“Morning, sleepy,” Karl says as he comes into the kitchen.
“I need to talk to you about something,” I whisper when Bertha moves toward the sink. “In private.”
“Okay. Treehouse?” He raises his eyebrows.
We sit on the floor, sharing the bread and sausage, a blanket wrapped around our shoulders. Despite the temperature, it’s cozy in our secret nest, just the two of us.
“Should I tell Mutti?” I ask quietly, after recounting what I saw.
He shakes his head. “You must have dreamed it, Hetty. You have a crazy imagination.”
“But I was awake, Karl, I saw them. It was horrible.”
“You’re being ridiculous. It was the middle of the night. You fell asleep in your window seat and had a bad dream. Besides, why would Vati want to kiss Fräulein Müller? She looks like a heifer with those massive hindquarters.” He begins to laugh. “Moo,” he says blowing out his cheeks and making his eyes all big.
Perhaps he is right. I could have dreamed it. Suddenly, I have a picture of a brown-patched cow with Fräulein Müller’s round face and fierce plaits where its ears should be.
“Moo,” I say, giggling.
“Moo, Herr Heinrich, how about a kiss?” Karl laughs and curls up his top lip, just like a cow smelling the air.
I’m laughing so hard my eyes begin to water. Karl digs me in the ribs with his elbow.
“See?” he says. “See how silly it all is?”
Our maid Ingrid’s fair head appears at the base of the tree.
“Walter Keller is at the door to see you,” she calls up to Karl.
Racehorse hooves thud in my chest.
Karl’s forehead creases. I expect him to throw the blanket off his shoulders and bolt down the ladder, ending our private chat. But his body is completely still.
“Tell him I’m not here,” he shouts down to Ingrid. To my astonished face he explains, “I have to go out soon anyway. Meeting some of my HJ friends.”
His serious face cracks into a smile and he pushes me onto the dusty treehouse floor, tickling me hard under the armpits.
“Stop it! I don’t want to play that game,” I yell, fighting him off.
“What’s the matter?”
“Why did you send Walter away?”
Karl shoves me in the shoulder and sits up.
“What does it matter to you?” he asks gruffly. “He was my friend, not yours. I’ve got new friends now. I don’t need Walter.”
He gets up and begins climbing down the ladder.
“See you later, Little Mouse.”
I sit for a long time, legs dangling through the hole, getting colder and colder.
Does this mean I won’t see Walter anymore? How can that be?
Well, Karl, just because you have new friends doesn’t mean you have to lose your old ones. I’m going to make sure I keep mine. Because friends are precious. Like jewels.
Six
February 11, 1934
The gray streets of Leipzig are hidden beneath a deep layer of crystal white. Delicate ridges line every branch and twig of the cherry tree, transforming it into the sugar-coated world of The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King.
It’s the first day of the school winter holidays and Tomas, thinly dressed for the weather, hops from foot to foot on the doorstep. His lips are tinged blue.
“Come out with me,” he says. “I hardly see you these days.” He wrinkles his nose and pushes his glasses up.
“I’ve a lot more homework now.” I hold fast to the doorframe. His eyes are too big for his thin face, and they protrude, like an owl’s. Behind me, the house is warm and Bertha is making zimtsterne cookies; the smell of hot sugar and cinnamon drifts from the kitchen.
“We could build a snowman in Rosental.” His breath fans and coils above his head. I think of how Karl has ditched Walter and how I vowed not to do the same with my friends.
“All right, I’ll come,” I say, and as he smiles, his eyes crinkle and disappear.
I pull on my boots and coat. Selecting a pair of warm gloves, I think of Tomas’s bare hands. There’s always a whiff of mold about him. A faint hum of sweat, grime, and misery. But we were once poor, and I mustn’t hold it against him. I pick up a second pair of gloves and a woolen hat, too.
“Here, you can use these.” I hold them out for him. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t give them back,” I add.
He takes them and strokes his fingers across the wool.
“Thanks, Hetty,” he mumbles, looking down. He pulls the hat over his ears and then puts on the gloves. “Warm as a hot potato now,” he says, clapping his hands together and giving me a shy smile.
Snowflakes peacefully float from a low granite sky, drifting onto the mounds piled against the railings. We cross Pfaffendorfer Strasse and walk toward the big iron gates at the entrance to the park. On the side of Tomas’s temple is the large, mottled, yellowy-green remnant of a bruise. I wonder, like an apple repeatedly dropped to the floor, if he is all brown and rotten on the inside, too.
“My father lost his job,” Tomas says as we kick our way through the fresh, untrodden snow.
“Oh dear. Has he got another?”
“There’s none to be found.” Tomas runs my glove along the top of a railing, the snow mounding in front until it falls off the end. “We’ve had to move in with my uncle’s family above his cobbler’s shop on Hallische Strasse. We couldn’t pay the rent for our old flat, so we got kicked out.”
“He could join the Sturmabteilung,” I say, remembering how Vati had talked of a big SA recruitment drive not so long ago. “The Brownshirts always need loads of men,” I tell him confidently.
Tomas half chokes, half laughs. “He’d rather we starve than join the SA. He’ll have nothing to do with those thugs.” He spits out the word. “Even though they have a uniform and weapons, like a proper army.” He looks wistful now, at the thought of weapons.
There’s trouble with Röhm, I recall Vati recently saying to Mutti. Two million hungry men. Out of control. It’ll need to be dealt with . . . If only I’d listened properly.
“What does your mother think he should do?”
“She doesn’t care, provided he puts food on the table. And he’s not even doing that at the moment. Just slouching about, like a good-for-nothing.” He sucks in a long breath.
We cross the road and walk between the tall stone pillars marking the entrance to the park. The wide expanse of Rosental stretches away so blindingly white, it hurts my eyes.
“Can’t he even get a job in a factory?”
Tomas shakes his head. “I told you. There’s none to be had. You’re so lucky to be . . . Wow, this snow is thick.” He kicks at it and ventures off the path into untrodden snow and sinks to the top of his boots.
We try to run and stumble. Laughing, we gather armfuls of the fluffy white powder.
There’s a swooshing noise and a snowball hits Tomas in the back of the neck with savage force. Gasping for breath, he scrabbles at the lump of snow and ice wedged between his bare skin and the collar of his thin coat. A second one, stingingly accurate, hits the side of his head.
“Ow!” He rubs the spot where it hit. Mouths open, whooping and yelling, four boys run from behind shrubbery, pelting us with hard lumps of gritty snow. I recognize the Brandt brothers from our old school. They’ve always had it in for Tomas. Just our luck to bump into them now.