The German Girl (4 page)

We alighted at the next station and walked back a few blocks to reach Fasanenstrasse. We entered the side passage of the building, its stucco façade decaying from dampness and grime. Before we even arrived under Herr Braun’s window, we could hear his radio turned up to full volume as usual.

He was a disgusting, deaf old man. Leo called him the Ogre, just as he did all the so-called pure and those who wore brown shirts as well. We sat beneath the window of his messy dining room, with cigarette butts and dirty puddles all around us. It was our favorite hiding place. Sometimes the Ogre used to see us and shout insultingly “the word beginning with
J
” that Leo and I refused to pronounce. As Mama insisted, we were Germans first and foremost.

Leo couldn’t understand why I took photos of the puddles, the mud, the cigarette butts, the crumbling walls, the shards of glass on the
ground, the smashed shop windows. I thought that any one of these images was worth more than those of the Ogres or the buildings with their flags: a Berlin I had no wish to see.

Not even the smoke from the burning building could soften the Ogre’s breath with its mixture of garlic, tobacco, schnapps, and stale pork sausage. He never stopped spitting and blowing his nose. I didn’t know what made my stomach churn more: the foul smell from his house or seeing his face. Except that, thanks to his deafness, we were able to find out what was going on in Berlin.

We were no longer permitted to listen to the radio at home, to buy a newspaper, or use the telephone.

“It’s dangerous,” Papa told me. “Let’s not go looking for problems.”

The Ogre changed radio stations several times. The news—or the orders, as Leo called them—was due to start in a few minutes, and the Ogre wouldn’t stop moving around and making noise. Eventually he sat near the window. Leo pulled me out of the way right when the Ogre looked out the window. We couldn’t stop laughing; we were well versed in his habits.

Leo knew I’d be happy to spend the whole day here; that I felt protected when I was with him. When we were together, I didn’t think of my mother fading away or of how Papa was intent on changing our lives.

Leo was a passionate person. He didn’t walk, he ran, always in a hurry, with a goal to reach, something to show me that I shouldn’t miss. He also visited various neighborhoods, trying to figure out what was happening in this city of ours, which was falling apart bit by bit. Occasionally he mingled with the Ogres marching and shouting in the streets with their flags, but I never dared join him. He talked to me nervously, like someone who could foresee that we didn’t have a great deal of time left. Our only moment of peace was here, among the Ogre’s filth and spit, thanks to an old radio playing at full volume.

Leo was older than me. Two months older. That led him to think he was more mature, and I went along with it because he was the only friend I had; the only person whom I could entirely trust.

Sometimes he used to spy on his father, who was up to something with my father ever since they’d met in the Grolmanstrasse police station, which, according to Leo, stank of urine. He used to come tell me terrifying ideas, which I preferred to ignore. We knew they were planning something big; something that might have included us or not. I didn’t think they were going to abandon us, or send us to a special school outside Berlin, or to another country on our own, where they spoke another language, as some of Leo’s neighbors had done with their children. But they were up to something; he was sure of it. And that scared me.

Herr Martin was an accountant who had lost all his clients. He and Leo shared a room in a boardinghouse at 40 Grosse Hamburger Strasse. Their building was next door to a shelter full of women, old people, and children—all those they don’t know what to do with or where to send, in a neighborhood Mama never would have dared set foot in.

Leo’s mother had managed to escape to Canada, to join her brother, sister-in-law, and nephews and nieces, whom she hadn’t met before. Leo and his father had no hopes of going to live with them there anytime soon. They were looking for “other possibilities for flight,” as Leo liked to say. My father was part of the plot. According to Leo, he had also been sending money to Canada since they started closing our bank accounts in Berlin.

This at least made me happy. We would have accepted whatever decision our parents made, provided it included Leo and me and both families. Leo was convinced my parents were helping his father, who had been left penniless and with no possibility of work, so that they could escape as well.

Leo was in the habit of accompanying his father to the morning meetings with Papa. He pretended he wasn’t listening and that he was busy doing something else so they didn’t interrupt their discussions and planning. I used to joke that he had become the spy of the Martin-Rosenthal partnership. But keeping his eyes and ears open was something Leo took very seriously.

He refused to allow me to visit him in his new home.

“It’s not worth it, Hannah. What’s the point?”

“It can’t be worse than this horrible passageway where we spend so much time.”

“Frau Dubiecki doesn’t like us to have visitors. She’s an old crow who takes advantage of our situation. Nobody there likes her. And Papa would only get angry. Besides, Hannah, there’s no room to sit down.”

He took a piece of black bread out of his pocket and put a huge chunk in his mouth. He offered me some, but I didn’t accept. I had lost my appetite: I ate only because I had to. But Leo devoured the bread, and while he was doing so, I could get a good look at him.

Leo exuded energy from every pore. He was full of color: his skin was reddish, his eyes brown.

“Blood flows through my veins!” he would crow, his cheeks shining. “You’re so pale you’re almost transparent. I can see inside you, Hannah.” I’d blush.

He didn’t make many gestures and had no need to: with just one sentence, his face expressed myriad emotions. When he talked to me, I couldn’t help but pay attention. He bombarded me with his words. He made me nervous; I would laugh and tremble, all at the same time. Whenever you listened to Leo, it was as if the city were about to explode at any moment.

He was tall and skinny. Although we were the same size, he appeared to be a couple of inches taller, with thick, wavy hair that looked as though it had never been combed. Whenever he was about to say something important, he bit his lips so hard they seemed about to bleed. He had frightened, wide-open eyes, and his lashes were the darkest and longest I have ever seen. “They always arrive before you do,” I used to tease him. How I envied him. Mine made me sad; they were so light-colored, they hardly seemed to exist, like Mama’s.

“You don’t need them,” he would say to comfort me, “not with those big blue eyes of yours.”

The stench reminded me we were still in that disgusting passageway.
The Ogre was moving around his room. He seldom went out except to go shopping.

Leo told me that the Ogre used to work in Herr Schemuel’s butcher’s shop, a few blocks from there, until he himself denounced the owner. He felt in control ever since the Ogres took power; they gave him the freedom to make or unmake someone as insignificant as he was.

On that terrible November night that everyone still talked about, they smashed Herr Schemuel’s windows and closed down his business. It was from that moment on that the stench took over the city: a stench of broken pipes, sewage, and smoke. Herr Schemuel was arrested, and nothing more was heard of the man who’d provided the best cuts of meat in the neighborhood.

So now this Ogre was out of work. I was curious to know what he had gotten out of denouncing Herr Schemuel.

Berlin was full of Ogres. There was a vigilante on every block. They took it upon themselves to report, persecute, and make life impossible for all of us who thought differently; who came from families that did not fit in with their idea of a family. We had to be very careful with them, as well as with the traitors who thought they could save themselves by denouncing us.

“It’s better to live shut in, with doors and windows sealed,” Leo would say. But we two couldn’t stay still in one spot. What was the point, when our parents were going to send us wherever they felt like anyway?

It was hard for the Ogres to spot what I was. I could sit on the park benches forbidden to us and could enter tram carriages reserved for the pure race. If I’d wanted to, I also could have bought a newspaper.

Leo used to say I was able to pass for anyone. I didn’t have any mark on the outside, although inside I had the stigma from all four grandparents that the Ogres detested so much. Leo was the same. They assumed that he was like them, even though he thought his nose or his gaze betrayed him. Still, Leo couldn’t have cared less if they had found him out, because he was an expert at escaping and could run faster than even the great American Olympian Jesse Owens.

But my ability to pass for whomever I liked without them spitting at me or kicking me counted against me with my own people. They thought I was ashamed of them. Nobody loved me; I did not belong to either side, but that didn’t really worry me. I had Leo.

We often used to hide in the Ogre’s passageway to find out what was going on. If there was an afternoon when we didn’t have time to get there, Leo would become anxious, afraid he might have missed a piece of news that could change our destinies.

The baker’s son, who was proud of his enormous nose, interrupted us. But he was a friend of Leo’s. I looked down at the ground. If Leo wanted to go play with him, let him. I’d find something else to do.

“With her again?” his friend shouted. “Come out of that filthy hole and leave
the German girl
.” When he called me that, he pronounced each syllable carefully and made a face. “Leave her. She thinks she’s better than the rest of us. Let’s go and watch the fight out on the corner. They’re beating each other to death. Come on!”

Leo told him to lower his voice and to get out of there.

“
Liebchen, Liebchen, Liebchen,
” he crooned, as if Leo and I were sweet on each other, and then vanished.

Leo tried to console me. “Don’t listen to him,” he said gently. “He’s just a street urchin.”

I wanted to go home to make my nose bigger, curl my hair, and dye it black. I was fed up with people mistaking who I was. Perhaps I wasn’t my parents’ daughter but an orphan—a truly “pure” orphan adopted by a wealthy impure couple who thought they were superior because they had money, jewels, and properties.

The news on the Ogre’s battered radio set brought me out of my pathetic self-pity. We were going to have to comply with fresh regulations and laws. I gave a start at each new order, which echoed like a roar. It hurt.

We were going to have to list all our possessions. Many of us would have to change our names and sell our properties, our houses, and our businesses at prices they dictated.

We were monsters. We stole other people’s money. We made slaves of those who had less than us. We were destroying the country’s heritage. We had bled Germany dry. We stank. We believed in different gods. We were crows. We were impure. I looked at Leo and at myself. I could not see what was so different between him, Gretel, and me.

The cleansing had begun in Berlin, the dirtiest city in Europe. Powerful jets of water were about to start drenching us until we were clean.

They didn’t like us. Nobody liked us.

Leo pulled me to my feet, and we left. I followed him aimlessly. I let him drag me along.

The Ogre came to the window looking smug, pleased like all of them that the cleansing was drawing nearer—about time, too!—similar to what he himself had begun in our neighborhood. The moment had arrived to crush the undesirables, burn them, choke them until not one was alive near them; nobody to spoil their perfection, their purity.

And with the satisfaction conveyed by the power to annihilate, to be who he was, to be superior to everyone else, to feel he was God in his marvelous bunker surrounded by cigarette butts and mud, he spat another thick, resounding gobbet of phlegm.

T
oday I woke up earlier than usual. I can’t get the face of the German girl out of my mind: she has the same features as me. I want to be wide-awake so that I can forget her. On my bedside table, where I keep the photo of Dad, I’ve added the faded postcard of the ship.

It’s my favorite picture of Dad. It’s seems like he’s looking straight at me. It shows his dark hair brushed back, his big, hooded eyes and thick black eyebrows hidden behind his rimless glasses, the hint of a smile on his thin lips. Dad is the most handsome man in the world.

Whenever I need to discuss something about school, talk about what went on during the day, or share my worries with someone, I take his photograph and put it under the lamp with the ivory shade decorated with gray unicorns that gallop around until the light is switched off and I fall asleep.

Sometimes we have tea together. We share a chocolate cookie, or I read him a passage from the library book for my school assignment.

If I have to rehearse a presentation for my Spanish class, I do it with Dad. He’s the best listener: the most understanding and relaxed.

Mom once told me that as a boy his favorite book was
Robinson Crusoe
, and the day I started school, she gave it to me as a gift. She put her thin hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye:

“So that you’ll learn to read quickly.”

I glanced at the few illustrations of those two men covered in rags on a desert island, and wondered why there weren’t more pictures in this book of way over a hundred pages that Dad liked so much. I couldn’t see what was so interesting about a bunch of pages full of black writing on a white background, with no color at all.

Once I had learned to read, I tried to decipher it, repeating every word, every syllable, to myself, but I still found it very hard. Those complicated sentences seemed so foreign to me, I couldn’t get past the first one:

“I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner . . .”