The girl in the train

History always bored me to death, yet I find myself in the same god-forsaken class, teaching antiques. I got the main message of this subject after the first year of study: don’t make the mistakes of the past! The rest was history…well you get me.

Sitting in the last row, I practice the easiest way of falling asleep with my face in my palm and playing with a pencil. Meanwhile I enjoy my favorite bedtime story…whatever the teacher has to babble today. Soon I find myself in the position of barely keeping my eyes open. Some faint words still make it through to me, something about killing, lots of casualties; I imagine a war, houses reduced to ruins. Well there were quite a lot of wars… so when was this one? In the end I give up asking and start sleeping.

Still, as much as I would have liked to just sleep, I can’t… a colleague pats me on the back. ‘What?’ I ask frustrated. ‘Some water…’ a quivered voice calls out. I lift up my head and open my eyes, in front of me, a rag muffin, all black and blue in the face, reaching for the bottle in my hand. I still look at him amazed and cannot react. He slowly takes the bottle from my hand and gives out a painful smile trough his wounds. I start to look around me; I see people around me, lying on the floor, some moving about in the little space there is, others sit and talk, some children cry for food or their parents. The worst was when I saw the corner, in which some people were lying with their faces covered. What happened…where am I?

I look at my hands; they’re full of bruises, somewhat shaky. I ask the man what day it is. He said he wasn’t sure…but it was surely November 1939. This wasn’t right. I couldn’t really get a grip of what was going on, but it couldn’t be much… I can already see the professor trying to wake me, he’ll most surely kick me out and I’ll go and have a coffee in town.

The man asks me for my name. ‘Alex’ I tell him. A young girl then slightly punches me in the shoulder and says: ‘But that’s not a Jewish name…so they brought you along because of your looks...?’ It was all surreal but… I’ll wake up in an instant, this is not real…
‘I don’t really now…’ I finally broke trough the silence.
‘Well, they took my family to a different camp, my little brother…he is probably dead by now…’ As she said all this, a tear forced itself to the light, and cleaned a little of the dust on her face.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked…
‘Eva’ she replayed quickly.
‘It’s a beautiful name…’ I tried to somehow change the subject. She looked back at me with a different, angry, almost vengeful look in her eyes:
‘They might ask you for your name, but never think they care about any of us, they can kill you, they can kill all of us, and they just might’ there was a sudden silence in the wagon. Everyone had their eyes fixed on the conversation. The old man got up and went to Eva, he convinced her to calm down, she would scare the children even more than they were. A few hours of silence followed. I just sat there and tried to figure out this whole predicament.

After some time the man broke the silence: ‘You know, you really shouldn’t be angry with her she didn’t mean to shout. It’s that… she was famous; she used to write songs and poems. She was famous with them too, the… Nazis I mean, yet now they do what they do to her and her family too. She doesn't deserve this treatment; no one here deserves what's happening...’

It was pretty much clear what all this was from the very beginning, I just didn’t want to swallow it all. ‘Where are we? Or…where are we going?’
The man gave me a bit of a smirk. ‘On the train…The rest, when you know, be sure to tell me too. They told us nothing when they took us away. You were lucky though, you slept trough the first two days. You must have really got a bump on your head, you still have the mark…’ he pointed it out.

All this time I was pinching myself, maybe I would wake up…but no chance, nothing happened. The place was cramped, you had no chance to stretch, no where to go. There was no such luxury as a bathroom or anything even vaguely close to it, no food, and hardly any water.
I couldn’t help but staring at Eva; for a while she fell asleep. She had long coal black hair, but beautiful blue eyes; she was lean, tall, pretty faced and smart. One couldn’t ask anything close from a star in my days…or dreams…or whatever it would end up being.

After a while she woke, a few kids asked her to sing something, I also insisted along with the little ones; so that after a bit of fuss she agreed. The next few hours felt somewhat more bearable, even happy, especially for the children. It was no time until they started to fall asleep, though, and so did the rest of the people around. I could see nothing through the few cracks in the wagon. I would guess its night. It was painful watching them fall to a dream, a world they wished for but couldn’t have. It was so because they truly deserved it, and because I couldn’t. I was a bit jealous.

I sat there with my head tilted to the wooden boards that made up the wagon walls. I kept gazing and wondering about the most divers of things, tried to also fall asleep but no luck; so as I sat there day- dreaming, I hear a definite ‘Pssst!’ It was Eva. She was sitting, knees to her chest, all coiled up, trying to keep warm.
I somehow managed to lift my body and step through the many people lying on the floor. I felt like a broken machine, every nook and cranny of my body cracked and twisted in the most painful way. I finally sit next to her. She coils up next to me and puts her head on my shoulder. ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’ she asks.’ You were just staring at…something.’
‘I was thinking’ I responded
‘Oh, please share those thoughts, I might be sitting next to a famous philosopher and not even know it.’
‘Well, your guess is as good as mine, I still have no idea of how I got here, or what I did before all this’
‘It must be dreadful… was that what you were thinking of so intensely? Well, all I can tell you is that, they put you on the train in Lublin, like most of the people here, but you were pretty much unconscious then too.’
‘Tell me…what do I look like?’
‘Well, narcissistic are we? Wait, you have a little smudge on your face…’
‘I see you like to make fun.’
‘No, no, your face is pretty much clean, except for that one smudge; you also have dark hair, black eyes, a nose in the middle of your face…it’s not too big, but not too small either…’ she carried on describing me, in a low voice of course, not to wake the others, and with her soft hands she examined every inch of my face. I couldn’t help but enjoying her funny, lightly sarcastic style.

As our discussions went on, I had the chance, to see who she really is and she was, surely, anything but a person deserving this kind of faith, nor did all the other people around here- the old man was right... The night passed with a few laughs and also with a few somewhat more serious talks. I was sure of one thing, that the Nazis would either kill them, us, the moment we arrive at a camp, or work and starve everyone to death.

Eva fell asleep somewhere before morning. She still lied on my shoulder. I kissed her forehead and let her sleep on. I watched the sun go up through the wooden planks. I still didn’t manage to put lid on lid, even after a whole night. I even started to miss the dreaded history class…
Still lost in thoughts, it was only later I noticed the train was slowing down.

I quickly woke Eva, but before she could even open her eyes properly, a man in uniform slammed the door open. ‘Everyone out!’ he shouted in a high, ordering German. Everyone woke to the dreadful reality. Some, fortuned, voices would say, lied there still with an ice cold color in their faces.

The rest, who were still alive, stood scared in front of the wagon. Two soldiers were talking: ‘We need to pick up another badge, the women and children we don’t need, dispose of them in the forest...’ Hearing his words, I held Eva even closer, wrapped in my arms. One of the soldiers pulled her away… ‘No!’ I shouted. The next thing I knew was that something hard hit me on the head. I felt I was loosing balance, and I heard Eva screaming… I felt the blood flowing on my forehead and face. I still saw the ground, heard a few more words of the people around, but couldn’t make any out. All I saw were flashes and then, darkness.

A hand was shaking my shoulder. I felt the bottle of water I my hands. I lifted the bottle, thinking it was the old man again.
‘No thanks! I have my own.’ He responded furiously. I could also hear people laughing. I opened my eyes. There was an old man alright, but the one teaching history this time…
‘I’m sorry sir, I thought you ran out.’ I said. I didn’t really mean it as an insult, if he only knew.

‘Last time I asked you what it would take to keep you awake in my class, you said a movie…YOU SNORED THROUGH ALL OF THIS TOO!!!! Where did I go wrong…?’
‘Well, sir, I did say a good movie, you managed that… but you forgot the popcorn!’ everyone was laughing…I couldn’t help it, sorry teach!
‘That does it! OUT! NOW!’ he was furious; me… I was happy.
‘Wait a sec!’ someone called. I turn to see... ‘Eva’ I shake my head as if I said something I didn’t mean to.
‘You’ll need this’ she said handing me a handkerchief. ‘You have a little smudge on your face’
‘Thanks’ I still didn’t know if that was possible or if I was still dreaming. Just to make sure: ‘What’s your name again…?’
‘Well, I don’t recall mentioning it, but you already know it…’ I couldn’t help but laughing slightly.

‘I thought I said, OUT!’ the grouchy voice called out again.
‘See you later then’ she spoke in a low voice.
‘Surely…’ I replayed.
After all this nonsense, I really needed a drink; I'll settle for a coffee. There was also desperate need for some good company, so I took my history book along...