“Okay.” I attempt nonchalance, but my heart is pumping in my ears as we stand side by side.
Erna need not know where I used to live. She need not know that, at my old school, I had only one friend, Tomas. Our family is rising in the world; that’s what matters.
“Girls!” Fräulein Sauber claps her hands for attention. “Listen carefully and follow my instructions. With your partner and your batons, you will work on the routines I taught you last week. Concentrate on reaching high with your arms, and the graceful placing of your legs and feet. Your partner will point out any errors. Find yourselves a space.”
We position ourselves near the back steps of the building.
“Now”—there is a glint in Erna’s eyes—“show me your best twirl, and don’t forget to lift that baton high and point your toes.” She mimics Fräulein Sauber’s high-pitched voice, and suddenly I’m laughing and the two of us swirl and sway, waving our batons and pointing our toes in a vastly exaggerated fashion. With Erna at my side, I couldn’t care less if I get into trouble with the squeaky fräulein.
I glimpse Freda, once, practicing her moves on her own in the far corner of the playground. She looks sad and lonely, but I mustn’t feel sorry for her, because she isn’t one of us. I make sure I don’t look at her again.
“One, two, three . . . Heil!” Erna whips her baton across her top lip and extends her right arm up into a stiff salute.
“Erna!” I hiss at her daring, but I’m laughing so much my face aches.
“Class.” I deepen my voice, to sound like Dr. Kreitz. I stick out my belly and throw my arms out wide. “Take note of this author you must learn nothing about! He is great, he is brilliant, and he is banned!”
Warmth at the sight of Erna giggling at my joke spreads like hot chocolate. Everything is suddenly possible and within my grasp. I only have to reach out and take it.
The lesson ends all too soon and we must go inside.
This time, I squeeze onto Erna’s bench. We have a new lesson each day, slotted between other classes. The Life of the Führer. We are to learn about the great man, Adolf Hitler, Frau Schmidt explains, by studying his struggles, his courage and fortitude. Frau Schmidt is herself misty eyed as she speaks of his suffering, and of his wisdom. We shall, she tells us, once we know everything, admire and love him just as much as she does. And then we sing.
Belting out the “Horst Wessel Lied,” I glance out the window. The older classes are on their break. I scan the heads and find Karl. At the center of the crowd, he throws his head back in laughter. I smile as I watch him, then turn my gaze to a solitary figure sitting far from the others on a bench, legs crossed, one foot swinging lazily back and forth. His blond head is bent over, engrossed in a book. Walter. How funny he is! While Karl and his other friends show off and compete with each other, Walter does the opposite. He shuts himself away with his books. My heart expands as I watch him.
Our singing comes to an end with our daily chant of gratitude:
Führer, my Führer given me by God,
Protect and preserve my life for long.
You rescued Germany from its deepest need.
I thank you for my daily bread.
Stay for a long time with me, leave me not.
Führer, my Führer, my faith, my light
Hail my Führer.
MUTTI IS OUT fund-raising when Karl and I arrive home from school in a downpour.
“Once you’re dry, you can have lunch with Ingrid and me,” Bertha tells us, setting out four places at the big oak table in the flagstone-floored kitchen.
I climb the stairs to change my clothes. It was so different when we lived in the flat. Just Karl, Mutti, and me since Vati was often working. We were a little unit of three. Eating together; Karl and me sleeping together. We’d shop with Mutti and help her prepare meals in the kitchen. She would sing French songs and tell us stories from her childhood in France, before she came to live in Germany. She had more to do back then, because we didn’t have a cook and a maid, yet oddly, she seemed to have more time for us. Now she rushes here and there doing her charity work and seeing friends, often leaving us in Bertha’s care. I wonder if she sometimes forgets we even exist.
I click on the smart new wireless Vati has given me, which sits on top of my writing desk. They are replaying the speech Dr. Gross, head of the Nazi Party’s Racial Policy Office, made last night to the youth of Germany. Karl and I had sat and listened to the whole thing dutifully before dinner.
“. . . science teaches us that inherited characteristics are more important than environmental influences . . .” I slip off my soggy skirt and blouse. “. . . when we are no longer alive, our inheritance will live on in our children and children’s children. When we grasp this, we see that great river of blood flowing to us through the centuries, and that is in truth the German people. Each generation is a wave that rises and falls, replaced by the next one. As individuals, we are a droplet in this stream. Unlike the liberal minded, we do not see ourselves as the center of the world.” I pull a clean blouse, pullover, and skirt from my wardrobe and put them on. “. . . such understanding makes us modest. Unlike the liberal minded who acts as though he has achieved all his accomplishments by himself, we know that everything we accomplish is not because of our own abilities, but due to our inheritance. We are the proud carriers and guardians of German blood . . .”
I click the radio off. I know what he will go on to say. That every race is different. Simply by educating the Negro, it can never turn him into the superior Nordic. As I walk back down the stairs, I can feel the pure, precious power of my good German blood, at least from Vati’s side, pulsing through my veins.
Bertha serves steaming bowls of goulash, each with a large, doughy bread dumpling. Just as we are finishing, Walter’s head, glistening and wet, appears at the door.
“Ah.” Bertha smiles at him. “Just in time for some pflaumenkuchen. Did you smell it? Come in, don’t dither on the doorstep,” she chides, clearing our bowls away.
He sits next to Karl. I smooth my hair and straighten my back.
“Have you written your history essay?” Walter asks Karl.
“No.” He groans. “I’ll have to do it tonight. What was it again?”
“To what extent can you draw a parallel between the symbolism of struggle and heroism in the medieval poem ‘Nibelungenlied’ with the current-day struggle of the German Volk?” Walter takes a mouthful of plum cake. “This is delicious, Bertha.”
Bertha beams. I rest my head against the wall and imagine a time when Erna might be here, too, and the four of us—Walter and Karl, Erna and I—would sit around gossiping about school, or this person and that, easy in one another’s company. I’m telling a story, and all three of them have their eyes fixed on me, nodding, listening, and smiling at my amusing anecdote.
“You coming then?”
“Hmm?”
“I said, are you coming to the treehouse with us?” Walter’s looking at me expectantly. “I have Riesen caramel,” he adds, shaking a paper bag at me.
I spring from my chair and follow the boys down the passageway, out the back door, and into the garden. The rain has stopped, and I breathe in the rich smell of wet earth. I watch them climb up the narrow ladder; then, holding fast to the slippery rungs, I clamber up after them, pushing myself through the hole in the floor that straddles the trunk and the main fork of the tree. I roll over and swing my legs through. As I do, my skirt rucks right up to the top of my thighs. Quickly, I pull it down. But Walter isn’t looking.