She moved me to a corner of the set where no one was around us.
“I thought I was just late, but, Lenka, I’m pregnant.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it. She looked down at herself and touched her belly with a cupped hand. She lifted her tattered dress and showed me the soft swelling of her abdomen. She placed her hand on her stomach as if cupping a secret.
“Rita,” I said quietly. “What are you going to do?” We both knew what it was like to be pregnant in Terezín. In the past few months, we had heard rumors about women who’d become pregnant within the ghetto being put on the next transport east.
She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “What can I do, Lenka?”
I had heard whispers of women who went to the infirmary, where one of the Jewish doctors would make the issue go away. It was a terrible thought, but Terezín was no place to bring a child into this world. To be placed on a cattle car, pregnant and forced to a work camp, was an even worse thought.
I had personally known only one woman who had become pregnant in Terezín. Her name was Elsie, and she was in my barracks. I had seen her crying on her bed one night. She was whispering to one of her friends, who was working as a nurse in the infirmary. I could hear the friend say that she would take Elsie to see Dr. Roth.
Later, I would learn from Rita that Dr. Roth had performed several abortions in Terezín. He did it in secret and only when the girls begged him, sacrificing the unborn fetus to save the mother’s life.
Oskar told Rita there would be time to have children after the war, but not now. She told me this through tears, wringing her thin white hands.
“He loves me,” she said through her crying. “He even says he wants the Council of Elders to marry us, but he thinks they are sending pregnant girls to their deaths.”
“And what if he is right?” I said.
“How? How could anyone believe that? Because it might just be a camp with facilities more suited for mothers, after they can no longer work.” She paused. “Why would they let women on the trains with their prams if there weren’t places for the children?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was what existed or didn’t exist within Terezín, and everything about the transports east seemed like one big black hole.
“But what if he is right, Rita?” I whispered to her. “Is it worth the risk? Now you have a safe assignment at Lautscher and Oskar’s job as an engineer gives you some added security within the camp. Take him up on his offer to get married now, and start your family later.”
I could not believe I was actually telling my friend to end her pregnancy, especially one involving two people who wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. I knew that if anyone had made such a suggestion to me when Josef left for England, I would have despised that person with every ounce of my being. But since our transport nearly a year before, I had witnessed the roundups for the trains “east.” I saw how the majority of those sent away were sick, old, or pregnant. And now when a new transport arrived, even some healthy prisoners were shipped off. It was clear to me that wherever the Nazis were sending these people, it was bound to be a place far worse than Terezín.
I could only imagine the horror and betrayal Rita must have felt at hearing me tell her this. I’m sure she expected me to support her, to tell her that I would speak to Oskar and convince him that he was wrong.
“I suppose it’s that you have no idea what it’s like to have a baby growing within you, Lenka.” She looked at me with eyes like a cornered animal. “If you did, you would never tell me what you just did.”
“Rita,” I said, my voice cracking even though I spoke in the faintest whisper. “I do know what it’s like to be pregnant.”
I did not elaborate about my miscarriage, of the sadness of losing my only connection to my husband, who had drowned in a freezing ocean. There was already too much sadness around us. I just reached to squeeze her hand.
For the next two weeks, I watch Rita struggle, caught between Oskar’s fear for her safety and her desire to preserve the life growing inside her. In this barren ghetto, where no sapling or flower grows, the capacity to create life was still a miracle. How many women had I heard say they no longer got their periods and believed their emaciated bodies were now incapable of conceiving anything during a hurried, unromantic encounter with their boyfriends?
Rita shows me her decision without speaking directly of it. When she sits, she now folds her hands over her belly as if the two flat palms can protect what grows secretly inside.
When she talks, she does not look straight ahead, but toward her lap.
“Oskar is sick with worry,” she tells me. “The only way I can silence him is by putting his hand here.” She unfolds her hands and pats her stomach. She is four months along now, yet still not even the slightest bump shows. “I feel flutters,” she says, and her face is flushed with happiness. “I know I don’t look pregnant, but I still feel it.” I look at Rita and try to push away the fear and enjoy the sight of my friend so alive, so full of life.
Oskar tells her he wants them to marry before the baby is born. He fashions a makeshift engagement ring out of some twisted electrical wire and proposes to her on bended knee, just after she has finished her day’s work at Lautscher.
There are no extended engagements in Terezín. Within days they are married in the chamber of the Council of Elders. The night before her wedding, the girls in Rita’s barracks all got together to wash her hair. They placed a large bucket under the spigot in the wash sink, where it remained for several hours, collecting the droplets of water until there was enough to bathe Rita’s head. Her hair is short and cropped around her sharp face, but two girls stand and fuss over her and use their fingers to arrange it as best they can.
Rita wears an old brown dress with a frayed hem and a worn collar. She is solemn-looking, a bride without adornment. There is no veil, not even a single flower for her white fingers to clasp.
Theresa appears and quietly tells Rita she has brought something for her to wear.
She hands Rita a small package wrapped in old newsprint. The parcel, which seems almost weightless as it is placed in Rita’s hands, seems suddenly to become heavy and worthy of reverence as Rita slowly unwraps it.
We all watch awestruck as she peels off the layers of newsprint to reveal a small corsage constructed from strips of painted canvas, sewn together with a yellow felted center, a blooming flower made from nothing but scraps.
“It’s for your hair,” Theresa says quietly.
She withdraws a small piece of metal wire from the pocket of her dress. “Here. You can use this to twist it around some of the strands, perhaps just above your ear.”
Rita touches her face to fight back the tears. “Thank you, Theresa. Thank you.” Her fingers now reach to cup the girl’s face. She kisses her cheeks. “Only you could make something so beautiful out of nothing.”
Theresa blushes from embarrassment. “It’s really nothing . . . I—I . . .” She is stammering from all the attention her gift has brought her. “I just wanted you to have a flower.”
It is true, Rita holds no wedding bouquet. Yet she is beautiful with her handmade corsage pinned to her hair, her hands folded protectively over her slightly swollen belly. Oskar’s four friends hold up wooden sticks, a white sheet making the marital canopy over their heads. We all gaze at them as the chief rabbi of the ghetto evokes the seven blessings. An old glass bottle is placed in a napkin and Oskar smashes it beneath his boot.
“Ani L’Dodi v’Dodi Li,” the rabbi tells them to say to each other. “You are my beloved and my beloved is mine.”
I think of those words and remember my own wedding day. It seems so far away and yet like yesterday at the same time. I try to hold back my tears at the memory.
The other girls all clap to congratulate the couple, and I see them absentmindedly touching their fingers to their hair. We are all wishing for another time, where there could be an abundance of flowers—or even just
a handful—so we all could have one to tuck behind our own ears.
Rita’s belly grows no bigger than a loaf of bread. She wears the same baggy dress she has always worn. She learns to walk even straighter so that the little bit of new weight is even less noticeable. I take fewer bites of bread for myself, and pour half of my soup into a watering can. I bring both the half-bitten morsel of bread and the watery soup with a single piece of turnip to her barracks.
“Eat,” I tell her.
She refuses my ration. “I don’t need any more than I have,” she insists. “Please don’t save your food for me, Lenka. You need to eat, too.”
“You’ll need it when the baby comes,” I say.
I leave the food, despite Rita’s pleas. Later, when I run into Oskar, I notice how thin he looks. “I try to give her my ration, too,” he says. “She refuses it, but I won’t leave for the evening until I see her eat it.”
“You need to keep your strength up, too,” I tell him, and touch his elbow in a sympathetic gesture.
The next time I go to bring Rita food, she uses a stronger voice with me.
“Lenka, you must stop this. I am serious.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell her. “You need to eat more, for you and the baby.”
“I don’t want to eat more! I can’t get any bigger than this, or they’ll figure out I’m pregnant and send me away!”
I looked at her, her wide green eyes now filled with a wild fear.
“But the baby needs nourishment, Rita.” I could barely force out the words.
“The baby will take what it needs from me. I just want it to be born in Terezín . . .” She began to weep. “I am too afraid to go anywhere else.”
I understood now what she was saying. So I did the only thing I could think of: I took Rita in my arms, just as I remembered my own mother doing to me when I was scared and pregnant back in Prague. Hoping that the warmth of my embrace gave her at least half as much comfort as I remembered Mother’s giving me.
CHAPTER 37
JOSEF
One of my earliest gifts from my grandson Jason was a paperweight he made when he was three. It was a stone he had painted blue, with two black-and-white eyes and an orange felt nose. It still sits on my desk alongside my papers, adjacent to the photographs of my family members, all now grown.
I love that paperweight. Every time I place it atop a pile of bills or a notepad, I remember the day he brought it home from preschool.
He called me “Gampa” back then, the closest thing to “grandpa” he could manage. He pulled it out of his little red knapsack and handed it to me.
“For you. Gampa.”
I held it in my hand and smiled. The stone was wrapped in wax paper, its opaque paint still a bit wet; the felt nose was off center, and the two plastic eyes wobbled back and forth.
“I’ll cherish it,” I told him. We went to the kitchen and placed it to dry on a paper napkin. Then we washed our hands together, the water running blue.
I close my eyes and remember my grandson when he was small. The first time I took him somewhere, just the two of us, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I led him through the Temple of Dendur, explaining the history of the Egyptians, the magic of hieroglyphics, and the curse rendered on those who had excavated the tombs. There was the joy of his first visit to the Central Park Zoo, the sweetness of his first frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, and the wonder of our first visit to the Hayden Planetarium, when he asked me if every star represented a person who had died.
His comment rendered me speechless. Wasn’t it a wonderful thought, to imagine every soul alight in the darkened sky? I reached for his hand and held it close to mine. As the projection of planets and stars filled the black dome, I saw the look of awe spread over his face, and I just wanted to watch him forever. I wanted to witness how he experienced the world, how he learned to navigate his way through it. And as I watched him grow, I mourned what I had missed with my own son. Jakob kept me at a distance, or perhaps I was the one who had created the distance. I would never truly know.
But what I did know was that I wanted to glue my grandson and me to those seats in the planetarium and count every star alongside him. And how I wanted his thought to be true! That, in death, I’d become a star. Suspended from above, burning brightly over him. Protecting him with a pure white light.
His wife-to-be is beautiful, elegant, and refined. Her red hair reminds me of Lenka’s mother’s and sister’s.
I had met a handful of his girlfriends over the years. The brunette he met at Brown his freshman year, the one who did not shave her legs and supported animal rights so fervently it seemed as though it were her religion. The curvy Italian girl in his sophomore year, whose breasts were so full I kept thinking she’d begin lactating at the table, and the twin who had one brown eye and one blue, her face all angles and her body all curves.
Then there was the British girl he met during his junior year abroad, who had the most lovely laugh I had ever heard and who charmed me even though I was now nearly eighty-five and a widower for almost ten years.
His visits to me began to decrease around the time he entered law school. He was busier, so I understood. There were his studies, the pressure of getting good grades, plus the pull of alcohol and music in the New Haven bars.
He had not dated Eleanor more than a year when they announced their engagement, and at that time I had only met her once, at Rebekkah’s apartment on the evening of Rosh Hashanah. She was quiet and polite. I could tell she was intelligent by her careful choice of words and her interest in the books that lined my daughter’s shelves.
I had brought my son with me that evening, and it was Eleanor’s gentle kindness to him that fully won me over. She sat next to him and tried to coax him out of his shell. My son was now fifty, with a gray beard and a receding hairline that accentuated the shine of his taut, red skin.
She asked him what he was reading and he rambled off a list so long I was sure her head was spinning. Yet minutes later, I heard them talking about one title at length, and I saw a faint glimmer of light in his eyes. I wanted to go over and kiss her, so happy was I that Jakob had finally connected with someone.
I saw how Jason beamed in her company. How when she was standing, he couldn’t help but gravitate toward her. I was an insatiable observer that evening, also watching my own daughter, with the first sprouts of gray running through her wiry curls, cutting bagels and making sure there was enough cream cheese and lox for everyone. I watched how Benjamin, now deep in the throes of middle age, still seemed to be in love with her. And that gaze warmed me, because they would soon be celebrating thirty-three years of marriage, and it was no small feat to keep the embers of love aflame for so long.
That night, my son and I stayed up late together and watched television. The gentle hum reminded me of the quiet times between his mother and me. I couldn’t help but be sad that Amalia would not see Jason’s wedding, and share the joy of meeting his beautiful new bride. But then I thought of my grandson’s comment nearly twenty years earlier, at the planetarium, and hoped that he was right. That she would be there, watching in her own quiet way, one of many stars beaming down.
CHAPTER 38
LENKA
By her own reckoning, Rita was now six months along. Whenever I stopped by the Lautscher workshop, she was almost always sitting, still painting postcards. The completed, dried ones were stacked in piles to her right. The wet ones were set in front of her.
Her hand was still steady. I noticed the scenes of the horses and the bales of hay, the mother with the child sitting on her lap, the Nativity scene that she had painted in abundance even though it was only September.
Theresa was standing in the corner by the easel, painting a copy of Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride. Had the SS commissioned this as a sadistic form of irony, or was it Theresa’s quiet form of defiance? I looked quickly at the canvas and saw the gold and red of the bride’s dress executed in Theresa’s delicate brushstrokes.
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“It’s beautiful,” I told her.
“I’m hoping they don’t know the title,” she said. “They just told me to do another Rembrandt.”
I smiled at her and she looked at me directly.
“You know they say Rembrandt’s wife was a Jew.”
I nodded and each of us smiled at the other with satisfaction.
As I turned to face Rita, however, I noticed how pale she was.
“How are you?” I asked, touching her shoulder.
She was quiet for a moment.
“I’m tired, but I’m better than so many others here.”
I knew the truth of what she was saying. There had been an outbreak of typhus and the infirmary was flooded. The dreaded roundups continued. Those inmates who were lagging were sent east to Poland.
We saw the smoke rising from the ghetto’s crematorium, its two chimneys burning with the bodies of those who had died in the infirmary or at work. And while the only executions were rare hangings of those who had tried to escape, two gallows remained in the center of the ghetto as a stark warning to all of us.
And still, new trains arrived weekly with more and more Jews.
On some days, we would hear whispers from someone who had overheard some information coming from within the Council of Elders that a thousand would be arriving from Brno; on another day there might be fifty from Berlin, a week later another thousand from Vienna or a few hundred from Munich or Kladno. We saw the new arrivals walking down the street from the windows of our workplaces: women holding their babies in one arm and a suitcase in the other. There were the young and single always walking in front, the elderly and unaccompanied lagging behind.