‘Where were they?’ He asked the question quite suddenly.
She did not need to ask who he meant. ‘I couldn’t see them anywhere, at first. I tried. There was a huge crowd by then. The families were trying to stay together and the children were crying. There were a lot of children who didn’t have anyone by then. It was hot. I saw your mother just before she was pushed into the truck.’ She halted, thinking, I shouldn’t have said pushed.
‘Marie,’ Emil said, without turning his head. His voice was very gentle. ‘Tell me.’
‘I didn’t see them until the end. They were in a group waiting for a truck that wouldn’t start. Most of the trucks had gone. The guards were still angry. By then, we had been told we were not going, we still didn’t know why. We thought it was because the trucks were full. Maybe we would just have to wait there in the heat until another truck came. I wanted to go and not to go. I wanted to get away from there more than anything. But when they had mentioned Germans, I knew. The people who had been sent on the trucks in December …’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know where the transports were going.’
‘I saw them,’ she continued, wanting this part to be over. ‘Your mother was there. Your little brother was in her arms. He had been very ill, after you left. Your mother didn’t think he would live during the quarantine. He was still very weak.’ She would not tell him that by then Bobo was blind. ‘Your mother was standing holding him. Your aunts Ludmila and Eva were clinging on to her arms. They were crying but she wasn’t.’
‘Tekla?’
‘She died during the quarantine. Lots of people died. Some of the guards too.’
Emil let out a deep sigh. Marie wondered if he had imagined any of this. She wondered how his vision of what had happened to them all tallied with what she was telling him.
‘Eva and Ludmila were holding your mother’s arms. She was looking around. She saw me …’ Perhaps she should make something up, some last words that his mother could have said to her. If you ever meet my son Emil …
Emil was watching her face. She looked at the ground, the earth in front of her, peppered with gravel. She shook her head.
‘She couldn’t come over to us. They were in the last group, surrounded. There were German soldiers as well, come to make sure everything went smoothly. I think they thought there would be trouble. They didn’t trust the Czechs. Your mother just stared at me, for a moment. I think she knew. I don’t know.’
Emil had turned his face and shoulders away from her. She heard his breathing deepen. She lifted a hand, then let it drop, afraid to comfort him. She heard him gasping for self-control.
He began to sob, making a frightening, animal sound, a monotonous hur-hur. The great gasps of it shook his frame. ‘Emil,’ she whispered. He shook his head, refusing her. I haven’t told you any of it, she thought despairingly. How could she begin to tell him what the camp had been like, under quarantine, how even a simple conversation had become impossible – how they had all become no more than suffering ghosts? He rose suddenly and walked a few paces away, standing with his back to her, his shoulders shuddering. I should not have told him anything, she thought I should have just told him about our release and said I had no idea what had happened to the others.
He returned to her and sat down again, still turned from her. ‘Go on,’ he said.
She brushed at her skirt. ‘The trucks had already gone when one of the guards came over and told us to go back to the barracks. The place seemed so empty. He didn’t say which block, so we all went and sat in the women’s block. It was only that night that they came and told us we were going to be released.’
Emil still had his back to her but he had stopped shaking. He sat down again, reached for another blade of long grass.
‘Eventually, it was one of the clerks who came. I don’t know his name. He was the accountant, I think, the one who did the sums and the paperwork. He stood in the doorway of the women’s block. It was us and the Lomeks and four men we didn’t know. We were hungry. We just sat staring at the empty stove. My mother and father looked at each other. They had hardly spoken to each other for a year. Eventually, this man came and stood in the door. He had a bundle in his arms. He tossed it over. It was the warm clothing they took from us when we arrived, the things we had wanted so much in the winter. All the time we had been so cold, the bundle had just been sitting somewhere, in a shed. He said, tomorrow you can go, you can go now if you like but it’ll be dark in an hour. He gave my father an envelope with official papers inside. We waited for a while after the guard had gone, then my father went over to the men’s barracks to see if there was anyone there. Nobody. The four men that we didn’t know stood up and said they weren’t going to hang around and give them time to change their minds. Mr Lomek was all for setting off straight away as well but two of his children were still quite small and his wife was sick. My father persuaded him to stay. We all slept together that night, in the women’s block, with the door open. Mr Lomek and my father propped it open with a pile of stones that would fall and make a noise if anyone tried to close it. We knew we were free to walk around but we stayed inside in case somebody saw us. Through the evening we heard them packing up. At one point I went to the window and watched. It was dusk by then. They had a jeep. They were taking things out of the office, boxes of papers. I saw one of the women come out with armfuls of winter boots. She dropped them into the back of the jeep, then she brushed the dirt off her shirt. My mother told me to come away from the window. I don’t think any of us slept that night.’
Emil turned slightly. She could see his face in profile. He was shaking his head. ‘You mean after all that time, a whole year, they just told you it was a mistake?’
‘It was as we were leaving the next day, a guard told us. We wouldn’t have asked but Mr Lomek went up to him and said, where have they sent the others? The guard said, to Poland. They’ve all gone now, the gypsies. Mr Lomek said, the gypsies have gone? The guard was one of the older ones, quite friendly. He said, yes, all of them. You don’t really count. You were a big farmer before, weren’t you, Lomek? It’s all on your papers. Some of them were all for sending you with the others, but it’s got to be legal. We’ve got procedures. Get home as fast as you can and see if your homes are still secure. Your gardens will be dug up, you know. You’ve forgotten what it’s like on the outside. There won’t be so much as a cabbage. Or something like that. I can’t remember. I couldn’t believe the way he was talking, all friendly, as if he was concerned how we would manage.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think my father really worked out what the guard meant until we were walking down the road, towards the village. He turned to Mr Lomek and said, what did he mean, we don’t really count? That’s when Mr Lomek explained. We had been released because we weren’t considered gypsies, because someone in Brno who had never even met us had looked at the paperwork and decided we didn’t count. Being not-gypsies in their eyes had saved us. My father stopped, right there, in the middle of the road. He was shaking his head. We all stopped. My mother was speaking to him, but he turned and started striding bade up the road. Mr Lomek realised what he was doing and ran after him. He grabbed his arm and my father turned and hit him. We couldn’t believe our eyes. It took Lomek and both his big sons to pin him to the road. My mother was screaming and crying. He had gone mad. He was going to walk all the way back up the hill, into the camp and demand to be put on a train to Poland …’
She stopped speaking, suddenly exhausted by her story. In the two years that had passed she had hardly thought of how they had left the camp; the journey back to Orlavá, her father vowing all the way that he was going to knife his brother for having betrayed them and her mother and herself too frightened to remind him that it was probably Uncle Karel’s appeal against their arrest that had resulted in their eventual release.
And then, when they reached Romanov; the burnt-out cottages, the little yards full of smashed furniture and the desecrated vegetable patches, the stray cat sitting on
the rubble and staring at them with narrowed eyes, hostile to their trespass …
They had hidden in the woods for two weeks. Her father went out at night to steal food. One evening, he came back and said he had managed to find Uncle Karel’s old friend, Officer Holt, and given him the fright of his life. Holt said the others were all gone. They had been taken two months ago, straight up to Poland. None of them would come back.
Holt was desperate to get rid of them. He had given them the address of a cousin who owned a factory on the outskirts of Prague. He would give them work, he said. It would only take a phone call. It wasn’t safe for them to stay in South Moravia. But they could travel quite openly – their papers were legal. He would even give them some money for the fare.
It was on the journey to Prague that her father broke. It had happened quite gradually, as he was staring out of the train window. She had watched it happen. She had looked at him and thought, all his life he has had the confidence of being utterly right. Now he doesn’t know what to think. The brother he was going to kill has disappeared and because we were betrayed by him, we have been saved. My father doesn’t understand. He wants to kill someone for saving us. He wants to live, and die. He is ashamed.
She could not find the words to explain this to Emil. She said simply, ‘We got to Prague. It wasn’t too bad when we first got here. We stayed in a back room in a factory, out of sight, even though we were legal. The three of us worked like slaves in return for the back room and a little food. We managed there for a whole year. But then it got worse and worse, more arrests, the rations went down, everyone got more frightened. The factory manager said he didn’t care if our papers were legal or not, we had to go. He had five children. He couldn’t risk their lives. I had to do all the talking. I told him that making us leave was the same as murdering us. I threatened to go to the police and turn us all in and say he had been listening to illegal radio broadcasts. He didn’t believe I’d do it until I pointed at him and cursed in Romani. He found us a shed in an allotment but we only stayed there for a few weeks. Too many people came and went.’
Her voice became low and bitter. ‘I’ve had to look after them, to do everything. Move us from place to place. And each time it’s got worse. We’re in a cellar. It is horrible. We’ve been stealing dog-food from the German family upstairs. They give their dog the rotting scraps and my father made friends with him so he never barks at us. He would if he knew it was us taking the slimy cabbage and green bread they put out for him. My mother managed some work as a cleaner, for a bit, but we got frightened they would round her up. We buy flour on the black market once a week but we can only make a paste. We can’t cook. I do most of the going out but I keep my head covered. My mother rubs flour over my face before she lets me out. My father …’ As she had been talking, her speech had become faster, like a train gathering speed. Emil took one of her hands between his.
‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted, her voice cracked and desperate. ‘I haven’t talked properly for two years. My parents, they don’t talk any more. It is like living with ghosts. I’ve been so desperate. Sometimes I thought I would just abandon them, just crawl out of the basement and leave them to it.’
Emil stood up and held out a hand to raise her. ‘Enough for now,’ he said. ‘It is enough.’
He pulled her to her feet.
‘I ought to go back,’ she said. ‘They will think I am dead.’
She closed her eyes and swayed, remembering the pure moment, as she had run in panic across the square, through the smoke, looking at a man, and seeing how that man’s face, without changing, had resolved itself into something she recognised … It was like flying.
‘They are nearby?’ Emil asked.
‘Not far from the square.’
‘We will go and see them,’ he said. ‘But there is something I have to do, a place I have to look at. It’s just round the corner.’
She nodded. Anything, she thought, anything so long as you do not leave me.
From the bridge, there came a long, continuous burst of machine-gun fire. It stopped, then started again, and was joined by the sound of other guns, firing repeatedly.
She looked at him.
He said, ‘That isn’t fighting, it’s celebrating. Someone has seen tanks in the northern suburbs, they’re saying.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Let’s go and see your parents. Then let’s go to Wenceslas Square.’
‘You don’t have to fight any more?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’ He turned to mount the bank and stride back up to the street. She hesitated, not wanting to leave the riverside, where it had been just the two of them and she had talked and talked, and been listened to.
He turned back to her, reaching out his hand to pull her up the bank. ‘Come. It’s all right.’ His hand enclosed hers. As he pulled her up the bank, she felt a brief dizziness. It often happened when she stood. She ate so little these days. She wondered where he lived now, if he had food somewhere. His clothes were dirty and torn from the fighting but his shoes were good shoes. My gadjo, she thought.
As they climbed the bank, the gunfire on the bridge burst out afresh, and floating towards them, down-river on the breeze, came the sounds of shouting, of song.
CHAPTER 31
At the top of the rise, Yenko told Marie to wait while he walked to the end of the street and checked that it was safe to cross the road. From the corner, he could look up towards the square and see that the smoke had cleared. Four partisans were standing in a group adjacent to the arches.
As he trotted back, he saw that Marie was stock-still where he had left her, staring after him, her eyes as round as the ebony buttons on the long waistcoats his father used to wear. It was how he imagined a child might stare at a ghost. He tried to smile at her, but all he could do was return her stare. He tried to feel emotion but after talking about his family, all he could feel was a rawness inside, a deadness. When he reached her, he touched her lightly on the arm, to turn her, and said, ‘This way. Come.’ The little square with the statue of the weeping angel was deserted. Old Stano’s bar was locked. While Marie waited, he returned to the street and found a short, thick piece of metal. He glanced up at the shuttered windows that overlooked the square, then pushed the piece of metal into the link chain that held the padlock on the door, forcing it open. The chain snapped with a ping that echoed around the tiny courtyard. He turned and beckoned Marie forward. They slipped into the bar.
Inside, the stools were upturned on the wooden tables and a sheet draped over the bar. The empty money-box was lying flat-open next to the bottle rack, to tell thieves there was nothing of value on the premises. Yenko took a stool from a table, turned it upright and told Marie to sit. Then he went up the small wooden staircase, to the attic.
When he returned, Marie was still standing in the middle of the room, looking around. ‘Do you work here?’ she asked, as he clumped down the staircase.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I thought I might have left something here, but I hadn’t. There’s nothing.’ He turned to go but she did not move. She was looking at him. He shook his head. ‘I have lived like a gadjo for two years,’ he said, as he ushered her out, ‘And I have learnt that they are every bit as treacherous as we were always taught. They would betray each other for a glass of beer.’
*
The basement where Marie and her parents had been hiding was two minutes from Old Stano’s place. They went around the front of the building to enter. As they approached, Marie said, ‘My father. He is not as he was. Neither of them are, but my father especially.’
She opened the large wooden door, slowly, and they entered a darkened hallway. They turned right and went down a short flight of stone steps, at the bottom of which was another door. She signalled with her hand that he should be quick.
‘If it was a German family upstairs they’ll be gone by now,’ Yenko hissed.
She waved at him to be silent as she tapped lightly, three times, on the cellar door.
The door opened immediately. The interior was dark but for a little grey light from the barred window on the opposite side of the room. A very old man stood in the doorway, his face lined, his shoulders stooped, his hair a shock of white.
Yenko had been planning to greet Marie’s father in formal Romani but was so surprised at the sight of him, that all he could manage was a nod.
Jan Malík looked from his daughter, to the strange young gadjo, and back again.
‘It’s all right, Father,’ Marie said kindly, reaching out a hand and placing it on his sleeve. He stepped back to allow them in.
As they stepped forward into the gloom, there was movement from the far side of the basement. Marie’s mother came forward. Her hair was streaked with grey. Grey shadows swooped down from the corners of her eyes, either side of her nose. Even her lips looked grey. They cannot stay down here, Yenko thought. They will die.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that they had made a few small attempts to render the basement habitable. A tin bucket stood in one corner. On the opposite side of the room, a torn blanket had been nailed above an arch. There was a dank smell, a smell of old people, and piss. The wall beneath the window was streaked with greenish-purple, a shininess – a thin slime of damp reflecting the sliver of light above.
In two years, Yenko thought, I have forgotten what it is like to live like this, to be grateful for this. (His polished shoes, his black-market coffee – what would happen now his savings had been stolen by Blažek and his livelihood gone?)
Marie’s mother was staring at him fearfully, looking from him to her daughter, waiting for clues.
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