“And you wouldn’t believe how many people bought his flutes—until one of his customers was a child.”
When he gets to the end of the story, his listeners stampede toward the door with that sense of urgency typical of childhood. Each minute is lived intensely because right now is everything. Ota watches them rushing off, and he also sees one of the assistants whizzing toward the exit like a rocket, her shoulder-length hair swinging to the rhythm of her steps. The librarian with the long, skinny legs is always running.…
She seems to have the face of an angel, but her energetic way of moving and gesticulating suggests to Ota that if she doesn’t get her way, the devil takes over. He’s noticed that she doesn’t usually speak with the teachers; she hands over the books and picks them up again with a nod of her head, always in a hurry. But then again, he thinks, she might be pretending to be in a hurry in order to cover her shyness.
And Dita has indeed raced out of the hut. She doesn’t want to bump into anyone because she’s got two books hidden under her dress, and that’s highly inflammatory material.
Earlier, when she’d gone to Fredy Hirsch’s cubicle to hide the books in her care, the door was locked. Even though she knocked several times, no one answered. She found Miriam Edelstein in the corner of the hut where the teachers gathered with their stools to chat. Miriam told her that Fredy had been called away without warning by Kommandant Schwarzhuber and had forgotten to leave the key to his cubicle with her. She took Dita aside and quietly asked her what she intended to do with the two books that hadn’t been picked up when morning classes ended.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
Miriam nodded her agreement and gave her a look that told her to be careful. Dita didn’t provide any further information. That was her right as librarian. The two books she was carrying in her secret pockets would sleep with her that night. It was dangerous, but leaving them in the hut didn’t strike her as a safe alternative.
Almost all the children had dispersed, while the tutors had taken others out behind the hut for sports training. But there was a group of boys and girls of mixed ages still inside the hut listening attentively to Ota Keller. Dita was impressed by the young teacher who knew so much and had such an ironic way of speaking. She was about to stay and listen to what he was telling them—she thought it was something to do with Palestine—but she had a date with a scoundrel by the name of ?vejk. She overheard a few of the teacher’s words, however, and was surprised by what he was saying. It wasn’t a class in politics or history, which was his usual fare in the mornings, but a story. And she was struck by the passionate way in which he was telling it. She found it intriguing that such an educated and serious young man could tell stories with so much enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm is very important to Dita. She needs to be enthusiastic about things in order to keep going. That’s why she puts her heart and soul into the task of distributing the books—paper ones in the morning, and “living” ones in the afternoon when things are more relaxed. In the case of the “living” books, she’s organized a roster for the teachers who have become talking books.
If she were prudent, the two books that haven’t been placed in the secret hiding spot would remain hidden under her smock until the next morning. But Dita can’t resist the temptation to find out what her friend ?vejk is up to, so she goes off to read in the latrines, a barrack with long rows of black, foul-smelling holes.
She makes herself comfortable in an inconspicuous corner. It occurs to her that ?vejk and his creator, Jaroslav Ha?ek, would have found it a most appropriate place in which to read. In the introduction to the second part of his book, Ha?ek observes that
people who get angry at vulgar expressions are fainthearted, and real life will sneak up on them. In his writings, Eustachius the Monk says of Saint Louis that whenever he heard a man farting loudly, he would start to cry, and prayer was the only thing that would calm him down. There are various people who would like to have transformed the Czech Republic into an enormous salon with parquet floors you could only walk over wearing tails and gloves—a place where the exquisite traditions of the upper crust world would be maintained and where, protected, the wolves of the elite could give themselves over to their worst vices and excesses.
In here, with hundreds of holes fully occupied every morning, poor Saint Louis would be praying nonstop.
When Dita leaves the latrines, she has to walk carefully because the ground is icy.
After she reaches her hut, Dita searches out her mother. Usually she’s a chatterbox, and she tells her mother stories about Block 31 or about the children’s pranks, but this evening she says nothing. Liesl feels the hard outline of the books under Dita’s dress when she hugs her, but she doesn’t say a word, either. Mothers always know more than their children think they do. And in this closed world, news leaps from one bunk to the next like the bedbugs.
Dita thinks she’s protecting her mother by not telling her what she does in Block 31. She doesn’t know that it’s actually the reverse. Liesl understands that, by pretending to be ignorant about Edita’s activities, she allows her daughter to worry less about causing her pain and to feel more tranquil. She won’t be a burden to her teenage daughter.
When Dita asks if she’s been tuning in to Radio Birkenau, Liesl pretends to be angry. “Don’t make fun of Mrs. Turnovská,” she tells Dita. In fact, she’s pleased that Dita is making jokes again. “We were talking about cake recipes. She didn’t know the one with blueberries and grated lemon peel! We’ve had a very pleasant afternoon.”
A very pleasant afternoon in Auschwitz?
Dita wonders if her mother is starting to lose her mind. Maybe that might not be such a bad thing. They’ve been through some very hard days in this horrible month of February.
“There’s still an hour before curfew. Go and visit Margit in her hut!”
Liesl does this often in the evening: throws Dita out of their hut, tells her to go and see her friends, makes sure she doesn’t stay inside surrounded by widows.
As Dita walks toward Barrack 8, she feels the books swaying slightly under her dress. She thinks her mother has shown amazing strength since the death of her husband.