When It's Over

by Barbara Ridley

  She smiles broadly; she really is proud. The Berkeley Rep came to the middle-school drama club to recruit extras for a new production. Sara thought it was a long shot. But Megan got accepted! That’s great. She can’t remember what the show is called.

  Her phone vibrates again. Rehearsals start in three weeks. So I don’t have to do pottery camp, right?

  Sara laughs. She insisted on some structure for the summer. Megan wasn’t keen on the pottery; Sara thought it sounded fun. She texts another response. She’s much slower at this than her daughter, needless to say, but she still thinks she’s pretty hip to be doing it at all.

  Guess not. LOL. What’s the name of the play again?

  She goes into Boots. She needs more wipes and pads for Mum. She finds them quickly and is standing in line to pay when the phone buzzes back. Having to reach for her glasses each time makes her considerably less hip.

  Brundibár.

  That’s right. Brundibár.

  “Next customer, please.” The girl at the till is waiting for Sara to unload her basket. “Boots Advantage Card?”

  Sara shakes her head no. Brundibár. It suddenly comes back to her. She clasps her hand to her mouth, stifling a strange grunting noise that’s escaping from her throat. She can picture the book Megan brought home from the school library. Based on a children’s opera originally performed in a Nazi concentration camp.

  A Czech concentration camp. Terezín.

  She gathers her purchases and stumbles outside. It was a children’s book with beautiful illustrations. She wants to find a copy. She abandons her plans for Assam tea and cookies and heads for the bookshop at the far end of the mall. The book is there on a display table in the children’s section, as if waiting for her: the glossy cover in yellow and pink, with a picture of the boy and girl with their milk pail. She strokes the dust jacket and clutches the book to her chest.

  Back at the house, Mum is up in the wheelchair, looking perky. Karly has fixed her hair; they’re drinking tea. Sara blurts out her news.

  “Megan has a part in a show at the Berkeley Rep. In the chorus.” She can hardly catch her breath. “They’re doing Brundibár. The children’s opera from Terezín.”

  Mum looks up, eyes wide. “Brundibár?”

  “Do you know about it?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Sara displays the book. “I found a copy in Waterstone’s.” She sits on the sofa. “Such beautiful illustrations.” She hesitates. “How old was your sister? What was her name?” Sara can’t believe she doesn’t even know this.

  “Sasha.” The sound pierces the room. The three women hold it in silence for a few moments.

  Sasha. Sara. Similar names.

  Sara is the first to speak again. Softly, as if not to trample on a grave. “How old was she when she was in Terezín?”

  “Eleven, maybe twelve.” Mum’s voice sounds thick. “She loved to sing.”

  Sara opens the book on her lap. “May I read it to you?”

  Mum nods. Sara reads out loud, strong and clear. She reads the story of Popicek and Aninku joining with the other children and animals to defeat the big, bad bully Brundibár, celebrating their victory over the tyrant.

  “It’s amazing that the Nazis allowed them to produce such an obvious allegory of resistance,” Sara says.

  “Tsk.” Mum gives that familiar dismissive flick of her wrist. “The children were carted off to Auschwitz as soon as the show was over.” She points at the book, her hand trembling. “Does your version have the very last page? The true ending?”

  Indeed, there is another page, an epilogue Sara hasn’t noticed, a last word from Brundibár himself. He’s not done; he threatens to return. “Nothing ever works out neatly/Bullies don’t give up completely.”

  When Sara looks up, tears are streaming down her mother’s cheeks. She rushes over, crouching in front of the wheelchair.

  “No,” Mum says. “Nothing ever works out neatly. No matter how much you hope it will.”

  Sara takes her into her arms, and, for the first time she can remember, the two of them weep together.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel would never have become a reality were it not for the early encouragement of Willa Rabinovitch, Junse Kim, Michelle Huneven, Robert Boswell, and Claire Burdett. I am deeply indebted to the ongoing support and feedback over the years from Susan L’Heureux, Martina Reaves, Ruth Hanham, Karen Hunt, Paul Davis, Richard Seeber, Linnea Chistiani, and Raleigh Ellison, and especially to David Schweidel, who constantly challenged me to improve my writing even if I wasn’t prepared to accept all his suggestions. I am grateful to Pamela Feinsilber for detailed editorial advice in the revision process.

  This is a work of fiction, but it relies heavily on the oral and written memoirs of my late parents, Vera and Jasper Ridley. In addition, I have shamelessly stolen a number of anecdotes from the memoir Very Convenient Everywhere, written by my parents’ good friend, the late Richard Seligman, and used with kind permission of his son Peter. Another of my mother’s friends from Prague, Fred Turnovsky, wrote a memoir entitled Turnovsky: Fifty Years in New Zealand, with early chapters which were very useful. I am also deeply indebted to my father’s lifetime friend Christopher Small, who not only gave me valuable feedback on the manuscript in its early stages and corrected a number of anachronisms, but also gave me the long letters which my father had written to him during World War II, which provide extraordinary and unique insights into the political climate during the last two years of the war.

  Other published works which I used extensively to educate myself about every facet of life during the period include: The People’s War by Angus Calder; London at War by Philip Ziegler; London 1945 by Maureen Waller; Ten days to D-Day by David Stafford; The Twilight Years: Pairs in the 1930’s by William Wiser; A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway; The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Paul Preston; London War Notes 1939-1945 by Mollie Panter-Downes; Ernie Pyle in England by Ernie Pyle; Continental Britons: Jewish Refugees from Nazi Europe by Anthony Grenville; Women in Wartime by Jane Waller and Michael Vaughn-Rees; The Internment of Aliens by F. Lafitte. Also extremely valuable were the Mass Observation archives at the University of Sussex Special Collections Library; London’s Imperial War Museum; and the BBC World War II People’s Archives available on-line at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/categories/.

  Jim Davies from the British Airways Archives and Museum at London’s Heathrow Airport helped me understand details of air travel between Paris and London in 1940. Professor Igor Lukes from Boston University kindly met with me and provided interesting insights into the source of the rumors about Nazi troop movements on the Sudetenland border in May 1938, which we now know to be false, but which were taken seriously at the time. Marta Tomsky corrected the Czech and Ulrike Ganter and Birgit Zorb-Serizawa helped with the German.

  I am very grateful to She Writes Press, especially Brooke Warner and Cait Levin, for believing in this work and giving it a chance to go out into the world, to Annie Tucker for her editorial expertise, and to Monica Clark and Reese Lichtenstein for assistance with proofreading.

  And a million thanks to Judy and Abby who put up with so much and made it all possible.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photo © Limor Inbar

  Barbara Ridley was raised in England but has lived in California for more than thirty years. After a successful career as a nurse practitioner, which included publication in numerous professional journals, she is now focused on creative writing. Her work has appeared in literary journals, such as The Writers Workshop Review, Still Crazy, Ars Medica, The Copperfield Review, and BLYNKT. This is her first novel. Ridley lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner and her dog, and has one adult daughter, of whom she is immensely proud. Find her online at www.barbararidley.com.

  SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS

  She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress
.com.

  Even in Darkness by Barbara Stark-Nemon. $16.95, 978-1-63152-956-6. From privileged young German-Jewish woman to concentration camp refugee, Kläre Kohler navigates the horrors of war and—through unlikely sources—finds the strength, hope, and love she needs to survive.

  All the Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian. $16.95, 978-1-63152-905-4. A lyrical, finely wrought tale of loyalty, love, and the many faces of resistance, told from the perspective of an Armenian girl living in Paris during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s.

  An Address in Amsterdam by Mary Dingee Fillmore. $16.95, 978-1-63152-133-1. After facing relentless danger and escalating raids for 18 months, Rachel Klein—a well-behaved young Jewish woman who transformed herself into a courier for the underground when the Nazis invaded her country—persuades her parents to hide with her in a dank basement, where much is revealed.

  The Sweetness by Sande Boritz Berger. $16.95, 978-1-63152-907-8. A compelling and powerful story of two girls—cousins living on separate continents—whose strikingly different lives are forever changed when the Nazis invade Vilna, Lithuania.

  Portrait of a Woman in White by Susan Winkler. $16.95, 978-1-938314-83-4. When the Nazis steal a Matisse portrait from the eccentric, art-loving Rosenswigs, the Parisian family is thrust into the tumult of war and separation, their fates intertwined with that of their beloved portrait.

  The Belief in Angels by J. Dylan Yates. $16.95, 978-1-938314-64-3. From the Majdonek death camp to a volatile hippie household on the East Coast, this narrative of tragedy, survival, and hope spans more than fifty years, from the 1920s to the 1970s.