Read Online Train to Budapest by Dacia Maraini - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dacia Maraini
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the war will be over in a few months. We just have to stick it out. Every morning at six she walks to the textile and uniform factory on Drewnowska Street. She puts on her apron and starts her sewing machine. Mamma is showing a courage I never expected of her. But Papà seems desperate. He can’t get over the fact he ever left Rifredi. He spends half his time in bed. Uncle Eduard was deported on the same train as us and we never knew. He wanders about the ghetto picking up cigarette-ends. But he says there are no longer many to find. People have no money for cigarettes. What most upsets me is losing my books. I used to have more than a hundred. Most got left behind in the house at Schulerstrasse in Vienna. I only managed to keep the three or four I threw into my suitcase at the last minute. Picked up at random. Now I read them again and again. Dickens’ Great Expectations , Pinocchio and The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Łódź ghetto. March ’42
Dear Amara. Today my father came home with three passports bought from forgers. He used the last of our hidden money to buy them. Mamma screamed at him that he was mad. He’s convinced we’ll be able to use them to get out of the ghetto and go to America. But everyone knows all passports have been cancelled and no one is allowed to leave the Łódź ghetto for any reason. With or without a passport. Uncle Eduard is ‘going off his head’ as Mamma puts it. He collects fag-ends in the city and buries them under a loose floorboard. The other day he killed a mouse and said: you lot can eat this. I’ll stick to pork.’ But there aren’t any pigs round here. The only little pig in this house is made of pottery and has a slot in its back for coins but it’s empty now and its gentle sugary pink face looks over at the window with a disheartened expression. ‘He’s been driven mad by fear,’ says my father, teasing him. But Uncle Eduard doesn’t smile. ‘We’ll all end up dead, all of us dead!’ he keeps shouting as he collects crumbs of bread round the house, hiding them in his pockets. The other day my mother sniffed the air and asked, ‘What’s this stink?’ Then she discovered it was half a turnip rotting under Uncle Eduard’s camp bed and giving off an unbearable stench.
It’s snowing. It’s cold. I sleep in my coat. Mamma looks like a whale, wearing all the clothes, both summer and winter ones, that she brought with her, three pairs of thick socks, and a now almost hairless fox muff that she wears on one arm even while cooking. The butter’s finished. Lard costs ten złotys and we can’t afford it. My father has run out of tobacco for his pipe. He’s started smoking birch leaves which makes a nice smell in the house. But it also makes him cough like a consumptive.
Yesterday I saw two SS men beating up a boy who had no yellow star on his coat collar. The boy showed them that he had his star sewn in full view on the lapel of his jacket, which he was wearing under his coat. But they went on hitting his head just the same. The boy was holding his head in his hands. One ear began spurting blood which stained the snow all round. A very thin and decrepit dog came from God knows where and began licking the blood up as though it were redcurrant syrup.
Amara tries to imagine Emanuele in that dirty and overcrowded ghetto in Łódź, with the snow falling. She has always loved snow. It softens and refines houses and countryside. But what can it have been like in that dirty and overcrowded ghetto?
Łódź. March ’42
I’ve found some paper. I swapped a silk handkerchief of Mamma’s for an exercise book. Writing to you is like writing to the whole world. But I’ve no money for a stamp. And in any case I don’t know if the post will take letters sent abroad. When we first came to the ghetto letters did go off. And sometimes they arrived, even if half blocked out. But not now, no longer. We’re shut in, closed in a trap. But I’m writing to you all the same.
Łódź ghetto. March ’42
Dear Amara. Today my father came home with three passports bought from forgers. He used the last of our hidden money to buy them. Mamma screamed at him that he was mad. He’s convinced we’ll be able to use them to get out of the ghetto and go to America. But everyone knows all passports have been cancelled and no one is allowed to leave the Łódź ghetto for any reason. With or without a passport. Uncle Eduard is ‘going off his head’ as Mamma puts it. He collects fag-ends in the city and buries them under a loose floorboard. The other day he killed a mouse and said: you lot can eat this. I’ll stick to pork.’ But there aren’t any pigs round here. The only little pig in this house is made of pottery and has a slot in its back for coins but it’s empty now and its gentle sugary pink face looks over at the window with a disheartened expression. ‘He’s been driven mad by fear,’ says my father, teasing him. But Uncle Eduard doesn’t smile. ‘We’ll all end up dead, all of us dead!’ he keeps shouting as he collects crumbs of bread round the house, hiding them in his pockets. The other day my mother sniffed the air and asked, ‘What’s this stink?’ Then she discovered it was half a turnip rotting under Uncle Eduard’s camp bed and giving off an unbearable stench.
It’s snowing. It’s cold. I sleep in my coat. Mamma looks like a whale, wearing all the clothes, both summer and winter ones, that she brought with her, three pairs of thick socks, and a now almost hairless fox muff that she wears on one arm even while cooking. The butter’s finished. Lard costs ten złotys and we can’t afford it. My father has run out of tobacco for his pipe. He’s started smoking birch leaves which makes a nice smell in the house. But it also makes him cough like a consumptive.
Yesterday I saw two SS men beating up a boy who had no yellow star on his coat collar. The boy showed them that he had his star sewn in full view on the lapel of his jacket, which he was wearing under his coat. But they went on hitting his head just the same. The boy was holding his head in his hands. One ear began spurting blood which stained the snow all round. A very thin and decrepit dog came from God knows where and began licking the blood up as though it were redcurrant syrup.
Amara tries to imagine Emanuele in that dirty and overcrowded ghetto in Łódź, with the snow falling. She has always loved snow. It softens and refines houses and countryside. But what can it have been like in that dirty and overcrowded ghetto?
Łódź. March ’42
I’ve found some paper. I swapped a silk handkerchief of Mamma’s for an exercise book. Writing to you is like writing to the whole world. But I’ve no money for a stamp. And in any case I don’t know if the post will take letters sent abroad. When we first came to the ghetto letters did go off. And sometimes they arrived, even if half blocked out. But not now, no longer. We’re shut in, closed in a trap. But I’m writing to you all the same.
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