Thirteen
Thirteen
E rna lives on the top floor of an apartment block just off Kirchplatz. The flat isn’t large, but it is light and airy.
“I’m so glad you could come!” Erna grabs my hand and pulls me straight up the stairs to her bedroom.
The ceiling slopes on both sides and four little dormer windows are punched through, peeking out under the overhanging eaves.
I glance out at sweeping views over the treetops, roofs, and chimneys of Leipzig.
Erna flops onto her bed and holds herself up on one elbow, her chestnut hair falling like a curtain behind her. She beams at me.
“I’m in love, Hett!” she announces, her cheeks flushed. “Madly. I’ve not told anyone else, but I had to tell you!”
“So who’s the lucky man?” My heart beats a little faster as a vision of Walter’s keen blue eyes flashes unwanted into my mind.
“His name is Kurt. He lives on the other side of Leipzig. He’s a total dish. Impeccable manners, and he’s rich.”
“Heavens. He sounds perfect... does he have any friends?”
Erna laughs. “Maybe. But don’t tell anyone. Please. No one can know.”
“Why not? What’s the problem?”
“My parents would have a fit. They’re very old-fashioned, and I’m only fifteen. They wouldn’t approve of me cavorting around on my own with a boy. And he’s older—eighteen.” She sighs. “But oh, I’m bursting with happiness, Hetty. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Really. And such things always happen to you, Erna.
When she’s run out of things to say about the perfect Kurt, we go to inform her father, a round pebble of a man in the sitting room, that we are going to meet friends in town.
He’s drinking a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper—not the Leipziger Tageszeitung , but the Volkischer Beobachter , a national morning newspaper.
Erna chooses not to mention that the friends are boys from the Hitler Jugend, even though they are just that.
Friends. On the front cover of his newspaper is a full-page spread devoted to the seven-hundred-year anniversary celebrations of the city of Berlin.
Pictures of the parades and displays of the mighty German army take up half the broadsheet page. He doesn’t look up.
“Listen to this, Erna.” Herr B?cker chuckles, smoothing a hand over the shiny skin of his bald head.
He reads out a section about the tour of a group of men from a place called Worcestershire in England who have traveled to Berlin to play a game called cricket.
“The English team claim the Germans have been unsportsmanlike. They complain about German gamesmanship,” he says, wrinkling his forehead, “and yet they enjoy all the delights of the famous Berlin nightlife.”
“Vati...” Erna scolds. “You shouldn’t say such things...”
He ignores her and continues talking as he scans the print with the paper held out above his ample belly.
He doesn’t seem to have noticed me. “What did we expect? To make friends with the British over a game of cricket, a beer, and a Berlin prostitute? Ha! The insanity of our leaders, beggars all belief—”
His words are so shocking I freeze in the doorway.
“ Vati !” Erna tries again.
But Herr B?cker rants on. “Still, I suppose if you put a bunch of stupid, crazy, drunken madmen, who have failed at all else in life, in charge of running our country, what else can one expect? Ruination and disaster, that’s what.”
Erna’s eyes are wide with alarm. “Vati, you mustn’t... Please stop.”
“Damned Nazis. Bloody Hitler,” Herr B?cker says fiercely to the newspaper, shaking its pages in anger.
“ Vati !” Erna’s voice cracks like a whip around the room. At last he looks up from the paper, openmouthed in surprise, and sees me standing there before him, in my BDM uniform. “You must not talk so,” Erna says more softly and tips her head toward me. “You remember my friend Hetty?”
“Eh, er...” He clears his throat and begins to fold the paper. “I...” He laughs nervously and peers at me through narrowed eyes as though I’m fuzzy and out of focus. “You’re a friend from school, are you?”
“Yes, Herr B?cker,” I reply quietly, but my heart thrashes wildly and a sweat breaks out.
Who is this man spouting such vile talk?
Is this what the enemy looks like? Not a red Bolshevist pushing the cause of Communist revolution.
Not a rich, hook-nosed, pig-eyed Jewish conspirator.
Just an ordinary, middle-class, nondescript nobody.
The father of my best friend. In how many other houses, behind closed doors, are such attitudes held and whispered?
How can we ever hope to overcome the treachery of ignorant fools like this?
“Hmm. Well, apologies, Helga, my tongue runs away with me sometimes.”
“Hetty,” Erna corrects him. “Hetty Heinrich .”
“Hetty Heinrich,” he repeats slowly, wrinkling his brow. He clutches the newspaper more tightly. “Ignore me, Hetty. I’m just... I don’t mean any harm by it, do I, Erna?”
“No, Vati.” Erna’s voice is low with shame.
There’s an awkward silence. Herr B?cker smooths and folds the paper.
“We’re going out, Vati. I’ll be back in time for lunch, before this afternoon’s BDM meeting,” Erna says and shoos me from the room.
Out on the street, her face is pinched and pale. “My father doesn’t mean what he says. He’s old and silly. I don’t think he even knows what he is saying most of the time.” The air is stiff. We walk slowly, and in time. Heel, toe. Heel, toe, our rubber-soled shoes quiet on the pavement.
“It’s okay, Erna, there is no need to explain.”
... Insanity of our leaders. Damned Nazis. Bloody Hitler. The words jolt and jar in my brain. Is this what Erna has grown up listening to? Why has she never said?
“He’s just a stupid old man,” she cries out.
Her words stop me in my tracks. Her face is puffy, red.
She’s angry. Or humiliated. Probably both, but I’ve never heard her speak in ugly terms about anyone before, let alone her own father.
Poor Erna. “Look, Hetty.” She turns toward me, pleading.
“I know you, well, we , are under a duty to report such talk and all that, but...”
How can she, Erna the Enviable, the Perfect, say nothing !
I think of Tomas and how brave he was to speak up about his father.
Perhaps, if Erna doesn’t have the guts, I should do it myself.
It wouldn’t be hard. Vati would be pleased with me.
I picture him telling Karl and Mutti about how I am a true child of the Reich.
But the glow is quickly extinguished by the thought of losing Erna forever as my friend.
How bleak, how meaningless life would be without her.
I place my hand on her arm. “I won’t say a word.”
“He doesn’t really mean it...”
“Your vati’s secret views are safe with me, I promise,” I add, giving her arm a squeeze.
Her face relaxes and she flashes me a quick smile.
We say no more about it, walking in silence until we arrive at the tram stop where a man and woman wait.
I sense there’s been a power shift between us.
She isn’t so perfect after all. She’s been holding things from me.
Her father’s allegiances are clearly not with Hitler, and she’s kept quiet about it.
She isn’t as pure of heart as I’d thought.
Does that make us equal? I wonder how many other clandestine secrets we each hold inside.
Insidious truths hidden from each other like festering wounds, blackening our hearts and keeping us from the honest purity every good German girl should strive for.
Perhaps this is the reason she remains my friend. She’s not too good for me, after all.
Forgive me, Führer. I know what I should do, but this is Erna and she is my best friend. I can’t hurt her.
I picture the Führer’s vivid blue eyes staring into my own, searching my soul and seeing that my intentions are good.
Do not worry , he announces, this man is not of importance. I have bigger enemies to fight. Together, we shall beat them all .
W E MEET T OMAS and three of his HJ friends at a table outside Coffe Baum on Kleine Fleischergasse. The weather is still balmy as we sit and watch the people of Leipzig stroll along the narrow, cobbled street. A waitress brings a tray of water, hot coffee in silver pots, warm milk, and sugar.
Erna sits next to me. She is quiet and withdrawn. I feel her neediness. Her reliance on me to keep quiet. Wissen ist macht. Knowledge is power. It’s a new sensation, a reversal. I’m the witty one this morning, filling the air with chat and laughter. The boys are reveling in my company.
“I’ve started my apprenticeship at the machine tool factory,” Tomas tells us in a lazy drawl.
“Only two weeks in and I’m bored as pig shit already.
Pardon my language,” he says, looking at me.
“I’ve barely set eyes on a tool, just swept the floor for fourteen days straight.
Only three years of this before I get released to do my two years with the Wehrmacht.
Can’t wait for that. Just hope the war hasn’t been and gone before I get there.
Knowing my pig-sucking luck, it will have. ”
Every boy’s dream is to fight for Germany.
“Surely it can’t be that bad. I mean, you won’t have to sweep floors for three whole years, will you? That wouldn’t be much of an apprenticeship,” I say, generously ignoring the second swear word. Inevitable, I suppose, mixing with foulmouthed factory workers.
“They like to start you at the bottom. So you feel like you’re working your way up. You know, from the toilet pit, to the rim, so to speak. I’m not staying there forever, though. I’ve got ambition. I’ll do better in the Wehrmacht.”
“Did you hear about Dr. Kreitz?” Erna suddenly asks.
“Haven’t heard his name in a long time.” I shake my head, remembering the crazy old literature teacher. “He was a teacher at our school,” I explain to the boys. “He got kicked out, ages ago. He made lessons... fun, interesting. There are no teachers like him left anymore.”