Winter of the World - Ken Follett

dezembro 07, 2019

were hard and she had not bought anything new for years. This morning, she looked slim and elegant in a navy-blue cashmere dress that was probably as old as Carla.

‘ “Signora Cerruti, who is Jewish, is a passionate Fascist, and they talked for many minutes. Did she beg Hitler to stop whipping up hatred of Jews?” ’ Father put the magazine down on the table with a slap.

Here it comes, Carla thought.

‘You realize that will infuriate the Nazis,’ he said.

‘I hope so,’ Mother said coolly. ‘The day they’re pleased with what I write, I shall give it up.’

‘They’re dangerous when riled.’

Mother’s eyes flashed anger. ‘Don’t you dare condescend to me, Walter. I know they’re dangerous – that’s why I oppose them.’

‘I just don’t see the point of making them irate.’

‘You attack them in the Reichstag.’ Father was an elected parliamentary representative for the Social Democratic Party.

‘I take part in a reasoned debate.’

This was typical, Carla thought. Father was logical, cautious, law-abiding. Mother had style and humour. He got his way by quiet persistence; she with charm and cheek. They would never agree.

Father added: ‘I don’t drive the Nazis mad with fury.’

‘Perhaps that’s because you don’t do them much harm.’

Father was irritated by her quick wit. His voice became louder. ‘And you think you damage them with jokes?’

‘I mock them.’

‘And that’s your substitute for argument.’

‘I believe we need both.’

Father became angrier. ‘But Maud, don’t you see how you’re putting yourself and your family at risk?’

‘On the contrary: the real danger is not to mock the Nazis. What would life be like for ourchildren if Germany became a Fascist state?’

This kind of talk made Carla feel queasy. She could not bear to hear that the family was in danger. Life must go on as it always had. She wished she could sit in this kitchen for an eternity of mornings, with her parents at opposite ends of the pine table, Ada at the counter, and her brother, Erik, thumping around upstairs, late again. Why should anything change?

She had listened to political talk every breakfast-time of her life and she thought she understood what her parents did, and how they planned to make Germany a better place for everyone. But lately they had begun to talk in a different way. They seemed to think that a terrible danger loomed, but Carla could not quite imagine what it was.

Father said: ‘God knows I’m doing everything I can to hold back Hitler and his mob.’

‘And so am I. But when you do it, you believe you’re following a sensible course.’ Mother’s face hardened in resentment. ‘And when I do it, I’m accused of putting the family at risk.’

‘And with good reason,’ said Father. The row was only just getting started, but at that moment Erik came down, clattering like a horse on the stairs, and lurched into the kitchen with his school satchel swinging from his shoulder. He was thirteen, two years older than Carla, and there were unsightly black hairs sprouting from his upper lip. When they were small, Carla and Erik had played together all the time; but those days were over, and since he had grown so tall he had pretended to think that she was stupid and childish. In fact, she was smarter than he, and knew about a lot of things he did not understand, such as women’smonthly cycles.

‘What was that last tune you were playing?’ he said to Mother.

The piano often woke them in the morning. It was a Steinway grand – inherited, like the house itself, from Father’s parents. Mother played in the morning because, she

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Winter of the World - Ken Follett

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