The Big Lie (19 page)

I was alone for a long time, in a room with a short metal bed. I had a rough blanket, a sink with only the cold tap working, a bucket (for the obvious), no radiator. I’d realised what was going on before they took me by the arm and steered me in, locking the door behind me. But maybe not on the journey over. I let go of the lie when I saw the gateway.

I was here to work, and that work would set me free.

In the first room, a sign was hung around my neck with the name of the place and a number.

23674.

‘Look left,’ said the woman in the grey smock, blinding me with the flash. ‘Look right,’ she said, blinding me again.

In the second room, she took away my watch, my neck-chain and Party pin. I handed over the small purse of money Mum had strung around my neck before I left. If she had known, I told myself, she would never have given me this. Next I removed my clothes – my BDM jacket, my woggle, the knot in my necktie, my shirt, my skirt, my shoes and socks. My bra next, then my pants. I signed them away, along with my trunk.

‘When will I get them back?’ I asked, feeling silly to be speaking while completely naked.

The woman shrank down further into the collar of her grey smock, adding more chins to the two she’d had from the start. ‘When you are good,’ was the reply.

My dressing down from Herr Hoffmann was not the end of it. I was punished, and in the most ingenious way. They gave me what I had always wanted. They made me their hero.

My picture was in the newspaper – the national one, not just the local – and I was interviewed for the radio. Then – the pinnacle – a crew from the People’s Television came to our house. They filmed me in our living room, sitting next to my mother, who was told to beam with pride, while Lilli sat at my feet, as if I were a god, or she my dog. (They tried to get Wolf to sit in too for what they called the ‘ahh-factor’ but he would only keep still if provided with something to chew. The sound of him cracking bone with his back teeth was too loud to accommodate, so he was shut outside in the garden and the microphone hardly picked up his whimpering at all.)

What choice did I have but to go along with it? And anyway, hadn’t I always wanted to be loved like this? As long as I didn’t think too much about why I was there, I thought I might come to enjoy it.

Before we recorded the piece for television, I sat down with the interviewer to work out exactly what I would say.

‘So you actually went blind for a few moments,’ gasped the woman in the neat, peppermint-coloured suit. ‘What did you expect to see when you could open your eyes again?’

She was one of the People’s Television’s main presenters – but only for the interviews with wives and daughters. And animals. They got a man to do the stories about money and war and industry. She was incredibly pretty, with large, impossible eyes, which meant the old-fashioned suit she was wearing didn’t exactly look awful. Her hair was styled all high, sharp and rigid. Her lips were painted a very vivid red. ‘To show up on the camera,’ she explained, as if it was a terrible chore to be allowed to wear lipstick.

‘Well, I could hear screaming and some fighting,’ I answered, ‘and when we got back to the hotel there was the sound of glass breaking outside, bottles and things like that, so I thought, oh god, this is bad, this is …’

‘Oh, HAHAHAHA.’ The woman cut me off with the loudest, strangest laugh. She seemed to think I was telling a joke.

She grinned at my father.
What an adorable daughter you have, Herr Keller!
the grin said. But it was also a little flirty. I glanced at Mum to see what she was making of it all, but she had her eyes tight shut while a girl in a checked skirt and black blouse was poofing powder onto her face. Our living room was all activity – men setting lights, mounting cameras on tripods, Lilli bothering each one of them in turn with her questions. Through the window, I could see Frau Gross standing across the street, craning her head around the television crew’s van, trying to see what was going on.

‘No, we won’t say that,’ the woman in the peppermint suit told me sweetly. She clutched my knee to stop me skipping off in any more giddy directions. The newspaper and radio people hadn’t wanted my real answer to that question either. I thought the television people, in the whole hierarchy of things, would be more discerning. They would like this injection of excitement. But in the end, they flattened out the story like everyone else. I just couldn’t see how I could be a hero if we hadn’t been in any danger in the first place. I was only trying to help them. Or maybe my ego had let me get swept away with it a little. The live broadcast of the concert had been stopped before the fire, thanks to that time delay. No one had seen this part, when she had …

I wouldn’t let my mind go back to it, not properly. I just couldn’t. It was too much to bear. The sight of my friend, like that … So really I was only making up my own safe story, just like they were making up theirs.

‘You must have heard the crowds cheering your quick actions,’ the peppermint lady said. ‘You must have expected to open your eyes to the hugs and kisses of your comrades?’

She positioned the question so that saying anything other than ‘yes’ would have sounded completely idiotic.

‘Oh, um, yes.’

‘So shall we say you were carried back to the hotel by the crowd, passed across that joyous sea of arms?’ She was a little bit in love with this image.

‘Okay,’ I said, because I didn’t want to disappoint her, or my father who was watching carefully from the sidelines. She beamed a big-teeth smile. ‘And, gosh, how did that feel? Being carried like that?’ Her eyes were shining, making it all instantly true – that joyous sea of arms.

‘Um, wonderful?’ I suggested.

I saw that Dad was nodding encouragingly, so I came up with more words.

‘Thrilling, unexpected, totally overwhelming …’

They needed some pictures to ‘cut away to’ during my interview, so they came and filmed me skating.

Ingrid had hugged me so tight that first time I’d returned to the rink.

‘Is everything all right?’ she’d said into my hair.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so.’

She continued to hold me close so she could speak quietly.

‘Is everything to go on as always?’ And I realised she wasn’t really worried about me. No, that is unfair – she wasn’t
only
worried about me. Her life, I saw, was inescapably associated with mine.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re fine.’

‘I’m so pleased,’ she said, louder now, patting my back and moving away. Then she set about getting me into the pole harness so I could work on my triple axel.

When the peppermint lady and the People’s Television crew invaded the rink, disturbing the hushed focus of our practice, Ingrid had to work hard to hide her irritation. She stamped her blades impatiently against the rubber flooring as the make-up girl straightened her hair and powdered her nose.

‘It’s so cold in here, isn’t it?’ the girl kept saying as she teased the strands of Ingrid’s fringe. With each repetition of this stupid rhetorical question, I expected Ingrid to swipe a paw at the girl’s unsuspecting face.

The crew played around endlessly with the lighting available until it fitted the mood they were trying to create, until we were all frozen to the bone waiting. At last I did my routine to Bruckner’s
Fantasie
but I was so cold and nervous that I went wrong in a number of places. I knew I was letting Ingrid down, dinting her pride, in front of all these people.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the peppermint lady. ‘We’ll edit it to make you look fantastic.’

‘She is fantastic,’ Ingrid hissed.

‘Oh, yes, yes, she is! Absolutely!’

The peppermint lady may have been tall and blonde and magnificent but no one would have fancied her chances in a fight against small, dark, cat-like Ingrid.

They also filmed me giving a talk to the Jungmädel.

Ruby Heigl, their new troop leader, was made to stand aside, her face like a puckered balloon as she led the cheers and rounds of applause for me. The television crew filmed her doing an introduction, which she was asked to redo over and over again.

‘With a little more passion, Fräulein,’ said the director, a slim, good-looking man with a wave of blonde floppy hair and a lovely patterned tank-top. ‘This is our national hero we have here!’

The girls stared up at me, open-mouthed, when I began to talk, describing how I had run from my position on the stage, grabbed the jacket and plunged into the flames. Then, without any prompting at all, I found myself telling them that I had been carried back to the hotel by the crowd, passed across a joyous sea of arms.

No one came back for hours. I was shivering. I wanted to curl up in the chair behind the desk, but guessed that would be against the rules. Would a good girl put her naked self on a wooden seat that would later be used by her superiors?

I had to get my stuff back. It wasn’t about the things. It was about proving that I was good and I deserved them.

I shifted my attention away from the chair to the slatted blinds. But, oh god, even in a half-empty room I couldn’t help but find temptation. Now all I wanted to do was open the blinds and see daylight. I wanted to look around and try to place where I was. (Of course, I did know where I was, I wasn’t stupid. But I only knew it by name. Just as a concept or an idle threat. Not as a real place, positioned on a real piece of landscape, reachable by real people, like me.) But I didn’t look. Because there was a camera mounted on the ceiling in the corner watching my every move.

When the man in the white coat walked in I was lying on my side on the floor, hugging my knees, almost asleep.

‘Aufstehen!’

I stood, trying to keep myself covered with my arms. He pulled a torch from his top pocket and shone it into my eyes. Another blinding.

‘Look up …’ he said. ‘Look down … Look left … Look right.’ I did as I was told.

‘Now open your mouth. Say “ah”.’ He counted my teeth.

The torch went off. He ticked and scribbled into his folder of paperwork, gave me occasional disappointed glances as he wrote. I wondered if I would feel any less humiliated if I just let my arms drop. Standing there with one hand clutching a breast and the other between my legs wasn’t feeling anywhere close to respectable. But I didn’t have the nerve to let go. I thought about what his notes might say.
Good height, sturdy build, features well within acceptable limits, no clear outward signs …

He didn’t have a stethoscope or a pump to measure my blood pressure. I was only going to be checked like a dog or a horse, for my shiny eyes and solid teeth.

Then he said, ‘Are you hiding anything on your person?’

This made me choke, almost laugh. It also made me drop my arms. I wanted to show him that, despite his expert’s white coat, he was clearly being an imbecile. How could I be hiding anything on my person when I wasn’t wearing any clothes?

The doctor’s face stayed steady and serious. He looked me up and down. But mostly down.

And I really had done so well up to that point, managing not to cry, but my voice cracked when I said, ‘Please don’t.’

Wait until my father hears about this!
is what I should have said.
Wait until he hears of this insult to his rank and family!
But I was too shocked.

A nurse came in.

‘Shall I cut off her hair, Herr Doktor?’ she asked as she passed him in the doorway.

My hands went instinctively to my head. I didn’t care about covering myself up any more. I’d thrown away my dignity.

‘No,’ muttered the doctor. ‘Just make the usual checks for contraband.’

And the nurse did exactly as she was told.

We sat down as a family. And, I confess, I was excited. It was the night we would watch back my interview on the Evening Show on the People’s Television. Mum had prepared us drinks and snacks. (Drinks and snacks, in the living room! A total infringement of the ban on anything that could potentially stain the best furniture.) This was a very special occasion.

We sat through the previews for the week’s dramas, the weather report predicting a drop in temperature, the tension building all the while. This is what it must feel like, I thought, to be a famous actress arriving at the Kino Babylon in a silk dress, ready to see your face on the big screen. I had been seduced by it all, this hero worship. I had swallowed the wonderful pill. And then there it was, straight off the back of the
hello
s and
welcome
s, while my head was still in Horst-Wessel-Platz signing autographs – my face!

‘Look, look, look,’ gasped Lilli. ‘Our living room!’

In which we were currently sitting! Having drinks and snacks!

Mum let out a delighted squeal. Lilli grabbed hold of my arm, digging her nails into my skin with her excitement. I felt so sick I thought I might actually be sick.

But it was the oddest thing. The peppermint lady’s hair didn’t look nearly as tall and sculptural as it had in real life. The screen reduced it somehow. For me, the camera lens had the opposite effect. I was bigger. Sort of grotesque. It didn’t feel like watching myself at all. The girl travelling across the rink in a wash of pink light, all snappy and breezy, her upright spins as neat and tight as any Dani Hannah could manage … that wasn’t me. The girl looking so cocky and sure as she stood in front of the Jungmädel telling them they must always be ready, always be prepared, because evil lurks behind every corner … that wasn’t me either. The girl sitting on a sofa with such an admiring mother and sister, telling a lady in a peppermint suit about ‘a sea of joyous arms’ … that certainly wasn’t me.

Yet it was. It was my shape and outline.

But my soul?

That wonderful pill was stuck, fast, in my throat.

When our moment on screen ended, Mum, Dad and Lilli began applauding, babbling and cooing about what they’d just seen. I didn’t join in. The programme returned to the male presenter behind a desk. Time to discuss the serious stuff surrounding the Jay Acker concert. The presenter didn’t call it that though. The name ‘Jay Acker’ had been crossed out. The day was now known as ‘The Concert’ or sometimes ‘The Incident.’ Did the boy go straight back to America? In the build up, there had been talk of him seeking asylum in the Reich. Since ‘The Incident’, no word.

For days they’d been promising to reveal the identity of the ‘terrorist’. I somehow knew that tonight would be the night, because Dad was carrying himself looser, a button undone at the top of his shirt, his cuffs rolled up. He had stayed over in London, at the office, the night before my first interview and when he came back he was fired up again, not brooding. He’d seemed ready to throw his energies into home. Into me. There was a momentum, and I felt part of it. The television interview had been the culmination of something.

In contrast to Dad, I was coiling tighter and tighter. They hadn’t asked any direct questions about her in my interviews – not her as an individual, only her as an abstract concept, her as a fire to be put out. I was grateful for this, of course. How would I have even said her name without collapsing into despair? But the silence, it was ominous. I couldn’t figure it out, how they were going to do it. How would they tell the nation that this ‘terrorist’ was our neighbour, my friend? Someone right under our noses, someone on our watch, someone whose father worked with my father? Someone who was one of us.

‘Authorities have today revealed the identity of the terrorist who made an attempt on the lives of our young people …’ said the presenter. I was breathing so fast I felt dizzy.

Her picture filled the screen.

She was an American, they said.

She’s called Amanda Levy.

She’s a Jew and a Bolshevik sympathiser, they told us
.
The girl in the picture had a cross and messy little face just like Clementine. She was wiry and white-blonde the same as my friend. But it wasn’t her. It was a picture of someone else.

My mouth opened, ready to argue, but what could I say? Who would I say it to? Mum and Lilli were still squealing about their television appearance. And my father … I didn’t dare look at him. But I could feel him looking at me.

Next on screen was a series of images of men with dark skin and misshapen features. These were also Americans, they said. These were the men who had instigated the plot. They had taken this Amanda Levy girl under their wing. She was an ‘asocial’ and an ‘idiot’, they told us (so not a calculating political sympathiser, after all). She had been their puppet.

It made no sense.

That’s what I would have said, had I had the courage to speak
. No one is going to buy this, because
it doesn’t make any sense!
All those people at home may not have seen her face, her real face, but they would have heard me in my interview – only moments ago on that very programme! – clearly saying how I wanted to save my friend. Yes, I had said that. I had managed that much. I had leapt onto the flames, I told the peppermint lady, because I wanted to save ‘my friend’. And now they wanted everyone to believe that I was friends with an American! With a Bolshevik sympathiser! With a Jew! How could I be a hero to them if I was friends with an American Bolshevik-sympathising Jew? How could my father let anyone believe that his daughter was friends with …

No, that’s not what I had said.

I hadn’t said ‘my friend’ at all.

Of course I didn’t. They wouldn’t have allowed that.

I’d been asked to say something ever so slightly different, the distinction barely registering at the time. I’d said yes to everything just to save my own skin.

They’d asked me to say ‘my friends’.

I leapt onto the flames, I told the peppermint lady, because I wanted to save ‘my friends’.

Just one letter – and I had crossed out her name, erased her message.

All that she’d done had been for nothing.

Even the people who were actually there, seeing it with their own eyes, hearing it with their own ears, they were too drunk on the music. And suppose just for a moment they weren’t, would any of their memories have survived the debriefings we were given to help us ‘understand’ what had happened that day? Even within our own Mädelschaft and Kameradschaft, the people who knew and recognised her, would any of them have managed to hang onto their belief that they had seen her – Clementine Amelia Hart – so desperate to be noticed, so desperate to be heard that she had set herself on fire?

That’s not what you saw,
the visiting Schutzstaffel officer had said in our debriefing in the meeting hall. He’d said that, without having to say it at all.

‘This was the act of a terrorist,’ he told us, slowly, methodically replacing her face, her very existence with a word –
terrorist.
I could see it now – the process of it, the system.

‘And we do not engage in discussions about the motivations of terrorists,’ he went on, ‘for there is no justification for acts of violence against the Greater German Reich. We simply condemn their acts,’ he said, ‘and then we seek revenge.’

It was only me. Her message had reached only me.

Sitting in the living room that evening with my family, I spat out that wonderful pill. It tasted bad. Very, very bad.

On the television, the man behind the desk was summing up, declaring this tragedy ‘a victory’. Enemies of the state had been captured before they could do any damage, because we had infiltrated and dismantled their intricate but naive little plot.

‘And all this has been achieved,’ the man said, switching from a straight face to this strange little grin, ‘with the help of the Reich’s favourite daughter.’

A smiling picture of me in my BDM uniform came onto the screen, the wind whipping up the loose strands of my hair, my eyes on something pleasing in the distance.

I had killed my friend. Me.