Hannah & Emil by Belinda Castles

Author:Belinda Castles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC014000, book
ISBN: 9781741765625
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2012-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

Emil woke later than usual in his tiny, borrowed apartment, heat radiating from the window. The May Day celebrations had kept him up late the night before, drunken SA shouting in the street below until well after midnight. Now the sound of a truck braking suddenly, a man giving orders outside brought him back to life. He was across the room in a moment, behind the edge of the window, watching through the gap at the edge of the curtain as uniformed men poured out of their trucks and into the offices of the metalworkers’ union in the morning sunshine. Because he had overslept, he did not know whether his father was inside yet this morning. Picking up his keys, watching to make sure there were none left out there, he turned to go down, to run to Father’s apartment and warn him. He had not been out in daylight for weeks but today he’d risk it. They’d been harassing the unionists for a while, but this, such numbers occupying the offices, was new. Best for Father to avoid it if he could.

He had watched Klaus’s progress along the street from the bridge every day since he’d found this place. Puffing, red-faced, later and later to work. Even later today, Emil hoped. And he watched every evening to see Father come out, his old body labouring as he breathed, tired after the stairs. It was not until after that, until dark, that Emil could leave the apartment, or he would be seen.

Something red, unfurling, caught his eye as he emerged from behind the curtain and back into the dark part of the flat away from the window. A swastika fell from a pole jutting through his father’s office window, so large it seemed it would drape down to the street. A figure below, the flag catching his eye, flinched, looked up at it. Him, his shape, his wheezing walk, his face the colour of a tomato. ‘No, Father,’ Emil breathed against the glass. But there was, he saw, a policeman immediately behind him and they were at the door already, going inside.

The building was full of those men. From here he could see through the windows that they were going continually up and down the stairs and in and out of the offices, overturning filing cabinets and desk drawers. He saw a flurry of paper at a window explode upwards and float down out of sight.

He tried to see Father at the stair windows but there were too many others passing up and down. Some came out and left in their trucks. More arrived and left again. A dozen times as he stood at the window he told himself: You must go in. If they must have someone, you will take his place. But then he thought of Hans and made himself still. They had no reason to do any more than intimidate Father and the other unionists, as they had before. If Emil entered the building they would arrest him, and more.

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