There are still too many teachers and assistants chatting in little groups, so in the meantime, she hides in the small nook behind a pile of wood that old Professor Morgenstern sometimes sneaks away to. There, Dita sits on a stool and feels a piece of paper brush against her hand: It’s a crinkled, spiky little origami bird. She feels like looking through her mental photo album of Prague, perhaps because when you can’t dream about the future, you can always dream about the past.
She comes across a very clear image: her mother sewing a horrendous yellow star onto her beautiful deep-blue blouse. It’s her mother’s face in that snapshot that most upsets her. She’s concentrating on her needle, her face as impassive and neutral as if she were sewing the hem on a skirt. Dita remembers that when she angrily asked her mother what she was doing to her favorite blouse, her mother answered what difference did it make? She didn’t even look up from what she was doing. Dita recalls clenching her fists, and bursting with outrage. That yellow star made from thick fabric looked awful on top of the satin cloth of her blue blouse. It would look even worse on her green shirt. She couldn’t understand how her mother, who was so elegant, who spoke French, and who read those beautiful European fashion magazines she kept on the small coffee table in the living room, could sew such ugly cloth patches on their clothes. It’s the war, Edita … it’s the war, her mother whispered, without looking up from her sewing. And Dita didn’t say another word, just accepted it as inevitable, as her mother and the other adults had already done. It was the war; there was nothing you could do about it.
She curls up in her hidey-hole and searches for another image, from her twelfth birthday. She can see the apartment, her parents, her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, and some of her cousins. The whole family is around her, and she’s in the middle waiting for something. There’s a hint of that melancholy smile of hers, the one that appears when she removes her “brave girl” mask and the timid Dita emerges. What’s odd is that no one else in the family is smiling.
She remembers that particular party well. It was the last one she ever had, with a delicious cake made by her mother. There haven’t been any cakes since then. It’s true that that particular strudel, which makes her mouth water now as she remembers it, was much smaller than the ones her mother usually made, but she didn’t complain at the time because she had spent the entire week watching her mother going in and out of dozens of stores trying to get hold of more raisins and apples. Impossible! She’d be waiting at the entrance to Dita’s school each day with her empty shopping bag and not a hint of annoyance. That was her mother.
On that twelfth birthday, her mother appeared in the living room, smiling nervously and carrying her present. Dita’s eyes lit up because it was a shoe box, and she’d been hoping for a new pair of shoes for months. She preferred light-colored ones, with buckles and, if possible, with a small heel.
She hurriedly opened the box, and inside she found a pair of sad-looking, black, everyday shoes with closed toes like school shoes. When she looked at them more closely, she noticed they weren’t even new; there were scratches on the toes, which had been covered up with shoe polish. A thick silence suddenly filled the air: Her parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were looking at her expectantly, waiting for her reaction. She forced a big smile and said she really loved her present. She went over to kiss her mother, who gave her a big hug, and then her father who, in his typically dashing manner, told her she was a very lucky girl because this autumn, many Parisians would be wearing closed black shoes.
She smiles at the memory. But she had her own wish for her twelfth birthday. That evening, when her mother came to her room to say good night, Dita asked her for one more present. Before her mother could protest, she told her that it wouldn’t cost a cent. She had now turned twelve, and she’d like her mother to let her read some grown-up books. Her mother looked at her silently for a moment, finished tucking her in, and left without saying a word.
A little later, just as Dita was starting to fall asleep, she heard her door being opened carefully. Then she saw a hand leaving a copy of A. J. Cronin’s The Citadel on her bedside table. As soon as her mother had left the room, Dita rushed to block the crack under her door with her dressing gown so her parents wouldn’t notice that her light was on. She didn’t sleep a wink that night.
Late one October afternoon in the year 1921, a shabby young man gazed with fixed intensity through the window of a third-class compartment in the almost empty train laboring up the Penowell valley from Swansea.
Dita settled down in the compartment next to young Dr. Manson and traveled with him to Drineffy, a poor mining town in the mountains of Wales. She had boarded the reading train. That night, Dita felt the thrill of discovery, of knowing that it didn’t matter how many hurdles all the Reichs in the world put in her way, she’d be able to jump over all of them by opening a book.
When she now thinks back affectionately, even gratefully, to The Citadel, she smiles. Her mother didn’t know it, but she used to hide the book in her schoolbag so she could keep reading it during recess. It was the first book that made her angry.
It was also the first book that made her cry.
She smiles again at the thought of all those pages. Since then, she has discovered that her life can be made much more profound, because books multiply your experiences and enable you to meet people like Dr. Manson and, in particular, his wife, Christine. She was a woman who never allowed herself to be dazzled by high society or wealth, who never sacrificed her principles, who was strong and never gave in if she believed something was unjust.
Ever since then, Dita has wanted to be like Mrs. Manson. She wouldn’t let herself become discouraged by the war.
In her hiding place behind the woodpile, Dita’s head nods as she is overcome by sleep.
*
When Dita opens her eyes, it’s very dark, and there’s not a sound in the hut. She panics briefly that she has missed curfew. Not returning to her hut would be a very serious mistake, the sort of mistake Mengele is waiting for so he can turn her into a laboratory specimen. But she calms down when she hears people outside. She can hear voices inside now, too, and realizes that’s what has woken her up. They’re speaking in German.
She peeps around the woodpile and sees that the door to Hirsch’s cubicle is open and his light is on. Hirsch accompanies someone to the hut door, and then cautiously opens it.
“Wait a minute; there are people nearby.”
“You seem concerned, Fredy.”
“I think Lichtenstern suspects something. We have to do whatever it takes to make sure that neither Lichtenstern nor anyone in Block Thirty-One finds out. If they do, I’m finished.”
The other person laughs.
“Come on, stop worrying so much. What can they do to you? After all, they’re just Jewish prisoners.… They can’t shoot you!”