un petit sac à dos avec quelques viatiques, said Austerlitz, those had been Vera’s exact words, summing up, as he now thought, the whole of his later life. Vera also remembered the twelve-year-old girl with the bandoneon to whose care they had entrusted me, a Charlie Chaplin comic bought at the last minute, the fluttering of white handkerchiefs like a flock of doves taking off into the air as the parents who were staying behind waved to their children, and her curious impression that the train, after moving off very slowly, had not really left at all, but in a kind of feint had rolled a little way out of the glazed hall before sinking into the ground. But from that day on Agáta was a changed woman, Vera continued, said Austerlitz. What she had preserved of her cheerfulness and confidence, in defiance of all difficulties, was now overcast by a depression which she was clearly unable to dispel. I think she did make one more attempt to buy her freedom, said Vera, but after that she almost never left the building, she shrank from opening the windows, she would sit motionless for hours in the blue velvet armchair in the darkest corner of the drawing room, or lie on the sofa with her hands over her face. She was simply waiting to see what happened next, and above all she was waiting for post from England and Paris. She had several addresses for Maximilian—a hotel in the rue de l’Odéon, a small rented flat near the Glacière Métro station, and a third place, said Vera, in a district I no longer remember—and she tormented herself by wondering whether at some crucial moment she had mixed up these addresses, so that it was her own fault if her correspondence had gone astray, while at the same time she feared that Maximilian’s letters to her had been detained by the security services on their arrival in Prague. And indeed the letterbox was always empty up to the winter of 1941, when Agáta was still living in the šporkova, so that as she said to me once, oddly, it was as if those messages in which we placed our last hopes were misdirected or swallowed up by the evil spirits abroad in the air all around us. It was only later, said Vera, that I realized how well this remark of Agáta’s conveyed the invisible terrors beneath which the city of Prague lay cowering at the time, only when I learned of the true extent of the perversion of the law under the Germans, the acts of violence they committed daily in the basement of the Petschek Palace, in the Pankrác Prison, and at the killing grounds out in Kobylisy. After ninety seconds in which to defend yourself to a judge you could be condemned to death for a trifle, some offense barely worth mentioning, the merest contravention of the regulations in force, and then you would be hanged immediately in the execution room next to the law court, where there was an iron rail running along the ceiling down which the lifeless bodies were pushed a little further as required. The bill for these cursory proceedings was sent to the relations of the hanged or guillotined victim, with the information that it could be settled in monthly installments. Although little hint of it made its way out at the time, fear of the Germans spread through the whole city like a creeping miasma. Agáta said it even drifted in through the closed doors and windows, taking one’s breath away. When I look back at the two years following the outbreak of the war, said Vera, it is as if at that time everything was caught in a vortex whirling downwards at ever-increasing speed. Bulletins came thick and fast over the wireless, read by the announcers in a curiously high-pitched tone of voice, as if forced out of the larynx: news of the never-ending exploits of the Wehrmacht, which had soon occupied the entire European continent, while its successive campaigns, with apparently conclusive logic, held out to the Germans the prospect of a vast world empire in which, thanks to the fact that they belonged to the chosen people, they would all be able to embark on the most glittering careers. I believe, Vera told me, said Austerlitz, that even the last remaining German skeptics were overcome by a kind of euphoria, such as one feels at high altitude, in these years when victory followed upon victory, while we, the oppressed, lived below sea level, as it were, and had to watch as the SS pervaded the economy of the entire country, and one business firm after another was handed over to German trustees. They had even aryanized the fez and slipper factory in Sternberg. The means Agáta still had at her disposal were barely enough for the necessities. Her bank accounts had been frozen ever since she was obliged to send in an eight-page statement of her assets, under dozens of headings. She was also strictly forbidden to dispose of any valuables such as pictures or antiques, and I remember, said Vera, how she once showed me a passage in one of those proclamations issued by the occupying power stating that in the case of any contravention of this regulation, both the Jew concerned in the transaction and the person acquiring the property must expect the most severe of measures to be taken by the State Police. The Jew concerned in the transaction! Agáta had cried, adding: Really, the way these people write! It’s enough to make your head swim. I think it was in the late autumn of 1941, said Vera, that Agáta had to take her wireless, her gramophone and the records she loved so much, her binoculars and opera glasses, musical instruments, jewelry, furs, and the clothes Maximilian had left behind to the so-called Compulsory Collection Center. Because of some mistake she had made in complying with this order, she was sent to shovel snow on Ruzyně airfield on a freezing day—winter came very early that year, said Vera—and at three o’clock the next morning, in the deepest part of the night, the two envoys of the Israelite religious community whom she had been expecting for some time arrived with the news that Agáta must prepare to be taken away within six days. These messengers, as Vera described them to me, said Austerlitz, who were strikingly alike and had faces that seemed somehow indistinct, with flickering outlines, wore jackets furnished with assorted pleats, pockets, button facings, and a belt, garments which looked especially versatile although it was not clear what purpose they served. The pair spoke quietly to Agáta for some time, and gave her a sheaf of printed forms and instructions setting out everything down to the very smallest detaiclass="underline" where and when the person summoned must present herself, what items of clothing were to be brought—coat, raincoat, warm headgear, earmuffs, mittens, nightdress, underclothes, and so on—what articles of personal use it was advisable to bring, for instance sewing things, leather grease, a spirit stove, and candles; the weight of the main item of luggage, which was not to exceed fifty kilos; what else could be brought in the way of hand baggage and provisions; how the luggage was to be labeled, with name, destination, and the number allotted to her; the proviso that all the attached forms were to be filled in and signed, that it was not permitted to bring cushions or other articles of furnishing, or to make rucksacks and traveling bags out of Persian rugs, winter coats, or other valuable remnants of fabric; and furthermore that matches, lighters, and smoking were prohibited at the embarkation point and thereafter in general, and all orders issued by the official authorities were to be followed to the letter in every contingency. Agáta was unable, as I could see for myself, said Vera, to follow these nauseatingly phrased directives; instead, she simply flung a few wholly impractical items into a bag at random, like someone going away for the weekend, so that finally, difficult as it was for me and guilty as it made me feel, I did her packing while she simply stood at the window, turning away from me to look out at the empty street. Early in the morning of the appointed day we set off while it was still dark, with her luggage strapped to a toboggan, and without a word we made the long journey through the snow spinning down around us, along the left bank of the Vltava, past the Baumgarten, and further out still to the Trade Fair Palace at Holešovice. The closer we came to it, the more often did small groups of people carrying and dragging their heavy burdens emerge from the darkness, moving laboriously towards the same place through the snow, which was falling more thickly now, so that gradually a caravan strung out over a long distance formed, and it was with this caravan that we reached the Trade Fair entrance, faintly illuminated by a single electric lightbulb, towards seven in the morning. We waited there in the crowd of those who had been summoned, a silent assembly stirred only, now and then, by an apprehensive murmur running through it. There were men and there were women, families with young children and solitary figures, there were the elderly and the infirm, ordinary folk and those who had been well-to-do, all of them, in accordance with the instructions they had received, with their transport numbers round their necks on pieces of string. Agáta soon asked me to leave her. When we parted she embraced me and said: Stromovka Park is over there, would you walk there for me sometimes? I have loved that beautiful place so much. If you look into the dark water of the pools, perhaps one of these days you will see my face. Well, said Vera, so then I went home. It took me over two hours to walk back to the šporkova. I tried to think where Agáta might be now, whether she was still waiting at the entrance or was already inside the Trade Fair precinct. I learned only years later, from one who had survived the ordeal, what it was like there. The people being taken away were herded into an unheated exhibition hall, a great barn-like building which was freezing in the middle of winter. It was a bleak place where, under faint, glaucous lamplight, the utmost confusion reigned. Many of those who had just arrived had to have their baggage searched, and were obliged to hand over money, watches, and other valuables to a Hauptscharführer called Fiedler who was feared for his brutality. A great mound of silver cutlery lay on a table, along with fox furs and Persian lamb capes. Personal details were taken down, questionnaires handed out, and identity papers stamped EVACUATED or GHETTOIZED. The German officials and their Czech and Jewish assistants walked busily to and fro, and there was much shouting and cursing, and blows as well. Those who were to leave had to stay in the places allotted to them. Most of them were silent, some wept quietly, but outbursts of despair, loud shouting and fits of frenzied rage were not uncommon. They stayed in this cold Trade Fair building for several days, until finally, early one morning when scarcely anyone was out and about, they were marched under guard to nearby Holešovice railway station, where it took almost another three hours to load them on the trucks. Later, said Vera, I often walked out to Holešovice, to Stromovka Park and the Trade Fair precinct. On these occasions I usually visited the lapidarium installed there in the sixties and spent hours looking at the minera