He held up an imaginary wine glass. ‘It shall never be forgotten.’
All around the room, people held up their imaginary goblets.
‘Hear hear,’ said Mrs Cohen. ‘L’chaim!’
‘L’chaim.To Life!’ everyone chorused back.
Silence draped the hot little tenement room. Dorotha felt hope, fear, and a desperate, desperate longing for life.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep doing this every Sunday until...’ She trailed off. It didn’t really need saying.
One by one, the women filed out, back to their own cramped rooms and spiralling dilemmas. Millie Hauser pressed a small potato and a copy ofThe Secret Gardeninto Dorotha’s hand as she passed. ‘I’m sorry. A peasant wouldn’t have fed this potato to his pig before the war, but I want you to have it,’ she said. ‘It’s all I can offer in return for your kindness. This book has taken me to places I could never imagine.’
Dorotha stared down at the battered paperback that once belonged to her sister Adela. It had been the length and breadth of the ghetto, passed along workshop benches and exchanged in food distribution lines. How she longed to see her little sister, press her arms around her, tell her what this book – and reading – meant to them all.
‘Mama and I are going to see if we can get some bread,’ Ruth said, once everyone had left, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders. ‘Gabriele’s asleep; perhaps we should go.’
Dorotha nodded as the pair left, leaving her and Oscar alone with the sleeping Gabriele.
‘Will you go?’ she asked.
‘I don’t see we have a choice,’ he replied. ‘They’re already stopping food coming into the ghetto.’
‘So they plan to starve us out?’
He nodded. ‘There’ll be a group of around eight hundred prisoners left behind to clear up the ghetto. Anyone else found will be shot on the spot.’
Gabriele moaned in her sleep, her breath shallow.
Neither voiced their fear. They both knew the child’s fate if she presented herself at one of the assembly points.
Oscar pulled her into his arms. For a while, they leaned into each other, their frail bodies resting against one another. She had missed the warmth of human touch. When life is reduced to survival, one almost forgets how to feel pleasure in a simple embrace.
Dorotha looked up and saw pure love gazing down at her.
‘I hope you don’t think me too forward.’
She smiled. ‘I think the time for formalities has long passed.’
He echoed her smile. ‘Very well. I am in love with you, Dorotha. Your strength, your devotion, your passion. Together, two weak people can become strong, don’t you agree? Together, we’ll find a way.’
She closed her eyes and nodded, her heart leaping.
He loves me!
They sat down on the battered couch, two young people, old before their time, daring to hope for a future. It struck Dorotha how odd it was to have found love in the darkest of days, like a bright butterfly fluttering into a bomb site.
They must have drifted off to sleep, exhausted from the busy afternoon and the extreme hunger. Dorotha woke groggy, to find Ruth and her mother standing over them.
‘The child,’ Mrs Mordkowicz said, breathless. ‘She is very ill.’
Dorotha sat bolt upright, frantically trying to assemble her thoughts.
Oscar was already on his feet, gathering Gabriele into his arms. The little girl hung limply, one arm dangling down. Dorotha could feel the heat of the fever coming off her.
‘I think she has typhus,’ he said.
Ruth began to weep. ‘What do we do? We can’t leave her to die.’
