Chapter 54

54

In the days that followed, everyone struggled with their broken bodies and shattered minds to ease themselves into a semblance of normality. Their first task was to tidy the mess in the apartment left by the Gestapo. Babi stayed with them in the apartment and slept with Jana in Papa's double bed and Papa moved into Jana's room. Andrej stayed with them too and slept uncomfortably on the settee in the living room.

One of the resistance fighters, a friend of Egon's, managed to borrow a horse and cart and rode out to break the sad news to Ramona of her husband's death and bring the children back to Prague. Jana and Lillian waited at the appointed time near the station and as the horse and cart approached with three small heads bobbing next to the driver, Lillian rushed forward to greet them. Maddie and Yveta sprung into their mother's arms with shrieks of delight and tears of happiness flowed.

The driver swung Michal down, and Jana hugged him even though her injuries were still painful.

‘How did Ramona take the news?' Jana asked Egon's friend. Then added, ‘That was a stupid question. Ramona has lost her husband and now lives alone in the middle of nowhere.'

He sighed. ‘Me and the wife will keep an eye on her.'

Michal looked over to Lillian and the girls and back to Jana, his face questioning.

‘There's no news yet, Michal. Your parents weren't in Terezin so must have been sent somewhere else. The end of the war is rather chaotic at the moment, so we'll have to be patient, but we will find them. Till then, would you like to stay with me? Babi is there too.'

He nodded and turned again to the girls, who waved him goodbye and skipped alongside their mother as they walked towards the Jewish Quarter to discover what had become of their home.

The apartment was crowded but they were happy to be all together. Michal took over the settee and Andrej bought a second-hand mattress which he rolled out on the living-room floor. He was back at work at the police station helping to fire the fascists and appoint new staff. Jana had begun to clear up the carnage in the bookshop.

Weeks passed and Jana's wounds healed but still there had been no news of Michal's parents or Lenka. The first reports of what the prisoners had experienced in the concentration camps were so horrific that Jana found it difficult to bear. Then one morning, the letter arrived that she had been dreading: Michal's parents had died in Auschwitz.

With a heart of lead, she trudged up the stairs to the attic and pushed open the door. Michal was at Papa's workbench, carving a puppet, Papa by his side giving instructions, his crippled hands, lifeless in his lap. Yet despite his injuries, Papa was smiling. ‘This boy has a natural talent. I'm going to make him my protégée and together… Goodness, Jana, whatever is wrong? '

She called Michal to her and he slipped down from the stool. They sat together on the floor and she told him. He didn't cry; he hardly reacted at all. After some moments, he said in a very quiet voice, ‘I knew they wouldn't come back.'

Jana put an arm across his shoulders. ‘You have us. We'll always be here for you.'

They sat there for a while in silence. Then Michal pulled away from Jana's arm and climbed back up on the stool next to Papa. ‘I'd like to carry on now,' Michal said. ‘How should I carve the eyes?'

Jana was determined to get the bookshop in order again and reopen. One afternoon, as she stood in the middle of the shop, planning some changes, there was a rap on the shop door. She saw it was Ivan and opened up. He stumbled inside, his face ashen, contorted.

Bile rose in Jana's throat. No, please, no.

Ivan crumpled to his knees, beating his fists on the floor. He howled, a terrible, feral sound that sent tremors to Jana's core. The room spun and Jana fell beside him.

‘Tell me,' she said. And when he didn't reply, hot emotion erupted within her, terror and anger making her lose control.

She screamed at him, ‘Tell me!'

He raged back at her, ‘She's dead. Lenka is dead.'

Jana's body jerked as if bullets were ripping through her once again and she lay on the shop floor and turned on her back, waiting for the darkness to come. But it didn't. Only the deepest ache of loss and the most unspeakable sadness.

Later, upstairs, over a bottle of Vodka, Ivan filled in the details for everyone. Lenka had been sent to Ravensbrück, a concentration camp for women in Germany about a year previously. She had died six months ago, allegedly from typhus. Jana held her breath, not daring to ask the question. But Ivan looked around the anxious faces and answered it.

‘My daughter was there too. But she's alive. Alena is coming home.' The tiniest light shone in his eyes.