Broken Angels

by Gemma Liviero

  OTHER BOOKS BY GEMMA LIVIERO

  Pastel Orphans

  Lilah

  Marek

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Gemma Liviero

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503934863

  ISBN-10: 1503934861

  Cover design by Patrick Berry

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  1942

  SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  OCTOBER

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NOVEMBER

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DECEMBER

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  1943

  JANUARY–MARCH

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  APRIL

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  MAY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  JUNE–JULY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  AUGUST

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  It was a …

  1948

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Somebody, after all, …

  1996

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The sun still …

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

  —Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

  PROLOGUE

  1996

  Mum rests in the mountain’s sweetly perfumed, red-brown earth, under rows of plaques in battle formation, and beneath a field of fluorescent plastic flowers, painted ceramic vases, and laminated photographs. Seemingly token gestures, yet for some who place them—those of us who can’t let go—they are bread-crumb trails for the dead: an irrational, grief-stricken hope of luring them back.

  Above my mother people murmur their prayers and tributes and leave their imprints in the thick grass. A coffin of mahogany lined with white satin was chosen from a catalogue. Mine will be walnut, placed on top of hers. I jokingly promised that I would follow her into the afterlife this way, though I meant it when I said I wouldn’t sell the house, to remain close by. She had brushed the words aside, frustrated by the fact that I felt I owed her something. Find a partner; settle down; this place too isolated for someone your age. But there is another reason to stay, and she understood this, also. Sometimes solitude offers the kindest company.

  Her name is etched, then raised in gold, not on metal but on stone. I made sure of it. I have long seen the romance of majestic, crafted stone. What is the good of death if we can’t respectfully yet unashamedly announce to the living who we were? If we can’t demand a moment of recognition for life: for reaching an age that many dreamed about? While others died among strangers—cold, hungry, without a name, their ancestry buried or burned with them.

  It was not the intimate service Mum would have wanted. Some had seen the death notice and driven far—those she had touched, not necessarily in a big way, but who had silently taken a piece of her to cope with their own private disquiet, once they had learned her story.

  Our group stands in front of an audience of hundred-year-old rain-forest trees, at the back of the cemetery, with their strange, tumorous growths and their moss-covered roots that are raised into steps for the grandchildren to dance between. Bright-yellow guinea flowers and salmon-pink kurrajong are planted in circular gardens: an attempt to brighten the perspective of death, to mask the scent of grief.

  The priest talks between the whistles and snaps of whipbirds. He is talking about my mother’s strengths, her private battles, her ability to rise up and create a loving environment for her family. I stand there listening, but only partially because I know all this already. I have a sudden memory, distinct and crisp because it was not singular; it was the first of many . . .

  No breeze, the curtains still, with windows wide-open. Half a moon above the ocean in the distance. We could see the water unimpeded when we first arrived, but then came more houses and Pacific-blue glimpses only if we stood on the roof. Damp came in through the window that night, on wings of heat. It was difficult to sleep without squirming. No fans yet. Noises from another part of the house. Lights on. Lights off. Shuffling feet. It was not uncommon. Often I would find her sitting outside on a patch of lawn, smoking a cigarette, watching the shapes in the blackness. This time she was on the floor in the kitchen, knees pulled up. I thought that perhaps she was dead. I was sixteen when the night terrors started for her—a delayed reaction to the sudden death of my stepfather, whom we had buried earlier that day. I knelt to search for her in the dark, following the sound of her whimpers, afraid of what I might see if I switched on the light. I touched her face, which was wet with tears, and her whimpers then turned to sobbing, interspersed with breathless apologies she didn’t need to give. I lay down on the linoleum, my arms tightly around her, until daylight grazed the room.

  It was frightening, this first attack. And then over time, one adjusts to the strangeness of those they love.

  My brother, Zach, flew up for the funeral from Melbourne with his new wife, Leanne. His first wife passed away a decade earlier by her own hand, without the warning signs, without a note. It took my brother years to accept that he wasn’t meant to make sense of it; that sometimes people choose to take their reasons with them. I have only met Leanne a couple of times. She is pleasant enough, louder than we are, laughing lots, but we will not have the years to bond, or possibly the inclination. Though, I have to admit, she is nothing if not efficient: sandwiches and tea on a lace tablecloth ready on our return to the house, cakes and caramel slices, too. I could not have done as well.

  My sisters, Clara and Louisa, came, also, along with several of my nephews and nieces. Clara’s children:
quiet and mouselike, courteous but from a safe distance, remote, as if they belong to someone else. Louisa has had it hard on her own after a complicated, expensive divorce, raising two teenage boys who look as though they would rather be surfing. Skinny brown legs, eyes darting around the cemetery for distraction, their feelings evident: disinterest in a grandmother who, though kindly and loving, was someone foreign, someone they had not grown up with. The boys with their sun-bleached hair, long and stringy, swept annoyingly across their faces like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family, as if they prefer not to see where they’re going. How to tell them to pull back their hair, look forward, don’t take the quiet moments for granted? How to tell any of them, these new generations?

  Each time my mother sank to the bottom of cold despair, she would always find a break in the ice above, to breathe new air, to find new purpose. She never indulged in self-pity, nor did she point the finger of blame for her misfortunes. Her heart was clear of bitterness. I believe that if a person’s strength of character is measured at the end of his or her life, it is by these qualities—qualities that allow a life to be lived, free of those restraints we place upon ourselves.

  But that doesn’t mean we should forget.

  1942

  SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER ONE

  ELSI

  I kneel in a pool of my mother’s blood. I found her crawling the short space from the bed to the kitchen.

  It was her moaning that woke me from a restless sleep. I cannot say that I ever sleep soundly with the springs of my bed squealing pitifully at every turn and the occasional bursts of gunfire in the distance, but I am not the only one who suffers the affliction of disturbance. Blackness circles the eyes of most of the residents here: another badge, as well as the star, that unites us in common.

  It was sometime after midnight and well after lights-out. I felt for the matches on the floor beneath my bed to light the last remaining candle, used for emergencies, fearful of what was about to be revealed within the dim apartment.

  The sight of my mother remains terrifying. Beneath her skirt, blood spills between her legs. She is awake and shivering, eyes squeezed shut.

  “What happened?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “We have to take you to a doctor.”

  “I’ll be fine. Just some water . . . I need to sleep. I need to sleep,” she mutters, her words mashed together, eyes half-lidded now, roaming. I have seen these signs in others who have died, signs I hadn’t seen before this place of a thousand hells. The first thing I’ve noticed in people just before they fall dead in the street is their overwhelming desire to lie down, anywhere. The second thing is that they talk as if intoxicated.

  She pushes my hands away weakly. “Go!” she says.

  And the last thing I have noticed is the desire to be left alone.

  My mother could be dying, an idea that is not so alien now to most in the ghetto. I want to cry, but this is one of those times when Papa would tell me to be strong.

  I help her up. She weighs only slightly more than me. Leah, my sister, is asleep in my bed. She will be inconsolable if she sees Mama like this. I check that she is sleeping heavily—one of the few gifts she is somehow afforded here—and pray she dreams till morning, that she doesn’t wake and search for us.

  Mama walks hunched, one arm across her stomach, one holding on around my neck in a monkey grip. She leaves a trail of blood drops on the stairs, or what’s left of them. At the base of the steps, I grip Mama tighter around the waist, and we enter the frigid darkness. There is always a chance that we will be shot. Sometimes no reasons are given before they fire. Again I think of Leah and pray for her sake that one of us will make it back safely.

  Three weeks ago, thousands of children were deported from the ghetto. After the announcement that children must leave, several parents were shot in their attempts to escape the ghetto with their children so they would not be separated, and in the washroom I overheard a conversation about some parents who had poisoned their own children, and themselves, rather than see their little ones taken. Leah was somehow spared from the deportation list, even though she was within the age-group required to go. Since the deportation, Mama’s nerves have worsened, and Leah has not been allowed to leave the apartment. Mama says that many people—those whose children were taken—will be jealous that my sister was allowed to stay.

  “She is safe,” I whisper to Mama, but I am not sure she understands. But you are dying.

  Mama is so weak I have to drag her along the pavement, across the cobbles, several blocks to the hospital. I avoid the circles of light from the sparse lamps, and we make it all the way without being stopped. I thank God for this small thing and wonder if it is perhaps of his doing. I hope that it is also his plan to save Mama tonight, and not take her away.

  I knock softly at the door and wait for what seems too long. The building is in darkness, and I knock again a little harder, the sound cracking open the stillness of the thick, fetid air in the ghetto. I wonder briefly about the people beyond the gates: if they are somewhere listening to the occasional sounds that pierce the gloom, if they wonder about the poor souls confined within these walls, and whether there is any sympathy out there. Or if they feel relief, from the safety of the trams, when they view the pathetic human remnants now contained.

  A light from inside is switched on, the gleam of which creeps dimly through the space at the bottom of the door. A young man opens the door partway, peering through the gap suspiciously. It is a familiar expression inside these barbed walls.

  “What do you want?”

  “My mother is bleeding badly. She needs to see a doctor.”

  “There is no doctor on duty. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”

  “But she is dying . . . please . . .”

  “There is nothing I can do.” He shuts the door, and I knock again. He opens it wider, but this time I can see the anger that lies just beneath his skin, threatening to burst through.

  “Do you want the guards to hear? I tell you that you don’t want that. Now be gone!”

  He shuts the door again, and the light inside is extinguished immediately.

  Mama is getting heavier as she leans into me.

  “Elsi, take me home,” she whispers. But I ignore this. Tears well in my eyes. She cannot die here, not in the street like a beggar, not after all the sacrifice, the charity she has offered to others. She cannot. I attempt to push off the sudden weight of sadness. What to do? Where to go? I am racked with indecision, facing more empty streets that carry no answers.

  “Lilli,” she whispers.

  Yes . . . Lilli.

  But I am wary of Lilli because she is not like the rest of us. She has friends in the council and German friends who do her special favors. She has extra food coupons as well, and it is something that Mama refuses to speak of. She wants to protect me from the various activities that happen after curfew.

  We slip down another street to begin walking the extra blocks. After a while, I put Mama down where she can lean against a wall, and I sit beside her, leaning my aching shoulders against the cold bricks, grateful for the cool air. I watch a guard cross the entranceway to the street and look our way. But he will be staring straight into darkness, and I stare back, invisible eyes from a moonless night. Once he is past, I stand again and carry Mama across my back along the final stretch of road, hunched and hobbling on unsteady legs.

  Lilli lives in a small house with a front garden on the other side of the ghetto, where the fortunate Jews live: the ghetto administrators and the Jewish council, or Judenrat. There is a field behind her house. The only time I can smell flowers is when we come here. It always reminds me of my childhood: when the days did not have so many worries. Lilli and my mother knew each other years ago before the war, when they were children. Apart from the ghetto, they have little in common, yet they have somehow found friendship again. Mama says that it is fortunate we have her as a friend.

  Lilli is the mistress
of a senior German official, Hermann Manz. Her house has its own toilet, and she had coal to burn through last winter. The residents who live nearby do not talk to her. They see the strange visits by officers at night and are concerned that she is a spy. Mama thinks that Lilli is in danger from her detractors. They could turn on her if Hermann Manz is removed from his ghetto posting. Anonymously scrawled death threats have been slipped under her front door, but she shrugs fear aside. She is casual about most serious matters.

  I worry that Lilli will turn us away.

  “Elsi! Good God! Quickly . . . bring her in.” She lifts Mama from my arms and puts her on the couch. Lilli is small and strong, with sultry, coal-black eyes and milky, smooth skin. She is a woman who has made the most of her looks, both before and during the war.

  “Why is she not in the medical center?”

  “They would not admit her.”

  “Bastards!”

  She examines the blood and where it is coming from, then wraps a coat around Mama. Against the quiet, Lilli’s silk nightgown makes a swishing sound as it brushes against itself, and Mama’s teeth chatter.

  “Hannah, my darling. I will get you help.”

  Mama doesn’t speak, though I see the whites of her knuckles as she squeezes Lilli’s hand. Several tears escape Mama’s closed eyes.

  “Stay here,” Lilli says to me. She leaves the small house without her robe, unaware, if not caring, that her ample flesh is exposed. Twenty minutes have passed when I start to worry that she may be finding a guard to take Mama away; I wonder whether she wants to be rid of us, or whether even she—one of the favored—has been seized by guards for breaking curfew.

  She returns with Herr Manz, who eyes me with disdain. I am to know my place. He does not step far into the house but views my mother from a distance, the lamp beside the couch illuminating her blood-drained complexion.

  “Bring her out to the trolley!”

  Lilli nods to me to help her lift Mama, but I hesitate. I have seen sick people disappear and never return. It is easier for the officials if they don’t.

  “It’s all right. He knows someone who can help her. Hurry!”