by Louise Fein
Lisel smiles. ‘We are very lucky to have a patron like your mother,’ she tells me, ‘working tirelessly for the good of others.’
I glance at Mutti in surprise. To me, she is just Mutti. But now I see she is something else besides.
In the sitting room, three old soldiers are parked in a semi-circle in their wood and wicker wheelchairs. I know I shouldn’t stare, but I can’t help it. The sight of one makes me sweat. Half of his face is missing, the rest of it, a twisted mess of flesh. A small hole is approximately where his mouth should be, but a great chunk is gone from the cheek area. One eye is missing altogether and the other stands proud from the shrunken flesh, white and cloudy. His face reminds me of the mangled parts of a half-eaten chicken.
My stomach curdles and I fear I’m going to be sick. Mutti grabs my arm and jerks it, hard.
I take a deep breath. If I’m to be a doctor, I cannot be squeamish.
In comparison, the other two – one with legs missing from the hips down, the other with half a leg and a missing arm – are easier to look at.
I watch Mutti, standing in the centre of the dreary room, surrounded by this human horror show, and suddenly she looks like the most beautiful creature in all the world. Her sparkling eyes and charming smile flicker only momentarily as, radiant in her peach dress, she splashes colour into the room and works her charm on the patients.
Lemon tea and cakes are brought in. Lisel administers tea to the mangled man through a straw poked into the hole where his mouth should be. It slurps back out when she removes the straw and dribbles down onto his shirt from the mottled flesh, once his chin. She wipes up the spillage and comes to sit next to me.
‘What happened to them?’ I whisper.
‘Injured by shelling. There are some even worse off than these.’ Lisel pauses. ‘It’s a terrible thing, war.’
‘I’ve never really thought about it.’
‘And why on earth would you? You’re only a child. Perhaps another time you might stay and read to the men? Your mother tells us how clever you are. They would love that. A pretty young thing to brighten up the place from time to time.’
I look at Mutti with surprise and she smiles indulgently at me. A flush of warm pleasure at Mutti’s words of praise washes over me.
‘Of course,’ I say, meaning it with all my heart. ‘I would love to.’
The nurse pats my knee and gets up to wipe the badly injured man’s face again and to offer water.
Later, we wave goodbye to Lisel on the doorstep. I take deep gulps of delicious fresh air and curb the urge to run away at top speed.
‘Those men are shockingly injured, Mutti.’
‘These are the lucky ones, receiving such good care.’
We walk slowly, savouring the late afternoon sun. Everything around me is in sharper focus and more dear than ever before. I’ve not appreciated enough the beauty in the spreading branches of a tree; pure, sweet birdsong; or the perfection of my own limbs. I realise more clearly than ever before that I want to become a surgeon. To make them better. I vow to work harder at school.
Please don’t ever let there be another war. Keep us safe, Mutti, Vati, Karl and me.
‘There won’t be another war, will there?’
‘Let’s hope not. We are fortunate to have Hitler, because he is a peace-lover and wants harmony in Europe. Sadly, the same can’t be said for other countries. Look at what harm they did to us at the end of the war – those disgusting reparations. So many injured men, so many unemployed, such poverty. They taunt us. Want us to suffer and suffer until we say, “No more!” and fight back for what is rightfully ours.’
‘But who? Who are they?’
‘Our enemies, Hetty. There are many who want to destroy us. They want to kill, to maim, to rid us of everything we hold dear. They want to destroy our very way of life.’
Little fingers of fear creep slowly across my skin.
‘But who are these enemies?’
Mutti squeezes my hand.
‘Oh, they are many and varied. But behind them all are the Jews. They want to take over the world for their own benefit. But you mustn’t worry yourself, my darling,’ she says in her bright voice. ‘With Hitler at the helm of our new Germany, we have nothing to fear. Those who seek to harm us will be quaking in their boots!’
11 October 1933
‘Sorry, I can’t today,’ I tell Freda, the Jewess, when she asks me to be her partner in gymnastics. Her shoulders droop in disappointment and I feel a stab of guilt. I search the playground frantically for another partnerless person to avoid being shoved together anyway. Gerda shakes her head at me and grabs Ava’s hand, in case I should be in any doubt.
‘Hey, would you like to be my partner today?’
I spin around and there is Erna, long and lean in her white gymslip. A half-smile flits across her lips.
‘Okay.’ I attempt nonchalance, but my heart is pumping in my ears as we stand side by side.
Erna need not know where I used to live. She need not know that, at my old school, I had only one friend, Tomas. Our family is going up in the world, that’s what matters.
‘Girls!’ Fräulein Sauber claps her hands for attention. ‘Listen carefully and follow my instructions. With your partner and your batons, you will work on the routines I taught you last week. Concentrate on reaching high with your arms and the graceful placing of your legs and feet. Your partner will point out any errors. Find yourselves a space.’
We position ourselves near the back steps of the building.
‘Now,’ there is a glint in Erna’s eyes, ‘show me your best twirl. And don’t forget to lift that baton high and point your toes!’ She mimics Fräulein Sauber’s high-pitched voice and suddenly I’m laughing and the two of us swirl and sway, waving our batons and pointing our toes in a vastly exaggerated fashion. With Erna at my side, I couldn’t care less if I get into trouble with the squeaky Fräulein.
I glimpse Freda practising her moves on her own in the far corner of the playground. She looks sad and lonely, but I mustn’t feel sorry for her, because she isn’t one of us. I make sure I don’t look at her again.
‘One, two, three… Heil!’ Erna whips her baton across her top lip and extends her right arm up into a stiff salute.
‘Erna!’ I hiss at her daring, but I’m laughing so much my face aches.
‘Class!’ I deepen my voice, to sound like Dr Kreitz. I stick out my belly and throw my arms out wide. ‘Take note of this author you must learn nothing about! He is great, he is brilliant, and he is banned!’
Warmth at the sight of Erna giggling at my joke spreads like hot chocolate. Everything is suddenly possible and within my grasp. I only have to reach out and take it.
The lesson ends all too soon and we must go inside.
This time, I squeeze onto Erna’s bench. We have a new lesson each day, slotted between other classes. The Life of the Führer. We are to learn about the great man, Adolf Hitler, Frau Schmidt explains, by studying his struggles, his courage and fortitude. Frau Schmidt is misty-eyed as she speaks of his suffering, and of his wisdom. We shall, she tells us, once we know everything, admire and love him, just as much as she does. And then we sing.
Belting out the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’, I glance out of the window. The older classes are on their break. I scan the heads and find Karl. At the centre of the crowd, he throws his head back in laughter. I smile as I watch him, then turn my gaze to a solitary figure sitting far from the others on a bench, legs crossed, one foot swinging lazily back and forth. His blond head is bent over, engrossed in a book. Walter. How funny he is! While Karl and his other friends show off and compete with each other, Walter does the opposite. He shuts himself away with his books. My heart expands as I watch him.
Our singing comes to an end with our daily chant of gratitude:
Führer, my Führer given me by God,
Protect and preserve my life for long.
You rescued Germany from its deepest need.
I than
k you for my daily bread.
Stay for a long time with me, leave me not.
Führer, my Führer, my faith, my light
Hail my Führer.
Mutti is out fundraising when Karl and I arrive home from school in a downpour.
‘Once you’re dry, you can have lunch with Ingrid and me,’ Bertha tells us, setting out four places at the big oak table in the flagstone-floored kitchen.
I climb the stairs to change my clothes. It was so different when we lived in the flat. It had been just Karl, Mutti and me since Vati was often working. We were a little unit of three, eating together, Karl and me sleeping together. We’d shop with Mutti and help her prepare meals in the kitchen. She would sing French songs and tell us stories from her childhood in France, before she came to live in Germany. She had more to do back then, because we didn’t have a cook and a maid, yet, oddly, she seemed to have more time for us. Now she rushes here and there doing her charity work and seeing friends, often leaving us in Bertha’s care. I wonder if she sometimes forgets we even exist.
I click on the smart new wireless Vati has given me, which sits on top of my writing desk. They are replaying the speech that Dr Gross, head of the Nazi Party’s Racial Policy Office, made last night to the youth of Germany. Karl and I had sat and listened to the whole thing dutifully before dinner.
‘… science teaches us that inherited characteristics are more important than environmental influences…’ I slip off my soggy skirt and blouse. ‘… when we are no longer alive, our inheritance will live on in our children and children’s children. When we grasp this, we see that great river of blood flowing to us through the centuries, and that is in truth the German people. Each generation is a wave that rises and falls, replaced by the next one. As individuals, we are a droplet in this stream. Unlike the liberal-minded, we do not see ourselves as the centre of the world.’ I pull a clean blouse, pullover and skirt from my wardrobe and put them on. ‘… such understanding makes us modest. Unlike the liberal-minded who acts as though he has achieved all his accomplishments by himself, we know that everything we accomplish is not because of our own abilities, but due to our inheritance. We are the proud carriers and guardians of German blood…’
I click the radio off. I know what he will go on to say. That every race is different. Simply by educating the Negro, it can never turn him into the superior Nordic. As I walk back down the stairs, I can feel the pure, precious power of my good German blood, at least from Vati’s side, pulsing through my veins.
Bertha serves steaming bowls of goulash, each with a large, doughy bread dumpling. Just as we are finishing, Walter’s head, glistening and wet, appears at the door.
‘Ah,’ Bertha smiles at him. ‘Just in time for some pflaumenkuchen. Did you smell it? Come in, don’t dither on the doorstep,’ she chides, clearing our bowls away.
He sits next to Karl. I smooth my hair and straighten my back.
‘Have you written your history essay?’ Walter asks Karl.
‘No,’ he groans. ‘I’ll have to do it tonight. What was it again?’
‘To what extent can you draw a parallel between the symbolism of struggle and heroism in the medieval poem, “Nibelungenlied” with the current-day struggle of the German Volk?’ Walter takes a mouthful of plum cake. ‘This is delicious, Bertha.’
Bertha beams. I rest my head against the wall and imagine a time when Erna might be here too, and the four of us – Walter and Karl, Erna and I – would sit around gossiping about school, or this person and that, easy in each other’s company. I’m telling a story, and all three of them have their eyes fixed on me, nodding, listening and smiling at my amusing anecdote.
‘You coming then?’
‘Hmm?’
‘I said, are you coming to the treehouse with us?’ Walter’s looking at me expectantly. ‘I have Riesen caramel,’ he adds, shaking a paper bag at me.
I spring from my chair and follow the boys down the passageway, out of the back door and into the garden. The rain has stopped and I breathe in the rich smell of wet earth. I watch them climb up the narrow ladder and then, holding fast to the slippery rungs, I clamber up after them, pushing myself through the hole in the floor which straddles the trunk and the main fork of the tree. I roll over and swing my legs through. As I do, my skirt rucks right up to the top of my thighs. Quickly, I pull it down. But Walter isn’t looking.
He walks to the window and peers out.
‘We’re so high up,’ he comments, looking back at Karl and me. He grins. ‘Can a kangaroo jump higher than a house?’
Karl rolls his eyes. ‘Not one of your awful jokes.’
‘No, a kangaroo can’t jump higher than a house,’ I say, thinking of our tall roof.
‘Of course it can,’ Walter exclaims. ‘A house can’t jump!’
Karl groans, but I giggle and Walter gives me a wink. He looks out of the window again.
‘You can see all the way to Rosental from here,’ he says. ‘Ouch!’ He whips his hand from where he’d rested it on the sill and shakes it, then examines his finger.
I jump up. ‘Let me see.’ The dark line of a splinter slices diagonally into the soft padding at the top of Walter’s index finger. It’s in too deep to pull out without a tool. ‘I’ll get my tweezers.’
Hurrying down the ladder I hear Karl laughing. ‘Watch out, she’ll be amputating that. She has some ludicrous dream of being a surgeon…’
I grab my kitbag from my room. Back when we lived in the flat and I roamed the streets with Tomas, I’d bring my medical kit, slung on my back, and keep an eye out for injured creatures which might need help. The odd stray dog, which Tomas would hold still (getting bitten once or twice) while I treated patches of mange with borax; next-door’s cat with an injured tail that I bandaged, much to its disgust. I once even tried to glue the legs of a daddy-long-legs back on, but it died anyway.
I run back to the treehouse and carefully pull the splinter out of Walter’s finger with my tweezers, then I give the hole a squeeze and it bleeds, so I know all the wood is out. Dabbing the wound with iodine, I tell him not to get it dirty to avoid infection.
Karl has spread a blanket on the floor and lies on his side, propped up on one elbow.
‘She even reads books on medicine,’ he comments, watching me. ‘So dull.’
‘They are not.’
‘Anyway,’ Karl sighs, ‘you do know, women can’t even be doctors now?’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Ask Vati if you don’t believe me. However much you don’t like it, Hetty, you’re a girl, and you should start behaving like one.’
His tone is not unkind, but I burn hot as I pack away the iodine bottle and close my kitbag. I feel the boys’ eyes watching me as I fumble with the straps and buckles. Women can’t even be doctors. Is he right? A hole opens inside me.
‘Well, thank you, Dr Heinrich,’ Walter says into the silence, ‘nothing wrong with holding onto a dream.’ His words soothe like ointment on a wound. He winks at me for a second time. ‘I should pay you for your trouble,’ he continues, furrowing around in the paper bag and pulling out a large piece of caramel.
‘The biggest piece, just for you, little Hetty,’ he smiles, holding out the sticky piece of caramel, and my heart flick-flacks wildly.
‘Thank you.’ I take it and sit down, my back resting against the wall.
I pop the caramel in my mouth and chew the sweet golden lump, but it’s large and hard and protrudes through my cheek, refusing to get smaller. Dribble escapes from the corner of my mouth and I quickly wipe it away with my sleeve.
‘Very fetching!’ Karl laughs.
Walter sees and begins laughing too. ‘Here, have another piece.’
I press my lips closed and shake my head, blushing red.
‘Hurrah!’ Karl laughs again. ‘A way to keep the girl quiet. Congratulations, my friend!’
A hard ball forms in my throat and I’m on my feet, bolting down the ladder before I allow myself to properly
cry.
The boys’ laughter follows me all the way back to the house, and the cosy visions of my future life shatter like glass into a million, multicoloured fragments.
10 February 1934
Augustusplatz is packed. The vast square has been transformed into an unrecognisable film set. Up here, from our special platform, reserved for local dignitaries and their families, I feel like a film star, waiting to go out in front of the cameras.
I shiver, wrapping my fur stole closer around my neck. Powerful, blinding lights flood the expanse of the square and huge swastika flags hang from the tall buildings all around. Below our platform, a film crew slouch and smoke next to their tripods and cameras, stamping their feet and hugging their coats tighter as they wait for the main event. I look down at the pale, upturned faces of the crowd and the thousands of hands waving their tiny flags.
Mutti grips my hand tight. ‘It’s Karl’s turn,’ she breathes.
Karl steps forward, uniformed and serious. He grips the flag with his left hand, the right pointing to the sky, three fingers extended straight as an arrow towards heaven. His chin is raised and he stares straight ahead, unblinking.
‘Adolf Hitler,’ he chants without quiver, ‘you are our great Führer.
Thy name makes the enemy tremble.
Thy Third Reich comes, thy will alone is law upon the earth.
Let us hear daily thy voice and order us by thy leadership,
For we will obey to the end and even with our lives.
We praise thee! Hail Hitler!’
My throat closes and heat rises from somewhere deep in my soul. Karl, the dearest of all brothers in the world, dark-haired, dark-eyed and beautiful, is initiated in the Hitlerjugend. Hitler owns him now.
He accepts the coveted dagger and returns to the rest of his Schar. The next boy steps forward and repeats the oath. When the last new recruit has been initiated, the boys troop off stage and join the other squares of HJ boys at the front of the crowd.
The film crew check their cameras. A man comes onto the stage and tests the single microphone standing in the middle and a loud crackle comes from somewhere. We wait for the main event.