Recorded Books Inc. - The girl in the red coat: a memoir

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For my son, Jakob

you were saved not in order to live

you have little time you must give testimony

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT ,

Pan Cogito

(translated by Jan and Bogdana Carpenter)

The Hotel Negresco in Nice on Frances Cte dAzur presides over the Promenade des Anglais like an enormous white ship. Its white awnings flutter slightly in the morning breeze. The sea is an almost supernatural blue.

Inside the hotel, pageboys in bright uniforms with feathers in their hats dash across the red carpets. I walk through the enormous entrance lobby with its gleaming marble floor, past large flower vases from which red roses billow, and into the breakfast room.

The room is round, decorated entirely in tones of pink and brown; the effect is that of an antique Biedermeier carousel. White horses turn to the music of a barrel organ playing gentle waltzes. Countless little lightbulbs illuminate the scene. The paintings on the walls show pretty landscapes done in warm pastel tones. A life-size doll in a quaint costume stands in the middle of the room; she has long, curly hair and her mouth is locked in a smile.

The windows are framed by heavy red velvet drapes, the Venetian blinds lowered halfway. Sunbeams paint golden stripes on the floor and on the pink tablecloths. The waitresses all look like the big dollthey wear the same pink skirts, revealing lace-edged underpants. Their smiles are real, if a little tired. They bustle back and forth.

The room smells of chocolate and raspberries, of coffee and perfume.

I sit down at one of the tables.

The circular breakfast buffet in the center of the room looks like a work of art, and immediately it puts me into an euphoric mood. There are raspberries, strawberries, chunks of pineapple; red, yellow, and green melon slices; pink-tinged ham artistically shaped into rosettes; salmon, sliced wafer thin and folded into stars; tiny halves of quail eggs topped with dots of caviar; jewellike petits fours; mounds of gleaming raisin rolls; fresh orange juice flowing like a waterfall over a cliff of ice cubes; jams and preserves of many colors; honey and balls of butter.

And that smell of raspberries and chocolate. I close my eyes. The suns rays play on my eyelashes and scatter into golden dust.

I feel carefree and happy in this place although I wont admit to this, for I am a superstitious old Jewish woman. I think of the beach and of the green chaise longue waiting for me there, of the cocktails the waiter will bring me while the sun warms my skin, and I soak up and dissolve into the blue of the sky and the smell of the sea. For lunch Ill have a salade Nioise with a glass of Prosecco. And then, there is that beautiful handbag I saw at Sonia Rykiel

An elegant couple sits down at a table near mine, a little girl in tow. She stands staring at the life-size doll and then finally joins her parents. The mother has placed a huge goblet filled with strawberries before her. But the little girl doesnt eat. She merely puts her spoon into the glass, absently stirs the berries around, and gazes at the doll, which keeps smiling its wooden smile.

The little girl has dark curly hair and large black eyes ringed by dark shadows. She is perhaps five years old and looks very fragile. She pays no attention to me.

Suddenly I feel as though I am sitting across the table from myself in another life, another time. I look at the little girl I once was or might have been, and I know that she has everything I never had: a happy, safe childhood, a beautiful home and garden, strawberries, chocolate, toys, and parents who love her, parents who have enough money to pay for trips, piano lessons, and birthday parties.

The life of the little girl passes before me like a Technicolor film of the life fate has cheated me of. I feel no envyjust the sharp pain of an old unhealed wound. The little girl has the right to this splendid, wholesome world. But I I am an outsider only passing through. I really dont belong here.

Suddenly I feel cold and begin to tremble, gripping the soft cushions of my chair. The little lights on the carousel begin to flicker, the barrel-organ music grows louder, and faster, faster, round and round, pulling me into the abyss of memory, back into the dark hole. The Ghetto.

* * *

It is always cold in the Ghetto, ice cold, inside the house as well as out. Inside theres only the one kitchen stove for all of us, and almost no coal. Outside, snow blankets the ground. There is no summer, no seasons at all, and no sunlight. Everything is dark and gray, always.

The Ghetto has four large gates. We are not allowed to pass through these gates. Its absolutely forbidden. A streetcar runs on the main street, the number 3. We are not allowed to get on it. Thats why it makes no stops. It simply goes right on through. The people sitting in the streetcar stare at us through the steamed-up windows. Once a boy throws a few loaves of bread out of a streetcar window; they fall at our feet.

We stand on the street, freezing. Many, many people. There are people everywhere. Some have large dogs, and carry guns, and just watch. They shoot at who they want to, maybe at me too. Were the others. The Jews. We have to wait all the time.

The people with the guns have gold buttons and black, shiny boots that crunch in the snow when they march by. But mostly you cant hear that because they are constantly yelling and shouting. They yell, we obey. Anyone who doesnt obey is killed. I know that, even though Im still very little, so little that I reach only up to the knees of the men in the shiny boots. When one of them comes near me, and I hear the black boots crunching and see the dog with the sharp teeth panting right next to my head, I feel even smaller than usual. I try to make myself invisible. Sometimes it actually works, and I dissolve in the icy wind and the yelling, and my grandmothers cold, thin hand. She holds me tight, but Im not there anymore.

Grandmother is always there. When the waiting is over she takes me back into the kitchen, then takes off my red coat. Its a beautiful coat made of soft red wool, and it has a hood. She sewed it for me herself. With her thin, cold hands Grandmother warms my feet; I cant feel them anymore. She sets me on top of the table while she stirs a pot on the stove. Then she comes back with a bowl of steaming porridge that has little lumps swimming in it. She tries to feed me, but I turn my head away. The porridge is disgusting, the lumps revolting. I dont want to eat it. I feel sick. The other people scold me. The steamy kitchen is full of noisy strangers with sweaty, smelly bodies. One of the men grabs the bowl from Grandmothers hand and swallows the gruel in one gulp. My grandmother doesnt say anything. She sits down at her sewing machine again and clatters away. Im glad the man ate the disgusting stuff.

At some point my mother comes home. Its already dark outside. Im lying in my little crib but cant sleep because people are everywhere, making all kinds of sounds. They snuffle, groan, grumble, and curse. They slurp and smack their lips, and some of them cry. My mother embraces me wearily. Her soft brown hair no longer smells of flowers the way it used to. It smells funny and sharp. You smell funny, I say. My mother smiles, but I can tell she is sad. She is always sad. Thats just the disinfectant, she says. Whats that? I ask. She doesnt answer. Instead she pulls her suitcase out from under the bed, takes out a small bottle, and opens it carefully. She lets a drop fall on her wrist and rubs it in. Then she closes the bottle, hides it again in the suitcase, and lifts me out of my bed. Better? she asks. Now she smells like flowers again.