Free Let Me Whisper You My Story by Moya Simons Page B

clipped voice reminded me of Nazi soldiers. I hated him.
    His eyes never left my face. ‘I can’t believe I am sharing my bedroom with a Jew. If my grandparents hadn’t cared for me for so many years, I would turn them in, and you with them. It is my sin that I love them. I am a disgrace to Germany. Meantime, you had better behave.’ He said this softly. I was sure this was so his grandmother would not hear him.
    Later that night, by a small light, Gertrude finished off the world’s longest scarf. ‘It just needed another row,’ she said, then handed it to me and put away the knitting needles. I held it against my cheek. I smelled it. If I sniffed it long enough wouldn’t Mama’s body smell reach me? Was Mama thinking of me right now?
    The scarf was so long. ‘A strange-looking thing,’ Gertrude said. ‘A nonsense,’ Aunty Gitta had called it. ‘Knit a blanket,’ she’d told Mama. But Mama wouldn’t. She said the scarf was her family. I held it up and lookedfor myself on the scarf. The red, the blue, the orange, the purple, the green, the pink stripes were all her family.
    Mama, which colour am I?
    I slept that night on the floor on cushions bunched together with an old quilt over me.
    Friedrich called out to me from his bed, before he turned off the bedside lamp:‘I don’t sleep well, so don’t snore or make any noises.’
    Sleeping in a strange room with strange smells and an awful boy there just increased my fear. Some nights I crept under Friedrich’s bed. In the solid darkness, with the world’s longest scarf and Miri’s journal, I felt safer. Often in the morning I would find myself there and not remember having left my own makeshift bed during the night.
    ‘What is that huge scarf that you take to bed with you?’ Friedrich asked. ‘And that journal. Who is Miri Schwarz, that name on the cover? She’s your sister, isn’t she? I wonder what she’s doing now.’
    I didn’t know whether he said that to upset me or whether he really wondered about my family. I wanted to yell at him. I strained my voice muscles, but nothing came out. Just a hoarse, rasping sound.
    ‘So you do listen and think. I thought your brains had taken off with your voice.’
    How I hated him when he said this, and I could do nothing but stamp my foot.
    Once he awoke in the morning and couldn’t see me. He opened his wardrobe door to get out his clothing and found me curled up there with my head resting on the world’s longest scarf.
    ‘Wake up, Rachel, and get out of my wardrobe.’
    Had I sleepwalked there in the middle of the night? I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember deciding to curl up in Friedrich’s wardrobe. I certainly didn’t like the smell in there. There was nothing familiar about it. Nevertheless, at least twice a week he’d find me there in the morning sleeping soundly.
    Friedrich went to his Hitler Youth meetings after school during the week. He dressed in his black trousers and brown shirt, grey socks and shoes and wore a small brown cap on his head.
    ‘We shall be as tough as leather, as hard as Krupp steel,’ he chanted to his grandparents before he left the apartment.
    ‘Stop that carry-on,’ said Gertrude. ‘I hate you belonging to the Hitler Youth. I hate the nonsense and the slogans they teach you. It’s a load of rubbish. If the authorities didn’t make such a fuss about it, believe me, I’d keep you home.’
    ‘I love it. I learn gymnastics and basketball. I march. Remember when I went on a two-day cross-country hike? It’s to make me strong, because I am special. I am an Aryan. I am part of the master race. I learn all about the war and our beloved Führer.’ Friedrich stared hard at me as he said this. I met his stare evenly and eventually he looked away.
    He grumbled to his grandfather:‘It’s awful. I wake up in the morning and Rachel crawls out from under my bed or from inside the wardrobe. Can you imagine, Opa? I open the wardrobe and she’s inside with that silly scarf.