Page 15

‘Thank the Lord for this day; we’ve been waiting for it long enough.

No more pretending Stalin and his filthy communists are our friends – now we’re going to teach the Russians the lesson they’ve long needed instead.

Get a bottle of schnapps from the cellar, girl, and call the farmhands in. This news needs celebrating.’

Noemi hated the cobweb-ridden cellar, but anything was better than being within reach of Herr Distel and his vicious views or his vicious walking stick.

She inched her way down the rickety staircase and into a gloomy basement which was stocked with more food than her parents’ meagre wages from the hotel and the bakery would buy them in a year.

The first time she’d ventured down there, the sight of all the bottles and jars with their old Café Drachmann labels had frozen her to the spot.

Now she hardly noticed them. She picked up a bottle of the cherry-flavour schnapps her boss hoarded, dusted it to save herself from another barrage of insults about dirty Jews and returned to the kitchen.

She didn’t stay once the men came in – not that they’d have let her.

She slipped away to the stables instead, where there was plenty of work to be done, and plenty of punishments waiting if she didn’t clear the muck out to Distel’s liking.

Not that anything was ever to his liking.

She was certain he’d only employed her because no one cared if he paid her next to no wages or worked her to death.

He’d probably get a medal for doing his duty if he managed to do that.

Noemi had heard the announcement shortly after Germany had invaded Poland and forced Europe into action.

It came crackling through the town’s loudspeakers as she walked back from the farm which had employed her once the hotel decided she wasn’t fit to be seen in its public rooms. Unlike the rest of Unterwald, she hadn’t stopped to listen to the belligerent announcer.

She had no intention of joining in with the cheers and the show of excitement which had quickly followed the initial stunned silence.

How could she, when she wasn’t part of the glorious new Germany the loudspeakers were promising the war would lead to?

When that war could – if Hitler had his way – spell the end of her?

‘If Europe plunges us into a conflict, which Germany will win, the annihilation of Europe’s Jews will follow.’

Hitler had made that pledge in the deadlocked weeks after the first shots were fired at the quickly conquered Poles.

Nobody had taken issue with it then; its promise was common currency now.

He hadn’t yet explained how he was going to do it; Noemi wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

Whatever the final move would be, her world was shrinking.

No Jews were allowed to own businesses anymore; no Jewish children were allowed to attend school.

Every pathway to every kind of a future was closed.

She stopped in the middle of the yard, ignoring the depleted woodpile and the hay spilling in messy clumps across the front of the stables.

She’d made the mistake of looking up towards the horizon, and now the longing to be in a flower-fragrant meadow or, better still, high up on a ridge with no space in her head for anything except finding the next foothold was overwhelming.

She couldn’t focus on her tasks, not yet, whatever the consequences.

She needed a moment to breathe. She made her way to the edge of an uncut field instead of the stables and sank down out of sight in the long grass.

Let’s leave here together… Let’s go…

She’d desperately hoped Pascal would say yes when she’d blurted that out in the hotel and told him she loved him without actually saying the words.

She should have known that he wouldn’t, that his ties to his father and the Party were too strong.

That had upset but not surprised her. But the depth of his blindness, his certainty that he could persuade men who wore hatred like a medal to look kindly on ‘good Jews’, had been a shock.

She’d fallen back on blaming Viktor’s influence then, to soften the blow, but Pascal wasn’t a child; he’d made his own choices.

I should have gone away without him.

That wasn’t a thought that brought any comfort.

Leaving Germany with her parents could have been a solution, but only in a different life.

They’d waited too long in the hope that things might improve and missed the moment to make it happen.

Emigration demanded resources they didn’t have: the family’s cumulative earnings barely totalled one non-Jewish salary and certainly wouldn’t pay for a passage or cover the fees the Nazis extorted from its fleeing Jewish population.

Besides, even if they’d had the money, they didn’t have the contacts – there was no one in America or England to vouch for them.

There was nowhere for them to go abroad; they couldn’t even travel inside Germany.

Freedom of movement for Jews had been restricted since the end of 1938, and the local police chief wouldn’t have signed a travel pass if her family had asked for one.

He was firmly under Viktor’s thumb, and Viktor was firmly the king of Unterwald.

The Drachmanns were trapped in a town, and a country, that didn’t want them.

Which was why Noemi rarely looked up at the mountains anymore; she couldn’t bear their promise of freedom.

‘Girl! Girl! Where are you?’

Noemi was about to jump up and respond to Herr Distel’s call, but some sixth sense stopped her. She shuffled to the edge of the grass instead and peered out, making sure she couldn’t be seen. Distel was standing on the porch, his gun in his hand. And Viktor Lindiger was standing beside him.

He’s coming for me. He’s coming for us all.

Oddly, the first emotion which struck her wasn’t fear.

She’d been waiting for this day on some level since the war began.

Or since the night in November 1938 when a band of thugs in Hitler Youth uniforms had roamed through the town, singing songs about spilling Jewish blood, and wreaking havoc.

Most of them had been bussed in from Munich, or so the gossip went, although where they’d come from seemed the least-important thing about them to Noemi.

The boys had certainly been well briefed; they knew who they were looking for.

They’d smashed and looted Herr Schuster’s tailor shop and thrown stones through the Drachmanns’ windows.

They’d set fire to the trees bordering Herr and Frau Fleck’s home, causing Herr Fleck to have a fatal heart attack the next morning.

Frau Fleck had left the town a week later.

The Schusters were living in circumstances as reduced as the Drachmanns.

Neither family had felt safe since that night, and their nerves kept being tested.

Soldiers returning home on leave brought stories about Polish Jews being forced into ghettoes and being made to wear armbands embroidered with the Star of David.

‘So they’re easier to catch,’ according to one of the farmhands who’d stared pointedly at Noemi as he’d said it.

So not fear then, but a strange sense of relief that the danger had stopped lurking and revealed itself.

If it’s out in the open, at least I can see what I’m fighting.

Viktor was scanning the farmyard; Herr Distel had shouldered his gun.

Noemi instinctively twisted onto her stomach and scanned her options.

She’d hunted enough prey herself to know what animals under threat did.

They froze. They lay low and blended in with their surroundings.

And, when they moved, it was rarely in a straight line.

And they still get caught far too easily.

Noemi refused to listen to that. She took a moment to calm her pulse and survey her surroundings.

The hay field beside her hadn’t been harvested yet and the stalks were high.

If she could cross it without being detected, she could reach the road which circled the back of the town and was too rough for Viktor to risk driving his precious car across.

She began to crawl in that direction, keeping to the tracks the farmhands had made, only rising to a crouch when she was well inside the thickest cover.

Luckily, the wind was blowing the stems in the direction she needed to go, which would camouflage her movements.

She forced herself to stay as focused as she would on a mountaintop and to push away the dangers, including the possibility that Viktor had gone for her parents or the Schusters first. That wouldn’t have been a logical move.

She was the quickest. She was the one who could get to everybody else and warn them to hide…

Where?

She stumbled as she hit the path, twisted her ankle, lost her breath.

Where could any of them go? Who, if anyone, would shelter them?

She ploughed on, trying to imagine each step as a foothold, telling herself she could reach it.

Anything not to panic at the thought of what might be happening in the town and freeze.

‘Noemi. Noemi. Wait.’

The voice wasn’t Viktor’s, and it wasn’t a shout. It didn’t sound like someone trying to raise the alarm. That didn’t mean she could trust it. She scanned the path for a rock or a stick, anything she could use as a weapon.

‘It’s all right. It’s me. It’s Carina.’

Noemi didn’t have time to decide if that was all right or not. Carina was at her side, a hand on her elbow, her eyes nervously scanning the path behind them.