The Earth Is Singing (5 page)

I wonder if Uldis reads
Tēvija
?

“I am proud to be Latvian, like my father and his father before him,” says Uldis. He has taken his cap off and his fair hair catches the light of the sun. “I guess I am fighting to keep Latvia for the Latvians. I can always train to be a lawyer after the war.”

He gives me his wide grin. I am reassured. With volunteers like Uldis in our police force, surely the Nazis will soon retreat from Rīga and let us get on with our lives?

We reach the bridge and see the large glass building on the other side. My heart gives a little leap of nerves and joy. I’ve missed this place for the last two weeks.

I say goodbye to Uldis and stand on tiptoe to plant a quick kiss on his cheek.

“See you tomorrow,” he says. “Have a great day.”

“Of course I will,” I say. “I love my dance classes.”

Uldis kisses me back and walks away.

I stand by the morning rush-hour traffic and get the usual pang of sadness at our separation.

He is so handsome. I decide that I wouldn’t much like it if he changed his mind about us being more than friends.

Then I run over the bridge towards my school.

There is an announcement before class begins.

The ballet mistress, in her dramatic long black skirt with the split up the side, claps her hands as we all lounge against the barre at the back of the hall. I’m standing on my own and wondering why Helena and Velna just came in and stood as far away as possible from me. We’ve been best friends since the very first day I entered this school a year ago. They are both blonde and tall with beautiful sharp bone structure in their faces but Helena has dark eyes and Velna’s are brilliant blue. The three of us with our fair hair in buns are sometimes called “the triplets” and it’s true, we do look similar. But Velna and Helena still have their fathers living safe at home and they have not had to move to an apartment or lose their families or their factories.

Already I feel that there is a gap widening between the two of them and me. I am starting to wonder if their fathers are reading
Tēvija
and believing some of the things that are written in there. But I don’t think that my friends would be so narrow-minded as to believe them too.

“Girls, from today our academy is to be known under a new name,” calls the ballet mistress. She stamps her stick on the floor to get absolute quiet. “We are no longer the School of the Opera and Ballet Theatre of LSSR. As from this moment we are the Rīga Opera Ballet School.”

There’s a murmur of surprise.

I go and stand next to Velna.

“What do you think?” I whisper. She shrugs.

“I guess it is because we are no longer under Soviet occupation,” she says.

Velna sounds odd today. Distant, like she’s not really talking to me.

“Hey, didn’t you see me at the pool?” I mutter under my breath. “I was waving at you!”

Velna shrugs.

“So?” she says.

My heart jolts with shock. So she
did
see me. I’m about to ask her another question but the ballet mistress is glaring at me.

“There may be other changes,” she says. She continues to stare in my direction when she says that. “But that is all for now. Assume your positions please, girls.”

We run to the side of the room and begin to warm up, stretching our calves by placing our legs on top of the barre along the wall and bending towards them, straightening the ribbons on our shoes and curving our arms into graceful arches over our heads.

The rehearsal pianist in the corner starts to play a soft version of “The Dying Swan” from
Swan Lake
.

Then I hear a sharp laugh behind me. It is not a happy sound.

I turn around with one leg still swung up on top of the barre. Mama is always exclaiming at how flexible I am and telling me not to rip my leg from my hip socket.

I look straight into the face of Marija Otis. She has been the star of our class for the entire year. Her parents have dedicated their lives to getting her through this ballet school and towards a glittering future.

Marija could be a poster girl for all of Latvia with her honey-coloured hair, perfect high cheekbones and long neck.

“You know what she means by ‘changes’,” she whispers to me. “If not, you will soon enough.”

The ballet mistress is passing us by. Marija dips her head down towards her feet in their tiny rose-pink pointe shoes and pretends to be rehearsing a piece from the ballet we’re working on. When the teacher has moved on to the girl behind, she smoothes a stray wisp of blonde hair back into place on her perfect head and grabs my shoulder, forcing me to turn back towards her.

The hairs on my neck are standing up.

“Get off,” I say. “What do you want?”

She gives her harsh laugh again.

“What would I want from you, you dirty Jew?” she says. “I want the same as everybody else in here. To get you out of our country.”

I am so shocked that for a moment the room spins and I think,
I can’t have heard that right.

Dirty Jew.

Dirty Jew.

Dirty Jew.

“I was born in Rīga, same as you,” I say. “I’m Latvian, just like you.”

In answer, Marija spits a warm gob of phlegm right into my face.

The ballet mistress calls an extra break after that.

I expect her to chastise Marija or at least offer me some reassurance but all she does is shove a handkerchief at my face and click off in her black dance shoes towards the sanctity of the staff room.

Velna and Helena disappear out of the hall without looking back.

The other girls break up into groups and stand around whispering and staring over at me. Nobody comes to see if I am all right.

I’m in such a state of shock that at first I don’t feel anything much at all. Then a creeping sick feeling starts to wrap its chill fingers around my heart.

These are my friends. Why do they no longer see me as Hanna?

Marija’s words echo round my head all morning.

I want to run home to Mama and cry my heart out but there are other classes that I must endure.

I go to see if I can find Velna and Helena but they’re nowhere to be seen.

Later on after the fuss has died down I am in a class with Helena and I go up to her and smile and try to be friendly, but she looks left and right with something a bit too close to fear in her eyes and she shuffles away from me like she might catch something and she says: “Sorry, but my parents have told me not to mix with Jews now. I can’t be seen talking to you any more.”

“But I am only half Jewish!” I protest.

Helena is almost leaning backwards in her attempt not to be breathed on by the dirty Jew. Me.

“My mother says that if your mother is Jewish then you are wholly a Jew,” she says. “Sorry.”

Her apology is the least genuine that I’ve ever heard.

I somehow make it to the end of the day. Then I go into the ladies’ lavatories and rip my hair out of its neat bun. I let it tumble all around my shoulders. I wipe off the pink lipstick and blue eyeshadow that the dancers here always wear. Then I pull off my rehearsal clothes – the tights and the white leotard, the little white wraparound skirt that I used to love wearing. I pull off my pointe shoes so hard that I snap a pink ribbon but I don’t care.

I change into my sweater and boring knee-length skirt, put on my flat brown brogues and leave my hair wild and loose.

I look at myself for a good long while in the mirrors. I do not look dirty. I do not even look much like a Jew.

“You are Hanna Michelson,” I say. “That is who you are.”

My voice comes out just like Papa’s. It is strong and proud, but underneath I don’t feel as if I’ll ever smile again. Underneath I am crumbling faster than one of Mama’s vanilla cookies.

Then I push open the heavy doors of the ballet school and let them bang behind me.

It’s almost the summer holidays anyway.

But I know I’ll never go back.

I get home very early.
I have a headache and feel about twenty years older than when I left home that morning.

Mama is bent over her sewing machine when I return to the apartment.

She is working with silver bugle beads. Mama often sews these tiny tubes around the neckline or hem of a wedding dress. She has to use good light and her spectacles to ensure that they are sewn on with precision.

I notice that her right hand is not as steady as usual.

She jumps when I come into the room.

“Hanna!” she says. “I am supposed to come and collect you! Why are you home?”

Omama is sitting in her chair in the corner of the room, humming to herself and reading a copy of
Tēvija
even though Mama has tried to ban it from the apartment. “It tells us what is going on,” protests Omama whenever Mama snatches the paper away from her. “It tells us what might be in store for us next.”

“That is why I don’t want to read it,” says Mama.

All the way home from dance school I made myself promise not to upset Mama.

But when I see her dark head lowered over the sewing machine from our old house, something twangs with pain in my memory. I see Papa standing smiling in the doorway with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his strong brown arms stretched out towards me.

I collapse into sobs at the dining-room table and drop my head onto my arms.

Mama puts her white fabric down in alarm.

“Hanna, what is it?” she says. Omama has struggled over and is attempting to do one of her painful cheek-pinches, even though my cheeks are already a horrid red from crying.

I tell them what happened at school.

Omama shakes her head in disgust.

“
Ach, Gott
,” she says. “These girls don’t possess a brain cell between them. Pay no attention, Hanna. Go back with your head held high.”

Mama says nothing. Her eyes have dark patches underneath them from not sleeping. I can’t help noticing that in the pile of work she keeps in the corner, there is hardly anything left to do.

“People don’t want a Jew touching their clothing,” she says, following my gaze. “Only Jewish customers will come to me now and many of them are already talented with a needle.”

I swallow hard. If Mama has no work, then what will we do for food?

Omama reads my mind.

“Don’t fret, little one,” she says. “I have some jewels hidden away. If I need to sell them, I will.”

“And I have some as well,” says Mama. “I managed to smuggle them from the villa. So we will eat. Of course we will eat! What would we be without our food, huh?”

I smile, just a little. But Velna’s mocking expression and the feeling of Marija’s warm gob of phlegm on my cool cheeks replay in my mind over and over. I feel dirty – tainted – by her having done that to me.

“You will get back to your dance school,” says Mama. “This madness will not last long. The war won’t go on for much longer. Already we have had that year of Soviet occupation and now this. So we will soon be back to our villa and our normal life, yes?”

I nod. She hasn’t mentioned Papa.

His absence looms even larger.

I feel lonely, for the first time in my life. All the normal things – Papa, the villa, dance school, even food – are being stripped away one by one.

Later I wipe my tears away and help Mama by winding cotton reels and sorting needles. Omama brings in some black bread and cheese and we eat in companionable silence.

Except that outside, it is never silent now.

Uldis treats me to an afternoon film at the cinema.

It is mid July and Rīga is at its most beautiful, with colourful flowers along the roadsides and in the park and a dry, hot sun which brings out groups of young people all over town.

“To cheer you up after what happened at dance class,” he says as he pays for the tickets.

I glow with an unexpected happiness. I have his sweater around my shoulders and despite the ballet class I feel lucky. I have Uldis and I have Mama and Omama and I reckon that even though I miss Papa so much that it makes me feel sick, I am still cherished and loved by those three important people.

So I let him buy me a box of chocolates at the cinema and we sit in the very back row with his arm draped around me. I enjoy sniffing the clean smell of the nape of his neck and the film is a silly comedy so we both laugh and I block out the thoughts of my Jewish blood and the mocking look on the face of Marija Otis and for two hours I just enjoy being with my favourite person in the world.

Uldis.

My happy mood is not allowed to last for long.

I go home for the evening, as Mama has told me that we will try to celebrate the Sabbath as usual.

Mama has queued for hours in disguise again.

She comes home with only some grey fish, which smells as if it has been in the shop for too long, and a lump of black bread which is so stale that I can’t get the knife through it. There are some small hard potatoes which don’t boil soft, so the potato salad becomes bullet salad even when disguised with Mama’s home-made dressing of lemon and vinegar.

There is no meat to make cholent for Saturday lunch tomorrow and there is no white flour to make the shiny plaited challah loaves either. Mama is distraught about this, but Omama tells her it doesn’t matter. That surprises me – Omama is far more religious than Mama.

“It matters only that we are all together,” she says. “We have enough food to stay alive. For that we should be grateful.”

“Yes, yes,” mutters Mama. She is so proud of her cooking and her neat kitchen. I can see that it pains her to serve up hard potatoes and less-than-fresh fish.

I lay the Sabbath table. No fresh flowers this time. But I light the candles and we say the blessing and pour a little wine.

Omama does not go to synagogue. Although her
Peitav Shul
is the only one still standing, rumour has it that the Nazis have ripped out the holy parchment scrolls clad in velvet and silk and burned them, along with the holy books and prayer shawls and all the ornate brocade curtains and hangings inside.

Omama can’t bear to talk about it.