‘Someone will help us? Actually help us find our uncle?’ Livi’s voice is shrill and the rooftop falls silent.
Branka reaches for her hand. ‘I hope so, little Livi,’ she says, softly. ‘I really hope so.’
The evening draws to a close and people begin to shuffle to their feet and head for their beds. Cibi is aware that several young men and women linger to finish their conversations, their heads bent close as they talk. Normal life might be possible after all, ponders Cibi. She remembers Yosi, the cheeky boy from the Hachshara, who so loved to throw his bread at her head. Maybe, one day, she too might find someone to love.
*
The sisters’ lives fall into a pleasant rhythm, each of them happy to lose themselves in a new, independent routine. Cibi is the luckiest, finding short spells of office work where she uses her typing skills. Livi and Magda find themselves office work too, filing paperwork and helping tally the accounts of small businesses, or cleaning. When they’re not working, they fix up the apartment.
Cibi and Livi had spent enough time watching the Russians construct Birkenau, so it’s no surprise that they prove to be dab hands at mixing cement and fixing broken bricks back into the walls of their flat, to afford them some protection over the winter months.
‘You girls sure know your way around construction,’ Frodo says, watching in awe as Cibi and Livi slap the bricks with mortar.
As the weeks pass, the sisters feel like they’re waking up from a bad dream. Each night, before they go to bed, the girls look through the photos, their hearts aching as they relive their happy childhoods, before it all went so wrong. But it’s no longer unbearable to face these memories. Livi cries herself to sleep every night, the pain of losing their home in Vranov still so fresh in her mind. Her dreams are confused things: the thug at their house shoving them into the street, into the arms of an SS officer who orders them onto a cattle wagon which is laden with actual cows. But each morning she wakes up and decides life must go on and, slowly, she begins to feel stronger.
Cibi visits the Red Cross at least once a week, scanning the lists for her uncle and aunt’s names, but so far she has had no luck.
One afternoon, two months into their residence in Bratislava, she returns home to find a man lurking outside the door of their apartment. Friend or foe, she wonders, instinctively, but Cibi reminds herself she is safe here, that a single cry for help would bring people from every apartment running to her aid.
‘Can I help you?’
The man turns round slowly. He is clutching his hat in his hands, twisting it round and round with thin fingers. ‘I’m looking for .?.?.’ he begins.
Cibi gasps, reaches for the wall for support. ‘Uncle Ivan?’ she whispers.
‘Cibi!’ he cries. In seconds they are hugging, each of them sobbing onto the shoulder of the other.
Cibi recognises him by the glint in his eyes, the shape of his nose – but everything else about her uncle is different. His once proud posture is stooped, his black hair is now white and straggly. Lines etch his features, but his smile is as wide and warm as it had ever been. ‘Magda? Livi?’ he says, hesitantly.
‘They’re fine. We’re all fine. And Aunt Helena? The children?’ It’s Cibi’s turn to sound hesitant. Ivan looks at his misshapen hat. ‘The children have been through a lot; it will take some time for them to adjust.’
‘Aunt Helena?’
Ivan hangs his head as the tears begin to spill down his cheeks. ‘We lost her, Cibi. She’s gone,’ he croaks. ‘She fell on the death march .?.?.’
He doesn’t need to say anymore and Cibi doesn’t press him. Once more they’re crying in each other’s arms.
‘I want to see Magda and Livi,’ Ivan says, finally.
Cibi nods, takes his hand and leads him into the apartment.
*
The next day the family gathers at their uncle’s apartment block, mere minutes from their own. The sisters listen as their cousins recount the moment their mother fell and was then shot by an SS officer. It is painful to hear, but Cibi knows now that talking about it will help them, however distressing the memories.
‘There is an empty apartment above,’ Ivan tells the sisters. ‘It would make me very happy if you girls moved in. We could be a family again.’
The sisters don’t even need to discuss it. That same afternoon, they say goodbye to Branka and all their friends, with promises to stay in touch, and move their meagre possessions to Ivan’s block.
They celebrate the first night of their reunion with their uncle, drawing up chairs and crates to sit round a small table and eat. When the table is set and the food steaming in mismatching bowls, Magda reaches for her bag and pulls out the candlesticks, replete with the long tapers given to her by Branka.