Waiting for the Violins by Justine Saracen Read Free Book Online Page A

stepped through the inner door into the hangar, a semicircle had already formed around the guest.
    She had to walk all the way around the mass of bodies to the end, and when she finally stood in place, she was slightly disappointed to see a portly, balding man in a rumpled three-piece suit and a black overcoat. He held his bowler hat and a cigar in one hand while he shook hands with the other. Ah, she thought. So that’s Winston Churchill. Britain’s most powerful man looked a bit seedy, like a slightly disreputable banker.

Chapter Eight
     
    Brussels March 1942
     
    Standing in the tiny corridor, Moishe Goldman pinched out the tip of his cigarette and dropped the remaining butt into his pocket. Then he knocked and let himself be scrutinized through a crack in the door. He heard the safety chain being undone, and when the door opened, his brother Aisik leaned toward him and spoke over the din. “Come, sit down. You’re the last.” In the room behind him where the others were gathered, people were arguing in their mixed versions of French, Polish, and Belorussian Yiddish.
    Aisik had packed almost a dozen people into the tiny flat, and, for lack of furniture, most sat on the floor or leaned against the wall. A pity they couldn’t have met in Aisik’s old place, a comfortable three-room apartment with its own toilet. What luxury it seemed, now that most of them were living clandestine lives in whatever cramped housing sympathetic Belgians would offer them.
    Moishe stepped over the legs of the men on the floor and squeezed himself into a corner. Glancing around the room, he realized he knew almost everyone. He was especially pleased to see the muscular Jakob Gutfrajnd, whom they all called Kuba, and the young medical student Youra Livschitz.
    In the far corner, his sister-in-law Rywka stood holding her baby.
    Kuba shouted over the general noise. “All right everyone, calm down. We’re all here now, so let’s get started.” In a moment, the sound subsided, and Moishe heard only the dry coughing of smokers and the simpering of the two-year-old.
    “You all know why we’re here,” Kuba said, and everyone seemed to listen. “Most of us are old comrades who fought together in Spain, and if we’re not all good Communists, we’re still brothers in arms. And we all know about what’s going on in Germany—the burning of the synagogues, the smashing of Jewish shops, the deportations. Belgium was safe, but the Germans are here now, and things are going to get worse.”
    “They’re already worse. Tell them about the labor camps,” Aisik said.
    Someone lit up a cigarette, took a long inhalation, and passed it to the man next to him. “They’ve built a big new one now at Oświęcim. The Germans call it Auschwitz. We’ve got to let people know.”
    Moishe snorted. “We report it all the time in the Jewish newspapers. But everybody thinks they’re immune because they work in important jobs or have influential friends.”
    “What about the Christians?” The boyish Youra called from the back. “The ones who can’t read Yiddish. All they hear and read is the crap coming from the Germans.”
    “That’s right.” It was Rywka, who spoke over the head of her baby. “Christians got us this apartment. If they knew, maybe they could prevent the deportations.”
    Aisik put his arm around her. “That may be too optimistic, Rywka. Why should they care about us? Who here is a Belgian citizen? Raise your hands.”
    Not a single hand went up. “No one? Okay, then, who here even speaks good French?” Three hands went up.
    “So where are the Belgian Jews? Leaders in business, banking, the diamond industry?” It was Youra again. Unlike most of the others, he’d had a university education and seemed to understand about things like banking and business.
    “I’ll tell you where they are,” Moishe said. “The ones who could afford to get away are in London. The rest are hoping it will all disappear. And the worst of them are