Page 8 of Hell to Pay
My father says, “Utter nonsense. Nothing spontaneous about it. That jumped-up little?—”
“Shh,” my mother says, and looks around fearfully. Nobody is here, though, but Miss Franklin, my English governess.
“The synagogue is burned to the ground,” my father says, the live half of his face filled with disgust. “How much effort does it take to burn a stone building? That was planned. Every Jewish shop has had its windows smashed, and I hear rumors of dozens beaten, or worse. Where does it end? Not allowed to teach, to attend university, to serve in the Army … Becker tells me he is no longer allowed to practice medicine. Becker! Who was such aWunderkind,with his treatments and his research. What is he to do now? What are we to do without him? Smuggle him in here, I dare say, for I’m not willing to be treated by anyone else.” He holds up his withered hand. “Whoelse knows how to deal with this, eh? Who? And if there’s a war?—”
“Oh, don’t say it,” my mother begs.
“I must say it,” my father says. “Annexing Austria, taking the Sudetenland? Where will this lead but war?”
“Herr Hitler says, though,” my mother urges, “that he desires nothing more, that he wants peace. He served in the last war and knows how terrible war is. He was gassed, after all.”
“That man,” my father says, “that jumped-up little corporal? He knows nothing but his own lust for power, for land, for more and more and ever more. What will be the end? Nothing good.” He seems to register Miss Franklin’s presence at last—she’s dressed, as usual, perfectly neatly and plainly in gray, and has a tendency to fade into the background around my parents—and says, “None of this to go any further than this room. I could be shot for saying as much.”
“Surely not,” my mother says in alarm. “You, with the Iron Cross First Class, with the Blue Max? A national hero, burned half to death for the Kaiser and the Reich, and a king? He wouldn’t dare.” The Blue Max, I know, is a most beautiful military decoration, like a blue-and-gold snowflake. My father got it for shooting down so many enemy planes in the Great War, which was a good thing, except that now, my parents are saying that war will be a bad thing, even though the radio says it is for the glory of the Fatherland. I find the world of adults very confusing.
“Exactly for that reason,” my father says. “Exactly because of who I am, and because I am decorated and somewhat well regarded. That is exactly why he would dare. There can be only one leader in his world.” He looks at me, then. “You are nine,” he says. “Old enough to be told. Old enough to know. You must never, ever repeat anything you hear your mother and me say about Herr Hitler, about the war, about our life.Not to your playmates. Not to the servants, except to Nanny and Miss Franklin, because they are English. Not to anybody. My life depends on it, and you would not want to kill your Papa, no? Not when I have already seen Hell and all its fires, and have had my face melted away for my troubles. We’ll keep me out of the flames a bit longer.”
I may have said something. I must have answered him. I can only remember the horror of the idea, and thinking,I’ll never tell.Even though I wasn’t sure what exactly I wasn’t meant to tell. My father must have understood that, because he told Miss Franklin, “You’ll explain to her. Impress upon her the danger.”
“Of course,” she says, with her usual cool crispness. Nothing rattles Miss Franklin. Not toads or thunderstorms, not even the SS with their lightning-bolt badges and their sinister black uniforms and cold eyes. When Miss Franklin sees them, she sniffs and holds my hand more tightly, but she doesn’t step aside and doesn’t look away.Everybodysteps aside for the SS. Everybody but Miss Franklin and my father, because they are the strongest people in the world.
“I fear you’ll have to leave us before much longer,” my father says. “You and Nanny Carlisle. Your passport is in order, I hope.”
“Always,” Miss Franklin says. “But I won’t let that man run me off one minute early.”
“You don’t like him?” my father asks, humor lurking around the good half of his mouth.
Miss Franklin sniffs. “I should think not. So ill-mannered and absurd, with his shouting and his rages and his ridiculous mustache.”
“I wonder,” my father says, “how many of the English share your opinion.”
“Not enough, at least not yet,” Miss Franklin says. “TheTimessays many of our best families have visited him, eventhe Duke and Duchess of Windsor. A former king! Giving him an audience would have been bad enough. Coming to Germany to call upon him, though … it’s really too bad. That half-witted Mitford girl, Lord Redesdale’s daughter, all but lives in his pocket, they say, and the beautiful one, Lady Diana, who married herself off to that fellow Sir Oswald Mosley—they come over to pay court as well. He’s as English as I am and should know better, prancing around with his brownshirts as if he’s hoping to be the next Mussolini. ‘The British Union of Fascists,’ my sainted aunt. As if we want fascists in England! Nothing but thugs. Dangerously unstable, that entire Mitford family, but they aren’t the only ones. ‘Hitler’s methods may be rough,’ I hear, ‘but you can’t deny that he’s made the trains run on time.’ I’ll take a good British train, late or not, over those cruel, goose-stepping SS any day. They’d have all of England speaking German if they had their way, but it’s not going to happen. We have a perfectly good King. We don’t need another one, and we certainly won’t stand for being told what to say and not say. I’d like to see them try.” Her contempt for Herr Hitler, it appears, has loosened her tongue.
“Nonetheless,” my father says, a smile lightening his ruined face now, “we will speak softly and carefully from now on. No sense borrowing trouble.”
“If he’s bad, though,” I’m emboldened enough to ask, “Herr Hitler, I mean,shouldn’tyou say? Nanny says everyone listens most to you, because you’re the King. If he’s bad, and he hurts people, shouldn’t you say?”
“Marguerite,”my mother says, in a voice I’ve rarely heard.
“No, it’s a fair question,” my father says. “It’s more complicated than that, I’m afraid. Perhaps if I’d taken it more seriously earlier … but I couldn’t believe he’d go this far, and now—” He breaks off, then goes on, “For now, you must keep quiet. And your mother and I will do the same.”
He was right, for from that day onward, I heard nothing as frank as that again, not even when Miss Franklin and Nanny both left us, and my French tutor, Mademoiselle Palisse, along with them, waving their handkerchiefs from the train carriage as I waved back and didn’t cry, for I was ten now and too old for such things. My father had been right—Hitler’s promises had meant nothing, for he marched into Poland less than a year after promising never to do so, and two days later, we were at war with Britain and France. From then on, it was all soldiers and massed ranks of Hitler Youth that my new German governess, who most decidedly did not look the SS in the eye, hurried me away from, and huge headlines in the newspapers announcing the conquest of France, of the Low Countries, of Norway, of Ukraine and Belarus and Czechoslovakia. And, always, the swastika, the flags hanging from every balcony and nearly every lamppost. Everywhere, in fact, but the flagpole of the palace itself, for my father would not allow it to be flown there. He’d taken down the Saxon lions with their crown, and the flagpole stood unadorned on the castle roof, an uneasy compromise.
Hitler and, more often, Dr. Goebbels, on the wireless, too, talking ofLebensraum,of limitless possibilities for the GermanVolkwho were even now resettling the countries to the East, which were by rights, we were told, German. And, always, the superiority of the German soldier, the German citizen. TheHerrenvolk,the Aryans, the Master Race.
By the time I beganGymnasium,my public schooling, at the age of eleven, the map of the Reich had extended even further, those other nations blotted out, and much of what I’d been taught by my governesses blotted out along with them as my science lessons taught me about the inferiority of the Jew and the Slav, and my history lessons expounded on the disgraceful treatment of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, the decadence and fecklessness of the WeimarRepublic, and our renewed path to glory under the Third Reich and our Führer.
And still, I knew so little of what was happening around me. Hopelessly sheltered and almost wholly ignorant. Protected, but you can’t protect a child from the truth. Not forever. Not when the truth comes to her door.
5
STIRRING THE POT
“It’s finally here,” Alix said the next morning. “Our big adventure. Are you excited, Oma?” We were sitting over the sort of breakfast I’d almost forgotten existed—soft-boiled eggs in their proper egg cups;Brötchen,the little rolls that were so crisp on the outside and so delightfully soft and chewy inside and had been baked mere hours ago; and marmalade, cheeses, jam, and the very freshest, creamiest butter.
Ben, of course, was dubious, and I said, “There’s also muesli and Quark, which is a bit like thick yoghurt, if this food isn’t enough.” He made a face, and I smiled and said, “We’ll convert you yet. You see, it isGermanQuark, and thus superior.”
“I thought you didn’t like Germany,” he said. “I thought that was the whole point.”
