“Cook,” I ask, when Nurse has left the room, “why don’t we have a proper teacher?”
Alice turns her head sharply toward Cook, who does not interrupt her cooking tasks; neither does she seem to want to answer.
“It is because they don’t want to spend the money,” says Alice. “They don’t want to waste it. Until they see whether you are worth keeping, perhaps for the officers.” There is bitterness in her words.
“Alice!” says Cook in a firm voice. She turns to me. “It is because they do not have enough good teachers.”
I look at Alice, who stares at her breakfast.
“I was told I would have a good education here,” I say.
“You just need to wait and not ask questions,” says Cook.
If I am to be the teacher, I might as well do things my way. While the children sleep that night, I write down several stories of my own on blank sheets of paper. Then, using the sticky porridge from my pocket, I glue them onto the pages of Mein Kampf.
In the morning I say to the others in the hut that I have an announcement and a surprise.
I pause.
“I have decided to name the baby.”
“But you can’t do that,” says Luise. “You aren’t allowed.”
“Who says?”
“Frau Haus says,” says Jacek.
“No, she didn’t,” says Adele.
“Yes, she did,” says Jacek sheepishly. He is lying, I can tell.
“Teachers can give names. I am sure,” says Adele.
“What name? I’ll have to approve it,” says Jacek, who likes to think that he is in charge because he is a boy.
“I have decided to name the baby Sarah.”
“That is a fine name,” says Adele. Luise says nothing. She has an angry face most days.
I look to Jacek, who shrugs.
“It is better than Baby. Sarah is my cousin’s name,” I lie. I chose Sarah because I like it.
Luise fiddles with her fingers and looks at Jacek, who is finally nodding his head. “It will do.”
“That’s good. As long as we are all in agreement,” I say before there is any further objection. “Now, here is the next surprise.”
I pull out the book Mein Kampf and hold it up. Jacek’s chin drops to his chest.
Adele is waiting for something more. She is a lot like me. She has a spark in her eye. I think she knows there is more to come.
“It looks like a boring book,” says Jacek. “This is no surprise.”
“Then you don’t know that I have found some new stories inside.”
They crowd around me, even Sarah, to look at my written pages.
“What are they?”
“They are my stories.”
“Can you tell us one now before we do our spelling?” says Adele.
“All right, but it is our little secret. You must never tell that I have written them.”
I read one of the stories. It is about a boy who does not lose hope that he will one day find his missing parents. He travels the world—across mountains, swimming through lakes, riding horses, battling soldiers—trying to find them, and one day he does. I have deliberately made my hero a boy to impress Jacek, since he is the one I must impress the most, and the others look up to him. When I have finished, Jacek has tears in his eyes, and the twins ask for more.
I write more stories that night and the next. The pages of Mein Kampf are filling up with my writings.
One morning we are woken very early, when there is still fog.
“We have a very special visitor,” says Nurse. She has brought us clean uniforms and socks. And we must wash our faces, and the girls must tie back their hair. Nurse has also brought scissors that she uses to trim Jacek’s hair. Adele dresses Sarah, and then holds her hand to follow Nurse. Luise is trembling.
I hope it is not the people who take children away.
We are led along the hall, toward the front of the house. I have not seen this part since I first arrived. In the front room there are couches and chairs, but Nurse says we are not to sit down. Four older girls are already there, sitting on wooden chairs, but we must stand in a line. One of the girls finds this amusing, and another points at my shoes with their laces undone. Frau Haus reminds them to behave like young women. She tells us all that we must not say anything until we are spoken to, and we must stand very straight and still. Alice is nowhere in sight.
On a tray there are plates with pieces of cake with cream. I can smell the vanilla that Cook uses in many of Frau’s desserts. If I were to take two steps forward and stretch out my arm, I would be able to take one of the cakes. The older girls are not interested in the cake. They are too busy giggling and talking among themselves.
Sarah does not want to stand and crouches beside Jacek. When Nurse tells her to stand up, she ignores the command. It is too late for Frau to punish her, because there is a man climbing out of a vehicle parked near the front window. He wears a uniform like Herr Lehmann’s and carries a shiny wooden cane.
“Who is he?” I whisper to Jacek.
“Shh,” says Frau, to all of us.
Jacek shakes his head and puts his finger to his lips to tell me not to ask any more questions.
The cane man walks into the room and greets Frau Haus. His name is Major Sievers. They talk about his travel and the weather and the war, and then the major is led to a couch. He takes off his hat and places it on the seat beside him. He has a large stomach, and I can see that all the cakes will not be enough to fill it. Cook enters with a teapot.
Sarah wants to lie down now, and Nurse is looking at her with evil, narrow eyes. I pick Sarah up and hold her.
Herr suddenly shows an interest in the older girls as he bites into a piece of cake. He is looking them up and down as if he wants to eat them, too.
“What a lovely bunch of girls you are.”
He asks them some questions, and they tell him that they have joined an athletics group and they have all won ribbons. One of them recites something in German, some kind of poem about loyalty that I have not heard before. His eyes keep dropping to her knees, and I see that there are crumbs left on his face. The girls speak very well and sweetly. But I have heard them talk in the backyard. They are not that sweet.
“And these are the younger ones . . . the orphan program,” he says. He does not look us up and down, nor does he smile. With his mouth closed, his jowls sag halfway down his neck. “How is their conversion going? How are the adoptions going?”
I am confused why he has called us the orphan program, and where Frau has been to see these adoptions.
“We are further along than we hoped, Herr Sievers. They will soon be Germanized to such a high standard that our center will be ready to receive their replacements.”
“And they all passed the testing?”
Frau pauses before she answers, and Herr’s eyes, which had wandered back to the girls, dart back to Frau again. “Yes, Herr Major.”
“Very well. I would like to hear some of them speak.”
“Matilda,” says Frau Haus, “I would like you to say a paragraph.”
I repeat several of the paragraphs before the officer gets bored with me.
“That is all,” he says, swatting at the air. “Who is next?”
“Ernest,” says Frau Haus, “I want you to recite the first few lines of Mein Kampf for me.”
Jacek is looking at the floor.
“Jacek!”
He says three random German sentences, but that is all.
“Jacek,” urges Nurse, “a paragraph from the book!”
Jacek begins to tell my story, in German, about the boy who fights soldiers before finding his true home.
“What’s this nonsense?” says the officer.
“Ernest!” says Frau Haus, with her lips together. “Speak a paragraph from Mein Kampf!”
He shuffles his feet nervously back and forth. This is to stop his legs from collapsing.
“I don’t know it, Frau Haus,” he says, his
eyes on the floor.
The major sits forward. “What did you say, boy?”
“I cannot say the words,” says Jacek, louder, as he sneaks a look at me.
“Adele, can you say a paragraph?”
“No, Frau Haus.”
Frau is looking at me. Everyone is looking at me.
“I thought you said these children were being Germanized!” says the major.
“Yes, Herr Sievers, however with the teachers very busy with the older girls . . . we do not have the resources . . .”
“There is a list of people waiting for children. If these are not the ones, then they must be disposed of.”
“Herr Major, we have been waiting for more children . . .”
“I see that this place needs better supervision, and the sooner we can recruit a commander for this place, the better.”
He stands, his large body filling up the center of the room.
Frau assures him that she will rectify the problem and instructs Nurse to take us to the dormitory.
It is my fault. I am the cause of this.
“What is going to happen?” asks Luise.
She has sensed the mood. She has sensed that Frau Haus is close to exploding.
Back in the hut, I pick Sarah up and put her on my lap. “I will teach you German, and we will be all right.”
Jacek is not looking at me.
We hear the squeak of the door at the other side of the crossing, and more than one pair of steps. Nurse is coming, as well as Frau.
They stand in the room and survey us. Nurse holds a leather strap this time.
“Stand up,” says Nurse to Jacek. “Turn around and pull down your trousers.”
Adele and Luise begin to cry.
She whips him once, and the sound cracks the air like thunder. I feel Sarah jump in my arms. I can see that tears are dribbling from Jacek’s eyes, which are closed, his mouth twisted and trembling. Nurse raises the leather again.
“It was my fault!” I shout.
Frau lowers the weapon and takes two steps toward me. I take the book of Mein Kampf and pass it to her to show her my misdeed. She opens the book and views the sheets with my writing inside. She looks at me, and I can see the devil inside her before she slams the book shut again.
“Stand up!”
I do not resist when Nurse grabs me and rips apart the buttons of my dress, which then falls to the floor. Nor do I resist when she tears my underpants down to my knees. I cannot look at the faces of the others. I cannot look at the open mouths of the twins, or listen to the muffled cries of Sarah in her pillow, but I catch a glimpse of Jacek, who has squeezed his eyes shut, who is fighting back more tears. I am spun around and made to face the wall. The whipping makes the sound of a broomstick smacking the dust from the blankets on the washing line, although the sound of the strap is muffled slightly when it hits my hip bone. Then it is more like a thud.
“I doubt anyone will want to adopt you now,” says Frau.
Even with the leather that eats into the backs of my legs, these words give me some hope. Perhaps now they will return me to my family.
We are up to five strikes. I do not know how many times more because I am sending my mind first to the hills behind my house where I can see my brothers waiting, and then next to the stories inside my head.
When the beating is done and the pain is burning through me, I am again sent to the small bolted house at the back of the property, where I curse the night spirits who have come to listen to me wail.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ELSI
It is dangerous, what we are about to do past curfew, but I trust Simon and his friends, Andre and Paulus.
“I want you to know how brave you are, Elsi.”
My heart beats a little faster every time Simon holds my hand.
We sneak along the alleyways until we stop at the end of one and sit still and quiet for several minutes, watching in the direction we have come. At the other end of the alley is a tall lamp, and the rain flickers in its yellow glow. There are no sounds of guards, only a slight pattering of rain on some rubbish near where we crouch.
Andre shines a flashlight onto a grate while Paulus unscrews bolts and removes it from the wall, sliding the metal to one side. Andre and Paulus crawl into the dark hole first, and Simon whispers for me to follow them. Inside the opening, which I presume is a vent of some kind, I can smell damp earth before my hands touch the floor’s cool surface, and there is roughened concrete just above me. In the pitch black, I feel a hand on my back steering me farther into the space. Against the dim light behind me, I can just make out the shape of Simon as he climbs through the gap. He then slides the grate across the opening so that we are concealed from outside.
“Light the lamp,” says Simon.
There is a strike of a match, a hissing, and light erupts around us. The space is only tall enough to allow a child to stand. I survey the new faces around me in the light. There are six others with us. They are on a list to be deported, so Simon and his friends have arranged to hide them. There is a woman with a baby sleeping in her arms, a boy around six, and an elderly man, all from the same family. There are also two ghetto orphans. They have been living inside this small space with stolen food from a truck that stops behind the kitchens. While the drivers make their deliveries, Simon takes some of the fruit and sausages, earmarked for the administrators, and delivers them to the boys.
He does not keep any for himself, or so Andre tells me.
Mama doesn’t trust Simon. One day I invited him into our apartment and asked Mama if he could sleep on the floor. Simon was courteous, but Mama wasn’t warm like she normally is with my friends. She was horrified when he called me Angel. “These terms are too familiar,” said Mama. “He does not know you so well.” She believes that such names are too personal, and that such intimacies should be built up over time between family and close friends. She is very old-fashioned that way, but she doesn’t know that Simon and I are connected now. That we are very close.
It is after curfew, and this means it will be difficult to get home. I know that Mama will be worried sick if I stay out all night at someone else’s place, but that is better than being caught and taken to the camp prison. It is not the first time I have done this—stayed out all night. Last time I went with Simon to Andre’s apartment, which is closer to the group’s secret meetings. When I came home the next day, Mama was so angry. Yuri just looked at me with those eyes that know things. He says things not out loud but in other ways: a touch on the back of my hand or shoulder. I have grown so fond of Yuri.
“We have to be very careful tonight,” says Simon. After the fire in the washrooms, it has become more dangerous in the ghetto. People have been questioned. The Gestapo hates to appear careless. The Judenrat chairman has told his members to be more vigilant, to do more inspections more frequently. He wants to stay on the good side of the Gestapo. Simon hates the chairman as much as he hates the Germans.
These people inside this hole in the wall are designated to be shipped to the camps. From Simon’s contacts outside, we are hearing that terrible things happen in the camps, even worse than in the ghetto. Some people are being executed in the camps to reduce the number of prisoners, and there is even less food there than in the ghetto.
Tomorrow night we are to meet behind the uniform factory with one of these contacts from outside the ghetto. Simon has been passing messages back and forth with him. Someone once told me that Simon never sleeps, and at Andre’s I saw that this is true. He lies down and then gets up, paces, goes to the window, writes some notes. He is always thinking, always planning something.
He has already passed a dozen people through the fence, including a pregnant woman. He is sorry that he didn’t save his sister, who was pregnant, also.
Tonight we stay in an apartment that has a window frame with no glass. We cannot stay in the hole in the wall because there is not enough room for the people to stretch out to sleep. They have a long journey ahead of th
em.
This apartment is infested with fleas, worse than ours, and I itch during the night and stay awake, also. Simon reaches for me in the dark, and I wriggle close to him.
“Thank you,” he says, “for trusting me.”
In the morning when I come home, Mama is so angry she can barely speak. Leah plaits the hair of her doll in the corner. She always looks frightened when anyone is upset.
“Where were you?”
“Safe. With friends.”
“With that boy?”
I nod.
“No more!”
“Mama, I’m sorry I worried you. But there were several of us, and we were talking so long I didn’t realize the time. I thought it was safer for me to stay there.”
“What happens if you are caught out after curfew? What do you think will happen then? What?”
Mama is pacing, looking from me to the view from the window, as if the street and I are somehow connected, as if the answers are there if they are not with me.
“If you do it again—”
“What will you do? Punish me?”
She can’t think of what to say. There is nothing she can do that could be worse than the punishment of being in the ghetto.
“As long as you are out of harm’s way,” says Yuri, bringing balance to the argument. Rada sits reading old letters. She does not want to be part of this conversation. Though occasionally she looks up over her glasses at Mama to check her expression. Leah stands up to put her arms around me, and we stand there in silence for several moments, until Mama finds it too hard to think. Her shoulders drop.
She nods her head. “All right, Elsi, you are an adult now. But perhaps you can let me know next time. At least that.”
“Tonight, Mama, we are playing cards at Andre’s.”
It is partially true. I write down the address and hand it to her to make her feel better.
Leah says, “Do you have to go?”
“Only tonight, because I’ve promised. But then I will be home for many nights.” I pick up her doll and straighten its soiled dress.
“Let’s go and give her a bath today at the washrooms?”
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