Let Me Whisper You My Story

by Moya Simons

  I liked going out of the building. I liked the air on my face. I liked whistling at birds I saw in the trees. I just wished Mama wouldn’t grip my hand so hard. I could walk by myself, and if I saw people coming towards us, I could quickly run to her.

  Once, when Mama was out getting food from Mrs Liebermann, I heard screaming outside. I pulled the curtain aside and saw the Fleischmann family from the apartment building across the road being pushed into a truck. Where were they being taken? Would they come back? Mrs Fleischmann was frightened. Her mouth was wide open. Mr Fleischmann had a big red mark on the side of his face.

  Then I saw Esther, their daughter. She was only five. She didn’t come over to play but I had talked to her outside the building a few times.

  Uncle Ernst heard the noises and came and looked out the window. He breathed heavily, then quickly closed the curtain. ‘Don’t look at such things,’ he said.

  I saw him dig his square nails into the dining-room table, scratching lines up and down the wood as the screaming continued. Aunty Gitta came into the room and put her arm around him. Erich was curled up in a corner of the room, absently plucking strings on his violin. Agnes lay on the couch, her hands over her ears.

  Miri wrote quickly in her journal, her head bent so low it almost touched the page.

  I picked at my fingernails. The noise outside stopped. Somehow the silence was worse than the noise.

  ‘I heard on the street that Mr Fleischmann’s son threw a stone at a soldier,’ Uncle Ernst commented.

  Papa was upstairs treating a sick child. He would have heard the noise outside. He’d have stopped in his examination and his eyes would have gone cloudy.

  I ran to the wardrobe and curled up in the dark thinking about Esther and her family. I was sure they’d be sent somewhere nice. Why were they screaming? There was no need for them to be so scared. I could imagine them working on a farm where they could grow sweet fruit and vegetables and even have a cow and three chickens. Maybe, with a bit of luck, we’d be sent there too. I shivered. In the wardrobe, daydreaming, anything seemed possible, even when your heart told you that daydreams were just pictures painted in your mind to make you feel better.

  Later, Uncle Ernst opened the wardrobe door and jumped when he saw me crouched inside. ‘I was getting a shirt. No, don’t get out. Stay there. I can get it later.’

  We were all so relieved when Mama came home. Papa told her how the Fleischmann family had been taken away. Mama’s eyes filled with tears which she quickly blinked away.

  ‘Look what I have,’ she said to us. Her pockets were stuffed with potatoes and she had bread and sausage concealed under her coat. Papa took some sausage and potatoes upstairs to the family with the sick child.

  Then Mama and Aunty Gitta quietly prepared the rest of the food, which we ate ravenously.

  Chapter Seven

  A WOMAN FROM upstairs had just visited. She’d sat down with us and told us of her former grand house. Frankly, I didn’t like the way people in the building came and went from our apartment. Sometimes they came to talk to Papa about their illnesses. Other times it was to talk about the war. I understood that we were all afraid, but speaking about it and what was to become of us, didn’t help.

  ‘I heard that the Americans and the British troops are preparing to land and invade Europe. What a happy day that will be,’ said Mrs Epstein. She was an old lady. Her son and daughter had left Germany before the war. She’d loved Germany too much to consider leaving, she’d told us. Then when she wanted to leave, like so many of us, she was trapped.

  Mama and Aunty Gitta talked of days when they lived in proper houses. They knitted or sewed while they spoke. Mama suddenly took to carefully unpicking wool from worn-out jumpers and reknitting the old wool. She was knitting the world’s longest scarf. Mama was knitting her family, she told Aunty Gitta. She knitted Papa, and the birth of Miri and me. She knitted Aunty Gitta. She knitted her parents, and their parents before them. She knitted her cousins, scattered around Germany. She knitted Erich and Agnes. Each colour of the world’s longest scarf represented a different person in her family.

  ‘You should knit something more useful,’ commented Aunty Gitta.

  ‘I am knitting my memories,’ Mama replied.

  ‘Where am I on the scarf, Mama?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s a secret. One day you will look at it and know immediately where you are.’

  ‘Knitting your memories?’ scoffed Aunty Gitta. ‘Knit a blanket; something practical. Memories won’t keep us warm.’

  ‘Ah, but they do.’

  On Friday nights after the first stars appeared in the sky, we sat around the kitchen table and said Sabbath prayers. From turnips and old vegetables and occasional potatoes and water, Aunty Gitta and Mama made soup. Candles were lit to welcome in the Sabbath, and around their flickering flame Mama, with her head covered by a scarf and her hands circling the candles in prayer, asked God to bless the Sabbath, to keep us safe.

  I concentrated hard and no longer pulled faces at Agnes, even though she pulled faces at me. After all, I’d made a promise to God.

  We only had the candles lit for a short while as we didn’t have many left. There was no wine for our blessing of the Sabbath but we could always pretend. We held up invisible wineglasses and toasted in the Sabbath.

  ‘Now, that was really good,’ Papa said, licking his lips. ‘Invisible wine. The best wine made in the best year.’

  Real wine was dark red and sweet. I could almost remember the taste.

  We saved some of our bread rations and used a little of the bread Mrs Liebermann had given us. Mama magically coiled the bread into a plait. Miri told me that this custom went back so far in time that nobody knew when it first started.

  Papa pulled the coiled bread apart, threw it carelessly to everyone and then we children threw bread at each other. This had nothing to do with religion. It was our family custom, invented by Papa, from a time when there was no war, no worries, no machine guns, no Nazis and no Hitler.

  Then one day there was a thud at our door. A large boot kicked the door open. Four armed Nazis stood there, tall, with horrible skinny lips that hardly moved. ‘Is Ernst Schwarz, the tailor, here?’ a soldier asked.

  Uncle Ernst stepped forward awkwardly, his lips trembling. ‘Here I am,’ he mumbled.

  I truly wanted to faint. I wanted to wake up somewhere else, where there was sunshine and green grass and my family was safe, and there was plenty of food, and Nazis had been put in a spaceship and sent far, far away.

  What did they want with my uncle? Aunty Gitta, who stood behind him, also took a step forward. Mama tugged at the belt on Aunty Gitta’s dress, pulling her back.

  ‘Schwarz, you are to come with us. Now.’

  Uncle Ernst stared vacantly in front of him. He turned to Aunty Gitta. ‘Maybe it’s just a bit of tailoring. Sewing, some clothing. Just some tailoring…’

  Papa nervously asked the soldiers, ‘When will he return?’

  ‘Quiet,’ one of them replied.

  Aunty Gitta’s eyes seemed to sink into her head. Papa put an arm around Mama. Her face was blank with shock. Agnes stood there, open-mouthed. Erich, usually so quiet and studious, suddenly ran to his father and stood protectively in front of him.

  ‘Don’t take my papa away,’ he screamed.

  Uncle Ernst pushed him back, but the Nazi soldier closest to Erich butted his head with his rifle anyway. Erich fell to the floor. Miri gasped. Blood spurted from Erich’s head and speckled his face. Erich touched his head. He appeared surprised to see blood on his hand.

  Aunty Gitta ignored the soldiers and kneeled, cradling Erich’s head in her lap. They didn’t look at her. This was good luck for Aunty Gitta, because they might have taken her away too if they’d seen the look of pure hatred she gave them.

  Miri’s fingers stroked mine. Where were they taking Uncle Ernst? Why?

  Aunty Gitta held up her hands in a gesture of complete helplessness as they marched Uncle Ernst
out of the apartment and down the stairs. Her voice, usually quite loud and strong, became a feeble cry as she wept: ‘No. No.’

  After he had bandaged Erich’s wound Papa locked himself in the bathroom. When he came out his eyes were red. ‘I should have done something,’ he said to Aunty Gitta. ‘I should have…I am a coward.’

  ‘Shush,’ Aunty Gitta replied. She shuddered and put her hand over her mouth and coughed, her face damp with tears. Erich and Agnes circled her with their arms. I thought she was very brave. What if it had been Papa? I would have melted away.

  ‘Ernst will come back,’ Aunty Gitta said. ‘Maybe Hitler has a torn coat he needs repairing. Who knows why they picked my Ernst? Don’t feel a failure. You couldn’t do a thing. They would have shot you on the spot.’

  So the awful truth had finally been said. The Nazis shot you.

  ‘You are very brave,’ I told Erich later. ‘I was too scared to do anything. Does your head hurt?’

  Erich nodded.

  Miri said to him, ‘Erich, I couldn’t have done what you did. I was frozen. You were amazing.’

  Erich frowned. ‘It didn’t help, though.’

  Chapter Eight

  AFTER THAT DAY Aunty Gitta took to looking out the window for the return of Uncle Ernst. She didn’t speak much anymore.

  Other people from Judenhäuser had been taken too. I heard talk in the queue outside the toilet of ‘forced labour’ and had to ask Miri what that meant. ‘Slave labour. You work for the Nazis and if you’re slow they probably shoot you.’

  Mama heard this, and she looked up from her knitting and said to Miri abruptly, ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘Why should I be quiet?’ yelled Miri. ‘Everyone knows what’s going on. There’s no escape for us. Mama, stop knitting that crazy scarf.’

  Mama frowned and her lips pursed in annoyance, but her fingers twitched away at the scarf. Miri sighed. She continued to help me with my reading and writing. I loved learning. I loved anything that kept my mind busy because it kept the thoughts about Nazis away. Miri read me her journal. I think she enjoyed reading out loud. She invited Erich to listen but he said no, although he lowered his book when she read and I think he really did listen.

  Erich played the violin often. When he played, he wanted to make his mother and sister feel better, but his music was so mournful, I was sure it was making them feel worse.

  I felt enormous fear for Papa. If Hitler needed a tailor, wouldn’t he need a doctor too? Maybe a lot of Nazi doctors had been killed and he’d have no choice but to employ a Jewish doctor. So far, Papa had been safe. Had it anything to do with Mrs Liebermann, the kind lady who gave us food? Had her husband, Papa’s former patient, put in a good word for Papa?

  Miri sat at the table chewing the end of her pencil, deep in thought. Every now and then she leaned over the table and wrote in her journal.

  I sat at the table with her, my head resting in the palms of my hands as I watched her. ‘Read to me, Miri,’ I asked.

  ‘Read to yourself,’ she replied.

  ‘I’ve read all the books we have, and they are baby books. Come on, read me more of your journal.’

  Miri sighed. ‘All right, you annoying thing, but you’re to sit still and listen carefully. Mama’s lying down and I don’t want to wake her.’

  She began, her voice sweet and clear, the voice I wanted when I grew older.

  I now know how to hate. They took my dear uncle away and we don’t know why. He hasn’t come back. There is no word of him. We are packed in here. I have no space of my own. Erich and I hardly talk, though we’re a similar age. I don’t know why. We used to in our other life.

  I know cowardice too. When the soldiers asked for my uncle, I froze. I couldn’t move. Erich did, and was butted in the head for his trouble.

  I stood, paralysed, while they took Uncle Ernst away. I have no courage.

  I would like to escape and join the partisans. They are out there somewhere in Holland and France, in forests, blowing up railway lines. That is the talk on the streets. How would I get there? Do I tap some German on the shoulder and ask, ‘Excuse me, can you direct me to the resistance armies?’ I hate being trapped. I hate being helpless.

  Hunger gnaws at me. Yet I still dream. Will I become a writer one day? Is it all right for me to have dreams?

  My aunt hardly talks now. Mama continues to knit the world’s longest scarf. I think she is going mad. She says she is knitting my uncle into the scarf today.

  ‘Do you understand what I’ve written, funny little thing?’

  ‘Yes, Miri, I think I understand most of it. You need to tell me more about the resistance army. I’d like to join too. After all, I’ll be ten soon.’

  THE SILENCE THAT went with Uncle Ernst’s absence was unbearable. Aunty Gitta, now a little crazy, combed the streets, expecting to run into him. But he’d gone. Vanished. All that remained of him was his clothing in the wardrobe and his shoes, now worn by Erich.

  On Friday nights, over our candles, we said a prayer for the safe return of Uncle Ernst. The rest of the time he wasn’t mentioned. Sometimes Agnes would quietly come to me and without a word, we’d hug and remember him. Erich would put an arm around his mother. My papa would look at a photograph of his brother with sad eyes. Mama’s voice would stumble if someone knocked on the door. Miri wrote her thoughts in her journal. We waited and waited, but he didn’t come back.

  ‘When will you finish knitting the scarf?’ I asked Mama.

  ‘I will know when it is finished,’ Mama replied. Her fingers twitched away, her needles making a sound like the ticking of a clock, and the scarf grew longer.

  A week later, when Mama went to meet Mrs Liebermann, she came home empty-handed.

  ‘She didn’t come,’ Mama said. ‘I am worried for her. I saw soldiers standing near the corner where we would meet, just by the alleyway. If they found out she was feeding Jews there is no way of knowing what will become of her.’

  ‘Maybe it is just too dangerous now for her to feed us,’ Papa said. ‘There are soldiers everywhere. It doesn’t mean they know she’s been helping us.’

  ‘People are just disappearing.’ Mama bit her bottom lip. ‘She was a good woman. Not many would have taken the risk. Our rations will have to see us through, though I don’t know how.’

  OFTEN WHEN I was bored and restless, I would approach Miri as she sat at the table writing furiously in her journal. ‘Have you written anything new in your journal, Miri?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not for you. You’re too young.’

  ‘Read it anyway.’

  ‘It’s really not for you. You won’t understand it.’

  ‘Please.’

  Memories of a former friend

  I cannot speak to you again

  for you are Jewish.

  Therefore, I have to hate you.

  But we are friends.

  We’ve known each other since

  kindergarten.

  I am still the same person.

  I didn’t know that you were Jewish.

  That you were different.

  That your people drink the blood

  of Christian babies.

  That you seek to control

  the world.

  But that is silly.

  You can’t believe this.

  We are good and bad like you.

  No different.

  As for drinking the blood of

  Christian babies

  You know that old story is nonsense.

  It’s the truth.

  I cannot talk to you.

  I cannot be your friend.

  I don’t know you anymore.

  ‘You’re right, Miri. I don’t understand.’

  PAPA WAS OFTEN called to treat patients in our apartment block and the other Judenhaus across the road. Aunty Gitta continued to pace the lounge room, or sit by the window, waiting for Uncle Ernst to return.

  ‘I guess they have a lot of sewing for him, Aunty Gitta,’ I told her, although she d
idn’t believe it, and of course neither did I. Aunty Gitta stroked my hair but didn’t answer.

  Erich became even more silent. He sometimes watched Miri as she wrote, and he would occasionally go out walking up and down the street when it seemed quiet. I’d watch him, hands in pockets, head turning as he scanned the street for some kind of trouble.

  Something had to be done about him playing unhappy music on the violin. ‘Can’t you play something bright,’ Papa finally asked him. ‘Make us happy, Erich. We are sick of being sad. Happiness is what we need.’

  Erich turned away from Papa. Miri put her hand on his shoulder, thinking he might be insulted. ‘I know how sad you are, Erich,’ she said. ‘How hard it must be for you to play cheerful music when your papa has been taken away.’

  I wondered if he had heard her. Then I saw his shoulder tremble under her hand.

  ‘Thank you, Miri,’ he said.

  Erich’s music became more cheerful, although his face stayed sad. Sweet Mozart melodies poured from the strings. Hopeful songs. Songs, I suppose, of his father coming home, of a return to a time when everyone felt safe.

  I went to my wardrobe. Inside it I could hear the strains of Erich’s violin. I fell asleep; a sweet sleep, lulled by the violin music and the warmth of the clothing around me.

  ‘WILL YOU READ to me from your journal, Miri?’

  ‘You should be able to read it by yourself.’

  ‘I like your voice, Miri.’

  ‘Hmm. I think you’re lazy, but all right.’

  Once I saw a white bird

  Fly over mountain-tops and villages

  Its wings dipping and lifting

  Like drifts of snow

  It could fly anywhere

  Any time.

  A hunter passing

  Raised his rifle

  For sport, for amusement