String of Pearls

by Madge Swindells

  ‘I’ll tell Mum.’ She voiced a silly threat.

  ‘Of course you won’t. You never do. This has nothing to do with you . . . it’s something I have to sort out for myself. Truly, Daisy, it’s not your business.’

  Looking deeply offended, Daisy flounced back to the house while Miro set off for school, but his mind kept going over his alternatives. He only had two and both were unendurable. He felt weakened by his guilt. Seeing an open gate, he dismounted and pushed his bike into the field. The hedge was tall and thick. No one would see him here, so he collapsed on to a patch of dried grass. Lying back in the warm sunshine, surrounded by bird song and the dense, vibrant hum of thousands of insects, his life seemed so pleasantly humdrum, but a worm had crawled into his psyche and it was eating him from the inside out, like a maggot in a rotten plum. Why had it happened to him?

  The funny thing was, he had never felt particularly Jewish despite his orthodox upbringing. He’d always preferred to be at his friends’ homes. Their lives were so uncomplicated. None of them bothered much about religion. They didn’t have to practice on the clarinet, or compose a melody each week, or read the right books, or bother with extra-mural studies and he found their free and easy lifestyle to be very relaxing.

  Whilst studying for his Bar Mitzvah he had suddenly been made aware of their differences. He was a Jew and therefore required to learn and obey God’s laws. There were over six hundred of them. He still did not know them all, but he felt sure that there must be a law of loyalty: thou shalt not aid and abet thine enemies, particularly those bent on killing every Jew. Thou shalt protect thine own people and save them from genocide.

  But he wasn’t a Jew, was he? Not after that fateful day in May, 1939, when he had sworn to serve the enemy. He had fallen into a trap and there was no escape. If only Papa had taken the Nazi threat seriously they could have fled Czechoslovakia while it was still possible, but he was an optimist and not the least bit interested in politics, nor business. He was simply a wonderful musician and his life was music. He looked the part, too, with his soft features, large, expressive eyes and his brown hair always tumbling over his forehead. God knows, Mama had nagged enough. Towards the end even Miro had become alarmed.

  They’d lived in Volary, a quaint old town in Sudetenland, eight miles from the German border, but this was not a good place for them after the Germans walked in and took over.

  His father played the violin in the Czech State orchestra and returned home only for weekends, so Mama closed their house and moved them to Papa’s small furnished apartment on the outskirts of Prague, where a synagogue, a Jewish school and a kosher butcher shop lay within walking distance. In the weeks that followed, news from home, conveyed to them by anxious friends and relatives, terrified them: German-speaking Sudetenlanders, anxious to show their solidarity with Germany, were rounding up the Jews.

  Within days, Mama made up her mind that they must leave Czechoslovakia and she set about persuading his father to see reason, but Father was eviscerated by his state of denial.

  ‘I’m not a religious person, Rachel,’ he told Mama. ‘I’m a musician. That’s all I am. Are they going to lock up half of Prague’s orchestra?’ he joked.

  Despite Papa’s reluctance to leave, Miro’s mother spent her days plaguing foreign embassies in Prague for visas. In the evenings she sat, remote and shocked, in her chair by the fire staring into space at nothing in particular. She had always been smart and fashionably dressed, loving to entertain, never happier than when the house was filled with friends, but after the Munich Pact, Mama was too frightened to care about anything, other than finding a country that would take them.

  In March, 1939, the Germans marched into Prague and not a shot was fired. They came in lorries, cars, bicycles and some even on donkey carts. Watching from the window of their sixth floor apartment, Miro witnessed the entire catastrophe. Mama’s search for a haven intensified: to the Jewish Board of Deputies, to the Red Cross headquarters, to embassies of countries she had scarcely heard of. The school holidays came and since Miro was at home, his mother took him with her on her rounds.

  As they hurried along the pavement Miro kept his eyes straight ahead. Like a horse with blinkers on, he never looked to either side. He did not want to see the many signs in offices, restaurants, theatres and even benches in the park and public toilets stating: Jews forbidden. His stomach was knotted with painful lumps, as it always was then, for he lived in a permanent state of terror and tension.

  By a new ruling they had to wear a yellow Star of David on their arms. The penalty for breaking this new law was immediate removal to a concentration camp. His mother could not take this chance, since she could be asked for her papers at any time, but wearing the yellow armband invited every lout to abuse them. Miro could not stand being singled out for contempt. He trailed along behind his mother wishing the earth could swallow him.

  At last they reached their destination, the Bolivian embassy. Mama hurried through the gates with a sigh of relief, but Miro was so worried he hardly noticed where he was going. Had their application been successful? Bolivia was the very last country left for his mother to try.

  He lost sight of her in the noisy, crowded room, but minutes later he found her standing at the end of a long queue of anxious people, most of them Jewish and elderly. An hour passed and then another. It was noon before his mother reached the desk, where a dark-skinned woman with large hazel eyes and a kind expression said in German: ‘Your name and reference number, please.’

  ‘Mrs Rachel Levy.’ She passed her number through the slot and stood there unashamedly praying.

  Miro tried to relax, but the woman was gone for a long time.

  ‘It will be all right,’ he told himself. ‘They will take us. It has to be . . . they are desperate for settlers.’

  This was their last chance. No one wanted unskilled, penniless Jews, as they were classified.

  When the clerk returned, she avoided looking at his mother, which Miro knew heralded bad news.

  ‘Unfortunately our government cannot accept responsibility for your maintenance. You are too old to be useful for immigration. We need strong young people who can work the fields and turn the land into profitable farms. Your son could reapply as soon as he reaches seventeen.’

  ‘He should live so long,’ Mama retorted. ‘But forgive me. I did explain,’ she argued tearfully. ‘I would be able to support them. I am a very good machinist, almost a qualified tailor. You must understand that you are our last chance.’

  The woman looked sadly at them. ‘Perhaps you know someone in Bolivia. If you could find sponsorship from a family or a prospective employer, then perhaps . . .’

  Upset by his mother’s reaction, the clerk looked stricken. ‘Perhaps the bank could help you. If you could raise enough capital you would be acceptable immigrants.’

  Mama wiped her forehead with a handkerchief ‘Forgive me,’ she said quickly. ‘It is not your fault.’ They had received several offers for their house, but at a fraction of its true worth. Not enough to provide them with escape permits.

  Obsessed with their problems, they hurried home and stumbled into a group of louts who were rounding up Jews to clean the pavements. Before Miro knew what was happening, Mama was forced down on her knees and given a pail of water and a brush to scrub the gutter. The boys jeered. Bitter tears of humiliation scalded her cheeks.

  Miro felt paralysed with indecision. He longed to confront the thugs, but he was afraid. How could he, a mere boy, take on six fully grown louts armed with batons? He wanted to cry out for help to the passers-by, but they were averting their eyes and crossing the road. His cowardice made him feel sick. His mother, whom he idolized, was crying and he stood there watching. Why her? Why not him? He lurched towards her with a sudden spurt of bravery. ‘Don’t cry, Mama. Give me the brush.’ He tried to wrench it away from her.

  ‘Don’t cause a disturbance,’ she whispered. ‘They will kill us both. Run home, Miro. Go! I beg you. Do as I
say.’

  He could not. He wanted to pull her to her feet, but he was too afraid. Instead he backed away to the corner of a building and hung around there. He longed to dash forward and say, ‘She’s my mother. Why are you picking on her? She’s done you no harm,’ but his fear made him feel unreal, it was as if he were watching the scene unfold at the cinema. He had an overpowering impulse to lie down on the pavement and let it all drift away. It was too macabre to be real.

  People stopped to watch the women. Mama became wet and muddy. Dirty water ran in the gutter and someone kicked it over her. She was terrified and so was he. At last the punishment came to an end. Mama stumbled to her feet, dizzy with fright and blinded by tears. As he ran towards her, a police van pulled up at the roadside and the women were bundled into the back of it. Miro ran towards Mama, but the doors slammed in his face. He pounded his fists on the van, shouting, ‘Mama! Mama! Let her out.’

  A baton struck his shoulder and sent him reeling across the pavement. The van took off. Miro raced after it, but it turned out of sight at the end of the road.

  Breathless and guilty, he ran to the concert hall to tell Papa. Wide-eyed and dishevelled, he created panic amongst the musicians, many of whom were Jewish. Papa and he hurried to the police station and then to the town hall and the Jewish Board of Deputies. Despite his father’s efforts to find his wife, Miro never saw his mother again.

  Three months later, he and his father were summoned to the town hall. Crowds of Jews had been brought there. After waiting four hours they were taken by trucks to Dachau Concentration Camp. Tired and thirsty, they arrived at dusk to find the yard lined with armed soldiers. Miro was shaking with fright. His father put his arm around him and whispered, ‘My boy, we might be separated. I want you to remember what I’m telling you now. Hang on to goodness. There’s always a choice, you see. Choose the moral path and never forget that you are a Jew.’

  If only he could replay the scene. In the terrible days and nights that followed he relived his mother’s humiliation over and over again, but each time he was there at her side, refusing to move away, comforting her and sheltering her from the Blackshirts, forcing them to let her go.

  Miro could never get to grips with his new life in England. It seemed unreal. He often thought he would wake, as if from a dream, and find himself back in Czechoslovakia. He worked hard, studied English assiduously, came top in his exams, loved his foster family and dreamed about lovely Daisy, but his true reality was back inside the barbed wire with the dogs, the guards and the pockmarked gypsy woman who ran the children’s camp. She was ugly and inarticulate, but the few words at her disposal had been powerful enough.

  ‘They tell me they want you. Do what they want. If not, you all die . . . all your family,’ she told him one morning, when he had been in the camp for six months. To prove her point she took him to see an execution of a young Jewish girl by garroting. They had a special machine for this, which took pride of place in front of the gallows in the main square. As they watched the girl screaming, then gasping and choking, and finally dying in agony, while her face became mottled and her eyes bulged, a tear gathered in the corner of the gypsy woman’s eye and slithered down the crevices of her eroded cheek. This surprised him. Behind the bullying voice, the coarseness and her cruelty, a small spark of compassion had survived. As for him, only guilt surfaced. He had not tried to rescue the victim. He had stood watching again like a dumb beast.

  Later that day he was taken to the office of the camp commandant, but the man waiting to see him was a civilian. He was plump and white like a maggot. His ring, his gold-rimmed spectacles and his bald head glistened in the harsh light, but it was his eyes that frightened Miro. There was no gleam of humanity there – it was like looking at a wild animal.

  ‘Miroslav Levy,’ he began in a soft, high-pitched voice. ‘I am going to tell you something that may surprise you. We are not cruel people, but we don’t feel obliged to feed and clothe those of you who cannot help yourselves. Take your mother, for instance, she is working here, but she is getting thin and tired. She is not a strong woman and she is not used to hard work. You, as her son, should support her, and I am sure you would be willing to do that. After all, why should we? You look to me like a well brought up young boy who would be pleased to do his best for his parents. Irwin Levy, your father, may be able to cope with the hard work we expect from our labourers, but who knows. We don’t have a position for a musician right now.’ He laughed softly. ‘However, if you were to work for us, both your parents would be well looked after. Dachau Camp is the best we have. There are many inmates living out their retirement here in relative comfort and absolute safety. They are parents of those who help the Third Reich. On the other hand, if you fail to obey your orders, your parents will suffer. So what’s it to be?’

  ‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ Miro mumbled. ‘Why don’t you let them go, since you have my word?’

  ‘Let them go? But Miro, no Jew is safe in Czechoslovakia. You saw what happened to your mother before we brought her here.’

  ‘So you are keeping them as hostages.’ As soon as the words escaped he regretted them. Now those eyes blazed with hatred.

  ‘Put it whatever way you like. Work for us and your parents live. Otherwise . . .’ He smiled. ‘It’s a simple choice, Miro.’

  Refuse.Tell him to go to hell. Tell him you’d rather die. But the memory of the humiliation and hurt in his mother’s eyes when they forced her into the gutter was stronger than his desire to refuse. He loved his parents.

  ‘Yes, of course I will work. I am quite strong,’ he said.

  The man smiled. ‘We don’t want your brawn, Miroslav, but your brains. You will keep your eyes open and send information to us as and when we contact you.’

  He felt the slow anger of the conned. A spy? he wondered. ‘I agree to whatever you want, but what proof will I get that my parents are still alive?’

  ‘We will send pictures occasionally. I have a Jewish bible here. Put your hand on it and swear to obey any orders you are given by representatives of the Third Reich.’

  Trembling, he pushed his hand on the book and swore.

  ‘You will be contacted when you are old enough to be useful,’ he was told.

  This was the great evil which lay like a foul smell in his memory, contaminating his life. He had sworn to obey these people in order to keep his parents alive and no amount of rationalizing could ever diminish his guilt.

  He was released the same day and driven to an orphanage in Prague. Two days later, he was collected by a Swiss nurse who liaised with Kindertransport and taken to the station. After an anxious six-hour wait, he was put on a sealed Kindertransport train with other children. The train crossed Germany into Holland where they disembarked at the Hook of Holland and from there they travelled by ferry to Southampton.

  Glancing around the field, Miro reached for the envelope, which had been pushed into his pocket by a stranger at cricket practice ten days ago. In it was a small picture of his mother. As he gazed at it, tears came to his eyes. She was much thinner, her hair had turned white and her eyes seemed larger. They conveyed the vivid intensity of her hatred. He had never seen his mother look like that. He knew at once what she would say to him, if she could, ‘Tell them to go to hell, Miro.’ There was no picture of his father and that sent spasms of fear through his stomach. Had he died? Or been murdered in the camp?

  The message was brief: It’s time.

  ‘Love surmounts politics, patriotism and all other allegiances,’ he whispered to comfort himself. But did it surmount his duty to God? He had been given the choice of good or evil, but his only concern had been to keep his parents alive.

  Three years had passed since the day he had sworn to help the Nazis and no one had contacted him, but he never stopped despising himself as a coward and a traitor, to his parents, to all Jews, to his foster family and the Allied cause. Now he had been called. Obviously ‘they’ knew that the Yanks were coming. ‘I can’t do it,�
�� he whispered. ‘I can’t.’ But what choice did he have?

  Four

  One morning, early in September, Daisy was woken at dawn by Cocky’s strident cries. As she lay half-awake gazing at the ceiling, pondering on her mother’s affection for this noisy bird, she heard other strange sounds. Pushing back the eiderdown, she rushed to the window and saw that their fields were jam-packed with camouflaged tents which had been erected during the night. How on earth they had managed to do all that in the dark amazed her. It was something. It really was. Loudspeakers blared as a convoy of troop carriers moved ponderously along the country lane from the direction of the main road from London. As each vehicle reached the gate it slowed, never stopping, and GIs tumbled out, each one carrying a large backpack, a rifle and assorted paraphernalia dangling from his belt. The superb organization of this sudden occupation left Daisy breathless. A self-contained village had been created out of canvas, right on their doorstep. She rifled in her drawer for her binoculars and studied some of the guys. Good looking, she thought. Hmm! Not bad at all. The Yanks had been piling into southern England for weeks. She and her friends had seen them jiving with local girls on the newsreels at the cinema. Nice girls weren’t supposed to be seen with GIs. Mum would have something to say about it if Daisy tried her luck.

  She scowled at her reflection in the mirror. What she saw displeased her. Her breasts were growing and she hated them, hated the whole distasteful business of becoming a woman. The onset of her periods had been . . . well, yuck! Words failed her. She’d like to bind her breasts like nuns did. Even worse was the feeling of self-disgust allied to a strange restlessness. She tried to analyze her problem and she came to the conclusion that her depression stemmed from missing her father whom she loved. Dad had left because of her mother’s temper. She had heard her mother blasting him for days before he left. Yes, it was all Mum’s fault. If only she could find Dad, but even Gramps hadn’t been able to trace him.