The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

52 Herr A 1941

The following day it transpired that the British pilot’s chocolate had contained a powerful dose of amphetamines. The father of the twins, the tubby pharmacist, came raging over to us, confiscated the booty, and then delivered a stern lecture on the dangers of these substances, particularly for Frisian girls.

I was still high. And went to school in that state. And knew everything, could do everything, did everything. But in the evening the effects finally started to wear off, my heartbeat slowed down, and I changed from an all-seeing roof hen into a weeping child. Frau Baum sat over me, and Hækja fetched a glass of water. The pharmacist returned and gave me a calming milky mixture. Shortly afterwards, I managed to fall asleep.

For days the thought of my climb filled me with terror – I had stood on top of a chimney! – and I always lowered my gaze when I passed a lit window and prayed for the Frau’s eye every night. Then I covered my ears to block out the stories that were spreading around the village, which Hækja, the arm molester, repeatedly tried to tell me: The English Adonis had betrayed Fräulein Osinga for her sister. Someone had stumbled in on him with the cobbler’s daughter in a basement close to the graveyard. And then two girls were seen leading him down to the shore.

He was the only real man in Womenville, a status he got to enjoy for ten days, until two uniformed Nazis appeared on the streets of Norddorf. They came to our house and demanded to speak to Herr A. These were two menial young officers, peasants who had been posted to an insignificant village on the remote periphery of the Reich chancellor’s empire but were eager to prove themselves worthy of more central missions and therefore extremely dangerous. As is often the case with upstarts of this kind, the uniform meant everything to them, everything from their shiny, polished boots to their beautiful, glowing buttons. They looked like two small-town kids who had come to pick up their dates for the masked ball, as they paced the kitchen of their compatriot, Frau Baum, waiting for the extremely dangerous leader of the resistance, Herr A, to step out of his hiding place. Hækja stood in the corner, proud of her impeccably dressed soldiers. Had she denounced me? Their caps tilted back from their eyes as they saw me treading down the corridor: Herr A was an eleven-year-old girl. Nevertheless, they ushered me into the living room and ordered the Frau to leave with her children, before locking me in with them. The living-room clock started to count the seconds I had left to live the moment I sat on the hard, creaking wicker stool.

‘Do you recognise this jacket?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘I found it by the bonfire. Down… down on the beach.’

‘What accent is this? Where are you from?’

‘From Iceland.’

‘Ah, Iceland? And are you living here with Frau Baum?’

‘Yes. My father’s in the army. He’s Icelandic, too. He’s in the Landsberg Military Academy. I think he’s in the SS.’

‘Really? Good for him.’

‘And Mum is working as a maid for Dr Krewald in Lübeck. He’s a friend of Himmel’s.’

‘Himmel?’

‘Yes. Heinrich Himmel.’

The man questioning me turned to his colleague, who despite his higher rank sat in lower seating, since he had comfortably settled into the deep sofa under the photograph of Herr Baum in his brown shirt, and stroked his thick moustache. The interrogator laughed and his superior smiled.

‘Ha-ha-ha, you mean Heinrich himmler?’

‘Yes. He’s high up,’ I said.

‘Yes, yes. He’s high up! Ha-ha. So she’s a maid at Dr Krewald’s? But what were you doing with that jacket? The jacket of an English pilot? What did you do with it?’

‘I… I let the sisters have it, the twins next door.’

‘Precisely. And why?’

‘Because… because they… thought he was so handsome. The pilot, I mean. And there was a photo of him in the jacket.’

‘Precisely, yes? And did you find him handsome, too?’

I listened to the clock a moment.

‘Yes.’

‘Yes? Why? Why did you find this Englishman… this pathetic Englishman so handsome?’

The clock ticked four seconds.

‘Answer! Why were you fond of him?’

This was the tone I was destined to hear many more times in my life, from a recently ditched husband or newly betrayed lover. Men are instruments with very few strings to their bows.

‘Come on, girl! Answer!’

‘He was very… beautiful.’

‘Really? More beautiful than a German? More beautiful than a german soldier?’

Young ladies are quick to learn the art of lying.

‘No.’

‘Good. Do you know a girl called Anna Tieck?’

God Almighty, of course, it had to be her. The clock now started the countdown to my execution.

‘Yes.’

‘She claims you stopped her from denouncing the Englishman, is this correct?’

I might as well sign my own death warrant.

‘Yes.’

‘You know what this means? How old are you?’

‘Eleven.’

‘And already a traitor to the Fatherland!’

Now I broke down and started to cry.

‘It is forbidden to cry during the interrogations of the Third Reich! It is punishable by death. I order you to stop immediately!’

Frau Baum was heard trying to turn the handle on the other side of the door. Then her pleading voice: ‘My husband works at the War Ministry in Berlin! Professor Dr Helmut Baum! I beg you!’

My good old Frau.

‘Silence!’

The clock ticks twice. I hiccup twice.

‘Why did you prevent Fräulein Tieck from revealing the truth about the English pilot?’

‘I just… I just didn’t want anyone… to die.’

‘To die?! Don’t you know that war is all about dying? letting people die!’

I felt the ice-cold nozzle of a revolver pressing against my forehead. It was accompanied by a terrifying and rather peculiar steel odour that I’ve never been able to erase from my memory, even though names and faces have started to fade. It wafts out of the recesses of my mind from time to time, like an invincible gas, a death omen from Hitler that smells of German metal. I needed to come up with a good answer.

‘No,’ I whined. ‘I’m just… Icelandic.’

‘Icelandic, yes? That’s… where do you stand in the war?’ he asked, momentarily thrown, it seemed.

‘We… we are…’ I was about to attempt a factual answer but suddenly remembered a better one and rolled up my right sleeve, all the way up to my elbow, peeled the plaster off my scar, and with feigned pride showed them the scissor-carved swastika.

‘I see, yes? Good. But why is it covered with a plaster? There is no need for a plaster over the swastika!’

‘Because there was a bit of… blood.’

‘Blood? But blood must flow!’

Blut muss fließen. He was now quoting the god of thunder himself. But instead of putting a bullet through my head, the soldier shoved me back, causing me to fall off the stool.

‘Stand up!’

I struggled to my feet and stood there trembling.

‘Chin up!’

I tried to straighten up.

‘Where is the Englishman now?’

‘I… I don’t know.’

He pressed the nozzle of his gun against my forehead again. ‘where is he?!’

‘Don’t know…’

I heard something pop. Not a gunshot. Just a pop. The same sound you get when you pull the plug out of the universe and it shrivels like a balloon. That kind of a pop.

‘Say the name! Where is he staying?’

‘Fräulein… Fräulein Osinga.’

‘Fräulein Osinga. Good. We thank you for your collaboration. Heil Hitler!’

He clicked his heels and swiftly extended his right arm in the air. I clicked my heels, swiftly straightened, and swung my right arm into the air as well, with my blood-carved swastika and floppy plaster.

‘Heil Hitler!’

I was still standing frozen in that position when they had left and the Frau entered.

‘Poor child.’

My face was as pale as a sheet, locked in that cramped posture: a child trembling in terror. And neither she nor I managed to get my arm down again. She led me into the bedroom with it still stuck in the air, and I lay in bed with my paralysed Hitler salute, remaining like that for the rest of the day. ‘Trauma block’ was the pharmacist’s diagnosis. Children streamed in from time to time to silently gawk at this bizarre condition, which didn’t wane until two days later. I was able to eat my breakfast with one hand but was spared the ordeal of attending school with my arm extended into the air for a whole day, when classes were cancelled for dramatic reasons: Later on the day of my interrogation, news spread that the English boy had been found in a boathouse by the shore with the cobbler’s daughter. They shot her and took him away. The twins were also arrested but then released again, their backs even more hunched from concealing their breasts than before. And in the evening, Fräulein Osinga was found in her garden, as stiff as marble, in a pool of her own blood.

I had become a war criminal.