The voices coming from the apartment above drew Johann’s attention again and he moved past the boys, dismissing them. ‘Go home, both of you. And no more looting, you understand?’
The boys nodded and went on their way as Johann continued to climb the stairs. At the top he heard a woman whimpering, and then came one of the voices he’d heard before. It was a man’s voice.
‘Tell me the combination or I’ll beat your daughter this time.’
The whimpering woman was crying. ‘Please, no! I told you, my husband is the only one who knows it and the Gestapo have taken him.’
There was another woman in the room. ‘Leave her alone,’ she said. She sounded younger, but it was difficult to be sure. ‘It’s clear she doesn’t know the combination to the safe. Can’t you see she’s been through enough today?’
Johann heard the man’s voice again. ‘You know, there’s only one thing worse than a Jew,’ he said. ‘And that’s anyone else who looks out for them. Is that what you are? A Jew lover?’
At that moment Johann burst into the room. It was a sitting room, although it was now barely recognisable as such. Every painting and every item of soft furniture had been slashed. All the other furniture lay broken on the floor, which was covered with fragments of china and glass. It the middle of the room stood two non—uniformed men, each holding a crowbar. The taller of the two—a wiry man with a pronounced nose—was waving his crowbar at a young blonde woman, whom Johann took to be the person who had spoken out in defence of the woman these men were threatening. She had a young girl of about four years old clutched to her side. The older woman, whom Johann presumed was the child’s mother, was standing beside the safe these men were interested in. Her dark hair was knotted and unkempt. Her face was bloody and her clothes were torn to such an extent that she had to hold the top half of her dress up to maintain what little dignity she had been spared.
‘Did you do this?’ Johann said to the men, indicating the older woman, drawing attention to her beaten and dishevelled state. ‘Did you rape her?’
The wiry man shook his head. He gave a derisive laugh. ‘I wouldn’t touch a filthy Jew.’
The other man stepped closer to Johann. He was much heavier set than the other, with a bald head, and eyes that were dark and deeply set. He spoke with obvious offence at Johann’s intrusion.
‘That safe is ours. Now go away, little soldier boy, and find somewhere else to loot, while you still can.’
The man stabbed his crowbar at Johann as he spoke, making it clear that he intended to beat him with it if he didn’t leave. Johann looked at the older woman again and saw the terror in her eyes. He looked over at the younger woman and wondered what she was doing there. Clearly she wasn’t a Jew; her long grey coat bore the emblem of the Bund Deutscher M?del–Werk Glaube und Sch?nheit—the League of German Girls’ Faith and Beauty Society—which was a section of the BDM for young women too old for the BDM and too young for the NSFrauenschaft. She wore a green, narrow brimmed felt hat, which suggested to Johann that she might also have come in from the street on hearing the older woman’s cries. He looked down at the child then. He wondered what terror she had been forced to witness and rage engulfed him. He could not let this continue.
The bald man’s crowbar was still outstretched towards Johann. With great speed and determination, he grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted his arm around, pulling him down. Then he hit him hard in the face and he fell instantly. The wiry man took a swing at Johann. His crowbar caught the side of Johann’s back, and he turned and locked his arm around the other’s, holding him in place as he slammed the base of his palm into that prominent nose of his. The man screamed in pain, and Johann continued to hold him so he could hit him again for good measure. When he let go, the man ran bleeding from the room, leaving his bald friend to fight for himself.
But he did not.
It was clear to Johann that there had never been any real fight in either of them when it came down to it. It was one thing to hit a woman or a child—a despicable and cowardly thing to his mind—but it was another matter entirely to go hand-to-hand with someone who had known fighting all his life. Johann had seen the traits many times before. Over the years he had become adept at reading the signs, and he had read this situation well. The bald man could not leave the room fast enough. He was running even before he had fully stood up, and like his wiry friend before him, he made a clatter on the stairs as he bowled down them.
Johann went to the older woman. If he’d had a coat, he would have put it around her, as much to ward off the coming night’s chill as to help restore her dignity. As he did not have a coat, he turned to the window, thinking that the material from the curtains would suffice, but as he did so, the younger woman held her own coat out for him to take.