“They’ll come for us,” Mama warned her husband. “They’ll come and take us away.” They. “We have to find it!” At one point, it seemed like Papa might have to go down to the basement and paint a flag on one of his drop sheets. Thankfully, it turned up, buried behind the accordion in the cupboard.
“That infernal accordion, it was blocking my view!” Mama swiveled. “Liesel!”
The girl had the honor of pinning the flag to the window frame.
Hans Junior and Trudy came home for the afternoon eating, like they did at Christmas or Easter. Now seems like a good time to introduce them a little more comprehensively:
Hans Junior had the eyes of his father and the height. The silver in his eyes, however, wasn’t warm, like Papa’s—they’d been Führered. There was more flesh on his bones, too, and he had prickly blond hair and skin like off-white paint.
Trudy, or Trudel, as she was often known, was only a few inches taller than Mama. She had cloned Rosa Hubermann’s unfortunate, waddlesome walking style, but the rest of her was much milder. Being a live-in housemaid in a wealthy part of Munich, she was most likely bored of children, but she was always capable of at least a few smiled words in Liesel’s direction. She had soft lips. A quiet voice.
They came home together on the train from Munich, and it didn’t take long for old tensions to rise up.
A SHORT HISTORY OF
HANS HUBERMANN VS. HIS SON
The young man was a Nazi; his father was not. In the opinion of Hans Junior, his father was part of an old, decrepit Germany—one that allowed everyone else to take it for the proverbial ride while its own people suffered. As a teenager, he was aware that his father had been called “Der Juden Maler”—the Jew painter—for painting Jewish houses. Then came an incident I’ll fully present to you soon enough—the day Hans blew it, on the verge of joining the party. Everyone knew you weren’t supposed to paint over slurs written on a Jewish shop front. Such behavior was bad for Germany, and it was bad for the transgressor.
“So have they let you in yet?” Hans Junior was picking up where they’d left off at Christmas.
“In what?”
“Take a guess—the party.”
“No, I think they’ve forgotten about me.”
“Well, have you even tried again? You can’t just sit around waiting for the new world to take it with you. You have to go out and be part of it—despite your past mistakes.”
Papa looked up. “Mistakes? I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but not joining the Nazi Party isn’t one of them. They still have my application—you know that—but I couldn’t go back to ask. I just …”
That was when a great shiver arrived.
It waltzed through the window with the draft. Perhaps it was the breeze of the Third Reich, gathering even greater strength. Or maybe it was just Europe again, breathing. Either way, it fell across them as their metallic eyes clashed like tin cans in the kitchen.
“You’ve never cared about this country,” said Hans Junior. “Not enough, anyway.”
Papa’s eyes started corroding. It did not stop Hans Junior. H
e looked now for some reason at the girl. With her three books standing upright on the table, as if in conversation, Liesel was silently mouthing the words as she read from one of them. “And what trash is this girl reading? She should be reading Mein Kampf.”
Liesel looked up.
“Don’t worry, Liesel,” Papa said. “Just keep reading. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
But Hans Junior wasn’t finished. He stepped closer and said, “You’re either for the Führer or against him—and I can see that you’re against him. You always have been.” Liesel watched Hans Junior in the face, fixated on the thinness of his lips and the rocky line of his bottom teeth. “It’s pathetic—how a man can stand by and do nothing as a whole nation cleans out the garbage and makes itself great.”
Trudy and Mama sat silently, scaredly, as did Liesel. There was the smell of pea soup, something burning, and confrontation.
They were all waiting for the next words.
They came from the son. Just two of them.
“You coward.” He upturned them into Papa’s face, and he promptly left the kitchen, and the house.
Ignoring futility, Papa walked to the doorway and called out to his son. “Coward? I’m the coward?!” He then rushed to the gate and ran pleadingly after him. Mama hurried to the window, ripped away the flag, and opened up. She, Trudy, and Liesel all crowded together, watching a father catch up to his son and grab hold of him, begging him to stop. They could hear nothing, but the manner in which Hans Junior shrugged loose was loud enough. The sight of Papa watching him walk away roared at them from up the street.
“Hansi!” Mama finally cried out. Both Trudy and Liesel flinched from her voice. “Come back!”