it true that they fought a battle on this hill?’
‘It’s true,’ he answered. ‘This hill used to be a lookout for the ancient Prussians. After that battle the German Knights claimed the village for good. But even the ones who died conquering the village didn’t much care.’
Mr Wolff explained that the highest goal a Knight could attain was not victory in battle, but death at the enemy’s hands. ‘They believed that by defending the Virgin Mary’s honour, they defended her son and in defending her son, they defended God.’ Mr Wolff sometimes recited literary works for Karl; he said that they sometimes called themselves Mary’s Knights or the cult of Mary and that in the fourteenth century they had created a vast body of Mary-verse, which they chanted in private among themselves:
In the name of God’s mother, the Virgin,
Virtue’s vessel and shedder of piercing tears,
for the sake of avenging her only son, our Saviour,
the renowned and numerous Knights of Mary
chose death as their destiny and reward,
and riddled with deep wounds
kept open through fearlessness and Faith,
they stood among smashed spears and shields,
among godless corpses and limbs and heads
to bleed and redeem with blood
their rapturous hearts, their singing souls,
in battles brutal as the Virgin is beautiful.
Around a month later Karl glanced out of his bedroom window and saw Mr Wolff walking up the path to the church again. When he had finished tidying his room, he left the house and followed him. He went in and crept round the wall until he reached the vestry door. There he stopped, certain that Mr Wolff was unaware of his presence. Then he scraped the heel of his boot on the floor. At first, Mr Wolff ignored it, but eventually he stood up to investigate.
When Mr Wolff pushed open the door to look out into the church, Karl hid behind it. He waited until Mr Wolff turned to go back, then jumped out and shouted, ‘Achtung!’
Mr Wolff whirled round in fright and Karl laughed until his sides ached.
When Mr Wolff had recovered he said, ‘Come sit with me for a little while.’
They talked briefly about Karl’s studies, then the coffin maker asked if Karl wanted to play a game.
‘What kind of game?’
‘You can pretend you’re the Führer.’
At first Karl thought Mr Wolff was joking, but then he realised he was serious.
There was a moment’s silence, before Mr Wolff asked, ‘My dear Führer, how do you propose to run the country when the war is over?’
Without hesitating – he knew the Führer wouldn’t hesitate – Karl said, ‘We must continue helping our people – especially those living far away. We must make sure everyone is safe.’
‘Everyone?’
Karl didn’t understand the question, but answered confidently, as he knew a leader must, ‘Yes, of course.’
They continued their dialogue, until Mr Wolff ended it by telling him he would make a fine leader. Karl swelled with pride. Unlike many people he knew, Mr Wolff never paid a compliment unless he meant it.
That meeting made a deep impression on Karl. Even though he and the coffin maker had spent only a short time together, he knew the old man had taught him something important even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. When he left the church, he decided he wanted to be alone to think about their conversation. Instead of continuing towards the square, he went down the hill into the forest where the hidden tunnel was rumoured to open.
In the months that followed, Karl was so busy at school that he hardly saw Mr Wolff – until one afternoon, when he glanced out his bedroom window: strangers were talking to him outside his shop and examining his identity card. He had shown it to Karl one morning when they met on the road that led from the railway station. Mr Wolff had been to the capital. Karl had studied the card, which bore a large ‘J’ imprinted in the middle.
‘They want me to change my name to Israel now,’ Mr Wolff had said. ‘Israel and Sara.’
After the men had left, Mr Wolff remained outside his shop for a long time, staring across the square. When he finally turned to go in, he saw Karl and paused, briefly, before disappearing back inside. Karl felt uneasy about having spied on him in such an uncomfortable situation.
But he felt far worse when, on his return from school a few weeks later, he discovered that Mr Wolff had gone. When Karl asked his mother what had happened she didn’t answer. A few hours later he asked her again. She told him to mind his own business. Later still, when she found him in his room, looking out of the window at Mr Wolff ’s shop, she relented. He knew something was wrong because she avoided his eyes.
‘They took Mr Schultze, too,’ she said.
‘Where did they go?’
‘I don’t know. They put them in a truck.’
‘Are they coming back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about his shop?’
‘I told you, I don’t know!’
He knew he should not ask any more. They stared out of the window without speaking. Ida slid her hand along Karl’s arm and clasped his hand in hers. He continued to look out of the window, first at the linden tree in the centre of the square, then at the church where he and Mr Wolff had sat together. Eventually, Karl asked if he could go outside.
‘I want you to stay in,’ his mother said softly. ‘They might come back to do something to his shop.’
In the months after Mr Wolff ’s disappearance, the children ran up the hill to the churchyard each day when their parents let them out to play. Once, Karl led the others into the church and up the stone stairs to the turret. Halfway up they came to a door that had been sealed with bricks. Karl placed his palms on the bricks, as Mr Wolff once had, and said, ‘The secret tunnel is in here.’ He explained that behind the bricks another stairway led down into the earth. ‘The tunnel may have caved in by now,’ he added and told them that the other end had also been sealed. No one in the village was sure any longer exactly where it came out.
When they left the church the children stopped and turned back to look at where they imagined the hidden stairs led down into the earth. A noise from the rooftop distracted them. They looked up and saw balanced carefully on the peak a stork’s nest made from twigs with a large bird in it. Atop the ridgeline of each house in the village ran a single strand of taut wire affixed to two boards secured at opposite ends of the roof to prevent the heavy birds from landing and keeping the home owners awake at night
