The Secret Wife(82)

For someone who worked as a journalist, Dmitri mused, he had twice failed to spot emerging political apocalypse until it became unmissable. In Russia, he had been aware of the grumblings against the monarchy and knew that revolution was in the air, but the November coup led by Lenin and Trotsky had seemed to him to emerge from nowhere. Similarly in Berlin, he was aware that men in brown shirts, known as the Sturmabteilung, were stirring up street brawls, and that they attacked anyone who did not support a minor fringe party known as the National Socialists, but he was astonished when that same minority party won eighteen per cent of the vote in the 1930 elections.



Burtsev asked him to write an article for Rul about the National Socialists’ claim that Communism was part of an international Jewish conspiracy, and Dmitri had no trouble at all in rubbishing that notion. In Russia the grass roots Bolshevik movement had gained strength from the disgruntled poor of all religions. Trotsky might have been Jewish but Lenin and the new leader, Stalin, were not. Who was supposed to be organising this Jewish conspiracy? None of it made sense, and he was scathing in his critique.

Rosa was worried when she read his article. ‘Perhaps it would be better not to draw attention to ourselves. It leaves you open to accusations of bias since I am Jewish.’

Dmitri had never given a thought to Rosa’s religion because she did not practise, and their children were not being raised in any particular faith. He had long since decided that organised religion was an absurdity and she agreed with him.

‘I can’t temper my journalistic opinions because of our personal circumstances,’ he replied. ‘Someone needs to stand up and point out the dangers of this new creed.’

Rosa was worried though. ‘Adolf Hitler is rapidly gaining supporters because he is restoring German pride. He needs scapegoats to blame for the economic ills and Jews and Communists are easy targets.’

‘That’s ridiculous! He looks Jewish himself! There might be a few unscrupulous Jewish moneylenders, but he can’t blame an entire race.’



Dmitri soon realised how short-sighted he was being as the political landscape mutated rapidly and street fights turned some districts of Berlin into battle zones. Brown-shirted Sturmabteilung and the so-called Hitler Youth, young boys in leiderhosen spouting the party message on purity of race, were suddenly everywhere. The neighbours’ sons, who had previously seemed nice young men, mutated into snarling bullies full of hatred.

Dmitri did not realise that Rosa had become a target of this vitriol until their son Nicholas asked him over dinner one evening: ‘Papa, what is a hure?’

Rosa tutted and tried to hush him, her face flushing.

‘Where did you hear that word?’ Dmitri demanded.

‘Mama said it to Mrs Brandt.’

Rosa shook her head, and motioned to Dmitri that she would tell him about it later, before saying, ‘Mama was wrong to use that word and you must forget about it and never repeat it.’

Later she told Dmitri that Mrs Brandt had spat in her face and called her a ‘filthy Jew’ as she walked home from the butcher’s holding the children by the hands. ‘I lost my temper,’ she said, ‘and yelled “At least my mother wasn’t a hure.” And then I remembered the children and their big ears.’

‘How does she know you are Jewish?’ Dmitri asked. Rosa used his surname, Yakovlevich, and her dark looks were more Southern European than Jewish.

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. People talk. My sister has lost her job and she is sure it’s because she is Jewish, although her employer didn’t say as much.’

‘You must tell me if it happens again,’ Dmitri insisted. ‘I will not stand for this.’ The thought of Rosa being subjected to such treatment was painful to him. She was a good person who never harmed a soul; on the contrary, she went out of her way to help others. She collected shopping for an elderly neighbour who could no longer walk, and she often looked after a friend’s children so she could work, going to her apartment so as not to disturb Dmitri.



But one Sunday afternoon when Dmitri took the family to the zoo, he became intensely aware of whispering and pointing in their direction. Rosa ignored it, and the children were only interested in seeing Sammy, the giant sea elephant, at feeding time. As the day went on Dmitri’s temper became increasingly frayed so when a man approached and said to Rosa, ‘Your sort shouldn’t be allowed in here’, Dmitri pulled back his fist and punched him hard in the face. There was a cracking sound and blood spurted. The children began to cry, and he knew he should not have done it, but at the same time he was glad to take action, proud that at the age of almost forty he could still produce a punch like that.

Rosa bustled them away before there were any repercussions. ‘It doesn’t help,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve found it’s best to ignore them.’

But Dmitri couldn’t ignore this new movement that had turned his peace-loving girlfriend into a social pariah. It made him sick to his stomach and he decided to take a writer’s revenge, by writing a novel about it. Ostensibly it would be about the rise of Bolshevism within one particular village in Russia, and the way it affected ordinary villagers who had previously lived together in harmony – but actually it was about what was happening on the German national stage. As he wrote, the ideas flowed and he could feel in his fingertips that this was going to be the most important book he would ever write. He wanted it to have a mythical quality but at the same time show readers the lunacies of a system that favours one racial group above another.