“There’s water. Just there—” He inclined his head to an old metal bucket at the end of the row. “Go and get it.”
Kája connected with the light hazel of his eyes, as they were so much softer than she’d have ever expected, and nodded. “Yes.”
“Bring it to me,” he stated matter-of-factly.
She obeyed and rushed over to retrieve the bucket. It was only half full, and not as taxing to move as she’d have thought by its size. Kája moved quickly, taking short steps, and brought the bucket over to the officer. He raised the metal ladle to the man’s cracked lips and poured water over them.
Kája’s eyes teared almost on their own.
The sight of the man revived from the water, skin wrinkled and eyes glazed with exhaustion—it was too much. He grabbed the cup of the ladle and lapped at the water like a parched animal, uncaring that the cool liquid was dripping from his chin and wetting a trail down the front of his shirt. He was ravenous for it, and without dignity in how he begged for more like a lapping puppy.
The young officer dipped the cup in again and offered a second ladle to the man.
The other SS officers shouted then, tossing out orders to the old Jew. “Jude! Jude—back to work!”
They’d marched up not far from the pair, but had stopped short where they now stood, laughing in the bright summer sun. They teased, slapping their knees as they ridiculed the young officer for his actions, taunting that he apparently desired a hug from a dying Jew. They admonished him to drag the old fool into the alley and free up the spot in the work detail for another.
“Give him to me—I’ve an extra bullet,” one shouted.
“Perhaps that girl could pick up the shovel in his stead! She looks as sturdy as any Jew I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
They roared with laughter, just as a shiver took over the length of Kája’s spine. She remained kneeling, frozen, unable to do anything but breathe in and out and wonder if any of them would make it out of the moment alive.
God . . .
She could scarcely form a prayer in her mind, save to plead his name through the intense fear.
One of the guards sighed in frustration and stomped up behind them. He grabbed the old man’s shirt collar.
“No.” The officer shoved him off, even as he stared into Kája’s eyes. “This man is fine. Just tripped on a stone. He will work. I’ll have him back up and in line,” he shouted, and tossed the nearest stone he could find. It clinked against the street near the eager SS officer’s boots. “And you see to it that the young boys remove these stones from now on, so it doesn’t happen again. It’s interfering with my workers!”
The other SS guard stared back with eyes narrowed to slits. He didn’t look like he enjoyed being tossed at, though said nothing. Whether he was outranked or outmatched by the officer with the kind eyes, Kája didn’t know. He stomped back to the crown of officers and turned his back on the scene thereafter.
The officer pulled the old Jew to his feet, roughly it seemed, though Kája noticed his hands were steadying as the man wavered to find his balance. The officer knelt and picked up the man’s shovel.
“Back to work,” he issued, and handed it back to the man.
Kája knelt on the ground, still frozen.
After the old man pushed the shovel blade down into the pile of dirt at his feet, the officer turned his attention back to her.
“You have your Passage Permit?”
Kája nodded and reached to take it out of her shoe.
“I don’t want to see it. Just be sure you keep it with you. Though you can travel the ghetto, you ought to go straight to your destination.”
“Yes.”
“Gather your things and go,” he admonished her. The words were barked in a rough whisper as he tilted his head up the street. “Now.”
Kája broke the connection with his eyes, immediately looking down to the spilled wares around her. She wasted no time. Uncaring as to what was retrieved and how it was shoved down in the basket, Kája picked up the paper and as many pencils she could find—even the ones that had broken against the stones during the fall and had been soiled by the water spilled from the man’s drinking.
She moved to leave as quickly as she could. It wasn’t until Kája was a step or two away that she felt the curtain of hair at her nape get caught up in the light breeze and blow about her shoulders. Her hand flew up to it, remembering that the kerchief was the only one she owned. She turned then, thinking it must have fallen to the ground, and met him, blocking her path.
He stood there, quiet, with a set jaw and unmistakably kind eyes as he held out the kerchief to her. She stepped forward and with a cautious hand, brushed fingers with his to take it back.
“Don’t ever come back by here,” he ordered, and without another word, turned his back to her as the work detail continued the endless swinging of tools through the air.
The cadence of shovels and picks in the dirt became a deafening death song as the Jews labored on in the sun.
Kája took the kerchief and stuffed it down in her basket, then almost faltered on the uneven stones of the street in her haste to get away. She hurried along, not even breathing until she’d rounded the corner and was clearly out of sight.
It was she that fell to her knees this time, sobbing against the nearest brick wall. With shoulders shaking and heart pounding, she slid down to sit on the ground and buried her face in her hands.
Be strong and courageous?
She shook her head.
It didn’t seem possible. Not there. Not when death was constant and searching. Not when evil was so hungry. It could find anyone, even as they walked down the street.
God? she sobbed. Where are you?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
December 19, 1942
Terezin
Kája entered the back door of the school building and quickly closed it behind her.
Walking past the guards each day had become her daily ritual in summoning fresh courage. After the confrontation with the Nazi SS guards in the street weeks before and the near-miss that could have ended her life, Kája’s main focus each morning was to remain unnoticed before them and reach the safety of the supply room in which she now stood.
She remained there for mere seconds before she was startled by an unexpected voice from the hall.
“Miss Makovský? Is that you?”
After trying to shed any trace of shakiness from her voice, Kája called out, “Yes. I’m here.”
She shrugged out of her coat just as a stout woman appeared before her with broad shoulders and ruddy brown hair dotted with sparks of gray. The woman stopped and surveyed her with an expressionless face.
“You are the art teacher,” the woman declared rather than asked. Her Danish accent was thick.
“Yes. The Jewish Council has asked that I employ some of the camp children with jobs in the arts community, if that’s what you’re here to inquire after,” Kája answered. She hung up her coat and patted her hair back slightly, trying to calm the tendrils that had come loose and fallen down to tip her shoulders.
“I was told to come and see the art teacher, so I’m here.”
“If you’re looking for supplies, I’m sorry to disappoint you. We haven’t any food here. And as for the rest, I’m afraid we’re rather thin at the moment. The paint’s long since dried up and without any more brushes I just don’t know . . .”
“Yes, well.” The woman stood poker straight and with an unmistakably serious bent to her features, added, “I am not here for supplies.”
“Oh.” Kája was used to somber faces and hushed whispers. They spoke of news. Bad news. The kind of news that everyone became used to in the camp. She took a deep breath and cleared her throat, her attention now fully piqued. “Very well. How may I help you?”
“The Jewish Council sent me to notify you that a transport arrived this morning.”
Kája nodded.
Another transport.
Terezin was burstin
g at the seams as it was. She suppressed a shudder, thinking of the people who would have to be shipped out to make room for new prisoners. It was a vicious cycle of death trains.
Kája looked back at the woman and saw the same fear in her eyes.
“Where is it from?”
“This one is from a ghetto in Poland.” The woman dropped her voice to a whisper. “It was cleared, you understand. But there are more children. Twelve hundred and sixty of them. Most from Poland, though some are from Germany and Austria. All without parents, you see.”
Kája exhaled and closed her eyes on the horror. She nodded, understanding the weight of the woman’s message.
“Will any of them be coming to work here, then?”
“Yes. I expect so. If they are healthy enough—and young enough to avoid the work detail.” The woman turned and looked farther down the hall. She inclined her head and ordered, “Come here, child.”
It was the first time Kája realized they weren’t alone.
She tilted her head to the side and looked past the woman to see a young girl standing behind, pale as a ghost with soft brown hair that just grazed her chin and wide owl eyes that stared straight ahead. Her shoulders were turned inward and she walked slowly, almost shuffling her feet as she came into view. She wore a polka-dot dress in a deep navy blue.
The sight of the girl caused a pang to register in Kája’s chest and she placed a hand over her heart on instinct. She took a step forward and knelt down in front of the girl, who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old, and asked, “What’s your name, dear?”
The girl whispered a name Kája couldn’t quite hear. She stared ahead as if entrancing pictures danced on the wall opposite her.
Kája looked at the woman. “Her name is Sophie,” the woman said.
“Sophie?” She smiled and reached for the girl’s hand, though the little fingers fell limp and lifeless in her palm. “Why, that is a lovely name.”
The woman leaned in, then whispered, “She is from Austria. Her parents were killed by the Gestapo before she arrived there. Her brother too. She has no family left to speak of.”
“I see.” Kája took a deep breath against the hitch of emotion that formed in her throat. She turned her attention back to the girl.
“Těší mne—it’s nice to meet you, Sophie. We have a lot of activities here. We have stage plays and music and even art shows. I’ve been asked to paint the sets for a children’s play. I’m certain we can find something for you to do.”
The woman cut in, “I’ve been sent to bring her to you, but not for work.”
Kája shook her head. “I don’t understand. The children are always brought here under the auspice of work.” She lowered her voice and added, “It’s how things are done.”
“Not in this case.” The woman leaned forward. “The SS has appointed you as her guardian.”
Izabel did not stir when they entered the attic.
She lay on a plank bed, back turned to the door, her breathing even with the cadence of sleep.
Kája noticed Agnes, one of their roommates, sitting on the floor by the window. The setting sun bled in at choppy angles across the room, lighting bits of her brown hair and the wooden brace arches adorning the ceiling. The broken glass of the window behind her fractured what little light there was, creating odd shapes on the wall.
Agnes looked up from the book in her hands.
“How is my matka?” Kája asked.
“She’s been this way since we came back from our shift,” she whispered, her German accent pronounced. “She was so tired that she went right to sleep.”
“Thank you,” Kája replied. “I’m so sorry to be late after school. I would have come to walk her back from the factory today, but we have a new roommate who has joined us and I had to ensure we had everything squared away.” She held up a rolled blanket from under her arm.
“Ja?” Agnes stood and laid her book on the window sill. “Then I am relieved it wasn’t for what we’d feared. I made excuses with your mother, and it concerned both of us when you didn’t show right away. I’m so relieved you’re here.”
“Me too.” Kája inclined her head in an appreciative nod, adding, “And I’m very grateful to you.”
Kája beckoned behind her, leading Sophie from the shadows into the dimly lit attic space.
“Sophie, this is Agnes. Along with my mother—who is asleep in the bed—and two other ladies whom you will meet later, she lives here with us in our room.” She rested gentle hands upon Sophie’s shoulders in presentation. “Agnes, this is Sophie. She comes to us from Austria and she’s going to stay here for a while. She and I are going to look out for one another.”
Agnes locked eyes with her over Sophie’s head.
The questions were there.
Where are her parents? What has she survived up to this point? And why has a child been assigned to us?
Kája could read them and shook her head, having no way to answer.
Within a month of entering Terezin, Kája and her mother had been moved from the overcrowded barracks to a tiny attic in an old Terezin shop building. Though there were not hundreds in their barrack room any longer, the location was less desirable. They were far from the hospital in which her father worked. What was more, the conditions were no less miserable on one side of the camp than the other. They may have been in one of the buildings in town, but it was also in wretched disrepair.
Agnes and two other women, much older sisters from Austria, had been pressed into the same space, sharing three plank beds between them, with lice-infested blankets and a communal bucket that stayed in the corner farthest from where Agnes had sat. They took turns emptying it in the alley behind the building each morning.
“Guten Abend, Sophie.” Agnes seemed broken from her momentary stupor and spread a thin coverlet on the floor under the window. “Perhaps you’d like to sit by the light?”
Sophie didn’t move right away.
Agnes met Kája’s eyes. She whispered, “Would she like a book?” then added quickly, “Can she read?”
Kája mouthed back, “I don’t know.”
“Sophie? Would you like to look at a book?” Agnes walked a few steps to the other side of the room and laid her hand on a stack of old books on the wall’s low shelf.
She made no move to retrieve a book.
“Well,” Kája said lightly. “Perhaps later, then. Why don’t you sit down and rest?”
It wasn’t until Kája nudged Sophie in the direction of the window that her limbs began working and she crossed the room to the coverlet. She sat and pulled her knees up to her chest. She wore long, gray socks that tipped the bottom hem of her coat and scuffed black buckle shoes so old they no longer reflected when light was cast upon them. She sat with her back up against the wall beneath the window sill, looking up at them from across the room.
Kája swallowed hard.
The challenge of caring for a child who gave the appearance of a wounded animal was a far cry from fumbling through teaching a group of children in a classroom. Besides offering food and what little water they had, she wasn’t sure what to do with the child. Sophie had haunted a corner of the classroom all day, sitting upon a stool without uttering the slightest sound.
She looked prepared to do the same through the night.
Kája took a few steps and knelt down before her. She slid a picture book from the shelf.
“Sophie? Lucky we are that this one has some beautiful pictures in it,” she offered, and set the book down on the floor beside her. “I’d like to step out in the hall with Agnes for a moment. Would that be all right?”
Sophie didn’t nod acknowledgment, though her eyes moved from Kája’s face to the door and back again. She figured it was enough of a reply that she’d be all right if they stepped out for a moment.
Kája gave her the strongest smile of solidarity she could and with Agnes at her heels, ducked out into the hall.
“Kája, what is she doing here?”<
br />
She shook her head in the dim light of the third-floor stairwell.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. A woman came to the school this morning and said that the Jewish Council had requested I be her guardian.”
“But what does that mean?”
“I don’t know, exactly. But she hasn’t any parents. No family. A transport of children just arrived today, and all I know is that she’s from Austria and she’s alone. Beyond that, I haven’t a clue.”
Agnes peered into the attic room, the shades of dusk now taking over as the minutes ticked by. Little Sophie was shrouded in a haze of gray-blue light from the window, her tiny form popping against the faded red of the brick walls and the worn wood ceiling above her head. She looked like a tiny glowing angel in the midst of a drab cell.
“Has she said anything to you?”
Kája’s heart was breaking. “Not a word.”
“Are you sure we can care for her?”
“Well, I suppose they thought of me because I work with children all day. Or maybe my father said something to them. I can’t say that I would have chosen myself, exactly. But she needs looking after. It’s apparent she’s severely hurt by whatever’s happened to her. If she needs care, maybe that’s why God brought her to us. We can be that for her.”
“I worry how we’ll all make it through winter without ventilation or heat. And no food? Think about what it’s like up here. Wouldn’t she have a better chance in the barrack, with more children around her?”
Agnes’s concerns were valid.
The attic was far worse than anything she’d seen in the barrack. Bed bugs and fleas crawled over them like armies marching drills through the night. No one was spared in sleep through their itching madness. There were no lavatory facilities to speak of. The roof leaked with each rain. Their little stove was broken, and their one window was cracked wide. What would they do? The worst days and nights of winter couldn’t be far off.
A Sparrow in Terezin Page 23
