Hitler's Daughter (4 page)

The rain pounded on the roof of the bus shelter like it couldn’t wait to get down from the sky. One of the cows moaned softly, a sad, wet complaint about life in general.

‘Go on,’ urged Mark.

‘The bus,’ said Anna.

Mark looked at his watch.

‘We’ve got another five minutes at least,’ he said. ‘Go on!’

Anna took another breath, and began the story again.

Frau Leib had grey hair, not speckled grey like Fräulein Gelber’s—whose hair looked a bit like a hen’s feathers, Heidi thought sometimes—but grey all over like a saucepan, and tight curls that looked
like they were made of metal too, they were so firm about her head.

Frau Leib’s hands were large, with red knuckles. Her skirt was much longer and wider than Fräulein Gelber’s, the sort of skirt you could use for carrying apples or cabbages from the cellar, and an apron from her neck to her knee, a ‘kittel’, that seemed welded to her waist no matter what else she wore.

Heidi never saw Frau Leib without her apron; whether she was coming or going, she still had it on. It looked bigger than she was, all bunched up at her sides, as though at one time Frau Leib had been even larger than she was now.

Frau Leib lived on the farm just down the road, the one with the pigs in the black mud. Her husband worked the fields with their young grandsons and two of their daughters-in-law. Their sons were away fighting, except for one who was in a prisoner-of-war camp in America (America was the enemy now, too).

Herr Leib was in the Nazi Party—one of the first members in the whole district—so his wife was supposed to be trustworthy.

She also liked to talk.

Frau Leib talked in a dialect so thick it was sometimes hard to understand, but that didn’t matter, because she said so much that you could
leave half of it out and still have enough for conversation.

‘I talk as the pig’s snout grows,’ said Frau Leib with a grin that showed the dark gaps in her back teeth, meaning that she talked as thoughts flew into her head, and there were a lot of thoughts under Frau Leib’s grey curls.

‘What happened to your face, girl?’ she demanded, as soon as she saw Heidi. ‘A burn? Is that what it is? The bombs?’

‘I was born with it,’ said Heidi quietly.

Frau Leib’s great arms came round her and she hugged her to her apron, which had just the faintest smell of pig. ‘You poor darling,’ she said. ‘I will give you some ointment. It’s pig lard, with chickweed and other herbs. It is my grandmother’s recipe and she got it from her mother, so it is very good. It takes scars like that away so fast you’d think the boar was after them to get its fat back!’

‘Thank you,’ said Heidi, as she was released from the apron, though she knew the ointment wouldn’t do any good. If there had been a way to remove the mark Duffi would have arranged it years before.

But there were some questions even Frau Leib knew not to ask. Whoever had organised the house
for them had made it clear that Fräulein Gelber—and Heidi—were people of importance. Their clothes, their food, their lack of ration cards, the guard, the provisions that arrived for them every second Monday were proof enough of that.

But even if Frau Leib didn’t ask questions, she still liked to talk.

‘Listen to the frogs in the pond!’ said Frau Leib, her fat fingers firm around the knife handle as she chopped through thick bacon while Heidi peeled the potatoes for the soup. (Heidi had never had bacon before—Duffi didn’t like people to eat meat. But they ate it now.) ‘If the frogs croak like that at night it will rain in the morning.’

‘Are there fish in the pond?’ asked Heidi. She was allowed in the kitchen often now to help Frau Leib. Together they made the beds, and dusted too.

‘Just the frogs,’ said Frau Leib.

Frau Leib had five children: ‘Lisl, oh, I had such a hard time having her,’ said Frau Leib. But at that Frau Leib halted a while, as though she had remembered how young her listener was. And there were Franz and Josef and Helmuth and Erna.

She also had two grandsons who worked the farm, and another two who were only babies, too young to help at all.

‘But oh, we need the help,’ said Frau Leib, shaking her head so her chins wobbled but her metal curls stayed firm. ‘All the fine strong men are in the army, and just old men and boys to help us now.’

If the farm had been bigger, she explained, the boys—her sons—might have been given a deferment from the army, so they could help the Führer by growing food for the soldiers of the Reich.

‘Of course, they are proud to be fighting too,’ said Frau Leib hurriedly, with a sideways look at Heidi. ‘We all have to do what we can.’

Several times Heidi noticed Frau Leib slip a little flour or a twist of sugar into the pocket of her coat that was hung by the back door when she came to work. But Heidi did not speak of it. She and Fräulein Gelber had more than they needed, and she now knew from Frau Leib that most people were going hungry, even here in the country with the cows and goats and pigs.

Frau Leib took their scraps to feed to the hens, and the dishwater to feed to the pigs. ‘It will just go to waste else,’ said Frau Leib reasonably, as she slipped a piece of leftover sausage into the hens’ bin that they could very well have had for lunch the next day.

‘Could we keep hens?’ Heidi asked Fräulein Gelber.

Fräulein Gelber shook her head. ‘They are dirty things,’ she said. ‘Besides, Frau Leib will sell us all the eggs we need.’

It was funny with Frau Leib in the kitchen. No one had ever talked to Heidi so freely before. Sometimes Heidi thought that Frau Leib wasn’t talking to her, but was just talking because she was uncomfortable when her mouth was still.

Did Frau Leib talk even when she was walking home by herself? she wondered. Did she talk to the starlings and the thrushes and the blackbirds perhaps…But it was good to listen to Frau Leib’s conversation. There was so much to learn that no one had ever mentioned to her before.

‘…and the blacksmith keeps the cows shod—oh yes, the cows must have shoes just like the horses if they are to work—and the scythes whetted…You have never seen the blacksmith work? But all the children hang around the forge after school! The banging and the clanging and the hot fire…you must come down this afternoon then…but perhaps not,’ said Frau Leib, pushing the broom and remembering.

‘It’s the fat that makes a good pig,’ explained Frau Leib one day, as she worked the pastry on the thick marble board. ‘The fat not only gives flavour, you understand, it helps the meat keep well. A sausage
without fat is tasteless, but it also dries out, and sometimes goes bad. But not all food will put fat on a pig of course. Fat produces fat—that’s what you have to remember. Corn is good, because corn is yellow like fat is yellow.

‘And you want to know a secret?’ asked Frau Leib, her red hands bashing the bread dough. ‘You want to know why in all these years our cows have never lost a calf?
Never!
’

‘Please,’ said Heidi, though she knew by now there was no need to say anything to keep Frau Leib talking.

‘The secret is beer!’ said Frau Leib triumphantly, giving her dough an extra good push. ‘You give the cow a good drink of beer as soon as it has calves, and it makes the milk flow and makes her mellow, you understand, so she looks after her calf better. A good bucket of beer, that’s what you need…’

‘I have brought you a present,’ Frau Leib said one day, as she took off her hat and gloves and coat and hung them on the peg by the door.

‘What is it?’ demanded Heidi.

Frau Leib smiled. ‘It’s in my coat pocket.’

Heidi peered into the pocket. There was something in the bottom; something small and warm.

‘A rabbit!’ she cried, lifting it out. The rabbit was soft and black and white and twitched its nose.

‘It’s a doe,’ said Frau Leib, smiling. ‘When she gets bigger you can breed it to our buck and then you’ll have lots of rabbits, and I’ll show you how to make rabbit pie.’

‘Look at its whiskers!’ cried Heidi delighted. ‘Thank you, Frau Leib!’

‘You’re a good girl,’ said Frau Leib, and Heidi knew it wasn’t because she was polite, or helped make the beds, but because she had said nothing about the things in Frau Leib’s pockets.

Heidi helped Frau Leib in the mornings, and often in the afternoons now as well. Fräulein Gelber had arranged all the schoolbooks in the third bedroom, but she no longer seemed as interested in lessons as she was before.

She didn’t even make Heidi read pages from Duffi’s book. She read her letters from home over and over, and several times Heidi found her crying. But now she wouldn’t explain why.

Fräulein Gelber still liked to walk, and they did walk once a day, but not along the lane: ‘In case someone sees us and asks questions,’ said Fräulein Gelber. They walked across the fields instead.

The fields had belonged to their house. Frau Leib’s husband worked them now. They walked across the Leibs’ fields too. There was a wood not far away and
once they saw a deer, grazing delicately by the edge of the trees, and once a wild pig, a ‘wildschwein’.

The wildschwein did not look at all like Frau Leib’s pigs. It was black and hairy with big shoulders and a tiny back and even its snout was crooked. It stared at them with tiny eyes, and then it ran away.

Heidi asked Fräulein Gelber why the wild pig was so different from Frau Leib’s pigs, but Fräulein Gelber couldn’t say. ‘It’s just the way things are,’ she said.

There were wild mushrooms in the fields in autumn and the leaves in the wood fluttered like yellow butterflies and stuck to Heidi’s shoes. Frau Leib made mushroom omelette as a treat, because even for them, eggs were getting scarce.

Sometimes city women came out and tried to trade things, like a cushion or a good saucepan, for an egg. Or even jewellery for a ham.

Frau Leib told Heidi all about the city women, but she didn’t say whether she traded with them or not. It was illegal to trade food. Everything was rationed; but Heidi suspected that she did, even if Herr Leib didn’t know.

One day when she and Fräulein Gelber were out in the fields, a plane flew down so low she could see the pilot’s face, or rather, his helmet, which mostly hid his
face. All she could really see were his mouth and chin, white below the brown helmet.

She almost wanted to wave, he was so close. If she’d yelled ‘Hello’ he might even have heard her above the clatter of the engines. But he was an enemy, and even if he had been a German pilot, Fräulein Gelber would have frowned.

The bus rolled and wandered through the puddles, then bumped up onto the bitumen. The splash of mud and water stopped.

‘I’d like to see His Excellency the blinking Mayor drive this blinking road twice a day,’ muttered Mrs Latter to no one in particular. She blew her nose with peculiar vehemence into the big white hanky. ‘Made sure he got the bitumen right up to his place, no worries about that. But as for doing anything for us out here…’

No one said anything. If you answered Mrs Latter you were in for an argument all the way to school.

Mark waited till Mrs Latter had subsided under her hat (it was orange and red today) then tapped Anna on the shoulder. ‘Anna?’

Anna looked up from her book and turned round. ‘Yeah, what?’

‘You know how Hitler went on about the Jews? About some people being better than others?’

‘Yes,’ said Anna.

‘Well, was there anything in it?’

Anna stared. ‘Of course not!’ she said.

‘I don’t mean about the Jews,’ said Mark hurriedly. ‘I mean everyone knows that’s stupid. But what I mean is, are some people better than others…you know what I mean.’

Little Tracey turned round. ‘I’m better at spelling,’ she boasted loudly. ‘Miss Littlefield says I’m the best of all. I can beat anyone in the class. I bet I can beat…’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ interrupted Mark.

Anna frowned. ‘You mean, is any group of people, a whole country or a race or a religion, better than other people?’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Anna. ‘Like Irish jokes. Everyone carries on that the Irish are dumb but everyone knows they aren’t really.’

‘My great-grandpa was Irish,’ said Mark.

‘So was one of mine,’ said Anna.

‘My grandpa came from Yugoslavia,’ said Little Tracey, bouncing up and down in her seat. ‘He says that he…’

Mark spoke over the top of her. ‘Ben’s dad says that Asians are all criminals. But that can’t be right can it? I mean how do we know?’

‘Ben’s father’s a racist little rooster with maggots for brains,’ announced Mrs Latter, circling round a pothole with more swerve than necessary, so they all had to grab the edges of their seats. ‘And you can tell him I said so with my love. No need to tell him anyway. I’ve told him often enough. Last time I saw him down at the pub I said…’

‘Why,’ began Mark, then stopped. No need to get Mrs Latter any more worked up.

‘Why? I’ll tell you why! You just have to look at the statistics, but does anyone bother to do that? No, they just listen to what some twerp has to say on TV and take it like it’s gospel. Never mind if it’s true or not. People just don’t THINK, that’s the trouble. They don’t look at the evidence. Never mind if anyone with half a brain in their heads…get on the right side of the road, you flaming numbskull!!’ Mrs Latter roared at Johnnie Trantor, bumbling past in his old ute.

‘What do the statistics say, Mrs Latter?’ asked Anna soothingly.

‘Asians have a lower crime rate than the rest of the population, that’s what they say,’ said Mrs Latter triumphantly. ‘And if you don’t believe me you look it
up yourself. You look at the ten most wanted criminals in Australia! Not a dark skin among the lot. All white and all dumb.’

Mark hesitated. Most times you’d be crazy to actually ask Mrs Latter a question. But she wasn’t going to shut up now, no matter what anyone said or didn’t say and maybe, just maybe, she’d have an interesting answer.

‘Mrs Latter,’ he attempted to interrupt.

‘…and as for that slimy, mean-mouthed bloke on TV, you know what I’d say to him if I ever caught him on my bus…’

Yeah, right, thought Mark. As though you’d get someone important like him on a school bus. ‘Mrs Latter, do you think there’s any group of people who are better or worse than other people?’

‘Sure,’ said Mrs Latter, swinging cheerfully back onto the middle of the road.

‘Really?’ asked Mark in surprise. He’d been sure she’d say, ‘No, everyone is as good as everyone else’, and then go off into one of her yelling matches. ‘Who, Mrs Latter?’

‘Men,’ said Mrs Latter with satisfaction. ‘They’re the worst group of people out there.’

‘But men aren’t a group or a race or…’

‘What are they then? Most crime is committed by
men, most car accidents are caused by men.’ Mrs Latter counted off on her fingers, so the bus swung wildly again.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Anna muttered to Mark.

‘Men start most of the wars, and fight in them too. Most of the people in prisons are men. You just have to look at the statistics!

‘You know what I think?’ demanded Mrs Latter, then answered herself as no one spoke. ‘I think men should pay higher taxes to pay for all the damage they do. Women are naturally gentler, more cooperative…Move your rear, you great mug!’ yelled Mrs Latter, as the bus slowed down behind old Mr Hannon’s Holden.

Mrs Latter was still holding forth as the bus pulled in to pick up Big Tracey. Mark sighed, and opened his maths homework.