Touching the Wire (6 page)

‘What
does that mean?’

‘It
means the Theresienstadt camp is a sham… a model ghetto… to fool the
International Red Cross. There’s a visit due soon. That’s why they get better
treatment. They’ll all be dead in six months.’ His hands made a helpless
gesture. ‘You must have heard about the chimneys… the gas chambers. I know you
don’t want to believe it, but it’s true.’

She
stared at the smoke that hung over the camp, blotting out the stars. ‘But the
Red Cross truck is going there now, look.’

‘It carries the Zyklon B
canisters… the gas…’

‘Gas?
Gas chambers… the chimneys… But you said… No, no… Efah, Grandmother… my little
Mary… Oh, God, no.’

‘I’m
sorry, Miriam. I’m so sorry…’ He held her as she cried. He had no tears left.

‘And
Father?’ Her eyes pleaded for something to hope for.

‘He
may be in Buna-Monowitz, or at one of the other factories or sub-camps. It may
be possible to find out.’

The
hope that lit her eyes faded as she watched the people who walked the road to
the chimneys, beneath the lights of the towers and the watchful eyes at the
guard posts.

How
many tramped past in the night? Three thousand… more?  The chimneys that
had belched flame all day smoked blackly. By morning the
uneconomic to feed
,
the old, the sick, the lame, the anxious mothers and the little children would
be gone: ash to float on the air, to fertilize the fields and make the paths
upon which they all walked… ash to leach into the waters of the Vistula, fat to
make the soap.

‘Mama, mama,’ a little boy
cried as he looked back helplessly for something he’d let fall.
Mama… Mama…
.
Sometimes, they said, the Nazis used too little gas and it didn’t quite kill
them. Sometimes, they said, the cries could be heard from the flames.

He
turned away and vomited. When he looked back all that was left of their passing
was a child’s toy.

The
bed bounced beside him. The teddy bear came back into focus. ‘Grandpa, why are
you cuddling Teddy Edward?’ A mass of blond curls framed a pale smile.

He
took Charlotte in his arms and buried his face in her hair, his fingers digging
into the toy bear. ‘Sometimes Grandpas need a cuddle too, little one.’

***

Jane glanced at Walt as she set the table for
supper. Neither had mentioned his restless night. He had the twins rapt with a
story, weaving his magic: sometimes only they brought him out of the long
silences she’d learned to accept. What had happened to hurt him so deeply? If
only he’d talk about the past and his family.

He’d mentioned his mother
only once since she’d known him, soon after Jennie was born: he said Jennie had
his mother’s mouth. She’d probed gently, discovered she was the daughter of an
Irish immigrant who’d made good in Liverpool, and then he’d clammed up: he
wouldn’t talk about his father at all, but something he’d said made her think
he was a Northamptonshire man. Walt had come to Kettering after his demob,
looking for work. She’d met him when he was doing repairs to the Methodist
Chapel she attended. She smiled wryly; she’d never persuaded him to go to the
services.

The war wasn’t the only
conflict that scarred Walt: a hinted at family feud, bitter enough to survive
two wars, locked him deep in his own mind. If only he’d open up to her… old
wounds didn’t heal wrapped in anger. Did he think he spared her feelings?
Dreaming, he often muttered under his breath and occasionally she caught a
name.

 She sighed. If he’d
forgotten the night terror that woke him it was for the best. She perched on
the edge of the sofa to watch the television news but Walt drew her in,
describing the forest with an expansive gesture.

‘Outside the open window a
wolf waited. One paw raised he tasted the air.
Chickens… and something else.
Wselfwulf sniffed again. The scent was children, small tasty children, the
woodcutter’s children. He crouched on his belly waiting for the door to open
and the woodcutter’s day to begin.’

‘Wselfwulf got up early?’

‘Very early, before it was
light. He didn’t have to wait long before the two little girls tumbled out of
the door and ran across the garden to feed the chickens. He followed, crawling
on his belly through the shadows.’ Walt’s hands padded softly and slowly across
the table. ‘And when Wselfwulf was almost close enough to touch… he jumped.’

Lucy jumped as well.

‘If these girls don’t have
nightmares…’

Charlotte brushed her
concern aside. ‘The story, Grandpa.’

‘Wselfwulf jumped and
grabbed one little girl in his jaws. The woodcutter charged at the wolf waving
his axe.
Let her go
. But the wolf held tight and the woodcutter daren’t
throw the axe for fear of hitting his daughter.
Please
, begged the
woodcutter,
I will give you anything, but don’t hurt my daughter
.
Wselfwulf looked at him thoughtfully and opened his jaws, holding the girl
captive with a huge paw.
Anything? You have gold
? The wolf liked shiny
gold to decorate his lair. He could eat the little girl another day.
No, I
don’t have gold
, the woodcutter said. The wolf licked his lips and growled
deep in his throat.
Then I need food, and I have a taste for little girls
not chickens. You killed my father. Give me one of your daughters and the debt
will be paid… a life for a life. Your other daughter will be safe. Which one
would you like me to…?
’

Walt’s hands froze
mid-gesture.

She looked where he was
looking. She caught part of what the presenter said. …
had considered
ordering a raid on a Brazilian farmhouse. It is believed that he may still be
alive, and living in Brazil or Paraguay. Extradition…
She glanced back at
Walt. His lips moved soundlessly. She’d spent years lying awake in the
half-light while he dreamed, listening to, and calming, his murmurings. She
knew the shape of that word… that name. She looked back at the television
screen, heart hammering. Dear Lord, could
that
be the man who haunted
Walt’s nightmares?

On June 4
^th
1944 Rome had fallen to
the allies and, within days, news spread across the camp. Whispers of
resistance grew louder.

The infirmary door stood
open, letting out the humid stench of the interior. Miriam’s figure was
silhouetted in the doorway. She turned. ‘The Red Cross are here, doctor.’

He joined her in the
doorway. Vehicles bearing the insignia of the International Red Cross and the
Danish Red Cross rumbled through the camp.

Miriam shaded her eyes.
‘Where are they going?’

‘The Theresienstadt
Familienlager.’ He cursed under his breath. ‘Better rations… I knew it was a
sham.’

Miriam’s thin shoulders
slumped. ‘And if the officials make a good report we may not get any more Red
Cross parcels.’

‘This is why they haven’t
punished the Roma. They’re waiting until after the Red Cross visit.’

‘It didn’t stop them killing
those brave young Greeks yesterday.’

‘They were only a few… and
they rebelled.’

‘The Jews of Hungary will be
forever in their debt. They chose not to gas Jews.’ Miriam lowered her voice.
‘Is it true the British and Americans have invaded France?’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Someone, somewhere.’

He smiled. Lives depended on
secrecy. ‘News of the war is suppressed, but something is making high-command
nervous. You’ve heard Rome has fallen to the Allies?’

She nodded. ‘A Jew from
Poland spoke of the Polish Resistance… the Home Army, gathering momentum in
Warsaw.’

‘And the two Slovaks who
escaped in April… they got through.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The SS would never admit to
it but it was broadcast on Swiss radio, apparently. The world knows what’s
happening here, Miriam. And there’s more.’ He glanced from side to side.
‘According to my source the Soviets are in Eastern Belorussia, pushing towards
Warsaw.’

‘Resistance inside the camp
is building. Do you think we dare hope, doctor?’

***

July, the Red Cross visit over, and life
returned to horrific normality. Hope ebbed as the remaining men, women and
children of Theresienstadt were marched to the gas chambers. Worry grew again
for the Roma and Sinti: the fit and able, the younger men, as the guard had
predicted, had been transported to other work camps.

As Miriam feared, the vital
Red Cross parcels stopped arriving. So did the transports of Hungarian Jews.
News filtered through courtesy of the camp radio, a set built from parts
organised from Kanada, the barracks where the belongings of the gassed and
imprisoned were sorted and sent back to the Fatherland. He’d discovered the
radio’s existence from a delirious typhus sufferer in the isolation camp though
he didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, where it was hidden.

News from Europe spread
across the camp by word of mouth in urgent whispers. The Soviets liberated
Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, and ten days later, Majdanek concentration camp
near Lublin, east of the camp. Allied forces had broken out of the beach-heads
of Normandy. Hope took wing again and hovered on an uneasy breeze.

July gave way to August. Hot
sun baked the earth by day and steamed it by night. Not a blade of grass grew,
not a bird sang. Water became scarcer than ever. Women on the infirmary bunks
moaned, sleepless with claustrophobic heat: Miriam wiped sweat from her face
and neck with a cloth, and then fanned her face.

He motioned her outside. Daylight
leached from the sky, stars shone pale and a full moon hung in the heavens. The
air from the surrounding swamp still sweated with the heat of day, forming
banks of steaming fog.  He passed her a bottle with a little water in
it.               

 She sank to the ground
and savoured the water. ‘I don’t know if it’s true. I heard the Polish Home
Army has risen up against the Germans.’

He squatted beside her.
‘When?’

‘It’s happening now.’

‘The Soviets have reached
Warsaw?’ He calmed his voice. ‘That’s still almost two hundred miles away, even
if they don’t have to fight every inch of the way.’

‘But if we can hang on… the
resistance…’ Miriam flushed.

‘It’s all right. I know
about the resistance.’

Lights flashed across the
camp near the command centre. He strained to see across the tracks. Headlights
strobed behind the rows of barracks, dust rose in clouds from wheels and a
quiet growl joined the low moans. The vehicles reached the junction and went on
in the direction of the gas chambers. The lights slowed and drew to a halt near
the gates of the Gypsy compound.

‘The Roma… They’ve come for
the Roma!’ He ran towards the compound gate, shouting. The guard on the gate
held his rifle poised to shoot.

‘Nicht schießen! Es ist der
Arzt.’

The guard lowered his rifle.
‘Oh, it’s you, doctor.’

‘Let me out. I need to go to
the gypsy camp. I have patients there.’

The guard laughed.

‘I found twins in the Roma
compound. I have to get them out. You’ll answer to the Camp Physician if
they’re gassed.’

The guard’s face paled. He
opened the gate and let him through. ‘I’ll escort you.’ He shouted to a
colleague to stand watch, and ran to catch up.

The gates to the gypsy camp
stood open. The barracks were in darkness, each building locked from the outside,
the internees confined, trapped. Vehicles drove through the gates and down the
main track, stopping outside the barrack blocks. He could almost feel the held
breaths of the wretches inside. The door to the orphan’s block was thrown open
and guards dragged out the children.

The children kicked, screamed and bit. ‘Murderers,
bastards…’

They were thrown into trucks
and carted away. Next, the door of the children’s infirmary was unbarred. He
watched each child being carried out, some on stretchers. He searched each
face, knowing he couldn’t save them. Only the twins stood a chance, if they
both
still lived.

He pointed to a small boy
who was kicking his captor’s shins. ‘This one.’

The guard jabbered to the SS
officer who eyed him mistrustfully.

‘And this one.’

He grabbed both children by
their collars and stood them side by side, glaring at the officer. ‘Identical
twins. Your life won’t be worth living if the Haupsturmführer hears you’ve
gassed these two.’

The officer shone his torch
in their faces. He smiled. ‘They hid these well. Take them. Be sure to tell him
it was me who found them for you.’

He clutched both boys by the
hand and marched them out of the gate, accompanied by his guard.

He spoke with calm
authority. ‘It’s late to disturb the doctor. I’ll take them to the women’s
infirmary tonight and deliver them in the morning.’

Behind him, the wails of
Roma and Sinti women, and the cries of their children, rose as block after
block was opened and emptied. He clutched the twins’ hands harder. In the
morning a different guard would be on duty outside the women’s compound. He
heard the trucks turn towards the gas chambers, but he didn’t look back.

The boys asleep at last in
one of the nurses’ bunks he went outside. Stars shone in gaps between cloud and
smoke. Flames shot from the chimneys, the smell of gasoline wafted across the
camp, and the stench of burning flesh and the screams of the dying rose from
open pits at the side of the crematoria. He closed his eyes and clamped his
hands over his ears. How would Arturas and Peti ever forgive God for allowing
this?

***

‘Fünf, zehn, fünfzehn, zwanzig…’

Zählappell: the count began
again. One short. How could they be one short? He’d been meticulous in his
record keeping. He went through his calculations again. Thirty-one had died in
the night, three had been discharged to a work party. Ten had been moved to
other compounds. That should leave…

The SS officer’s face was a
rigid, neutral mask. ‘You are one short, doctor. This person must be found.
Your patients will stand here until the number is correct.’

Stand was hardly the word.
Most could barely hold themselves upright.

The officer waved guards
forward. ‘Search the barrack.’

The women glanced from one
to the other and drew themselves straighter. They were almost all mothers and
almost all had lost their children: they’d taken the two little Roma orphans to
their hearts.

He gestured to Miriam to
stay where she was and followed the guards into the infirmary. It could be some
poor wretch had died unnoticed beneath their blanket, or had crept beneath a
bunk to hide, or had somehow found a way out and escaped in the night. Escape
was not tolerated: escapees would be hunted down and shot. Bunks were pulled
apart, straw sacking and blankets thrown to the floor, cracks and gaps between
them prodded and poked.

He held his breath, as he
knew the women outside held theirs. Bayonets thrust into straw mattresses,
ripping open the covers. The guards pulled a heavy tier of bunks onto its side
and stamped out.

‘You are still one short,
doctor.’

‘Someone must have been
moved without my knowledge. I shall have to check all the numbers to see who is
missing.’

‘Do it. The women stand
here, without food or water, until this prisoner is accounted for.’

‘I shall see to it,
personally.’

The sun burned down. The
tattooed numbers were checked and double-checked against the records. A woman
fainted: the officer kicked her until she revived. One of them was missing and
it could take hours to check the entire camp’s records to find where she’d been
sent. Another body hit the ground, unconscious. He ached to go to the woman’s
aid. He ached to check Arturas and Peti were safe, well-hidden and quiet.
Instead he hurried from the compound in search of camp records and the elusive
number.

The sun was setting by the
time he’d found the missing woman. The SS officer had transferred her to
Kanada, and not informed him. The weary women were allowed back to their bunks,
tired, sunburned and dehydrated.

With their help he put the
bunks straight and replaced the straw mattresses, feeling each one carefully.
‘This one.’

Willing hands peeled back
the mattress cover. A small body hunched inside it. He felt for a pulse and
eyes of different colours opened blearily. Miriam hugged Peti to her heart and
then searched feverishly among the ruined mattresses. ‘Arturas?’

‘He’s here… He’s alive. The
bayonets missed him.’

Low sighs broke out among
the women: in turn they hugged their adopted sons.

‘I’m hungry.’

‘I want Mama.’

Several women brought crusts
of bread from beneath clothing. Pieces were broken off.

‘Here, eat this.’

‘You both kept so quiet.’

‘Mama will be very proud of
you.’

***

Walt popped his head into the workshop
next-door to his at the end of the garden they shared with their neighbours,
Lil and Flo. Lil, long past retirement age, worked the foot pedal of her
sewing-machine and mauve taffeta flew beneath nimble fingers. Her sister, Flo,
pulled a pin from her mouth and adjusted a hem.

‘Ouch!’

‘Keep still, then,
Charlotte. Don’t wriggle,’ Jane said. ‘Let Flo pin the hem.’

Lucy headed for the door.
‘I’m going with Grandpa.’

‘Oh, no you’re not.’ Flo
removed pins from between her lips. ‘You’re next. You do want a party frock,
don’t you?’ Pale blue taffeta, sewn with sequins, was bullied to length while
its mauve sister flounced over Lil’s sewing machine. ‘That’s you done. Slip it
off and mind the pins.’

Charlotte pouted. ‘Don’t
look
,
Grandpa.’

‘All right, I’m going. I
didn’t realise you were so grown up.’ He smiled and returned to his workshop.
Charlotte and Lucy’s birthdays were to be marked by a fancy dress party and
he’d promised a treasure hunt. An extra shadow darkened his workshop floor. ‘No
you don’t, Lucy.’ He turned her round and shooed her back to Jane. ‘You can’t
see. It’ll spoil the surprise. Go away.’

Safely locked inside, he
considered the large dolls’ houses under construction. They were copies of the
terrace in which they lived, right down to the entry door, chimney stacks and
sash windows, and he’d made two houses joined together so Charlotte and Lucy’s
tiny dolls could be neighbours. Jennie and Jane spent hours sewing soft
furnishings and dolls’ clothes with minute stitches. At night, when the twins
were in bed, Jane helped him paint and wallpaper the little rooms. All that was
needed now was for him to finish the wiring and test the lighting circuit.

He looked at their
achievement with deep satisfaction. He’d spent many happy years in this
terrace. Guilt, as ever, tarnished that happiness: he’d promise Miriam a little
house in England, with roses in the garden. He’d never even laid flowers on her
grave. He reached for the book hidden beneath the sandpaper and opened it at a
random page.
Szvetlana egy idióta. Ő
leejtette Pinkly at
Zählappell. Azok
az
elkobzott minden javainkat.
Miriam dragged him back to the place he could never
truly escape.