Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken by Nita Tyndall

Author:Nita Tyndall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Part II

SEPTEMBER 1939—MAI 1941

September 1939

WE HAVE invaded Poland.

Greta and I wake up drowsily and tiptoe into the living room, where our parents are huddled by the radio, Hitler’s voice crackling through the speakers. I hug Greta to my side.

Mama’s hand is at her mouth and Papa stares blankly out the window, and I want to ask how they are feeling, what they are thinking, but all I can think about is the last glimpse I had of Minna from the train window as she left, the tops of the twins’ heads barely visible, the tears she wasn’t even trying to hide streaming down her face.

“You’re not going to work today,” Mama says once the broadcast has finished.

I stand. “Then I’m going to Renate’s.”

Mama looks at me darkly. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Charlotte, we—we don’t know what might happen, if Poland might retaliate—they said there were dead guards at the border—”

“But we invaded them—”

“You’re not going,” Mama says, and the look on her face is so stern I back down at once.

We are at war.

This then, is what it means to be at war. It means sitting on Renate’s bed, worriedly talking; Mama finally relented when I pointed out the cellar in Renate’s building can house more people than ours.

“Did you think this would happen?” I ask.

“You saw the planes,” she says softly, referring to the warplanes we saw flying over Berlin a few months before. She blows out air. “I hoped it wouldn’t, but when Minna left . . .”

I squeeze Renate’s hand. “She’s safe,” I say.

“Is she? There are hardly any Jews left,” Renate says. “A few of the swings, maybe, but now that we’re at war . . .”

I swallow. The word war just feels so heavy in our mouths, tastes like smoke on our tongues.

“Do you think they’ll draft your brothers?” I ask, and Renate bites her lip.

“I hope not,” she says softly. “But Hans could be called up any minute. Thank God Fritz is too young.”

Voices float in from her living room at that moment, her father’s tone sharp.

“How is your father doing?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.

“He just wants to pretend everything’s fine. Mama, too. It’s not like they’ll make him go back, he’s too old.” She sighs. “Try telling him that, though.”

“How is Hans taking it?”

“He doesn’t want to go,” Renate says miserably. “He’s almost done with his labor service, but after that . . . he wants to go to university, he was supposed to start in the spring at Humboldt.”

I want to tell her it will be okay, but I don’t know that it will. It’s not like I have to worry about any of our family being drafted, anyway.

“Let’s put on some music,” I say, just to distract her, to distract me, both of us, from thoughts of her brothers in trenches, bombs going off around them. “Do you still have the Louis Armstrong record?”

She nods her head toward the player. “I put it on sometimes when . . . when Mama’s at work.

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