Touching the Wire (7 page)

‘Svetlana
is an idiot… she dropped her pinkly at Zählappell.’

‘Pinkly?’

Miriam
looked at him as if he were an idiot too. ‘Everything we own, all we have
striven and traded for… our rations. Where do you think we keep them to stop
them from being stolen?’

‘You
keep them with you.’

‘In
a pinkly. I tore a piece from my dress to make mine. I kept it pinned beneath
my dress. I had a bread ration… a piece of soap… a spare safety pin… the bowl
and spoon you gave me… candy from Kanada for Peti and Arturas.’

‘What
happened?’

‘I
told you, Svetlana dropped hers from beneath her skirt. We were all searched.
Everything was confiscated…’ Miriam was in tears.

‘It’s
you I worry about. Possessions can be replaced, even if it does take time.’

‘But
Svetlana can’t… They shot her. She was an idiot… an idiot.’

She
sobbed in his arms. How much more tragedy must they endure?

‘It’s
the fault of the Blockälteste. She could have pretended not to see. I hate her.
Why does she have to be so vile?’

 ‘Miriam,
I heard a story about her. I don’t know if it’s true. She lived in Krakow.
Shortly after occupation four German soldiers came for her family, like they
came for yours.’

‘I’m
not vindictive towards the others. We all have stories of how we came to be
here.’

‘One
of them gave her a gun and told her to shoot her family… her parents, her
husband and her baby.’

‘But
she wouldn’t do that, surely.’

‘No,
she refused. They said they would kill them if she didn’t, but they would die
more slowly. Still she refused.’

‘What
happened?’

‘Two
officers picked up her baby, took hold of his legs and tore him in half.’

Miriam
covered her mouth, her eyes wide. ‘A living child? What kind of monster does
that?’

He
shook his head. ‘Then they told her that they would do that to every member of
her family, slowly, piece by piece, unless she shot them.’

‘She didn’t…’

‘She
shot them all and then tried to turn the gun on herself. They kept her alive to
suffer. They made her Blockälteste because they said she was brave. If it’s
true…’

‘If
it’s
true then it’s a wonder she’s still sane.’

‘It’s
a wonder any of us are sane.’

‘I’ll
pray for her… and for Svetlana. I’ll pray for us all.’  

The book fell from his
fingers, bringing him back to the workshop with a thump. He couldn’t change the
past. He rewrapped the book and replaced it in its hiding place. He patted his
pocket for the bulge of a cigarette packet. Why couldn’t he remember he’d given
up? He missed the comforting smell of tobacco smoke. He felt his other pocket
for the mints he sucked instead, if the twins had left him any.

Through the window, the
roses he’d planted in Miriam’s memory nodded in the wind. He looked back at the
dolls’ houses: he couldn’t wait to see Charlotte and Lucy’s faces when they saw
their present. His brief smile faded: the older the twins got the more his
conscience troubled him. Since their birth his nightmares had got steadily
worse.

He’d dreamt of
him
again,
last night. He’d woken sweating and shaking; the Wolf of Günsburg still hadn’t
been found.

***

Walt patted the seat next to him on the
two-seater sofa.

Lucy sat down with a
petulant frump. ‘I don’t want to go to the dentist, Grandpa. He pulled all Kerry’s
teeth out.’

Jennie said it was the
current school horror. ‘It wasn’t all of them, Lucy. Just four baby teeth,
stopping her grown-up teeth coming. Open...’

Lucy opened her mouth wide.
It didn’t stop her trying to argue.

He found a wobbly one.
‘Yours will come out by themselves but you still need the dentist to make sure
your teeth match that lovely smile.’

‘Still don’t want to go.’

‘Sweetheart, sometimes we
have to do things we don’t want to do. It will be all right, you’ll see…
Charlotte isn’t afraid, look.’

‘Bet she is.’

Charlotte looked up from a
colouring book, two crayons in one hand and another in her mouth. She removed
it. ‘I am not.’

‘Then you can hold Lucy’s
hand, Charlotte. I’ll have a surprise for you both when you get home.’

 ‘What is it?’

‘If I told you it wouldn’t
be a surprise.’

Jennie shouted from the
hall. ‘Charlotte, Lucy… come on. I don’t want to be late. I have work this
afternoon.’

He kissed them both. ‘Go on.
Don’t keep your mother waiting.’

A treasure hunt: he’d set
them a puzzle to occupy them while Jennie was at work and Jane was out. The
prize could be a small bar of chocolate each. Now, where to start? Clue number
one:
Be careful you don’t prick your finger
. That would lead them to
Jane’s sewing box in the front-room sideboard, except the longer words might
fox them. He drew pictures as well. The final clue, three tall thin oblongs
with a picture of a tree on the left-hand one and a bird on the right-hand one
might keep them guessing. He pinned the first clue to the door into the
front room, where the twins would be sure to find it when they got home, and
slipped the bars of chocolate between two nature books on the bookshelf in the
living room. Things hidden in plain sight were often invisible.

It was how they’d got away
with so much during that last year in the camp. The thin veil between now and
then tore with barely a sound.

‘Doctor?’ The surgery door
closed.

He put down the instruments he’d been attempting to
sterilise. ‘Miriam…’

She put a hand inside her
nurse’s blouse. ‘Candy for Arturas and Peti...’

‘They’ll love that.’

‘They’re getting tired of
being cooped up.’

‘They must stay hidden.’

‘They know. It’s a game we
play’ She withdrew another package. ‘Bandages.’

He took the proffered
package. ‘Organised from Kanada?’

‘The girls have put aside
medicines. There must have been doctors or pharmacists in the last transport.’

He clenched his fists. Jews
from the Polish ghetto at Lodz: no matter how brilliant their minds, they would
die if their bodies couldn’t be slave labour for the Reich. ‘Kanada, the fount
of all wealth… but for you none of it would come
here
.’ Did German
citizens know where their newfound wealth came from? Women prisoners did the
sorting: forced to listen to the screams of those about to be gassed, even as
they picked among their most treasured possessions. ‘I don’t know how those
girls stand their work.’

Miriam turned away, arms
stiff by her sides, fingers curled and tense. ‘They’re allowed to eat what food
they find… Even so, some commit suicide. They risk their lives to smuggle these
things out.’

‘I know. Miriam…’

‘Yesterday the men shared a
tin of shoe polish… they could eat their margarine ration instead of rubbing it
on their stupid worn-out shoes.’

Polished shoes: another
mockery. He gripped the bandages. Like most of the SS rules, the guards
tolerated this ‘organisation’, or clamped down on it, with capricious
irregularity. No razors were supplied, yet a man must be clean-shaven. Kicked
to death for having a button missing, but they had no thread or needles. A
piece of thin wire picked from the ground could save a life. Yet this
organisation ran the camp and the guards knew it. ‘Miriam… I’m sorry… I didn’t
mean to upset you.’

She shrugged off his hand.
‘My friend, Ilse, says in November they must package toys and clothes…
Christmas presents for German
Kinder
. Who will play with Mary’s rattle
and teether? Tell me who? Not my Mary.’

 ‘Miriam…’ Nothing he
could say would take away her pain. He put a hand on each of her shoulders and
concentrated on the future. ‘You do know that you are a miracle. Women may live
because of these medicines.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘When can we get them?’

She blushed and rubbed away
tears. ‘She can smuggle one item a night, God willing. I promised her bread
rations for her and her sister. They…’

‘The less I know the better.
A word to a friend…’ His mind raced ahead with words unsaid: that friend would
have a husband or brother in the men’s infirmary compound, and he’d have a
friend in the men’s camp who might have a pass to work in the gypsy camp, or
Mexico camp. Messages were exchanged, and goods traded, from one end of the
camp complex to the other, with betrayal a constant danger for a starving man
would do anything for a crust of bread. He smothered a sigh. ‘You did well.
We’ll find the extra bread.’

‘Doctor?’

‘Miriam?’

She smiled awkwardly. ‘Do
you have a name?’

Her smile gave him the
strength to find one of his own. ‘When I was small my mother called me Chuck.
Yes, when we’re alone, please call me Chuck. It’s a name that conjures happier
days.’

‘Chuck.’ Her lips puckered
into a broader smile. The name sounded more exotic on a Hungarian tongue than a
Liverpudlian one.

‘I like the way you say it.
Miriam, I trust you… you know that.’

She nodded. ‘And I, you. You
give my life purpose… you, and Peti and Arturas.’

‘You shouldn’t get too
attached to them… I don’t know how long we can keep them hidden.’ He hesitated,
knowing she loved them as much as he did, and knowing what he asked. He lowered
his voice. ‘I have an acquaintance, someone I helped once. I need to pass
packages to her. I can’t tell you what they are.’

‘I understand. How can I
help?’

‘It will be very dangerous.
If we’re caught we’ll be hung… or shot, and we won’t be the only ones.’

‘We’ll die anyway.’

‘You mustn’t think like
that.’ His voice was a whisper now. ‘
Sturmbannführer
Baer
suppresses the news but… the war isn’t going well for Hitler.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘A friend of a friend.’ He
could trust Miriam. ‘Someone has built a radio. There will be reprisals. The
worse the war goes for Hitler the more all here will suffer.’ He didn’t tell
her his fear that if they lost the war, the SS would leave no-one alive to bear
witness against them. ‘The resistance movement here is building. Anything we
can do to disrupt the gassings… to hold out.’

‘What can I do?’

He opened the door and
closed it again: no-one was there but he still kept his voice low. ‘Russian
guerrillas are hidden in the mountains. They will bury packages in the fields
at night. Internees from the men’s camp work those fields. They’ll dig them
up.’

‘How big are these
packages?’

His hands made a shape.
‘About the same as two cigarette packets.’

‘Small enough to be hidden
under shirts or blouses.’

‘Persuade your supplier of
medicines to tell her contact in the men’s camp that she’ll handle these
packages as well. Bring them to me and I will pass them on.’

Doubt flickered in Miriam’s
eyes. ‘Suppose this is a Nazi trick, like the postcards home.’

‘The plan comes from a
source I trust. They have news of the Polish Home Army… the fight for Warsaw
goes on. If,
when
they win, the resistance here will be ready…’

Miriam wasn’t convinced.
‘Mother wrote to Uncle
László
and Aunt Mariska in Trier.
She was told what to write, to say we were all well. Now Uncle
László
is in the men’s camp and
no-one knows where Aunt Mariska or the children are. How did the SS find them
if not from the address on the postcard? Mother’s card would have reassured
them. They’d have believed the Nazi promises, just as we did. Mother is torn
with guilt.’

He paced across the small
room and stopped in front of her. ‘If it is a trick, I shall hang too. I’ll
take that risk. Too many have died.’

‘Then so will
I
… for Efah and her children, for Mary, for Darja’s baby.’

‘And for Arturas and Peti.’
He held her close, her ribs sharp against his: she was still so thin, so
tortured by hunger. Here, she could usually have a larger ration. She gave most
of it to Ilse, who was now here in the women’s camp, or her mother who, like
Miriam, slept in Block IIc, opposite the men’s camp and now the Hungarian
women’s camp. It kept them well enough to avoid selection, or let them trade
for a pair of shoes that fitted so they could work and were worth
feeding.  His chin rested on the top of Miriam’s head, which was crowned
by a mass of short, black hair that stuck straight up like a porcupine and made
her small face look even smaller, even more vulnerable. Where did she find her
courage?