Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
W e walk separately, a hundred yards apart, past the soaring, classical structure of the university building, centuries old, solid and constant.
I lift my face to the sun; a feathery breeze touches my skin.
I glance back. He’s on the other side of the road.
The slightest tilt of his head as he acknowledges my look.
However many times we do this, it’s the same rush of adrenaline. Fear and excitement in equal measure.
I enter the small park beyond the university buildings.
A park where Jews are forbidden. Thank God for Walter’s blond hair and blue eyes.
A young man passes on his bike, a bag of books slapping heavily against his thigh.
An elderly man shuffles in the distance with a stick.
Nobody else is in sight. It’s as safe as it will ever be.
I sit down and rest my back against the solid trunk of a tree.
A couple of minutes later, he sits beside me.
“Hello, you.” I lean toward him for a quick kiss. “I have one hour at most.”
“Is that all?” His shoulders sag.
“I’m sorry, I’ll have more time next week—”
“It’s not that...” His voice falters. He looks wretched.
“Walter? What’s wrong?” I touch his shoulder.
He looks at me and swallows.
“Hey.” I rub his arm. “Not even a joke today?”
He shakes his head. He is deathly pale. “There’s something I must tell you.”
“What is it?”
He clears his throat. “My father finally accepted a few weeks ago that life here is intolerable. Hitler will take everything that’s ours, whether we remain here or not.
He decided we must leave Germany, at whatever cost. So every day he’s been walking from embassy to embassy, queuing for hours on end, trying to get visas for the family.
But, as I predicted, we’ve left it too late.
We should have done this years ago. Now, like vermin, no country wants any more Jews.
” I wince at his words. “We’re stuck,” he continues. “Except...”
“Except?”
“There is one way.” He sighs. “But it... I’m not sure I can go through with it.”
“Why? But you must.” My heart squeezes as I say it. The most important thing is that Walter is safe . So it’s good news. Walter doesn’t meet my eyes.
“It means me going alone,” he says in a flat voice. “I’ll have to leave my parents, my grandmother, all my family.” He scrunches his fists tight. “Worse still, I can’t bear to think of my life without you in it.”
“I don’t understand. Why is it that only you can go?”
He takes a long, deep breath. “We have good friends in England; the father is a doctor. They left Germany in 1933. They have a daughter who is a year older than me. Anna.”
“And they can help?”
“They think I would be able to get a visa...” He swallows again. “... if I’m a relative, and they guarantee to support me financially.”
“But you aren’t, are you? A relative, I mean. How—”
“Hetty... oh hell.” He looks skyward, then finally meets my eyes. With a jolt I see his are brimming with tears. “I have to become engaged to Anna. It’s the only way...”
I stare at him.
“What?”
“I mean, yes. Exactly that.”
“But you wouldn’t actually get married though? I mean, you’re only nineteen, and...”
“Yes. I would actually have to get married. The authorities over there... they check everything. It’s helpful that our friends are a good family.
Well respected. Anna’s father, he’s an excellent doctor, and Anna, well, she is a lovely, kind girl, but she isn’t you.
The last thing I want is to marry someone, anyone, other than you, Hetty. ”
“ Married ?” Weakness spreads through my body.
“I mean, it’s a lot to ask of her, too, of course. I’ve no idea if she... has someone else. It’s so good of her to help me out.”
Good of her to help you out. What would I not give, to be in her position?
My brain has numbed. I cannot conjure any words.
Walter stumbles on, as if trying to fill the silence. “She’s the sort of girl my parents would want me to marry, I know, even if all this...”
I spring away from him, anger surging, sudden and unexpected, through my body.
“Don’t imagine for a single second this is easy,” Walter says fiercely, grabbing both my hands.
“In addition to leaving you, and having to marry someone I have no interest in marrying, I have to leave my parents behind, and to what sort of future? This is tearing me apart. I told them I wouldn’t go.
That I’d stay and see things through here, but my parents won’t hear of it.
The fact I have a chance of a new life is all that is keeping them going.
” Tears flow freely now, down both of his cheeks.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a man cry.
I nod, a lump forms in my throat, and I close my hands around his. We’ve always been doomed, us two.
“I love you, Hetty. I always will. But it seems we could never be. Not properly. Not here.”
“I’ve had these stupid daydreams, that one day, somehow, some way, we can be together. Live in another country, far from here where nobody cares who or what we are. But now...”
“I know.”
My nose begins to run and he hands me his handkerchief. I wipe my eyes and nose and put it into my pocket. Something of his to keep.
“How soon?”
“Nothing is fixed. I have no visa yet from the British, nor any permission to leave here because we have to pay the damned exit tax, and we don’t have any money, so honestly, I don’t know. It could be as soon as a few weeks. Let’s try and see each other as often as we can until then.”
I stare at him through the wash of my tears, trying to absorb all he has said.
“But everything’s changed now.” The enormity of it finally hits. “You’re getting married to another girl .”
“She will never know about us.”
Something collapses, folds in. A silent scream.
He pulls me toward him. “I am so very sorry. If it could be any other way, you know I would change it.”
“But we can’t let this continue, can we?” I push him away, slap his chest. I want to yell at him. Hit him. Make him feel my pain. “It’s better we stop it now.”
I stand in a rush and back away.
“Is that really what you want?”
He comes toward me, tries to take me in his arms, but I fight to be free.
“No, Walter, of course not. None of it is. But it has to be, doesn’t it?” I’m trying to hold the pieces of myself together. “I have to go. Good luck with your new life in England. And good luck with Anna.”
“Hetty—this isn’t fair!”
I walk away.
“So this is it? Just like that?” He runs after me. “Hetty—”
“It’s for the best. For me, I can’t... Please, Walter. Just let me go.”
I feel him watching as I walk. Silently. In shock.
I don’t look back as I leave the park and pass quickly beneath the looming university buildings, casting a deep shadow across my path.
I should go home, but I can’t bear to. I keep walking until I can no longer see Walter, nor him me.
Then I collapse against a wall and sob. Deep, racking cries, as though I’ve been told my life is to end. My life might as well be over.
No longer caring if I’m late, I wander the streets for a long time. It’s one thing to accept Walter may have to live somewhere else, one day. But this. This. Walter to marry a girl called Anna.
How can I ever come to terms with that?
S OMETHING IS WRONG.
A sense in the air that makes the hairs on my arms stand up as I step through the front door. Ingrid appears, her face pinched; she has a tense look in her eyes.
“Oh, Miss Herta. At last. You must go straight to the afternoon sitting room. Your parents are waiting for you.” She hovers while I take off my outside shoes. Her words, her tone, aren’t unkind. Her usual sneer, absent.
I hurry in to find Vati standing near the window, silhouetted against the light. Mutti is on the sofa. She looks up at me, her face tearstained. Her eyes are red and swollen.
“Oh, Hetty—” She slaps a hand over her mouth as she begins to sob, deep, heart-wrenching sobs.
“I’m sorry I’m so late. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” I peer at the clock on the mantelpiece. I must have lost all track of time.
Vati shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter now.” He comes over to me, his face the color of ash.
Mutti lets out another sob. Could she have found out about Hilda Müller and the girl-child? Did Oma die? Have they found out about Walter?
“It’s Karl...” He can’t finish the sentence and stares at me with stricken eyes.
“ Karl ?”
“There’s been an accident.” He holds a telegram limply at his side. “He’s... dead.”
Through the thin brown paper of the telegram, I can make out the outline of the mighty Luftwaffe eagle, uneven letters stamped into words beneath. News. Plain, simple news.
The telegram blurs and a buzz as loud as a swarm of bees fills my ears.
“It can’t be true.” I exhale. “Mutti?”
People don’t die when they are nineteen years old. They don’t die when they are brimming with life and energy. They can’t die when they are beautiful and strong and Karl and my brother.
The words are wrong. They must be.
But Mutti continues sobbing, her hand over her mouth, her whole body heaving and shaking. Vati goes to her and wraps his arm tightly around her shoulders. I can’t bear to look at his slack face and hollow eyes.
“Please,” I try again.
“It’s true,” Mutti gasps through her tears. “Karl’s dead.”
“Your brother—” Vati begins, but then shuts his mouth and shakes his head.
A numbness engulfs me.
I’m sitting on the sofa, staring at Vati. Willing him to say something. Something that will make it all better.
When I was little, Vati was the biggest, strongest person I knew. He was in command, and I was safe and secure. In my world, he had the power of God. But now, his big frame is crumpled. In the face of death, he is as helpless as the next man.
“What happened?” I’m numb, trembling.
Vati slides his arm from Mutti’s shoulders, collapsing forward as if he no longer has the strength to hold himself upright, and rests his forearms on his legs.