Touching the Wire
Authors: Rebecca Bryn
Tags: #Mystery, #Historical, #Thriller, #Suspense
TOUCHING THE WIRE
BY
REBECCA BRYN
Text copyright © 2014 Rebecca Bryn
All rights reserved
Although based on the
testimonies of holocaust survivors, apart from the known Nazi war-criminals
mentioned and the four brave women who were executed for being members of the
resistance, all the characters in Touching the Wire are fictitious and any
similarity with real people is purely coincidental.
With
grateful thanks to Sarah Stuart, author of Dangerous Liaisons, for her
unstinting support, time and friendship, to my long-suffering husband for his
patience, to Robert Sayer for answering legal questions, to Frances for
reading, cooking and furries-therapy, to those survivors courageous enough to
share their experiences with the world, and to Walt and Miriam for showing me
how lucky I am and how much I owe those who fought for my freedom
.
Dedicated to the memory of the real Dr Schaeler, and all
those who have suffered the hand of tyranny.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that
good
men
do nothing
.
Edmund Burke 1729-1797
ONE
In the Shadow of the Wolf
Walt slid his chisel into its slot at the back
of his bench and sipped the tea he’d let go cold. He eased a sepia photograph
from his wallet. For thirty-four years he’d carried Miriam’s likeness, faded
and tattered around the edges: she’d left footprints in his heart, trodden deep
and clear. Her voice echoed and his heartbeat quickened. The tramp of feet,
marching from the spring of 1944, jarred the brick floor beneath him into
hard-packed grey earth. Left, right, left, right…
He marched with them: dust
scoured his eyes and throat, and gritted the sweat on his back. The kommando of
haeftling, striped berets and coats creating an army of Colorado beetles, kept
time with the SS guards. Despair choreographed their puppet-like movements:
heads pushed forward, arms straight down, wasted faces devoid of expression.
Behind them, ambulances rattled to a stop.
The sound of boots and clogs
faded beneath the hiss of steam and the clatter of couplings as the rumble of
iron on iron ground to a halt. The line of cattle wagons, each bearing the
insignia of their country of origin, and some with a roughly-painted yellow
star, snaked into Stygian distance.
Smoke and steam mingled with
the sickly-sweet pall that hung over the camp day and night. Flakes of ash from
the chimneys danced with smuts of smoke, and floated to the ground with the
grace of angels. Already the day was hot. Inside the wagons it would be
suffocating.
‘Öffnen die Wagen!’
Wagon doors rolled back with
squeals and grinding crashes, drowning the swing tune belted out by the camp
orchestra. Eyes stark with bewilderment blinked against the light.
‘Aussteigen.’ An SS officer
waved his pistol. ‘Schnell! Schnell!’
Men tumbled onto the ramp.
Women clutched babies to their breasts and gathered children to their skirts,
their eyes searching the faces around them.
A woman cupped her hands in
supplication. ‘Vis.’ A yellow star emblazoned her coat. Hungarian. Jewish.
They’d been arriving by the wagon-load. ‘Viz…
kérem
.’
The words for water, bread
and help were burned into his memory in every European language. The woman
begged for water. He could offer no drop of water, no morsel of bread or shred
of hope.
‘Viz. Wasser…
Bitte
.’
A stooped, grey-bearded figure held up four fingers. The journey from Hungary
had taken four days: four days without food or water.
The crowd swelled across the
ramp as the wagons vomited more souls than they could possibly contain,
bringing with them the stench of excrement. A guard hustled the men and older
boys from the women and children, forming them into two ragged lines along the
tracks.
A detachment of haeftling
quick-stepped forward and heaved bodies from the wagons, laying them in rows
upon the aching ground. The old, the little children: their bodies weren’t
heavy even for those barely fleshed themselves.
A young woman bent to
retrieve her possessions. An SS officer strode past. ‘Leave. Luggage
afterwards.’
She stood, wide-eyed like a
startled deer, one arm cradling a baby. Beside her an elderly woman clutched a
battered suitcase. The girl’s eyes darted from soldier to painted signboard and
back. ‘What are we doing here, Grandmother? Why have they brought us
here
?’
The wind teased at her cheerful red shawl, revealing and lifting long black
hair. She straightened and attempted a smile. ‘It’ll be all right, Grandmother.
God has protected us on our journey.’
‘Where’s your Father?’ The
old lady adjusted her shawl, covering shock-white hair. ‘Miriam, I can’t see my
Jani.’
‘Father will be helping Efah
and Mother with the children.’
‘And where are our precious
things…’
‘They’re here, Grandmother.’
Voices rasped, whips cracked,
dogs barked. The men and boys were marched away, craning necks for a glimpse of
wives, mothers, sisters and children. At a signal, the remaining haeftling
broke ranks and began searching wagons, and carrying bundles and suitcases to
waiting
lorries
. Miriam’s grandmother’s case fell
open: a beetle snapped it shut and scurried it away. Something had fallen out:
in the bustle no-one saw him pick up the small wallet and tuck it inside his
shirt.
More orders followed: more
cracking whips and snarling dogs. The line of women and children stumbled
forward across the railway sleepers, leaving behind tumbled heaps of abandoned
lives.
The march through the camp
took forever, yet it was over too soon. At the junction, guards ordered the
women to halt. Smoke from the chimneys obliterated the sky: a wind from the
west blew the stench of it across their path.
‘Zwillinge, heraus!’
He,
the hated Hauptsturmführer,
stood before them dark hair smoothed
back, his Iron Cross worn with casual pride. His eyes pierced the crowd; his
gloved hand held a cane with which he pointed bewildered women to the left or
the right.
He shuddered, knowing what
the man sought.
An SS officer pushed towards
a woman of about fifty. ‘How old?’ She didn’t respond so the officer shouted the
question.
He edged closer. As a doctor
he held a privileged position, but he’d also discovered a gift for languages.
He translated the German to stilted Hungarian, adding quietly, ‘Say you’re
under forty-five. Say you are well. Stand here with the younger women.’ He
moved from woman to woman, intercepting those he could. ‘Say you are well. Tell
them your daughter’s sixteen. Say she’s well. Say you can work or have a skill.
Tell them you’re not pregnant.’
The Hauptsturmführer waved
his cane. ‘You, to the right. No, the children to the left.’
A woman clutched her
children’s hands. ‘I can’t leave my babies.’
He froze, fearing for them
all. The thunder of another train grew closer and the SS officer gestured her
to the left with her children. He breathed again, ashamed at feeling relief,
and hurried to intercept the next group.
The girl with the red shawl
was there, in front of him: the old lady had called her Miriam. He touched her
arm. ‘Say you’re well, Miriam. Say you can work. Give the baby to your grandmother.
She must stand to the left with the children. You must stand to the right.’
‘My grandmother isn’t well.
I’m a nurse. I can look after her and Mary.’
A guard strode past.
‘Together afterwards.’
He nodded, compounding the
conspiracy of silence. ‘Together afterwards.’
The old lady held out her
arms for the baby. ‘Go, Miriam. God be with you.’
Miriam’s eyes glistened.
‘May He rescue us from the hand of every
foe.
’ She
touched her grandmother’s cheek, a gentle, lingering movement, and placed a
tender kiss on her baby’s forehead.
She moved where he pointed
to stand with a group of about thirty young women: only thirty? Her eyes
followed her grandmother and daughter as they were swallowed into the thousands
that straggled towards the anonymous buildings beneath the smoke. Ambulances
passed, carrying those who couldn’t walk; a truck bearing a red cross followed
behind. She watched until they disappeared from sight and then searched the
faces of the women that remained.
Miriam’s eyes met his. He
had no way to tell her he had given her life: no right to tell her to abandon
hope.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of
our death.
***
The doorknob rattled, jolting Walt back to the
workshop at the end of the garden: Kettering, England, 1978. He slipped the
photograph away and covered his work, heart thudding. He turned the doorknob.
‘Charlotte… Did you want me, little one?’
‘You promised us a story,
Grandpa.’
He shooed Charlotte outside
ahead of him and turned the key in the lock. He clipped the key to a chain,
alongside a smaller brass one, and put both keys in his pocket.
‘Grandpa…’ Charlotte plucked
his sleeve.
Lucy, her mirror-image,
mimicked Granny’s best exasperated sigh. ‘The little girls, Grandpa. Tell us
about the little girls.’
Machines, clattering from
open windows in the shoe-factory behind the workshop, settled into a rhythm
steadier than his heart. He ruffled Charlotte’s blonde curls absently and sank
into his deckchair, already standing outside the snow-wrapped building, many
miles and years from the garden of the back-street terrace. A wolf stalked the
edges of his mind and long-dead faces pleaded for help he couldn’t give.
‘A woodcutter lived deep in
the forests of Günsburg with his wife and two little girls, and some chickens.
They were happy and free, except for the wolf.’
Blue eyes widened. ‘A
wolf?’
He nodded. ‘The woodcutter
was afraid to let his daughters into the forest alone so he decided to slay the
wolf. He put on his green jacket, and his hat with a feather, and went outside
to kill a chicken.’
Charlotte sobered. ‘Why?’
‘His daughters’ lives were
more important to him than the
chicken’s
. He put
poison inside the chicken and set off to find the wolf’s lair. He dropped the
chicken onto the ground and climbed a tree to watch.’ He pushed away memories
of electrified barbed-wire, hunger, thirst and relentless cold. ‘The wolf crept
from his lair.
Sniff, sniff,
sniff
.
I smell
chicken
… He dragged the chicken inside.’
Charlotte tilted her head to
one side. ‘Did the wolf die, Grandpa?’
He brushed a stray curl from
her face. ‘The woodcutter thought he was dead but he was only sleeping a long,
long sleep.’
Lucy screwed up her face.
‘So he might still eat the little girls?’
He sought for a prettier
tale to distract her, but he’d been only three when the mud of The Somme had
sucked the life from his father and his mother’s struggle to raise him alone
hadn’t included fairytales.
Charlotte slashed at an
imaginary foe. ‘Grandpa won’t let the wolf eat us, Lucy. Grandpa will kill him,
dead, like this.’
She had the courage he’d
lacked. Would it have made a difference? ‘It’s not good to kill, Charlotte.
No-one has the right to take another’s life.’
‘But if he’s going to eat me…’
Why had he got into a moral
debate with five year-olds? They always found holes in his logic big enough to
fall through.
Lucy picked at a scab.
‘Granny says eating people is a sin.’
‘She did?’
‘She says it’s a comment
from God.’
‘A commandment. People
believe different things, Lucy. A long time ago people believed in lots of
gods.’
‘When we were little?’
‘Longer ago than that…
long before even I was born.’ Charlotte’s mouth made a circle round enough to fit
a whole plum. He smiled. ‘They thought the sun was a god, and the moon was a
goddess.’ It made more sense than the Catholic dogma he’d absorbed from his
mother.
Pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death…
Her plea
had struck terror into his young heart.
Take me from the dark. Hear me now, O Lord.
Her God hadn’t heard
him in his darkest hours; He hadn’t heard her when the aerial bombardment razed
her home to the ground, burying her and his sister, when the Second World War
was all but over.
Jane arrived with drinks and
biscuits, and drove both wolf and God from the twins’ minds with an ease he
envied.
‘I’ll take my tea in the
workshop, love… do a bit more to Dobbin. Come and see what you think.’ He
opened the door, making dust motes dance in the beam of sunlight. The rocking
horse stood on the brick floor waiting for a coat of primer: it was a present
for the twins’ fifth birthday. Arturas and Peti had been five.
Jane put the mug on the
bench among shapes hidden beneath dustsheets. ‘The twins will love him.’
Dimples chased the wrinkles from the corners of her mouth. ‘Don’t let your tea
go cold again.’
His gaze lingered on his
wife’s plump form as she retreated down the path towards the kitchen, measuring
the too-rapid drip of time they had left together. He breathed in the scents of
roses, lavender and leather before locking the door and removing the shroud
from his other, secret, more pressing
task.
He brushed back a strand of
grey hair. He took no pleasure from the work for each stroke of mallet on
chisel laid his soul bare. With a surgeon’s precision, he gouged his nightmares
into the tortured shapes, sanded truth into each curve, and wrote in them his
guilt.
Five carvings. Four were
living flames in burr elm. The fifth, carved from straighter-grained lime-wood,
depicted a wolf leaping through flames. Two short burr-elm cylinders, shaped
like lighted candles, echoed the theme of fire and completed the work. Thoughts
of mortality had made him take up his chisels, but he was desperately afraid of
what would happen if he re-awakened the wolf too soon.