Running With Ivan, page 13
‘It’s all right,’ I whispered to myself, over and over again, until I was just about singing it; until it was almost a lullaby.
When the order came to board the train, my stomach turned to liquid, and when the doors opened, my dread grew. For this was no ordinary train. This train had no seats and only tiny slits in place of windows.
‘It’s meant for freight,’ someone muttered behind me.
‘More like animals,’ answered someone else.
All around me people were jostling to get inside the train. It was the strangest thing. This was a transport no one wanted to be part of, so why clamber to be first inside? But the push of the crowd behind me gave me no choice as I found myself being swept over to the very edge of the platform and towards the door of one of the carriages. So many people were pressed against me I could hardly breathe and my hands were that sweaty and slippery, I couldn’t keep hold of Ivan’s duffel bag. No, I cried out as it fell from my grasp. I was being pushed so hard I couldn’t even bend down to grab it; I couldn’t move at all. I could only close my eyes as I tried to breathe through the terror that was growing inside me. ‘Mum,’ I cried out, ‘Mum, I’m scared.’
17
That’s when everything went quiet. Very, very quiet.
My eyes still tightly shut, I tilted my head to the side. Something was different. Something was very different. I could breathe again. I had room to move again. Gaining courage, I opened one eye then the other.
A wave of relief swept through me.
I was back.
After such a long time, I was back again. Back in the doorway of my little room. Back to safety. Back to stillness.
Not absolute stillness though, for behind me, I could hear a tune. A music box tune. My music box tune. It didn’t play for long: just a few bars before it stopped.
That’s when I heard my name.
It was my dad calling out to me. Then there were two voices: Dad’s voice and Julia’s voice, too. They were both calling me. It made me happy to hear it: so very happy.
Closing the door behind me, I crossed the garage and headed into the house.
There they were! There was Dad and Julia coming up the hallway towards me.
‘Hello, you,’ said Julia, a smile lighting her face. ‘We were wondering where you’d disappeared to. Where have you been?’
I took a deep breath. How could I even begin to explain?
My dad came a bit closer. ‘And what on earth are you wearing?’
I looked down at myself. Ivan’s clothes: that’s what I was wearing. His dark-grey pleated trousers, his grey knitted vest and the shirt that had once been white but was now a grimy beige.
‘They’re swimming on you,’ said Dad. ‘They make you look like you haven’t eaten in weeks.’
‘I’m really hungry,’ I wanted to cry out to them. But how could I? How could I say that? How could I possibly explain why I was so hungry and just where I’d been?
‘I found some clothes in the garage,’ I told them, ‘so I — um — I decided to try them on.’
Julia frowned. ‘You sure they’re not yours?’ she asked my dad.
He shook his head. ‘Never seen them before in my life.’
‘A mystery then.’ She stepped back to look at me. ‘To be honest, they look like they belong in the rubbish.’
In the rubbish? Ivan would have been outraged. My beautiful clothes, fit for the rubbish? He’d have been absolutely furious. The hint of a smile crept across my face as I tried to imagine it.
‘The boys are already in the lounge room,’ said Julia. ‘Troy has to watch a documentary for history. It’s his homework.’ With a flick of her wrist, she checked her watch. ‘It’s on in fifteen minutes. Get changed and come and join us.’
I hesitated. ‘What’s it about?’
‘History,’ said his father. ‘You should watch it. Jump in the shower first, though, and get rid of those filthy clothes.’
So I did: I stripped off Ivan’s clothes and I jumped in the shower. The water was hot. Beautifully hot, unbelievably hot. If it hadn’t been for my groaning, empty stomach I think I would have stayed under that shower forever.
Once I’d pulled on my pyjamas, I headed into the kitchen. Everything was exactly as I’d left it: the benches wiped and still a bit wet; the pots draining on the sink.
How could that be? How could it be that here, no time at all had passed, while there in Theresienstadt so much had happened?
I didn’t have the energy to even try to work it out. All I could think about was the fridge, and what I’d find in it. When I opened the door, I began to salivate. Bread and stew for so long, then this: a fridge full of food.
It took everything I had to restrain myself: to get out a plate from the cupboard, to fill it with leftovers — roast lamb and potatoes and pumpkin — and wait until the microwave had warmed them all up. I sat at the table — glad to be by myself — and, taking a knife and fork, I began to eat.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, I warned myself. If I ate too quickly I knew I’d make myself sick.
And oh, the taste of it. The miraculous taste of that food.
*
After I’d eaten, I joined everyone in the lounge room. Troy was sitting on a beanbag and Cooper was sprawled out on the floor beside him. Dad was sitting on the sofa with Julia. He patted the empty space beside him.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘everyone should know about this.’
Then he did a double-take. ‘You really have lost weight, haven’t you? I thought it was just those clothes.’
Feeling myself redden, I stayed silent.
Julia answered for me. ‘He must be having a growth spurt,’ she said before looking at me more closely. ‘Or maybe it’s all that training. We’ll have to make sure you eat more so you don’t get any thinner.’
The program was starting now, the television screen filled with soldiers and a line of old-fashioned cars. In the background was a town. A familiar town.
I felt my heart pound. It was Theresienstadt. The streets were the same; the buildings were the same. Everything was the same. Right up until the camera suddenly zoomed in on a playground.
A playground?
That was weird. I knew every street of Theresienstadt, every lane, every open space, and there wasn’t a playground anywhere.
Leaning forward, I tried to work out just where the playground was and why I’d never seen it. When I caught sight of my dormitory building beside it, I was completely bamboozled. How on earth had I missed it?
Then it dawned on me. The tent! The park and the playground were where the tent had been.
A new picture filled the screen now. It was a film: a crackly film of people singing. Not adults though: the singers were all children.
Cooper sniggered. ‘They look so stupid.’
I barely even heard him. Staring hard at the screen, I studied the faces of those singers. One by one I looked at them until suddenly I cried out. ‘Olinda,’ I shouted, ‘Olinda.’ I couldn’t stop myself.
Troy’s laugh was a honk. ‘Olinda? Who the hell’s Olinda?’
‘Troy,’ warned Julia, but I didn’t care what Troy was saying. All my attention was on the screen, on Olinda, her face looking out from the screen as though she was singing just for me. Not in German, though: to my surprise she was singing in Czech. That made me smile. It must have been a struggle. Did Ivan laugh at her pronunciation? I wondered. I bet he had.
When the music stopped, a man’s voice took over. His voice was gentle, soothing even, but what he said made me want to scream. No, I wanted to yell out at him, that can’t be true.
‘These children, all inmates of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, were part of the children’s opera, Brundibár,’ he was saying. ‘A special performance of Brundibár was staged in 1944 for representatives of the Red Cross who came to inspect living conditions in the camp. What the Red Cross did not know at the time was that much of what they saw during their visit was a show, and that one of the reasons the Theresienstadt camp seemed comfortable was that many of the residents had been deported to Auschwitz in order to reduce crowding during their visit. Later that year this Brundibár production was filmed for a Nazi propaganda film, The Führer Gives the Jews a City. Once filming was finished, everyone who’d been part of the production was herded into cattle trains.’
Cattle trains. Like the train that had come for me; the train I should have been on — that awful train with no windows and no seats.
My pulse quickened as the voiceover continued. ‘The cattle trains were crowded, with no food and very little water provided to the people inside. The travelling conditions were so appalling people died on the way. After two days, the train arrived at the concentration camp of Auschwitz.
‘Located in German-occupied Poland, Auschwitz consisted of three complexes. Inmates there were used for forced labour and had to wear a blue-and-white-striped prison uniform.
‘Auschwitz was also a place where inmates were killed in gas chambers that had been especially built for that purpose. More than a million people were taken into these gas chambers and gassed to death. The last transport from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz — transport EV — was on 28 October 1944. After that, the gas chambers at Auschwitz were closed, and finally destroyed.’
Olinda, Olinda. I could hardly stop myself from screaming out her name. Please not Olinda. Please not her.
My head was churning now, my mind racing. I needed to go back. I needed to warn her. Somehow, I needed to try to save her.
*
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there, waiting for Cooper to stop tossing and turning, waiting for a sign he was no longer awake. That sign soon came: a soft snore followed by a snort and another snore.
I climbed out of bed, opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The house was dark and my eyes took a moment to adjust. I crept into the garage just as quietly as I could and, once I’d retrieved the key, let myself into my room.
The fluorescent light was too bright so I used the camping lamp instead. A soft glow filled the room, lighting up the music box there on the shelf.
I didn’t reach out for it straightaway. What if it didn’t work? How could I bear being stuck here while Olinda was in such danger?
You have to try, I told myself.
Lifting the music box off the shelf, I held it, my hands shaking so much I was scared I’d drop it.
Breathe, just breathe.
So I breathed. I breathed in and I breathed out, my grip on the music box tightening as I felt for the winding key.
My heart quickened as I braced myself for disappointment: for the key not to turn, for the music not to play.
Do it, I murmured, do it.
My finger against the winding key, I pushed it forward.
It didn’t budge.
I took a deep breath and I tried again.
This time it did move. Only a bit, but still. My confidence rising, I pushed harder. Again the key moved, and, as it did, a tiny sound escaped from the music box. Closing my eyes, I began to twist. Five times I twisted, then eight, nine, ten times, and still it kept going — two more times before the key stopped turning.
Only then did I release it, my breath catching as the music began.
The music box back on the shelf, I was almost at the door when something stopped me; something urged me to go back again. I went back and, without knowing why, I picked up the music box, clicked open the hidden drawer, scooped out the watch and strapped it to my wrist.
My grandfather’s watch felt heavy on my arm and that reassured me. Running my finger over the watch face, I headed for the door, turned the handle and pushed.
18
I didn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t. I was too scared. What if it hadn’t worked? But even with my eyes closed, I knew I wasn’t in Julia’s house any more. The air smelt different and the ground was uneven under my feet. And when I opened my eyes, there were the double doors of my dormitory building.
The tiniest flicker of happiness tickled inside me. I’d done it. I was back.
When I saw Olinda sitting on the step in front of me, my happiness surged. She was there. She was still safe. Thin though, very thin. So much thinner than when I’d last seen her.
Catching sight of me, she let out a cry. ‘Leo!’ she said. ‘Is it you?’
Suddenly shy, I could only manage a smile.
But she wasn’t smiling. She was frowning. ‘How can you possibly be here?’ she asked me. ‘No one ever comes back from the transports. Not ever.’
I stayed silent.
‘No one does,’ she insisted. ‘No one ever does.’
I’m different. That’s what I wanted to say. Didn’t Ivan tell you I’m different?
But it was clear Ivan hadn’t told her a thing.
‘I escaped from the train,’ I lied.
Astonishment lit up her face. ‘But how? How could you possibly have escaped?’
Yes, how?
‘Well,’ I flustered, trying to think of something, ‘the train stopped and the doors opened. It was dark and I was small enough to slip out.’
But Olinda was shaking her head. ‘It’s been more than a year. Where have you been for all this time?’
More than a year?
That startled me. No, more than that: it panicked me.
‘What date is it?’ I asked, my voice rising.
She thought for a moment. ‘The twenty-seventh,’ she said finally. ‘It’s the twenty-seventh of October.’
My hands went cold, so cold.
No.
No.
NO.
‘Where were you?’ she pressed. ‘For all that time, where were you?’
My mind racing, I tried to think. ‘I found people to stay with,’ I told her, ‘but it got too dangerous for them to keep me because I’d escaped and everything. So I made my way back here instead.’ It was an unlikely story, and if she asked any more questions, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep it up.
But she didn’t ask me anything. Nothing at all. Instead, her voice rose as her face became animated. ‘Guess what happened while you were away? I was chosen to sing in an opera: a Czech one, called Brundibár. They even filmed it.’
My breath caught. A part of me still hadn’t believed it. Even after I’d seen her on the screen — actually seen her there — still I’d hoped I was wrong: that it hadn’t been her, after all.
‘Were you in it?’ I asked, my voice hoarse. ‘The film, I mean.’
‘Oh yes.’ She was smiling now. ‘The director even complimented me on my singing.’
After a moment, her smile faded. ‘I know the film’s for them, for Hitler and the rest of them. I know it’s not for anything good, but I still liked doing it.’
I swallowed. If only she couldn’t sing. Then she wouldn’t have been chosen; then she wouldn’t have had any part of it.
‘Do you have any idea what they will do to you?’ I wanted to shout.
Of course she didn’t. How could she?
But I knew. I knew a final transport would be headed to Auschwitz the very next day. On it would be everyone from that choir, everyone who had sung Brundibár for the Germans. Olinda included.
The thought of it terrified me, but I couldn’t let her know that. ‘How’s Ivan?’ I asked instead, trying to keep my voice light.
‘Good,’ she said, ‘pretty good. He’ll be here in a moment, so you can find out for yourself.’
And less than five minutes later, there he was, right in front of me. ‘Leo,’ he said, his eyes glistening, ‘is it really you?’
At first, I could only stare at him. He was so gaunt. Like Olinda, he had become so very thin. ‘Yes,’ I said softly, ‘it’s me.’
He gave me a small smile. ‘It’s been a long time, my friend. You’ve missed a lot.’
Olinda’s eyes had widened. ‘You’ll never guess what happened,’ she told him. ‘Leo was on the train — you know, on the transport — and he escaped. Then he hid in people’s houses until it got too dangerous, so he decided to come back here. Can you believe it? That he actually came back?’
Ivan shot me a look, one eyebrow raised.
Time to change the subject, I thought, turning to the park space in front of us. ‘What happened to the tent?’
‘All part of the scam of the century,’ said Ivan. ‘If you’d been here in June, you’d have been amazed by the transformation. Circus tent gone, a park suddenly in its place. For a while, there was even a playground there, too. Of course, they got rid of that after the Red Cross left.’ His voice prickled with sarcasm. ‘Yes, the Red Cross, who came to check on the conditions here. And weren’t they delighted by what they found: how beautiful it was, how well we were treated? Of course they would have been surprised to know how much work had been done to get ready for them. Those awful, flea-infested buildings freshly painted; the tent taken down; and all that dirt turned into a beautiful park. Better still, suddenly we had plenty of room here, because they solved the overcrowding problem too, didn’t they?’ His voice was raised now, raised and bitter. ‘Who would have thought it could be so easy?’
Olinda put a hand on his arm. ‘You need to be quieter,’ she warned him.
He shrugged her away. ‘I’m sick of being quiet. I need to tell him what’s been happening here.’ His face flushed with anger. ‘Do you know how they solved the overcrowding problem?’
I was feeling more and more uneasy. ‘I think so,’ I murmured.
‘Let me tell you what happened. In preparation for this Red Cross inspection, the Germans organised three big transports. So many people were sent away, thousands of them. All of them gone. Just like that. And there you have it: a spacious town. Lots of space for lectures, for concerts, for performances.’
Out of his mouth came the most awful laugh. ‘And how well you performed, Olinda, all of you up there on stage. The performance of a lifetime, that’s what it was. They sang and sang for the Red Cross, each on their very best behaviour. Like we all were. When those Red Cross people came to observe us, we all stayed quiet instead of begging them to save us. “Get us out of here,” we wanted to scream. “Get us all out!” But we couldn’t even risk making eye contact with our visitors, for what if the Germans saw us? What if the Germans thought we were staging a rebellion with our eyes? So we all kept our eyes down. And we acted well enough to make the delegation believe we were happy and our captors were kind. And didn’t this please our German captors? It pleased them so much they decided to make a film of it. To show the whole world how lovely it is here.’ His nose wrinkled as a waft of sewerage reached them. ‘And the best thing about a film is that you can’t smell it.’
