Best Friends are the Best

By Gerda Bean

It is the year 1944, and six-year-old Marie lives with her mother, father and brother in Baden-Baden, a spa town in the German Black Forest. Her home town has not been bombed and her father, an orchestra musician, has not yet left to fight in the war as German musicians were told to stay at home to keep up the people’s spirits.

But tragedy strikes in late 1944 as Marie’s father is sent to fight the Russians, and she is forced to move in with her grandmother, a pub owner in Eastern Germany. Marie becomes best friends with the girl next door and it is through their friendship that Marie is able to get through scary and uncertain times.

Together with her friends, Marie learns just how valuable true friendship is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805146933

Gerda Bean

Gerda Bean was born in Baden-Baden, Germany, and worked for Herder Publishers in Freiburg. She has lived in Boston and Washington, DC., and became a freelance translator in 1975. She has been nominated three times for the German Youth Literature Prize and lives with her husband David in Lincolnshire.

Book preview

Contents

1  This Stupid War

2  A Train Leaves

3  At Oma’s Place

4  Naughty Things

5  A Gloomy Mood and Apple Rings

6  I Want to Stay

7  In the Cellar

8  A White Trickle

9  Crash-Bang!

10  Can You Look into the Future?

11  The Moonman

12  Suddenly Silence

13  The Americans Are Here

14  Chocolate, Please!

15  A Red Flag and a Red Dress

16  In the Fields and Forest

17  My First Day of School

18  Goodbye

19  At Home

20  Milk and Apples

21  Faster! Faster!

22  Merry Christmas!

23  Another Present

24  Drawing and Writing

25  Three Letters

26  A Red Flame Whizzes By

27  At the Cemetery

28  Oh, Why Can’t It Always Be Summer?

29  Packages from America

30  Mama, the Cook

31  Paris

32  Tears

33  What Am I Going to Do?

34  Two Green Apples

35  Papa Talks

36  Papa Can Laugh Again

37  Here We Go Again!

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1

This Stupid War

Mama, when’re you going to bake a cake again? I asked.

When the war’s over, she said.

And when’ll it be over?

Soon, I hope, answered my mother.

This stupid war. The people were constantly talking about it. Everywhere. At the greengrocer’s, the bakery and the butcher’s shop. When Mama held our food ration card over the counter for the shop lady to clip off some stamps, at least one person in the store would mention the war. What it was really all about, I didn’t understand – we lived in a small, sunny town where no bombs had fallen yet.

Have we just been lucky, or is our town too pretty to destroy? I asked myself.

Our town nestled up against dark-green mountains and had a beautiful park with a large shell-shaped pavilion, where Papa sat with other men and played music. In the orchestra, Papa played the bassoon – a long, wooden instrument. That’s what he was doing now and I hoped he would come home soon.

I went to the window. Maybe he’d come sooner if I wished him back really hard. I felt bored. My brother, Peter, in his third school year, was doing his homework and had told me in a strict voice not to bother him.

So, I kept pestering my mother instead.

Mama, since when’s this war been going on?

"Marie, you know that!"

I’m almost six.

Right. And when the war started, you were nine months old, Mama said and continued with her ironing. Just a small baby. And next year, you’ll start school.

"Yes and I can’t wait. I’ll be a big schoolgirl then and Peter mustn’t disturb me when I do my homework!"

Maybe Papa will want to ride his bicycle when he comes home from work today, I wondered. And maybe he’d ask me if I’d like to come along. I’d, of course, say yes, because I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful.

I looked down at the street outside. It was quite steep downhill. Our house was the last one in a row of attached buildings. It was painted dark pink and had three storeys. Our flat was on the middle floor and I had a good view from our living-room window. I liked to stand there and watch the people walking past. There weren’t many out today, though.

Suddenly, a man appeared. Was that Papa?

No, it was Old Man Meier, who lived four doors down and was just leaving his house. He crossed the street fairly quickly and disappeared into the house opposite ours, where his lady friend lived. Molly, his tabby cat, ran after him, but Herr Meier had already closed the door. Molly scratched at the door, the door opened slightly and Molly slipped through the crack.

Where’s Papa? Another man appeared. That must be him! Yes, it was. He held a long, dark bassoon case in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Papa was really easy to spot because he didn’t have a lot of hair on his head. Herr Meier had even less. And our barber at the end of the road had none left at all and his head looked like a big, fat marble from behind.

But it didn’t matter that my father had a bald head – he was still the best-looking man far and wide.

Then things happened exactly the way I’d wished them. Papa put his bassoon case away, talked a bit with Mama and looked over Peter’s shoulder, who was scribbling eagerly in his exercise book. Then he asked me if I wanted to get some fresh air.

Oh, yeah, Papa, I need a lot of fresh air! I screamed with excitement and ran through the hallway to put on my shoes.

Papa went into the bedroom to change his clothes. He didn’t want to ruin his nice suit on his bike.

Downstairs, I waited in front of the house until Papa carried his bicycle out of the cellar. And off we went!

It was great to swish around the curves of the forest paths and feel the wind in my face. I sat on a little saddle in front of Papa and held on to the handlebar. I also had to be careful that my feet didn’t slip off the little footrests on the axle of the front wheel.

The sunlight glittered through the fir branches and, once in a while, when the high trees weren’t too close together, we could see a church tower as it peeked to us from another hill.

The fir tree needles under the wheels flew off to the left and right.

Papa’s the best cyclist in the whole world, I thought.

The many hot springs in our town made it a famous spa. And in the middle of the forest, there was a medical wading pool. The water ran out of a pipe into a little stone wading basin and out of the basin again, through another pipe.

There was a metal handrail in the middle of the pool that you could hold onto as you stamped through the water – which was supposed to be very healthy, as Papa had explained to me once before.

He stopped with squeaking brakes and let me take off my shoes and socks and splash around in the water up to my knees. Papa sat down on a bench and watched me with a big smile.

After I had stamped enough through the water, I sat down next to him.

You can use my big handkerchief to dry your feet, said Papa and added, laughing, Don’t worry, I haven’t used it. It’s nice and clean.

I wiped my feet with the hanky, put my socks back on and pushed my feet into the lace-up shoes, which were a little too big for me. I’d taken them over from Peter because there were hardly any shoes left in the shops.

A big green bird pecked around in the grass under a tree nearby.

That’s a green woodpecker, explained Papa. Isn’t it lovely?

Yeah. May I stroke it? Its feathers are probably very soft.

Papa laughed. You can try, he said.

I stood up slowly and walked towards the woodpecker. A twig cracked under my feet. The bird lifted its head and flew away.

Disappointed, I returned to the bench, sat down again next to Papa and started to draw circles with my toes. Papa picked up a twig and drew two dots in one of my circles, a short line in the middle and a semi-circle one underneath. It was a smiling face.

Then Papa said, Come on, we’ve got to go now. Mama’s waiting with dinner.

I had nothing against it. My belly was rumbling.

*

All my days then were very much alike. Mama took care of the housework. Peter went to school or did his homework, and I stood at my favourite place at the window and watched the street. One day, I saw a young woman pushing a baby carriage up the steep pavement. It looked pretty exhausting. I didn’t know her.

But I wondered if I should run down and help her. I was about to ask Mama, but the woman had already turned the corner and just then a soldier walked up our street. He looked very young and his grey uniform seemed a bit too big. He smiled and, not long after, the doorbell rang.

Mama opened the door. The soldier asked if the family could spare a radio for the brave heroes of the fatherland. Mama nodded and went with a grim face into the living room, took our radio from the bookcase where it always stood and gave it to the soldier.

I wasn’t happy at all about that because I liked to listen to the funny stories and fairy tales on the children’s programme. And I was even more unhappy when another soldier appeared a week later at the door and soon pushed Papa’s bicycle out onto the street.

Goodbye, I said softly.

For our victory! called the beaming soldier and jumped onto the bike saddle.

I swallowed hard and started to hate the war even more.

2

A Train Leaves

Then it was autumn, but the sun shone almost every day and it was still warm outside. When Papa didn’t play his bassoon in the orchestra in the park, he went to the playground with me or we just took a walk. Peter, the best student in his class, either sat at the dining table and did his homework or went to see a friend. And Mama was always busy with her chores around the house.

When Papa and I walked through the streets, some people gave us nasty looks. Sometimes, when Papa greeted a neighbour lady, she pretended not to see us, which was very impolite. Mama always said that if a person greets you, you have to greet them back. And Papa was such a friendly man. His voice was soft and kind.

When I played alone or with other children in the street, women from the neighbourhood often asked me why my father was still at home. Why’s he still here? Why isn’t he fighting like the others?

What could I say? That he was ‘indispensable’, as Mama had explained? That he had to play with his music colleagues in the bandstand in the park to cheer people up?

I looked the women in the face who had snapped at me. That was another thing Mama had taught Peter and me.

If grown-ups talk to you, you look at them, she had said. The women had pale and unfriendly faces, but their eyes were sparkling. They scared me.

I decided to keep my mouth shut.

But it was true. There were few men left in our street. Most of them had been called up, which meant they had to be soldiers and fight in the war.

The fathers of my playmates were all gone. Sometimes they had a few days of leave and then went for walks with their children. They held them by the hand and the children looked proudly up to their fathers, who wore grey uniforms.

Why’re the women in the street so mean? I asked my mother.

They aren’t mean, Marie. They’re just bitter. There’s hardly a family in our neighbourhood who haven’t lost a father, brother or son. They’re jealous because we still have our papa. You can understand that, can’t you?

Yes, I said. But I didn’t.

*

The playground was near our house. If Papa couldn’t go there with me, I went alone and usually met my friend, Armin. He was a year younger than me and always went along with what I wanted. We both loved to dig in the sandpit. Once we were so busy with our work that we didn’t realise how quiet it’d become around us. All the other children at the playground had gone home. Only Armin and I kept filling our little pails and turning them over to make cakes and decorate the rim of the sandbox.

Somebody in the house opposite the playground knocked on the window, but we ignored it. Finally, a woman opened the window.

Run home quickly, you kids! she screamed. There’s been an air-raid warning! Didn’t you hear the sirens?

No! we screamed back.

We looked at each other and didn’t know if we should continue our work or go home as the woman said. Digging in the dirt was such fun! The rim of the sandbox was almost covered with our little cakes. There were only three cakes missing and we wanted to finish what we’d started. And what should we be afraid of, after all? Nothing bad had ever happened to us.

Suddenly, my mother appeared. She gripped my hand and ran home with me. Armin just had to cross the road.

Now I got scared.

"If you hear a siren, you run home at once – at once!" said Mama harshly, pulling me along.

In the cellar of our building, the other neighbours were already sitting on benches. Old Frau Neuhauser, who lived in the flat above us, was knitting. She smiled at me as always and didn’t seem to be afraid.

Our landlord, Herr Becker, and his wife were also there. Herr Becker had been a soldier in another war, the First World War, as Mama had told me once. He’d fought against the French and returned home badly wounded. His red face looked all crumpled – like a piece of paper that somebody had scrunched up. And there was an iron hook at the end of his left arm instead of a hand. When Herr Becker