Authors: Jackie French
‘It’s alright,’ said Mark.
Something was wrong. Unfinished. It niggled at him all the way through school.
It was Anna’s story of course. That’s what was wrong. She wasn’t telling it properly, not like it should be told.
Because somehow Mark knew that the story was THERE, in Anna’s mind. She shouldn’t have let them butt in. It was almost, almost like she didn’t want to tell it at all.
It shouldn’t have mattered, of course. It was just one of Anna’s stories, like the one about the goldfish that swam to Tasmania or the wild horses that took over the school or the secret gold mine under the butcher’s.
But somehow Heidi had become real…no, she wasn’t real, not yet. It was as though she MIGHT be real, if Anna just told them more.
And suddenly Mark wanted more than anything to know more.
The buses lined the road next to the school. When he’d been small Mark had thought they looked like lions waiting to swallow you and then burp you out at your bus stop.
Mark sat with Bonzo, as he always did, in the seat behind Anna and Big Tracey. Little Tracey sat with a kid almost as small as her. Ben sat in the back seat with his mates.
One by one all the other kids got off. Little Tracey’s friend first, and Ben’s mates and Bonzo at the stop by the store, then finally Big Tracey at Dirty Butter Creek.
Mark leant forward and tapped Anna on the shoulder. ‘Hey, guess what?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I just worked out why it’s called Dirty Butter Creek. I used to think there must have been a dairy or something here.’
‘Wasn’t there?’
‘No. I asked Dad once and he said there weren’t any dairies around here. Just look at it now.’ Mark gazed down into the swirling yellow water.
‘Hey, I see…’ cried Anna. ‘It looks just like dirty butter, doesn’t it? Yuk…all yellow and brown.’
‘Yeah. Anna, will you go on with the story tomorrow?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Anna slowly.
‘Please.’
‘If you really want me to,’ said Anna, even more slowly.
‘Yeah, I do,’ said Mark. ‘Look, how about getting down to the bus stop a bit earlier tomorrow, so you’ve got more time. I’ll ask Mum, and your mum can pick up Little Tracey, say, fifteen minutes earlier.’
‘Mum won’t have time for a cup of tea. Oh, alright. I’ll say we need to talk about a project for school.’
‘Thanks,’ said Mark. He leant back in his seat again, then changed his mind and tapped her arm again.
‘Anna.’
‘Yes.’
‘
You
tell the story tomorrow. I mean without us interrupting.’
‘What about Ben? Are you going to ask him to come early too.’
‘You can get the story going before he gets there.’ Somehow he knew the story wouldn’t go right if Ben were there.
The rain gurgled along the gutter and into the tank outside the kitchen window, almost drowning out the yelling of the frogs in the creek. Down on the flat the creek groaned and rumbled, so the air seemed to vibrate with the noise.
‘The tank will overflow if this goes on,’ said Mum, shoving the plates into the dishwasher. ‘Mark, turn the radio off, would you? I don’t want to listen to the news this morning. It’s too depressing. Have you got your homework?’
‘Yep.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yep. Come on, Mum. I’ll be late for the bus.’
His mother looked up from the dishwasher, surprised. ‘We’ve got ages yet.’
‘But it’ll be slower because it’s muddy. That’s what you said yesterday.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Oh look, the umbrella’s still wet. I hate it when it drips like that. You run down the path first and I’ll follow you, alright?’
Mark nodded. Whenever it rained the roses along the path hung wet and heavy, so that if you brushed against them water tipped from their leaves and petals down your shoulders and arms. Mum never cut them back enough, Dad said. She was too softhearted even with the roses.
The car was cold and smelt of wet dog.
‘I shouldn’t have let Bubbles ride in the car yesterday,’ said Mum, turning the demister to maximum. ‘Oh yuk, the smell’s even worse with the heater on.’
The car squelched through the puddles on the driveway, then squished onto the mud of the road.
‘Mum?’
‘Mmm?’ Mum was concentrating on steering around the puddles. ‘Heaven knows when the council will get round to grading this road again.’
‘What’s the longest time it’s ever rained?’
‘Good grief, I don’t know. Forty days and forty nights. That’s what it was supposed to be for Noah’s flood. Oh, and for six weeks back in forty-seven, so your nanna told me. Fog and rain for six weeks.’
‘Six sevens are forty-two, that’s forty-two days and beats Noah,’ said Mark with satisfaction. ‘Did it flood?’
‘Right up to the garden fence where the vegie garden is now,’ said Mum. ‘Your nanna said no one could get out for weeks, and Mrs Hilson down the valley had her baby and they had to call a helicopter in. Oops, sorry about that,’ as the car plunged into a puddle. ‘I didn’t realise it was so deep. Oh, look at that cow…get off the road you stupid creature.’
‘Hey, Mum.’ Mark watched the cow slowly amble to the side of the road. ‘Do cows ever sneeze?’
‘Mmm. What was that?’ Mum carefully circled the cow in case it decided to step back into the path of the car. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’d better give Ned a ring when I get back and tell him there’s a cow on the road…’
‘Mum? What do you know about Hitler?’
Mum blinked, and the car shot into a puddle. ‘Blast. Hitler? What brought that up?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mark.
Mum shrugged. ‘You choose the worst times to ask questions. What do you want to know about him?’
‘What was he like?’
‘Oh, Mark, not now, it’s bad enough trying to keep the car on the road with all this mud.’
‘Please, Mum, I want to know.’
‘Well, he was a monster, of course,’ said Mum reluctantly, still battling with the steering wheel. ‘All the concentration camps…and he killed all those Jews…six million, I think, that’s why it’s called the Holocaust.’
‘Six million people!’
‘There were lots of others he killed, too. Gypsies and people in Trade unions…there was a TV program on it last year, but we turned over to a movie halfway through. It’s hard to watch that sort of thing. I don’t know why they put them on TV…oh, he killed people who were disabled in some way, too…I think there was something like eleven million people altogether.’
‘Eleven million!’ Mark tried to work it out. ‘That’s more than half the population of Australia.’
‘They weren’t just in Germany,’ said Mum. ‘Turn the heater down, will you, Mark, it’s getting stuffy. There were also camps in all the other countries he conquered. It was a long time ago, Mark. I don’t know why you’re so interested.’
The car bounced through another puddle. ‘Blast,’ said Mum again. ‘That nearly hit the sump…’
‘But why?’ demanded Mark.
‘What do you mean why?’
‘Why did he do it?’
Mum shrugged. ‘That was the sort of person he was.’
‘But he must have had a reason!’
‘I think he wanted to breed a Super Race,’ said Mum reluctantly, trying to concentrate as she negotiated the puddles. ‘You know—Aryans. Yes, that’s what they were called. A pure Aryan race. So he had to get rid of anyone who didn’t fit his idea, anyone who was different. Oh, look out you silly roo.’
The kangaroo watched them uneasily from the middle of the road, then jumped once, twice, and over the fence.
‘I always wanted to be able to jump like that,’ said Mum, sighing in relief as the car hit the bitumen. ‘Oh, that reminds me—Jesse Owens. Yes, that was his name. He was a runner…I
think
he was a runner in the 1936 Olympics. Was he American? I can’t remember. Your dad would know. Anyway, at that time the Olympics were in Germany and Hitler wanted to show the world what his Super Race could do, but then Jesse Owens won a whole lot of medals instead.’
‘What was so bad about that?’ asked Mark.
‘He was black!’ explained Mum. ‘And he beat all the Aryans hands down.’ The car drew to a stop slowly by the bus stop. ‘Hitler wouldn’t even shake Jesse Owens’ hand.’
‘How could someone as dumb as that run a country?’ asked Mark.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mum vaguely. She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s still pretty early.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Mark. He kissed her hurriedly. ‘See you.’
‘See you tonight. Don’t worry if I’m a bit late. I need to get the books done before the stocktake,’ said Mum. ‘Have a good day. Don’t get too wet. Are you sure you’ve got your homework? How about your lunch money?’
‘Yep, I’m sure. Bye Mum.’ The car trundled slowly back down the muddy road.
It was Tracey’s mum’s turn to pick up Anna today. Mark hoped they’d be early too…yes, there was the green truck, pulling out of Anna’s driveway down the road.
Mark watched as Little Tracey hugged her mum and dashed for the bus shelter. She was wearing her old yellow raincoat with the tear in the sleeve. Anna followed more slowly, the hood of her jacket shading her face.
‘We got here early so Anna can go on with the story,’ announced Tracey. ‘She said she would. Didn’t you, Anna?’
Anna nodded. Her hood had slipped back, so her
fringe hung limply against her forehead. ‘If you want,’ she said offhandedly.
‘Yeah,’ said Mark, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. After all, it was just a story. Anna told lots of stories…‘Better get a move on before Ben gets here and wants to put the Red Baron in it or something.’
‘Ben’s not coming today. He’s got a cold. His mum rang my mum so I could tell Mrs Latter not to wait for him…’ Anna pushed her wet hair back out of her eyes.
‘Go on then!’ urged Little Tracey impatiently.
‘I’m not sure where to start,’ admitted Anna.
Mark stared. Anna always knew where to start. She’d never been stumped with a story before.
‘What did Heidi have for breakfast?’ demanded Little Tracey. ‘Did she have any pets? A dog? Or a horse?’
Anna relaxed. ‘I can tell you that,’ she said. ‘She had bread for breakfast—hot rolls coiled up into shapes with seeds on them. Sometimes they were caraway seeds and sometimes they were poppy seeds and once, for her birthday, the cook made her a bread roll in the shape of a cat, with a tail and poppyseed eyes and whiskers.
‘Like this.’ Anna traced a rudimentary picture of a cat in the mud with the toe of her shoe. ‘And she liked
it so much that her father ordered the cook to make her a bread cat every Monday, or a frog or a goat or a donkey. And once, for Easter, she made a sheep, too, with a whole lot of little baby lambs.’
‘Did Heidi eat them?’
Anna nodded. ‘She could eat them because every Monday morning there’d be another one. And she had milk for breakfast, too, with some sugar in it.’
‘Then what did she do?’ asked Little Tracey. ‘Did she go to school?’
Mark leant back against the wall of the bus shelter. Anna’s face was absorbed, as it always was when she told a story, her hands flying and gesturing as though they wanted to tell the story too.
‘No, she didn’t go to school.’
‘Why not?’ asked Mark, suddenly interested.
‘Because,’ Anna hesitated. ‘Because people might discover Hitler had a daughter. Or they might tease her about the mark on her face or maybe…maybe Hitler himself had hated school so he said his daughter didn’t have to go. She had lessons with Fräulein Gelber instead.’
‘Didn’t she go anywhere?’ asked Little Tracey, disappointed.
‘She went to Church, I think,’ said Anna hesitantly. ‘I don’t think she went every Sunday. Maybe it was
only once or twice…I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s just not working.’
Mark considered. ‘How about start with, As far back as she could remember,’ he suggested. ‘Mr McDonald got us to start an essay with that last term. You know: “As far back as I can remember…”’
Anna took a deep breath. Her fingers looked white and cold and she shoved them in her pockets.
‘As far back as Heidi could remember…’ she began.
As far back as Heidi could remember there had been Fräulein Gelber. Fräulein Gelber looked after her. She was tall and thin, with hips that looked like she had a coat-hanger in her skirt, and she had dark hair pulled back and wore narrow skirts that meant she couldn’t run or walk too fast.
There was Frau Mundt, who was a widow, whose hands smelt of butter. Frau Mundt looked after her sometimes, when Fräulein Gelber visited her family.
Frau Mundt wore flowered dirndls under her apron. Once she took Heidi on her knee and told her a story.
‘We had no money, no work, no bread,’ she said. ‘Even if you had money, it was worth nothing in those days! A wheelbarrow full of money wouldn’t buy you a loaf of bread.
‘We begged. It was horrible, but we had to beg just to get food to eat. The occupying troops, the French and the Belgians, took all we had. They had whips and they whipped us off the sidewalks so we had to walk in the gutter. They threw us in the mud. That is how it was then, after the Great War.
‘Then it was 1932. My Willi had a motorbike. It was an old motorbike, from before the war, but sometimes we got a little petrol, and I sat on the back seat and we went to hear the Führer give a great speech. He wasn’t the Führer then but it was so wonderful—thousands of people, oh, so many people cheering.
‘And he told us how he wanted to be on the side of the unemployed—that was people like us, like me and Willi. He would save us, he would get us jobs, he would make Germany proud and free again, and I was cheering with everyone else while the tears ran down my cheeks.
‘And that night I prayed that this great, good man would get all the votes so we could get out of need. No one else promised what he did. He was the only one who gave us hope. This good man…and everything that he promised, he has given us.’
It was only then that Heidi realised Frau Mundt was talking about Duffi.
Duffi was the Führer. He was her father too.
No one said he was her father, of course. She never called him Vater. She called him Duffi and he hugged her whenever he visited, which wasn’t often, and he brought her dolls with long blonde hair that made her cry secretly at night, because they were beautiful and she was not.
If she looked like the dolls he would have let her call him Father.
‘But…but how did she know she was his daughter if he never said?’ objected Mark. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She just did know. She lived there in his house—or the house he visited sometimes, anyway, when he wasn’t in Berlin—and he called her “my little girl”. “How is my little girl today? Has she been good for Fräulein Gelber?” Somehow she just
knew
.’
In the mornings she did her lessons with Fräulein Gelber and in the afternoons they walked.
Fräulein Gelber knew the name of every tree and every flower, and even the names of the grasses too.
‘That’s a cuckoo’s call!’ cried Fräulein Gelber, or, ‘Listen, there’s a thrush.’
Sometimes they took bread down to the carp in the pool by the bridge. One of the carp was big and black
and gold. He was maybe two hundred years old said Fräulein Gelber as they threw the bread into the water for the fish. (The fish mostly ignored it, so Heidi wondered if they really liked bread at all.)
When Heidi found hedgehogs freezing that winter Fräulein Gelber let her keep them in a basket by the hearth of the stove and Heidi fed them on bread and milk.
‘They will probably die anyway,’ said Fräulein Gelber indulgently, but she let her look after them. The hedgehogs didn’t die, and in the spring Heidi let them go in the garden. She hoped that maybe they’d remember her and come back to her sometimes. It would be good to have friends, even if they were hedgehogs. But the hedgehogs scuttled away and Heidi didn’t see them again.
Heidi always wanted to walk faster than Fräulein Gelber did. Fräulein Gelber didn’t even have a limp, but she never walked quite fast enough.
There were so many things that Heidi would have liked to do. She would have liked to join the Bund Deutsche Mädel, the girl’s association, like Frau Mundt’s eldest daughter, Lotte. Frau Mundt told her lots of stories about Lotte. Heidi would have liked to meet her, but of course she never could. Heidi never met anyone at all.
If she joined the BDM she would do sports (Heidi had to ask Frau Mundt what sports were, but they sounded fun), and folk dancing. They would all sing songs together and, sometimes, go to the movies together.
But Heidi was not allowed.
She would have liked to go to school, to play with other girls. But that was not permitted either.
But she was a lucky girl. Everybody told her she was lucky. She had such pretty things: all the pretty things a girl could want.
She had her lovely home and such good food and Fräulein Gelber to look after her, and she had Duffi, who loved her, just as he loved all his German children.
Heidi hoped that one day Duffi would tell her that of all his German children he loved her best.
An engine sounded in the distance. A rumble coming closer, closer. Mark peered out of the shelter. Surely it was too early for the bus.
It was only Johnny Talbot on his motorbike, roaring up to town. He raised his hand briefly at the kids as he passed the shelter, and Mark half raised his hand to wave.
Anna sat still with her hands in her pockets.
‘What?’ Mark broke off and tried to choose his words carefully. ‘How could she want someone like that to love her? Someone who did such horrible things.’
‘He was her father,’ said Anna simply.
‘But what about the concentration camps? What about all the Jews he killed and the war and how he invaded Poland and all that?’
‘She didn’t know,’ said Anna.
‘But she must have!’
Anna shook her head. ‘The concentration camps were secret. I mean what they did there was secret. They were just supposed to be work camps. That’s what it said in the papers. And Heidi didn’t even see the papers. No one showed them to her. Only sometimes, when her father made a speech, and Fräulein Gelber would cut out his photo for her to pin on the wall.
‘How would she know what was happening? She didn’t even go to school so she couldn’t listen to other people talk.’
‘But she was there—in Hitler’s house—in the middle of everything,’ objected Mark.
Anna nodded slowly. ‘She was in the middle of everything, but she knew less than anyone outside.’
Anna put her hands in her lap, and her face got its
story-telling look again. ‘She knew there was war. People talked about the war. But no one said that it was Hitler’s fault. The people in the household worked for Hitler. They thought that he was wonderful and that’s what they told Heidi.
‘Hitler was the leader who was going to save Germany, who would bring about The Third Reich. Germany would reign over the world and all the shame of World War One would be wiped out. Why would Heidi think any differently?’
Mark shook his head. ‘But…but she must just have KNOWN. If she’d just started to think about it all…’
‘Would you know if your parents were doing something wrong?’ asked Anna softly.
‘Of course I would. But they wouldn’t do anything really wrong anyway.’
‘Are you sure?’ persisted Anna. Her eyes were bright. ‘All the things your mum and dad believe in—have you ever really wondered if they are right or wrong? Or do you just think they’re right because that’s what your mum and dad think, so it
has
to be right?’
‘Well, I…’ Mark stopped.
No, he’d never thought maybe Mum and Dad were wrong, really wrong, about something.
Something big—not just like Mum always wanting to be early and Dad barracking for Carlton even though he could see that they were losers (that’s what Mum said at any rate).
But that was different. Mum and Dad weren’t evil.
‘It’s not the same,’ he said at last.
Anna shrugged.
Little Tracey drummed her feet impatiently, ‘Go on with the story,’ she insisted. ‘PLEASE, Anna.’
Anna glanced at Mark. ‘Okay,’ she said.
‘Sometimes, just sometimes, Heidi felt that maybe…maybe things weren’t always right.’
It was the day after her birthday party. Duffi couldn’t be there—Duffi came so rarely nowadays. He had all of Germany to look after, and the war. But she had had a cake, in spite of the war, though she’d heard one of the guards mutter how much butter it had used.
It seemed other people didn’t have butter or cakes like that any more.
‘So there were guards?’ asked Mark.
‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘There were always guards.’
Duffi sent a doll from Paris. It had dark hair like her own, so Heidi liked it better than her other dolls, but it still didn’t have a mark on its face and anyway she was much too old for dolls.
The doll was dressed in velvet and lace. The dress had proper buttons so she undid them and took the dress off, just to see what was underneath, then put it back on again and sat the doll on the shelf above her bed with all the others and went to find Fräulein Gelber. It was time for Heidi’s lessons. Fräulein Gelber had never been late before.
Fräulein Gelber was in the garden, sitting on the wrought-iron seat under the plum tree. She had a letter in her hand. She was crying. Her face was all scrunched up like a mouse’s.
Heidi approached timidly. She didn’t know what to do when someone cried.
‘Fräulein Gelber?’ she asked at last. ‘What’s the matter?’
Fräulein Gelber thrust her handkerchief back into her pocket and tried to make her face look normal. ‘It’s my brother,’ she said. ‘They’re sending him to the Russian front. Oh, Heidi, it is insane, insane. He will die there, I know he will. We can never win this war now.’
Then suddenly she looked frightened, her eyes red in her swollen face. She looked up at Heidi as though she had remembered who she was. She tried to smile.
‘I’m being so silly,’ she said. ‘Please forget I said that, Heidi. Please forget I said anything at all. I am
just worried for my brother—who would not be? But of course he will come back safely. Of course Germany will win the war.’
Fräulein Gelber fumbled the letter into the pocket of her jacket. ‘It’s time for lessons,’ she said. ‘You are a very lucky girl, you know that? All these wonderful things that you’re learning.’
‘Yes,’ said Heidi. ‘I know that I’m lucky.’
Anna stopped.
‘Go on,’ said Mark after a while.
‘There was another time, another time that Heidi realised something was wrong.’
It was one of the women in the kitchen. A big woman, who came to do the scrubbing. Her bottom looked as wide as a table and she had lots of hair, bits of which stuck out in spite of being tied back.
She was crying, and the others were all comforting her.
‘I didn’t know,’ she kept saying. ‘I didn’t know. They took her away. They said it was for the best, she would be cared for.’
Frau Mundt saw Heidi listening and ran across the kitchen to her, and took her hand. ‘Freya isn’t well. Come on, I’ll take you upstairs.’
Frau Mundt led her up the stairs, away from the sobbing below.
‘Frau Mundt, what’s wrong with her?’
Frau Mundt hesitated. ‘She has just found out that her sister is dead.’
‘When did she die? In the air raids?’ Even Heidi knew about the air raids.
‘Not in the air raids. She has been dead, oh, six months maybe.’
‘I didn’t know she had a sister,’ said Heidi.
‘Her sister, she was not quite right. In the head you understand, not clever like other children. So they took her to a special school. And now Freya has found out her sister is dead. No one told them she had died, not till the family wrote to say that they would visit next month. And now she thinks they killed her sister there.’
‘Did they kill her?’ whispered Heidi.
‘No, of course not. Of course they didn’t,’ said Frau Mundt, just a bit too firmly. ‘Freya has just been listening to stories—silly stories, you know how people talk. But sometimes, sometimes things like that have to happen. It’s for the good of everyone. We cannot have weaklings in the new German race. People like Freya’s sister mustn’t be allowed to have children. It is like with the Jews.’
‘What are Jews?’ asked Heidi. The word was familiar—she’d heard it before. She’d even read it in
Duffi’s book, the big, boring one that Fräulein Gelber kept on the mantelpiece and made her read a page from each day.
The book talked about the ‘Jewish problem’ but Heidi had never known quite what it meant.
Frau Mundt bit her lip. ‘You should ask Fräulein Gelber about that. But it is all nonsense what they say. Nonsense. The Jews are simply being sent to work, that’s all. The Jews are rich, everyone knows that. It’s time they were made to work. Come on now, hurry upstairs.’
Later, during their walk, she asked Fräulein Gelber: ‘Fräulein Gelber, who are the Jews?’
Fräulein Gelber scarcely hesitated in her stride. ‘The Jews are different. They are different from us. That is why the Führer wants to separate them. So they can’t endanger the lifeblood of the German people, so they can’t weaken it.’
‘What happens to them?’
‘They are sent to camps. Places to work.’ She looked at her sharply. ‘Who has been telling you about the Jews?’
‘No one. Well, Frau Mundt. But she said I was to ask you.’
‘Well, I’ve told you. They are different from us. That’s why they have to be sent away.’
‘Are there any Jews near here?’
‘No, of course not. But if one did escape and come near here, the guards would catch them and send them back. There is no need to worry.’
‘I’m not worried,’ said Heidi.
Anna’s voice stopped.
‘But what happened then?’ demanded Mark. ‘Go on!’
Little Tracey nudged him. ‘The bus,’ she said. ‘Come on. The bus’s here.’