What World is Left (11 page)

“I don't know about the carousel,” Father says, “but it's likely there will be swing sets.” When he smiles at Theo, Father's eyes look very sad.

“What else?” I ask Father.

“There's talk of flowerbeds and benches for prisoners to sit on.”

I remember how I sipped my coffee standing up that morning. Benches will be nice. But then I consider how benches, flowerbeds and swing sets will do nothing to quell the hunger in our bellies. How ridiculous of the Nazis to spend money on frivolous things when everyone in Theresienstadt is starving!

“What about food?” I ask Father. “Will we be getting bigger rations? Real meat in our soup?”

“I haven't heard anything about food,” Father admits.

“Food is what we need most,” I tell him.

“But this is a start,” he says.

It bothers me that Father is trying so hard to look at the bright side of things. Why can't he see that the Nazis are making a mockery of us?

Mother folds Theo's blanket over her arm. “I'm glad at least the Danish Red Cross cares about what's happening to us here,” she says.

Father nods. “The Danish Red Cross is asking questions because of the trainload of Danish Jews who arrived here last month. But it looks as if their visit may improve conditions for the rest of us.”

“It's not as if we can eat flowers,” I mutter.

Then Theo, who rarely says anything that isn't annoying or just plain silly, surprises us all. “What about the Dutch Red Cross?” he wants to know. “Why haven't
they
come to visit?”

Father and Mother exchange a look. “The boy makes a good point,” Father says.

I sigh. For the first time, I feel as if I've been abandoned by my own country. How could Holland let this happen to us? All this talk of embellishment only makes me feel worse. “Embellishment?” I cry out. “It's insane!”

Am I the only one who realizes how twisted our lives have become? To think we are excited about swing sets and benches and flowerbeds! Have we forgotten how hungry we are—and how others, like Franticek, have been shipped off to God only knows where? This Embellishment is just one more way for the Nazis to distract us from the truth: that we are wasting away in this miserable sick place.

Father breathes hard when he stands up. It's another aftereffect of the diphtheria. “It's true we can't eat flowers, Anneke,” he says, “but we have to be practical. The Embellishment will mean more jobs for prisoners. And that buys us all something we desperately need.”

“What's that?” I ask.

Father glances down at his left wrist. It's where he used to wear the watch that was taken away from him in the
Schleuse
. “Time,” he says. “We're in desperate need of time.”

Within a week, there is a new sound in the camp: hammering.
Tap, tap, tap-a-tap-tap
. There is hammering everywhere. Near the main square, where Commandant Rahm has ordered the facades of more shops to be built, including a
bonbonnerie
. At the corner, where a café is being constructed—imagine, how preposterous: a café inside a prison!—and even outside our quarters, where a prisoner is installing a flowerbox made of rough-hewn planks.

The incessant hammering gives me a headache. Still, I have to admit that despite all my objections, the various improvements to the camp are not entirely unpleasant.

Even if it is all a sham, all part of a giant hoax, the improvements—and the work on the improvements— seems to be lifting people's spirits. “Do you think they'll send us geraniums for the flowerbox?” I hear Mother ask Father. “I so hope we'll have red geraniums. Tulips would be too much to ask for, what with the bulbs, but geraniums, especially bright red ones, would do me a world of good.”

And yet, listening to Mother go on about red flowers also makes me want to scream. Doesn't she realize flowers won't do us any real good? What we need is food! Real food, not watery lentil soup and moldy bread! What we need is a way out of this place and an end to this awful war!

But there are moments when I, too, get caught up in plans for the Embellishment. I close my eyes and imagine myself and Hannelore at the café, listening to a concert. We've heard there will be weekly concerts for prisoners at the café.

“Do you think we'll have hot chocolate?” Theo asks, licking his cracked lips. And though I doubt it, I don't have the heart to tell him so.

Father is involved in the Embellishment too. He has been commissioned by Commandant Rahm himself to decorate the walls of the children's infirmary. The commandant has requested, of all things, a fairy-tale motif. When one night, Father tells us about it, I laugh out loud. “Bah!” I say. “Fairy tales! A painting of a graveyard would be a better choice!”

Father gives me a stern look. “Anneke,” he says, “remember what I told you.”

Father has already completed one mural of Rapunzel with her long blond hair streaming out of the tower where she was imprisoned by a terrible witch.

“Anneke's right,” I hear Father tell Mother later when the curtain that separates us is drawn. “It is
bizarre to be painting fairy-tale scenes in a place like this.” I'm glad that at least in private, Father shares my opinion.

Mother makes a tut-tutting sound. “Perhaps your murals will bring the sick children a little joy.” How can Mother really believe the Embellishment has some value?

Doesn't she see the Nazis are trying to trick not only the Danish Red Cross, but us as well?

Father sighs. “You may be right. Besides, Rapunzel is a hopeful story. She found a way out of her prison. I sometimes wonder, Tineke”—Father lowers his voice to a whisper—”whether we'll
ever
find a way out.” My shoulders tense up. It isn't like Father to sound so discouraged. How can he, of all people, be losing hope? The thought makes me feel unmoored.

But then I hear Mother's voice, soft and strong. “Jo,” she says, “you'll always be my handsome prince.”

“I was just a frog until you kissed me.”

Mother laughs. “Now, Jo, you're mixing up your fairy-tales.”

I hear them shift a little on their mattress.

I have so many worries on my mind: Franticek, this crazy Embellishment and my sense that I am the only one who understands we are being duped. Yet the sound of Mother's laughter stays with me as I drift off to sleep.

“Your father is working too hard on those murals,” Mother tells me one afternoon soon after that. She twists some strands of dark hair around her index finger. “I worry about him.”

I reach into my apron pocket and take out the potato Frau Davidels has just given me. It is small and misshapen, but I know Mother will be pleased. “I'm going to boil it up straightaway,” she says, glad, as usual, to have some task to keep her occupied. “Then you can deliver it to the children's infirmary.”

Father is standing on a chair, using a thick pencil to draw a giant frog on the wall across from the doctors' station. He is concentrating so hard on getting the warts on the frog's back right, he doesn't notice me coming down the hallway.

“Father!” I call out, looking around to see no one is in earshot. “Mother asked me to deliver this.” She has packed three thin slices of boiled potato inside her enamel cup. Theo and I have already eaten our share. Mother didn't want any. “I'm not hungry,” she said when she sliced the potato. Of course, I know it isn't true.

Father's face brightens. My stomach rumbles as I watch him pop the first slice into his mouth. I am so hungry it hurts. “You take this one,” he says, offering me the second slice.

I remember how Mother said she was worried about
Father. “I've already had my share,” I tell him, looking away.

On my way out, I see two doctors. I know they are Jewish because I've seen them in the soup line with the rest of us. They are outside one of the small rooms they use to perform operations. “Now that we've set the bone, the child will likely walk without a limp,” one of the doctors says to the other.

I smile as I pass them. I want them to know I am grateful for everything they do. It's a blessing the child they're discussing won't have a limp.

They are standing in front of the Rapunzel mural. Rapunzel's hair looks so thick and blond I can practically feel its coarse texture. I have an urge to tell them my father painted her, but I am too shy. Just then, the younger of the two turns toward the mural, looking at it as if he is noticing it for the first time. “Part of the Embellishment,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Designed so that when the Danish Red Cross visits, its representatives will be impressed by the looks of our fine infirmary.”

My urge to tell them that the mural is my father's work disappears. So I am not the only one who disapproves of the Embellishment. Why else would this doctor roll his eyes?

“We're living in an insane world,” his colleague observes.

I suck in my breath. I'm right, then, to be suspicious of the Embellishment. These men are doctors, scientists; they must know the truth.

“What's most insane isn't this new wall decoration,” the first doctor says. “What's most insane is that the Nazis ask us to treat children, only to dispose of them in the death camps.”

Death camps? My whole body begins to shudder. What has the doctor just said? For a moment, I wonder if perhaps I have misheard him. But no! He said children are disposed of in death camps. “Disposed of.” Those are words people use to talk about garbage, not human beings. Not children. Can it be true? It must be true! What would this man stand to gain by lying?

My breath seems to be trapped in my throat. I must have made a choking sound because one of the doctors asks whether I am all right. “Young woman,” he says, “you look like you are about to faint.”

I push him away. I am too upset to speak. So the rumors about the death camps are true. My Franticek, I think. My Franticek!

As I rush out of the infirmary, I am filled with the terrible unwavering certainty that Franticek is dead. Gone, vanished. And somehow, my life has gone on without him.

When I get outside, my legs give way, and I collapse on the ground, weeping. The sobbing makes my body shake and my throat hurt. No one stops to ask me what is wrong. In Theresienstadt, a weeping girl is not an unusual sight.

While Hannelore and I wait in line for our miserable ladle of lentil soup (it isn't even made from real lentils, just some awful dried lentil powder), we survey the changes taking place around us.

There are poplar saplings in the central square. Several apartments have flowerboxes like ours. Mother never did get her red geraniums. She has settled for some scruffy-looking greenery. Mother says it is better than nothing. “Green,” she tells me, “is the color of life.”

I don't have the heart to tell her that maybe nothing would have been better. At least that way she wouldn't be fooled into thinking that conditions in the camp are really improving.

The poplar saplings and Mother's plants aren't the only new additions to the camp that are green. There are also squares of green grass that prisoners have been made to plant in the dirt. At first, the bright green color gives us a shock. We've grown so used to the gray and brown shades that are everywhere in Theresienstadt. Gray and brown bricks, and of course, gray faces. But within a few days, despite the prisoners' best efforts to water the turf, it begins to turn first yellow, then brown.

The same thing, I think, is happening to us. If, as Mother says, green is the color of life, we are turning gray and brown here too. Nothing can stay green in Theresienstadt.

And though the camp is being embellished—there are a few new benches, a playground with three seesaws, a monument in the main square, and the bunk beds in the barracks have been cut down so there are two tiers of beds, not three—only the surface of our world has changed. We are still starving. We are still in danger of being sent on one of the transports. Death still stares us in the eye.

“Can you imagine a
bonbonnerie
without bonbons?” Hannelore asks. “It's criminal.”

“Did you ever taste Dutch licorice?” I ask her. My mouth waters at the memory of the salty sweet taste. It is a kind of game we prisoners sometimes play— remembering our favorite foods from our old lives.

Hannelore wrinkles her nose. “I hate licorice! I always preferred tortes—especially my Tante Helga's
nusstorte
. She uses hazelnuts instead of flour. And mocha cream. Oh, it's so good I can almost taste it!”

“You don't like licorice?” I poke Hannelore's stomach. When I do, I notice how her ribs protrude from her side. “Something tells me if someone came around this instant and offered you a piece of Dutch licorice, you'd be glad of it.”

Hannelore turns away. “You're probably right,” she concedes.

Talking about foods we've eaten in the past brings a momentary pleasure, but such conversations have a price. Afterward, we feel even hungrier than before. My belly is so empty it hurts. Sometimes my stomach
makes odd gurgling noises as if it is complaining of neglect.

No, all in all, it is better not to remember food and not to talk about it. So I try to change the subject. “This Embellishment,” I say to Hannelore, “makes me think of Potemkin Village.”

Hannelore nods. “Yes, indeed. You're quite right. We learned about Potemkin in school. He was the Russian minister who had his troops construct a pretend village along the banks of the Dnieper River.”

“I can't for the life of me remember Potemkin's first name. Can you?” I ask her.

Hannelore scrunches her forehead. She can't remember it either.

“It's the hunger,” Hannelore says, shaking her head, “it's beginning to affect our brains.”

“Or maybe we weren't paying attention in class! Maybe you were too busy mooning over Gunter!”