Resting at the bottom is a silver-and-blue fountain pen.
“I thought you could write all your secrets in there. Or stories you make up with that wild imagination of yours,” Karl says, searching my face.
“I’ll try and write some really good ones. But maybe not about drowning.” I smile at him. I want him to know everything is okay.
As I settle my head back on the pillow, I know that it is okay, but some things are changed.
I nearly drowned and Walter rescued me.
That makes everything different.
Part I
One
August 7, 1933
Metamorphosis!” exclaims Dr. Kreitz. “That’s what the English call this book,” and he waves its pages in the air with a flourish. “Can anyone tell me what that word means?” He leans on the teacher’s table, shirtsleeves pulled up to his elbows. Not one of us makes a sound from our wooden benches in my new classroom at the gymnasium.
No more dusty, higgledy-piggledy volksschule for me. The small, black cinder playground and rough children are a distant memory from before the long summer break. The gymnasium is all high arches and echoey corridors. In its center, a great hall with a high beamed ceiling beneath its grand, red mansard roof. Here, the teachers are taller, smarter, stricter. I might have gotten better marks in the entrance test than Karl did three years ago, when he sat for them like me, at eleven; but now I’m here, I don’t feel very clever at all.
“Does it mean transformation?” Someone at the back breaks the silence. I twist around and glimpse a small girl with frizzy black hair, a little like my own.
“Name, please,” Dr. Kreitz says, his head popping up, eyes bulging out, reminding me of a frog.
“Freda Federmann,” says the girl in a confident voice.
“Wonderful. Yes, Freda,” Dr. Kreitz enthuses. “Transformation. Rebirth. Conversion. From the Greek metamorphoun, meaning ‘to transform.’” He begins to pace. “Studying the Greeks and Romans,” he says, “will teach us all we need to know about the human condition.”
“Freda Federmann is a Jewess,” I hear someone hiss to her neighbor from the row behind me. It’s loud enough for the professor to hear, but he shows no sign of it. He picks up a book from the table as he passes by.
The professor has narrow shoulders and a potbelly. Part of his shirt hangs from his trousers and his tie is askew. This school, famous for its classical education, clearly picked him for his knowledge and superior brain, not for his appearance.
“Franz Kafka,” he says, staring intently up at the ceiling, as though he might see the author perched on top of the rafters. “What a brilliant, and amusing, man he was. Listen.” He vigorously flicks through some pages, his hair flopping wildly. He begins to read, treading a slow circuit of the room. He tells us, in a mesmerizing voice, the story of Gregor, the traveling salesman who awakens one morning to find himself transformed into an enormous insectlike creature.
Light filters through the long, rectangular windows set high up on the classroom wall. Adolf Hitler stares serenely down at us all from his vast portrait above the blackboard. Dr. Kreitz’s voice rises and falls, fades and resounds. As I look at the portrait, Hitler’s face appears to swell and move. He gazes at me, unblinking, but I’m certain his lips have moved, twitched, as if at any moment he might smile and step down from the picture, saying ha ha, what a joke, I have been here all along.
He doesn’t, of course, and I tear my eyes away. Karl says I have too much imagination. My heart jumps and I wonder if he’s right.
Dr. Kreitz reads on. I avoid looking at Hitler’s picture and instead study the profile of the girl sitting next to me. Tall and elegant, she has long auburn hair that hangs either side of her shoulders in two smooth plaits. Her pale face is so perfectly formed, it could have been chiseled from the finest marble. She holds her chin high as she watches Dr. Kreitz travel around the room. Feeling my gaze, she turns and fixes me with sloping green eyes.
“Hello,” she whispers. “My name is Erna Bäcker.” A smile flickers on her lips.
“Hetty Heinrich,” I reply, excruciatingly aware of my frizzy dark hair, big eyes, and too-round cheeks.
Erna Bäcker is simply the most bewitching creature I have ever seen in my life.
A knock on the classroom door stops Dr. Kreitz’s reading abruptly.
“Herr Hofmann . . .” He addresses the tall, thin man, wearing a waistcoat and bow tie, who enters the room.
“Heil Hitler,” Herr Hofmann greets the class.
“Heil Hitler,” we echo back.
“Headmaster”—Dr. Kreitz clears his throat—“delighted you can join us.”
Herr Hofmann sweeps to the front of the class.
“Welcome to our wonderful gymnasium,” he says, smiling around the classroom. “You’ve all done extremely well to get here. But this is only the beginning. During your time at this school, with hard work and exemplary behavior, you can become exceptional. This is true not only for the boys, but for you girls, too. In the fullness of time, you shall go on to become wonderful members of our great new Reich. I am sure you will make both your parents and our school proud. Best of luck to you all.”
I smile back at him. My dream is to become a doctor, preferably a world-famous one. I feel that, being here, at this great school, is one step closer to achieving my ambition. I shall try my very best at all my lessons. Always.
Herr Hofmann turns to Dr. Kreitz. “What are you studying this morning?”
Dr. Kreitz silently shows him the cover of Metamorphosis.
A look of horror passes over Herr Hofmann’s face. “Dr. Kreitz, have you lost your mind?”
He shrugs. “It’s a wonderful text, Herr Hofmann. Perfect for introducing the themes we are studying this year: symbolism, the metaphor, the absurdity of life—”
“We will discuss this later,” Herr Hofmann says brusquely. “In the meantime, as well you know, this is not an appropriate text to be studying. Ensure you choose a suitable German author next time. Good day, children,” and he sweeps from the room, banging the door shut behind him.
Dr. Kreitz shrinks.
His hand trembles as he returns to his desk and slides Metamorphosis into his bag. He licks his lips and stares at us, as if not sure what to do next. Chatter breaks out among the class and he makes no attempt to stop it.
Again, he reminds me of a frog, but this time, one that has been squashed and flattened on a busy road.
TOMAS IS WAITING for me when I come out of school. Long-legged and skinny, he leans nonchalantly against the trunk of a large tree on Nordplatz. Before I can make a run for it, he spots me and rushes over, bumping into me with a crooked smile.
“What’s it like then?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at the school. We fall in behind a noisy group of older pupils streaming across the grassy square toward Gohlis.
“It’s still school. Just . . . smarter and stricter, that’s all.”
Tomas looks a little wistful. He’d go there in a shot, if only his parents could afford the fees. He’s clever enough to pass the test.
“It’s odd, you not living in our block anymore,” Tomas says. “Emptier,” he adds after a pause.