Jackie French - Hitler's Daughter

‘It’s the fat that makes a good pig,’ explained Frau Leib one day, as she worked the pastry on the thick marble board. ‘The fat not only gives flavour, you understand, it helps the meat keep well. A sausage without fat is tasteless, but it also dries out, and sometimes goes bad. But not all food will put fat on a pig of course. Fat produces fat—that’s what you have to remember. Corn is good, because corn is yellow like fat is yellow.

‘And you want to know a secret?’ asked Frau Leib, her red hands bashing the bread dough. ‘You want to know why in all these years our cows have never lost a calf? Never! ’

‘Please,’ said Heidi, though she knew by now there was no need to say anything to keep Frau Leib talking.

‘The secret is beer!’ said Frau Leib triumphantly, giving her dough an extra good push. ‘You give the cow a good drink of beer as soon as it has calves, and it makes the milk flow and makes her mellow, you understand, so she looks after her calf better. A good bucket of beer, that’s what you need…’

‘I have brought you a present,’ Frau Leib said one day, as she took off her hat and gloves and coat and hung them on the peg by the door.

‘What is it?’ demanded Heidi.

Frau Leib smiled. ‘It’s in my coat pocket.’

Heidi peered into the pocket. There was something in the bottom; something small and warm.

‘A rabbit!’ she cried, lifting it out. The rabbit was soft and black and white and twitched its nose.

‘It’s a doe,’ said Frau Leib, smiling. ‘When she gets bigger you can breed it to our buck and then you’ll have lots of rabbits, and I’ll show you how to make rabbit pie.’

‘Look at its whiskers!’ cried Heidi delighted. ‘Thank you, Frau Leib!’

‘You’re a good girl,’ said Frau Leib, and Heidi knew it wasn’t because she was polite, or helped make the beds, but because she had said nothing about the things in Frau Leib’s pockets.

Heidi helped Frau Leib in the mornings, and often in the afternoons now as well. Fräulein Gelber had arranged all the schoolbooks in the third bedroom, but she no longer seemed as interested in lessons as she was before.

She didn’t even make Heidi read pages from Duffi’s book. She read her letters from home over and over, and several times Heidi found her crying. But now she wouldn’t explain why.

Fräulein Gelber still liked to walk, and they did walk once a day, but not along the lane: ‘In case someone sees us and asks questions,’ said Fräulein Gelber. They walked across the fields instead.

The fields had belonged to their house. Frau Leib’s husband worked them now. They walked across the Leibs’ fields too. There was a wood not far away and once they saw a deer, grazing delicately by the edge of the trees, and once a wild pig, a ‘wildschwein’.

The wildschwein did not look at all like Frau Leib’s pigs. It was black and hairy with big shoulders and a tiny back and even its snout was crooked. It stared at them with tiny eyes, and then it ran away.

Heidi asked Fräulein Gelber why the wild pig was so different from Frau Leib’s pigs, but Fräulein Gelber couldn’t say. ‘It’s just the way things are,’ she said.

There were wild mushrooms in the fields in autumn and the leaves in the wood fluttered like yellow butterflies and stuck to Heidi’s shoes. Frau Leib made mushroom omelette as a treat, because even for them, eggs were getting scarce.

Sometimes city women came out and tried to trade things, like a cushion or a good saucepan, for an egg. Or even jewellery for a ham.

Frau Leib told Heidi all about the city women, but she didn’t say whether she traded with them or not. It was illegal to trade food. Everything was rationed; but Heidi suspected that she did, even if Herr Leib didn’t know.

One day when she and Fräulein Gelber were out in the fields, a plane flew down so low she could see the pilot’s face, or rather, his helmet, which mostly hid his face. All she could really see were his mouth and chin, white below the brown helmet.

She almost wanted to wave, he was so close. If she’d yelled ‘Hello’ he might even have heard her above the clatter of the engines. But he was an enemy, and even if he had been a German pilot, Fräulein Gelber would have frowned.

The bus rolled and wandered through the puddles, then bumped up onto the bitumen. The splash of mud and water stopped.

‘I’d like to see His Excellency the blinking Mayor drive this blinking road twice a day,’ muttered Mrs Latter to no one in particular. She blew her nose with peculiar vehemence into the big white hanky. ‘Made sure he got the bitumen right up to his place, no worries about that. But as for doing anything for us out here…’

No one said anything. If you answered Mrs Latter you were in for an argument all the way to school.

Mark waited till Mrs Latter had subsided under her hat (it was orange and red today) then tapped Anna on the shoulder. ‘Anna?’

Anna looked up from her book and turned round. ‘Yeah, what?’

‘You know how Hitler went on about the Jews? About some people being better than others?’

‘Yes,’ said Anna.

‘Well, was there anything in it?’

Anna stared. ‘Of course not!’ she said.

‘I don’t mean about the Jews,’ said Mark hurriedly. ‘I mean everyone knows that’s stupid. But what I mean is, are some people better than others…you know what I mean.’

Little Tracey turned round. ‘I’m better at spelling,’ she boasted loudly. ‘Miss Littlefield says I’m the best of all. I can beat anyone in the class. I bet I can beat…’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ interrupted Mark.

Anna frowned. ‘You mean, is any group of people, a whole country or a race or a religion, better than other people?’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Anna. ‘Like Irish jokes. Everyone carries on that the Irish are dumb but everyone knows they aren’t really.’

‘My great-grandpa was Irish,’ said Mark.

‘So was one of mine,’ said Anna.

‘My grandpa came from Yugoslavia,’ said Little Tracey, bouncing up and down in her seat. ‘He says that he…’

Mark spoke over the top of her. ‘Ben’s dad says that Asians are all criminals. But that can’t be right can it? I mean how do we know?’

‘Ben’s father’s a racist little rooster with maggots for brains,’ announced Mrs Latter, circling round a pothole with more swerve than necessary, so they all had to grab the edges of their seats. ‘And you can tell him I said so with my love. No need to tell him anyway. I’ve told him often enough. Last time I saw him down at the pub I said…’

‘Why,’ began Mark, then stopped. No need to get Mrs Latter any more worked up.

‘Why? I’ll tell you why! You just have to look at the statistics, but does anyone bother to do that? No, they just listen to what some twerp has to say on TV and take it like it’s gospel. Never mind if it’s true or not. People just don’t THINK, that’s the trouble. They don’t look at the evidence. Never mind if anyone with half a brain in their heads…get on the right side of the road, you flaming numbskull!!’ Mrs Latter roared at Johnnie Trantor, bumbling past in his old ute.

‘What do the statistics say, Mrs Latter?’ asked Anna soothingly.

‘Asians have a lower crime rate than the rest of the population, that’s what they say,’ said Mrs Latter triumphantly. ‘And if you don’t believe me you look it up yourself. You look at the ten most wanted criminals in Australia! Not a dark skin among the lot. All white and all dumb.’

Mark hesitated. Most times you’d be crazy to actually ask Mrs Latter a question. But she wasn’t going to shut up now, no matter what anyone said or didn’t say and maybe, just maybe, she’d have an interesting answer.