There is a noise. Someone has entered the room. Rosa sits groggily up. She has no idea how long she has been sleeping; the candle is still lit, it can’t have been very long.
—My dear Rosa, I thought you were tired, says Frau Schulz. Why ever are you not yet asleep? Rosa does not answer. The maid drags the rocking chair in front of the door, blocking it. Leaning over the bed, her face made ghoulish by long shadows, she moves to blow out the candle.
—No, please, don’t, says Rosa. I don’t like the dark. I will be afraid.
—Nonsense.
With a brisk puff the maid blows out the candle and the room is plunged into darkness. The wind rubs against the window, creaking the glass in the frame.
Rosa peers wide-eyed into the blackness, trying to see where Frau Schulz has gone. She could be anywhere, could have left the room, or be squatting in the corner, or hiding under the bed, or right in front of her face, holding a knife in the air, who could tell. Rosa does not dare speak out. As her eyes get used to the dark she gradually makes out the maid’s silhouette, sitting in the rocking chair blocking the door, swaying to and fro, to and fro, like a caged animal. The movement of the chair has a hypnotic effect; after a time the darkness draws Rosa’s consciousness inwards and sleep begins to overtake her, despite her best efforts to keep her eyes open.
—Are you awake?
Rosa awakes. Frau Schulz is whispering in her ear; she can feel the maid’s breath soft on her cheek.
—Are you awake?
The breath of the maid is almost ticklish. An unpleasant shiver ripples through Rosa’s body but she manages to keep her eyes closed, does not answer, tries to breathe normally; the maid repeats it once more, and then a silence falls, an interminable silence, masking who knows what actions. Rosa worries that her heartbeats are audible; she lies still as the dead and forces herself to breathe deeply, regularly.
There is a noise. Rosa opens her eyes the tiniest of cracks and sees the silhouette of Frau Schulz gently edging the chair away from the door. Then, quietly as a huntsman, the maid leaves the room. There is a gentle click as the door is locked behind her.
Rosa sits up, her hair standing in a pile on top of her head, red creases scoring her cheek. The room is profoundly black, and she is afraid; she sits for many minutes, making not a sound, straining her ears for a noise, a clue, something from the silence. But nothing is forthcoming, the silence is not broken. She swings her legs round and slips out of the bed. She must do something, she knows not what. She stands up and listens once again, then sits on the bed and listens again. Still the smell of Frau Schulz’s soap lingers. She gets to her feet, crosses to the window, parts the curtains, peers down: the street is empty, dotted with regular pools of light from the streetlamps. A dog prowls along the kerb. Far below, a figure emerges from the apartment block, hurrying down the stairs – Rosa raises herself on her toes – it is Frau Schulz, her coat collar drawn up high against her cheeks, her beret on her head, her arms wrapped tightly around her body. She appears in a state of some agitation. She glances over both shoulders, then hurries off down the street, breaking from a walk into a run and back again; she turns a corner and is out of sight.
Like a plague, a bad feeling spreads throughout Rosa’s body. With uncertain fingers she fumbles for the candle; she strikes a match, and a sphere of light sifts into the room. There is not much wax left, perhaps enough for a few minutes. It is cold, she is shivering. She reaches under the bed for her shoes, her hand brushes against something leather; she draws the object out and is surprised to find herself holding a man’s boot, black, knee-length and highly polished, smelling of cigarette smoke and grease. She drops to the floor and searches under the bed, but her shoes are nowhere to be found. Her coat and scarf are gone as well.
She crosses to the window and tries to open it, but it will not budge. Not that it would make a difference; the apartment is several floors up. She crosses to the door and rattles the handle, then throws her weight upon it and heaves with her shoulder, this is so strange, trying to open a door that is locked, so strange that she has been locked in.
Rosa sits back on the bed, pushing her fingers through her tangled hair, her stockinged feet treading on each other. As she glances round the room, her eyes fall upon a squat-looking hand iron, the kind that Mama uses to iron clothes for the customers, the sort that has a considerable weight. Rosa gets to her feet and picks the iron up; then she swings it and strikes the door. A small dent is left in the wood, that is all. She strikes again. The dent deepens. Then she strikes again, and again, and there is a splintering sound, and once again, and again, and the paint chips away, then, finally, one final strike, with all her strength, for all she is worth, and the door bursts open, splinters spraying onto the carpet. Rosa drops the iron on the floor, picks up the stub of candle on its little plate and hurries into the sitting room, heart pounding. Her shoes, where are her shoes? And her coat and hat? She searches the room, quickly, on the sofa, on the dressing table, a dim orb of light accompanying her – in her haste she collides with a chair which falls clattering to the floor. Finally she opens the wardrobe, and there, neatly hanging, like a museum piece, is her coat, the hat rolled up in the pocket and the scarf draped around the collar, just as Frau Schulz used to do when Rosa was a child, and there, on the wardrobe floor, her shoes. Rosa bundles herself up hastily then walks towards the door, carrying her shoes. As she does so something on the floor catches her eye: a scrap of paper, her scrap of paper, with the Krützfelds’ address written on it. Rosa snatches it and crumples it into her pocket. Then the candle splutters and burns out, and blackness once again descends.
Suddenly she freezes. Footsteps can be heard coming up the stairs outside the apartment, as well as hushed voices, a woman’s and a man’s. There is nothing she can do. The footsteps arrive at the door – then fade away and spiral up to the floor above. Rosa slips out of the apartment and pads noiselessly down the spiral staircase, seeing herself reflected many times in the mirrors round the stairwell. Arriving at the entrance to the apartment block she puts on her shoes and opens the door a fraction. The street is deserted and there is no sign of her bicycle anywhere. She hurries down the stairs, past the blank-eyed lions, and disappears into the night.
6
Yes, Hedi, it is getting late; of course she hasn’t complained but she is tired, a mother can tell these things, her little eyes are rimmed with red, and she is stumbling slightly as she walks, for the umpteenth time, around the concourse. Earlier, Inga feared they were looking suspicious, so she extended the circuit to include the surrounding roads. It is quiet on the streets, so quiet, as if the colour has been permanently drained from everything forever, yet Inga can tell that something out of the ordinary is happening. Half an hour ago another group of brownshirts passed, one of them scrutinised Inga and Hedi but they didn’t stop, his pockmarked cheeks, couldn’t have been more than eighteen, a child really, they seemed so excited, very boisterous, possessed by an unusual mood. And the SS are walking more briskly than normal if that’s possible. Then there was that horrid little man who prowled over, made a great show of examining Inga’s nose, almost gave them away, she managed to shake him off in the end, he must have been drunk.
What’s that, little one? Very well, let’s return to the station and you can go to the bathroom, you are doing very well, only been once so far this evening, and you must be very thirsty, there has been nothing at all to drink. Mama’s hungry, didn’t notice that, you must be hungry too.
So: here they are again, this accursed station, greeted yet again by that sickening yellow board of destinations, departures, arrivals, all the numbers blurring together, fewer now than there were before. Inga supposes the last trains are approaching, soon everything will stop and then what will they do? This plan of Wilhelm’s may not have been very well conceived after all, before long it will be quite deserted, and then where will they go?
Yes, Hedi, very well, the bathroom, in you go, Mama will come too, lock the doo
r behind you, goodness it’s draughty in here, all right, let’s help you with your coat. There now, no need to rush but please do be quick. Ah, these images of the family, suffering, dying, get out, get out. Perhaps … it’s a crazy idea but madness is everywhere tonight … yes, the broom cupboard, let’s see – Mama’s still here, Hedi, just a moment – it is unlocked, very dusty, those are cobwebs lurking in the corner, like nets; not pleasant exactly, but it might be worth a try, it can’t be any more dangerous than being outside, and there is enough space for two, space to lie down even, but it is so cold in here, as cold as outside. Hedi, come along now, yes, in here, let’s make some space, these brooms haven’t been used in a long time, covered in cobwebs, this is an adventure isn’t it, all right, let’s pull the door to, slide a bucket against it, very good, now the main thing is not to make a noise, we must be quiet as mice, Hedi darling, yes? Quiet as mice, little mice. Come here, come under here. Yes, you are tired, so is Mama. There we are, not too bad. Let’s hope nobody opens the door. Maybe we can get a little sleep.
7
The air is bitter and the streets are deserted and Rosa makes her way along the road in the shadow of the tenements, unsure of where she is, unsure of where to go. Her eyes flit nervously around, looking for any sign of Frau Schulz, or those devilish schoolboys, or anybody – anyone could be a threat to her now, all it would take would be one person to see her and raise the alarm, and then what would she do, she is vulnerable, without her bicycle she would have no means of escape. Her hopes of passing as a normal German girl are dashed, for what would a normal German girl be doing slipping through the shadows alone, on foot, on a night like this? The tenements stretch high into the grey-black heavens, the trees form a canopy above, Rosa feels tiny, and slow, as if for all her efforts she is barely moving at all. A figure peels out from the shadows ahead, a bearded man with a hat, hunched and glancing about him; he ghosts across the road and disappears into an alleyway, followed by a second figure, and a third, then all is still again. Rosa turns a corner, a dog prowls alongside her on the kerb for a while, then glares at her maliciously and disappears into the gloom – should she try to find her way home? That may be fatal, Mama said people were going to break down their door, what if she were to go home and— But she feels so helpless out here in the open, so unprotected, and so cold. Can nowhere be safe? Perhaps she should try once again to find the Krützfelds’ house, though Frau Schulz knows the address and may have alerted the authorities, and Rosa doesn’t know how to get there anyway, she has lost her bearings. If she went towards the centre of the city she could find her way from there; but that’s where the big Jewish shops are, on the Alexanderplatz, the Unter den Linden, the Kurfürstendamm, she cannot imagine what the scenes are like there now. She decides to find a place outside, pass the remaining hours of the night in a dark corner somewhere, make her way home at dawn.
The sky stretches overhead like a dark, smeared window, huge and opaque, with no stars; on the horizon several fires ebb, but these streets are empty and quiet, for the moment. Further up the road there is a small park, next to which can be seen, behind a fence, a shadowy bridge over a railway track. Rosa glances over each shoulder and slinks along the flowerbeds towards the fence; she finds a gap, crawls through, then scrambles down the bank to the track.
It is darker down here than on the streets; foliage obscures the moon, and she must strain to see anything at all. Around the base of the bridge nettles grow bushily, and rubbish lies rotting; there are probably rats. Driven by tiredness she feels her way underneath and squats with her back against the wall. The air is dank and freezing, pitch black; Rosa’s eyes open wide, involuntarily, yet still she can see nothing. This is a good place, nobody will find her here. She wonders if Frau Schulz is looking for her, if anyone saw where she went. She wonders if Mama and Hedi made it to the railway station, if Heinrich persuaded Papa to leave the apartment – they might be in the Krützfelds’ shed at this very moment, unaware that the Gestapo is closing in, perhaps she should go there to warn them, but by the time she arrived it would probably be too late. Ah, it is possible that Frau Schulz didn’t inform on them at all, it is possible that Papa and Heinrich will be safe. How she wishes she had the bread and cheese that Heinrich packed for her, which she left in Frau Schulz’s apartment.
Suddenly there is a scuffling sound. Rosa starts and peers into the darkness; her eyes are adjusting to the gloom but still nothing can be seen. A whisper comes from beside her, startlingly close:
—What are you doing here?
Rosa scrambles to her feet and looks around, in vain. She thinks she can make out the figure of a man standing over her, his hat pulled low over his pale face, but she cannot be sure, the shapes keep moving in the blackness.
—Who’s there, she says, who’s that?
—Get out, comes a different voice, this is our place. Find your own place. You’ll give us all away. Get out.
Rosa looks round for the second speaker but still nothing can be seen. She opens her mouth but cannot make a sound; she backs away, stumbles out from under the bridge, scrambles up the bank and, heart pounding, makes her way back to the street.
She hurries along the empty, echoing streets, from time to time passing apartment blocks with fresh graffiti on the walls, windows broken. As she walks visions of her family crowd into her mind. What must be happening to them now? She tries not to dwell on this morbidity, envisions them all together at the dinner table, at a time when all of these troubles have passed; they will have moved back into their old apartment, and Papa will be back at the hospital, and they will be eating well again, and going to Wiesbaden on holiday again, and this night will have become nothing but a half-remembered dream. Borne on these thoughts she walks for a long time, her senses attuned to signs of danger. Eventually she finds herself approaching the Arbeiterviertel, finally she knows where she is and she feels strangely exhilarated; these streets she has walked many times, these grey Berlin pavements with their wrought-iron lamp-posts and rows of inscrutable buildings. As she nears the Beeskower Straße she slips into the alleyways behind the tenements, picking her way through dustbins and brooms, nobody ever comes this way – was that a shout? No, just a trick of the mind probably, carry on, almost there, turn left between these buildings, and now she can see across the road her apartment block – it looks as if there are people standing in the road outside, not a crowd as such, just a line of people. She has to get closer, but carefully.
She creeps to the end of the alleyway and looks out; the Beeskower Straße is filled with a strange quietude. Outside her apartment block, in the middle of the street, illuminated by the grey light as it edges towards dawn, stand ten or fifteen men in a line. None are wearing hats, few are wearing coats, some are wearing jackets, but most are in shirtsleeves or pyjamas, and one is barefoot, his hair ruffled from sleep. Their eyes are downcast, or staring straight ahead, there is something ridiculous about them, as if they are playing a game, except for their awful expressions. Those wearing shoes have had their laces removed; the leather tongues hang limply forward. A lorry is reversing towards them, exhaust fumes slipping round their ankles. Black-uniformed SS officers guide the driver towards the kerb, stride briskly up and down the line. The wind flutters the clothes of the men standing to attention, disperses the exhaust, and still they do not move; the tenement block, their homes, stand behind them, metres away and yet unreachable.
Eventually the lorry is parked and the rear doors open. The SS officers start herding the men on and they clamber awkwardly aboard, pulling each other up by the elbows, blows falling upon them. In the windows of the apartments faces can be seen, families watching, and as the lorry starts to fill up clusters of people appear at the doors of the buildings, huddling in dressing gowns and blankets.
There: three from the end, a man standing very erect, his chin jutting defiantly outwards, his natty moustache bristling, strands of hair falling over his forehead, in nothing but shirtsleeves yet showing no signs of col
d, collar hanging down his chest and open cuffs hiding his hands. Next to him is a boy of eighteen, his eyes fixed on the ground between his stockinged feet, shoulders hunched, shirt-tails flapping in the breeze behind his legs; they turn and follow the others towards the lorry. Papa and Heinrich look so different in this state of disarray, from this distance, but they are recognisable none the less – before Rosa can call out, before she can move, someone grabs her from behind, lifts her bodily from the ground, strong fingers clamp her mouth closed, she kicks and thrashes, her face is pressed against a heavy trench coat smelling of petrol and cigarettes. The figure waves to the officers in the street and they acknowledge him, laughing, for he has hunted down another; shut up, Jew, he says, halt gefälligst den Mund. Rosa squirms and glimpses his face, black against the moonlight, a peaked cap low on the forehead, insignia glinting, she struggles again but cannot break free. The man drags her back down the alleyway, laughter can still be heard from the officers in the road, did Heinrich see her, did Papa? She hears a commotion in the street but it fades, she is dragged further down the alleyway, she can hear the man panting, his fingers are biting into her arm, he is mumbling, shut up, Jew, shut up; then they emerge from the alleyway, and he pushes her against a motorcar, and she gasps for breath and stares up at him.
The English German Girl Page 10