‘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 fornezuchon-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.
11
Joyce
London, 29 December 1940
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 18
SSL Friends, I write this with a heavy heart. My library is gone. Exeter Library was once described as one of the most palatial libraries in the country. But Hitler has wiped us off the face of the earth. I write this to avoid the frightful sight of so much smouldering rubble. In my bag is the only book to have survived.English Men of Letters. One book is all I have left. I’m a librarian without books. What good am I now? I know I’ll recover my morale, but for now, dear friends in the Secret Society, oh my sorrow...
Jo x
The morning after they launched the mobile library, Joyce woke with a start and immediately knew she’d slept in. Groggily, she pulled down the homemade facemask that Mitsy had made for her from surgical gauze, sprinkled with eucalyptus oil to keep the germs at bay, and yawned.
It was a Sunday, which meant the wardens were less zealous about turfing out shelterers. She groaned as the first Tube train of the day slid into the station, her very own alarm call. Mercifully there were few people on the Tube that morning to see her mussed-up hair and bleary eyes.
She knew she shouldn’t have spent quite so long writing the previous evening, but the words flowed out of her mind and ontothe page, almost as if she had no hand in it whatsoever. She had even written a letter to Virginia Woolf via her publishers, telling her about the Secret Society of Librarians. She doubted very much she’d hear back, but it felt good all the same.
‘Morning,farshlofener,’ said Adela, crouching down beside her bunk with a mug of tea from the café in the booking hall. ‘Yiddish for sleepyhead, before you ask.’
Library Cat leapt up onto her bunk looking pleased with herself, and butted her head against Joyce’s, purring like a tractor.
‘She talked a girl on the westbound platform into sharing her fish-paste sandwich,’ Adela laughed, stroking the cat’s head. ‘You’re late up this morning. Lilley and Rosie have taken Mitsy out for fresh air and Dore’s asked us to meet him at the library.’
On a Sunday?Joyce thought, immediately sensing something must be wrong.
Thirty minutes later, after a hasty shower at a Lifebuoy shower van parked outside the Tube, the girls arrived at Camden Central Library, only to find a sizeable chunk of the roof missing.
‘Whilst we were underground reading about the Great Fire of London, our own library was being blitzed,’ said Dore, coming to greet them on the steps with a grim expression. ‘Jerry hit Camden hard last night. The train station copped it, half the high street is missing, and five people killed. I suppose one ought to feel grateful, but it’s a terrible mess in there.’
