She can’t avoid overhearing the teachers’ voices, which sound fraught this afternoon. Mrs. Nasty is complaining bitterly that it’s impossible for her to teach the children geography over the noise of the yells and orders accompanying the deported prisoners who arrive at the camp and walk past Block 31 on their way to the showers and their death.
“Trains arrive, and we have to pretend that we can’t hear anything. We carry on with our lessons, while the children whisper among themselves. We act as if we can’t hear a thing, as if we knew nothing about it.… Wouldn’t it be better to face up to it and talk to the children about the concentration camp? They all know what is going on anyway, so let them talk about their fears.”
Fredy Hirsch isn’t there today. He tends to shut himself in his cubicle to work and takes part less and less in the social life of the hut. When Dita enters his den to put the books back in their hiding place, she often sees him totally focused on what he’s writing on pieces of paper. He explained to her once that it was a report for Berlin; they were really interested in the Block 31 experiment. Dita wonders if those reports are linked to the shadow that Hirsch is trying to hide from the others.
In his absence, it’s Miriam Edelstein who has to be uncompromising with the difficult Mrs. K?i?ková and remind her of the orders of the block management.
“But do you honestly believe that the children aren’t concerned?” another teacher interrupts.
“All the more reason, then,” answers Miriam Edelstein. “What’s the point in endlessly going on about it? Endlessly rubbing salt into the wound? This school has a mission over and above the one of pure education: to convey a certain sense of normalcy to them, prevent them from becoming disheartened, and show them that life goes on.”
“For how long?” asks someone, and the conversation gets stirred up again. Comments, both pessimistic and optimistic, erupt everywhere, together with all manner of theories about how to explain the tattoo on the arms of all the children, the tattoo that refers to special treatment after six months. For those in the September transport, that time is edging ever nearer. The conversation descends into chaos.
Dita, the only young assistant allowed to stay in the hut at this hour, is somewhat uncomfortable at witnessing the teachers’ discussion, and the word death rings in her ears as something almost obscene and sinful, something a young girl shouldn’t be overhearing. So she leaves. She hasn’t seen Fredy anywhere all day. Apparently, he’s busy with something really important. He has to prepare for a ceremonial visit from the high command. Miriam Edelstein has the key to his cubicle. She opens the door so Dita can go in and hide the books. The two exchange a quick look. Dita tries to detect a hint of betrayal or insincerity in the deputy director, but she doesn’t know what to think anymore. All she can see in Mrs. Edelstein is a deep sadness.
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.