Read Hitler's Daughter for Free Online Page A

least,’ he said. ‘Go on!’
    Anna took another breath, and began the story again.
    Frau Leib had grey hair, not speckled grey like Fräulein Gelber’s—whose hair looked a bit like a hen’s feathers, Heidi thought sometimes—but grey all over like a saucepan, and tight curls that lookedlike they were made of metal too, they were so firm about her head.
    Frau Leib’s hands were large, with red knuckles. Her skirt was much longer and wider than Fräulein Gelber’s, the sort of skirt you could use for carrying apples or cabbages from the cellar, and an apron from her neck to her knee, a ‘kittel’, that seemed welded to her waist no matter what else she wore.
    Heidi never saw Frau Leib without her apron; whether she was coming or going, she still had it on. It looked bigger than she was, all bunched up at her sides, as though at one time Frau Leib had been even larger than she was now.
    Frau Leib lived on the farm just down the road, the one with the pigs in the black mud. Her husband worked the fields with their young grandsons and two of their daughters-in-law. Their sons were away fighting, except for one who was in a prisoner-of-war camp in America (America was the enemy now, too).
    Herr Leib was in the Nazi Party—one of the first members in the whole district—so his wife was supposed to be trustworthy.
    She also liked to talk.
    Frau Leib talked in a dialect so thick it was sometimes hard to understand, but that didn’t matter, because she said so much that you couldleave half of it out and still have enough for conversation.
    ‘I talk as the pig’s snout grows,’ said Frau Leib with a grin that showed the dark gaps in her back teeth, meaning that she talked as thoughts flew into her head, and there were a lot of thoughts under Frau Leib’s grey curls.
    ‘What happened to your face, girl?’ she demanded, as soon as she saw Heidi. ‘A burn? Is that what it is? The bombs?’
    ‘I was born with it,’ said Heidi quietly.
    Frau Leib’s great arms came round her and she hugged her to her apron, which had just the faintest smell of pig. ‘You poor darling,’ she said. ‘I will give you some ointment. It’s pig lard, with chickweed and other herbs. It is my grandmother’s recipe and she got it from her mother, so it is very good. It takes scars like that away so fast you’d think the boar was after them to get its fat back!’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Heidi, as she was released from the apron, though she knew the ointment wouldn’t do any good. If there had been a way to remove the mark Duffi would have arranged it years before.
    But there were some questions even Frau Leib knew not to ask. Whoever had organised the housefor them had made it clear that Fräulein Gelber—and Heidi—were people of importance. Their clothes, their food, their lack of ration cards, the guard, the provisions that arrived for them every second Monday were proof enough of that.
    But even if Frau Leib didn’t ask questions, she still liked to talk.
    ‘Listen to the frogs in the pond!’ said Frau Leib, her fat fingers firm around the knife handle as she chopped through thick bacon while Heidi peeled the potatoes for the soup. (Heidi had never had bacon before—Duffi didn’t like people to eat meat. But they ate it now.) ‘If the frogs croak like that at night it will rain in the morning.’
    ‘Are there fish in the pond?’ asked Heidi. She was allowed in the kitchen often now to help Frau Leib. Together they made the beds, and dusted too.
    ‘Just the frogs,’ said Frau Leib.
    Frau Leib had five children: ‘Lisl, oh, I had such a hard time having her,’ said Frau Leib. But at that Frau Leib halted a while, as though she had remembered how young her listener was. And there were Franz and Josef and Helmuth and Erna.
    She also had two grandsons who worked the farm, and another two who were only babies, too young to help at all.
    ‘But oh, we need the help,’ said Frau Leib, shaking her head so her chins wobbled but