The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

by Robert Hillman

  The slap of leather on flesh rang out more loudly than might have been expected for those who hadn’t witnessed a thrashing before—Trudy and Gran and Aunty Tilly. The three of them jerked in their small chairs. Peter, his arms hanging down limply, convulsed with pain but didn’t cry out. The blows then followed rapidly. The dose was to be ten strokes. Peter writhed at each blow but kept his lip between his teeth. His behind was bright red by the time Pastor raised his hand after the eighth stroke.

  ‘Ten,’ said Pastor. ‘That’s it.’ It was his way to subtract one or two strokes from the dose, pretending that the full complement had been issued. But these reprieves didn’t please everyone; sometimes even the parents protested. On this day, it was Judy Susan who raised an objection.

  ‘Eight,’ she said.

  ‘Ten,’ said Pastor.

  ‘Eight by my count,’ said Leo Bosk.

  Trudy came to her feet quickly. Her face was wet with tears and her lips wobbled in her effort to control them. ‘It was ten!’ she said. She strode to Peter, lifted him to his feet and hoisted his underpants and shorts up to his waist. Then she faced Pastor and Judy Susan.

  ‘I don’t agree with this, Pastor. I have to say I don’t agree. It’s not right to hit the boy. It makes me upset.’

  As she spoke, Peter lifted his face—like his mother’s, wet with tears. He’d been able to stifle the cries of pain, but not the tears.

  Pastor nodded, his white hair a mess after he’d buried a hand in it while the thrashing was in progress.

  ‘Trudy my dear, none of us takes any satisfaction in this,’ he said. ‘Not me, not Tilly, not Judy Susan nor you, and certainly not Peter. But consider Proverbs twenty-nine fifteen. “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.”’ Pastor raised himself from his child’s chair with surprising ease; at seventy-seven he might have been expected to struggle. He stood before Peter, took his face in his hands and tilted it up so that he could look down into the boy’s eyes.

  ‘Are we mates again, Peter? Because I would go much further than this to see you in the arms of Jesus. Much further. Are we mates again?’

  Peter said nothing. Nor would he. Pastor stood between him and Tom. Trudy, in time, would let him go. But Pastor—no. Not ever. In Peter’s gaze burned implacable enmity. And in Pastor’s gaze, as he held Peter’s face in his two hands, also the relish of enmity, most welcomed. If he’d been compelled by circumstances that no longer obtained in this age—of course not—compelled to set a burning brand to the timber stacked around a tethered Peter, he would have done so. He knew it. And accepted the weight of sorrow that would fall on him when he touched the brand to the kindling.

  Chapter 21

  THE ANCIENT locomotive seething at the Toruń platform was supposed to draw twenty battered carriages to Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin. If it could. Hannah and Lette had been waiting hours for the arrival of the train, together with hundreds of Russian soldiers and fifty or more civilians making a belated attempt to escape the Soviet occupation.

  The Poles, some with children, looked daunted. As if they expected the Russians to throw them off the train along the way or shoot them—a well-founded fear. The Russians were boisterous, reckless with their guns, firing at ravens in the trees beyond the station. They were drinking not vodka but slivovitsa, a clear plum brandy of the region. Among the soldiers were a number who looked like dwarves, all wearing the same unit insignia. The language they spoke among themselves was not Russian. Hannah hoped with all her heart to find a carriage free of the dwarf soldiers; they looked savage, and drank more freely than the other Russians.

  They’d dressed themselves for the journey like magazine models, Hannah and Lette. They wanted to look special, inviolable. Dressing in this fancy way would normally have guaranteed trouble, but with the hand-written travel pass from Lieutenant Colonel Zalman, they calculated that they would seem untouchable, maybe the mistresses of big shots, and would be left alone. Unless a document written by Zalman was more likely to cause strife, considering that he was now probably dead, shot for whatever absurd transgression his masters had dreamed up. Would the Russians this far from Moscow know that Zalman was a traitor? Hannah thought, with a shrug, We hope not.

  A skinny boy in the official uniform of the Polish railways announced in a faltering voice that all passengers must now enter the carriages. The boy’s uniform was far too big for him and must recently have belonged to the corpse partly covered by a blanket on the floor of the waiting room.

  Hannah hurried Lette along to a carriage just behind the engine—as far as she could get from the dwarves. She chose the smallest of the five compartments—only seating for four. It was a carriage that must once have been First Class and still retained vestiges of a happier era, the plush blue upholstery not yet as badly torn as might have been expected. Lanterns above the seats; here and there an antimacassar on a head rest; small pull-out brass trays on which a cup and saucer could rest. Hannah might have spread her belongings over the remaining two seats to discourage others from choosing this compartment, but she didn’t, believing herself to be the sort of person who would not behave in such a greedy way. And she told Lette to refrain, too.

  Two soldiers threw open the compartment door with a crash, gazed with aroused curiosity at the two women, heaved their kits up on the baggage rack. As soon as the soldier next to Hannah had seated himself, he attempted to put his hand up her dress. Hannah slapped his hand and threw it back on his lap.

  ‘You speak Russian?’ she said. ‘Good. Can you read? No? Listen to me.’

  She read from the travel document issued by Zalman. When she came to the end of what Zalman had written, she added, with emphasis, something of her own, ‘If any harm comes to the bearer of this pass, I will know and my vengeance will be terrible.’ Melodramatic, but only melodrama would ever get through to uneducated Russians.

  Not these Russians. The soldier snatched the document from Hannah and spat on it. Then handed it back. An animated argument followed between the two soldiers in a dialect completely unfamiliar to Hannah.

  Lette eased herself to the far side of her seat. Hannah cleaned the spittle off the document with her handkerchief. The train was now in motion, but at no more than walking pace. As soon as it had cleared the platform, it stopped. The soldiers dropped their argument and listened. A voice was calling something in Russian, difficult for Hannah to catch. But the two soldiers went into a rant of disgust, full of Russian oaths that Hannah recognised regardless of the dialect.

  The door was wrenched open and a soldier, a junior lieutenant by his insignia, more refined in appearance than his comrades, shouted in clear, educated Russian, ‘Find your kits, brothers! We’re getting off!’ He departed down the corridor, shouting the same command at each compartment. The soldier who’d spat on the travel pass bent down with his kit over his shoulder and kissed Hannah on the mouth with force and a prod of tongue. At the door, he said something in his dialect. Hannah understood the word sweetheart.

  Minutes later, the train started again, empty of soldiers.

  The journey settled into the monotony of the passing countryside, verdant, flat, sunbathed. The catastrophe of the war was not so evident: in the villages a few burnt-out dwellings, a shattered farmhouse in the fields. But outside one village hours to the west of Toruń, bodies lay beside the rails at regular intervals, suggesting that these people—all in civilian clothes, a number of children among them—had been shot at the doors of moving carriages and pushed off the train. Freshly killed—maybe no more than a couple of days earlier. Surely not ethnic Germans? They would have made their dash for Germany nine months ago.

  Hannah gazed down at the bodies without revulsion, but with an unsettling anger. Why the need? The war was over. A train in the east of Europe passes dead people left where they tumbled, and nothing is to be said, nothing is known. It exhausted her, this changing scene, evidence of the retreat of the Nazis in their defeat: sunshine on the fields of
Poland, but then come the bodies, even children. It could go on forever: justice, beauty, murder.

  Lette had in her hand—something. What? Like a small stone that she was turning about in her fingers. And muttering.

  Hannah said, ‘What are you doing?’

  Hannah had seen Lette at other times over the past months fiddling with this whatever-it-was. She’d never asked about it.

  Lette shrugged, but kept it up.

  ‘You, madwoman, I said what are you doing?’

  The train, at its unhurried pace, passed through a small station where a group of ragged women stood holding hand-lettered signs in Polish written on paper, on cardboard. Women like these gathered at every station and on roadsides. Each sign asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of this person or that, this age, that age, send a letter to such-and-such post office. The futility of the quest made Hannah sigh each time. She didn’t sigh this time because she was engaged with Lette’s craziness.

  Lette in her fancy outfit, her felt cloche, her dress of bright yellow jersey, lipstick, small jade earrings, said, ‘None of your business.’

  Hannah reached out and took from Lette’s fingers a white stone. She studied it closely. A vein of blue ran through the stone.

  ‘What is it supposed to be?’

  Lette said, ‘A charm.’

  ‘A charm? What charm?’

  ‘From Kristina.’

  ‘Kristina who?’

  ‘At the farmhouse. One of the Siberians. Kristina.’

  ‘The big one?’

  ‘No. Not big.’

  ‘The one with the flat nose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A charm?’

  Lette took the stone back. ‘It keeps evil away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It keeps evil away. She gave it to me because I fixed her toothache.’

  ‘Fixed her toothache? How?’

  ‘A spell. A Magyar spell.’

  ‘What? Are you a witch? Where did you get a Magyar spell?’

  ‘Our maid in Buda.’

  ‘Lette, we’re Jews. We don’t have spells. We don’t worship stones. Do I have to tell you?’

  ‘So what? Something from the Magyars, something from the Siberians. Who cares? I was in Auschwitz because of being a Jew. I can’t get a little help from the barbarians?’

  Hannah dropped the subject. She knew why her friend was praying to stones. She wanted to find her husband alive, and the kids. By some miracle. By the miracle of the stone.

  Hannah would have nothing to do with it. Michael was dead. Not even his bones remained. Whenever she heard of miracles, a storm of disgust ran through her. Don’t talk to me of miracles. One person gets a miracle, a million don’t.

  They changed trains twice, each time to a contraption more decrepit than the one before. But by fits and starts, they reached the ruins of Berlin. Cleared rubble was stacked high on both sides of the rail lines. The blue sky showed through the broken upper storeys of buildings. The plundered capital of the Third Reich. It gave Hannah no joy at all. Hitler’s egomania went this far: Berlin destroyed? For what?

  A resettlement agency for Jews had been established in Berlin, run by steely young men and women from Palestine, from Jerusalem. It was housed in an elegant building in Charlottenburg provided by the Americans, not so far from the Spree: pillars, colonnades, lawns, elms. The rubble of bombing raids hemmed it in on all sides; everything else in the neighbourhood had been blown sky high. If you looked north towards Charlottenburg Palace, you could make out, even from a distance, the damage to the structure caused by the 500-pounders falling from the RAF Mosquitos as they swept over the city.

  The Jews who came to the agency in tattered coats and threadbare dresses enjoyed a few moments of uplifted spirits when they reached the building. Surely this was a sign that impossible things could happen. Not one bomb had struck the building? Then there was hope.

  The officers of the agency were highly motivated people who, although capable of smiling, rarely did so during working hours. It was their task to find homes for any surviving Jews of Europe who came seeking help. The home that was commended to them was Palestine. Grow oranges, strawberries, tomatoes. Mix the sweat of your brow with the soil of your ancient homeland. Sit in the shade of the trees you raised yourself. There is no shade like the shade of a tree grown in Israel, the Israel that is to be. In the channels between the trees, fresh water runs. Dip your hands into the water. Wash your face and hands in the honoured way.

  But you could turn the suggestion down if you wished. Tea and biscuits would still be offered; a home somewhere else would be found for you—maybe Vienna, if that’s where you once lived. Maybe Berlin. Maybe Budapest.

  The young men and women of the agency had heard stories of suffering from Jews of twenty or more nationalities between June 1945, when the agency was set up, and November of the same year, when Hannah and Lette came looking for help. Whatever their feelings, as they listened to the stories, they kept to themselves. They had known of the camps before they came to Berlin from Palestine, and their purpose. They didn’t yet know the exact number of Jews who had died in the camps and elsewhere, but their estimate was close to the figure that emerged from painstaking investigation a few years later.

  They kept a disciplined space between themselves and atrocity. They’d been trained to think practically, and to say few words when the people who came to them spoke of their daydreams. ‘In Vienna, twenty-five of us, they can’t all be dead, find my sister, find my mother.’ The only conceivable consolation for a past that had been destroyed was a future of safety, forever. And so, Israel. The orange trees; the shade.

  Hannah was given the Charlottenburg address by a young man at Anhalter Bahnhof, plainly dressed in a black coat and trousers, white shirt, and with a healthy glow about him. Quite handsome. He handed her a slip of paper printed front and back and said, ‘Go here.’ Below the address, in four languages—Hungarian, German, French and Hebrew—the words: For your relief.

  Hannah said, ‘You are Jewish.’ A statement.

  The young man said, ‘Of course,’ in Hebrew. They nodded at each other.

  It took four hours to reach Charlottenburg. The city was broken, a mess, and so many checkpoints. Who had papers to show at such a time? A few buses travelled short distances, no tickets required. Otherwise Hannah and Lette walked. The most common expression on the faces of the Germans on the streets was one of sullen endurance. Even children wore that look. Also resentment. Of whom? Their Führer? The occupying forces? Perhaps simply for the misfortunes of life.

  Among the debris modest crosses had been erected. Some had names written on them in pen, in pencil, or etched into the wood; some were bare. The lettering of shop signs amid the rubble conveyed messages of a commercial life that could not now be imagined. Lebensmittel für Sie. Alles ist frisch. Bilderrahmen. Chiropodist nach Vereinbarung. Kunz und Söhne Besteck und Kerzenhalter.

  People could be glimpsed in the debris—faces peering out of pits and hollows, eyes shining with hunger. Hannah saw a child who could have been Michael’s double, and her heart stopped. She called in Hungarian, ‘Who are you?’ The child ducked out of sight. Hannah muttered to herself: ‘What’s happening in your head?’

  At the agency, an efficient young woman who spoke German with an accent took them to a desk, recorded their names and dates of birth, then, in a calm monotone, asked them about their experiences.

  ‘Auschwitz,’ she said. ‘You came in forty-four? From where? By what means? With your family? A husband, a child? Tell me about the selections. Your child was selected? I am sorry to hear that. And his name? And his age? Do you know the names of any women who were selected? Do you know where they came from?’ The young woman wore small earrings, amber in a gold setting. It was an odd effect she created, a touch of allure—but here, asking about Auschwitz? So sober otherwise.

  Lette asked about her husband. It was a difficult question for her to ask. Lette had willed her husband to be ali
ve for months and months. The calm young woman consulted a bound folder of many pages. She said, ‘Mrs Rosen, we have nothing. I am sorry.’

  To Budapest, then, if it was possible, and it was. Not so many soldiers making the Budapest journey, and only six carriages. The engine was even more ancient than those on the Polish line. It was as if the Russians had developed an affection for an earlier era of steam locomotion. Until you saw the Soviet big shots boarding at Leipzig, pickled beyond affection for anything at all. They called coarsely to Hannah and Lette and waved a bottle of brandy.

  No more bodies, thank God.

  The countryside had returned to its priorities. In Bohemia, winter was gathering, the broadleaves almost bare. Beyond the grassy verge of the rail line, red deer in groups of four grazed close to safety on the fringe of the forest. Was it madness to imagine what Hannah imagined? In summer, a trip by train to the forest outside Budapest, a picnic, red wine, the sun striving through the foliage? Only without Michael. Only without Leon. Could that be imagined? Oh, for a moment, for two moments. Then, no.

  Chapter 22

  FEBRUARY EACH year, Tom sent the lambs to the Garland & Garland slaughterhouse, past the cemetery in a small homely town left over from the gold rush. He held them back this year to concentrate on picking the apples, the nectarines, the pears, all ripening freakishly at the one time. Orchards up and down the valley were producing no more than an average crop but at Tom’s place the trees had gone berserk.

  Theories were offered. Tom’s drainage and irrigation system, so carefully attended, had saved the roots from damage in the flood. That was science. Witchcraft was also suggested. Hannah the Jew had fashioned a spell from Hungary, or maybe from a book of charms that Jews were known to keep under lock and key in their, what-do-you-call-it, synagogue. This according to Pearly Gates, president of the Hometown branch of the RSL.

  Pearly’s strain of anti-Semitism took in only primitive Jews (he’d seen one) who wore peculiar clobber with fancy hats, and not, for example, Sir John Monash, the finest soldier of the First World War and an educated man after whom a university had recently been named. A Jew like Hannah (such was her cunning) could keep a bookshop and still be primitive.