“I knew it. I knew you would make trouble.” Liebrich paced up and down at the end of Sarah’s cot, practically growling. “The last thing we need is Von Scharnhorst making this dorm her latest pet project. Damn you, Haller.”
Sarah was sat cross-legged on the bed, hastily written pages spread out in front of her. She scanned the lines over and over. Some songs, like “The Banner”, were easy – she was familiar with the tune – but two of them she’d never heard before. With no melody to hang the words on, they just drifted away, autumn leaves blowing off their branches.
“You aren’t making this any easier,” Sarah murmured.
“I mean, what rock have you been under that you don’t know these songs?”
“Yes, that was it, I was under a rock. Not in Spain, under a rock. My best friend was a worm,” Sarah said icily.
“Don’t get smart, Haller.”
“Well, we can’t all be like you, can we?”
Liebrich thought about that for a moment. Two of the other girls getting ready for bed behind her stifled a laugh. Liebrich clenched her fists by her side. “If you don’t make die Eiskönigin happy tomorrow, you’ll have another hair-pulling session here right afterwards.”
“I’ll look forward to it. Bring a hat.”
Sarah didn’t look up. She didn’t care about Liebrich any more. There were bigger sausages to fry.
“Lights out,” called a voice and the girls hurried to their cots. Sarah shuffled into the bed and tried to wrap herself in the sheet. Liebrich had lied. It was nowhere near warm enough.
Sarah was running headlong down the alley. She had scratched her cheek and could feel blood running down her chin.
“JUDE!” screamed a voice behind her.
“JU-DE,” other voices chanted, more distantly.
She glanced back to see how far they were behind her and totally failed to see the three boys from the Hitlerjugend, the Hitler Youth, until she was right on top of them. The tallest, a boy who looked about fifteen, seized her wrists and dragged her to a halt.
“Look, it’s the little golden Jewess.” He flung her against a wall and wiped his palms on his uniform trousers. The rough brick tore at her back through the thin cotton of her dress.
“You’ve got your hands dirty now, Bernt,” said one of the others, slouching against the wall. They were almost twice her size, too big to fight but young enough to keep up with her if she got away. She tried not to breathe heavily, but the moment was too much for her and she ended up panting like a dog.
“They shouldn’t be out soiling up the place,” muttered the other, blocking Sarah’s escape on the opposite side and making a wet snorting sound.
“Yeah, we should make them wash. Don’t you think, Martin?”
Martin stooped and spat in Sarah’s face. The phlegm was hot as it slapped across her cheek, splashing into her eye before coming to rest on her ear. She waited for it to slough away, staring at the ground. She knew better than to look them in the eye at this point. Her only defence was their boredom. I am nothing, I am not worth bothering with. Walk away.
“What’s a Jew doing with that hair, anyway? Eh?” The leader seized one of her curls and pulled slowly. This was new and she wasn’t sure how to play it. Seeing her confusion, he tugged quickly and tore the hair from her scalp. She cried out despite herself and she could feel the tears coming.
Don’t you dare cry, dumme Schlampe. Better they take every hair on your head than be that weak.
My lovely, lovely hair.
You vain little Hure. You shouldn’t even have hair that colour.
The boys laughed and reached for her head.
“Is this what the master race is doing these days? Bullying a little girl?” The voice made them stagger and turn. “That making you feel big and important?”
The butcher was huge. Tall and broad shouldered, his arms were rounded and merged seamlessly into his bald head without stopping for a neck. The front of his white coat was soaked red, with gleaming patches where it was still wet. In his hand was a chalef, a long cleaver, with a glittering edge.
In the silence a sphere of blood formed at the end of the blade and dripped onto the cobbles.
“Move on, old man. This is Reich business,” Bernt stated, but his voice quavered.
“The business of the Reich? Children menacing children?” He swapped the cleaver into his right hand. The blood left a trail across the ground. “You’ve got until I count to five to get lost. One.”
The boys looked at one another.
Bernt stepped forward. “We don’t take orders from a Jew.”
“Two.”
“You take orders from us.” Behind him, Martin took a step to the right.
“Three.”
The third boy looked at Martin. Martin shrugged. “Bernt…” Martin whispered.
“Shut up,” Bernt hissed, but Martin shuffled further away.
“Four.” The butcher took a step forward and the third boy ran. Bernt took an involuntary step backwards and Martin was gone.
“This isn’t over, Israel…”
“Five.”
Bernt ran. He stopped ten metres away and cried out, “Not for you. Not for your little Hure.”
The butcher turned slowly towards him, but the boy was gone.
He breathed out slowly and shook his head. He crouched down and shook off his coat. He laid the cleaver down gently onto its folds and covered it with a sleeve. Sarah was shaking. He reached out to her, but she pulled away.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right, it’s all right,” he shushed, pulling a bloody handkerchief from a pocket. He reached over and moved the wet hair from her face. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have risked the blade on those low lifes. Too precious.” He gently cleaned the spittle from her face with the cloth that smelled of meat. “When I do this for my son, I usually spit on it, you know?” He laughed gently.
“Those boys…” Sarah whispered.
“They’re gone, it’s over,” shushed the butcher.
“It’s not over,” she rasped. “They’ll come back and there’ll be more of them, and the SA and…aren’t you scared?”
The butcher’s eyes were small brown walnuts in a giant suet pudding. He wasn’t.
“Rapunzel, there were pogroms before, there’ll be little Arschlöcher like that throwing stones through my son’s windows in the years to come. Nothing changes. Yet we remain. I can’t be scared that there’s a storm. It rains. It stops. It’ll rain again. Are you scared of the rain?” he asked with mock seriousness.
“No.”
“The thunder or the lightning?” He smiled.
“No.” Sarah giggled, unexpectedly, like a hiccup. It was like a ray of sunshine through the cloud.
“See? Now, you’d better get home.”
The sky darkened and the air grew cold. Sarah looked up at the butcher. His smile faded and the light in his eyes grew dull. His right cheek swelled, the skin bruising and blistering, finally cracking with dark blood. The growth spread across the white of his eyeball and it turned a dark red-black. His nose grew and snapped to the right, his lips thickening even as broken teeth pushed through them. The sky was night and the world was lit by fire and screaming. As the butcher sank to his knees, Sarah could see that the floor was littered with broken glass that twinkled like a million stars, as the boots crashed past. About his neck was hanging a board hacked into a crude Star of David and the rope was tight around his throat. He opened his mouth and leaned towards her. Blood and vomit spilled down the yellow paint.
The blood was running down her face, the vomit in her hair.
She wanted to scream but couldn’t; her pulse was hammering in her ears like her head was about to explode. She needed to scream, she needed to force all this away by the power of her voice but nothing came out. She took a long breath, opened her mouth. But still nothing came out.
“Haller.” Small hands reached out to her. Sarah knocked them aside and tried to squirm away.
“Haller! Shhhh…”
Sarah looked into the Mouse’s face, unmistakeable in the moonlight.
“You’re having a nightmare.”
Sarah stopped fighting. She was slick with sweat and the sheets were damp. The big eyes of the Mouse blinked enquiringly.
“No dogs.” Sarah sniggered mirthlessly, rubbing her eyes.
“You like dogs? I like dogs. They’re nice. Maybe a bit smelly,” the Mouse burbled. “What were you dreaming about?”
“I was dreaming about Kristall…” Her skin went cold.
She struggled to think straight, pulling the leaves of sleep from her mind. What would she know about that night, as one of them? What would she call it? Not the Novemberpogrome…no, she was right. Kristallnacht. It was a beautiful name they gave to something so horrific. She shook her head and muttered something incoherent.
“It was a bit scary, wasn’t it? With all that screaming.” The Mouse paused. “Wouldn’t you have been in Spain?”
Dumme Schlampe.
“I wasn’t there…I was just dreaming…the Jews were all getting away. No one was listening to me. It’s silly…”
“No, that would have been horrible.” The Mouse nodded as she spoke and seemed content. Sarah tried to marshal her thoughts. The lie, the consequences, the meaning…what would Ursula Haller’s next question be?
“What was it like? Kristallnacht, I mean?”
“I was home for Memorial Day. It was very exciting, I suppose. You know, the Jews getting punished and the will of the people and everything. But the glass was everywhere, in all the streets, even where there were no Jewish shops and it took ages to get cleaned up and I had it in my hair and my shoes were ruined and…”
“Mouse.” A voice spoke out of the darkness. “Shut up.”
The Mouse pulled a face. “You should sleep so you’re ready for tomorrow evening,” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone. “How are you getting on?”
“I don’t know the tunes to half of them. It makes it harder to remember.”
“Oh, that’s easy, I’ll sing them for you. You lie down and sleep and I’ll sing them, then you’ll remember. Go on.”
Sarah couldn’t think of what to say. She lay back on the sheet and rolled over, feeling the Mouse lie down behind her.
Sarah didn’t want to be touched. It had been a very long time since someone had held her, deliberately, voluntarily, without seeking to deceive someone or hurt her. But the Mouse did not touch her. She just lay ten centimetres away, too close for comfort, too far away to truly matter. Her little willowy voice croaked into life, half-whispering, half-singing, like a faulty gramophone.
“We stay in solidarity under our shining flag, all together.
There we find ourselves as one people. No one walks alone now,
No one walks alone now.
All together, we stay dutiful to God, the Führer, and the blood…”
Sarah began to slip away, into a misty evening harbour road and the distant sound of dogs.
“We want to be as one, all together: Germany, you shall stay alight.
We will see your honour in your bright light.”
“Mouse,” snarled the voice in the darkness. “Shut. Your. Mouth.”