He walked in with the ghetto library briefcase and his clothes tied in a sheet.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he apologised. ‘But how do you decide which book to take and which to leave? In the end I settled for Thomas Mann’sThe Magic Mountain.The protagonist is facing his own mortality as he begins a journey. It felt apt.’
He laughed dryly, then trailed off.
‘What’s going on? Why isn’t Gabriele better dressed for the journey? I thought we agreed she would be made up to look older?’
‘We’ll wait outside in the corridor and say our goodbyes when you’re ready,’ Ruth said quietly.
‘What does she mean, say our goodbyes?’ Oscar demanded once they had filed out of the room.
Dorotha explained the situation as best she could; by the time she’d finished, his eyes were black with pain.
‘Is there anything I can say to change your mind?’
She shook her head.
‘Why am I not surprised? The reason I fell in love with you, for your empathy and courage, is the very reason we are now about to part.’
He dropped his suitcase and pulled her into his arms. And then he was kissing her. His lips gently working along the sweep of her eyebrows, her cheeks and then her mouth. She closed her eyes and tasted the salt of his tears on her lips. She realised then, in the very moment she was losing him, how desperately she loved him, this beautiful, soulful man who had stitched himself into the threads of her story. Who had given her such purpose with his quiet strength and support of her and her library.
Dorotha opened her eyes and stepped away to fetch something. ‘If you survive this and I do not, would you find my sister Adela and give her this?’ She pressed a battered copy ofThe Secret Gardeninto his hand. ‘Tell her...’
He pressed his finger against her lips to silence her. ‘You will tell her yourself when you see her...’
Her thoughts reeled as she put the book back on the table.
But what if I die here? What if I starve to death or am shot? What if I never see you again?
All those thoughts and more fractured the air between them. She took his hand in hers and smoothed her thumb over his palm, feeling the edges of their broken goodbye.
‘Be well, my wife-to-be,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘Iwillcome back and find you.’
Oscar left and then, just like that, she was hugging Ruth and her mother.
None of them could speak for the pain of their parting. They just clung to one another, speechless that after so many years of surviving together, it had come to this.
‘If we never see each other again, I’ll write a book about you, Dorotha Berkowicz,’ Ruth whispered as she finally untangled herself from Dorotha’s embrace. ‘The librarian of the Lódz ghetto, and it’ll be a bestseller, mark me.’
Dorotha smiled through her tears. ‘Mind you do.’
‘I’ll be seeing you, ghetto sister.’ Then Ruth was gone, her drab skirts brushing against the dusty ghetto street.
Dorotha watched them all through the window until they had blended into the shabbily dressed crowd, like a slow-moving grey river.
Her legs weakened and waves of red, shuddering pain washed over her. Then she felt a small hand in hers, looked down and saw the eyes of a child staring up at her expectantly.
‘Hey,bubbeleh, sweetie. It’s just you and me now.’
17
Joyce
London, April 1941
‘Libertatem per Lectio’
Bulletin No. 21
