by Liz Tolsma
Anna. How was she doing? And Babička. How was she holding up under the rigors of war? Jakub wouldn’t be able to keep them off the deportation list forever. It was only a matter of time until they arrived.
Against David’s wishes, that German soldier came now and then to see him, each time with a bit of food. Not enough to make a difference, but just enough to put all of them in increased danger. David didn’t eat any of it but divided it among the men in his room. They’d lost two roommates but gained four.
The other two members of the ensemble arrived. Though David had worked hard in the rock yard today and would rather be sleeping on his pallet in his room, their captors demanded they practice for hours each evening.
And then the music enveloped him, carried him far from this place. He sailed above Terezín’s confines, peering down on this miserable lot. He soared above green fields, majestic mountains of blue, shimmering turquoise oceans. Away, far away from the misery of his soul. The terrible ache in his heart over the loss of his parents, of his family faded.
Only beauty remained.
The last notes of the piece died away. Someone applauded. David opened his eyes and sucked in his breath when he discovered Hauptmann Engel in the audience.
“Your patron is here, David.” Viktor clapped him on the back.
“I wish he would leave me alone. Haven’t he and his like caused us enough grief?”
“I’m glad I’m not you.” Egon gave a crooked grin, packed up his violin with a great deal of haste, and hurried into the night.
Only David and the officer remained in the building. He approached the Nazi, glancing over the man’s shoulder a time or two as he made his way down the aisle. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you I would return. I have some supplies for you in my car. Tinned meat, bread, soap, and the like.”
“Do you know what you’re doing to me?” David bored his gaze into the middle of Hauptmann Engel’s chest.
“I’m helping you. Keeping you alive for your sister’s sake.”
“I don’t need your kind of help.” David turned to walk away.
The German grabbed him by the arm. David ripped himself from his grasp and shrunk back, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Why shouldn’t I help you?”
“You aren’t helping. Don’t you see that? My roommates look at me with jealousy, like they might kill me for a bite of bread or a forkful of peaches. I’ve endured more fights in the past few weeks than in all my growing up years. I’m alienated. And here, to be alone is to die.”
“I—”
“And what if you get caught? Have you thought about that? They would shoot you.” He clapped his hands, and Hauptmann Engel jumped. “Exactly. But do you think they would stop there? Who would they turn their rifles on next? Think about that.”
Hauptmann Engel didn’t back down. “I have thought about it. What they are doing to you and the others is wrong. I’m not afraid to die on the side of right. I’m not fearful of the sacrifice.” The man spoke with bravado, but did he feel it?
“Except it isn’t only you who would be sacrificed.” David stood with his legs spread apart. Couldn’t this man see reason? Perhaps that flaw ran in Aryan blood.
“Your sister and grandmother got their deportation notices. They were to leave a few days ago.”
David’s stomach fell like a rock tossed off the top of the Eiffel Tower. “They are coming here?”
Hauptmann Engel shook his head.
David’s legs lost all feeling. He sat down. “They are going directly to the extermination camp?”
Again, the Nazi shook his head.
“They aren’t . . . ?” David held his breath.
Color flooded the man’s cheeks. “I’m hiding them.”
David released the air from his lungs. “Excuse me?”
“I brought them into my apartment. They are living with me, under my protection.”
“You said you were hiding them.”
“I am.”
Was the man out of his mind? “Then they aren’t under your protection. You all are in grave danger.”
“You wanted me to stand by and watch them leave on the transport?”
“Ne. I mean, I don’t know. I want my family to be restored to me.” In more ways than one. He’d missed his parents and sisters in the years they had been estranged. And now . . . He swallowed the lump in his throat.
Hauptmann Engel sat across the aisle from David. “Believe me, I would like nothing more. That’s not reality, though. Until then, I will do all I can to protect you. All of you. Tell me what is the best way to bring supplies into the camp, and I will do it.”
“You can’t. Putting yourself in harm’s way is out of the question. If something happens to you, what will become of my sister and grandmother? I forbid it. Do whatever it takes to keep them safe. Forget about me. Don’t return here. If you’re followed, you’ll lead them to Anna and Babička. Above all, you have to shield them.” David mussed his already unruly hair. “You have to promise me.”
“You should know there are no guarantees in this life.”
“Lie to me, then, so I’ll be able to sleep at night. I have nothing left here except for my music and my dreams.”
Hauptmann Engel kicked the floor with the tip of his shoe. It took a moment for him to answer. “I promise to keep them safe.”
For the time being, that would have to be enough.
Anna took her time washing the lunch dishes in the tiny kitchen tucked into the back of the flat. Here, no sun filtered through the curtains, no brightness to add to the days.
Life would be like this until the war ended. Táta said the Allies would come soon and free them. Almost a year had passed since he’d uttered those words, and still no British or American boots had set foot on continental European soil. For now, she and her grandmother could only hide in the shadows and pray that no German eye spotted them.
Babička shuffled into the dark little room with her plate and cup. “Why so sad, my beruško? I haven’t seen you smile since we arrived here. And it’s been a long time since you played.”
Anna took the colorful dinnerware from her grandmother. Ne, she hadn’t picked up her violin since the day Hauptmann Engel told her of her family’s fate. Not even for him. “Why should I?” She plunged her hands in the water.
“I am disappointed in you.”
She turned her attention from the dishes to stare at her gray-haired grandmother. “Why?”
“God has provided, yet you act like He hasn’t.”
“I know I should be thankful. I know. But are our lives more valuable than our freedom?”
“You are longing for home.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes.” But not the home Babička had in mind. “I yearn for the past. I would even take days from two years ago. We lived stuffed into the flat, but we were together. At the time, I didn’t appreciate it enough.”
“None of us did. Perhaps that is the lesson to be learned here. Cling to your memories, yes. They are good, a blessing from the Lord. But if you allow the past to weigh you down, you cannot move forward. You have to deal with the present and reach for the future.”
“Maybe.” Anna picked up another glass and dunked it into the water. Much as she hated to admit it, Babička was right. Maybe dwelling on the past only brought more heartache. Yet how could she bear to let it go? “You had a good nap, ne?”
“Not really. I couldn’t sleep.”
Anna took a good look at Babička. Had she shrunk another few centimeters in the weeks they’d been hiding here? She did tremble more than ever. The war took a toll on her. Anna couldn’t stand losing her. God, don’t take her, too.
Babička leaned against the counter. “Where did Hauptmann Engel go?”
Anna shrugged. “He left a few hours ago without saying. I guess there are things he cannot share with us. Don’t forget, he is the enemy. There must be things he doesn’t want us to know.”
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“You don’t like him?”
“It’s not that. Are you forgetting that I’m a Jew? This is an impossible
situation. Dangerous, even.”
“I see good in him.”
“It doesn’t bother you in the least that he is an officer in the Nazi army? That his countrymen sent your daughter and her family to their deaths? That he might send you to yours?”
“Don’t judge him by the uniform he wears, but by the kind of person he is underneath.”
Anna kissed her grandmother’s wrinkled cheek and fought back the tears. “You always see the bright and not the dark. I wish I were like that. That is why I love you.” And why she couldn’t lose her.
Babička sat for a while, still and quiet. Anna couldn’t follow her lead. What about Hauptmann Engel? Where was he, and what was he doing? When might he decide to turn them in?
“I think I might be sleepy enough to take that nap now.” Babička pushed herself from the sofa. “Don’t think ill of him just because of his blood. That is what the Nazis are doing to us.”
Her grandmother made her way to the bedroom. The door closed with a soft click. The flat fell silent.
Anna picked up a book from the end table, one she’d brought with her from upstairs, one she’d read a dozen times at least. Her mind refused to focus on the words. She returned the book to the table, got up, and paced the living room. When would Hauptmann Engel arrive home? And with whom?
She daydreamed of the summer afternoons she’d spent at the café with Ester, of the winter evenings the string quartet had gathered at her home and practiced, of the brisk fall days she’d walked to the market and chatted with the grocer.
Hauptmann Engel was gone so much, and Babička often napped or read her Bible. If the war dragged on much longer, how would she stand the quiet? They didn’t dare make noise during the day when he was away and the flat was supposed to be empty.
After she listened for sounds of Babička stirring or Hauptmann Engel arriving home, she wandered to the window overlooking the street and pulled aside the curtain. Here, on the edge of the Jewish quarter, life slowed. Too many of its residents had disappeared into the great unknown.
Before she dropped the drape, a Nazi officer popped into view. He turned in front of the building and climbed the steps.
Anna spun from the window and clutched her chest, as if she might keep her heart inside.
The officer banged and pounded on the door. “I know you’re in there.”
She couldn’t breathe.
They’d been caught.
Horst stood in the midst of the grandeur that was Smetana Hall. Spectacular. Prague’s monument to the Art Nouveau movement. Rows of electric lights accented the buttresses of the soaring ceilings. Sculpture groups known as the Degradation of the People and the Resurrection of the People flanked either side of the concert hall. Rather ironic.
The ceiling’s glass dome drew his gaze upward. The frescoes were allegories of music, drama, dance, and poetry. The organ, surrounded by gilded bronze reliefs, occupied center stage.
All in all, it took Horst’s breath away. He could stand here the entire day and admire it. A place of beauty, both in architecture and in music, as it housed the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Surely, Anna had been here. Perhaps even played here.
He would have loved to have heard her.
Because the Germans marched into Prague with little resistance, they’d spared the many beautiful buildings this city boasted. Not like London.
He shook his head. He hadn’t come here to daydream but to work. He slid a pen from his uniform pocket and took notes on a pad of paper. The building was only thirty years old, but he marked several items that needed improvement.
Václav Smetáček, the conductor Horst met on a previous visit, entered and rifled through his music. Violinists, cellists, flutists, and others trickled in. Practice time was upon them. The musicians warmed up, a cacophony of sound.
Horst strolled around the edge of the great hall, jotting down the reliefs that required touching up and the spots that begged for gilding. In between his notes, he slipped out his sketchbook and drew the boxes above him, attempting to capture the heavy folds of the drapery. And failing. His pen refused to translate the awe of this place to paper.
The conductor gave a few instructions Horst couldn’t decipher. Music then floated from the stage, a great blending of the voices into one. He stood transfixed, his pencil grasped in his hand. He’d heard this piece of music with Mutti.
The nightmares plagued him again. Unconscious memories of breaking glass. Cursing brown coats. Screaming Jews.
Mutti had always taken him to the music hall in Munich to soothe his frayed nerves. To help him forget, if only for a little while, what had happened on that horrible night.
Conductor Smetáček tapped his baton on his stand and the melody stopped. Horst screeched back to reality, to the olive-green uniform he wore, the Nazi swastika on his forearm.
He had to get out of here. Even the beauty of this place haunted him.
Still holding his pencil and notebooks, he was halfway up the red-carpeted aisle when Oberleutnant Meier, his superior, entered. Horst pocketed his sketchbook and met Meier halfway, giving a Heil Hitler.
Horst returned the salute. “What brings you by today?”
Meier craned his long neck and whistled. “Look at that. I had been told how amazing this place was to behold, but every account has been lacking. I will have to attend a concert here.”
Horst nodded in the musicians’ direction. “They are practicing Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony in D Minor. One of my favorites. You would enjoy it.”
“I believe I would.” Meier returned his attention to Horst. “I’m glad I tracked you down. You are a difficult man to find.”
“The nature of the job.” Horst grinned. “Just the way I like it.”
“I imagine. You are good at what you do. I can see you are committed to the Fatherland and the Führer. But here you are, stuck inside of buildings all day long.”
“I enjoy it. And many days, I spend as much time outside as I do inside.”
“Your service has been noted.”
“By whom?” Perspiration dampened his hands.
“You are being offered a promotion.”
He didn’t want one. “I’m flattered.”
Meier stroked his long, pointed chin. “You have visited Theresienstadt with Hauptsturmführer Jaeger?”
“Ja. Twice.” What did Theresienstadt have to do with this?
“You are being offered the position as director of deportations there.”
To be transferred . . . What would happen to Anna and her grandmother? And deportations? He couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. “Danke for the recognition, sir, but I cannot accept. As I said before, I enjoy my work here. It is what I went to university for, what I studied many long years to achieve. And I’m just settling in to Prague and finding I like living here.”
“You are turning down this opportunity?” Meier’s green eyes darkened.
Horst studied his spit-and-polished black boots. “My father bought me this commission.”
Meier crossed his arms in front of himself. “Do you not realize what total war means to the German people? There must be absolute unity in thought and moral conduct. You are no longer serving just yourself but all of Germany.” His voice rang throughout the hall, reaching over the music. “Together, in step with each other, we forge a better place for our people. We make the world and Germany what it should be. Strong. Proud. Free from the impure. That cannot be done if we only look to our own selfish desires. No one is immune from sacrifice. Greatness will not be achieved without giving up self. Your circle of responsibility is growing. As it should. It is your duty.”
Duty. Vater ever only spoke of duty. Do your duty, Horst. Don’t shirk your duty, Horst. Horst, it is your duty.
But protecting Anna and her grandmother was his duty. He could not fulfill that responsibility at t
he same time as the one now thrust upon him.
And head of deportation? Would he be the man to send Anna and Frau Doubeková to their deaths?
Meier leaned in. “You would be wise to accept.”
Anna hung onto the back of the old wing chair in the alcove the bay window formed. The German officer continued to pound on the door.
Thank goodness Babička had gone to take a nap. He wouldn’t see her. At least, not right away. But he would search the apartment and find her. It would take too much time for Anna to hustle Babička to the cellar, to the hiding place Hauptmann Engel created for them. The man wouldn’t wait that long. Besides, he already stood at the door. Blocked their path.
The knocking continued. Anna shuffled in the direction of the entrance. And what about Hauptmann Engel? He would be implicated. The punishment for being Jewish was severe. What about the punishment for a German officer caught hiding Jews?
She shivered as she turned the knob and cracked the door. “Can I help you?” She spoke in Czech.
The man furrowed his brows. Without an invitation, he pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold.
Anna dared not glance at the bodice of her navy-blue dress where a star once resided. Hauptmann Engel had insisted she rip it off, rip all her stars off, and burn them. His foresight proved invaluable.
“Who are you?” He spoke decent Czech. With his cold, blue eyes, he scanned her up and down and up once more.
She didn’t appear Aryan. Her hair was dark and so were her eyes. There was no hiding her Jewishness. But it was worth a try. Her fate couldn’t get any worse. “I am the maid.”
“The maid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who is your employer?”
“Pan Engel. He is good to me.”
“He didn’t tell me he hired a maid. I’ve been here before and never seen you.” He narrowed his gaze.
“I am new here.”
He stepped around her. “Do you have papers?”