Twenty
Twenty
I sit at the back of the classroom as we are read Mein Kampf as a class.
Frau Schmidt insists on it, ever since half the teachers at school were dismissed for using un-German texts.
We studied it last year, too. Now we have gone right back to the beginning and started again.
The book was long and slow going the first time.
It’s soporific the second. And now we must go through it all again, tedious chapter by tedious chapter.
Frau Schmidt no longer bothers to initiate discussion. Instead, blessedly, she skips chunks and then quotes salient parts out loud to the class.
“If we consider how greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how he has squeezed and sucked the blood again and again; if furthermore we consider how the people gradually learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his existence as nothing but punishment of Heaven for the other peoples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew.”
Frau Schmidt plows on, appearing to neither notice nor care whether any pupil in the class pays attention or not.
“The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people...”
With every mention of the word Jew , Walter’s beautiful face swims into my mind.
Could Satan really be crouching beneath his peachy skin?
“What if he isn’t black haired, Frau Schmidt?” I ask when she nods at my raised hand.
There is a collective rustle as the class turns to look at me.
“I’m not sure I understand your question, Herta.” Frau Schmidt pauses and removes her glasses.
“I mean, what if he has blond hair and doesn’t look like a Jew at all? But he is one. What then?”
She stands looking baffled, as if not sure how to answer.
“What if he looks Aryan,” I press, “and acts like one too? What if he has the best of manners and is courteous and brave? What if he believes in Germany just as we do? Is he still a danger then?”
Nobody makes a sound.
Thirty sets of eyes rest on me.
“Why would you ask such a question?” Frau Schmidt’s voice is strained, her cheeks flushed.
“Because of course, you know the answer, don’t you?
There is no difference, however the Jew may look.
His true character will belie the outer casing.
His blood cannot be anything but inferior.
His mind can be nothing but flawed, and his intentions will have the same aim of self-betterment, whether he be fair or dark.
” She grips the side of the teacher’s table until her knuckles turn white.
“I hope I have answered your question adequately, Herta,” she adds and replaces her glasses.
She’s afraid I’ve set her a test. She knows who my father is and fears I will report her. These days, a teacher has more to fear from a student than the other way around.
“Yes. That is most clear. Thank you.”
Erna nudges me in the ribs.
“What did you ask that for?” she asks, and I shrug, because I don’t fully understand myself.
A FTER SCHOOL, BACK at home, I go to my room and retrieve my journal from its hiding place. Within its geometric covers, I can be entirely honest. It’s my only true, trusted friend.
Oh, how I miss you, Karl! The house is different without you.
The air inside its walls is stilled, as if frozen without your life to fill it with warmth and movement.
Sometimes the floorboards creak or a curtain swishes in the breeze, and I think it’s you.
But there is no one there. Perhaps it’s the ghosts of past inhabitants, their misery trapped, seeping out of the masonry, infecting our lives with bad luck. Please come home soon.
The telephone rings in the hallway.
“Would you like to go to the cinema to see Operation Michael ?” Tomas’s voice is fuzzy at the end of the crackling line.
“I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”
“Please come, Hetty. I’ve already asked Erna and she said yes. It’s a war film,” he adds, as though that would tempt me.
I suppose anything to take my mind off the girl-child and that revolting husband stealer, as well as Walter and the wretched Kafka that still lies unread beneath my mattress.
E RNA AND T OMAS are waiting for me outside the cinema.
“Hurry up, snail!” Erna calls, waving as I run from the tram stop. “It starts in five minutes.”
Our seats are in the middle row. The lamps are dimmed and voices become hushed. Above our heads a shaft of white light from the projector cuts through the darkness, illuminating the big screen at the front. Clouds of cigarette smoke rise and curl through the beam.
The projector whirs into life. I settle back into my seat between Tomas and Erna to watch the newsreel.
Tomas leans toward me and nestles his arm against mine on the velvet armrest between us.
I glance at him but his attention is focused on the clip Festliches Nürnberg .
His head is close to mine, but angles away so I can see the thousands of marching soldiers on the screen weirdly distorted through his glasses.
He turns and I feel his lingering gaze. He whispers, his mouth too close to my ear, “So many soldiers, it’s a wonder there are any civilians left in Germany.” His breath is hot and clammy on my skin.
I lean away and turn my attention to the Nuremburg Rally.
Scenes of vast mines of coal and ore, of sprawling factories spewing gleaming cars, clothes, electronics, and appliances.
The might of Germany. The inexorable advancement of the German people.
Germany, the narrator proclaims, is the envy of all nations.
There are shots of endless cheering crowds, and a smiling, proud Hitler announces to the world he only wants peace in Europe.
Then the sound of a hundred thousand marching boots.
Peace? I think of the wrecked men in the soldiers’ home.
There are tanks and guns and the Luftwaffe flying in beautiful formation.
My heart skips for Karl. Finally, there is roller skating, folk dancing, and a fire show.
The cinema audience spontaneously erupts into cheering, clapping, and shouts of “Heil Hitler.”
Tomas smiles in the semidarkness; carried along with the excitement, he moves closer. “I just hope the war doesn’t start and finish before I can play a part in it.”
“Why does everyone talk of war when Hitler claims only to want peace?” I whisper.
“Because we need to show the bastards what we’re made of!” Tomas waves a hand toward the now blank screen. “The swine out there have to see Hitler means business. War is the only way to do that, so to get to peace, you need to have war, right?” He looks sideways at me.
“The Führer must know what he is doing,” I say, thinking of Karl, vulnerable up there in a metal box with wings.
“Of course he does. He’s the ultimate leader. God among men. He has a Master Plan for all this.”
“Let’s hope he’s better at winning wars than he is at writing books.” I soften my voice so nobody can overhear. Tomas thankfully laughs at my joke and the screen lights up again.
After the scenes from Nuremburg, the main film is something of an anticlimax.
My mind wanders. Is Vati with his other daughter?
He could, at this very moment, be tickling her round belly and making her giggle.
I imagine him smiling at her mother, running his fingers tenderly down her cheek, praising her for giving him this lovely child.
Bile rises and stings the back of my throat.
The cinema is no sanctuary from my thoughts.
Everywhere I go, I’m haunted by that vision of Vati.
There is no escape. No respite. I shift uncomfortably in my seat and only now do I notice Tomas has my hand in his. I gently pull it away.
If only it were Walter here beside me, holding my hand.
But then, he wouldn’t be allowed to come in here at all.
It’s dusk when we get outside. We sit on a bench opposite Thomaskirche. Strains of the clear, high voices of the boys’ choir flow from the ancient church across the cobbled square.
“My father is dead,” Tomas suddenly announces, his voice a harsh monotone, breaking the amiable silence among the three of us. A bolt passes through me.
“What happened?” Erna gasps.
“He fell from a prison window,” Tomas answers, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. “He was cleaning it, four stories up. Must’ve leaned out too far.”
“That’s just awful. How horrible,” Erna says. “I’m so sorry.”
“Well, I’m not,” Tomas replies swiftly. “He was a terrible embarrassment. He didn’t fight in the war.
He was a Communist. He was anti-Nazi. Truth is, he was a traitor and he got what a traitor deserves.
” His cheeks are pink and his smudged glasses have slipped, just as they always used to, halfway down his nose.
Erna looks at him, wide-eyed with shock. “But you can’t be happy that your own father is dead!”
“I’m not happy. Of course not. But he only had himself to blame.
He was selfish and we all suffered because of him.
Never earned a decent wage. Now we have to live in a shithole in Plagwitz, and my poor mother has to do the work of a man and a woman.
Slaving all hours in that goddamn factory, while we live on crap food and factory fumes.
You never knew him, Erna, or anything about it.
Hetty understands, don’t you, Hetty? We’re better off without him, that’s all. ”
I squirm on the bench. If I hadn’t gone to Vati with Tomas, someone else would have, sooner or later. The whole family might have had to pay a price, so the reality is, I helped them.
“We did the right thing, Tomas,” I say softly. “I know it’s been hard for you. But everyone knows you are the hero here.”
Erna looks from one of us to the other.