The door to the kitchen is mostly closed, and I’m about to knock it open with one of my elbows when I hear Mrs. Kinsky, in the middle of saying something. “. . . transport order. The entire family. They’re to report tomorrow.”
“Transport.” A new word we’re suddenly hearing a lot these days. Because the Germans aren’t satisfied with making up new rules every other day. Now they’re going to make us move around, too. Like lumber on a train. It started last month, around the time Father was arrested. You get a pink summons, and then you have to report to the Exhibition Hall here in town. Next thing you know, you’re off to Poland. Why, I have no idea. Part of me bets it’s got to be better over there than here in lousy Prague, but who knows at this point.
“To Lodz?” Mother asks.
“No, Terezin,” Mrs. Kinsky answers.
“Terezin?”
I peek through the crack in the doorway. They’ve stopped preparing lunch. Mrs. Kinsky wipes her thick hands on a small towel hanging off her shoulder. Even though there’s not much food in the ghetto, Mrs. Kinsky still looks like she eats way more than she should. “It’s here in Czechoslovakia. Not so far from Prague. An old military fortress. Ada told me her cousin, Herman—I guess he’s a cook of some sort—was sent there a few days ago. To help set up.”
“Set up?” Mother asks. “Set up for what?”
“How should I know? Perhaps—” But the mouth attached to this dirty diaper lets out a cry, and a second later the door is all the way open. Conversation over.
* * *
“Mother,” I say about a half hour later, back in the kitchen, where I’m helping to clean up. Which in my case means wiping all the plates clean with my finger.
“Yes?” Mother’s at the sink, washing the plates.
“What are these transports about? Why don’t they want us in Prague?” She doesn’t answer. “Mother?”
“I don’t know, Misha,” she says, scrubbing a bit faster.
“Do you think we’re all going to wind up on a transport at some point?”
No answer.
“And now that they’re sending people somewhere close, instead of Poland, is that better? Or worse?”
Nothing.
“Hey, maybe Father is there already.” I swallow the last piece of carrot from the last plate. “Maybe they needed lawyers to set it up and not just cooks. Maybe that’s why they took all the men he used to work with. Right? To help with the money or something.”
Mother turns off the water. Wipes a spot above her eyes with her forearm.
“And if we do have to go there, we’ll come back here once this is all over, right? When the war is over, I mean. If the Germans lose, that is. Which they better. Which they will, right?”
Mother comes over to me and moves some hair behind my right ear. “Misha,” she finally says, “it’s time for you to go back to your lessons. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
And just like that, she kisses me on the cheek, turns around, and leaves the kitchen to help Mrs. Kinsky, because even though the children are supposed to nap after lunch, at least half of them have other ideas.
December 18, 1941
MARIETTA AND I ARE SITTING on our beds, her drawing and me reading the sports section of a week-old newspaper I found in a garbage can. But I can’t concentrate, because this thing about Terezin is real. Aunt Louise and Uncle Ota left on a transport just a few days ago. And it’s not like we used to see them all that much, but still, it’s weird knowing they’re gone, and to some place I don’t really know anything about. Plus there’s something about them leaving with Father still gone that makes the whole thing worse.
The door to the apartment opens. I’m about to say something to Mother, who I figure is the one opening the door, when I notice a weird expression on Marietta’s face. I turn around, and for some reason Mrs. Kinsky is where Mother should be. She’s even holding Mother’s keys in her hand.
“Hello, children,” Mrs. Kinsky says, standing there in her giant gray dress.
“Hi,” we both say, a little confused.
She’s holding a small box in her other hand. “I thought . . . ,” she starts saying, but then stops.
“Where’s Mother?” Marietta asks.
“She’ll be here soon,” Mrs. Kinsky says. After smiling for no reason I can think of, she sits down at the table and slowly opens the box. “I made . . .” Marietta stops drawing and makes a face, the one she makes when something is confusing or stupid, or both. “Would you like some cookies, children?”
A second later I’m next to the table, looking inside the box. How long has it been since I had a cookie, let alone cookies? They don’t look like anything special. No chocolate, no powdered sugar, but they’re definitely cookies, which is more than enough for me.
“Thanks!” I say, with one already in my mouth, and another waiting in my hand.
Soon Marietta’s standing next to me, examining the box. For some reason she doesn’t take one. Instead she lifts her head up, turns it to Mrs. Kinsky, and asks again, “Where’s Mother?”
“Where’s Mother?” Marietta says for the third time.
“Want one?” I ask Marietta, my mouth full of the second cookie.
“She needed to . . . ,” Mrs. Kinsky says. “There was something . . . something happened at the nursery, and she had to stay behind. Please, have a cookie, Marietta, they’re delicious.”
“They are,” I say, already working on my third.
But Marietta just puts her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, something happened?”
Mrs. Kinsky makes a big smile and says, “Oh, Marietta, you shouldn’t . . .” But then the smile disappears all at once, and her eyes open extra wide, looking sort of glassy. “Excuse me,” she says, and hurries toward the bathroom. Before she even gets there, Marietta is out the front door.
A few minutes and a few cookies later, Mrs. Kinsky comes out of the bathroom. Her face and double chin are covered in splotches.
“Where’s Marietta?” she asks.
“I don’t know.” My stomach does something. Something that hurts a little. “She left.”
Mrs. Kinsky closes her eyes and exhales loudly. “Come, Misha, let’s go.” She takes my hand and, for some reason, kisses the top of my head. She smells like soap.
* * *
I can hear the two of them before we even make it to the nursery’s kitchen. Both of them are definitely crying.
Mother raises her head when I walk in. Her face looks really pale and really red at the same time. My stomach sort of lurches, and for a second I’m mad at Mrs. Kinsky for bringing all those cookies. But then I realize something that makes my skin tighten up, all over my body, until everything hurts, until I can barely stand. I try asking the question, but all I can do is show Mother that I’m trying to ask it, and her eyes tell me she knows.
While Marietta sobs into Mother’s lap, I try to get the words to come out. I think Mother is trying to smile to encourage me to say them. But it’s too hard.
“Is he?” I manage to say a few seconds later. Mother nods, and then I’m not standing anymore.
* * *
I don’t know how much time passes or how I wound up facedown on the tiling near the window, but Mother’s next to me, rubbing my back. We stay like that for a long time, until my legs get tired of kicking the floor, and the part of me that is trying to make the rest of me die finally gives up.
“How?” I ask Mother, not lifting up my face. “How did it happen? How did he . . . ?” I’m crying, but the tears don’t feel like mine. My whole face, my head, my whole body, none of it feels like mine. Mother doesn’t answer, so I go back to kicking the floor.
* * *
I look up a while later. Mother’s sitting on a thin wooden chair in the middle of the room. Her nostrils are open wide, and she keeps pressing her lips together. “The report said uremia.”
“Uremia?” Marietta asks. She’s sitting on the floor, not that far from me, her back against a cabinet, her head
in between her knees. Her face so wet it shines.
“It’s a type of kidney failure,” Mrs. Kinsky says quietly.
“Father had problems with his kidneys?” I ask, trying to sit up.
“No,” Mother says. “No, he didn’t.”
December 19, 1941
MOTHER IS HOLDING MY HAND so tight it hurts, but I don’t say a word. I wonder if she’s doing the same thing to Marietta with her other hand. At least I get a break sometimes, since she lets go of mine every minute or so to wipe the tears off her face. I keep waiting for mine to come again, but other than when I first found out, nothing.
The rest of the tram is empty except for the three of us, a couple of uncles, and an aunt. We’re far from the ghetto. I’d ask how far Olsansky Cemetery is, but I know I should keep quiet.
The tram stops. “Come,” Mother says. We get off. Eight of us. It’s cold, so we stand close together. Cars pass by. So do people. A couple of them notice our stars, but they don’t seem to care. Across the street, in big letters over the big gate, OLSANSKY CEMETERY.
We cross the street and walk through the gate. This place is so much bigger than the cramped Jewish cemetery by the Old-New Synagogue, the one the Jews had to use for centuries a long time ago. That one got so cramped they had to stack the graves on top of each other. This cemetery, I can’t even see the end of it.
I don’t know who started first, but now Mother and Marietta are crying loudly. Marietta buries her face in Mother’s chest. My uncle Arnost comes over to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. For a moment I hate him for being alive instead of Father, but when he pulls me into his side I just let myself fall against him. I close my eyes, and everything spins slowly while he rubs my back and says, “There, there.”
A bit later we’re all walking again.
We walk for what feels like forever, turning off the main paved walkway and onto a thin dirt path. There must be a million people buried here. The graves are all different. Some big, some small. Some are just wide, flat stones, some are statues of angels or Jesus. There are even these little . . . I don’t know what they are, but they look like houses. And bare trees everywhere, getting ready for winter.
If Father were here, he’d tell me all sorts of facts about the place. I’m sure of it.
My face feels heavy. Or maybe just cold. No one talks. Up ahead I see a cart and two men. One of them is Rabbi Landau. A long wooden box sticks out from the back of the cart.
Father.
Uncle Arnost approaches the coffin, and his hand reaches out for the lid.
“Don’t,” one of Father’s cousins says. Uncle Arnost doesn’t say anything, just turns his head to the cousin. “There were instructions . . . not to open.”
Uncle Arnost puts both hands on the edge of the wooden lid and raises it. His eyes close almost immediately, and he drops the lid back down, wood smacking against wood. Then he closes his eyes extra tight and brings his chin to his chest. Afterward, he takes a half dozen steps away from the group, his back to us.
When he turns around a minute later, wiping at the edge of his mouth with a handkerchief, he mumbles to the ground, “No one else can look. No one.”
* * *
We’re just a small circle. Standing around a deep hole. Rabbi Landau holds a small, old book in his hand and mutters in Hebrew. Next to him there’s a shovel sticking out of a big mound of dirt.
We’re Jewish and Father was killed for being Jewish and now we’re putting him in the ground the way you do for a Jewish person. It doesn’t make any sense.
My stomach hurts. Like it did all last night. From the cookies, or just from knowing.
Rabbi Landau gets to the Kaddish and everyone joins in. They do this prayer every week, so we all know it. Father used to say each word so clearly when I stood next to him in the synagogue, which the Nazis closed around the time they took him away.
But it doesn’t matter, because I won’t go back there again. I won’t. Ever.
He told me it’s a prayer for the dead. But all it talks about is God. Something else that makes no sense.
Rabbi Landau, Uncle Arnost, and two of Father’s cousins lower the wood coffin into the ground.
They say Father’s inside, but maybe they’re wrong. Maybe the Nazis told Uncle Arnost to play along, and that’s why he said no one else should look inside. Even if his face looked way too sick for someone who’s just playing along. But who knows, maybe it’s not him. Maybe it’s someone else. Maybe Uncle Arnost just saw some other dead person, someone he actually knew. Or maybe it’s no one. Maybe it’s a bunch of rocks and maybe they didn’t take him from the Pankrac Prison to some other prison, some place in Terezin called the Small Fortress. Maybe they didn’t take him there and kill him. Maybe he’s waiting for us back at our apartment in Holesovice and maybe the Nazis were just pretending and all this, all of the last two years, every last bit of it, maybe it’s all a trick meant to teach me something.
But Mother wouldn’t cry like this just for a trick. She couldn’t. And they wouldn’t cut our clothes for a trick, especially when we don’t have all that much to wear anymore. And Rabbi Landau wouldn’t play along, wouldn’t cut our clothes the way you’re supposed to when you’re a Jew and someone you’re related to dies. And we definitely wouldn’t leave the ghetto and have someone dig a hole in the ground and pay for a coffin when we don’t have any money, all just for some horrible trick that only teaches you that things can always get worse, much worse, even once you’re sure they couldn’t possibly get even a little more worse.
People are taking turns shoveling dirt into the hole. Onto Father in his wooden box.
My turn comes, but I don’t want to. Because that would mean it’s not a trick and he’s not coming back. It would mean that I think we should still do Jewish things, even though they kill us for being Jews. And it would mean that soon we’ll be done putting the dirt in the hole, because after that we’ll have to get back on the tram, step into the last car, and go back to the ghetto, where we’ll sit around and eat bread that cost ten times what it should and try to remember what meat tastes like. And wait for the summons that tells us now it’s our turn for the transport, the transport that will take us someplace better, or someplace worse, or someplace just like here, which would be the worst of all.
I take the shovel and push it back into the pile of dirt. I take it out and push it back in. Over and over, faster and faster. I can’t really see anything at this point, but I can feel my bottom lip moving up and down and something coming fast out of my nose. I throw the shovel extra hard into the dirt and soon, somehow, I’m lying on the pile. Marietta calls my name, but I don’t know what she wants and I don’t care. The dirt is hard and cold, and Father never took me to the castle again. And we never went to Stechoviche or Lovos, and he was the nicest person in the world and was supposed to make everything better and you shouldn’t put dirt on a person like this or do something to them that makes it so no one can look at them in their coffin.
Hands are on my arms and shoulders and hips, so I squirm to get them off me. Marietta calls my name again, only this time she’s much closer. I twist and turn fast so no one can grab me, so I can keep them from putting the rest of this dirt on Father. Sounds come out of my mouth, but they’re not words, so maybe they’ll keep everyone away. This works for a while until two strong arms reach around my waist and yank me back up. They squeeze me so tight I stop making my noises. They squeeze me until I finally give up.
One of the arms lets go and wipes my face with a cold, damp handkerchief that smells like Mother.
“It’s time to go home, Misha,” she says into my ear.
“Home?” I ask, like she’s still trying to play that trick on me.
She pulls her head back and nods a few times, not bothering to wipe her face, which is somehow still making tears. “I know,” she says. “I know.” Then she takes my hand. “Come, it’s time to go.”
So we walk off and leave Father in his flimsy box, the one that is
supposed to protect him from all that hard, cold dirt.
September 23, 1942
KRYSTOF KRAL. IF ANYONE ASKS, that’s my name. I live on Albertov Street. Oh yeah, and my father, Dominik, he works in the theater. He’s an actor. You’ve never heard of him, really? Well, I meet him over here after school. If his rehearsal is running late, he sends me to the movies.
So that’s why I’m going to the movies right now.
And why I’m not wearing a star. Other than the fact that I’m Christian, of course. No, definitely not Jewish. What makes you think I’m Jewish? My name is Krystof. What kind of Jew names his son Krystof? Not Dominik Kral, that’s for sure.
Yeah, he’s really skinny. Just like me. I know, I know, but we’re just naturally skinny.
* * *
I check my chest again. Nope, no threads left. And I’m pretty sure you can’t tell anything was there. I was worried there’d be a mark, from the sun or something. But nothing, luckily. Still, I rub some spit on it, just to be sure. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Krystof Karl. Albertov Street.
When I found those ten crowns in the stairwell this morning, I knew. I knew that if I sold a belt, I could go. So I found a doorway and yanked the stupid thing off. But then I wondered, do I throw it out or stuff it in my pocket? Because if it’s in my pocket, and I get stopped by some Nazi, I can say, Here it is. Some boys ripped it off. That’s why this edge is torn, see? They ripped it off really hard. I’m going home right now to sew it back on, I promise.
But if I put it in my pocket, then it might just fall out. When I don’t want it to. Like when I’m buying my ticket. And then what would happen?
So I tossed it in the garbage. No, not tossed. Buried. I buried it in the garbage, in case someone walked by right after. So they wouldn’t see the star, and then me. And then start asking questions.
Somewhere There Is Still a Sun Page 5