by Bram Presser
‘The work continues in the city,’ said Glanzberg. ‘We made sure to leave one of our own in charge of the museum.’
‘Old Jakobovits.’
‘Pieces of all kinds come before him and his team examines them, tests those that might be of any significance, squirrels them away in the piles of confiscated goods. Here we only have books. Until now we had found just one item: the list of names read by Rabbi Löew to the Angel of Death at the cemetery gates in defence of his congregation. And now this…’
‘The most unlikely evidence of all.’ Muneles looked at the cup in Jakub’s hand. ‘When Leo came to tell me, I thought the fortress had gone to his head. Nowhere has the story of the hollowed book been written down. Could it be that the mutterings of a senile woman hold the key to the greatest mystery our city has known? The Council had already dismissed it out of hand. Now, in our little Klärenstalt, a siddur matching her very description appears…It is too much.’
‘There is no way to test it here,’ said Glanzberg. ‘And woe to us all if the administration gets hold of it. No, we must get it to the city, to Jakobovits. He must store it with the rest of the artefacts so that it might survive even if we do not. Who knows, when this is all over, perhaps it can be taken to the banks of the river and mixed with the mud so that the creature may rise again and avenge us.’
Otto Muneles pulled a crumpled paper sachet from his pocket and flattened it against the table. Jakub made out the word ‘Sugar’ stamped in faded ink. ‘Put it here,’ said Muneles.
Professor Leopold Glanzberg took the cup from Jakub and tipped the dirt into the bag, clapping his palm against the cup’s base to be sure he’d emptied it all. ‘There are boys,’ said the professor, ‘young men who know their way through the tunnels, who have contacts in the towns outside the fortress gates. I will take it on my daily rounds, see it gets to one I can trust. Dr Jakobovits will have it in days. And Jakub?’ He placed the sachet on the table and took Jakub’s hands between his. ‘Not a word to Georg. In the past I’ve tried, but he does not listen. Now this…I’m afraid he will think—’
Muneles picked up the sachet and rolled the top closed. Holding it in his palms, he tilted back his head and began to chant quietly: ‘A heart with no form, with no chambers, no vessels. A heart that does not beat, that cannot ache, cannot love. A heart that can be scattered to the wind just as easily as moulded with the ground. What good is a heart alone, with no body, no home? It can only stain those around it with blood. AH, H, AH, AV, V, AV.’
Jakub tried to push it from his mind. That night, a heaviness set in his chest, a soft wheeze that whistled when he slept. By morning it had worsened, a burning in his throat. He could not swallow. With the pain came the chance of escape. Jakub put in for a transfer to the hospital barracks, where he was misdiagnosed with the early stages of pneumonia. He coughed and choked his way through four uneasy nights before he was deemed well enough for light work and discharged.
As he made his way back along Neu Gasse towards the Hannover Barracks, Jakub saw Professor Glanzberg scurrying about near the entrance to the girls’ home. Catching sight of him, Glanzberg stood to attention, clicked his heels and ran up the road to greet him. ‘Jakub,’ he said, trying to catch his breath. ‘Have you heard? No? There are rumours. Nothing official yet but…transports. Any day now. And worse. Our boy. The tunnel. He was captured. They’ve taken him to prison in the Small Fortress. And they’re searching the kambals, clearing them out. Here!’ Professor Glanzberg stuffed something into Jakub’s pocket. ‘A sympathetic gendarme from the security detail. Take it. Keep it safe and wait for word from Otto. We will find another way. Now go.’
The Hannover Barracks were deserted. Beds made in haste, rags strewn across the lumpy covers. The distant clamour of a cleaning detail. Jakub opened the battered case at the foot of his bed, fished the paper sachet from his pocket and placed it inside. There were others: salt, flour, lentils. A small reserve of rations, should the need arise. Jakub locked the case and set off to find his mother in the Hamburg Barracks.
7
THERESIENSTADT
Daša Roubíčková twisted her hand from side to side, watching the light dance on the surface of her mother’s ring. She scraped at the veins of starch that lined her palms—the remnants of a day peeling potatoes. She had so little time to ready herself after work, to change from the stinking rags into something more appropriate, something he might like. She had settled on a pale blue dress that would distinguish her from the other girls in their drab greys and browns. In the washroom she patted down her blonde curls and tied them with a piece of twine. She searched for her reflection in the steel trough and tugged at the hem of her dress to stretch out the creases. He would be waiting, she knew. Or maybe he was fussing with his shirt, trying to assume an air of casual indifference to mask his yearning.
She didn’t yet understand the contours of their love, if that’s what it was. And why shouldn’t it be? Love, after all, is the dominion of the nourished. Empty stomachs swallow hearts, devour them without grace. Daša knew how the other girls spoke of him, how they spoke of anyone with privileges. She knew how they skittered through the halls of the Magdeberg Barracks, ready to profess their love for whoever clutched an extra crust. In every sweaty liaison there was an unspoken contract. A lecher’s bed was better than chastity’s eastbound train. But that, Daša thought, was not love. It was not even commerce. It was subsistence. Survival. Too many times she had watched them pull bloody rags from beneath their skirts and hold them tenderly, as if wondering what might have been had they not sought treatment at the hospital, had they not given themselves over to the plague of so-called ‘endometriosis’, the cure for which was guilt and loathing and longing. Not her, though. Since she had watched her mother disappear into the snowy folds of the valley, she had sworn herself to purity. She had chased away the desire that spread through her like butter sauce whenever he brushed up against her. Remember who you are. Remember what you are. Yes, true love was found in resistance, in control. Only when there is nothing to be gained can you ask yourself whether you are in love, whether you can be loved.
Daša dropped her hand to her lap and looked across at the freshly painted pavilion in the town square. Two months it had been standing and there had yet to be a concert. Word around the fortress was that the Ghetto Swingers would be the first to tread its boards. She had seen them only once, a random assortment of players thrown together by circumstance, the very friction of which had electrified their performance. In the barracks at night, starstruck girls whispered their names and hummed tunes, riding the disorderly waves of jazz to temporary freedom. Sometimes Daša joined them, but her heart was not in it. She loved opera, like her mother.
He was late. Two gendarmes ambled towards the square. Without thinking, Daša clasped her hands together, hiding the ring from view. The ring. What had possessed her? She always kept it on her, dangling from a string under her blouse, against her heart. In the washroom, she held it under her tongue and clinked it against the back of her teeth to check she hadn’t swallowed it. But to wear it on her finger? Madness. Could it be that she had grown brazen in this place, her good sense lost to privilege? No, it must be something more: a way to reassure him that she needed nothing, expected nothing. Or maybe it was the whisper of a mother who understood what she tried not to see and was watching from afar.
‘Daša.’ She jumped at the touch of a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re early.’
‘Bohuš.’
Daša skipped through the gate of the Hamburg Barracks. All around, women clamoured in the vast courtyard, heaving their mattresses to the dusty field in the hope of escaping the bedbugs that had invaded again with the early heat. Clouds of Zyklon B had sent the vile creatures into the walls’ deepest crevices, but it was a short-lived reprieve. In darkness, they continued to breed, feeding on the squalor between the cracks. When they dared venture back out, they found only the emaciated bodies of the overworked, their blood a turgid syrup,
difficult to draw from the veins. And so the bugs bit harder and burrowed deeper, leaving angry pustules on papery skin.
‘Watch your step,’ cried one woman, her finger shaking in accusation.
‘Stupid girl,’ spat another.
They were all standing around Gusta’s bunk when Daša burst through the door. For a moment her heart sank. She had seen the bodies laid out each morning, the ones who had not made it through the night. ‘Dear God!’ Daša cried and the others parted to reveal Gusta curled up on her mattress, clutching a card to her cheek. The woman’s lips were twitching, whispered words addressed to the greyed paper on the nearby strut. As Daša knelt close, Gusta jerked forward, pressing the card into her hands. ‘Please,’ Gusta said.
Daša read it aloud, as she did when each new card arrived, translating from the German. She paused at the last line: Papa is waiting. When she read out Shmuel’s name, Gusta gasped and begged her to read it again. Daša read it over, Gusta’s voice echoing hers. Only when the woman could say it by heart did she take back the card. The others had lost interest and were going about their nightly routines, readying themselves for bed. Daša climbed up to her bunk, where Irena was already asleep. Typhus had wracked the child’s body in the winter and recovery was slow. Daša pulled the blanket over them both and turned to look down at Gusta. The woman was still whispering and kissing the card, her head nodding like a woodpecker.
Again she waited on the bench. It was over a month since she’d succumbed to folly and worn her mother’s ring. Every week since that day, when she came and sat down in the square, waiting for him to arrive, she felt it hang from her neck, a millstone for her inattention.
Around the square, members of a cleaning detail scrubbed at the concrete. Swathes of colour radiated from the surface of the pavilion, as if the sun, tired of waiting for the Ghetto Swingers, had set about a performance of its own. In the surrounding plots, newly planted flowers watched on. They were all willing players in this process of beautification: Daša, the cleaners, the sun and the flowers. Behind her, on the main thoroughfare of Neu Gasse, couples strolled wearily towards the barracks, stopping to pick at the leaves of a tree or admire the fresh paint on an empty shopfront marked Pharmacy or Perfumery.
Daša refastened the bow on her collar. The blouse had arrived that morning, in a package from the city. Pink, frivolous. For the new season, her mother had written on the accompanying note. Daša hoped it would be enough to keep his interest. How long would he wait, she thought, when she could not see to his needs? Her body had jerked in fright when he took her hand. She was not ready for his touch, with its suggestion of shame and sacrifice. He had looked at her with kindness, with sadness. With pity. And they had talked, not of what had just happened, but of their memories of Biskupcova Street.
The next week he came but it was not the same. He appeared anxious. He spoke of strange men and tunnels and secrets that, for her own safety, he said, he dared not share. When she returned to the barracks she clung to Irena. The younger girl, exhausted from an evening’s gymnastics, pushed her away. Daša rolled over and waited in the darkness for sleep. She woke with new resolve: she would promise herself to him, to the warmth of their own beds, to the disapproving stares of their mothers. It wouldn’t be long, she knew. On every front the Germans were losing. The news swept through the streets with the gusts of spring. Italy had fallen. The Russians had pushed beyond the Polish border. Yes, their communion would be a celebration of freedom. If only he would wait. She readied herself to tell him. Next week, she said to herself.
Again, a hand on her shoulder, but this time heavy.
‘Roubičkova.’
‘Pan Durák!’
She had not recognised Ludvík’s old employer when he first approached her near the entrance to the Hamburg Barracks. The gendarme’s greatcoat, with its rows of gleaming buttons, added bulk to his frame while the rounded metal helmet hid the warmth in his eyes. His beard was gone. He was, in her mind, a stranger. To hear a gendarme call her name filled her with dread, not so much for herself as for her father. From the moment she had arrived in the fortress town she expected to hear that some calamity had befallen him; it was, after all, his way. He had not changed. Only when the gendarme began to speak of Prague’s Old Town Square, and how the girls had played beneath the café awnings while Ludvík haggled, did it occur to her that she had nothing to fear. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out three cigarettes and an envelope. It was from her mother in Prague.
Since then they had always met behind the kitchen. There he could tell her news from Žižkov, give her the gifts he had stashed in his case—money, cigarettes, coffee and tea—things forbidden in the ghetto mail. Otherwise, she hardly saw him. So why had he come now, while she waited for Bohuš? Daša felt the skin on her arm prickle.
‘Look ahead,’ said Pan Durák. ‘I’m leaving for Prague tonight. No doubt your mother will be glad to hear you are well. Have you enough until I return?’
‘Thank you, Pan Durák. Yes. For now.’
‘And Irena?’
‘The dizziness has gone. Tell mother she is in good health.’
‘Daša…’ His voice was soft, cautious. A snatch of music rang out behind them as the café door swung open to swallow a patron. ‘I…I am here about your friend.’ Daša went rigid against the bench. ‘The boy.’ How long had he known? What crude fantasies had he conjured in the things he saw? Poor mother, Daša thought. To be met in her own home with such tales, such disappointment.
She made to turn around but Pan Durák gripped her shoulders and held her fast. ‘Straight ahead.’ Daša felt the pressure ease. ‘There has been an incident of sorts. Smuggling. Much of it is condoned, controlled even by the SS and gendarmes for profit, but this…this was different. Your friend was found under the fortress, in the tunnels that lead to a nearby village. There was a small group of them, I’m told, all arrested. They have been taken to the Small Fortress for questioning. It is not good, Daša.’
‘Is he…?’
‘I have not heard. Which means he is alive. He will likely be sent to the mines. When his body gives way he will be deported. That is, of course, if—’ Daša stared towards the pavilion. The colour was gone. The flowers had drooped. ‘There is another thing,’ Pan Durák said. ‘A car came today. With Eichmann.’ He paused. ‘Stay safe, Dašinku. I will report everything to your mother, have her keep making enquiries about your welfare with the Gestapo. It is your greatest privilege: to be loved, to be known, to be asked after. I return in a fortnight. God willing, I shall see you then.’
That night she did not sleep. She did not want to close her eyes, to abandon him to the damnation of her dreams. And so she listened to the sounds of the barracks, its creaks and hisses, moans and hacking coughs, until orange light leaked through the clouded glass. Daša climbed from her bed and crept into the corridor, towards the warm-up kitchen. On the wall, a fresh bulletin had been posted by the night sentries. She read only one word before spinning around and running back to her room:
Transport.
The word rang out like a morning bell. In the barracks, in the kitchens, in the streets, in the park, it was all they spoke about. The Kommandant had directed the Jewish Council to draw up a list of two and a half thousand people to be deported to Birkenau in three days’ time. Another work detail.
The women reassured each other that they were safe. Daša sat on her bunk, her knees pulled up to her chest. She could think only of Bohuš, how he was now lost to this uncertain tide. She wanted to ask, to search, to beg, but what did they care? There were rules to be followed. He was not deserving of their pity, even if they had some left to give. Daša watched Irena tear into the loaf of bread that Magda, the block warden, had distributed the previous morning.
‘Don’t eat it all. Make it last.’
Irena stopped for a moment, sniffled, then stuffed another wad into her mouth.
The stillness of waiting.
All day they faced the Magdeberg Barracks
and prayed.
Then: night. From the corridor came the crescendo of approaching footsteps. The solitary bulb sparked to life. The room filled with groans and muttered curses. A few soft mewls. One woman banged a cup against her bunk and began to laugh as if the night itself were a joke. Another sang an old folk song, shrill, out of tune. Dazed, Daša watched Magda weave from bunk to bunk, checking numbers, shaking those who had not woken, handing out the strips of paper. It pained Daša to bear witness, she who was still drenched in the lamb’s blood of privilege. When Magda approached, she closed her eyes and waited to be passed over. Gusta R? The voice was firm. CK-571. Gusta R? Daša peeked out to see Magda lean over and shake Gusta’s shoulder. Louder: Gusta R.
Gusta pitched upwards and snatched the paper slip. She held it close to her face and scanned the unfamiliar script, first from right to left and then the other way. What little she knew of the written word came from the pages of holy books. Eshet chayil, a woman of worth, whose value far exceeded rubies. Such a woman needed only learn to read God’s language, and even then no more than was necessary for her to converse with Him at the proper time and in the proper manner. Beyond that, the world of letters was not her business. On the paper, Gusta knew, were the words of another god, a god that was fickle and malevolent, a human god, but a god who had at last listened to her deepest prayer: Gusta R had been summoned for transport to Birkenau.
Daša vaulted from her bunk the moment Magda left the room. She knelt beside Gusta in the dark, protesting, but Gusta shooed her away. ‘Not now,’ she said as she pulled the blanket over her head. ‘Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.’ Gusta was asleep in no time: a deep, dreamless slumber.
