Hitler's Daughter

‘To see my father?’ It was the first time she had called him that. What with the dark and sleepiness she had forgotten to call him Duffi.

‘Perhaps. Yes. I don’t know. Come on, hurry. Schnell!’

Heidi swung her legs out of the bed. ‘To Berlin?’

Fraulein Gelber nodded. ‘The car is waiting. Dress warmly. I will pack your bag.’

‘Are the soldiers coming, Fraulein Gelber?’

Fraulein Gelber didn’t look up from the drawers she was emptying. ‘Yes. They will be here soon.’

Both of them knew that she didn’t mean German soldiers. The enemy would soon be here. They had to escape before the enemy found them.

‘What about Frau Leib?’

Fraulein Gelber shrugged. Frau Leib would have to look after herself, and besides, Heidi realised, she would never leave her family.

‘What about my rabbits?’

‘Frau Leib will take them. Schnell!’

Heidi pulled on her stockings. Thick, woollen stockings. They prickled, but they kept her warm. She glanced around her room at the bright starched curtains, the photographs on the wall. Somehow she knew it was the last time that she would see it.

She left her dolls on the shelf above her bed.

‘Come now,’ said Fraulein Gelber.

Fraulein Gelber’s suitcase was in the corner. She picked it up, and handed Heidi hers.

Down the long corridor, down the twisting stairs, along the corridor below and past the kitchen.

‘Wait a moment,’ said Fraulein Gelber.

She quickly packed a basket for the journey with bread and cheese.

But not the sausage, Heidi noticed. Duffi would not like them to eat the sausage. And she would be seeing Duffi soon.

There were three cars in the driveway, not one. Army cars, with no lights showing. The driver got out of the second car. He took the suitcases and opened the back door. Fraulein Gelber ushered Heidi inside.

The black shadows danced in the moonlight. She could see the shapes of leaves outlined quite clearly on the ground, and the gleam of the moonlight on the frog pond. The frogs were silent.

The first car started its engine and moved off. It did not put its lights on. There was enough light from the moon to see their way.

Their driver started his engine. It spluttered once, and then ran smoothly. They moved after the first car, the third one following behind.

The house was dark behind them.

There was a rug on the seat. Fraulein Gelber spread it over their legs. ‘It is a very long way to go,’ she said. ‘Try to sleep.’

‘Yes,’ said Heidi. But she did not close her eyes. She looked out the window instead, at the faint moonlit glimpses of everything passing by.

There was the hedge with the starlings’ nests. And there was Frau Leib’s farm, blacker than the moonlit darkness. Even the pigs were asleep, and the baby goat called Heidi.

A plane roared overhead and then another. Fraulein Gelber tensed, and so did Heidi. She hoped it was too dark for the pilot to see them, down below, even with the moonlight.

The planes passed overhead. No bombs dropped around them. There was silence, apart from the engines of the cars. Heidi relaxed. For the moment they were safe.

Sometime towards morning she fell asleep, her head on Fraulein Gelber’s arm. Fraulein Gelber snored softly beside her, a wisp of spit on one corner of her mouth.

chapter seventeen The Bunker

The walls of the bunker seemed damp, though when Heidi touched them her fingers stayed dry. When she touched the walls she could feel the vibration of the explosions in the world above; the bombs and the tank shells, and other noises too, but Heidi didn’t know what they were. Your fingers felt fuzzy if you left them there long enough. It was a game that Heidi played sometimes.

There was not much else to do.

You could hear the explosions too, of course, but it wasn’t the same as feeling them. They just went on and on, so you almost got used to them. Then suddenly there would be a louder one than all the others, a high-pitched screaming noise and then the dull thump, thump would start again.

The room was small; concrete and steel deep underground, with a concrete floor. There were double bunks along the side. Heidi had wanted the top bunk, but Fraulein Gelber said, No, she might fall out, and took the top one for herself.

It seemed odd to Heidi that, with the invasion outside, the bombs and rockets and aircraft, Fraulein Gelber was worried that she might fall out of bed. But she said nothing. She was good at saying nothing. She had practised it all her life.

The room had a wooden table, with a small primus stove on top and two chairs, and a small alcove curtained off from the rest of the room. Inside the alcove was a basin with two taps, which gave cold water only, and two chamber-pots. Fraulein Gelber had to empty the chamber-pots into a bucket in the corridor every morning.

A soldier brought in breakfast. There was the end of a loaf of black bread, dusty and hard, not sweet and moist at all, and a piece of cold sausage, and two mugs of imitation coffee, one for her and one for Fraulein Gelber. Even here at the Fuhrer’s headquarters food was scarce. Did Duffi know about the sausage? wondered Heidi. Or maybe any food was precious now.

Fraulein Gelber divided the sausage and the bread. She hesitated, then she put the bread aside. ‘For later,’ she said. The imitation coffee was hot and bitter, the sausage dry and tasteless. Heidi wondered if it was made from horse meat. Frau Leib had told her that that was all they had in the city now.

Fraulein Gelber hadn’t remembered to bring any lesson books, and it seemed wrong to sing so far underground. Even talking seemed wrong, with the noise of the explosions, and the hard, worried voices in the corridor outside.

So they sat. Heidi remembered the wind on the lake and the sun on the leaves and all the bright things in the world above. She wondered how much would be left when the planes had dropped their bombs.

A different soldier brought their lunch. It was soup made from potatoes and cabbage; cold, with a thin sheet of fat congealed on the top, so Fraulein Gelber heated it on the stove. The stove warmed up the room, but she turned it off when the soup was hot, as there was not much fuel.

There was bread with the soup, but again Fraulein Gelber put it aside.

It was cold. They had two blankets each on their beds. It was too cold to sit on the chairs so they lay on the bottom bunk together, and Fraulein Gelber wrapped her in all of the blankets, and held her till she slept.

When she woke up Fraulein Gelber had gone. The bread had gone, too. And Fraulein Gelber’s suitcase.

Heidi felt no surprise. It was as though she had known it would happen, even though it had never occurred to her it could happen.

Of course, Fraulein Gelber would go. She would try to find her family in the mad world up above. Her family might need her, and she would need her family. What was the point of waiting for the soldiers here?

It was lonely in the bunker by herself.

She lay on the bed with the blankets around her till dinner came; more soup and bread and sausage and coffee. There was the same amount as before. No one seemed to have noticed that Fraulein Gelber had left. Or maybe they knew but didn’t care.

It took a while to work out how to light the primus. She was scared she’d burn her fingers, but at last she managed it. She drank the soup slowly to make time pass, and then she drank the coffee even though she did not