, which made Bart kiss her forehead.
Elsie pounded the fleshy part of her hand into the brick wall. ‘What we are?’ She swiped her nose with a wet hankie and glared through blotchy, meatball-swelled eyes. ‘The Nazis may call us criminals, but that’s their term, not ours. I’m not ashamed of the Jewish blood in my veins.’
Karl put his arm around her. ‘None of us are.’ He looked at me, his eyes heavy, and asked if I had any other questions.
Claudia would be aghast to know how much I had pried into their lives already, reminding me that the less I knew the better. But I couldn’t help myself. It was just me and them in the quiet basement, and I wanted to know. He did ask if I had any questions.
‘How did it happen?’ I said. ‘How did you end up in the Am Oberg?’
Karl waved everyone closer, and below the dangling light they recounted their story to me in great detail. They ran a post-war corporation that employed hundreds of people, buying dilapidated industrial parks, restructuring them and turning them into thriving manufacturing centres. Last week Karl received a summons ordering him to sell the company to an Aryan conglomerate. When he didn’t, a friend at the documentation office told him that his family’s name was on a deportation list for the east, despite his iron cross which he said should have been enough to keep him off the list.
‘Deport us east?’ Bart breathed heavily, ripping his glasses from his face only to put them back on. ‘Never.’
‘The same friend got us in contact with someone who brought us here. They said they could get us out of the country,’ Karl said. ‘It happened so fast, we only had time to grab our coats.’
Elsie blotted her tears away. ‘I’ll never forget the sound of those Gestapo trucks driving down our road,’ she said, sniffing.
‘It’s not the house I’ll miss most,’ Maria said. Tears welled in her eyes and she squeezed Bart’s knee. ‘It’s the vase Bart gave me on our wedding day.’
Bart pressed Maria tightly into the crook of his shoulder. ‘There will be plenty of vases in our future, darling.’
Maria dried her glistening eyes. ‘Sascha, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was royal blue with raised flowers and had serpents for handles.’ She simulated the vase’s design by moving her fingers in an hourglass shape. ‘It had a vignette of soldiers on horseback on one side, and flower sprays on the other. It was a Meissen, not sure if you know what that is, dear, but they are very nice.’
‘Meissen, yes… I know it,’ I said. ‘Porcelain from Dresden?’ It wasn’t typical for a girl my age to know such things but working in my aunt’s shop afforded me a certain kind of education, one that trained the young where the gold was, and a Meissen was indeed worth its weight in gold.
‘Yes!’ Her face lit up. ‘But my vase was made for a king!’
Elsie smiled. ‘Grandma, you’re telling tales now.’
Karl chuckled. ‘Now Elsie, if Mama says her vase was made for a king, then it was,’ he said, giving her a wink.
‘It was! It was!’ Maria yelped. ‘You think I am telling a tale here, but I’m not. Every one of you can laugh, but the stamp on its base said so.’ She shrugged her shoulders and batted her eyes as if to make light of her own conviction. But I knew Maria was probably right. In the early eighteenth century, King Augustus II of Poland commissioned his own set of Meissen pieces, marked with his initials. I was about to say something, but Maria seemed to enjoy the teasing so I let it be and listened to them carry on while I snuck back into the shop to look for some food.
Thank goodness my aunt hadn’t thrown out the kipfels Herr Rubin gave us the day prior; the crust had turned tough, and the bready inside crumbled into flaky bits that flecked to the ground, but I didn’t think the Kortens would be picky. I looked over her desk for something else to eat, Hitler’s dark-as-tar eyes watching me from the wall where Auntie had hung his portrait. I dug out a handful of caramels from the candy jar, and then went to the closet to get the blankets.
Maria gasped with delight; she thought I’d brought her the store. Bart thanked me with a puff of his chest and a rub of his belly. Elsie clapped when she saw the candy, and then popped a few pieces into her mouth. Karl sat down next to me, in front of the door on the second step, watching them dig into the pile.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ I said.
‘Nein,’ he said. ‘What about you? I heard your stomach growling.’
‘They need it more than me.’ I took my coat off to use as a cushion and Karl eyed my uniform. Then he asked me the question I was sure had been on everyone’s mind.
‘Why are you helping us? We’re strangers. I’m sure you know the risks.’
I loosened the tie from my neck until it hung down low on my uniform. ‘This uniform is my aunt’s doing. I wasn’t raised to believe in the Reich.’ I took a long breath through my nose, reliving my childhood on the outskirts of Nuremberg with my parents. ‘I haven’t told anyone this story before, but when I was young, I think nine or ten, the Jewish girl across the street told me she couldn’t be my friend anymore. When I asked why, she said the Reich wouldn’t let her attend school because there were already too many Jews. Each morning I’d see her staring out her front window, hands to her face, watching me leave for the schoolhouse with my other friends. At that moment, with her sad eyes on my back, I told myself that no matter how hard the Reich tried, I’d never become one of them.’
I think Karl was surprised, because he sat for several seconds looking at the ground after I’d told him the story. ‘Well, thank God for that little girl. You might have just saved our lives.’
We sat quietly, watching the others divvying up the food. Then Karl put his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes where dark creases had settled into his skin. ‘Now what?’ he said. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘There’s someone I need to find.’ Claudia. ‘Because you can’t stay here. The shopkeeper, she is… not sympathetic.’ I stopped short of saying my aunt was a full-blown member of the Party. He didn’t need to know, and I didn’t want to say it out loud either.
‘Don’t tell them,’ Karl said, glancing at his family. ‘I’m not sure my mother can take another move. They thought we were leaving for France today. No need in telling them we’re not.’
I slipped back into the shop, locking the door to the basement behind me. My aunt would be opening the shop bright and early tomorrow. I felt sick thinking about it.
I had to find Claudia.
There was only one place I thought to go—the Fountain o
f Virtues. Another reason why my aunt disliked Claudia; the fountain was the site of our ‘episode’, as Auntie had called it, the place where we’d publicly disobeyed the Reich.
I just hoped Claudia was there.
4
Sirens wooed outside. Lorries sped down roads. Window curtains opened momentarily only to close once I passed. The square was empty, but lit up by moonlight now that the rain had stopped, which made the Fountain of Virtues look grey and spooky. The water had been emptied for the winter, and I saw a rat rooting around in some leaves that had fallen into its basin—very different than it looked the day of our episode.
A day I would never forget.
We followed our League leader across the square as she escorted a line of girls through busy afternoon foot traffic, barking at us not to stop. But it was hot outside, and our feet ached. Claudia stopped next to the fountain and dipped her hand into its cool flowing water. Her eyes glowed when she read the sign that warned us to keep out. ‘Follow me.’ Claudia slipped off her shoes and hopped into the fountain.
Her face pruned from the initial chill of the water but quickly changed into a beaming smile. I took my shoes off, draping my socks over the keep-out sign and loosened my tie. Claudia stood under the fountain’s water spout, a steady stream drilling the top of her head. ‘It’s cold,’ she said, running her hands through her hair as if she were showering. People stopped to stare, many with their hands over their mouths, gasping.
I waded through the gushing water as Claudia marched defiantly in circles, cupping the water in her hands and throwing it into the air. Frau Dankwart had stopped when she heard the commotion and came charging back. She stood at the edge of the fountain, her grey hair twisted up in a bun and her mouth ajar.
‘Git,’ she shouted. ‘Git! Git!’ She flicked her finger at us, her lips pursing in between her words. Claudia kicked her feet up like one of those dancers from Paris, peeling her wet skirt from her body and lifting it in the air, her eyes caught in Frau Dankwart’s vengeful glare.
The girls from our League had gathered around in shock and wonder. Some started to take their shoes off, as if they wanted to join us, but then stopped when they saw the police walking toward the fountain. Frau Dankwart waved frantically at them to hurry while still shouting at us to get out.
Claudia scowled, the water streaming down her face. ‘I’ve had enough of you telling me what to do, Frau Dankwart. The Reich!’ She undid her tie and then flung it at Frau Dankwart’s face, which surprised even me. Then she started to undo her buttons and my mouth dropped. She took off her shirt and waved it at her if she were charming a bull, Frau Dankwart’s hands reaching for it every time the tail-end flicked in her direction.
‘Ella,’ she said, the water spraying over both of us. ‘This is our place. If ever we can’t find each other.’ I held her hand, squeezing, before the police ripped us from each other and pulled us out.
Later, Auntie paced with her hands on her head, out of her mind, spouting like a teapot she was so mad. ‘What were you thinking when you took off your socks? Did you even stop to think about how your little episode would affect your uncle and me? Our status in the community?’
‘No,’ I said, shrinking under the weight of my uniform. ‘I didn’t think about any of that.’ I only wanted to be free of the uniform, if only for a second, forget about the Reich and live free like I had in the country when my parents were alive, but try as I might to tell my aunt this, she never understood.
‘You never do think,’ she huffed. ‘You never do…’ Uncle tried to calm her with a hug, saying I had got out of the situation unscathed.
Auntie looked at me from over his shoulder. ‘Why do girls have to be so hard?’
Claudia disappeared for two weeks after the police took her away. When she came back, she refused to talk about where she’d been, but judging by the bruises on her arms I assumed she had been stashed away someplace horrible. Her father was a nationalist and pushed for her punishment, her mother unable to help. Auntie blamed Claudia for the episode, saying she had forced me to join her, which was enough of an argument to keep the police from arresting me.
‘Claudia,’ I whispered into the night air, and then listened. A woman shrieked from not that far away and a child cried. Car doors slammed, and windows crashed. My hands shook, alone in the square, and a twisting panic brewed up inside me thinking she’d left or wouldn’t come at all, but then a crackling noise came from the alley and out from the shadows Claudia rushed toward me. I almost collapsed with relief when I saw her face, but she grabbed me by the coat sleeve, out of breath and looking down the street, and forced me to walk. ‘We’re not safe here.’
We walked a few blocks before ducking into a narrow alley between two towering buildings. ‘Where have you been?’ she said, hugging me. ‘I went by your place and got worried when you didn’t open the window.’
She waited for me to answer. I was overjoyed to have found her, and yet a little scared. The wig I had pinned to her hair was gone, and she looked very concerned. Then the enormity of the night hit me, and my eyes started to water. She brushed a lock of hair away from my face.
‘He never came—Wilhelm. I waited all day just like you said.’ I gulped, about to tell her I’d broke her one rule. ‘So I left the square and moved the family myself.’
Claudia’s head flopped back. ‘Ah, thank God.’
‘You’re not upset?’
‘No!’ she said. ‘You did the right thing.’
‘They’re at my aunt’s shop.’ For a second, I thought she might be mad at me for moving them to a place like my aunt’s shop, but then she gave me a sympathetic smile.
‘I knew I could count on you if things went wrong.’ She pulled a hankie from her sock when she heard me sniffling.
‘Why didn’t Wilhelm meet me?’
‘I don’t know…’ she said, shaking her head.
A loud screech startled us both, followed by a commotion of heated commands. Claudia peered down the alley. ‘We should be walking.’ I turned and saw five men with long wool coats and knee-high boots enter the adjacent building. Some had guns slung over their shoulders, others held sledgehammers and knocked their way through locked doors.
I gasped. ‘The Gestapo!’ Screams echoed down the alley, some high-pitched, some low, painful moans. Chairs crashed through windows; women hopped out, dresses ripped down the middle like robes, their wounds branding the ground with their blood. A man tossed off the fire escape went limp on the stone pavement in his soiled night clothes.
‘This way!’ Claudia yanked on my arm and we walked the length of the city wall. That was when I noticed a scrape running from her forehead, along her jaw and down to her chin. It looked fresh, with gravel still clinging to the open parts of the wound.
‘What happened to your face?’
Claudia paused, looking up at shuttered windows and judging how far away the nearest raid was by listening to the night screams. ‘In here…’ We ducked into a barrel arch in the city wall where we could hide. ‘Listen, I’m involved with something. Something big.’ I stared at her, wondering how much bigger it could get than hiding Jews in her father’s rental, when she blurted, ‘I’m in the resistance.’
I exhaled from having held my breath. I knew, I suppose, that she was in the resistance. It just didn’t seem real until she said it out loud.
‘We’re going to get rid of the Reich.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
‘We have many plans,’ she said. ‘Exciting plans, Ella. Ways to disrupt.’
‘You believe it’s really possible?’ I thought about all the times we’d talked about what life would be like in Nuremberg without the Reich. No uniforms, no political parades, nobody telling us what to do and how to think. A day where a girl could run down the street without being stopped. Our Jewish neighbours could come back home.’
‘I do believe it’s possible,’ she said. ‘Tonight, I held a stick of dynamite in my hand.’
; My eyes widened. Dynamite?
‘There was a rumour the Reich had a torture device in the basement of the Zum Gulden Stern restaurant. They call it the Nazi Clock. I tried to get rid of it.’
I gasped. ‘The Zum Gulden Stern? But Auntie takes me there all the time! Did you destroy it?’
She shook her head. ‘The police chased me into the Altstadt and jumped me from behind, near your aunt’s shop.’ She dug her fingers into her shoulder and adjusted the joint with a painful wince. ‘It wouldn’t have been this bad if it weren’t for the glass.’
I looked at her as if she were a ghost. ‘Near the shop?’
‘They threw me into a police car, but I wiggled out of the cuffs and lit the dynamite in the backseat. There was a lot of screaming and commands shouted at me, but I jumped out of the car as it was rolling and took off running.’
The boom. After learning what Claudia had been through, I couldn’t believe she was still alive. I flung my arms around her and my hand snagged on something spiky. ‘Ouch!’ Barbed silvery points poked out from the fabric of her coat. ‘The hooks!’
‘Yes, the hooks,’ she said, looking down. ‘Careful.’
‘When did you do this?’ I said, remembering every single one of those hooks I’d so carefully hid in her hair.
Claudia held out her coat sleeve and pushed a few of the barbs back into the fabric. ‘In the pews of a church,’ she said with a smile. ‘You like it? It’s my only defence since I got rid of the dynamite.’
‘My God.’ Claudia was just a girl, only a few weeks older than me, not somebody you’d expect to outwit the Nazis. But as I looked at her with the scrape on her face, the wig gone from her hair, and hearing about the dynamite, I thought maybe she could do it. ‘What else did you do?’ I asked, as if nothing else could surprise me.
‘That’s it. What about you? What happened here?’ she said, picking at my ripped stocking.
I blushed. ‘Nothing.’ Suddenly my night and the entire day leading up to it paled in comparison. ‘Are you worried the police will find you?’
