Thirty-Six #4
Walter. Please just be alive.
I CAN ’ T STOP shaking. That contorted body, splattered blood. The head, crushed, facedown in the road. Maybe he had a wife. Children. Grandchildren. People who loved him, called him nicknames, laughed with him. Not anymore.
The image of his face morphs into Walter’s.
I begin to retch. I can’t stop it. I get off the tram halfway up Hindenburgstrasse and vomit at the side of the road.
My stomach heaves and heaves. But I don’t feel any better when I’ve finished.
Still shaking, I walk up the main road toward where Walter told me his grandmother’s house lies. Perhaps he is safely home now.
It’s quieter than the city center, but a smell of burning pervades the air, even here. It’s as if war has broken out, in the center of our most civilized city. I feel as though I’m walking through a hideous dream I can’t wake from.
There’s another fire ahead. It’s hard to know, but it could be Walter’s house. A fire engine is parked in the street. Again, the firemen stand idly by, watching.
I stare up at the elegant facade, flames taking hold, roaring from within. The rock in my stomach grows. From what Walter’s told me of it, I’m certain this is his house.
I push my way to the front of the gawping crowd.
“What happened to the occupants?” I ask a woman, staring up at the flames with her two young sons.
“They fled squealing like rats from a burning barn,” she replies, curling her mouth downward, her face as sour as her words. “That idiot, Schloss”—she waves a hand at the greengrocer’s shop across the road—“took the women in. Gestapo arrested the men.”
“The men,” I echo. “What men? Where have they taken them?”
Am I too late? I swallow the sour bile in my mouth.
“Shipped them off to god-knows-where for the night. ’Bout time too,” she adds, sniffing hard.
“Been complaining about them for months. Having Jews in our midst like that. Heaven knows what they might have done to our kids. Been living in fear, you know, it’s awful.
I told Schloss, not that he listens to me, I told him he’s making trouble. ..”
I push my way roughly back through the crowd and run across the road to the greengrocer’s. “Hateful, rotten cow ,” I say out loud. Please let that horrible woman be wrong. Please don’t let them have Walter.
Herr Schloss stands in a narrow doorway, to the side of the shop, talking to a bunch of angry youths.
“You’re as bad as they are, if you hide the buggers in with you,” one is saying.
“Send ’em out,” adds another.
“These are women and children, frightened to death. I’m not sending them out to face you lot,” Schloss tells them firmly.
“Then we’ll have to smash your windows in and fetch ’em out ourselves,” says the first youth, raising a wooden bat.
“Now, now.” Herr Schloss raises his hands.
“Be reasonable. You’ve no argument with these poor souls.
Look, I’ve no wish to have ’em in my place, I can tell you.
But their house is burning down, and they’ve nowhere to go tonight.
” He points at the burning building. “I’ll send them on their way first thing. You’ve no argument with me, lads.”
The boys exchange glances.
“They’ll be gone first thing in the morning, I give you my word,” Herr Schloss repeats firmly.
“They’d better be,” growls one of the youths. “We’ll be back early, Schloss, and if they’re not, expect the worst...” He turns and walks away, the others following him.
Herr Schloss steps back to close the door, and I rush forward.
“Please!” I shove my foot in the doorway. “Please! I want to help.”
He grabs my arm and pulls me through the door, slamming it shut behind me. He stares at me, raising his eyebrows high.
“I’m a friend of Walter Keller,” I explain. “Is he here? Is Walter here?”
A woman appears at the top of the stairs.
Walter’s mother. I recognize her instantly.
But she’s thinner, older, and more haggard than I remember.
She walks slowly down the stairs, her clothes smudged and dirty.
Tears leak from her eyes and make a pathway through the soot on her cheeks.
Another, plumper woman follows her down with three children. Walter’s cousins and aunt?
“It’s okay, Herr Schloss,” Walter’s mother says in a soft voice. “Who are you?” She peers at me.
“I’m Herta Heinrich.”
She instantly recoils.
“Walter was once great friends with my brother,” I rush on. “We bumped into each other a few months back—”
“I know,” she says, her tone hostile now. “He told me. And I remember just how upset—”
“Frau Keller, I’m not making any excuses for my family. But the important thing is Walter. Is he safe?”
She shakes her head. “They have them all.” Her cheeks are pinched and her lips drawn back, reminding me of a cornered, snarling dog.
“My husband, my son, and my husband’s brother.
Taken into custody by the SS, only this time they said they will be transferring all of them to Buchenwald Concentration Camp in the morning. ”
The night blackens. I’ve failed him. The world tilts sideways and I grab the banister to steady myself.
“I tried going to the Gestapo headquarters, but I was turned away. They’ve not even done anything wrong,” she cries, raising her hands to her anguished face.
“And my Walter! He’s supposed to go to England.
To start a new life. To marry and have a chance to be happy.
What now? How am I to get them out of that place? ” she demands.
I sink down and sit on the bottom stair.
“I don’t know.” I have no more strength.
I should have come earlier. Found a way as soon as I read that dreadful order.
I let my head sink into my hands. Behind my eyelids, Walter’s face, his smile, his eyes.
I can almost catch his smell, feel his hands, gentle and warm.
“The children are terrified,” Frau Keller is saying.
I look up at her. “We’ve nowhere to go, except to the Jewish house in the morning.
We have nothing left but the clothes we stand up in.
Even if he were free, we now have no way to pay Walter’s exit tax, so he cannot leave.
Everything we ever had is gone.” Her voice quivers and the children begin to cry.
They stand there, staring at me with desperate, wild eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumble. I’ve never felt so powerless.
I look at my watch. It takes a moment for the clock hands to make sense. I’ve been gone well over two hours. It’ll be nearer three by the time I get home.
“I have to go.”
Nobody says anything as I pass Herr Schloss. He opens the front door for me.
“I’m not like my father,” I tell them as I step outside. “Not one little bit.”
I PUSH OPEN the back door, as quietly as I can. The passageway is in darkness and for a moment I think that, with luck, they’ve gone to bed. But a silhouette appears at the head of the passage and Mutti’s voice, shrill and loud, cuts through the silence.
“Where the HELL have you been?”
She runs and grabs my shoulders with long, thin fingers, shaking me with surprising strength and yelling into my face.
“You stupid, stupid girl! You were forbidden to go out. I telephoned everyone I could think of, but no one knew where you were,” she rages, barely taking a breath. “I left a phone message with Vati, and I was just about to call the police...”
We move into the hall and that’s when I see Bertha, her face tearstained and stricken, her hands trembling. Shame washes over me.
“I’m sorry...” I croak.
My mouth is like sandpaper. I collapse onto the bench. Walter is gone, and I’ve ruined everything for Bertha. A stab of fear for her, and for me, when Vati finds out.
“Look at the state of you! You’re covered in soot, and muck... Is that blood? Hetty, you stink of... of smoke ! Where on earth were you?”
She slaps me. A sudden, stinging blow across my cheek. I hold my face where she struck it.
“Hetty?” Concern, now, added to the anger in Mutti’s voice.
“I need some water.”
“Bertha—please.” Mutti’s hands are on my knees. She crouches down and tries to look into my face, but I can’t meet her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she says. “Why do you punish me like this? I’ve lost one child, I can’t lose you, too.” She grips me tight.
Bertha hands me a glass of water. I drink it in gulps. It’s cool and refreshing, a salve to the bitter burning in my throat. Then she hands me a warm, damp cloth to wipe the dirt off my face.
“You may go,” Mutti tells Bertha coldly. “I’ll deal with you in the morning. I can’t face it tonight.”
“Yes, Frau Heinrich.” Bertha sniffs and heads for the stairs.
“What did she tell you?” I ask when she’s out of earshot.
“That she sent you out to borrow some ginger from Frau Weber across the street because we’d run low, and you didn’t come back. She was frantic with worry, but she should never have sent you out. Just because Ingrid wasn’t here... how dare she use you as a maid—”
“It isn’t true,” I say quickly. “She’s trying to protect me. I lied to her. I pretended we’d run out. I begged her to go; she didn’t want me to, but I needed an excuse to leave the house. It’s not her fault, Mutti. It’s entirely mine.”
“Why?” She rocks back on her heels in shock. “Vati’s right, you have become a wild thing. What with Karl... I should have paid more attention—”
“No, Mutti. It’s not you.” I twist the cloth in my hands. “I hate being cooped up in this house. I want to join in the fight for Germany. It isn’t fair that the boys have all the fun.”
Mutti regards me with a look of disgust.
“That’s it? That’s why you ran off? Getting Bertha into trouble because you want to fight like some stupid boy?
Vati forbade you to leave the house. You went directly against his orders, Herta.
What on earth has got into you?” Her eyes are full of anger again.
“Go and get properly cleaned up and then go to bed. When Vati returns, he will decide what to do about you and Bertha.”
I shut myself in the bathroom and scrub at the filth until my skin hurts.
Once alone, the enormity of the evening’s events hits me like the full force of a wave.
The death of that man and the violence and destruction around Leipzig.
I’ve done nothing whatsoever to help Walter.
In fact, I’ve probably made his situation worse.
The desperation on the face of his mother and his young cousins.
What if Vati finds out where I’ve been? As for poor Bertha, what is to become of her?
Whatever it is, it will be my fault. Whatever I touch turns sour.
I laugh out loud. I used to think I was chosen for great things.
That I was somehow better. How foolish. People, good people, like Bertha and Walter, have risked so much for me, and in return, with blundering foolishness, I let them down when they needed me most.
Later, much later, I creep up to the top floor. A slice of light shines beneath Bertha’s door. I knock quietly. There’s a pause. The door opens a fraction and her face appears in the crack.
“I’m so dreadfully sorry,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she replies crisply.
“They’ve taken him to a concentration camp.”
“Then I’m sorry, too.”
We stare at each other through the crack.
“Go to bed, Fr?ulein Herta.”
I’m not sure I shall ever be able to sleep again.
I’m haunted by what I saw tonight. How can men do such things to other human beings?
Nature is harsh, but such brutality—this is the domain of humankind alone.
Whatever our religion, race, where we are from.
Whatever our hair or eye color, our nose shape or the size of our feet, we’re all just people.
People who feel pain, joy, love, anguish.
Who have hopes and dreams; families, friends, and loved ones.
How can one lot of people be so utterly blind to this and treat another lot of people as if they are no more than inert objects beneath their feet?
And what of you, Walter? Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is you, being beaten to death and left, broken and rotting, on the hard, cold earth. Please, please, be alive.