“And the winner of the annual River Run is…” There was a pause while the teacher checked the name. “Ursula Haller.”
The girls, crowded into two lines, went wild as Sarah walked between them to where the Ice Queen waited at the head of the parade. She was clutching a tarnished trophy and staring at Sarah like a butcher appraising a side of beef.
“Heil Hitler, meine Schulsprecherin.” Sarah saluted with all the verve she could muster. Her armpits and nipples were rubbed raw and the action was agonizing. The Ice Queen waited a beat before replying, the crowd still burbling and clapping happily.
“So, once more it appears I have underestimated you,” she said quietly. “You’re wet. You swam?”
“I flew,” Sarah said insolently.
“I should have you disqualified.”
“It’s immaterial. I said I’d cross the finish line first. I did. So we’re done.”
“And how am I supposed to maintain order, with you running roughshod over the hierarchy?”
“I’m not. I’m one of you, strong, fast and superior. I’m your ally and, of course, your loyal servant.”
You will never be this strong again. Let’s hope this works.
Sarah sank to one knee.
“What are you doing?” The Ice Queen cocked her head, puzzled.
“Place your hand on my head, then offer me your other hand. That’s it.” Sarah took the proffered hand and kissed the back of it. She had read this in a book. “Now help me up and tell them I don’t want the trophy, it belongs to the Fatherland.”
The Ice Queen frowned, then smiled.
“No, stay there a moment.” She threw her head back. “Haller rejects these petty spoils. She won the race for the Führer, and she offers him the trophy!” The crowd cheered and a few girls began to chant Sarah’s name. “No, my sisters. Don’t celebrate Haller – she does not wish it. The glory belongs to the Reich! Heil Hitler!”
The girls saluted and chanted and saluted some more while Sarah kneeled in the mud. A teacher began a speech about the war, but the girls’ raw enthusiasm drowned him out. The Ice Queen reached down and lifted Sarah to her feet. She came close so she couldn’t be overheard.
“Now, Haller. If you are indeed to run with this esteemed company” – she gestured to her lieutenants – “you will be your year’s Schlafsaalführerin now. You must make that happen, no matter how it is done. You will lead. You will follow no one.”
“Very well,” replied Sarah. It’s all coming together. I can do this, she thought.
Elsa Schäfer was standing behind the Ice Queen with the others, watching intently with the same expression of amused fascination. Be fascinated. Be amused. Be my friend. Victory was so close that Sarah could taste it.
“And you must stop fraternizing with the weak and pointless, like your friend Mauser.”
Little Mouse. Unloved and unwanted. Weak and pointless. The only girl who gave a damn about Ursula Haller. Haller’s friend…Sarah’s friend. Sarah had a friend. She wanted to scream and swing a punch at the Ice Queen.
“No.”
“No?” The Ice Queen’s eyes betrayed real surprise.
It happened before Sarah could stop it. She was so full of anger and power that she spoke without thinking.
“You’re right,” Sarah snarled. “I will lead, and I will not follow anyone. So take your crowd of lickspittles and verpiss dich.”
The Ice Queen was incredulous. “You don’t get to walk away, Haller.”
Commit to the move.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. And I’m bringing my weak and pointless friend with me.” Sarah pointed at the Ice Queen. “You’ll want to be a woman of your word. We’re done, and you’re done with my class. You stay away,” Sarah finished through clenched teeth.
Sarah could feel the opportunity, her way out, the job, sliding away like the sea from the shore…but her passion had been bigger, stronger and in total control. The move was complete.
The older girl’s mouth opened and she seemed on the verge of slapping Sarah. Then her expression changed to a curious mix of animosity and irritation that didn’t sit well on her normally blank slate. Around them, the teachers began reorganizing the classes for the walk back to school.
“And where is Rahn?” the Ice Queen asked as Sarah turned.
“I have no idea,” Sarah lied with the straightest of faces. “Where did you put her?”
The Ice Queen strode away, calling to her retinue. Elsa glanced at Sarah – a moment’s confusion – and they were gone. Sarah breathed out, like she had broken the surface of the water again. She began to shiver, doused in exhaustion. It took the Mouse and two other girls to help her back to school.
The River Run proved very controversial that year. One girl, Rahn, appeared to have been attacked by a wild animal of some kind. Her injuries were serious enough that she’d been sent home to recover. It seemed that the forest was no longer safe and the teachers were bickering, trying to apportion blame. Some felt that the whole race was dangerous and the Final Year girls had too much power over it. In the end, boredom and indifference reigned. It was too much trouble to do anything about it.
Sarah’s victory was endlessly argued about. The impossibility of swimming the river seemed the only certainty and some would rather believe she had flown across. There was disappointment that the win didn’t bring about a sudden end to the Ice Queen’s tyranny. Others saw the apparent truce as a betrayal and many girls began to look over their shoulder, wondering who was the next on the Schulsprecherin’s hit list.
Sarah ran a fever for the rest of the week. Confined to the sanatorium and between vivid nightmares, she lay and considered her mission’s complete failure. Her failure. She had been welcomed into the inner circle, to rule the school alongside Elsa Schäfer. She hadn’t just refused, she had doused that bridge in gasoline and lit the match.
As she berated herself silently, the visiting Mouse gave her a running commentary on life in Rothenstadt, an endless narrative of gossip, politics and supposition.
“How did you get ahead, Haller?” the Mouse jabbered happily.
“I flew, didn’t you hear?”
“No. Really?”
“Really,” Sarah said.
She had tried to piece together the events over the river, but even she wasn’t quite sure. The whole fragmented experience was laced with pursuing horrors, cabaret songs and dream dogs. It seemed scarcely believable, even to herself.
Sarah had immediately regretted her wilful sabotage of the mission, but simultaneously clung to what it had represented. She was no monster, no monster, no monster…but her fractured memories of the run told another story. One moment stood out, in crystal-clear fidelity that Sarah relived over and over again: the rock hitting Rahn in the face. The cracking sound. The movement. The intention suddenly exploding out of circumstance. She could have killed her. She would have killed her, if the rock had been heavier. She had been willing to do anything to fight her off. Not even to survive, just to avoid pain – to avoid losing. It was a deep pitcher of shame and self-loathing that part of her wanted to drink from, just to prove she was still a human being. But the jug was huge. There was enough to drown in.
Once she was well, any sense of triumph deserted her, along with her ethical qualms. She wanted an erneuter Versuch, a second go. The mission still stood and now seemed more impossible than ever. She couldn’t bring herself to beg the Ice Queen for forgiveness, so without anything better to do, Sarah found herself trailing silently after the Ice Queen’s entourage. There was no plan, no idea. She hung about in the shadows, watching them, their habits and their routines. Hoping for a piece of information she could use, waiting for an opportunity that she knew wouldn’t come.
Elsa was loud. It was the boisterousness of someone with something to prove. As the youngest, she must have felt that she had to be rougher, nastier and noisier than everyone else. When the Ice Queen was absent, their conversation was prosaic. Horses. Boys. Marika Rökk’s new song. It was as if the war, the Reich and die Judenfrage – the Jewish Question – didn’t exist.
Just once Sarah heard something valuable. She was eavesdropping on the queenless court, who were smoking on a fire escape. She was crouched, back to the wall beneath them, listening to the voices she had come to know so well.
“So who is he preying on now?”
“That new girl Haller.”
“Oh, the all-conquering hero—”
“Shut your mouth, Eckel.”
“That’s what she did on Rahn’s leg,” Eckel joked.
“Shush. You really don’t want the Ice Queen to hear you.”
“So what’s Foch’s story, anyway?”
“No clue, but Schäfer knows, don’t you?”
“Look at her face! She knows something.”
“This is what I heard. I got it from someone whose father knows the staff—” Elsa crowed.
“One of your pets?”
Elsa ignored the interruption. “…Foch was a loyal part of the Sturmabteilung from the very start. They put the Führer in power, but Röhm, the head of the SA, he was a Revolutionär. And there is no place for those when the revolution is over. He thought he was more important than he was. He loathed Himmler and Heydrich and thought they couldn’t touch him.”
“Ha! Yeah, that worked out well.”
“The SS put an end to the Röhm-Putsch and wiped out the SA in just one night,” Elsa continued. “A Blood Purge, a night of the long knives. Bang. Bang. Bang.” She began to laugh.
“That’s not news, Schäfer…”
“But Foch wasn’t shot with the others, so what happened?”
“Ah, well. When they came for him, he pleaded to be let off. So they made him do something to prove his loyalty. Something disgusting.”
“What?”
“What’s the worst thing you can think of?”
Gretel, thought Sarah.
A distant bell rang. Lit cigarettes dropped one by one at the wet ground beyond Sarah’s feet.
Sarah decided that even if she had to break her own fingers, she wasn’t going to play the piano for Foch any more.