This is My Song

by Richard Yaxley

  ‘What I mean to ask is – who really knows the butterfly?’

  Now the children hesitated. One girl said, ‘I know how to catch them.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Dominik told her. ‘That is a great skill. You must be very clever.’

  The girl blushed happily. Dominik began to describe the stages of metamorphosis, from egg to larva – ‘you know, the first thing the caterpillar does is eat its own leaf. Fancy that! Would you ever wake up and eat your own bed?’ – and pupa. ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘Caterpillars are ugly slugs and butterflies are so beautiful. There’s a lot going on in there.’

  The children murmured their appreciation of this. Dominik said, ‘Now, who’s ever seen a pupa?’

  This time, surprisingly, the scowly boy raised his hand. ‘I did,’ he said, ‘on a twig in our garden. I thought it was a jewel.’

  Someone laughed. ‘What did you do?’ asked Dominik. ‘Did you break it open?’

  ‘No,’ said the scowly boy. Then he smiled, the opening of his face giving an unexpected sunny effect. ‘I couldn’t. It was, you know –’

  His face creased again. Dominik said, ‘Too beautiful?’ and the boy nodded.

  Now the children were silent. Like me, they were transfixed.

  ‘You made a wise decision,’ said Dominik. ‘You know why? Because the butterfly uses the exercise of breaking the pupa to strengthen its wings. If you help out in any way, then the butterfly might not get enough exercise. It might be too weak to fly. And if it cannot fly, guess what? It will die.’

  He cleared his throat, placed his palms together into a steeple and told the children, ‘We can learn a lot from butterflies.’

  Dominik taught me many things. Why we need volcanoes. The usefulness of the spider. The composition of the human body. The wonders of chlorophyll. How rain is created. The mechanism by which birds fly.

  ‘So a bird may never fly backwards?’

  ‘Most birds, no.’

  ‘Ah! Some birds do this?’

  ‘There is one.’ Dominik grinned. ‘The hummingbird has a different wing structure. It can twirl its wings around like a helicopter –’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Helicopter. A new flying machine, with overhead blades that go round and round. The hummingbird’s wings are similar, meaning that it can fly left, right, up, down, forwards and, yes, even backwards. Amazing.’

  ‘I would love,’ I told him earnestly, ‘a pet hummingbird.’

  ‘A pet?’ Dominik frowned. ‘Consider this. Your pet hummingbird would have to be in a cage where it would sit alone on a perch and lament its lack of freedom. It might even forget –’

  ‘How to fly backwards?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Indeed.’

  Every lesson had a point, every explanation of the intricacies of nature could be used to illustrate the complex business of human existence. Dominik willingly taught the younger children as well as people of my age, but I was selfish enough to want him for myself, to work cunningly towards pulling him away from the group.

  For one so young he was uncommonly wise but also brave … I recall him turning up at the barrack steps late one afternoon with a sheaf of precious paper and some pencils.

  ‘Today,’ he told the assembly, ‘we will draw the solar system. I will demonstrate, then each of you can make your own diagram.’

  ‘Why, Dominik?’

  ‘So we may fully appreciate the extent of God’s creation.’

  He began with the Sun, had blotted in Mercury, Venus and begun Earth – when two policemen loomed in the open doorway.

  ‘Boy, that paper –’

  ‘A gift,’ said Dominik, ‘from a benefactor, a fellow scientist –’

  They didn’t believe him. It was alleged that he had broken into the office of the protectorate and stolen twenty sheets. Perhaps he had. There was no doubt plenty of paper in there – and no point in arguing. Dominik was sent to the Little Fortress, outside Terezín, for thirty days. He came out thinner and paler, with new circles of pain etched around his eyes.

  ‘Did they –’

  ‘Amazing,’ he whispered. ‘Rafi, my friend, did you know that cold air is more dense than warm air? This is because …’

  A generous, genuine, humble boy. Such people are not made for this earth.

  The second person of great importance that I met was Mr Haas.

  Terezín housed many fine musicians. In this respect my father had been correct. Historians tell us that the model ghetto was filled with orchestras, choirs and cabaret for the purposes of Nazi propaganda. Their desire was to costume the ugly, give this deathly place a look of lively enlightenment. The inmates did not care about such a motivation. Playing music was all that mattered.

  It was 1942. Early, late, I cannot recall. The days, weeks and months had become irrelevant. I believe that I might have been thirteen, certainly too young to play with the adult bands. Many of the children had been organised into a choir and were undertaking singing lessons. For me, this had no appeal. I was a musician, on a par with my great friend Michal Laks … singing nursery rhymes with corresponding hand movements was beneath me.

  Such pettiness. Such arrogance.

  Each Monday the Division of Recreation posted a list of the week’s upcoming activities on the barracks board. This particular Monday included a note about a jazz group – unusual, you might say, but remember, my child, the Nazis were interested in appearances.

  Could I sneak in? Persuade the jazz group to give me a chance? If so, would I even remember how to play? To my inner self I acknowledged the truth. I hadn’t been so good …

  After a tiring day of digging ditches I found my way to the block where the orchestras rehearsed. At first I could only hear violins whining and cellos groaning until I neared the end of the building. My blood quickened at the snorts and proclamations of a trumpet. I peered through a grimy window pane and saw five men practising: a piano player, two trumpeters, a man with a clarinet – and a saxophonist.

  I pressed my face to the glass, watched their fingers fly, their eyes close to slits or open wide and sparkle with the passion of the moment. I saw their gaunt faces swell with pleasure, and their bodies bend and rise and sway as if they too were instruments. I closed my own eyes and let the music race like a train into my heart, and I thought of the Old Man before he was shot, of Michal, our lessons, all that he had instilled –

  Suddenly the window was open and the piano player was standing before me.

  ‘Hello, young přítel.’

  I flushed at being caught. The piano player said, ‘You were enjoying our songs?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good to see. My name is Haas. And you are –’

  I told him my name.

  ‘I see that you are a lover of fine music, Rafael Ullmann.’

  ‘Yes –’

  ‘You like to listen –’

  ‘More than that,’ I told Mr Haas boldly. ‘Before I came to Terezín I was learning the saxophone from one of the greatest players in the world, Michal Laks. You would no doubt know of him?’

  The other men exchanged bemused glances. Mr Haas said, ‘The great Michal Laks? I do believe that I have heard of him, yes.’

  A kind man, to humour the ridiculous child that stood bugeyed before him. He said, ‘It is cold in here but colder out there. Would you like to come inside for a little while?’

  I nodded, then asked, ‘May I play?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Haas with a smile.

  From that point on, whenever I had a spare moment, I was allowed to sit in with the jazz band. I believe that Mr Haas, who had been granted certain privileges, spoke with the commandant of the Division of Recreation, convincing him that I was a special case, a prodigy who needed ongoing exposure to great music. Sometimes Ernst Dura, the saxophonist, would allow me to blow some notes and give me tips on improving my embouchure or note formation, but most of the time I was content to watch and listen and feel those rich sounds move within me, a gallop, a swing,
a shiver, an explosion.

  Looking back, my child, on what I have written, I see that a note of caution is due. I was lucky to learn from Dominik and listen to Mr Haas’s jazz band, but please understand: if I am painting the ghetto as a place of hope and enjoyment then I have most certainly given the wrong impression. Terezín was in part a creative community because of some talented inmates, but this was no guarantee of happiness. Despite the Nazis’ public claims to the contrary, the settlement remained an inhumane prison where people died every day from disease, exhaustion or starvation, particularly elderly people. Many of the ghetto police were vicious thugs – we had nicknames for the worst – the Bull, Dogface, the Hawk – who enjoyed nothing more than taunting and beating Jews. We were constantly hungry, cold, miserable and lice-infested. Yes, there was music, a library and secret lessons – but we were still prisoners. Always prisoners.

  Despite these difficulties, or perhaps because of them, my mother, like the other mothers in our barracks, worked hard to maintain our Hebrew observances. She ensured that Marika and I faced Jerusalem, silently recited the Amidah and said our individual prayers. Disregarding our frowns, she insisted that we petition our captors in those prayers – ‘Lord, grant them a vision of peace!’ – and frequently asked us to be mindful that God was with us at all times and that He would always protect our souls, even when our minds and bodies were being ravaged by earthly indignities …

  ‘Marika?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think God is watching?’

  ‘Of course, Rafi. What a stupid question.’

  ‘Was He watching when Mrs Dobransky died last night? They say she choked on a potato skin because her throat was too thin to swallow.’

  ‘Rafi.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are an infidel. Say your prayers again and go to sleep.’

  However much God may or may not have been watching, I became dismissive of His attention because I believed that brave Dominik and talented Mr Haas gave me greater purpose. I began to feel that a proper approach to life meant seeking a balance between two objectives: those of thinking like a scientist and feeling like a musician. This, combined with the absence of my father and his obscure metaphors and obsessions, allowed me to achieve, for a brief period, a measure of contentment in Terezín that I had not thought possible. Although I did as she asked, so as to keep the peace, my mother’s efforts at reinforcing our faith became, for me at least, increasingly futile. Privately, rebelliously, I began to see parts of the Torah as no better than a Rilke poem. As time passed and Terezín became a way of life, both God and my father became increasingly unimportant, figures from my childhood cast in pale ochres and fuzzy lines. Eventually I came to the idea that my new self, while not openly defiant of either deity, had certainly grown away from their orbits, which I now saw as strange, remote and irretrievable.

  During the latter part of the winter of 1942 my sister also found some fulfilment in Terezín, although the flash fires of her indignation were never far away. Always a talented artist, she had heard rumours of a new arrival named Friedl who was providing secret lessons for children.

  ‘Rafi, you sneak about and you’re a boy, you get told things. Do you know of this Friedl? Where does she teach?’

  I shrugged. Art did not interest me. I was a scientist and a musician.

  ‘They say she is a genius,’ said Marika.

  I looked at my sister. I mean really looked at her, for the first time in months. Even I could see that, despite her bony frame and ashen face, fifteen-year-old Marika was on the verge of becoming an elegant woman. Like me she was tall, but whereas my arms and legs were disobedient pipe cleaners, Marika’s long limbs moved with the precision and grace of a waterbird. She had inherited our mother’s perfectly mirrored features and plumes of thick dark hair. That hair might have been lank and knotted, but it was still easy to see what Marika could become, once she was free of Terezín’s cold clutch.

  ‘Stop staring!’ she said. ‘Ghoul.’

  ‘That woman,’ I told her –

  ‘Friedl? What about her?’

  I named a block on the western side of the settlement. ‘I have heard, the cellar –’

  Marika clapped her hands before spontaneously kissing me. Embarrassed, I pulled away and she laughed. A few months later I would remember that moment as I remember it now, with equal measures of affection and despondency.

  It was nearing spring in the new year when our father appeared at the door of our barracks.

  He was a spectre – gaunt, wild-eyed, his clothes torn rags hanging from a skin-and-bone frame. The sight of him made me think immediately of a scavenger. However, despite his diminished appearance, it was soon clear that the strange eruption of his spirit was still in place.

  ‘I have returned,’ he announced in godlike fashion.

  Our mother rushed to the doorway and embraced him. ‘Josef,’ she said, over and over. ‘Josef! I never knew! They refused to say and then, I thought – oh, Josef!’

  She helped him inside, where he sat gingerly on a wooden sill. There were scabs and weeping sores on his face and neck, open wounds on the backs of his hands. The other families nodded and greeted him; then, respecting the moment, they moved to the other end of the barracks and went quietly about their own business.

  ‘Children, it is your father!’

  Marika hugged and kissed him without restraint. ‘Oh, Papa,’ she said, ‘we always knew you would come back!’

  My father’s laugh was a throaty wheeze. ‘Little one,’ he said, patting the top of her head, ‘my little one, you have grown.’

  ‘Rafi?’ It was my turn. I hesitated then stood before him. Was this broken figure really my father? Someone whom I should love without condition or question? I turned my eyes to the floor as my mind flickered to images of windy days in the city, scraps of rubbish blown into the streets and yards. I thought of grit and sore eyes and the wintry chill that blew one way from the desolate farmlands, the other way from ice floes on the river ...

  ‘Rafi –’

  ‘Papa,’ I said, taking his scabby hand, ‘miluji tě.’ I love you.

  I was a child prisoner, filthy, hungry, desperate, frightened. What else could I say?

  Other men returned. For the same purposes of propaganda the Nazis had decided to allow some families to live in separate rooms. That we greeted this news with gratitude to our captors showed how far our expectations had changed since coming to Terezín. We were being pathetically thankful for what should always be a basic human right: that of families to live together in peace.

  We were given our single room to share. There was a stove, a tub for washing and even a table and two chairs that had to be stacked when we laid out our mattresses in the evenings. My mother was able to cook meals, admittedly with limited fuel and groceries, and we could place our photographs and precious objects in corners or on the table during the day. It should have been more homely, and by and large it was – despite the presence of my father.

  I have noted his physical deterioration. All of us had similar issues. But whereas we were also emotionally flat and weary, our spirits pushed down by unrelenting misery and work, the power of my father’s obsession was unabated.

  ‘Nearly done!’ he would exclaim before lowering his voice, looking around for the spies that he always imagined to be lurking nearby and whispering. ‘Bezdek will be envious. He will be insane with envy because “Love and Sorrow” is brilliant. Brilliant! Rilke cements his reputation, Ullmann too!’

  At night while we huddled against the cold and tried to sleep, his husky voice reached into every part of that tiny room as he recited, for no apparent reason:

  My eyes already touch the sunny hill

  going far ahead of the road I have begun.

  Once, gazing at the stark buildings and streets, the unending grey that was Terezín, he turned and said, ‘The raptures! I told you, did I not? We enrol in the raptures of life!’

  Was he being i
ronic? I believe not. Simply stated, there were many differences in what he saw, and what was there.

  It was easy to become frustrated or angered by him, and I am ashamed to admit that I did, to the point where Marika frequently reminded me that we did not know what had happened to our father in the many months he had been lost to us. Had he been locked in a cell? Left alone to rot? Was he tortured? All of these were possibilities, but one thing was clear: he either would not or could not say, probably because, unintentionally or otherwise, he had wiped that portion of time from his memory.

  Our mother tried to help by distracting him in conversation or asking him to read to her.

  ‘The poet!’

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow, Josef. Tonight, Leviticus. Read to me from Leviticus.’

  In familiar fashion, he argued before agreeing to do so.

  Despite all this, for a while we were able to bumble along in a relatively controlled manner. My days were no less repetitive: wake up, ignore my father, join whichever work gang I had been assigned, finish, struggle back to the main compound to find either Dominik or Mr Haas, return to our room, ignore my father, try to sleep. Marika, meanwhile, was taking lessons from the artist Friedl. When she secretly showed me a piece she had smuggled away from the cellar I said, ‘You should not do this. If the police find out –’

  ‘What is the point of this,’ said Marika, indicating her picture, ‘if no one can see it?’

  I did not reply. The image was made from thickly applied black pencil. Several lines of ghetto police marched across the paper. Each line was a replica of the others; each policeman owned a vicious gargoyle head with bared animal teeth and grasping oversized hands.

  ‘One day,’ Marika said softly, ‘we will leave here and I will use my art to show the world what this place was really like.’

  ‘What if we don’t?’ I asked. ‘Leave, I mean. What if –’

  Without missing a beat Marika said, ‘Rafi, listen to me. Friedl’s art, my art, the works of the younger children – some of it will survive, even if we do not. And people will know. They will know.’