Fredy Hirsch isn’t there today. He tends to shut himself in his cubicle to work and takes part less and less in the social life of the hut. When Dita enters his den to put the books back in their hiding place, she often sees him totally focused on what he’s writing on pieces of paper. He explained to her once that it was a report for Berlin; they were really interested in the Block 31 experiment. Dita wonders if those reports are linked to the shadow that Hirsch is trying to hide from the others.
In his absence, it’s Miriam Edelstein who has to be uncompromising with the difficult Mrs. Křižková and remind her of the orders of the block management.
“But do you honestly believe that the children aren’t concerned?” another teacher interrupts.
“All the more reason, then,” answers Miriam Edelstein. “What’s the point in endlessly going on about it? Endlessly rubbing salt into the wound? This school has a mission over and above the one of pure education: to convey a certain sense of normalcy to them, prevent them from becoming disheartened, and show them that life goes on.”
“For how long?” asks someone, and the conversation gets stirred up again. Comments, both pessimistic and optimistic, erupt everywhere, together with all manner of theories about how to explain the tattoo on the arms of all the children, the tattoo that refers to special treatment after six months. For those in the September transport, that time is edging ever nearer. The conversation descends into chaos.
Dita, the only young assistant allowed to stay in the hut at this hour, is somewhat uncomfortable at witnessing the teachers’ discussion, and the word death rings in her ears as something almost obscene and sinful, something a young girl shouldn’t be overhearing. So she leaves. She hasn’t seen Fredy anywhere all day. Apparently, he’s busy with something really important. He has to prepare for a ceremonial visit from the high command. Miriam Edelstein has the key to his cubicle. She opens the door so Dita can go in and hide the books. The two exchange a quick look. Dita tries to detect a hint of betrayal or insincerity in the deputy director, but she doesn’t know what to think anymore. All she can see in Mrs. Edelstein is a deep sadness.
Dita is lost in thought as she leaves Block 31. She weighs whether she should consult her father, who is a sensible person. Suddenly, she remembers that she has to keep a look out for Mengele and swivels her head around swiftly a few times to check if anyone is following her. The wind has died down, and the snow has begun to fall over the camp. The Lagerstrasse is empty apart from a few people walking hurriedly to their huts in search of warmth. There’s no trace of any SS. But in one of the side alleys that run between the huts she can see someone leaping about while attempting to defy the cold with a frayed jacket and a handkerchief worn like a scarf. She looks more closely: white stubble, white hair, round glasses … It’s Professor Morgenstern!
He’s vigorously waving a stick up and down with a net tied to it, and Dita recognizes the butterfly net she saw in Block 31. She now knows whose it is. She stands there watching the professor because she can’t work out why he’s waving the artifact in the air, and then she finally gets it. There’s no way she could have imagined that Morgenstern would use it to catch snowflakes.
He sees her watching him and waves a friendly greeting to her. Then he returns to his fanatical pursuit of snowflake-butterflies. Every now and again, he’s on the verge of slipping as he pursues a snowflake, but in the end, he catches it and watches it melt in his palm. The elderly professor’s stubble is full of sparkling ice crystals and, from where she’s standing, Dita thinks she can see a smile of contentment.
10.
When Dita goes into Fredy Hirsch’s cubicle each afternoon to store the books, she tries to leave right away and avoid eye contact. She doesn’t want to risk seeing anything that might break her trust. She’d rather believe in his goodness. But Dita is stubborn, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t rid her mind of what she saw.
Dita’s sense of curiosity—piqued by the young teacher Ota Keller—has led her to spend her afternoons curled up in her hidden corner reading H. G. Wells. In the meantime, classes have finished in the hut, and the pupils are playing games, taking part in guessing competitions, preparing plays, or drawing pictures with the pencils that have miraculously appeared. She wishes they had some of those exciting novels the teacher had talked about at their disposal. A Short History of the World is the library book borrowed most frequently because it’s the closest thing to a regular schoolbook. And there’s no question that when she buries herself in its pages, she feels as if she were back at her school in Prague, and that if she were to raise her head, she’d see in front of her the blackboard and her teacher’s hands covered in chalk.
The story of our world is a story that is still very imperfectly known. A couple of hundred years ago, men possessed the history of little more than the last three thousand years. What happened before that time was a matter of legend and speculation.
Wells is more of a novelist than a historian. In the book he talks about the creation of the Earth, and the bizarre theories about the moon proposed by scientists at the beginning of the twentieth century. From there, he takes the reader through all the geological periods: the Lower Paleozoic with the first algae; the Cambrian with its trilobites; the Carboniferous with its extraordinary swamps; and the Mesozoic, when the first reptiles appeared.
Dita wanders in amazement over a planet shaken by volcanic convulsions and the subsequent marked shifts in climate, alternating between hot periods and extreme ice ages. The Age of Reptiles grabs her attention, with its colossally large dinosaurs that became the masters of the planet.
This difference between the reptile world and the world of our human minds is one our sympathies seem unable to pass. We cannot conceive in ourselves the swift uncomplicated urgency of a reptile’s instinctive motives, its appetites, fears, and hates.
She wonders what H. G. Wells would say about the world people now inhabit, if he would be able to distinguish the reptiles from the humans.
The book keeps Dita company during the less structured afternoons in Block 31. It guides her safely as she makes her way through the subterranean passages of the imposing pyramids of Egypt and the battlefields of Assyria. A map of the dominions of the Persian Emperor Darius I shows her an enormous expanse of territory, far greater than any of the empires currently in existence. And the fact that Wells’s commentary on “Priests and Prophets in Judea” doesn’t match what they taught her as a child about sacred Jewish history leaves her feeling somewhat confused.
That’s why she prefers to return to the pages about ancient Egypt, which immerse her in the world of pharaohs with mysterious names and allow her to board the boats that navigate the Nile. H. G. Wells is right. There really is a time machine—books.
When the working day is over, she has to store the books before the final roll call. After standing in line for a torturous ninety minutes while all the prisoners’ numbers are checked off, she heads happily for her class with her father. It’s geography today.
As she walks past Barrack 14, she sees Margit leaning up against the side wall with Renée. They’ve just finished their roll call, which is far more unpleasant because it takes place outdoors. They look very concerned, so she stops to talk to them.
“What’s up, girls? Is something wrong? You’re going to freeze out here.”
Margit turns toward Renée, who looks as if she wants to say something. Renée untwists a blond curl on her forehead and chews it nervously. She sighs, and a wisp of breath spirals out of her mouth and disappears into the air.
“That Nazi … he’s harassing me.”
“Has he done anything to you?”
“Not yet. But this morning, he came to my ditch again and planted himself right in front of me. I knew it was him. I didn’t lift my head. But he wasn’t going anywhere. He touched me on the arm.”
“What did you do?”
“I tossed a spadeful of dirt onto the feet of the girl next to me, and she started to
screech like a wild animal. There was a bit of a kerfuffle, and the rest of the German patrol came over. He stepped back and didn’t say a word. But he was after me.… I’m not making it up. Margit saw it yesterday.”
“Yes. After roll call. The two of us were chatting before we headed back to our hut to see our parents, and he stopped a few steps away from us. He was looking at Renée—no question.”
“Was he looking angrily at her?” asks Dita.
“No. He was just staring. You know … that dirty look that men have.”
“Dirty?”
“I think he wants to have sex with Renée.”
“Are you crazy, Margit?”
“I know what I’m talking about. You can see everything in a man’s look. They stare as if they are already imagining you naked.”
“I’m frightened,” Renée whispers.
Dita hugs her and tells her they’re all afraid. She reassures her that they’ll keep her company whenever they can.
Renée’s eyes are watering and she’s trembling, but who knows if it’s because of the cold or her fear. Dita picks up a small chip of wood and starts to draw some squares on top of the snow-covered ground.
“What are you doing?” her two friends ask, almost in unison.
“Drawing a game of hopscotch.”
“For heaven’s sake, Ditiňka! We’re sixteen years old. We don’t play hopscotch; that’s a kids’ game.”
Dita continues to draw the squares meticulously as if she hasn’t heard Margit’s comment. And when she’s done, she looks up at them as they stand waiting for her reply.
“Everyone’s gone inside their huts. No one will see us!”
Renée and Margit frown and shake their heads as Dita searches for something on the ground.
“The woodchip will do,” she tells them, and she throws it into one of the squares.
She jumps and lands with a wobble.
“You’re clumsy,” says Renée, laughing.
“You think you can do any better in this snow?” Dita rebukes her, pretending to be angry.
Renée tucks up her dress, throws the woodchip, and begins to jump with perfect accuracy, to Margit’s applause. Margit goes next. She’s the worst of the three: She stumbles as she hops and falls spectacularly onto the snow-covered ground. As Dita tries to help her up, she slips on some ice and falls backward.
Renée laughs at the pair of them. From the ground, Margit and Dita throw snowballs at her, which land in her hair and turn it white.
And the three girls laugh. Finally, they are laughing.
Dita, wet but happy, hurries off because it’s time for her Wednesday geography class. On Mondays it’s math, and on Fridays, Latin. Her teacher is Mr. Adler, her father, and her notebook is her head.
She still remembers the day she came home to the apartment in Josefov and found her father—who no longer had an office to go to—sitting in the living-dining room at the only table they had, twirling the globe with his fingers. Dita walked over with her schoolbag to give him a kiss, as she did every afternoon. Sometimes he would sit her down on his lap and they’d play at naming a country, slowly spinning the globe on its metal stand, and stopping it suddenly using a finger at the spot where they guessed the country might be. He seemed distracted on that particular day. He told her they’d sent a message from her school: holidays. Now, the word holidays is music to a child’s ear. But the way in which her father had said it, and the sudden appearance of those unexpected school holidays made that music sound off-key. She remembers how her joy turned to distress when she realized that she would never have a school to go to again. Then her father signaled for her to sit on his lap.
“You’ll study at home. Uncle Emile, who’s a pharmacist, will teach you chemistry, and cousin Ruth will give you art classes. I’ll talk to them, you’ll see. And I’ll give you language classes and math.”
“And geography?”
“Of course. You’ll get sick of traveling around the world.”
And that’s what happened.
That was during their time in Prague, until they were deported to Terezín in 1942. And they weren’t such bad times when seen from the depths of Auschwitz. Up till the German occupation, her father had worked so hard that he hadn’t had much time to spend with his daughter. So Dita was happy that he became her teacher.
Now as Dita walks toward her father’s hut, she occasionally looks behind her, just in case Mengele is hot on her heels. Although, if truth be told, she’s more concerned at this point with knowing what to expect from the director of Block 31.
Her father is waiting for her by the side of the hut, as he is each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday if it’s not raining. They sit down together on a large stone. That’s her school. Her father has already traced a map of the world in the mud with a stick. When she was younger, her father would help her to remember places by telling her things like that the Scandinavian peninsula was the head of a giant serpent and Italy was the boot of a very elegant woman. It is hard to recognize the world he’s drawn into the mud of Auschwitz.
“Today we’re going to study the planet’s oceans, Edita.”
But she just can’t concentrate on her lesson. She thinks about how much her father would enjoy the atlas in Block 31. Removing the books is prohibited, however, and with Mengele breathing down her neck, there’s absolutely no way. She’s too distracted to listen to her father’s explanations, and on top of that, it’s freezing cold, and it has started to snow.
So she’s delighted when her mother turns up a bit early.
“It’s freezing. Leave it for today, or you’ll both catch cold.”
Here in Auschwitz, where there’s no medicine or even enough blankets and food, colds are a killer.
Dita and her father get up, and even though he’s the one shivering with cold, he wraps his own jacket around Dita.
“Let’s go to the hut; they’ll be serving dinner soon.”
“Calling a piece of dry bread dinner is really optimistic, Mama.”
“It’s the war, Edita—”
“I know, I know. It’s the war.”
Her mother falls silent, and Dita takes advantage of the silence to raise the topic that’s been worrying her, though she does so indirectly.
“Papa … if you had to confide a secret to somebody here in the camp, whom would you trust absolutely?”
“You and your mother.”
“Yes, I know that. I mean, apart from us.”
“Mrs. Turnovská is a very good woman. You can confide in her,” her mother interjects.
“There’s no question you can be confident that if you tell her something, even the head of the latrine cleaning brigade will know about it pretty quickly. That woman is as good as a radio,” her husband replies.
“I agree, Papa.”
“The most upright person I’ve met here is Mr. Tomášek. In fact, he came by not long ago to see how we were. He takes an interest in what’s happening to other people. There aren’t many people like that in here.”
“So if you were to ask him for an honest opinion about something, do you think he’d tell you the truth?”
“Absolutely. But why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing special. Just asking.”
Dita makes a mental note of Mr. Tomášek’s name. She’ll have to go and have a chat with him and see what he thinks about Fredy.
“Your grandmother used to say that the only ones who speak the truth are children and madmen,” her mother adds.
Dita thinks of Morgenstern. She can’t go to just any adult with her doubts about a person of such high standing as Hirsch. They might accuse her of betrayal, or who knows what, in front of everyone else. But she doesn’t run that risk with Morgenstern. If he were to spread her tale, she’d simply say it was another of the old man’s crazy inventions. Would he know something about Hirsch?
She tells her parents she’s going to see Margit. She knows the retired old architect usually stays in Block 31 until it’s soup time,
often in that hidden corner behind the woodpile she goes to when she wants to leaf through a book.
The assistants aren’t allowed to stay behind after classes are over, but Dita’s the librarian, and that gives her certain privileges. That may explain why the other assistants seem to dislike her. Not that it really bothers her. Her head is full of worry and doubt.
A group of teachers are chatting together inside Block 31. They don’t notice her when she comes in. She heads to the back and peeps around the woodpile. Professor Morgenstern is refolding an origami bird made out of a well-used piece of paper.
“Good afternoon, Professor.”
“Well, well, it’s Miss Librarian. What a delightful visit!”
He gets up and bows.
“Can I be of service to you?”
“Oh, I was just walking by—”
“A good idea. A daily half-hour walk extends your life by ten years. A cousin of mine who used to walk for three hours each day lived to a hundred and fourteen. And he died because on one of his walks, he tripped and fell into a ravine.”
“It’s a pity that this place is so horrible that you really don’t feel like going for a walk.”
“Well, you can just move your legs. Legs can’t see.”
“Professor Morgenstern … have you known Fredy Hirsch for long?”
“We met on the train bringing us here. That would have been…”
“In September.”
“Precisely so.”
“And what do you think of him?”
“He strikes me as a distinguished young man.”
“That’s it?”
“You don’t think that’s enough? It’s not easy to find people with class these days. Good manners don’t count for anything anymore.”
Dita hesitates, but she doesn’t have many opportunities to be honest with someone. “Professor … do you think Fredy is hiding something?”
The Librarian of Auschwitz Page 11
