Vladivostok, hm. So you go and buy yourself something to eat, some vodka, of course, and walk out to the edge of town. There’s a bench, so you sit and look at the water — there it is, the end of the road: the Sea of Japan. So there is no Eastern Europe actually.
You’re right about that, Sara!
I still thank God, or whoever, that I was born in the West.
Yeah?
Most of my relatives got killed in Terezín, but my dad made it out to Sweden with the other Slovakian Jewish kids, on the Red Cross transport, like I told you before. He grew up normally. The movies were the only place he ever saw Nazis and Commies. Just like me.
Right!
So the cultural difference between you and me comes from dozens of years of terror, oppression and humiliation. That’s what makes you guys different! And I don’t think that’s about to change anytime soon.
Oh no?
My dad was a smart little boy. Sara clapped her hands. He made it to Sweden, and that means I’m normal. I can finish university, I’ve got a passport that’s good wherever I go, no debt. Eventually I’d like a kid or two, a man, a house, all of that.
Hm!
They stuck them on a train in Prague with signs around their necks, and off to Sweden you go! Did you know that Sweden was neutral during the war?
No. What does that mean?
Oh, never mind. Listen, you know why I like the East?
Yeah, you’re looking for your ancestors and roots here and stuff.
No, come on, you know why I feel so good here?
No.
I feel superior. You’ve all got complexes because of who you are and where you’re from. But I’ve just got my own personal complexes, you see? Now, good night!
All right, g’night, I said.
But she didn’t really mean it about going to sleep. We could hear the hum of Old Town Square nearby. The tension in the air from the battle had disappeared. We held each other tight for a long time. But I was glad when she fell asleep. At least I could put the T-shirts in my backpack in peace. Sara was too careful packing. Sometimes it took us hours. But if the T-shirts got a little squished, the aunts could always iron them. They didn’t mind.
5
Sara and I made it back to Terezín in under an hour. That time with Mr Hamáček in his beat-up Škoda, it had taken half the day.
Volunteers printed the T-shirts with Sara’s design, and as our revitalization movement grew in strength and more journalists and more bunk seekers began to seek us out in our broken little town, Sara and I went on more and more shopping trips to Prague. Our T-shirts, which the aunts peddled to tourists at the Monument, went like hot-cakes, and we sold other things too — pebbles from the riverbeds of the nearby Elbe and Eger, they made nice talismans. We numbered them in indelible ink, so every tourist who came to Terezín would know what number visitor they were.
And then Lea came to us.
It was Lebo himself who caught her, after she split away from her tourist group and wandered off the Monument’s designated trails and ended up in town. Almost six feet tall, with cropped red hair, even shorter than mine, she was staggering across Central Square in the midday sun, dazed by the heat, wearing nothing but green boxer shorts — she had torn off all her clothes and thrown them away, along with her backpack. Swaying and teetering, slowly, cautiously, she lifted her right hand, fumbling, groping in the air, eyes bulging. She smiled later as she explained that in her mind she had been trying to grab hold of the wires, to give herself an electric shock and put her out of her misery, to stop her marching, tortured brain that was trying so hard to understand. All those tours had driven her mad. She’d visited many sites in Poland, but the pivotal point, the place from which her family had set out for the wires of death way back when, was here in Terezín, and so here she was. With a fever. She felt awful.
Getting to know Sara helped the girl we sometimes called Lea the Great. For a whole day and night she slept on Sara’s bunk, and once she had pulled herself back together a bit, she listened to Lebo breathlessly. After reading so many encyclopaedias, tracking down her family and walking through museums and down educational trails, now all of a sudden she had a living witness, a witness who spoke healing words. And it was calming for her to share the objects left behind by the dead or disappeared. First with Sara, and later with Rolf and the others, she handled every little thing, every single item we’d found as kids in the tunnels under Terezín and brought back to Lebo. This sharing, along with Lebo’s strength, began to break up the black cloud in the heads of the seekers afflicted with the horror of the past. The well-travelled Lea meant a great deal to us. She gave our community a name.
And food. She copied the idea from the Kraków ghetto, so the tasty, crunchy pizza that Lea and the aunts began to bake in our kitchen became known as ghetto pizza. The secret ingredient was a light dusting of Terezín grass, a seasoning that didn’t exist anywhere else. And one day two girls showed up who Lea had met on a visit to Auschwitz — of course they were also from the second or third generation of victims and their minds were also shadowed with a black cloud. Lea had tipped them off to us, and after a few days our new students decided to stay. They looked after the tent on Central Square, which we called the Amusement Centre. A multicoloured T-shirt of Kafka flew above it and the delicious smell of ghetto pizza filled the inside. That alone was a sign of revitalization, since not only were the local people creeping out of the shells of their half-broken-down homes to experience the smells, the colours and all the movement in general, but more and more people were heading our way from the world outside. So we set up the Main Tent by our first stall on Central Square and during the day Lebo would talk to people inside. Sara and Lea were in there with him, protecting him from the new visitors. It’s true Lea provoked some amazement among the country folk, but children adored her, especially when the giant redhead made funny faces at them, and besides, towering in front of the tent, dressed as she usually was in a green track suit, she guaranteed no wise guys snuck in without paying. Sara collected the money at the entrance. There were people who came here just to get a glimpse of the famous Guardian of Terezín, and they had to put a coin in the dish. Now Sara would just shake her head when she saw me waiting for her to come out to herd the goats with me. In fact the day Lebo started talking to newcomers in the Main Tent on Central Square, Sara stopped coming to see me. I think that was one of the reasons why I said yes to Alex.
By then we were already calling ourselves the Comenium. Lea, who had come up with our name, thought we should offer instruction in the history of horror, as well as therapy for it, including dance. We agreed, since she had come to us from Holland, the country where Comenius had resided after his merciless expulsion from Bohemia.
The Happy Workshops were Sara’s idea.
*
I was out for a walk with Bojek and the other goats one day, strolling along, when one of the nanny goats squatted down, so we stopped to wait. Goats pee like girls, you see — not a lot of people know that — and it was a good thing we stopped, too, since all of a sudden I saw … Sara, in the grass down below us! Kamínek the mental case had knocked her down and was standing over her. I went tearing down there, screaming at him, and Kamínek grabbed his crutches and hobbled off, scuttling through the grass like some disgusting insect, rear end shining, clutching at his pants. Sara got up, her T-shirt torn across her chest. She was in shock, not even talking, so Bojek and I escorted her home. And that evening she came up with the Happy Workshops.
The mental cases stayed out of my way. I stopped by Mr Hamáček’s vegetable shop one day and Kamínek and this other bum took one look at me, got up and wobbled off, past the baskets of rotting potatoes, sacks of onions, and kohlrabi, crutches clattering, in those shabby army overcoats of theirs. They sure don’t want to talk to you! said Mr Hamáček. I hadn’t told a soul about my time in the slammer — why would I? — but the mental cases had somehow got wind of what I did there. Somebody from that loud-mouthed society in Pankrác Prison had recognized me, ratted on me, and passed it on. They may have been cripples, thieves, and losers, but they had feelers everywhere, they were all connected somehow.