The Earth Is Singing (11 page)

Her face is very red and pinched, though. And her grey hair is shoved up into a prim bun. With her thick-rimmed black spectacles she reminds me of a teacher I used to hate at school.

“Hello, Aunt,” I say in a subdued voice. Brigita doesn’t even look at me, or at Omama who is glaring at her from her bed in the corner.

“I hope you are satisfied,” she says in a high, trembling voice. “We have had the Gestapo here tonight.”

“Yes,” says Mama in a mild tone. “I thought I heard them.”

“We could all have been shot,” says my aunt. Her hands on the floor of the loft are shaking. “It was not my idea that you came here. We must all suffer because of you.”

“Uh-huh,” says Mama in that strange, neutral voice. “Even though we are the family of your own dear brother.”

Aunt Brigita flushes a deeper shade of purple.

“He made his choice when he married you,” she says. “It is not my fault that my brother turned out to be so stupid.”

Mama stares at her sister-in-law in astonishment. I’m doing the same. Although she’s always been a bit snippy she used to manage to be polite to us. Now it’s like that veneer has been stripped away to reveal a deep hatred underneath.

We are getting used to being hated, but not by our own family. I feel sick to the pit of my stomach. Is there nobody who likes us any more? What have we ever done to these people except invite them to sit at Mama’s table and eat our lovely food?

I can see Mama struggling for words but she needn’t have bothered.

Omama has pushed herself up into a bent walking position and is standing above the hatch and glaring down at my aunt.

“You bitter, shrew-faced old misery,” she says. I hide my face behind my pillow. When Omama gets going there’s no stopping her.

“What do you know about suffering?” continues Omama. “Here in your fancy house with all your expensive things and your silly clothing and your husband who works hard to give you what you want.”

Aunt Brigita has started to descend the ladder but Omama reaches down with her walking stick and grabs a lapel of her white silk blouse.

“May God have mercy on you,” she hisses. “And teach you some compassion, for His sake.”

Then she makes a stabbing motion with the stick and Aunt Brigita practically jumps the last few rungs of the ladder onto the safety of the carpeted landing.

We hear her bedroom door slam and then there is silence.

“Well,” says Mama. She shuts the hatch and sits down so hard that I hear a bedspring snap. Her face is very pale. “That told her, Mama. But maybe you should tone it down a little in future? We are guests in her house, after all!”

Omama snorts and gives her big Jewish Grandmother shrug. Then she winks at me.

“We might lose everything else, but we still have our pride, eh?” she says.

I smile back but I feel sick and shaky and wracked with worry.

My heart is pounding.

Aunt Brigita will not let us stay here much longer.

It looks as if even our own family will turn against us soon.

So what will happen to us then?

After the visit from Aunt Brigita
we wait in fear for Uncle Georgs to come up and tell us that we must leave his house.

Mama says that we could go back to our apartment in the old town and hide up in the attics of the building, but we know that this would not be ideal. There are too many other non-Jews in the apartment block and they would hear us moving around overhead.

Omama reckons that her Rabbi might be able to help us, but this would mean leaving the suburbs and somehow going into town to look for him, so that’s too risky.

“Maybe we should just move to the ghetto,” I say, trying to help.

Mama’s face becomes pinched and stubborn.

“No,” she says. “I will not move there. Not to that district. We are better off up here but only if Uncle Georgs agrees to let us stay.”

We are silent for a moment. Last night very late we heard Georgs and Brigita have another whispered argument in their bedroom below our feet.

And last night for the first time, Georgs did not bring us any supper on a tray.

It makes me feel sick with guilt that their marriage is in trouble because of us, even though I don’t much like my aunt.

There is nothing we can do this morning except wait.

It is our Jewish New Year today.

It falls at the end of September and its real name is Rosh Hashanah.

If we had been at home and not holed up in an attic with no table or cooking facilities we would have started the celebrations at sunset after the ram’s horn had been blown at synagogue to symbolize the sobbing and wailing of Abraham offering his son to God. The celebration would have gone on for two days.

However it’s a bit difficult to do anything much without any food up here and I don’t fancy our chances blowing any sort of horn with the Aunt Brigita Police on duty downstairs.

So we wish each other a Happy New Year with kisses and hugs and try hard not to see the irony in our wishes.

Omama pinches my cheek in that special way that she has and my eyes water with pain but I kiss her anyway.

Then we sit on the edges of our beds and wait.

At ten o’clock, Uncle Georgs burst through the loft hatch.

He is smiling and a little out of breath.

He gestures at me to take the tray and I cry out when I see it.

There is a round shiny challah and a jar of honey.

“I made it in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep,” he says, going a little pink. “I remembered that it was today.”

Mama comes over and plants a big kiss on the top of Georgs’s head.

“Oh, you are a good man,” she says. “A thousand thanks. This will make our day special.”

Uncle Georgs clears his throat and starts to descend the ladder, but then he comes up again as if he’s just remembered something.

“I have had words with my wife,” he says. “Don’t worry. You can stay here as long as it takes. Happy New Year!”

He goes down and we hear the shelves being slid into place.

Mama sits on her bed and bursts into tears.

We eat the shiny challah, dipping the sweet pieces into the sticky honey and cramming it into our mouths. We are not supposed to have it until the evening but up here the rules are bent so much every day that even Omama doesn’t really mind.

“We dip this bread into honey so that the forthcoming year will be sweet,” she says, honey running down her chin. “And we eat the round challah also so that the year will be rounded, like a circle.”

Mama gives a very un-Mama-like snort.

“How will it be?” is all she says, but the bread doesn’t taste so good after that. I know that she’s right, but sometimes I just want to pretend everything is going to be okay.

I make a big fuss of pulling off more challah and dipping it into the divine honey.

We do not eat as much here as we would like to, so to have a whole loaf and a jar of honey makes me feel rich for the entire morning. And there is fresh coffee, too. Uncle Georgs has gone all out to try and make our New Year special.

And he has more surprises in store.

By the late afternoon Omama is trawling through the papers and Mama is asleep on her bed as usual. There is a gentle click and Uncle Georgs appears with our supper tray. It is earlier than usual so I am surprised.

He slides the tray onto the floor and beckons me over.

“A special supper,” he says. “I had to assemble it while Brigita was at her reading circle. She is not to know I spent money on this. Happy New Year!”

My brilliant uncle disappears down the hatch and I stare at the tray.

There is a steaming dish of chicken soup with little white noodles floating in the golden liquid. Next to it is a platter with a whole fish on. We eat a whole fish at Rosh Hashanah to symbolize fertility. And under a cloth on another plate is a golden square of apple strudel, stuffed with plump raisins and fat wedges of sugary apple. There are white china plates and silvery cutlery.

And a glass carafe containing red wine.

“Mama,” I whisper. “Wake up.”

My mother struggles into a sitting position and tries to focus her tired eyes on the tray. When she does, she claps her hands without making a sound and hugs me to her.

Omama is already slurping the soup.

It is the best evening we have had since we moved into this attic over a month ago.

For one evening we forget that we are all a little thinner and paler from lack of balanced meals and fresh air. We forget about Omama’s worsening hip and the way that all my ballet muscles are less defined even though I try to run through a set of exercises whenever I can. We forget that we are homeless and do not know what lies ahead of us.

There is only one thing we do not forget. Well – one person.

“To Papa,” I say, raising the small glass of wine that Mama has allowed me.

“To Papa,” says Mama, her eyes glistening. “And to dear, dear Uncle Georgs.”

I think of Uldis with a pang in my stomach. I miss him so much, stuck up here away from the rest of the world.

We clink glasses very softly and smile at one another.

So the first day of our Rosh Hashanah is everything we could have wished for and more.

We do not get to observe the second.

At one o’clock in the morning we are woken from our wine-drenched sleep by a banging noise.

“Quick,” says Mama, wide awake in seconds. “Onto the balcony, Hanna.”

I start to open the window as softly as I can.

Mama helps Omama on with her coat and herds us both underneath the window.

The night air comes through the cracks. It is sharp and acidic. There is some sort of danger in the air, like gunpowder.

I start to shiver. The three of us stare at the grey bell. I pray hard for it not to go off.

When it does, I jump so hard that I bang my elbow against the window frame.

“Go,” says Mama.

Just one word, but we know what we have to do.

I push open the window and climb onto the balcony.

Then I lean back in to give Mama my hand. I help her out and then between us we manage to haul Omama out by her arms. It is a good job she is so skinny.

Mama shuts the window behind us and looks up at the roof.

“Climb up as far as you can towards the middle,” she hisses. “Stay very still when you get there. I will be right behind you.”

I begin to climb up the roof in my shoes and nightdress but then I look down at Mama and Omama standing there looking up at me and my heart contracts.

I promised Papa I’d look after them.

I slither back down the roof tiles backwards and my feet hit the balcony.

“Hanna,” says Mama. “What are you doing? Get back on the roof at once!”

“You and Omama go up first,” I say. “I will help you.”

There is no time for argument. With an anguished look at me, Mama climbs onto the roof tiles and turns around to extend her hand to Omama.

Omama reaches up a skinny wrist and grabs Mama’s hand. I push her legs up and between us, Mama and I try to heave Omama onto the roof but it is no good. Her sore hip and her skinny legs are a lethal combination. Her legs slip and slide as they try to find footing on the black slates and a great tile comes loose.

It crashes to the ground below and smashes into pieces. The noise may as well be a cannon shot.

“Well, that’s us done for. Perhaps we should have practised?” says Omama. She is back on the balcony.

I laugh. I am surprised that Omama can still be so funny in this situation.

Mama hesitates on the roof. Then she slides back down again.

And that is where they find the three of us.

Cold, defiant, huddled together on a tiny balcony in our coats and nightdresses.

The two Gestapo men, standing with their guns and their snarling, pulling dogs.

And behind them, in his yellow-green uniform with the red striped armband and wearing an expression of something that I can’t read…

Uldis.

The dogs bark, thick snouts
pointing up towards the night sky and fat bodies straining at their black leather leashes.

Downstairs Uncle Georgs’s dogs are going crazy.

One of the Gestapo men shouts at the dogs and they whimper and settle down at his feet.

I am shivering hard. It is not cold outside but inside I am full of rising fear. I can’t stop staring at Uldis. There has been some mistake. Why will he not look at me? I cling onto Mama’s arm on one side and Omama’s on the other. Omama’s arm feels like the bone in the middle of a shank of lamb but without all the meat and fat clinging to it.

Then it hits me as hard as if I had been attacked with the butt of a rifle.

This is because of me.

I told Uldis where we were hiding.

I have betrayed my own family.

“Name?” says the man who has shouted at the dogs.

Mama steps forward off the balcony and climbs back through the window, gesturing at us to follow. Her head is held high and I recognize the determined lift of her chin. My mother is a proud woman.

“Kristina Michelson,” she says. “This is my mother Ita Dzintra and my daughter Hanna Michelson.”

I shoot Omama a look of astonishment.

“I did not know that was your name,” I whisper.

Omama shrugs.

“What can I say?” she answers. “I am an enigma.”

Then she pinches my cheek very hard. The tears that this brings are added to the tears I already have in my eyes. Everything I love and have left in the world is huddled here in a poky room in front of the Gestapo and their vile dogs. The world has shrunk right down to this attic and this moment.

“Michelson, huh?” says the man. He comes over and looks straight down into my face.

I try and stare back with as much impudence as I can muster, but my arms and legs and head are shaking. I can’t seem to look at Uldis and his face is in shadow in the dark corner of our attic. But his stance – folded arms, unmoving – is telling me things I don’t want to know.

“Jew?” says the man. “But you are not wearing your star.”

In the panic to get outside I forgot to put on my jacket with the star sewn on.