“No,” said Emi, her shoulders burning from her arms being pulled back behind her. “I was sure you had something better to do with your time than run after me.”
“Oh, I didn’t have to run,” said Kersten. “I knew you would be up there for hours, crying over Leo and his rich Jew parents. But I timed it perfectly. Just as we turned on his street, you came out, looking this way and that like a panicked little mouse.”
“We heard all about you and Hartmann,” said the boy who was bending her left arm. Emi recognized him as Erich B?hm. He was in the class below hers and blond as a field of wheat. “If you’re so ready to be with the Jews, then your legs should open up very easily for us.” Erich laughed and thrust his pelvis against her. He told his friend to take both her arms and stepped in front of her. He unbuttoned her coat, pushing it off her shoulders and letting it dangle on the ground. Her schoolbag fell with it and he yanked it off her, letting go of her for only a second, and kicked it into the street, where a taxi immediately ran it over. It bounced once from the movement of the cab, then lay in the middle of the street, like a flattened animal. Emi tried to lunge for it, but the boys holding her were far too strong.
“What? All of a sudden you don’t like male company?” said the third boy, laughing. “That’s not your reputation. I’ve heard you’ve taken it more than once.” He bent back her arm even more unnaturally and Erich started unbuttoning her blouse, pulling at the pearl buttons until they were all undone. He moved it back onto her shoulders so that Emi’s chest in her thin slip was bare in the nearly freezing weather. Then he ripped open her slip and bra, so that her body was exposed in the street. Emi screamed, trying to grab her breasts, but her arms were being held back too tightly.
“Let’s all do it right here, against the Hartmanns’ house,” Erich said to the two other boys. He leaned down and fondled her breasts, biting them and pushing his hands against her nipples. “No one will come out to help her. They’re too scared to leave. They can just watch from the windows. They’ll love that. You’re probably sleeping with the rich Jew father, too,” he said, kissing Emi hard on the mouth. He shoved his tongue into her throat, moving it up and down, causing her to gag. She coughed loudly in his face, choking, but he didn’t take a step back. When he finally pulled away from her mouth, he moaned with pleasure and pinned her back harder. Emi started to scream, thrashing her body back and forth, trying to escape. A clammy hand went over her mouth again, though she wasn’t sure whose it was, and she felt her feet scraping on the pavement as she was dragged, trying to fight in vain against three boys. As Erich slammed her body against the wall and spread her legs open, she felt his hands in her underwear, pushing hard inside her. She screamed again, starting to thrash her head, the only part of her that wasn’t held back. With her eyes watering and the taste of blood in her mouth, Emi felt one hand move from inside of her to the fly of his school pants. He opened it and then pushed himself in her, causing her to scream so loudly that both the other boys put their hands over her mouth at the same time.
As she tried to bite down on their hands while Erich moaned, she heard Kersten sigh and walk to them, grabbing Erich by the shirt and pulling him off of Emi.
“Leave her alone,” said Kersten, looking down at Emi’s feet, which were bleeding through her stockings, her shoes kicked off on the pavement. “Her father is a diplomat. It will cause too much trouble. If he wasn’t, then I would say go ahead. She deserves to be raped in the street by all of you after what she’s done.”
“Get off of me!” Erich yelled at Kersten. “I’m going to finish,” he said, moving toward Emi again.
Kersten got to Emi first and covered her with her body. “You will not. Go whack off in that end of the alley,” she said, pointing down the road. “I don’t want to see how little you have down there.”
Erich moved a step back, zipping his fly as he went, and spit on Emi’s stocking feet.
“I don’t want to shoot it in a girl who has been with a Jew anyway,” he said laughing and grabbing his crotch as the other boys finally let her go and ran off laughing with Erich.
Kersten lingered behind, smiling at Emi’s appearance. Emi got up, covered herself, and ran back for her coat and shoes, Kersten watching her. She picked her coat up, threw it over her shoulders, fastening the buttons up to her neck, and then hurried into the road to get her bag, which was ripped along the side seam from the car’s tires.
When Emi was on the sidewalk, holding her broken bag across her chest like armor, Kersten said, “I wouldn’t bother coming back to school tomorrow.” She walked over to Emi and pulled at her coat collar button, which was hanging on by a thread. It came off in her hand and she threw it into the nearby gutter.
“I told you Leo wasn’t worth crying over,” she said. As she walked away, she pointed to the Hartmanns’ windows above them. All the curtains were drawn, with no sign that the family had witnessed anything.
As soon as Kersten was out of sight, Emi leaned against the Hartmanns’ wall and looked up at the big white house one last time before running toward school.
It never happened, she told herself as she sprinted through the street, her insides burning. She would never tell her family; never tell Leo. Everything about the day, except kissing him goodbye, would just have to disappear.
CHAPTER 18
LEO HARTMANN
DECEMBER 1938
It was four weeks and one day after Kristallnacht, and the Hartmanns were leaving the city at 11 P.M. to make the seven-hour drive to the St. Gallen border crossing with Switzerland. The man from their synagogue, who had helped Max obtain their visas so quickly, said that there was a compassionate border police commander there who had already let in fifty Jews during the first days after the attacks. But they had to cross before 7 A.M., when the day guards came on. They were much stricter with the Jews.
The three Hartmanns watched as Zalan loaded up his own small car, having exchanged his for the Hartmanns’.
“Will we have to ride in the trunk?” asked Hani, looking at the cramped space.
“No,” said Max, putting his hand in hers. “We have visas for Switzerland and enough money to pay off everyone who might stop us.”
“They don’t even care about our money,” said Hani. “They just want us gone. Preferably dead. There’s no bribe to outweigh that kind of hate.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” said Max. “We’re fleeing, aren’t we? I’m leaving my brother in charge of too much, leaving all my family burdens on him. We should be staying months longer. Waiting until our staff leave. Even the Christian ones.”