The Earth Is Singing (8 page)

Papa’s face floats between us for a moment, as it often does. The three of us are sitting around the table in our elegant villa. The double doors are thrown open and the garden is full of birdsong and the smell of cherry blossom.

I reach for Mama’s hand. I remember the promise I made to Papa.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “We will stick together. So we will be all right. And Papa will come home again when the war is over.”

Mama cannot speak, but she grips my hand tighter.

“So much change ahead,” is all she says, but it’s enough to make the air take on a colder feel around our heads.

We duck inside our apartment block to get away from the rain.

Mama spends the next two weeks trying to teach me to sew.

I’ve already watched her for years as she makes and alters dresses, trousers and skirts, but watching it and doing it are two very different things. Although I’ve helped cut out patterns and sort fabrics, I realize that doing the sewing requires good co-ordination between my arms and my feet on the pedal.

“It’s not fair,” I say, as Mama tells me off for the hundredth time for messing up my stitches. Thread is flying all over the place and I’ve nearly stitched through my hand by putting it too close to the needle. “Why can I get my arms and legs to match in ballet but not here?”

Omama is trying to stifle a laugh.

“You are the worst seamstress I have ever seen,” she crows. “It is a good job you are going to become a ballerina.”

“Here,” says Mama in a voice which she is trying very hard to keep patient. “Put it here. Like this. See? Then move it like this…” and she glides the fabric smoothly under the dipping needle. Her move is precise and confident. When I do it, the fabric catches and jerks and snarls up into lumps.

“It is like your dancing,” she says. “At first it is difficult. But with practice it becomes easy, no?”

I shrug. My eyes ache from staring at the tiny stitches and my back hurts from hunching over the sewing table with my foot pumping up and down.

Deep down I miss dancing so much that I can hardly bear to think about it. My dreams seem to have been suspended somewhere just out of my reach and I can’t touch them any longer. Sometimes at night I risk doing a few gentle jetés on the carpeted floor of my bedroom but my legs are losing muscle tone and I’m worried I will never be able to catch up again.

“Must I carry on learning this sewing?” I say. “Can’t I get some other job?”

Omama’s smile fades. She gets up and draws the curtains.

“You want to clean toilets for some Nazi soldier?” she says. “Because there will be plenty of those jobs for pretty young girls like you.”

I shudder.

Then I bend over the fabric with an exaggerated sigh.

“Right,” I say. “Let’s start again.”

August comes and with it the first truly hot days of summer.

We have still not been called to begin work. So we are sweltering up in the apartment and living on bread and cheese and black coffee or anything that Mama can get during her weekly trawl around the shops. Most of the shops have signs in the window proclaiming that no Jews are allowed to shop in there. There is very little food in the few shops allocated for us and what is there is often covered in a light dusting of green and yellow mould.

Uldis drops in when he can but he is busy. He tells me that the police have increased his hours of work. The streets are so dangerous that I can no longer choose to go and find him and must rely upon his visits. I am worried that because of this, we will grow apart. When he does visit he is as kind and polite as ever but the feeling in the air between us has changed. I’m guessing that it’s partly because having a girlfriend who can’t leave her apartment is restrictive for him, but there’s something else. It makes me feel uncomfortable and when he leaves, I am both sorry and relieved in equal measures.

The relieved bit makes me feel sad.

I lie in bed and pray to God that we can carry on our romance as before.

Another thing is worrying me. A change has come over my mother and grandmother.

They will not let me near
Tēvija
any longer. Omama takes it off into her bedroom to read. After reading the 23rd August edition she came out looking pale and frightened. She and Mama have taken to muttering in the corner of the lounge after I go to bed, only they often forget to shut the door so I can hear them if I strain my ears.

I am not stupid. I watch from our window as the lines of Jewish people pull carts and wheelbarrows along in the gutter and I can see that they have mattresses and suitcases crammed into these barrows. Where they are going, I do not know.

Mama knows, I think.

I ask her if we will soon have to put all our possessions in a cart and leave our home.

But she will not answer my questions. She paces up and down the apartment, glancing outside every now and then and grabbing onto her own elbows and scowling. It is like she is having an inner argument with herself. I wish I knew what she was thinking.

Sometimes I hate being treated like a child.

At the beginning of September I go on one of my rare walks outside. We have a curfew now which means we cannot be outside past six o’clock in the evening, but it is only four and it is a beautiful day and I have been allowed to go out so long as I wear my jacket.

I end up near the
Opera
in the beautiful park. Jews are not supposed to go into parks any longer but it draws me like a magnet. There are no soldiers around so I creep in and sit on a bench for half an hour and try to ignore the sounds of army vehicles rumbling down the
Brīvības bulvāris
.

I am sweating in my black jacket. It is boiling hot. I glance left and right and then with pleasure at the gleaming white building of the
Opera
where one day I will dance onstage and bow down for all the applause.

Or at least, I used to hope that I would. Now it feels less certain. Jews are not allowed to do anything which they once used to enjoy.

I can’t bear the thought of not dancing. I don’t really know what else to do with my life. It is what I am good at and what I love to do.

I take off my jacket with the yellow stars and lay it on the bench next to me. As soon as I slip it off I feel better. I am not Hanna the Jew with the yellow stars, I am just Hanna. I sit in my summer dress with the pink and white checked pattern and I hold my face up to the sun and drift off somewhere far away from my troubled city.

It is so hot that I go to sleep for a moment or two.

Then a sharp click makes me jolt back to the present.

The sun is blocked out. For a moment my dazed eyes can’t work out what has happened. Then I see a uniform in front of me. My eyes adjust. I raise them up and see a cap with a pair of eagle’s wings in gold. Then I frown. Under the eagle’s wings is what looks like a badge in the shape of a skull.

It is a member of the SS.

I struggle into an upright position.

The soldier has a lazy grin on his face.

“Good afternoon,” he says in a polite voice that reminds me a little of Uldis. “What a beautiful day to be sitting in the park.”

I nod. Then I see another group of soldiers standing behind him. They are all grinning with that same, lazy interest.

I figure that if they’re smiling, they can’t be out to cause any trouble.

“I am a dance student,” I say. “I am going to dance there one day.”

I point at the
Opera
behind him.

The soldier doesn’t even follow my finger. He is still leering at my face.

“You speak very good German,
Fräulein,”
he says. “And yet I see your coat has the yellow stars.”

I flush and glance down at my jacket next to me.

“I was too hot,” I say. “I have been wearing it all day. I am going to put it on again in a moment. I just wanted to feel the sun on my arms.”

The soldier pulls out the long brown gun from his holster with a swift movement. For one crazy moment I think:
This is it. He is going to shoot me.

He uses the muzzle of his gun to hook up my jacket. It hangs shapeless and black. He dangles it in front of my nose and gestures at me to take it.

“You do not make the rules, Jew,” he says. The polite smile has never left his face. “Soon you will realize that.”

My hands have started to tremble but I slide my arms into the jacket and pull it close about me. The cloth is cold and heavy on my sweating arms.

“Good afternoon,” says the soldier with a sharp little bow. Then he joins the others and they walk off. The sound of their harsh laughter floats back to me on the summer breeze.

I cannot move.

I stay on the bench in my hot coat. I can feel the stars glowing yellow. They seem to pulsate in time to the beating of my heart.

After what seems an eternity, I leave the park and run home along the gutters.

Mama will be worried. I have been out far too long.

When I get home I
lie on the bed and give way to my tears.

Mama sits next to me like she did when I was little. She is hunched over and fiddling with her wedding ring again.

“You were out so long,” she says. “I was worried. Even Omama was worried. You must not stay out so long now. Things are not safe.”

I pass my hand over my hot face to mop up the tears. I want to tell Mama about what just happened but something tells me that this will only make her more afraid.

“Mama,” I say, “I don’t want Jewish blood in me any longer. I want to take it out of my veins! I only want Papa’s blood in me! How do I get the Jewish blood out?”

Mama’s own eyes fill with tears. It is too late. I realize now what my words have just done to her.

“I am sorry, Hanna,” she says in a voice kept firm with a lot of effort. “We have already had this conversation. You are my daughter and we can’t change that fact. And you should be proud to be Jewish.”

I dissolve into fresh tears.

“Proud?” I say. “When I am made to walk in the gutter and wear this STAR” – and here I rip off my jacket and hurl it across the room – “and I have to leave dance school and I never even see Uldis any more?”

I wish I hadn’t said that last bit. It’s a private pain that’s been worrying me for ages. Mama has told me that it’s very difficult for non-Jews to visit Jews now without risking their own safety and maybe even their lives. But I miss Uldis so much that my stomach hurts and I don’t want him ever to see me in the same way that Velna and Helena do.

Dirty Jew.

Mama gets up very deliberately as if it is a superhuman effort to move in the face of my outburst. She picks up my jacket from the floor and hangs it on the back of my bedroom door.

As she does this I see with a jolt that my suitcase is down from the top of my wardrobe and waiting at the end of my bed.

“What’s that doing there?” I say. My heart is lurching. For one crazy moment I think that Mama is evicting me from the apartment for staying out too long. But then as I look out into the tiny hallway I see Mama’s small red suitcase packed by the front door along with Omama’s black one.

“We are leaving,” says Mama. “I do not want us to move into the Jewish ghetto. There will not be enough food. Besides, it is in the Maskavas area of town.”

I shudder. So they are making us a ghetto, just like in Poland.

The rumours turned out to be true.

I know the Maskavas area. That is the place where all the poor Russians live. Their houses are run-down and basic and look like they are made of slatted cardboard. The houses there have no proper heating or water supplies.

“But at least we would be together and with other Jews,” I say. “That can’t be so bad, can it? If we leave and go somewhere else, won’t we be in even more danger?”

My head is whirling. All the way back from the park I could only think of how good it would feel to get back to this apartment and to the safety of my family, or what’s left of it. Even though it is not as good as our beautiful villa, it is starting to feel a bit like home.

Mama lugs my suitcase into the hall and puts it next to the other two.

“There is no guarantee we would stay together in the ghetto,” she says. “And there are rumours that people might be sent further east to camps. We could be split up for good. So Brigita has agreed to take us in. It is good of her. We leave tomorrow night.”

And the way she says it leaves no room for argument.

Aunt Brigita is Papa’s younger sister.

She still lives near to our old house in the Mežaparks area of town in a pretty villa with a garden and four bedrooms. She is married to Georgs and they have no children, just a selection of horrible miniature dogs with short legs and sharp, abrasive barks.

When Papa was still around he avoided Brigita for most of the time. Even though she was his sister they were as different as black bread and matzo. Papa is gentle, laid-back and charming. Brigita is sharp-tongued, impatient and bossy. Her visits always leave Mama plagued with headaches and exhaustion.

Omama can’t stand her and always disappears off somewhere else.

“That bony bird gives me the jitters,” is all she says.

Brigita hadn’t visited us for ages, but then she was here at night-time with Uncle Georgs just over a week ago. I heard her thin, insistent voice arguing with his deeper one when I was supposed to be asleep in bed. I guess that’s when Mama hatched her plan.

My aunt does not much like children. When I am left in a room with her I struggle to know what to say. We sit far apart on the sofa and the silence hangs heavy and slow. I reckon she always wanted Papa to marry a rich Latvian widow rather than a struggling Jewish seamstress with a crazy old mother. She disapproves of me wanting to be a dancer, too.

“How will you find time to look after a family if you have a career?” is what she said last time I tried to share my ambitions with her. Aunt Brigita is obsessed with money. She thinks that women should stay home and men should earn all the money. Georgs earns a good salary at one of the largest banks in Rīga and he has even kept his job throughout the Soviet and Nazi occupations and the nationalization of his workplace. Omama mutters in a dark voice that he is probably in league with all sorts of undesirable political parties but in fact Uncle Georgs is a hard worker and a clever man.