The food at Rothenstadt was cold and disgusting. It had once been fried, but that had been a long time ago. Like most things in the Third Reich, the school’s veneer of excellence was a sham, but even knowing this, the quality shocked Sarah. The weeks of eating the Captain’s rich and expensive leftovers had made Sarah soft. She gathered the hollow longing for apple cake and hid it deep inside her box. She had, she reminded herself, eaten far worse and at least this came on a dirty plate, rather than from a dustbin.
Classes were easy. Sarah had been worried about being behind the other girls in arithmetic and algebra, subjects that never came easily to her even before she lost her tutor. But there were no proper sums, or science, or much of anything that she would have recognized as a normal school day. The watchwords appeared to be Kinder, Küche, Kirche – children, kitchen, church – the religious component being National Socialism. There were classes in housekeeping, childcare and, ironically, cooking. Sarah was up to most domestic tasks. She’d pretty much run her household for the last few years on increasingly meagre rations and supplies.
The rest seemed like a parody of an education. There were exercises that sounded like maths questions but were all about how much the Jews stole from the Fatherland. Geography talked about the Germans being harassed in Poland. History was all about the Volk – the people – and their achievements. The answers were unimportant; the message was everything.
Any failure, any dubious reply, any work that didn’t measure up to the school’s frustratingly vague standards resulted in being struck across the palm of the hand with a ruler. Some teachers administered this punishment with only cursory attention. Sarah saw girls who didn’t even wince as the wood bounced across their skin. Other teachers took their responsibility far more seriously. One such woman was Fräulein Langefeld.
Fräulein Langefeld carried, or rather wielded, a thick metre-long stick, which she tapped impatiently against the dais at the end of the classroom. Her voice followed its staccato rhythm, each word a weapon, her face pulled into an everlasting frown of sharp distaste. Her stick was used too hard, too often, her tongue clenched between her teeth.
The prime target of her simmering discontent appeared to be the Mouse. The harder Langefeld hit, the more the Mouse stuttered; the higher the upswing of the wood, the deeper the fear in her round eyes. Sarah found herself turning away rather than having to see it.
Dumb. Monster.
Sarah preferred to move in the shadows. It paid to go unnoticed, to watch and not be watched. But over the course of that first day, Sarah realized this was impossible. Word had spread. Von Scharnhorst had set Sarah an impossible task and her pet maniac Rahn was going to tear Sarah’s scalp off. Sarah saw the glances, nudges and whispers. Die Eiskönigin, the Ice Queen, had a new target. The girls pitied her but were relieved. While Haller sat at the bottom of the pile, they weren’t there. Dumb. Monsters.
Sarah pushed open the heavy double doors to the music room as carefully as she could. The small hall was empty and smelled of mildew. Against the far wall, a pile of songbooks formed an irregular tower. Every copy of We Girls Sing! was yellowed and tatty, held together with sticky tape, but to her intense relief, the Mouse was right. The book had all the words and music she needed to learn.
The piano was cheap and dusty. Clearly Herr Bauer’s fastidiousness didn’t extend beyond his office. In fact everything Sarah had seen so far suggested the school was a rotten apple, shiny and whole on the surface but writhing with decay inside.
Sarah tapped a key. The ivory plating on the bottom C was even held down by the same sticky tape, making it tacky to touch. She sat on the stool and played scales across the octaves. The rollers thudded noisily under the lid and the strings revealed themselves to be minutely out of tune. Sarah grunted and began working through the songbook.
The tunes were triumphant, even jolly. Some were old German folk songs that Sarah could easily recognize, romantic visions of common purpose. Some she had heard from the passing Hitler Youth – these were more boisterous, more martial, full of darkness and blood. The women were giving, yielding, suffering, yet somehow they were also to be strong, united and proud. Go east, avenge the wrongs, free the German folk…our people to arms!
It was enticing, almost hypnotic, following the notes tripping across the stave. Her voice began quietly but grew in volume. It rose and fell, taking in the words, putting them in the right place for later: “Germany awake and end the…”
Sarah stopped. That was wrong. She knew this one. She heard it chanted endlessly by boys with stones and spittle. “Germany awake and death to the Jew”, that’s how it went. Yet here it said “and end the suffering”. Whose suffering? The Jews’? Not the goyim? How had they suffered? Sarah was annoyed. Why was it changed? Were the girls supposed to ignore the pogrom? Did they not know? Of course they knew. It wasn’t possible not to know.
Wasn’t it?
“‘End the suffering’. That’s the next bit.”
Sarah froze as the scent of oranges filled her nostrils. She read the lie on the page and against her will, her irritation oozed out.
“It’s ‘death to the Jew’. Why is it different here?” Sarah snapped. “Are you – are we ashamed of it?” Shut up, shut up, shut up, dumme Schlampe.
Behind her, Sarah heard Sturmbannführer Foch take two more steps into the room. Sarah felt a creeping chill, like she’d walked out of the house with wet hair in December. She began to play “Volk, ans Gewehr!” again. In the smeary surface of the open lid, she saw the officer come closer.
“It isn’t necessary for women to be part of that action. Theirs is to raise the family and leave the removal of the Jews from public life to us. No one is dying,” he said soothingly.
“Death…” Sarah murmured, looking down.
“The excitement of youth,” he assured her.
A hand rested on her shoulder. Sarah tried to keep playing. The piece was simple, too simple for her to concentrate on. She wanted to pull away, push the hand off and back into a corner.
The Sturmbannführer spoke again. “Do you know any Beethoven, Haller?”
Nothing. There were no notes in her head. Think of something. Say anything. She was being pathetic. Pathétique. Sarah nearly laughed. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8. Pathétique. The notes filled her head.
She smacked the keys with venom; she reined it in, then struck again. The gentleness that followed belied the tension, the suggestion of anger and pain. Noise, peace, darkness, light.
The start of this piece had always been fun. It had felt like summoning demons and monsters and lightning before controlling them with the pedals and fingertips. Not this time.
Sarah let her hands run across the keyboard with an unfelt joy and settled into a rocking lullaby, a lullaby of approaching storm clouds, lightning and destruction. This time her hands weren’t free to run. They tugged back just as freedom beckoned. Then the notes flowed in a torrent of trills and runs, the emotion lost in the technical effort. Just numbers and fingertips, mathematics and memory.
The hand tightened on her shoulder. She lost her place, rippling into discord and error. She stopped, the last mistake resonating dully under the lid.
“It’s been a while, Sturmbannführer.”
“That’s fine, Gretel. Next time you’ll play it right.”
“Ursula, sir.” He’s funny, the Mouse had said. Was this what she’d meant?
The hand vanished from her shoulder. “Of course. Carry on.”
She watched his dark shape shrink and vanish in the piano’s reflection. Somewhere an unseen clock ticked. Count the seconds, wait, take control.
The room was nearly dark. The light in the window was fading and reddening.
Sunset.
Sarah gathered We Girls Sing! to her chest and made for the door.
The room was hot, stiflingly so. A fire was playing in the hearth and the pointed flag tacked crudely to the wall above it rippled slowly in the rising air. The steamy window trickled in its struggle to keep out the cold or withstand the heat inside. But that wasn’t what made the atmosphere so oppressive. The room dripped with a leery, vicious condescension that coated the peeling walls like mould.
Sarah stood to attention in the centre of the room. A trickle of sweat slid down her back, escaping her gathered waistband and continuing downwards. It gave her the uncomfortable feeling that she had wet herself. Get your act together, dumme Schlampe. No rehearsal, this: the press and honoured guests await, the electric lights are on, the curtains open.
The Ice Queen occupied the ancient leather armchair like a throne, one leg lazily draped over the other, and her hands extended along the arms, long fingernails scratching the edges absent-mindedly. Her hair was escaping the plait that ran around her head and a fringe now hung over one of her lamp-like blue eyes. There were smirks and whispers from the older girls in the shadows. Sarah knew Elsa would be there, near enough to touch.
The words she needed squirmed and writhed in the front of Sarah’s mind, but she pushed them aside. They would come when called, or they would not. There was nothing to be gained from grabbing frantically at them now.
“Head up, eyes front, new girl. Your posture is appalling.”
Sarah stared at the BDM pennant. It was cheap and had loose threads. The eagle was roughly sewn and almost comical, like an injured chicken. “Shall I start?” Sarah asked carefully.
“When I say.”
From the corner of her eye, Sarah watched Rahn unfold herself from her slouching position next to the Ice Queen’s chair, like a house spider Sarah had once seen after a fly had crashed, buzzing, into its web.
Rahn stalked past Sarah, uncomfortably close. She listened to the taller girl pace back and forth slowly over the carpet behind her.
“You see,” the Ice Queen began softly, “you’re here for two reasons. Firstly, our people are destined for great things, but the future will be hard won. Only those who can function under stress are worthy of raising the next generation.” Her voice was reasonable, even friendly, but not to be crossed. “It’s survival of the fittest…and we will be the fittest. All others will be cast aside.”
Rahn coiled a muscular arm around Sarah’s neck and began to tighten it slowly. Stale sweat and cheap soap filled her nostrils. Rough fingertips ran across her scalp and through her hair.
“The other reason is you have some catching up to do, and I’ve found that pain is a terrific motivator. Really focuses the mind.”
As the arm squeezed, Sarah had to stand on tiptoes to breathe. The hand closed around a fistful of hair and pulled slowly until it was taut on her scalp. The first few hairs tore away; a squall of lightning pinpricks peppered her head.
“Not that much, Rahn,” chided Von Scharnhorst gently. “She’s got a long way to go yet. Don’t want her looking like a Polack labourer, do we?”
The hand released the clump of hair so it fell over her brow, but neatly wrapped a smaller lock around a finger and heaved. Sarah sucked at her teeth as three strands snapped away with tiny popping noises. The finger froze as her scalp howled.
“So you may begin.”
Your cue. Sarah licked her dry lips and began to sing.
“In the east, the flags are raised,
By the easterly wind they are praised…
Then they sound the signal to depart,
And our blood responds in our hearts…”
The words arrived on cue, joined hands with the melody and fell from her mouth to a military beat.
“The answer comes from that place,
And it has a German face.
For that, many have bled…
This is what that earth has said.”
Her voice grew more powerful as she got into her stride, letting defiance creep into her tone.
“In the easterly wind, the flags will wave,
To a journey made for the brave.
Protect yourself and be strong!
If you journey east you may suffer long.”
What are you singing, dumb monster? Going east? When Germany goes east, what will it do? What about the people who are already there?
Concentrate—
Sarah stuttered at the start of the fourth verse and with a grunt of satisfaction Rahn tore the lock of hair out. The pain came like an explosion of light. Sarah suppressed the shriek, but a whimper escaped as Rahn tightened her grip and wrapped a new curl round her index finger.
Now look, princess. See what you did.
My lovely hair!
You vain little Hure. Concentrate. Mutti…
No. Sing your songs.
Sarah closed her eyes. She finished “In the East, the Flags Are Raised” and went straight into “All Stand in Solidarity” – flag, Führer, blood…more passion, more volume as the words streamed out, faultlessly, perfectly, like the threads of a story she’d told all her life.
As she moved onto “One Flame”, Rahn growled and began to pull her forearm into Sarah’s windpipe. Sarah’s voice became rough, then hoarse. It was almost painless, like a sore throat, but as she continued it became harder to breathe. Each breath gave her less and less air.
“Close the ranks” – heart beating faster and louder in her chest – “let the embers flame” – gasping – “none shall taint or chide it” – her song was now a wordless whisper, the pain – “what lies” – too much – “in our hearts…”
Sarah inhaled loudly through her mouth and Rahn ripped a handful of hair from the roots.
“Rahn…” A warning. Who?
Sarah gasped silently, opening her mouth to go on, but nothing came out. The words became dim. The flag was growing dark.
“Rahn…”
Rahn dragged a long blonde tress clear of her head, ripping it noisily free.
“Rahn! Enough,” the Ice Queen commanded.
Rahn swore and relaxed her arm around Sarah’s throat. Sarah crumpled and was given a shove forward. She managed to stop herself in front of Von Scharnhorst’s armchair.
The Ice Queen watched Sarah’s shoulders rising and falling. She nodded once, her eyes and lips narrowing.
“Nothing wrong with your brain, then,” Von Scharnhorst said, lighting a cigarette. She exhaled noisily and the cloud of cigarette smoke billowed round Sarah’s face. “How old are you, Haller?”
“Thirteen,” she rasped. Liar, liar, liar.
“Bit small for thirteen, aren’t you?” She sounded disappointed.
“I suppose.”
“Like I said, you’ve got some catching up to do. However, you interest me. I’ve not had a clean slate, a tabula rasa, to work with before. I wonder what we can make of you. Next time, we’ll see what your body is capable of, eh?”
Rahn pushed Sarah towards the door as giggles broke out from the shadows behind her. She looked back and for the first time spotted Elsa, her expression one of amused fascination in the firelight. Her eyes followed Sarah’s exit. Who was she standing with? Who were her special friends? What did—
Rahn slapped her in the face with a crack. Stumbling into the wall, Sarah found herself cowering and holding her hands over her face. Make yourself small and minimize the damage.
“Rahn! No more,” the Ice Queen ordered.
Rahn stood over Sarah and wiped some spittle from the corner of her mouth. “You’ll fail, you dumb little girl. Then I’ll break you.”
The dormitory was trying to look busy, but everyone was evidently waiting for Sarah to return. As she pushed the door open, Liebrich was blocking the way from the door to her bed.
“You still have some hair. Excellent.” The sarcasm was thick in her voice. Sarah just kept walking until they were face-to-face. When she looked up, Liebrich started abruptly, eyes wide, mouth open. Sarah took another step, pushing home this advantage.
“You stay away from me, Liebrich,” Sarah croaked, barely audible. “You understand?”
Liebrich nodded, composure gone.
Sarah pushed past her and sat on her bed, facing the wall. She was tired, too tired to undress.
“Haller?” enquired a little voice.
“Hello, Mouse,” whispered Sarah.
“Oh, you’ve lost hardly any hair, that’s good, when we’ve brushed it and cleaned, you know, the blood away a bit, we’ll plait it and—” The Mouse stopped as Sarah raised her head.
“What?”
“Your eyes, Haller, oh, your eyes…” gasped the Mouse.
“Do you have a mirror, Mouse?”
The small figure darted away and returned a few seconds later clutching an old tortoiseshell compact. Sarah opened the lid.
The whites of her eyes were no longer white. They were a deep, dark red.
How did that BDM song go? The blood hears the call.
The whole room was staring at her, wonder, sympathy and fear on their faces.