She closed her eyes, and in the darkness she saw their little faces gathered around her at the story time, which for many had been their last.
He began to sway, and she suddenly realised he couldn’t have slept in days.
Wordlessly, she led him in the direction of the library van and opened the back doors. Pulling as many blankets as she could from behind the counter, she made a bed of them.
‘Lie down,’ she ordered. ‘I’m going to fetch you a cup of tea.’
By the time she got back, he was fast asleep. She set down the tea and lay down next to him. Cocooned in the safety of the library van, nestled in a forest of books, she wished she could hold real life at bay.
‘I think I love you, Harry,’ she whispered into the space between them. He stirred and moaned, his arms reaching out to catch at something unseen. There and then she vowed, she would always be there for the people who needed her. Adela. Dorotha. The Secret Society. Harry. Because love... Well, love was the only damn thing that made any sense right now.
Being careful not to wake Harry, she reached for her notebook and pen. ‘Dear Dorotha...’ And then she trailed off as the sobering reality hit once more. Like the rest of her letters, she couldn’t post it. After all, she had not the slightest clue where to send it. Where were they taking Jewish people in Poland? And to what end?
But was that a reason to stop writing? Because surely if she did that, it would be like admitting that her friend no longer existed, that she no longer mattered, and then Hitler had won. His regime may have taken her, swallowed her into a black hole, but shewasout there somewhere.
‘I am writing this letter to you in the knowledge it can’t be sent yet, and I will have to give it to you in person when this war is over. That, my friend, is all I cling to in this madness:the knowledge that one day you and I will meet again. We’ll stuff ourselves silly on cake, drink gin and argue over books, and laugh at your attempts to make me bolder and more forthright. But you know, Dorotha, I think you’d be proud of me. I’m a different person to the woman you last met.’
Next to her, Harry cried out in his sleep and she reached out to stroke his hair before resuming her letter.
‘So much has happened, Dorotha. I have never needed you more than I do now. I need my best friend.’
But when,if, they were reunited, how was she supposed to keep such a monumental secret from her best friend, without betraying her promise to Adela? Never had she felt so utterly powerless. Joyce looked around the walls of her magical little mobile library, created with so much care and love. In just a few short months these shelves would be stripped of books and the keys returned, unless she could find a way to fight for its reprieve. In the midst of such atrocities, surely the need for this library was even more urgent. But time was running out.
15
Dorotha
Occupied Poland, July 1944
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 180
Gabriele’s been with us for fifteen months. She’s the dearest child and, despite my best intentions, I grow fonder of her every day, which is a dangerous thing in the ghetto. I’ve read herEmil and the Detectiveshundreds of times. It’s become our good-luck talisman. It’s the only one of Eric Kästner’s books to have escaped Nazi censorship. Let’s hope she manages to achieve the same feat. Friends, I fear my bulletins will become shorter. We’re running short of everything now. Food. Paper. Time.
The resistance is warning of an imminent liquidation of the ghetto. The chairman’s lost all his power and the Gestapo have taken control of administration. Even the Germans are twitchy. I long to stay alive to see liberation.
Your Dorotha x
The clock was ticking, counting down the days until the liquidation of the ghetto, which most prisoners suspected meant only one thing.The liquidation of human lives.The mood in administration since the chairman had been replaced with the Gestapo was dire. His dwindling power proved what Dorotha had suspected all along; it was only ever an illusion.
Everyone wondered what would get them first: disease or the Germans. The horse-drawndoroz?kideath cart had become an increasingly familiar sight in the ghetto, rattling over the cobbles, with emaciated, naked legs dangling over the sides.
Outside it was so hot, the sky looked as though it had curdled. It was ten a.m. on a Sunday morning in late July, and the temperature was already topping 40 degrees. Administration had ordered the windows remained closed in the office to prevent the rotten smell of the ghetto from drifting through from outside, but all it did was seal in the smell of many ripe, unwashed bodies. For the past hour, Dorotha and Ruth had been busy in the stationery cupboard library, organising which books to take back to their room for their patrons to borrow later that same day. Dorotha had just nipped out to use the bathroom, but when she returned and opened the door, she jumped.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’ Ruth exclaimed. She was curled up in the corner, with a book propped in her lap, jammed in between a mop and a bookshelf.
In that moment, Ruth looked so extraordinarily like Joyce reading in the broom cupboard at the London School of Economics, the day Dorotha had met her, she felt like she’d stepped through a portal into another world.
Dorotha staggered as another wave of light-headedness hit her. The heat. The hunger. Yesterday, she had queued at a food distribution point for two hours, only to come away with half a loaf and some potato peelings. All they had eaten for the past seven days was a thin soup, raw grated radish on stale bread, and a sort of pancake made from potato peelings.
‘Come,’ she urged Ruth. ‘There’s no time to read. Fill this briefcase with as many books as you can. Mrs Cohen is looking after Gabriele, but we must get her out of the room before we open the library.’
Thank heavens for Mrs Cohen, formidable matriarch of the ghetto. After the Pesach celebration, Dorotha had told her the whole story, including their fears for Gabriele’s mother, along with their own at how on earth they were to keep the child safe. The secret had simply felt too big to shoulder, but of courseMrs Cohen and Oscar had helped without reservation, not just in securing extra rations, but Mrs Cohen had often stepped in to help with the care of the little girl.
Dorotha and Ruth worked fast, piling as many books into the briefcase as they could. A shadow passed over the little library.
‘Oscar, what’s wrong? Why are you here on your day off?’
