“Remember how we used to draw together?”
I nodded.
“Start again.” She moved the curtains beside my bed. “What other family still has such a view of the Vltava?”
I had wanted nothing more than to forget the emptiness in my belly, the ache for something that was no longer there. But it had remained like a wound that had no salve, a stifled wail that had no release.
Lucie had given me a gift—a reminder that I still had my sight and my hands. That afternoon I began sketching again.
At first, I struggled to get my hand back. My fingers gripped the pencil, the tip pointed to the page, but I could not connect my hand with my head. But slowly, things returned to me, and I began to regain my focus. I started by sketching small objects in my room. Just looking at things that I had not noticed for so many months was nourishing to me. The glass birds on my desk, the wooden whistle from my childhood, and the porcelain doll that had been a birthday gift.
Every week, Lucie would return with more supplies, and I found that a tin of charcoal and a stiff pad of paper went a long way toward soothing my wounds. I was like a painting that had been rendered in black and white. But after several days I was able to add the first strokes of color.
My grief still had its own ebb and flow. When I looked out the window and saw the Gentile women taking strolls with their shiny black prams, the sunshine hitting their babies’ caps, I still wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.
Other times, when I lay at night in my bed, I would feel such an ache in my womb that I wasn’t even sure if it was the miscarriage—for I had never even seen this child’s eyes, felt the grasp of its finger—or the loss of the possibility that I would ever have a child with Josef. He was gone now and so was any connection I was ever to have with him. I had barely grieved for him when I received news of his death because the miscarriage had arrived so swiftly—but now the finality of his death swept over me.
As the weeks passed, however, my bouts of crying lessened and I was able to distract myself more and more with my drawings. I remembered how I used to lock myself in the same room that first year and study my legs or the flexed tendons in my hand, and I was comforted by knowing that there were some things that could not be taken from me.
I began to curl myself on the window seat of my bedroom with my pad atop my knees and sketch the roofline of the castle, the bridge outside our apartment, and the young girl who skipped along the edge of the Vltava as I myself had done so many times as a child. I sketched until my fingers were numb, the apron of my dress dusty with pastel.
My mother would often knock on my door and ask me to come and join her in our parlor for a cup of tea and a few biscuits if Lucie had managed to bring some butter that week. The parlor was now a shadow of what it once was. Weeks before, we were forced to bring what little remained of our valuables and turn them over to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Marta and I took our heirloom silver candlesticks, the few remaining china figurines and ornaments to the storage center at the Spanish synagogue, where they were registered and then sent on to the Reich.
I believe one of the reasons I was so content to just stay in my childhood room sketching was that I could sequester myself from the loneliness and emptiness of the rest of our apartment. Sitting in an empty room that had once been filled with so much color and life was now unbearable. It wasn’t that I longed for the full shelves of glass and decorations themselves. It was the sense of emptiness that permeated the walls, a sense that was intensified by the scene of Mother sitting against a now-worn sofa, with her two girls trying so hard to act as if a single cookie was an extravagance neither of them deserved.
For most of that year, I passed each day by drawing. I even set up a small easel by my window. The scarcity of oil pigments made me more focused than I had been at the Academy. I would find myself first applying each brushstroke in my head, imagining it on the canvas even before I put it there to make sure it was just right. For I knew how precious each inch of color was.
That autumn of 1941, all Jews were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David.
I remember the afternoon in September we registered at the Gestapo office and were given our stars. The four of us returned home to find Lucie and Eliška already there. Lucie had her own key and had let herself in, and had begun making pancakes from the flour and eggs she had brought.
We had stuffed the yellow felt stars into our pockets and sat down at the table to eat with Lucie and Eliška. Our faces were strained. I could see the tears filling Mother’s eyes as she looked at her namesake’s rosy, sweet face. Papa sat straight in his chair looking at the grandfather clock, and Marta and I tried to forget the burning stars in our pocket and simply enjoy Lucie’s delicious pancakes that we had grown fat on in our own childhood.
It was Mother’s star that slipped to the ground as Lucie hugged her good-bye. I stood behind the two of them and saw the star fall to the carpet, its silent descent more powerful than the loudest cry. Mama carefully picked it up and put it back in her pocket, placing a palm over it as if to shield it from Lucie’s little girl. But Eliška had noticed. “Look, Mama, Aunt Liška has stars in her pocket. She’s so lucky, Mama!”
My mother knelt down and kissed her on the forehead. “Stars belong in the sky, dear. Remember that.” Lucie’s eyes were full of tears as she came over to Mother. Lucie took her daughter’s hand in hers and kissed it. I so wanted her to hold mine, too, for I remembered the safe feeling of that hand. The warm padding of her palm as it held me close, the reassuring security it gave me as a child as we walked down the street. The memory of my own childhood when the only stars were just as Mother said, those burning in the midnight sky.
One afternoon, I went to get what little groceries I could with my ration coupons. There were only a few hours each day during which Jews could shop. The lines were long and there was hardly anything on the shelves to be bought. On this day, however, I was lucky enough to get a little flour and butter, a few radishes, and two apples.
Walking home, I ran into a girl who was in the class above me at the Academy, Dina Gottliebová. She was not wearing a yellow star and I was surprised when she stopped to talk to me.
“I’ve just come from seeing Snow White,” she said. “I took my star off to see it.”
I was shocked. I would never have imagined taking such a risk.
“You cannot imagine the drawings that made this film possible.” She was brimming over with excitement. “The characters were so lifelike . . . the colors so saturated. I want to race home and draw all night.”
For a few seconds I had forgotten about the star on my coat, and my hungry parents and sister waiting for me in the apartment. There I was enraptured by the sight and voice of my old classmate waxing enthusiastic about a film.
We talked for a few more minutes, before the sight of a German officer walking in our direction frightened me from continuing the conversation.
How I wanted to remain there with her. Her energy was infectious and I admired her bravery, but she was the one now with the yellow star in her pocket, while mine was clearly sewn on my lapel. The two of us talking openly could only ignite trouble.
“Dina.” I touched her arm gently. “I am so happy to have seen you, but I must go home and get these groceries—what little there is of them—home to my mother.”
She nodded and smiled in a way that communicated that she understood why I had become nervous. “Let’s hope we see each other soon,” she said, and then we parted ways.
That night, over a watery soup of flour dumplings and two quartered apples, I imagined what it might feel like to sit in a dark theater and watch an animated film. To laugh at the lively images dancing on the screen, with the light from the projector illuminating my hair, and my yellow star buried deep in my pocket.
CHAPTER 25
JOSEF
At night, I sometimes wake up from a dream in which I am sitting in that lifeboat, with Isaac sitting next to me, his violin on his l
ap, his black eyes scanning the water, searching for the exact place where he dropped his bow.
In the dream, I am not watching as the Athenia raises its nose to the starry sky. I am not focusing on the horror of the mangled lifeboat or the blood staining the waters red.
I am staring at all the empty seats in the boat. The places where my family might have sat, and my life would have been wholly different. I have heard other survivors speak of this guilt—the boat that could have held one more, the family that could have been persuaded to hide one more child, or the wife that should never have been left behind.
If I am feeling particularly low, I try and imagine Lenka there beside me. I wiggle my old bottom to the side of my mattress and make room for her on the wooden seat. I place my hand on a stretch of white sheet to warm it for her, to search for her fingers, to wait for the grasp of her hand. Sixty years later, and I still can remember the sensation of Lenka’s hand.
I tell nearly all my patients the same thing when I come to check on them after their delivery. They are almost always sitting up in bed in their robes. The baby is slightly unwrapped from its hospital blanket, its face peeking toward its mother’s breast, its fingers threaded into hers.
There are two sensations of skin you will always remember in your lifetime: the first time you fall in love—and that person holds your hand—and the first time your child grasps your finger. In each of those times, you are sealed to the other for eternity.
Lenka’s hand was the whitest I have ever known. The fingers long and elegantly tapered. The first time she took my hand, my heart beat so fast I could hardly breathe. She never smelled like turpentine or chalk dust even after a day of painting or drawing. I would press my lips to her smooth knuckles, and inhale the scent of rose and geranium. I could fall into the memory like a softcushioned chair. I could smell a lifetime of happiness. I could close my eyes and see us growing old together, our hands knotted together wrinkled and brown.
The day at the station when we parted, I honestly did not think it would be the last time. But to this day, I can still feel those fluttering hands against my cheeks. I can feel her fingertips over my eyelids, inhale the scent of flowers, and recall the flash of her white skin.
When my daughter, Rebekkah, was born—that grasp of two infant fingers over my single one—was equally powerful. And when my son was born and I cradled him in my arms, the sensation was just as profound.
When Amalia was dying, lying in a bed with tubes threaded through her nose, one taped to her arm, I would take her hand and talk to her.
That hand, small with delicate fingers and pale, moon-shaped nails. My daughter’s hand, but older. Liver spots and skin as fragile as rice paper. I would kiss her hand. I would find myself crying when her eyes were sealed closed. I would wipe my tears with the back of her palm and I would squeeze it as if trying to communicate with her through Morse code.
But in my heart, I knew that even in the best years of our marriage, the sensation of Amalia’s hand never gave me the same thrill or comfort as Lenka’s. But when Amalia’s heart stopped beating and her hand grew cold, I ached, yearning for that fleeting sense of warmth and comfort, all the same.
CHAPTER 26
LENKA
We were informed by letter that our family would be transported to Terezín in December 1942.
We were not the first to receive notice of their transport. Dina and her mother had been sent earlier in the year, and Elsa that October with her parents. By the time we heard that we were to be sent, we were almost looking forward to it. We hoped to be reunited with so many of the people from our circle who had already been sent. “It will be a place of only Jews,” Father told us. Oddly enough, that sounded like a relief to us at that time.
Every transport was assigned a letter of the alphabet, and we were Ez. We were instructed to bring a total of fifty kilos that could fit into one suitcase, a rucksack, and a roll of bedding. Marta and I went through our clothes and packed three outfits each. One pair of pants, a dress, and two skirts and blouses. Stockings. Shoes. Underwear. Papa said Marta and I could each pack one book, but I chose to bring two sketchpads, along with one tin of vine charcoal and one small box of oil pastels.
When we learned we would be sent to Terezín, Mother took the news so silently, so inwardly, that it was impossible to gauge her feelings. She worked like a machine, efficiently and without emotion, reading the guidelines and then making the necessary preparations. She saved two sausages over the course of three weeks. Then, as the transport got closer, she cooked milk and sugar for a long time until it turned brown, and then packed it in paper containers. She also made a roux of butter and flour and rolled it in wax paper. She baked small cookies and one cake, and several loaves of bread. She packed most of this between her and father’s rucksack, packing little else for them but two sets of clothes and underwear. No extra shoes. Not a single book.
She took our sheets and pillowcases and boiled them the color of coffee so they would not look dirty when they eventually became worn. Marta gave her the pillowcase that Lucie had embroidered so many years before and asked her to boil that in coffee, too. “I want to bring it,” she had said. Mother took the pillowcase, already fragile from being on Marta’s bed for so many years, and boiled it.
After Marta and I had packed our suitcases, mother checked what we had packed and refolded the clothes, as if she needed the ritual of preparing the things for each of her children’s journey. We were no longer young children—even Marta was now sixteen—yet, in her eyes, we were ever still in need of her care.
Father used a thick black pen to mark our suitcases and rucksack with our transport numbers. I was 4704Ez, Marta 4703Ez, Mother 4702Ez, and Father 4701Ez. We also were given identification tags with the same numbers that we were required to wear around our necks.
The night before we were to leave, Lucie came to our apartment. She was solemn. Her black hair was pinned behind her ears and her face was tense. That beautiful white skin of hers—which only a few years ago had looked like porcelain—was now showing the first whispers of age. The fear on her face was so visible that I felt a chill down my spine. I could not look her straight in the eyes.
And so I focused on my mother. I watched as she took Lucie’s capelet and smiled as she glanced over the fine navy gabardine that looked as good as the day she’d given it to her. She reached to touch Lucie’s shoulder, and Lucie responded by opening her arms and enveloping Mother in such a tight embrace that I saw the fabric of Mother’s dress gather into the grasp of Lucie’s fingers.
When I saw the two of them, Mother bending to embrace Lucie, her chin resting on Lucie’s shoulder, I thought of the history between these two women. How each of them had loved me through my childhood, and had mothered me in her own way. But watching them together now, it was clear that their connection was more like the bond between Marta and me. They did not say a single word, but each movement, each gesture, was like a pantomime of worry and reassurance, of fear and of the other extending comfort. All expressed without the utterance of any sound.
Lucie sat next to my mother at the dining-room table. She watched as my mother opened three velvet boxes. As required by the Germans, my parents had turned in their other valuables weeks ago. The shelves in the basement of the Spanish synagogue—a designated collecting station for the German authorities—were filled with silver candelabra, mother-of-pearl gramophones, sets of sterling, as well as paintings and jewelry. All of these things, now considered extravagant luxuries, would be sent abroad to enrich the senior members of the Reich. We had stood in line for hours to hand over our watches, Father’s cuff links, Mother’s strands of pearls, Marta’s earrings with the faceted stones, and my favorite garnet ring. But Mother’s engagement ring from Father, the gold choker with the seed pearls that Grandmother gave her on the eve of her wedding, and the small ring Father gave her when I was born, those things she had kept hidden.
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.