He walks to the window and peers out.
“We’re so high up,” he comments, looking back at Karl and me. He grins. “Can a kangaroo jump higher than a house?”
Karl rolls his eyes. “Not one of your awful jokes.”
“No, a kangaroo can’t jump higher than a house,” I say, thinking of our tall roof.
“Of course it can,” Walter exclaims. “A house can’t jump!”
Karl groans, but I giggle and Walter gives me a wink. He looks out the window again.
“You can see all the way to Rosental from here,” he says. “Ouch!” He whips his hand from where he’d rested it on the sill and shakes it, then examines his finger.
“Let me see.” I jump up. The dark line of a splinter slices diagonally into the soft padding at the top of Walter’s index finger. It’s in too deep to pull out without a tool. “I’ll get my tweezers.”
Hurrying down the ladder I hear Karl laughing as he says, “Watch out, she’ll be amputating that. She has some ludicrous dream of being a surgeon . . .”
I grab my kit bag from my room. Back when we lived in the flat and I roamed the streets with Tomas, I’d bring my medical kit, slung on my back, and keep an eye out for injured creatures that might need help: the odd stray dog, which Tomas would hold still (getting bitten once or twice) while I treated patches of mange with borax; the next-door neighbor’s cat with an injured tail that I bandaged, much to its disgust. I once even tried to glue the legs of a daddy longlegs back on, but it died anyway.
I run back to the treehouse and carefully pull the splinter out of Walter’s finger with my tweezers. I give the hole a squeeze and it bleeds, so I know all the wood is out. Dabbing the wound with iodine, I tell him not to get it dirty to avoid infection.
Karl has spread a blanket on the floor and lies on his side, propped up on one elbow.
“She even reads books on medicine,” he comments, watching me. “So dull.”
“They are not.”
“Anyway”—Karl sighs—“you do know, women can’t even be doctors.”
“That’s not true!”
“Ask Vati if you don’t believe me. However much you don’t like it, Hetty, you’re a girl, and you should start behaving like one.”
His tone is not unkind, but I burn hot as I pack away the iodine bottle and close my kit bag. I feel the boys’ eyes watching me as I fumble with the straps and buckles. Women can’t even be doctors. Is he right? A hole opens inside me.
“Well, thank you, Dr. Heinrich,” Walter says into the silence. “Nothing wrong with holding on to a dream.” His words soothe like ointment on a wound. He winks at me for a second time. “I should pay you for your trouble,” he continues, furrowing around in the paper bag and pulling out a large piece of caramel.
“The biggest piece, just for you, little Hetty.” He smiles, holding out the sticky piece of caramel, and my heart flick-flacks wildly.
“Thank you.” I take it and sit down, my back resting against the wall.
I pop the caramel in my mouth and chew the sweet golden lump, but it’s large and hard and protrudes through my cheek, refusing to get smaller. Dribble escapes from the corner of my mouth and I quickly wipe it away with my sleeve.
“Very fetching,” Karl says, laughing.
Walter sees and begins laughing too. “Here, have another piece.”
I press my lips closed and shake my head, blushing red.
“Hurray!” Karl chuckles. “You’ve found a way to keep the girl quiet. Congratulations, my friend!”
A hard ball forms in my throat and I’m on my feet, bolting down the ladder before I allow myself to properly cry.
The boys’ laughter follows me all the way back to the house and the cozy visions of my future life shatter like glass into a million multicolored fragments.
Five
February 10, 1934
Augustusplatz is packed. The vast square has been transformed into an unrecognizable film set. Up here, from our special platform, reserved for local dignitaries and their families, I feel like a film star, waiting to go out in front of the cameras.
I shiver, wrapping my fur stole closer around my neck. Powerful, blinding lights flood the expanse of the square and huge swastika flags hang from the tall buildings all around. Below our platform, members of a film crew slouch and smoke next to their tripods and cameras, stamping their feet and hugging their coats tighter as they wait for the main event. I look down at the pale, upturned faces of the crowd and the thousands of hands waving their tiny flags.
Mutti grips my hand tight. “It’s Karl’s turn,” she says.
Karl steps forward, uniformed and serious. He grips the flag with his left hand, the right pointing to the sky, three fingers extended straight as an arrow toward heaven. His chin is raised and he stares straight ahead, unblinking.
“Adolf Hitler,” he chants without quiver, “you are our great Führer.
“Thy name makes the enemy tremble.
“Thy Third Reich comes, thy will alone is law upon the earth.
“Let us hear daily thy voice and order us by thy leadership,
“For we will obey to the end and even with our lives.
“We praise thee! Heil Hitler!”
My throat closes and heat rises from somewhere deep in my soul. Karl, the dearest of all brothers in the world, dark haired, dark eyed, and beautiful, is initiated in the Hitler Jugend. Hitler owns him now.
Karl accepts the coveted dagger and returns to the rest of his schar. The next boy steps forward and repeats the oath. When the last new recruit has been initiated, the boys troop off the stage and join the other squares of HJ boys at the front of the crowd.
The film crew check their cameras. A man comes onto the stage and tests the single microphone standing in the middle. A loud crackle comes from somewhere. We wait for the main event, still to come.
And we wait. My fingers and toes slowly become numb. I try wriggling them, clapping my hands, and blowing on them, but it doesn’t work.
At last the band strikes up Franz Liszt’s fanfare. A hush comes over the crowd and almost as one, a thousand heads turn. I glimpse the open-topped black Mercedes crawling down one side of the square. I forget the numbing cold, the unforgiving hardness of my chair. It really is him. The greatest of all men, my brother’s new father.
The car pulls up in front of the platform and the Führer climbs the stairs, passing me so close I could reach out and touch him. Vati is clapping hard and fast, smiling broadly. Small and nimble, in the flesh, Herr Hitler is terribly good-looking. He wears a brown suit and a swastika armband. His hair is very dark, like mine, and is swept elegantly to one side.
For a few moments, he surveys the crowd. He raises a fist skyward, then clutches it to his chest. The crowd goes wild, crying “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil” until the Führer holds his hands out and, as one, they are silenced, without him uttering a single word.
“Heil, my German Youth!” he cries at last. “It is our will that this Reich shall endure in the millenniums to come. We can be happy in the knowledge that this future belongs to us completely!”
Mutti is gripping my hand so tightly it hurts. Her eyes fill with water. The Führer pauses and looks around. His eyes, the color of the deepest ocean blue, sweep over our little group of local dignitaries, pause, and lock with mine.