The Big Lie

by Julie Mayhew

  Whatever ‘it’ was.

  I crawled on my hands and knees back to the magazine. Using the very tips of my fingers, I opened it up again. There was a page of letters from readers, decorated with images of two different starving women. Neither of them had many clothes on. One was pulling down the waistband of a pair of too-tight trousers, as if to show us how painful they were, though there were no marks on her skin to back her up – her belly was weirdly smooth. The other shocking woman had a garland of flowers in her hair and no top. The words I AM FREE were painted across her naked breasts.

  I carried on reading, though I knew I shouldn’t. I had to figure it out. Clementine wanted me to have this. There must be something I was supposed to understand. I went through the readers’ letters on the page. What were ‘sex tapes’? What were ‘plus-sizes’? What did Clementine want me to grasp from all this?

  I tried the next page – a man wearing just a pair of pants was kissing the shoulder of an arrogant girl in a fluffy black dress. Further on, another man in just his pants, this time for a medical article. Arrows pointed to the parts of his body that scientists say should be touched to increase blood flow to the penis. I thought of Fisher, that he seemed to know where to put his hands on me without the help of any magazine. Or maybe there was a corresponding edition with instructions for men? A gentle throb started up between my legs at the thought of it. I quickly turned the page. Here was an article about a terrible ‘crime’ illustrated with pictures of Untermenschen with brown skin and fat noses shouting and holding up signs. I AM A GIRL NOT A BODY TO BE USED said one banner. Yet the terrible ‘crime’ had not been committed by these awful people, the crime had been done AGAINST one of them. A rape. What Commie bastards do to nice German girls.

  I went over to the skirting board and pulled out Clementine’s notes. There was the word again.

  Nine countries taken raped!

  It was the first time I had ever really thought about what the word actually meant. Before, it had just been a word. A vague idea.

  We travelled into London for rehearsals every day during that final week. I was instructed to shift my skating practice forward to 4 a.m. so I could be at the station with the others to catch a train at 6.30 a.m. Ingrid was furious.

  ‘If I’m to teach all the little ones right up until midnight, then when do I actually sleep?’

  Just like when Mum was fuming about something, I knew that it was best to keep quiet, be the punchbag.

  ‘All for a stupid boy,’ Ingrid muttered as she laced her boots, ‘who can’t even find a pair of trousers to fit.’

  ‘Is it, though?’ I asked her. There was something fake about her fury, like when a skater cheats by starting the rotation of a jump on the ice. That’s much easier than doing it for real in the air.

  ‘Is it what?’ Ingrid arranged her knitted warmers over the top of her laces and hooked them under the heel.

  ‘Is it just a boy, though? Is it just a concert?’ I looked over Ingrid’s shoulder to make sure we were alone, that the man who drives the ice resurfacer had left to take his morning tea. Ingrid followed my gaze and did the same check. I lowered my voice. ‘Or is this them doing their hardest to control something they just can’t control?’

  Ingrid gave a painful sigh, closed her eyes. ‘Probably,’ she whispered. ‘But let me tell you …’ She was up then and stepping past me. ‘I am far too old to be getting my hopes up.’

  I watched her take to the ice, launch into great swirls of backward crossovers that I could see were cooling her down just as much as they were warming her up.

  While Ingrid wanted to know when she might sleep, I wanted to know when I was supposed to eat. For my breakfast, I was forced to stuff some of Mum’s Zimtschnecken rolls into the pockets of my BDM jacket and eat them on the train.

  I had thought that these trips might be an opportunity to travel into London with Dad. I wanted to get a glimpse of his morning routine, of another version of him. Not the man we got at home, the other man. Perhaps the real one. But Dad was drafted to work from London 24/7 that final week. He packed a suitcase on the Friday, the morning after we sat together watching the television programme about the supercomputers, kissed us all goodbye and said he’d be back after the concert.

  ‘Where will you be staying?’ I asked.

  ‘At the office.’

  ‘With Herr Hart?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dad. An uncomfortable yes.

  I pictured my father rolling out his sleeping bag next to Clementine’s dad, on the floor of Fräulein Gruber’s office, wishing each other night-night before turning out the lights. In the battle inside your brain, often the made-up image is more powerful than anything else.

  We didn’t sing.

  There was excitement in the train carriage but it was regimented, scary. We’d been told too many times that all the world’s eyes were on us, that the images from the concert were being broadcast across the globe, that this was the first time we were letting those other, lesser nations get a glimpse of our beautiful Reich. Telling us this was meant to be motivating, to fill us with even more passion, but it only left us frozen.

  At our last meeting, Fisher had opened up the knowledge section by asking: ‘Soldiers, what should you say if an American journalist asks you about living in the German Reich?’

  Ruby Heigl’s hand flew up in the air. Of course it did. I think her question-answering reflex had developed in the womb, way ahead of any reflex to suck, cough or gag. But of course the question was entirely rhetorical. Fisher had the EXACT things that we should say to an American journalist if we got asked about living in the German Reich. They were written on the sheet of paper in front of him.

  ‘Let’s practise shall we, battalion?’

  We recited back what Fisher read out to us. ‘As youngsters we have been taught the value of camaraderie – and not just textbook theories, but in the thousand-fold experiences of our everyday lives.’

  The words felt weirdly familiar, lines from a school play that you’d been in ages ago and thought you must have forgotten.

  That finished, we were informed that if we did come across someone claiming to be an American journalist, then they were on our soil illegally, because American journalists couldn’t be trusted to have access to our great nation and not abuse it by planting a bomb or something. Either that or they were lying about being an American journalist, so were probably a spy.

  So, then, (asked nobody) when would we ever get to say our lines?

  Fisher attempted to lift the fog of confusion by making us practise our restrain and detain techniques. We each took our turn in the middle of the circle, pretending to be an illegal/fake American journalist. I was chosen to go first – and I was lost. What did an illegal/fake American journalist in need of restraining actually look like? I decided to stand in the middle of the circle, tip my head back and scream. It may have been wrong but just like Ingrid’s series of workmanlike backward-crossovers, it made me feel better.

  ‘Interesting interpretation,’ I heard Fräulein Eberhardt snigger to Dirk as I took a breath.

  ‘In you go, Fräulein Baker!’ yelled Fisher. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  Angelika leapt forwards, put her head to my chest, and clamped a hold around my neck. She yanked me backwards. The hand that she smacked across my mouth smelt of grass and mud from the squat thrusts and press ups we’d done earlier in the meeting.

  ‘And release!’ instructed Fisher. Angelika let go. I shook my head to get rid of the little white dots dancing in my vision. My glance landed, quite by accident, on GG. I thought of the smell of her that day on the cross-country run when she’d grabbed me. From the less-than-a-second that our eyes met before flickering apart, I would have bet everything that she was thinking of it too.

  No one on the train made eye contact with anyone they did not know. All the world’s eyes were on us and they belonged to fake American journalists. And spies! And TERRORISTS!

  Even Ruby Heigl understood that this wasn’t
the time for a sing-song, and she’d been known to strike up a verse of ‘Eine Flamme Ward Gegeben’ at a public hanging, just so she could make it all about her. Instead we stared out of the windows. And at each other – safe faces.

  ‘How can you possibly eat at a time like this?’ Angelika Baker muttered as I stuffed the Zimtschnecken into my mouth. ‘Just watching you is making me want to puke.’

  Angelika had woven little red, black and white ribbons through the French braids that started at the front of her head and worked their way round her scalp like a mountain road. Or rather, Frau Baker had. No one had enough hands or mirrors to have attempted that construction by themselves.

  My hair had been rushed and would probably work loose the second we started marching. I could feel the pastry grease smeared on my chin. But I had to eat, even if it made me feel queasy, or I would collapse later from jelly-legs after all that skating practice. I didn’t want Fräulein Eberhardt seeing me swoon and thinking it was because I was too excited about a stupid boy who couldn’t even find a pair of trousers to fit.

  Because, actually, we’d all forgotten about him. When Ingrid had mentioned him that morning, there had been a brief moment when I’d honestly caught myself thinking, What boy? Even the girls who had got a thrill from Jay Acker at the start had lost interest. In the beginning his song was weird and exciting and new, but after hearing it day in and day out on the People’s Radio it felt normal and tired and obvious. Maybe if they had given us something new we would have stayed enthralled. Instead those repeated words got stuck in our heads.

  You have me in your arms

  In your prison

  Yet I’m feeling free

  How can it be?

  It had become something of an earworm. The song went round and round and round and round, until you were forced to sing it out loud, just to set the pest free. The opening piano notes were enough to make you reach for the radio’s off switch. Is that what it would be like when he finally stepped out on stage to sing? Thousands of German kids groaning out a sigh and ramming their fingers in their ears?

  All this, for that.

  When we got to Trafalgar Square, we were escorted straight to the grand hotel that we would be using as our base. We stashed our flags and supplies in one of the larger meeting rooms and were given a tour of the public areas by a pretty, bossy girl with looping plaits. It was the most stunning place – beautiful, so stylish – yet the bossy girl acted as if it was all nothing – irritating, even. The lighted pillars, the screens made from suspended cord that shimmered as someone passed, all of those high-powered men and women in pristine uniform, sitting about the lobby in little leather seats with moulded feet having Kaffee und Kuchen – oh, it was all so TIRESOME to her.

  We were taken down the glass-panelled stairs to a moody lower-ground floor where the walls were coated in a textured navy blue, and directed towards the toilets to freshen up. The bossy girl didn’t come in with us, so that meant we were free to strike poses in front of the two-metre high gilded mirror and squeal with delight at the sensor taps. We used two flannel hand towels each, just because we could, and rubbed the lovely hand cream into our skin, right up to our elbows. Fräulein Eberhardt hissed out a few ‘Calm down, girls,’ but I’d seen her pout her lips as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was as swept away by it all as we were. In a tense day, it was a longed-for moment of release.

  Back upstairs and back on our best behaviour, a high-ranking man from the Schutzstaffel led Fisher, Dirk and Fräulein Eberhardt up to the top floor of the building. We went too, following behind in a neat line, our hands behind our backs, but all of the Sturmbannführer’s words were directed at the older three, as if he didn’t quite know how to speak to young people, especially not girls. I got a nod, of course. He had to acknowledge me.

  He led us through a gorgeous suite with a vast landscape of thick-pile carpet that made you worry about the fact we were all wearing shoes, past a purple-quilted bed and a door giving us a peek into a marble-sinked bathroom, then out onto a balcony that ran along three sides of the building. It had the most amazing view of the square and the city. The streets were dressed in red, white and black as far as the eye could see. It was one of those moments, staring down on the domed rooftops of our elegant capital, where an intense rush of love for the Fatherland was unavoidable.

  But we hadn’t been taken up there for the view. We were there to see the rope ladders that were stored by the railings of the balcony.

  ‘Another potential escape route,’ said the Sturmbannführer.

  I wanted to ask if we were the ones who would need the escape route, or if we were to stop others (Journalists! Spies! Terrorists!) from using the escape routes. Then I realised the clue was in the ladders. As if we would be providing means for the enemy to make their run for it. But then another question – if it was us making the escape, what exactly would we be escaping from? (Journalists? Spies? Terrorists?) No one asked. Not Fräulein Eberhardt, not Dirk, not Fisher. I assumed it would all become crystal clear when the general escaping started to happen.

  The Sturmbannführer turned and walked back through the glass sliding doors of the hotel suite and, like the tail of a snake, we followed. It was a moment’s job, I thought, to flip one of those ladders over the side of the balcony, to make it an entrance route as well as an exit. It seemed to me that this was something the Sturmbannführer hadn’t considered – that people might want to get in as well as escape. I quickly pushed the thought from my mind before I felt compelled to say something out loud. All I had to do was stay quiet, but that felt like an impossible task, treacherous. Even though I had nothing to tell, not really. No details. But I had a feeling, an understanding that couldn’t be shaped into words … I had that.

  As we passed the bed, I let my hand fall away from behind my back to stroke the silkiness of the bed linen, just to distract me, just to see if I dared. The excess and the decadence of this room – it was all wrong. But, it existed, for someone. I wanted to touch it. I saw that GG, immediately behind me, had let her hand drop to casually do the same. Our hands traced the same line along the neat stitching. I didn’t risk turning around to see her smile. But I knew it would be there.

  The Sturmbannführer escorted us outside next, through the square, past the statue of Himmler, past the lions in their flag jackets and around the fountains where mermaids and dolphins and tritons flipped about in nothing because the water had been drained away. This would be our route to the vast stage beneath the pillars of the National Gallery. This monster stage had huge red, black and white wings. Television screens were suspended where the monster’s horns might be. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Not even at the birthday celebrations on 20th April. Fisher hollered back to us the instructions he was receiving from the Sturmbannführer. We couldn’t hear him ourselves, now that we were out in the open. Helicopters were circling and light aircraft were crossing overhead, leaving strange trails.

  We passed other groups of HJs and BDMs, picking up snatches of their instructions from their SS escort. We straightened our backs and eyed them suspiciously. They eyed us back. Usually in situations where we met other troops, the girls would be giggly, checking out the new crop of boys. The boys would be swaggering, trying to impress. Not that day. This was the enemy. What songs and marches had they got up their sleeves? Would they be putting on a better show than us? Could we honestly say that our troop had done all we could to prepare?

  Once our instruction was over, the order for the shooting came. Wehrmacht boys started working their way through the square, picking off the gulls and pigeons. Each soldier had a dog at his heel to retrieve the bird corpses to put into their sack. A man in a bright yellow jacket followed, hosing away the blood.

  The gunshot continued all week, every day. The pigeons didn’t seem to get the message that this wasn’t a safe place to be. Or maybe they were up for the fight. They kept on returning, in their battalions.

  13TH AUGUST 2013
/>   Our moment arrived.

  The square was an unending mass of upturned faces, bobbing on a sea of white and brown shirts. Special instruction had been given that we should remove our jackets because of the heat.

  The crowd joined in with us as we sang – one voice – so that it was never very clear if we were performing or them. I don’t remember if we made any mistakes. I’m sure we were perfect. The routine was etched so deep into our muscle memory that none of us was conscious of it any more. We just did it. Like when you properly nail an ice routine, you don’t worry about which foot, which edge, which way to turn, what speed to reach – you just go. And that frees you up to concentrate on the emotion.

  So what was my emotion on that stage as we marched and sang and banged our drums and waved our flags? A sort of terror, I think. An anticipation of something beyond this, bigger than this. I thought about Clementine – could she see me? Because she said she would find a way to be there, somehow, to see history happening right now. And also to say goodbye. She promised me she would say goodbye. I thought about my father who could certainly see me, supposedly making him proud. But mostly I thought about myself – which version of me was on display that day? Good Jess? Bad Jess? Moments earlier I had saluted and curtsied to a line-up of dignitaries in the hotel lobby, a line-up that included my father. I was but a few metres away from our dear, great Führer. Did I tremble? Yes. But I’m ashamed to say my overriding emotion was one of regret – the regret that I could not enjoy it more.

  When we finished our march, we stayed on the stage, just as we had rehearsed over and over. Each of us had our own small X taped onto the floor. Miss it at your peril. On the day of the actual concert, there were Wehrmacht boys just beyond the footlights, on the stone stairs, holding their rifles, and I had to wonder if they’d been put there to pick us off like unwanted pigeons should we stand out of line. We eyed them when we could – and the small monitor screens next to them showing what images were being relayed to the people at home and the people around the world. It was confusing, because there we were standing upright on the stage, looking pretty/formidable, ready to be the human scenery to Jay Acker’s performance, but there on the screens was footage of us marching ten minutes ago. The day’s so-called ‘live’ events were going out with a time delay. If we had messed up our march, would they have cut it? Were they going to edit out parts of Jay Acker’s performance?