‘How did you get these?’ asks Julia, holding the two tickets in the upturned palm of her hand.
‘Traded some food for them,’ says Suzanne.
She is grinning from ear to ear.
‘What food? Your food?’
‘Yes, my food.’
Julia is at a loss. ‘But why –?’
‘It’s our anniversary. We’ve been ... well, you know – for six weeks.’
‘But Suzanne ... we ... you ... have so little food.’
‘I love you, Julia. You know that. Come on. It’s on tonight.’
Everyone in the ghetto knows the story of Brundibár. Two children, Aninka and Pepicek, want to buy milk for their sick mother – the doctor says she has to have milk. But the children have no money and they don’t know how to get any. But then they have an idea. There’s an organ grinder who plays tunes and people put money into his hat. So the children try that too – singing for money. However, the organ grinder is evil and he tries to drown out their voices. But then a miracle happens. With the help of a sparrow, a cat, and a dog, and the children of the town, Aninka and Pepicek sing louder than the evil organ grinder. In the end they are victorious.
Brundibár is held in the new cultural hall in the Sokol building on the outskirts of the ghetto. The cultural hall was specifically built as part of the Great Beautification. When Julia and Suzanne walk in, the hall is almost full. On this warm June night, the smell in the room is like something solid that hangs over the crowd – old clothes, unwashed or starved or diseased bodies. Still, everyone is talking excitedly while, up in front of the stage, the musicians are tuning their instruments. Julia and Suzanne take their seats. Then, the last few seats are filled, the hall slowly goes quiet, the lights go down and an expectant hush settles on the audience. The curtains open to reveal the set – the buildings of a town in the background and in front the wooden fence just as in the poster.
And so it begins. Brundibár is sung in Czech but even so, it’s not too difficult to follow the action. It starts with the doctor coming to visit the children’s mother. Then they go into town to buy the milk. The opera takes its title from the evil organ grinder whose name is Brundibár. There is a great cheer when he comes out on stage. This is because the boy who plays Brundibár – his name is Honza Treichlinger and he is only thirteen or fourteen – has become well known in the ghetto because of his role in the show.
And the cheer is because Brundibár – Honza – sports a great pasted-on black moustache which he wiggles from time to time, causing huge amusement in the audience. The villain has a black moustache. The symbolism is so obvious that people in the ghetto wonder how the Germans have not seen it and closed the show down ages ago. Brundibár was even performed for the Red Cross visitors. It’s true what Suzanne said – a smart German is an imaginary creature.
Julia is entranced. It seems to her that this is what life should be all about. Creating beauty. Art. Those things that happened to her – at this moment they seem unimportant. This – in front of her – is what really matters. Those things that happened to her – it is like they are floating away from her, becoming smaller and smaller. She’s not forgetting them; that’s not what it is. Is she forgiving? She’s not sure. She frowns at this – she actually frowns. If she’s not forgiving, maybe she’s just saying that what happened to her in the past isn’t going to determine what happens from now on. This – the here and now – and art – these are the things that matter.
And Julia understands that what she and Suzanne have been doing with their book – this too is part of it. They too have been creating beauty. Making people feel and think so that they don’t just eat and make love and fight and – here in the ghetto – try to survive.
Julia becomes aware that Suzanne is looking at her. Julia turns. Suzanne smiles at her in the semi darkness.
‘Thank you,’ Julia mouths.
Suzanne takes her hand and squeezes it.
Finally, the children get their milk and Brundibár is defeated. The final song is the ‘Victory Song’ that everybody joins in singing. By then Julia’s eyes are smarting and as the song comes to an end, she is weeping.
She and Suzanne sit for a long time afterwards as the hall empties. Eventually Julia’s tears stop. Suzanne stands and Julia looks up at her. Julia blows her nose and smiles wearily. Together they make their way out into the gathering twilight.
There is a half moon high up and just visible against the darkening blue of the sky. Suzanne stops to look at it.
‘She’s my favourite planet,’ says Suzanne. ‘I love the moon.’
And then Julia says the words she has never said to anybody in all of her twenty-one years.
‘I love you, Suzanne.’
Chapter Thirty-seven
Kelyn (Suzanne)
Birkita lay in bed savouring a few more moments before it would be time to get up. Through the doorway of the hut, with its cover pulled back to try to keep the place a bit cooler, she could see the sky becoming brighter. Soon, the sun would pull itself over the horizon and then it would be time to move. She had slept so deeply it was almost as though she had been drugged. The others – Galena, Kelyn and Sevi – were still asleep.
It had been a beautiful summer – an endless procession of misty early mornings that gave way to scorching hot days with cloudless blue skies. Now, it was harvest time and the early spring rains followed by dry weather just when it was needed meant that the harvest was plentiful. For days, Birkita, Galena and the girls had been working in the fields bringing in the crops. The muscle pains that Birkita had felt – that they had all felt after the first few days of work – had now faded so that her body felt taut and hard and strong. She couldn’t help comparing this harvest with the last one she had experienced a year earlier with the bull Roman. How things had changed in that time.
Now whole days went by when she didn’t find herself thinking about her parents and her brother and his family. She found the memory of Pompeii was fading so that sometimes it seemed like all of that was something that had happened to someone else. Or it was like a story she had been told, with the captain and all the other people she had met, simply characters in it.
Most of all, Birkita felt she had a home again. This unusual, all-female household that she was part of – it really did feel like her family.
The sun slipped above the edge of the field across the river sending a shaft of red-orange light into Birkita’s eyes. It was time to get up. She called the others and with a mixture of groans and heavy silences, they began to stir.
‘Will you get some water, Kelyn?’ asked Galena.
Kelyn let out a sound that was part moan, part complaint. Nevertheless she stood up, took the two buckets from their place by the door and went out. Birkita began to feed twigs onto the fire, blowing under it gently so that the grey embers gradually became scarlet and the fire came back to life. They had some fish, taken from the river yesterday. Galena took a knife and began to prepare it, cutting it expertly. It had turned out that Galena cooked beautiful food. ‘It was one of the things the Roman liked,’ she said. Birkita took satisfaction from the fact that this was yet another thing she had taken from him.
‘What’s taking Kelyn so long?’ asked Galena as she finished the fish and began to break a loaf of bread into chunks.
‘That girl – she gets distracted so easily. I ask her to do one thing and she ends up doing anything but.’
‘Maybe she’s talking to one of the boys,’ said Birkita. ‘She’s very pretty. Haven’t you noticed – several of them have their eye on her.’
‘Sevi, go and see what’s happened to your sister. And if she has stopped to talk to one of them, at least bring back the water.’
It was some time before Sevi returned. Birkita was in the back of the hut with her back to the door, bent over and tidying away their blankets.
‘She’s not at the river,’ said Sevi.
‘That girl! Where’s she gone now? Is she in one of the other hous
es?’ asked Galena.
‘No, I went round them all. Nobody’s seen her.’
Birkita straightened up and turned round. It was like a sliver of ice had run through her veins and entered her heart.
‘Come on,’ she said.
In summer, the river was about two spear throws wide and maybe the depth of a small child. The far bank was high and steep but on this side, the slope was much gentler. The river flowed from left to right. At the village there was a brief patch of open ground – a grassy bank that eased its way down to the water’s edge. Here, the villagers drew water and women washed clothes. But on either side of this open area, the bank was heavily overgrown with gorse and wind-sown saplings and thorn bushes. This had never been cleared and so the years of growth were high enough that a man sitting on a horse would have been invisible there. A narrow path wove its way through all of this along the riverbank.
It was clear that Kelyn had got as far as the river. Footsteps were clearly visible in the dew. But they only went one way. There was no return track. Birkita looked up and down the river. There was not a soul to be seen, neither animal nor human. There were no tracks along the river bank so Birkita could only assume that Kelyn had been in the river. Walking? Being carried? Taken? On a horse?
In the time they had been here, there had been no trouble with the surrounding tribes. As far as Birkita could judge, Guidgen, the headman, seemed to be sensible, practical and wise. In that respect, he reminded her a lot of her father. However he had done it, he seemed to have established peace with all of their neighbours. Of course, it was always possible that that would come to an end. Birkita wondered if that was what was happening now. Had Kelyn been kidnapped and would whoever had taken her ransom her and was this to be the start of something? Birkita prayed that it was only that.
‘Sevi, go back and round up as many people as you can,’ said Galena. ‘Tell them what’s happened – that Kelyn is missing.’
Within minutes, Guidgen had arrived and taken command. He organised four search parties. Two went upriver, one on either bank, the other two in the opposite direction. Between them all, they would see anything that might be on either bank and also anything in the river. Birkita tried not to think about that. Galena was silent, doing whatever she was told to do, but fear was etched into her face.
When the sun was at its highest, the four parties met up again back at the village but there was no trace of Kelyn.
Now, Guidgen sent riders out to all of the neighbouring villages. If they were still friendly, his rationale went, it could only help and if, for some reason, they had gone to war, then that would become apparent pretty soon too.
The sun was low in the sky when the riders returned. All was peaceful. Nothing had changed. But nobody had seen Kelyn.
Birkita convinced a distraught Galena that she needed to have some food. They hadn’t eaten since the previous evening. Then with something in their belly, they could carry on looking. The moon was close to full. It would give plenty of light and they could comb through the forest which is what Guidgen proposed to do next.
Birkita cooked the morning’s fish and she, Galena and Sevi ate in silence. Galena didn’t touch her food. The other two finished quickly and went out of the hut, heading down the gentle slope that led to the river.
But now there was a crowd of villagers down there, gathered in the blue moonlight. Clearly, they had found something. Galena began to run. Birkita and Sevi ran with her. As they got near the group of people it parted. Guidgen stood on the river bank, tall, well-built, like a bear with his back to them. Galena ran past him and stood on the edge of the bank. Birkita arrived a moment later.
Face down, arms and legs outstretched, a figure floated in the water. The blue dress was unmistakeable. It was Kelyn.
And then Birkita knew.
49
‘I knew you were going to do that,’ says Julia.
‘We both knew,’ says Suzanne.
‘We could have ended it there,’ Julia goes on. ‘They could all have lived happily ever after.’
Julia’s not complaining. She and Suzanne are just discussing the latest turn their book has taken and what has to happen next.
‘But you know we would have been cheating,’ says Suzanne. ‘Cheating our reader.’
‘I think some writers wouldn’t have felt that,’ says Julia. ‘Bring the reader to the safe shore of a happy ending and drop them there.’
‘But we’re not some writers,’ says Suzanne. ‘There has to be a last trial that our character goes through. The hardest trial of all.’
‘So now what? asks Julia.
‘Now, Birkita has to hunt down the bull Roman. He’s discovered they crossed to Gaul so he’s come after them and found them. Now he’s stalking them. He’s killed one daughter. He’ll kill again. His plan is to kill them all. They have to find him.’
Finding the bull Roman turns out to be nearly as difficult as it must have been for him to find Birkita, Galena and the girls. Julia starts on the chapter on the first day of July but runs into problems almost straight away. The story just becomes episodic. And then. And then. And then. When she shows it to Suzanne, Suzanne reads a couple of pages and looks up frowning.
‘I know,’ says Julia. ‘What’s gone wrong?’
Suzanne takes a turn but after the few days, the result is no better. They decide to take a break in the hope that that will make a difference. They take a week off, agreeing to restart on July 17th. They become irritable with one another. The war will end when their book ends – but at this rate, it looks like their book will never end.
Just as they are about to restart, a bonke goes round that a group of people who had been painting pictures of the ghetto have been arrested and sent, with their families, to the Little Fortress. The place called the Little Fortress is a part of the Theresienstadt complex but separate from the ghetto itself. The Gestapo uses it as a prison. Terrible rumours circulate about what is done to people who are taken there, Mention of the Little Fortress is probably the only thing more terrible in the ghetto than the phrase ‘transport to the East’.
When Julia and Suzanne hear about the artists, they are truly terrified. They talk of burning their two notebooks. They consider it seriously. They are close to going off and trying to find a place to do exactly that. But in the end, between them, they manage to talk themselves out of it. They have put too much into their story. It would be criminal to destroy it.
However, for the rest of July and early August they do no writing. Instead they spend it trying to find a safe place to store their notebooks. They don’t want to store them on the floor on which they sleep. If the books were found in a search, the Germans are quite likely to send all the occupants of the floor to the Little Fortress. In fact, Julia and Suzanne decide it would be best if they didn’t store them in their barracks at all – or in any barracks, but rather in some kind of public place. Eventually, after much searching, they find a place. It is not ideal because it is in the washroom on their floor but it will have to do. And the notion that they would have destroyed the notebooks is too unbearable. And anyway, they have to finish the story so that the war will end.
Low down on the wall of the washroom there is a loose tile. When pulled away it reveals a hole in the wall about the size of a small fist. Putting a hand through the hole – and it took them some courage to do that until eventually Julia said ‘Fuck it, I’ll do it’ – they find that the hole extends back quite a way. Julia can put her arm in up to her shoulder and still the hole doesn’t come to an end. While Suzanne keeps watch early one morning, Julia widens the hold just enough to be able to push the notebooks through. The final thing they need is that they manage to get their hands on a piece of oil cloth and they use this to wrap the books to keep them dry. They stow them away and for several days, neither of them dares even talk about what lies hidden in the washroom.
In the middle of August, a new piece of excitement sweeps the ghetto. Apparently the Red Cross visit was a
complete success. The visitors were completely taken in by everything they saw and heard. In a place where disbelief has become something of an everyday occurrence, the ghetto residents still find this jaw-droppingly incredible. Anyway, the Germans are so pleased that they have decided to make a movie about Theresienstadt. So another beautification takes place – everything is smartened up again so that a camera crew can film many of the things that the Red Cross visitors saw on the day. And of course, with typical German economy, the filmmakers themselves are ghetto residents with a couple of Germans in overall charge.
Julia and Suzanne have to do their laughing and singing with rakes on their shoulder act again. This time, the group have to go to Adolf to draw their rakes and costumes. Adolf makes them line up outside his shed and then, one by one, they come in. He hands each of them a brown paper package with the clothes and they take a rake from a pile of them leaning against the wall of the shed. He records all of this in his book. When it is Julia’s turn, Adolf hands her the package and says, ‘You can change here if you want.’
‘No, that’s all right, thank you,’ Julia says as icily politely as she can.
‘I could insist, you know.’
And that does it for Julia.
‘Adolf,’ she says, ‘why don’t you go fuck yourself.’
Julia had hoped for some kind of shocked reaction from Adolf but instead his smile just becomes unpleasant and he says, ‘You know, Dutch girl, before too long don’t be surprised if you’re begging me to fuck you.’
Filming finishes in mid-September. By then, it is more than two months since they have worked on the book. Partly this is due to the block they were experiencing before they hid the notebooks. Neither of them wants to be the one to have to restart. Each is hoping that the other one will volunteer. But then there is also the fear of their being discovered. For as long as the filming has been going on, there has been more renovation, snap inspections and Germans popping up everywhere. It has just been too dangerous.
The Paradise Ghetto Page 32
