by Bram Presser
She found the girl in the eastern wing, crouched at the top of the stairs to the attic. ‘Irča?’
‘I only did as he asked.’ Irena shifted to the side, her eyes red and swollen.
‘It’s okay. Come.’
Irena paused, shook her head. ‘He’s been called.’
‘For transport? It’s not possible.’
‘When he returned this afternoon. He’s on the list. His friend too. They leave on Thursday.’
‘He told you?’
‘He was scared. I’ve never seen it before. He said it was my fault. That I’d ruined everything. That I shouldn’t have taken the sugar from his case. But Daša…’ Irena straightened herself, suddenly composed in her defiance. ‘It was him. He told me to.’
‘Come. Forget him.’ They walked on along the corridor. From below they could hear the muffled bustle of another transport, shuffling towards the assembly hall. A second train would leave tomorrow, then another on Thursday. He would be gone, with his frustration and rage. Back to his mother’s arms, to Shmuel. How fragile is family, Daša thought. How easily broken and stuck back together, its pieces never quite fitting like before. She had thought of him like that, and he, perhaps, thought something else. Not now. This creature he had become was no brother of hers. But she would remember Gusta, remember her kindness, the way she welcomed the girls into her family. Yes, she would remember Auntie Gusta with fondness. And damn it if he, too, would not creep into her thoughts, the way he cared for his mother when the silt of failure was all he had left to give.
Daša Roubíčková stood at the bunkroom window and looked out. The moon bathed the empty streets in deep purgatorial blue. The transformation was complete: beautification, with its park benches and flowerbeds, bandstand and sporting fields, shopfronts and children’s pavilion. All off limits to the townspeople. The last train had gone, leaving her behind in this unfamiliar place: the Jewish Settlement of Theresienstadt. A model town. The jewel in a crooked crown. Soon the Red Cross would arrive. Rehearsals were already underway. Oh no, Uncle Rahm, the children would chime in unison. Not chocolate again…
8
BIRKENAU BIIb, THE CZECH FAMILY CAMP
Thy magic power re-creates
All that custom has divided
All men become brothers
Under the sway of thy
Gentle wings.
A semitone sharp and several beats too late, the last voice faded out to a wave of childish titters. They all waited for the doctor, their eyes fixed on his pigskin gloves. Jakub stood uneasily to attention. Beside him, Georg fidgeted with a loose button, winding a wayward thread around its sagging base. ‘Bravo, kinder,’ the doctor said in his thin voice and brought his hands together once, twice; the damp slap of leather. They looked at each other—the children, the instructors—and when they were sure, they, too, began to clap. The doctor stepped forward, arms outstretched, to pat heads, caress cheeks. The children were eager to please. Perhaps he would take them from this place, across the dusty Styx to the Hospital Block where, it was said, there was more food, even beds with white sheets and pillows. They could not know for sure. None had returned. But the doctor was not like the others—not like the Camp Elder Arno Böhm, not like Büntrock, not like Tadeusz. The Kapos. The savages.
Jakub rubbed his temple, trying to relieve the pressure. He could not bear the children’s shrill squawking. When he first heard them rehearse in the vast latrine block, their boisterous ‘Ode to Joy’ set to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony bouncing from the concrete walls, Jakub had cursed them to silence and then perched on the concrete slab waiting for the moan of his bowels. The music instructor, Felix Baum, took him aside that afternoon to apologise. It hadn’t been this way when Imré was here. Poor Imré, the optimistic fool. Soon after Fredy Hirsch had talked the Nazis into allocating a barracks to the children, Imré offered his services as choirmaster. ‘In music they will be free,’ he said. Fredy took little convincing. He knew the power of song, not just to liberate but to teach. And so, while the other instructors recited books from memory and played games and pieced together performances to nourish these pitiable souls, Imré built up the greatest choir that Hell had ever seen. So great were they, so accomplished, that it was said they went to the gas singing the ‘Internationale’, the ‘Hatikvah’ and the Czech National Anthem in perfect harmony. Imré was last seen waving his arms with joy outside the large brick house from which he left as smoke.
With a polite bow and a wave, the doctor took his leave. Jakub watched him hurry along the central path to the front gate. His step was nimble, carefree. The children shuffled down from the makeshift stage, away from Snow White and her misshapen dwarf, away from the meadows and flowers, and broke into their groups, eager to resume their rehearsals. Having long ago forfeited their names, the children had once again found something of an identity in Block 31. They were not the numbers crudely carved into their arms. They were Swallows, Bears or Maccabees. And they fought for supremacy any way they could: scrubbing their stalls the hardest, chanting the loudest, picking the most dandelions from the patch by the perimeter fence. They fought with the ferocity only children can rally, the kind that knows no limitations, that is oblivious to danger. They fought as if their very lives depended on it. As if they didn’t know they were already dead.
Jakub was scraping at the scab on his forearm, watching the numbers bleed black and red, when he learned that he, too, would die. ‘My brother,’ he said to Michal, his new bunkmate, on the first night in Birkenau. ‘Shmuel Rand. Please, I need to see him.’ It had been his first thought as he stepped down from the train with Georg. Find Shmuel. Find Gusta. Then find the dirt. His heart sank when he heard the shouts: ‘Leave everything on the train. All luggage is to remain in the carriage.’ Those who did not hear, who would not listen, had the bags snatched from their hands. Michal’s arm snaked from beneath his splayed greatcoat. ‘They’re all there,’ he said, pointing to the ceiling. ‘The chimneys, the fire. The smell. That is him. Next it will be me. Then you. Six months.’
Jakub turned to Georg but his friend was already asleep. On the train he had been quiet, sullen. Leaving his father tormented him. In Theresienstadt their roles had reversed. The ghetto policeman’s uniform could not hide the old man’s creeping confusion. He spoke in ever more peculiar fancies. More than once Georg had been called to the gate of Magdeberg to calm his nerves. There was even talk of sending Professor Glanzberg to the Kavalier madhouse but Georg pleaded with the Council on his behalf, for the sake of his father’s dignity. ‘He is harmless,’ Georg had said. ‘This place has undone him, it’s true, but he carries on with his duties.’ When Georg received his transport slip he pleaded again. ‘You needn’t worry,’ said the clerk. ‘Herr Professor Glanzberg is safe here. Go in peace.’ On the train, Georg cursed himself. ‘I’ve damned us both,’ he cried as it began to heave along the track. Jakub sat beside him on the bench and held his hand. He longed to comfort his friend, to blow away the veils of pity and doubt. But to say something now, to speak of books and myths and secrets, would only confirm what Georg feared most about his father.
Jakub lifted the blanket from his chest and laid it across Georg’s shoulders. Give him this moment of peace. Jakub lay back on their third-storey bunk and stared at the ceiling.
A storm of crashing wood snatched him from what he’d mistaken for a sleepless night. Shouts, like thunder, echoed through the barrack. Georg spun around, grasped at Jakub’s leg. Michal, seemingly unfazed by the uproar, sat up and stretched, his bony arms pushing past his bedfellows’ heads. ‘Welcome to the first day of your death.’
Jakub and Georg climbed down and followed Michal outside to a large area near the gate between two kitchen blocks. Weary hordes streamed into the space. Jakub tried to spot his mother but it was no use; she was small and would be hidden in the crowd. In the distance he thought he caught sight of Shmuel. Then again. And again. All around him were faces that, for a moment, might have been the boy, but were
n’t. Beyond the fence, two towering chimneys loomed above the forest. From their black-tipped stacks, flames licked the grey dawn.
More shouting. Jakub looked back along the unfinished road that cut between the rows of barracks. Old men hobbled towards the assembly ground beneath a hail of blows. Their malevolent shepherds cursed them and laughed as they brought down the wooden cudgels. ‘Green Triangles,’ said Michal. ‘Murderers. Rapists. Here they thrive.’ And then, as if an afterthought: ‘You’ll learn.’ Jakub turned his gaze to the ditch that ran alongside the cobbled path. All around it the ground was parched, but through this channel ran a constant flow of oily, effluent sludge. ‘The big one is Böhm,’ the bunkmate continued. ‘He runs the place. Then there is Büntrock, the imbecile. But it is Tadeusz you should watch. Last month, for Passover, he threw the body of a poor boy who’d died in the night onto the camp flour supply. Cut him, he shouted. Bleed him out. Make your bread. And he waited until one of the bakers stabbed at the boy’s chest. Never mind that blood would not flow. It was entertainment enough.’ Michal spat on the ground and snorted. ‘Do you have a wife? A sister?’ Růženka. Jakub had not thought of her in months. Safe in America, thank God. He could not bear to imagine her in this prison. ‘Here, no,’ he said. Michal ran his fingers across his chin. ‘Good. There is no end to his depravity. Even here, where we are already corpses.’
The muster began with a call for the fallen. Numbers sounded out from around the crowd. Family. Friends. Jakub lost count. After a pause, the roll master readied his list. Then: ‘A-One-Zero-Three-Six.’ Michal leaned over, whispered in his ear: ‘Tadeusz. Bastard.’ The one called Tadeusz was shorter than his comrades. Rags hung from his broad shoulders and over his paunch. Jakub could just make out the faded green triangle on his shirt. Tadeusz repeated the number: ‘A-One-Zero-Three-Six.’ From the crowd, a man’s voice: ‘Nein, nein. Present.’ Michal shook his head. ‘Pervert,’ he spat. ‘Bitte, bitte, nein,’ the man was crying. Then a woman: ‘My God. No. He is here. Can’t you see?’ Tadeusz fell back into line and the roll master called the first number.
The muster dragged on through the morning. The latest transport had filled the camp to overflow. When his own number was called Jakub shouted ‘Jawohl!’ as he had heard those before him do. Then, he waited. The sun beat down, an early summer. At last: Dismissed. Jakub pushed through the bodies, to where he had seen a group of women. He found Gusta near the Registrar’s office. ‘Thank God,’ she said. He held her against his chest. ‘He is gone,’ she said. There was relief in her voice, triumph even. ‘Oh, Mama. He’s—’ She cut him short: ‘In Heydebreck. I know. Don’t listen to what they say. The worst kind of bonkes. A mother knows. A dead son does not send postcards.’ Jakub chose not to argue. ‘Your bag?’ he said. She broke free, swatted the air. ‘They wanted to take it but I thought Shmuel might…They took it from me, emptied it on the ground. I went to pick it up but I was pushed along—’ She stopped, tilted her head. ‘And Daša and Irena?’ ‘They send their love. When this is over we’ll meet up in Prague.’ He looked away. Then: ‘I’d better go. They’ve assigned me to the Children’s Block.’ A quick kiss on her forehead and Jakub joined the procession back along the camp road.
Loss, he thought. That, too, is a holy incantation. To make something tangible out of loss is the soul of creation, of faith. And so Gusta had done what Muneles and Leopold Glanzberg could not: she had made real the man of clay in Jakub’s heart. The dirt was mere fantasy until it was gone. Now Jakub crushed it underfoot, or breathed it in, or watched it swirl in the distance. Yes, the golem was here, in this place where stories ended. It was here and then it was not. Like Daša. Like Shmuel. Like all of them in time.
‘Jakub!’ A cluster of inmates huddled near the doorway between two barracks. Again: ‘Jakub! Here!’ It was Michal. Jakub veered from the path to where the men were gathered. They were peering down the shaded corridor that ran between the buildings. Michal stepped aside and pushed him into the group. ‘Shhhh.’ He held his finger to his lips. At the far end Jakub could make out three heavy-set, bald figures standing over another, smaller man. The latter was lying on the ground, trying to shield his head. Even from a distance, Jakub could hear the thuds and cracks of wood and bone. ‘There you go,’ said Michal. ‘A-One-Zero-Three-Six. Tadeusz is correcting the mistake in his reporting. Tomorrow this poor fellow’s wife will be in the comfort block.’ Jakub stumbled away, up the camp road as fast as he could go, swallowing frantically to keep down the bile. The paving ended halfway along the road and he tripped over the broken ground. From the barracks up ahead, a familiar song— ‘Ode to Joy’—in pinched, uneven tones:
Joy, bright spark of Divinity
Daughter of Elysium
Fire-inspired we tread…
Again, a blur. The blinding fog of hunger. It was happening often since the rations had been cut back. Jakub steadied himself against a shelf. The children seemed distant, in another place. The haze gave way to a hundred tiny eyes, staring at him. Not children, puppets, seated in lines across the shelves, their feet dangling from the edge. Jakub reached out, picked one from the middle row. It was misshapen, ugly, like most things here. Still, he admired the crafting of its face, the droopy eyes, the smeared red on its cheeks. There was no mistaking the man after whom it was modelled: Tadeusz.
The performance had been planned for their final night. The night before they were scheduled to die. The doctor would be there. And the Green Triangles. Probably a guard or two. Most had seen the play before, when it was acted out by children, not puppets. Heavenly Auschwitz, Earthly Auschwitz. A comedy, really, written soon after the liquidation of the September transport. In it the children died and went to heaven, only to find that it was no different from what they had on earth. They were immortal, as souls are supposed to be, but stricken with lice and typhus and dysentery. They were beaten by guards and made to dig holes and fill them, senseless, purposeless labour, for all eternity. They begged for the release of death. God was confused. Had He not granted their wish once already? It was not possible to die again. And so the play ended with Him turning His back on the ungrateful brats like they thought He had done before to them.
The children, of course, were not fooled. If the message was supposed to appease, to make them thankful for what little they had here, it achieved quite the opposite. They knew of their classmates’ fate. They heard the rumours. They knew of Fredy Hirsch, their fallen hero, who did not resist as they dreamed he would, but who took pills to avoid what was to come. No, they were not fooled at all. Still, any chance to mock their captors was seized upon with glee. They fought for the roles of the overseers and played them with spiteful exuberance. The instructors tried to temper the offence. They pulled green triangles from coats, mussed up slicked-back hair. Soon after the May transports, they announced that the play would no longer be performed. They would just sing. Or act out traditional Czech stories. Fairytales. They even danced for Snow White, who looked down on them from the back wall, while the choir sang: ‘Hi ho. Hi ho. It’s off to work we go.’ Another comedy for the Family Camp.
In early June, the children grew restless. They counted their time in days. Oskar Fischel, captain of the Swallows, proposed one last reprise of the play. ‘This time,’ he said, ‘with puppets.’ The instructors liked the idea. The children had stopped listening to their lessons. They had begun to bicker. A new production of Heavenly Auschwitz would keep them busy. Ten days to build a cast from whatever scraps they could gather. The children argued among themselves over who would craft which character and then retreated to their corners: it would be a competition between the three teams. Jakub recognised figures in the camp—Dr Mengele, the Green Triangles, but also the children’s parents and friends and, of course, some of the children themselves. When the day was over, the instructors sat and ate their rations: soup and bread cooked in the nearby Gypsy Camp. ‘Dredge for teeth,’ Jakub had said to Georg the first time.
‘To think this is what they leave behi
nd,’ said Erwin Glaser, the man who had taken Fredy’s place after the March liquidation. ‘They fashion their own faces, dust them with chalk to cover the dirt. Here, this puppet; once there was a boy just like him.’
Georg shifted to dangle his legs down the brick. ‘And the villains,’ he said. ‘Have you noticed? Crafted with the greatest of care, as if to remember them is the most important thing. Each brushstroke is the finger of accusation.’
‘Let them hang,’ said Glaser.
‘But it’s a mistake,’ said Georg, ‘to put faith in creations. We cannot know God so we hope to stand in His place. We deign to know what will be. We’re playing at idols. Nothing more.’
‘Idols build strength too,’ said Glaser. ‘There is talk again of uprising. The locksmiths have come to deliver messages. The Sonderkommando are ready. They have been stockpiling weapons for months, hiding them among the cases in Kanada. Now they wait for our signal.’
‘As they did in March,’ said Felix Baum. ‘Why trust us now?’
‘We are under no illusion,’ said Glaser. ‘If we do not fight back we will die. And Georg and Jakub here will watch us spill from the chimney stacks.’
‘And the puppets?’ said Georg.
‘These,’ said Glaser, his hand sweeping over the benches strewn with half-finished figurines. ‘These are their weapons. The children must fight too. To what end? It hardly matters.’
Jakub cradled the puppet of Tadeusz in his hands. Across the room, the children were still in their groups, talking excitedly among themselves. The doctor’s visit was already a memory for them; they still clung to the hope of a performance and were practising their lines.
Jakub felt a tug at his sleeve. ‘Sir?’
He looked up to see the familiar face of Arnošt Flusser. It had been two years since the boy first sat in his class in the Jewish school at 3 Jáchymova Street and, save for some facial stubble and a few inches of height, very little had changed about him. His eyes were filled with the same wonder and he often broke from his fellow Bears to float about on a mission none of the instructors could understand. When his father died, Flusser sat himself in the far corner of the Children’s Block facing the wall for three days. The other children knew to leave him be. On the fourth day he did not come to classes.
