No one says anything else, we just go back to chewing our delicious food, at the edge of a sidewalk that got cleaned so thoroughly on Wednesday that we’ve been forbidden to walk on it ever since.
* * *
Today’s Brundibar performance, which is at least our twentieth by now, is better than usual. Maybe because they have us perform in the Sokol Building, which I guess is now supposed to be called the Community Center, in a huge room that actually has a balcony.
I can’t tell if or when the Red Cross visitors come. All I know is that we sing extra loud today, especially at the end. Like maybe they’ll somehow get the message then and make the Nazis shut down Terezin and send us all back home. Of course, after we finish and the applause ends, nothing else happens. It’s just like any other performance. Still, I’m a little excited. Because as soon as Freudenfeld, the director, says it’s okay, I take off for the bashta, hoping to catch the end of the game between Franta’s team and the electricians.
I race through the camp, past the new playground, past the packed pavilion, where the orchestra is warming up, past the neat rows of blue and pink and orange flowers, past wide stretches of actual green grass. The buildings are almost sparkling, they’re so clean. I get to the edge of the bashta and quickly run up the stairs. Only when I get to the top do I realize that someone’s built a railing along them.
There’s maybe twenty, twenty-five people up here, none of them much older than me. Darn, I missed the game. I notice Pedro and Zdenek Taussig from Room 1 and run over to them.
“Is it over?” I ask.
“Wow,” Zdenek says. “What a match.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“Teachers won, three to two,” Pedro says. “Franta was amazing. You should have seen it. A couple of times he jumped straight out to the side. I swear, he was completely parallel to the ground! And still he was able to catch the ball, or at least punch it away. He’s not scared of anything. I bet he’ll play pro someday.”
A few minutes later we’ve got our own match going. Everyone seems to be in a pretty good mood, even Zdenek and the rest of the kids from Room 1. We play for around an hour and only stop because Apel is coming up.
“If it was like this all the time,” Pudlina says, kicking the ball ahead as we head back to L417, “I wouldn’t mind staying here. I wouldn’t.”
“But what if staying here still means transports sometimes?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hanus says, kicking the ball away from Pudlina, “because the Americans are already in France. We’ll be back in Prague in no time.”
“Speak for yourself,” Erich says. “I’m going back to Brno. Prague is stupid. I mean, how can a city that big have such lousy teams?”
“What are you talking about?” I say, but no one seems to care, since the rest of the guys are all fighting over the ball about ten feet from me. I decide to get in there myself, so I hurry over and kick the ball extra hard just as it squirts out toward me. It flies into the air, bounces off a tree, and sails over a brick wall.
“Way to go, Misha,” Pudlina says. “Now go get it.”
“Isn’t that the Vrchlabi Barracks?” Kikina asks.
“I think so,” Hanus says. Kikina shakes his head and shivers a bit.
“What?” I ask. “What does that mean?”
“C’mon, go get it,” Pudlina says. “Apel starts soon.”
I want to say no, but I guess it was my fault. And this is the best ball we’ve had in months. “Okay,” I say, “but someone’s going to need to help me over the wall.”
A minute later Felix and Erich are holding the bottom of my shoes and complaining that I weigh a ton. “Just a bit higher,” I tell them. Finally I reach the top of the wall and pull myself up. It actually feels good in my arms to pull like this. Maybe the tongue gave me extra strength or something.
I drop down as a bad, sour smell hits me. Then I look up. I’m inside a courtyard I’ve never been in before. Lying everywhere on stained sheets, or just on the dry, dirty ground, are sick people, most of them very old, all of them incredibly thin. I don’t know if it’s some weird light or something, but they all look kind of yellow, except for the red spots and rashes all over their bodies. The ball is just sitting there, resting between two of them, but they don’t even seem to notice.
For a few seconds I think about telling everyone I couldn’t find it. But instead I walk over. The smell, which is pee and something much worse than pee, grows stronger with each step. I hold my breath and pick up the ball. Even though I’m trying to look away, I accidentally make eye contact with an old man. His eyes are both silver or gray, and I sort of get the feeling he doesn’t actually see me. His teeth are so yellow they’re nearly brown.
“Bruno?” he says.
I stand there for a few seconds, trying to figure out what happened to his eyes.
“Bruno? Is that you?”
But I don’t answer him, just kick the ball back over. Then I grab a rickety wooden chair resting on its side in the middle of nowhere, bring it up to the wall, and hurry to the other side.
“Hey,” I say a minute later, “do you think the Red Cross is still here?”
“Nah,” Kikina says, “my older brother told me they already left. Why?”
But I don’t say anything, and no one seems to notice that I’m walking so slowly that I fall way behind the rest of the group. As L417 comes into view I hear the orchestra start up again, playing something familiar. I guess I must have heard it once or twice on our radio back home, when we’d sit in the living room after dinner, my parents drinking tea and me asking for just one more cookie.
September 24, 1944
THE MOMENT I HEAR THE rumor, I tell Tommy we need to go, now. Sure it was just two random women on the street, but I’m not taking any chances.
“But what about the last delivery?” he asks.
“It can wait,” I tell him.
We quickly push the wagon back to the bakery, almost running over a few people in the process. Then we just leave the thing there, not caring that it’s a third full of rolls for the Hannover Barracks, one of the men’s barracks. Because if those women are right, then that’s a pointless delivery to begin with.
Tommy and I sprint—and I mean sprint—across the ghetto. And I can see on the faces of at least half the people we pass that the rumor is spreading fast. It’s been over five months since the last big one, which somehow only makes it worse.
* * *
I stumble into our room. Franta’s at one of the tables, and about half the guys have already arrived, every one of them no more than ten feet from him.
“Is it true?” I say, completely out of breath.
No one answers right away, but I can tell it is. Because most of the kids are crying, and no one’s really doing anything else. No games are being played, no books are being read. No one’s even talking. They’re all just frozen, especially their faces. Except Kikina, who’s steadily punching the table with the side of his fist.
And then there’s Franta, who sort of looks like he’s having a conversation with himself. His eyes are darting around, his forehead wrinkling and unwrinkling and wrinkling up again. His chest expands as he takes a deep breath. Then he holds it for a few seconds, closes his eyes and exhales.
“Is it?” I ask again, squeezing in between Felix and Leo at the table.
Hanus nods.
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” Shpulka says, “starting tomorrow.”
“It may take a bit,” Franta finally speaks. “Five thousand people can’t go out in just one day.”
“Five thousand?”
“All men, sixteen to fifty-five,” Hanus says. “All of them.”
“Supposedly they’re going to start a new labor camp somewhere,” Shpulka says.
So that explains why the room isn’t more full. Because pretty much all the fathers must be going. Pavel’s, Erich’s, Koko’s, and a bunch of others—all are going. Then they’ll be
like me. Well, sort of anyway.
“Don’t go.” The words come out of my mouth before I realize I’m saying them. “You can’t.” Somehow this starts Kikina crying.
“I have no choice,” Franta says. “I’m not a protected person, I—”
“What about Gonda?” I say. “Your boss’s boss. He’ll get you off the list. For sure he will. I mean, c’mon, you’re the best madrich here.”
Franta smiles. “Well, if Gonda weren’t going himself, perhaps I could.”
Usually when I cry, which isn’t that much, I feel it coming. Which lets me fight it. Mostly I win. Even when I don’t, at least I have time to prepare, to go off somewhere so I can do it alone. Only now it just happens all at once. Franta gets blurry, and I feel like I need to blow my nose. But I don’t care. When everyone’s crying, what does it matter?
The door opens, and Pavel comes in, biting his bottom lip.
“How are they doing?” Franta asks him. Pavel just shrugs his shoulders.
“Wait,” I say, “what about our room? Who’s going to live with us now?” All the heads not already facing Franta turn to him.
“They’re evacuating L417—”
“What?”
“Why?”
“They can’t just—”
“Most of you,” Franta continues, sounding like he’s telling us nothing more than the time of the afternoon Apel, “will live with your mothers. There is talk of setting up another children’s barracks.”
“But what about the Program?” Erich asks.
“Those remaining will do their best to continue it,” Franta says.
“No!” Kikina says. “It’s not fair. It’s not.” Suddenly he stands up, grabs the ladder leading up to one of the bunks, and starts shaking it. When that doesn’t do anything, he starts kicking it. I watch for a couple of seconds, but eventually turn away around the time the wood cracks.
“Kikina,” Franta says firmly, “enough.” A couple of kicks later Kikina stops and collapses onto one of the beds. Franta stands up and walks over to his own bed. He pulls a small suitcase out from under the bunk, places it on his bed, and begins packing. From the sound of it, I can tell that everyone who wasn’t crying before is now. For a moment, Franta pauses, the muscles in his jaws sticking out. After a few seconds of doing nothing, he slams his suitcase shut and comes back to the table. But he doesn’t sit down.
“Shpulka,” he says.
“Huh?”
“What are the rules here?” Shpulka doesn’t respond. “In our room, Shpulka, what are the rules?”
Shpulka sniffles and wipes his nose with his sleeve. “Make your bed, every morning.”
“What else?”
“Check for bedbugs.”
Franta nods.
“And . . . and keep the bathrooms clean. Someone has to do that.”
“Good,” Franta says, “what else? Someone other than Shpulka.”
“And yourself,” I say. “You have to keep yourself clean.”
“Is that all?” Franta asks, almost smiling. “Are the Nesharim merely hygiene experts?” We look around at one another the way we do when some ex-professor asks us a tough question about history, or science. “Nothing? That’s it?”
“Be nice,” Felix says. “To everyone.”
“And share,” Pedro says, “even when it’s hard.”
“Be on time,” Kikina says straight into the mattress, without even lifting his head up. A few of us laugh.
“Work together,” Kapr says.
“No names,” Felix says, “no calling people names.”
Franta’s nodding. “You see,” he says, “you don’t need me, you already know—”
“And stick together,” I say. “But this isn’t sticking together.” I feel something coming up my throat, but I keep talking. “You’re not sticking together, Franta. You’re not.”
“Yeah,” a few of the boys say.
Franta squeezes in between Shpulka and Felix and sits back down. Felix starts crying really hard, and Franta hugs him. Felix lets out a loud moan, and I realize I wish I were sitting where he is. Eventually Felix pulls away, crosses his arms on the table, and buries his head there, facedown. Franta places his hand on Felix’s back.
“You know,” Franta says, “I used to have a cousin. Sasha. Nine years older than me. He lived in Prague. I’m from Brno, so I didn’t see him so often, but whenever I did, I always thought, Wow, Sasha is so old. One of my first memories is from the weekend of his bar mitzvah. Thirteen might as well have been twenty-five as far as I was concerned. And when we would play soccer together, I felt like I was playing with a member of the national team. And at my bar mitzvah, he made a speech, as the oldest cousin. Just like any other adult. Big cousin Sasha. But do you know something? The last time I saw him, in 1939, I thought, for the very first time, He’s only nine years older than me. Only. Because I was a man too. The years between us didn’t matter so much anymore.”
Franta stands up and walks around the table. “Soon you’ll be men too. All of you. Soon we’ll be peers. A few years from now, you’ll be walking down the street, on the way to work, perhaps with a tie around your neck. You will, don’t laugh, it happens even to the best of us. And you’ll see your old friend, Franta. And we’ll stop and have a beer, we will.” Franta pats me on the shoulder. I wish he’d keep his hand there forever. “It’s what men do sometimes.”
“Beer is disgusting,” Kikina says.
“They call this one of the boys’ rooms,” Franta says. “But you’re not boys. Not anymore. Not after the last few years. The Nazis stole that from you too. They stole the last years of your childhood from you. You’re men already, and you know this. You are men, and as men you will carry on without me. I was only one member of the Nesharim, and the Nesharim are much bigger than one person. All you need to do is support one another and remember how we do things here. That is all. You’ll carry on without me, do you understand? And that”—Franta’s eyes grow wide and he takes an extra-deep breath—“that includes pillow fights. Even if you are men.”
Franta walks over to a ladder, climbs up, and sits down on the top bunk. “Look at you. The Nesharim,” he says, clearing his throat. No one says anything for a while, until Franta speaks again, his eyes red. “I love all of you. Like brothers. Every last one of you. Promise me you’ll remember that. Promise.”
The room is silent. A few of us are still crying, but only a few.
“Franta,” Felix finally says. “Is your cousin . . . Sasha . . . is he here? At Terezin?”
Franta doesn’t respond, just bites on the inside of his cheek or something and blinks his eyes a few times. “Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim,” he whispers. In fact, he whispers it so quietly I’m not sure that’s what he said until he whispers it again, no louder than the first time. “Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim.”
“Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim.” A few of the others join in this time.
“Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim.” I say it as well, though it’s still barely audible.
“Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim.” Everyone’s saying it now, but it’s still just a whisper. Which somehow, I don’t know how, makes it feel more powerful than ever before. Even more powerful than the day we screamed it with everything we had after winning the soccer championship. I close my eyes and hear each person saying it separately and together, our voices mixing and not mixing in the air all at the same time.
“Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim,”
Kikina, Pudlina, Pavel, Brena, Kapr.
“Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim!”
Shpulka, Felix, Pedro, Erich, Extraburt, Kali.
“Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesharim!”
Grizzly, Pajik, Gustav, Krsya, Franta, and me. Every one of us crying out.
“Rim, rim, rim, tempo Nesh—”
A loud crack interrupts us. The door slamming against the wall. I open my eyes. It’s Erich, his cheeks splotchy and red, his eyes half shut in anger.
“It’s not fair!”
he screams. “It’s just not fair!”
* * *
At some point Franta has to leave to speak with someone. The room is much too sad without him, so I walk over to the Dresden Barracks to see Mother and Marietta. Terezin seems both deserted and buzzing. There are people walking quickly in every direction, but no one is talking, no one is even looking at anyone else.
“Hey, uh,” I ask some woman who I’ve met a couple of times but can never remember her name, “have you seen my mother?”
“Upstairs,” she says and points. “I saw her follow your sister there. To the attic.”
“The attic?” I say. “Why would anyone go to the attic?”
But all she tells me is how to get there.
I’m barely at the last stair when I hear someone talking very, very loudly.
“You will not! Put that back now!”
Is that Mother?
“Leave me alone!”
That’s definitely Marietta.
I freeze where I am, not because I’m trying to hide, more because of their voices. I’ve never heard them so furious.
“I will not allow it!” Mother shouts. “Do you hear me? Absolutely not!”
“Try and stop me!”
And then no one says anything. Instead, people breathing hard and groaning and then a few loud thuds. I take a couple of steps forward and turn into the main part of the attic. Mother and Marietta are both on the floor. Mother has her hands on a suitcase that Marietta is reaching for. All around them, and taking up most of the attic, are piles and piles of suitcases. There must be a few hundred at least, in neat stacks nearly reaching the ceiling.
“Give that to me!” Marietta shouts. “It’s mine! Give it!”
“What’s going on?” I ask. They both look at me like I’ve caught them doing something they shouldn’t be doing. I almost feel like I’m the mother or something. “Why are you fighting?”
Mother fixes her hair, stands up, and straightens her dress. Marietta lunges for the suitcase, but Mother has moved it out of her reach. “It’s nothing, Misha,” Mother says. “Go downstairs, I’ll be there soon. You can tell me about your day.”
“Why does Marietta want the suitcase? Where’s she going? I thought the transport was for men.”
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