Thirty-Two #2
“You really don’t understand what it’s like for us, do you?
” I want to shake him. Make him see. Make him feel as I do.
“Karl didn’t have a choice . He had to reject you.
What people secretly think, it doesn’t matter anymore, don’t you see?
We have to be this way. Why do you imagine it’s easier for us than it is for you? ”
Walter straightens and turns away. “Then you are blind, Hetty Heinrich. People see what they want to. We all have a choice. Each and every one of us. We choose how we treat each other. You chose, didn’t you? Karl simply chose differently.” His face is hard, eyes angry, words acid.
“I hate you, Walter Keller,” I sob. “I hate you.”
I should walk out now, leave. Slam the door. Never see him again, but I can’t make my feet move. I just sit, sobbing, my shoulders heaving, my wretched heart aching like it has never ached before.
“You don’t mean that,” Walter says at last. “I know you don’t.”
There is a pause, a teetering on the edge of something, and then, somehow, I’m standing and he’s holding me. I’m crying from the inside out, and he is whispering “Shhh,” softly in my ear, rubbing my back, and I am saying, “Sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over, because I mean it more than anything.
“I’m sorry, too. You know I would never do anything to hurt you. I love you, Hetty Heinrich.”
We collapse into the chair, together, and slowly everything calms. We don’t speak; there is no need for words. He kisses my hair, my cheek, my neck. Then he kisses my mouth and a hunger grows inside.
Suddenly, from somewhere upstairs, there is a loud banging of doors. We stare at each other and a few seconds later, more bangs. The muffled sound of footsteps.
“I think it’s a raid.” Walter’s whisper is barely audible.
“Why?”
“About the taxes. It’s just an excuse. Hurry, they might come down.”
He grabs my hand and leads me toward the back of the warehouse.
“Why don’t we leave?”
“There’ll be Gestapo crawling around outside. Quickly.”
He pulls me into a dark corner. Bales are piled high but behind them, between the mountain of rabbit skins and the wall, is a narrow gap. We can just squeeze in sideways.
We hear the outer door crash open. Shouts. Clipped footsteps. We freeze in horror. Walter nudges me to keep going and we edge inch by inch along the gap, between the bales and the wall, right to the end in the pitch blackness. With luck, torchlight won’t penetrate far enough in to see us.
“What if they find us...” I hiss to Walter.
“Shh. Don’t think... just be silent.”
The gap is so narrow. The wall is hard against my back and the weight of the bales press in front and above me, Walter to the side.
Boots pound across the floor. The bark of an order.
The darkness is impenetrable. My eyes strain against it, trying to make out pinpricks of light, but there are none.
Someone shouts, nearer now. I’m suffocating.
Terror overwhelms me. Walter fumbles for my hand.
“It’s okay. Stay calm.”
There’s a rasp of metal on concrete. Footsteps. Close. Very close. My ears strain. I try to stop shaking, stop the sound of my heart crashing in my ears, still my breathing.
The men are in the office, slamming open drawers and doors. One or two, it’s hard to tell. Another door bangs open, this time the inner, not the street door. Clipped footsteps and voices. Walter stiffens.
“Vati and my uncle Josef,” he whispers.
I press myself hard against the wall, trying to increase space between my face and the rabbit bales; its surface is rough against my back. I wish it would absorb us, envelop us in the brickwork.
“Leave my son out of this.” I hear Walter’s father’s voice clearly. “He has nothing to do with anything. If you must take someone, take me. But he is not responsible. He’s just a lad—”
“How old?” barks a voice.
“Nineteen,” Walter’s father replies.
“Old enough to know right from wrong. We’ll arrest all three of you.”
“For what?” a plaintive voice now. “Come on. There is no need for this...” That must be Josef.
There is a shuffle, a heaving sound, then a cry.
“On your knees, you Jewish filth .”
“I don’t understand... we’ve paid all your exorbitant taxes—” Josef’s voice again.
“Shut up!” The Gestapo man’s voice is low with threat. “Where is your son? We will confiscate this stock...”
“No!” Walter’s father shouts. “It’s all we have! Check the papers—look. It’s all in there, please!” I imagine him pointing at the little glass office.
“How dare you.” The Gestapo man’s voice trembles. Just listening, I can pick up every nuance, every emotion in the words they are saying. “Are you calling me a liar?” the Gestapo man continues, his voice loaded with threat.
“I didn’t—”
Thwack. A crack, like gunfire, but not. The sound of something solid, metal perhaps, connecting with flesh. A cry and Josef, “You bastards! You didn’t need—”
“Shut up. Pig. ” A thump, a yell.
Suddenly Walter lurches. “They’re killing him,” he hisses. “I have to do something!”
“No! Walter, stop. What good can you do?” I whisper, desperately pulling his arm. “They’ll only kill us, too!”
There is a groan.
“He’s alive! Walter...”
Walter hesitates; he’s tensed, ready. I hang on to his arm tightly, both hands. I can’t let him go.
“Where is the boy?” Another voice.
“Probably at home. Where he should be.” Josef’s voice, firm but trying to placate.
More groaning, low down. Walter’s father must be on the ground.
“You have us. Why would you need him, too?”
“For questioning on another matter. There has been a serious accusation.”
Walter and I grip hands tighter. Ingrid must have tipped off the Gestapo. What else could they want Walter for?
“Search the place,” someone barks. “You, go to the home address.”
I feel Walter shudder, tense against me.
Oh dear God, I know I have sinned and been bad in so many ways, but please, please, if you are listening, I will change. I will go to church, I won’t forget you again. Just don’t let them find us. Please God. Don’t let them find us.
I have not prayed to God since I was small. But I do it now, over and over. What else is there to do? My legs are so weak and shaky that if I wasn’t propped between the wall and the bales, they wouldn’t hold me up.
The men crash about the warehouse. Their boots click, their voices harsh and ringing.
There are thuds and bangs. Torchlight flashes.
The boots come closer, but somehow, miraculously, thank you, God, if you really are there, I won’t forget this , they don’t find the gap between the mountain of rabbit skins and the wall.
They leave as suddenly as they arrived. The lights are switched off and a key turns in the lock. A deep blanket of silence descends. Shakily, we inch our way out.
Walter begins to sob. I put my arms around his shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But what shall I do?” he asks quietly. “They’re after me.”
He cannot go home, that’s clear. He must disappear for a while.
And I know just the place I can hide him.
T HE DARKNESS IS thick, like treacle, as I stand, ears straining, on the landing.
The evening passed at an agonizing pace as time stretched over dinner and coffee and silent pauses between the few words passed between Vati, Oma, and me earlier in the evening.
Around me, the house heaves and creaks. Breathes and watches.
I’m still for a long time, listening, checking for light beneath doors. All is quiet.
Working in slow and silent motion, I gather blankets and supplies from the kitchen. I close the back door behind me and take it all to the treehouse.
“Walter?” I call softly from the base of the tree.
“Up here.”
My heart swoops with relief.
The treehouse is in surprisingly good shape after all these years.
Watertight and solid, if rather dusty and neglected.
A nest, hidden from the predators prowling below.
Walter sits with his knees to his chest while I spread the bedding on the floor to make him comfortable.
He shivers now and then and says nothing.
He refuses food, but it will keep for tomorrow.
“Come,” I say at last. “You need to get some sleep.”
“How can I sleep? I have no idea what’s happening to my father or uncle, nor my poor mother. She’ll be wild with fear. Besides, what if they should find me, Hetty?”
“They would never think of looking here. It’s the safest place to lie low for a couple of days, trust me.”
“I do. But”—through the darkness, he reaches for my hand—“I can’t stay here long.” He squeezes my fingers. “Do you think you should go back to the house?”
“Not yet. I intend to make the most of every moment I have with you. I’ll go back before it’s light. I don’t want to leave you here on your own. Not yet.”
He says no more and we lie together on a soft eiderdown, beneath the blankets.
Slowly, his trembling lessens and finally ceases altogether.
We press together for warmth and comfort.
The wind tosses the branches of the giant tree, twigs scratching and scraping at the wooden sides of the treehouse, as if trying to enter and tear us apart.
It feels safe here, in the warm cocoon of soft down and blankets, high up in the ancient oak tree.
Far above the madness playing out in this city, in this troubled country of ours.
I screw my eyes tight shut and bury my head in the crook of Walter’s neck.
His scent is overwhelming. They can’t take him away from me.
I won’t let them. If only I could save him from whatever the future holds.
We lie face-to-face. He shifts and our lips connect.
His kisses are filled with sadness. Desolation.
Then slowly I sense a change to yearning and desire.
His feelings seem to mirror mine. Is this what love is?
To know how the other feels, without ever having to explain?
His fingers begin to wander, to explore beneath my clothes.
“Shall I stop?” he asks, several times, his voice low, his breath soft in my ear. “We shouldn’t...”
Stop. Now. Before it’s too late.
“No, we shouldn’t.” I’m on a precipice, teetering on the edge of cataclysm. I know I should pull back, but it’s impossible to fight. I don’t want to fight it. “Don’t stop,” I murmur at last. “I don’t ever want you to stop.”
Whenever I imagined this moment, which was often, late at night, alone in my room, I didn’t picture it here, in a dark, drafty shack, perched halfway up a tree in my garden.
It was always in a canopied bed, where I would lie on my back with my hair spread out on the pillow, like a movie star dressed in silk.
He would take control, instruct me, and I would comply, but I would be afraid of doing it wrong or that he might not like me without my clothes.
Afterward, we would lie in each other’s arms, my head on his chest, and we would both be smiling with love and happiness.
But this, this real-life enactment of my fantasy, couldn’t be more different.
A piece of me steps out, watches in amazement as I transform into someone else.
This someone who doesn’t freeze with the shame of her own nakedness.
Whose body seems to know better than her what it is to do.
Who is not afraid to explore a man’s body not just with her hands but with every inch of hers; and who surrenders the most intimate parts of herself to him.
Because unlike the act that took place in my imagination, this is not merely a mechanical transaction of intertwined body parts.
It is so much higher and greater than the awkward tangle of limbs—the wet, the smell, the blood, the pain, the pleasure.
It’s the joining together of our spirits, finally playing out our love, our desperate desire for each other that has simmered to boiling after all these months of wanting.
W E LIE, NOT speaking, but closer than we have ever been before.
His heart beats, quick and strong next to my ear, and he runs his fingers along the line of my naked back; a feather touch, soft, tingling.
I don’t want to move, to destroy this moment.
I drift in and out of sleep for what seems like hours.
“I must go,” I whisper at last in Walter’s ear.
“I don’t want you to leave.” He clutches me tight.
“I must...”
It’s still long before daybreak. Reluctantly I peel myself away from his warmth and creep quietly back to my room. My legs are sticky. They’ll smell it on me. The sex. They’ll know.
Alone in my bed, I try to sleep, but it’s impossible. Events replay and replay in my mind. An energy fizzes inside, keeping me on high alert, so much so that I fear I may never be able to sleep again. What on earth have I done?
I pull out my journal and begin to write, to pass the time, as the night ticks relentlessly toward morning. Writing my feelings down risks discovery, but it’s the only way to calm the turmoil in my brain. I will find a place for it where Ingrid cannot think to look.
What do you think of me now? After what we did?
According to the law, we have sinned. The worst of all sins.
I think of our bodies, our sweat, our blood, mingled now, forever.
It can’t be undone. I’m ruined and damned.
But how could something that felt so natural, so perfect, be a sin?
Indeed, it is not. It cannot be. Walter is the best, the most kind, the most gentle.
In his arms, I am safer than safe. It is they who are wrong, not us.