Berlin had been in a rising state of excitement ever since it was announced that the 1936 Olympic Games would be held in the city. By the time the first of August arrived, Liese was as obsessed as the rest.
The day itself had promised so much. Once Paul realised Berlin was decked out for a party he wanted to be seen at, he had sent the car on and agreed that the family could walk part of the way. Both Liese and her mother had new dresses: Liese’s in lemon; Margarethe’s in rose. The skirts were pleated to mimic a tennis dress and their discus-shaped bags were trimmed with the Olympic flag’s colours. The stares and whistles that Margarethe ignored had made Liese blush and Paul beam. As for the thronged streets they stepped into, they were as shiny as the buckles fastening Liese’s cream shoes.
Yes, thanks to Michael, she now knew that the city’s spruced-up appearance had been temporary, a ‘calculated sleight of hand’ as he put it, and that was disturbing, she couldn’t deny it. But then? Liese, like everyone around her, had revelled in the pageantry. She had liked that every paving stone gleamed, that every polished balcony tumbled in a riot of pansies and violets. It was hard not to be happy when speakers played music the length of Wilhelmstraβe. When there wasn’t an unpleasant poster or a forbidding sign to be seen. When, for the first time in two years, the newspaper boxes normally showcasing the Party paper Der Stürmer, whose hateful sketches of hook-nosed men drew the eye like a magnet, had disappeared. Berlin felt fresh and hopeful.
As for the stadium, its scale was impossible. ‘Three hundred and twenty-five acres and seating for a hundred thousand’, or so their guide boasted. As they shuffled in, the sun came out and made everything sparkle, from the white-robed choir lined up on the playing field to the huge copper bowl waiting for the torchbearer’s flame. Liese couldn’t stop grinning, and even hard-to-impress Margarethe declared it was splendid.
Their view was perfect, not that Paul could sit still. When he saw that the stand they were in was packed with Haus Elfmann clients, he hopped from seat to seat as though the arena was playing host to him. He ran about, bestowing kisses, promising that every gown ordered for the coming fortnight of parties would be ‘just as special as you are, my dear’. His exuberance almost drowned out the tutting it provoked in the rest of their section.
‘Ignore him.’
Michael had wriggled in beside her, late as usual, causing a disturbance as he pushed through. Liese had considered getting cross with him, until he produced a bag of her favourite chocolate kisses and grinned his Michael grin.
‘There’s an airship due over shortly: surely your father can’t make more noise than that.’ He grabbed her programme and rolled it into a cone. ‘Shall I give him this, see if I can turn him up as loud as the famous “Nazi Megaphone”?’
‘Stop it. You’ll get us both in trouble saying things like that.’
She tried to sound serious, but it was hopeless: his use of Goebbels’ nickname too perfectly captured her father’s overbearing behaviour.
Michael seized on her amusement and began making up comic characters for the people around them. Soon, Liese was giggling so hard her stomach muscles hurt from trying to stifle her laughter. She slipped her arm through Michael’s.
‘I’ve missed this. You and me, having fun and not fighting.’
He turned to her, smiling, but then a ripple ran round the packed terraces and jerked their attention back.
‘Michael, what’s happening?’
People were nudging each other, pointing.
Michael’s face hardened.
The crowd swivelled, craning towards the top of a long sweep of stairs, where a figure stood, silhouetted and tiny.
Liese jumped as a trumpet rang out.
‘What on earth!’
She bit her lip as backs in the row in front stiffened. The blast had plunged the stadium into a silence she knew instinctively it would be foolish to shatter.
The trumpet was joined by another and another, until a fanfare trilled. The figure moved down the steps, his entourage following. The arena rose as if it was operated by invisible strings, arms snapping into the air.
Paul slid back to his place and saluted; Margarethe mirrored him. Liese scrambled to her feet a second behind, pulled up by the crowd’s movement.
A roar flew through the stands as if everyone had learned a cue, three notes of a chant beating like a drum. Liese caught it up without thinking, her voice blending in with the deep-throated swell.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
Michael hadn’t moved, despite Otto’s frantic prodding. His arm had stayed firmly down.
‘Seriously, Liese, what’s got into you? Why are you shouting “Heil Hitler” like one of the Party faithful? Have you gone mad?’
Despite the gap growing between them, he had never spoken to her so harshly before. It brought Liese up with a jolt. She suddenly saw herself through Michael’s eyes, standing stiff as a statue, shouting with a passion they both knew she didn’t feel. It wasn’t a comfortable image. She meant to apologise, but then his lip curled into a sneer and she snapped back instead.
‘What’s wrong with you? It’s a politeness, a welcome. It doesn’t mean anything.’
The roar swept into a storm of clapping as the Führer took his seat; into a whooping cheer as the torchbearer ran into view.
‘Besides, everyone was doing it; I was just joining in.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then. If everyone’s doing it, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s me who’s the fool, not you.’
His sarcasm grated across her like tweed pulled over bare skin.
Large sections of the arena were still saluting. Liese sank down and glowered over the forest of arms as the runner began his steep ascent towards the skyline. Beside her, Michael was building up steam, his rant as unstoppable as the runner’s pounding feet.
‘It is a vision all right; I’ll give you that. The great and the good and their well-behaved wives, our pampered visitors from Europe and even America, all lifting their hands and howling for Hitler. Isn’t it marvellous how everyone loves him? Including today – heaven help us – the Jews.’
Liese cringed as the man in front turned round and tutted. She knew Michael’s patterns too well: he was about to launch into a tirade against the Party straight from his beloved KPD lecture, the one he could repeat word-perfect time after time, as if he’d swallowed a manual.
Liese was not, despite what she had just done, a devotee of Hitler, but it was clear from the profusion of lapel badges and flags surrounding them that plenty of the crowd were. This was no place for Michael to give full rein to his feelings, no matter how honestly held they were. She leaned towards him, her voice lowered to a whisper.
‘I don’t like it either, truly I don’t. But can’t we pick over this later, when we’re at home?’
She was too late. Michael was off in full spate and not listening.
‘The National Socialist Party is the enemy of the working man, and the communist and the Jew. To participate in, or cooperate with, the Party’s orders or their pageantry is an act of betrayal. No one can be allowed to forget that, not ever.’
The man in front nudged the man next to him; Liese saw fists starting to curl.
Why must he always be so loud?