The Lost Wife (40 page)

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Authors: Alyson Richman

BOOK: The Lost Wife
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“Does this painting look familiar to you?”
I shake my head. “No, sir.”
“You mean to tell me you don’t know who did this painting?”
Again, I tell him no.
He brings it closer to my face. The piece of paper dangles so close to me I can smell the dampness of the pulpy fiber.
“Look closer,” he demands. “I don’t believe you!”
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t recognize the artist.”
Rahm reaches across the table for another drawing. This one shows the overcrowded interior of a dormitory. I need only a second to see that it is one of Fritta’s compositions.
Again and again Rahm pulls paintings from the table. Every one is unsigned, but anyone attuned to nuances of line and composition would be able to identify their creators. I can immediately tell that one is Fritta’s by the vigorousness of the line, the way he has of rendering the absurdity and hopelessness of ghetto life. In Haas’s drawings, I can sense the anguish in the squiggle of the line, the ghostlike ink washes, and the faces that all but leap off the page like apparitions.
But I say nothing to these German officers who bark at me, ordering me to identify the artists. They pound their fists on the table and ask me if I know the painters’ contacts on the outside. They tell me they have “intercepted these paintings” and will be able to find others.
“If there is an underground movement within the ghetto, we will root it out and squash it,” Rahm barks at me. Again I tell them I know nothing.
For some reason, perhaps because they are conserving their strength for beating my colleagues, they do not strike me. And finally, after what feels like several hours of incessant questioning, I am told I can leave.
As I go to exit the door, I glimpse on a desk the Swiss paper with the drawing of the camp published on the first page. I want to smile, knowing that Strass’s people have been successful in getting one of my colleagues’ drawings to the outside world.
 
Without our colleagues, the technical department seemed devoid of life and full of fear. Those of us who remained did not speak about our interrogations, but I often looked over at the empty chairs where my friends had once worked, and every time I did, I wanted to cry.
Fritta, Haas, and Otto remained imprisoned in the Small Fortress until October. There were rumors that Ferdinand Bloch had been tortured by the Gestapo and then murdered, and that Otto’s hand was permanently maimed so he could no longer paint. I began to feel a noticeable difference in the ghetto. The number of transports leaving for the east began increasing, so now thousands of us would disappear overnight. I witnessed the hanging of someone who had tried to escape. The boy was no more than sixteen, and to this day, I can still see his head being forced into the noose as if it just happened. The look of confusion and fear in his eyes as the German officer screamed obscenities just before the floor fell out from under him. Then there was a terrible incident involving a young boy who had climbed the fence to pick some flowers for his girlfriend. “Flowers?” the SS officer had screamed at him. Seconds later, the officer was seen running the boy over with a tractor, leaving his bloodied body wrapped around a tire as a warning for us all.
In early October, Hans, who is now nearly five, is sent east with his parents. His mother tells me outside the barracks that they will be leaving the following day. She holds Hans’s hand, his wrist as limp as a picked dandelion. I extend my hand to run through his brown hair.
“Do you have any pencils, Lenka?” he asks me. His eyes are so sad. I can close my eyes to this day and imagine Hans’s, as green as leaves in spring. The shadows of his face seem haunted. I reach into my pockets hoping to find a piece of charcoal to give him, but I find nothing and it agonizes me.
“I will get you some before you go,” I promise. Ilona, his mother, tells me that Friedl, his teacher and my mother’s colleague, will be on their transport as well.
I extend my arms and hug them both. I feel the sharpness of their ribs and Hans’s heart pounding through his clothes. I whisper into his ear, “I love you, my sweet boy.”
That night, just before curfew, I find him on the bed in their barracks. I’ve wrapped two pieces of stolen charcoal in a piece of brown paper. I’ve drawn a small butterfly on the top in pen and ink.
For Hans
, I write,
October 5, 1944. With each new journey, may your wings always soar.
CHAPTER 52
 
LENKA
 
With the absence of Friedl, my mother and the head tutors of the children’s home, Rosa Englander and Willy Groag, continue to work with the children in Terezín. But with each passing day, we hold our breath, wondering when we will receive our transport papers. On October 16, 1944, Petr’s wife is notified of her transport and Petr elects to go with her. He does not tell me about his decision; I find out when I see his empty chair. It is only then, after I ask someone where he might be, that I am told that he has volunteered for that morning’s transport.
I feel as though I am beyond emotion. Since my interrogation, I have almost nothing left inside of me. On October 26, we hear that the Gestapo has sent Fritta and Leo Haas on the transport east as well. I find that I am unable to cry. I am like a machine. I exist on almost nothing but air.
In November 1944, my mother is informed of her transport.
That evening, after we hear the news, our family huddles outside the barracks. The air is so cold we see our breath as we speak. Marta holds her hands up to her mouth for warmth. Father’s long, weary arm drapes over Mother, who is now so frail, she looks like she might break under its weight.
“Your mother and I have discussed it, children. I am signing up tomorrow to join her on the transport. The two of you will remain here.”
His words ring eerily in my ears. An echo of those years before, when Father had been insisting that I leave with the Kohns and that the rest of my family remain.
“This time you’re telling me I cannot go?” I say it in such a way that he has to recognize the irony of the situation.
“Lenka,” he says. “Please.”
“We came as a family, we leave as a family.”
“No,” he says. “There is no question about what life is like in Terezín. Your mother and I will rest easier knowing you remain here.”
“But, Papa . . .” Marta now interjects. “We can’t be separated. Boundaries can be changed during the war, and what if we are forced to remain on one side, you on another . . .”
Father shakes his head and Mother just stands there and cries.
That night, I told Marta not to worry. I would go myself to the Council of Elders and put our names on the transport. And that is exactly what I did.
 
My father was furious when he discovered my transgression.
“Lenka!” he yelled. His face looked like a skull. A blue bruise was right below his left eye; clearly someone had hit him since I had last see him. “You and I both know that you are safer here in Terezín than on that transport.”
“The ghetto is changing,” I tell him. “We no longer feel safe here. What difference will another place make?”
He is shaking now in front of me. I want to reach out and touch his bruise. I want to find twenty kilos of flesh and put them back on his bones. I want to feel that I can hug him again.
“We cannot be separated,” I tell him.
“Lenka . . .”
“Papa, if we separate now, what is the point of my having stayed in the first place?”
I am crying now. My eyes like floodgates.
“We cannot break apart now. Not ever, Papa, not ever.”
He nods his head. His eyelids closing like two paper-thin curtains.
“Come here,” he whispers. He opens his arms and takes me to his chest.
And, for a second, I am able to forget the smell, the dirt, the hollow, concave skeleton that is my father. We are two ghosts sewn to each other. I am his daughter. And my father’s heart beats against mine.
 
There were over five thousand people in our transport that November. We were quarantined the night before. We were roused at the crack of dawn. Then we somberly carried our suitcases and rucksacks, now noticeably lighter than the fifty kilos we had brought to Terezín. We no longer had any food to bring, and much of the clothing we had brought had long since disintegrated. As we walked to the waiting cattle car, newspapers flapped on the empty sidewalk. I strained to read the headlines. One of the men in our transport tried to reach down and grab one, but he was met with a rifle in the back of his head by one of the supervising soldiers.
 
Do I need to tell you the next part of my story? Do I need to detail what it was like in the cattle car, where we were each pressed so close to one another, how the pot that served as a latrine overflowed over our feet, or how the car was so dark that I only saw the whites of my parents’ and sister’s eyes? To this day, I can see the fear, the hunger. In one of the last memories I have of my mother, she looks like a starved wolf. Her hair is white and wiry. You could serve soup from the hollow basins of her cheeks or scoop the tears from the valley beneath her eyes.
I remember the sight of my father’s emaciated arm slung around Marta. The three-day trip—the starting and stopping of the train—the pitch-blackness of the car, the stench, the near dead pushed to the far corner with the suitcases. We knew that the place where we were going would be even worse than Terezín. Squeezed next to my sister, I hear her whisper words that I have never been able to forget, no matter how many years go by. “Lenka, where is the Golem now?”

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