Somewhere There Is Still a Sun

by Michael Gruenbaum

  “Good, good,” Mr. Freudenfeld says, and looks at his watch. “Doors open in two minutes, and the show will start in ten.” He turns and starts walking toward the musicians, but then stops and raises a finger in the air. “Oh, and one last thing. Pinta, Greta, Zdenek, Ela, Rafael, and Honza”—he smiles—“you may remove your stars for the performance.”

  “What?” about half the kids say. The rest, including me, are too stunned to say anything.

  “We received permission”—he nods his head a bit—“for the main characters. So you may remove them.”

  The six of them start pulling at their stars, but only Greta gets hers off quickly. Zdenek tells Sasha to help him, and soon just about everyone has a hand on one of the five stars. Before long all of us are screaming and tearing at the horrible yellow things like they’re sticky, disgusting bugs that have been crawling up and down our bodies for years.

  Thirty seconds later we’re all giggling fiercely, the stars on the floor, in our hands, in pieces at our feet. Their six chests look like regular chests. Like the way they must have looked before all this started four years ago, before we wound up in this horrible, ridiculous prison where they let us put on plays one day and stick us on trains to who knows where the next.

  Suddenly we hear some clapping. Some of the musicians have tucked their instruments—a flute, a clarinet, and a few violins—under their arms and are giving us a standing ovation.

  * * *

  The room seemed impossibly big before, but now it’s packed. People of every age. Kids, parents, old people—you name it. Every single chair has someone in it. We even saw a little fight, or at least a big argument, between two people over some seats by the aisle. Of course we saw it, because we’re all just sitting here at the front of the room, by the side of the stage. It’s not like this is a real theater or anything. There’s no backstage.

  Honza looks like he’s going to be sick, which makes me feel like I’m going to be sick. Because Honza had the guts to play Brundibar himself, which means singing solos and being mean, all at the same time. Plus he’s an orphan, in real life, and pretty tall and strong, and so this is the first time I’ve ever seen him look even a teeny bit worried. So it’s making me very worried. And it’s not just me. All the other faces—Ela, Zdenek, Greta, Pinta—they all look the same.

  Mr. Freudenfeld taps a few kids on their heads. “Thirty seconds,” he says.

  Stupidly, I look back over at the audience, which includes Hans Krasa himself, the composer who wrote all the music. He came to most of our rehearsals and seemed pretty nice, but now his long face looks way too serious, like he’s actually expecting this to be good. I think I even see Edelstein, the guy in charge of Terezin, at the far end of the second row.

  Why didn’t I listen to Jiri and go play Chinese checkers that one day?

  * * *

  But then something happens. We’re good. We’re actually good. Not great, but definitely good. Pinta and Greta really seem like brother and sister. And Ela moves like a cat. And Rafael has an amazing voice. And Honza is really, really, really mean. So it doesn’t matter that Zdenek forgets a line or that Zvi’s voice cracks.

  When it’s finally my turn to go up on stage with the rest of the chorus, I can’t wait. All of us sing:

  Let’s extend our helping hand. . . .

  Add your talent to our efforts,

  Voice to voice, and we’ll be strong. . . .

  United we’ll win our stand.

  Singing with everyone feels a little like playing on the Nesharim team. But it’s different, too. Because there’s something about the story and how mean Brundibar is. We’re not competing against other boys stuck here like us. We’re all together fighting a really rotten person. Which is maybe why when we sing the words, we sing them like we mean it. Not to mention, when we finish the first big number, I can see it on the faces of the audience. They’re happy.

  * * *

  We rehearsed it a bunch of times, but when we finally defeat Brundibar, when all the animals chase him off the stage, I can barely breathe I’m so excited. So excited and so happy. And something tells me I’m not the only one, because we’re still in the middle of the scene, but the crowd is already clapping. So we sing over the applause:

  We’ve won a victory,

  Battle won

  War is done

  Since we were not fearful,

  Since we were not tearful,

  Because we marched along

  Singing our happy song,

  Bright, joyful, and cheerful.

  In the middle of all this, I realize part of me is actually a little sad, because I keep remembering all those cast members who disappeared. Eva and Havel and Jan and Lev and Alena and a few whose names I never bothered to learn. They came to a rehearsal like the rest of us, not knowing it was going to be their last. Plus I still don’t understand why the Nazis even let us put on this opera in the first place, an opera about fighting against an evil man with a mustache.

  But that’s only part of me. The rest can’t stop smiling, and not just because it was fun to beat Brundibar. The truth is, it’s pretty hard to be sad when the audience won’t stop applauding and you have to bow for so long you’re almost sick of it by the end.

  November 10, 1943

  “WHY DO WE HAVE TO go to sleep so early?” Leo asks after Franta tells us to wash up. “It’s barely even eight o’clock.” A bunch of the other kids join in to complain, including me.

  “Quiet, everyone, quiet,” Franta says. After we all finally shut up, he sighs. “Listen. Tomorrow may be a very difficult day. I want everyone to be well rested.”

  “Difficult?” Pavel says, laughing. “What day here isn’t difficult?”

  “Yeah,” Koko says.

  “This is serious,” Franta says. “There is a rumor that someone, perhaps more than one person, has escaped, and—”

  “Good for them,” Pavel says.

  “Pavel, please,” Franta says. “Enough.” Franta crosses his arms over his chest but doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “They want a full count.”

  “A full count of what?” I ask.

  “Of everyone.”

  “Everyone?” Pavel asks, no longer trying to be funny.

  “Yes, everyone in Terezin,” Franta says.

  We all burst out with a ton of questions. Everyone, as in everyone? Where is this going to happen, because how could they possibly find a place big enough for all of us, because we barely even fit in Terezin to begin with? When is it going to start? How long will it take? And why isn’t a regular count—when they gather the count from each room in each barracks—why isn’t that enough?

  Franta doesn’t have too many answers. In fact, he doesn’t have any. So we get into bed and try to be satisfied with his promise to read to us until everyone is asleep.

  * * *

  I think I might already be asleep when something startles me. I look toward the door, which is open a crack, letting a sliver of light pour in. Franta stops reading. Then some loud whispering and steps coming straight at me. A few moments later Mother’s standing over my bed.

  “Mother? What are—”

  “Take this with you tomorrow,” she says, spreading the blanket, the one she’s already tried to give me a couple of times, over me and Jiri.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper, now definitely awake. “It’s way past curfew! They’ll put you in the Small Fortress, or maybe even shoot you, if you get caught. Are you crazy?!”

  “Mrs. Gruenbaum,” Franta says, standing next to her. “I can’t allow this.”

  She ignores both of us. “Take it with you. It’s supposed to be cold and rainy tomorrow. Don’t forget it. And dress in layers, as many as you can manage.”

  “Mrs. Gruenbaum,” Franta says again.

  Mother doesn’t say anything for a few moments, just straightens out the hair near my forehead. “Franta,” she finally says, very quietly. “If I see Misha out there—”

  “Out where?”
I ask.

  “—tomorrow without this blanket, so help me God, Franta, I will . . .”

  No one says anything for what seems like a long time. Not me, not Mother, not even Franta. Then she leans over, kisses the top of my head, and disappears. I look at Franta, who’s rubbing his face and mumbling something I can’t make out.

  As soon as Mother leaves the room, I hop out of bed and run to the window. I sort of expect Franta to order me back to bed, but somehow I’m not that surprised when he appears next to me instead.

  About ten seconds later, I spot Mother below, out in front of our building. Stay away from the lights, I tell her in my head, and just like that she steps off the street and disappears into the darkness. She doesn’t reappear, but I stay at the window anyway, following an imaginary path toward her barracks with my eyes, holding my breath, and hoping not to see any guards walking nearby.

  “Okay,” Franta says softly a couple of minutes later, “into bed.”

  But I don’t move, just look up at him. He has a strange expression on his face, like he’s somewhere else entirely. “Do you think . . . do you think she’s okay?”

  He doesn’t answer for a bit. The look in his eyes only gets stranger, until he barely looks like himself at all. “Yes,” he says, his voice quite dry, “yes.”

  November 11, 1943

  IT’S DARK WHEN FRANTA WAKES us up. I’m awake for a few seconds before I remember the thing with Mother. I assume it’s just a dream until my fingers feel something weird and bring the blanket up to my eyes. I pull it over my head and try for a moment to pretend I’m back in Holesovice, in my parents’ bed. But I can’t pretend, even with the help of that warm, wonderful smell.

  “Get up, get up,” Franta says. “Your heaviest clothes, put them on. A hat, if you have one. Boots, if you have them. Hurry. We must report to the South Gate by seven a.m.”

  I put on three pairs of pants, four shirts, two pairs of socks, and my boots, even though one has a hole in the bottom. Then I grab my jacket and the blanket and stand by the door, waiting for everyone else.

  * * *

  We wait at the gate for a while, more and more people coming all the time, the sky slowly growing lighter. It starts drizzling, so a few of us try standing under a tree. But since almost all of its leaves have fallen, there’s not much of a point. Then I get an idea.

  “Jiri,” I say, “help me up.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it,” I say, placing the blanket on his shoulder, grabbing the trunk, and reaching toward the first big branch. Soon I’m sitting in a wide V, up above the crowd, which is still growing. I look all around, but can’t find Mother or Marietta.

  “Misha!” Someone’s tugging at my foot. Franta. “Are you insane?! Get down from there immediately!” He helps me off, squeezing my arm so tightly it hurts. “This is not a day to stick out,” he says. “Do you understand?”

  “Sorry,” I say, which doesn’t seem to mean much to Franta right now. “I was trying to find my mother. Have you seen her?”

  “What?” He raises his head a bit, and, I think, curses to himself. “No. I’ll ask around.” And then he definitely curses. “But it may take a while.”

  “How long?” I ask. But he doesn’t answer.

  * * *

  Eventually, the gate opens and people begin streaming out through it. Still, it takes at least fifteen minutes before our part of the crowd starts moving.

  I haven’t seen this many SS the whole time we’ve been here. There must be dozens of them, each one holding a machine gun. Most every day since I’ve been here I’ve wanted to walk through these gates. But with the SS everywhere, with no one telling us where we’re going or why, I’d much rather stay in bed. I’d stay there all day if I could.

  But instead we march along the path we took into Terezin back when we first got here. Almost a year ago.

  * * *

  Maybe a half hour later, after my feet are definitely hurting and my stomach is definitely asking what happened to breakfast, the line up ahead turns off the road and into an enormous meadow.

  SS officers are screaming loudly. The same thing over and over, but it takes a few minutes before our part of the line gets close enough to hear.

  “Lines of one hundred! Arrange yourselves in lines of one hundred! One hundred! Exactly one hundred!”

  After we get in our line, Kikina, Jiri, Leo, and I argue if the exact number means it’s more or less likely that they had us come out here so they can shoot everyone. Kikina wants to ask Franta, but he’s at least thirty people from us. In the end we can’t decide, but we all agree that if we hear gunshots, we’ll run away from the direction we came in, toward a grove of trees maybe a quarter mile from here.

  * * *

  And then we just stand there. For an hour, for two hours, for a bunch of hours. It drizzles on and off. Hour after hour.

  * * *

  One hundred and ninety-seven, one hundred and ninety-eight, one hundred and ninety-nine, two hundred. “Sorry, Gorila, time’s up,” I say. “Jiri, your turn.”

  “It’s okay,” Gorila says to me, stepping out of the blanket we were wrapped up in together. “Thanks, Misha.” For a few seconds, before Jiri hurries inside, the cold, wet wind attacks me. Thank God for this blanket.

  Jiri is shivering so much he can barely hold his end of it. “How long,” he says, his teeth clicking against each other, “do you think we’ve been out here?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I bet Franta does.” I look down our line, one hundred people long, but don’t see Franta. Which doesn’t mean he’s not here, because it’s really hard to see past the first ten people or so. I should start counting, since Leo’s next, but Jiri deserves a little extra time.

  “And when,” he says while his whole body shivers against mine, “are they ever going to let us go back inside?”

  * * *

  Kikina taps my shoulder.

  “Huh?” I ask.

  “Franta wants you,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, “just go.”

  So I leave Jiri and Leo with the blanket and make my way toward Franta. I can’t really step out of line, so I get each kid to change places with me, one at a time. Some people, like Pedro and Pudlina, give me a look like I’m trying to get us all in trouble, but after about five people I don’t care one bit, because I realize there’s only one reason Franta would want to talk to me right now.

  “Yeah?” I say when I finally reach him, barely able to breathe.

  “She’s fine,” he says. “She’s fine.”

  “Really?” I say, suddenly noticing that my hands are shaking uncontrollably. He nods his head. An SS guard walks past us, his machine gun almost hitting Franta on the shoulder. Franta waits a few seconds and then picks me up.

  “Look over there.” He motions with his chin. I look over the lines closest to us, which until then had been blocking my view. All I can see are more lines, reaching so far that after a while they aren’t separate lines at all, just people. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “Over there. Seventeen, or eighteen, lines away.” I try counting, but after the ninth line or so I lose count.

  “How do you know?”

  “I spoke to Otto Klein, and he asked Gonda Redlich to find out.”

  “Gonda?” I ask. “Who’s Gonda?”

  “You know how Otto is my boss?” Franta asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Gonda is Otto’s boss. So he knows what he’s talking about. She’s out there, and so is your sister. Now get down, because you might not be very big, but today at least, you’re much too heavy for me.”

  When I get back to my spot, I wrap myself in the blanket, bend down a bit, and press my face into Jiri’s back.

  “What are you doing?” he asks me.

  I lie and tell him, “My nose is so cold . . . I’m worried it’s going to fall off.” Hopefully he can
’t hear me sniffling.

  * * *

  One hundred and thirty-four, one hundred and thirty-five, one-hundred and—

  “Misha,” Jiri says, or maybe whispers. His voice sounds really weak. “What do you think happens if you eat grass?”

  “What?” I ask, because maybe I didn’t hear him right.

  “If I don’t eat anything soon . . . I don’t know what’s going—”

  But then I really can’t hear him, because suddenly there’s a plane buzzing overhead. And not far overhead, like the planes we sometimes see way up in the sky on clear days. No, this dark gray plane is circling right over us.

  A couple of lines from us, one made up of women, screaming erupts. “No! It’s going to bomb us! No!” The screams grow louder. “It’s going to kill us all!” A young woman with wavy, dark blond hair shrieks and starts running to the far edge of the meadow. An SS officer with a machine gun in his hands runs down the line after her. When he catches up, he pushes her hard to the ground and points his gun at her. Maybe he’s saying something too, but it’s hard to know, because now hundreds and hundreds of people are talking and screaming and crying.

  A few minutes later she’s back in line, being held up by a woman on either side. The plane continues to circle, and now it’s the only sound I can hear.

  “What do you think, Misha?” Jiri says. “Because cows eat grass. So maybe people can too, right?”

  I know I should say something, but instead I wrap my right arm tighter around Jiri. Closing my eyes, I picture the numbers in my head, each one a different bright color: one hundred and thirty-six, one hundred and thirty-seven, one hundred and thirty-eight . . .

  * * *

  “How many lines do you think there are?” I ask Leo, who’s just joined me under the blanket.

  “How should I know?” he says.

  Even with two pairs of socks on, I can feel the water soaking up through the hole in the bottom of my right boot. I try opening my mouth to catch some of the rain, because they still haven’t given us anything to drink all day. Or eat either. Which is crazy, because it’s starting to get pretty dark out. In fact, it sort of looks like what it looked like when we first got out here this morning, whenever that was exactly.