Pennies For Hitler (7 page)

He hadn’t come to school again.

Georg still didn’t understand how he could be Jewish — how Papa could be and Aunt Miriam too. Papa never killed babies. He wasn’t even rich, as Jews were supposed to be.

Could … could the Führer be wrong, and Jews weren’t all evil? Or was he different from other Jews, and Papa and Aunt Miriam too, because they were only a little bit Jewish, so it didn’t count?

If the Führer was wrong about Jews perhaps he was wrong about other things. About the English being weak and cowardly, about the French being arrogant and treacherous, about Americans being ruled by Jews and bankers.

Maybe Germany didn’t even have the right to rule the world. If the Nazis did conquer the world then Jews would be hunted everywhere. And if they weren’t bad then what about the gypsies? Maybe even black people weren’t Untermensch, subhuman, at all. He vaguely remembered someone saying that in Berlin a black man from America won lots of running medals, and the Führer had had to shake his hand. A black man who was stronger and faster than the Aryan Super-race of Germans … Had he read it somewhere? No, it wouldn’t have been in the paper. Perhaps Papa had told him.

Sometimes, as he walked the streets, he thought he saw Papa’s face, or Mutti’s flowered dress. He knew it wouldn’t be them, not really — they would have telephoned Aunt Miriam as soon as they landed in England. But it was good to pretend, just for a while, to follow them, trying not to catch up too soon, to delay the rush of disappointment when he saw a stranger standing in front of him with Papa’s hair or Mutti’s scarf.

It was hard sometimes, to fill in the afternoon.

In the park was a small café that sold tiny ice creams for the English coin, a penny. He began to buy a penny ice cream every day, learning about English money and English coins. He copied the way one of the nannies said, ‘An ice cream, please,’ so that his words wouldn’t sound like he had an accent.

The library was across the park. He discovered it by accident, following some boys who had been playing catch with a ball. He told himself he followed them to see what English children did, in case they were different from German ones, but mostly it was because he had nothing else to do — not until Saturday afternoon, when Aunt Miriam would take him to a film, or Sunday, when they would go to church, have lunch in a restaurant and then go to a museum. Museums and films were educational, Aunt Miriam said. They would help him be more English.

He looked up at the library building nervously. Were strangers allowed inside? You had to show your card at the University library before you were allowed in. But then a woman carrying a baby walked up the stairs and right past the woman at the desk inside without showing anything. He followed her. He could always apologise and leave if someone stopped him.

No one did. The woman at the desk even smiled a welcome at him, before looking back at the books she was stamping. He stood in the foyer and looked around.

It was tiny. The only library he knew back home was the big one at the University, with walls and walls of index files, and quiet tables for students to study at.

This one was only two rooms: one for ‘Adults’ on one side of the foyer and one with a sign that said ‘Children’. The tall shelves of books were just like at the University. He slipped inside.

One wall had big shelves, with books for little kids. But the other shelves had proper books, with lots of words. English words — but that was good. They’d help him to seem really English.

He picked a book off the shelves, another of the Arthur Ransome adventures, and sat at a table with it. He had only read two chapters when the woman from the desk came up to him.

He froze, hunting for English words to apologise. Perhaps the library was for students of a certain school, or children from certain families. Would she call the police? Why hadn’t she stopped him before?

But she just smiled at him. ‘Library’s closing, dear. Would you like to take that out?’

It took a moment to work out that she meant he could borrow the book. He shook his head cautiously.

‘You’re not a library member, are you? You get your mum to bring you down tomorrow and sign you up. It’s only threepence a week. Then you can take out four books at a time.’

He nodded, hoping an aunt would do. Threepence was only three pennies. It would have to be Saturday, when Aunt Miriam wasn’t working. He hoped they were open on Saturdays. He didn’t want to risk his accent being recognised by trying to ask.

He put the book back on the shelf, with the Rs, exactly where it had been before. Papa (his heart clenched a little) had shown him how libraries worked. Alphabetical order seemed the same in England as at home. The lady smiled at him as he left.

He went to the library every afternoon that week, as soon as he had eaten the lunch that Aunt Miriam had left for him. (She told
the maid that she had guests to dinner often now, to explain the extra food.) The librarian smiled at him every time he came in.

Aunt Miriam was tired when she came home from work. It was usually late, long after Georg had eaten his English dinner of baked beans on toast that he could make himself, or shepherd’s pie to heat in the oven left by the maid.

He waited till Saturday morning, till Aunt Miriam had woken late and showered, and was frying sausages for breakfast. They weren’t like German sausages — they were coarse beef sausages, bland and fatty, instead of pork — but the smell made him homesick just the same. He made sure any tears were gone before Aunt Miriam put the sausages on the plates, with a fried egg each and bread fried in the sausage fat.

‘Aunt Miriam?’

‘Yes?’ said Aunt Miriam absently, frowning down at the newspaper headlines. Georg glanced at the newspaper.
Hitler Tears Up Naval Treaty with Britain
.

‘May I be a member of the library across the park? It is three pennies a week.’

‘Threepence, not three pennies. Yes, of course.’

‘The librarian said I should bring my mother. Will an aunt do?’

‘I should imagine so,’ said Aunt Miriam, her eyes on the paper. She took a forkful of sausage and dipped it in the egg yolk. ‘We’ll go down after breakfast.’

‘Aunt Miriam?’

She looked up at the new note in his voice. ‘Yes, George?’

The words fell over each other in their hurry to get out. ‘May we put a phone call through to home? Or to Tante Gudrun? I … I hoped Mutti would ring me but she hasn’t. I want to know how Papa is. I want to write to them. Please can I write to them? I …’

Aunt Miriam waited till he had finished. She looked at the sausage, then put her fork down. ‘George, I wanted to talk to you this morning. I need to tell you …’

‘Tell me what?’ asked Georg.

‘A letter came from your Aunt Gudrun yesterday. I wrote to her as soon as you arrived to let her know you were here safe and well. I was careful not to mention you by name. I said “a package”.’

I am a package, thought Georg.

‘I wrote to your mother at your home address too, but my letter came back yesterday as well. It had been opened, but not by your mother, I think. Don’t worry. I was careful what I wrote to her too. Things … things are not good in Germany.’

‘But Mutti? What did Tante say about Mutti and Papa?’

‘Your aunt says that your house, all your father’s property, has been confiscated. That means the government owns it now,’ she added when she saw Georg didn’t understand.

‘Our house? Why? It’s ours!’

‘Because they say your father is Jewish.’

‘But he isn’t! Jews are different. Everyone knows that,’ he said cautiously, because he was no longer sure, but wanted to hear what Aunt Miriam would say. Aunt Miriam knew things, like who was the President of America and why it was really called the United States.

‘Did your parents tell you that Jews were different?’ asked Aunt Miriam quietly.

‘No. Papa said I was too young to understand.’ Grown-ups told you that when they were afraid that you
would
understand, thought Georg. But he didn’t say that to Aunt Miriam. ‘Papa said I wasn’t to listen when people talked about Jews.’

‘As though if you don’t listen it doesn’t matter.’ Aunt Miriam
shook her head. ‘George, by the Nazi system your father is Jewish. I tried to tell him, to warn him, but he said that he knew the German people better than I did. The land of Goethe and Schiller, he said.’ She shook her head again. ‘Your father could never see that people can be both good and bad, that a land can have beauty as well as evil.’

‘You think Germany is evil?’

Aunt Miriam sighed. ‘I don’t suppose Germany is any more evil than any other country, though I could never say that in public. There are fools in this country too, but just now Germany has one for a leader.’

‘No! The Führer isn’t …’ Georg hesitated.

‘The Führer is a tiny little man who wants to be a big one,’ said Aunt Miriam evenly. ‘And he wants to make his country bigger too. Germany was in a bad way when he came to power. And he’s done good things — bringing the nation together again. But to do that he blamed all the hardships on the Jews, creating hatred and fear, to give communists and fascists and every unemployed peasant a common enemy. The Jews. Sometimes it’s as though hatred spreads like the flu. One person gets it, then another and another.’

‘You are a Jew.’ Georg made it a statement, not a question.

‘No. But Herr Hitler would call me one. My grandfather — your father’s grandfather — was Jewish. He stopped practising his religion when I was a little girl and your father was still a baby. My mother is a Gentile — non-Jew — just like yours; and for practising Jews that means we are Gentiles too. But to Hitler you are still a Jew.’

‘I am not!’

‘To the Nazis you would be Jewish,’ said Aunt Miriam wearily.

Georg was silent. It didn’t make sense. But so much didn’t make sense these days. Did any of it ever make sense? he wondered. Had the world changed, or had he just realised parts of it were stupid and wicked?

His mind came back to the most important thing. ‘Our home is gone?’

‘Not gone. But it isn’t yours now. All your father’s money, everything he and your mother owned, it’s all been taken by the government.’

‘Then where is Mutti now?’ But he knew the answer even as he asked it.

‘I don’t know. Your Aunt Gudrun doesn’t know, or if she does she won’t tell me. She says her sister has vanished and that she has brought shame on the family by marrying a Jew.’

‘No!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Aunt Miriam simply. ‘If it helps, I think perhaps your aunt knew someone would open and read her letter before it got to me. A Nazi, who might use her words to try to find your mother, or put your aunt in prison if she helped her. Perhaps Gudrun has helped your mother to somewhere safe.’

Georg remembered how Tante Gudrun had vanished on that awful day. Perhaps, he thought.

‘I … I am sure your mother is safe,’ said Aunt Miriam. ‘She acted quickly to get you out. She’ll make good decisions now. But I don’t know where to write to her. We have to wait till she sends us a letter. Maybe the Nazis will let her leave.’

‘I will write to Hitler. Hitler will make things right. He can order them to let Mutti come here, and —’

‘George, Hitler is the one who hates the Jews.’

‘But …’ His world was breaking into pieces. All the things he
had been so sure of — his home, his parents, the glory of the Führer — it wasn’t just that they were no longer there for him. It was as though they never had been — not as he had thought they were.

‘Why?’ It had seemed to make sense when he had thought that Jews were evil.

‘I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because things were so very bad in Germany after the last war. Maybe when things are bad it helps to have someone to hate.’

Georg thought about that. ‘Then if you make people happy the hate would go away?’

‘Yes. No. It isn’t simple. I just don’t know.’

Georg thought about giving Hitler a penny ice cream between two wafers. Hitler would eat it and smile …

No, a penny ice cream had only given him a penny’s worth of happiness. It hadn’t covered up the pain. A penny ice cream wouldn’t be enough for Hitler either.

‘Aunt Miriam, did the letter say how Papa is?’ He watched her to see her reaction.

Aunt Miriam’s face went carefully blank. ‘No. I’m sorry. Gudrun didn’t mention your father. She … she asked me not to contact her again.’

‘Will you?’

Aunt Miriam stared at him, then down at the newspaper. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I think if she knew something we should know Gudrun would tell us, despite what she says. Maybe your mother will find some way to get a letter to us.’

There is something you’re not saying, thought Georg. It was what he hadn’t been thinking too. Dead, he thought. You won’t say maybe Papa is dead. I won’t say it either. If we say the word aloud or think of it too often it might be true.

‘I have some other news.’ Aunt Miriam tried to smile. ‘I have spoken to the building supervisor. They’ve agreed that in the circumstances you may stay here.’

‘The circumstances?’ He could leave his clothes in the cupboard. The hated suitcase could be put out of sight under his bed.

‘I told them the truth. Part of the truth. That your mother is abroad and can’t get back just now. I said she was Swiss though, not German. You must remember that if anyone asks you. It will explain your accent too. George, we will be at war with Germany soon. There is a lot of anger against Germans now.’

He stared. War happened somewhere else, in Prague or the Sudetenland or Spain.

‘I just want you to be prepared,’ said Aunt Miriam. She stood up, and scraped her congealed sausages into the bin. ‘Let’s go to this library and then we can have a good lunch somewhere and feed the swans.’

Chapter 11

MAY TO DECEMBER 1939

The year crept on.

Summer brought long days, longer than at home, and twilights that stretched forever. Sometimes it even brought blue skies. There were tomatoes in the shops and strawberries that brought a sweet pang of home, and lettuces. Summer school holidays began, with children in the streets holding hands with their parents. Sometimes the group of boys played ball in the park. They asked Georg to join in once.