My Family for the War (3 page)

Chapter 2

As always happened whenever I caught sight of Richard, August, and Eberhard, my scalp and fingertips began to tingle. Had they seen me too? I didn’t think so, because as I backed into the nearest doorway I could see them, completely focused on kicking their ratty old soccer ball around.

I tried to stay calm and looked around. I was standing in an entryway near the south end of the Schiller Promenade, which meant we had mapped out four or five escape routes and two hiding places right around here. They wouldn’t catch me this time! I pushed myself off from the wall of the house. Leaving my three friends behind me, I leisurely walked back in the direction I had come from.

Right away, I heard that the soccer ball wasn’t bouncing on the ground anymore. That didn’t have to mean anything. The best thing to do was just continue on my way without turning around. I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jacket and strolled down the street, apparently in no hurry.

But I knew the tragic story of Lot’s wife, and that the brain
basically ignores orders like “Don’t turn around!” I hadn’t gone five yards before I risked a tiny peek.

Richard’s eyes met mine. He came toward me, grinning, with the ball under his arm, matching my pace with the other two in tow. They were just waiting for me to start running.

I walked a little faster. They picked up their pace too, and they were already catching up. I only had one chance. I stopped and turned around. “Just try to catch me, you cowards!” I screamed.

Then I turned around and fled.

It’s a wonderful feeling when you’re running and gaining ground. You don’t even feel the ground; your legs and feet and the pavement all become one. A few intoxicating leaps transformed what had just been a scared girl into a winged being that couldn’t possibly be caught, like Jesse Owens, the black Olympic champion who left all his competitors of the supposedly superior races in the dust two years ago.

I dedicated my run to Jesse Owens, and that gave me luck. Even without looking behind me I could tell that the distance between me and my pursuers was growing. I let out a wild cry of triumph, ran around the church, and nearly knocked over an older man who suddenly stood up from his bench right in my path.

“Grab her! She’s a Jew!” Richard screeched. The man actually reacted, spread his arms out, and made a few halfhearted steps toward me.
But Franziska Jesse Mangold can’t be stopped! An elegant swerve to the right will do the trick, allowing her to leave her pursuers behind. And it is unbelievable, ladies and gentlemen, but this gifted young runner still has enough energy to step up her pace!

I turned into the home stretch. The arched entryway I was headed for was at the top right corner of our survival plan, because it was almost outside our neighborhood. Bekka and I had discovered the house in the spring, not long after my first run-in with Richard and his group. The entrance was always open because it led to a butcher’s shop in the back of the courtyard. I crossed the street and disappeared into the entrance. “She’s over there! Get her!” I heard behind me—in a voice that was out of breath, I noted with satisfaction.

I rushed down the steps to the cellar and found myself in a long, low tunnel. To the right and left of the stairs were passages lined with small niches used as storage space by the people who lived in this building.

Cellar number 8 was way back at the end of the corridor on the left. I ran through the passageway. It smelled like brickwork and mouse droppings. Right when Richard, August, and Eberhard reached the bottom of the basement stairs, I disappeared into the darkness of cellar number 8.

“Now you’re trapped, you Jewish pig!” Richard jeered.

I heard steps coming toward me, just one pair of footsteps. Richard had sent his friends in the opposite direction and came alone. A wooden door flew open and banged against a shelf. Glass jars clinked together. There was a brief flash of yellow light when Richard turned on the light in the little storage room and looked around, then a soft click as he turned it off again.

There was no time to lose. I felt my way along the back wall, where the opening was. Sure of the way, I slid my hands along the bricks. There was the cupboard, and right next to it…

Ouch! I felt the big, heavy object that stood in my way. It was a storage shelf! I desperately tried to squelch the paralyzing fear that instantly shot from my legs to my head.
Stay calm! You’re in the wrong cellar. When Richard looks into the next one, you can slip into number 8.

I ran back to the door with my heart pounding. Richard had made it to number 4; now he went in and turned on the light there. I took a step out of my shed to dart into the next one down.

But there wasn’t another one. I
was
in number 8! Where there should have been an opening into the basement of the neighboring house, some idiot had put up a shelf!

“There she is!” resounded through the basement hallway. I had completely forgotten about August and Eberhard.

Out of my head, I stormed back to the shelving in the darkness, kneeled down, and felt for one of the boards with both hands. Cans, glass jars, bottles, everything I got my hands on I flung to the side and pulled my upper body into the space I had made so I could feel what was at the back with my right hand.

My hand felt nothing. Salvation! The shelves were open at the back! Shoulders first, I crammed myself into the bottom shelf, making so much noise that I couldn’t even tell if Richard and his cronies were already in number 8. With one last desperate kick I freed myself and dropped down into the basement of the building next door. I landed on my back, hard, on the cold cement. It was pitch-black, but the scratching coming from the shelves told me that Richard was already working his way through.

With both hands stretched out in front of me, I walked
into the darkness with my eyes wide open. I fell up the first step of the basement stairs, and after several feet came to the door into the neighboring courtyard. With weak knees I tumbled into freedom, slammed the door closed, and I suddenly stood absolutely still, as if I had grown roots on the spot. Richard’s soccer ball lay in the middle of the entryway I had just lured the boys through. He had to put it down to have his hands free for me.

How could he? I had never known him to leave it out of his sight. He knew there were children living on this street who would have given anything to have a ball like that. But now the soccer ball lay on the sidewalk because something else had been even more important to him. Richard must hate me fiercely.

Something in me said, “Leave it alone, Ziska!” But instead of doing the only smart thing and getting away as fast as possible, I saw only that ball.

And all at once I was gripped by a rage greater than anything I had ever experienced in my life. That stupid, shabby ball suddenly conjured up everything I absolutely didn’t want to think about. The birthday party when Richard had gotten the ball. The game of spin the bottle, where
the next one the bottle points to has to kiss someone!
The bottle turned, turned more slowly, stopped turning, and pointed to Richard. And Richard laughed, stood up without hesitating, walked through the circle of kids toward me, and kissed me right on the mouth. He looked at me so sweetly while he did it.

I hadn’t been invited to birthday parties for a long time. But at one time, Richard had been my friend.

“Is it true, Ziska?” he had asked me later in a low voice. “Your parents are… you’re… Jewish?”

“Nah,” I had answered. “Papa is a lawyer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course! You know he is!”

He rumpled his forehead. “But my mother said that you’re Jews.”

“Should I ask my mother?” I could see how concerned he was about this. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

He planted himself in the schoolyard the next day and listened to me, his face without any expression, as I relayed my mother’s explanation. Yes, we actually did have Jewish ancestors, and I had never heard anything about it before because all four of my grandparents had already converted to Protestantism in the last century. So when it was time for religion classes at school, I was part of the Protestant group, I believed in Jesus, and I would be confirmed at the same time as Richard. The other kids stood around us, and no one said anything. Richard shifted from one leg to the other and I noticed that he had just as little clue about what to do with this information as I did. For my part, I couldn’t have told you exactly what “Jewish” meant, or why it was of any significance in the schoolyard.

“Eeeew! Richard kissed a Jew!” fat Roland finally screamed.

In the next instant he lay on the ground, crying, because Richard hit him with a perfect right hook. There was a wave of muttering among the other children, who took a step backward just to be safe. Proudly, I lifted my chin and looked around with a challenging gaze. That was much better than
a kiss! No one had ever hit someone else for my sake before!

Then he let go of Roland. He fell back in the dust and lifted his arms in front of his face. “Okay, Richard, I get it,” he whimpered.

Richard took a step back and looked at me again, and I could not believe what I saw. Everything that was handsome about his face had disappeared; there was nothing there but a hard mask that stared at me, full of accusation, rage, and contempt.

“You should have told me!” he barked at me.

“But Richard… why?” I managed to get out.

All I saw then was his jutted chin, his bright eyes, and the quick, hard motion of his shoving me. I lay on my back next to fat Roland, who crawled away from me fast, as if I had a contagious disease. I squinted up at Richard. He gave me a kick and turned away.

“Now we have you, you Jewish pig!”

Richard, who had followed me through the basement, came at me from behind, August and Eberhard from the front. I stood between them with the ball in my hands. Only a few seconds could have passed since I ran out of the cellar, but those were the seconds I needed to escape.

“Drop the ball!” Richard barked. His hands were clenched into fists. The feeling that overcame me was familiar. It was what had led Bekka and me to spend most of the last six months combing our neighborhood for escape routes.

“Come and get it!” They charged me. I wound up my arm as if to throw the ball over Richard’s head onto one of the balconies. Startled, he jerked his head up, and raised his
arms too. I channeled all my fury into my throw and shot his ball right in the middle of his face.

Where are you, Bekka? We can cross off the entryway at the butcher’s, and we definitely need to check the other hiding places to make sure they’re still the same as when we found them, so the next time… the next time… the next time…

I lay on my side, and something buzzed on my mouth. A big, fat fly was flitting across my lower lip, tasting a bit here, a bit there. There was certainly enough blood there. Almost dry already. Was there any part of me still whole? I sat up slowly, leaning against the house wall. Someone had watched from the first floor, but whoever it was left me alone.

“Ziska? Can you stand up?” A long, pale face appeared in front of me as if through a fog. It must have taken a lot of guts for him to come into a strange courtyard—Ruben Seydensticker wasn’t exactly one of the bravest people I knew. He took hold of both of my limp arms and helped me get up.

I clung to his shoulder, bent over forward, and saw the blood-sprinkled cobblestones in front of me blur. “I’d better take you home with me,” Ruben said quietly. “It isn’t far.”

“Nah, lemme gon,” I mumbled through my throbbing, swollen lips, which weren’t able to form understandable words anymore. After two yards he stopped us again, leaned me against the building, picked up my shoe, and put it on my foot.

Gradually the other parts of my body sorted themselves out and began to send searing hot messages to my head. Pain rampaged through my left shoulder, my arms, the back of my head, not to mention the entire lower half of my body,
and after we had taken three or four steps, I threw up right on Ruben’s shoes.

“It doesn’t matter. Just keep moving,” he said gallantly.

I was so ashamed that I started to cry. And that’s how we arrived at his apartment. His parents, who had been sitting at the table, jumped up. “Oy!” escaped from Frau Seydensticker, followed by a wave of strange sounds that sounded like German, but then again not really.
Aha,
I thought dully.
The Seydenstickers want to emigrate too.

I wondered which language this family was learning. I quietly began listing all the countries I knew of that were still accepting Jews: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay… Not that this was really of great interest at the moment, but the whole way to Ruben’s I had continuously been checking whether my brain had suffered any damage.
My name is Ziska Mangold, born on February 19, 1928. I live at Hermannstraße 88, front house, third floor
… I couldn’t have been unconscious for very long, but a small sliver of my life was shrouded in darkness, and that was enough to make me terribly afraid.

Ruben’s father laid me carefully on the kitchen bench. His full beard tickled my arm, and perched on his head as if with glue was a perfectly round, flat yarmulke.

“This is Ziska. She’s in my class,” Ruben said. It was both an introduction and an explanation for my condition, because no one asked so much as a single question. The Seydenstickers were
really
Jewish. They were subjected to attacks on the streets much more often than me, who didn’t look the part. For them, going to a Jewish school and getting beaten up apparently fit together somehow.

I lay on the hard kitchen bench with a wet cloth on my forehead. Gentle hands bandaged my arms, my legs. “We have to fix you up a little bit before we call your mama,” Frau Seydensticker murmured with a wonderfully rolling
r
. She wore a wide, brown housecoat and had a cloth wrapped around her head that fell down her back. She became embarrassed when she noticed how I was staring at her, and I turned bright red, mortified by my bad behavior and, yes, by the poverty around me.