The Other Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

if necessary, black eyes snapping above the glare of her uniform: ‘Now Mister Meyer,’ she will say in her nasal way, the corners of her mouth pulling down. ‘You know that is not a sensible idea.’
    But she didn’t see us in Russia, tramping through endless snow, starving and exhausted. Our feet rotten stumps wrapped in rags. She doesn’t know what I’m capable of. I have stretched limits before, bracing myself against the hard wire of impossibility. And I can do it again.
    We were swift as a greyhound, tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel. But what good did it do us?
    I find myself humming the words to those old marching songs. The ones we learnt in the Hitler Youth and sang again and again in the Wehrmacht, dug into foxholes, marching in line across never-ending plains, across broken, rutted wastelands in rain and hail, past rows of rough wooden crosses, with helmets hanging on them. A German boy doesn’t cry.
    Heute wollen wir marschier’n einen neuen Marsch, probier’n in dem schönen Westerwald. Ja da pfeift der Wind so kalt. I’m moving my lips, and the words crack as one language slides into another. Dancing is a joy and the heart in love laughs.
    I would like to dance with her one more time.
    But the wind is so cold.  
    Winter nights on the farm, when the frost made patterns on the inside of the window, Otto and I would creep out of our beds, wrapped in blankets, and climb down the ladder to the stable. Lotte and Berta sometimes slept lying down, and if one of them was stretched out on her side in the straw, we’d curl up against her warm flank, putting our cheeks against her muscled neck, fingers tangling in her thick greasy mane. Through the dark, I could almost taste the smell of piss and dung and the hot breath of the animal. Even in sleep, a part of us was conscious, ready to move if she stirred, to roll out of the way of her hooves.
    There were other songs we learnt and repeated in the club house and at camp, hurling words into the air, our young lungs heaving, mouths opened wide. ‘Kill them. Kill them all. Line the fat cats up against the wall . ’ Perhaps we didn’t understand what we sang. I don’t know how much we really knew or when it was that the knowledge became something real, lodged inside like shrapnel.

KLAUDIA
    1986, London
    I’ve been to Amber’s house three times, twice on my own, and once with Lesley. I liked it better on my own. Her mum made us cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We watched The Sound of Music on their huge colour TV, while their hairy Lassie dog pressed up against me, resting his damp nose on my knee as if he loved me. She has a guinea pig called Honey. She let me pick it up. The creature felt strangely bony under her thick golden fur. Her claws scrabbled at my hand, and one got hooked through my cardigan. I bent close to unhook it and she nipped my chin with sharp teeth. I put her down quickly, before Amber noticed.
    Amber wants to come to my house. ‘It’s your turn,’ she explains. ‘It’s only fair.’
    ‘Of course,’ I say quickly, in case she thinks I don’t know how to do this. ‘I’ll ask my mum.’
    I choose a Saturday afternoon when I know that Dad will be out at a chapel meeting. I’m nervous. I worry that she’ll think our furniture is wrong and the wooden disciples weird. But Mum doesn’t let me down. She’s made fairy cakes with icing and sugar flowers; she sits at the table with us, smiling and asking the right questions. I see Mum through Amber’s eyes and realise how pretty she is. Even though she’s old.
    In my room, Amber finds my pink dance slippers.
    ‘I didn’t know you did ballet too?’ She claps the slippers together. ‘I go to Miss Hockey. Grade Three on Tuesday evenings.’
    I shake my head. ‘I don’t have lessons. Not yet.’
    Amber looks disappointed. She plays with the ribbons on the shoes, twisting them around her fingers.
    ‘We could do some dancing now, if you like,’ I say, keeping my