My Family for the War (2 page)

We crept into our favorite hiding spot, a cave in the bushes. The homeless man who used to sleep here at night hadn’t been around since the spring. “Maybe they…
krrrk!
” Bekka made a motion at her throat.

But I didn’t believe that. I figured he was working for the Reich somewhere. After all, we constantly heard how the Führer took people from the streets and gave them work. The actual name of the Führer was never spoken at my house. Mamu made sure of that: Anyone who said his name or even the word
Führer
had to put a penny in a glass. That way we could go to Cohn’s on Hermannplatz and eat an ice cream at his expense every once in a while. The only trouble was, there were just a few pennies in the glass because Papa and I never wanted to talk about the Führer.

It wasn’t until Bekka and I were in the cave and sitting across from each other that I saw that her flight into the birch tree hadn’t exactly ended gently. She had scratches on her face
and arms, nasty scrapes on both palms, and some twigs had such a firm grip in her hair that we tore out whole tufts when we tried to get them out. Bekka had long, white-blond hair. I, with my unruly mane, not really dark and not really blond, actually no color at all, was secretly envious of it.

Without a care in the world, she licked blood from her arm, turned halfway around, and grinned at me. “The tree is closer than it looks! I didn’t need that much momentum!”

“We’d better stay out of the courtyard for a while,” I said.

Bekka agreed. “Do you think Bergmann will really call the police?”

“No, she’ll just run to Mamu, like always.”

“So what if she does? Your mother will take care of her,” replied Bekka, who thought the world of Mamu. No wonder, since she didn’t have to actually live with her!

“It will more likely be me she takes care of,” I predicted darkly. A combination of Mamu and the gentle Mrs. Liebich, I found, would have been ideal.

My friend took off her right shoe, removed the lining, and dug out a well-worn piece of paper—our “survival plan,” Bekka called it. She and her parents and brother had been learning English for two years. That’s because the Liebichs were going to emigrate to America soon. They were already as good as gone, just waiting for a response from a cousin who had married into money over there and would have no problem at all sponsoring the Liebichs.

I didn’t like it when Bekka spoke English, and not only because I couldn’t understand a word of it, even though I had been plagued by it at school. No, it was much more because every English word reminded me that I would
soon lose my best friend. The ranks of children in the Jewish school were dwindling. Teachers disappeared too, sold all their worldly possessions and emigrated. We never knew who would show up in the coming week, or who would be teaching us which subjects.

Crazy, said my father. You’ll see, next year the whole fuss will be over and done with, and they’ll be stuck in Cuba and Chile and Argentina and will have lost everything!

But “survival plan” sounded too sophisticated: The crumpled paper inside Bekka’s shoe was actually just a tiny, scribbled map of the best hiding places and escape routes in our neighborhood. With her tongue between her teeth, Bekka drew a tree in the appropriate place on the map and wrote “3rd floor, Ziska’s room” on it. Then she folded the paper together and stuck it back in her shoe. “Remind me to give you the map when we leave,” she added. As if she would ever give up the map, her pride and joy.

I took a long time to make my way back up to our apartment. I studied the ornamental wooden carving on the door to each apartment, the glass paintings on the windows in the hall. But I didn’t dare touch the banister with my Jewish hands. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if Bergmann had poked her head around the door just at that moment! Not that I had ever heard that it was expressly forbidden, but you could never be too sure. On Sunday you’re happily sitting on the park bench, and on Monday, it’s not allowed anymore. “Jews and dogs not allowed.” No, I didn’t touch the banister.

Christine and her mother came toward me on my way
upstairs. Christine’s mother looked away, as if a particularly hideous beggar were stretching out his hand toward her, even though I pressed myself against the wall in order to take up as little of their space as possible. Christine smiled at me, very quickly, so that her mother didn’t notice. She still did that, even though we hadn’t exchanged a single word with each other since public officials, including their families, had been forbidden to have anything to do with Jews. Before that I had been in her apartment often, or Christine came to ours. She was nice. I smiled back—a little conspiracy.

I opened the door and stepped into safety. Our apartment—spacious, bright—was the place where the outside world ceased to exist. Except for a few small blank spaces on the walls where pictures used to hang, paintings my parents had recently needed to sell, everything looked just the way I had known it my entire life. I took off my shoes so I could tiptoe from carpet to carpet without making any noise on the wood floor. Their voices came from the dining room. That was good—maybe I could slink past them into my room without them noticing.…

“We’re finished! Through, Margot, do you understand? That was it! It’s over, finito!”

Papa’s agitated voice rose, and fell again with the last word. I had already covered half of the foyer and was past the kitchen, but I stopped, anchored to the spot. Bergmann had actually gone to the police! Thoughts raced through my head and collided with each other.
We’ll lose the apartment! My parents will be taken away! Bekka won’t be allowed to go to America! This is it! We’re finished!

“Always be careful how you behave,” my father told me.
“Be polite, even if they get rough, and never talk back. Don’t speak loudly or thoughtlessly, but you don’t want to come across as too refined either—otherwise they might think you feel superior. Always wear clean clothes when you leave the apartment so no one can say we’re dirty. A single Jewish child that makes a bad impression reflects badly on all of us! The best thing to do,” he added, looking into my shocked and troubled face, overwhelmed with all that responsibility, “is not to attract attention at all, Ziska.”

Exactly what would happen if I was noticed or behaved badly he didn’t say, because we knew as well as anyone that we couldn’t rely on one particular punishment. The Germans could do with us whatever they pleased. But I had never imagined it would come to the point that we were finished, and all because of me.

“Finished? That’s ridiculous,” Mamu said impatiently. “Your clients weren’t paying you anymore anyway.”

My father didn’t answer. Mamu’s voice became more strident. “Let’s face the truth, Franz. We’re already living entirely from my money now. And it’s not so surprising that you’ve been banned from practicing law. Of our friends, who is still allowed to work? Schumann, of course. But there are always SA standing around in front of his store.”

As if led by the strings of a marionette, my feet carried me a few steps to the living room door, which stood ajar. While I pressed my ear to the door I prayed fervently,
Oh Jesus, please only let us be goners if it has nothing to do with me!

“Maybe we should have tried to get out,” Papa said quietly.

Now it was Mamu’s turn to not answer.
Uh-oh,
I thought, picturing how she had her lips pressed together. Ever since
I could remember she’d been badgering Papa,
Let’s get out of here!
But Papa wouldn’t hear of it, even when one country after another started to close their borders to Jewish refugees. “There’s still Shanghai,” Papa said now.

“How nice that you’re finally coming to your senses,” Mamu retorted in a frosty tone. “Ziska, you’re my witness. Do you think I haven’t noticed that you’re eavesdropping behind the door?”

Dazed, I entered the room and looked over at my parents. They were sitting at the dining room table underneath the large oil painting of Emperor Wilhelm, and Mamu studied me with one of her scrutinizing gazes through the thick strands of black hair that half covered her right eye.

I was all too familiar with this look, and it made me feel the usual combination of guilt, anxiety, and admiration. My mother was widely considered to be a “beautiful woman,” though in my opinion that didn’t begin to do her justice. She was tall, dark, and temperamental, with a loud voice and big gestures. And as if her appearance weren’t impressive enough, she emphasized it even more with hats and scarves in dramatic colors, wore pants and bright red lipstick. I loved, admired, and feared my mother.

Papa sat in his place, utterly miserable, his back even more hunched than usual, and made a grimace that was supposed to be an attempt at a smile. Whatever it was that he had found out today, it had clearly been a hard blow, and I immediately thought of the photograph hanging in his office. It was of a German soldier looking confident and stern, and it was only recently that I had realized it was a photo of my father! I had never seen him like that; all the troubles that
had plagued his life started soon after I was born, slowly but surely wearing him down. My mother seemed to me to grow stronger, the smaller and quieter he became, and she loved him with a devotion that made me jealous.

But my parents had never fought as bitterly as they had lately. Just a week ago, Mamu had bought the
Stürmer
newspaper and brought it home, a repulsive Nazi propaganda rag. Repugnant, dark figures were featured on the front page, supposedly Jews. They didn’t resemble anyone I knew. Papa had run out of the room and slammed the door behind him, and I could still hear Mamu’s angry cry: “I at least want to know who I’m dealing with!”

“Ziska and her friend jumped out of the third floor today,” Mamu said. “And do you know why they do that? It’s their survival training in case that stupid group of Hitler Youth running around with Richard Graditz beats them up again. That’s how far it’s gone, Franz. Our daughter is jumping out of the third floor. The Liebichs, the Todorovskis, the Grüns, all of them already have emigration petitions in the works, everyone except us!”

My mother! Here I had spent the entire afternoon thinking of nothing but the various ways she would let me have it, and now she turned the whole thing around and used our crazy stunt to manipulate my father! All I had to do was play along.

Unfortunately, I glanced at Papa’s guilty face and knew I couldn’t do it. “But I didn’t…” I protested. Mamu glared at me so fiercely that I snapped my mouth shut again. She, of course, already knew that it wasn’t me who had actually jumped. My mother was the smartest woman I knew, and
twisting little details to her advantage was her specialty. If I said that, she probably would have answered, “So what? Why didn’t you jump? If you had jumped, I wouldn’t have to stretch the truth now!”

“They won’t be able to get us anymore,” I told Papa instead, by way of encouragement. “We have hideouts and escape routes all over the neighborhood. There are already so many that Bekka has to draw them on a map so we can keep track of all of them.”

Strangely, this bit of good news didn’t do a thing to erase the worry lines on his forehead. Papa propped up his head in both hands and stared blankly in front of him.

“Well, what do you think of Shanghai, Ziska?” Mamu asked, smiling.

“How would we get there?” I replied, skeptical.

“On a ship, a trip of several weeks.”

“Is it as far as America?”

“Even farther, Ziska! Quite a bit farther away than America.”

“And when will we go?”

“As soon as I have all the paperwork together. I’ll have our names registered tomorrow.”

“Don’t we need someone who will sponsor us, like the Liebichs?”

“No, sweetie. We can go to Shanghai without a sponsor. We don’t even need a visa, just an exit permit and passage for the ship.”

Mamu kept glancing over at Papa. Our question-and-answer game was probably intended to point out again how simple it really was—how simple it could have been the
entire time. “Of course, we’ll have to pay the emigration tax. But with my jewelry and the family porcelain… we’ll be able to keep enough to live from for a while.”

Papa stood up and left the room. His sadness stayed behind and draped itself over me. “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered.

Mamu looked off to the side. For a moment I thought I saw her eyes fill with tears, but I must have been mistaken. Mamu didn’t cry. Never. Papa maybe, and I definitely did, but not Mamu.

“Papa’s license to practice law was revoked today. We knew it was coming, but it’s terrible for him anyway, now that it’s happened. You know how much he had hoped…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but I knew what she meant. My father still believed in the good Germany, the one he fought for in the Great War. In his mind there was a little blockade that held back everything that might have convinced him of the opposite: that his battles on the western front and even his Iron Cross Second Class didn’t count anymore; that he was no longer a German, but a Jew, even though the Mangolds had been Protestant for two generations and not one of us had ever stepped foot inside a synagogue. He couldn’t understand that we weren’t wanted in Germany, or in almost any other country in the world, for that matter.

“Shanghai,” I repeated, tasting the name on my tongue. “I think that sounds good.”