Hannah & Emil

by Belinda Castles

  ‘I hear a rumour,’ his father said without looking up from the piece of paper onto which he was copying addresses. Oh yes, thought Emil. That’s unusual. ‘I hear you have brought weapons into town.’

  Emil froze. ‘Father, who told you? Who knows?’

  ‘That is not the point,’ he said, looking up. He leaned forward, his paunch pressing against the desk, lowered his voice. ‘Have you lost your mind? What do you think you are going to do with them?’

  ‘Defend ourselves. And, Father, it is the point. If someone has told you, then someone’s talking. I need to know who it is.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He told only me.’

  ‘Father, forgive me. You are the biggest gossip in town. If someone is telling you, they’re not being as discreet as I would hope.’

  ‘Well then.’ He threw a hand in the air. ‘I will tell you, before you go holding an inquisition. Herr Peters is concerned. He thinks you are pushing things along too quickly. He told me only so that I would talk to you.’

  ‘It was his idea. He brought me in on it.’

  ‘He wanted only to be prepared. But now he says you are talking about going after the bosses.’

  ‘Not yet. Not if we don’t have to. For now I’m working to help us win the election. We brought them in when things looked bad, after the July election.’

  Klaus was satisfied with this, for a moment. ‘This is still a democracy. We still have elections. Their success is waning. These other methods—you will go too far. And there will be no way back.’

  ‘You have seen what they do.’

  ‘But that is not what we do, Emil.’ He finished writing, handed Emil the piece of paper. ‘Now, Mother wants you all round for dinner this weekend.’

  ‘We can feed ourselves, you know.’

  ‘I know, yes, you have been working. Greta has news.’

  ‘Has she broken down his defences at last?’

  ‘Good God, I hope so. Mother cannot sleep for worrying about her. Says she will die an old maid if she wastes much more time on this ditherer.’

  ‘You want me to go and see him?’

  ‘Have you become a mobster since I last saw you, Emil?’ But there was a glint in his eye. ‘Come on, walk down with me. There is time for a beer with an old man before you go back to your life of crime, surely.’

  Klaus was not at his desk. The other union functionaries were rushing through the corridors cradling files, hair awry. Zelma was again at the window, looking down onto the street. She wore a dark green suit. It gave her a smart silhouette at the bright window. ‘Zelma,’ Emil said. She started.

  ‘Oh, Emil.’ She stopped, peered at him. ‘I’m not sure you should be wandering about.’

  ‘You spend too much time listening to Father.’

  ‘Still, they’re out for blood down there.’

  ‘Where is he? Have you seen him?’

  ‘Not yet. He comes in late sometimes now. I believe he’s getting a little old for this game.’ Emil cast a look over his father’s desk. There were piles of paper everywhere, an ashtray, a cup with a coffee mark at the rim. ‘He won’t let me touch it. He insists he can’t find anything when I do.’

  ‘If he comes in, would you tell him I was looking for him? There’s talk of a strike. I need to know what he wants to do.’

  ‘Bit late for that, don’t you think? Haven’t you heard the news?’

  ‘Of course. I need to know what action he wants to take.’

  She lifted her hands, gestured at the desks, the furniture, the photographs of labour leaders on the walls. ‘Emil, it’s over for us, for now. You should spend your time with your family until things settle.’

  ‘Hans is fine. He’s at school, where he belongs.’ He backed into the corridor, pushed himself quickly down the stairs.

  Since he had entered the building not ten minutes before, the pavement had begun to fill with men and women in their working clothes who had come to a halt, chatting in little groups with a look about them of mild elation, though he knew many of them had come to SPD rallies at one time or another. On the other side of the wide road, beyond the carts and buses and tramlines and bare trees, the pavement was crowded with SA. Some looked drunk, tilting cheerfully into the road, though it was barely eight in the morning.

  A man stood just in front of him on the step of an office building entrance, shouting. A group thickened across the path to listen, blocking Emil’s way. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, several times, but no one budged. He could not make himself understood above the man’s shouts and the crowd’s rowdy gossiping.

  ‘These are great times, friends!’ the man was shouting.

  Emil looked at him. He was one of them, his face lit with it, the alcohol of fervour. Panic fluttered—he must find Father.

  ‘How do you make that out, Ostler?’ Next to Emil a man with hands jammed in the pockets of paint-spattered overalls, cap pulled low, scowled at the speaker.

  Ostler beamed at his audience. ‘Germany will finally be great again. We shall throw off the boot of the French from our necks. The money will flow, and our wages will restore this town to glory. And then—’

  ‘You are a warmonger.’ The painter thrust a finger towards him. ‘You dodged the last one, and now look at you.’

  ‘This town dies without the renewal of war. Our factories are quiet, we cannot feed our children when they cry for food. Imagine . . .’ He held a hand in the air, brought it down, fingers fluttering. The heads of the crowd followed its progress. ‘Money will rain on these streets once more. You will hear the sound of the men’s feet marching to work! The factories and the docks will be humming with industry!’

  Emil, without knowing it, had stepped forward. ‘Your sons will die of cold in a trench and working people will shred their fingers making shells and machine guns. The money will rain only on the capitalists and profiteers.’ He cast a hand across the people around him. ‘None of us were given a vote.’ The crowd had turned to look at him, their expressions unreadable. ‘You—’ he held a finger above the man’s head, as though to strike him with lightning ‘—you will allow this tyrant to finish Germany once and for all. I’m ashamed to call myself German.’

  He felt his fists clenched at his thighs. The people around him were quiet. For a moment he could hear breathing, jeers drifting over from the other side of the street, the tram bell ringing for people to move aside.

  ‘I know you,’ this man Ostler said quietly. ‘You are the socialist Becker. You run with that rabble, the Reichsbanner.’ He smiled to himself. ‘It is you who are finished, friend. All you scum who stabbed us in the back at our moment of glory. You would rather strike than make this country great. You should be ashamed. I hope they line you up with your friends and put a bullet through your treacherous skull.’

  Emil was at the step, had felt the softness of a woman’s upper arm beneath her woollen coat as he jostled her aside. His fingers closed on the man’s lapels. He pulled him forward, onto the pavement. ‘There is not a thing between your ears if you believe Hitler will do this town or any other a scrap of good.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The man spoke to the crowd over Emil’s shoulder. ‘Just what I would expect of a thug like you. Solve your disagreements with your fists. Charming.’

  He felt others at his back, a firm, gentle hand pressing on his elbow, and released the man, who made a fussy show of dusting his lapels where Emil’s fingers had been.

  ‘Some of us have jobs to go to.’

  Emil’s cheeks were hot. He pushed his way through the crowd. The men at Emil’s back were Schilling and Klein. He had last seen them at the meeting in Peters’ office. ‘That Ostler is a notorious fool,’ Schilling said loudly. ‘He has grand ideas. They say he wants to run for mayor as a Nazi.’

  Emil attempted a laugh. ‘Is no one going to work today?’ His blood was slowing, the tightness leaving his neck and shoulders. The mass of people was so thick now that it spilled into the road. He would never find Father. The driver of a blocked car leaned
on his horn. A rock bounced on its bonnet and into the crowd, raising a disapproving gasp from several bystanders.

  ‘Those who do have jobs will hardly get into trouble,’ Klein said.

  ‘I suppose not.’

  From the corner of his eye he caught a sudden movement in the crowd. The mass on the other side had spread across the road and a current was pushing against those around him. There were shouts of annoyance as a wedge of SA thrust themselves through the surge, in front of a tram, onto this side of the street. A fist knocked Klein’s head sideways. Emil reached forward, wrapping his arm around the neck of a shaved-headed man, not young, knotty and lean in the shoulders and arms. The man stamped on his boot with steel-capped heels. Emil swore, released him, felt sharp knuckles burn his cheekbone. As his head snapped back it seemed there were brown shirts everywhere. Their faces intent, thrilled. A ten-metre stretch of pavement broke out in punching and kicking. Beneath his feet was a Nazi. Emil stepped on his big thigh as he tried to break through into the road to find Schilling and Klein.

  He pushed down off the pavement and saw them, already here in the road, leaning forward, arms dangling like baboons, a long rake of a brown shirt in front making quick swipes at them with the ragged-looking blade of a hunting knife. This man had not seen Emil at his side. Emil punched him in the head and he staggered, dropped the knife. Emil kicked it into the forest of legs. The man swung round and managed to land a heavy fist on Emil’s ear before stumbling into his chest. Emil grabbed his shoulders, pushed him upright. The man made a prong of two fingers and jabbed Emil in the eyes. Pain roared inside his head. He shouted, reaching forward blindly, grabbing cotton, a sinewy shoulder, squeezed, pushed the man down. When he managed to open his eyes he saw over the man’s head the streets emptying. Police ran along the tramline with batons. One stopped at two SA slapping a man’s face, stepped around them and hauled the man by his shirt towards a police van.

  Emil reached down and grabbed his opponent’s ankle, pulled it out from under him, dragged the stunned body towards the pavement, felt the skull bump against the kerb. All around him people fled. Somewhere behind him was the dark gap of an alley. The man’s body seemed to grip the ground, kept catching and bouncing as Emil pulled him away from the street.

  A child’s voice cut through the throbbing and sirens. ‘Papa!’ Emil froze, skin shrinking, dropped the man’s leg. He turned slowly and they were there: his father, hair in damp ropes, face red and moist, the boy in his arms, head held against his chest, dangling legs, too big to be carried, pushing against him, straining towards Emil. Hans loosed himself from his grandfather’s grasp. The man at Emil’s feet bumped against his shins on all fours as he pulled himself to his feet, staggered off into the street. The boy flung his arms around Emil’s thighs and squeezed, as though to restrain him. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? You pulled that man. His head bumped on the ground!’

  Emil could not take in enough air. He put a hand on his knee and the other on Hans’s head. The dense cool silk of it sent a shock through him. His father too was heaving from the effort of carrying the boy through the melee. He stared at Emil, mouth agape. Eventually he placed a hand on Hans’s shoulder and pulled him upright. ‘Come, boy. We will go inside now. Come, Emil, up to the office. Zelma will make us coffee.’

  By the time they had trudged up the stairs and into the office, the street below was as quiet as the Sabbath. Zelma stood from her desk by the window and rushed to them as they entered the room. ‘Hans!’ She looked at the men. ‘God in heaven, what will your mother say?’

  She fussed him onto her chair, spinning him around, which he usually found thrilling. Today he peered sullenly into his lap, before abruptly being sick in it. ‘My darling! Oh, I am an imbecile.’ She hurried him into the corridor, a hand on his back, peering briefly at Klaus and Emil, silently flanking Klaus’s desk. The boy’s head was bowed, his trousers ruined.

  The room empty, the street silent, Klaus leaned forward, gripped the edge of the desk. Emil felt a trickle of blood begin to move down his cheek. ‘What were you going to do to that man?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know. Nothing.’

  ‘I saw you from down the street. You were dragging him into the alley.’

  Yes, he remembered. He had felt the dark gap of the alley open up behind him. It had been part of some plan. There came the sound from the corridor of a child shouting: ‘It was a Nazi. A Nazi man! You don’t know anything about my papa!’ And then something between a roar and a scream: a small creature attempting to scare off something bigger.

  Emil covered his face with his hand and closed his eyes. Whatever had changed in the world would not soon be returning to the way it was.

  When the knock came at the apartment door he was awake instantly, sitting up, but Ava was faster still. She was at the bedroom door, tying her robe. The boy slept and shifted in his bed.

  ‘Don’t let them in, and say I am away.’

  He sensed her turn in the darkness but she said nothing. The knock had been soft, polite. That was something. Then he heard her in the kitchen. ‘Who is it?’ she said quietly. He heard a muffled murmur. ‘He’s not here,’ she replied. Then, at the bedroom door, she whispered quickly, ‘It’s Karl Bremmer.’

  ‘Okay,’ Emil said. ‘Talk to him in the kitchen. But I am still not here.’ The boy laughed in his sleep.

  She was opening the kitchen door to the landing and there were footsteps on the boards in the next room. At first, still, he could not hear him when he spoke.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That is not correct.’

  Karl raised his voice, loudly enough for Emil to hear. He sounded agitated, but also as though he was speaking for an audience beyond the kitchen door. ‘He’s on a list. They believe he has guns. Tell him. Tell him there’s no doubt about this.’

  Ava said something inaudible and Karl murmured in response.

  He sat in the dark, trying to keep his breathing quiet. There was silence in the kitchen for several moments. They were not speaking at all, he would hear them. Ava and Karl, standing in the dark kitchen. After a while he heard the door open and close, footsteps receding on the stairs.

  He stepped aboard the train amid the squeeze of workers just after dusk. These men might happily sniff out his presence among them, turn him over to the nearest SS. Close among them, men of his town, he might see a face he knew at any moment.

  He took a seat next to an older woman, nodded from beneath his cap as he took the empty place, newly vacated, warm from another. The sky was a deep blue outside the window. They passed through a black stand of pines just before Krefeld and then he glimpsed a tree-lined avenue of grand old houses and densely turfed lawns under tall lamps. A couple, identical bulky shapes in their winter clothes, held each other’s hands as they walked down the middle of the empty road.

  It was cold still but would not be for much longer. He thought of the night he had made a hole in the ice on the river with a welding torch and watched the rifles slide into the black water. Even as the water closed over them he felt it was the wrong decision, a bad mistake with no possible remedy, but he had promised Father. He wondered how far the river had taken them before they sank to the bottom, ruined from the moment they had slid beneath the surface.

  The train slowed further as it reached the platform. He tugged his cap low, pulled his scarf up over his mouth and joined the huddle at the door. There was old mutton fat and smoke in the fibres of their coats. At the end of the platform, slick with early frost and glittering in the light from the train windows, were two SS with dogs. A man just off the train shot his arm out in the air. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he barked. The men, who had been smiling over some joke, looked at him and then returned his greeting, expressions resolute. There welled up in Emil’s gut an awful urge to laugh. He tucked his chin still further into his collar and passed by them, through the station, onto the road.

  His shoulders loosened as he walked the quiet streets amid the straggle of homecomers. He knew
this town but was unlikely to see anyone he knew on the street after dark. He walked quickly, it was very cold, though spring was close.

  Soon he was standing in the hall of an apartment building at the edge of dark fields. The building had a large garden with chickens, he heard them fussing and chucking in the cold. Ava’s sister opened the door to a blast of heat and colour—bright curtains, a reddish tapestry in the hallway, a yellow rug on the wooden floor. And the woman, like her sister, tall, slender, white-blonde, and yet a stranger. In Magdalena’s face, Ava’s unreadability became a blankness. He removed his cap, held it in front of him. ‘Magdalena?’

  She smiled slowly. ‘Come in, Emil. Hans has nodded off on the sofa, but we were about to wake him for supper.’

  She stood aside and he went in, stamping the feeling into his feet on the mat. In the sitting room, next to a bright fire in a large square fireplace, Ava sat on a long low sofa, Hans’s face on her leg, features obscured by pale hair. She looked at Emil, waited for him to speak.

  He sat next to her. Her body transmitted heat along his arm and leg but he had the feeling that he did not know her, that he had been mistaken in believing he did. Yet here was a part of them both, snoring lightly on her lap, long legs hanging off the edge of the sofa, feet almost toasting in the fire.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ she whispered. Magdalena scraped a metal spoon in a pan behind them somewhere in the apartment. He could smell meat roasting, spiced vegetables.

  He took the long fingers of her hand from the boy’s head, drew a long breath. After a moment she laid down his hand, eased the boy’s head off her lap. ‘I will help Magda in the kitchen.’