“You’ve never spoken of her since then, Papa.”
“I know. I hoped we could leave it all behind. I worked very hard to create a new story for us.”
“Tell me about her.” Sweat is rolling down my back, and I take off the cardigan, stuffing it into the bag between my feet. Babies take turns wailing.
“We were artists, Gerta. We believed in beauty, truth. We wanted to pull heaven down to earth. We had many friends, went to many parties—we were part of a club. A Jewish club.”
He looks me in the eye with an intensity that makes my head throb.
“Jewish?” My eyes don’t know where to focus.
“Yes, my love.”
“But…how could we be? We’re not religious. What are you talking about?”
“Gerta, when you were just a little girl, they passed laws. They put a definition on everyone—who was German, who was not. Who was ‘Aryan,’ and especially who was a Jew. Who was human, who was…well. This was all meaningless, you understand—both of our families had been in Germany for generations. But people will believe anything, about anyone, in the right packaging.” He tilts his head back and fishes for a deep breath of the stagnant air above our heads.
“Your mother sensed before I did that things were going to get bad. We had already been planning to leave Köln and start somewhere else—maybe France, England—change our names, live quietly until Hitler was gone. We thought, This cannot go on. Surely people will realize they are being fed lies. But madness had infected Germany and seeped into the national mind. And before we could leave, she…”
“Oh, Papa.”
“You weren’t even four. After the election, things happened so fast. Your mother was part of a political movement. She wanted to try to slow things down, to try to make people come back to reason, but no one could stay ahead of the rapid changes. So, you see, she was at a meeting at the Jewish club, and there was a raid. She was trying to push her way through the chaos to get back to us.
“I was home with you that night, and you were already tucked into bed. My friend Reinhart was there. We were drinking whiskey. My brother Bernard showed up in a panic, and I left you with Reinhart. When Bernard and I reached your mother, it was too late. I recognized her yellow dress, the freckle on her arm.” Papa’s chin is shaking. In the compressed mass of people, I find his hand and squeeze it. “We buried her quickly, Gerta. We had to. But before we did, I kissed her hand…and slipped off her wedding ring.” He dissolves.
The train lurches and an involuntary cry goes up from the whole carload trying to keep their balance.
Hours pass. Papa has fallen asleep, tear stains crystallized on his face. I drowse from the exhaustion of holding myself up on the jerking train. I dream I am lying in the backseat of a car, my head on Papa’s lap, watching the moon follow us. It glows on Papa’s face. He holds his fist to his mouth and clenches his jaw again, again.
“Gerta!” he whispers sharply, stirring me awake. “Gertalein, I have to finish. I do not know what will happen next.”
“All right, Papa.” I am so thirsty, I can barely swallow.
“I took your mother’s wedding ring to the viola maker. He was in the Resistance. He had a steady hand, and he knew how to forge identification papers, the Ahnenpass. I…sold the ring to him. He made us Richter, Gerta. But our name is Rausch.”
“Rausch.” I speak the name, which tastes unfamiliar in my mouth.
“You and I lived our quiet lives in Köln for a few more years. But we were squeezed from every side. I simply wanted to keep things normal for you. I didn’t have your mother’s foresight or her strategic mind. By then, it was too late to leave Germany.
“The night of the riots, when you were nine, the beautiful old synagogue was burned to the ground. Any shop owned by a Jew was looted and destroyed. Old men were beaten, women were pulled out into the street by their hair, homes were robbed by our own neighbors. The police stood by and did nothing, or laughed, or helped.
“Maria Büchner was my friend through orchestral circles. Musicians look out for each other, you know. I phoned her immediately, and Reinhart risked his life to drive us all the way to Würzburg. Town after town was on fire, all over the country. Maria took us in that very night. When anyone asked, she told them I was just her friend Klemens from conservatory. Anything she decided to do was seen as one of her many charming aspects. So what, if she wanted to take in a gentleman and his daughter—who needed to know more? And we had a few good years, didn’t we, Gerta?” He gives an exhausted smile.
“I love our life,” I say. Then there is a question I never thought to ask. “Papa, do you…love her? The way you loved my mother?”
“It’s a different kind. But yes, Gerta, I do. I would have married her, if it wouldn’t have raised too many questions. And she loves you, too, like her own daughter.”
The train whistle blows. Hardly anyone speaks now. An old woman near the corner begins to moan and mutter. A sweaty toddler lifts up a kitten-like wail for water. The interminable length of train cars carries a miserably bowed drone across the rhythm of the tracks.
“All of this,” I say, “is why I couldn’t go to school?”
“Yes, and why we rarely left the house. I tried to fade into the background in the orchestra. In the end, it became too dangerous for me to go out at all, and I kept only the few students I felt I could trust.”
“Like me.” I manage a smile.
“Like you,” he says. “Though I would not call you an anointed player.” He winks and we laugh. His eyes are like distant stars. “But I was desperate to share my music with you, Gertalein. It has always been the language I speak best. No, more than that. I thought I could hide you in music, like Moses in the basket. I felt the time growing short.”
“Those people we saw being marched out of town…”
“Jews, like us. I knew they would eventually come for us, but I thought—how foolish—I thought maybe because you were a child, they wouldn’t take you, that you could take my viola and your beautiful voice and carry on with your life.”
Papa rubs his face. “A father’s dream,” he whispers. “A father’s dream.”
The train thrusts forward, drawing out the weak screams of the still conscious. There’s a little girl next to me, bobbed mousy brown hair, strawberries on her dress collar. She has a tiny stuffed-animal puppy tucked into that collar, right under her chin. She’s standing over the body of her mother, whom she can’t get to wake up. She is crying so loudly. I’m paralyzed.
The train door slides open for the first time in days, and we are hurried out. It’s a long way down to the ground. The train is so close to the depot building, we can barely stand together. The sign on the yellow wall says BAHNHOF THERESIENSTADT.
An SS guard comes to us and pins a piece of colored paper on our shirts.
“Name.”
“Klemens and Gerta Richter,” says Papa, handing him our papers.
“No Richter here on the list.” The guard looks at us suspiciously. “Is that your real name? Oh, wait, I do see a Klemens and Gerta here, but it’s Rausch. Nice try,” he says with a smirk. “Occupation?”
Papa sighs. “Violist with the Würzburg Orchestra.”
“Ah yes, the Würzburg transport. A real music town, isn’t it? Theresienstadt’s the place for you, then. Lots of uppity artists.”
There are strangers going through our bags. I want to shout at them, but the number of guns hinting in our direction makes me think it’s better to stay quiet. Thankfully, Papa still has his viola in his hand. A man tries to grab it, but Papa resists.
“Pay him if you want to keep your instrument,” says the guard.
“What?”
“Pay the man, Schwein!” he spits. Papa reaches for a few coins in his pocket and hands them to the thief, who looks at him in disgust and walks away.
“From now on, pay in bread,” says the guard pragmatically. “How old is the girl?”
“Sixteen,” Papa lies. I can’t help
shooting him a quick look before I realize what he’s doing. The guard escorts us to the registration table.
“Musicians’ building for him, girls’ building L410 for her,” the guard tells the registrar while lighting a cigarette. As he walks away, he throws the match at Papa, and it singes a hole in his shirt. The registrar gives us our papers and a card with a grid of tear-off numbers. It looks like some kind of game.
“Ration tickets,” she says. “Don’t lose these; you won’t get more until next month.”
The guards are shouting to everyone to report to their quarters. Confusion reigns. Papa takes out a pen and writes his building number on my hand: B4, Hannover.
“Write this down somewhere safe. I’ll find you. Don’t worry, Gertalein. It’s not a big town. Look over there—there’s a lady pushing her baby in a stroller. It can’t be so bad. Maybe you’ll meet some girls your age.”
He’s shuffled away with a huge cohort of men, and I am separated from Papa for the first time in my life.
This town would actually be pretty if it weren’t so chaotic, with soldiers and guns and these massive crowds everywhere. For a minute, the sound becomes so overwhelming that my brain flips a switch and somehow all goes quiet. I look around at the rows of orderly buildings. It looks as though everything here were built in one day, in the same quaint time as the Residenz palace back home, just smaller. Everything is so right. The houses look like they were painted in sorbet—cream, minty green, mustard yellow and pretty salmon pink. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the whole town was decorated for a summer luncheon.
The sun has gone down over the rampart walls, and the guards manning them turn into silhouettes. Just when I’m thinking that maybe this won’t be so bad as long as I can lie down in a bed, I notice how dark the town is. There are street lamps but hardly any lights on in the many, many windows that looked so picturesque just a little while before. But it’s not only the lamps that aren’t lit. It’s hard to describe. There’s just no light here.
I’m bumbling through the street, stunned. I’m surrounded by several girls my age—I’m not sure at which point I was filtered down into this group—led by a Kapo, an old woman in a uniform jacket with a kerchief over her furrowed brow. She ushers us through a heavy arched wooden entryway, through an empty courtyard and up the stairs to a door. It looks like a storage closet, just one bare lightbulb glowing over shelves of suitcases. There’s a stench coming out of the room, like sweat and pee and that vinegary smell of fresh vomit. There are voices in there. It sounds like a lot of people. What are they all doing in a closet?
“Why are you just standing there staring, you little bitches? Find a bed!”
“A bed?” I ask. “Where?” The woman sucks her teeth and marches down the hall, her heels smacking on the tile floor. I look closer—what I took to be closet shelves are just the front layer of a complex construction. The shelves are in fact the ends of wooden bunk beds, three tiers high, seven beds deep. I quickly do the math. There are more than eighty beds in this room the size of Maria’s sitting room at home. Somehow the twelve of us in my group have to find a space in here.
My head is spinning. How long has it been since I’ve eaten? A girl with jet-black braids locks eyes with me and waves me over. “There’s a free bed here,” she says. I sit down on a bottom bunk. The bed above is too low for me to sit up straight. I hunch and open my bag, exhausted and trembling. The box of crackers I had been rationing is missing. So is the little bag of hard candies—almost everything is gone but an old dress and a pair of underwear. I’m hungry and confused and I just want my papa. What is happening? What is this place?
“You’ll want to shake out the linens first,” the girl says. “They were supposed to disinfect in here weeks ago. Don’t worry. The bedbugs are itchy, but you get used to it.” I should care about this, but I’m so overwhelmed, I just clutch my bag to my chest and pass out.
Crack!
“Aufwachen!”
I sit up and smack the top of my head on the bunk above me. It’s all too true: I really am here in this place.
A whistle blows outside our building.
“Schnell, schnell!” shouts the Kapo from yesterday. We’re herded into line to get our first bread ration, but one of the girls from my transport is late coming out. A guard waves her over. With a robotic movement of his arm, he simply shoots her between the eyes, spattering her blood all over our bread. A thick numbness rolls through me.
ONE, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight-and-ONE, two, three, four…
Instantly I begin counting a beat in my head, automating my actions. My brain simply takes over the responsibility of making sure I’m in lockstep, and I become as mechanical as the guard. This is the first murder I’ve ever witnessed, and I understand perfectly that it won’t be my last. Now I see the buildings in a different light. The paint is peeling off their gray concrete walls. The charm and order are an obscenity.
After our paltry breakfast, I’m called with the other newcomers to a table where the old woman gives us work assignments. I’m to work at the clothing shop. She waves another girl over. I recognize her; she’s from my room, actually. She’s tall and very pretty, and I can tell she’s rich.
“Roza! Take her to the shop with you and get her up to speed.”
“Come on,” says Roza impatiently, tossing her honey-colored hair. The clothing shop is just catty-corner to our barracks. It’s airless and hot inside and musty, like dirty laundry. On my mostly empty stomach, the odor makes me instantly nauseous.
“It’s not hard, okay?” she huffs. “You have to sort the clothes in this pile into the right categories and hang them up by size. Think you can get that?”
“Sure,” I say. I have a vested interest in getting things right; the image of the girl being shot keeps flashing through my mind.
On a shelf behind the counter is a basket of yellow stars and spools of thread. Jewelry lines the glass display case—nothing of value, just cheap-looking costume pieces—along with used lipsticks and half-empty bottles of shaving lotion.
A customer comes in looking for underwear and socks. Roza turns on some charm and persuades her to buy a pair of shoes, too. She takes the fellow prisoner’s combined currency of camp money, ration tickets and an additional “tip” for the shoes—two cigarettes wrapped in a bit of newspaper. As I’m sorting, I spot something familiar, but I don’t say anything. It’s a pink blouse with red roses on it. And there’s Maria’s green cardigan. I grab them; they still smell like her gardenia perfume.
“Roza,” I whisper after the customer leaves, “these are my clothes!”
“Of course they are, stupid. These are all our clothes. Right down to the underwear. If you like it that much, you can always buy it back. You’ll just have to go without food for a couple days. Want it now? Or should I put it on layaway for you?” She laughs. Roza’s brand of cruelty is new to me.
The next customer comes in, and Roza shows her my clothes on purpose, going on and on about how perfectly suited they are to this woman’s coloring, and makes the sale.
* * *
—
I haven’t seen Papa in a week, and I’m starting to panic. I step out of the hellish clothing shop, and a girl hands me a flyer for a concert in the café on the town square. It’s starting in ten minutes. The strange thing about this café, I realize, is that there doesn’t seem to be any food or any actual coffee—just weak, bitter tea ladled from a big stockpot. I take a cup and am trying to find a table when someone grabs my arm—
Papa!
We cling to each other until my breath gives out. He looks awful, unshaven and tired. But we sit down, hoping that some music will reset our hearts. It’s a nice concert, in fact. It seems out of place here among the hideousness, but the players are world-class, Papa says. He leans over to me.
“That’s Albert,” he whispers, “the conductor. I played with him in conservatory. I haven’t seen him in fifteen years. Imagine.”
Then
something surprising happens: Roza takes the stage. She plays a few pieces from Schumann’s Kinderszenen. Just the easy ones. Even I can play those, and piano is my third instrument. Her playing is as wooden as that of any average girl who takes her lessons once a week. But after the concert, Roza is swarmed by girls, and more than a few boys. She’s obviously popular here and knows it. Papa goes to talk with his conductor friend and comes back to the table, beaming.
“Albert says I can join the orchestra!” he says. “That means I can get out of the job they gave me.”
“What job were you doing?”
“Never mind that, Liebchen. This is a good turn of fortune. Music to the rescue, right?”
It doesn’t change anything for me; I still have to work in the shop with Roza. But Papa and I share the viola, and before curfew every day he drills me in my études and I improve. I even get to perform a little chamber music. But I wish I could find a way to sing. I feel like if I could work on an aria, I could shed some of this nervous energy building up alongside my gnawing hunger.
The reality of life here becomes clear very fast. It’s filthy, crowded; dead bodies lie stacked in horse-drawn carts in the street; people are shot or beaten for no reason—but inexplicably, there are concerts and plays. I don’t know if it’s a mercy or part of a big, cruel Nazi game.
* * *
—
A Sunday concert is just letting out, and some of the kids are trading pieces on the grand piano. They practically beg Roza to perform, and she sets to it, all talk and no substance. I can’t take it anymore. Roza’s bragging and the way she makes life so unbearable at the clothing shop drive me to do it. I take a deep breath, so deep it feels like my diaphragm hits my knees, and sing the highest note I can at full voice. All the kids turn around, stunned.
From that point on, Roza is more subdued. The girls in our room want to know where I learned to sing like that and what I’m going to do when we get out of this nightmare.
What the Night Sings Page 4