Let Me Whisper You My Story (8 page)

Gertrude stopped. I was sitting on the sofa listening intently. She looked at me then back at Freddy. He pulled away and went to his bedroom slamming the door behind him.

Gertrude wiped her hands on her apron and bit her lower lip. ‘Of course, after the war, you will find your family again, Rachel.’

Yes, that was what would happen.

I opened the door to our bedroom. Freddy was lying on the bed, facing the curtains covering the window.

He turned as I came in. ‘I will never go outside again. My best friend was Jewish. His father was and that is the same thing, according to Hitler. You only need one Jewish grandparent to be a non-Aryan. What’s more, he was accused of being involved in un-German activities, so he was a traitor too. What’s going to happen to Frank? I don’t care. He deceived me.’ Then he began to cry. He punched his pillow. ‘I hate the war.’

I felt sorry for him. It was the first time, since living with Gertrude and Heinrich, that I’d felt anything other than dislike for Friedrich. I watched as he thrust his fists into his pillow, refusing to admit that he would miss his friend.

I
WAS NOW
over ten years old. My birthday, in April, had come and gone. So had Pesach, the eating of matzo, the celebration of escape from slavery, and the hunting by the youngest in the family for the hidden matzo.

I remembered when ribbons were special to me. Long ago. How I used to study myself in the mirror. How Papa said my smile could light up the world. I remembered the long table and the throwing of bread on Friday nights. I remembered the warmth of Mama, Papa’s thick eyebrows that needed trimming, Miri sitting at the table writing in her journal. My cousins, my aunt and uncle…I missed them all. Agnes, if only I could see you, I thought, I would let you have tantrums the whole time.

I decided to read Miri’s journal. It had been too painful to open the book, but now I decided I had to be braver. I’d been sleeping with it under my cushions at night, and whenever Friedrich tried to grab the journal to have a look, I held it firmly away from him.

I read the words slowly, making out every third word or so and pieced it together in my mind. My sweet
sister’s journal. I smelt the pages. How I wished for some scent, some reminder of Miri to linger, but too much time had gone by and the smell, like my sister, had disappeared.

Sometimes, when Friedrich found me in the wardrobe he complained, but at other times his eyes would open wide as if he was suddenly truly seeing me, Rachel, and he’d close the wardrobe door softly.

Mostly, he became more agitated. He stayed home more than he wanted to. His grandparents insisted: ‘It’s not safe anywhere.’ Heinrich said, ‘At the shops where we get our rations there’s talk of things going badly at the Front. There are many casualties. The American troops are bombing Europe, and Hitler is still trying to win the war with Russia. Nobody will admit it, but we are losing this war.’

Friedrich didn’t say much to this. He folded his arms and went to his bedroom. ‘Why don’t you talk?’ he asked me later.

I shrugged.
I don’t know.

I felt ready to talk. I wanted to talk. I felt closed in on myself. Yes, I had the words. They lingered in my throat, they wouldn’t come out. In the beginning, when Gertrude had first taken me in, it didn’t seem to matter. I had nothing to say. I lived inside myself, in a silent world of grief and despair. Now, I wanted more. I wanted to talk to my rescuers. I even wanted to talk to Friedrich. Would I ever talk again?

His school was closed most of the time now, due to air-raids or the fear of them, and Friedrich was becoming bored and fidgety but curious too. ‘Who are you?’ he
asked one day when his grandparents were out. He paced the floor. ‘I can’t stand this, I need someone to play with. Even you are better than no-one. However, whatever game we play, I must be in charge. You are Jewish, after all.’

I felt great anger when he said this. I stamped my foot on the floor. Friedrich laughed.

‘I shall be your teacher,’ he decided.

As the months passed he taught me maths and how to read more difficult books. He used his blackboard and a piece of chalk when teaching maths. He liked being a teacher, instructing me, showing off.

I went along with it because I wanted to read Miri’s poetry properly and not have to try to guess the words. So I listened and watched but I still thought Friedrich was a nasty boy with a fat head.

Not being able to read out loud was a problem, but I silently wrote down sentences he dictated in his annoying voice and solved maths problems. Reluctantly, he began to praise me. ‘For a Jew, you are intelligent.’

I am intelligent. I am also Jewish
, I told him from my silent world.

I wrote in my exercise book:‘Was your school friend, Frank, smart?’

Friedrich looked straight ahead after he read it. I watched his lips quiver. ‘What is that journal you hide from me?’

I pointed again to my written question. Friedrich bent down to pull up his sagging socks, then said quietly, ‘Yes, he was very smart. Now let me see the journal.’

So I showed him Miri’s journal. He thumbed through the pages, sometimes stopping, as if he was thinking about Miri’s words.

When he’d finished reading, Friedrich became quiet. ‘It’s good,’ he said eventually, closing Miri’s journal. ‘Your sister is smart too.’

I smiled at Friedrich, even though he wasn’t looking at me.

Later, I smudged Miri’s pencil writing with my fingers. Not the writing, but places where she’d crossed out a line or changed her words. I rubbed the pencil marks on my fingers together, hoping some trace of Miri would dissolve into my skin and become part of me.

Miri’s last journal entry:

Reflection

God.

We are your chosen people

So it is said.

Why are we then cursed

To wander

Through wasteland

Always searching

For a home
?

Why don’t you part the
Red Sea yet again

And give us refuge

And drown the Nazis

In their own hatred.

Where are you?

Not in the coiled bread on Friday nights

Nor in our prayers.

What have we done

That you abandon us?

F
RIEDRICH BECAME NICER
as my clumsy writing improved. We played cards and board-games and sometimes he let me win. Sometimes I won all by myself. When this first happened, he asked, ‘How did you trick me?’As time passed, he just nodded. ‘I am a good teacher.’

How could I not smile at this? For moments there we were just ordinary children playing together without a care in the world.

We were both skinny and there were shadows under our eyes. Food rations, though, were still available in quantities that were better than what I’d had with my family.

‘Hitler wants to keep us fed. He is scared of the German population turning against him if we become too skinny,’ reflected Heinrich one evening. We were eating vegetable soup with potatoes and bread. Sometimes Gertrude was able to get a few eggs, which was a rare treat. It depended on what the shops had available.

I wondered sometimes about Mrs Liebermann, the kind lady who’d met Mama each week with a bag of food. What had become of her? Horrible things happened to Germans caught helping Jews. Had she been caught? I promised myself that no matter what happened, I’d talk about her one day, and Gertrude and Heinrich, because people everywhere would need to know when the war ended that not everyone was bad.

Quite suddenly, rationing became harsher. The war was not going so well. Hitler asked Germans to make sacrifices on the home front.

‘Where do you think your parents and your sister are?’ Friedrich asked me once as I dipped bread into a thin vegetable soup. One by one their faces flashed before me, their outstretched arms imploring me, asking me to do something to save them, or to come to them because they were fine. How could I ever know which? I answered by putting my hand on my heart, the universal sign of love.

He frowned. ‘I’m sorry, Rachel, I know you love them, but they’re probably dead.’

‘Freddy, stop that,’ Gertrude said.

A husky squeal came from my throat. Salty tears dropped one by one into my soup.

‘I can’t stand this,’ complained Friedrich, his voice rising. ‘Even if that awful wail you just made means you’ve got a voice in there somewhere.’ He finished his soup then stood up and stamped his foot. ‘Outside, everywhere, everyone is crying. We are doing badly in this war. Do you know that? We were winning not long ago. The Americans are going to invade us by land any
time now. The Russians won’t give in. If we lose the war things will go worse for us. I’ve heard they will do terrible things to us.’

His grandfather said quickly, ‘Freddy, keep your voice down. And don’t worry about the Americans and the Russians. They can’t be worse than the Nazis.’ He noticed how Freddy trembled. ‘Come now, give your old Opa a hug.’

Freddy hesitated then threw himself into his grandfather’s arms. ‘I love Germany but I don’t know what to think.’

‘I love Germany too,’ Heinrich answered, kneading his grandson’s shoulders. ‘But we will come through this all right. I feel it in my bones.’

Once, while his grandparents were out buying food with ration cards, Freddy asked me, ‘How come you are poor? Aren’t all Jews rich from the money they steal from the rest of us? Where do you hide your gold and diamonds?’

I looked at him.
Who tells you such nonsense?

‘No diamonds?’

He marched up and down the room like a soldier, then creased his brow. He folded his arms. ‘When your voice comes back, which could be any moment, you can call me Freddy. But only while you live with us. Once you’re gone, if you ever see me, you must call me by my proper name. Friedrich.’

Hmm. I shall think about that. Freddy, who thinks he is better than me. No. I shall always call you Freddy.

One day, flicking through Miri’s journal, I found a poem that Miri had never read to me.

Jakob Jakob

Judenhäuser Jakob

Jewish Jakob

Smiles at me

He’ll be leaving

Says he’ll miss me

Wants to kiss me

Tenderly

Did Jakob really say that to Miri, I wondered. A love story going on with Jakob at the
Judenhaus
across the road from us. Or had Miri made it up?

Freddy raced into the bedroom where I was sitting on a cushion on the floor, scanning the journal for entries I hadn’t read before. ‘My grandmother told me that Jesus was Jewish.’

This confused me. Jesus was Jewish? It sounded familiar. Had Papa told me this? How could Jesus be Jewish? Hitler had said that all Jews were sub-human. What did that make Jesus? How strange, I thought, that if Jesus were alive he’d be taken away to some camp like other Jews.

‘I shall read our Bible and immediately discover this lie,’ announced Freddy, waving a finger in the air. He went to the bookshelf then ran out of the room.

Much later Heinrich asked, surprised, ‘Freddy, you’re reading the Bible?’

Freddy didn’t answer. I watched as his eyes grew large with astonishment. He threw the book to the floor and screamed, ‘Even the Bible tells lies.’

‘What lies, Freddy?’ Gertrude asked wearily.

‘Jesus cannot be Jewish. It says here that the people called him Rabbi. It’s not possible. That means if he was alive now…’

‘…he’d be rounded up and sent away like the other Jews,’ his grandmother finished. Then she added, ‘It’s true. Jesus was a rabbi.’

‘That can’t be right. How can I believe the Bible and believe Hitler? Hitler wouldn’t lock up Jesus. He wouldn’t.’

‘Freddy, be quiet. Keep your voice down. How many times do we have to tell you? Do nothing to draw attention to us.’

Later, bombs fell in the distance, whistling as they dropped. There was an explosion, then silence, suddenly broken by screams outside the window.

‘Come, down to the cellar,’ said Heinrich.

‘We can’t take Rachel and I won’t leave her,’ said Gertrude firmly. She put her hands on my shoulders. Another bomb whistled outside, then met its target. I saw light flashing behind the curtains and heard a huge thundering noise. Then screams. I trembled under Gertrude’s solid hands.

‘We should not have hidden her.’ Heinrich paced the room, his hands on each side of his head. ‘I know. I know. She is only a child. But there is talk that our rations are going to be reduced further, and then how will we stretch our food? And the bombs? This is madness. Where do we go? You won’t go to the cellar without her, now I won’t go anymore without you.’

Freddy said nothing.

‘While we live, she lives. I still earn a little money sewing for the woman down the road. We can sell the necklace my grandmother gave me. The only crime of Rachel’s family was being Jewish. I will not let her die like so many Jews.’

Could my family be dead? No, it was not possible. I heard Gertrude’s words but they washed over me. Papa’s furry beard covered by a mound of earth; Mama’s face always moving, smiling, stilled by the silence of death; Miri lying somewhere in a grave, her blonde hair spread around her like a shroud, her bottle of half-used scent lying beside her. Not possible.

The bombing had stopped. We heard people climbing up the stairs back to their apartments.

I ran to the chair in the bedroom and rocked myself to and fro, stroking the world’s longest scarf.
Mama, Papa, Miri—where have you gone? I’m here. Can you hear me call for you? Erich, are you playing the violin somewhere? Agnes, I wouldn’t mind your tantrums, honestly I wouldn’t. I don’t care that you used to pinch my ribbons. It doesn’t matter. Papa, when can I speak again?

Freddy opened the door. He looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry, Rachel, sorry about everything.’

I
N THE COLD
winter of December 1943, Leipzig was badly bombed. Heinrich, Gertrude, Friedrich and I heard the sirens warning us of an attack. Together we lay bunched up under the big double bed. I curled into the fold of Gertrude’s arms. Heinrich held tightly onto Friedrich.

‘Why won’t you, at least, go to the cellar, Freddy?’ he asked him.

Friedrich didn’t answer, or if he did, the answer was lost in the whistle and thunderous crash of bombs.

We waited while the bombs dropped, clutching each other. Moulded into Gertrude’s bony body, I tried to retreat to my old fantasy world in Mama and Papa’s wardrobe but it was too difficult.

I had no idea how long the noise went on for, but it finally stopped, and there we were, together and alive. Slowly, painfully, for we were stiff, we crawled out from under the bed.

The building was still standing. Heinrich went to the window, pulled the curtain aside and looked. ‘There’s fire everywhere,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how this building stayed up. The war is lost no matter what Hitler says.’

We could hear crying from somewhere within the building and the careful shuffling of people returning to their apartments. Someone knocked on our door.