The Earth Is Singing Read Online Free Page A

for a moment.
    “It is the anthem of the Nazi Party,” she says when I continue to stare at her.
    “Oh,” I say. A tiny bolt of something painful passes through my stomach. “They are already here, then?”
    “Yes,” says Mama. She doesn’t elaborate.
    My mind is racing.
    I keep replaying in my head the expressions on the faces of those young Jewish men as they were marched off.
    I see the red and white armbands on the uniforms of the men accompanying them.
    Uldis might be wearing those armbands soon. What if he is ordered to stick a gun into the back of a thin Jewish boy?
    But I know him so well. He is kind. He won’t harm anyone. He will keep the peace.
    I want to discuss it with Mama, but something about her face is as closed off as the sign outside our famous church warning people not to venture inside the ruin.
    So the questions and doubts inside me have nowhere to go.
    They grow into the silence, filling it up like mould.

Chapter Three
    Mrs Rubinstein and her family are taken away in the night.
    I wake up from an uneasy sleep to hear screaming.
    Mama is already up and standing in her red flannel dressing gown at the window, her hair in a dark plait down her back. For the first time I notice the wiry grey hairs poking out and floating in the lamplight.
    I stand next to her and we peer out of the gap in the curtains. Mama tells me to switch off the light.
    Down on the street the white-clad figure of Mrs Rubinstein, still in a nightdress, can be seen huddled over next to a man in sharp uniform with a smart peaked cap to match. Her two children cling to her hands. I can hear little Peter crying and see his older sister, Leah, trying to comfort him. She is crouched down, peering into his face.
    I stare at the soldier. He looks different to the ones who marched through Rīga with their wide grins and tanned faces.
    I can’t see much of his face because it’s dark, but something about the rigid way he holds himself makes my stomach feel horrid. He is pencil-thin and full of sharp angles.
    “Why are they taking her?” I whisper, almost to myself as much as to Mama.
    Mama doesn’t answer. Mrs Rubinstein was our neighbour when we lived in the villa and she was moved at the same time we were, to the apartment block right next door to ours. Now she is being shoved into the back of a truck. As she sits in her thin nightdress, she looks up at our apartment for a split second and Mama places the palm of her hand on the window and it’s like a message passes between them via electricity.
    We watch as the truck with the three figures in the back passes down our street and roars out of sight.
    There is a terrible silence for about five minutes. The truck drives off so fast that I can still see leaves and debris swirling around on the pavement. Mama pulls her long coat over her nightdress and runs downstairs and out into the street. I see her bend over something in the gutter. When she comes back upstairs she is sighing heavily and I don’t think it’s from her exertions on the staircase.
    She puts something on the window sill in front of us.
    It’s the dirty stuffed teddy bear belonging to Peter Rubinstein. It only has one black beaded eye.
    “We will keep it until he gets back,” says Mama, her eyes shining. “I will sew on a new eye and give this bear back his sight!”
    I smile. Sometimes Mama can be strict and hard to fathom.
    At other times I love her so much that it hurts.
    The silence outside doesn’t last long. The sound of screams and gunfire reach us from somewhere just around the corner – Kalēju iela , perhaps.
    Mama makes us a cup of coffee each as it’s obvious that we will not be able to sleep any longer that night. Already I know that I will fail to reach school in a few hours’ time.
    “Mama,” I say, fiddling with the ends of my hair. “The Germans have chased the Soviets out of town but it does not feel safe. I can still hear shooting.”
    Omama has woken up and come in to see what we are