Running With Ivan by Suzanne Leal

Author:Suzanne Leal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

14

When I opened my eyes, I felt a surge of excitement. The garage was gone: it had completely disappeared.

I’d done it! I was back. Finally, I was back.

Looking around me, I frowned. Back where, exactly?

I wasn’t in the wardrobe and I wasn’t in Ivan’s house. I wasn’t in a house at all. Instead, I’d stepped onto a train. I was in an old-fashioned train carriage with rows and rows of red leather seats. All the seats were taken and there were people standing in the aisles. And although it wasn’t cold, they were all wearing overcoats — and every overcoat I could see had a yellow star sewn on the front of it.

The train door slammed behind me. When I turned to the sound of it, I saw two soldiers on the platform. They wore black uniforms with lightning stripes on their collars, stripes that formed the letters ‘SS’.

I knew about those letters. I knew about the SS. They were Nazi soldiers.

There was movement then, enough to make me lurch and nearly lose my balance. Reaching out to steady myself, I grabbed on to one of the people in front of me. He swung around, frowning.

‘Ivan,’ I said, a smile stretching over my face. ‘Ivan, it’s me!’

He smiled then, too: a small, wry smile. ‘So it is.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry I left you there. I tried to come back to you.’ But the words wouldn’t come.

‘How on earth did you manage to get on the train?’ he asked me. ‘Didn’t anyone ask to see your documents?’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t see anyone at all. I just stepped onto the train.’

‘Seriously? Just like that?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked him instead.

‘To Theresienstadt,’ he told me. ‘At least, that’s what the Germans are calling it. Before they came, it was Terezín. It’s an old fortress town.’

A fortress town. That didn’t sound so bad. It even sounded a bit exciting. ‘Why are they taking everyone there?’

‘Because we’re Jewish and Adolf Hitler thinks we should be kept away from everyone else.’

‘But why?’

Ivan lowered his voice. ‘So they can send us away on a transport like this and the bastards can steal our houses.’

I looked at him in horror. ‘What, even yours?’

‘Especially mine, I’d imagine.’

A picture of Ivan’s house — and with it, Ivan’s father — flashed through my mind. Guilt engulfed me yet again. ‘What happened to your dad?’ I asked, my voice very soft.

He didn’t answer. He just stared at me. He stared so hard I began to squirm. ‘What is it about you?’ he asked slowly. ‘Why do you just turn up like this?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘I never know where I’ll end up. I — well, I just find myself there.’

But Ivan didn’t even seem to be listening. ‘It’s been months now,’ he said, his voice low, ‘and I’ve heard nothing from my father. Nothing at all. Maybe he’s already there, in Theresienstadt. Who knows? No one seems to have any idea.

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