Pennies For Hitler (32 page)

Dimly he was aware that Mrs Peaslake had come in too and was knitting quietly; of the nurse who held water to his lips. He sipped, then kept on talking. It was like when he was running. It was impossible to stop.

When it was done, when every word was gone, he lay back. He looked at their faces, waiting for the horror to start, the anger, the hatred.

They didn’t come. Instead they stared at him with love and wonder, and Mrs Peaslake stroked his hair. ‘Our darling boy. Oh, George,’ she said.

‘Geh-org,’ said Mr Peaslake, trying out the sound of the hard Gs. ‘That’s how you say it, isn’t it, my boy?’

‘Yes,’ said Georg. It wasn’t quite right, but it would do. He wanted to sleep again. Instead he said, ‘I almost killed a man. But I couldn’t. I saved him even though I thought he was an enemy. Does that make me a coward?’

Mr Peaslake blinked, as though he had no answers for this. But Mrs Peaslake took his hand. ‘No. It means you’re brave.’

‘But Alan …’

‘A man’s life is still a life to save, enemy or not,’ said Mrs Peaslake firmly.

Alan killed enemies, Georg thought. So did Mud’s brothers.

It was as though Mrs Peaslake knew what he’d been thinking. ‘There’re times you have to kill things. People. Animals. What matters is that you know there’re only certain times you need to do it. What matters is that the rest of the time you’re kind. Our Alan is a hero.’ Her smile held tears, but it was a real smile too. ‘Two heroes in our family now. If Johnnie Chang had been an enemy he’d have been helpless in a strange country. He’d have been sent to a prison camp.’ She took a breath. ‘And it wouldn’t be a prison camp like our men are in either. I should hope we Aussies know a sight better than that.’

‘Too right,’ boomed Mr Peaslake. He looked at his wife and Georg with pride.

Georg nodded. It didn’t quite answer his question — he wasn’t sure he’d ever know what he should have done. But it was enough to go on with now. ‘What happens now? When will they take
me
to the prison camp?’

‘No prison camp,’ said Mr Peaslake.

‘But that’s where the German refugees have to go. All Germans. All Japanese.’

‘You’re English,’ said Mr Peaslake, still making an effort to be quiet. ‘Shh, no,’ as Georg tried to interrupt, to make him understand what being German meant these days, ‘let me speak now. It’s been a long day, son. Two long days and a long night. One of the coast watch gave me a number to ring. A high-up bloke. I asked him that very question, just in case what you said was true.

‘If you’ve got a genuine English passport then it doesn’t matter if you were born in Germany. Your dad was English, so you are too. We’ll have to inform the authorities that your mum’s probably still in Germany, but that’s all.’

‘Really?’

‘We wouldn’t lie to you,’ said Mrs Peaslake softly. The jumper she’s knitting looks just my size, thought Georg. ‘If you were an adult it might be different. In a bigger town maybe there’d be some strife — people who’d only see the German, not the boy. But you’re one of us now.’

‘Will Mud hate me?’ Somehow the thought of losing Mud’s friendship was as bad as losing what he now knew was home.

‘Mud?’ Mr Peaslake gave a hoot of laughter, then shushed as his wife nudged him. ‘Mud sticks to those she loves like, well, mud.’

‘No prison camp?’

‘No prison camp. Besides,’ his smile was real now, ‘you’re a hero, remember. Young Chang’s mum says she’s going to bake you a cake.’

‘I can bake all the cakes you’ll ever want.’ Mrs Peaslake gazed at him as though she didn’t want to drag her eyes away, her fingers
click, click, clicking
. ‘Georg.’ She stumbled a little over the unfamiliar name. ‘Do you think you might call me “Mum” now? And call Father “Dad”? We didn’t want to ask before, not till you knew us well. But we think of you as our own son.’

‘I … I already have a mother …’

‘Auntie then,’ she offered, undaunted.

Auntie Thel and Uncle Ron, the same as Mud? That felt wrong too.

‘How about Grandma and Grandpa?’ Mr Peaslake’s boom was as quiet as it ever got. ‘You got either of those?’

‘No.’

‘There you are then. You’ve got them now. That fit right with you?’

It did. It felt warm and solid, like the paddock rocks baked in the sun. The warmth comforted him as other memories came seeping back. The wireless broadcast last night. ‘The Japanese!’ How could he have forgotten? ‘Have they invaded us?’

‘What? No, calm down. It was just little subs in Sydney Harbour, that’s all. Nowhere near as bad as people thought at first. Won’t happen again. We’re onto them now.’ Mr Peaslake gave a half-smile. ‘I’m not just saying that, laddie. Mud’s brothers are up in New Guinea now, and their mates. Can you imagine the Japanese fighting an army of Muds? It’s not going to be easy. Or quick. But we’ll beat them.’

‘And … and my mother?’

Mr Peaslake was silent.

‘Do you … do you think she’s dead?’

Mrs Peaslake met his eyes. ‘Do you think she is?’

Georg was silent for a moment, trying to feel the thread that linked him to Mutti in his mind. For the first time he realised that Mutti might have changed as much as he had in the past few years. But somehow that small glow still lingered.

‘No,’ said Georg. ‘Papa … I know they killed Papa. But I don’t feel that Mutti is dead.’

‘Then she isn’t,’ said Mrs Peaslake. ‘If she’s like her son she’ll get through. And after the war is over she will be welcome here. But if you want to go back to Germany, well, you’re family now wherever you go.’

‘I won’t go back to Germany,’ said Georg. He hadn’t known that he thought that until he heard his voice saying the words. But it was true. Sometime in the last day he had become Australian. Gumtrees were in his heart.

‘You should sleep,’ said Mrs Peaslake. ‘We should all sleep.’

Yes, he could sleep now. Perhaps he could tell himself a story too, before he slept. Somehow he knew the stories would come again now. Good stories: of life and hope.

‘Mud will be in later at visiting hours.’ Mr Peaslake’s voice was a boom again. The nurse glanced over at them, irritated. ‘Her mum is coming too.’

And that felt right as well.

Mrs Peaslake bent and kissed him. ‘Sleep well,’ she said. ‘Georg.’

He smiled as he shut his eyes.

Chapter 42

Dreams came, but it wasn’t quite a dream, for he knew he wasn’t asleep yet. There was the ship: not the ship he had sailed on but one much like it, still war-time grey, even though the war was over; men and women staring over the rail with limp hair from long days at sea, carrying cardboard suitcases; and children wide-eyed from too many years of fear, but excited too.

And there among the crowd was a woman. She didn’t look like the Mutti he had left. She had a thin face that had forgotten how to smile, and deep-set eyes. No flowered dress this time; and short hair instead of the curls under a green scarf.

But it was as though a bit of string led from him to her. She saw him as she stood at the rail. He saw her face crumple as he waved; heard a sob in sympathy from his grandmother behind him.

‘Is it her?’ asked Mud urgently. Because of course Mud was there. Impossible to leave Mud out, even in dreams. Mud had helped him paint Mutti’s bedroom, had knitted her a jumper that was, of course, more holes than jumper.

He nodded, still waving.

Mutti lifted a hand in a tentative wave. And then at last she smiled.

They had waited so long for this day: ever since the telegram from Aunt Miriam, and then the letters sent via the Red Cross. Mutti’s letters had told a little of the camp where she had been finally sent after her years working with the anti-Nazi underground, and how she had survived it. But she spoke much more about those who had sheltered her, during the war and after: strangers who gave and who helped. If hatred was contagious, perhaps kindness was too.

Then there were no more letters because Mutti was on the ship, and the ship was sailing here, with other ‘displaced persons’.

Would this continent ever be home to someone who had spent so much of their life in another one, even if that homeland had imprisoned them and taken what they loved? Could Mutti become part of a family just because it was already her son’s?

They had both changed so much. He knew, though, that this wasn’t an ending, but another beginning and a good one.

A small eruption at the other end of the hospital ward woke him. Mud’s voice said urgently, ‘I don’t
care
if it’s not visiting hours yet! I’m his
friend
!’

Her footsteps thudded down the ward. ‘George! Why didn’t you
tell
me? Do we call you Georg now?’

‘Shh,’ said the nurse. ‘He’s supposed to be resting.’

The dream faded. But it left him with a smile.

Epilogue

There is no true ending to this story. Lives go on. Children grow up and have children; those children live new stories of their own.

Enemies change. One enemy becomes ‘just like us’; and new enemies are found. But the stories of friends, families and love continue too. So this book ends not where the story does, but with a glimpse.

It was a rainy day — grey sky, grey air — but welcome after too many blue days of drought. Umbrellas dripped in the university hall. No one quite knew where to put them.

The graduation ceremony was over. The young man stood in his mortarboard, his family around him. His mother, thin, with short white hair, defiantly bare shoulders despite the rain, despite the tattoo on her arm, which for the rest of her life she would refuse to hide. She was a student at this university too now, strong enough to accept that she was older, different from the others.

His grandma clucked like a happy hen. His grandpa stood like a proud rooster, a new Box Brownie camera in his hands. The
young man’s best friend strode over to them, her own mortarboard under her arm, wearing a black gown with different coloured lining, her parents and brothers hurrying in her wake.

‘Let’s have a photo of the both of you.’ Mr Peaslake’s boom rose over the chatter of the crowd. ‘Mud, you stand there, and Georg.’ Mr Peaslake waved his camera.

Mud smiled as Georg took her hand. That was how the camera captured both of them: smiling, hand in hand, two mothers and a father behind, an aunt-grandmother, and brothers on either side.

The camera clicked.

Later they would all go out, into the rain, to the restaurant table Mud had booked — a strange restaurant for Australia, where they served spaghetti and salads with things called olives instead of slices of orange and hard-boiled eggs — a place Georg and Mud had found in their first year as university students, and wanted to celebrate in now. A place where the cook and waiter had once been enemies, but now were …

Us.

Author’s Notes

The incidents in this book are based on real events, although they happened to many different people, from the graduation ceremony that ended with students thrown through the window, to the child hidden in a suitcase and the Japanese ‘spotter’ planes that flew above the towns on the New South Wales south coast in the months before and after the submarine raid on Sydney.

It wasn’t until fifty years later that the public was told just how many submarines had lurked off the Australian coast, some large enough to launch small planes.

Of course the Japanese never did invade.

In late 1943 a news clip was shown in moving picture houses in Tokyo, showing Japanese bombers destroying Canberra and politicians running away in terror. The news clip said that Japanese forces had already taken over Australia, but it was a fake — a propaganda movie made in Japan. Back then, though, as the Japanese relentlessly conquered one country after another, it seemed inevitable that Australia too would soon be invaded.

Historians are divided on whether invasion was imminent when first the Australians and then the combined Australian
and United States forces began to beat the Japanese army back in New Guinea: the first time in that war that the Japanese forces had been defeated. Perhaps the bombing of Darwin and other towns, as well as the attack on Sydney Harbour, were only to disrupt the supply lines to troops in New Guinea. At the time, however, the invasion seemed both near and real.

H
EAD MEASUREMENTS

Racial Studies was part of the Nazi school curriculum. The idea that you can tell a person’s race or intelligence or leadership ability by measuring their head is a myth. I have based the story of a Jewish boy who was told he had a ‘perfect Aryan head’ on an oral account from a survivor of the Holocaust. You too may hear it at the Jewish Museum in Sydney.

H
ITLER AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Georg’s mother wasn’t Jewish but she, like anyone who opposed Hitler, would have faced a concentration camp. The tattoo on her arm would have been the number tattooed on all the inhabitants of concentration camps.

By 1939, when this book begins, Jewish people had been forbidden to participate in many professions in Germany, including lecturing at universities. Nor would there have been Jewish university students. But many people in Germany back then whose grandparents or even a great-grandparent had been Jewish didn’t consider themselves Jewish. They might have been practising Christians, or atheists. In some cases they may not even have known that one grandparent had been Jewish. But
once the connection was discovered by the Gestapo or by fervent young ‘Brown Shirts’, the descendant was then classified by the German state as a
Jude —
a Jew. The radical Nazi students in this book who threw their classmates out of the window would have been hunting through the families of their fellow students, looking for Jewish ancestors.

Georg’s father didn’t consider himself Jewish. He was English and, like many Germans, would have been horrified by the campaign against Jewish people. But, as one man who had lived through those times told me, hating the things your government does is not a reason to abandon the country you love. Georg’s father might also have considered his work as more important than politics. The worst horrors of the concentration camps were still to come in 1939, and even at their height from 1942 to 1945, many Germans or people in German-occupied countries didn’t know of them, nor knew of a way to protest in a country facing the hardships and horrors of war and bombing.