Hissssss.
Quex’s father beats him and signs him up to become a member of the Communist party. However, Quex informs the Hitler Youth that the Young Communists are planning to ambush them during a march using guns and dynamite. Quex’s warning is found out, and he becomes a pariah to the Communists and a hero to the Hitler Youth. His distraught mother tries to kill her son and herself by extinguishing the pilot light and leaving the gas on in their one-room apartment at night. She is killed. Quex survives. His father, crushed by what happens, begins to wonder aloud whether his son isn’t right—maybe National Socialism is better for Germany than communism.
The boys in the movie tent all yell, “Of course it is! Of course!”
Edwin, Ludo, and I had seen plenty of movies together. We all nearly pissed our pants when we saw Nosferatu. During The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I yelped when Quasimodo abducted Esmeralda, and Edwin and Ludo giggled out loud when he was crowned as the king of the fools. Still, neither of those was interactive like this.
By the end of the movie, Edwin, Ludo, and I were all trying to anticipate what the group would yell at the screen next, hoping we would guess right, and could join in.
“You’re a hero, Quex,” the boys yelled when the film ended.
After watching that movie, something shifted in me. That night, in my cot, I imagined I was Quex saving the Hitler Youth boys. Brave despite knowing I was on a Himmelfahrts Kommando, a trip-to-heaven mission. I wanted to be a hero too.
“I loved that movie,” I whispered over to Edwin who propped his flashlight on his pillow so he could see his notepad as he sketched.
“Well. Remember what Uncle Martin said. Don’t buy too much into what these people are telling you.”
“Why not? We don’t have this many friends at home.”
“Which are our friends here?”
I pointed around the room and my finger fell on Pauwel’s bunk.
“Who else? Who else, Mr. Soldier Boy?”
“You’re just mad I’m doing so well and can figure out how to put on a gas mask.”
Edwin swung his legs out of bed, reached a hand to my shoulder, and dug his fingers into the flesh above my collarbone until it felt like he held me by a handle.
“Am not,” he said.
“Okay. Okay,” I murmured, squirming to get away from him.
“To sleep!” Günter yelled from the far end of the cabin.
Asleep, my dream self cared only for the heroic. I had been called to perform. Before camp, I went to sleep most nights dreaming of my mother’s organ music, the spark and glow of fresh new lights my father had brought into the world, Thump-Drag, or Hilda, my grip on her ankles. Now, I’d been called.
The next morning at breakfast, where we were fed scoops from a vat of brown goulash and boiled and pressed sugar beets, Timothy and three of his friends sat across the table from Edwin, Ludo, Pauwel, and me. The boy straight across from me, Garth, was pudgy with pinched, close-set eyes. His hands dimpled at the knuckles. There were different-colored stains down the front of his shirt.
“You strike me as someone who would slap another boy’s privates if you got the chance,” Timothy said. “And you,” he pointed at Ludo’s bad arm, “you weaken the race.”
Edwin sat perfectly still. Then he spit his juice out of his mouth in a whalelike blow across the table. Spray settled and rivulets of juice converged and dripped from Timothy’s chin.
“I thought I tasted a spider,” Edwin said, and turned back to his juice, washing down his breakfast as if nothing had happened.
I was shocked at my brother’s nerve. He sat there calm and easy. Though for the first time I noticed the gray skin under his eyes from staying up every night drawing.
“You just made a mistake, you Dutch du Hurenschn.” Timothy pulled a dagger out from the side of his belt and slammed it down into the wood table. The blade ate an inch into the wood, and the black handle—with the red-framed black swastika in the middle—shook for a moment between the two boys. Etched on the blade were the familiar words Blut und Ehre, and no sooner had I finished reading them, Timothy yelled, “Now!”
He and his three friends jumped up onto their benches, stepped onto the table as if they’d choreographed their movements earlier and dove at us. One of the boys kicked Pauwel right in the mouth. One jumped on Ludo, and Timothy sent an errant kick toward Edwin who sidestepped it and swept his other leg off the solid wooden table. I didn’t see Timothy smash onto the breakfast tray, as at that moment Garth jumped off the table, landed on top of me, and slammed me to the ground. In moments, red-faced Garth was snarling hysterically and pounding his fists on my arms where I covered my face and tried to fight back.
The counselors pulled a boy off Pauwel and peeled Ludo and Edwin off one boy with a bloody nose they had wrestled down. Ludo was in a rage and spit flew from his mouth. “I hope you piss green worms,” he yelled.
“Halt this immediately!” Günter yelled.
Günter and his fellow counselors lined us guilty boys up so Edwin and Timothy’s allies were mixed up and standing shoulder to shoulder. We breathed heavy. Missing hats. Our shirts untucked, dirty, and blood-splotched. I had split knuckles. Red crescents from hitting teeth leaked into the webbing of my fingers.
“So you all want to be fighters? That’s good. But we will have to teach you when to fight and who to fight. Now all of you face forward. Turn left. Now march—march—march.”
Günter led the eight of us boys to the flagpole at the revelry area. “Remember what Quex learned, boys? You work together. You are brothers. But wrongs must be punished. Now who started this fight?”
Timothy and Edwin both stepped forward. They both looked right into Günter’s eyes.
Again Edwin’s nerve astonished me.
Günter motioned to the two other camp counselors who had marched with us to the flagpole to join him in front of the boys. When one of them was each positioned in front of Edwin and Timothy, they hauled back their arms and slugged each of the boys in the stomach, toppling them to the ground.
“Now that you’re down there, make fists and lean on your knuckles. The rest of you get down and do the same,” Günter yelled.
On our knuckles we were forced to do push-ups in the grass while chanting after Günter, who spouted off about a reawakened Germany beneath the waving flag.