My Brother's Secret (28 page)

I slipped the bag from my shoulder and approached the desk.

‘Not on there,’ Wolff said. ‘Over there.’ He pointed towards the empty bookshelf, so I crossed the room and put the bag on the floor.

I crouched and removed the tin of white paint, the paintbrush, and my torch.

‘That’s it?’ Wolff asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Turn out your pockets.’

I took out the penknife Stefan and Mama bought for my birthday, put it on the floor beside my bag, then turned my pockets inside out so he could see they were empty.

‘You too.’ He looked at Lisa.

Lisa hesitated, then came to where I was standing. She pulled a rolled up paper bag from one pocket and placed it beside my penknife.

‘And what is in there?’ Wolff asked.

Lisa swallowed. ‘Sugar.’

Wolff clamped his teeth together so that his jaw bulged. ‘Were you planning on putting sugar in my fuel tank? Is this something you have done before?’

Lisa shook her head and I felt afraid for her.

‘Stand there.’ Wolff pointed his cigarette at the spot in front of his desk.

We obeyed, and without taking his eyes off me, Wolff sat forward and crushed the cigarette into the ashtray. He opened the desk drawer again and took out a leather strap which he folded over once and gripped tight in his fist before standing.

‘Put out your hand,’ Wolff snarled as he came around the desk toward us.

‘Please,’ Lisa said and there was terror in her eyes.

I felt it too. I felt the same terror that she felt, but I told myself to be strong. If Wolff was going to hit us, then it didn’t matter. I had been hit before; I would survive. Lisa would survive too. Wolff would sign our release forms and we would go home with sore hands and that would be it.

‘Put out your hand,’ Wolff said again, looking at Lisa. ‘NOW!’ He raised his voice so suddenly that my heart lurched and raced in my chest.

Lisa flinched away from him, squeezing her eyes shut, pushing tears onto her cheeks.

‘It’s all right,’ I whispered to her. ‘It’s all right.’

When she heard my voice, she opened her eyes and looked at me. Our gaze met and I forced myself to smile. I nodded so gently that I hardly moved, but Lisa understood what I was saying. We were in this together. We would be strong for each other.

Lisa nodded back and raised her arm. Her hand was clamped in a fist but, keeping her eyes on me, she opened it out so the palm was towards the ceiling.

Wolff came to stand in front of her.

He lifted the leather strap to shoulder level and paused.

Lisa stared right at me.

‘Perhaps I have a better idea,’ Wolff said, breaking the silence.

He lowered the strap and reached down to take my right hand. He forced the fingers apart and placed the strap across them before closing them into a fist so I was gripping the cold leather. ‘You do it,’ he said. ‘You hit her.’

‘What?’ I tore my eyes from Lisa’s and looked up at him.

‘You heard me.’

I looked back at Lisa, seeing the confusion in her expression.

‘You
hit her,’ Wolff said.

Suddenly I had a vision of Johann Weber standing in
front of me, the laces on his boxing gloves trailing, boys chanting at me to hit him. But nothing on earth would have made me hit Lisa.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t do it.’ I threw the strap down on the carpet and stood as straight as I could.

For a moment, Wolff did nothing. Then he bent down to pick up the leather strap and he doubled it over once again. ‘Who knows you’re here?’ he asked. ‘I’m going to take a wild guess and say that
no one
knows. Am I right?’

We stayed silent.

‘I don’t think you quite understand how much trouble you’re in,’ Wolff said. ‘My soldiers are helping at Feldstrasse and no one knows you’re here. We are alone. You could just … disappear. Your mama will wake up in the morning and you will simply not be there. She’ll think you must have sneaked out in the night to see the bomb damage. Perhaps you got caught under falling rubble. Or maybe you went into a building and were burnt alive.’ He smiled. ‘Burnt alive. I like that. Maybe that’s the best thing for Edelweiss Pirates.’ He walked behind me. ‘That
is
what you are calling yourselves, isn’t it? Young criminals who hate Germany.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We hate the
war
. We hate
Nazis
.’

‘You are a Nazi,’ Wolff sneered.

‘Not any more.’ I turned to look at the picture of the Führer. ‘My papa is dead because of him.’

‘Put out your hand.’

Straight away, I lifted my arm and opened my hand. I would not let him win. I would not give him the satisfaction of frightening me. I would not—

Swoosh-SLAP!

The whip of the leather strap cutting through the air and the noise of it striking my skin happened simultaneously. They were almost one sound. What followed was an agony that burst in my palm, burned through my fingers and seared across the back of my hand as the strap curled around.

The pain was enormous and it took my breath away. I clamped my mouth shut, my teeth grinding together, and tears came to my eyes, but I was not crying. I
refused
to cry.

Swoosh-SLAP!

The second was more painful than the first. It felt as if I had thrust my hand into the hottest fire imaginable and I was sure that if I looked down at it, I would see broken skin and blood.

Swoosh-SLAP!

The third was the worst. An awful explosion that blossomed in my palm and spread through my fingers, right up my wrist. It made my body cramp and my mind go blank. For a moment everything went white. Sparks seemed to erupt in the air between me and Lisa and I couldn’t help myself from crying out in pain.

I snatched my hand away and bent double, holding it to my stomach, smothering it against my jacket, searching for some way to stop the pain.

‘Stand up,’ Wolff said.

I gritted my teeth and straightened up, refusing to look at him. Instead, I looked at Lisa and tried to smile, to show her not to be worried. But the fear was clear on her face. She was afraid of what was coming next.

‘Be strong,’ I said to her, then I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to watch Wolff hit her.

When Wolff had finished, Lisa was holding her hand just as I was, but there was no way to make the pain go away.

‘It saddens me to see two young Germans like you dragged into the mess created by these criminals,’ Wolff said. It was warm in the room and there was a thin film of sweat on his brow that shone in the glare from the chandelier above him.

I looked up at him, letting him see the hatred in my eyes.

‘People like these Edelweiss Pirates get under your skin and tell you lies and make you believe them, but it’s the Führer who loves you,’ he said to me. ‘He loves all his children and he knows they will make Germany strong.’

‘He sent my papa to war,’ I said.

Wolff shook his head. ‘Your father went to war because he loved Germany and he wanted to make it strong. You shouldn’t believe what you read in leaflets that fall from the sky.’

‘Papa didn’t want to fight.’

‘Did your mother tell you that? Did
she
put those ideas in your head?’

‘No.’

‘Your brother, then, and those criminals he hangs about with. They say it’s just about long hair and music but they’re saboteurs,’ he said. ‘They attack the Hitler Youth, daub slogans on the walls. What will be next? Blowing things up? Murdering policemen? And now you
listen to their lies,’ he said, going back to the seat behind the desk. ‘And I’m wondering what it is I can do to persuade you to be a good German.’ He sat down and looked at each of us in turn. ‘Perhaps some time away from home might do you both some good. I know of boot camps that are perfect for children like you.’

‘No.’ The word escaped Lisa’s lips before she could stop it.

‘No?’ Wolff turned to her. ‘You don’t want that?’

She shook her head.

‘You don’t want to go to a camp like your father did?’ he said, twisting the leather strap, making it creak. ‘You know, when I arrested him, he begged me to let him go, but I can’t have Communists wandering the streets. That’s almost as bad as having Jews running their dirty businesses on our doorsteps. Not to worry, though,’ he leaned back and smiled. ‘We won’t be hearing from him again for quite some time. Perhaps never.’

His last words were like deadly bullets. They took away any hope that Lisa might have had of seeing her papa, and her breath escaped her in one quick rush of air. Her body went limp and her knees buckled. Her legs gave way and she toppled like a felled tree.

I reacted quickly, reaching out to catch her as she collapsed. If I hadn’t been there, she would have fallen flat on her face. As it was, I wasn’t strong enough to stop her, and all I could do was slow her fall. Her weight took me down onto my knees.

When she opened her eyes, Lisa looked about as if she had forgotten where she was, then there was a flash of
realisation and she turned onto her side, curled into a ball and began to sob.

‘I hate you,’ I said, looking up at Wolff. ‘I
hate
you.’

Wolff stood up, the leather strap still in his hand. ‘You two will spend the night in my cells while I decide what to do with you. And there’s something I want you to see. Something that might make you change your mind about what kind of German you want to be.’

NIGHTMARE

I
t took a while for me to get Lisa on her feet. I helped her up and supported her as Wolff took us out of his office and along the dark hallway where the smell of disinfectant hung in the air like an old ghost. He walked behind, directing us past an office that looked a lot like his, except the only thing in it was a chair, right in the middle of the room. Then we passed another that was stacked with filing cabinets.

We went to the end of the hallway, where a large flight of stairs disappeared into the gloom. I expected to be ordered up into the shadows, but instead, Wolff instructed me to open a door that was set into the wall below the stairs.

‘Go down,’ he said when I revealed the darkness behind the door.

The stink of disinfectant was stronger here, as if this was where the smell was coming from. And I could smell fear, too. My whole body told me this was a bad place, and I hesitated, afraid that if I went down those stairs, I would never come back up again.

‘Go on,’ Wolff snapped.

Still holding on to Lisa, I stepped forward and began to descend into the cellar. This was not like the cellar at Oma and Opa’s house, though, these steps were wide enough for Lisa and me to climb down side by side, and there was a sense that I was walking into a very different kind of space.

When Wolff flicked on the light, it became clear this was not a cellar used for storing old furniture and bicycles. This was not a cellar that housed the beast-like furnace that blazed in the winter months. This cellar was home to a very different kind of nightmare.

The room was twice, maybe three times the size of Oma and Opa’s cellar and there was no junk in there. Instead, there were six cages, three on either side of the room, set back against the cold brick walls, as if it were some kind of private zoo. A corridor between them gave enough space for a grown man to walk to a door at the far end with his arms outstretched and not touch the metal bars on either side. The floor was stone, unpainted but dotted with dirty patches that someone had tried to scrub away. I knew that they were reminders of other prisoners; bloodstains left behind by people who were long gone.

Each cell contained a wooden bunk close to the floor, but only one of them had a sheet over it because only one cell was occupied.

It was Stefan. My heart leaped.

He sat up as soon as he saw me. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Painting on walls,’ Wolff said. ‘Another Edelweiss Pirate like his brother.’

Stefan looked at me with confusion and worry, then started to shake his head. ‘No. You’re wrong. The leaflet was mine. It’s me who painted on the walls.’

Stefan’s bruises were more visible as I came closer to the cell. The light was dull in the prison, but the angry marks on his face were clear enough. His left eye was swollen like mine had been when I returned home after the parade, and his lip was fat and crusted with dried blood. His long hair was gone, too, shaved right down to stubble.

‘What have you done to him?’ I said, going straight to the cell. ‘What have you done to my brother, you pig?’ I turned and glared at Wolff.

‘Don’t,’ Stefan said. ‘Just do what he says. Tell him whatever he wants to know.’

‘Spoken like a true German,’ Wolff said. ‘You see how we can help you to be a better German? When your brother first came in here, all he could do was shout and spit. Now look at him.’

‘What are you going to do with him?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t decided,’ Wolff said. ‘Maybe he’s learned his lesson or maybe I’ll keep him here a while longer. Or
perhaps he needs to go back to a camp for a while.’

It was then that I realised Lisa had taken more of her own weight. She felt more sturdy on her feet and there was more strength in her arms. She had stopped sobbing too, and when I looked at her, standing with her back to Wolff, her eyes met mine.