“It’s strange, but that’s really the way it is,” said Karl, recalling how all the good people he’d met had looked. He even remembered the rabbi who had been in Emil’s home. But he couldn’t recall the faces of the three men who had taken away his mother.
When Berta had finished with their trousers she put out the lights.
“It’s late,” she said in the darkness. “Tomorrow will be sunny, and we’ll figure out what to do with you. I have to go to my mother’s; there’s nothing for me to do here. I’m all alone here, and my mother lives far away. It takes four, five hours by train. But I won’t abandon you, you can be sure of that. Good night, children.”
Karl began to feel very sad. He was worried about what the next day’s plans might be.
“Good night,” he answered.
He listened and wondered why Emil didn’t say anything. But then he heard him breathing heavily, like someone fast asleep.
“Emil’s sleeping,” Karl said, explaining why his friend hadn’t said good night.
“Poor little boy,” Bertha said. “He’s completely worn out.”
chapter eleven
In the morning Karl awoke to discover a pair of brown, smiling eyes, and for a brief moment he thought he was looking at his mother. Still half asleep, he enjoyed the warmth of her smile.
But as he emerged from sleep, he realized that it was the sad smile of the janitor’s wife. She stood bent over a small suitcase and kept pushing down on it with her knee to get more clothes to fit inside.
Emil was already sitting in a chair, drinking a glass of milk. He looked refreshed, his shirt had been washed and pressed, and he had been scrubbed completely clean.
Karl saw that it was sunny outside. Some pale light seeped in through the cellar window, and the room was pleasantly quiet.
“We’ve been waiting for you long enough,” Emil greeted him.
Only then did Karl wake up completely. Until he heard Emil’s voice, his eyes kept opening and closing.
Karl jumped out of bed and was about to grab his shirt, which was waiting for him, washed and pressed, on a chair next to the bed.
“Oh, no,” said the janitor’s wife. “That won’t do. First you have to give yourself a good washing.”
She gave him a basin of cold water, and he started to splash about, almost as if he were going for a swim. He liked cold water and would always splash some on his face whenever he wanted to wake himself up.
But the janitor’s wife didn’t let him fool around for long. She took him in her hands and washed and scrubbed him. She rubbed him with soap until it felt as though she was scrubbing beneath his skin. Then she combed his hair, parting it in the middle.
Now Emil and Karl looked at one another happily. Emil remembered when they used to meet in the schoolyard. That was a happy time, when all the children would still play with him.
As he recalled those days, Emil’s heart felt heavy. He began to think about what had happened since then, and he couldn’t believe it. He tried to remember how long it had been since that night when his father had been beaten and dragged from the house. He started to count—a night, a day, a day, a night—but he got confused.
He could only remember that when he had left his house he was all alone in the world. He had no one except for his friend Karl. Emil suddenly realized how grateful he felt to Berta, who was now making breakfast. He went over and embraced her.
She didn’t move away, but shut her eyes and put her arms around him as tears ran down her face.
“Come here, Karl, come to me,” Berta called out and embraced both boys. “Things will get better, they will. Today we’ll say good-bye to each other, but Josef will come back, and we’ll be happy again.”
Still, tears still continued to run down her face.
Emil felt much freer and happier. Later, as he and Karl walked with Berta to the park, he felt much more at ease than the day before, when he had run, terrified, out of the house.
But as soon as they reached the park they heard wild cries and laughter. Emil almost broke away from Bertha’s grasp. She wanted to run herself but froze with fear, holding both children firmly by the hand.
The park was small, and Emil and Karl knew every corner of it. They often took walks there on Sundays. Now it was packed with people standing about. Even if Emil and Karl had wanted to run away, there was no way that they could have pushed their way through the crowd. People kept running through the gate toward them, and there was simply no place to move.
The shrieks and laughter sent chills through them. A storm trooper in uniform ran ahead of them and stopped Berta.
“Are you an Aryan?” he asked.
She nodded her head.
He took a hard look at her and at the two children. Then he smiled.
“Very well, ma’am, go on in with your children. They’ll find it very amusing.”
Numb with fear, Berta walked into the thick of the crowd and pulled the two children after her.
She forced her way through to an open spot. A few people shouted and complained that she was pushing them.
“How rude! Why all this shoving?”
Berta felt like turning back, but other people stuck up for her.
“Let the children be entertained. Aryan children need to be amused,” they said, looking affectionately at the boys, their faces glowing happily.
Once more Berta approached an open spot. Other mothers and fathers with their children pushed forward along with her.
There was a large circle in the middle of the park. Dozens of men, women, and children stood inside the circle. Karl noticed right away that they were different from the rest of this Sunday crowd.
“Look—they’re Jews!” Emil cried out.
Berta put her hand over his mouth. Emil wanted to shout again, but her warm hand restrained him.
Dozens of storm troopers also stood in the circle. Near Emil and Karl a man staggered about, barely able to stay on his feet. He began clapping his hands and whistling.
“C’mon, let’s get started! The German people are impatient!”
Many others started clapping, too.
“They’ve been dragging these damned Jews out of their houses all morning. They pulled all of them out of our building,” said a young woman with a parasol, smiling.
“Careful with that umbrella! You’ll poke someone’s eye out,” people warned her.
“They cleaned all the Jews out of our place, too,” a tall thin man, who looked as though he were standing on stilts, said in a loud voice.
“What’s going to happen now?” asked a man who had only just elbowed his way through the crowd.
“He has no idea what’s going on,” someone else said, making fun of him. “These lousy Jews are going to amuse us Aryans.”
“Terrific!” the man shouted. “We deserve no less. They ought to make it a law to do this every Sunday.”
“Yes, they really should make it a law. Only it’s a pity that the storm troopers have to work so hard! They’ve been dragging Jews here since dawn.”
The man who’d started the clapping began to clap even louder. It could be heard everywhere.
“C’mon, let’s start! We’re suffocating from this heat!”
Mothers kept pushing forward with their children.
“Stop shoving! How rude! It’s so crowded, we’ll suffocate!”
“Let the children move up! It’s their treat,” other people suggested.
“No!” protests came from all sides. “This is for everyone. Grown-ups should be entertained, too!”
“That’s right,” dozens of others agreed. “Everyone wants to see.”
“Why are you pushing?” people said to the lady, who by now had closed her parasol.
“I want to see my Jews, the ones from my building, I want to see them when it’s their turn. That would be wonderful.”
“We all want to see! We all want to see our Jews!” dozens of people shouted from among the crowd.
The man began cl
apping even louder. Then, suddenly, little pieces of red and green paper rained down on the crowd. All around, people looked up to see where this colorful shower came from.
Thousands of pieces of paper fell on the crowd. Many got caught in the trees or stuck to people’s hats. Karl picked up a red piece. There was something printed on it, in fat, black letters:
FOR SHAME! DON’T LET THE AUSTRIAN PEOPLE BECOME ANIMALS!
chapter twelve
All at once, dozens of storm troopers rushed through the crowd. Emil and Karl were shoved aside and were almost torn away from Berta. There was a great deal of shouting and confusion. People in the crowd were screaming.
Suddenly everyone ran off to one corner of the park. Emil and Karl were swept along with them.
Two storm troopers there were beating a man. The man’s face was no longer recognizable. It was completely swollen, and blood ran from his eyes, his ears, his nose. It seemed as though he was weeping blood.
“I am one-hundred-percent Aryan,” he pleaded in a weak voice. “You’ll pay dearly for this! You’ll pay for this!”
The storm troopers continued to strike him.
“Where’d you get that red piece of paper?” One of the men in uniform asked.
“I picked it up off the ground. I’m an Aryan!”
He collapsed, and the storm troopers left him lying on the ground.
Screams came from the other side of the park. The entire crowd ran over.
“That’s him!” some shouted. “He’s the one who scattered those papers!”
One old woman yelled louder than the rest: “I saw him tossing them into the air. I saw it myself!”
But before the storm troopers could reach him, the man pulled some documents out from his shirt pocket.
“Here are my papers,” he shouted in a loud voice, trying to be heard over the crowd.
The soldiers examined his papers carefully, and then they raised their hands, saluting him.
“Heil!” he answered.
The people in the crowd all raised their hands as well.
“They could kill an innocent person,” someone muttered.
“Yes. And whoever scattered those papers was very clever about it.”
“What does it say on them?” a short man asked.
“Pick one up and take a look. Why don’t you pick one up?” another man answered with a taunting laugh.
The first man just stood there, not knowing what to do, and looked down at the trampled pieces of paper.
People began to run back to the spot where they had all crowded together before.
“Let’s go home,” Emil quietly said to Berta.
But she didn’t reply. In all the commotion, Berta didn’t even hear that Emil had said something to her.
“Please, you’ll step on the children!” she said to the people around them.
“The children! The children!” they shouted with her.
Emil and Karl could no longer find a place to stand. They made their way to one corner of the park, but they could still see dozens of men, women, and children standing in a circle, surrounded by storm troopers.
A big, broad-shouldered man with a wild red beard and a head of scruffy red hair stood taller than the rest of the crowd. He wore an old jacket, its color faded beyond recognition, and tight-fitting shorts that just reached the top of his knees.
He let out a laugh that rolled like a barrel and ended in a shriek. Each time he laughed he clapped his hands together and yelled, “This is good! This is good!”
Then he stretched out his hand and gave a wild shout: “Heil! Heil!”
His face swelled and grew stern. His cheeks were so puffed up that it looked as though they were about to burst.
But just when it seemed that his eyes would pop out of his head from shouting “Heil,” he burst into a peal of laughter that ended in a shriek.
“This is good! This is good!” he said, his feet dancing.
“Idiot! Be quiet!”
“Heil!” he shouted with all his might. Then, like an army called into action, the crowd began to raise their hands and shouted back, “Heil!”
After this chorus of Heil’s he burst out laughing once more. His laughter was infectious. A few children started imitating the peculiar way that he laughed, and the whole crowd was delighted. Emil and Karl moved closer to him, and for a moment they forgot where they were. From the circle in the middle of the park, they could hear a man in uniform speaking, but he was too far away for the boys to understand what he was saying. The red-haired man was laughing so loudly, and the crowd along with him, that it was impossible to hear a word.
Suddenly they saw a soldier pick out one of the people from the group in the circle and lead him over to a tree.
The man scurried up the tree just like a squirrel. He climbed up to the very top and stayed there, sitting among the branches.
The whole crowd lunged forward, breaking through the dozens of storm troopers who were trying to keep them from getting too close.
Now they could hear everything. The soldier standing under the tree ordered the man above him to make sounds like a bird.
No response came from the tree.
“Crow like a rooster,” the soldier shouted.
From the tree a weak “cock-a-doodle-doo” could be heard.
“Louder!” The officer yelled.
The man up in the branches crowed louder now. The crowd went wild and applauded, as if they were watching a play. The red-haired man danced about, clapping his hands and shouting loudly, “This is good! This is good!”
When the man in the tree came down, the soldier hit him on the head twice. A second man was already waiting to take his place. He was an old man. He tried to climb the tree, but he couldn’t make his way up. Each time he fell down, the storm trooper struck him, and the entire crowd shook with laughter.
But there was no way that he could get up the tree. After he’d been hit several times, he could no longer stay on his feet, so the officers forced him to sing as he lay on the ground.
The old man sang in such a peculiar voice that the storm troopers went berserk.
“Louder!” they shouted. “Even louder!”
But the more the officers shouted, the softer the old man’s voice became.
Then it seemed that everything went crazy, like an insane asylum. Under the storm troopers’ orders the people in the circle started to sing in a strange mix of voices. Their children wailed along with them. Dozens of people crawled on the ground, chewing on the grass and calling out “moo!” or barking “bow-wow!” Others were ordered to sit in the trees, crowing and trilling like birds.
And above all this tumult the red-haired man’s “Heil! Heil!” and his raucous laughter could still be heard.
“This is good! This is good!”
Suddenly a shot rang out. The crowd shuddered and started to run away. The gunshot came from within the circle. Karl had seen it—a finely dressed man with silver-gray hair had pointed the revolver at himself. Now he fell, the revolver still in his hand.
People began to push closer, right up to the spot where the man with the revolver lay. Several storm troopers ran past and kicked him in the stomach. The revolver fell out of his hand.
One of the soldiers bent over, raised the man’s bloody head, and spoke to the onlookers, as if he were reciting a poem:
“How beautifully they die, these children of Israel! How excellent!”
The crowd began to disperse. Many people began to make their way out of the park, heading down the side streets. Others were so exhausted that they dropped onto the grass, as if they had fainted.
Berta took advantage of this opportunity and headed for the gate with Emil and Karl.
But then she, too, sat down for a while on the grass.
“I have to rest. I can’t move my feet.”
Emil wanted to say something, but Berta interrupted him.
“Don’t talk now, Emil, not one word!”
“Yes,” Karl a
dded, “Don’t say anything.”
Another woman came over and sat down near Berta. She was stooped, like an old woman, though her face didn’t look old at all. She sat hunched over, as though she felt cold on such a hot, humid day.
“What a day this has been!” she mumbled, as if to herself. Then she turned to Berta. “How did you like it? Nice?”
Berta started to move away from her.
The woman snapped at her. “You don’t have to run away from me. I’m not going to bite you. How do you like our Vienna?” she asked again.
“I don’t know, I’m just a janitor’s wife, an ignorant woman!” she blurted.
“I’m just an ignorant woman, too,” the stranger said.
The women looked at each other without saying anything for a while.
“Nice boys,” the woman said. “Handsome boys.”
“Come,” Berta said to Emil and Karl. “Time to go.”
But as soon as she started to get up, the woman grabbed her by the hand.
“You don’t have to run away from me, I’m your friend.”
She spoke quietly, but so gently and kindly that Berta stayed where she was, and so did Emil and Karl.
Berta summoned all her courage and asked, “How do you know that we’re friends?”
“That’s easy—when I spoke to you, you said nothing. Silence says a great deal.”
The stranger stroked Karl’s hair and at the same time caressed Emil.
“In that case, I’d like to ask your advice. My husband’s gone. These boys aren’t mine; their situation is very bad. Today I have to leave the city. Someone has to look after these boys. Someone!” the janitor’s wife said quickly.
“Your husband’s gone?” The woman bent over even closer and added softly, “Was he arrested?”
Berta didn’t answer. Her teary eyes spoke for her.
“You can turn the boys over to me. I’ll make sure that no harm comes to them,” the woman said.
“Their situation is very bad. They have no mothers, they have no fathers, they have no roof over their heads. They need to be taken care of.”
The stranger answered in a dry but insistent voice. “You can trust them to me.”
Emil and Karl Page 6