The Librarian of Auschwitz(102)
Despite her caution, Dita’s mother won’t achieve her objective: When her postcard reaches its destination, nobody is there to receive it.
The Allied aerial bombings are becoming more frequent and rumor has it that the Germans are losing ground at the front, that the war has changed direction, and the end of the Third Reich could be close. If they pass the six-month mark and are still alive, then maybe they will see the end of the war and be able to return home. But nobody is very optimistic: There’s been talk of the end for years.
The next morning, Dita displays her library on the wooden bench yet again, and while the groups are getting settled on their stools, Miriam Edelstein comes over and puts her mouth close to Dita’s ear.
“They’re not going to come,” she whispers.
Dita gestures that she doesn’t understand.
“Schmulewski has found out. It seems that the international observers were in Terezín and the Nazis organized everything to perfection. So they didn’t ask to see anything else. The International Red Cross observers won’t be coming to Auschwitz.”
“So … what about our moment?”
“I don’t know, Edita. I want to believe that there’s always a moment for truth. We’ll have to be attentive and patient. If the Red Cross isn’t going to come, the family camp probably stops being useful to Himmler.”
Dita feels cheated. And if their lives have been worth very little up to this point, now they are worth nothing.
“Bad, bad,” Dita mutters.
Events don’t take long to unfold. On a morning seemingly like all the others, Lichtenstern calls classes to an end five minutes early, although no one else realizes it—he’s the only one in the entire camp who has a watch. He climbs with some difficulty onto the horizontal ledge of the stove. The children, who think morning classes are over before soup time, race around laughing and happily playing jokes on each other. No one expects it when the block chief raises the whistle to his lips, calling for attention.
Just for an instant, the sound reminds the old hands of the much-missed Fredy Hirsch, and they fall silent; they know that something serious must have occurred if Lichtenstern is using Hirsch’s whistle.
Lichtenstern says that he has important news. He looks tired, but his voice is decisive.
“Teachers, students, assistants, I have to tell you that Birkenau–Auschwitz Command Headquarters has informed us that this block has to be vacated by tomorrow. That’s all I know.”
By the afternoon, Block 31 is empty, only a warehouse again. Dita knocks on the door several times, and when Lichtenstern doesn’t answer, she uses the key they gave her weeks ago.
She takes advantage of the fact that Lichtenstern is absent, and that there’s still a bit of time before curfew, to take out the library books one by one.
She hasn’t leafed through the atlas for days and feels immense pleasure as she retraces the sinuous outline of the coastlines, climbs up and down mountain ranges, whispers the names of cities like London, Montevideo, Ottawa, Lisbon, Peking.… And as she does this, she feels she can hear her father’s voice again as he turns the globe. She removes the yellowing cover of The Count of Monte Cristo, a book whose secrets she was able to discover even though they were in French, thanks to Markéta. She whispers aloud the name of Edmond Dantès and works on imitating a French accent until she feels satisfied. The moment to abandon the prison on If has arrived.
She also places H. G. Wells, her private professor of history, on top of the table. And the Russian grammar, Freud’s book, and the geometry treatise, as well as the Russian novel with no front or back cover that contains the mysterious Cyrillic script she failed to decipher. Very carefully, she takes the last book out of the hidey-hole—The Adventures of the Good Soldier ?vejk with its missing pages. She can’t resist the temptation to read a few lines to assure herself that the rogue ?vejk is still there, lurking among its pages. And there he is, in full flight, trying to soothe Lieutenant Luká? after his most recent blunder.
“Half the consommé soup in this bowl you’ve brought me from the kitchen is missing.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. It was so hot that it was evaporating as I came over here.”
“It’s evaporated into your belly, you shameless parasite.”
“Lieutenant, sir, I can assure you that it was all caused by evaporation; these things happen. There was a mule driver transporting some casks of hot wine to Karlovy Vary who…”
“Out of my sight, you animal!”
Dita hugs the pile of pages as if it were an old friend.
She devotes time to gluing some of the loose spines carefully with gum arabic and to using a bit of saliva on a cloth to clean the odd cover stained with dirt from the hidey-hole. She mends their wounds, no doubt for the last time. When she can do no more to fix them, she runs her hand back and forth over the pages like an iron to remove some of the creases. She’s not just smoothing them; she’s caressing them.
When they’re lined up, the books form a tiny row, a modest display of veterans. But over these past few months, they’ve enabled hundreds of children to walk through the geography of the world, get close to history, and learn math. And also to become drawn into the intricacies of fiction and amplify their lives many times over. Not bad for a handful of old books.
27.