Let Me Whisper You My Story (3 page)

C
REAKING
,
OLD WOODEN
stairs led us to the second floor. Behind closed doors we heard crying, banging and raised voices.

‘Why do they make such a noise?’ I asked, one hand holding my doll and a packet of hair ribbons, the other clinging onto the handrail.

‘Fear,’ Papa said, as he strained under the weight of his suitcases. ‘It makes some people very nervous. That won’t happen to us.’

Other families trudged up the staircase behind us. I turned around when an old man tripped and cried out. I could see the contents of his case when it fell open. Out came underwear, shirts, trousers, soap, a pair of scissors, a small book. Everything he owned spilled on the stairs. A woman with a scarf stopped to help him. His lower lip trembled as he nodded at her.

Papa, walking ahead, cautiously turned the door handle of apartment three.

As he opened the door, who came running across a shabby lounge room but my aunt and uncle and two
cousins. Agnes squealed with delight as Mama, Miri and I followed Papa into the apartment. Her brother, Erich, grinned at Miri and planted a shy, polite kiss on her forehead. He kissed my forehead enthusiastically. I was so happy to see him that I decided immediately that his kiss had finally taken away the invisible scar of the spit.

‘You’re here too?’ Papa asked, confused, as Mama and my aunt embraced. Uncle Ernst gripped Papa by the shoulders, and the two brothers stared at each other in grim silence.

‘Yes, that’s Nazi book-keeping,’ said Uncle Ernst. ‘We have the same surname, so they put us together. We arrived earlier today.’

‘So this is a
Judenhaus
,’ said Mama. She looked around in dismay. ‘It’s awful. How will we all fit here? Why are they doing this?’

‘They are moving Jews into
Judenhäuser
and then somewhere else.’ Aunty Gitta shrugged. She was taller than Mama with a lined face, a firm jaw and eyes that used to twinkle.

‘So what happened to the people who lived here before us?’

‘Gone. Who knows where?’ She shrugged again.

‘That doesn’t make sense.’ Mama shook her head and looked around the apartment. ‘I couldn’t bring my broom. I must clean. I have to sweep and dust.’ She sat on a torn old sofa in the small lounge room.

Aunty Gitta patted her shoulder. ‘It will be all right.’

I looked up at the ceiling where the paint was peeling like flaking skin. In the centre of it, a light bulb dangled
on the end of a cord. I needed to find a wardrobe and quickly.

Mama tested the taps. Cold water came dribbling from one tap in the kitchen, and there was another one in the bathroom, though the water was a rusty colour and only a trickle came out.

‘Gitta, it’s terrible,’ I heard her say.

The apartment also smelt like the inside of a garbage bin. It was the ugliest place I had ever seen. I thought of our living room with its warm carpet. Had Mama brought our candle holders and candles along? I hoped so. We must have our Sabbath service.

What was it that Mama had said? As long as we were together we would make a home anywhere. I hoped she was right. Two families living in such a small space would trip over each other.

There were two bedrooms, each bedroom very tiny. Eight of us bundled together in such a small place. I
had
to find a wardrobe. Ah, there was a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. I opened the door and the musty smell was overpowering. When we unpacked and put our clothing inside, the smell would go, and it would be replaced with the smell of my family’s clothing. I would still have my safe place to be alone.

‘Hey, you’re skinnier than ever. I’ve seen fatter worms.’ Agnes, my irritating cousin, stood there, her arms folded as she stared at me, blue eyes set in her thin, bird-like face. ‘Why are you looking inside the wardrobe, Rachel?’

‘So that I can lock you in it and throw away the key.’

We poked our tongues out at each other, and then I started laughing.

‘You look like a lizard, Agnes.’

‘You look like a skinny worm with a tongue.’

Miri had also been exploring. She seated herself on a threadbare armchair and took out her journal and began to write quickly. ‘Hey, be quiet, you two. I want to be a writer one day, and I’m starting with this journal.’

Agnes scowled then pressed her nose against the window, her eyes scanning the street below.

‘Wouldn’t you rather be a movie star, or marry a prince and become a princess?’ I asked her.

‘Silly. Jewish girls never marry princes. And no, I don’t want to be a movie star. That’s not for me.’

‘Will you read me what you write, Miri?’ I asked.

‘No, you’re too young. I’m a serious writer. You wouldn’t like what I write.’

‘Please read it to me, Miri. I am suffering from
awful
sadness because this place is so ugly.’

Miri lifted her journal in line with her head so I couldn’t see her face as she read out loud:

There are two toilets at the end of the hall, which everyone on our floor has to share. Water appears intermittently from a broken tap in the kitchen. In the kitchen which is really just part of a small living room is an old stove with two gas rings. There is a washroom with a yellow stained bath and no hot water. Floorboards groan as if the weight of us all is an assault on its old age. I have tested the lights and the electricity works on and off according to its mood.

‘It’s not very interesting so far, Miri. I hope it gets better. I’ll be your audience. Will you read me everything you write?’ I asked her.

‘Hmm. Maybe. As long as you sit still.’ Miri chewed on her pencil and then started writing again.

‘There are more people arriving,’ said Agnes as she left her spot by the window.

Mama and Aunty Gitta discussed the state of the apartment. ‘We need to shake dust out of everything,’ Mama said. ‘Why didn’t I bring my broom? All I have is this pan and brush. I can’t live in such filth.’

There was a screech from Agnes. ‘A mouse. I saw a mouse in the kitchen. No, it was too big to be a mouse. I think it was a rat. I can’t stand this.’

Agnes threw herself onto the floor, a dangerous place to be if there really was a rat around.

‘Agnes, stop that tantrum,’ said Aunty Gitta.

‘It’s not a tantrum. I just want to go back home.’ Agnes scrunched her face and began to cry.

‘Me too,’ I added.

‘We all want to go back home,’ said Mama quietly. ‘And one day we will, you wait and see.’

Agnes got up from the floor and wiped tears from her face with the back of her hand. ‘You don’t understand.’

She muttered for a while then suggested that she style my wavy hair. This was the first good idea she’d had. I sat on a chair in one of the bedrooms. There was no mirror for me to check on what she was doing to my hair, but it was relaxing having her methodically twirl my waves into what looked like large sausages.

Papa and Uncle Ernst went rat-hunting and Mama’s favourite saucepan ended up with a small dent in the middle of it; it would be a permanent reminder of the rat that slunk out from behind a cupboard in the kitchen and was promptly killed.

‘Like us,’ Miri commented. ‘Rats in a trap.’

‘Stop it, Miri,’ grumbled Aunty Gitta. ‘Help your mama clean. Agnes, finish off styling Rachel’s hair. You can both help too.’

So Agnes quickly made sausages from my wavy hair and put bows in the middle of them. We found some rags near the sink and wiped down the dark furniture. Aunty Gitta and Mama took turns beating the sofa with the back of the brush, and Miri swept the dust into the small dustpan. Together Mama and Aunty Gitta carried the thin torn mattresses down the stairs at the back of the apartment block. There they methodically beat out the dust with a trimmed branch from a nearby tree. Miri, Agnes and I pulled off branches from the tree and helped. It was fun. I pretended the mattress was Hitler.

A lady opened the door of a ground-floor apartment and came outside to watch us. She was very old, wearing her grey hair in a small, tight bun. She folded her bare arms and I saw how the skin there hung in loose, wrinkled flaps, much like deflated balloons. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘We are just trying to clean the place,’ Mama told her.

‘Madam, I am sorry for you. This must be your first experience of life in a
Judenhaus.
Dust won’t kill you. Use your energy instead to find shops that serve you food.’

Mama pursed her lips. She would not be told what
to do. She quietly said to Miri and Agnes, ‘Now, sweep up this mess as best you can. There is a garbage bin over there. Be careful. It’s not clean there.’

We struggled back to our apartment with the mattresses. Slowly, we unpacked.

I needed to use the toilet, which was at the end of the outside hall leading to the staircase.

‘I’ll come with you, Rachel,’ Mama told me. ‘Just give me a minute.’

‘I have to go now, Mama. I’m not a baby. I’ll go by myself.’

Mama nodded. I opened our front door and counted the other apartment doors as I walked down the dark hall. There were two toilets for four apartments on our floor. Three people stood outside one toilet queuing and arguing, two stood outside the second toilet.

I quietly waited my turn. How bad could this be? What if I had to go in a hurry? Mama would fix up a potty in the washroom, I guessed.

Nobody from our apartment floor looked down at me. I supposed it was because they all felt desperate for their turn. I shrivelled in the queue, embarrassed, trying to tell myself I had to get used to this. I wished I didn’t have to go so badly.

A man went before me. He shuffled in, was there for ages, then shuffled out. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to me apologetically. ‘The chain does not work.’

I went inside holding my breath. I think I set a world record for holding my breath. When I came out, I also told the woman waiting outside apologetically, ‘The chain does not work.’

T
HE WARDROBE IN
one bedroom was the only one we had and we divided up the space. All in all, we had not brought much clothing with us. I was dismayed to find that I’d left some of my pretty dresses behind, then I realised how silly this thought was. When would I wear them again?

When the unpacking was completed I inspected the wardrobe. I saw that shoes now lined the bottom of the robe with socks poked into them. There was a stale smell. Was it coming from my uncle’s socks? Would my parents’ smell eventually take over the wardrobe? I hoped so. Maybe, though, the stale smell would stay forever. I could ask Miri to spray some of her scent there. Now, that was a good idea.

Mama put her arms around me. This was the best feeling in the world. ‘You’ll still find room to snuggle up in the wardrobe,’ she told me softly.

‘What does she do in the wardrobe?’ Aunty Gitta asked.

‘Sometimes she just wants to escape into her own world,’ Mama responded, and my aunt nodded as if she understood perfectly.

‘O
NE DAY
I’
LL
be tall and not so skinny and I’ll sit on you,’ I told Agnes, who had a permanent smirk on her face and seemed to hang around every corner pulling faces at me.

‘But you’ll always be the baby, Rachel. Always,’ she said.

Erich removed his violin from its case. He opened the case so carefully, you would have thought it was filled with gold. He took out the old instrument, which had belonged to his great-grandfather and plucked at the strings.

He held his violin under his chin, extended his bow and played something sad. Papa listened to Erich, his hands in his pockets. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

‘Papa?’ I asked. Papa quickly put his handkerchief away.

‘Dust, Rachel. I’ve been cleaning the inside of cupboards. You should see the dust.’

‘I can help,’ I said.

‘No, listen to Erich. Play something cheerful, Erich.’

Erich didn’t seem to hear Papa. He heard only the music in his head and heart and continued to play until he was satisfied, then he put the bow and violin carefully away. Agnes took out a board-game and the two of them sat on the floor and played. I sat beside them, watching.

At the same time, I listened to the adults talking. They’d finished their unpacking and were sitting on the couch. ‘We shall manage,’ Uncle Ernst said bravely, although the lines on his face were like question marks. Uncle Ernst was a tailor. This was handy, I thought. As our clothing wore out, he could repair it. That thought made me feel very dismal. How long were we meant to stay here?

Papa and Uncle Ernst discussed a way to make the apartment comfortable. There were two bedrooms with thin mattresses and beds in them. Aunty Gitta and Mama decided that each couple should have a bedroom and the children should sleep in the lounge room, on the mouldy, hard-cushioned armchairs. Except for me. At eight and a half, and small for my age, I would sleep with Mama and Papa.

I listened carefully as my parents and aunt and uncle talked, their voices soft, as they sat bunched together on the couch. Erich and Agnes were concentrating on their board-game. Miri was writing. I sat on the threadbare carpet and flicked through the pages of a book Miri had found for me to read. I tried to catch the adults’ words, to understand. It reminded me of the quiet way my parents spoke to each other about
Kristallnacht
, the night everyone’s windows were broken and Jews were hurt.
Now the words were also like broken glass, shards that by themselves did not answer any questions I had.

Why?…keep calm…the children…What to do?…escape?…impossible.

What did their words mean? I began to feel sleepy. I curled up on the carpet and dozed off. When I awoke Agnes and Erich had finished their game. Mama was sitting on the carpet with my head in her lap and was stroking my hair. Erich had begun to play the violin again.

F
ROM TIME TO
time soldiers came and took people away. We never knew where they were going or why.

I wished Erich wouldn’t play such sad music. He was the same age as Miri, almost sixteen, but he looked about twelve, with his skinny legs and his short trousers down to his knees and long uneven socks. His fair hair was combed to one side and his blue eyes were miserable. When he wasn’t playing the violin he read books.

He didn’t speak much to Miri. They had been close cousins, almost like sister and brother. They’d taken off their yellow stars and gone out together on a dangerous adventure. But Erich had changed. He seemed to have curled up inside himself, like a snail retreating into its shell. Miri had also become snail-like, although she still fussed over me and gave Agnes and me school lessons. Mostly though, she sat and wrote, or helped Mama shopping for food using ration cards stamped
Jew
.

‘We are given the worst food in the shops,’ she complained one day when they returned. ‘And having
only set times to shop, the best food is gone then. Some shops see our yellow star and turn us away.’

Miri sat with Aunty Gitta and listened to her talk about her grandparents and the war.

‘For a long time we Jews were respected,’ Aunty Gitta told her. ‘Your grandfather was awarded the Iron Cross in the First World War. We are German patriots. Hitler and this war will be the undoing of Germany. Now that London has been bombed and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii has been hit, the war has grown bigger. The Americans are in the war now. Hitler will lose. It is only a question of time.’

‘When?’ asked Miri.

‘I wish I knew.’

Agnes was moody. Everything seemed to upset her. ‘I don’t want to be here,’ she said to Aunty Gitta and stamped her foot.

I looked at her. She’d always been a moaner, and now she was worse. I sighed. I was so tired all the time. When had I last had a full stomach? Food rationing was increasing. I missed my old home, the birds on the window ledge, the front gate that creaked…

Mama stood up and went to the kitchen with Aunty Gitta. From a pitiful supply of vegetables and a rare potato they would cook something for us all. I looked at Miri, who was busily writing in her journal. I closed my eyes and dreamed…

When I grow up I will look like Miri. My hair will be elegant and curled at the bottom. It will not be messy like it is now. My eyelashes will be long and they might flutter, and perhaps I will have a prince fall in love with me. I’ll wear nylon stockings and be very shapely.

My prince will come for me on a white horse and say he has never seen anyone as pretty as me. We will ride away to his castle. Of course, in the castle we’ll have lots of room for Mama and Papa and Miri. We will have a house for my aunt and uncle and cousins too, but there’ll be a moat between us.

Then I remembered who I was and that Jewish girls do not marry princes.

Miri bit the end of her pencil and stared at the wall opposite her. She reached into her pocket and took out her bottle of scent and dabbed a little behind her ears.

‘May I have some?’ I asked.

Miri hesitated, but only for a second. I suppose that her hesitation was because her scent was all she had from her other life, all that reminded her of pretty things from the past.

‘Sure, you skinny thing. Come here.’

She dabbed a little on each of my wrists. It was heaven in a bottle. I sniffed my skin, drunk with the smell of fresh flowers and open fields.

Papa came into the room. He’d brought with him some of his medical equipment and was sorting it out on the table.

‘Do you have to use that scent?’ He waved the air around him.

There was something about this sweet smell hanging like a cloud around Miri that truly bothered him. Why? The smell reminded Miri and me of fresh spring flowers. The spring flowers that would open wide in our old garden and fill it with colour and perfume.

‘Miri,’ I whispered, ‘can you put just a little scent in the wardrobe? It has a bad stink in it, and I really need
to go there. I think the stink might be coming from Uncle Ernst’s socks.’

Miri’s look told me that she thought this a total waste of good scent, but she also seemed to understand that I needed the wardrobe just as much as she needed her scent. So she went into the bedroom and, while Papa was busy sorting out medicines and various instruments, she dabbed some scent on the inside wall of the wardrobe, then closed it quietly and left the room.

‘T
HERE
,
NOW YOU
look like a fairy princess.’ Agnes, bored, was arranging a new bow in my hair. I’d swapped four of my own for two of hers. Agnes said it was a fair bargain as her ribbons were better. This new one was red with blue stripes.

‘If I was allowed to, I could cut up my yellow star and Uncle Ernst could make ribbons out of it,’ I said.

‘Don’t even joke about it,’ Miri answered. ‘You must wear the star like the rest of us.’

‘I remember when you went out with Erich. You didn’t wear your star then.’ I pulled a face at Miri.

‘You did that?’ asked Agnes, her eyes like saucers.

‘Quiet,’ said Miri, glaring at us.

Mama and Papa had gone out with Aunty Gitta and Uncle Ernst and Erich to try to buy food. Our ration coupons had been changed again. Less for ordinary Germans; still less for Jews. Sometimes they were gone for hours.

That night, our stomachs growled as we ate vegetables
that tasted awful. There was only enough food to remind us of how hungry we were.

I lay in the middle of my parents’ bed. There was a dent in the mattress. I thought of my old bed, the bright quilt, the soft mattress. Who was using it now? Nazis? I shivered and held Annie tightly.

Miri came in to say goodnight. ‘Please,’ I asked her, ‘can you just put a tiny bit of scent behind my ears? I can’t sleep.’

Miri somehow always had her scent bottle on her, in one pocket or another. ‘Just a little, Rachel. This has to last for the rest of the war.’

She dabbed a spot behind both my ears. Ah, now this was good. This was heaven.

Papa came in and sniffed the air. ‘Oh no, it’s not enough that Miri stinks, now you stink too, Rachel. I don’t have daughters, I have stinkies!’

In the half-light, Papa stood, bearded, thick eyebrows almost meeting.

‘Your eyebrows need trimming, Papa,’ I reminded him.

‘They are good friends and are reaching out to shake hands with each other,’ Papa replied, then shook with laughter. ‘Oh, I am such a funny man.’

He leaned across the bed and kissed me goodnight. He kissed Miri and even the one-eyed doll. Then, chuckling to himself, Papa left the room.

I looked up at my sister. ‘Miri, I am hungry all the time. My stomach rumbles. I get tired when I try to run up the stairs. Mama says it’s because I don’t get enough food to eat. But I want to try to keep running all the same. I feel if I stop running then I’ll show how scared I am.’

‘Rachel, we are on rations. We shall starve if this goes on.’

‘But not on Friday nights. We will never starve at our long table at Friday night dinner, because that’s the Sabbath.’

Miri twirled my hair with her fingers. My eyelids became heavy. I forgot about soldiers and guns, Hitler too. ‘No, while there is our long table and our Friday Sabbath, we will not starve,’ Miri whispered in my ear. The next day, after I had begged Miri to do so, she read to me from her journal.

‘It’s about me,’ she said seriously.

The anger I feel inside me

Is a mute fire
.

I sit quietly at the table

Writing

And no-one knows

Who Miri is

Anymore
.

I did not harm anyone

I did not steal or kill

I did nothing to hurt the German people

I am innocent
.

But I am Jewish

And they say that is enough
.

So where is Miri now
?

‘Well, it’s better than the other writing you read to me. I don’t understand it, though. Why are you asking where you are? You’re right here, in front of me,’ I said.

‘Am I?’