The Morning Gift Read Online Free PDF

arrested. They took him to that hell hole by the Danube Canal - the Gestapo House. He was held there for days and no one told me. Then they released him and told him he had to leave the country within a week with his family or be taken to a camp. They were allowed to take just one suitcase each and ten German marks - you can't live for a day on that, but of course nothing mattered as long as they could get away. I'd gone ahead on the student transport two days before.'
    'So what happened?'
    'We got to the border and then a whole lot of SS people got on. They were looking for our Certificates of Harmless-ness.'
    'Your what ?"
    She passed a hand over her forehead and he thought he'd never seen anyone so young look so tired. 'It's some new piece of paper - they invent them all the time. It's to show you haven't been politically active. They don't want to send people abroad who are going to make trouble for the regime.'
    'And you hadn't got one?'
    She shook her head. 'At the university there was a boy who'd been to Russia. I'd read Dostoevsky, of course, and I thought one should be on the side of the proletariat and go to Siberia with people in exile and all that. I'd always worried because we seemed to have so much. I mean, it can't be right that some people should have everything and others nothing.'
    'No, it can't be right. But what to do about it isn't always simple.'
    'Anyway, I didn't become a Communist like he was because they kept on calling each other "Comrade" and then quarrelling, but I joined the Social Democrats and we marched in processions and had fights with the Brown Shirts. It seems childish now - we thought we were so fierce. And, of course, all the time the authorities had me down as a dangerous radical!'
    'So by the time they took you off the student train your parents had gone?'
    'No, they hadn't actually. I phoned a friend of theirs because they'd cut off our telephone and she said they were off the next day. I knew that if they realized I was still in Austria they wouldn't go, so I went to stay with our old cook in Grinzing till they left.'
    'That was brave,' said Quin quietly.
    She shrugged. 'It was very difficult, I must say. The most difficult thing I've ever done.'
    'And with luck the most difficult thing you'll ever have to do.'
    She shook her head. 'I think not.' The words were almost inaudible. 'I think that for my people, night has come.'
    'Nonsense.' He spoke with deliberate briskness. 'There'll be a way of helping you. I'll go to the British Consulate in the morning.'
    Again that shake of the head, sending the blonde, absurdly abundant hair swinging on her shoulders. 'I've tried everything. There's a man called Eichmann who runs something called the Department of Emigration. He's supposed to help people to leave, but what he really does is make sure they're stripped of everything they own. You don't know what it's like - people weeping and shouting…'
    He had risen and begun to walk up and down, needing to think. 'What a huge place this is!'
    She nodded. 'Twelve rooms. My grandmother had two of them, but she died last year. When I was small I used to ride round and round the corridors on my tricycle.' She followed him. 'That's my father in the uniform of the 14th Uhlans.
    He was decorated twice for bravery — he couldn't believe that none of that counted.'
    'Is he completely Jewish?'
    'By birth, yes. I don't think he ever thought about it. His religion was to do with people… with everyone trying to make themselves into the best sort of person they could be. He believed in a God that belonged to everyone… you had to guard the spark that was in you and make it into a flame. And my mother was brought up as a Catholic so it's doubly hard for her. She's only half-Jewish, or maybe a quarter, we're not quite sure. She had a very Aryan mother - a sort of goat-herding lady.'
    'So that makes you… what? Three-quarters? Five-eighths? It's hard to believe.'
    She smiled. 'My snub nose, you mean - and