Hana by Alena Mornštajnová

Author:Alena Mornštajnová
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

But Hana didn’t leave for England that September, nor did she leave later. While she still had the strength, she often wondered how different not just her own life but also that of her sister Rosa and her mother Elsa might have turned out if they had sold the house, packed their bags and boarded a train. If she hadn’t met Jaroslav and fallen in love with him and had done the sensible thing instead.

Four years later, as Elsa Helerová and her parents perched above a freshly-dug ditch half-filled with bodies of those who had stood in the same spot before them, she shut her eyes firmly and thought that it was fate that had set her this test. But in actual fact it was Hana who had altered their fate by deciding, in the late summer of 1938, to do everything she could to delay their departure for England until the latest possible date. It was Hana who didn’t do what her mother had asked her to do.

All their passports and visas had been issued except for one – Rosa’s. Her papers had been delayed because she was under-age and her application was supposed to have both parents’ consent attached to it.

‘But her father is dead,’ Elsa muttered as she opened a drawer and removed a sweet box made of tin in which she stored important documents. There, among the house deeds, her trading licence, marriage licence, and the family’s birth certificates, was her husband Ervin’s death certificate. ‘Everyone knows me in this town, and everyone knows that I’m a widow, but these blessed bureaucrats won’t do anything without their piece of paper,’ she grumbled, stuffing the certificate into an envelope. ‘Drop this letter off at the post office for me on your way to the Karáseks,’ she called to Hana. ‘I’m not going out just for one piece of paper! I’m busy as it is – some people interested in buying the house are coming to have a look.’

No sooner did the word get out that the house in the Square was on sale, a number of people showed interest. Who wouldn’t be interested in a well-kept house with a stationer’s and a tobacconist’s on the ground floor, and a nice flat above? The problem was that everyone guessed the reason the widow Helerová was selling the house and that she was in a hurry to sell, and their offers were well below its real value. Truth be told, Elsa was desperate. She was terrified, just like thousands of other people who had by then realised that Europe – especially a small country like Czechoslovakia – was no longer a safe place to be. But she wasn’t yet desperate enough to let herself be fleeced by those intent on exploiting her difficult situation and she clung to the hope that someone would come up with a reasonable offer. It could well have been Mr and Mrs Drozd, who were due to come at three o’clock this afternoon.

Hana took the envelope and stuffed it into the pocket of her light jacket.

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