The Earth Is Singing

by Vanessa Curtis

  “I have friends in high places,” is all she’ll say when we quiz her about where the biscuits have come from.

  We laugh. Omama is full of surprises.

  But that night I worry about the empty cupboards.

  Then I replay Velna’s expression for the hundredth time.

  It’s like everything is pushing me in a direction I really don’t want to go.

  When I go to bed I try to find a comfortable position but I can’t.

  I feel as if I am still wearing the Jewish star.

  Chapter Seven

  There are new officials on the street.

  They wear white armbands with a blue Star of David on them. Some of them have long beards and skullcaps on.

  Mama says that they are a special Jewish council set up to help the Nazis keep control over the rest of us. She says that they are on our side and that if we have any problems or questions our council members will be able to help us.

  Omama snorts when Mama says this.

  “I have been around too long,” is all that she will say.

  By August there is a new list of regulations pinned up in the street and emblazoned in big black letters all over the front page of Tēvija.

  Regulations for Jews

  All Jews must wear a second yellow star in the middle of their backs.

  No Jew is permitted to walk on the sidewalks.

  I look outside. I don’t have to wait long. A steady stream of Jews is picking its way through the gutters outside. Horses and army vehicles roar past them, splattering them with the rain, ash and mud which now lie heavy over our streets.

  Some of the Jews look dejected. Others have their heads held high. I can see that they are defiant and that they are trying to wear the star with what is left of their pride. Then I see them being whipped by Nazi soldiers for impertinence. I let out a cry and put my hands over my mouth. The Jews stumble to the ground and fall to their knees in the mud and rain. Some of them are whipped again and again and then kicked. They lie motionless in the gutter. The SS utter their loud barking laughs and move on. The lucky ones get up again and continue to walk.

  Now their heads are bent low and they are limping.

  Tears of anger rise up in my eyes. I notice that the new members of the Jewish Council are still allowed to walk on the pavements and use the buses and cabs.

  “That’s not fair,” I say, out loud.

  “Come away,” says Mama, shooing me back into the room and pulling the curtains tight so that there is no gap. “Help me with the sewing, please.”

  She has the roll of yellow fabric out again. In silence I help her cut thread and measure the width of the stars to a perfect ten centimetres. Then she sews the three new stars onto the backs of our jackets.

  “Well,” says Omama, holding her coat up to admire Mama’s handiwork. “Whatever next? They will have us dressing in giant star costumes soon.”

  We giggle, despite the solemnity of the moment.

  Omama has a way with words.

  Uldis comes to visit me.

  Because of the way that the Nazis are beating and whipping us Jews on the streets I am imprisoned inside the apartment again at the moment. Uldis has been busy with his police work but he comes by on the way home sometimes and Mama begrudgingly cuts him the smallest piece of bread or sponge cake if she has managed to somehow make one out of almost no ingredients.

  “Could you bring us food?” I ask him. It’s all I can think about at the moment. “You must still be able to buy normal provisions.”

  Uldis sighs.

  “Even for non-Jews there is not so much food about,” he says. “The war is having an effect everywhere. But I will see if we have anything that we can spare.”

  “Oh,” I say, disappointed. Sure, it’s good to see him looking so well and handsome but I was hoping he might at least have brought us a cake. Mama’s neck is getting scrawnier by the day and Omama spends more time sitting in a chair than she used to.

  “It’s all right,” says Mama in a low voice. “We don’t need your charity, Uldis. Hanna enjoys your visits so that will have to do for now.”

  Her face doesn’t invite argument, so I pass Uldis a scrap of black bread and press my shoulder up against his.

  A notice comes through our door.

  It proclaims that all Jews must register with their local police stations.

  “For what?” I say.

  Mama passes me the piece of paper. Her hand has developed a tremor over the last week and I notice that she can never sit still for more than a minute at a time.

  The paper says that all able-bodied Jews between fourteen and sixty-five must go out to work and will be assigned to jobs which they are not allowed to turn down.

  “That is me, then,” I say. “What will I do? All I can do is dance.”

  I have been trying to do my ballet exercises late at night when nobody is watching. I force my legs to go into first position and then work my way through to fifth before running through a series of arm exercises. There is precious little room for pirouetting in my tiny bedroom but I risk it anyway.

  Mama sits down and puts her head in her hands for a moment.

  “I don’t know, Hanna,” she says. “There will not be much choice in the matter.”

  “Who will look after Omama?” I say.

  “Omama will,” says Omama. “I am quite capable of amusing myself until your return. I can catch up with my ancient friends in this very building. I have my papers and radio and enough biscuits to see me by until these Nazi bastards have gone.”

  Mama rolls her eyes.

  “Language, please,” she says. “And that radio is supposed to be confiscated,” she says. “Mama, you are awful.”

  But she is smiling.

  We have to go to our local police station to register for work.

  For the first time we are out on the streets with many of our Jewish neighbours. We haven’t seen most of them for months. Mama uses the opportunity to speak to as many of her old friends as possible. I cling onto Omama’s arm in the long queue outside the police station. She is too old to register for work and only came with us out of sheer nosiness. I’m clinging for safety but I’m also trying to hold her up without letting her know that this is what I’m doing.

  Omama’s legs are as thin as my arms now. We haven’t had a lot of food over the last few weeks so now they look even more brittle, like small shiny brown twigs. Like the other Jewish women out here on the streets she is huddled inside a black headscarf as hats are no longer allowed and she is wearing her jacket with the two stars, just like everybody else. The queue outside the police station weaves its way like a dark wriggling snake covered in yellow splodges. The rain falls onto us and steam rises from the gutter. I have no hat or umbrella so my fair plait is becoming dark from the rain and my face shines with rainwater.

  Mama is deep in conversation with an old friend, Mrs Brauner. From the way they are gesticulating and huddling together I can tell that the information Mama is receiving is causing her some distress.

  Before I have a chance to creep nearer and eavesdrop the queue jolts forward and we find ourselves propelled through the door by the crowd. Omama pushes her way back outside.

  Inside a small room there are men with white and blue armbands sitting behind a desk. I recognize some of them from our Jewish community.

  We take our turn at the desk.

  A man shoves two blue cards at us and gives us a pencil.

  We have to fill in our place of residence and which apartment we live in. Then we have to put down our “present employment”. I glance up at Mama in panic.

  “Put down that you are a seamstress,’’ she hisses. “I will teach you. Write it down. Quick.”

  I pencil the words with a trembling hand.

  We are told that soon we will be placed in employment and that there is no choice in the matter. Then we are gestured to leave the room.

  It isn’t until we are outside rushing through the rain that someth
ing strikes me.

  “Mama,” I say, “why did we answer all the questions in pencil? Why not pen?”

  We are approaching our apartment on Skārņu iela. I am holding onto Omama’s arm to stop her stumbling.

  “I don’t know, Hanna,” says Mama. “Maybe they do not want to keep a permanent record.”

  We both fall silent, considering what her words could imply.

  She stops in the gutter to stare up at the window where we have spent so much time watching the destruction of our beautiful city. I see the rain pour down her cheeks and from the flushed colour of her skin and redness around her eyes I realize that the rainwater is mixing with tears.

  Papa’s face floats between us for a moment, as it often does. The three of us are sitting around the table in our elegant villa. The double doors are thrown open and the garden is full of birdsong and the smell of cherry blossom.

  I reach for Mama’s hand. I remember the promise I made to Papa.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “We will stick together. So we will be all right. And Papa will come home again when the war is over.”

  Mama cannot speak, but she grips my hand tighter.

  “So much change ahead,” is all she says, but it’s enough to make the air take on a colder feel around our heads.

  We duck inside our apartment block to get away from the rain.

  Mama spends the next two weeks trying to teach me to sew.

  I’ve already watched her for years as she makes and alters dresses, trousers and skirts, but watching it and doing it are two very different things. Although I’ve helped cut out patterns and sort fabrics, I realize that doing the sewing requires good co-ordination between my arms and my feet on the pedal.

  “It’s not fair,” I say, as Mama tells me off for the hundredth time for messing up my stitches. Thread is flying all over the place and I’ve nearly stitched through my hand by putting it too close to the needle. “Why can I get my arms and legs to match in ballet but not here?”

  Omama is trying to stifle a laugh.

  “You are the worst seamstress I have ever seen,” she crows. “It is a good job you are going to become a ballerina.”

  “Here,” says Mama in a voice which she is trying very hard to keep patient. “Put it here. Like this. See? Then move it like this…” and she glides the fabric smoothly under the dipping needle. Her move is precise and confident. When I do it, the fabric catches and jerks and snarls up into lumps.

  “It is like your dancing,” she says. “At first it is difficult. But with practice it becomes easy, no?”

  I shrug. My eyes ache from staring at the tiny stitches and my back hurts from hunching over the sewing table with my foot pumping up and down.

  Deep down I miss dancing so much that I can hardly bear to think about it. My dreams seem to have been suspended somewhere just out of my reach and I can’t touch them any longer. Sometimes at night I risk doing a few gentle jetés on the carpeted floor of my bedroom but my legs are losing muscle tone and I’m worried I will never be able to catch up again.

  “Must I carry on learning this sewing?” I say. “Can’t I get some other job?”

  Omama’s smile fades. She gets up and draws the curtains.

  “You want to clean toilets for some Nazi soldier?” she says. “Because there will be plenty of those jobs for pretty young girls like you.”

  I shudder.

  Then I bend over the fabric with an exaggerated sigh.

  “Right,” I say. “Let’s start again.”

  August comes and with it the first truly hot days of summer.

  We have still not been called to begin work. So we are sweltering up in the apartment and living on bread and cheese and black coffee or anything that Mama can get during her weekly trawl around the shops. Most of the shops have signs in the window proclaiming that no Jews are allowed to shop in there. There is very little food in the few shops allocated for us and what is there is often covered in a light dusting of green and yellow mould.

  Uldis drops in when he can but he is busy. He tells me that the police have increased his hours of work. The streets are so dangerous that I can no longer choose to go and find him and must rely upon his visits. I am worried that because of this, we will grow apart. When he does visit he is as kind and polite as ever but the feeling in the air between us has changed. I’m guessing that it’s partly because having a girlfriend who can’t leave her apartment is restrictive for him, but there’s something else. It makes me feel uncomfortable and when he leaves, I am both sorry and relieved in equal measures.

  The relieved bit makes me feel sad.

  I lie in bed and pray to God that we can carry on our romance as before.

  Another thing is worrying me. A change has come over my mother and grandmother.

  They will not let me near Tēvija any longer. Omama takes it off into her bedroom to read. After reading the 23rd August edition she came out looking pale and frightened. She and Mama have taken to muttering in the corner of the lounge after I go to bed, only they often forget to shut the door so I can hear them if I strain my ears.

  I am not stupid. I watch from our window as the lines of Jewish people pull carts and wheelbarrows along in the gutter and I can see that they have mattresses and suitcases crammed into these barrows. Where they are going, I do not know.

  Mama knows, I think.

  I ask her if we will soon have to put all our possessions in a cart and leave our home.

  But she will not answer my questions. She paces up and down the apartment, glancing outside every now and then and grabbing onto her own elbows and scowling. It is like she is having an inner argument with herself. I wish I knew what she was thinking.

  Sometimes I hate being treated like a child.

  At the beginning of September I go on one of my rare walks outside. We have a curfew now which means we cannot be outside past six o’clock in the evening, but it is only four and it is a beautiful day and I have been allowed to go out so long as I wear my jacket.

  I end up near the Opera in the beautiful park. Jews are not supposed to go into parks any longer but it draws me like a magnet. There are no soldiers around so I creep in and sit on a bench for half an hour and try to ignore the sounds of army vehicles rumbling down the Brīvības bulvāris.

  I am sweating in my black jacket. It is boiling hot. I glance left and right and then with pleasure at the gleaming white building of the Opera where one day I will dance onstage and bow down for all the applause.

  Or at least, I used to hope that I would. Now it feels less certain. Jews are not allowed to do anything which they once used to enjoy.

  I can’t bear the thought of not dancing. I don’t really know what else to do with my life. It is what I am good at and what I love to do.

  I take off my jacket with the yellow stars and lay it on the bench next to me. As soon as I slip it off I feel better. I am not Hanna the Jew with the yellow stars, I am just Hanna. I sit in my summer dress with the pink and white checked pattern and I hold my face up to the sun and drift off somewhere far away from my troubled city.

  It is so hot that I go to sleep for a moment or two.

  Then a sharp click makes me jolt back to the present.

  The sun is blocked out. For a moment my dazed eyes can’t work out what has happened. Then I see a uniform in front of me. My eyes adjust. I raise them up and see a cap with a pair of eagle’s wings in gold. Then I frown. Under the eagle’s wings is what looks like a badge in the shape of a skull.

  It is a member of the SS.

  I struggle into an upright position.

  The soldier has a lazy grin on his face.

  “Good afternoon,” he says in a polite voice that reminds me a little of Uldis. “What a beautiful day to be sitting in the park.”

  I nod. Then I see another group of soldiers standing behind him. They are all grinning with that same, lazy interest.

  I figure that if they’re smiling, they can’t be out to cause any trouble.
r />   “I am a dance student,” I say. “I am going to dance there one day.”

  I point at the Opera behind him.

  The soldier doesn’t even follow my finger. He is still leering at my face.

  “You speak very good German, Fräulein,” he says. “And yet I see your coat has the yellow stars.”

  I flush and glance down at my jacket next to me.

  “I was too hot,” I say. “I have been wearing it all day. I am going to put it on again in a moment. I just wanted to feel the sun on my arms.”

  The soldier pulls out the long brown gun from his holster with a swift movement. For one crazy moment I think: This is it. He is going to shoot me.

  He uses the muzzle of his gun to hook up my jacket. It hangs shapeless and black. He dangles it in front of my nose and gestures at me to take it.

  “You do not make the rules, Jew,” he says. The polite smile has never left his face. “Soon you will realize that.”

  My hands have started to tremble but I slide my arms into the jacket and pull it close about me. The cloth is cold and heavy on my sweating arms.

  “Good afternoon,” says the soldier with a sharp little bow. Then he joins the others and they walk off. The sound of their harsh laughter floats back to me on the summer breeze.

  I cannot move.

  I stay on the bench in my hot coat. I can feel the stars glowing yellow. They seem to pulsate in time to the beating of my heart.

  After what seems an eternity, I leave the park and run home along the gutters.

  Mama will be worried. I have been out far too long.

  Chapter Eight

  When I get home I lie on the bed and give way to my tears.

  Mama sits next to me like she did when I was little. She is hunched over and fiddling with her wedding ring again.

  “You were out so long,” she says. “I was worried. Even Omama was worried. You must not stay out so long now. Things are not safe.”

  I pass my hand over my hot face to mop up the tears. I want to tell Mama about what just happened but something tells me that this will only make her more afraid.

  “Mama,” I say, “I don’t want Jewish blood in me any longer. I want to take it out of my veins! I only want Papa’s blood in me! How do I get the Jewish blood out?”