Such a sweet-looking lady. And no doubt as kind as she looked. Except when it came to the treatment which she would happily see handed out to any ‘Jews or gyppos’ who dared to come near her exalted ‘stock’.
Otto stared at the handwriting in the Bible. Reading the various names, the last of which was that of Inge Hahn. His mother.
‘And my father?’ Otto asked. ‘What about him? He’s not entered here and there was no name on the adoption certificate either. Do you know who he was? Do you know his name?’
‘Yes,’ the farmer said, ‘we know his name, although I won’t speak it in this house or anywhere else.’ He took some paper from a little drawer in the treasures table and slowly and carefully wrote down a name. ‘But you mustn’t fear, my boy,’ Herr Hahn went on. ‘I know that the man was of good stock for all he disgraced his own family and ours. Inge wrote and told us his father was a minister in the Lutheran Church in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, but he died in the war. His mother may live. We wouldn’t know.’
Otto took the paper and thanked the old couple.
‘We have to leave,’ Otto added. ‘We’ve got a long way to go on our bikes to get home.’
Herr and Frau Hahn were horrified, devastated even. Clearly Otto’s sudden appearance had brought them such hope.
‘But won’t you stay?’ they pleaded. ‘You and your friend? We have food and apple juice. We are so pleased to see you and we have so much to talk about.’
Otto stared down at his boots.
‘No, ma’am,’ he murmured, ‘we don’t.’
‘But yes! Of course we do,’ the farmer’s wife protested. ‘You can’t leave now that you have only just arrived.’
‘I’m sorry, Frau Hahn. But I can’t stay. I really am sorry but I have heard all I came to hear.’ Otto went to the door. ‘Come on, Silke, we need to get going.’
Frau Hahn began crying. Her husband took up the old leather-bound Bible and thrust it towards Otto.
‘Won’t you put your name in our Bible at least?’ the old farmer said. ‘Beneath your mother’s? She is the last one of our family so inscribed.’
But Otto wouldn’t do it.
‘I wish you well, Herr Hahn,’ he said politely. ‘I really do. But you’re not my grandfather and the people in this Bible aren’t my family. I have no place in your book. My family began with the mum and dad you gave me to. And what’s more, they’re Jews. I am a Jew.’
The two old peasants looked dumbstruck.
‘Jews?’ Herr Hahn asked in genuine horror. ‘That doctor gave you to Jews?
‘That’s right,’ Otto replied, ‘you left me with the finest people in Berlin and for that at least I will always be grateful to you. Goodbye.’
With that Otto left the tiny cottage with Silke scuttling after him, mumbling embarrassed farewells on both their behalf.
Otto didn’t look back as they cycled away, but Silke did, and she saw the old couple standing in the doorway staring after them, their faces empty with loss.
When Otto got back to the city, the first thing he did before even going home was to ride to the Lutheran church at Prenzlauer Berg and enquire after the previous minister. The one who had died in the Great War and whose name the peasant farmer Hahn had written down for him.
It was just as old Herr Hahn had said it would be. There was no shadow of Jewry to be found in Otto’s paternal line, any more than there had been in that of his mother.
That news for which every other German longed, to be classified officially as a genuine six-generation ‘pure blood’, left Otto devastated. He really wasn’t a Jew and he could not turn himself into one no matter how much he might want to.
And so, like the Jews he could no longer claim to be, he must be exiled.
Fate Sealed
FRIEDA AND WOLFGANG were summoned to the local Gestapo Office about a fortnight after Otto returned from his trip to Saxony.
They returned ashen-faced.
‘They say that you are never to see us again, Ottsy,’ Frieda said, trying with Herculean effort to pull herself together enough to speak.
‘No!’ Otto shouted. ‘That can’t be true. Why? What’s the point of stopping us even seeing each other?’
‘They said we’ve been a corrupting influence for too long,’ Frieda explained through her tears.
Wolfgang took his bottle of cheap spirits and sank down on the piano stool, his head slumped forward.
‘They say it will be a serious criminal offence if we try to maintain any kind of relationship with you at all,’ he said, speaking into his chest.
‘But what if it’s me?’ Otto almost pleaded. ‘What if I’m the one who comes to you? They can’t blame you for—’
‘If you visit us,’ Wolfgang interrupted, ‘they’ll treat it as if we’ve kidnapped you, and Mum, me and Paulus will be sent to a concentration camp.’
The four of them stared at each other.
‘Tomorrow?’ Otto said almost mechanically. ‘They’re coming tomorrow?’
‘We’ll see you, Otts,’ Wolfgang went on, emboldened by the gulp of liquor he’d taken. ‘Somehow we’ll find a way. They can’t just pretend our family doesn’t exist.’
‘Of course they can’t and nor will we,’ Frieda said, sniffling into a handkerchief and trying to collect herself. ‘Somehow we will stay together.’
‘But if you see me they’ll punish you,’ Otto said in despair. ‘If I come around here they’ll take you away.’ He looked at Paulus. ‘We’ve been together since our first day on earth, Pauly. Now they won’t let us be brothers at all.’
Paulus was pulling himself together also, wiping the wet from his eyes with angry sweeps of his sleeve.
‘Maybe they’d let us see each other if we promised to fight,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘We wouldn’t find that too difficult, would we?’
Otto still did not cry but now he began to rage.
‘I’ll make them wish they never heard of me,’ he said banging his fist down on the dining table. ‘Any family that takes me in is going to regret it. I will make their lives hell. I’ll make them hate me for the Jew I still am! I’ll kill them if I have to.’
‘Otto, please!’ Frieda cried. ‘Don’t say that. You can’t fight these people. They’ll punish you.’
‘Punish me! What more can they do to me? I’m telling you, Mum, I don’t care!’
‘But I
Otto was brought up short. Frieda’s tone was so incongruous and yet so very familiar. She’d used it so many countless thousands of times before. Almost by force of habit Otto cast his eyes to the floor, as if she’d been ticking him off for stealing biscuits from the treat tin or brandishing a dirty postcard that she’d found hidden in his bag. He almost found himself smiling.
‘And don’t grin like that when I’m talking to you!’ Frieda snapped, dabbing at her eyes. ‘You will wipe that smile off your face and listen to your mother! It is quite bad enough that you have to go away for a while, without me having to worry that you’re going to get yourself into terrible trouble when I’m not there to look after you.’ Frieda had regained her composure now. The issue of controlling Otto’s behaviour being more urgent to her than her despair at his having to go. ‘I
