Ashes

by Christopher de Vinck

  ‘Hava,’ I muttered, embarrassed, ‘people are looking at you.’

  Hava opened one eye and giggled. A man in a bowler hat with a newspaper under his arm stopped and said to her, ‘Shakespeare is for serious-minded people.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘And you, miss . . . I’m sure your parents did not raise you to hang out with lunatics.’

  The man with the bowler hat waved his newspaper in the air. ‘Shameful!’ he said.

  ‘Let’s do the death scene in your cellar,’ Hava suggested. ‘There are too many theatre critics around here.’

  ‘There are too many army spies,’ was my reply.

  I remember that particular walk home, but not just because of the angry man. It was spring; the markets were full of tulips and early asparagus, plump mushrooms, tall rhubarb, spinach, and watercress. Trees expanded with green leaves. The trams seemed to clack against the road with a softer pitch. The sun made the buildings blush. Children leaned out of their prams as mothers gossiped. Old men with open collars sat on the avenue benches, probably thinking about other spring afternoons.

  ‘I don’t think my father would be happy about us playing in the cellar,’ I said to Hava as she stopped suddenly in the middle of the pavement.

  ‘Your father will never know we’re down there, Simone. We both know the lines; we can just go there, set up the scenery quickly, and play out our dying scene.’

  It was dark in the lowest level of my house. When Hava and I opened the cellar door, she suggested we take candles.

  She went down first, her long hair touching the back of her neck. The candlelight wavered. Hava’s shadow on the wall was wide and fat. I heard her hard shoes hitting each step. She turned, looked up at me and said, ‘Maybe there are bodies buried down here.’

  The cellar was dry and filled with empty boxes, a tool rack, a shelf of empty jam jars, and a long, flat work table.

  ‘We can use the table as a bier,’ Hava suggested.

  ‘Or we could go back upstairs and have some tea instead,’ I suggested.

  ‘Tea?’ Hava said as she began to form her long hair into a bun. ‘We don’t drink tea when we’re dying, Simone.’ She took a small piece of string from her pocket and tied her hair back. ‘You can’t be too pretty for death,’ Hava said as she slipped off her shoes, and then stretched out on the low table. Her body fitted perfectly: her arms at her sides; her legs straight and parallel. She closed her eyes. ‘Do I look dead?’

  ‘You look like a Belgian girl stretched out on a dirty work bench.’

  ‘I need a pillow,’ Hava said as she lifted her head and looked around in the dim light. ‘There, what’s that in the corner?’

  I walked to the corner and found several small, bulging burlap bags with the words ‘coffee beans’ stencilled on each. ‘They’re bags of coffee beans, Hava.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think Juliet used coffee beans as a pillow, but I don’t think Shakespeare would mind.’

  ‘How come you are playing Juliet? I don’t want to be Romeo.’

  Hava raised her hands and made a magician’s gesture above her chest: ‘Simone, in Shakespeare’s day men played the role of Juliet. You can play the role of Romeo. Your voice is deeper than mine so it will be much easier for the audience to think of you as a boy.’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t think spiders and dust make up a legitimate audience.’

  ‘Just say your lines, Simone,’ Hava said as she adjusted her coffee-bean pillow and closed her eyes. She looked like a sculpture in the candlelight: her body all curves and soft lines. I was all straight lines and flat. Perhaps I did make a better boy than a girl after all.

  Hava and I knew the entire play by heart; it had been her idea to learn it. ‘I want to die a thousand times in the arms of Romeo before I actually die,’ Hava said as she handed me a copy of the play one afternoon. ‘Let’s memorize the entire play together.’

  We never finished the dying scene in the cellar because, just as we began, the angry voice of my father echoed from the top of the stairs.

  ‘What is going on down there? Simone? Is that you?’

  Standing in the candlelight with Hava, I felt like we were two martyrs about to be engulfed in the flame of my father’s torch; two city girls caught in a foolish escape into our imaginations. Hava and I in the shadows, surrounded by the protective black space as if prepared for a shower of anger – a shower that would not cleanse, but would separate her from me, and from my conservative father, who understood order and respect, uniforms and tradition.

  Hava jumped off the table with such speed that she knocked over the candle and everything went dark, except for the light at the top of the staircase.

  ‘Simone?’

  ‘Yes?’

  My father started to stomp down the wooden stairs. When he reached the bottom step there was a small click and the torch that he held firmly in his hand illuminated the cellar with a beam of yellow light. I turned, and there was Hava untying her hair and giggling.

  ‘Hello, Miss Hava,’ my father said as he aimed his light into my face. ‘Simone, what are you doing down here in the dark?’

  ‘We weren’t in the dark, Papa. We had a candle.’

  ‘Simone, you know what I am asking.’

  ‘General Lyon,’ Hava said as she stepped into the bright beam of the torch, ‘Simone is doing a report for her science class about mould. We were looking for bits of mould on the cellar walls so she can look at it under the microscope at school.’

  Hava stood in that light as if she were on stage. I was afraid she was going to bow, or that I was going to applaud her clever lie.

  ‘The cellar is no place for young women. Come up, both of you. We’ll have some tea and biscuits,’ my father said.

  As Hava and I walked up the stairs, and my father stepped into the kitchen, Hava whispered to me, ‘I will never be afraid of the dark for as long as you are my friend.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Within the first days after their invasion of Belgium, the Nazi Party created laws that confiscated Jewish property and businesses. Jewish men and women were banned from many professions. Jewish families were frightened, threatened, and eventually taken to Auschwitz.

  Now, the synagogue was like that dark cellar. As we stood before the great doors of the building, Hava turned and looked back to the empty streets. I will never forget her eyes at that moment: beautiful, brown, and filled with hope. She pushed the doors open with the full force of her body, sure she would find her father, mother, and Benjamin sitting in their favourite pew.

  The doors opened like a blessing, two hands parting. We stepped into the sanctuary. There were no lights, no candles. From floor to ceiling, from wall to wall, a subdued light from the rose window created shadows. A grey-black gleam filled the synagogue with a quiet darkness. It was difficult to see, like an empty cave. Hava looked at me as if to ask, ‘Where is everyone?’ I took her hand and we walked down the main aisle. The synagogue was Hava’s Tara; her house of salvation.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ she finally asked aloud. I squeezed her hand and said nothing. In the far corner of the synagogue there was a little chair, and sitting in the little chair was an old man with a beard and a small book in his hand.

  ‘That’s Rabbi Menke,’ Hava whispered.

  As we approached the old man, I saw that he was stroking the book with his open palm and whispering a prayer: ‘O Lord, grant that this night we may sleep in peace.’

  The rabbi looked up at us through the dim light of the morning sunrise and said in a stronger voice, ‘May your paths be free from all obstacles, from when you go out until you return home.’ Then he lifted one hand, curled his fingers, and pointed first at Hava, and then at me. ‘We need to protect each other and inspire each other to think and act only out of love.’

  ‘Rabbi Menke . . . Do you know me, Rabbi Menke?’ As Hava knelt before the old man, he placed his hand on her head.

  ‘I do not remember,’ he said.

  ‘Rabbi Menke. Where is my
mother?’

  The man looked into her eyes, he looked up at me, and then returned his gaze to the face of my friend. ‘I do not remember.’

  ‘Where is my mother, and Benjamin, and my father?’

  ‘Benjamin?’ Rabbi Menke asked.

  ‘Yes, and my father Yaakov. Yaakov Yosef Daniels, my father. I need to find my father.’

  The rabbi looked up at and said, ‘There’s no one here. They are gone.’

  I knelt before the old man and asked, ‘But where, Rabbi? Where have they gone?’

  ‘They are all gone. There’s no one here. Not even their shadows. There are no more shadows. Look, no shadows, not even ashes.’ He waved his hand. ‘You won’t find anyone here. No praying. No singing. I am told a synagogue is burning in Przemysl, Poland, so people here are afraid. There are rumours the Nazis are coming.’

  ‘But Rabbi Menke, where is my family?’ Hava asked. ‘They said they’d be here.’ Then she broke down and wept into the rabbi’s lap.

  Rabbi Menke placed one of his wrinkled hands on her head as she cried. ‘Many Jews in Antwerp have already fled to Cuba. Many in Brussels have already left.’

  ‘But my mother and father wouldn’t leave without me,’ Hava said between tears.

  Rabbi Menke placed his hand gently under Hava’s chin, lifted her face up to the light, and returned to his prayers: ‘Let us pray. Oh God, keep far from us all evil; may our paths be free from all obstacles from when we go out until we return home.’

  Hava looked up as she heard the words ‘until we return home’.

  ‘Return home? Yes, of course. I’ll go home. My mother will surely be there by now. The sun is out. She will have to prepare eggs for Papa. Benjamin has to be roused from his sleep. The day is beginning. He’ll be going to school.’ Hava looked at me and said, ‘We must wake Benjamin. He needs to get ready for school.’

  She stood up, leaned over, and kissed Rabbi Menke on his forehead. Then she turned and ran down the aisle, through the subdued light. When she reached the open doors she stopped, turned, and motioned for me to follow. I looked at Rabbi Menke.

  He said, ‘Be in peace.’ Then I stood up slowly and walked through the synagogue, past the empty seats: one, two . . . ten . . . thirty . . . a thousand . . . a million . . . six million empty seats.

  When I reached Hava she took my hand and said, ‘We must hurry or there will be no eggs left. You know how Benjamin will eat six eggs if he’s given the chance.’

  She pulled my hand and we ran down the steps of the Great Synagogue and out into the twilight street. Black buildings stood at attention. The trees didn’t move. An empty bicycle rack had been tipped on its side.

  We stopped running for a moment when we both heard the loud engines of planes once again. Six large shadows flew overhead as we stood in the empty road.

  As the planes disappeared, and silence returned for a moment, Hava let go of my hand and said, ‘Do you hear that?’ I stood beside her and together we just listened. Yes, there was a sound we thought we recognized. ‘Birds?’ Hava asked.

  It sounded like pages flipping in a book, and then, thousands of leaves began falling from the sky: leaves; thousands and thousands of yellow leaves.

  Hava walked into the middle of the street and looked up at the early morning sky. She spread out her arms and turned slowly, round and round and round, under the falling leaves. I held my arms close to my chest. It was a cold morning.

  ‘Simone,’ Hava called out, ‘look at the leaves. Aren’t they beautiful?’

  They were beautiful, light-yellow leaves: maple leaves? As they floated to the ground, I realized that they weren’t ordinary maple leaves, but leaves made from thin paper. I looked up into the sky and watched the leaves twist and swirl through the air, and land on the buildings, the streets, and the bushes. Hava stopped suddenly, leaned over, and picked up a single leaf.

  ‘Look, Simone,’ she said as she offered me the leaf. ‘Look.’

  Printed on the paper leaf, above the skull of a soldier wearing a helmet, were these words:

  In autumn the leaves fall.

  We fall with them. In the spring

  nobody will remember the dead leaves

  any more than the dead soldiers.

  Life will pass over your graves.

  Below these words I saw the crooked cross of a black swastika. I looked at this symbol, at the skull of the soldier. I reread the words. I thought about my father and my mother’s grave. I thought about dead soldiers and the black planes. I held the leaf in my hand and ran my finger over the black cross, the mark of death.

  It was one of the most effective leaflets that Hitler dropped on the people of Europe during the war. A simple message: no one cared if we died.

  The Nazi leaves soon covered the roads and pavements as they continued to fall from the distant planes.

  We sat in the middle of the street as the last leaves fluttered down and then all was silent once again until Hava whispered, ‘My family. We have to hurry.’ She stood up and began to run.

  The propaganda pamphlets rustled around her feet as she ran over them. They seemed to chase her as she ran down the street towards the square. I stood and called her name again and again, ‘Hava! Hava!’ but she did not stop.

  More planes roared overhead. In the distance more bombs exploded and seconds later plumes of black smoke rose from behind the distant buildings. I could smell burning and imagined the heat of the flames against my cheeks.

  CHAPTER 25

  In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic.

  Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, speaking of the Nazi flag

  More bombs landed closer as the surrounding buildings shook. Hundreds of windows shattered at the same time. Splintered glass rained down on me. Vicious shards covered the street. Bricks shot into the air. The ground shook with each thump of an exploding bomb. ‘Hava!’ I called after her, as my friend ran and ran.

  I had no one to run to. My father was with the Resistance. In that moment, Hava’s family had become my surrogate family: my mother, father, brother. I began to run again, hoping to catch up with her.

  When I finally reached her, Hava was standing at the edge of the square. I didn’t know why she’d stopped. I was out of breath, my legs hurt. I looked at Hava, she looked at me and then, without a word, she pointed towards the building across the square.

  Outside a window someone had draped a giant red flag with a white circle, and in the white circle was a black swastika. I had never seen the Nazi flag in real life before. Of course, I had seen the image in my school books in flat black and white pictures in the newspaper, and on the propaganda leaves, but here, hanging above our heads, colours illuminated in the morning sun, it was an ominous, eerie presence that terrified me. The flag hung motionless. Hava and I stood before it and stared.

  ‘What does it mean, Simone? Why is it here?’

  The flag bulged outward in a sudden gust of wind, flapping in a mocking wave above the square.

  ‘Is it a warning, Hava? Do we have to surrender? Is it a death flag?’

  A small, horse-drawn wagon appeared carrying chairs, blankets, pots, and a stove. Sitting beside an old man at the front, an old woman with a blue scarf wrapped around her head held a thin dog on her lap.

  Men pulled at the horses’ reins, urging them forward, out of their way. Children clutched suitcases and ragdolls. It was as though the square had cracked open, and people started spilling out of a bowl that was breaking.

  A siren blew, a wailing, plaintive sound muffled by the sudden cries of children. Mothers called out to the men to hurry.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked a woman with a large suitcase.

  ‘Going? We’re leaving Brussels. The Germans are coming. Run! We must all leave the city!’

&nbs
p; A man pointed to the flag, shaking his fist. ‘This is no longer Belgium!’ he declared angrily.

  ‘Take what you can!’ another man shouted. ‘Go west! Go south! You’ll be safe in France. There are no Germans in France. Escape while you can!’

  CHAPTER 26

  At that time I believed in the Führer Principle because to me it meant that the best one should be the leader. If the leader is good and responsible, then the government is good.

  Walther Funk, German Minister of Economics, 31 March 1946, from the Nuremberg trials

  Someone tore down the Nazi flag. Hava and I watched it descend and flatten onto the cobblestone in a deceptively soft manner. Three men stopped running and stood before the fallen flag. One of them pulled a small box of matches from his pocket, struck a match on the side of the box, and touched the edge of the flag. It was quickly engulfed in flames, and swiftly reduced to ash.

  It seemed that all of Brussels swirled around us like a cyclone: a tumult of people held hands, rushed down the streets, twisted in the crowd. Hundreds of people blown from their homes, uprooted from their lives, and callously tossed aside.

  Hava and I stood in the eye of the storm, briefly protected from the threat of guns, bayonets, slaughter, and death. Then she whispered, ‘I want to go home.’

  Where is my father? I wondered to myself. We sprinted together through the streets of Brussels at the beginning of the Second World War, among the thousands of refugees spilling out of their homes, trying to get ahead of Hitler’s advancing army, trying to dodge the approaching machine-gun fire and bombs from the Luftwaffe.

  Hava was convinced that her family had returned home from the synagogue. ‘They must have gone home when they found the synagogue empty. They would never leave me. Where else would they go?’

  We made our way through a sea of sorrow and fear. Horses skittered nervously, agitated by the noise and the crowds. Children howled their distress, not comprehending the panic. A man smoking a cigar carried a poodle in one arm and a violin in the other. A woman pushed a wheelbarrow filled with books.