Hannah & Emil Read Online Free PDF Page B

past the shopfronts to Goodge Street tube on the corner. The streetlights were out and the padded creatures bumped and jostled their way to the entrance by instinct, muttering Excuse me , After you , Mind my foot in a number of languages. It was cold outside at night, even with a coat pulled over my nightclothes, but the air between the shuffling people was thick and warm and one could tell from its odour that it had been cycled through living bodies. What I loved best were the searchlights tracing paths in the sky. I walked looking up, hoping for a glimpse of a zeppelin, while Mother hurried me into the station entrance, pressing my head into the scratchy woollen coat covering her soft hip.
    In the dim light in the endless stairwell I saw Boris from my class with his parents and his sisters just below us. I recognised him by the silhouette of his glasses and his unruly hair. He was Russian but that was not the language we spoke together. Father had taught me only a little of his language—much of what I knew I had gleaned from inside the curtain around my bed during his late-night conversations with Mother, when he spoke of relatives at home and how they fared: shortages, strikes, the cost of food. And English was unspeakably dull, the language of school, not for down here in the tunnels at night. We might have spoken Yiddish, but never in front of Father. He called it the dead language of the old world. He hated anything old-fashioned, anything he connected with superstition. Mother would not have minded so much. She often made up affectionate names in Yiddish, though not when Father was about. She had an endless store, so many that I often had to ask her what I had just been called. Little bird. Flower of spring. Sweet morsel.
    We spoke when we were playing in a language we felt we had invented. Or if we knew we hadn’t quite invented it, that we were close to its beginnings. Someone at our school, St John’s, used it on us, called us little Jews. It was clear what the boys were saying. They called everyone little Jews. We listened to these and other snippets of tattle and invective in the playground and saw quickly enough that it was a simple trick. One worked out how the word would be spelled backwards, with the odd variation where needed for pronunciation. Yobs for boys and so on. Mother hated it, said we sounded like barrow boys and fishmongers.
    â€˜Olleh Sirob.’ I fell into step beside him, clutching my bundle as we descended into the crowded gloom, whispers echoing up from deep, deep below us. I loved raid nights.
    He had not known it was me behind the pile of bedding. I was just a small girl, even for eight. Boris was not required to carry bedding. His mother did everything. We spoke as quickly as possible, partly to show off, partly to obscure further what we were saying. I was not one to waste a chance to irritate my brothers, who were one step behind, and stuck behind our bulkily laden forms until we reached the platform. We exchanged nonsense until our brains tired and we were forced to whisper in English.
    â€˜Do you think there is really a bomb?’ Boris said. ‘Mama says this is a waste of time.’
    â€˜ I’ve never seen one. But imagine if we went back up and the streets were missing, and we had to live in the tube forever, like rats . . .’
    On the platform my parents manoeuvred themselves into a space where they could wedge their pillows against the curved tiled walls of the tunnel. ‘Hannah, come,’ Father instructed. ‘Boys, come. You want the hoi polloi to crush your skulls?’ As we burrowed into position, the ground trembled and the whispering ceased for a moment. Everyone looked at the ceiling. Was that a bomb at last? Or merely a rumbling in some ancient water pipe?
    I was forced to share bedding with Mother, but made sure that I could lie next to Boris as well. Mother had brought an extra quilt to lay beneath us, but it was thin, the stone