The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

night and because Mama appeared to have resigned herself to the situation, she decided to bring him his supper there. As I mentioned before, the big meal of the day was lunch, so bringing him his supper was nothing more complicated than Mama having to make two brown bread sandwiches, one with cheese and one with smoked ham, wrapping them in wax paper and then bundling the four of us up for the walk to the Ortsgruppe office. I loved these walks. They were very special because Leipzig was considered a possible RAF target and was under blackout orders. This seemed laughable because of what we were hearing on the news, but Papa explained that although the British government had abandoned Poland, individual Britons could be quite fierce and brave. Perhaps such a bomber pilot could sneak through. The government was just being extra careful so that little German boys and girls like Theodor, Johann, Clara and me would be as safe as possible.

When I say blackout, I mean it literally. The city was blackest black at night. There was not a single light visible anywhere in the city. The street lights were out, people only had dim lights on in their houses behind blackout curtains, the few cars on the streets did not use headlights and, most impressively of all, when we got to Zwickauer Strasse, the streetcars thundered by without a single light on them — black trains careening through a black night. You might think that the effect would be spooky, but to us it was quite thrilling. Very little that could be considered exciting happened in our house, so being out in the city in the dark felt remarkably adventurous. And with the five of us moving along in a little huddle, it felt cozy as well. Some people must have conjured terrors out of such darkness, but we only conjured wonder.

Mama took advantage of these dark walks to show us the night sky. As big-city kids we had never really seen the stars. My parents were not the camping type — in fact the very thought of it was as absurd as suggesting that they might have converted to Islam and become Bedouins — so we never left the city. Nonetheless, Mama knew quite a few constellations and took care to teach them to us. She also taught us how to tell whether the moon was waning or waxing. The German word for waning is “abnehmend,” starting with A, and for waxing is “zunehmend,” starting with Z. When you write your ABCs, you write them from left to right. Therefore, when the moon is bright on the left it is abnehmend, waning, and when there is more light on the right, pointing to the end of the alphabet so to speak, it is zunehmend, waxing. This might seem a cumbersome way to remember this, but I use it to this day.

One particularly quiet and clear night we stopped in a small square along the way and Mama pointed out the thinnest fingernail paring sliver of the new moon rising in the east. “Children, see there? Every night it will rise fifty minutes later, so tomorrow we’ll see it on our way back from Papa’s office and then for many nights it will rise after you are in bed, but in twenty-eight days we will see it here again at this time. No matter what happens in the war, no matter what Hitler does, no matter whether bombers come or not, no matter what your marks are at school, no matter about anything we humans do here on the face of the earth, like ignorant ants scurrying about, the heavens, the moon, the stars, the sun, they will continue undisturbed in their rhythms.”

We all looked to the east, eyes wide, but did not say anything.

“So, when you are scared or sad,” she continued, “look to the sky and find some peace in the knowledge that there are things eternal, that always continue, that you can always count on.”

Papa’s office was a marked counterpoint to this discussion of lunar rhythms and things eternal. Here dozens of men and women in grey uniforms were working at desks under very low light, hammering on typewriters, walking very briskly to other desks to whisper to colleagues, rifling through filing cabinets, pinning notices to notice boards, sticking pins in wall maps, talking, sometimes shouting, into telephones. The whole place had an intensity and compressed energy about it, like a box of windup toys being lightly jostled. Mama’s comment about ants scurrying came vividly to mind, but it was all very impressive nonetheless, just in an entirely different way than the night sky. It was interesting because although at a casual glance it was the same scene there every night, on more careful observation there were subtle changes too. The mood certainly varied, perhaps due to news from the front but more likely due to local conditions, and the specific things specific people were doing varied as well. We were sternly cautioned not to disturb anyone, so we stood silent as little mice by the door while Mama sought out Papa to deliver his sandwiches. The four of us were all very observant children, so we must have made an interesting sight, lined up from biggest to smallest, our coats still buttoned up, our eyes as wide as silver Reichsmark coins.

Sometimes a young woman who worked for Papa came up to us. I suppose she was an aide or a secretary. She would crouch down to say hello and then give each of us a boiled sweet or sometimes even a small piece of chocolate. Chocolate was becoming scarce, so this was an especially welcome treat. She had very white teeth and very red lipstick and smelled strongly of perfume, but otherwise I do not remember what she looked like, nor do I remember her name. Greta maybe? That is probably wrong. I do remember that Mama did not like her. She