A Sparrow in Terezin

by Kristy Cambron

  “Oh, Father.” Kája shook her head and raised a finger to her lips. “Shh. I cannot tell you. That would ruin their secret. I have to paint the story first.”

  He nodded quietly, as was his way. He patted her shoulder and smiled, almost as if proud of something.

  “Soon you will grow up, little Kája. But not yet.” He stood and clutched her hand. “That, too, shall happen in his timing.”

  July 6, 1942

  Prague

  The sky bled ink over the horizon as night folded in.

  Its depth was unyielding, and the darkness frightened her like it had when she’d stared up at the clock as a child. The nature of the greeting made Prague seem foreign somehow, as if night hung over the old city with more than just the setting of the sun. And the warm memories of trips to the clock made her wish her childhood stories were true. How she longed for the sight of little sparrows flying about with their sprinkling of blessings.

  It all seemed so fanciful, and so foolish now.

  Kája sat high up in a passenger seat of the large merchant truck, nervous as the driver lumbered along behind the vehicle Mrs. Sørensen led in the Red Cross convoy. They’d been charged with transporting truckloads of ration boxes containing tea, tobacco, barley and biscuits, small servings of fish and canned meat, processed cheese, and rudimentary medical supplies such as Band-Aids and peroxide.

  The driver had assured they’d have a safe ride north to the Charles Bridge. From there, they’d move through the Nazi checkpoint to the heart of the city. She watched as the spattering of rain peppered the truck window, blurring images as the city flew by.

  It had been only three years since she’d left but an awakening stirred within her: only a shadow of her beautiful Prague now remained.

  The old buildings were still there, the architecture immaculate and laden with the memory of lost time. But shop windows were boarded and some painted black, their glass broken and the doors bolted tight. Homes appeared dark, some possessing the look of having been abandoned and others so ill-kept they might fall down altogether.

  The truck slowed and her attention was drawn away.

  Her heart nearly stopped when their convoy slowed to meet a swarm of German soldiers lining the street. They watched as the trucks motored by.

  “Nebojte se,” the driver whispered, telling her not to worry with a tone that was even and controlled.

  He was an older gentleman from Prague who’d been working with the Red Cross for more than a year. Kája had to admit to herself that it brought a small measure of comfort to have a fellow countryman accompanying her into the city. But with her being half Jewish and not knowing his loyalties beyond that of a Red Cross uniform, she opted to converse in as few words as possible.

  “They’ll not stop us,” he reiterated. “They know we’re Red Cross.”

  He kept a keen eye trained on the large crowd of soldiers with his peripheral vision, but kept his chin inclined to the front windshield.

  She swallowed hard.

  “Where do we meet the German authorities to arrange for these provisions to be distributed to POWs and civilians in the city?”

  “That’s ahead in the city center, up by the river. The high-ranking Reich have taken over those homes. We should expect high security. You’ll have to go through them if we want to distribute these rations.”

  Kája closed her eyes tight, knowing that her family home would be amongst them.

  “Will they stop us?”

  “Perhaps. There are no prisoners of war for the Red Cross to help. Not in Prague at least,” the man stated matter-of-factly. “Unless you refer to the Russians. But the Germans will not allow any provisions to be given to them. Russia has not signed the agreement.”

  She knew what he referred to. “The Geneva Convention?”

  “Yes.” He looked her in the eye for the briefest of seconds, then observed, “Received a lot of schooling, have you?”

  “Some.” She turned and looked out at the brick buildings flashing by the window. She was lost for a moment, looking into the blackness of alleys and ghostly buildings lining the streets.

  “It has a different look, yes? Prague?”

  “Jen troche.”

  “Just a little” was hardly the phrase for it. The city was darker than she’d ever imagined. “And what about the Jews of the city? Can we distribute the rations to them?”

  He looked at her with a rather curious bent to his features and said, “There are few left. Nearly all have been transported.”

  Kája’s heart sank.

  “Transported?” She tried to seem innocent with her interest.

  “Yes. You have not heard of Heydrich’s assassination but a month past?”

  Kája had read about the bombing that had mortally wounded the high-ranking Nazi official.

  “Yes. I’m aware of what happened to him.”

  “The Germans wasted no time in their repartitions of the Jews after it. Heydrich died 4 June and they had a funeral but three days after. Filled up all the streets. It was a grand affair, with a processional the likes few have ever seen. And though most of the Jews had already been transported a year back, they rounded up most of the last of them weeks ago.”

  “Rounded them up? But couldn’t the Jewish Council do something to prevent it?”

  “Excuse me, miss, but have you been living under a rock? You don’t sound as if you know much about this war to be in it as you are.” He shook his head. “The Jewish Council hasn’t a voice. Thousands were arrested. And word is the Nazis cleared Lidice as reprisal.”

  “What do you mean, cleared?”

  “Flattened. Gone. Ležáky too. Burned and bulldozed to the ground for hiding the assassins. Whomever wasn’t killed was deported with the rest. No way to tell if it’s true though, not here.”

  God . . . please let my parents be safe . . . Let me find them.

  The truck lumbered about, jostling them so Kája felt the aggressive bumps along the ruts in every street. She held on to the doorframe for support.

  “Where were the deportations?”

  “Trade Fair Grounds.” He waved his hand toward the outside of the truck. “Other side of the city. Near Stromovka Park.”

  Kája gripped the side of the truck until her knuckles burned.

  What if I’ve come all this way—all this way, Lord—and they’re no longer here?

  Their convoy of trucks continued the trek through the city until they reached a checkpoint of German soldiers positioned on both sides of the road. All of the vehicles were stopped and from behind, she could tell their contents were being searched.

  With shaking hands, Kája grabbed Liam’s cross necklace from under her collar and kissed it. She needed the reminder that she was never alone, even in the menacing blackness of the war-torn city she’d once so affectionately loved.

  She took a deep breath as the Nazi soldiers approached their vehicle.

  The house smelled just as Kája remembered it, like nutmeg and sage from her mother’s cooking, mixed with the citrus scent of lemon oil from the furniture polish. It was a welcome aroma, greeting her in a warm contrast to the rest of the city. But in looking around, Kája doubted the scents were real. It was far more likely that they were figments of her childhood imagination, forcing their way to the surface.

  She looked around, pained to find that like the rest of the world, war had changed everything in the home of her youth. The front door had been locked, but she’d slipped her old key in the lock and it turned with ease. She’d come in and set the Red Cross ration box on the floor.

  Kája took off her shoes at the door, as was customary in Prague. She noticed the polished botník was gone, the long box in which she and her sister had always left their shoes. Kája pushed her uniform shoes up against the wall and turned back to the entry.

  In the hint of darkness shrouding the hall, she looked around.

  The entry hall’s lovely antique furniture that had been preserved and passed down for generations
was still there, though it all looked buried in dust. Marble floors stretched out naked before her, having been shorn of their beautiful ornamental rugs. Paintings were missing from the hall, the telltale signs of their absence outlined against the faded wallpaper like square shadows. The crystal chandelier still hung in the entry, but it looked tired, greeting her with only a feeble shimmer of light.

  Kája dropped the leather satchel from her shoulder to the marble floor and looked up the length of the curved staircase. She remembered the times she and her sister would slide down the polished banister as girls, much to their mother’s chagrin, and would plop down in their father’s waiting arms. She pictured it, the memory of that royal staircase, making her feel like a princess in a castle of her own world.

  The sounds of joyous laughter and the vision of being twirled around in their father’s arms—they, too, faded away into the fallen shades of dusk creeping about the hall.

  “Hello?” Kája breathed out a hesitant whisper toward the landing on the second floor.

  No answer.

  Kája turned her attention to the back of the house and the most-used rooms: the kitchen, the dining hall, and her father’s beloved study. She began taking steps forward, making sure that her footfalls were silent against the hard floor.

  Each room she passed was uncharacteristically dark. They felt cold. Haunted almost.

  She called out again, “Hello?” and continued taking measured, cautious steps through the first floor of the house. “Matka?”

  The endearment was whispered and floated from Kája’s lips out into the stillness that led to the dining hall. Its large doors were open wide, and one clung to an errant hinge as if it had been the recipient of some sort of aggression and fought to keep from crashing down to the floor. The oversized sideboard was still there on the back wall, though its top was bare; there was no grand cascade of food to welcome partygoers now. All that remained was a glass hurricane around a nearly finished candle. The long table that had once played host to dozens of guests was gone. Some chairs were left, stacked in the far corner in a jumbled heap and partially covered with a sheet that had long since lost its bright-white hue.

  Kája scanned the hall, taking in the few broken windows in the back of the grand room and the spiderwebs that dotted every corner.

  Oh Lord . . . what has happened here? Kája shook her head on the prayer, words bleeding from her heart. Is everything I’ve ever known now a memory?

  “No.”

  Kája whirled around at the sound of the thick voice.

  “Father!” she said, darting forward. “It’s me—Kája.”

  “No! I prayed to God,” her father cried out as one of his knotted hands came up to form a fist in the air, “you’d not come back! You must not come back here.”

  “But it is me.” Kája rushed to his side. “I am well. See? I came for you.”

  She placed a hand over his waving fist, gingerly encasing it with the sincerity of a light touch. He looked around, almost as if he expected a convoy of people to have followed her into the house.

  “How did you get here?”

  “I’m traveling with the Red Cross,” she said, and took her hat from her head, handing it to him. “See?”

  “You’ve joined the Red Cross?” He muttered something further under his breath and shooed the hat away.

  Kája lowered her voice to a soothing whisper and asked, “Am I not welcome here, even when I’ve come back to you, Father? I’m here to save you.”

  “No.” He shook his head, emphatic. “We need no saving. There is no saving from this war.”

  “Yes, there is,” she said, and pulled travel papers from the inside pocket of her uniform jacket. “See?” She held them out to him. “I have travel papers. These will get us out!”

  He swiped them from her hand, rushed over to the sideboard, and struck a match upon its surface. He stood then, washed in the tiny glow of the match light, surveying the papers.

  Kája felt like crying over what she saw.

  The man before her was not the revered gentleman doctor she’d always known. He’d seemed tall, so dignified and robust in her memories. Now he appeared hunched as he stood over the sideboard, as if his bones were permanently curved to one side. His skin was gray and sunken in, and he’d lost weight. In fact, his belt and waistcoat were pulled tight over his middle, yet his trousers sagged noticeably and he looked to be swimming in his shirt. The once-tailored wool now looked like it dressed a withered scarecrow, not the society doctor whom she’d always pictured in a smart suit, with gold-rimmed glasses just tipping the edge of his nose. He’d possessed a white, toothy smile that seemed to linger upon his face.

  He didn’t smile now. Or have those beautiful glasses tipped upon his nose. He grumbled and scanned the paper with an odd, wide-eyed fascination from behind simple wire-rimmed spectacles that looked older than he.

  “Father?” she whispered into the vacant room. The tiny word seemed to echo off the ceiling.

  “How did you get these?”

  “A friend—” Kája stopped short, finding her voice hitched ever so slightly at the mention of Liam. “He helped me.”

  Her father’s shoulders sagged, defeat evident, and he slid into a chair against the wall.

  “You never should have come here.” He took the paper and folded it, very carefully, and shook his head. The folded paper drifted from his fingertips to his lap. “I prayed over and over that if God kept you safe, I’d live another day for him. I’d tend to the German soldiers. I’d care for them as their doctor, no matter how many people they sent away on trucks . . . no matter how many of us they killed. If you’d only be kept away.”

  Kája rushed over to him and fell to kneel at his feet. She looked up into his eyes.

  “Were there soldiers here? Is that what happened to the house?”

  “It was a hospital for some time,” he said, looking around the vast room. “They were short of doctors, you see. The Reich took the houses from Jews in the city. This house is too exposed to air attacks, though—they won’t have a general in a house along the river. But for the wounded, it was good enough. For a time, at least.”

  “And the furnishings? The paintings in the hall?”

  He shrugged. “They took some. We sold others. Nearly all of your mother’s jewels are gone, save for the pearl earrings handed down from your grandmother.” His voice sounded mechanical and far away, drifting off. “Your grandmother would not have wished to live through the war, not to see this.”

  She cleared her throat, finding emotion had taken root and caused her voice to falter.

  “But I’m here now. Try not to think about it.”

  “You are well?” He looked over her face, his eyes touching the angles of her cheekbones and her brows, accounting for the features he remembered.

  “Yes.” Kája nodded. She smoothed the wavy locks away from her brow and tilted her chin to the light, not knowing she’d exposed the scar along her temple.

  “What is this?” He ran his finger along the scar.

  Kája thought about the scar that spanned six inches of skin from shoulder to elbow on her left arm and softened the truth. “All healed. Just a scratch.”

  He held her chin in his hand and looked over the scar, his fingertips running along the small jagged line, surveying the wound as a doctor would.

  “See? It’s not so very bad,” she offered, and turned her attention to the quiet shadows around them.

  The house was too hushed to be in an occupied city. It was almost ghostlike in the way that there was no sound, save for the echo of their voices in the empty room.

  “Matka. Where is she?”

  “Your mother has not been well these many months.” He patted the side of her hair before dropping his hands to his lap again. “Just tired, you see. She is sleeping.”

  “Shall I wake her? To let her know I’ve come home.”

  He shook his head. “When she can sleep, we must let her. Her heart will be broken
soon enough when she wakes.”

  Hearing his agitated words felt like a reproach, and it cut straight to her heart.

  “I had to come,” Kája cried, tears cooling her cheeks without reservation now. “I read what the Nazis are doing to the Jews. Terrible things—”

  “And I believe they are all true. Which is why our daughters were to stay far away from here.”

  His voice was so soft, so weak, that she couldn’t help but cry for the anguish that was locked up inside. The tragedy of what he must have witnessed at the hands of the Nazis . . . Kája pushed it away. She’d not let her mind linger on such darkness.

  “Please. Let me help you,” Kája began, and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I have a friend. He’s made it possible for us to travel to Switzerland with the Red Cross. They’ll assure us safe passage.”

  Kája was stopped short by the muffled sound of her father’s laughter.

  “What? What is it?”

  “There is no safe passage. Not anywhere.”

  “Yes, there is. I made it in, didn’t I? And we’ll be given transport out of Prague,” she said, trying to convince him that there was hope. She squeezed the travel papers in her hand. “We have enough time to get out.”

  “Don’t you understand? There is no time here.”

  She shook her head. “Whatever do you mean? You don’t even want to try?”

  “Always sweet,” he said, and patted her cheek with a light caress. “It’s like the times we used to go visit your clock. Remember? In the Old Town Square?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember.”

  “There was time then. And God kept your sparrows aloft in the sky.” His hand dropped to his lap and he downturned his eyes. “But that is no more.”

  “But it still can be. Don’t you see? We have to try. I’ve come all this way just so we could.”

  “Memories,” he breathed out, and looked around the hushed silence of the great hall. “They whisper in this room. Do you hear them? Listen. People, friends, Jews—dancing away at the music of your mother’s parties. The tinkling of crystal. The joy of laughter. Do you hear it, little Kája?”

  “Yes, Father.” She sniffed over tears. “I hear it.”