Under a Cruel Star

by Helen Epstein

  Mrs. Nemcova took me by one hand and Hanka by the other. Zuzka and Mana followed close behind. She led us around darkened houses and quiet, bare gardens out into the fields. We took our shoes off so that we would not lose them in the dark and ran barefoot across the frozen ground. I heard Hanka’s quiet sobs and Mrs. Nemcova’s whispered encouragements. We ran more and more frantically and, just when it seemed that we were incapable of another step, Mrs. Nemcova said, “Here you are: home. You don’t have to run as fast anymore but don’t dawdle. At the crossing there’s a good watchman – you don’t have to be afraid of him. But watch out for the next village. There the police have dogs.”

  We embraced her and ran on, alone again. Hanka complained that she couldn’t keep going but I dragged her along, almost crushing her hand, whispering, “Hang in there! Even if we have to crawl on all fours we’ll make it home.”

  We reached the checkpoint at last. Just as we crawled under the barrier, the door of the guardhouse opened and a cranky voice mumbled, “Well women, any of you have any cigarettes to spare?” It was only when we were quite a bit farther along that we allowed ourselves to slow down. We decided to make a detour around the village with the police dogs. Zuzka, whose home was in a nearby town, now announced with a flourish that she would provide shelter for us all. She was the daughter of a mixed marriage, and some of her relatives had not been deported. Soon we would come to an area where she knew her way around and, with luck, we would reach her town before daybreak.

  Gratefully, patiently, we crept through a silence full of sounds, a darkness full of shadows. For the first time since I had woken up that morning, I started to breathe easily. I still was alert to every rustle and kept probing the darkness for danger, but something inside me began to loosen up. It seemed to me that I was holding my fragile freedom cupped in my hands. What would I make of it? I might lose it very soon. There was no time to waste. I did not even dare think what I would do when I got to Prague. I did not know whether I would even get there. But my life was no longer broken in two. Suddenly there was continuity. I was no longer a camp inmate, a victim destined for destruction, but a human being, a woman with a past and a future.

  The step that lay before us, the transition from the freedom of a bird to the freedom among people proved to be the most difficult part of our journey. We had to find home again, to find the place where we belonged, and, for that, the simple fact of return was not enough. I think sometimes that the road which, years later, led us into another disaster began with this very step. For many people in Czechoslovakia after the war, the Communist revolution was just another attempt to find the way home, to fight their way back to humanity.

  But on that first day back, everything seemed promising. We arrived in Zuzka’s town before dawn, and her relatives welcomed us with great joy. They found a place for Mana to stay for a while and even produced a nice elderly man to drive Hanka and me most of the way to Prague in his truck. He dropped us off only a few miles away from the last stop of the city streetcar. We were all right until we boarded it. Then, once again, we were paralyzed by fear.

  This was the sixth year of the German occupation. Thousands of people had been shot, whole villages had been wiped out, just for helping the Resistance or for harboring escaped prisoners. If the Gestapo caught us, it meant death not only for us but for anyone who helped us or was even casually associated with us. Just to see an “illegal” without reporting him to the police was, at the time, a capital crime. The police were continually searching homes, checking identity papers, prowling the streets. Certainly there were people who would recognize us. Many things must have changed in our absence; there had to be new regulations we knew nothing about. We could give ourselves away at any moment. If anyone just took a good look at us he would see the imprint of the camps in our faces; he would realize right away who we were.

  The streetcar rumbled into downtown Prague. When it stopped in the center of the city, Hanka looked at me silently, squeezed my elbow and stepped off. I was left alone in the car full of people but they did not seem to notice me. They all had their own lives and their own wartime concerns. Nothing, perhaps, as horrible as what we had been through, but all suffering can become intolerable. Maybe some of them were as worn out by running into shelters and standing on lines for food as we were by the terrors of the camps.

  During those years Prague had changed, perhaps even more than I had. Most of my friends and relatives were still in concentration camps and I would have had no idea where to turn had it not been for Jenda. Jenda, who was my closest friend, could only have changed for the better. I knew that if he was still alive and free, I would be safe. The day before our deportation, he had come to our home with a small gift for everyone and had declared, “Whatever happens, I’ll be your anchor. If you can, send me your messages. Should you be separated, count on meeting again at my place. If anything happens to me, I’ll find a replacement. I’ll never stop waiting for you to come back. You’ll always have somewhere to come back to.”

  It was already evening when I reached the apartment house where Jenda lived and, as I slowly walked up the stairs, my feet hurt. Somehow it was difficult to walk. I arranged my scarf around my head and rang the bell. The door opened. It was Jenda – what luck!

  He did not seem to recognize me. No wonder, I thought. I tried a smile but, at that instant, his eyes flashed with such terrible shock and with such horror that my smile fell away. Jenda grabbed my hand, glanced down at the stairwell, and pulled me inside. He closed the door behind us and then blurted out, “For God’s sake, what brings you here?”

  The answer stuck in my throat. So this was my anchor, this terrified, trembling wretch who could not even look me straight in the eye. Was this really Jenda? I looked around the room, trying to latch onto something familiar, something intimate. There was his bookcase. The easy chair by the window. Things old and familiar. But there was also a new red carpet, a new phonograph, and a few paintings I had not seen before.

  We faced each other silently. Then he spoke. I did not let him go on with his explanations for too long; things were clear without the talk. I saw that he felt ashamed of himself and guilty, but that his fear was stronger than anything else. All he could think of was the deadly danger that had walked in with me: Was I sure no one had seen me on the stairs? He wanted not to know me, to know nothing about me and live. Live in peace and quiet in the middle of death and desperation. Still, I believe that while he was talking to me he realized that his calm was gone for good. Even if he were never to hear from me again, his life would not be the same.

  I went out into the street again. It was dark and almost deserted. One of my parents’ old friends lived nearby, a woman I had always called Auntie. Before our deportation she had hidden away some of my clothing and other things that would now prove useful. Perhaps she would let me stay the night.

  The moment I rang the bell, I heard slippered feet shuffling nervously down the hall. I must have scared her; she had learned to be wary of visitors. But as it turned out, she was a courageous old woman and, after recovering from her initial shock, she welcomed me warmly, settling me down on her velvet sofa beneath a wall covered with family photographs.

  “Let me stay the night Auntie? Tomorrow I’ll find something.”

  She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. Then she started moving through her apartment, scrounging up whatever she could find for me. She went through closets and drawers and finally came up with a complete set of clothing from before the war which would make me inconspicuous in the street. Then she tucked me under a plaid blanket and sat down on a chair near the door with her hands folded in her lap. She sat there the whole night through without shutting an eye, as if her vigil could save us from danger.

  It was still dark when I walked back out into the street. I felt good in my clean change of clothes and after a big breakfast but I realized that my situation had taken a turn for the worse. Until then, I had had to face only the police system of a fascist regi
me. Now I had to cope with a worse enemy, human fear and indifference. Until the day before, I had kept in my mind one goal – to reach Prague and to find Jenda. Now I was looking for a human being whose humanity would prove greater than his fear.

  I walked the streets waiting for daylight before I dared call on another old friend, Franta. Even if he himself could not help me, I could at least find out from him what had happened to my other friends. Franta had always been an ambitious, responsible young man who had worked his way through school while supporting his widowed mother. He had slaved away from morning till night, worked on farms while the rest of us took vacations, tutored students during the school year and took on the hardest jobs just to earn some extra money. He never doubted his capabilities or questioned his goals. The war, I thought, must have wrecked his plans too.

  Franta opened his door in a sweatsuit, still unshaved. He stared at me for a moment, then stepped back, and let me into the hall.

  “Franta, I ran away from the camp. I need help. Do you know where I could hide for a couple of days? Where I could rest? Do you know anyone with contacts in the Resistance? The war’s almost over. It’s a matter of months.”

  In the darkness of the hall I could not see Franta’s face, and he did not say a word. Then he opened the nearest door and said, “Come in. Sit down.”

  For a while he paced nervously around the room. Then he sat down facing me, took out a cigarette, looked at it, put it down on the table, picked it up, finally lit it.

  “I need to look at you,” he said. “I have to get a really good look at a person who escapes from a concentration camp, walks around Prague without any identity papers, has no place to sleep, and still thinks she can stay alive. That’s really exciting. I myself have been trying to gain a sense of personal freedom ever since the beginning of the Occupation – even for a few moments. One hour of it. I haven’t succeeded yet. It’s impossible. You liberate yourself from direct oppression and you sink into something even worse. You have to run and hide and in the end you get caught anyway. Forgive me, but I can’t imagine how you can save yourself. You clearly did what you thought best in your situation but it goes against all reason. Look, I could pretend that I’m going to try and help you. I could make promises and lie. But it would be no good. If you look at it rationally, you’ll see it’s hopeless.”

  I got up and walked to the door. Franta jumped up to stop me.

  “Please don’t leave yet,” he said. “I’ve struggled with these questions endlessly. When and how should one risk one’s life? You escaped because you were probably convinced you’d be killed. But, in my opinion, the chances that you’ll lose your life are much greater this way than if you had stayed in camp. After all, some people will survive even there. You have much less hope in this situation. And am I justified in risking my or anyone else’s life for something I consider a lost cause? What sense does it make anyway to risk one life for another?”

  I stepped back to try to look him in the eye, and Franta threw his cigarette into an ashtray. After another moment of silence, he said, “Okay. It’s true. I’m scared.”

  Again I walked out into the streets. There were pink posters pasted onto the walls with long columns, listing the names of people who had been executed for “crimes against the Reich.” Often, there were three or four people with the same surname: whole families murdered for trying to help someone like me.

  Marta’s house was in a suburb high up on a hill and I got caught in two air raids before I reached it. Air raids were as dangerous as streetcars. The police and air raid wardens checked the papers of all strangers who entered the shelters but if you tried to stay in the street, which was strictly forbidden, you would almost surely be seen.

  Both times, I managed to slip into a passageway where I passed the time trying to imagine what Marta was doing. It was not hard to guess. She would be painting, because that was her life. And she was probably still waiting on Vlada because that, too, was her life. Now, at noon, she was probably just putting aside her brushes and beginning to prepare Vlada’s lunch. I should hurry up and get there before he returned home.

  When Marta first saw me she shrank back, but then her whole face lit up with pleasure. She sat me down in her warm kitchen, and all of a sudden I felt so tired that I could not manage more than a few sentences. For Marta though, even those were enough.

  “It’s great you came here,” she said. “Now you’ll have nothing to worry about. Vlada will help you. Don’t look so surprised! It’s true. I know what you think of him. I have to admit I was starting to agree with you and I finally told him that if he didn’t change, I was leaving him. Believe me, he took it to heart. You’ll see for yourself. To make a long story short, Vlada started working for the Resistance! He helps hide fugitives; he works with the partisans! Can you believe it? At first he didn’t want to talk about it but you know it’s never too hard to get him talking about anything that makes him look good. And the point is that he’s really doing something useful – look, he’s coming! I’ll go tell him you’re here.”

  Marta disappeared down the hall and, when she came back, Vlada was behind her. He really had changed. He was no longer the charming playboy I remembered from before the war, good for nothing more than looks and pleasant chat. He was thinner, and his face was lined. Actually, he was better looking than before. But he did not meet my eyes. He just managed a crooked smile and stretched out his hand. It was cold as ice.

  “Marta told me you escaped from the concentration camp,” he said. “That’s really something. I’d love to help you out, only there’s a problem...”

  “What?” said Marta. “Only last night you said...”

  “Marta, something very unfortunate has happened. The man I was going to meet tonight will not come. Somehow the connection broke down. It’s rotten luck, but we always knew that this kind of thing could happen.”

  “But surely you can do something. You keep telling me how everything’s covered. You must have made plans for a situation like this.”

  “Of course, but it’ll take time. Maybe a week. Ten days?”

  “Fine,” said Marta and turned to me. “You’ll stay here until contact is restored. Vlada, we can hide her in the den by the attic. She’ll be safe there and it’s warm.”

  “Marta!” Sweat had broken out on Vlada’s forehead. “Don’t you know they shoot people for harboring illegals?”

  “What’s the matter with you? You’re suddenly afraid to do something you’ve been doing all year? Or said you were doing – Vlada!”

  Vlada collapsed into the nearest chair. Marta’s face became so pale that her black eyes and hair looked as though they were painted onto the wall behind her. I got up and tiptoed out into the hall, then into the yard. Neither of them seemed to notice.

  It was a long walk to Vinohrady, a neighborhood almost at the other end of the city, and my legs were beginning to give out by the time I got to the apartment where Otto and Milena lived. It was late afternoon when Otto opened the door. It took him a while to get his bearings, but Milena ran out past him and threw her arms around me.

  “How great you got back! I was so afraid I’d never see you again! You’ll stay with us. Don’t worry, we’ll hide you. You have to tell us everything, but first come and see my babies! Surprised? Then you’ll lie down and rest. You look terrible. You’ll have a nap and then I’ll fix you something good to eat.”

  I allowed myself to be led into their bedroom and to be tucked in as though I were Milena’s third child. Her mother covered me up, sat by me, and stroked my hair.

  So I had, after all, found people and a place that had not changed, that had remained the same in the middle of all that destruction. Here I could catch my breath, if only for a day or two. Then I would set out for the woods and join the partisans... Otto and Milena would find some contact. Everything would be all right. No more roaming the streets... I did find someone... Who would have thought that of all people Milena would be the one not to be afraid?... Even tho
ugh she has her mother to think of... and her children... those children!

  I sat up in bed, my sleepiness gone. There was no way I could stay. Two small children! And that kind old lady! I must leave right away. How lucky that no one had seen me on the staircase!

  I closed my eyes for one more minute, trying not to think. I had to go on, and in a few hours it would be night again. Then I got up and went into the kitchen where Otto and Milena and her mother were whispering together like a group of conspirators. Otto was even drafting some kind of blueprint; they probably wanted to wall up some corner of their tiny apartment for my hiding place.

  First I had to give them a report. I made it short and, for the sake of Milena’s mother, I skipped over the worst events. Then I asked about our other friends. How many were left? Only Zdena and Ruda. Zdena had married, but was living with her new husband in her parents’ apartment just like before. Ruda one hardly ever saw. He was always out of town, Milena said, sometimes for months at a time. During the last year they had seen him only twice. Both times he showed up unexpectedly, tired and withdrawn. He sat for a while and then left.