Simons The English German Girl

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-85790-015-9
Verlag: Polygon
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 346 Seiten

This powerful, meticulously researched novel is a moving tale of one girl's struggle against a world in turmoil. In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler's fist, the Klein family are gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a new life in England. Charged with the task of securing a safe passage for her family, she vows that she will not rest until they are safe. But as war breaks out and she loses contact with her parents, Rosa finds herself wondering if there are some vows that can't be kept ... A sweeping tale of love and loss, with the poignant story of the Kindertransport at its heart, this is an exceptional accomplishment from one of Britain's bravest and most vibrant writers.

Jake Wallis Simons is a staff writer for the Sunday Telegraph, radio broadcaster, artist, and award-winning novelist. He has a PhD in creative writing, and his writing has been featured in the Times, Guardian, and Independent.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Simons, Jake Wallis

Leseproben

23 December 1935, Berlin

1

Otto Klein rotates his wrist a quarter-turn, angling his watch face towards the dim light above his desk; he notices the chalk on his fingers and wipes them carefully on a handkerchief. Only five minutes remain until he can release the first group. He looks out of the window at the school gate and can see nobody gathered outside; it looks fairly safe but appearances are so deceptive these days – what’s that – no, just a cat, maybe, or a dog. He is on edge. It has been utterly black outside since four o’clock, and bitterly cold at that, and the children are desperate to get home, but safety must come first, and since they started releasing the children at intervals there have been fewer attacks. The twinkling silver baubles around Berlin would be terribly pretty. He used to take Rosa and Heinrich out to see the seasonal decorations, that’s impossible of course this year, perhaps once again in the future; this dim light above is making him feel rather tired, it aggravates the darkness by seeking to dispel it, but now only five minutes to go, four actually, another minute has slipped by, he can hear nothing but the buzz of this infernal light. Whom shall he release first?

—You boys on the front row, yes, you five. Pack away your books. You may go.

—Yes, sir.

—Thank you, sir. Now there is noise – no voices, no laughing or talking, only floorboards creaking, desks closing, they are well behaved, these boys, which makes the job bearable. He resisted teaching in his former life, used to avoid at all costs the lecture hall, repelled by the tedium of it, the very idea of repeating the same facts and figures to wave upon wave of half-interested students used to fill him with horror – and here he is a schoolmaster, in a schoolroom, who’d have thought it would come to this?

—You boy, Pfeifenkopf, put down your work. You may leave along with the others. Hurry along now, boy, catch them up.

—Very good, sir.

Ah, little Bernhard Pfeifenkopf, so scrawny and tiny, his clothes are practically ragged, he needs a good hot meal and some proper fresh air, and to run about in the park or something, although in all probability his spectacles preclude any serious physical exertion. The boy must surely get bullied, his very name lends itself to bullying, a ridiculous name. According to Pfeifenkopf, it goes back to the giving of surnames to Jews in Austria in the last century, his grandfather was called to the police station to be named and happened to be smoking a pipe at the time. What a sense of humour, those Austrian policemen, hilarious. Klein understands that Pfeifenkopf’s parents have fallen upon hard times, that following the Aryanisation of their factory they have turned to selling soap for a living, though one wouldn’t know it from the state of their progeny’s face. And they receive supplementary income from Jewish Social Welfare, or so he has been led to believe.

Klein can see through the window little sprites, little shadows, keeping to the walls, that is good to see, and they are going three this way, two that way, which is probably a fine idea as well, they are ingenious, these children, he will say that for them, they are able to think for themselves, to a certain degree at least; and there goes little Pfeifenkopf, sidling off alone.

Klein is exceptionally tired today, he is glad that school is breaking up tomorrow for the Weihnachtsferien holidays, just one more day to get through then no school until January, that is one advantage of being a schoolmaster, he supposes. Today is a Monday, only the beginning of the week and already he’s exhausted, there was no time to relax over the weekend, especially Sunday, which he spent in the Scheunenviertel, in the musty corridors of the Central Jewish Offices at the Oranienburger Straße 31: the place was packed with people seeking emigration advice – everyone apart from Klein, that is, who was only seeking a loan. He will have nothing to do with the emigration hysteria that is gripping the Jewish community, his memory is not so short; only twelve years ago inflation had spiralled into the millions, Inga was forced to knit socks and gloves to sell, and money had to be spent immediately, before it lost its value. On the morning after payday he would get up before dawn and take his entire wages to the wholesale market where the entire sum would be spent on non-perishables, tins, hundredweights of potatoes, soup cubes, spongy hams, great fat cheeses, all piled higgledy-piggledy into a handcart, for within a few days the entire month’s salary would not have bought a cinema ticket; everyone thought the world was coming to an end, yet now it is almost forgotten; Klein is convinced that in just the same way this current unpleasant episode will pass.

When he arrived at the Oranienburger Straße, sombre hordes were clustering in thick brown lines around the building, pouring in a great queue onto the icy pavement and past the Neue Synagogue, which was looking magnificent on that clear winter’s day, its dome a drop of molten gold. He queued for an hour, his trilby pulled low on his forehead, nuzzling into his scarf, his nose cherry-red above the frosty natty moustache, his numb hands poking like sugar mice from the sleeves of his overcoat. Eventually the pressure became too great, the queue burst and seethed into a disorderly crowd, so Klein pushed his way through, squeezed into the building through the narrow entrance. Then came the corridors, teeming with people hurrying this way and that, pressed in packs around offices, glancing in all directions, clutching sheaves of papers, or trailing after officials in the flickering electric light. Klein, losing his bearings, was borne along in a sudden slipstream of teenagers, had to lay a hand on the doorframe and prise himself away from the Youth Aliyah classroom; he slipped down a dingy metal staircase, emerged into a throng on the floor below, pushed his way through a cluster of men with string-bound files, and finally, above a shifting sea of hats, a sign came into view: the Central Office for Jewish Economic Aid. It took an hour for Klein to lever his way into the office and a further half-hour of jockeying before finally he could sit on the battered leather-capped chair in front of the desk and raise his eyes to look someone in the face.

The man behind the desk looked familiar, and after a few seconds Klein placed him: Ludwig Altmann, the organist from the Neue Synagogue, whom he had met at a lecture that Inga had forced him to attend; the two men had sneaked out and struck up a conversation over a cigarette on the synagogue steps. Altmann recognised him immediately, shook him warmly by the hand, his broad face lighting up like a Chinese lantern; then it dimmed, the strain returned, he dipped his pen excessively in a pot of lavender-coloured ink and scratched Klein’s details on a sheet of foolscap, and the second of the ‘o’s in ‘Otto’ pooled, causing a major kerfuffle with a sheet of blotting paper. Klein was sweating now; he removed his spectacles and passed a handkerchief over his face; the blare of voices all around was interfering with his thoughts. He loosened his scarf. The conversation was fragmented, punctuated by interjections from anxious people, and somebody jogged the table and another blot appeared. Klein had to raise his voice above the din, and Altmann craned his neck to hear him, but the upshot was yes, in all likelihood he will indeed receive a loan, it is understood that he has incurred many expenses while changing careers and addresses and so forth, he will be contacted by letter in the near future, next please!

The way out was worse than the way in. No sooner had Klein raised himself from the rickety chair than three men were competing for it, he was spun by the crowd away from the desk and once again found himself buffeted here and there by the mob, his legs were rubbery and he had to get some air, he squeezed his hand upwards through the tightly packed shoulders and tilted back his hat; and it was then that it came to his attention that somebody was calling his name.

—Herr Doktor Klein! Doktor Klein!

It had been a long time since Klein had been called Doktor. With an effort he turned and squinted in the direction of the voice. Somebody was waving a bowler hat in the air.

—Doktor Klein! Over here! Herr Doktor!

Klein recognised immediately the silvery crown of Doktor Oskar Fehr projecting half a head above the crowd. Klein waved, briefly, and continued to make his way towards the exit, but the crowd-tides turned and he found himself at a standstill; before long, having found a swifter current, Fehr appeared beside him.

—Doktor Klein, I say, I haven’t seen you since our hospital days. What are you doing here?

—Everyone in Berlin is here, said Klein, why should I not join them?

—Not holidaymaking in Wiesbaden this year, Herr Doktor?

—Not this year.

—My God, I have never seen such crowds. Have you come to visit the Emigration Advice Centre?

—No, I am … making a social call.

—I see you have not managed to obtain one of these. They are in short supply, you understand.

Fehr parted his greatcoat to reveal a pile of battered-looking books, each as thick as a fist, cradled in his arms like an infant. He pulled one out, awkwardly, and pressed it to Klein’s chest.

—Here, I already have two Chicagos.

—What’s this?

—It’s a Chicago – I have a New York, a Chicago and a Washington, but here is an extra Chicago.

The crowd moved and Fehr was carried away, calling over his...