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Chapter One
Berlin, Thursday, 24 August 1939
Another day of perfect Führer weather was fading. The Spree River was bathed in golden twilight. Freyja cycled home beneath scarlet Swastika banners hanging slack in the sultry air.
Around her, Berliners enjoyed their evening entertainment. Lovers waltzed on open-air dance floors. Streetside cafés buzzed with chatter and laughter. Well-dressed couples strolled towards the theatre district, ready for an operetta or revue.
Pedalling past Artillerie Strasse’s tapered buildings, she spied the New Synagogue’s ribbed gilded domes towering above the streetscape. She loved its exotic Moorish architecture. It was fortunate it had been saved from destruction in last November’s violent pogrom. Many temples across the city weren’t spared.
Her family’s Linienstrasse apartment block had seen better days. Formerly a fashionable townhouse at the turn of the century, the building had been converted into flats. The pale blue paint on the stonework was peeling, the white scrolled pediments above the window frames sooty, the ornamental pilasters chipped.
She inwardly groaned to see Gisela Vogelsang ensconced on the window seat of her ground-floor apartment. With her hair dyed brassy red and eyebrows pencilled in high arcs, the buxom woman was a nasty carbuncle. Her watery blue eyes observed all comings and goings. Ever since she and her husband moved into the Horowitz residence, the number of denunciations in the neighbourhood had increased.
‘Heil Hitler, Frau Vogelsang,’ Freyja said, hurrying by.
The woman raised her hefty arm in a perfect rigid diagonal. ‘Heil Hitler! You’ve missed the excitement. Blockleiter Steiger ensured the Swing Kid got his comeuppance today. Gestapo officers left a few minutes ago.’
Freyja gasped. ‘Dieter arrested? He’s only seventeen.’
Gisela sneered. ‘They just roughed him up. Warned him to stop visiting secret jazz clubs to listen to dirty Negro music.’
‘I must get on,’ said Freyja. She wheeled her bike through the street door, anxious to check on poor Dieter. The interior was stifling, the heat of the day yet to dissipate. In the dim vestibule, the youth was curled in a ball at the bottom of the stairs. His hulking grandfather, Ernst Weber, hovered over him. Jagged shards of jazz records lay scattered around them. Dieter’s eyes were puffy slits, his cheek bruised. His hair was shorn roughly, the scalp bleeding.
Freyja hastened to Herr Weber as he tenderly lifted his dazed grandson in his immense arms.
‘We’ll be fine, Fräulein,’ said the porter when he saw her, his face as grey as his hair.
‘I’ll help you.’
He whispered, an edge to his tone. ‘Go. Steiger may still be watching.’
She resisted the urge to glance up to the next landing where Steiger, the officious Party Block Warden, lived. The fact he was responsible for Dieter’s punishment was no surprise. Other than the Vogelsangs, most were wary of him. He kept files on dozens of households in apartment blocks in the area. He’d revelled in persecuting the poor Horowitz family; triumphant he’d hounded them to emigrate to Amsterdam after Kristallnacht. Vati was scathing of him – a bully strutting around in a Storm Trooper’s uniform who’d been too young to see action in the war. Mutti was careful to keep on his good side, often baking an extra batch of gingerbread cakes for him.
Freyja
reluctantly headed up the winding staircase; unnerved such harsh punishment was
exacted for a taste in music. Why was jazz forbidden? Swing music was
appealing, with its lively notes and infectious beat. And the orphaned Dieter
was innocuous, with his scruffy hair and open-necked shirts. His widowed
grandfather doted on him, prepared to turn a blind eye to the harmless
rebellion of the boy’s music. She liked Dieter’s pep, amused by him using
American slang. ‘Okay. Okay,’ he’d chirp, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
Today, nothing was okay. Today, Dieter and his music had been silenced; the
minims, crotchets and quavers splintered within the black shellac. Tomorrow, she would tell him not to let the Gestapo
steal a tune from his head. Rob the melody from his heart.
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