Scheisshaus Luck (35 page)

One morning a Cossack colonel, wearing a Persian lamb hat and black uniform weighted down with medals, rode into Wustrow on a white stallion. I watched from the window as he tied his horse to a lamppost next to ‘‘city hall.’’ With a cartridge belt slung across his torso, saber, and polished black boots, it was as if he had charged straight off the pages of
War and Peace
. As a child I attended a PART VI | WUSTROW

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performance of the Don Cossacks with my parents, but none of those men cut such an impressive figure. Arthur and I froze when the colonel stepped inside our office. It seemed extraordinary that a man dressed for a ball at the Summer Palace would want to speak with us.

‘‘My name is Boris,’’ he announced in Old German. ‘‘For the time being I’m the senior officer of the garrison.’’

He explained that he and his soldiers were passing through with a massive herd of cattle that they had driven all the way from Bavaria, and he was now waiting for transportation either by sea or rail. Otherwise he would have to drive the cattle through Poland, which meant he wouldn’t reach Russia till the onset of winter. The herd and his men were now camped at the lakeshore.

Hesitantly, I asked the colonel if he had learned German in school. He fixed his gaze on me and furrowed his brow. ‘‘I was adopted by a Volga German family whose ancestors had settled in Russia centuries ago. When the Germans approached Stalingrad, they were all deported to Siberia.’’

When he learned that I was from France, he demanded that I be the one to shave his head every morning. I didn’t dare refuse.

Was he under the impression that every Frenchman was a barber?

Or was he leery of the Russians and Ukrainians in his platoon, fear-ing they might try to slit their colonel’s throat in mid-shave? I had grown up believing that everyone in the Soviet Union was Russian, but the Red Army troops flowing through Wustrow had quickly dispelled me of that fallacy. The only thing that was keeping the ancient ethnic rivalries from flaring up among the diverse republics was Stalin’s blood-stained iron fist.

Around noon the next day, Boris arrived on his stallion and handed me his razor. All evening I had practiced with Arthur’s straight razor on my own cheeks. It wasn’t that I feared the colonel would beat me if I nicked his scalp; I wanted to do my best for him.

Shaving him well could grease the wheels for any future favors I might need. I sat Boris down in the middle of the office, softened his stubble with towels soaked in a pot of hot water, then lathered 252

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his skull. As I began to shave him, a group of Russian soldiers came running down the street. Cossacks on horseback were herding and whipping the breathless men who looked more like
Muselma¨nner
than soldiers.

‘‘What’s going on?’’ I asked.

‘‘We liberated those cowards from a German Stalag, and they’re being shipped home today. Stalin is going to have a hell of a reception for them,’’ Boris said matter-of-factly.

The colonel’s Red Army cowboys were a wild bunch. Every night from the dock Arthur and I watched them have an orgy in the light of their campfire. Afterwards, their female companions would splash at the edge of the water to cool off their overheated organs.

We agreed that vodka was one hell of an aphrodisiac.

‘‘If we could break their bottles, I bet all the rapes would stop,’’

I ventured.

♦ ♦ ♦

My life in Wustrow was good. I had no complaints whatsoever. But even though Arthur and Mrs. Novak treated me like a son, they weren’t my parents and Wustrow wasn’t Nice. Having heard BBC

reports on Arthur’s shortwave radio about the ghastly finds the Allied armies had made in the camps, I realized how cruel it was to continue to keep my parents in the dark about my well-being. They had to be expecting the worst. And truth be told, I ached to go home, figuring that the farther away from Germany I was, the easier it would be to put behind what the Nazis had forced on me.

One afternoon, a pale, anemic man in his thirties with a nasty cough and a blue-eyed blonde who had been badly beaten came into the office. She grimaced as she slowly eased herself onto the chair across from the desk. The man stood behind her like hired help.

In German I asked the woman her name.

‘‘Ilse.’’

‘‘You were raped?’’

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She nodded.

‘‘When?’’

‘‘Last night.’’ She pointed to her companion. ‘‘Carlos promised to protect me. He said he was ‘
Policia en Madrid
,
Policia en Madrid,
’

but they lifted him up like a sack and hung him on the coat stand.’’

I turned to Carlos and asked him in German how many Russians had been involved? He shook his head.

‘‘
No hablo aleman
.’’

I asked him in Spanish.

‘‘What could I do against five Russian goons? It was awful. I saw the whole thing. Five times,’’ Carlos said shamefaced.

I turned to Ilse and asked in German if it was true that they had hung Carlos on a coat rack?

She glared at Carlos and hissed, ‘‘He looked pathetic hanging there, like a worthless scarecrow.’’

Carlos may not have known German, but he got the general idea from Ilse’s tone. He waved five fingers.

‘‘There were five of them,’’ he protested in Spanish. ‘‘Five! I couldn’t fight them all. You know, she left me dangling there all night.’’

I tried to mask my amusement. I asked Ilse if she left him up there.

‘‘I couldn’t move. It was a miracle I was even breathing. That Spaniard is lucky that I even bothered to fetch a neighbor this morning.’’

I wrote down Ilse’s information, then turned to her ineffective bodyguard. ‘‘Carlos, what’s your full name and where’s your home?

I need it for my records.’’

‘‘My name is Carlos Puerta. I was a Republican policeman in Spain, but my wife and two kids now live in France.’’

After the Spanish Civil War, the French government had located all the anti-Franco refugees in a camp in the southern French town of Gurs. Carlos informed me that the Vichy government emptied the camp, handing the Spanish men over to the Gestapo.

Carlos landed up in Ravensbru¨ck where he contracted tuberculosis.

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That explained why he coughed up blood twice while I took their report. When I told him I was from Nice, he clapped his hands.

‘‘My family is in Menton. They’re right in your neighborhood,’’

he said in French.

Malheure
! What a harsh accent, but he was right. Menton was twenty miles from Nice.

As they headed for the door I asked Carlos if they planned to stay in the house Ilse was renting.

‘‘We will be leaving soon. Ilse has a place in Berlin. It’ll be safer there,’’ he said as they walked out. I jumped out of my chair and ran after them. I had found my traveling companions.

C H A P T E R 2 4

A huge lazy pike had made his home under Arthur’s dock, and for a week I tried to catch it with an array of baits, but this was one fish that knew how to get dinner without getting hooked. I told Arthur that we needed to nab it before some Russian blew up his dock trying to make a meal of it. After delivering slices of ham and preserves to Ilse and Carlos, I baited my line with a lively nightcrawler and went down to the lake. I dropped my hook, but the damn pike wouldn’t budge. As I bobbed the line, I debated how to break the news of my imminent departure to the Novaks.

Ilse and Carlos were recuperating nicely. The bruises and swelling in Ilse’s face had receded, revealing a pleasant-looking thirty-two-year-old. Unfortunately she was still bleeding, and it would be a few days before she could walk without any pain. She was eager to get to Berlin for medical attention because she feared those five brutes had infected her. Carlos wasn’t coughing as much and had put on some weight, but he wanted to get to a hospital as soon as possible, too.

Carlos and Ilse’s relationship was intriguingly odd. They were completely incompatible. The only reason they were together was that the group Carlos was traveling with left him at her doorstep.

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Being a war widow, Ilse was thankful for any companionship, and in many ways Carlos acted like a thankful stray puppy dog in her presence. They definitely weren’t romantically involved. How could Ilse be attracted to a man she could so easily swat away? If Carlos had been a cop in Spain he must have held a desk job.

For me they made the perfect traveling companions. With no common language there wasn’t much chance of a protracted argument grinding the journey to halt, and I would see to it that all translations were watered down. I trusted both of them, certain that I wouldn’t wake on the road to Berlin abandoned and my knapsacks gone. Ilse knew that two men at her side would keep her out of harm’s way, and since Carlos couldn’t speak German he needed me more than I needed him.

A half-hour had passed and the pike still hadn’t gone for my bait. I was thinking about finding a frog to use as bait when Mrs.

Novak yelled from the house.

‘‘Hurry, the soldiers are pilfering your room!’’

A soldier went running from the greenhouse toward a truckful of his comrades parked on the road. In his hand was one of my knapsacks. Screaming in French, I chased after him. He jumped onto the rear of the bed and the truck started rolling. I kept running and cursing. To my astonishment, the truck stopped. Twenty rifle barrels suddenly pointed at me, but I didn’t care. I grabbed one of the knapsack’s straps. Inside were some clothes, a Hitler Youth dagger that I had confiscated from a German teen the day before, and the silverware. For the trip home those forks, knives, and spoons were my currency. Holding onto the other strap, the soldier looked inside. With a triumphant grin spread across his unshaven face, he held up the dagger, then let go of my knapsack. The guns dropped as the other soldiers burst into drunken laughter. Either they were happy for the thief or they found a
Ha¨ftling
chasing after a Nazi knife positively amusing.

I was shaking when I returned to the greenhouse. How did I pull that off? I could easily have gotten myself killed or booted to Stalingrad as more slave labor. Was it my striped ‘‘pajamas’’ and PART VI | WUSTROW

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Polizei armband that saved me? That night I had nightmares about my little stunt. I was too close to the end of my journey to be taking such foolish risks.

The next morning I went straight to Ilse’s and told them that no matter what, we were leaving in three days. Neither of them argued. I broke the news to Arthur and Mrs. Novak while eating our usual dinner of ham and asparagus. Arthur was grateful that I had stayed as long as I had, and Mrs. Novak made it clear that I was welcome to stay on, but they both knew I needed to get home. As usual, after dinner we listened to music on the shortwave radio.

Arthur excused himself early. The next day he handed me a letter, hoping that a commendation from the mayor of Wustrow would help with any problems I might encounter on my trip.

The Novaks must have told everyone in Wustrow, because people stopped me on the street or came in the mayor’s office and shoved marks into my pockets.

‘‘Do take it. Money is worthless here. We live on a barter system, but it might come in handy for you.’’ I ended up with several hundred marks. Well, if I don’t spend it, it might become a collec-tor’s item or at least a souvenir, I thought.

The Novaks’ neighbor, Irma, arrived at the house with tears rolling down her cheeks. Irma had trusted me to lance a seriously infected boil on her neck, which was healing nicely. She gave me a piece of smoked ham and a green striped tie that had belonged to her husband, who was ‘‘missing in action.’’

Still feeling guilty about my insensitive remarks in front of Mrs.

Novak, and my reluctance to notify the authorities about the rape victims, I took the ledger to the garrison. It also gave me a good excuse to have one last visit with Sonia. She was berating two soldiers like an older sister who had caught her brothers snooping in her underwear drawer. She seemed genuinely happy to see me, which made me ask myself why I hadn’t come around more often.

‘‘Where are you from?’’ I asked her.

She named a town in Poland. I never heard of it, but to impress her I nodded as if I knew.

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‘‘I came here as a so-called volunteer three years ago. Otherwise the Nazis would’ve cut my parents’ food rations,’’ she told me.

‘‘I suppose this was a quaint, peaceful little town.’’

‘‘Not for us. We were treated like dirt and worked like cattle in their fields and as their domestics.’’

She asked me what I had in my hand.

‘‘It’s a list of all the rapes that have been reported.’’

Sonia shrugged her shoulders. ‘‘I was raped, too.’’

‘‘Lately?’’

‘‘Oh, no. I’m safe now. The word got around that I’m private property. It was a couple of years ago. My complaint went right into the waste-paper basket. He was a Nazi official.’’