Devil's Workshop by Jáchym Topol

night she slept on Sara’s bunk, and once she had pulled herself back together a bit, she listened to Lebo breathlessly. After reading so many encyclopaedias, tracking down her family and walking through museums and down educational trails, now all of a sudden she had a living witness, a witness who spoke healing words. And it was calming for her to share the objects left behind by the dead or disappeared. First with Sara, and later with Rolf and the others, she handled every little thing, every single item we’d found as kids in the tunnels under Terezín and brought back to Lebo. This sharing, along with Lebo’s strength, began to break up the black cloud in the heads of the seekers afflicted with the horror of the past. The well-travelled Lea meant a great deal to us. She gave our community a name.

     
    And food. She copied the idea from the Kraków ghetto, so the tasty, crunchy pizza that Lea and the aunts began to bake in our kitchen became known as ghetto pizza. The secret ingredient was a light dusting of Terezín grass, a seasoning that didn’t exist anywhere else. And one day two girls showed up who Lea had met on a visit to Auschwitz – of course they were also from the second or third generation of victims and their minds were also shadowed with a black cloud. Lea had tipped them off to us, and after a few days our new students decided to stay. They looked after the tent on Central Square, which we called the Amusement Centre. A multicoloured T-shirt of Kafka flew above it and the delicious smell of ghetto pizza filled the inside. That alone was a sign of revitalization, since not only were the local people creeping out of the shells of their half-broken-down homes to experience the smells, the colours and all the movement in general, but more and more people were heading our way from the world outside. So we set up the Main Tent by our first stall on Central Square and during the day Lebo would talk to people inside. Sara and Lea were in there with him, protecting him from the new visitors. It’s true Lea provoked some amazement among the country folk, but children adored her, especially when the giant redhead made funny faces at them, and besides, towering in front of the tent, dressed as she usually was in a green track suit, she guaranteed no wise guys snuck in without paying. Sara collected the money at the entrance. There were people who came here just to get a glimpse of the famous Guardian of Terezín, and they had to put a coin in the dish. Now Sara would just shake her head when she saw me waiting for her to come out to herd the goats with me. In fact the day Lebo started talking to newcomers in the Main Tent on Central Square, Sara stopped coming to see me. I think that was one of the reasons why I said yes to Alex.
    By then we were already calling ourselves the Comenium. Lea, who had come up with our name, thought we should offer instruction in the history of horror, as well as therapy for it, including dance. We agreed, since she had come to us from Holland, the country where Comenius had resided after his merciless expulsion from Bohemia.
    The Happy Workshops were Sara’s idea.
    *
     
    I was out for a walk with Bojek and the other goats one day, strolling along, when one of the nanny goats squatted down, so we stopped to wait. Goats pee like girls, you see – not a lot of people know that – and it was a good thing we stopped, too, since all of a sudden I saw … Sara, in the grass down below us! Kamínek the mental case had knocked her down and was standing over her. I went tearing down there, screaming at him, and Kamínek grabbed his crutches and hobbled off, scuttling through the grass like some disgusting insect, rear end shining, clutching at his pants. Sara got up, her T-shirt torn across her chest. She was in shock, not even talking, so Bojek and I escorted her home. And that evening she came up with the Happy Workshops.
    The mental cases stayed out of my way. I stopped by Mr