Where Birds Go to Die

By Hannah Hardman

When I was a child, I would have looked you in the eye and told you I wanted to be a bird when I grew up. It was every child's dream at that time to be anything they weren't. Life passed with every fleeting imagination then, every absurd thought that entertained our masterminds. Worlds were made and forgotten to come and go and use as we pleased, where life was normal. We clothed ourselves with imagination as with immortality...

The world is a marvelous place for a young Hebrew girl with a burgeoning imagination. Abra's audacity, frankness, and strong sense of justice often put her family at risk, to the unease of her elder brother, Benjamin, who understands the rising intensity of their world under Nazi occupation better than she.

Life is twisted unexpectedly when, one November night in Vienna, Jewish shops, synagogues, and homes are burned by the Schutzstaffel. With the death of their father and the disappearance of their mother, sixteen-year-old Benjamin is forced to take care of his little sister on his own. Together in an abandoned attic, they create a hidden world to preserve their childhood and keep their dreams, humor, talents, and love alive.

Despite such disheartening odds, Benjamin, Abra, and their friend Enoch are determined to cling to their humanity as their humanity is reduced to ashes.

Where Birds Go to Die is a story of persistence, faith, and the exploration of the complexity and beauty of the human soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887514550

Book preview

The Benevolence of Imagination

Autumn 1937

When I was a child, I would have looked you in the eye and told you I wanted to be a bird when I grew up. It was every child’s dream at that time to be anything they weren’t. Life passed with every fleeting imagination then, every absurd thought that entertained our masterminds. Worlds were made and forgotten, to come and go and use as we pleased, where life was normal. We clothed ourselves with imagination as with immortality.

My brother Benjamin, who was right about everything, told me little girls can’t become birds, but I knew better. You hold out your arms like this. You jump out of a tree—or off the sofa—and flap your great wings till you fly away into the Austrian sky, where nobody can catch you, and you feel majestic. Well, one day I was going to be a bird. I hadn’t made up my mind yet about which kind, but I supposed a yellow one would do me the glory.

Benjamin wanted to be other things too. He put on makeup and became all sorts of things onstage. People, behind the lights, watched him transform. Sometimes he danced. Sometimes he mimed. Sometimes he was dead, and he looked so good and beautiful dead, as a flower does when you crush it. He wasn’t a sixteen-year-old boy on his throne of lights and admiration. A world consumed him on that stage, and he could be anything. I liked him best, though, when he was Benjamin Katz. I liked him even better when he wasn’t telling me what to do. Telling me what to do was his favorite activity these days, as he did it a lot, now that Papa was gone, and he was taller, so he knew better. As long as I minded him, he let me be a bird. I did my best to mind him.

But even birds must be girls sometimes, and actors must be boys. That time was whenever we were in public for others to look at. Market missions were such a time. My brother would hold both of my hands and look at me long and steady in the face and whisper, as if this were a secret between us, You’re like everybody else. You walk fast, you talk low, you don’t bring attention to yourself. Like this.

He would tuck his hands in his pockets, keep his black eyes on the ground, and walk as smoothly as a common thing. Out here, we were not Benjamin and Abra Katz. I don’t know what we were pretending not to be, but we were something else, something safe.

Benjamin enjoyed grocery missions as much as I did, for long walks alone in the city gave us time to talk about things Mother didn’t know about. Little did she know we were explorers, venturing into the neighbors’ backyards after school, snooping on the lady next door with twenty cats. The secret places of the earth were ours.

We’ll begin one day in October.

It was Monday. The clouds were growling.

The cold chewed me raw. Vienna never forgot its promise of gloom every fall: the clouds hung low, the once colorful buildings were cast in gray, and fog loomed among us like a creature. Benjamin, in his yellow coat, guided me like a mother duck. I always thought he looked like a mother duck in that yellow coat. A drizzle knocked on our heads as we walked from the market, arms full, down the road under the clouds’ shadows.

Benjamin told me all about school. He was getting older, wiser with the world, and he knew more than anybody. He told me the tales of what it was like on the other end of our school where the high schoolers were schooled. It was a fascinating mystery: all of us third-graders would push our noses into the fence at recess to stare across the yard into the upper-floor window of the red-brick building, fantasizing, wondering what they were up to all those hours in their confinement. They didn’t get free time outside like the rest of us. Benjamin told me all sorts of exciting things, most of which I suspected were myths.

During the afternoons, he said, Fräulein Rosenberg lets us play jacks in the halls.

I gave him a skeptical look. My teacher makes us stand in the corner when we’re bad.

High school is different, Abra. And the teachers don’t mind if we cheat on spelling tests. Sometimes we trap them in the lockers.

Benji, that’s a lie!

Oh?

Mama said that when she was in high school, the teachers beat her with a stick.

The teachers flip tables too. Saw one do it today. That’s why you don’t bring latkes to math class, the teachers don’t like it. We had to hide in the shelters. One kid got dragged off by the teacher. That’s how he got a black eye…

I looked at him.

He stopped. What, you don’t believe me?

We walked under oaks onto Baumgartner Street. The trees were naked now in their march toward death and tossed their leaves to the ground like clothes. I ran ahead of Benjamin and kicked through them. It was always a wonder to watch them flutter through the air, swirls of red and gold, frantic and helpless, before resting on the ground to crumple up and die. Somehow even dead things were lovely.

Just as any other evening after school, Benjamin and I were headed toward our bookshop. I often trailed behind to watch him work, and sometimes he let me help him with the books, to dust the shelves, straighten their spines, organize them by color, in the long afternoons of autumn when the sun meandered across the floor and brushed the books gold. Other times, I sat on a stool in the corner and watched him greet customers and wrap their books in brown paper. Benjamin always wrapped their books in brown paper, like little presents, and tied them with ribbon.

I sat on that stool now with a doll, tying its hair in a horrendous braid to the best of my eight-year-old prowess. For one whole minute, the sun lay on the floor and dragged its fingers on the walls. A daze fell over the shop as children on their missions ran by and bicycles hummed along the streets, newspapers or violets in their baskets. Benjamin dozed at his desk. Above his head, a clock said twenty-five past four.

He was startled awake now as the shop door slammed. The bells above the entrance shivered under the wrath of a Viennese, a tall Viennese, a Viennese we had seen before. Benjamin smoothed his apron and fixed his yamaka, and the episode that soon followed went something like this:

Herr Becker! How may I help you, my friend?

Don’t you sweet-talk me, Mister Katz. The man marched straight over to the desk and thumped it with his fists. Two fists. Two times. It appears you owe your customer an apology.

My brother stared. Down dropped his smile. What do you mean?

Don’t play games with me, boy.

Is the book I gave you in good condition? It’s a delightful classic, no? Perhaps you would like another. With ribbon! Oh, lots of ribbon—

Becker grabbed him by the tie. That’s enough out of you, Jew. You know very well what I am talking about.

I do?

Stop your fooling!

Benjamin risked a glance across the counter at me. I had stopped swinging my doll by the hair to stare, scrounging Becker’s face, looking for an explanation, a hint, a crumb of it, but I came up with nothing. Just yesterday, he was our friend. Just yesterday, he was our faithful customer to the Katz bookshop, and he always had a cheerful smile to offer my brother while they conversed about classics and theater. Except now the only thing the man offered was a look of utter contempt.

Benjamin calmly adjusted his yamaka, which was knocked sideways in the commotion. He said something sheepish, with a shrug, at which our friend laid out the accusation before him, straight on the counter. It went like this.

Scandal, Katz. Becker pulled a book from his coat and dropped it on the desk. Benjamin stared at it. Becker stared at it. He said, You know what that is, boy?

You bought it from me Sunday afternoon.

Yes. And you stole from me.

Benjamin looked up in alarm. Stole?

That’s right.

Benjamin shook his head and pushed the book back to the man. I don’t steal from my customers, sir. Honest to God.

"So you lie too. You stole from me. You charged me twice as much as you said it cost. Thieving from a poor old man and lying before his very eyes—have you no shame?"

Benjamin’s hands shook as he fumbled to open the cashbox. If you would like me to give you a discount for your unsatisfactory purchase, sir, I will gladly do so—

Never mind. I should have known.

Benjamin slumped like a scolded dog. His voice was so small, I could have put it in my pocket. Herr Becker, I don’t understand. You know me. You know I would never do you harm.

But his words were idle in the ears of Becker, who shook his head and went out the door like thunder as he had come in. The door slammed behind him. Benjamin stood rigid in a silence that clenched both of us. The clock clacked. Dust motes unsettled themselves. Books blushed. And then, without a word, he tore the Willkommen! sign from the window and yanked off his apron and threw it to the ground. There was a smile, or a couple of broken pieces of one, as he turned to me and held out a hand.

Come on, Abra. Let’s call it a day.

My doll lay on its face on the ground.

A patch on the bloomers was torn.

I slid off the stool and helped gather Benjamin’s things before heading up the back stairway to our apartment, and taking his hand, I looked up into his great dark eyes.

But, Benji, you never stole from that man.

God knows.

But why did he say that, Benji?

His heavy eyes looked out the window at the streets. They hung there awhile, on the shops, the black windows that weren’t black before. His voice slouched at his feet.

You wouldn’t understand.

One thing I did understand was this: it was Monday, the world was a wonderful place, and I imagined I was a bird. I took my brother by the hand and taught him how to beat his wings.

Benjamin, staring at the wall, looked very much like a boy. Tired and beaten. Robbed of transformation.

If only imagination could really change us, huh, Abra?

If only.

Ham and Gentiles

It was the end of October when the world changed for both of us. Things always got interesting for Benjamin and me this time of year, because it was when we headed toward the countryside to spend the day with an old family friend. The Beinlich family had been close to Mother and Father ever since I was born, so the story goes, and as tradition had it, I was to be nice to their youngest daughter, Gretel.

Nice. That’s a common grown-up word no child wants to hear which can be translated into the following:

Playing dolls with Gretel,

Doing whatever Gretel told me to do,

Not pulling her hair as often as I would have liked to.

The Beinlichs are very generous to invite us to stay, Mother would always tell me. Be grateful they have a respectable daughter for you to play with.

Mother had a way with detecting the respectable ones. Gretel was responsible and helped her family with chores, and she ate her vegetables, so Gretel was therefore a good influence for me. I could object to that. She made me play with the dolls that had stuffing coming out at the seams while she played with her new china dolls, but I never complained. Gretel had so many of them, I sneaked one home each time we visited.

That Sunday evening as we packed our things to go, Mother reminded me to be on my best behavior. "The Beinlichs are very kind people, Abra. Now I expect you to stay with the children while we have our catching-up time together. Du hörst?"

I never fancied communion with the grown-ups anyway. Grown-ups were the slowest and the dullest of our human breed. Mostly they sat in silence around a fire and sipped wine to Strauss. Occasionally one said, Frau Fritz, how is your husband back on the farm doing? Fine, Frau Fritz would say. Got a job with the Müllers, did you hear? A murmur of congratulations. The record would scratch, silence would settle back in like an itch, and the fire would shimmer off their empty expressions.

Playing dolls with Gretel was somewhat beneficial for my part.

We pulled up in their driveway as the sun turned and left. Benjamin didn’t have to be dragged by the collar to the door like I was—the Beinlichs had a son his age, and Benjamin tolerated him with mutuality. Mother was just a single knock in when the door opened. A very tall, very handsome woman in her middle age appeared with such a look of surprise on her face and such a shock of gold hair on her head that I wondered for a minute if she had forgotten we were coming. But then again, that was just Frau Beinlich. Everything surprised her.

Anita! she shouted, seizing my mother in a jolting handshake. My oh my, what a wonderful sight if I ever did see one, Anita.

I managed to sneak inside unnoticed while Frau Beinlich and Frau Katz talked forever about coupons and how tired they were.

Dieter, their son, who lurked on the stairs like a misbehaving cat until he saw us, was at my brother’s throat within seconds.

Hello, Benjamin.

Hello, Dieter.

Want to go to my room?

Okay.

Watching my grown-up brother around his mandatory friend was dreadfully uncomfortable. Boys have such a strange way of interacting among their kind, a sort of mutual approach, as if both were testing their grounds to see whether it was okay to show affection. They ran off upstairs and disappeared into Dieter’s bedroom, a mysterious lair in which nobody was allowed except those bearing the names of Dieter Beinlich and Benjamin Katz.

I was next. Gretel made her usual entrance in her pink dress and thin braids as long as the Patriarchs’ genealogies. I had always wanted to pull those braids. Yank them hard and good and watch the golden hairs unravel into a thousand glittering pieces. She stuck up her nose in acknowledgment of my presence and said, Hello, Abra.

Hello, Gretel.

Want to go to my room?

Okay.

Off we went, Gretel in the lead. It was such a familiar routine—walking up the cherrywood banister, down the hall, past Dieter’s territory, to her own room. Her door was decorated with a sign blatantly declaring Gretel Beinlich in pink glitter. I would have seen the sign without the glitter, but that was Gretel. She liked to make sure she was noticed.

The Beinlichs certainly were no stranger to the last bit of luxuries Austria had to offer. Unlike my family’s fortune, their home was a three-story house. They had their own pond, and when we dined with them, for once I could remember having too much on my plate. Their money showed in Gretel’s cheeks, the way they were stuffed up with chub, how they bounced when she walked. We were both eight years old, yet somehow, I felt older. I was taller, maybe, or maybe Gretel wasn’t forced to mature in the ways that I was, knowing what it was like to not have enough.

She introduced me to her new toys. One was a little wooden doll stacked within many other wooden dolls—It’s from Russia, she said—and the toys that had been new the last time she now tossed aside with a yawn. I suppose there was something interesting about Gretel, if one were to really search for it, but mostly she was so terribly dull. She didn’t like reading like Benjamin and I did. She wasn’t interested in flying kites, and the last time I had challenged her to a fistfight duel in the mud, she shrieked in disgust and told me I needed to learn a thing or two about being a lady. Maybe I was more of a bad influence on her than she was a good influence on me. Whichever the case, I didn’t want to talk to her, and I wondered what Dieter and Benjamin were doing next door.

What kind of toys do you have, Abra?

Jostled from my thoughts, I looked at her blankly.

Toys, she repeated.

Oh. The old kind.

By which I meant the ones Mother had passed down to me from her childhood, because we didn’t have money for dolls. Not many of us did these days.

Oh, said Gretel. Mother says that’s typical for you.

Typical?

She smoldered a taunting smile. "You are Jewish, aren’t you?"

Feelings rose in me. The world staggered sideways. I think so.

Mother says that’s why you don’t have money. Nobody wants to sell their business to a Jew. They can’t find jobs these days.

Blue eyes

Yellow hair

Does it hurt to pull yellow hair

Does it hurt to poke blue eyes

I hate your blue eyes

I hate your yellow hair

I want to chop it off with scissors and

burn it

I must have been looking pretty stupidly at her, because she glanced up at me through her bangs, petted her doll’s pretty golden hair, smiled at my reaction, and casually prodded on like a knife to my throat.

"You are poor, aren’t you?"

My fists clenched around her china doll so hard it cracked. Apart from being richer than me, Gretel was also a Gentile. Blue eyes yellow hair perfect eyes perfect hair. My hair curled black as charcoal; my eyes were droopy ink splotches. Well, I was Jewish. What was I supposed to do?

I was debating whether to yank her hair or throw the doll at her head, when there was a knock at the door. One wonderful word interrupted the opportunity.

Abendessen.

Dinner.

I followed her in the scent of a feast. Even the boys crawled out of their cave—the news of food always did it—and together we raided the kitchen, armed up on sauerbraten and something dark and mysterious slathered in

Ham! Dieter stabbed his fork into a slab of pig and held it up for all to admire. It winked in the light. Don’t you love ham, Benjamin? My mother even slow-cooked it in honey.

Slowly, Benjamin lowered the meat from his mouth.

Don’t you love it?

Don’t you love it?

Benjamin stared at the wall.

Dieter stared at Benjamin.

I stared at the ham.

And brought it from my own mouth.

Oh, nein.

Nein nein nein.

What’s the matter?

I looked up to find Dieter and Gretel staring at us, faces blank in confusion or curiosity, like idiots or something. I thought I might have seen Gretel smile from the edge of my vision.

Go on, said Dieter, motioning with his hand. He, too, had blue eyes yellow hair perfect eyes perfect hair. Beautiful like his mother, his sister. He waved us on like we were tiny flames. Take a bite. It’s okay.

Take a bite, why don’t you, Abra?

But I already had taken a bite, and the swine was abominable in my mouth.

Benjamin saw me chewing on it and looked horrified. Everyone was looking at me. Dieter blinked two times. Gretel’s round cheeks were already stuffed full with it. And I tasted that swine, that abomination, and it was sweet, and the walls stumbled sideways, and my stomach somersaulted on itself like an acrobat, and I threw up in front of them all.

Silence.

The ham sat on the floor. I stared at it, Benjamin stared at it, Dieter and Gretel and God and the grown-ups—

Please, God, the grown-ups—

Abra. Mother stood in the doorway. She just stood there with the reddest face. Oh, Abra.

Frau Beinlich, behind Mother, looked more hurt than angry. There her feast was, the strenuous labor of her generous hands, tossed on the ground in disgust. In disgust. My soul blushed down to my socks.

She rushed to my rescue with a wobbly smile. I was awfully fragile. Gretel, get Abra a glass of water. Sit down here, dear—there, like that.

Gretel offered me a cup, but I knew that snide look in her eye. The trickles of laughter. Dieter turned his face away to smother a smile. It was only when Gretel fled the scene with her yellow braids flying did I sense there was a scheme in the whole matter.

I imagined Gretel Beinlich was a china glass doll.

In my fist, her pretty face cracked into a thousand pieces.

*****

The rest of the holiday was somber. For such an event, I was invited to sit with the grown-ups to soothe my stomach while Benjamin and Dieter and Gretel ran off somewhere. The fire was kindled. Flames flicked off the grown-ups, glittering in their wineglasses and on the water of my cup. I was seldom noticed besides the occasional glance shot my way now and then to make sure I was behaving.

The Beinlichs had their distant relatives staying for the weekend with them. Lenhard had round glasses and constantly sneezed into a handkerchief; Gertrude was the mother of four back home and was married to a mute man (nobody knew his name; he couldn’t tell us); Kristöfel made a living by selling picnic baskets door-to-door. He carried a dog with him. It was here with us now, and it peeked at me around the corner of the couch, giving me a fang. It was an ugly thing.

When specks of rain tapped on the windows and I couldn’t possibly stand another second in this room, I told my mother I felt better and ran off to find my like-breeds. They were outside in the yard, bent over something in the grass.

A baby bird, Abra. Benjamin’s eyes were round. Just hatched.

It was naked in the grass, except for a couple of yellow feathers on its wings, thrown on the ground like filth. It honked.

It’s dying, I said.

She needs her mother. Probably fell out of her nest from that tree over there.

We looked across the pond where he pointed, the only tree in the yard draped over the water. Scooping up the yellow bird, we got in the boat tied at the dock to carry it home: Benjamin and I on one side, Dieter and Gretel on the other. I still was cold toward Gretel and refused to acknowledge her beside me.

Rain dribbled down. We shivered as we neared the middle of the pond, pieces of clouds splashing back from the water as they tumbled. The bird was tucked into bed, prayers were said, and we waved good riddance as the little boat took us ashore.

*****

That night, Benjamin and I went to our guest room for bed. He was worn out from a long day of socializing—he was always worn out after socializing—and was fast asleep before I got my nightgown on. The lamp on a stool was turned out so that the moon melted in silver streams through the window. I climbed out of bed and stood by him and prodded him in the back with my finger.

Benji?

What is it, Abra? A rumpled voice.

Can I ask you something?

There was a moan under his blanket. His curly head poked out, and he said, "Ja."

I nestled at his side, pushed my head under his arm, squished my cheek on his chest. Stared into the dark in silence. I said, Benji, I don’t think the Beinlichs like us very much.

Why do you think that?

Gretel called us Jews.

We are.

Yes, but…

My hands fidgeted with his striped shirt.

She said we’re poor.

We are.

Benji?

"What now, Abra?"

Why doesn’t anybody want to sell their business to a Jew?

He sat up on his elbows and looked at me. The moon caught his scowl, but then his face softened, and he sighed. He sounded like Mother when he did that.

Gretel means no harm to us, Abra. The Beinlichs are good people. But when good people mix with bad people, they start having wrong ideas about friends. Folk like us.

Like Jews?

Like Jews.

I considered that. Benjamin was quiet too, and that meant he was thinking. The moon tinged a lazy bang on his forehead. He added, That day Herr Becker came into the shop… I never stole from anyone. They think we’re thieves because we’re Jews, they think we’re liars because we’re Jews, but that’s the way it’s always been.

The way it’s always been, the way it’s always been…

Another silence. I held my brother’s face, pulled it close to mine, and looked into his warm dark eyes.

Remember that bird?

The dying one?

It was alone. Its mother didn’t want it.

Uh-huh.

A yawn. His eyes were drooping.

But why?

A thoughtful pause. He kissed my forehead and turned over, pulled the blankets over his head. Then slowly, softly, he said, I guess some of us aren’t wanted.

I watched the moon on the pond. Benjamin was soon asleep and kicked like a rabbit while he dreamed, but in our silence, his words dangled between us.

I didn’t know what he meant then, but it would make sense to me later. It would be the only thing that made sense when our world changed, when the only thing to cling to in our madness was each other.

The Perfect Schnoz for a Fist

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for Adonai over all is generous to all who call upon him.

—Romans 10:12

Morning announced the good news that our holiday was over. As we buttoned our jackets and talked nonsense out the door, Herr Beinlich stopped me. He was a quiet fellow, tall and sandy-haired like Dieter, and I seldom heard him speak when the grown-ups gathered around their fire. Usually he sat alone by the record player and hummed to Beethoven. As I looked into his coffee eyes, I saw they were surprisingly gentle for a grown-up. He knelt to my level. You know, Fräulein Abra, you didn’t have to eat the ham. He winked.

I shot a glance at Gretel to see if she was smiling, but she was too busy stuffing her mouth with breakfast. Her cheeks looked especially round this morning. I nodded my thanks to Herr Beinlich, and Mother pushed Benjamin and me out the door.

The first of November arrived beautifully. I would return to school, Benjamin would return to the bookstore, and life would carry on from our Beinlich daze. I had been in the third grade for just two months now, but I was already tired of it. Frau Berkovic was a formidable woman. She towered over us like Goliath, and when she moved in on her prey, her countenance was like the shadow of Mount Sinai looming over her trembling victims.

She didn’t make the third grade easy for me. I never found school particularly interesting anyway, but I resented forced education all the more the day I was put in her classroom. Ever since our first battle, in which she had to pin me down to my desk to make me write the vocabulary, we shared a cold mutuality. I didn’t like her, and I suppose she didn’t like me either. My report card often came with colorful observations about me: Very troubled.

Benjamin tried to see the positive side of things. School is a privilege, and our duty as human beings is to become the best that we can be for our society. All sorts of benefits come from an education.

Like standing in the corner when you’re bad?

Like getting smart. If you’re smart, you can get a job.

I told him women didn’t get jobs, so what good was it for me?

Nobody wants to marry a stupid person, Abra.

What’s so great about getting married?

Well, don’t you want children?

Sometimes Benjamin’s optimism turned me wild. I tried to see the world from his perspective, but it was awfully hard to do so, especially when I had enemies to deal with. Enemies like Friedrich Schmidt.

It was a Tuesday afternoon when that schmuck showed up. It was recess. The sun shone like aluminum foil, the air was skimpy, and I was staring at the high school building from the fence with my friend Edna when the bell screamed for us to go home. I usually cut across the yard into high school grounds to meet Benjamin after school, but today Edna didn’t want to walk home alone. Edna was not particularly normal. She was scared of everything, including walking from our school to her apartment around the corner. I didn’t see why. I suppose she could have hit someone over the head with those textbooks of hers if she needed to—she often thought she needed to—but because I was bigger and not so much a baby, I was to escort her home.

Not far from our Hebrew school was another school where the Gentiles went. Separating our worlds was a fence and an army of oaks, along with some broken bottles jutting from the earth on the Gentiles’ part to keep us out. It was easy to avoid their territory and just as easy for them to avoid ours. But as I rounded the corner to Edna’s apartment, an insult hurtled after us.

You ugly Jews!

We turned. A scrawny kid no bigger than us was standing on the sidewalk across the street. He wore knickers and a rumpled mess of brown hair, and he peeked out at us from behind a telephone pole. I didn’t know what he was calling us ugly for. The kid wasn’t so pretty himself.

Good afternoon, I called.

"Don’t you good afternoon me, Jew. My folks are Aryan."

I didn’t know what that meant. I