The Other Me Read online

  They may as well be going to the moon or Mars. I’ll never see them again. A pain grips my belly as if I need to empty my bowels.

  * * *

  Weeks pass, but when I ask about their plans to leave, Daniel tells me that his father is still trying to get the right paperwork. “We’ll be leaving any day now,” he says. And each time he answers my question with his stiffened smile and those same empty words, my heart does a little flip of relief. I haven’t lost them yet. On a hot evening in July, I arrive at the cottage to find Daniel in a strange mood. His gaze is flat and withdrawn. He shows me an identification card. It has a big yellow “J” on the front and inside his fingerprint and all his details.

  “I have to carry it all the time. As if I’m a criminal.” His voice is dull. He shoves the card back into his pocket, crumpling its edges.

  Daniel isn’t in the mood for games or talking. He sits on a blanket in the corner with his long legs folded under him, and loses himself in a novel. I don’t know how he can immerse himself in a story. It’s too hot to concentrate on anything. The air is oppressive and muggy. A fly buzzes at the cobwebby window. After abandoning a game of cards, Sarah and I go into the forest for a walk, ducking under swags of greenery. There’s no escape from the languid heat. The canopy of branches makes it worse, shutting it in.

  Sweat trickles down my shoulder blades. I hope I don’t smell. I dip my chin to sniff my armpits. We drag our feet through drifts of lush grass, pushing aside brambles. “My father’s found someone who can help us—he thinks he’ll get our visas next week,” Sarah says, as she unpicks a thorn from her skirt.

  “I don’t want you to go.” I speak before I think.

  She winces. The thorn has pierced her finger. She examines it. A bead of red appears, trembling on the surface. I pick up her hand and put her finger in my mouth. I feel her sag, hear the small gasp she makes as my tongue circles the tip of her finger. Her blood tastes sweet. And I don’t know how, but our mouths are together, her lips moving against mine. I close my eyes and put my hand on her waist to pull her close. I’ve never kissed a girl before and I couldn’t have imagined the bliss of it. The ground tips under me. When I let go of her, I think I might faint. The forest spins around us: colors and sounds blurring and intensifying.

  November

  He is dead. We heard it on the radio. Vom Rath, the Nazi diplomat shot in Paris, took two days to die of his wounds. It’s all anyone is talking about, that and the revenge that must be taken on his Jewish killer.

  Evening falls, dark and cold. Even at the farm, I can feel strands of tension coming from the town. And I think of them stretching out from all the villages and cities beyond like a net being drawn tight over the whole of Germany.

  Otto takes the stairs to our room three at a time. “Quick, get your things,” he shouts, grabbing his hat, checking his dagger at his belt. “We’re going into town. The Jews are going to pay this time.”

  I shake my head. “I’m staying here.”

  “I don’t understand you.” Otto curls his mouth in disgust. “What’s the matter—don’t you care about this … this insult to the Fatherland?”

  “It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “It has everything to do with you…” He heads for the trapdoor, and turns to go down the stairs. “A Jew just walking into the German Embassy and shooting a Nazi? A diplomat? You think that’s all right do you?” He glares at me. “Why is it that I always have to prove myself for both of us?”

  A car arrives, revving its engine at the entrance to the yard. I hear voices and a door slamming. The engine thrums and tires squeal away into the night. I stand in the yard watching the blinking red lights until they disappear.

  I’m alone. The Meyers are in their parlor gathered around the radio. It is bitterly cold. The sky clear. I can see the speckled path of the Milky Way. I look across at the horizon, to where the town beyond lies with its church spires and gabled roofs. Over there the sky is smudged with the dirty glow of a fire. I curl my fingers tight. The Baumanns will barricade themselves inside their house. But fire eats through doors, melts locks. I pace up and down the yard. The horses stamp in their stables. I stand by Berta’s massive head and scratch her forehead, nails working across her white star; she pushes the weight of her skull into my arms and I stroke her bristly lip until it hangs loose and quivering. She regards me with the liquid curve of one eye, and I see myself reflected inside her wise gaze.

  I should go into town. But what good would it do? What help could I possibly be? I push my knuckles against my eyelids until flashes of color burst. No solution comes to me. No course of action. My mind is numb. I am afraid, and it makes me despise myself. I lean against the stable wall and knock my forehead against the brick, banging it over and over until it’s throbbing. The pain makes me feel better. I know I can’t protect the Baumanns single-handedly; I wouldn’t stand a chance. I can imagine what kind of crowd is gathering in the streets, the mood they are in.

  There is one other place I could go. A force pulls at me, propelling me towards the forest. I’m sure that the cottage will be empty. But I have to go. Just in case.

  I close the gate behind me, creeping along the side of a ploughed field, feeling my way. Noises rustle. I’m an intruder in the darkness; from fathomless banks of undergrowth, I feel eyes watching. My feet slip on the heavy earth, catch on roots, so that twice I fall, cursing, onto my knees.

  I pass the lake, glittering in the moonlight, slate gray and still. Frost whitens the reeds. I’ve never been inside the forest at night before. I pull my dagger out of the sheath and grip hard. My mouth is dry. I step with slow care, trying to move quietly. The cottage rears up, a black shape hunched inside a tangle of trees. I don’t know if I am brave enough to go inside. The building has lost any semblance of friendship; all my hours there with Sarah and Daniel seem like a dream. The gaping windows are expectant: watchful and malevolent. Then I catch a tiny pulse of light through the glass and my shoulders relax.

  As I climb over the sill I call Daniel and Sarah’s names in a hushed voice. They’re in the parlor, huddled around a single candle. I get a shock, because they aren’t alone. Mrs. Baumann is there too. Daniel stands up and puts his hand on my shoulder. “This is bad,” he says. “A bad night for Germany.” He sounds like an adult; it makes me feel young and foolish.

  “Where’s your father?” I ask.

  “He wouldn’t come. He had to protect our property. All his medical equipment. He told me to bring Sarah and my mother.”

  I sit next to Sarah. But we don’t touch. She presses up close to her mother, who has her arms around her. Sarah’s mother watches me over her daughter’s head. I meet her steady, assessing gaze and lower my eyes. I am ashamed. It’s very cold and we wrap ourselves in blankets. We don’t speak much and none of us sleeps properly. I doze and wake with a stiff neck and dribble on my chin. As dawn begins to break up the darkness, I leave them there with promises to come again as soon as I can, and trail home through crisp, silvery grass, stumbling over frozen ground.

  Otto’s bed is empty. It hasn’t been slept in. I’m relieved that he hasn’t got there before me. I sit on my cot, shivering and uncertain. The day is beginning. A cock crows. The horses move in the stables below. I hear a car stopping outside the gate, the murmur of voices and a door slamming. I stiffen, waiting. One of the horses makes a welcoming whicker. The stairs creak. Otto comes up slowly, his head appearing first through the trapdoor. He brings the stink of stale sweat and smoke with him. He sits on his bed heavily. We’re facing each other, our knees almost touching. He looks exhausted but replete, as if he’s had a long day’s hunting. There are smuts over his clothes, streaking his face. Blood has dried on his cheek in a crust.

  “You’ve hurt yourself.” I gesture towards the slash of dark red.

  He wipes it and looks at his hand. “Not mine,” he says.

  Then I notice a spray of blood over his sleeve. It glistens. He sees where I’m looking and narrows his eye
s, leans forward and picks something from my hair. A leaf. He twirls it between his fingers and regards me steadily. “Busy night?”

  I ignore him. My heart is thumping in my chest. I keep my expression blank.

  “What have you been doing, Ernst,” he persists, “while we’ve been hard at work stamping on vermin?”

  He drops the leaf, crushing it under his boot. As he moves his foot, a fragment of glass glints on the floorboards next to the smear of broken green.

  “Nothing.” I clear my throat. “And you?”

  He yawns. “Synagogues burned. Skulls broken. And there is no longer a single pane of glass standing in any Jew establishment. They got the message all right.”

  * * *

  I think about the Baumanns crouched in the cottage. Are they still there, or have they gone back to their house to meet Dr. Baumann? I want to make sure that they’re safe. But it’s impossible to leave the farm. All day the talk is of how many windows were smashed, how the streets and pavements glittered with glass, and how the Jews ran like rats into their basements, hiding behind locked doors. I hope that the Baumanns’ home is still standing, that their windows are intact. Otto boasts to Bettina and Agnes. Mrs. Meyer won’t let the girls go into town. Instead they hear Otto’s stories, eyes wide, gathered around him. I can’t listen.

  Evening. The dark is heavy with damp; a low mist swirls through the tops of grasses, gathers around bushes and brambles. As I approach the cottage, I strain my ears, picking up a strange noise. I realize, with a bump of joy, that it’s a human sound and hurry forward. They’re still here. Climbing through the window, my ears are trying to decipher the odd noise. It’s louder now and I understand. Sarah is sobbing inside the circle of Daniel’s arms, her head against his chest. I blink in the grainy, underwater light, making out another figure in the other room. Mrs. Baumann sits on the floor, rocking back and forth; and a deep howl rises from her, an endless, eerie hungering. It makes the hairs prickle on the back of my neck. I stare from one to the other, terror bubbling. They don’t acknowledge me. It’s as if I’m not here.

  “What?” My voice breaks. “What is it?”

  All I hear is Sarah’s painful sobbing and her mother’s terrible, mad cry. The sounds tear at me. I want to put my hands over my ears.

  None of them looks up. I am shut out. “Tell me,” my voice squeaks.

  “Our father is dead.” Daniel raises his head. Behind his glasses, his eyes are red and swollen.

  My mouth falls open. Shock winds me. I take a step forwards. I want to put my arms around both of them. But they are untouchable.

  “How?” I whisper.

  “We think … we think he’d been trying to stop them … they … they hanged him. Lynched him in the street.” Daniel looks at me as if he doesn’t know me. “Go. Go now, Ernst. We can’t meet again.”

  I press my hand over my mouth, feeling sick. “No. I’m not leaving you.”

  He shakes his head. He looks exhausted. “Things have changed. My father is dead. Do you understand?” His face suddenly blazes. “We’re different, Ernst. You and me. We can’t be friends. Do you know what they did? Have you seen? Everything is destroyed. People died. People were taken away.” He stops, a dry sob in his chest. “We’re not German anymore. We’re not even human to them. My father was trying to get us out before … now I have to do it.”

  “No.” I’m shaking. “It’s all wrong. I won’t pretend I don’t know you.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Daniel frowns. “It’s not about you. We’ll be punished. Not you.”

  A chasm has opened in the ground. The void between us deepens, becomes a bottomless, echoless pit. Sarah turns her blotched face towards me, her mouth trembling. My fingers itch to dry the wet on her cheeks, push the tangles of hair away.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  “We’re going to stay here,” Daniel says. “We can’t go home. I have to keep my mother and sister safe. It’s up to me.”

  “Then you’ll need help. I can bring you food. Clothes. I can help.”

  His lips press tight.

  “Let him.” Sarah wipes her face with the back of her hand. “He’s not like them.”

  I take a deep breath. Tears sting the back of my eyes. “I won’t let you down,” I say.

  * * *

  I hate going into town. Lots of shops have been boarded up. Houses sit empty with gaping holes where windows used to be. The synagogue is a blackened ruin. People call it Kristallnacht after all the broken glass. Everyone is different since it happened. Nobody smiles or gossips. Sometimes I feel the heat of a stare on my back. When I turn, the watcher has dropped their gaze, and begun to whistle or examine their nails.

  I steal bread from the larder. I take eggs from the hens. I pull clothes from neighbors’ clotheslines. I dig up vegetables in the garden at night. I wrap my own supper in napkins and push it into my pocket when nobody is looking. I know that I’m taking too many risks, but I haven’t got a choice. Their survival depends on me. Each time I manage to get to the cottage they are thinner, paler. The forest seems to have claimed them. Their clothes are moss tinged, sour with damp; twigs stick in their hair, dirt rims their nails. There’s a particular look in their eyes now: wary and strained and watchful. Mrs. Baumann’s chapped lips are sealed shut; I haven’t heard her speak since that night. But they are safe. The cottage has become their only hope; Daniel hasn’t been able to get visas. It is too late. Germany has shut her gates. At his last attempt, some SS questioned him on his way back. He only managed to escape because a scuffle broke out farther down the street.

  The army is moving fast. The Wehrmacht has invaded Poland. All anyone talks of is the war, the power of our troops, their swift victories, the success of Lebensraum—our new Living Space.

  I don’t care about the war. Otto is desperate to join up. But I can’t go anywhere. I have to stay and look after the Baumanns. I have to take care of Sarah. I dream of her at night, and every day my only thought is of how I am going to get back to her. After I make my drop of food or supplies, she comes with me through the woods. We hold hands, fingers knotted tightly.

  “There’s something you don’t know,” she says in a hesitant voice. “We moved from our house.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  She bows her head and I glimpse the thickened grime under her collar, dirt etched onto her pale skin. “Ages ago, after … after my father couldn’t work anymore. There was no money. We’ve been living in a flat across the railway line. It’s a Jewish area. My father took enough medical equipment to start a new surgery. He’d been treating our neighbors for free. He said it was the one thing he wouldn’t let them take from him. His skill.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I thought we’d shared everything.

  “Daniel’s proud.” She shrugs. “Sometimes it’s better not to speak, when nothing can be done.”

  I press her up against the trunks of trees and bury my face in her neck. I inhale the musky aroma of her: bark and earth and wood smoke. She lets me lift her skirt. She is velvety on my fingers. I tremble, feeling the length of her body resting against mine; the softness of her, the sweet, lush curve of her mouth. I will never allow anyone to hurt her.

  I steal soap for her. It’s just a worn green sliver, smelling of detergent. I wish I’d kept the bar I found on the pavement that day, the one wrapped in flowery paper, dense with the scent of violets.

  “We’ll always be together,” I tell her. “And when it’s over, people will forget about the race problem. We’ll be married. We’ll go to America.”

  She smiles as she listens to my stories.

  “I love you,” she says.

  It is the one thing I believe.

  * * *

  Otto has applied to the Waffen SS. It is common knowledge that getting into the SS requires one hundred and fifty years of documentation as proof of ancestry. But Otto thinks he’s a special case. That he’s the only person in the Fatherland who can
prove his Aryan blood just by being himself. I had actually begun to believe that they might make an exception for him.

  On the day he gets his response, I find him alone behind the stables. I know better than to question him. He has his dagger in his hand and he throws it straight at the wooden planks. He goes to the knife and pulls it out, returns to his position and throws again. Even as I walk away, I hear the whistle of the blade, all his anger sounding inside the judder of steel on wood as it finds its target, over and over again.

  KLAUDIA

  1996, London

  Dear Meg,

  I haven’t heard a word from you. I can’t bear to think how hurt you must be. Your silence hurts me too. I find myself talking to you, telling you things. I can’t believe that we won’t see each other again. You’re my best friend. I thought we’d know each other all our lives, be old ladies together, laughing about our days in Leeds with Voronkov, reminiscing about how we danced on different stages round the world. I thought we’d boast about our children, our grandchildren. Have I really destroyed all that?

  I miss Mum. People think you should get over it in a month or two. But I miss her every day. I always will. And it’s worse because I feel guilty. I let her down. I’ll never forgive myself for it.

  I wish I could talk to you about so many things. Remember Cosmo? The crazy thing is that he’s here in London. I’m working for his friend in a burlesque bar of all places. The people there are lovely. Except, they think I’m Eliza.

  Cosmo has no idea who I really am. So he doesn’t understand why I’m holding myself back. I’m afraid I’ve lost him because of it. But I can’t let myself get involved again, not while he thinks I’m Eliza, can I? I know you’d tell me to be honest, tell the truth and get it over with. But I can’t. I’m afraid. You haven’t been able to forgive me. I don’t want him to hate me—to despise me, cut me out of his life. And the other thing is, his grandmother is Jewish. She was in a concentration camp. How can I tell him that my father is German—what he did in the war? I haven’t told anyone. Not even you.