English / Sample translations /

/translated by Barbara Day/

chapter VII.
Savitree the Witch
/narrated by Daniel/

          In December 1938 Baťa launched a new kind of waterproof shoe on the Indian market. Metal bowls of water appeared in shop windows, with the shoe dangling in them. “In wet and dry.” It was an immediate hit; Indians went wild over them. They cost fifteen anas a pair.
          Amon died in the middle of January. Father said he’d reached that age. I cried a lot; he’d been in the family since before I was born. I missed him awfully.
          In February 1939 a letter arrived from aunt Regina that changed our life completely:

          Erik, Lily and little Irma have emigrated. They’re in England at the moment. Lily has some relations there, but I don’t know where they’ll end up. Mother fell ill soon afterwards; it became clear she’d been ill for a long time. There’s no hope. The doctors say she has a month left, maybe two. I’ve taken time off because it was difficult for Father to look after her. They talk about you all the time. I think life’s playing a game with us. Just when Father seemed to be pulling around after his stroke last year, everything began to slide back again. You would hardly recognise them.

          "Raquel, try to understand. We can’t go back!"
          "My mother is dying."
          "I know. I know it’s hard, but we can’t go."
          "I have to go back! I owe it to her."
          "Raquel –"
          "I haven’t seen her since I married you."
          The words caught in his throat.
          "There’s a war breaking out. It’s – suicide."
          "I have to go home"
          He heard the despair in his own voice, betraying him. He couldn’t swallow. He was putting his foot out to stop an accelerating train. "Raquel –"
          "If you don’t come with me, I’m going alone!"
          "You can’t do that."
          "I will!"
          She stood up from her chair and slammed the door behind her.

          The sultriness weighed heavy on him. He stayed sitting in the garden till dusk and listened to the evening ritual of the parched earth. Thousands of leaves in the tops of the banyan trees, like naked hearts with sharp bare ends, prepared to defend their own vulnerability. With cicadas came dark, and the cries in the night threatened his life.

          I said good-bye to her. To India. And to Kavita. Her embraces, songs and incantations. To the people, with their countless stories and gods. A small pack on my back, like a poor traveller, I said farewell to my first love, magical and consuming. I became a pilgrim against the flow of time.
          I flew in an aeroplane for the first time in my life. It seemed unbelievable that such a heap of metal could lift itself off the ground. It was against nature, against all logic; against everything. We took off into the sun and the ground fell away below us like an endless map, without frontiers or customs declarations, without watchtowers. I turned into a giant, and with seven-league boots strode the deserts and mountains, and saw rivers like thin threads, like small veins on the rounded body of mother earth. One day, I’ll be a pilot, I told myself. Definitely. Behind us we left Calcutta and Batanagar, which had become the biggest shoe factory in India. It employed six thousand Indians and a handful of Czechoslovaks, my father no longer among them.
          We landed in Vienna and boarded a train. On the evening of Sunday 12 March I reached the station of my native town. A town I didn’t know. Not even my parents knew it. In six years it had grown by thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of houses and buildings. The skyscraper dominated a modern city. A monument in glass and concrete to Thomas Baťa. Schools and film studios. A unified style; parks and gardens.
          Three days later snow started falling on the roofs of the brick houses, as if it would never stop. Armoured cars, personnel carriers and motorcycles streamed through the dilapidated boundaries of the Protectorate. The Legionnaires in front of Prague Castle were replaced by the battalion of Death’s Heads in black. In Hitler’s honour. Winston Churchill was sulking, but that was no help to former Czechoslovakia.
          Mother travelled to see grandma in Prague.
          We were sailing against the current. At that time a lot of the Baťa management were already abroad, and yet we had come home. We moved into a free house near the woods. Hall, living room, kitchen and toilet on the ground floor; three bedrooms, dressing rooms and bathroom upstairs. The house had a glass veranda with a terrace, a cellar, garage and little garden facing the forest. We collected our piano from the Wassermans – an ebony Petrof. Father had bought it for mother a week before their wedding.

          She called from Prague to say that we should follow her. My grandparents wanted to see me.
          A new world opened before me. The handle of the door to the Vinohrady apartment was so high I could barely reach it. An affable man who walked with a stick appeared. He had a short, but full, greying beard and pince-nez on his aquiline nose. He gazed at father for a long time. His eyes were like little balls of mercury. They had never seen each other before; now they stood face to face, wordlessly they gazed one at the other, as though a conversation were taking place, a conversation without sound or form. Seconds and minutes passed by in a difficult silence and I waited throughout that eternity for someone finally to speak. I slipped my hand into father’s. He looked at me and winked.
          “Come along, say hello to grandpa, Daniel. Or has your tongue turned to wood?”
          The old man laughed. Come in, you foreigners, so we can get to know each other at last. He shook my hand and put on a ceremonial expression. I liked him. I had always wanted a grandpa like that.
          With a strange tightness in my throat I crossed the threshold. Tall ceilings, stucco and antique furniture. The place draped in Persian carpets; some hanging on the walls; clocks ticking in every corner.
          Grandma. Lost in the feather quilt she looked like a little girl, tiny and weak, a sick child with the face of an old woman. The massive bed emphasised her fragility. Eyes in a web of wrinkles, full of pain, skin cracked as earth in the dry season. I gave her my hand. She grabbed it hungrily, held me and tried to say something, but instead she broke into tears. But in that slight hand, in those bony fingers, their swollen joints, was a surprising strength. It was as if my hand was in a vice; she pressed it as if she never wanted to let go. I didn’t like it, I didn’t feel comfortable and wanted to get out of there. I looked round the shadowy room and breathed in a smell which suddenly made my stomach heave. A whiff of age and approaching death.
          Mama freed me from the grasp and sent me to grandpa. Margit was serving supper. When I went into the dining room, grandpa and father were sitting at a huge oval table which could easily have held twelve people. They had something serious to discuss. It didn’t escape grandpa that I was struck by the antique sideboard, made from the same wood as the table and chairs. If only these few bits of furniture could speak, that would be something, he winked at me. He tapped the table top. Walnut. Two hundred years ago a French count had had it made as a wedding present for his fiancée. The cabinetmaker completed the work and the wedding preparations could begin. But life had picked up the cards and shuffled them again. The fiancée didn’t live to see her own wedding. And so the fate of this set of furniture changed.
          By the window, the dining room turned into an L-shape, with the living room around the corner. I caught my breath. In an alcove, on a raised platform, stood a grand piano. Mother once told me it was sacred. A Bösendorfer. A mahogany giant. It had been handed down from generation to generation, and to play or practice on such an instrument was a great honour. An angular shape, a delicate mechanism, a wooden music stand and two brass candlesticks which could be adjusted. If someone pressed on one of the pedals it gave out a jangling, slanted sound.
          Father left immediately on Sunday, but I stayed two weeks. An astounding fourteen days. With grandpa. I sidled up the shadowy staircase and groped the elaborately embossed balustrades with their wooden handrail. The patina of dozens of years and hundreds of touches. I ran my hand against the grain and imagined the people who had touched it. Old fashioned matrons squeezed into corsets and crinolines which rustled at every step; dignified gentlemen and young, neatly pressed maidens in long gloves.
          Mother and Regi, helped by the old servant Margit, looked after grandma while I discovered Prague and immersed myself in the well of Jewish wisdom. I couldn’t have had a better guide than the old professor of history. The city with its aftertaste of servitude and its gloss of majesty, famous and rejected at the same time, revealing its mystery, yet always mysterious. Vyšehrad, Petřín and its gardens as they gradually came to life; Prague Castle and the astronomical clock on the Old Town Hall. The legend of Master Hanuš with his eyes pierced by human folly. In Latin, the word for clock is horologium, grandpa told me.
          The Jewish cemetery. The Old-New synagogue. An aged man with a yarmulka on his bald head in the gloom of the Gothic walls. From his lips escaped the colours of Hebrew words. He swayed to their rhythm, coiled inwards; he was a ball of atoms of the human body under a prayer shawl, stooping over the book of psalms, putting on his straps. For the first time) I heard the Hebrew language, prayers, I saw the Torah and listened to stories from the time of Abraham and Sarah, dropping off to sleep with an image of Moses: the sea dividing before him and the Jews leaving Egypt. I added a stone to the tomb of Rabbi Low and in my dreams I searched for the shem so I could bring the Golem to life.
          “Why do we put stones on the tomb, and not flowers?” I asked.
          “Because we come from inhospitable lands, from the desert and the highlands, where flowers are scarce. The stone says the same as a flower. That you stood by the tomb of one who had died, and thought of him.”
          Grandpa gave me a copy of Hans Andersen’s fairy tales bound in leather, full of eerie illustrations. A dog with huge eyes which shone from the yellowish paper like lamps guarded treasure. He looked a little funny, and his furrowed brow reminded me of Amon.
          And then came a celebration. Passover. The Jewish spring holiday, a holiday in memory of Moses. The Exodus. Passover comes from “pasah” which means to leave aside. Yahweh went from house to house, and where he did not see the mark of blood, he struck down the firstborn son. He passed over the homes of the Israelites.
          The evening before the holiday was a festive supper. Seder. I ate matza bread, made from unfermented dough: “in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread.” The meal was served on blue and white Rosenthal china. During the evening the Hagada was read, retelling the story of Moses, how he led his people from Egyptian slavery. Wandering through the wilderness and crossing the Red Sea.
         Grandpa told me how mother used to be nervous before the Seder, because as the youngest, she had had to recite Mah Nishtanah. She fidgeted during the reading of the Hagada, she never managed to sit through to the end. She ran around making faces at Regi and Erik.
          He fell into a reverie and said that the last twenty years had been the first years of this Republic. Free and beautiful. Then he grew sad. “And now it’s over.” He blew across his palm, as if blowing a kiss. “Like that. Just like that.”
          He gave me a pocket watch. The first watch I ever had. A Remontoir patent, with big Roman numerals and a small circle with a second hand. I opened the back. Sparkling and perfect. A harmony of little wheels and miniscule teeth. Fifteen jewels, and grandfather’s monogram in gold.
          I left Prague feeling I had discovered another god. Years later I understood I had discovered something more. Primary matter. Roots. Part of my own roots. And a person who took me below the surface and let me discover how deep they were.
          I never saw him again.

          Grandma died on the first Sunday in May.

          The meeting with my grandfather left an ineradicable impression on me. I came back from Prague with a few picture books, all of them about history. A few days after grandma’s death, I sat at table picking at a dreary pale green plate, searching for microscopic morsels of meat and pushing the steamed kohlrabi aside. I hated the stuff. However it was prepared my taste buds rejected it. I couldn’t face its dingy colour. I squirmed on my chair as though I had worms and thought about how to get rid of it. To distract attention from my all too full plate, I decided to make an important announcement. With utmost gravity I informed my parents that I had decided to devote the rest of my life to the study of history. Father raised an eyebrow.
          “Indeed? And why?”
          “Because history teaches us how to live. History is the teacher of life.”
          I paused, to give my words greater weight. Historia magistra vitae, I parroted grandfather, the august Latin text that stemmed from the depth of human understanding. Mother agreed and smiled admiringly, but I had not dazzled my father.
          “History teaches us we will never learn,” he muttered with his mouth full, and listlessly stabbed a lump of kohlrabi with his fork.
          I was confused.

          For my eighth birthday I got the most beautiful present of my life. A little furry bundle staggering around the kitchen, its paws skidding in every direction and surprised eyes blinking at me helplessly. I cuddled him in my arms and shouted for joy.
          “He hasn’t got a name yet, but it should begin with ‘B’. Mama wants to call him Benaiah.”
          “I’ll call him Benny then.”
          My parents laughed at my swift decision. He was a German shepherd. Father told me he would be a bright dog once I’d trained him properly.
          “He’s the best puppy I’ve ever seen!”
          We became inseparable. Wherever I went, Benny followed. For the first time in my life someone belonged to me, was mine alone, relied on me, and I went through fits of parenthood. Father took Benny’s head in his hands and said, Benny, your master is going to make a fine little wimp out of you. Remarks like those bit, so I pulled myself together and got Benny to the training ground. I proudly thrust my chest out in front of the trainer and asked him to help me make a disciplined dog out of Benny. Come back in two months, he said, when he’s six months old.

          22nd July 1939 – Zlín.

          Thomas went to see his boss. He caught him sitting behind piles of paper.
          “I’ve got a project for you. It’s abroad, as you wanted. But it’s a bit far away.”
          “Where?”
          “Argentina.”
          “Argentina? Well, all right.”
          “All right? Good then. Arrange everything you need. And, Thomas?”
          He turned round, surprised by the urgency in his boss´s voice.
          “Get out as fast as you can.”
          He forced a smile and disappeared.

          In the evening the sky grew dark. A summer storm raged through the streets of the town like a bad omen. Hailstones the size of hen’s eggs crashed through glasshouses, windows, shop displays and left behind a crystal shambles.
         Raquel still shrank from believing the dreadful stories seeping out of Germany. The lines on Tom’s forehead grew deeper every day; her blindness drove him crazy.
          You just won’t understand what this means! You want to be stuck here and learn what it means for yourself, German thoroughness? You want to know what it looks like, Hitler’s solution to the Jewish question? They strip you of your rights, kick you into the street, steal your last nickel and then stand you up against a wall!

          “You’re frightened of people.”
          “Yes, I am.”
          “Goethe said that only someone who doesn’t know people is afraid of them.”
          “Absolutely. I prefer the maxim: The more I know people, the more I love dogs!”
          He snapped his fingers and whistled. Benny came running and put his head in Tomas’ lap. She laughed briefly. Sharks are not the only fish in the sea, Tom.

          He was fighting his wife’s naiveté. Everyone around was blind. They didn’t see or didn’t want to see that young Czechoslovakia had disappeared down the trapdoor of history, and that nothing would be as it was.

          2nd August 1939 – Zlín.

          “Raquel! We’ve got our permits. Just a few formalities need to be sorted out; they promised to speed it up.”
          “Father has pneumonia.”
          He shuddered at the thought he read in her eyes.
          “Raquel, we can’t stay!”
          “Then take Dan and I’ll follow you.”
          “Don’t you understand? I can’t leave you here.”

          Otto Weinstein had lost his footing. He couldn’t remember what had happened; maybe his stick had slipped. He fell to the ground, breaking his leg. Two days later he came down with pneumonia.

          24th August 1939 – Prague.

          Otto Weinstein died. The funeral took place two days later. His daughters accompanied him on his last journey.

          31st August 1939 – Zlín.

          Tom sat on the packed cases crossing items off a list of things.

          “Raquel, what’s that?”
          “A present for Regi. I’ll be saying good bye to her tomorrow.”
          “We only have half an hour to change trains in Prague.”
          “I have to say goodbye to Regi.”
         “We won’t have time.”
         “I’m not leaving without saying goodbye to her, do you understand? Do you understand?!”
          She cried out in despair. Her voice was a dagger, a garden of fear. Her fragility hurt him. He came to her and clasped her in his arms. His hands shook when he breathed in the scent of her tears.

          I checked my luggage asking questions at the same time. An endless, uncontrolled flood came into my head. Father answered each little thing openly and from time to time threw something into the hand baggage. This evening he smiled as if he had got rid of an old burden. At half past ten he drove me off to bed.
          “Dan, I’m telling you for the fifth time, go to bed. And I don’t want to say it again. In fact, I’m not going to say it again.”
          I was so excited I couldn’t get to sleep. Argentina, Argentina, Argentina, I repeated over and over again like a charm. When I finally fell asleep I returned to India.

          In June father took us to the mountains. The temperature in Darjeeling was around sixty degrees and for mother it was a welcome change from the moist heat of Calcutta. The low cottages of the mountain-dwellers, the farms stuck to the side of the hill like match boxes, and the frugal Nepalese who kept cattle and grew tea. In summer the climate of Darjeeling became an oasis for well-off Indians and the English. The journey was terribly long and tedious. Our black Chevrolet chugged stoutly up the hills and rattled along the uneven road, the steering wheel sweating in my father’s hands. In the last kilometers, the road wound like an endless snake, and every now and then we had to stop and wait while mother was sick. Her stomach couldn’t take these serpentine roads at all.
          Darjeeling. Tennis courts, cafés, cinemas, horse races and beautiful dusky maidens in shot-silk shawls. We stayed with Mrs. Tenduf-la from Tibet. The Hotel Windermere was set in magnificent gardens. Daybreak, when a thick mist covered the valley, gradually revealed a panorama of mountains which at that moment floated above the clouds. Streaks of mist reflected the purple colour of the sun and between them soared Kangchenjunga and finally the peak of Mount Everest like crystal. Indians believe that once, long ago, the mountains were flying elephants. Firm as a rock, and unyielding. The king of the gods, thousand-eyed Indra, became angry with them for their obstinacy and punished them unfeelingly. He cut off their wings.

          After two days rest in the mountains Tom returned to stifling Calcutta. The next day the plaster on the back of the house swelled up and over another two days half of it collapsed. He spent the whole of Sunday cleaning up the mess, an unending heap of debris, and during the week sent three workmen to make repairs.
          When he looked at the new wall, smooth and even, without bumps or valleys, he had an idea.
          He prepared a plumb line, a spirit level, a large protractor and a T-square. He screwed two boards into a right angle and thrust a needle, which he had borrowed from Raquel’s sewing-box, into the point he had measured as a gnomon. He waited until noon exactly and then, with the primitive gnometric instrument and the plumb line in his hand, ran along the wall. The wall was all but perfect. It faced south, with just a small inclination to the east. When he made sure that the azimuth of the wall was only ten degrees, he laughed with pleasure. First he sketched the whole configuration onto a sheet of paper, scrawled the patterns into it and leafed through astrological yearbooks and charts. He cut a right-angled triangle out of stiff cardboard as a pattern to anchor the half-axis. Then he clamped a metal rod in a vice and bent it into an angle according to the template. He hammered the shorter length of the bent rod flat, then went outside. The sky was cloudless. He leant a ladder against the brand-new façade and climbed up, hung about with the rulers and T-squares, balancing carefully so as not to crash. He laid his drawing against the wall, measuring again and again before coming down for the bent rod and knocking the flat end into the wall. He waited for the setting to harden, and then applied paint with a light brush stroke. He put it on as thin as he could and spread it well, so it didn’t run. When he had finished he took a critical look at the large ochre-coloured rectangle from which the metal rod protruded.
          On Tuesday he stopped by the metal chiseller’s workshop and explained what he wanted to the amused master. Could it be done by Friday? Of course, confirmed the chiseller.
          The very next Sunday he spent all day with his eye on the time, and ran into the garden every hour on the hour, clambering up and down the ladder and drawing the shadow of the metal rod on the wall. As the sun set he collapsed on the grass. With the sense of victory came total exhaustion. It was dark. In India the dark does not come gradually, it falls all at once. Just in a moment. One second, maybe two. It pours itself over the burning hot ground. As though at the wave of a magic wand. The inky blue of the Bengal night is a nymph.

          Three months later he fetched us from Darjeeling. He described how he’d renovated a few important sales outlets in the state of Maharashtra. On his travels he’d met an English archaeologist who’d shared his excitement about the biggest discoveries of his career. Ajanta. Rock temples carved into grey stone. Buddhist caves in a forested slope, hidden by the waterfalls of the Vaghor river. Cliffs of granite. Monasteries and temples. Bats and snakes in the dust of time guarding the sacred mysteries. Frescoes on the walls portraying Buddha and all his past lives.
          Can you imagine? The twilight of corridors, inner courtyards, narrow passages, unexpected galleries, dark wells and silence. Staircases polished smooth over the centuries by thousands of bare feet.
          Raquel closed her eyes and leaned her head back.          
“I want to see them. I have to see those frescoes. Promise me.”

          From the mountains we returned to Calcutta. Forests of Chestnut and magnolia covered the lower slopes of the Himalayas. As we crossed the Tropic of Cancer the landscape took on a different look. Bengal. Water in deep riverbeds. Palm groves alternating with high reeds and ferns. Mangroves in the delta. Crumbling Indian villages; bamboo shacks roofed with straw, earth walls. And finally Calcutta. A sea port. Malaria, cholera and tuberculosis.
          We got home after dark. Zam had prepared supper for us but apart from Amon none of us wanted anything. I fell asleep with my head full of pictures. Cliff temples and images of the Buddha, the breath of dark corners in the caves which had not seen sunlight for millennia.
          In the morning I ran my spoon round the edge of my porridge plate and watched mother. Two narrow cracks for eyes and head heavy as the globe. It sunk lower and lower until she had to rest it on her hand.
          “Mama, didn’t you get any sleep?”
          She blinked.
          “Yes, sweetheart? What did you say?”
Father put down his newspaper.
         “Madam, you really do look as if you didn’t sleep a wink all night.”
          He always used to call her Madam when teasing her. He turned to me and asked what time it was. I looked at the pendulum clock on the wall. It said half past one.
          The clock’s stopped, I said.
         “Raquel, don’t you know what time it is?”
          She shook her head and lowered her chin back into her hand.
          “Then come with me.”
          It sounded like an invitation to try a new car. I jumped up from my chair.
          “You too, Raquel. Come on, wake up.”
          Mama got up and followed us into the garden. A few metres from the house he told us to turn round.
          I was speechless. The wall of the house mirrored the movement of the sun. There, on the newly plastered façade, was a sundial. Rays showing the time radiated from the centre of a semi-circle. The dominant part was three pictures ina beaten brass. Our signs of the Zodiac. My Cancer on the hyperbole of the summer solstice, mother’s Aries on the spring equinox and then father’s Capricorn: the winter solstice.

***

          In the morning he made breakfast and went to wake the sleepers. Dan, get up. We have a long trip ahead of us. I’ve made you some tea.
         India disappeared. We were back in Czechoslovakia, but Argentina was waiting for us. Half asleep I shuffled into the bathroom. Argentina. Argentina. I cleaned my teeth and got my tongue round it. Argentina. Argentina. I liked the sound of it.
          “Raquel, please, get up.”
          He went back into the kitchen and tuned the radio. He poured himself some white coffee.

          “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
          “What’s happened? Tom?”
          She rushed into the kitchen. She had never heard him shout like that. He pointed a frozen finger at the radio.
          “What is it? Have you scalded yourself?”
          Her stomach clenched. Eyes of a trapped beast. She had never seen such a face.
          “Hitler! – He’s invaded Poland!”

          We didn’t go anywhere. From that moment father’s work permit turned into a worthless scrap of paper, no longer enough to get us out. The borders were hermetically sealed and we were caught in a trap. Father didn’t give up. He did all he could to get us out of the country, out of reach of this madman’s clutches.

          At first nothing changed in our life. An Indian summer was hovering in the air, and a taste of cider. An arrow of migrating birds on the horizon. I started in the second class at school. The Masaryk Experimental Community School. Father joked that it sounded like an institution for the mentally handicapped. My first day I caught a butterfly on the way to school. A Yellow Brimstone. Such a little thing. In India I’d seen a butterfly at least ten centimetres across. Graphium Agamemnon. Coloured like a salamander. Enormous wings, yellow marks on black velvet. In the depths of the rain forests pierced by the gleams of the sun it disappears completely. It becomes imperceptible.

          In the 1930 census my parents had declared themselves of Czechoslovak nationality. In the column marked religion they both wrote “no profession”. He, the son of a German father and Czech mother of the Catholic faith; she, the daughter of a Czech Jew and a German Jewess. Father’s own father and his sister had both claimed German nationality and now they automatically became citizens of the Reich.

          There were demonstrations in Prague. The Germans closed the universities and imprisoned some students. Several were shot.

          When winter fell, our first winter in that city, there was a bitter freeze. Even the river froze over. Father gave me a pair of skates and after a few days I cut across the ice better than him. I wheedled a hockey stick out of him as well, so I could join my friends. Unlike Venda and Mira Zajíc and Kubík Novotný, I had to be home by dark, which annoyed me. The others had to show up for supper as well, but afterwards they could return to the river. I envied them. Only once did I have a bit of luck. Mother wanted to go to the cinema. They were showing a Czech comedy, fittingly titled Life is a Dog. My parents dressed up, gave me some unnecessary advice about what I should do if the house caught fire, and not to open the door to anyone. Then they promised me they’d be home as soon as the film was over. At half past seven they closed the door behind them, I rushed to put on my anorak and threw my skates over my shoulder. On the threshold I remembered that the boys carried paraffin lamps with them, so I went down to the cellar and added an extremely dusty one to my sporting equipment.
          When I reached the river the boys cheered. There were only three of them so now we could at least have a contest. Two against two. I put the paraffin lamp down on the frozen water and Venda got his matches out. The smooth surface of the ice reflected the yellow flickering of the lamp like a mirror, the snow fell into the silence and into our numb??? souls. A snowflake landed on the window of the lamp and turned into a drop of water which ran along the surface and disappeared. The beams of the paraffin lamps were a kaleidoscope. They were different from the reflections of candles on the river in Varanasi. The surface of water reflects exactly what it sees, ice is different. Ice multiplies light, splits it, plays with it. It enchanted me. Furrows from our skates cut through the light. A world dispersed in the ice, chaotic and at the same time transparent. I took my glove off to touch. It was cold. As though it wanted to capture me, draw me in, it breathed out chill and pledged itself through my fingertips. I skated right, left, in a trance, but I didn’t play well. At that moment the flicker of lights fascinated me more than anything.
          “Daniel?! Daniel!”
          Mother’s voice shook with the cold. Or rage. “What are you doing there? Why aren’t you at home?”
          Why aren’t you at the cinema, was my first thought, but I choked the question back. She wouldn’t have. Father stood on the shore next to her, watching the scene as if from a distance.
          The performance had started at quarter past eight with a newsreel. Reichsprotektor Neurath’s speech had the effect of a flu virus on the audience. Just a couple of people started coughing at first, but then the infection spread with the speed of Czech burlesque, jumped from row to row, surged like a breaker and flooded the whole cinema till everyone was coughing so much that not a letter could be heard of the muscular oratory of the Reichsprotektor. The terrified constable on duty asked for quiet. When the afflicted failed to obey he turned up the lights and stopped the projection. The flu-stricken audience received a warning. Please, there has to be complete silence! Otherwise I’ll have to clear the cinema.
         Silence reigned. The invalids calmed down and after a short interval the projection restarted. The first scenes of Life is a Dog appeared on screen and the coughing fits were not repeated. Ten minutes into it, three Gestapo and one SA man invaded the cinema. They stopped the projection, called up reinforcements from the ranks of the police and kicked the paying audience out of the hall.
          So my parents slouched home. On arrival they found with surprise that their only child was not seated at his desk nor lying in bed. They ventured into the dark in a search of their lost son. And now they were standing on the shore and mother was wringing her hands and I stood there not knowing how to escape I wanted to sink into the ground, to disappear under the ice. Tail down, I crawled off the skating rink. A delicate situation. I was embarrased in front of my friends, and at the same time I knew I had violated the trust of my trusting mother. Not that my father wouldn’t have trusted me, but I somehow knew that he had no illusions about me. He never had any illusions about anyone or anything. It was different with mother. First of all she got angry and then she started working on me. She made it a thing of principle and honour and then she played on my feelings, that I had disappointed her and how unhappy it made her. I took these psychological debates badly, when I felt as though I was being interrogated. I shrivelled to the size of a small beetle, melted under her all-knowing gaze and turned into a pathetic traitor who blurts out everything he knows and much that he doesn’t on top. I was a rotten liar and an even worse man of honour. In the end she repeated that every time I broke the rules I would be punished. And then the verdict was pronounced.

          “No more skating till the ice melts.”

          For a moment there was silence. After a few seconds father spoke up for the first time that evening. He announced that never in his life had he heard anything more fiendish. He laughed. Your mother’s a cunning woman, you know.
          It was the only time he’d ever intervened in mother’s disciplinary methods. He’d always refrained from comment and silently made it understood that he and mother played the same tune. They were as one, impenetrable and unrelenting. This time he didn’t hold back, and facetiously translated mother’s statement: You’re not allowed to go on the river while it’s covered with ice, Dan. Once the ice melts, then you can go and skate there again.
         She protested that it wasn’t what she’d meant at all. The ice had to melt, then freeze again, and then I could skate. Was that clear?
          Father stuck out his lower lip and the corners of his mouth turned down.
         “In other words, till it rains and dries again.”
          I was hysterical. “But that could mean I won’t get to skate at all!”
          “Exactly,” she snapped and walked into the kitchen. I locked my eyes on father; I didn’t want to cry. He winked at me.
          “I’ll try to persuade her tomorrow, but no promises.”
          I flung my arms round his neck and poured out my thanks.

          He persuaded her. The punishment was mitigated to one week. Seven days, seven nights and indescribable torture. Every day I went to look at the ice on the river and beseeched it to hold out. By the time the punishment expired great ice floes were floating in the river. It was a shame, but the ice floes weren’t completely useless. The other boys and I had a good time with them. We got hold of some big sticks and pushed the pieces of ice around; soaked through and numb with cold, we dared each other to cross the river without getting our feet wet. We jumped from one ice floe to another across to the opposite bank. I was balancing on a piece of ice when she appeared. Mother. It was inconceivable how she always managed to catch me out in any mischief I got up to. I knew I was in for another thunderbolt. I could expect nothing less than a total ban on all outings and some sort of unpleasant task on top. And that’s the end of it, she always said on such occasions.
          I jumped on an ice floe not far from shore, stuck the stick into the water and waved at mother in a bold kind of way so that the others wouldn’t think that she had me completely under her thumb. Seconds later events gathered momentum. My stick broke. The ice floe, swinging about and slippery, mother’s terrified gaze, mouth stretched wide open, the inexorable weight of my own body. A short flight or rather, a free fall. A great splash. I roared under the surface. Pins and needles, pain like knives, shards of glass. I don’t even know how I got out of the water or how she hauled me home. My lost memory seeped back with the warm water. The bath and mother’s hands, her soothing voice. Then darkness again. I could see father as though in a haze, his strong hands carried me away. He was saying something to mother, firmly and directly. In my fever I returned to the stifling streets of Calcutta.

          Everything was dark and black like Savitree’s eyes. I fell in love in the middle of the burning Indian summer.
          I no longer remember why, but I had got out of bed earlier than usual. In the corridor I ran into Kavita. She was standing by the window looking onto the street, hands planted on her sides as if she wanted to stem the avalanche of fat which flowed down her sides. When she noticed me she shouted: Come and look. Just come and look at that Shivora witch. Scum!
          Kavita and Zam openly turned up their noses at anyone from a lower caste, and at any of the rabble of beggars which swarmed through the Calcutta streets.
          Through my sleepy eyes I blinked at the sight below. A tousled little girl, mounted on a shrunken mule, ragged tresses of hair like trash, a smudged little face and wild, bitter eyes. Wrapped in a piece of worn sackcloth, she was struggling with a malnourished pile of bones. Stick in hand, brandished like a sword, she flogged with all her strength; behind the one-eyed mule bounced a two-wheeled cart loaded with brushwood, thrown on so randomly it was a wonder it didn’t fall to the ground. Kavita stretched out her hand, index finger extended. Do you see her? The little witch. The old man used to ride, but before long he was on his last legs, wasting away in that hovel of theirs, can’t even sit up in bed any longer, so he sends that she-devil. What a fate! Bad karma.
          I stood on tiptoe and spoke in a strangled whisper.
          “What – what’s her name?”
          “Savitree.”
          Savitree. Fate. Bare feet, rough, blackened skin on her heels; she jabbed it into the weak spots of a skeleton barely able to move. Savitree, I repeated to myself in silence. Savitree. The dull clatter of wooden wheels on the cobblestones. Ah, Savitree, my wretched Savitree. The sound of her name and the thudding of the stick on the moulting coat of the mule, these blows cut into my young soul like the bridle into the mouth of the exhausted animal. Her face contorted with strain and anger, young, innocent and wonderful, wild and inhuman. I looked into her. Savitree. She might have been the same age as me, maybe a little older, but it seemed as though she had lived long already, long before me. She was older by several lives, by the suffering fate had etched into her face. And I stared at her and felt giddy. A flood of revulsion and love. I couldn’t bear even to look at her and at the same time I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I wanted to run away and hide. I wanted to run out to her and take the reins and the stick and drive fate away. But I stood there, feet rooted to the tiles, hands glued to the window-sill, and couldn’t breathe. She was like Kali. Red eyes and dark skin, angular and strained features. Bloody Kali. I had seen her in an illustration, hair flying freely, unbound, teeth like fangs; she rode on a lion into battle, to stop the demon Raktabija. Decorated with the chopped-off heads, limbs and entrails of everyone who crossed her path. The enraged Kali didn’t stop until Shiva himself, her mate, fell on his knees before her. At that moment the goddess embraced her husband, shed her terrifying shape and was transformed into Gauri, the beautiful all-caring mother.
          Savitree was cursed. I wanted to fall on my knees in front of her. I wanted her to be transformed. I wanted to shriek at her, to call out, to stop her, I wanted so much to do something. She was wild and unbound. I didn’t dare to let out a sound. I would never have dared to address her. A mixture of empathy and horror, of tenderness and repulsion stuck in my mouth, bitter and everlasting. I never forgot her. I tried to drive her out of my dreams, out of my life, but every morning, heaviest of sleepers, I got up at cockcrow, crawled out of bed and looked for Savitree, the witch. I loved her. She was cursed. Condemned. I wanted to free her, but invisible bars divided us, a glass barrier, through which I could not reach her. After two weeks of early rising I left for school.

          I didn’t mind boarding school in itself, only I missed mother. I used to think about father as well, but I didn’t miss him half as badly as I missed mother. Maybe because he mostly wasn’t home anyway. After the first three months I fell ill. An attack of malaria. My parents came for me and took me back to Calcutta. Mother cried and the doctors stuffed me with quinine. A protozoan of the haemosporidia family blasted my corpuscles and liver. The very first morning after arriving in Calcutta I was back on my feet, waiting at the window, full of fever. Savitree didn’t come. She never came again. But she followed me my whole life through my fits of malaria. She kept coming back on that mangy mule harnessed to the creaky cart, her eyes bloodshot like Kali’s. I saw her again and again in my fevers. My ague took the shape of Savitree. My delusions had her name, I repeated it like a prayer, and my helpless mother had no idea who I was calling for. Savitree. She still runs in my blood.

***

          After the death of Stella Weinstein her jewellery had been divided between Regina and Raquel. Three months later all valuables had to be surrendered to the far-sightedness of the Reich.
          Raquel and Regina moved some things out of their parents’ apartment, some they shared amongst their friends and acquaintances, some Raquel brought home.
          Then they were summoned by the Gestapo office for the Střešovice district of Prague. After waiting for hours they were asked in. A presentable young Gestapo officer politely explained to them that they would be interested in purchasing their two houses in the district of Vinohrady and the plot of land in Jevany. He placed in front of them a piece of paper stating that they were voluntarily selling the houses and land to the Third Reich for a million crowns. He expected them to sign.
          - We can’t sign that. We own everything in common with our brother, who’s abroad. We don’t have the right to sign.
          The Gestapo officer explained to them pleasantly that this wasn’t important, we are not concerned with such small details. Eventually he began to scream that he’d have them locked up. They grasped the position and signed, voluntarily.
          Regina accompanied Raquel to the station. While they were standing at the ticket office Raquel suddenly stopped and burst out laughing. Regina, show me that scrap of paper. Regina blinked at her sister, not understanding. She groped in her bag and pulled out the document with a rubber stamp and the signatures of the representatives of the Reich. Raquel couldn’t stop laughing.
          “We’ve sold our house for this? That’s what I call a good deal. Let’s drink to it!”
          Before they made for the platform both of them had legs heavy with wine and heads lighter of the cares of family property.

          Father strove with all his might to get us out of the country. He was in touch with Uncle Eric, and was trying to move us to England or America. Permission to leave was approved in the final instance by the Gestapo. But not in every case.
          The year-long efforts brought the desired result. Father succeeded in getting an affidavit for our removal to America. After the cash-free transfer of the Weinstein property into the claws of the Third Reich, the Gestapo banged a large rubber stamp on their agreement to our departure. There was just one catch. In wartime Europe the consulates of most of the countries we had to cross before sailing to the New World were closed , and to obtain a transit visa was a Herculean task. What was more, the emigration passport had a limited validity. Twelve months. That was the Gordian knot on which we could be wrecked, and we were. By the time we obtained the transit visas, our permission for departurehad expired. Which meant starting the whole agony from the beginning. And time was passing, and the war swallowed money, days, lands, people.

          He got back from work, sat in the arm chair in the living room and buried himself in the newspaper. I got down to my math homework, but very different thoughts were going through my head.
          “Father, why are the Jews the enemies of mankind?”
          The newspaper he’d been holding in front of his face lowered slowly, like a curtain at the theatre. It revealed two eyes, wide open.
          “Who told you that?”
          “I read it on a flier at Schindler’s. They had it up in their shop window.”
          “Come here.”
          His expression was deadly serious, and the fine lines between his eyebrows turned into deep furrows. He rubbed the corners of his eyes with the thumb and index finger of his right hand.
          “Dan, the Jews are not the enemy of mankind. Peopl’s greatest enemy is their own narrow-mindedness. Their fear. Fear of what is different, fear of another culture, of something they don’t know. So the symbols of another culture become the symbols of their fear. The turbans of Sikhs, the headbands of Indians, Muslim scarves, whatever is not part of the world they know. The greatest enemy of such people is their own stupidity. Do you understand?”
          I wasn’t sure if I did.

          According to the calendar, spring was drawing near, but somehow didn’t dare to put its head out the door. We were sitting down to supper, the perfume of onion soup pervading the house. Spoons fell silent on our soup bowls. Heavy blows thudded around us. Father put his spoon down and went to answer the door.
          “Who’s there?”
          “Gestapo! Öffnen!”
          He turned the key in the lock and the door flew open. Three men marched in.
          “Thomas Keppler?”
          He nodded. One of them looked at mother, then at me. He spoke forcefully to father, who answered calmly. I stared at the two who had followed him. They were in uniform, wearing caps. The skull and crossbones gaped at me like a toad. It oozed horror. I didn’t understand much German, but the presence of these men boded no good. Mother indicated I should stay seated. She herself didn’t move, just attentively followed father and that man in a leather coat who raised his voice as though he was speaking to the deaf. The other two scoured the house, inspected every corner and turned everything upside down. When it seemed they had finished their spring cleaning, the one in civilian clothes barked out a sentence even I could understand: Mitgehen!

          Father nodded and asked something. The Gestapo man turned to mother and motioned that she should leave. I didn’t understand. Mother jumped up and ran upstairs. Every step groaned under her, as if expressing its reluctance. I was rooted to my chair, shrank as small as I could, and if it had gone on any longer, I might have broken apart in my fear. Father looked at me. There was resolution in that gaze, a calm strength and will power. It poured into my veins. I straightened my back.
          Mother was back in a moment. Her hands were shaking as she gave father a sweater and some underwear. He smiled reassuringly and left the house.
          I felt – it hung round my neck like a dead mouse. I trembled behind the curtains, watching the car until it disappeared into the grey dusk.

          The next day mother phoned Olomouc. She talked to grandpa Rudolf and several times was on the brink of tears. What should I do, she asked?
          She went regularly to see him in prison. She brought him food, and clean clothing.

          I heard her unlock the door and wipe her feet on the map. She came inside and took off her coat.
          “When is he coming back?”
          “Soon. They’ll let him go soon.”
          She sat down, absently dropping the bundle of washing on the table. I casually leaned my hands on the wooden top, about to say something, but it stuck in my throat like a fish bone. A pile of crumpled clothing. Father’s clothing. I couldn’t take my eyes off a dirty piece of fabric. Blood! Blood! A hysterical scream burst from my throat. It’s his blood! They’re beating him!
          Mother leapt to her feet. In one movement she swept the bloodstained shirt from the table and caught me by the hand. Calm down, Dan. Please, do calm down. That isn’t his blood.
          "It is his blood! They –"
          I screeched like one possessed. She shook me.
          "Listen to me. Father works there – they have to, they work as – Dan, look at me and listen. They work, they work as… as… butchers, you know, they cut up meat, and skin animals. They have to do all sorts of work. They have to work. That’s why there’s blood on his clothes. But it’s not his blood. Do you hear me? That is not his blood. So stop carrying on."
          I believed her. She had never lied to me. It sounded strange, but one could believe it. I wanted to believe it.

          I believed her, up to the time he came home.

          In India father had contributed to the support of the government in exile, just like most of Baťa’s men in Batanagar. They’d collected almost half a million. The list had fallen into German hands. They suspected him of being in the resistance, but they couldn’t prove it. He was released after four weeks.

          He went back to work. When I asked him what he did at work, he said he squatted at a drawing board and drew lines on paper. He didn’t try to pretend he enjoyed it. Designs for a future square, bus station, sports arena. It all went into the drawer. He used to go to Gahura’s studio in the Zlín City Hall, where designers and architects gathered during the war. He made friends with the architect Lorenc who sometimes used to visit us for coffee. Lorenc wore glasses with round frames and a well fitting suit. Thin lips and ears set low down. He looked very serious, but he was always good fun.

          I stopped going to school. Jews not permitted. I was a Jewish half-breed of the first degree.
          Even against the background of the apocalypse which followed, I’ve never forgotten how Mrs. Notovná told me Kuba wasn’t in. It was strange. I was sure I’d seen him at the window. When the same thing happened the next day, I understood that Kuba would never be at home for me.

          At the end of September 1941 Raquel opened the magazine Zlín and read out loud:

          From this Friday an injunction will be put into effect whereby entry to cinemas, theatres, cafés, parks and other places will be forbidden to Jews. Jews throughout the whole Reich will henceforth wear a visible mark. They will wear on their coats a yellow star, the so-called Star of David. This precaution has not only a moral and ideological meaning, it will also be of practical use, for in many cases it will prevent illicit trading still carried on by Jews.

          History had come full circle. Father said we were hurtling headlong into the Middle Ages. They didn’t wear the star in the Middle Ages, they wore yellow belts.
          Two pages further on the Czech press provided information about how the Jewish question was being solved abroad:

          In Warsaw (Warschau) Jews have been concentrated in one part of the city. There are about half a million living there altogether. There are no obstacles to such a solution working in our case as well. What has been done here so far – that is, bans on Jews going to swimming pools, riding in the front tram car, shopping during certain hours – is insufficient. Jews find their way around these regulations, they profiteer, circulate secret propaganda, and provoke the Czech people.

          Tom stood up and took the newspaper from her hands.

          The streets of Czech towns were threaded with yellow stars.

          It is astounding for the average Czech to see who are and were all the Jews among us. Photographs are published in the papers of the powerful Jews who controlled public life during the First Republic. There was scarcely an editorial office without its Jew, and names such as Fuchs, Lustig, Bloch, Stránský, Kisch and others are embarrassing proof of this. Jews contribute the lion’s share to all those baitings where the Czech man-in-the-street is merely a witness. Jews sat on the governing boards of banks and businesses, they threatened to take over the theatre and played a deciding role in the cinema. Out of this, all that remains to them are the radio broadcasts from London …

          The fact that I couldn’t go to school didn’t mean my education was neglected. Mother took me in hand. She taught me herself. I had a timetable, subject after subject, six teaching hours a day. I ground my teeth, but I have to say, she was good. I loved history. Often at the expense of geography or natural science she told me about all the great battles, about good and bad rulers, about free spirits who changed the world.. Spartacus. Caesar and Cleopatra. Alfred the Great and Napoleon. She wanted father to set me exercises in maths. I practised on the piano an hour a day and in the evening I read. I buried myself in books. I gulped down anything with writing in it.

          I had reached the age when I found it interesting to read from the papers.

          29 October 1941 – No treats for the Jew
From now on shopkeepers are forbidden to sell Jews any fruit, cheese, sweets, fish, fowl or meat. To prevent loopholes in this ruling, Aryans are forbidden to make gifts of any such provisions to a Jew.

          5 November 1941 – Now for the Jew-lovers
The Jew disappears, but the Jew-lovers remain. There is no point in waiting for them to dwindle away; they should meet the same fate as the Jews they care so much about.

          Underneath, two caricatures which stick in my memory. Jews. With brooms in their hands, stars on their lapels, hooked noses taking up most of their face, and bulging eyes. Bloated features with the expressions of unsatiated greed, framed by jug ears. In the second illustration they are departing, hunched up with bundles over their shoulders and a sidelong glance. As they came, so shall they go, mocked the caption.

          Mother played the piano more than ever before. I think it was her consolation. Around the house she wore simple button-through sleeveless dresses over coloured blouses. She did the housework, cleaned, cooked, washed and ironed. And tortured me with study. But when father came back from work she sat with a book, dressed as though for an outing. Or she would be playing the piano. I often begged her to play one particular piece, for a long time I couldn’t remember what it was or who composed it. It was just a little piece, four minutes long, like the babbling of a brook. Play me that babbling, I used to say.
          “That babbling, Dan, is Tchaikovsky’s Troika. And it’s not babbling, it’s sleigh bells. Listen.”
          It’s snowing. I can see snow and white horses. A Troika. Racing across the plain, hooves scrunching into a frosty quilt. Drawing a sleigh. It is empty, just a white-faced driver sitting on the box. Branches bent under the weight of the snow. The horses tearing across the landscape, then racing still faster while the sleigh bells on their yokes ring out, resonant and sad. Raquel closed her eyes while she played. She jumped into the white sledge and travelled on and on, far from reality, into a white paradise.


          In April 1942 the newspapers published a list of further measures to be taken against the Jewish element.

          By governmental decree of 20 April, Jewish half-breeds will lose their posts. Those to be dismissed will be Jewish half-breeds and those married to a Jewess or to a Jewish half-breed of the first degree. Public employees may marry only persons who are not Jewish or Jewish half-breeds.

          Raquel looked at Tom.
          “Soon you will be fired because of me.”

          A month later they offered a reward for the capture of some wanted criminals. Ten million crowns. For the head of the vile offender responsible for assassinating the representative of the Reich, Protektor SS Obergruppenführer and General of Police, model husband and loving father, Rudolf Heydrich. Two days later the reward was raised to twenty million and a state of emergency declared.

          I celebrated my eleventh birthday and gazed into the darkness. The stars were disappearing. They were lost to sight, vanished into the unknown. All that remained were empty houses and empty rooms. And no one dared ask where they would end up. It was done on the orders of the authorities, so most of the onlookers on were not even very sorry.
          In March 1943 Regina Weinstein got into the train which took her with thousands of others to Theresienstadt.
          At the end of the year the architect Lorenc disappeared. Without a star. He hid himself for a while, but in the end they sniffed him out, or someone turned him in. I think they executed him. For his activities in the resistance.

          On 21 January 1944 in the evening a representative of the Jewish community came to our door. Jüdische Kultursgemeinde, sign here. He disappeared into thecold like an evil foreboding.
          Raquel put the papers on the table.
          “They want me.”
          Tom picked up the document and scanned it quickly.
          “One thing at least. I’ll see Regi again.”
          “Then we’re all going.”
          “Tom, please! Don’t make it worse than it is.”

          Her eyes were a flowing river. The current bore him away; the force of wild water. He wanted to stem the stream tearing them apart. He cried out to her, but the opposite bank was already too far. He lay beside her buried in the dark. A sleepless night.
          “I should have taken you away, I should have–maybe I still can–“
          “No.”
          “But I could–“
          “No!”
          “Then what–what should I do?”
          His voice breaking through clenched teeth. It was the first time in his life he had asked someone what to do. The first time in his life he was completely helpless.
          “Look after him.”
          It drew closer, it attacked the dearest thing he had. He pressed himself to her and breathed in her tears.
          “I can’t do it. I can’t let you go!”
          Her hair was darkness in the desert. That night it melted away under his hands.

          The day before mother left, grandpa Rudolf came from Olomouc. We went with mother to the station.
          She told me we would see each other again soon. And look after your father, won’t you?
          She was so beautiful. I loved her as if I owned her, blindly and thoughtlessly. I took her for granted. Like the air. Like bread.
          As she was leaving she told me the rays of the sun were the messengers of the sun god, and we would send each other signs through them. When you see the sun, when you feel its rays on your face, you will know they are my hands, that I am close to you. The moon will tell you stories to send you to sleep.
          I hugged her for the last time. I could smell the perfume she always spread around her.
          Remember, you can never lose someone you truly love.

          She got into the train. Father went with her. Grandpa and I stayed behind.

          Prostějov – the junction. It was as far as he could go. She stretched out her hand through the train window. He caught it convulsively and with fevered eyes gazed into the face above him. The whistle blew. The shock of an electric current. He turns his head towards the engine. He sees the dispatcher pull the signal disc from under his arm and cast an experienced glance over the closed carriages, then at his wristwatch. An oval target with a red bull’s eye cuts through the air and swings upwards. It’s January. Trickles of sweat run down his back. The muscles of his face taut as strings, his expression wild. A loyal dog, who tears around a fence. The fence is too high, but he is convinced there is some point where he’ll be able to jump over it.
          She smiled. “It’ll soon be over. You’ll see. I’ll be back before long.”

          He tried to nod. The train slowly got under way and her slender fingers slid from his hands. She waved. He stood motionless for a long time after the last carriage had vanished.

          When he returned it wasn’t him. He had changed. Completely changed.

          She had gone and I was short of breath. I managed to stare into the sun, eyes wide open, to look for her smile. When I turned away, the rest of the world had disappeared. I couldn’t see anything. Only after a while hazy outlines returned.
          The first night without her, I had a dream. We were wandering together in an unknown land, in deep snow, in a thick forest. Wolves howled around us. We fled, stumbling over the roots of trees, the tentacles of an octopus catching us by the legs. I ran for a long time, maybe hours, before I realised I was alone.
          I recalled my grandfather, the gold box with the Torah, the gloom of the synagogue in which lived the invisible God, and I began to pray to him. God, you created this world, you created man. Don’t let anything happen to her.
          I wanted to know where Theresienstadt was and what mother was doing. We had always done everything together. Now I only had father, trying desperately hard, but I knew how badly he missed her. I missed her too.