Goodbye, Mr Hitler

by Jackie French

  He reached the hospital.

  Chapter 42

  JOHANNES

  AUSTRALIA, JUNE 1951

  Mr Mittelfeld lay in a small white-painted room, between white sheets, his white face on a white pillow, his sparse hair grey. Green curtains had been pulled around the bed of the only other occupant.

  This is where people die, thought Johannes.

  Mr Mittelfeld’s eyes were shut. He breathed as if a machine pulled the air in and out of his lungs, as if it needed a massive engine to do that simple thing. But there was no engine, only the frail body on the bed.

  How had Mr Mittelfeld become so much smaller in the past week? Johannes sat, the paper bag of biscuits in his hand. Stupid biscuits, because Mr Mittelfeld could not eat them. But it hadn’t seemed right to leave them back at his apartment, or throw them away.

  The eyes opened. Mr Mittelfeld smiled.

  ‘I . . . I hope you’re feeling better, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’ The word was a harsh whisper between two gasps of breath.

  Relief flowed through him. ‘I’m glad. I was afraid . . .’

  ‘That . . . I . . . would die? Of course . . . I am . . . dying.’ The smile again. ‘I have seen enough of death . . . to know its . . . face.’

  ‘No! It’s not fair!’

  A faint shrug. ‘Who said that life was f . . . fair? Humans . . . invented . . . fair. We must be . . . fair. But . . . life? Not so.’

  ‘Then God isn’t fair!’

  ‘What . . . religion . . . says . . . He is? But He . . . gave us . . . ways . . . to bear what isn’t . . . fair. To . . . to make . . . life . . . good.’

  ‘You made life good for me, sir. You gave me music.’

  ‘I . . . know. That gave me . . . much joy. My violin . . . I wish . . . it to be yours.’

  ‘But I’m your worst student! I’m not a good musician!’

  A cough cracked his laugh. ‘You are not a . . . good musician. But it is not . . . a good violin. How could a . . . refugee teacher . . . afford . . . a good . . . violin?’

  ‘But it sounds beautiful when you play it, sir.’ Anguish ran through him like a lightning strike. Would he never hear that music again?

  ‘That is because you . . . listen for the beauty. That is . . . important, Kindchen. Listen. Always listen . . . for the beauty. It is always . . . there.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘You do not search . . . hard . . . enough.’ The coughing laugh spluttered again. It went on until a nurse arrived and held water to the old man’s lips.

  ‘Perhaps it’s time for your visitor to go now.’

  Mr Mittelfeld smiled at her. ‘It is soon . . . time for me . . . to go too, eh? Let the boy stay.’

  The nurse hesitated. She was young, so very starched and black-stockinged. She touched the old man’s thin shoulder in its pyjama top lightly. ‘I’ll pull the curtains so Matron doesn’t see.’

  Mr Mittelfeld waited, wheezing, until the curtains were drawn. ‘Even in . . . the camps, there was . . . beauty. Did you never look up . . . at the sky, or hear . . . a lark sing?’

  ‘No,’ said Johannes. Why would you look at the sky and listen to birdsong when you were in the belly of the ogre?

  ‘But they were there,’ whispered Mr Mittelfeld. ‘And you are here. So much . . . joy . . . that you . . . are here. A gift to know . . . I gave you . . . beauty.’ The voice faded. The breathing grew louder, in and out, and in and out. His eyes shut again. But his hand moved, out of the tidy sheets, towards Johannes.

  Johannes took his hand. A papery hand. A winter leaf. Tattered, scarred, splotched with red scars and brown spots. A cold hand, for a man of so much warmth.

  Mr Mittelfeld breathed. In. Out.

  In. Out. The nurse peered in, then went away.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  Another nurse. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked softly.

  Was he? Johannes didn’t know. He nodded anyway.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  Silence.

  He should call the nurse. Call a doctor. A normal boy would call someone.

  A normal boy did not know death as Johannes did.

  Mr Mittelfeld’s face looked faintly grey, more sunken . . . Johannes hesitated, then stood stiffly and kissed the cold cheek. ‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I am glad you didn’t die alone.’

  He opened one of the curtains a little bit, and left it open, so the nurse could see he had gone. That both of them were gone. He walked out of the hospital.

  Chapter 43

  JOHANNES

  AUSTRALIA, JUNE 1951

  He didn’t know where he was going till he reached the house where the Schmidts rented their rooms. He needed Helga. Always, when life was hard. He went round to the back door and looked in and there she was, doing her homework at the table in the otherwise empty kitchen.

  He said, ‘Helga,’ and then said nothing, because his voice was gone. He suddenly realised she should be at her Red Cross meeting. ‘Why are you here?’ he managed.

  ‘Mrs Robinson’s sick. What’s wrong?’ She stood, crossed the room, then took his hand and led him to the table. She reached automatically into the cupboard for the cocoa, then into the cold chest for the milk, and poured it into a saucepan.

  Johannes said, ‘Mr Mittelfeld is dead. Pneumonia. He left me his violin.’ And music, he thought. And the knowledge that all those years in the camps the sky was beautiful and a lark sang, but I didn’t know to look or listen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Helga gently. She put the cocoa in front of him, sat opposite him, watched him sip. Sweet and milky, as cocoa had never been until they came here. He sipped again, trying to work out what he felt. And then he knew.

  ‘I hate him,’ he said quietly. ‘Almost all I am is hating him.’

  ‘Mr Mittelfeld?’ asked Helga, startled.

  ‘No! Hitler! He stole Mr Mittelfeld’s life. He stole it twice! Once in the camp, and now here — Mr Mittelfeld should have had years of life here. Being happy. But because of the camps, because of Hitler, his lungs were scarred and so he died. I wish . . . I wish he hadn’t died.’

  ‘Mr Mittelfeld?’ Helga looked confused.

  ‘Hitler! I want to tear him into pieces — small pieces, over a long time. Make him feel the agony as well. Millions of agonies, every single torment that he caused. It was Hitler. All him! Like Nurse Stöhlich said,’ Johannes didn’t even realise he had used her old name, ‘Hitler was a bacterium that infected all of Europe. Destroyed most of Europe! One man infected them all! But he cannot pay because he is dead. He cannot feel the anguish. Mr Mittelfeld was left to hurt, to die, but Hitler is safe and dead and can never feel pain or suffer loss . . .’

  It was as if coals that smouldered had at last burst into flame. His whole body ached with anger. ‘Every night, the nightmares come. Every night! Every time I see barbed wire, I remember what it was like to be behind it. Hitler killed us. He killed us all! Even now, while we are still alive, he kills us still!’ When had his voice risen to a scream?

  And then he stopped. Because Helga should be comforting him. Helga should hold his hand. Helga always helped. But Helga only sat there on the kitchen chair, cold and far away.

  ‘Helga?’ he said.

  She said quietly, ‘Hurt me then.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘You want to hurt Hitler? Make him pay? Then hurt me!’

  ‘But you . . .’ he almost said ‘I love you’, ‘you are my friend.’

  ‘I am Hitler’s daughter,’ said Helga flatly.

  He stared. Was she joking? But her face was twisted. And he knew: it was the truth. This was what Helga had been hiding. This was what drove her to give comfort in the camp hospitals, even with chamberpots and pus-filled wounds, to feel that she must save six million people, or forty million, with medical research.

  Helga, who was not a Schmidt, who must have been adopted only in the last days of the war, he thought, remembering conversations from back then, just after he met her. And
yet . . .

  ‘Hitler didn’t have a daughter,’ he said.

  ‘He did.’ Helga’s voice was still small and flat. ‘He had me. But I am small, not tall and blonde. I am crippled. Ugly. Marred. He could not say to Germany, “This is my daughter.” He was ashamed.’

  Johannes said nothing. His mind had turned to stone. This was too heavy to take in.

  ‘Well?’ Helga picked up a fruit knife lying on the table, offered it to him. ‘Do you want to slice me up instead of him?’

  ‘No, of course —’

  ‘Because you should! What did you say? All of Europe was infected? Well, it was. And I am Hitler’s daughter and I am all that’s left.’ Tears ran down her face now and mucus from her nose. ‘All these years, people saying, “So good is Helga Schmidt.” They don’t know that I am the worst person in the world.’

  ‘But how did you . . .? Why didn’t you . . .?’

  ‘Why didn’t I stop him? Because I didn’t know what he was doing! There in the centre of it all, they only told me that Duffi was wonderful. They wouldn’t let me call him Vati, so I called him Duffi. Duffi was the hero who had saved our country when the French occupied us and made Germany starved and poor. I didn’t know! And then when I began to understand, what could I do? I only saw him twice in the last three years of the war, just for a few minutes. What can a child do? Even if I had the chance to talk to him, what could I have said? Do not kill millions of people, Duffi. I . . . I will sulk or kick you if you do. But I did nothing. Nothing! And now I never can!’

  Helga’s face was serious. She really was . . . Johannes could not even think the name, the hated name, nor put that name with Helga’s. And yet . . .

  ‘Helga Hitler,’ he whispered.

  ‘Heidi Hitler,’ she said. ‘That is who I am.’ The loathing in her voice was even more intense than his. ‘A soldier took me from the bunker, near the end. A bomb killed him before he could get me to whatever safety they had arranged. And there I was, alone in the rubble of Berlin, no longer Heidi Hitler, and I found the Schmidts.

  ‘Frau Schmidt needed help, and I could give it. Her daughter, Helga, had just been killed, by the Russians. Frau Schmidt only just survived. So I helped her, and used Helga’s papers, and Frau Schmidt was grateful and called me her daughter, then Hannes was killed, and I was all she had left. And Herr Schmidt accepted me out of gratitude, thinking I had saved his wife, not knowing who I really was, that it was all a lie, and it was they who’d saved me.

  ‘It is all pretend, always has been. I am not good! I am bad, evil. I must be evil, like my father, so any good I do must be false, a pretence so people like me. Everything! I was born rotten . . .’ She was weeping now.

  She stood. ‘And now you know my secret, and Mutti and Vati . . . the Schmidts . . . they will know, and Frau Marks and George and Mud and everyone, and they will hate me because they should hate me. I hate myself. I hate myself!’

  Then she was gone, out the back door, down the steps. He heard her footsteps and her sobs.

  Chapter 44

  JOHANNES

  AUSTRALIA, JUNE 1951

  He knocked the chair over as he ran after her, but she had vanished by the time he reached the street. He looked to the right, and then the left, and saw her running, the strangely bouncing run because of her limp.

  He ran too, but not fast. Because he must give her time to stop crying, to stop running, so they could talk. About what . . .

  He didn’t know. Just talk. Think.

  She was Hitler’s daughter. Heidi Hitler. All his hatred had only one place to go. To her. To Helga. Because she was Helga, not Heidi, had been Helga for six years.

  ‘Helga!’ he called. ‘Helga!’

  She didn’t answer. Just kept running, towards the main road.

  No!

  He ran faster, but she reached the main road before he did. His lungs screamed. He hesitated as a truck thundered around a corner. He saw Helga stare at the truck. He saw her calculate.

  He pushed his body one last time. He leaped, as the teachers had shown him how to do when they thought he might be able to play football. He reached her just in time to see the driver’s face, startled and then terrified, as he swerved his big truck across the road, missing an oncoming car by inches, then thundered on, as Helga lay on the road underneath him, sobbing, clutching at the tarmac as if to claw her way back to the middle of the road and its traffic.

  Another car swerved around them. The car stopped. A man called out, ‘You kids all right?’

  No, thought Johannes. We are the most not-all-right people in the world. But he stood. He put his hand down to Helga and helped her up as yet another car swerved, stepped back onto the verge and called, ‘Thank you. Just an accident!’ then waited till the man drove away.

  He looked at Helga.

  ‘Helga,’ he said.

  ‘No! Heidi.’

  ‘Heidi. Helga. You are the best person I know.’

  ‘But don’t you see? What if . . . what if Duffi was trying to be good too?’

  Johannes thought of that small man. Small, like Helga was small, dark-haired like her. He remembered him standing on the balcony, screaming in fury, soaking in ten thousand angry cheers.

  Helga was not that. Helga was small and good.

  Helga was love. Not hate.

  So that was what he said. ‘You are not him. If you are a . . . a bacterium, you spread love, not hate. That is who you are, Helga or Heidi. You are love.’

  She collapsed into a ragged heap on the rough grass of the road verge, onto a pulped-up cigarette packet littering the ground. She said, ‘I . . . I have never known what I am. I have tried to be good. But all the time I lived a lie. Don’t you see? If Mutti and Vati, the Schmidts, had known who I was, they would not have kept me. Never loved me. You would not have been my friend.’

  He considered that. At last he nodded. ‘No. You’re right — I wouldn’t have been your friend. Not then. But now I am.’

  ‘Even though I am Heidi? Hitler’s daughter?’

  ‘You are you.’ He hesitated because, unless this wasn’t life and death it was too embarrassing to say, and then realised it was life and death, and so he said, ‘I love you. Really love you. I always will. I love you not just because you are good and have always helped me. I love you not because you are Helga or Heidi or any name. But because you are you.’ He put his arm out tentatively, not sure how you hugged a girl, then found her in his arms.

  Drivers stared as they passed. It didn’t matter. They sat there, on the grubby verge.

  At last she whispered, ‘I have to tell Mutti and Vati. Tell everyone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They should know the truth!’

  ‘The truth would only hurt them. They have been hurt too much.’

  ‘They have been hurt too much to have more lies from me.’

  He considered that. Finally he said, ‘We’ll ask Frau Marks.’ For Frau Marks was the wisest person he knew, now Mr Mittelfeld was dead. And like Mr Mittelfeld, Frau Marks had also been eaten by the ogre. His parents were wise about medicine and building houses, but somehow Frau Marks knew more about people. And his parents would be too tired when they came home from the hospitals to cope with the shock of knowing Hitler’s daughter, or think what they should say to her. ‘We can trust Frau Marks.’

  He felt Helga nod against his shoulder.

  They walked hand in hand. It was embarrassing again, a bit, and wonderful, a bit more, and neither mattered because today he had almost lost Helga and now he would not let her go.

  Would Frau Marks be home?

  She was, kneeling in the tiny front garden, planting a row of flowers in well-dug soil. She glanced up at them, then stared. ‘Helga! You’ve hurt your knee! Johannes, your elbow . . .’

  We must have grazed ourselves on the road, thought Johannes. He hadn’t noticed the dirt and blood. ‘It’s fine,’ he began.

  ‘It is not fine. Come inside. Let’s clean them up before they get infected.�
�

  They followed her, still hand in hand. It would be easier to talk inside. George and Mud were not there, Johannes saw with relief. Frau Marks poured disinfectant onto some cotton wool. ‘This will sting.’

  It did. He didn’t mind the pain. But the smell brought back the stench of death within the ogre’s belly, and that was hard to bear.

  Helga’s hand was warm in his, though, and suddenly the memory of the war vanished and all the world was Helga and Frau Marks, the scent of almond biscuits cooling on the bench and, yes, the sky outside was a high wide blue, and beautiful, and that was a magpie singing, not a lark, and the light streaming through the window was pure gold. Why had he never seen the beauty of Australian light before?

  ‘Helga? Johannes?’ asked Frau Marks, looking at him with the concern she had put aside to tend their grazes. ‘Was ist los?’

  So Helga told her. Told her about a childhood in a house high on a mountain, where sometimes a man called Duffi visited; where she watched hedgehogs and studied with Fräulein Gelber; about the farmhouse they lived in later with Frau Leib; the visit from the Führer when she wore her best shoes; the bunker where she called Hitler ‘Vati’ for the only time and he said, ‘Who is this girl?’ and the soldier took her to safety; but there was no safety, for he was killed, and then she found Frau Schmidt and Hannes, and then Johannes . . .

  ‘And finally we came to the camp and met you,’ said Helga. Johannes still held her hand tightly, not because he was scared for her now, but so she would know she was Helga, not Heidi. Helga!

  ‘I knew that nothing I could ever do would make up for what my father did, for who I am, but still I had to try.’ The tears fell again now. She brushed them away angrily. ‘I have always known that if Mutti and Vati knew who I was, if you did, if Johannes did or his parents, that you would all hate me. Everyone must hate me, because I am Hitler’s daughter. I am all there is left to hate.’