This is My Song Page 5

  I admired the noble sunbeam of her hope as much as I admired everything about my sister. But the fact was unavoidable – our lives were terrible. In Terezín, as soon as people died, replacements arrived. The operation of this model ghetto was based on a constant rebalancing of the scales, scant life on one side, welcome death on the other. In recent times, there had been an influx of elderly prisoners from countries such as Holland and Denmark. Many of these did not last long, meaning a greater stream of limping, wisp-haired arrivals and the all-too-familiar routine of the police dragging, from the barracks each morning, the stick-bodies of those who had died overnight – and taking them we knew not where.

  As well as this, our Nazi captors had become increasingly brutal. Late one night we were woken, ordered into the frosted yard and forced to watch at gunpoint as six men were paraded before us then hanged by the wrists from posts specially erected for that purpose. The prisoners, who had allegedly been plotting some form of resistance, were whipped, each of their backs being turned to a bloodied sludge. This was bad enough, but things became worse when one prisoner cried out words of defiance. He was swiftly untied, a new rope was looped around his neck and tightened … he kicked out in vain as his face bulged, his tongue lolled and turned purple, blood ran from his eyes, his head sagged as his bowels emptied, the foul stench rising into the night – and all the time we had to watch because we knew that turning away would mean a similar sort of treatment.

  We existed in a soiled and pathetic bubble, grateful for each breath of air, no matter how stale, for each drop of water, no matter how tainted with filth, for each skerrick of time, no matter that it might mean more pain – but my child, the continuation of our lives, Terezín itself – the whole thing was a cruel cosmic tease. Late afternoon on 4 March 1943, the world spun away from its axis, never to return … Who could believe in the God of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and think it worthwhile to pray to such a God? Who could believe in godlike fathers and thus hope for their shelter and salve? Who could believe in those platonic gods of Romance, poets such as Rilke and Goethe? Who could believe in anything of this or any other world from that day forth, when the cool autumn light cut behind walls of stone and my beloved sister Marika Lena Ullmann was brutally murdered by a man or men unknown?

  I must tell this and the remainder as quickly as I can.

  What I know –

  She was carrying another painting. Of what, I was never able to discover. No doubt it was destroyed.

  She was stopped by the ghetto police. They would have screamed at her – what is this? Where did it come from? Are there more? Answer our questions!

  I still see, in my imagination, the defiance in her dark eyes, the coltish pulling back of her head – ‘I am never a number!’

  In here! Now! You will answer our questions!

  But she would not, my sister Marika, she would not betray – and so she was picked up and flung into a terrible hole in time.

  Later on, when they dared speak of this, there were those who claimed to have been nearby. We heard screams, they said. Callous laughter. Screaming and clubbing, clubbing and moaning. They claimed to have seen blood smeared in lengths along the stones. But who could give credit to such claims? By this time we were all unravelled, we all made claims. We claimed spirits and saints and faceless visitations and, for those who still believed, audiences with God. But few of us knew what we had truly seen, imagined or remembered.

  What I know –

  No matter the crime, the Nazis had no care for being heard or not heard, seen or not seen. We had reached a point; their absolute power was matched by their absolute disdain.

  And then –

  My mother’s hollow face and hoarse words. Where is Marika? It is nearly nightfall, where is Marika?

  My father softly singing, ‘Hajej, můj andílku …’

  Soup, always soup. We must eat. Where is Marika?

  The grab in my stomach then my own scratchy call, the voice neither adult nor child. Mama, no! Do not go out! You know what they will –

  Boots, marching.

  ‘Hajej, můj andílku …’

  Family Ullmann? I regret to inform you –

  At first no response, no cries. The terrible strain of a silence that was beyond words before my mother groaned out all hope and lay as a foetus on the cold floor. I should have cried but I could not. Instead I looked at my mother and I thought of the Old Man in the snow-strewn street and I thought of the butterfly’s broken pupa.

  My father said, Marika?

  Raptures and troubles. The men left.

  My father said, Marika?

  Our neighbours, Mr and Mrs Polacek … Anna? Josef, what has –

  My father said, My little one – and I fell on him, howling and beating him with my fists and screeching it was you, you, you did this, it was you, you are to blame, she is dead because of you! Mr Polacek hauled at my arms so I kicked out and there was blood, cuts on my father’s face, his impassive nothing-face, you, I screeched, you, it has always been you, murderer –

  Those next few hours, I cannot remember.

  Sometime afterwards –

  The Department of Documentation. The cinerary urn, the Columbarium. My sister crumbled into a jar, signed papers, pronouncements, death by bureaucracy.

  A fall, they said.

  Weak heart, they said. This can happen. We live in difficult times.

  Clotted blood, they said, maybe an aneurysm – then they said no more.

  ‘Hajej, můj andílku …’

  I sat away from my whimpering mother in a cold grey room in a universe where the icy wind blew and no light could be found, and it was Dominik who came to me, held me and spoke to me with compassion and love, Dominik who said to me, ‘You must grant her peace by striving for your own peace,’ Dominik the wise, the gazelle … and yet the next time I saw this tender boy was during deportation when he was pushed aboard two cars ahead of me and once more after that, from a distance, his quizzical face evident through the mustardy haze, his bowed spindly body being jerked left by an SS officer’s thumb.

  When the world is already without colour, you do not notice it fading or deepening. Can white become whiter or black blacker?

  My mother coughed and rattled and emptied herself of bile and phlegm.

  My father scraped a rake through the dust.

  I also worked. I dug and scrabbled with my hands and twisted the weeds so hard, their putrid juice stained the cracks in my fingers and at night I put those same fingers in my mouth and licked the roughage and tasted the bitterness.

  We lay without sleep or dreams.

  ‘O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?’

  Shut up, I thought. Shut up, murderer, shut up, monster, shut up, poet –

  My mother coughed hard enough to split flesh, gargled and spat until her lungs called for breath then she rose high as if for the last time but it wasn’t the last time. The spit became vomit and I held her head. Liquid ran from her in a thin magenta stream, splashed onto the dust. Finally she lay back and wept into the straw. I saw that there were hairs left between the vees of my fingers, and they were brittle and silvery.

  She lay still as I waited and watched. That night was starless, no gild from the moon. I saw her chest lift and this time it seemed to pause, as if in farewell. The coughing broke and faded. Soon there was nothing within her and I knew that this was the moment, tight and empty. The air was like glass, cold and perfectly still.

  And then, as if called, her shrunken heart left its case. As it eased past ribs and shadows, I saw that it was shrivelled and pale like a parched pink bird. I continued to watch as it hovered briefly then perched over the window. From there it offered a final look of love and I knew that it desperately wanted to return, to glide back into its home, but simply could not. Its flickering pulse said, no more, no more – and so the heart-bird lifted its tiny wings and flew gently away. I went to the window and saw it skim the streets and the black roofs, the smouldering smokesta
cks and finally those imposing walls, then I saw it lift over the paddocks, the rivers and mountains, the limits of the known world, and I knew that it was gone for all time.

  I sat with her chrysalis until dawn when men came, prised her from my stiff hands and carried her out like a stick of firewood. I looked around and realised that I now had a room, which I would shortly lose, a mad father and nothing more.

  The giant, offensive emptiness.

  ‘Mama,’ I said. ‘She has gone. Do you see, Papa? Do you know?’

  My father nodded. He pored over those torn, pointless pages, gesturing and muttering before going off to rake, and I wondered, did he feel grief? Did he feel anything?

  I think now that he did, but not in a way that he could recognise. His personal lament was the shifting air at dusk, a thin fog creeping across the river. The translator had lost touch with the common, physical world. He stood, mostly bewildered, in the windowless cell of his mind, the ghost of Rilke squatted in the corner and chanting like a shaman, the words spilling and colliding and turning to noise. Marika died, my mother died – and yet, for my father, the only signal of this was the presence of a vapour in that cell, cool and dark and acrid. He might well have been left alone in the ashes of a burned building, as naked and unknowing as a newborn.

  Marika had a painting. Did she smuggle it for me? To show me, her guileless, selfish brother? To my eternal shame, I have always believed this to be the case. In so doing, my sister was murdered by Nazi thugs, my mother’s heart shrank and departed, and my father’s fate was brought closer to completion. From this point, for all of us, the song was gone.

  My child, to this day I carry the guilt of the living. It tastes like blood in my mouth.

  Ukraine, they said. Workers are required for the mines. You will go in a train.

  Raus! You will go!

  It was 1944, but who really knew? Straws in a box; that was us, one hundred and fifty jammed into space enough for a dozen cows. No food, no water. A single bucket, if you had anything to give.

  One minute.

  Five minutes.

  Ten. Half an hour. A man just over began to cry. Tiny sobs swelled into a howl before the quiet again, the thump and grind of the train.

  One hour.

  There was a blankness behind the small barred window. It might have been snow or sky; it might have been the transfer-space between earth and hell.

  Two hours.

  The crying man lay on the floor. Those nearby rolled him and checked. He was dead.

  Six hours, twelve, twenty-four. We began to measure not in hours but in corpses. As people died we pushed them to one side to separate the dead from the living. Their bodies were stiff and cold and flat and weightless. They might have been made from paper.

  When the rain fell, a few precious drops came in through the window. Men opened their mouths and laid out tongues like shrivelled worms. They shoved to get closer and some were pushed down and trampled. The rain stopped and we saw that beneath our feet there were more dead.

  They too were pushed to the side and stacked.

  My father, who had hitherto been silent, leaned into me and said, ‘Oh, the dragons, the princesses –’ and I hit him, at first in the stomach then, with difficulty, in the throat. He gagged as a line of spittle ran from his mouth. His eyes rolled back and he muttered words that I could not understand.

  Days and nights, frozen corpses, the frozen living. The dead were cold-piled to the roof while the living were held in place by shackles made from fear, stench and the shuddering of the train. The rancid bucket toppled. As its warm innards flowed over our feet, I realised that I could no longer feel my own flesh.

  The place was called Auschwitz-Birkenau. When the train stopped and the main hatch was thrust aside, the blue light burned our eyes. Soldiers roared and levered us free with their guns, as if we were herring laid in a square of tin. A proud older man tried to leave the train on his own terms. Pushed aside, I heard a single shot. I turned and saw fresh blood on the gravel and the steel tracks. I should have been horrified. Instead I thought the sight to be strangely beautiful, a warm colour splashed brightly across a dark, metallic surface.

  Blood and rust, I thought. Ice and death.

  ‘Raus! Eine zeile!’

  First separation: male and female. We shuffled like rain-drenched birds on a wire. My father was in front of me. I heard his whisper, ‘Oh, the finest, the finest –’

  A young man behind me hissed, ‘Hey kid, how old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘That’s all right. You’re tall, so stand straight and look strong. Is he with you?’

  My mumbling, staggering, scarecrow father.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pretend otherwise.’

  ‘Why –’

  ‘Just do it!’

  The line shortened. When we came to the end-point, a man in immaculate uniform awaited us. He was holding a cigarette in his right hand. My father was propelled forward. A different officer barked at him. I heard my father cough before saying, ‘I am Josef Ullmann, famed scholar and translator of the great –’

  The first man gestured with his cigarette. My father was shunted left, into a new line mainly of older people and children. He called, ‘Rilke, Rilke,’ but no one heard or noticed or cared.

  My turn. I stood straight and tried to look strong. The man drew on his cigarette and stomped the butt into the gravel. I avoided the burning coal of his eyes.

  I was pushed right, to the other side of the landing ramp.

  Those on the left were first to be marched away. I recall seeing my father with that familiar, bobbing gait and thinking, there is nothing left of him, just a nonsensical jumble of words. Imagine tearing the pages of a book and throwing the pieces into an ocean where they might drift or sink. That ocean was my father.

  I felt a fierce tug of love before he turned a corner and was gone for all time.

  No one should be in such a place.

  Stripped. Showered. Deloused with chemical burn. Shaved. Ordered into a striped ‘uniform’ and ill-fitting wooden shoes.

  ‘Raus! Eine zeile!’

  Sharp pain, blood on my left forearm. As the scab disintegrated the mark would remain, B4198 stamped in indelible blue ink.

  Line-up. Roll call. Barracks. Line-up. Roll call. Barracks. We were bark stripped from trees, unable to reattach or even make a shadow.

  ‘Mister, please –’

  ‘You have to move. Get out of there.’

  ‘If you don’t –’

  A new cycle, as predictable as a clock. Death at dawn. Soup in the morning. Crusts in the afternoon. Death at nightfall. Death at dawn …

  As I waited for sunrise, waited for sunset, I wished I could turn back to God. I wished I could pray for Marika, my mother and my father, and make that prayer clean and worthy. I wished I could rise into His sphere and call on the Almighty to save all who remained and deliver our people – but I could not. I had no right. God is no watcher, no outsider. God must sit in the heart or be nowhere at all.

  Now we measured time by breaths. One breath. Another. Another. Gratitude, pity, regret. Our lives leaked onto the stones and into the dust. We fed on the teat of misery, using the deaths of others to remind us that we remained alive.

  My blood slowed and stagnated. My skin was glued to my bones.

  One day guards entered our barracks. I saw that their faces were on the brink of madness. They looked like starved wolves.

  ‘Where are the musicians? Anyone from Terezín? You are required.’

  I was no musician, no Michal Laks or Mr Haas, but still I went. I went without caring, hoping that they would hear my paltry playing, register the deafness inside me and either put a bullet in my milky brain or march me into the dark forest.

  Inside a room there was an old saxophone. I used my last spit to play a single scale. Once up, once down. Someone nodded. Suddenly, in the most ridiculous of circumstances, I had achieved my goal. I was in a band.

&nb
sp; The leader’s name was Jakob. I remembered seeing him at Terezín. A violinist, he’d been one of the principals in the main group.

  There were nearly forty of us in total. The saxophone section was myself and an older man named Zivon. I whispered to him that I wasn’t much of a player and straightaway he said that he would help me.

  ‘You do realise,’ he rasped, ‘what this means? This orchestra?’ He licked his cracked and purple lips. ‘Listen, kid, every camp has an orchestra. The Nazis want us to play at ceremonies and special occasions. That means they need us. Understand what I’m saying? Maybe we’ve got a chance –’

  That made some sense. For a time there was a flicker inside me, the final, defiant rise of a flame … I thought, maybe I should try a bit harder.

  We learned German music and I saw the glowing face of my poor deluded father, delighting as his son played Beethoven’s Fifth or the overture from Tristan und Isolde. We learned folk songs from Hungary and Romania, melodies from various operettas, more Beethoven, a Mendelssohn concerto, the Hallelujah chorus and even the theme music from a film called Triumph of the Will.

  Soon I was getting to the point where I didn’t have to hide behind Zivon’s skilled playing.

  We were moved into a different barracks. Given food. Taken off the labour gangs. Other prisoners looked at us with an envy that was near to poisonous, but I didn’t care. I was alive and I was playing music.

  Jakob told the orchestra, ‘Tomorrow we must play early, when the gangs leave for the fields.’

  Someone whispered, ‘Why?’

  ‘It is better not to ask or know,’ Jakob reminded us. ‘Accept and obey. That is all.’

  The gangs went out to the fields under gunpoint while we played marching music. When they shuffled back at the end of the day, haggard and bent and carrying the bodies of those who had died, we played the same staunch repertoire as if there had been no intervention, the concert continuing while the auditorium crumbled and fell.

  As thousands were ordered into the yard for hour after hour of roll call, we played light classical and opera. When people collapsed and died, we kept playing.