The Big Lie

by Julie Mayhew

When I finished my session, GG wasn’t there. I walked round the banks of lockers – the guards on my skates making my stride long and loping – thinking I might find her. But her bus would have been leaving early. The day at the meeting hall really had been our goodbye.

  I was alone now.

  I pushed my key into the slot of my locker, feeling very grown-up all of a sudden, the realisation that I was on the cusp of something settling firmly on my shoulders – and then I froze.

  NESTBESCHMUTZER.

  On the locker door, in front of my nose, scrawled in big, black marker pen was the word NESTBESCHMUTZER. It hadn’t been there when I’d put in my things, I was sure of it. How would I have missed it? I looked around. No one. I could hear voices echoing back from the rink – Dani and her coach. GG would never have written a thing like that, nor Ingrid. And anyway Ingrid had been with me the whole time. To suspect Dani was too far-fetched. We were rivals, but in a quiet way, our weapon of choice being total indifference, even if she had got word that I’d beat her to pulling off a triple.

  NESTBESCHMUTZER.

  I was scared to open my locker door, in case I found something else inside, something deserving of a Nestbeschmutzer – somebody who dirties their own nest, somebody who shits on their own people. I swung back the door with my eyes closed and when I opened them again – nothing. Or rather, my things – exactly as I had left them, utterly terrifying in their ordinariness.

  I’d been cut loose and I was drifting. Who was I, who would I be, without them? I remembered Dad taking the stabilisers off my bike for the first time when I was seven and pushing me off, down the wide, empty tarmac of Lincoln Drive, my mind squealing on a loop: now what now what now what …

  I searched for the good.

  Morning line-ups became an opportunity to see a beautiful sunrise; evening line-ups a chance to watch the Suffolk trees turn to silhouettes against the pink. Those exhausting walks to the textile factory could be transformed by a glimpse of a woodpecker or the tune of a Singvogel. In the dusk, deer might leap across our path, making us stop and gasp. We saved lumps of inedible gristle in the pouches of our cheeks at lunchtime and spat them into the hems of the SS uniforms before sewing them up.

  I got a new family.

  One rainy evening a girl called Ute killed herself. She’d smuggled a pair of fabric scissors out of the factory in the lining of her smock and used them to cut her own throat. We mourned her, of course, with a small, quiet ceremony in the dorm. Candles and tears and illicit prayers. But also we tried to be thankful. We were thankful that Ute had found some peace, that she had carried out her awful act in the shower block where it was easy for us to clean up – because that was our job, just like it was our job to pull actual lumps of shit from the drains when the sewers backed up. We were thankful for Ute’s things, which Clara shared out amongst us, gifting me with my first pair of gloves. And I was also thankful for the space Ute left in one of the dorm’s ‘families’. Her grieving ‘Schwester’ Nina chose me to be her new sister.

  Nina – with her long, shaggy hair the colour of sand, her eyebrows as big as slugs. Like many of the women she was in there for some petty remark. A neighbour had reported her for naming her pigs after the Führer and two of our Reich Ministers.

  ‘It was meant to be affectionate. I fucking love those pigs.’

  Now she was locked up, all her affection gone. For our leaders, that is. She still talked longingly for the pigs, more than her human family.

  Our ‘Mutti’, Kika, slept in the bunk above us with Ann, an aunt of sorts. We checked each other’s hair for lice, like a concentrated bunch of baboons; we protected each others’ stash of bread and bed socks; we kept each other warm. Because it did get cold. I thought about how I had stamped my feet on the pavement during the rounds for last year’s Winterhilfswerk. That had been nothing compared to the razor-sharp coldness of sleeping in that dorm.

  We spooned one another in bed, Nina and me.

  ‘I might kill myself too one of these days,’ she’d say after lights-out, her voice clicky and nasal in the dark. ‘I’m going to run at that fence. I’ll die in a shower of sparks.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘It’ll be electric!’

  We sniggered. This wasn’t a gloomy conversation. The idea that there could be an end to things, an end that might somehow be in our control, was soothing.

  ‘Or I might steal a pair of scissors too but I’d use them to cut strips from a blanket.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’d make a noose. I’d swing, of course!’

  We were quiet. Sharing the silent image of Nina peacefully swaying a metre above the ground.

  ‘Where do you think you go?’ I asked Nina. ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘Oh, they put you in one of those incinerators round the back of the toilet block,’ she said. ‘Then they post you back to your family in a little cardboard box.’ She wriggled further under the covers, taking me with her.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean, where do you go, the thing inside your body.’

  ‘What thing?’ She buried her face in my hair. ‘There is no thing.’

  ‘A soul?’ It sounded like a polite request. ‘Don’t you think that something must live on?’

  I could feel her shaking her head, her chin rubbing against the base of my skull. ‘No, this is it, Jess.’ She tightened her arms and legs around me and squeezed. ‘You have to do it all here, right now. It’s the only chance you get.’

  I listened at doors.

  They started having hushed little arguments. And Mum took to drinking. Not much, just a gin and tonic in the evening, but it was quite a development considering she was all set to have another baby once I’d flown the nest. Something had to be badly wrong for Mum to throw purity out the window.

  I was convinced it was all about me, the bickering. They were deciding what sentence to dish out – for the keys, for the typewriter, for GG. But when no punishment materialised, I told myself I was paranoid. My time as a national hero had led me to believe, mistakenly, that I was the centre of everything. The graffiti at the ice rink – that was just a coincidence and not the harshest of words. VERRÄTER would have done the job better. TRAITOR. My parents’ spatting, meanwhile, was down to their wobbly marriage. Mum’s plan to have another baby was a fantasy. She was too old. I had seriously started to doubt then whether she had even given birth to Lilli. A memory of my mother fat and pregnant just wouldn’t come to the surface. Dad, of course, still had a lot to offer.

  So I left them to it. I moved on.

  I volunteered to walk with Lilli to school, which might have raised suspicions if that bus wasn’t taking to me to skate camp in three days’ time. We were all allowing ourselves to be a little more sentimental – like the families on the television dramas who stroke each other’s hair in broad daylight and tip their heads to the side in love and admiration. And actually, I did feel sad about leaving Lilli, and my parents.

  ‘You know it’s not your job to look after the new neighbours,’ I told my little sister as we headed along the cut towards the stream and the ditches. I’d slipped on Wolf’s lead and brought him with me. Moral support. His claws skittered against the pavement beside us, his furry back bouncing reassuringly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lilli asked.

  Yes, what did I mean? Because I did want her to look after them, just like I had tried to look after Clementine. But I also knew that was too much responsibility for an eleven year old.

  ‘I mean, you don’t have to play with them if you don’t want to. If you really don’t like them.’

  ‘I don’t ever play with anyone I don’t like,’ Lilli replied, smartly. And I could hear my old arrogance in her voice, the sense of position and entitlement you got from being in our family.

  ‘Good for you,’ I replied. And I think I meant it. I envied her, that she could feel so sure of herself.

  I dropped Lilli at her classroom, promising to meet her there at the end of the day and took t
he fork in the path leading to reception, tying Wolf to the school sign. He curled up straight away, grateful for the rest.

  At the desk, I rang the little bell and Fräulein Gruber’s stockinged legs snip-snipped her over to the window of reinforced glass. Her long, neat nails slid it open. I couldn’t shake the idea that Herr Hart’s sleeping bag should be there underneath her desk.

  ‘Fräulein Keller, how lovely to see you!’ She adjusted the position of her glasses on her nose as if focusing binoculars. ‘Not off to skate camp yet?’

  I shook my head. ‘Three days’ time.’

  ‘Well, we’re all so looking forward to seeing you on television in the National Championships.’ She beamed, I grinned back and we stayed like this until our smiles wore out.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ she offered.

  ‘Well, I’ve written a newsletter,’ I announced, pulling it from my bag and sliding it across the counter for inspection. ‘It’s for everyone in our old Mädelschaft, a bit of information on what everyone is up to now.’

  A bit premature, isn’t it, Fräulein Keller? – she should have said. Some of you have only been gone a day or two. But Fräulein Gruber wasn’t someone to be bothering with original thought. Not in the presence of the Reich’s favourite daughter.

  ‘Oh, how lovely!’ She picked up the newsletter and held it at a distance, as if it was a piece of art to be put on the wall and admired, not something to be read. This was probably for the best as most of it was made up.

  ‘So,’ I told her, ‘I need the key to the photocopy room.’

  The rest of the day, I wandered, scared to head home with my bulging bag, all those copies of Clementine’s face. I went up to the high street and had a cup of tea in The H Place, shivering at one of the outside tables because Wolf was too whiny to leave alone. My mother had been nudging me to organise some kind of meeting with Fisher where I could lay down the case for us to remain a couple throughout my time at skate camp. I momentarily considered heading to his lodgings to do this, if only for a more awful distraction from the awful thing I’d just done. But I knew I couldn’t go there with my bag stuffed with posters. I wouldn’t be able to do anything with any real focus until they were out of my hands. But I had to wait, until the last minute. Do it, get on the bus to skate camp, get out of there. That was the plan.

  I busied myself buying small going-away gifts for Mum and Lilli in Fascinations, then I went in search of something to give to Dad, picking up book after book in Smiths, but not finding anything right.

  Then after struggling to fill the time, I managed to leave a whole five minutes late to meet Lilli. This became ten minutes when a strange woman grabbed me by the arm on the high street and asked directions to the station, ignoring all of my claims that I was in a mad hurry. Three times I ran through the very basic instructions before she would let me go. I sprinted the last stretch to Lilli’s playground, Wolf struggling to match my pace. I arrived hot-faced and sweaty as the last of the kids trailed away with their stachels and paintings of sunsets. I went up to the door of Lilli’s classroom just as Fräulein Kling was shutting the door.

  ‘Oh, she’s gone,’ she said, not taking her hand off the handle or looking me in the eye.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘We’d arranged to walk home together.’

  ‘Quite sure. She left with a man, I think,’ said Fräulein Kling. Then quickly: ‘Though I couldn’t possibly say for sure.’

  She closed the door and flicked the latch. A man!

  ‘Wait!’ I banged on the glass, but Fräulein Kling had left the classroom, pretending not to hear.

  Guilt hit me hard and immediately. Crazy with panic, I went to every set of swings near the school, yelled her name across the fields, Wolf joining in with sorrowful howls. I would find her, I told myself, no one need know, all would be fine. That thought danced menacingly with the belief that I would certainly discover her mutilated body in the woods. I worked my way back to the high street, Wolf limping now, on his last legs. Lilli wouldn’t have left with a man she didn’t know, I was convinced. She understood the rules of stranger danger. Fräulein Kling was mistaken. She must have sneaked off alone, to get me a going-away present in town. But she wasn’t there, I checked at Fascinations, everywhere! Nothing. The little daisy chain bracelet I’d bought for her suddenly felt heavy in my bag – heavy with tragedy.

  I was going to have to go home, raise the alarm. I started running, past the Party building, past the florist, up towards the turning for the County Roads Estate … And then, there she was. She was stepping out of the back of a large black car. I ran to her as she waved her driver away.

  ‘Where have you been?!’ I shrieked.

  ‘For a milkshake,’ she said. The most obvious thing in the world.

  ‘With who?’

  ‘That man.’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’

  I worked my hands down her hair, face, arms, checking for damage. Wolf licked at her ankle.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Again, the way she was talking, I was the stupid one. ‘He was actually quite nice.’

  She took my hand and started walking us back in the direction of our home. I was the kid sister now and she was the grown-up.

  We walked past the lamppost. And we both stared, because today it was a girl. I recognised her. She was just a couple of years older than me. From the rough end of town. The sign around her neck read VERRÄTER. Just that. VERRÄTER. We were to fill in the rest, with our own guilt, our own shame.

  ‘What was his name?’ I asked Lilli, my voice trembling. ‘This man.’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I looked back over my shoulder at the girl, her hands tied behind her back, her head on one side like she was waiting for the answer to a question.

  Then my little sister said, ‘But he knew your name.’

  ‘He did?’ A ball of something hot rose into my throat.

  ‘Yes,’ Lilli said, so pleased with herself. ‘He said you’re called Jessika and really you ought to be more careful.’

  We didn’t always talk about death. Sometimes we talked about love.

  ‘Do you like girls more, or boys?’ Nina was pinching my feet between her thighs to warm them. In return, I rubbed her hands, careful to feel in the pitch black for the newest of her blisters and not press too hard upon them. ‘In the real world, I mean.’

  ‘Well, it’s not like there’s much choice in here,’ I snorted, because I wasn’t sure how to answer honestly.

  ‘I like boys most,’ she told me.

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I did before I came in. Not so sure how I’ll feel when I get out.’

  ‘Can you change then?’ I asked. We swapped hands and feet. She shoved her steel cold toes between my legs. I could feel the indent in her calf from the dog bite she’d got that week, the wiry stitches resting against my thigh.

  ‘I dunno.’ She went quiet for a while. ‘They send men into the whores’ block sometimes. Men from other camps, the ones who have sex with other men. It’s supposed to make them normal again.’

  Nina pinched each one of my fingers in turn, forcing the blood back into them.

  ‘Does it work?’ I asked.

  ‘How should I know?’ She placed my hands together on the mattress, making a pillow of them for her warm cheek. ‘Can’t stamp out the gays, can you? They just keep getting born right under their noses.’ She laughed at this. This was funny. ‘I wouldn’t let them know you like girls though,’ she said, serious again. ‘Not in that way.’

  ‘I never said I liked girls,’ I replied, ‘in that way.’

  I wished it wasn’t dark and that I could see her eyes.

  Nina went on. ‘Clara says, if a guard gets word, they send you off to a room with a soldier to … you know … get put right again.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ I knew that wasn’t true. I felt bad for cutting her down though. It wasn’t like I still believed that only Commie bastards did it, Commie b
astards who kidnapped nice German girls.

  ‘Besides,’ I whispered, ‘all of the women in here are at it. So how could they possibly …’ They were, you could hear them, in the night.

  ‘It’s only because of this place.’ Nina rolled over, pushing the curve of her back into my chest. I put my arms around her. ‘You’ve got to get your affection somehow.’

  I listened to her breath getting slower and deeper. Usually I fell asleep quickly, no matter what terrible things had happened that day. My brain was only too happy to switch off.

  Today’s horror – having the new Frau Aufseherin, the one standing in for Boogie, a woman made of a different metal, come into the dorm and demand to know which one of us was going to beat Stephi for falling asleep at her workbench. My ‘Mutti’, Kika, had been the first to shoot her hand into the air. There were plenty of volunteers – maybe that was what upset me most.

  ‘Someone has to do it,’ Kika argued. ‘It may as well be me.’

  She would be given cigarettes and extra bread as payment. Being part of her family, I would profit.

  So off she went with Stephi, who returned half dead, her clothes drenched in blood. She’d had to remove her underwear and be strapped down while Kika whipped her arse until the skin was gone. Lesson learnt – Stephi wouldn’t be falling asleep again for days.

  And I couldn’t sleep.

  I thought of Clementine, about how when her family got to the USA at the end of their mythical escape they would have undergone a process of ‘de-Nazification’. Clementine said it didn’t matter if they were revolutionaries or not, they would be detained and questioned and counselled until the Americans were absolutely sure they held no sympathies whatsoever with the ideals of the Greater German Reich.

  ‘What ideals?’ I had asked her.

  She gave me a long list. I didn’t recognise any of them as beliefs that belonged to me. I didn’t realise I had any ideals.

  But now I saw.

  Exactly the same thing was going on in here. We were being detained, questioned, counselled, with some hard labour and harsh punishments thrown in for kicks. And, then, in the end, though the intention was entirely different, the result was exactly the same. De-Nazification. All my sympathies, gone.