by Jodi Picoult
And then, one day, things began to change. At Gymnasium, there was a contest to see which class could first get 100 percent participation in the Hitler-Jugend. In 1934, joining the Hitler Youth was not mandatory yet, mind you. It was a social club, like your Boy Scouts, except we also swore allegiance to Hitler as his future soldiers. Under the guidance of adult leaders, we would meet after school, and go camping on weekends. We wore uniforms that looked like those the SS wore, with the Sig Rune on the lapel. I, who at age fifteen chafed at sitting at a desk, loved being outside. I excelled at the sports competitions. I had a reputation for being a bully, but that was not necessarily fair--half of the time I was beating someone to a pulp because he had called Franz a sissy.
I desperately wanted my class to win. Not because I had any great allegiance to the Fuhrer but because the local leader of the HJ Kameradschaft was Herr Sollemach, whose daughter, Inge, was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. She looked like an ice queen, with her silver-blond hair and her pale blue eyes; and she and her friends did not know I existed. This, I realized, was an opportunity to change that.
For the competition, the teacher put everyone's names on the board, erasing those of the boys who joined the HJ, one by one. There were some who joined out of peer pressure; some who joined because their fathers said they had to. There were more than a dozen, however, who joined because I threatened to pound them in the school yard if they did not.
My brother refused to join the Hitler-Jugend. In his classroom, he and one other boy were the only ones who didn't. We all knew why Artur Goldman did not join--he could not. When I asked Franz why he would align himself with a Jew, he said he didn't want his friend Artur to feel like he was being left out.
A few weeks later, Artur stopped going to school and never came back. My father encouraged Franz to join the Hitler-Jugend, too, to make new friends. My mother made me promise to watch over him at our meetings. "Franz," she would say, "isn't strong like you." She worried about him camping out in the woods, getting sick too easily, not connecting with the other boys.
But for the first time in her life, she didn't have to worry about me. Because as it turned out, I was the poster child for the Hitler-Jugend.
We would hike and sing and do calisthenics. We learned how to line up in military formations. My favorite activity was Wehrsport--military marching, bayonet drills, grenade throwing, trench digging, crawling through barbed wire. It made me feel like a soldier already. I had such enthusiasm for the Hitler-Jugend that Herr Sollemach told my father I would make a fine SS man one day. Was there any greater compliment?
To find the strongest among us, there were also Mutproben, tests of courage. Even individuals who were afraid would be compelled to do what we were told to do, because otherwise the stigma of being a coward would cling to you like a stench. Our first test was climbing the rock wall at the castle, without any safety harness. Some of the older boys scrambled to be in the front of the line, but Franz held back and I stayed with him, as per my mother's orders. When one of the boys fell and broke his leg, the training was aborted.
A week later, as part of our tests of courage, Herr Sollemach blindfolded the group of us. Franz, sitting next to me, held tightly on to my hand. "Reiner," he whispered, "I'm scared."
"Just do what they say," I told him, "and it will be over soon."
I had come to see a beautiful liberation in this new way of thinking--which was, ironically, not having to think for myself. At Gymnasium I wasn't clever enough to come up with the right answer. In Hitler-Jugend, I was told the right answer, and as long as I parroted it back I was considered a genius.
We sat in this artificial dark, awaiting instructions. Herr Sollemach and some of the older boys patrolled in front of us. "If the Fuhrer asks you to fight for Germany, what do you do?"
Fight! we all yelled.
"If the Fuhrer asks you to die for Germany, what do you do?"
Die!
"What do you fear?"
Nothing!
"Stand up!" The older boys pulled us to our feet, in a line. "You will be led inside the building to a swimming pool with no water in it, and you will recite the Hitler-Jugend oath and jump off the diving board." Herr Sollemach paused. "If the Fuhrer asks you to jump off a cliff, what do you do?"
Jump!
We were blindfolded, so we did not know which of the fifteen of us would be pulled to the diving board first. Until, that is, I felt Franz's hand being torn away from mine.
"Reiner!" he cried.
I suppose at that moment I was thinking of nothing but my mother, warning me to take care of my younger brother. I stood up and yanked off my blindfold and ran like crazy past the boys who were dragging my brother into the building. "Ich gelobe meinem Fuhrer Adolf Hitler Treue," I cried, streaking past Herr Sollemach. "Ich verspreche ihm und den Fuhrern, die er mir bestimmt, jederzeit Achtung und Gehorsam entgegen zu bringen . . ."
I promise to be faithful to my Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. I promise to him, and to those leaders he has assigned to me, to give them my undivided obedience and respect. In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Fuhrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.
And without looking, I leaped.
*
Wrapped in a coarse brown blanket, my clothes still soaking, I told Herr Sollemach that I was jealous of my brother for being chosen first to prove his allegiance and courage. That was why I had cut him in line.
There was water in the pool. Not much, but enough. I knew they could not let us all jump and kill ourselves. But since each of us was being brought into the building individually, we could not hear the splash.
I knew, however, that Franz would, because he was already at the edge of the pool. And that, then, he would be able to jump.
But Herr Sollemach was less convinced. "It is admirable to love your brother," he said to me. "But not more than your Fuhrer."
I was careful the rest of that day to avoid Franz. Instead I played Trapper and Indian with abandon. We split up into platoons based on the colors of our armbands and hunted down the enemy to rip off their armbands. Often, these games escalated into full-on brawls; they were meant to toughen us up. Instead of protecting my brother, I ignored him. If he was trampled in the dirt, I wasn't going to pick him up. Herr Sollemach was watching too closely.
Franz wound up with a split lip and bruises up and down his left leg, a nasty scrape on his cheek. My mother would hold me accountable, I knew. And still, when we were walking back home at dusk, he bumped his shoulder against mine. I remember the cobblestones on the street were still warm, from the heat of the day; there was a rising full moon that night. "Reiner," he said simply. "Danke."
*
The next Sunday we met at an athletic hall and squared off in boxing matches. The idea was to crown a winner from our group of fifteen boys. Herr Sollemach had brought Inge and her friends to watch, because he knew that boys would show off even more if girls were present. The winner, he said, would get a special medal. "The Fuhrer says that a physically healthy individual with a sound character is more valuable to the volkisch community than an intellectual weakling," Herr Sollemach said. "Are you that healthy individual?"
One part of me was healthy, I knew that much. I could feel it every time I looked at Inge Sollemach. Her lips were pink as ribbon candy, and I bet just as sweet. When she sat down on the bleachers, I watched the rise and fall of the buttons on her cardigan. I thought about peeling back those layers to touch skin, how she would be white as milk, soft as--
"Hartmann," Herr Sollemach barked, and both Franz and I stood. This surprised him for a moment, and then a smile spread across his face. "Yes, yes, why not?" he muttered. "Both of you, into the ring."
I looked at Franz, at his narrow shoulders and his tender belly, at the dreams in his eyes that scattered when he realized what Herr Sollemach wanted us to do. I climbed between t
he ropes and put on the padded helmet, the boxing gloves. As I passed by my brother, I murmured, Hit me.
Inge rang the bell to get us started and then ran back to her girlfriends. One of them pointed at me, and she looked up. For one amazing moment the world stood perfectly still while our eyes met. "Come on," Herr Sollemach urged. The rest of the boys were cheering, and still I circled Franz with my hands up.
"Hit me," I muttered under my breath again.
"I can't."
"Schwachling!" one of the older boys yelled. Stop acting like a girl!
Halfheartedly, I shot out my right fist into my brother's chest. All the air rushed out of his body as he jackknifed. There was a cheer from the boys behind me.
Franz looked up at me in fear. "Fight back," I yelled at him. I jabbed with my gloves, pulling my punches before I could make contact with his body again.
"What are you waiting for?" Herr Sollemach screamed.
So I punched Franz, hard, in the back. He fell to one knee, and there was a gasp from the girls in the bleachers. Then he managed to drag himself upright. He pulled back his left fist and threw a punch at my jaw.
I do not know what flipped the switch in me. I suppose it was the fact that I had been struck, and was in pain. Or maybe the girls watching, whom I wanted to impress. Maybe it was just the sound of the other boys egging me on. I started beating Franz, in the face, the gut, the kidneys. Over and over, rhythmically, until his face was a bloody pulp and spit bubbled out of his mouth as he collapsed on the floor.
One of the older boys jumped into the ring and raised my glove, the conquering champion. Herr Sollemach patted me on the back. "This," he told the others, "is the face of bravery. This is what the future of Germany looks like. Adolf Hitler, Sieg Heil!"
I returned the salute. So did all the other boys. Except my brother.
With adrenaline pumping through my veins, I felt invincible. I took on contender after contender, and everyone fell. After years of being punished for letting my temper get the best of me in school, I was being praised for it. No, I was being exalted.
That night, Inge Sollemach gave me a medal, and fifteen minutes later, behind the athletic center, my first real kiss. The next day my father called on Herr Sollemach. He was very disturbed by Franz's injuries.
Your son is gifted, Herr Sollemach explained. Special.
Yes, my father responded. Franz has always been an excellent student.
I am speaking of Reiner, Herr Sollemach said.
Did I know this brutality was wrong? Even that first time, when my brother was the victim? I have asked myself a thousand times, and the answer is always the same: of course. That day was the hardest, because I could have said no. Every time after that, it became easier, because if I didn't do it again, I would be reminded of that first time I did not say no. Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't even any guilt.
What I mean to tell you, now, is that the same truth holds. This could be you, too. You think never. You think, not I. But at any given moment, we are capable of doing what we least expect. I always knew what I was doing, and to whom I was doing it. I knew, very well. Because in those terrible, wonderful moments, I was the person everyone wanted to be.
Aleksander had been working for me for a week now. We exchanged pleasantries, but mostly, he arrived to bake just as I was going to sleep; when I woke up to take the loaves to market, he was untying his white apron.
Sometimes, though, he stayed a little later, and I left a little later. He told me that his brother had been born with a caul over his face; that he hadn't had enough air. His parents had died in a plague in Humenne, Slovakia; he'd been taking care of Casimir for a decade now. He explained that Casimir's disorder, as he called it, led him to eat things that he shouldn't--stones, dirt, twigs--which was why he had to be watched all the time he was awake. He told me of the places he had lived, some with stone castles that pierced the clouds and others with bustling cities in which there were horseless carriages that moved as if pulled by ghosts. He did not stay long anywhere, he said, because people felt uneasy around his brother.
Aleks took to the baking like a natural, something that my father had always believed was the mark of a contented soul. You cannot feed others if you are always hungry, he used to tell me, and when I said this to Aleksander, he laughed. "Your father never met me," he said. He was always modest in his long-sleeved white shirt, no matter how hot it grew in the kitchen, unlike my father, who used to strip down to his undershirt in the sweltering heat. I complimented him on his rhythm. He moved with grace, as if baking were a dance. Aleksander admitted that he had been a baker once before, a lifetime ago.
We spoke, too, of the toll of the dead. Aleks asked me what the villagers were saying, where the new casualties had been found. Recently, the attacks had come within the perimeter of the village walls, not just on its outskirts. One of the ladies of the evening was found with her head nearly torn from her body in front of the doors of the saloon; the remains of a schoolteacher who had been walking to class were left on the steps of the statue of the village founder. It was as if, some people said, the beast responsible was toying with us.
"They are saying," I told him one day, "that maybe it's not an animal."
Aleks looked over his shoulder. He had the peel thrust deep in the belly of the hearth. "What do you mean? What else could it be?"
I shrugged. "Some kind of monster."
Instead of laughing, as I expected, Aleks sat down beside me. He picked at a chink in the wooden table with his thumb. "Do you believe that?"
"The only monsters I have ever known were men," I said.
SAGE
"Here," I say, handing Josef a glass of water.
He drinks. After nearly three hours of talking nonstop, his voice is pebbled, hoarse. "This is very kind of you."
I don't respond.
Josef looks up at me over the lip of his glass. "Ah," he says. "You are starting to believe me."
What am I supposed to say? Hearing Josef talk about his childhood--about the Hitler Youth, with a level of detail that could only have been gleaned from someone who lived it--makes me certain that yes, he is telling me the truth. But there is still a substantial disconnect for me, to see the Josef this community knows and loves recounting a time when he was someone completely different. It is as if Mother Teresa confessed that, in her girlhood, she had set cats on fire.
"It's a little convenient, isn't it, to say that the reason you did something horrible was because someone else told you to," I point out. "That doesn't make it any less wrong. No matter how many people are telling you to jump off a bridge, you always have the option to turn around and walk away."
"Why didn't I say no?" Josef mulls. "Why didn't so many of us? Because we so badly wanted to believe what Hitler told us. That the future would be better than our present."
"At least you had a future," I murmur. "I know of six million people who didn't." I feel my stomach turn over as I watch Josef in his chair, drinking his water as if he had not just told the beginning of a story of abject horror. How could anyone be that vicious to others, and not have the aftereffects bleed out in tears, in nightmares, in tremors? "How can you want to die?" I blurt out. "You say you're religious. Aren't you afraid of being judged?"
Josef shakes his head, lost within himself. "There was a look in their eyes, sometimes . . . They weren't dreading the trigger being pulled, even if the gun was already pointed at them. It was as if they ran toward it. I could not fathom this, at first. How could you not want to draw breath one more day? How could your own life be such a cheap commodity? But then I started to understand: when your existence is hell, death must be heaven."
My grandmother, had she been one of those who would walk toward the gun? Was that a mark of weakness, or of courage?
"I am tired," Josef sighs. "We will talk more on another day, yes?"
What I want is to wring information out of him, until he is
dry and brittle as a bone. I want him to talk until he has blisters in his throat, until his secrets litter the floor around us. But he is an old man, and so instead, I tell him that I will pick him up tomorrow for our grief group.
On the car ride home, I call Leo and tell him everything that Josef just told me.
"Hmm," he says when I am done. "That's a start."
"A start? That's a ton of information to work with."
"Not necessarily," Leo says. "After December 1936, all non-Jewish German kids had to join the Hitler Youth. The information he's given you corroborates other things I've heard from suspects, but it doesn't implicate him."
"Why not?"
"Because not all members of the Hitler Youth became SS men."
"Well, what have you found out?" I ask.
He laughs. "It's only been three hours since I talked to you in the bathroom," Leo says. "Plus, even if I did have detailed information, I couldn't share it with you, as a private citizen."
"He says he wants me to forgive him before he dies."
Leo whistles, a low, long note. "So now you're supposed to be his assassin and his priest?"
"I guess in this case he'd prefer a Jew--even a self-renounced Jew--to a priest."
"It's a nice, macabre touch," Leo says. "Asking the descendants of the people you killed to let you off the hook before you shuffle off that mortal coil." He hesitates. "You can't, you know. For the record."
"I know," I say. There are dozens of reasons why not, starting with the very base fact that I am not the person who was wronged by him.
But.
If you turn the request just slightly, if you let it hit the light of reason from another angle, what Josef has asked isn't the empty plea of a murderer. It's a dying man's wish.
And if I don't grant it, doesn't that make me just as heartless as he is?