Gerlinde memorized the lines but hardly recalled their meaning after reciting the lessons in front of the class. On her lap, a chemistry textbook always lay open – one of the rare sciences the Nazi Party didn’t corrupt. The biology one joined the pile to be burned later in the school courtyard – the racial study and genetics sections were “utter and complete nonsense,” according to the same Amis. Gerlinde took their word for it without much thinking; entrance exams preoccupied her much more than anything.
She wouldn’t be alone taking them the following year. Wirths, who had ceased to be Wirths and had become Erich, for her, sometime in October, would be taking them along with her. It all started with a soccer game and Erich’s sprained ankle which Gerlinde expertly bandaged; his surprise at learning she used to be a Red Cross nurse during the war, followed by his admission that he had always envied the medic corps for they saved lives whereas he took them. And suddenly he didn’t wish to play with his comrades anymore, even after his ankle had healed but wanted to sit with his head bent over Gerlinde’s textbook instead and memorize the types of infectious diseases and the position of internal organs and breathe in the lavender scent of her hair.
They quizzed each other on laceration types and symptoms of concussion and let each other practice bandaging their “wounds.” Her hands were always cold and his – big and a bit rough, with callouses from clearing the rubble on weekends. The hands unlike her father’s, unlike Onkel Oswald’s, unlike Alfred’s. Erich’s were a soldier’s hands, a worker’s hands, honest and clean. Gerlinde’s stomach always contracted whenever he touched her, sending waves of intoxicating pleasure through her pale-blue veins.
Erich knew she was a Neumann; everyone at school knew who that Neumann was but unlike half of the students, Erich cared not one bit. Not because the old man was a Nazi but because he, Erich, had shot at people and killed them more often than not and did it really matter if the war was going on and that’s what happens during wars?
“I’m a murderer, too.” That was his reason.
“You’re a soldier.” Gerlinde tried to correct him.
“A murderer who gets awarded for murder then.” He would smile at her; it was the smile of a very old man on the face of a very young one. “That’s the whole difference.”
Erich was quiet and studious and always ready to help – a perfect Doktor material, Gerlinde would joke and he would smile his beautiful smile at her and hold her hand and make her feel at peace with herself for the first time in years. His comrades loved him. Tadek would kill for him and even Morris thought him to be a first-rate young man and permitted Erich to take Gerlinde to the movies for her birthday, accompanied by Tadek, though. Another reminder that Gerlinde was still a Neumann, which Erich once again thoroughly ignored.
They sat in the very back of the theater. Over Gerlinde’s blonde head, the silver light spilled from the projector turning dust into diamonds. She smiled at Tadek who sat to her right and put her left arm on the armrest, next to Erich, hoping that he’d hold it when the cowboys would start shooting. It was some Ami Western where blood didn’t spill from the wounds and where the bandits wore black hats and the sheriff wore a white one and the plot was easy to understand.
The lights hadn’t been dimmed yet. Behind their backs, invisible in the small window, the operator was loading the mandatory newsreel into the maw of the projector. In front of them sat women with their hair put up high and next to them, men in uniforms – American, not German ones. Whenever the women turned their heads, Gerlinde saw the red lipstick and white teeth as they smiled and wondered what they did during the war and whether their new Ami boyfriends ever asked them about it. They were young and beautiful and perhaps former mistresses of some high-ranking Nazis, or Bonbon-wearing Party members themselves, the secretarial staff or some such, or BDM leaders, or Red Cross nurses like herself… She looked at Tadek once again but he stared straight ahead, at the empty screen. Gerlinde wondered whether it was because of Erich.
The projector purred to life. On the white screen, the screaming American letters – Hollywoodish, grotesque.
Universal Newsreel.
Nuremberg War Crimes Trial Opens.
The newsreel was fresh, still untranslated into German but Gerlinde spoke English far too well to feign ignorance.
The prosecution of the terrorists of the Nazi regime… unbelievable crimes against humanity… International Tribunal… These pictures reveal the arrogance… German warlords… Strong indictment of the defendants… the wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating… do you plead guilty or not guilty… Hermann Wilhelm Göring—
Herr Reichsmarschall.
At once, Gerlinde was on her feet, pushing her way out of the theater stuffed with far too many people, far too many eyes staring at her in condemnation, far too many mouths murmuring their disapproval. Somewhere behind her, Erich was moving and apologizing to someone in English. In front of her, only darkness, darkness and the familiar faces in place of the faceless crowd.
Herr Reichsmarschall. Herr
