Chapter 10 - Dorotha #2
‘I’m not offering it. If you let me search the house for books, in exchange I’ll bring you whatever food I can manage, and blankets too. You must be freezing. That’d be a fair exchange, no?’
Dorotha could sense the churn of the woman’s thoughts. But it was the look on her daughter’s face that sealed it. Her eyes were fixed on the bread, naked hunger written all over her.
She nodded imperceptibly and handed the bread to her daughter, who wolfed it down.
‘Don’t think you can come here when you like,’ the woman retorted, her suspicion clearly not assuaged. ‘This is my home.’
Dorotha wanted to weep at a world in which a woman was forced to hide in her cellar just to keep her child alive.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Ava. I-I lost my parents in the round-up. Not a minute goes by when I don’t wish I had your strength of character and foresight.’
Ava softened.
‘Very well. You’ll find my husband’s collection of books on the bookcase on the first floor. Take what you want . . . if they’re still there. We live down here in the basement. I haven’t been up there for months for fear of being seen.’
‘Please, miss . . .’ the little girl’s voice in the gloom shocked Dorotha. ‘Can you please get me my copy of Emil and the Detectives? It’s on the chair by the bed, where I left it before we ran.’
Dorotha looked more closely at the girl. She was a pretty little thing, with red hair and a smattering of freckles. She was deathly pale, but her eyes, as blue as china, gleamed at the promise of a reunion with her favourite book.
Dorotha nodded. Gingerly, she picked up her briefcase, clambered up the basement steps and found the door handle.
‘Be quick,’ Ava ordered.
Dorotha was in and out in under fifteen minutes. Not stopping to read the book titles, she scooped as many as she could into her briefcase, and grabbed the copy of Emil and the Detectives on her way down.
She handed it to Gabriele. ‘Thank you,’ she said, hugging it tight to her chest. ‘You are a shlingen bikher . . . a bookworm.’
Dorotha smiled at the sweet saying and tapped the little girl’s nose. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
It was then that Dorotha noticed Ava was shaking, tears streaming down her face.
‘I’m sorry if I sounded rude,’ she wept. ‘Only I haven’t spoken to another soul apart from Gabriele in three months. I-I’m just so scared.’
‘Oh, Ava,’ Dorotha cried, closing her hands over the woman’s.
‘We all are. But you’re not alone any more.
I’ll do everything in my power to help you.
I’ll come back as soon as I’m able and, if you like, I’d love to read to Gabriele.
I used to host children’s story time at ?ód? library before the war. ’
‘Oh please, Mama, can she?’ Gabriele begged.
Ava nodded, her body sagging.
‘I’m trusting you, Miss Berkowicz.’
Dorotha nodded gravely. ‘And I will not betray that trust.’
The woman extended her hand, her fingers as thin as pencils, and Dorotha took it.
‘Don’t wait too long to visit.’
Dorotha left the way she had come in. Heaving the briefcase through the small basement window and then pulling herself up after it.
Many people would have thought twice about returning.
Aiding and abetting anyone who was wanted by the Germans for escaping the round-ups equalled certain death.
Only last week, a family had been found hiding in an attic.
The Gestapo had rounded up everyone in the same block and made a spectacle of their hanging in the middle of Hanukkah.
They hadn’t just slung the rope around the escapees’ necks, but everyone who lived in the same apartment block, regardless of whether they’d known or not.
Their bodies had been left hanging for days as a ‘deterrent’.
Dorotha ran the rest of the way home, the book-filled briefcase bashing against her shins, and was close to collapse when she stepped inside their room with minutes to spare before curfew.
‘You’re home!’ Mrs Mordkowicz gasped, her voice trailing off when she spotted Dorotha’s face.
‘What’s happened? Don’t even think about lying. Speak the truth and shame the devil.’
Ruth, sitting on the floor, darning her socks, lifted one eyebrow and said dryly, ‘The Schupo have nothing on Mama’s interrogation. Do yourself a favour, Dorotha, and answer her.’
Dorotha dropped her briefcase and spilled the whole story.
She expected anger, condemnation, and she wouldn’t have blamed her either. She had put them all in danger, but instead, Mrs Mordkowicz slumped into her chair.
‘That poor woman. We must do whatever we can to help her. Now I have this new job, I can sneak them the odd potato.’
After the Sperre, Mrs Mordkowicz had managed to get work in a potato distribution centre. Second only to working in a bakery, it was one of the best jobs in the ghetto and, from time to time, a precious potato found their way into their evening soup.
‘But we’ll need more than that,’ she mused. ‘Leave it with me.’
Then she turned to Dorotha. ‘Come, child. You’re frozen.’
Mrs Mordkowicz wrapped a coat around her and led her to the table, where a bowl of soup and some bread awaited her.
‘Eat, eat,’ she ordered.
Without any fanfare, Ruth’s mother had taken over the matriarchal role in their home.
She was equally lavish to both Dorotha and Ruth in her affections.
Dorotha had to hand it to her: she was fairness itself, dividing their meagre meals up equally between ‘her girls’.
It had never been spoken, but she divided her love as equally as their precious rations.
Every evening, she would comb the lice from their hair and rub an ointment, which she had managed to swap for a brooch, into their sores.
‘Come, come, let me see to those feet,’ she said, patting her lap. ‘The last thing any of us needs are infections.’
She rubbed the powerful herbal tincture into Dorotha’s feet. Within seconds, her head started to loll and her eyes flickered closed.
‘By the way. You have your first patrons. I’ve been speaking to some of the women at work and you’d have thought I offered them sugar, not books. Ruth, fetch that list from my bag.’
Dorotha’s eyes snapped open.
‘You did what?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, I was careful. I trust these women. They have as much to lose as you do, remember. They’re coming here next Sunday to make their book selections.’
‘But all the books are in the library,’ Dorotha protested. ‘I haven’t yet worked out how I was going to distribute them.’
‘There now. I’ve saved you the bother,’ Mrs Mordkowicz replied bluntly. ‘It’s settled then. You’d better make sure to bring home some books in that new briefcase of yours, Miss Librarian, and, please God, everyone will be happy.’
She went on, kneading and rubbing Dorotha’s feet with her strong hands. If the stakes hadn’t been so high, Dorotha might have laughed at the older woman’s chutzpah.
‘They want adventure novels, romance and detective stories; something to lose themselves in,’ she sniffed. ‘Nothing too highbrow. They want escape, not education.’
Dorotha gave in to her laugher. ‘You are quite something, Mrs Mordkowicz.’
‘Just make sure you’re ready.’
‘I will be.’
‘Good. Now, let’s sleep. Every morning we wake . . .’
‘Yes, yes, Mama,’ Ruth said. ‘Is one day closer to our liberation.’
‘We must keep up hope for nezuchon-bituchon,’ she said, murmuring the Hebrew for certainty in the final victory.
They fell asleep cuddled up next to each other, all in the one bed, for warmth, limbs tangled like three pretzels.
For Dorotha, realisation that she was, once again, a librarian helped to push back the bleak tide of despair.
The fact that there were women in the ghetto willing to risk their lives to come and borrow a book from her was astonishing and empowering.
The Nazis had stolen so much from her, but this was one part of her identity they hadn’t erased.
The milky light of dawn was streaking the eastern horizon when Dorotha eventually drifted off to sleep.