The Paradise Ghetto Page 3

  She begins to scream.

  ‘No!’

  She screams louder.

  ‘Please!’

  Until it is blood-curdling.

  ‘Go away! Don’t touch me!’

  She sees surprise on the man’s face but then he slaps her hard across the cheek.

  However, instead of making her go quiet, this only causes her to get worse. She pulls the bedcovers over her head. She tries to roll to the far side of the bed but strong arms pinion her. She kicks, or at least tries to, but the covers and the weight of the man, who has now spread himself on top of her, mean she can’t do much.

  She struggles some more but she realises it’s pointless. His strength is way beyond anything she is capable of fighting. Finally, she goes limp. He hesitates for a little while and then pulls the covers off her face so that the light and his bull face return. He is half on the bed, pressing his hands onto her upper arms and with his thigh and knee holding down her legs.

  ‘We’re not going to touch you,’ he says quietly, almost tenderly, in Dutch. ‘You just have to come with us. Understand?’

  Her eyes slowly become used to the light and comprehension dawns. She returns.

  ‘Understand?’ he says again.

  Eventually she nods.

  ‘OK,’ he says, climbing off the bed.

  Slowly, she sits up. There are two of them – the one with the bull face who looks like a policeman out of uniform and one in a leather coat. He is short and thin and wears wire-rimmed glasses. Small and weaselly, he looks like a student.

  A small man. Never good.

  It occurs to her that it’s lucky she’s not naked, as she would have been had it been the summer. Tonight, this morning, whatever it is, she’s fully dressed, having slept in her clothes.

  ‘You have ten minutes to pack a case,’ says the Dutchman, severely, this time.

  She climbs slowly from bed, still somewhat stunned by what has just happened. She kneels down, groggily poking around under the bed for her suitcase. It is the same one she used when she left home three and a half years ago, just as the Germans were entering Amsterdam.

  The Dutchman lights a cigarette, offering one to the other who declines with a curt ‘Nein’.

  So – the weaselly one is a German.

  While the Dutchman watches her, the German begins to search the place. He opens the wardrobe, his leather-gloved hand leafing through the few items of clothing that hang there. Then, he opens in turn the three drawers of the chest. The top one contains Julia’s underwear and he seems to spend an inordinate amount of time with his hand in that. She can’t be sure because he’s got his back to her but she thinks he pockets something.

  Now, at least, she is able to think a little more clearly. If she is packing it means they are not going to kill her. At least not yet. Not tonight. And it doesn’t look like they’re going to rape her. At least not here. Ever since she left home, Julia has kept a mental scale of the most frightening things she has done or that have happened to her. She decides that this would not be the top of her scale – maybe second. Up until tonight, second had been the first time she made a film. That’s now slipped to third.

  ‘You should bring food,’ says the Dutchman. ‘And a bowl and a spoon.’

  Encouraged by his tone, Julia asks, trying to sound defiant but not really succeeding, ‘Why are you arresting me? I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Just pack, Jew,’ the German says in a cold, toneless voice.

  Chantal.

  Julia packs any food she has into the suitcase and puts whatever warm clothes she has around that. She has a beautiful flowery summer dress. It’s her favourite – the first thing she ever bought with money she had earned herself. No point in bringing that now.

  On top of her chest of drawers are a dozen or so books that Julia either brought with her from home or that she has accumulated since then. She thinks of them as her ‘library’, a term that always causes her to smile inwardly. Now, she has to decide what she’s going to do with them.

  Julia loves books. With their ability to whisk her away to other places, to become part of amazing people’s lives, books have been her solace ever since her mother first read to her and then taught her to read herself, so that Julia could get through grown-up books by the time she started school. She would love to bring them all but they will be too heavy. And picking just one of them, she thinks, is like being asked to choose between your children.

  ‘Schnell. Schnell,’ says the German. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

  She wonders if she should take Hollands Glorie by Jan de Hartog but before she can decide, the Dutchman, who appears quite nervous despite his size, stubs his cigarette out on the floor and says, ‘Come on, that’s enough’. He shoves her aside and clicks her suitcase shut, before picking it up and thrusting it at her. Now that she’s being taken, now that it’s time to leave her little haven and she is fully awake, she’s starting to feel very frightened. What is going to happen to her?

  The Dutchman goes in front, the German behind. Julia has a sense that the whole building is wide awake and listening, but she doesn’t see a soul as they descend the stairs. Outside in the icy night, a car waits for them, engine running. Its exhaust creates a small cloud of fog in the freezing air.

  They drive her to a police station and she is reassured a little by this. She is taken down a corridor that is almost painfully bright – the lightbulbs protected by wire cages. Then she is pushed into a pitch dark cell.

  The smell is the first thing that hits her. It is really bad – shit, piss, bad breath, the meaty smell of unwashed bodies. There is the sound of the heavy breathing of sleep. At first she can see nothing and stands by the door. But eventually her eyes adjust to the very faint light that comes in from a street lamp somewhere outside the thick, frosted glass window. She sees that the space is already crowded. There are at least eight other people there, as well as a pile of luggage in one of the corners near the door. There is a bed and there are people sitting on that, backs to the wall in various attitudes of sleep. There are more people on the floor, including some children. It reminds her of a photograph she once saw of a painting by Goya – something about a massacre. There is some space near the luggage so Julia steps across the prone bodies and inserts herself into it, back to the wall. She has just enough room to stretch out her legs. There is some coughing and snuffling. Somebody talks in their sleep. Someone else starts to snore. Despite all the bodies, the cell becomes very cold and Julia draws her coat around her and pulls the collar up. It doesn’t make much difference.

  The day, three and a half years ago, that Julia had resolved to leave home was in May. A Saturday. Shabbes. She feigned illness so that her parents would go to synagogue without her. The German invasion had started a few days previously and she had hesitated that Saturday morning after she heard the door close. Should she go ahead? She had a plan – she had had it for weeks. Everything was in place. She had found a place to live, she had a job. But now this – the Germans.

  She didn’t have much time to decide. Her parents would be back. She agonised. The minutes ticked by. Her suitcase sat on the bed, looking at her. Asking the question. ‘Are we going? I’m ready.’

  And finally she thought – if not now, when? If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

  ‘Fuck it,’ she said, and picked up the suitcase.

  Julia wanted to be either a writer or an actress. Maybe both. Her job was at the Hollandsche Schouwburg theatre. It was menial – a dresser and general dogsbody. The pay was shit but just enough to cover the rent on a dump and cheap food. It was a start.

  But things started to go wrong almost immediately. Her ration cards were sent to her home and she couldn’t go back there. When she tried to re-register with her new address she was told that because she wasn’t yet eighteen, she would have to get her parents’ permission. That closed that door. Without ration cards, she couldn’t get food. She eventually managed to get some cards on the black ma
rket – in the theatre somebody always knew somebody – and to get herself re-registered, but the cost was everything she earned. She needed money for the rent. That was when the idea came to her that she could use her looks and her body. That led her to the photographs. She only did them a few times to pay off the cost of the ration cards.

  After that things were settled for a few months. She worked, she earned, she ate, she had a little money. But in October 1941, the Germans changed the name of the theatre to the Joodsche Schouwburg and decreed that only Jews could perform there. Julia had become friends with an old guy called Anton who had worked backstage there for ever.

  ‘It’s the beginning,’ he said. ‘You should get out of here while you can, kid. It’s only going to get worse.’

  She hadn’t believed him until the following April when the order for the Star came.

  ‘Get out,’ Anton said again. ‘Find some other way to make money. If you’re really – and I mean really – stuck, call this guy.’

  ‘This guy’ had turned out to be Bert.

  That first time, the first film, she had felt the same sense of dislocation she feels now. Obviously, her being here is only a temporary thing and they are going to take her somewhere else. She tries not to think about that. She tries to just be here now.

  In the time since she left home, Julia has developed a skill that she calls ‘moving her mind’. It was what she did during the films. She would be naked, legs open, and doing what she had to do, but her mind would be in a different place. It would be walking out the door after the shoot into the fresh air outside. Her body might be in front of the camera but she tried to make it that the rest of her was outside waiting for her. After the shooting, she and that other piece of herself would rendezvous. They would have money. They would go off and do things together.

  Now it is like the opposite of that. Her mind wants to wander off, to try to anticipate what lies ahead, but Julia keeps bringing it back.

  ‘Please stay with me,’ she keeps saying to herself in her head. At some stage she must actually say it aloud because somebody shushes her and tells her to be quiet.

  She dozes.

  Some time later, while the night is still black outside, the cell door opens and a rectangle of light falls across the tangle of sleeping bodies. Julia’s eyes snap open. Someone else is pushed into the cell and the door clangs shut again. A female silhouette in a coat stands there, unable to see after the brightness of the corridor outside.

  ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘Over here,’ says Julia. ‘There’s space.’

  ‘But I can’t see.’

  The voice is young, fearful. Wet. She has been crying.

  Julia puts her hand up.

  ‘Take my hand.’

  Ice cold fingers find hers.

  ‘Just be careful where you step.’

  The girl steps over Julia’s outstretched legs. Julia makes a space between herself and the piled-up suitcases. The girl puts her back against the wall and slides down, slotting into the space beside Julia. She can just make out a girl about her own age or maybe a bit younger. She is taller than Julia.

  ‘Thank you,’ the girl whispers.

  Julia goes to take her hand away but the girl continues to grip it tightly. Julia leaves it there. The girl is shaking. Julia just wants to go to sleep now. She is beyond exhausted. So much has happened it seems like months since she was filming with Bert – was it really only yesterday? But the girl has begun to cry and is soon sobbing.

  This makes Julia angry. She wants to fucking cry. She wants somebody to hold her. To comfort her. Just once in her life to tell her it’s all going to be all right. But this girl isn’t going to do that.

  The crying continues. It’s really getting on Julia’s nerves now. She sits there stonily until the girl goes silent. Eventually, Julia falls asleep. When she wakes, the girl’s head is on Julia’s shoulder and Julia’s head rests against hers. The girl has drooled onto the sleeve of Julia’s coat. When Julia lifts her head, the girl wakes. As soon as she becomes aware of her surroundings she starts to cry again.

  Christ, Julia thinks, this one. She wants consoling. But nobody’s consoling Julia. That’s the way it’s always been her whole fucking life – she’s had to stand alone, with nobody to protect her. Julia ignores her, struggling with herself as her mind races off again, trying to anticipate what’s coming.

  The girl eventually stops, takes a handkerchief from her sleeve and wipes her nose. She is very skinny and wears a coat, beneath it a dark dress and black stockings. It’s very hard to see what colour anything is in the weak light of the cell. The clothes look like they were expensive once but are now worn and shabby. The girl is maybe a year or two younger than Julia and unbelievably pale – more bone white than a corpse, with hollow dark circles around her eyes. Julia speculates that she might have worked in an expensive shop or maybe in De Bijenkorf, the department store – maybe the perfume department or expensive clothes or lingerie.

  The girl returns the hankie to her sleeve and then takes a pair of glasses from the pocket of her cardigan. Putting them on, and with her blonde hair tied up, she suddenly doesn’t look at all like a girl from De Bijenkorf. Rather, she reminds Julia of the girl who was top of the class in school. Julia can’t even remember her name now – just that she hated her.

  ‘I’m Suzanne,’ the girl says.

  She extends a hand. Reluctantly Julia takes it. The freezing fingers again.

  ‘Julia,’ she says shortly, not wanting to get involved.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ says Suzanne, with unexpected formality.

  Julia says nothing. The rest of the occupants of the cell are waking up. People are having to go to the toilet. A coat is used as a screen. Somebody complains that the bucket is nearly full. The smell of shit and piss is suddenly much stronger. The children begin to moan and say that they’re hungry.

  ‘Are these some of your family?’ asks Suzanne.

  Julia shakes her head. Don’t talk.

  She does anyway.

  ‘No, I’m by myself.’

  ‘Me too.’

  The implication seems to be that they should join forces in some way. Fuck that.

  After a pause, Suzanne continues. ‘I was in hiding. My parents found a place for me. But there was only room for me. I suppose my parents must be gone to the East now.’

  Suzanne chokes back a sob. Julia remembers that that was why she hated that girl in school. Sara. That was her name. She hated her because she was so smart and seemed to have such a perfect life. It sounds like this one had had the same. My parents found a place for me.

  ‘I hope they’re still alive,’ says Suzanne. ‘I think somebody betrayed me. What about you?’

  ‘I just carried on. Didn’t report. Didn’t play their stupid fucking game.’

  ‘You did? My God, that was so brave.’

  Julia didn’t think it was brave. Just smart. You can be smart in school and still be pretty stupid. Julia wonders where Sara is now. In hiding? Yes, her parents would probably have tried to find a hiding place for their darling daughter too.

  Suzanne’s face is not so much pretty as intriguing. She has high cheekbones and kind eyes. It’s a face that invites questions. Curiosity. Julia both wants to ask but doesn’t at the same time.

  Suzanne says, ‘You don’t seem afraid.’

  ‘I’m very afraid. But so far, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  Julia knows she’s bragging.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you mind me asking –’

  ‘Maybe some other time.’

  An awkward silence follows. Suzanne asks the question that has been tormenting Julia.

  ‘What do you think is going to happen to us?’

  How the fuck should I know blazes in Julia’s head but she manages to say, ‘Ship us off to some place. A camp or something. If they were going to kill us they’d have already done it.’

 
; The words come out without thinking. Julia doesn’t know where they came from. Are they a wish or what she actually thinks? She finds though that, either way, they make her feel a bit braver. Despite herself, she says to Suzanne, ‘It’s better to be afraid. Makes you sharper.’

  ‘You think so?’

  Julia doesn’t but she says that she does. Why is she trying to make this girl she doesn’t like feel better?

  ‘I’m sorry I was so upset earlier on,’ says Suzanne. ‘I was in shock. I had been in hiding for two years. I thought I was going to get through. That I’d made it.’

  ‘I can see how you would,’ says Julia noncommittally.

  ‘I’m better now,’ says Suzanne. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  This is too much for Julia. She cracks.

  ‘How can you say that? How can you say such a stupid thing?’

  ‘What’s stupid?’

  ‘“It won’t happen again.” What do you mean? You won’t cry again? You won’t be afraid again?’

  ‘I might cry,’ says Suzanne. ‘And I’ll certainly be afraid. But I’ll try to control it. I’ll try to control my fear.’

  Julia’s heard it all at this stage. ‘And how the fuck are you going to do that?’ she asks.

  She’s enjoying swearing in front of Suzanne who’s clearly taken aback by it. Little daddy’s girl never heard bad words.

  ‘You know the weather?’ says Suzanne. Her voice is even. Calm. Rational.

  ‘Of course I know the weather,’ says Julia.

  ‘Our emotions are like the weather. They change from day to day, from hour to hour. Sometimes from minute to minute. Right?’

  ‘Yeah’

  ‘I try to make my own weather. Bring my own weather with me.’

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘It was something I realised while I was in hiding – that it’s weakness to let your thoughts control your actions. You can let your actions control your thoughts. Then you’ll be strong.’

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘Well, for example, I had these long days with almost nothing to do. So I made up these movies in my head. I would film a bit every day and assemble the movie in my head and then play it.’ Suzanne has been speaking quietly but now is becoming more animated. ‘Happy movies. Sad movies. Whatever mood I wanted to create I just played that movie.’