Devil's Workshop Read Online Free

under the outermost bastions. And as boys and girls, future male and female soldiers, enchanted by the perpetual gloom and dripping water, we were soon exchanging shy kisses and fleeting touches. Amid the flicker of candles and the smell of dripping wax, how could we not, given that we were practically always together, not to mention our sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t be long before we’d be ordered off to school, or maybe to some faraway garrison. Our favourite place to play was in the crawl spaces between the ramparts and the other forgotten parts of town, as far away from other people as possible.
    Some days we grazed the flock with stakes, some days without them. A goat on a chain would graze a circle in the grass by nightfall, and the next day we’d just move the stake. On sunny days – and there were plenty of them! – we often let the goats run free. They’d always find their way to where the grass was thickest. If a goat ran away, we could track it by its droppings. They were black, which made them easy to spot in the red grass.
    But even back then Lebo knew it had been decided and that Terezín’s days as a living town were numbered. The army was leaving.

     
    Lebo also knew the only part of town that would be preserved was the Monument, where the eggheads, in return for their cushy income, worked, as Lebo put it, hand in glove with the government, so they couldn’t have cared less that the town would be torn down.
    That was why he was so obsessed with every spike, every inscription, every bullet shell, each and every human bone we brought him back from our wanderings.
    He wanted to save it all.
    Being a kid, I never thought to ask him why. None of us did. He wouldn’t talk to anybody who asked him why the town should be preserved. Rolf the journalist was the one who eventually came up with an answer for the world. And now, if I want to ask why we shouldn’t let this town of evil collapse and let the grass grow over all the long-ago death, all the long-ago pain and horror, why not just let it disappear, Lebo can’t answer. All I hear now is the rustle of the grass, all I hear is the echo of footsteps in the ruins, the drip of water in the catacombs. It’s over, and nobody can answer me any more, because it happened: the town of Terezín fell.

     
    Mr Hamáček drove slowly while I just stared in amazement. In the days before I was in prison, every once in a while a swarm of Tatra 613s would come speeding down the road, which meant the government was coming to town for some war anniversary. The rest of the time it was just horse-drawn wagons, tractors from the collective farm, and every now and then a clunker or two like Mr Hamáček’s. Now the cars zoomed by, one after the other. Mr Hamáček explained that while I had been locked up, we had become part of Europe and there had been a tremendous influx of all sorts of new cars. I was amazed at the petrol stations, as lofty and clean as any spaceship I’d ever imagined, and as Mr Hamáček’s Škoda lurched to a stop at one of the pumps, I didn’t get out for fear of being crushed by all that open space, I didn’t even peek out of the window. And that was before I had any idea how Terezín had changed.
    I kept an eager lookout for the sign that said WITH THE SOVIET UNION FOR ALL TIME AND NEVER OTHERWISE. For my whole life it had marked the goat herd’s outermost post. But now it was gone, disappeared, nothing but a long, soggy field at the edge of the ramparts.
    As we drove into town we were greeted by silence, the silence of a destitute if not yet dead town, a town that had sunk into appalling poverty after the army left.
    Almost no one came here any more.
    What few tourists there were wandered around the Monument, up and down the educational trails they had put in to commemorate the genocide.
    We drove through Manege Gate, the Škoda shuddered to a stop on Central Square, and I froze.
    My aunts, among the few original inhabitants who had