The Earth Is Singing

by Vanessa Curtis

  Mama is told that we will not receive any pay for our work.

  I open my mouth to complain at this but she shoves me in the ribs and turns me round before I have a chance to say anything that we might all regret.

  Thank God Omama does not hear the bit about us not receiving pay.

  Our registration is finished. We make our way down Sadovņikova iela and into Ludzas iela.

  We brush past other Jews who are stopping and consulting one another, trying to find their lodgings. I try not to look too closely at the buildings we are passing but I can’t help it. Many of them are only one storey high and their thin walls are made of cheap wooden slats. Several windows are smashed or missing altogether and there are boards nailed up over the gaps. One or two of the houses have no roofs although others have pointed gables and might have been pretty, about a hundred years ago. There are dogs chained to walls and barking in the run-down front gardens of some of the houses. I guess their owners had to leave them behind if they were moving in to smart apartments in town so that Jews could move into these dilapidated houses.

  “I know this area,” says Omama. “When I was a girl, I used to visit my friend here. It is a nice place, no?”

  We ignore her sarcastic tone.

  “Very near the Jewish cemetery, too,” says Omama, waving her arm in front of us. “Most handy.”

  When Omama is in this mood it is best to ignore her. Mama stops, out of breath, and sits for a moment on the side of her barrow. We are outside number 29. It is a fragile building of three storeys. There is an attic window in the roof. The wooden walls are brown and the windows are thick with grey dirt and bordered by sills whose paint has long since rotted away. There are wooden shutters hanging off the ground-floor windows and the roof is missing several slates.

  I stare at this place which is to be our new home and realize that the apartment in Skārņu iela was really not as bad as we had always thought it. This building is in a different league altogether.

  “Well!” says Mama in the bright voice she always assumes when she senses my fear. “We’d better get in and start unpacking.”

  She steps forward and pushes the main door. It swings open with a creak and a small bird flies out into her face and makes her scream.

  We navigate our barrows into a dark hallway. Although it smells of damp and something less pleasant, there are brown panels on the walls which may once have been smart and there are holes where picture hooks were inserted.

  Mama is looking around with a frown.

  “This was a family home,” she says. “It must have been divided into apartments by the Soviets. I hope the previous residents are having better luck than us.”

  “Well,” says Omama, “those penniless Russians will now be put into the apartments we Jews left. Of course they will have better luck than us! For the first time they will have electricity and running water!”

  Mama has abandoned her barrow at the foot of the stairs and is climbing up, hanging onto what is left of the banister. The stairs creak and there is a smell of mould and dust and overflowing rubbish.

  “This must be ours,” she calls from the first floor. “There is nobody else here.”

  I help Omama up two flights and we enter the apartment which is to be our new home.

  There is only really one main room, with a wooden floor with split floorboards and one uncurtained window overlooking the street. Off this room is a tiny kitchen with one sink, a greasy stove and nothing else. There is a small bedroom which opens out of the opposite side of the living room but there is no furniture in it. There is no dining room and no bathroom but Mama finds a toilet in what looks like a cupboard.

  “It is not even the space we have been promised,” says Mama, her face falling. “They said that each Jew would have three to four square metres of living space. I don’t think it is even quite that.”

  Her face looks so anxious that I smile.

  “We are thin,” I say. “We don’t need so much space anyway.”

  Omama laughs. She fiddles about in her pocket and produces something in a silver wrapper.

  “And we have two squares of chocolate,” she says, passing me a piece. “So we will not get much fatter, but we will be happy.”

  I allow the soft, sweet lump of darkness to dissolve on my tongue.

  “Mama!” says my mother. “Where on earth did you get chocolate? We have not been near a proper grocery store for months!”

  My grandmother cackles with pleasure. She opens the silver foil and divides up the rest of her spoils.

  “I used to be on good terms with my Rabbi,” she says. “I saved it for a moment such as this.” My mother is shaking her head in despair but she takes her piece of chocolate and sucks on it with a look of bliss on her face. Then she claps her hands as if getting rid of something and says: “Right, girls. We’d better start cleaning up in here.”

  We clean for the rest of the day and still we do not manage to get the apartment the way that we would like it.

  Mama has brought soap and kerosene in her barrow and it is just as well. No sooner have I started to lay down my pillows and blankets in the corner of the main room than a large mouse scuttles out of a corner and bolts across the floor. Omama has found a nest of cockroaches in the small bedroom where she is going to sleep and when I sit down on the floor to rest my sleep-deprived limbs for a moment I get bitten to death by fleas and have to be rubbed down at the one sink by Mama with her large bar of yellow soap.

  I clean the floor of our living room several times with the mop-head that we brought from our old apartment but it takes me three hours to get the dirt and stains off.

  By the time the evening comes we are beyond exhausted.

  I am sitting on the tiny ledge in front of the window. Mama has fashioned us a curtain out of some of her old material and I am watching Jews arriving in the ghetto while I sniff the nice clean smell of her rose-printed fabric.

  Mama puts together the bread and cheese she has brought from home and although the bread is stale and the cheese speckled with a grey-green mould, we are so hungry that we devour it, sitting in a circle on the floor and using a wooden box as a table. Omama sits on a folded-up shawl to stop her bony bottom hurting on the floorboards. I sit cross-legged. The muscles I used to have in my legs from ballet have wasted away. I prod them and watch the dimples which do not disappear.

  “I should do my exercises,” I say.

  “Never mind your legs,” says Mama. “I must find out where we get our food.” She goes into the tiny kitchen and turns the rusty tap. A stream of grey-looking water comes out. “There will be a place here somewhere.”

  She passes round the glasses of dirty water and we try to drink.

  “Nothing more for me tonight,” says Omama. “I have never ached so much in my life. I would sleep on a nest of cockroaches, even if they had giant teeth.”

  “You do not have to now,” says Mama with a tired smile. She is almost asleep where she sits. I am the same. We have not slept since the last night in Uncle Georgs’s attic before we were disturbed by the ringing of the grey alarm bell.

  Omama goes into her tiny bedroom and curls up on the bed we have made her from blankets, pillows and leftover fabrics.

  Mama and I have made a floor-bed each on opposite sides of the living room. My makeshift bed lies underneath a small painting of St Peter’s Church that Mama brought from home. It once hung on the wall of my bedroom in our beautiful villa and whenever I see that painting I feel at home. The brown triple-layered spire stretches up towards a bright red sunset and the River Daugava splits the city in two with its dark waters and humped bridge that always reminds me of a serpent in a children’s book.

  I do not feel very at home in this room, however.

  It is strange not having a mattress or any furniture.

  Mama says goodnight and goes to sleep straight away.

  I lie in my heap of blankets and listen to the street noise outside. Sometimes there is the sound of people
crying or arguing and the slamming of doors. I can still hear the rumble of wheels from carts and barrows late into the night as more families arrive to seek their new lodgings.

  I lie awake worrying about what will happen to us and wishing I knew what had happened to Papa. All I know is that he was put into a cattle truck and taken away, and I have always tried to picture him with work and food and a roof over his head but it is starting to occur to me that nothing I previously thought is true. After all, I thought Velna was my best friend and that Uldis was my boyfriend and that these two facts would never change.

  “Ha,” I say to myself in the darkness with a small, sarcastic laugh.

  I return to thinking about Papa. He is a good man. That at least will never change. But what if he is also shoved into a ghetto somewhere with not enough food or warm clothes? How would I know? How will I find him again when the war is over, or how will he find me?

  I know one thing for certain, though. I promised Papa that I would look after Mama and Omama and so I have to keep my promise, especially after everything that has just happened.

  I feel sick with guilt. I have not done a very good job of honouring that promise.

  After what feels like hours I stop thinking.

  My last thought is: Maybe it won’t be so bad here. I am still with my family.

  I sleep without dreaming until morning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We wake to a hammering on the door downstairs.

  “Mein Gott!” croaks Omama. “Can’t they let an old woman sleep?”

  That is typical of my grandmother. She is complaining that she is young enough to work and yet now she is saying that she is too old to be woken up in the middle of the night.

  It is dark outside. The rain drips down our dirty grey windowpanes.

  “Report to work!” comes the cry from a Latvian policeman outside. “All Jews must report to work!”

  We struggle into seated positions from our uncomfortable bedding on the floor. Mama stretches her back with a grimace and looks at the wristwatch which she has hidden under her blankets.

  “It is five o’clock,” she says. “No wonder I feel tired.”

  I braid my hair as fast as possible. The plaits hang limp and greasy over my shoulders but there is no time to wash and no warm water to wash in, only the thin grey stream of liquid from the kitchen sink tap. I am still wearing my clothes from yesterday so I just leave them on.

  Mama and I put our coats with the yellow stars on.

  “Wear all your clothes under the coat, Hanna,” she says. “It is very cold outside.”

  The weather in Rīga turns from boiling hot to freezing cold in the space of a few days.

  I slip my jacket on and become Hanna the Jew with the yellow stars again.

  At least I will not stand out from the crowds that are gathering outside.

  There is no time to eat breakfast and in any case we are down to only a small amount of bread.

  We have to say goodbye to Omama. It is the first time the three of us have split up during the daytime since she came to live with us in Skārņu iela in June.

  Her eyes look small and frightened in her wrinkled face but her hands are strong as they push us towards the door.

  “Go,” she says. “Somebody has to earn a wage around here.”

  Mama looks as if she is about to speak and then changes her mind.

  There are things that it is better Omama does not know.

  We scurry over the wet cobbles that line the ghetto streets.

  A steady stream of Jews dressed just like us in thick coats and sweaters with their two yellow stars visible are hurrying towards the main ghetto gate. We link arms and follow them, heads bent against the driving rain, as they pass down Ludzas iela and into Sadovņikova iela, which leads to the main ghetto gate.

  On the other side of the barbed-wire fence, a handful of Latvians are walking back and forth and going to work just as they always did. A few early risers walk their dogs, men hurry along in business suits or in caps and long black winter coats. Night workers are coming home from offices and factories, their walk slow and satisfied at the thought of home, food and sleep.

  These people glance at us through the fence as if we are curiosities and then they lower their eyes and hurry ahead.

  We assemble at the ghetto gate. There are only four Latvian guards on duty to control all these people but they are accompanied by the ever-present snarling dogs.

  “Yellow cards this way,” says one of the guards. He does not look any of us in the eye.

  We shuffle into a column and are marched through the gates and out of the ghetto.

  “Keep in line,” says Mama in my left ear. “Do as they say. It will not be long until we get to our workplace and can warm up.”

  My stomach growls with a sick hunger. I hope they will feed us at this place.

  We are marched down Gogoļa iela and past the jagged remains of the burned-out Great Choral Synagogue. A lump forms in my throat when I see the stones and blackened wood and remember the beautiful rich fabrics and gold furnishings inside.

  Our walk takes us straight down the Brīvības bulvāris, past the Opera and the park and the Brīvības piemineklis, our Freedom Monument where I first saw the line of young Jewish men being marched away.

  These are the places I have loved all my life but now I see them through a blur of tears.

  I am a stranger in my own city.

  We walk for over half an hour in the rain and wind.

  My face feels numb and raw and my nose drips.

  Our destination is Ganu iela on the other side of the old town.

  There is a large square building in the street and we are marched straight inside and into a crowded foyer.

  It is chaos.

  Nobody knows why we are here or what we are supposed to be doing.

  I cling onto Mama’s arm as hard as I can. I feel the now-familiar fear, deep down in the pit of my stomach and moving into my legs.

  There are men working their way amongst the crowds, men from the SS with their stiff uniforms and their shoulders and caps emblazoned with eagles’ wings.

  One of them stops and looks at Mama. Even with her headscarf on and her face thin from lack of proper food, Mama is still beautiful enough to cause people to take a second glance.

  “Very nice,” he says in a voice betraying no emotion. “You wish to work here?”

  Mama nods.

  The SS points at Mama’s arm. She has put on her wristwatch out of habit.

  “Oh, no,” I say. The words just burst out of me. “You can’t touch that.”

  The man laughs, as if I’ve just told a good joke.

  “Gold, yes?” he says. “Take it off.”

  Mama fumbles with the catch. Her hands are trembling. She holds up the little watch to the light and it glints and sparkles. On the back is the inscription from Papa which he had engraved to mark their tenth wedding anniversary. It says “From Niklas to Kristina, with all my love for ever.”

  The SS man reads the inscription and his smile widens even further.

  “Such a romantic message,” he says. “So how about I take care of this for you? You want a job here, yes? You will be kept warm and off the streets.”

  Mama’s eyes grow dim as the man slips her watch into his breast pocket.

  “We will work,” she says. “After all, what else have we left?”

  The SS man has moved along the line, bored of us already.

  Later we find out that this man is famous for taking bribes from Jews and giving them slave labour and no money in return.

  But it means we are indoors all day and might get fed, whereas we see others thrown out onto the streets where they are forced to sweep the gutters and clear the rubble from ruined houses in the rain.

  I guess we should be grateful that Papa gave Mama that watch.

  We are working at the Heereskraftpark. It is an army vehicle park run by the SS but we are in a workshop making uniforms for the Ger
man army, the Wehrmacht. The workshop is at the back of the building and is crammed with Jewish women just like us, all bent over machines for twelve hours a day.

  I have to follow what Mama is doing and I have to learn it fast. Any false move and the guards who patrol the rows of machines inspecting our work will throw me out into the streets.

  I watch as she slides the fabric under the needle of the machine and I copy her and try to remember what she taught me. We are working with tough khaki materials and it is a struggle to penetrate the fabric but I focus all my concentration into what I am doing.

  I have to tie my plaits back on the top of my head because they dangle too close to the needle. My hands become dry from handling the fabrics and my eyes ache from squinting but I daren’t stop.

  We work from six in the morning until midday and then we are allowed to take a break. A piece of bread and a small cup of watery soup are dispensed to each of us. It does not taste good but it stops my stomach from trying to eat itself.

  Mama and I go and stand out in the back courtyard where some of the workers are huddled together in the rain, drinking the hot soup.

  “Eva!” says Mama, going over to a group of women. “Eva Petersohn!”

  The two women embrace. Mama has known Eva since the days when we lived in our villa. Her daughter Zilla is also here. I went to Jewish school with Zilla when I was little.

  “I did not know you were a seamstress,” I say to Zilla. Her face, once round and glowing, has taken on a sallow, sharp edge, but her eyes are dancing as much as they ever did.

  “I am not,” she whispers. “And neither is Mama. But don’t tell anybody.”

  I laugh.

  “Me neither,” I say. “I have sewn an arm to a leg. The poor soldier will not be able to put his uniform on at all!”

  We laugh under our breath and then stop quickly. Even out here, the SS pace up and down and glare at us.

  There is little time to catch up with our acquaintances before a whistle is blown and we hustle back to our workstations.

  In the afternoon we repair uniforms which have come into the workshop full of holes.