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Galerie
Galerie
Galerie
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Galerie

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One woman's quest for truth reveals a dark family secret long buried in Prague's Nazi past.

WINNER: Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, Fall 2015 -- Best Books in Fiction

FINALIST: Readers' Favorite Book Awards 2016 -- Historical Fiction

"Imagine Stephen King wrote Schindler's List..." ~ Nikki

Every family holds to secrets, but some are far darker, reach deeper, and touch a rawer nerve than others.

Vanesa Neuman is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and her childhood in the cramped intimacy of south Tel Aviv is shadowed by her parents' unspoken wartime experiences. The past for her was a closed book… until her father passes away and that book falls literally open. Vanesa must now unravel the mystery of the diary she has received—and the strange symbol within—at all costs.

Set against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation and the Jewish Museum of Prague—Adolf Eichmann's "Museum of an Extinct Race"—Galerie is fast-paced historical fiction in the tradition of Tatiana De Rosnay's Sarah's Key. From Jerusalem's Yad V'Shem Holocaust research center, to the backstreets of Prague, and into the former "paradise ghetto" of Theresienstadt, Vanesa's journey of understanding will reveal a darker family past than she ever imagined—a secret kept alive for over half a century.

PERFECT FOR BOOK CLUBS: A book club guide is included at the end of the story.

EVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS a thrilling work of historical fiction that examines how Holocaust horrors still resonate generations later, and how even deep wounds of betrayal can ultimately heal. [DRM-Free]

 

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 24, 2015
ISBN9781622532209
Galerie
Author

Steven Greenberg

Briefly…. I am a professional writer, as well as a full-time cook, cleaner, chauffeur, and work-at-home single Dad for three amazing teenagers. Born in Texas and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I emigrated to Israel only months before the first Gulf War, following graduation from Indiana University in 1990. In 1996, I was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces, where I served for 12 years as a Reserves Combat Medic. Since 2002, I’ve worked as an independent marketing writer, copywriter and consultant. More than You Asked for…. I am a writer by nature. It’s always been how I express myself best. I’ve been writing stories, letters, journals, songs, and poems since I could pick up a pencil, but it took me 20-odd years to figure out that I could get paid for it. Call me slow. After completing my BA at Indiana University - during the course of which I also studied at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Haifa University - I emigrated to Israel only months before the first Gulf War, in August 1990. In 1998, I was married to the wonderful woman who changed my life for the better in so many ways, and in 2001, only a month after the 9/11 attacks, my son was born, followed by my twin daughters in 2004. In late 2017, two weeks before my 50th birthday, my wife passed away after giving cancer one hell of a fight. Since 2002, I’ve run SDG Communications, a successful marketing consultancy serving clients in Israel and abroad.

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    Book preview

    Galerie - Steven Greenberg

    www.EvolvedPub.com

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    ~~~

    GALERIE

    Copyright © 2015 Steven Greenberg

    Cover Art Copyright © 2015 Mallory Rock

    ~~~

    ISBN (EPUB Version): 1622532201

    ISBN-13 (EPUB Version): 978-1-62253-220-9

    ~~~

    Senior Editor: Lane Diamond

    Assistant Editor: Michelle Barry

    Interior Design: Lane Diamond, with Images by D. Robert Pease

    ~~~

    PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

    At the end of this novel of approximately 72,927 words, you will find two Special Sneak Previews: 1) ENFOLD ME by Steven Greenberg, a journey of understanding about denial, acceptance, and the tortuous path between the two, in a story that imagines the unimaginable, and; 2) FORGIVE ME, ALEX by Lane Diamond, the multiple award-winning psychological thriller from the senior editor of Galerie. We think you’ll enjoy these books, too, and provide these previews as a FREE extra service, which you should in no way consider a part of the price you paid for this book. We hope you will both appreciate and enjoy the opportunity. Thank you.

    ~~~

    eBook License Notes:

    You may not use, reproduce or transmit in any manner, any part of this book without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews, or in accordance with federal Fair Use laws. All rights are reserved.

    This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; it may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    ~~~

    Disclaimer:

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.

    Enfold Me

    Galerie

    Moon Path

    ~~~

    www.StevenGreenberg.info

    ~~~

    What Reviewers Are Saying about Galerie:

    ~~~

    ...dark and gritty...the story and writing lift it up to the point of being nearly sublime. Buy this book and say goodbye to your family for the weekend, because you will not want to put it down once you get started. ~ Eric W. Swett

    ~~~

    "Galerie is a gripping read, rich with intrigue from beginning to end. As much a thriller as a Holocaust novel." ~ BookWormNZ

    ~~~

    "Imagine Stephen King wrote Schindler’s List.... Galerie manages to break away from the accepted treatment of Europe’s darkest hour and explore the horror from an unexpected point of view." ~ Nikki

    ~~~

    What Reviewers Are Saying about Enfold Me:

    ~~~

    I was haunted... had to read this incredible book in short doses... so haunting was the premise. ~ Jewneric

    ~~~

    Devastating, stunning, unforgettable... an amazing story, if you dare read it. ~ Glenda

    ~~~

    ...brutal... shocking... The book's conclusion will startle.... ~ San Diego Jewish Times

    We’re pleased to offer you not one, but two Special Sneak Previews at the end of this book.

    ~~~

    In the first preview, you’ll enjoy the prologue and first two chapters of Steven Greenberg’s critically-acclaimed ENFOLD ME, a journey of understanding about denial, acceptance, and the tortuous path between the two, in a story that imagines the unimaginable.

    ~~~

    ~~~

    OR GRAB THE FULL EBOOK TODAY!

    FIND LINKS TO YOUR FAVORITE RETAILER HERE:

    STEVEN GREENBERG’S Books at Evolved Publishing

    In the second preview, you’ll enjoy the first five chapters of the multiple award-winning psychological thriller FORGIVE ME, ALEX by Lane Diamond, the senior editor of GALERIE.

    ~~~

    ~~~

    OR GRAB THE FULL EBOOK TODAY!

    FIND LINKS TO YOUR FAVORITE RETAILER HERE:

    Lane Diamond’s Books at Evolved Publishing

    For Segev—the best travel companion, researcher, editor, plot consultant, and son that any man could hope to have.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Copyright

    Books by Steven Greenberg

    BONUS CONTENT

    Dedication

    GALERIE

    PROLOGUE

    BOOK I

    Chapter 1 – Sweetness

    Chapter 2 – Welcome to Prague

    Chapter 3 – A Kladno Schoolgirl

    Chapter 4 – Persistence

    Chapter 5 – Moe

    Chapter 6 – Soulless

    Chapter 7 – Backup Plan

    Chapter 8 – Zvi

    Chapter 9 – Something Broken

    Chapter 10 – The Golem

    Chapter 11 – Validation

    Chapter 12 – Terezin

    Chapter 13 – The Lie

    Chapter 14 – The Barracks

    BOOK 2

    Chapter 15 – Floodgates

    Chapter 16 – Respect

    Chapter 17 – Sticky Silence

    Chapter 18 – Win-Win

    Chapter 19 – Resignation

    Chapter 20 – Art

    Chapter 21 – The Yellow Brick Road

    Chapter 22 – Plan X

    Chapter 23 – Life Itself

    Chapter 24 – Mutual Interests

    Chapter 25 – Betrayal

    Chapter 26 – Galerie

    Chapter 27 – No Questions

    EPILOGUE

    Book Club Guide

    Acknowledgements

    Appendix

    Bibliography

    Special Sneak Preview: ENFOLD ME by Steven Greneberg

    About the Author

    More from Steven Greenberg

    More from Evolved Publishing

    Special Sneak Preview: FORGIVE ME, ALEX by Lane Diamond

    Prague, 1943

    Despite the basement room’s damp November cold, the boy dripped with sweat. His breath fogged out in gasps as he rocked, face huddled between spindly knees that peeked out through his threadbare trousers like two dim streetlamps in an otherwise dark alley. He’d drawn himself into a ball, hugging his legs so tightly with his stick-like arms that the tips of his dirty fingers had gone white.

    He’d already seen more than a twelve-year-old should have to witness, let alone process.

    He grasped the individual details of the scene, many of which were by themselves familiar: the table, the flickering bare bulb dangling from the ceiling as if on an umbilical cord, his father’s sharp and varied tools.

    They’d been familiar sights, but when his father had moved aside, no longer obscuring the boy’s field of view—that was when the whole had become incomprehensibly greater than the sum of its parts. That was when his heart leapt out of his skinny chest, commanding the scuffed leather-clad feet to run, run, RUN!

    And he had run. Back to the empty basement storeroom, with stone walls that sweated in the summer and radiated cold in the winter. He’d spent more time down here in the basement, as the weather had grown colder, rainier, and more dismal. Since it was no longer possible to play outside in the building’s small, dingy courtyard, he’d turned the mostly empty building into a personal playground. From nooks like his current subterranean roost, up to the attic rooms whose small dormer windows, reached eagerly en point, provided a glimpse of occasional passersby on the narrow cobblestone street below—the boy knew the limestone-faced building inside-out.

    Now, he drew closer to the building’s main sewage pipe, which provided faint warmth that always comforted, as long as he didn’t dwell on its origin. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near his father’s workshop in the sub-basement, the equivalent of several floors below his current refuge. Never pass this door, do you understand? Promise me. His father had made him promise, out loud.

    And he never did pass the heavy metal door with the symbol engraved on it, which led to the brightly lit staircase curving so steeply down. But at twelve years old, with no people around, he was lonely and bored, not to mention relentlessly curious. It hadn’t taken him long to find the wide ventilation ducts that let him move surreptitiously throughout the building, down to the basement where he now hid, and even to the massive sub-basement. Today, the workshop door had been left open—irresistibly so—just wide enough for a small eye to peer through the crack....

    His breathing slowed and he raised his brown-curled head tentatively, opening first one eye, then the other, checking the safety of his surroundings. The small stone storage room sat empty, and he was alone. For now.

    He’d been alone the first months, too. Father had not had any time for him, between long hours in his workshop and seemingly constant dealings with the man who came several times a day, regal and straight-backed in his black woolen overcoat, fedora, leather gloves, and silver lapel pin that bore the same strange symbol as the door. Father always showed the man respect and gratitude, and made the boy do the same, because if they were polite and worked hard, the man would bring Mother. She’d been left behind in Terezin, but remained warm and secure.

    The beginnings of a smile budded on the boy’s chapped lips. Soon, at least, he wouldn’t be alone. More people would come. They always did. He liked meeting them, these new people. They were kind, and hopeful, and they told stories with funny accents, which he sometimes couldn’t understand, and had strange clothes and smells. He rose to his full height, brushed the dust from the seat of his trousers, and started toward the door.

    As he left the room, he turned and looked back, the light of childlike curiosity just beginning to eclipse his dark visage. He imagined the room full again with voices, smells, and hopes. Yes, he thought, now smiling fully, new people would make it so much better.

    Prague, December 1991

    A rickety tram wiggled by, its unpainted metal roof mismatched to its red paneled sides. Dual headlights peered through the early darkness like serpentine eyes as it emerged from under the building and rumbled by Vanesa Neuman. From her perch in the shadows of the four columns of the Church of the Holy Savior, the squeal of the tram’s wheels, muted by a crunchy dusting of snow, quickly faded with its passing. Only the sharp smell of electricity from the tangle of overhead wires remained, as if to preserve its memory.

    For Prague in 1991 was a like a memory, she told me before she even left Tel Aviv—and not a good memory. She’d never been to the city, and had never intended to come. She’d heard all she needed to hear over the years from her father. She knew what she needed to know, and had never once felt a need to learn more about the city. All her life, she’d heard of Prague’s beauty, Prague’s mystique, Prague’s rich history, Prague’s breathtaking architecture, Prague’s insidious betrayal, and Prague’s slow downward spiral from discrimination, through persecution, into inhuman realms of misery, pain, and death.

    No thank you, she’d thought. No need to see this place.

    Yet here she was, and damn it, he was late. She must be in the right place, for there was only one Church of the Holy Savior in Prague, on Krizovnicka Street, across from the iconic Charles Bridge. He was supposed to meet her right here, in the shelter of the church’s massive columns, at five o’clock. The impassive eyes of the six marble statues above Vanesa, white-cloaked in fresh snow, gazed disdainfully down at her. It was already five-thirty, and almost fully dark. Still she, and the statues, waited.

    Huddled deep into dark coats and scarves, pedestrians flowed by. Streetlights flickered on, as did the gay Christmas decorations strung between the lampposts, throwing shadows dangerously into the paths of oncoming Skodas.

    Vanesa pressed deeper underneath the meager shelter that the columns afforded. They loomed over her, heavy, their menace unabated by the veneer of holiday cheer that draped the city. She pulled her long wool coat tighter around her petite frame, and tugged the hat further down over her ears, making her dark curls stand out at crazy angles. Still she shivered, stamping her booted feet halfheartedly in a futile attempt to warm them.

    She’d never really known actual cold. In a lifetime of nearly year-round Tel Aviv sunshine, cold—at least biting cold, like Prague’s December air—was an unknown commodity. Tel Aviv cold nipped lightly at you. The Golan Heights cold, which she’d encountered in her army service, snapped at your chin, numbed your earlobes and toes. The damp Jerusalem cold could actually get into your bones. Prague cold, however, clamped right down and gnawed on you, like a Piranha going after aquarium-dipped fingertips.

    She hadn’t wanted to come, she told me, to this land where her parents’ family had lived for over 500 years, to this land from which some 85% of Jews were eradicated at places she’d read about, or heard mentioned in hushed Czech whispers when her father spoke to friends or customers at the shop.

    Of course I remember Luba! either he or the friend would gush, confronted with a just-discovered mutual acquaintance. This elation inevitably preceded an understanding blink, a subtle nod in her direction, and a lowering of eyes, as either one or the other knowingly whispered the words—usually Auschwitz, but sometimes Maly Trostenets, Sobibor, Izbice, or simply the transports.

    She’d come to Prague not out of want, but out of need—a need that led her to wait on this frozen street corner to meet a man she only knew through Uncle Tomas, and who’s gravelly, authoritative voice she’d only heard briefly over a scratchy international telephone line. She needed to make sense of her father’s dying gift, to fill in the vast empty space that was his life during the war. She needed to put some sort of face on this man who had raised her after her mother died—a face not lit by gaudy Tel Aviv sunshine, but rather by the same fading, winter-gray Bohemian light that currently lit her own face.

    She sighed. Her primary contact in Prague was a no-show, leaving her the lone actor in a slowly-fading street scene.

    A tram lumbers by, she narrated to herself, attempting to alleviate her boredom and forget the cold. A faulty streetlight flickers. Tourists straggle off the Charles Bridge, closely followed by artists lugging wares in cleverly-designed carts. Another tram, this one with a squeaky wheel. Cue more cars. Cue pedestrians. Enter boy on a bike, slipping in the patchy snow. Fewer and fewer pedestrians now. Finally, following an agonizingly slow fade, the spots darken, the street grows silent. The curtain falls.

    At six-fifteen, she gave up and turned to walk the half kilometer back to her hotel next to Old Town Square. Halfway down Platnerska Street, she could already see the mismatched twin spires of the St. Nicholas Cathedral peeking from above the buildings and leafless trees. Her footsteps, squeaking occasionally on the patches of foot-packed snow, had begun to echo on the deserted street.

    Unlike in the movies, she told me later, she’d never even heard another set of footsteps. She’d never spotted a shadowy figure trailing her, had never seen a suspicious car with a figure in a dark hat glancing furtively in her direction as it glided by. She was simply walking one second, and being pulled into the alley the next second.

    Two men, both bald, both in high, black, military-style boots, grabbed her. One stank of garlic; the other reeked of alcohol, likely vodka. Once off the street, Garlic grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms behind her back, his rank breath on her neck. Vodka clamped a cold hand over her mouth. They ignored her admirable yet futile attempts at resistance, pulling her deeper into the alley and through a low doorway into what had to be a garbage room, based on the ripe stench. A metal-grated door clanged shut, abruptly cutting off any remnants of city sounds audible over Vanesa’s silent struggling.

    When her father told her that her mother had died, alone at night in the off-green sterility of Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center, Vanesa had not cried. Neither had she cried at the funeral, nor during the shiva—the traditional seven-day period of mourning. She’d never been an emotional girl, she told me, because she’d always known—and frequently been reminded—that whatever her current tribulations, they paled in comparison with her parents’ experiences. What right had she, a girl who’d always had clothes to wear and food on her plate, to complain to two Holocaust survivors... about anything? Who was she to mourn a lost toy, a stubbed toe, an insult, even a single death, when her childhood memories were as populated by the ghosts of her parents’ past as by living souls?

    So, from a young age, I fought epic battles with tears, she said. She’d won, but it had been a Pyrrhic victory. The tears, once defeated, were disinclined to return, even when needed.

    Only Uncle Tomas had managed to elicit a dribble of tears from the dry well of twelve-year-old Vanesa. Uncle Tomas, with his wool coat that had in those years always smelled vaguely of carrion, and the fading blue-black number on his forearm that she’d long ago committed to memory—A-25379. His stiff Germanic manner was, she believed, only a frozen exoskeleton that the Mediterranean sun had not yet thawed. Her father seemed to alternately despise and grudgingly admire Uncle Tomas, always keeping him at arm’s length, but never farther. Despite his family status as closest living relative, Uncle Tomas wasn’t really even a relative, but rather her grandfather’s business partner, co-owner of the cramped shop on Nahalat Binyamin Street in south Tel Aviv’s working-class Florentine neighborhood.

    Nor had the tears returned of their own volition when her grandfather Jakub died four years later. They’d found him slumped over his workbench in the dingy back room of the shop, a single bare bulb reflected in the stainless steel scraping tool he still clutched in one hand, his forehead resting lightly on his other hand.

    Again, only in the comfort of Uncle Tomas’ stiff embrace could she mourn, as if he held some secret key to the floodgates of her grief. Thankfully, he had always been beneficent in his duties as gatekeeper.

    If her parents were closed books, her grandfather had been to Vanesa a locked library, a restricted section cordoned off with gaily painted steel mesh that was superficially decorative but ultimately foreboding. Vanesa had never met a more silent person, yet he always smiled sweetly when she waltzed into the shop after school on her way home, the family apartment being just one floor above. He would look up from whatever he was scraping, stretching, or trimming, with a distracted smile, as if he’d forgotten something and her arrival had pleasantly jogged his memory—a vague aha! moment. Then he would lower his head, wordlessly turning back to his work, leaving her to poke around the shop until she found the piece of hard candy he placed in a different hiding place each day.

    It was like I learned, both in the shop and in my life, to look past the silence and find the sweetness, she told me.

    But no sweetness could be found in what Vodka and Garlic did to Vanesa in that dark Prague garbage room, just as there had been no sweetness whatsoever in the untimely death of her father at age 60, just six months previously.

    No sweetness, and still no tears.

    Prague, December 1991

    They flung Vanesa to a cold concrete floor. She slid backwards over the frozen film of garbage juice until the back of her head connected with a filthy brick wall, the unhealthy thunk making her teeth rattle.

    Her head cleared slowly, and an ominous silence followed. Her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, picking up wisps of light floating in through the rusty mesh metal door.

    The two hulking silhouettes loomed above her, sufficiently backlit that she could see the swastika tattooed on one’s neck when he turned. Neither made any effort to hide his face. They stared at her, as if impressed with their accomplishment thus far but unsure how to proceed. Garlic finally took the lead, speaking in unaccented Czech.

    So, bitch, Miss.... He looked at the palm of his hand, as if reading what was written there but then deciding not to vocalize it. He looked sideways at Vodka for encouragement, turned back to Vanesa, smiled—showing a number of sickly black teeth—and adopted a quasi-formal, oratorical tone. Uh... welcome to Prague, the jewel of Bohemia. As part of our city’s welcoming package to intrusive cunts like yourself, we’d like to enlighten you as to certain local rules and customs. The very first rule is that too much curiosity can piss people off. He spat in her direction, again turning to Vodka for reassurance.

    Vodka nodded sagely, wringing his hands in undisguised anticipation.

    Vanesa pressed herself tighter against the damp coldness of the brick wall, which provided faint reassurance, simply owing to the fact that it was not tall, muscular, swastika-tattooed and looming.

    Garlic began to unbuckle his belt, looking back at Vodka with leering satisfaction. With her defiance now supplanted by visible fear, he was pleased with himself, and continued. ...and pissing people off in Prague has historically held somewhat unpleasant consequences, as you may know.

    "Prosim, she stuttered in Czech. Please...."

    As the two men closed in on Vanesa, the remaining inky light left the fetid room like a final solemn breath.

    Wisconsin, 1981

    When I first met Vanesa Neuman, she had more questions than answers, and a clear willingness to ask them. I once joked that her truly insatiable curiosity made her a sort of bottomless intellectual sinkhole, swallowing anything thrown into her. She lived her interrogatory life in a kind of stream-of-consciousness, one question inevitably leading to another. A discussion about peeling paint could easily unravel into the Allegory of the Shadows, meander back to the inner life of mosquitoes, flit to the merits of that evening’s dining hall fare, and roost thereafter on the branch of Mongolian falconry.

    As the years passed, Vanesa’s question-to-answer ratio slowly tipped. In the way of zealots, technocrats, taxi drivers, and the clinically insane, she gained too many answers. They pushed her questions aside, as if her intellectual storeroom had finite volume. And she grew further and further away from me.

    Nonetheless, the touch of some people who intersect your life never completely fades. In the summer of 1981, more than a decade before I’d even heard the word Galerie, Vanesa became one such person.

    I was an oh-so-serious nineteen-year-old college student, working as a counselor for high school-aged kids, in a sleepover camp tucked back in the woods two hours north of Chicago. The camp’s ample grounds snuggled at the edge of a still wooded but increasingly urbane subdivision that had sprung up uninvited on one side. On its other side ran a copse of dense forest whose depths even the most adventurous camper dared not plumb. To the east, the property hugged a mud-bottomed lake with a trucked-in sand beach, which boasted a speedboat and small catamaran, not to mention a number of canoes and paddle boats renowned for providing only the illusion of movement.

    Donna, the waterfront director, lorded over the lake. Her word, inevitably reinforced by an eardrum-piercing whistle, was absolute—as absolute, it was irreverently rumored, as her prodigious posterior, which was said to have once crushed an errant kitten that made the regrettable life choice of napping on the lifeguard chair.

    Vanesa was a quintessential sixteen-year-old, a camper in the oldest group in which I was a co-counselor for a boys cabin. She stood 162 centimeters in her All-Stars, shorter and slightly chubby compared to the Madonna wannabes in her cabin. But you could feel the fire in her at a glance—in the way her eyes met yours without a shred of hesitation, without an inkling of self-consciousness, probing you like a district attorney and then delivering judgment like a Wild West hanging judge. She had a way of tossing her dark, shoulder-length curls when she argued, of leaning her small-chested figure in to engage you when she spoke—as if not just her mind, but her whole body tried to prove her point.

    I was instantly smitten, and remain so today—less with what she’s become than with what she still is to me, which is, of course, sixteen years old.

    My pimple-faced, hyper-hormonal yet laudably under-experienced campers—this was the 1980s, after all—lived for the duration of each month-long camp session in a rickety wooden cabin, together with my co-counselor and myself. The cabin—the camp brochure called it rustic—boasted screen-only windows quite effective at keeping the mosquitoes in the cabin, gaps in the floorboards wide enough to accommodate the entrance of almost any spider or vermin, and a screen door whose industrial-strength spring slammed it closed with a bang loud enough to grace the finale of the 1812 Overture.

    Teenage boys being teenage boys, my campers lacked interest in much beyond sports and girls. So I was drawn to chatting with the girl campers during my free time. They were strictly off-limits romantically, and I maintained the propriety of the camp rules, but what nineteen-year-old straight male would not enjoy the fawning admiration, chaste though it may be, of a gaggle of boy-struck teenage girls?

    Vanesa did not penetrate the inner circle of the girls’ cabin intrigue. Neither did she linger on the fringes. Instead, she struck me as standing some three meters above. She sat apart reading, writing in a journal she kept in a simple spiral notebook—not a pretentiously locked and frilly girl-diary—or just gazing at the sky, with a gently curving nose flaring out to meet cheeks that retained just the right accent of baby fat. Sixteen, perfect, and untouchable—I was staff, after all—and she was a visiting Israeli camper.

    We had no hope romantically. Or so I thought that summer.

    Vanesa was born in Israel, a true sabra, which made her all the more beguiling to a young American Jew like me. Her father, Michael Neuman, was a Czech immigrant to Israel, which explained her impressive command of not only Hebrew and English but also Czech, which she spoke at home. It also explained her real name, Limor, which she used only in Israel—or so she told me at the time. Vanesa was actually her mother’s name. She said she’d adopted it because it’s easier on your American ears and tongues.

    Later, I learned the real reason, but she has always remained Vanesa to me.

    Prague, December 1991

    With his belt opened and his fly now unzipped, Garlic continued. In accordance with rule number one—which, you’ll recall, is that in Prague, pissing people off has consequences—we have a message for you. An important message, he continued. He nodded to Vodka, who followed Garlic’s lead and unbuckled his own belt. You see, in Prague, if you piss off the wrong people, you can end up in a whole world of mess. He chuckled and nodded in Vodka’s direction. And not just any mess, but, in fact, a whole world of piss.

    At this, both men, having unzipped and taken themselves in hand, began urinating on Vanesa. Steam rose from the horse-like streams as they sprayed her and laughed.

    She cowered silently, scooting away from them, squeezing into the corner of the room, trying to shelter her face and head from the relentless, sickly-warm torrent. It was no use. Her face, hair and torso were soaked in a matter of seconds. An incongruous passing thought of how much these two must have had to drink before meeting her flashed through her brain, defying

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