Best Australian Yarn: Soar by Eleni Chapman

Krakow, Poland, 1942

Sabina was reading her book when the Nazis came for her parents. She was sitting at the big wooden table in the kitchen while Mama prepared lunch for her. Papa read his newspaper, humming happily. Sabina was impatient as she waited for her mother to cut the boiled meat and potatoes into small pieces for her to eat, and her mind drifted to her the promise Papa had made. Sabina had come home the previous day with a report card full of neat red ticks, and Papa had promised he would take her for an ice-cream as a reward. The anticipation of the rare treat had kept Sabina going, even through the boredom of waiting in line with her mother to be handed the yellow fabric star all Jews were required to sew on their sleeves. Sabina hated waiting in lines, and she was only eleven and so didn’t even need to wear the fabric star. It all seemed pointless anyway. When Mama came home and began to stitch the star to her best sweater, all it had done was make Papa’s twinkly eyes and smiley mouth go flat and tight. Then he had invited a couple of men from the street over to the apartment and they had spent the rest of the night talking in low, hushed voices with worried frowns permanently set into their features.

Sabina opened her mouth to ask Mama whether she should choose chocolate or vanilla ice-cream when someone began hammering at the door. Mama dropped the dish in her hand. It shattered into a hundred pieces on the floorboards, the pale white china the exact same shade as Mama’s stricken face. Papa leaped up from his seat and grabbed Sabina’s shoulders. He pushed her towards the hallway, where the ladder to the attic stood.

“Go,” he said urgently. “Go now.”

Sabina’s heart beat fast as she obeyed and raced up the ladder to the dark attic. Panicked thoughts rushed through her head as the angry voices of German soldiers echoed from the kitchen.

“Juden, raus! Schnell!” Sabina heard Mama’s panicked scream, Papa pleading. The sounds of struggling, a harsh slap, voices roaring. She pulled herself into the attic, gasping as her foot caught on the top rung of the ladder, sending it clattering to the floor below. She held her breath as the angry yells from the hallway stopped abruptly. Had they heard her? Sabina lay curled in a ball, waiting for the attic’s trapdoor to be flung open, for her hiding place to be discovered. Minutes went by … hours? Days? Sabina did not know. After what seemed a lifetime of waiting, she slowly stood up and peered down through the attic door. The house below was silent and the sun was sinking below the horizon, a blood-red glow seeping through the sky. Her parents were gone.

When the Nazis invaded Poland last year, Papa had stood at the door, his face set as straight and stiff as the shirt collars her Ciocia Maria ironed in her little shop. As the uniformed men marched through the streets of Krakow, some barely older than Sabina’s cousin Leon, Papa had walked briskly back inside, and up the stairs. Sabina had found him in her room, folding her favourite dress into a small suitcase.

“Papa!” she had said crossly. “I wanted to wear that to Sara’s birthday tea on Saturday!”

He had turned to look at her gravely.

“Gąsienica, soon there will be no more birthday teas. We must be prepared.” Sabina’s heart warmed at his use of her childhood nickname, which meant “caterpillar”, but she was also confused. No more birthday teas? Surely the Nazis, with their boots and guns and tanks, were more interested in doing other things than taking away little girls’ birthday teas? An uneasy feeling settled in Sabina’s stomach and didn’t leave until she was safely tucked into bed later that night.

But Papa’s preparation had paid off. The suitcase was waiting faithfully in the attic corner, still holding that favourite dress as well as a few other items of clothing. Now, Sabina quietly laced her boots, put on her winter coat and took the suitcase before walking over to the concealed wooden panel in the attic wall. She put her hand on the faded rose wallpaper and pushed hard. The panel swung open, and Sabina climbed through.

It had been Papa’s idea too to install the panel. The apartment houses on Sabina’s street were jammed together like coloured pencils in a box, the neighbours sharing the same thin walls. Her uncle, Wujek Jakob, who lived next door, had helped Papa cut a neat hole in the attic wall and installed a hinged door. Jakob was a skilled craftsman, making intricate wooden toys and games for all the children on Sabina’s street, and you could barely see the panel. Papa said that if the family ever needed to escape their house, they should climb through and hide in Uncle’s house next door. When Sabina had heard him telling Mama this, the uneasy feeling had returned. Surely they would never need to escape their own house?

Now standing in Uncle’s dusty attic, her heart racing, Sabina was glad Papa was so paranoid. It meant she was safe for now – but what of Mama and Papa? The Nazis had taken them, but where? Sabina swallowed hard and tried not to think of the hushed tales Mama’s friends whispered in the kitchen when they all thought she was asleep, stories of people being packed into train cars and never returning home. She knelt over the dusty trapdoor, eased it open and peered through. When there was no sound, Sabina lowered herself down into her uncle’s apartment, her suitcase clattering to the floorboards below.

“Wujek Jakob?” she called tentatively. “Ciocia Maria?” There was no reply. Sabina tiptoed into the apartment’s kitchen. The table was, as always, laid impeccably for dinner. A worn tablecloth of exotic patterned fabric lay underneath the china plates and polished silverware, but on closer inspection a thin layer of dust lined the utensils’ smooth surfaces. No-one had been here for a while. Sabina hoped her uncle and aunt had fled for safety like many other Krakow families had, rather than had to face the alternative like Mama and Papa had … Sabina shook the thought away and looked inside Uncle’s kitchen cupboard. Her eyes went wide.

There were potatoes, but there were also loaves of bread, jam, eggs, pickles, and a whole packet of sugar! Inside the refrigerator, there were six eggs and a block of butter, as well as two glass bottles of milk. Uncle Jakob’s wife, Ciocia Maria, must have been saving all the rich food to trade for potatoes, like Sabina’s own family did. But although she wished it wasn’t so, something told Sabina that Wujek and Ciocia would not be returning to their apartment for a very long time. Her stomach growled. She may as well make use of the remaining food.

After she had eaten three pieces of bread with butter it dawned on her that she now had to look after herself. There was no-one to cook dinner for her, no-one to tuck her in at night. She was all alone. Tears sprung to the corners of her eyes but she swallowed them down. She had to be strong, for Mama and Papa. She was eleven years old. She could manage.Sabina took a breath to get her thoughts straight. Tomorrow she would take some of the richer food from Uncle’s kitchen and trade them for bread and more potatoes. Mama couldn’t cook her lunch now; Sabina had to feed herself.

Now that she had a sense of purpose, Sabina felt stronger. She was strong enough now, to take care of herself, to make Mama and Papa proud. She would survive until she saw them again, until the Nazis went away. But she couldn’t go back to being the Sabina of this morning, the girl who thought only of ice-cream and report cards and birthday teas. She was no longer her father’s gąsienica, the little caterpillar. She was a motylek, a butterfly now.

So she would soar.