The Book of Dirt

by Bram Presser

  Long after Emílie had nestled into the forgotten recess of Ludvík’s mattress, after Marcela and Hana fell asleep under quilted down, after the angel had been placed on top of the coat rack to bring peace on this refuge of tranquillity and hope, Františka Roubíčková tiptoed over to the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. There it was, Daša’s old jewellery box, its hinges broken, the felt worn down to the chipped wood. It was all she could think to grab when Ottla B had tapped frantically at her door that night, almost a lifetime ago, hours after she kissed her eldest daughters goodbye. ‘Please,’ her neighbour had said, dropping a folded piece of paper in Františka’s hand. ‘Take this. For Bohuš.’ Františka was lost for words. In her most desperate hour Ottla had found the courage to run, to escape Žižkov. ‘When this is over, when he comes home, give it to him. Tell him his mother is coming. Promise me you will—’ Ottla’s voice faded on the wind. She looked around, saw two figures turn in from Mladoňovicova. ‘Thank you,’ Ottla said as she ran into the night. It was the last Františka saw of her.

  Františka pushed aside the paper, pulled out a small felt pouch and tipped its contents onto the kitchen table. She picked up each ring in turn, testing them on her fingers, under her tongue, beneath the folds of her clothes. Her eyelids grew heavy and she settled on one Ludvík had given her soon after they first made love. A simple gold band. So this was the value of her heart, a currency greater than cigarettes, greater than coffee. Almost weightless, the infinite rounding of life. She pushed it into the moist Christmas cake and waited for dawn.

  4

  THERESIENSTADT

  She danced between the lines in the kingdom of paper. It started with the slightest glimpse, a blonde curl behind a slanting lamed, a flash of skin—perhaps a wrist, a shoulder or even a thigh—through the crook of a beit. By some mistake of gravity he had ascended to the heavens where only gods and angels dwelled. He looked at Georg, at Muneles, at Gottschall, at Seeligmann, but they were lost between pillars of pulp, blinded to this shimmering sprite. She grew more brazen with the days, revealing more of herself on each new page. There was nothing suggestive in her moves, just the sheer delight of freedom. She cared little for his startled gaze. At times she swirled the ink around her in a frantic pirouette until the words blurred like a shroud across her shoulders.

  Jakub sat back and wiped his brow. No, it was pointless. It was like leering at a sister, a child. And was he not just seeing her with his mother’s eyes? He knew how Gusta looked on when they talked, imagining what might have been, what still could be. But theirs was nothing more than a convenient alliance: her packages, his privileges, pooled to create a semblance of plenty. Outside the barracks, away from these books, she danced for others. He had seen her in the park on his way back from the bastion, huddled close to a young man under a tree. And what to make of the other times when she would loiter near the gate at day’s end and run the moment she caught sight of Jakub coming up Südstrasse? Jakub was certain he saw the gendarme right himself before hurrying over to unfasten the lock.

  Jakub looked at the SS man by the door. He rarely moved, as if asleep. Only once had he stood to attention, when Eichmann himself came to visit, to compliment these shackled scholars, to show that he, too, could speak in their tongue. It is very important work you are doing, gentlemen, Eichmann had said. That was before September, before the Council announced the resumption of transports. Before they took Shmuel away. He should have known. Eichmann’s presence boded ill for them all.

  Jakub pressed down on the calfskin jacket of his next book and hoped that when he opened it she would not be there. He read the words: Sefer Darchei No’am, The Ways of the Torah. A book of responsa by Mordechai Halevi, published in 1697. Now item number Jc 10008b. He jotted down the details and a short commentary, first on a blank sheet and then, when he was satisfied with what he wrote, on a standard index card. This time Daša was nowhere to be seen.

  5

  PRAGUE

  II. I. 44

  My dearest Emí,

  I send you kisses and, of course, Marcela, who I hope remembers to pass on this letter.

  Everywhere the winter’s sun plays tricks with the light, making rainbows on the frost, but inside me there is only black. It is two weeks since I saw them, two weeks since I felt the warmth of their fingertips through the wire. Yes, a wire fence. Oh, Emí, forgive me. There was so much I couldn’t tell you when I returned. I was tired but also ashamed, as much for them as for myself. I don’t know what I expected, how I hoped it would be. Perhaps you will understand why I held it inside that night, why the following morning I walked you to the station without a word, why now I must tell you like this.

  The train arrived at Bohušovice before eleven. Two men in different uniforms sat on the platform, smoking and playing checkers. One rested a rifle across his lap, the other had a whistle hanging from his neck. When I asked them for directions their faces darkened. The rifleman signalled for the other to deal with me.

  The whistle jangled against his buttons as he stood. He looked me over from head to toe before his eyes came to rest on the box under my arm. I pretended not to notice but then the rifleman shook his head and mumbled something. Yes, the other man said. An inspection is in order. Can’t be too cautious. I held open the box and he looked inside. At last he took out the Christmas cake wrapped in its cloth sack. My wife will like this, he said. Anything, I thought. Anything but that. I thrust my hand into the box and—oh God, Emí, I am sorry—I pulled out the carved wooden angel. I held it out to him and for a moment he hesitated. Then the rifleman jumped in. Yes, yes, he said. For my daughter. The other placed the Christmas cake back in the box and escorted me outside.

  Bohušovice was a quiet town. The man with the whistle pointed to a road that cut through the centre. Just keep walking, he said. Do not branch off. In the end I would reach the fortress. The people of Bohušovice are no longer accustomed to seeing strangers. I could read it in their puzzled faces. They have closed their minds to what festers beyond. I am told this is the same path they all walked, Ludvík and the girls, but they have since built a railway line so the townsfolk do not feel like accomplices to it all. I walked for half an hour, past the town and through the valley. Emí, it is strange to say but in many ways it reminded me of Sudoměříce. Even in the cold, with snow underfoot, there was a sense of serenity, of beauty. I wondered whether perhaps the girls might feel at home.

  Then I saw it. A heavy wire fence with razor wire curled across its top, stretching across the sunken brick walls of an immense fortress. The road led to a gate where a guard stood warming his hands over a fire pit. I greeted him. He responded in Czech; he was a gendarme, not a soldier. We spoke for a while; he seemed uncertain about my presence. One arm rested on his truncheon throughout. I asked him about the daily funeral procession. It would be here soon, he said. Just like Daša told me. I asked if he knew many of the people who lived here and he said he did. I took two cigarettes from my pocket and offered him one. We stood there smoking, taking in the strangeness of our encounter. There was something about him that bothered me. I asked whether he knew my Daša. It was an innocent question, just a way to pass the time, but his face, Emí, his face changed. You know what it’s like to see a pleasant smile contort into a lecherous grin? There was hunger in his eyes. Hunger and knowledge. My chest burned. Yes, he said, letting out a great puff of smoke. She comes here some days during the lunch break. She has been making arrangements for your visit. I am glad to oblige.

  I’m sure he would have gone on but we were interrupted by the approaching wail of the funeral procession. The hearse—a horse’s cart wheeled by four men—was heading towards us. In front walked a rabbi with a deep voice, chanting lamentations for those who trailed behind. I saw the awful cargo, a pile of bodies, ten or more, covered only by a sheet that kept lifting with the wind. The gendarme released the latch on the boom gate and allowed the hearse to pass. The rabbi motioned for the bearers to halt and, for a moment, these po
or souls rested on the precipice between two worlds. The families set upon the tray, clutching at their loved ones’ arms. They kissed their hands and faces, whispered blessings. Only when the hearse moved on did I see the girls, at the back, among the mourners. They played the part, as if they hadn’t seen their mother waiting there.

  The gendarme stood guard while the mourners squeezed against the fence, straining to see the hearse as it rolled off. When at last it was gone, they began the slow march back into the ghetto until only my girls remained. Daša ran over to the gendarme and whispered something in his ear. He shook his head. She whispered something else. Without a word, he took out a cigarette and crossed to a nearby hut, where he sat on the stoop, his face turned away.

  How we rushed at each other, Emí. Even through the wire we smothered one another’s faces with kisses, careful not to catch our lips on the freezing metal. It is less than a year but they have grown! Daša is a woman now and Irena no longer looks like a child. Ludvík was unable to come. He is employed in a workshop at the other end of town. I asked if he provides for them. They were reluctant to answer but Daša kissed me again on the cheek and said, as if in jest, He gives what he can. I could not let the atmosphere spoil so I reached into the box and pulled out some socks and other things that I had packed. I threaded them all through the fence, told Irena they were for her birthday but that she should share them with her father and sister. Then we sang together, loudly, joyously, because she was growing up and, no matter what the current situation, it was still Christmas. The gendarme appeared entranced by our ways, as if for a moment he had forgotten himself.

  Too soon the lunch break came to an end. Daša said that she was returning to the kitchen and Irena to the sewing workshop. I laid the box at my feet and pulled out the last package. I had wanted Irena to unwrap it but it was too big to pass through the wire, so it was left to me to peel away the cloth. They clapped and cheered when they saw it: the moist Christmas cake. Irena began to laugh. What is it? I asked. What is so funny? Oh, Mama, she said. If only you could have been there to taste my birthday cake. You cannot imagine how we must make do. I passed them both a small handful. Eat carefully, I said. You never know what Saint Nicholas has hidden inside. We are not children, said Daša. Yes, I said, but your teeth can still break.

  It was I who got the ring. I felt it the moment the cake hit my tongue. What a fool I must have looked digging into my mouth, catching hold of it while I sucked the dough from its surface! I looked at the gendarme but he was facing the ghetto. I pulled Daša close and dropped the ring into her palm. For Christmas, I said. Use it however you must. I looked again to the gendarme. Remember who you are, I said. Remember what you are. And like that it was over. Daša and Irena gave me one last kiss and ran off back down the road. The gendarme resumed his position by the gate.

  Oh, Emí, can you forgive me like I have forgiven Daša? To have kept this secret when my whole life I have told you everything. Why is it that I thought the worst of Daša and that gendarme? Could it simply be that I no longer recognise myself? That my eyes have lost focus? It is true. This situation has dressed us all in fraying rags. Pray that we may stitch them back together.

  Always your loving sister,

  Františka

  6

  THERESIENSTADT

  Draymen in ragged trousers, their chests bare in the morning light, hauled wooden hearses towards the delousing station. Gaunt faces stared up—elderly and infirm—wincing with discomfort, grey hair tumbling in matted clumps around protruding cheekbones. Soon they would be back, standing outside the kitchens, begging for scraps, but for now the promise of chemical clouds, relief. Jakub and Georg kept their distance; rather be late than infested. At the nearest crossroad they branched off onto Südstrasse. The gendarme tipped his hat, greeted them by name and unlocked the gate. They passed through and headed towards the Klärenstalt.

  Spring had thickened the air inside. It was early, or late. Here there was no time. Weiss, the carpenter, scurried from table to table, picking up books, darting back to place them in the waiting crate. The others hunched over their stations. Jakub reached across and took the next book on the stack. A simple siddur, Jakub thought. A prayer book looted from the genizah of a synagogue that was now ash. Worthless. The leather was dry, worn, rubbed, with splits along the spine and edges. Only the clasp remained intact: a tarnished lion, its claws clutching at a small orb. The blackness hid the intricacy of the metalwork, clogging the grooves that fashioned the beast’s fur.

  Jakub eased his nail beneath the lion and gently pulled. The clasp strained before springing open with a muted pop. He slid the strap aside and lifted the cover. The first page was blank, mottled by specks of mould and the smudges of impatient fingers. He flipped the page over, then another and another. All blank. Running his hand along the paper, Jakub could feel the faint relief of letters that might have been. The page was uneven: taut around the edges but slack in the middle. He turned several more pages then stopped. He looked around quickly and leaned over the book, shielding it from view.

  The handiwork was crude but effective. Slivers of wood had been pasted around a hollowed compartment. The walls were far enough from the fore edge and top square not to arouse suspicion; to the casual eye it was a siddur like any other. The compartment was packed with a clump of tawny dirt, little more than a handful, but enough to fill the space. Jakub pushed the dirt aside, spilling some onto the surrounding paper. There must be something buried inside, he thought, something to warrant such effort to conceal it, but he could find nothing. He pulled a spoon from the buttonhole in his lapel and began to scoop the dirt into his tin cup, watching it suck at the last droplets of water. Soon the compartment was empty, only a few dark streaks across the pastedown at its base. Jakub blew into the space to clear the remaining dust. The streaks held firm, curled, purposeful. Two letters. Mem. Taf. Together Met. Death. He blew again and they were gone.

  ‘Pencils down, gentlemen.’ It was Muneles. Jakub grabbed the cup, covered it with his palm and rushed out of the Klärenstalt into the late afternoon sun.

  ‘A lion, you say?’

  Professor Leopold Glanzberg had been transferred to the Ghetto Watch after the August purge of young and, in the Camp Kommandant’s opinion, potentially rebellious men. The new Watch consisted exclusively of men over forty-five, men who could be easily subdued, whose only real authority rested in the esteem with which these elders were held by the other Jews. Professor Glanzberg was little more than a kindly face standing at the gate to greet those who had business in the Magdeberg Barracks.

  ‘And you are quite certain about the orb?’ The black cap with its thin beige cresting wave and scalloped clover insignia was too small for Glanzberg’s head. When he spoke it shifted around, releasing sprigs of grey brush that disappeared into his unruly beard. It was said his mind had softened but his eyes still burned with the intensity of the learned.

  ‘Yes, it was grasping at a ball,’ said Jakub. ‘The sun, perhaps?’

  ‘A grape. Yes, a lion picking a grape from its vine. The symbol of Rabbi Judah Löew, the great Maharal of Prague. He had it etched above his door in Široká Street. Few know of this detail. Most only think of the lion. Still, it’s the empty pages that interest me.’

  Jakub followed as Professor Glanzberg set off along the street. The town pulsated with the activity of another day’s end. Shoulders collided, dust kicked at worn heels. Gendarmes manned the corners, tried to direct the flow. Jakub tried to pick Glanzberg’s voice from the crowd.

  ‘And you still have the book?’

  ‘It is not permitted,’ Jakub said. ‘Weiss will have taken it. I…just…no.’

  Professor Glanzberg broke from the weary stream into a narrow alley between two houses. ‘Here,’ he said and turned another corner to reach a deserted cul-de-sac. ‘Please,’ he said and held out his hand. Jakub passed him the metal cup. Professor Glanzberg peered inside, shook the cup, nodded. For a few moments he stood there, as if unsure
of how to start. Then:

  (The Story of The Book of Dirt…with interruptions)

  ‘It sounds preposterous, I know. There was a woman, impossibly old. Mad. We didn’t know her name, hadn’t seen her around the community. She started coming to the museum several months before the occupation. She would visit every few days, more so once the Nazis came. We didn’t charge her admission, there was no point. It was obvious she couldn’t pay. She greeted us all warmly, hung her coat near the entrance. Then she would begin her rounds.

  ‘I was given the task of following her, working out her game. It was the great advantage of my role; I was invisible, just the man in the background tending to the exhibits. I don’t think it would have mattered to her, though. She was blind to all who passed by. It was always the same route through the display halls; she never missed a single exhibit. She talked to herself as she walked, not the soft mutterings of the old and infirm, but full, animated conversations.

  ‘It took me a few days but I came to understand that she was giving tours, talking to an audience only she could see. On closer inspection—I dared step as close to her as I am to you, pretending to dust a nearby plinth—I saw that she looked only to the gaps between our displays. Her babble seemed to unscramble as I drew near. When I was right beside her I could understand every word she said. Here was a fragment of stone from the Ten Commandments, there was the knife Abraham had intended to use to sacrifice Isaac. In this cabinet was a dried chunk of flesh from the fish that swallowed Jonah, on that wall a spoke from the chariot Elijah rode to heaven. I reported back to the directors. They decided to leave her be. There was a certain charm in her presence. After all, what harm is there in a woman who sees what isn’t there? It is a quality we might all do well to develop.’