The Midwife of Auschwitz by Anna Stuart EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Authors: Anna Stuart
- Language: English
- Genre: Jewish Literature
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
1 SEPTEMBER 1939
ESTER
As the clock of St Stanislaus’ cathedral rang out midday, Ester Abrams sank
gratefully onto the steps beneath it and turned her face to the sun. The soft
rays were warm on her skin but autumn was sending tendrils into the stone
and it felt chill against her legs. For a moment she considered taking off her
coat to sit on, but it was new and bought in a recklessly pale blue that her
younger sister had said brought out the colour in her eyes, and she didn’t
want to risk staining it.
Ester flushed. It had been a foolish purchase really but Filip was always
so beautifully dressed. Not extravagantly – an apprentice tailor had little
more money than an apprentice nurse – but with care and pride. It had been
one of the first things that had struck her on that day back in April when
he’d first sat down on the far side of the steps and she’d felt every cell in
her body fill up, like the blossom bursting into life on the nearby cherry
tree. She’d looked down again straight away of course, fixing her eyes
firmly on her pierogi, but had eaten her way through the little dumplings
without tasting one morsel of her mother’s finest mushroom and sauerkraut
filling.
She hadn’t dared look up again until, finally, he’d risen to go and she’d
risked a quick glance. She could picture him now – his body long and lean
and almost gangly, save for the purpose with which he walked; his jacket
coarse but cut with style; his kippah intricately bordered as it clung to the
back of his head. She’d feasted on the sight of him until, suddenly, he’d
glanced back and his eyes had locked tight with hers and she’d felt not just
her face but her entire body flush with something that should have been
embarrassment but had felt more like… like joy.
The next day she’d been there early, tense with anticipation. Midday
had struck but there’d been no young man, just an old one in a too-low hat,
doddering up the steps on a stick. She’d rushed to help him, partly because
it’s what her mother would expect of her, and partly in the hope that by the
time she came back out, the young man would be sat there. He hadn’t been
and she’d thrown herself down with her bajgiel, picking crossly at it as if
the poor bread was to blame so that it had taken her until at least half the
way through her food to realise that he was back in the same spot as
yesterday. He’d been quietly eating his own lunch and immersing himself in
a newspaper, save that whenever she glanced over, he’d seemed to be less
reading it than staring through it.
For six long days they’d eaten at opposite sides of the steps as the
people of Łódź had bustled and pushed and laughed their way along
Piotrkowska Street below them.
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