The Librarian of Auschwitz(34)
Dita is lost in thought as she leaves Block 31. She weighs whether she should consult her father, who is a sensible person. Suddenly, she remembers that she has to keep a look out for Mengele and swivels her head around swiftly a few times to check if anyone is following her. The wind has died down, and the snow has begun to fall over the camp. The Lagerstrasse is empty apart from a few people walking hurriedly to their huts in search of warmth. There’s no trace of any SS. But in one of the side alleys that run between the huts she can see someone leaping about while attempting to defy the cold with a frayed jacket and a handkerchief worn like a scarf. She looks more closely: white stubble, white hair, round glasses … It’s Professor Morgenstern!
He’s vigorously waving a stick up and down with a net tied to it, and Dita recognizes the butterfly net she saw in Block 31. She now knows whose it is. She stands there watching the professor because she can’t work out why he’s waving the artifact in the air, and then she finally gets it. There’s no way she could have imagined that Morgenstern would use it to catch snowflakes.
He sees her watching him and waves a friendly greeting to her. Then he returns to his fanatical pursuit of snowflake-butterflies. Every now and again, he’s on the verge of slipping as he pursues a snowflake, but in the end, he catches it and watches it melt in his palm. The elderly professor’s stubble is full of sparkling ice crystals and, from where she’s standing, Dita thinks she can see a smile of contentment.
10.
When Dita goes into Fredy Hirsch’s cubicle each afternoon to store the books, she tries to leave right away and avoid eye contact. She doesn’t want to risk seeing anything that might break her trust. She’d rather believe in his goodness. But Dita is stubborn, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t rid her mind of what she saw.
Dita’s sense of curiosity—piqued by the young teacher Ota Keller—has led her to spend her afternoons curled up in her hidden corner reading H. G. Wells. In the meantime, classes have finished in the hut, and the pupils are playing games, taking part in guessing competitions, preparing plays, or drawing pictures with the pencils that have miraculously appeared. She wishes they had some of those exciting novels the teacher had talked about at their disposal. A Short History of the World is the library book borrowed most frequently because it’s the closest thing to a regular schoolbook. And there’s no question that when she buries herself in its pages, she feels as if she were back at her school in Prague, and that if she were to raise her head, she’d see in front of her the blackboard and her teacher’s hands covered in chalk.
The story of our world is a story that is still very imperfectly known. A couple of hundred years ago, men possessed the history of little more than the last three thousand years. What happened before that time was a matter of legend and speculation.
Wells is more of a novelist than a historian. In the book he talks about the creation of the Earth, and the bizarre theories about the moon proposed by scientists at the beginning of the twentieth century. From there, he takes the reader through all the geological periods: the Lower Paleozoic with the first algae; the Cambrian with its trilobites; the Carboniferous with its extraordinary swamps; and the Mesozoic, when the first reptiles appeared.
Dita wanders in amazement over a planet shaken by volcanic convulsions and the subsequent marked shifts in climate, alternating between hot periods and extreme ice ages. The Age of Reptiles grabs her attention, with its colossally large dinosaurs that became the masters of the planet.
This difference between the reptile world and the world of our human minds is one our sympathies seem unable to pass. We cannot conceive in ourselves the swift uncomplicated urgency of a reptile’s instinctive motives, its appetites, fears, and hates.
She wonders what H. G. Wells would say about the world people now inhabit, if he would be able to distinguish the reptiles from the humans.
The book keeps Dita company during the less structured afternoons in Block 31. It guides her safely as she makes her way through the subterranean passages of the imposing pyramids of Egypt and the battlefields of Assyria. A map of the dominions of the Persian Emperor Darius I shows her an enormous expanse of territory, far greater than any of the empires currently in existence. And the fact that Wells’s commentary on “Priests and Prophets in Judea” doesn’t match what they taught her as a child about sacred Jewish history leaves her feeling somewhat confused.
That’s why she prefers to return to the pages about ancient Egypt, which immerse her in the world of pharaohs with mysterious names and allow her to board the boats that navigate the Nile. H. G. Wells is right. There really is a time machine—books.
When the working day is over, she has to store the books before the final roll call. After standing in line for a torturous ninety minutes while all the prisoners’ numbers are checked off, she heads happily for her class with her father. It’s geography today.
As she walks past Barrack 14, she sees Margit leaning up against the side wall with Renée. They’ve just finished their roll call, which is far more unpleasant because it takes place outdoors. They look very concerned, so she stops to talk to them.
“What’s up, girls? Is something wrong? You’re going to freeze out here.”
Margit turns toward Renée, who looks as if she wants to say something. Renée untwists a blond curl on her forehead and chews it nervously. She sighs, and a wisp of breath spirals out of her mouth and disappears into the air.