‘Peter has said I can borrowThe Secret Garden,’ Adela said, looking animated. ‘I was reading it before the invasion.’
‘Is that all right?’ Joyce asked. ‘She’s not a member.’
‘She is now,’ he said. ‘We have ways and means.’ He patted Adela’s shoulder. ‘Everyone deserves the opportunity to finish their book. We can’t let a ruddy little ignoramus like Hitler get between you and such a wonderful story.’
Adela curled up on a chair immediately with the tea, her book and the cat, who hopped up on her lap and immediately began to purr like an engine.
‘Sorry, that’s Library Cat,’ Peter chuckled. ‘She’s taken a shine to you.’
Within minutes, the cat was curled in a perfect ball, asleep on Adela’s lap, while she lost herself in another world, her fingers softly raking through the cat’s fur. Clara and Peter returned to their shelving duties, and Joyce sat, comforted just to be in a place of such acceptance and peace. Scattered diamonds of light fell from the glass above and cast the library in an ethereal glow. Joyce felt a bucolic sense of peace unravel inside her.
The stacks stretched up high to the glass roof like so many treetops reaching to the sky. It was such a fine library, with so much thought and care going into every last detail. Plaster medallions dedicated to cultural heroes such as Karl Marx and Charles Darwin stared down at her from on high. The library walls were clad in ornate wooden panelling the colour of dark honey.
Sitting in a puddle of late afternoon light, Joyce closed her eyes and mentally catalogued the noises of a library. The squeak of the library cartwheels. The softthunk thunkof the stamp as a book was checked out. The rustle of paper and the soft murmur of voices. Then another noise, low and feral, sliced through the ambience. More of a vibration than a noise, in fact. Joyce opened her eyes. Library Cat was standing up on Adela’s lap, her usual liquid movements tense and coiled.
The air began to quiver, and she saw Peter and Clara lock eyes in alarm. The mournful wail of the air-raid siren rose up.
‘Yes, thank you, Moaning Minnie,’ Peter said, attempting to make light of it. ‘Probably a false alarm, but shall we head to the public shelter just to be on the safe side?’
The rhythmic throb of aircraft seemed to rise up through Joyce’s bone marrow, swelling to a deafening roar, and instinctively she made a grab for the library counter.
Suddenly, the glass ceiling exploded and their world was torn in two. Joyce had a sensation of falling. A thick curtain of pain and heat draped over her.
The air was suffused with black, toxic tendrils of smoke, curling round her ankles and whispering at her throat, and abruptly she came to, as if she had been smacked with icy water. She was covered in glass and rubble, her yellow dress singed and torn. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t see and, oh Lord, the ringing in her ears...
‘Adela,’ she managed, but her throat was sandpaper, her limbs made of cotton wool. She coughed, and saliva and grit spooled from her mouth. The air was frigid cold, but when she lifted her cheek, she felt burning. The ringing subsided and, after what felt like hours, or maybe it was only seconds, Joyce managed to stagger to her feet, whirling around in the roiling black smoke, her movements jerky like a marionette puppet’s.
‘Adela,’ she rasped. ‘Clara. Peter.’
But when the smoke cleared, Joyce saw a vision of hell.
The library had caved in on itself. Books were strewn over heaps of twisted masonry and rubble. The powdery black remains of thousands of burnt books floated and swirled in the air like a grotesque snow globe. A great pall of greasy black smoke mushroomed over the whole apocalyptic scene.
And in the middle of the crater was Adela. She was sitting with her knees drawn into her chest, whimpering, incongruously still clutchingThe Secret Garden. Yards from her was a body. Crumpled waxy limbs were just visible through the powdery black remains. Desolation flooded through Joyce as she looked at the lifeless figure of a man.
Clara sat sobbing over the body, her face white as bone. ‘Peter,’ she cried. ‘Peter, talk to me.’
4
Dorotha
Occupied Poland, September 1942
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 86
Have we been forgotten? Does the civilised world know the ghettos exist?
I set down my intention here. Survive and tell the world.
We are being starved in the ghetto. Food is an obsession. Last week, I swapped a cardigan for a cabbage. In the ghetto, we call this ‘organising’. Cigarettes for a potato, half a loaf for a bar of soap, and so on. I’ll regret giving away my cardigan come the bitter winter, but for now, our most urgent need is food. I must keep my parents fed. I can only admit this to you friends, but there has been a shift in the dynamics of my relationship with my beloved parents. I feel I have now taken on the role of protector. They grow weaker by the day. I watch them with mounting fear. But enough of this indulgent talk. If people are ever to believe what happened here, sentiment must be set aside in favour of facts. A new transport of nine thousand has recently come in from the city of Zdun´ska Wola, adding to the already chronic overcrowding in the ghetto. How long can we go on living like this?
Your Dorotha
One week on from their arrival, it already felt like Ruth and her mother had always been there. Mrs Mordkowicz had a job with her mother, working in the straw boot workshop, andRuth was working alongside Dorotha in the Department of Vital Statistics in the administration block in Baluty, the nerve centre of ghetto life. They were lucky to have office jobs where they were protected from the elements and given a daily soup ration at dinnertimes.
But it did have its downsides . . .
