The Lost Wife (25 page)

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Authors: Alyson Richman

BOOK: The Lost Wife
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I imagined I was the same way when I worked, my focus whittled to a sharp nib. A thread running between my eyes, my mind, and my hand. The artist’s sacred trinity.
I sat at the drawing board, and within a few seconds I had recorded an enviable likeness of Petr. I drew the sharp angles of his face, the length of his fingers pressed onto his paper, and his arched back as he huddled over his work. It was the sort of fast drawing I knew that Fritta, one of the preeminent satirists back in Prague, renowned for his political caricatures, would like, for it was a method he himself often used.
“Excellent,” Fritta said as he studied my drawing. “We will make good use of you here.”
I remember I looked not at Fritta when he said this, but at Petr. He was still completely focused on his drawing, and not for a single second had he lifted his gaze.
CHAPTER 29
 
LENKA
 
Few people are sensitive to the sound of paper being torn from a sketchpad or the scrape of a pen nib that is thirsty for ink. But to me they are like the sound of a razor or a scythe slicing through the air. These were the sounds of the technical department: sharp and unflinching, and I heard them every morning when I walked through the door.
Unlike my time in Lautscher, there were no piles of insipid postcards or thick, oily canvases sent on trucks to decorate the interiors of German villas. Here, there was a sense of efficiency and urgency.
“We are responsible for many things here, Lenka,” Fritta explained. “There are architects who are preparing blueprints for Terezín’s expansion. We need new roads for the increased population. Drawings for new barracks. The train tracks from Bohušovice into Terezín need to be extended. The camp’s antiquated sewer system needs to be updated. All of these things need to be drawn up by architects and engineers working in this office, and artists like yourself will help them with that.”
As he spoke, he moved across the room with a quiet authority. I noticed everyone was working—a line of backs arched over drawing boards—a few people were clustered in groups, a pile of supplies placed in the center of a shared table. Everyone’s head was down. I did not see a single face.
“We have deadlines that we have to meet, Lenka. So when I tell you I need something in three days, try and get it done in two.”
I nodded.
“Do not waste our supplies. They are our most precious asset.”
Again, I nodded.
As Fritta talked to me, his eyes scanned the room. His physical presence sent a signal to everyone that order had to be maintained in the drawing room at all times. Fritta was the commander here, and the rest of us were his troops. But why, I wondered, were we working—and working so hard—for an army whose objective was to corral us into a ghetto of disease and starvation? Where was the resistance? I wanted to ask Fritta. I looked around the room, past the dozens of men and women who looked like mechanical drones, and shuddered. I could not sense any sort of resistance at all.
 
“Lenka, meet Otto Unger.”
Fritta and I stood next to a desk where a frail man was hunched over a book of illustrations.
When he stood up, I saw that his face was chiseled. He gave the appearance of someone sculpted from clay, deep tunnels fingered out from underneath his eye sockets.
“I’m Otto.” He stood up and extended his hand. His smile was warm, but his fingers were ice cold.
“I’m Lenka Kohn,” I said.
“Lenka?” He said my name like a question. “It’s a beautiful name. You’re the first Lenka I’ve met in Terezín.”
I blushed.
“No flirting here old man.” Fritta wagged a finger at him. It was the first break for levity I had experienced since I had walked into the room. I smiled.
“Since when is forty-two old?” Otto teased. I shook my head; the harsh conditions had clearly made him appear older than his years. It would only be a matter of time before the same thing happened to me.
“Otto, I want Lenka to work on the workbook detailing the progress of the railroad tracks from Bohušovice into the camp. Show her the format you used with the drawing for the sewer system. She should model her illustrations on them.”
“No problem, sir. Yes, right away.
“Let’s get you started here.” Something about Otto reminded me of my father. He had wide dark eyes, a narrow face, and a gentle way of speaking. He pulled out a chair for me and handed me a stack of technical drawings. “These are the engineer’s drawings,” he began. “You will need to do some illustrations that will supplement the book. Your drawings should show men working on the construction of the railroad lines into Terezín and the new buildings that surround it. We will send it to the Germans who have requested detailed information on Terezín’s expansion.”
I nodded that I understood the assignment.
“We have gouache and watercolor pigments on the shelves, as well as brushes and pen and ink. Choose whatever medium you think is best, but please try not to make mistakes.”
“Yes, I know.” I smiled. Seeing how hard Mother was working to get supplies to her students, I was sensitive to the importance of these materials.
He smiled back at me. It was a warm, paternal smile and it made me miss Father.
“Very well, then.” He knotted his hands in front of him. “I’ll let you get to work, Lenka.” He returned to his chair and reached for his pen and pad.
 
Otto’s face was the color of wax. He always looked melancholy when he drew, while the others in the room hardly had any expression at all. I watched him sometimes out of the corner of my eye. He always wet his paper with water before applying his pigment. This made the painting more difficult, because the colors could bleed. The borders could blur. I wondered if he did this for the challenge. He had to work that much quicker to get everything into the drawing.
Occasionally, he would glance over at my work.
“I like the expression on the soldier’s face . . .” he said, and he appeared slightly amused.
I looked at the tiny figure I had drawn next to the men working to lay the tracks, and I noticed that I had given him an almost maniacal expression.
I laughed for a second. “I hadn’t even realized that I did it. Perhaps I need to start over.”
Otto shook his head. “No, keep it. It’s accurate. They tell us they want us to represent everything with complete accuracy, and you have.
“They’re all little shits,” he whispered to me. “I hate this. I loathe working for them.” He pressed his pen to the paper with such pressure that the ink began to pool. The drawing would have to be scrapped.
I looked at the ruined drawing and shuddered. What would Fritta do if he saw that ball of crumpled paper? It wasn’t Fritta who had the temper, but his second-in-command, an artist by the name of Leo Haas. He rarely spoke to any of us. He spoke only to Fritta.
But Otto didn’t throw the paper into the waste bin. Of course not. He waited for it to dry and he then folded it into a little flat square and hid it in his pocket.
 
Otto and I begin to spend more time with each other. Part of me, unrealistically, hopes that he will reveal to me that he is part of the artistic resistance. But he says very little except that he hates being forced to draw for men who want him and his family dead.
We eat our bread slowly together at lunchtime, chewing slowly, pretending that it is something else.
“I’m eating dumplings and pickled cabbage today. Mountains of it,” he tells me. Otto breaks a morsel of his stale bread. I watch him close his eyes as he attempts to use all his powers of imagination to transform a single bite into something far more satisfying.
“I’m eating chocolate cake,” I tell him. The bread is sawdust in my mouth. Yet I still cup one hand underneath my ration as I eat. I will not let a single crumb escape.
When Otto laughs, his eyes fill with tears.
Our fifteen-minute lunch break is nearly over.
“Fritta is a great man. We are lucky, Lenka. We are better off than the others,” he says as if he needs to remind himself or remind me.
“Yes, I know.” I nod. There are two pieces of paper folded against my brassiere. “Otto, I know.”
 
Every day I learn a little more about the technical department and our boss from my new friend Otto. I learn that Fritta was one of the initial arrivals at Terezín in November 1941—the
Aufkommando
. They were a select group of 350 or so highly skilled Jewish engineers, draftsmen, mechanics, and construction workers who volunteered to leave Prague to help enlarge the infrastructure within Terezín to prepare for the influx of Jews who would soon be arriving by transport. These men volunteered to work at Terezín early, with the promise that neither they nor their families would be sent “east.”
I learned that many of my colleagues at the technical department were like Fritta and had helped with the initial plans for the camp. An engineer by the name of Jíří had created drawings for the entire septic system, and another man, Beck, had drafted the original plans that were used to build the ghetto. These men had knowledge of the infrastructure of the camp that even the SS was not aware of, and later that knowledge would prove to be invaluable. If you wanted to hide something so no one would know where to find it, these would be the men to ask.

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