What World is Left (9 page)

He ties the leather strip around my neck, careful not to let it catch in my curls. The little hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I feel his touch.

When Franticek brings his lips to mine, I don't object.

Frantickek's lips are rough chapped, but for some reason I can't quite understand, his mouth tastes sweet. Sweet and somehow earthy at the same time. I am thinking too much. Stop all this thinking, I tell myself, as I part my lips and let myself sink into the kiss.

Franticek is right. People need to take what they can. People need to feel alive. This kiss is what I need to take to feel alive. When it finally ends, and Franticek brushes one finger against my lips, I can feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. Franticek wipes them away. Then he brings his finger to his mouth and tastes my tears.

Neither of us says a word as Franticek walks me back to Jagergasse. I've wrung out the laundry as best I can, and Franticek is carrying some of it. The leather strip feels good against my neck. I'll never take it off. Never.

We are on Jagergasse now. Franticek kisses my forehead once, lightly. “Always remember,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Promise me.”

“I promise.” The tears are coming back. How can all this be happening? How can Franticek tell me he loves me and then be going away? Because of course that's what it all means—the things he's said, the leather necklace. Franticek is leaving on tomorrow's transport.

I cling to him. I don't care if Father or Mother or Theo sees us through the window.

But it is Frau Davidels who finds us. “Anneke,” she says, her voice as brisk and businesslike as it is in the diet kitchen when one of the Nazi supervisors is around.

“Come quickly.” She tugs on my elbow. “Your father has been taken to the infirmary. They think it's diphtheria.”

“Why can't
I
go see Father?” Theo asks. He's lost all his baby fat in Theresienstadt and grown a little taller, but he is still a nuisance.

“You're too young,” I tell him.

“You're too ugly, but they let
you
visit him.”

“Come on, Theo,” I say. I am doing my best to ignore the nasty thing he just said.

Frau Davidels has offered to watch Theo while I join Mother at the infirmary. “It's good for me to be around a little boy again,” Frau Davidels told me, her eyes a little misty. I knew she was thinking about the son she'd lost.

Father has been in the infirmary for over a week, since the night before Franticek left on the transport. I tug on the leather necklace he gave me. It makes me feel a little better to know his fingers touched it. How I miss him, and how I hope he is still alive. It hurts too much to consider any other possibility, and when I do, my whole body goes icy cold. What if someone has hurt Franticek? What if he is already buried in some pit? No, no, I tell
myself, that cannot be. Besides, I'm convinced that without Franticek, my world would end. And because I woke up this morning, Franticek must still be alive, mustn't he?

Since Franticek's departure, I've begun doing something I never did before, and never imagined myself doing. I've begun to pray. I didn't really know how it was done, since I'd never been to synagogue, and so I made it up. As if praying was one of my stories.

I know Father wouldn't approve. He thinks religion is a form of superstition; hocus-pocus, he calls it. Only right now, I need some hocus-pocus, something to give me hope that Franticek is still alive.

I don't know what else to do or who else to ask for help. So every night, before I crawl onto my mattress, I drop to my knees and pray to God. “Please Lord,” I tell Him, “I understand that there are many people who need you during these dark days. But please, if you could consider my requests. There are only two. Could you look after Franticek? Help him stay strong and don't let him suffer too much. And please, please could you also restore Father's health so that we can be together again?”

The praying hurts my knees because of the wood floors in our apartment, but at least it makes me feel like I am doing something. I hope God, if He really exists, won't be upset with me for only turning to him now, when things are so bleak. But I have a feeling He will understand my predicament.

Perhaps Countess Bratovska is right. Perhaps Franticek has been sent to a place where there are fewer people and larger rations. He is young and strong, so perhaps he is helping build a new camp in the east. Yes, I like to picture him chopping wood or laying stone, the muscles in his shoulders rippling as he works. The thought of anything else—that the rumors we've heard of Jews being tortured and killed in death camps might be true—is too terrible to contemplate.

As I enter the infirmary, I nearly run into a little boy with a very pale face. He is carrying something, coddling it like it is a tiny baby.

“What have you got there?” I ask him.

His dark eyes light up. “An egg.”

“An egg?” I am impressed. I haven't seen an egg since we came to Theresienstadt. I'm sure the Nazi officers get to eat them for breakfast, but not us prisoners. How has this child managed to get an egg?

“I have
TBC
,” he tells me. It's the abbreviation we prisoners use for tuberculosis. “So tonight I got an egg with my dinner. It's hardboiled.” He opens his hands to show it to me. It's a brown egg—a big one. For a moment, I remember the rich taste of egg yolk and the way it sometimes dripped across my plate, leaving a yellow trail. “Can you believe my good luck?” the boy asks.

“You are very lucky,” I tell him. As I open the door to Father's room, I hear the little boy's cough, dry and ragged, echo down the hallway. Tuberculosis is a terrible disease. I wonder how much time the boy has left.

Mother is sitting by Father's bedside. His eyes are closed, but his breathing is steady. I lean down to kiss Father's forehead. It feels hot and clammy.

“It's best not to get too close,” Mother whispers.

I nod, and she notices me wince when I swallow.

“How is your throat today?” she asks.

“I'm fine,” I tell her. But I am not fine. My throat hurts almost all the time, but I don't want to give Mother any more to worry about.

While Father is in the infirmary, he is getting reduced rations, and if he is going to recover, he needs his strength. Thank goodness for Frau Davidels' potatoes. And for Petr Kien, who brought Father a chunk of black bread the other night.

I make myself a spot at the end of Father's cot.

“Anneke,” Mother whispers. “There's something we need to discuss.” I knew it would only be a matter of time before Mother asked about Franticek. She and Frau Davidels have become good friends, and Frau Davidels saw Franticek and me together...the night we kissed. That wonderful, terrible night.

“Else told me about you and the boy,” Mother says. For the first time, I notice that the hair at her temples is streaked with gray. Mother's beautiful thick auburn hair that she was always so proud of. And she's not even forty.

I don't want to talk to Mother about Franticek. I want to keep Franticek to myself, like a kind of treasure that is just mine.

She reaches for my hand and squeezes it the way she used to when we walked together in Broek. “Anneke, you're growing up and there are things you need to know...about men and women.” Mother's cheeks redden, but she keeps talking. “Else told me that you and the boy were kissing. Passionately.”

The tears sting at my eyes as I remember the feeling of Franticek's lips on mine and how sweet he tasted. “He's gone,” I tell my mother, blurting out the words. “On the last transport.”

For a brief moment, the lines on Mother's forehead seem to disappear. Is she relieved? The thought fills me with anger. How can she be so selfish? But then Mother's face changes again, and she gets up from her seat to take me in her arms. “Anneke,” she says, her voice thick with tears, “my dear, dear Anneke.”

The lights wake us before the noise. Search beams shine in through our window, making wide white arcs against the wall. Where am I? I wonder for a moment. In Broek? On holiday in Paris with Father and Mother and Theo? But when I look up at the gray wood planks on the ceiling I know exactly where I am. My mouth tastes sour. My stomach grumbles from hunger.

“What's going on?” Theo calls from the bathtub.

Mother is up now too. She is opening the curtain that separates our “rooms,” a bewildered look on her face.

The light hurts my eyes. When I moan, Mother gives me a sharp look. “Anneke!” she says.

“Everyone outside! Everyone outside immediately!
Raus
!” an angry voice crackles over a loudspeaker and then fades into the darkness. The sound is coming from a car that is being driven around the camp. Soon, it is back again. “
Raus
!
Raus
!” Now there is honking.

Because, by now, we are accustomed to following orders, the three of us put on our tattered outer clothing, pull on whatever is left of our boots and rush out the door.
I look longingly at my mattress on the floor. The air is cold and harsh.

There isn't time to wonder why the whole camp is being forced out of bed at two in the morning. And in the rain, no less! Besides, there is no point in wondering, just as there is no point in questioning anything the Nazis do.

I watch as Mother reaches for the shelf and slips the four sugar cubes into her pocket. “Don't forget your cap,” she tells Theo. “Anneke, are you wearing your sweater?”

“I hate that cap,” Theo says. “The material feels scratchy.”

“Just wear it.”

By the time we get outside, Jagergasse is swarming with people. I spot Petr Kien with his arm around his wife. His in-laws are stumbling behind them. I am too sleepy to greet them. It doesn't take long before the rain soaks through my jacket. I can tell that, unless it lets up soon, it will soak through the rest of my clothes. Because it's dark and difficult to see where I am going, I step into a puddle. Now my socks are sopping wet too. The smell of wet wool fills my nostrils and makes me feel even colder and more unhappy.

“What do you suppose they have planned for us?” an old man asks. No one answers because no one knows, and we are too sleepy to speculate.

The crackling voice in the car is back again. “To the exercise field at the Buhosovice Basin! Everyone to
the exercise field! This is a census count,” it announces.
Honk
!
Honk
!

The exercise field is a valley on the edge of the camp, between the road and the river.

“A census count? In the middle of the night? It makes no sense,” I mutter to Mother as we join the huge throng of prisoners that looks like a black snake slithering in the dark toward the field. The air is damp and heavy. The rain is getting stronger, pelting down against our faces.

Mother takes Theo's arm, and I know to stay close. “Things stopped making sense a long time ago,” she says.

The one good thing about the cold and the rain is that they help wake us up. But my throat throbs, and I wish I had thicker socks. Thicker dry socks.

“What about Father?” Theo asks. “Do you think they'll make him come to be counted too?”

For a moment, Mother shuts her eyes. When she speaks, her voice is tight. “Let's hope not.”

Every street we pass is full of prisoners. From a distance, they look like ants. When I get closer I can see them: young and old, all pale and thin, most of them yawning or wiping the sleep from their eyes. Sleep—if we are lucky enough to be able to ignore the bedbugs and lice and doze off for a few hours—is our only escape in Theresienstadt.

I've never seen such a crowd of people as I do once we reach the field. They are milling in circles inside other circles, muttering about having been awakened
in the middle of the night and speculating about how long a census count can possibly take.

“Hours! Don't you see how many of us there are? We're going to be here for days,” I hear a man with a heavy Czech accent say.

“If they don't kill us first,” adds his neighbor.

When I shiver, it isn't just from the cold seeping through my clothes the way the rain has already done.

Somehow, even in the mass of bodies, Frau Davidels manages to find us. She kisses Mother on the cheek. “Have you heard any news of the infirmary?” I hear Mother ask. Even in the dark, I can see the little lines around Mother's mouth; they look like a kind of roadmap.

I push Theo away so I can hear better. He kicks me in the shin.

“They haven't forced them out of the infirmary,” Frau Davidels says. “Your Jo should be able to continue resting.”

When Mother smiles her old smile, I nearly forget the throbbing in my throat—and the new pain in my shin.

The Nazis make us form rows of five, then twenty rows of five to make a hundred. This will make us easier to count. Theo and I huddle between Mother and Frau Davidels. At least the other bodies so close help warm us a little. It isn't just the November chill
that's hard to bear, there is also the damp. The rain keeps getting heavier.

It's coming down at an angle now, beating down against our faces. Around me, people's feet make squishing sounds inside their boots. And soon, the tiredness that disappeared temporarily when I was roused from my sleep, returns. If only I could rest, even for a few minutes.

After two hours of standing and waiting, I feel as if I might keel over. When I lean on Mother's arm, she nearly topples over. She, too, is having trouble staying upright. The cold is making goose bumps on her arm.

“Don't horses sleep standing up?” I ask her.

Theo rubs his eyes. “I wish I was a horse.”

Poor Theo. He looks so small and thin and tired. I can almost forgive him for kicking me. “I wish you were a horse,” I tell him. “A golden palomino. Then you could give me a ride. Giddee up!” I say, and I pretend to be cracking a whip. Perhaps my story will distract him.