Authors: Jáchym Topol
The Red Army had scooped him up in some Czech village in the Carpathians, or maybe it was Ukraine, that’s right, and your father became the son of the regiment.
So he pulls the girl out, lays her on the grass, and peels off his shirt to cover up her shocking, skeletal nakedness. It was a sunny day in May when your parents met. And then he hears the Russians laughing and looks up and sees them walking along with the Czechs who took up arms and rebelled, and they’re putting the Germans they captured into the typhus camp, which had been emptied of Jews – about four thousand all together, hundreds of women and children died in there. Probably some of those little bones and messages and hairpins you brought me came from them, I can’t tell them apart. So the Russians and Czechs were herding the Germans past the typhus pits into the camp, but a few of the Russians turned aside and went over to your father, their brother-in-arms, and they had water! Right, so they gave the girl a drink too. You must keep that girl now! the Russians told him with a devilish grin. Whoa ho, the molodets has found a girl! So we hold wedding now, no? Teasing him like soldiers do, but your father was crazy with thirst, so he just nodded deliriously and that was it, the marriage was set. The army doctors managed to pull her through, against the odds. She had typhus, sure enough, not to mention being completely exhausted from giving birth! Just imagine, Lebo says, and I feel his hand on my shoulder and I don’t want to ask a thing.
You know why she was in the pit? Lebo says. The forces of law and order sentenced her to death for getting pregnant here in Terezín, that was her offence. But the Russians came so quick that the Krauts didn’t have time to shoot everyone they convicted. And that’s why you’re here, do you understand now?
No, I don’t, and I don’t care! I said, stamping so hard it raised a little whirl of red dust.
I know what you mean, Lebo said. I stopped caring who my father was a long time ago. They probably killed him anyway. Lebo shrugged.
We stood, looking out from the ramparts. The pit my mum was in when she waved to my dad was almost exactly the same spot where my dad fell off the ramparts. It was strange.
Ah, who cares, I said, shrugging my shoulders like Lebo.
We looked at each other, Lebo’s enormous hand on my shoulder. And in a flash of understanding, the two of us sealed a pact never to talk to each other about our parents again.
Then Lebo told me how the Russians held a wedding, a war wedding in Terezín.
Your father stayed here with your mum, and out of nothing he created the most famous regimental music in Czechoslovakia, the military band of the town of Terezín, known far and wide beyond the town borders, and believe me, for an army boy, a shrimpy little rat-
a-tat
-tat who grew up poor, that was no joke! Your father put all he had into this town! You should carry on his legacy.
And for the first time Lebo confided in me his plan to save the town. He had been drawing on his contacts for some time already, pleading and begging and sounding the alarm to all corners of the earth.
You know, he would have been proud of you, Lebo said, gesturing in the twilight at the spot down below us where the tall grass trembled in the gusts of evening wind.
That’s where my dad breathed his last.
If he hadn’t died that way, the town’s undoing would have killed him for sure, Lebo said.
He was probably right.
Just imagine a military marching band, the proud blare of brass, in these ruins!
That’s how my dad saw the town’s ramparts in his final moment, as he went flying past. It was a good death, especially for a liberator of Terezín.
And I made up my mind right then and there to dedicate the rest of my life to Lebo’s plan to save the town.
We set to work that same night.
Now I could finally view my childhood as a closed chapter.
We went straight back to our building, to my bunk. Lebo slid a desk next to it. He looked at me, smiled and nodded, then pointed to the wall: an Internet hook-up, the same as the one in Pankrác, a shiny, tiny thing.
I nodded. This was where the Monument had planned to put its office.
You know what I did in prison, Lebo?
He shrugged. Did he know or didn’t he?
We left it at that.
Lebo pulled out an old satchel filled with notebooks and scraps of paper, the satchel he’d stuffed with our copies of the messages
scratched
by fingernails. Sometimes there was also a name, and some of the people had survived, or their relatives had survived, and now they were out in the world.
He’d had decades to find them, based on all the notes we’d found beneath the town. He had pages torn from encyclopaedias, educational books and memoirs. Now Lebo sat down next to me and began to dictate from memory, weaving his web of connections and contacts that were going to save Terezín.
Yes, we spent that night, and the following days and nights, writing letters, cries for help, pounding on many doors. We fought for the dilapidated town by begging, sending pleas to everyone who’d ever been here, and their relatives and friends as well. We sounded the alarm.
As time went by, we partitioned off my bunk with boards to make a computer room. My desk was quickly covered over with notebooks, stacks of floppy disks. We didn’t want to move out of the bunkroom.
No matter what.
I would sit at the computer, fingers flying over the keyboard, while Lebo paced back and forth, or more often sat on a bunk and dictated.
Even later, when we had some of our students sleeping in the room, exhausted by the evening sittings, we didn’t care, we worked.
Lebo knew which important people we should contact. He’d had decades to seek them out, plus the Internet and me. He knew who to turn to.
He had gazed up at some of the survivors from his Terezín cradle, a shoebox hidden under the bunk he was sitting on right now. He wanted their money, and their influence, and the money and the influence of their relatives and friends.
I would never have believed the rocket-like rise of our cause if Lebo hadn’t been reading me the replies. Plenty of people agreed to help us, no questions asked. Those were the kind of people Lebo was looking for, people who didn’t wonder whether or not the old town of evil should be torn down, who didn’t need any deliberation or discussion, because they knew that every splinter of every bunk should be preserved, every battered brick, every corner of the old fortress. Every inch of Terezín should exist always and for ever, and, as Rolf would later write, feed the memory of the world.
I didn’t care about memory, though. I just needed a place to live.
I really hoped Lebo could save the town. And I hoped his contacts could feed us all – everyone living here, even the ones who were only half alive. My aunts, the old men and women, the drunks, cripples, and mental cases, the ones who couldn’t leave Terezín. If the bulldozers came, they’d have nowhere to go, as I’ve said before.
And that evening, when we walked home from the ramparts together, Lebo started broadcasting the news of the fortress town’s destruction to the world. From then on we wrote letters every day, oftentimes working for nights at a stretch.
Soon the replies started coming in. The people Lebo knew already wrote to the others that he was OK. And soon everyone wanted to get a look at Lebo, Guardian of Terezín, as Rolf dubbed him in his article.
Rolf’s reportage was published with a photograph of the giant Lebo dressed in black, gazing out from the ramparts into the reddening twilight as he declared,
This place of dreadful horror must be preserved for the memory of humanity
. Of course Rolf made up the ‘memory of humanity’ part – Lebo didn’t talk about his activities. And he had no intention of feeding the world’s memory. He just wanted to feed the dying inhabitants of Terezín.
Our work had just begun.
Rolf ’s article was reprinted in many languages, it was published all over the world, so it wasn’t just academics who could speak for Terezín any more, academics installed by a government that didn’t want to pour billions or even millions into a decaying town with no army. Now there were other spokesmen for the town besides the board members and researchers, feasting off of their cushy incomes and keeping quiet about the coming of the bulldozers. The world had found out about us. Visitors started arriving.
And that was the beginning of the Comenium.
One of the cornerstones of the Comenium student commune was laid the day I spied a gorgeous girl in shorts and a T-shirt stumbling across Central Square in the summer heat, a blond braid hanging down her sweaty back. There I was, merrily herding along my little flock, the few that had managed to escape both the auction block and the mental cases’ maws. The wind had long since blown the stink of prison off of me, and she recognized me. Yes, she had come because of Rudolf’s article, she felt aligned with us, she said, and wanted to meet Lebo and stuff, help us in our cause. Dazzled by this apparition of a girl, I said nothing, just turned and led her through the dust kicked up by the goat’s hooves. I was longing for twilight, eager for it to be sundown, so maybe she wouldn’t notice I was blushing with embarrassment, though I was also leaning in towards her, with a touch of hungry boldness. She gazed at me curiously as I led her to Lebo, the curtains stirring here and there in the hovels on either side, people peeking from half-open windows as Sara’s sandals slapped against the cobblestones. Not many found their way into our streets in those days, just buses with tourists visiting the Monument. Sara had set out for Terezín from Sweden to track down the bunks where her grandfather and grandmother had supposedly once rested their heads, before they were killed. She was one of the seekers of the bunks, young people with brains darkened by the cloud of the terrible past, by the horrors that had befallen their parents, grandparents, relatives, or just by the fact that those horrors had happened at all.
Could they happen again? What is man capable of? How come it happened to them, but I was spared? What would I have done if it had been me being led to my death? Can it happen again?
The seekers turned these morbid questions over and over again in their minds, a demon had taken hold of them, clouding their brains. Even now, they were tormented by the murders of yesteryear, making them ripe for the psychiatrist’s couch. But some of them took to the road, heading for the East, all on their own, with a backpack and a credit card from their parents in their pocket, and went digging through the damp ruins of Poland, Lithuania, Russia – in short, everywhere mass graves were common. The seekers, like drops of water, seeped into the underground currents of the mysterious East, so it was no surprise they often sank to the bottom in anguish. And occasionally one of them would turn up in Terezín. Longing to ease the painful pressure on their brain, these were no ordinary tourists, content to wander down a few trails of genocide, maintained for the world by the Monument. Ordinary tourists strolled through Terezín like it was a medieval castle, taking snapshots, shooting videos of the dungeons and torture chambers to show the family afterwards. The bunk seekers would never even think of such a thing. They showed up here crazed with pain, seized by the eternal question every seeker asked:
If it happened here, can it happen again?
They knew they weren’t in a medieval castle but in an abyss where the world had been torn apart, a place without mercy or compassion, where anything was possible. And it ate at their brains. Sara, too, had arrived sick like this, which was why she insisted on exploring every inch of the town. I have a feeling, she said over the trampling hoofs of my herd, that they left a message here for me … somewhere.
First she had wandered around the Monument, then she headed over to our seedy little town. I want to walk by every wall, every rampart in this town of death, I want to understand, to know, to feel, Sara said amid the clouds of dust and the bleating herd. She seemed a little dehydrated to me. I took her to Lebo.
That day, like every other day, I grazed my goats till dusk, but once the darkness had swallowed up the last shades of red, I was driving my flock back home, past Lebo’s ground-floor room, and the lights were on and I saw Sara, well refreshed now, thanks to my aunts. She was an important visitor, after all – she brought interest to our town of destruction, fresh air and life would follow in her footsteps, my aunts could sense it somehow.
Inside, Sara was listening to Lebo, the man who had drawn his first breath here at the eye of the hurricane, at the centre of all the horror, most likely right next to the bunk where Sara’s granny had slept. She paid close attention as Lebo opened his black satchel and showed her the old notes, spikes, and rusty bullet shells. I had completely forgotten that somewhere down in the catacombs, where nothing rots, we had found two fingernails, probably torn off scratching the plaster long since washed away by groundwater. Lebo had kept them, so Sara could touch them. She was hungry for details of life in the town of death, so Lebo talked.
The seekers of the bunks came thirsting for knowledge. All of them had been directly affected by what went on here and needed to hear that, despite all the horrible things that had happened to their grandparents or parents, in spite of it all and through it all, they could go on living. And the seekers spread the word about Lebo to each other, so more of them came, wanting to hear the witness who had been born in hell and survived and was now alive in the modern era. And coming face to face with the living Lebo and his objects helped them. And some – like Sara – stayed.
Sara! It wasn’t only her grandfather and grandmother who had
breathed
their last here. About twenty of her relatives had perished in Terezín or somewhere in the black holes of Poland. Only her dad managed to save himself. Thanks to the Swedish Red Cross, he made it out on a children’s transport to Sweden. Sara wasn’t interested in the streets the town and the government had designated to be preserved. She liked tramping along the crumbling ramparts, crawling through the
overgrown
drains, running her fingers over the scratches that might’ve been greetings from those going to their death. She also enjoyed taking part in the lives of those of us who were left, and that was the thing, that was the reason why they liked her. She enjoyed listening to the old codgers puffing away on the peeling benches of Central Square, speaking with pride of the days when the regiments of the Czechoslovak People’s Army paraded through, and how many of them had paraded with them, or even led those regiments. Sara spoke German, which all the old people here knew. She was the Swedish girl who had come to us from the world, an apparition, a sign of life. At first the locals just stared cautiously through the curtains, watching as she looked around and listened in fascination, here in the graveyard condemned by the world to ruin and decay.
But soon Sara had an open door wherever she went, probably because she reminded the old ladies of a granddaughter of theirs, or a little niece, and they loved telling her stories about their youthful years in Terezín. Maybe they had even known her grandmother – oh, definitely. Whenever Sara paid a visit to their homes, which had been spared so far, the old ladies wiped the dust off their plastic tablecloths and opened their glass-fronted cabinets, fumbling among the painted dolls, glass deer, and decorative cups and spoons, reaching for the brandy glasses and filling Sara’s to the brim. Afterwards when she came back to our squat, she would either whoop it up or crawl straight into her sleeping bag on the bunk, and while I pounded away on the keyboard, following Lebo’s instructions, or Lebo read out the news we had received from the world, Sara would sleep, puffing in and out. We were glad to have her here. Soon all of the town’s old folks and drunkards were saying hello to Sara, sometimes even the hopeless mental cases would shyly waddle along behind her in the dust, as though maybe she could take them away somehow. It fascinated Sara when, in her honour, Aunt Fridrich cut off a hen’s head and threw it out of the window, into the brook under the ramparts, the way it had always been done, and she was glad to help Mr Hamáček haul his basket of kohlrabi or sacks of potatoes to Central Square. She even got involved with the kitchen, helping to serve the tea. Sara had decided to live a normal life in this town of death, and I had the feeling she was recuperating, coming out of her grief, escaping the despair that can cloud a mind with blackness and, especially in young and innocent people, produce a shock of realization at how terrible evil is and can be.
One day Sara said we should take a trip to Prague to buy souvenirs, so we’d have something to sell the occasional tourists who wandered our way. The cloud was slowly lifting from her mind. Plus she was the practical type.
We were doing brilliantly with Lebo at the computer hunting for contacts, running fundraising campaigns, and sounding the alarm, but, maybe because she was a newcomer and saw the situation through the eyes of an outsider, Sara insisted that if we could attract more people to the town, it would be a big help against the bulldozers.
You have to bring in tourists, get the world’s attention.
Only if the eyes of the world are on Terezín can we begin the process of revitalizing the town, Sara said.
And revitalizing means revival, or even rebirth, she explained.
Sara had studied history, ethnography, literature, and religion. All of our students, before they came here, had studied a wide range of fields. Everyone except me. I’d only gone to military school, and even then not the whole thing.
Sara knew how to paint as well, and one evening as I was pounding away on the keyboard to Lebo’s dictation, we were interrupted by her cry, but it was a cry of triumph. She sat down on the bunk and showed us a T-shirt with a picture of a man she said was the writer Franz Kafka. She had bought it in Prague and added the word
Theresienstadt
to it, plus a gallows and the words
If Franz Kafka hadn’t died, they would have killed him here
. This could really catch on! Sara crowed. She wouldn’t dream of taking it to a printer’s, she said. We could produce the T-shirts ourselves, using her stencil, handcrafted and artistic, that was the only way it made sense.
Lebo and I nodded OK. We trusted her. She was from the world, after all.
Sara and I got on really well from the start. When she first arrived, consumed by sadness, wandering around the ruins, her brain clouded, I made sure that she didn’t fall down a shaft or get swept away by the current that wound its way through the catacombs, that she didn’t go too far into the old armoury, where a brick from the weathered walls might fall on her head. Sara had become used to me, and to my animals. I showed her my little shed, and she didn’t even mind Bojek and his head butts.
Sara loved my animals and I’m pretty sure I was in love with her. I doubt she felt the same about me, but now I’ll never know. Either way, we did share a few sudden outbursts of love – a roll in the grass was simple enough. And that’s all there is to say about it. Anyone who goes on about that sort of stuff in public should be put up against a wall, just like in the old days.
When evening came, we got up and drove the herd home. People teased us of course. The thing is, the dust from the bricks on the ramparts gets in your hair, in your clothes, into your skin. Everyone can see it on you when you roll around in the grass.
In Prague we stayed in a hotel. We had plenty of money in those days, so much we didn’t even count it, and our trips to Prague were for business, so they were paid for out of the money that gushed from Lebo’s contacts.
Whenever we needed funds, Lebo, usually accompanied by Sara, and sometimes by other girls as well, would make a trip to the bank in Prague and withdraw the required amount. Every now and then, of course, the girls needed a little something, as Lebo used to say, so they would also spend some time in the department stores. I didn’t pay any attention to money. Sara took care of whatever we needed for the computer room, and also chose my clothes.
She bought the T-shirts and other souvenirs, planned our promotional brochures, bought the crates of red wine for our celebrations. I mainly just carried stuff, lugging backpacks around the city with her. We travelled by taxi – Sara taught me to do that too.
Our room in the hotel tucked away off Old Town Square was filled with Sara’s scent. It was quite unlike the next hotel room I would be in.
In Prague there are more streets than you can count. Our hotel is on a long, narrow, crooked street, like all the rest. There is the occasional piece of dog shit and rubbish on the cracked pavement. I don’t feel at home here.
Terezín is a military town. It’s laid out in right angles. That’s why you can find your way around there, country boy. Sara is explaining to me why I would be lost here without her. Prague is medieval, so it’s convoluted, it’s twisted and contorted, she says.
We sleep here in this little room, organizing our purchases, holding each other, talking. This is where we stay on our business expeditions.
You know, Terezín actually reminds me a lot of Venice, Sara says, leaning nonchalantly against my shoulder. Stacks of Kafka T-shirts are drying on the floor around us. We got soaked in a downpour, now I’m breathing in the black damp of Prague rain from her hair. You know, St Mark’s and the gondolas? That’s how your government-backed Monument looks in the eyes of the world, but right nearby there are normal people, living behind peeling walls. She shakes her head. Normal, right. All over Western Europe there are mass graves from the Second World War, carefully tended and maintained, whereas in Terezín, amazingly, you’ve got Mr Hamáček selling kohlrabi on a slaughter ground, Mrs Bouchal and Mrs Fridrich swearing at their permanently jammed laundry press on the very same spot where trains used to leave for the extermination camps in the East. When you were kids, you played in morgues and felt each other up in bunkers! It’s a nightmare, you’re all perverted and you don’t even know it. In the West they wouldn’t allow kids to go in places like that. It isn’t allowed here either! I say. But you don’t give a damn in this country, she objects. Yeah, well, why should I care whether it’s allowed or not, just as long as I don’t get caught, I say. Sara shakes her head, we talk, a little later we go to sleep.