The Lost Wife (21 page)
Authors: Alyson Richman
I can still see it so distinctly as she pushes them over to Lucie, who quietly wraps them in old scarves and places them in her basket.
“I will keep them safe,” Lucie says just by lowering her eyes. She knows how much it means for Mother to be entrusting her with these things. Their significance lies not in the monetary value of the stones or the weight of the gold, but in the different milestones in her life that each marked.
Mother stands and Lucie embraces her one last time, rising on her tiptoes to reach her. A single tear falls across Mother’s cheek. My beloved Lucie kisses not the dry cheek but the wet one, and Mother nods before pulling away, pointing over to her two children, who are not children at all now, but two young women.
Lucie comes over to Marta and me, and we each stand to hug her as we say good-bye. She holds her basket tightly to her, and we know she is signaling to us that the jewelry will be safe with her. That she will never sell it. Her eyes are fierce and defiant, a look I have never seen before.
“I will see you girls when this is over,” she says, trying her best to smile. “And your mother can decide which of these you can wear.”
I look at her and I know that my eyes are frightened. The tears, the emotion of saying good-bye to her, is almost too difficult to bear. “Lucie,” I say. “Take this, too.” I unpin the cameo that Josef gave me that last day at the station. I also wiggle off my gold wedding band, the one I promised to myself that I would never take off as long as I lived.
“Keep these safe, too.”
Lucie reaches to embrace me, and tells me she will do as I asked and not to worry. I try to thank her, but the tears are coming and she shushes me the way she did when I was a little girl.
She holds me tight to her chest, kisses me, and then Marta once more, before she rises and walks quietly out the door.
The next morning, we left our apartment with our suitcases and rucksacks. We had slept little, and now spoke only a few words because we were anxious and had no idea what to expect. Our deportation cards informed us that we were to report to a local school where we would remain for three days until our transport to Terezín. When we arrived, the school was already teeming with hundreds of people. Marta found one of her former classmates immediately, but I recognized no one. We slept on the floor with our sheets and blanket. The air was stagnant with the smell of sausages and warm milk. It was an awful, rancid odor, one that made me sick. I remember reaching for my pillowcase to inhale the scent of the coffee mother had boiled them in. My stomach ached, not yet from hunger but out of a sense of dread. A fog of nervousness and fear hung over all of us. Every pair of eyes seemed scared. Even the toddlers who roamed about with their little stocking-clad feet and rounded faces appeared tense. I looked at them with sympathy. My own childhood had been so carefree. Long walks with Lucie and Marta, painting watercolors by the Vltava, and slices of rich chocolate cake. I had not yet let myself feel thankful that I had lost my baby; that would come much later, but it pained me to see the child who was looking longingly at other people’s food, the one who already needed a bath, or the one whose parents had lacked the room in their suitcase to pack a single toy.
There was one little boy whom I befriended the first night at the school. His name was Hans and he had turned three the month before. I had left my parents and Marta by our makeshift beds and gone for a walk alongside the perimeter of the auditorium. Out of habit, I took my tin of charcoal and sketchpad out of my rucksack, and hoped to find something of interest to draw. I found a quiet corner and made myself as comfortable as I could.
But before I had the chance to settle in, Hans found me. He was wearing a white shirt that was already stained with what looked like jam, and a pair of brown trousers. His dark hair was thick and curly. His eyes were bottle green.
I’m not sure why he chose to sit next to me. I didn’t have a cookie to offer him or even a stick to play with, but he settled by my feet and smiled at me. I showed him my sketchpad and asked if he minded if I drew him for a little bit. He nodded and smiled. I felt such a pang in my heart as I looked at his curls and the color of his eyes. I wondered if my baby would have looked like him at three.
“Hans,” I whispered. “Look at the shadows on the glass.” High above, the gymnasium windows were filled with the reflections of the trees outside. Almost like large puppets, they swayed back and forth. One branch resembled the neck of a giraffe; its cluster of leaves on the top could have been the animal’s bobbing head. Another tree had a long sweep of boughs that looked like a dangling jellyfish. Hans giggled, and I began drawing him in profile.
Over the next two days, we became fast friends. I met his parents, Ilona and Benjamin, who were close to the same age as Josef and me. I sketched them holding hands, with Ilona gazing past her husband’s face, past her son drumming on the floor. She was already trying to envision where we were headed, a mother’s worried anticipation of the unknown written all over her face.
Before Terezín
I wrote at the bottom of the page. One could scan the room at every other mother, the gaze was the same. Where were they sending us?
I wrote at the bottom of the page. One could scan the room at every other mother, the gaze was the same. Where were they sending us?
The name Terezín meant nothing to me at the time. I did not know of extermination camps or work camps, or even really the concept of a ghetto. I had never heard a whisper about a concentration camp.
We had heard we would only be with Jews, which was a relief to us. To be in a place where we were all the same, and not have to live next to others who would be permitted their freedom while we were saddled with one restriction after another. We knew there would be SS and that there would be work for us to do. But did we know what else truly lay in store for us? No. We did not. Absolutely. No.
We were loaded into the train, over one hundred of us herded inside a space that would have been overcrowded with less than half that. I stood next to Marta and Mother. Papa was pushed away from us as we were forced deeper and deeper into the car. Once the doors were closed, I looked for him. There was only a faint line of sunlight in the car, coming from a narrow window above, but I could see a glimmer of his profile in the back of the train. Every time I tried to look over in his direction, he was staring straight ahead.
The train crawled over the tracks. Babies cried and people tried not to complain, but we were terribly uncomfortable and there was no place to sit. The air was stifling and ripe with the smells of everyone’s provisions. I looked to find Hans, just so I could lift him for a second and smell his unwashed hair.
By late afternoon, the train came to a halt and the door of the car was finally opened. We had arrived at the small train station of Bohušovice, which was about three kilometers outside Terezín. We were told by the Czech police to carry our suitcases and rucksacks for the remainder of the journey.
There was already quite a lot of snow on the ground. The white drifts were piled high against the road, and a light mist had begun to fall as our transport headed in the direction of Terezín. I remember looking at the sight of snowflakes on Mother’s and Marta’s hair. The two of them already looked so tired, and their black coats no longer seemed elegant after such a long journey. But in the fading sunlight, they looked almost like fairies, with their coils of red hair now adorned with snow. Little crystal beads that sparkled for a second before disappearing.
Later on as we walked, we finally saw the ramparts of Terezín on the horizon. I noticed Mother ahead of me, fumbling in her pocket, then bowing her head, her gait slowing for a moment. Later on, when we were standing and being counted, I noticed that she looked different, that the color in her face was almost revived. When I looked more closely, I realized what had caused the change. She had secretly applied some lipstick.
Most of us did not know anything about the town of Terezín. We had no reason to, given our previously comfortable lives back in Prague. I eventually learned that at the orders of the Emperor Josef II, Terezín had been built as a Baroque fortress in the late eighteenth century. In the beginning, it served as a political prison for the Hapsburgs, with an addition of a small town to house the garrisons and soldiers. So do not imagine Auschwitz or Treblinka when I tell you what follows next in my story. There was no chimney of smoking, burning ash to greet us when we arrived. There were no brown, split-beam barracks. It resembled a small town—with buildings, dirty and dusty. Facades once painted Maria Theresa yellow, were now faded and peeling; the church was boarded up. But it was also the perfect place to prevent any escape: the town was surrounded by a moat, its perimeters lined by ramparts, and all exits and entrances marked by iron gates.
Upon our arrival, we were led to the Schleusse—the arrival hall—where we were registered, our bodies searched, and our luggage expertly checked by a special detachment of German women. For several days after our processing, we were kept in the Schleusse until we were assigned our housing by the
Raumwirtschaft
—a special department of the Jewish self-administration. The men and women in this department had been notified and had already prepared the bunks for the new arrivals in our transport. Luckily, Mother, Marta, and I were all placed in the Dresden barracks, and Father was assigned to live in the Sudeten. Most of the barracks, we soon discovered, were named after German towns.
Raumwirtschaft
—a special department of the Jewish self-administration. The men and women in this department had been notified and had already prepared the bunks for the new arrivals in our transport. Luckily, Mother, Marta, and I were all placed in the Dresden barracks, and Father was assigned to live in the Sudeten. Most of the barracks, we soon discovered, were named after German towns.
As we were about to make our way to our barracks, I saw Ilona standing in a corner, holding Hans close to her. His legs were wrapped around her waist, and his head was nestled against her shoulder. I tried to look over in his direction and get him to smile, but he was lethargic from the journey and the lack of food. I made a shadow puppet with my hand and saw a little smile cross his lips. Ilona told me that she and Benjamin had yet to receive their barracks designation, and I told her I hoped she would be with us. That way, we could all look out for each other and maybe also care for Hans, who was still too young to be taken from her and put in the children’s barracks.
She nodded, but already seemed as though she were in a dream. Her eyes were cloudy and her hair not pinned back. How quickly our appearances had changed without the luxury of clean clothes, a bath, and a mirror.
My family and I said good-bye to the people we had befriended over the course of our few days in the Schleusse, and began to make our way deeper into the ghetto.
While heading to the barracks, I searched for the gaze of someone we passed on the road who might somehow reassure me that Terezín would not be a terrible place to live during the war. I, like so many other Jews, could not then conceive that there was a master plan to exterminate us, but only to segregate us. But as I walked through Terezín that first afternoon, it was clear that this was a place of great deprivation. The roads were filled with half-starved prisoners, their cheeks hollow and their clothes threadbare. Men as thin as skeletons pulled old funeral carts loaded with suitcases or supplies. There was no color or vitality to be seen. Even the park in the center was fenced off.
Already another transport was arriving from Bohušovice, and I will never forget the sight of the people it contained. Men with long white beards, some wearing top hats and tails. Women in long dresses, fur coats, a few even walking with parasols that were bending from the snow. Later we would learn that this was a transport of German Jews—distinguished war veterans, intellectuals, and men of culture—who had paid thousands for supposed contracts that falsely promised them a privileged resettlement during the war.
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