I don’t believe in anything. Not in justice, truth or equal rights for women. It’s not that I’m opposed to anything, quite the opposite. If women want to vote, that’s fine, but I’m not going to march in any rallies. I don’t hold up placards and chant slogans. Actually, I can’t stand crowds. A few hundred people all yelling the same thing, all wanting the same thing – that’s my idea of Hell. Hell. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe in the Devil either. If he exists, that’s fine, but he’s not getting my support. On the subject, I don’t believe in Hitler either. Especially not Hitler.

I know Hitler exists, but I’d prefer he didn’t. I’d have a nice job if it wasn’t for Mister Hitler. Before his National Socialist Party started throwing their weight around, I had a comfortable position teaching English to good German children. The school was in one of the nicer areas of Berlin, about six blocks from my apartment. I loved that apartment. In summer I could stand by the open window and smell the roses from the park across the road, even from three floors up. On weekday mornings, I would cycle to work in my short sleeves, dodging between horses and automobiles. The air was warm and fragrant with roses. (It was also often fragrant with horse droppings, but I prefer to remember the roses.) I loved that ride, that apartment, that school.

About six months ago, being a teacher became more complicated than I like things to be. I was teaching a group of twelve year olds, most of them blond and all of them polite and friendly. By that time, a lot of the Jewish kids had dropped out. I heard rumours they had been persuaded to leave by the Headmaster, but I preferred not to know anything about it. If there was trouble, it was trouble someone else could deal with. I don’t do trouble. But then a couple of the teachers stopped coming in to work. In the staff-room (when the Headmaster wasn’t listening) there were stories that they had been dobbed into the party by some of their students. Dobbed in for daring to say something Mister Hitler didn’t agree with. A number of the students in the school had joined the Hitler Youth – there were a couple in my class, which worried me. I don’t like having to be worried.

One afternoon one of the blond haired boys in his brown shirt put his hand up.

‘Yes, Wilhelm?’ I asked, looking up from my desk at the front of the class.
‘Herr Eitzel, do you think it’s true that the Jews pose a threat to the Fatherland?’

I was hearing the term ‘Fatherland’ more than I would have liked to. It was one of Hitler’s favourite words. I preferred it when people used to just say ‘Germany’ or ‘Deutschland.’ I thought about this while I tried to think about how best to answer Wilhelm’s question.

While I was thinking, Wilhelm grew impatient. ‘Herr Eitzel,’ he said again. ‘Do you believe the Jews pose a threat to the Fatherland?’

What could I say? I didn’t believe in anything. I didn’t believe in a Jewish threat or the Fatherland. But I suddenly realised that, as far as Wilhelm was concerned, not believing the same thing he believed meant that I believed he was wrong. I couldn’t be undecided, I either believed the right thing or the wrong thing. I also realised that believing the wrong thing was likely to put me in a lot of trouble.

‘Er,’ I said. And, ‘Um.’

The next day, I quit the job I’d loved so much.

Since then, I’ve been tutoring students in their homes. A lot of parents had started teaching their kids at home, feeling it might be safer, I guess. Not just Jewish kids, there didn’t seem to be many of them around these days, but often the children of foreign businessmen. English and American mostly, although a lot of foreigners had also left Berlin. I had thought about it, thought about returning to London, but I didn’t like feeling pushed around. I didn’t believe it was worth causing a fuss. Things would blow over and Berlin would return to normal. I’d go back to my job at the school and could afford to rent that flat I’d loved so much. Right now, I’m renting a small room that only smells slightly less of cabbage than the kitchens occupied by my landlord, Frau Bernhard. Frau Bernhard is a lovely woman with a big smile and a bigger girth, who enjoys cooking more than anything. It’s a shame she’s so terrible at it as there’s always plenty to go around between me and my fellow lodgers.

Anyway, that’s enough about me. Me, Flynn Eitzel, an English ex-teacher, tutoring scared students and living in a damp beige room that reeks of cabbage. The story I want to tell you starts the morning I saw an ex-boxer thrown out of the antique shop across the road. I didn’t know he was an ex-boxer then, although his nose was pretty well flattened across his broad face. He was carrying a brown leather pouch that he dropped on the sidewalk as he seemed to stumble in the doorway. As the pouch landed, it fell open and from it spilled a small pile of glistening jewels that caught what sunlight there was and flashed it back in my eyes. The man, who had landed badly on one of his knees, instantly scooped the jewels back in to the pouch, got to his feet and hurried off up the street, limping.

I didn’t think much more about this scene as I walked on to my first job of the day.

My first student was a young girl called Eliza, whose dark hair fell in corkscrews about her face. She was mostly polite and often cheeky. She called me Herr Esel – which was German for Herr Donkey – partly because my surname sounded similar, but mostly because she thought my thin, pale face generally looked as miserable as a donkey.

‘Herr Esel,’ she would say. ‘You need to get more sun. You always look so pale and sad.’
‘Do your work Eliza,’ I’d say.

I didn’t mind, she worked hard and had an obvious and precocious talent for languages.

This morning, I rapped on the front door of her apartment and waited for her mother to answer. I waited a minute on the doorstep before knocking again. Finally, I could hear some slow, shuffling steps in the hallway and the door opened. It was her mother, her cheeks stained with mascara. She had obviously been crying. I asked her what the matter was.

‘It’s Eliza,’ she explained. ‘It’s my fault. I let her go to the shop for me this morning and she hasn’t returned. I’m terrified she’s been taken.’

‘Taken?’ I asked, although I knew what she meant. When people were taken, it was because they’d offended the Party somehow. Mister Hitler wasn’t pleased with them. But how could a polite young girl like Eliza upset the Fuehrer?

As I listened to Eliza’s mother cry and blame herself, I had the terrible feeling that I was going to have to help her find her daughter. Which was, I could tell, only going to bring me a lot of trouble. And I don’t believe in trouble.