The Story of Henri Tod

by William F. Buckley

  Blackford at first only admired Henri Tod. But very soon after, he began to like Henri Tod. In the end he would come to love him. And now he accepted without resentment the boundary beyond which Henri would not admit him. It was primarily, Blackford reflected, a professional boundary. And Blackford was right in supposing so. Because Henri Tod had vowed many years ago that he would not again impulsively reveal information that should be kept secret; not again, that once having been more than a lifetime’s ration.

  6

  Henri Toddweiss (they called him Heinrich in those days) and Clementa (Clementina) had always shared the same bedroom, and did so even now, aged thirteen and eleven. It wouldn’t be until the following year that they would get separate quarters, their mother said: so it had been in her own family, and in that of her husband. Henri and Clementa had privately sworn never to sleep other than in a single room. Moreover, they swore according to the sacred rites of a society so secret that it had only two members, Henri and Clementa, and even beyond that, so secret that no one else in the entire world knew of its existence, not even Hilda, who knew most things about her little charges, and in whom they confided most things. But not about their society.

  They called it The Valhalla, because everyone who was a member of it was, if not quite a god or a goddess, a king or queen. Clementa, when she was ten, had presided over the coronation of Henri, and it had been a most solemn occasion, conducted in the bathhouse outside the swimming pool at Pinneberg, where they lived then. And the very next day, King Heinrich had presided over the equally ceremonial investiture of Queen Clementa. Each now had a staff of office, for which purpose they had taken two golf clubs from a discarded set of their father. Clementa had complained that her wand was unwieldy, but Henri had reassured her that she would grow into it: so at least twice every week, usually on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays, they convened the royal court—not, during the summers, in the bathhouse, which was otherwise engaged. But their court was mobile, and met sometimes in the attic, sometimes outdoors, in the little glade at the end of the property. On such occasions they heard petitions from their subjects, discussed matters of royal moment—for instance, whether Hilda should postpone the hour at which she turned off their reading light. Always, they would refer to themselves with proper respect. “Is Queen Clementa satisfied with the service Her Majesty is getting, or does she desire King Heinrich to behead anyone?” “Sire, I would not go so far, but Stefan [Stefan was the groom] I think should be given forty lashes, because he was not properly dressed yesterday when Her Majesty went to the stable to ride.” King Heinrich would write in his notepad, and move his lips as he spelled out the sentence he would mete out: Stefan, 40 lashes.

  Every Saturday morning they were given their spending money, and in recognition of Henri’s seniority he got two marks, while Clementa got only one mark fifty. But Clementa knew that she could confidently expect to find, that Saturday night under her pillow, an envelope with twenty-five pfennigs. And, written on the envelope, with crayons of different hue, a note. Last week’s was, His Majesty King Heinrich has ordered that this purse be put at the disposal of Her Majesty, the Queen.

  The messages would vary. And once, when Clementa was eleven, she found on the envelope a note advising the Queen that her purse this week would come to only twenty pfennigs, because His Majesty had seen her eat an American hot dog at the school picnic, and at age eleven the Queen should know that Jews do not eat hot dogs, under any circumstances. But the King added that he did not intend to report the infraction to their parents.

  They didn’t know what time it was that night when Hilda roused them. They had been asleep, and it was dark outside—it might have been eleven in the evening, or four in the morning. Hilda had turned on the lights and quickly placed on their beds a set of clothes and told them to get dressed instantly, not to utter a single word, that she was carrying out the instructions of their parents, and that the success of the enterprise absolutely required that they utter not a single word. “We will talk later,” she said.

  Confused and bleary-eyed, but with a sense of adventure, they dressed, and looked at each other, exchanging The Valhalla signal pledging secrecy to their proceedings. Hilda had two suitcases in hand, and outside a car was waiting. Not one they had ever ridden in before, or even seen before, and the driver was a stranger to them and spoke not a word, even as Henri and Clementa kept their silent pact. What was distressing was the near ferocity with which Hilda embraced them, each in turn, as she shoved them into the car. “I will see you tomorrow,” she said. But when the car drove off Clementa whispered to Henri, “Hilda was crying!”

  “Shh,” Henri said, removing himself to the corner of the seat. By the time they reached Tolk, a two-hour drive, it was dawn. Clementa began to cry, and so the spell was broken as they drove, finally, into the little farm where they were met by the Wurmbrands.

  Mrs. Wurmbrand told them that they would be staying here at the farm for a while, that such were the instructions of their parents, who would be absent for a spell, but soon they too would come. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wurmbrand had said, they must refer to their hosts as Aunt Steffi and Uncle Hans. Now they must go to bed, and she would talk to them more later in the morning.

  If asked when did he and Clementa realize that they would not again be seeing their mother or father—or Hilda—Henri could not answer. For the first few months, Aunt Steffi simply kept postponing the day on which they could expect to see their parents. When, after the first fortnight, Clementa had asked why her parents had not written a letter, Aunt Steffi said curtly that where her mother was, there was no post office. At the time, Henri had not known how to interpret this retort. Aunt Steffi was kind, but not demonstrative—but this time she had put down the telephone in the kitchen during dinner, after an exchange of only a couple of minutes, during which she had contributed practically nothing except to say, “Yes … Yes … I understand … Yes.” She had then, inexplicably, leaned down and embraced first Clementa, then Henri, and had left the kitchen so quickly that, though Henri could not absolutely swear on it when he and Clementa discussed the episode, he thought she was in tears; certainly there had been a noticeable heaving of her bosom. By the time Henri had reached age fourteen, he had guessed that that was the conversation at which Aunt Steffi had got news of his parents’ annihilation. When he was fifteen he would find out: at Belsen.

  In those early days, Uncle Hans told them that the war had brought on a number of difficulties and hardships, and that it was important to take certain precautions. For instance, under no circumstances must they discuss politics, not with anyone. This instruction Henri found extremely easy, because he didn’t know anything about politics, except that there was a war going on, and Hitler was the head of the country, and Henri was quite certain his father didn’t like Hitler. A few weeks later, Uncle Hans told them he was going to enroll them in the little school at Tolk. He told them that—“now listen to me very carefully”—they were to pass as orphans, the children of a Danish mother and Uncle Hans’s brother. Their parents had died in a car crash when they were very young children, they had been brought up by a cousin near Hamburg, and when that cousin died they had been brought to Tolk. Their surname was Tod.

  This deception they managed without difficulty, and without difficulty they mingled with the children, most of them, like Uncle Hans, sons and daughters of farmers. The schoolmaster, after two months, was called away to serve in the army, and passed along the teaching job to a widowed sister, who was a proficient disciplinarian. Her attention gravitated toward students in whom she detected curiosity, and before long Henri was reading special books assigned by her, and handling English with considerable fluency, as was Clementa.

  And so it was that, gradually, the profile of Nazi Germany transpired in his mind, and Henri gradually came to know what it was all about. He and Clementa were Jewish; they were being protected, for some reason he did not know, by “Aunt” Steffi and by “Uncle” Hans, and if it were known that
they were in fact Jewish, they would be taken away, perhaps to wherever it was that their mother and father had been taken. All this he passed on to his sister, but only after he had thoroughly digested the data and it had become clear to him that Clementa could take the news with fortitude.

  They were never apart. The schoolhouse had only the one room for the forty-odd students. When they returned from classes they worked, side by side, helping Uncle Hans with the cows or with the hay; or Aunt Steffi, in the kitchen. She quickly noticed that they liked to be together, and for that reason did not separate the chores by assigning kitchen work to Clementa and outdoor work to Henri. They were put to work together, indoors and out. When it got dark they went into Henri’s bedroom, which doubled as a study, and did their homework, Henri helping Clementa with her work, she, occasionally, with his. Supper was increasingly unimaginative fare, as shortages multiplied, but they were never hungry. After supper they would resume their homework and then, for one half hour, they were permitted to play games, and there was a checkers set, and some playing cards. After a year or so they were permitted to listen to the radio, which broadcast news of one Nazi victory after another, although they did finally conclude, after a few weeks of trying to sort it all out, that the Nazi army had not undertaken an amphibious operation against England; and descriptions of enemy bombers shot down suggested that there were considerable Allied air raids going on. In Tolk, so near the Danish border, it wasn’t often that they saw enemy aircraft overhead, although blackout precautions were rigorously observed.

  One day, two months before Henri’s sixteenth birthday, just before noon, the children heard the sound of a motorcycle, the roar diminishing to the whine, then the little stutter, as the engine was turned off. Directly outside the schoolhouse. There was no knock on the door. It opened, and an elderly man—someone had once pointed him out to Henri as the mayor of Tolk, also its postmaster and undertaker—escorted in a hulky young man dressed in a Nazi uniform.

  The mayor approached Mrs. Taussig at her desk in front of the blackboard and whispered to her. The Nazi officer was meanwhile scrutinizing the children and taking notes. He said nothing. Mrs. Taussig addressed the class. “Children, the gentleman from the army here has been sent to check on draft registration.” She was interrupted by the officer, who spoke to her in a quiet voice that could not be heard. Mrs. Taussig then transcribed the order: “The captain wishes all the girls to leave the room.”

  They did so, rather in a hurry. Clementa managed to grip Henri’s hand on the way out.

  Now the captain took over. He was very young, perhaps twenty-five. His brown hair was clipped short, his frame husky, his voice metallic. “How many of you are sixteen years old or over sixteen, raise your hands.”

  Two of them did so. “Move to that side of the room.” The captain reordered the seating.

  “How many of you are fifteen years old?” Henri and one other boy raised their hands. “All right, the rest of you are dismissed. Wait a minute”—he pointed to a boy leaving, who looked older than the others—“you. What is your name?”

  “Paul, sir.”

  “Paul what?”

  “Paul Steiner.”

  “Steiner? Stay here.”

  The captain was interested in four things. He wanted to know by documentary evidence whether either of the two boys who had given their age as fifteen might actually already be sixteen. And he wanted to know whether Steiner was Jewish. Concerning the first point, the captain wanted supplementary proof other than that which school enrollment records provided, so Henri and Siegfried were sent home to consult their parents. Steiner, with the name suspiciously Jewish, was asked where he had been baptized. He replied that he didn’t know. Mrs. Taussig intervened and said that the boy’s parents were Lutherans, to her certain knowledge, as she regularly saw them in church on Sundays. The captain was finally satisfied, and now needed from Steiner only proof that he was not yet sixteen.

  Uncle Hans had two years earlier foreseen the need for papers. Having through sources established that St. Bonaventure’s Church in Hamburg had been bombed and all its records destroyed, he procured on St. Bonaventure’s stationery a baptismal certificate, dated December 7, 1928, which listed Henri’s birthdate as one year earlier. In longhand he wrote that his nephew had been born in Denmark, at his mother’s home, and that when Henri’s mother and father were killed in the auto accident, they had merely been visiting in Germany, so that no papers concerning their son and daughter were in hand, and that he had never known where his dead brother had kept such papers. “Give this to the captain, and if he wishes to see me, tell him I am here, at work, and would be glad to see him.”

  It worked. But the captain had made careful notes, and told Henri, Siegfried, and Kurt that they would receive notices within thirty days of their sixteenth birthday telling them where they were to report for induction into the army. The senior boys would be receiving their notices right away. He put away his writing materials, bowed perfunctorily to Mrs. Taussig, and left the schoolhouse.

  After dinner Uncle Hans informed Henri that he needed to talk with him. The spring evening was warm, and Uncle Hans said they might take a little walk. It was then that he told Henri that he must go abroad, that contingency plans had been made to take him to England. The following day, right after dinner, a resistance member would pick him up and take him to Tönning, on the North Sea. He would be delivered there into friendly hands, and by the end of the week he would be in England. Once there, a Mr. Wallenberg would look after him. When the war was over—as, Uncle Hans said, surely it would be over, within a year or so—he would be reunited with Clementa.

  Henri, up until now compliant in attitude, stopped dead in his tracks. What? Leave without Clementa? He came close to hysteria. He would do no such thing, ever ever ever ever. Uncle Hans replied calmly that he had no choice in the matter, that resistance leaders made such decisions, that they had evidently reasoned that Clementa, as a girl, was in no danger, unlike Henri, who stood to be drafted in a matter of weeks. Henri replied that he would rather be drafted than leave Clementa. Hans Wurmbrand replied that to be drafted would hardly put him any closer to his sister. Henri threw himself into a mound of hay at the side of the pathway, and half swore, half cried that he could not leave Clementa. Hans Wurmbrand reasoned correctly that he should let the matter drop for the moment and confer with Clementa.

  And of course he did; and of course Clementa went to Henri and told him that if he truly loved her he would leave, and be safe, until the war was over. He had cried, inconsolable at the thought of their separation; but agreeing, finally, to go. They stayed up until early in the morning, talking, exchanging endearments. At school that final day he could not bear to look in her direction, or she in his, and halfway through dinner, after removing the soup plates, Clementa crept upstairs and shut her door. Aunt Steffi handed Henri a note. He opened it. Clementa had written, “You must not say goodbye to me. I will see you very very soon. I know I will. Besides, that is the royal command of Queen Clementa, who loves her King Heinrich so very much.” Henri lunged out of the door, and wept uncontrollably until the car came, and after hugging his adopted parents he went off with the stranger and two weeks later was enrolled in St. Paul’s School in London as a boarding student.

  Mr. Wallenberg told Henri that he had been a friend of Henri’s father, that he would look after Henri until the war was over, that Henri was to be extremely careful not to divulge to anyone the circumstances of his departure from Germany or give any clue concerning the practices of the apparatus that had brought him to safety, and above all he was not to breathe a word of the existence of his sister, or of the Wurmbrands. Special arrangements would be made to instruct him in the Jewish religion, but this was to be done during the vacation period because his Jewish background, combined with the obvious fact that he was German, might arouse curiosity in someone capable of making mischief.

  To all of this Henri of course assented, but he was astonished on being tol
d that there was no way in which he might communicate with Clementa, that the resistance was simply not willing to run risks in order to deliver correspondence. The day he heard that—the day before entering the school—he resolved that he would write her a letter every single night and, after the war, he would give her the whole collection to show her that he had not let a day go by without thinking of her.

  St. Paul’s School could not remember when last it had received a student of such energy and talent. Although the curriculum was very different from what he had got used to at Tolk, it was only a matter of weeks before the necessary adjustments were made. Before the semester was over, Henri was receiving all A’s—in Latin, Maths, English, Geography, Greek, and History. He was permitted to stay at the school during the summer vacation, during which he studied and did chores twenty hours every week. By the beginning of the Michaelmas term he was jumped in grade to the fifth form. Several months later, soon after his seventeenth birthday, he was elected school captain, his office to begin in the Lent term, after the holidays of December 1944.

  That was the night. It was traditional that the captain-elect and his prefects should be taken by their predecessors to the Aldwyn Chop House, next door to the school, a favorite and handy restaurant for visiting parents. It was the unspoken tradition of the school that on that night the captain and outgoing prefects would entertain their successors and dip deep into the Aldwyn’s inexhaustible supply of ale. The headmaster of St. Paul’s had himself staggered out of Aldwyn’s sometime after midnight thirty years ago, and so—on that one night—the school’s stern rules were, very simply, overlooked.