by Lily Graham
Her hands felt the tiny portrait hidden against her ribs – how would she get a chance to give it to Herman now?
Spring was supposed to be on its way, but instead snow was falling in heavy drifts. She wrapped the thin scarf she’d managed to get in the warehouse around her head and shuffled forward to join the crew who would begin the twelve-hour shift of breaking up rocks, in the freezing cold.
That night, before the curfew as she walked outside with her hands swollen into claws from the icy weather, red and painful, she gave Sofie the portrait of Michal. ‘Can you give it to Herman, if you see him?’
Sofie looked at her and then wrapped her scarf over Eva’s hands in an attempt to warm them.
‘I’ll try. It might take some time. He doesn’t clean in the hospital anymore, but sometimes I have to go to the storerooms for supplies, and it goes past the fence where he is working now.’
‘Thanks, whenever you can.’
Vanda and Helga and several other women from the Kanada were moved to the same work unit a week later, and joined Eva in a new barrack that was reserved mostly for labour units. The new accommodation was far more crowded. Still, Sofie managed, with a bit of bribery on the part of Meier, to move into Eva’s new barrack too. Their new Kapo was a Polish woman by the name of Maria, who seemed the kind to look the other way if the price was right. It took a month before Sofie got the chance to go past the fence and find Herman.
She coughed, then dropping it at his feet, she motioned to the ground, and he stealthily pocketed it.
‘And now we wait,’ said Sofie that night, ‘and see.’
Eva nodded.
Her hands were split and painful. She was tired and starving. There were no extra rations or scraps to be had – it was difficult to find anything to barter with when you were working outdoors, it wasn’t like when she was in the Kanada where there was always something she could trade for extra food.
She’d got painfully thin, and there were sores on her legs that weren’t healing properly.
‘Here,’ said Sofie, giving her a thick wedge of black bread, bigger than their usual evening ration.
‘No, Sofie,’ she protested, ‘I won’t take your food.’
‘You have to, Eva, or you’re not going to make it, not on these rations. You’re already too thin. Besides, I’m working in a hospital, we get extra food sometimes.’
‘You’re lying,’ Eva said, eyes narrowing. She stared at her friend, and wondered – had she slept with Meier so that she could get this? She didn’t want to be the reason her friend put herself in danger.
‘I’m not,’ Sofie said, breaking off a piece of the bread in Eva’s hands, and then putting it in her friend’s mouth. ‘Eat,’ she commanded, her dark eyes stern, and Eva began to chew, fighting the urge to shovel the whole thing in her mouth as her hunger pangs gnawed at her.
‘I got this through a friend, a nurse from work,’ Sofie lied, giving Eva a wedge of cheese afterwards, and then she took out a thick piece of sausage from her headscarf, which she shared with all her bunkmates to their amazed delight.
There was a low gasp. ‘Is that real? Or have my eyes just played a trick on me?’ whispered Helga, sitting up.
‘It’s real,’ said Sofie with a soft smile.
Vanda scoffed, her eyes narrowing. ‘She’s lying. She got it from that puppy-eyed guard, Meier. They couldn’t stay away from each other, even though she’s no longer in the Kanada. I saw them when I passed by the back of the hospital the other day. He couldn’t keep his hands off her; he didn’t seem to care who saw.’
Sofie looked thunderous but she didn’t say anything to deny it. It was true, she’d got away from him for a while, and had been very busy in the hospital. Things had got better for her as a result; Hinterschloss seemed to have found someone else to torment for a while, too, but with her friend still so ill, when Meier had made the pretence of coming past a few days before, she’d told him that she’d missed him.
‘You have?’ he’d said, surprised, pleased. He looked over his shoulder, and took her hand. They were alone, apart from a few sick patients lying in beds, who had other concerns.
She’d nodded, and he frowned, looked at the floor. ‘Every time I’ve come past you’ve been too busy… always in a hurry. I thought maybe you didn’t want to be my girl anymore.’
Sofie had swallowed, ‘No, that’s not it. I suppose I’m just distracted… I’ve been so hungry, it’s been a bit hard.’
He’d looked at her. ‘You need more food?’
She’d nodded. ‘Yes, I think that would make a big difference.’
He’d stared at her for some time. Then he’d given her a small smile, and nodded. ‘I understand. I can get you some.’
‘You can?’ she’d asked.
He touched her arm, and surreptitiously skimmed his hands over her breasts. ‘It’s a risk, though – if I’m caught. I have to know you are serious about me, about us.’
‘I am,’ she’d said, fighting the urge to prise his fingers off her thin chest. Then she’d kissed him, and he’d taken her by the hand and pulled her into the shadows so he could kiss her properly, his hands roaming to places he hadn’t touched before. She let him. For now she was grateful that he was satisfied with that.
She and Eva had to live, and they wouldn’t without food – it was that simple – and as genial as Meier appeared he wouldn’t remain so for long until she gave him something more in return. Thankfully he was something of a romantic, and perhaps he liked the idea of the chase.
‘It’s good of you to share,’ said Helga, with a shrug. She wasn’t blind to the realities of this place. When one of the women had died in the night a few weeks before, she’d been the first to take the dead woman’s shoes and jacket. It was indescribably horrible, yes, but the dead didn’t need to be warm, and morals didn’t keep food in your belly.
Vanda huffed. ‘It’s the least she could do after spreading her legs.’
Eva slapped her in the face, hard. The sound rang, making them all flinch in shock. There were white lines imprinted on Vanda’s suddenly red face.
Vanda stared at her in shock and gasped, cupping her smarting cheek. ‘You bitch, why did you do that?’
Eva’s eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Because you have no idea what you’re talking about.’ She had seen the risks that her friend had undertaken and she could guess why she’d gone to speak to Meier now – and the danger it put her in from Hinterschloss who seemed to enjoy terrorising her because of Meier’s interest. Sofie denied that Hinterschloss had taken it further, she worried that the more Eva knew the more dangerous it was for them both.
‘Leave it, Kritzelei.’
Eva shook her head, then glared at Vanda. ‘Who are we to judge?’
There was an uncomfortable silence. Vanda touched her reddening cheek, and carried on eating her sausage with tears in her eyes.
After a minute, her eyes softened, and she picked up Sofie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She wiped her eyes, and sniffed, looking up at her. ‘I would probably do it to too, given the chance, if I could make sure my friends could eat.’
‘Exactly,’ said Eva, taking both their hands. ‘We all would.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ joked Helga. ‘I’d only give it up for chocolate.’
The Kapo had to tell them to stop laughing.
‘Stupid birds,’ she muttered.
Chapter Fifteen
‘You’re humming,’ said Vanda, who had been assigned the same task as her. Eva swung a hammer to break up a large rock, ignoring the dull ache of pain from the repeated action, as well as the grumble of hunger that was her constant companion. She looked up, wiping a bead of sweat from her eyes. It was cold, and the wind was icy but her cheeks were reddened from being outside all day.
‘Was I?’ she asked, surprised. Her thoughts, as usual were in the past.
Vanda nodded, and she whistled the tune back in response. ‘I know that, I think – Debussy? Or Moz
art perhaps?’
Eva paused, her expression soft as she shook her head, in surprise. She hadn’t even been aware of what she’d been humming, as she kept time with the hammer. ‘No, none of them.’
‘I’m sure I know it though – what is it?’
There was a light in Eva’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. ‘I don’t think so – it was never released.’
In the distance, there was a shout from one of the guards and they were told to get back to work.
As Eva swung the hammer again, ignoring the way it reverberated against her bare, red and swollen fingers, she slipped back into the memory.
Vanda couldn’t have heard it before, because it had only ever been played once in public as far as she knew, and for an audience of one.
Eva woke to the haunting sound of a violin. She sat up in her small bedroom, which overlooked the Wenceslas Square. Prague was fast asleep – the first blush of dawn filtering through the curtains she had left open the night before. As she lay in bed she wondered for a moment if she was still dreaming. But the music played on. She stood up to look out the window, and saw down below, on the street, a figure was playing the softest, sweetest melody she’d ever heard. It was mysterious, and left goosebumps on her arms. Haunting, yet uplifting at the same time.
By the time the other windows had opened, and people looked outside to see, the violinist had gone, he’d faded into the rising dawn.
Eva didn’t go back to sleep, just slipped on her robe, and crept out of the apartment and down the stairs. She saw something poking out of their letterbox, a folded piece of paper. She smoothed it out to find that it was sheet music much scribbled, and redrawn. There was a small note attached.
‘I couldn’t draw a portrait of you, but I wrote this. It’s what you’d sound like if you were put to music.’
There was a postscript.
‘P.S. How about breakfast?’
He mentioned a café around the corner that opened at 7.a.m.
She grinned. Had he known she would come downstairs? She raced upstairs, taking them two at a time, then got dressed, whirling to pull a comb through her hair, brush her teeth, and dab some apricot-coloured lipstick on her mouth.
She left her parents a quick note that she would be gone for breakfast, before they could protest.
In the small café around the corner from their apartment, the scent of just baked bread and freshly brewed coffee welcomed her as she opened the door to a tinkling chime. The windows were fogged, and the cold air slipped in from outside. She saw Michal at the back, sitting at a table, his head bent over a notepad, one hand in his curly hair as he scribbled. He looked up as the door opened, then gave a half grin, showing a dimple.
She came to stand across from him, her hands clutching the back of a chair nervously for a moment.
‘Hello, peach-girl,’ he said, standing up and pulling out the chair for her, and she sat down, greeting him with a somewhat shy hello. The night before when they’d walked the city, she’d left feeling confident. Now, in the morning, she felt shy, nervous, on the brink of something momentous.
His dark green eyes twinkled as he looked at her.
‘I didn’t know if you’d get my message.’
‘Which one?’ she asked. ‘The serenade or the note?’
He grinned, ran a hand through his hair. ‘Either.’
‘When did you write it?’
‘The note?’ he asked, taking a sip of his coffee, but his mouth missed the lip as his eyes were fixed on her face. He wiped his chin, with a laugh. She realised, touchingly, that he was nervous too, and it endeared him to her all the more.
‘The music?’ she asked, with a smile.
‘Last night, after I walked you home. I couldn’t sleep…’
‘You’ve been up all night?’
He nodded, flashing her a smile that she couldn’t resist returning. ‘I’m used to it – it happens to me when I get inspired, like I can’t sit still.’ Then he looked away for a moment, admitted, ‘I couldn’t stop thinking of you.’
Eva bit her lip. She’d slept fitfully too. She nodded. ‘Me neither.’
‘Oh, he’s good,’ said Mila, after Eva knocked on her cousin’s door, a few hours later, showing her the music, and Michal’s note.
Her cousin’s large blue eyes scanned the sheet. Her hair was set in bouncing curls, and she had red lipstick on her pretty mouth.
‘Very good.’
Eva stared at her cousin, who had been driving the boys wild since they were in kindergarten.
‘I don’t think it was a technique, if that’s what you’re implying – something he does with all the girls.’
Mila raised a blonde brow, and looked at the music sheet, then up at Eva with a soft smile on her lips – something like wonder – and she nodded, looking at it closely. ‘No, I don’t think so either. It would have been more practised – this is … something else.’
At Eva’s smile, she shook her head, and laughed. ‘I do believe, cousin, that you are in trouble.’
Eva laughed and sat down on her bed, pausing to move a soft rose-coloured pillow as Mila came to sit down next to her.
‘I think so too.’
Her cousin smirked. ‘I am going to enjoy this, I think.’
Eva hit her with the pillow.
As spring gave way to summer, Eva spent her days sketching in the park or down by the river and the old town, with her friends and cousin, and at night there was always a ticket left for her at the opera house, and she would watch Michal play, sitting in the front row, first looking for those old worn shoes.
She loved getting to know the serious soul that lived behind those thoughtful green eyes, after the concert was over; walking with him along the river – night-time was their time, and she lived for the moment he would put his jacket over her shoulders when the weather turned crisp, and the scent of his cologne lingered in her senses, or his hand would find hers.
He had a way of making her snort with laughter one minute and thinking about philosophy the next. Sometimes they would just sit quietly together, him passing over some article he thought she might like to read, while she sketched.
In the weeks that she got to know him she learnt that Michal had grown up of limited means, yet he came from a family that had once been rather wealthy – they had fallen on hard times when his father had passed away during the First World War. His mother had retreated within herself. Prone to intense highs and lows, she had gone to live with her sister in Austria when he turned sixteen. They had since moved to France, on the eve of the Nazi Anschluss, he hoped she would be doing better now.
At age twenty-four he was well on his way to becoming one of the most promising players in the orchestra.
He was handsome, head-turningly so, and charming, but he wasn’t quite aware of it. Old-fashioned in some respects – not daring for more than a few kisses and making sure she was home by curfew most nights, yet liberal in his thoughts and ideals. He earned good money but sent most of it to his mother. Frugal with himself, generous with others.
He was a puzzle, one she wouldn’t mind spend years getting to know, and for the first time ever she wished she weren’t leaving the city for the rest of the summer.
Every summer Eva’s family went away to a house in the mountains on the edge of a small natural lake outside the town of Jívka in the Hradec Králové Region. The red-roofed farmhouse had been bought by Eva’s father and her uncle Bedrich after the birth of their children. The brothers took it upon themselves to restore it, with the result that each summer they found themselves some new project to work on. This year it was a gazebo, for outdoor dining. As Eva’s mother put it, ‘Let them work, or they’ll drive the rest of us crazy.’
It was for everyone a refuge. A place to forget about school and industry. For Eva and her cousin, Mila, the exuberance of childhood cannon balls in the lake, mud pies and tree-houses had given way to sunbathing, sketching and languid starfish laps in the shimmering water.
&n
bsp; It was a place to forget about the world as the sun turned their limbs brown and bleached the ends of their hair gold. Night-time by the lake, whatever their age, had been for skinny dipping, sharing their hopes and dreams, and building castles in the air. Eva had always thought how wonderful it was that her best friend was also her cousin.
It was here, inspired by her wild surroundings, that Eva had begun the habit of keeping a sketchbook. Action-sketching she called it, by following mountain squirrels as they scurried up the great trees, or sneaking up on otters as they made their way down the Elbe river.
The house was a remote hideaway, without a telephone and traversed only by a thin, winding dirt path, but despite its out-of-the way locale, the postman had added it to his route, due to the combined charms of Bedrich’s legendary card games and their housekeeper Kaja’s excellent apple pie.
One afternoon, Eva stood in the doorway, her long hair wet from swimming, dripping on the rag-rug welcome mat, causing Kaja to furrow a brow, grab a towel by the console and proceed to attack her hair, while moaning that she’d waxed the floors just that morning. Eva shrugged the fussing woman’s hands away, and stepped back onto the rug. Her eyes fixed on the sight of the postman with nervous anticipation, avoiding Kaja’s knowing, slightly exasperated smile. Eva had run all the way from the lake when she’d heard his familiar whistle, and saw his shuffling stride. He doffed a flat cap at her, his watery brown eyes softening as he noticed her excited state. He looked at Kaja and said, ‘Oh, to be young again.’
Kaja snorted. ‘Speak for yourself.’
Eva danced on the mat, shuffling from foot to foot in anticipation. There was a towel wrapped around her, but she was still in her striped bathing suit, and he gave her an indulgent smile as he handed over a letter. ‘It’s here, dítě,’ he said with a wink. ‘From your young man.’
Eva coloured, but she couldn’t help the wide smile that split across her face as she clutched the letter to her chest. ‘Thank you!’ she cried, before fleeing down the path towards the lake, Kaja’s calls to be careful and not to break her neck drifting off in the distance – along with something about a warm chocolate babka that had just come out of the oven, and would he like a slice?
