The Diplomat’s Daughter Page 20

“Let’s all do it right here, against the Hartmanns’ house,” Erich said to the two other boys. He leaned down and fondled her breasts, biting them and pushing his hands against her nipples. “No one will come out to help her. They’re too scared to leave. They can just watch from the windows. They’ll love that. You’re probably sleeping with the rich Jew father, too,” he said, kissing Emi hard on the mouth. He shoved his tongue into her throat, moving it up and down, causing her to gag. She coughed loudly in his face, choking, but he didn’t take a step back. When he finally pulled away from her mouth, he moaned with pleasure and pinned her back harder. Emi started to scream, thrashing her body back and forth, trying to escape. A clammy hand went over her mouth again, though she wasn’t sure whose it was, and she felt her feet scraping on the pavement as she was dragged, trying to fight in vain against three boys. As Erich slammed her body against the wall and spread her legs open, she felt his hands in her underwear, pushing hard inside her. She screamed again, starting to thrash her head, the only part of her that wasn’t held back. With her eyes watering and the taste of blood in her mouth, Emi felt one hand move from inside of her to the fly of his school pants. He opened it and then pushed himself in her, causing her to scream so loudly that both the other boys put their hands over her mouth at the same time.

  As she tried to bite down on their hands while Erich moaned, she heard Kersten sigh and walk to them, grabbing Erich by the shirt and pulling him off of Emi.

  “Leave her alone,” said Kersten, looking down at Emi’s feet, which were bleeding through her stockings, her shoes kicked off on the pavement. “Her father is a diplomat. It will cause too much trouble. If he wasn’t, then I would say go ahead. She deserves to be raped in the street by all of you after what she’s done.”

  “Get off of me!” Erich yelled at Kersten. “I’m going to finish,” he said, moving toward Emi again.

  Kersten got to Emi first and covered her with her body. “You will not. Go whack off in that end of the alley,” she said, pointing down the road. “I don’t want to see how little you have down there.”

  Erich moved a step back, zipping his fly as he went, and spit on Emi’s stocking feet.

  “I don’t want to shoot it in a girl who has been with a Jew anyway,” he said laughing and grabbing his crotch as the other boys finally let her go and ran off laughing with Erich.

  Kersten lingered behind, smiling at Emi’s appearance. Emi got up, covered herself, and ran back for her coat and shoes, Kersten watching her. She picked her coat up, threw it over her shoulders, fastening the buttons up to her neck, and then hurried into the road to get her bag, which was ripped along the side seam from the car’s tires.

  When Emi was on the sidewalk, holding her broken bag across her chest like armor, Kersten said, “I wouldn’t bother coming back to school tomorrow.” She walked over to Emi and pulled at her coat collar button, which was hanging on by a thread. It came off in her hand and she threw it into the nearby gutter.

  “I told you Leo wasn’t worth crying over,” she said. As she walked away, she pointed to the Hartmanns’ windows above them. All the curtains were drawn, with no sign that the family had witnessed anything.

  As soon as Kersten was out of sight, Emi leaned against the Hartmanns’ wall and looked up at the big white house one last time before running toward school.

  It never happened, she told herself as she sprinted through the street, her insides burning. She would never tell her family; never tell Leo. Everything about the day, except kissing him goodbye, would just have to disappear.

  CHAPTER 18

  LEO HARTMANN

  DECEMBER 1938

  It was four weeks and one day after Kristallnacht, and the Hartmanns were leaving the city at 11 P.M. to make the seven-hour drive to the St. Gallen border crossing with Switzerland. The man from their synagogue, who had helped Max obtain their visas so quickly, said that there was a compassionate border police commander there who had already let in fifty Jews during the first days after the attacks. But they had to cross before 7 A.M., when the day guards came on. They were much stricter with the Jews.

  The three Hartmanns watched as Zalan loaded up his own small car, having exchanged his for the Hartmanns’.

  “Will we have to ride in the trunk?” asked Hani, looking at the cramped space.

  “No,” said Max, putting his hand in hers. “We have visas for Switzerland and enough money to pay off everyone who might stop us.”

  “They don’t even care about our money,” said Hani. “They just want us gone. Preferably dead. There’s no bribe to outweigh that kind of hate.”

  “We’re doing everything we can,” said Max. “We’re fleeing, aren’t we? I’m leaving my brother in charge of too much, leaving all my family burdens on him. We should be staying months longer. Waiting until our staff leave. Even the Christian ones.”

  “You gave them more money than they make in a year. Helped them obtain exit visas. We’ve done all we can. Staying in Vienna, in Austria, is a death sentence,” hissed Hani, opening the back door to the little white car and crawling inside. “Your brother will leave before the spring. He promised. As will my family.”

  Leo tried to ignore his parents’ conversation, helping the chauffeur—one of the only members of the Hartmanns’ staff who were not Jewish—with their bags instead. He knew they had to escape Austria, that they were lucky to have Swiss visas, but he was heartbroken about leaving Vienna. His life, his house, everything he had ever known was about to fade into the distance behind him. And Emi, too. The unlikely girl that he’d fallen very much in love with.

  At five past eleven, the chauffeur signaled to Max that they had to depart if they wanted to stay on schedule. Zalan was going to return to Vienna and try his best to keep the Hartmanns’ house and possessions from being seized by the Nazis. If he succeeded, and if the Hartmanns never came back, it would all be his.

  The family sat as stiff as corpses as the car made its way out of town. Once Vienna was behind them, they spent half the trip nodding off, only to be jolted awake at every stop, when the worrying would begin again. But as the sun started to rise, a half hour before they reached the Swiss border, nothing had gone wrong. So it was with confidence that Max handed his family’s papers and passports to the young guard they encountered at the point of entry at six o’clock in the morning.

  Stern-faced until he saw Hani, the guard took the papers and made small talk in German until he opened Max’s passport and saw the large, red J stamp. Then he looked at Max’s visa again and announced, “These visas are not valid.”

  “Of course they are,” said Max, trying to take his passport.

  The border guard pointed at the J, then flipped through Hani’s and Leo’s passports and saw that they bore the incriminating letter, too. “Your visa is not valid for a Jew and certainly not valid for three Jews. You will have to leave now.” He waved toward the road and turned away.

  “Of course it is valid, Jew or not. This is an entry visa into Switzerland,” said Max, pointing at the paper, his eyes, as green as Leo’s, wide and pleading. He started after the guard, but Leo caught him by the coat.

  Turning back to Max and pulling out his gun, the guard said, “My orders are to use my own discretion, and my discretion tells me that this country already has too many Jews and we are not letting any more in.” He spat on the ground near Max, then eyed Hani and added, “Even beautiful Jewesses.”

  Max started to protest again but the guard roared, “Enough!” and lifted his pistol to Max’s face.

  “But we must cross!” insisted Max, oblivious to the risk. “Who else can I speak with?”

  “Let’s leave, Father,” Leo urged from behind him. “Can’t you see what is in front of you? This is not the man we were expecting.”

  “That’s right! Listen to your son,” said the guard. “You want to speak with someone else, Jude? You were expecting some Jew lover? You don’t think I have absolute authority here?”

  The guard turn
ed and shouted for another officer who was reading a newspaper in the nearby guardhouse. Reluctantly, at his second shout, the man got up and strolled over, his expression unchanged. Leo hoped that this guard was the one they had been told about, and as he approached, he could feel his parents’ desperation also. The younger guard asked him if he had the authority to reject the three Jews trying to enter Switzerland.

  “You can do whatever you want with them as long as you don’t make me come outside again,” he said yawning, showing off a mouthful of yellow teeth and not even glancing at the Hartmanns.

  “Turn your car around there,” said the young guard smugly, pointing to a wide stretch of road. “Leave right now or I will report you. I’m sure the Germans will be happy to see you back in Vienna. They’ll know just where to send you so you never return.”

  “Could we buy the right visas?” asked Max in a last attempt to cross. He took his hat off of his thick gray hair, respectfully. “We will pay any price.”

  “How much?” said the young guard.

  Max handed him five thousand perfectly ironed reichsmarks and the guard laughed. “I don’t want reichsmarks! And even if you gave me a million of them, I wouldn’t let you in.” He put the money in his pocket and said, “No to your bribes, no to your Jew visas. Now turn around before I report you to the Gestapo.”

  Max, finally seeming to understand the clout the juvenile guard could exercise, motioned for Hani and Leo to get in the car.

  “We will try to enter Switzerland at another crossing,” he said when the border was out of sight.

  “But they will just pass word to each other that we already tried,” said Hani tearfully. “You heard what that little fascist said. He was going to turn us in. We can’t risk it again. Especially not today.”

  “Where should I drive then, sir?” asked Zalan, and Max told him to follow signs for Lienz.

  “Olis Benn gave me the address of his parents’ house in case we had trouble at the border,” said Max, mentioning a man who had worked in the family’s chocolate factory for thirty years. “Quickly, Zalan, please,” he said to the chauffeur. “Get us to this address without incident.”

  The little car sped back east through the countryside in the increasing sunshine, driving without stopping, straight toward their destination in the mountains.

  “We helped Olis when his wife died,” Max told Leo. “Financially. He had three children and no one to tend to them. He said if he could ever repay us.” Max broke off to tell the driver to be careful. He turned back to Leo, squeezed against Hani in the backseat, and said, “I thought very little of it at the time, since he was a factory employee and I had so much more. But perhaps he sensed what was coming for the Jews more clearly than I did. Things can change quickly, fortunes can turn, so always be kind, Leo. Be kind to everyone. If I can give you any advice, that is it.”

  “Max, he doesn’t need life lessons right now,” Hani snapped. “He is always kind. He’s a wonderful son.” She kissed him on the cheek and they all fell silent, looking out the dirty windows as the car weaved its way through the rolling countryside, beautiful in its bare winter form but menacing in its quiet.

  After two hours, Zalan announced that they’d arrived. Or so he thought. Leo looked out and saw a long driveway leading up to a very small farmhouse. The house was bright white, but the paint was peeling and the shingled roof sagged on the left side, moss growing plentifully between roof and walls. Already, although the car windows were closed, they could smell farm animals.

  “I’ll park around the back,” said the Hungarian, maneuvering the car to a more secluded area near the matching white barn.

  Before they were out of the car, the elderly couple who owned the house were outside, the husband holding a pitchfork and walking slowly.

  “Let me speak to them first,” said Max, opening his door. Leo watched him walk over with a smile, explaining in a loud, clear voice who he was before he reached the Benns.

  “They seem to recognize his name,” said Hani. Relieved, she pulled the scarf off her curls and sighed loudly. “The man has put down that weapon.”

  “That’s not much of a weapon,” said the chauffeur. “Especially not when it’s being brandished by an eighty-year-old farmer.”

  “Did Papa give a lot of money to Olis Benn?” asked Leo.

  “Enough so that his parents should let us sleep in the barn for a night or two,” said Hani, opening the car door when Max waved to them. “Even if they don’t like Jews.”

  To the family’s relief, the Benns were kindly people, seemingly indifferent to Nazi propaganda. They brushed their white hair and changed out of their field clothes after the family came into the house and thanked Max repeatedly for his generosity toward their son and grandchildren.

  “Of course you will sleep in the house, not in the barn,” said Alfred Benn, Olis’s father, through a gap-toothed smile.

  When they were seated in the living room, on a faded velvet couch, Leo looked at the wooden cross on the wall, family photographs hung around it. And then he noticed the piano.

  He walked over to it, put his hand on top, and looked at his parents.

  “Do you play, son?” asked Alfred. “Please, feel free to play.”

  “I don’t, my mother does,” said Leo, looking at Hani. But he wasn’t thinking about his mother, or music. He was thinking about Emi Kato and her father.

  “We should ask Norio Kato for help,” he said to his father. “If we could get in touch with him, with the Japanese Consulate, maybe there is a way he can help us get across to Switzerland.”

  Max looked at his son, surprised. The Benns stood up to leave them, seeming to understand that this conversation was more important than the piano, and Hani sat on the piano bench, a smile starting to appear. She looked at her husband and said, “Yes, Max, you must.”

  “It’s a good suggestion, Leo,” Max said after a pause. “Let’s call their house if the Benns will allow it.”

  He left the room to consult with their hosts and returned quickly, smiling. He nodded at Leo.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “But you should be the one to call, Leo. Emi’s father might find it harder to say no to you.”

  That evening, when Leo guessed that Norio Kato would be home, he dialed the operator and was connected to the Katos’ residence. The phone rang several times before Norio picked it up and said hello in Japanese.

  “Mr. Kato, this is Leo Hartmann,” said Leo, trying to keep his voice calm and steady. When Norio immediately asked what was wrong, he guessed he hadn’t done a very good job of it.

  “We didn’t make it across the border to Switzerland,” Leo told him. “The border guard threatened to turn us over to the Gestapo, but we were able to flee and are now in the countryside. We are in Lienz at a friend’s home. They’ve been kind enough to put us up for the night.”

  Leo paused, then said urgently, “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Kato, but I’m afraid we are desperate for help. Without someone intervening, they won’t let us into Switzerland, even with our visas, or with bribes. We tried that as well. Nothing has worked.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone, then Norio assured him, in his always-formal German, that he would do what he could. Everything he could. Leo explained where the house was, gave him the phone number, and Norio said he would call back within three days.

  When Leo hung up, his mother lunged for him, wrapping herself around him.

  “Can he do something?” she asked. “I don’t want to have to try to enter Switzerland again without help. It would be like walking ourselves over a cliff. You were right to think of him, Froschi.”

  “Let’s not relax into thinking he’s saved us yet,” said Max.

  “You said Switzerland was a certainty!” said Hani, looking at her husband angrily. “That with what we could pay, we would never be turned away. But now we are without anything, we could die here—”

  “He will help us,” Leo interrupted. “I’m sure he
will. He said not to move from this house. That he will contact us in a few days.”

  “I will stay here, then,” said Max, putting his hand on the phone. “I won’t move from the telephone.”

  “Don’t touch it,” said Hani. “You could rattle it by accident. Keep it from working.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Max, settling back onto the couch. “You should both see what help you can be to the Benns, Hani. They are very kind to let us stay here. And now we might need to stay longer than one night.”

  Hani nodded, her eyes tearing up.

  “Not yet, Hani,” said Max. “If we don’t hear from Mr. Kato in the next three or four days, we will have to leave. We can’t continue to impose on the Benns. It’s obvious that they are scared having us here, even if they are too kind to say so. Then you can cry.”

  “And where will we go?” asked Hani. “To the border again? We can’t go back to Vienna.”

  Leo put his arm around his mother, then walked to the front window, where the gingham curtains were pulled close. The Benns had told them they could stay as long as they needed to, provided they did not leave the house. They did not want their neighbors, however distant, to see strangers. The Hartmanns’ car was hidden in the barn and Alfred had taken out their things after it was dark.

  By their third night in Lienz, Max was whispering with his driver about what other Swiss entry points they could try and Hani’s head had acquired a permanent droop, making her neck ache. Leo took over his father’s position near the telephone.

  As the late evening turned to the quiet of night, Hani and Max were so caught up in their discussion of other scenarios of escape, most of them impossible, that Leo was the only one to notice the lights of a car pulling slowly up to the house. Impulsively, he abandoned his post by the telephone and ran outside. When Hani saw him, she screamed, and Max ran after him. He grabbed Leo by his shirt collar, accidentally choking him as he dragged him back inside.

  “You’re not to leave the house!” Max said as Leo coughed. “You could be shot running at a car like that. What are you thinking?”