by Lily Graham
Eva raced back to the edge of the small, natural lake to read it in private, but it wasn’t to be.
‘Is that from Michal?’
Eva whirled around, then seeing her mother, she grinned, nodding.
Eva’s mother, Anka, was seated at a long wooden table, a glass of lemonade in her manicured hand, her Dachshund, Chatzy – who had large, sad brown eyes – at her feet. Anka put down her magazine. Her dark, curled hair shone in the sunshine.
Anka Copco, it must be said, did not give up her standards, even for the mountains. And if the men wanted to build things and spend their time being mountaineers she would leave them to it, just so long as they kept it to themselves.
Eva tore the letter open, her eyes scanning Michal’s words, written in a slanting, scrawling hand. She sat down on the chair opposite her mother to read, hazel eyes alight.
Eva smiled, as she recounted parts of it aloud. ‘They played Don Giovanni last night, a special performance because some celebrity musician attended.’ She scanned the rest and then snorted. ‘He had to buy a new pair of shoes.’
Her mother laughed too.
She read the part about him missing her to herself.
‘I smelt peaches in the market, and for a moment I saw your face, someone told me that I had stopped in the middle of the road without realising.’
She set the letter down, her stomach doing a flip. Before her family had come to their country house, she’d spent almost every day with him – when they had started getting ready to depart for the old house in the mountains, she’d dragged her feet.
As she’d packed, her mother stood at the doorway, a knowing look on her face. ‘Your father tells me that you asked if you could stay behind this year, dítě. Has this got something to do with a certain boy who has been keeping my daughter out late every night, ruining her complexion?’
Eva straightened, and glanced at herself quickly in mirror, then laughed. There were deep circles beneath her hazel eyes from her late nights waiting for Michal to finish at the symphony and their long walks through the city. It was a magic time that felt made just for the two of them. And as the long hours of daylight stretched through summer, they would watch the sunset together before he walked her home.
She grinned, ‘What does uncle Bedrich say – “sleep when you’re dead”? I haven’t wanted to miss anything this summer.’
Her mother smiled. ‘Bedrich takes a nap every single day at two!’ she scoffed. ‘It is wonderful to see you so happy, though, dítě. But a few weeks in the country will be good for you too.’
It had been good. The mountains were as beautiful as they ever had been, her cousin’s laughter just as infectious. But it felt as if a part of her had been left behind in Prague.
She shook her head at herself, and laughed now, leaning against her mother. ‘You know, I used to tease Mila about stuff like this, pining over some boy.’
Her mother’s arm came around her shoulders, playing with her wet hair. There was a soft smile on her red lips. ‘Well, her head was always turned by some young man, she was always a little bit in love. You, well, you never did give your heart to anything lightly, not art, your family, your friends – you always give it your all.’
This was true. Even as children, Mila had had a crush on almost every boy in the class. By the time they were nine she had married them all in the playground, and caused a few of her ‘husbands’ to get into some rather raucous fights.
The sound of laughter carried on in the distance. Eva and Anka looked up to see Mila running from the lake in a red bathing costume, Arnold hot on her heels in shorts, his strong muscular thighs making short work of the distance as he scooped her up over his shoulder and proceeded to march her back to the lake where he threatened to toss her in.
Mila had met Arnold – a lawyer with a boyish laugh, and kind eyes – the previous summer. He hadn’t been impressed by Mila’s coquettish ways, and had put her in her place rather quickly when she’d tried dating him and someone else at the same time. When he walked away, declaring that he deserved better, to everyone’s surprise, she’d agreed, and she’d sent him roses to apologise. By then she was head over heels in love.
It had been a whirlwind romance.
‘Cousin! Eva, come save me!’ cried Mila, her long blonde hair a tumble of curls over his shoulder, her eyes dancing as she shrieked.
Mila and Arno were getting married in the spring – she’d finally found the boy who’d catch her. Eva laughed. Then set the letter down to save her cousin.
It was late afternoon, and the lake was ablaze, the water shimmering in golden light. Eva’s sketchbook lay abandoned, just fallen out of her hand onto the grass, as she dozed.
She stretched her legs on a big stripy towel. The neighbour’s cat, Scarecrow, a fluffy straw-coloured thing with a squashed face and a grumpy temperament to match, nestled into the crook of her arm, and she gave in to the temptation for a nap with him.
A shadow fell across her face, and she squinted, a hand cupping her eyes, only for her to blink and sit up fast, prompting the cat to make a disapproving sound as he skittered away somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed.
Eva squinted, and then she saw him.
His face was bathed in gold, which turned the edges of his curls a soft honeyed brown, and his laughing green eyes were crinkled at the corners.
‘You’re here,’ she breathed.
His mouth formed a soft smile, as he stared down at her. ‘I couldn’t stay in Prague.’
She’d stared, marvelling at the sight of him, here with her. ‘Why not?’
‘Because you weren’t there.’ Then he kissed her.
Chapter Sixteen
Sofie was tired, there were deep circles beneath her eyes. She’d heard about a woman who matched Lotte’s description, but it had turned out to be another dead end, and she was beginning to wonder if she would ever find her, or if the letter from her cousin’s neighbour, which had led her here, to hell, was simply a wild and foolish goose chase. She sat on the edge of the bunk, her eyes glazed, not seeing as a pair of women squabbled over stolen shoes. She was lost in time, to the moment when everything had changed.
She was standing in the front of the shop, watching Tomas who was smiling as he crawled towards her. He gave her that impish grin that was always hard to resist.
The shop bell chimed, and the sound of heavy jackboots were loud on the wooden floors.
Sofie looked from her son to see two men with hard eyes and amused sneers entering the building.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, as Tomas began to crawl towards them, his little fist coming forward to shake on a trouser leg.
It happened before she could blink, before she could even snatch him away.
The man reacted fast, shoving him aside. His hooded blue eyes flared. ‘Take your dirty fingers off me.’
Sofie raced forward to pick up her child, who had toppled over, and begun to wail in loud, piercing shrieks. ‘You monster! How dare you – you have no right to touch him!’ she cried, picking up her baby and trying to soothe him while she glared at the intruders. ‘Get out of our shop!’ she commanded.
He simply sneered, ‘I’m here to hand out the orders – and actually I have every right to be here. It’s you who no longer has any,’ he spat.
She blinked, she’d known this boy, not well, but his father had been in to the shop before. He was small of stature, scrawny, and there were spots on his chin.
From his workshop in the back, she could hear her father’s voice calling out, ‘What is it, Sofie, what’s going on?’ as he hurried inside to where the commotion had centred.
‘Just a warning,’ said the boy with hooded eyes. ‘For now,’ he added, sharing a sly look with his partner.
He handed them a notice, which he was careful not to place directly in her father’s hands, but on the glass counter.
Then he turned and left, giving Sofie one last lingering look of warning from his hooded eyes before he did.
Her father picked up the piece of paper, and read the notice with a frown. His eyes widened in disbelief. ‘It says that from now on it is illegal for a Jew to own a business.’
He staggered to the armchair nearby, and sat down with a thud.
‘Illegal?’ Sofie repeated, dumbstruck. Her large, dark eyes stared at him, trying to make sense of his words. ‘But it’s been in the family for more than a century!’
Her father looked up at her, looking suddenly younger than his years. ‘What are we going to do?’
They decided to put the business in a friend’s name, a gentile. It was her grandfather’s idea, and it was a good one, or at least so they thought. But the Nazis saw through it.
In the night, while she’d been putting away some stock, the glass rained down from above, landing on Sofie’s head, and she fell backwards crashing into a wall of shelves. They upended, and hundreds of watch faces fell, breaking into shattered pieces on the hardwood floor. Sofie lay in a pool of her own blood. Her ears rang, and it was hard to see or hear beyond the slick of her blood.
Distantly, there was worry, and in the quiet before the hum of noise began again, her first and only thought was for her son, Tomas.
‘Tomas!’ she called. Her voice was weak, then grew louder, her gaze blurring, her ears ringing all the more. Her head pounded. She put a hand to her temple and it came back wet with blood. She blinked. What had happened?
Suddenly there were footsteps, hard hob-nailed boots, and all she saw was brown – brown uniformed legs. Nazis, she realised with a shiver of fear, thugs.
She sat up, cradling her head and calling for her son. She could hear him, somewhere, crying out, calling for her.
She crawled forward, blinking, then suddenly there was a voice, and a face that smelt like old whisky and rage, hot and rancid. Cold, hooded blue eyes seared her flesh. Her hair was snatched back by a hard hand, and he hissed as her head snapped towards his. ‘I told you, you should have just left.’ Then he slammed a fist in her face, and she fell back on a jagged piece of glass. She knew nothing after that.
Hours later Sofie woke with a headache. It felt as if her head was splitting in two.
She was on the sofa, and her father was sitting next to her, his greying head in his hands.
‘Udo can get us out, he says he knows a way,’ he said, as soon as her eyes were open. She blinked, staring up at him. It looked like he’d aged twenty years overnight from all that had happened in the space of a few weeks. Their shop ambushed, their citizenship stripped away. All because they’d happened to do nothing more offensive than exist. ‘He knows someone who can get us through to Switzerland by boat. We’ll have to leave tonight.’
Sofie made to get up, her head pounding from the sudden movement. She flinched at the pain, but pushed through. ‘I’ll pack our things, get Tomas ready.’
He shook his head. ‘Already done. Your grandparents will follow us in a few days, we must go now.’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
They travelled by train for several hours. Her father’s friend, a local businessman, had helped to arrange the papers to get them out. On the first stop the guard checked them over, and Sofie held her breath. It was illegal for Jews to travel more than a few kilometres from their homes, leave the country or travel in anything but the third-class carriages. She wore a woollen hat low over her forehead, but the bandage still showed. He frowned, then asked how she’d got it. She looked at Tomas, mercifully asleep in his cot, and said, ‘Tripping over my son, you know how it can be – I wasn’t looking.’
The guard pulled a face and her father added, ‘Mother’s instinct to save her son, she went flying down the stairs instead. Women,’ he muttered with a wink.
The guard laughed. ‘Yes, silly things,’ he said, then handed her back her papers. ‘Be careful now.’
‘I will,’ she said, too afraid to be offended.
That evening they arrived at the station in Bregenz, at the foothills of the Alps, where they were met by her cousin, Lotte and her husband, Udo. The pair had looked after her when she’d given birth to Tomas. ‘The boat will get you through to Switzerland,’ Udo explained, running a hand through coarse black hair, his dark eyes solemn. ‘You can use my car – we’ll follow in a few days to avoid suspicion.’
They nodded. Lotte rubbed her throat in anxiety. She was a motherly sort, plump with short blonde hair and a permanently worried expression. She had big, round doe eyes, that looked terrified at everything that was happening. She didn’t say much, just twisted her fingers together so much that she had caused the skin to bleed.
Sofie and her father didn’t comment. They were tired, hungry and miserable too. Sofie understood how her cousin felt, she wouldn’t feel safe until she was properly out of the country, but it was enough to at least be out of Vienna, and away from all that had happened.
After a light dinner, they went to bed, hoping that tomorrow they would find themselves a new home. ‘Maybe we should rethink this,’ Lotte said again. ‘Try something else. This is just so risky.’
Sofie sighed. Her cousin had said it a few times already, and they’d grown impatient in explaining that this was their only chance. It was either leave or wait for them to come find them.
Udo pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Enough, Lotte. This is the only way.’
Sofie escaped from their bickering, knowing it was just the fear talking. She held her son close, breathed in his fresh scent after his bath, and whispered. ‘I’ll make sure you don’t have to grow up with this fear, somehow. I promise you. I won’t let anyone tell you that you’re a second-class citizen again.’
They were hurrying towards the lake and the small waiting boat that would lead them to Switzerland, and freedom, when suddenly there were shouts from behind them, and several SS officers raced towards them, calling the attention of the border patrol guard who had waved them through moments before, and hadn’t asked too many questions. As she cradled Tomas, Sofie could see her cousin being dragged forward by two Nazis, howling. ‘I’m so sorry!’ Lotte wailed. ‘They said they would kill us if we didn’t tell them the truth!’
Sofie closed her eyes in horror.
‘They have falsified their papers,’ said the officer to the patrol guard.
‘No,’ Sofie denied it. ‘They’re real.’
The officer struck her across the face. Sofie’s father shouted, and suddenly he was dragged across the gangway, a gun pointed at his head.
‘No! Please, don’t!’ shouted Sofie.
The officer looked at her. ‘I don’t like liars,’ he spat. ‘Or Jews,’ before he shot her father in the heart.
‘No, Papa!’ she screamed. She watched as her father gasped for breath, then died. She fell to her knees, sobbing, clutching her son, who started to wail. Lotte came forward to take him from her, her plump face full of remorse.
Sofie snatched him away from her cousin, and an officer picked her up roughly, dragging her away from her father, forcing Tomas from her arms. He handed the baby to Lotte and sneered, ‘Take care of this.’ Then he looked at Sofie and said, ‘You are under arrest for trying to leave on falsified papers.’
Lotte started to cry, over Tomas’s wails. ‘I am so sorry.’
Sofie’s lips trembled, hot tears splashing from her lashes. ‘Look at what you did – what you caused. Was it worth my father’s life?’
They took her to a nearby police station, where she was kept in a holding cell and told that they would decide what to do with her in time. Sofie sat in the same clothes that she had crossed the border in, and couldn’t find it in her to bathe or wash or fix her hair, even though her cousin had brought her suitcase by a few days before.
All she wanted was her son. She ached for him, ached for her father. The tears had stopped flowing, perhaps they were drowning her from the inside, suffocating her heart.
‘What has happened to my son?’ she asked the guard, when he came past with a small bowl of soup that she wouldn’t be eating. It had been several d
ays and she hadn’t heard anything. ‘Is he with my cousin?’
The guard looked at her. ‘Your cousin?’
‘The woman that sold me out,’ she spat.
He blinked. ‘The blonde Jew? Same thing that will happen to you no doubt – she was sent to a camp.’
Sofie stood up fast, blinking in shock. ‘And my son?’
He picked his teeth idly. ‘There was no child when they took her.’
‘What do you mean?’ she screamed.
He took a step away from her. ‘She was alone. Said she gave the baby up – wouldn’t say where. It didn’t matter to us.’
Sofie felt as if her heart had shattered into a thousand pieces.
‘Where is she – which camp?’
He shrugged. ‘She was sent East.’
Sofie sunk to her knees in despair, as the guard left without a backward glance.
Falsifying papers was a serious offence, and there were two punishments for such a crime: the first was death by firing squad, the second was to be sent as a prisoner to a labour camp. Not that Sofie was given an option. She was told the following morning that she would be sent to a camp and there they would decide her fate.
She was sent out on a crowded train with hundreds of others: men, women and children.
The train travelled for several hours, and then ground to a sudden screeching stop.
In the close quarters of the cattle cart – which smelt of waste and unwashed bodies – people were staring out of the slats but no one was sure what had happened.
Suddenly, the doors opened, and they were pulled off the train, and ushered onto a platform along with another cart, which had been going in another direction. ‘Stay here,’ they were commanded.