“I remember standing right over there, with my mother, watching the Easter procession,” she said. “And that street—the K?rntner Strasse—was where she used to take me to buy shoes.” It was hard to imagine anyone going shopping there now. Most of the elegant facades were smashed to pieces, as if a giant fist had come and punched through the windows and the walls. Outside one of the few that had survived, a line of people snaked out along the street. Above the door hung a cardboard sign with the German word for bread chalked across it.
They walked on, heading east, away from the inner city. Charlie stopped to buy strudel from a man selling pastries from a tray strung around his neck. He offered it to Kitty before biting into it. She took a corner of it, just to please him.
When they neared the canal, she caught sight of the great black skeleton of the Prater Wheel, towering still and silent above the ruined houses. It brought back memories of summer afternoons spent at the amusement park. The ride on the big wheel had been the ultimate treat of those days out with her parents. She had sat between them, terrified, as the car began to sway and climb, almost sick with fear when it reached the top and the whole thing stopped dead for two eternal minutes for the passengers to admire the city spread out below.
“That must have been pretty spectacular.” Charlie seemed to have read her thoughts. “I wonder if they’ll be able to get it going again?”
“I hope so.” It was impossible to imagine children laughing and playing on fairground rides in this desolate landscape. Maybe, one day, this place—this whole city—would rise from the ashes. Would she be there to see it? The question echoed around her head as they walked on.
They crossed a makeshift military bridge into Leopoldstadt, the district where Blumenthal’s had once sold silk finery to the wealthy women of Vienna. A noticeboard told them that they were entering the Russian zone. Kitty tensed as they paused at a checkpoint to show their papers, but the guard waved them through.
They walked along a wide, rubble-strewn avenue that ran down to the Prater Platz. The shell damage looked even worse on this side of the canal. Kitty had been afraid of encountering Russian soldiers on every street corner—but there were no signs of occupation.
Kitty spotted the street where Clara used to go to church. The entrance to it was blocked by a tangle of metal girders. Peering through it, she saw there was not one building still standing. The church was gone. No wonder no one from the congregation had responded to the appeal for information.
A few streets farther on, Kitty slipped her arm through Charlie’s. Soon they would be passing the place where her parents’ shop had been.
“You okay?” He put his free hand on her forearm, squeezing it gently.
“I think so. It’s just down there.”
“Are you sure you want to see it?”
She nodded. “I have to, or I won’t believe it’s gone.”
All that remained of the shop was a section of the front wall. Her family name had been obliterated—but the sign that the Nazis had made her father put up was still there, hanging by a single rusty nail. “Jüdisches Gesch?ft.” Jewish Business. She remembered he’d gone back to the shop at night to hammer it in place because he was afraid of being arrested if he did anything to draw attention to himself. A swastika and graffiti had been painted across the wall beneath the sign. Du Judenschwein, m?gen deine H?nde abfaulen! You Jewish pig, may your hands rot off!
Kitty looked away. She knew she had to suppress the incandescent rage the ugly scrawl had triggered if she was going to carry on. How quiet and dead the whole street looked—utterly at odds with the firestorm of emotion in her heart.
They walked on in silence. She pictured herself in the back room that no longer existed, sitting at the sewing machine, her mother a few yards away, the two of them working in concentrated silence. She remembered how, when she was alone in that room, she would imagine that the treadle of the machine was the pedal of a car, that she was about to set off on a journey and would no longer be stuck inside sewing seams and buttonholes. That dream of escape had haunted her through the years in England. As if by wishing it, she had conjured all the darkness that had engulfed her family.
She thought she knew the way to the street where Clara was now living, but the bomb damage made everything look different. Signs had disappeared and some of the roads were impassable. Eventually she found her way to her old school, which was still standing. Clara’s apartment was just around the corner.
“I’ll go for a walk around the block.” Charlie released her arm. “I won’t go far. I’ll be waiting outside once you’re done.”