Sirius (15 page)

Unbelievable that this man, of all people, now has a Jewish dog at the end of his lead.

The dog still clearly remembers the day when Father Liliencron said: “It’s dangerous out there if you have a Jewish name. We’ll find a beautiful new name for you. Then you can give the Aryans the run around.”

And so Levi became Sirius.

Now the danger is even greater. Sirius is living in the lair of a Hauptsturmführer who has pledged his allegiance to the swastika of the master race.

One needs to be called Hansi to survive in a place like that.

*

The Wünsches live in a house on Bülowstraße, not far from Kleistpark, where the office of the Reich Ministry for Nature Conservation is located. So Erwin Wünsche only has a short commute, and often comes home for lunch.

Their townhouse isn’t bad for an official of the Department for Bird Protection. The Traube family, the former owners of the Traube screw factory, certainly used to feel at home here. That is until their property was Aryanised, and the Traubes deported.

One of the property’s most impressive features is the garden. And it’s so much more than a garden; more like a large market garden. Vegetable beds, herb beds, flower beds, fruit trees, greenhouses. The Wünsche family feeds itself from its own soil.

Grapes are the only thing they don’t have. Not one single grape. That would be too disrespectful. Other than that, everything that the German soil can produce grows here.

“Your tomatoes are the best,” Göring once said. One tomato even made its way to the Führer, and he was allegedly very impressed by it. The Führer is completely uncompromising when it comes to tomatoes. If there’s something he can judge, then it’s tomatoes. After all, he himself predominantly eats organic food.

Cooking is a woman’s business. That’s why, in the garden and the kitchen, Erwin Wünsche’s wife Gertrud commands the regiment. She has a sturdy, rugged figure, perfectly suited for garden graft. In fact, whenever she lays down the spade or hoe she looks strangely incomplete.

People whose daily work takes place in the plant kingdom tend to enjoy talking about it of an evening, but seldom reap any interest. It is the same for Gertrud.

“The caterpillars are at the savoy cabbage again,” she complains.

“Are they?” replies Erwin, elsewhere in his thoughts.

“The radishes are already coming up,” says Gertrud cheerfully.

“Good,” says Erwin.

What else can one say in response to that? Erwin has other problems. The Final Solution to the Jewish Question is a done deal. Eleven million Jews from all over Europe are on the death lists. The first trains to the Auschwitz extermination camp are already setting off. How can it all be made to go smoothly?

“Gassing. Will it really work?” asks Erwin.

“No idea,” says Gertrud.

“Eleven million of them!” cries Erwin.

“Uh-huh,” responds Gertrud briefly.

She simply isn’t interested in his work-related problems. And as it happens, the Final Solution isn’t Wünsche’s problem either. He works in the Department for Bird Protection. But all the authorities are closely interconnected, and career progression can be an unpredictable thing.

Take Dr. Manfred Gürtel, for example. He is Wünsche’s direct superior in the Reich Ministry of Forests. Gürtel will soon be transferred to the Reich Main Security Office to lead Department 211 of “Chartered Trains”. People with good organizational skills are in demand right now.

Erwin Wünsche has good organizational skills. Recently Göring ordered 5,000 nesting boxes for Carinhall, his hunting estate in the Schorfheide forest. It takes a lot of wood to make 5,000 nesting boxes. And Göring’s order was: “On the double!” Wunsche mastered the task. Might he possibly become Gürtel’s successor? Why didn’t they take
him
instead of Gürtel?

These are the questions that are worrying him. It’s hard for a Hauptsturmführer to switch off at the end of the working day. One seldom sees him sitting in the armchair; instead, he tends to pace up and down the living room, nervous, silent, lost in thought. Five thousand nest boxes, Department 211, Gürtel, on the double.

The children loiter around, bored. They wear their Hitler Youth uniforms even at home.

“Play with Hansi!” calls their mother.

The children look at each other, clueless. They don’t really know what to do with Hansi. Ulrich, the patrol leader, throws the dog his swastika armband and calls “Catch!”

Sirius flinches. This is supposed to be fun?

Rudi, the
Jungvolk
newbie, picks up a cushion and presses it down onto the dog’s head.

“You’re dead!” he cries.

Sirius yelps and scampers away.

“Hansi can’t play,” complain the children. “He’s stupid.”

“Then find something respectable to read,” says their mother. “Read the
Stürmer
.”

Ulrich and Rudi fetch the torch instead, then go into the garden and hunt for snails, which they jeeringly hack to pieces with a spade.

The
Volksempfänger
radio broadcasts the request show for the Wehrmacht. Magda Hain sings
Seagull, You’re Flying Home
. Sirius feels sad. Oh, how he would love to be that seagull right now.

Before going to bed each evening, Gertrud polishes her husband’s boots back to a high shine. At night, the boots Sirius has been afraid of his entire life stand right next to his basket. What a nightmare.

Moonlight falls through the window. The Big Dog is in the starry sky, and he’s worried. After all, he can see how much the little dog is suffering. Sirius is afraid that they’ve long forgotten him on the other side of the world.

*

Forgotten him? Not in the slightest! John Ringling North, the circus director, has alerted the Crowns about what happened, the Crowns went straight to Jack Warner, Jack Warner even asked the President of the United States for help, and Roosevelt in turn immediately sent diplomatic cables to all the U.S. ambassadors. All in vain.

But how could they hope to be successful? The dog has disappeared without a trace, he could be anywhere in the world. Or, in the worst case scenario, no longer in the world at all.

Rahel is in floods of tears, inconsolable in her grief.

Carl stares into the distance, horror-stricken. Sirius was his life. Without his dog, there is no reason to get up in the morning.

The circus director is beside himself. The Greatest Show on Earth stands or falls by Hercules. His name is in block capitals on all the posters.

He is top of the bill.

Jack Warner is cursing. Who will rescue old Rome now? And Hollywood without Hercules? Unthinkable.

Not to mention the hearts of the nation. Hercules has won over an audience of millions. What if the people find out that their sweetheart has disappeared without a trace?

An absolute catastrophe.

Jack Warner calls for absolute silence on the matter. After all, there’s still hope. Soon the Turk will be back. He is the only one who knows where Sirius ended up.

Sirius – each of them now suddenly realize – changed all of their lives. He is their fate.

And yet all he wanted to do was play. He played into the hearts of the people, even when he was still called Levi and receiving two nut triangles for a performance. Then he transformed himself into Sirius, and his star rose in Hollywood. Hercules was his greatest role, and he was even in the Greatest Show on Earth.

A small dog, but such a great transformation artist. No-one knows who he
really
is.

“He was always fleeing from something,” says Carl sadly. “Perhaps this time he really managed it.”

“Don’t say that!” protests Rahel, bursting into tears again.

Secretly, even she fears that they will never see Sirius again. Where could he be? Long gone across the mountains? Somewhere on the ocean? Or on land, together with other dogs. Happy. The most important thing is that he’s happy.

The Turk returns.

He turns up on the doorstep one day, not suspecting a thing. He has three fox terriers with him, of differing sizes, as agreed.

Manzini rushes towards him.

“Where’s Hercules?” he shouts, before going on to explain what happened.

The Turk goes pale with shock. He stammers his story, aware that he is unleashing even greater unhappiness with every word.

Carl and Rahel listen breathlessly.

As soon as the story reaches German soil, they all shudder.

“Germany?” calls Carl in disbelief.

The Turk suspects that the news of where the story ends will be equally disquieting: Berlin.

“Berlin?” shrieks Rahel.

Yes, that’s how life plays out. Sirius isn’t just playing with life; life is playing with Sirius too. That’s the magic we call fate.

Manzini knows this. He smiles and thinks to himself that, in a way, his time machine did work after all.

Sirius is back where he came from. He has saved everyone, the Liliencrons, the settlers in Luckyville, the princess on the South Pacific island of “Hula” – and now he himself needs to be saved.

He desperately needs a guardian angel.

And there happens to be one in his very own family. But Jewish guardian angels don’t have permission to land in Berlin.

*

The days in the Wünsche household drag by slowly. They begin with the Hauptsturmführer marching off to the office, then the children trot off to school – and from then on Sirius is alone, for Gertrud disappears off into her vegetable beds.

She crawls through the lettuce, she scrabbles through the turnips, she weeds and plucks. Her head is hard to make out amidst all the heads of cabbage. Now and then she sits up, stretches her crooked back and groans.

She has tried to make use of Hansi for the garden work, in the area of snail extermination for example, but he’s useless. He is repulsed by snails. And by Gertrud too. Her rustic features, the crude clothing, the chapped hands, everything is a horror to him. The hobgoblin with the apron just doesn’t fit into his idea of what a woman should be. Impossible to believe that she is of the same gender as Gloria Hayson, Carole Lombard and Rahel.

The clock hands creep towards midday. The house begins to smell of stew, sometimes with peas, sometimes with potatoes.

The Hauptsturmführer has to swallow whatever Gertrud has brewed up for him. The dish also dictates the topics of conversation.

“Peas are very healthy,” says Gertrud.

“And green,” comments her husband.

“Potatoes,” says Gertrud with contentment.

“German potatoes,” corrects her husband.

Ulrich and Rudi sit there silently at the table. They try to follow the adults’ conversation.

Once the last pea has been chewed, the Hauptsturmführer gets up, clicks his heels together and goes back to the office.

Now the afternoon stretches before Sirius; a seemingly endless lowland of boredom with only the odd small crest to awake his interest.

Sometimes the postman rings the doorbell. Sometimes the wind slams a window shut. Sometimes the kettle whistles on the stove. But nothing more than that.

The children obediently do their homework.

“Name Kriemhild’s three brothers in the
Song of the Nibelungs
,” murmurs Ulrich.

“Gunther, Gernot and Giselher,” calls Rudi proudly.

Good to know.

Ulrich claps the book shut. He wants to play now instead.

“Hansi,” he calls, waking the dog, “come on, we’re going Jew-hunting!”

The dog doesn’t know the game. Nor does it sound like one he would like to know. But the children tug him out onto the street regardless.

“Here,” says Ulrich, the patrol leader, holding a scrap of material under Hansi’s nose. “This is what Jews smell like.”

The material comes from a coat that the Gestapo ripped from an old man’s body the day before. Ulrich happened to walk past just as the man was seized. He picked up the coat and tore off the breast pocket with the Jewish star.

The dog is now expected to pick up the trail. The children spur him on. They chase him into dark doorways, up flights of stairs, and before every apartment door they call excitedly: “Can you smell them?”

Sirius pretends to be sniffing around. After all, he doesn’t want to be a spoilsport. The children wait eagerly for the fruits of his tracking instinct.

Nothing, again.

He could, of course, play with fire and occasionally act as though he’s on the right track. The children would be delighted. They would praise him and pamper him.

But that wasn’t an option. The children could then batter at the door, and perhaps they really would find what they were looking for. Then Sirius would be a snitch. That’s what people call Jews who betray their own people in order to rescue themselves.

No, Sirius would rather be a failure than risk that. Rudi kicks him in disappointment.

“Hansi is stupid,” announces Ulrich that evening to his father. A report of their failed hunt follows.

The father reminds them that it wasn’t the easiest of tasks. Of the 160,000 Berlin Jews, he estimates, only 15,000 remain. Hidden all over the city. In cellars, in attics, in back rooms.

“So it’s entirely possible that you’ll often come away empty-handed.”

“He won’t hunt for snails, either,” says Gertrud sadly.

“Maybe he’s just not a hunting dog,” suggests Rudi.

“A German dog that isn’t a hunting dog?” exclaims the father in outrage. “There’s no such thing.”

“But,” it suddenly occurs to him, “that’s how it is with the Jews. No-one can smell them, not anywhere.”

*

Sirius has discovered a hole in the garden fence, between the elderberries and the hydrangeas, and he slips out through it whenever he’s in the mood for some distraction.

He wanders through Berlin, in whatever direction the wind takes him, always taking care not to lose sight of the way back.

Where is this war that everyone is always talking about? Sirius imagines war to be loud and wild; like the shoot-out in the saloon at Luckyville, only bigger.

But instead the city is eerily quiet. The streets are empty, cars and buses are a rare sight. Petrol has been rationed. People go to places on foot. They have grey, serious faces. They queue in front of the few shops which still exist, in the hope of getting some food in exchange for ration coupons. Meat and bread are rationed too.