Roots of Evil (30 page)

But what you don’t know, you vicious cruel creature, she said to this hateful image, is that after you threw me out of your house I lived among Vienna’s back streets and alleyways, and I survived by selling my body. And if I could cope then with being fucked by half a dozen men in one night, I can cope with it now.

The small private obscenity helped to steady her, and it brought the defiance flooding back. I can’t escape this, but I can try to disconcert these animals. How? Well,
perhaps by reminding them who I am and what I have been. Leo Dreyer knew the truth about her, but for reasons Alice had not yet fathomed, he seemed to be letting the legend stand. So to these German officers she was still the infamous baroness – the decadent aristocrat whose lovers were said to be legion, and whose private entertainments were whispered to be Bacchanalian in the extreme. Lucretia von Wolff, rumoured to have committed every sin in the calendar, and whose sexual proclivities had been unfavourably compared to those of Messalina…

As the first man approached her, Alice smiled at him and held out her arms.

The small unexpected act did not stop them, of course – Alice had known it would not – but it certainly gave them pause. They glanced furtively at one another as if each of them needed to check his colleagues’ reactions before doing anything on his own account, and this brought Alice a small shred of courage and self-esteem. You see? she said silently to Leo Dreyer. You thought I would be beaten and humiliated but I’m neither of those things and I never will be!

Even so, what followed was an appalling ordeal. The men were all relatively clean, and most of them had clearly bathed or showered in the last forty-eight hours – Alice knew from those long-ago black days that this was something for which to be grateful. But the enforced and brutal intimacy inflicted a mental uncleanness on her mind that she feared might never wash away.

Only one of the men displayed any degree of sensitivity, and that was the very young officer who had
poured out drinks. He was fourth in line, and as he approached her he avoided meeting her eyes as if he found the whole business shameful. But his excitement was stronger and more frenzied than the others, and when he finally shuddered in climax Alice cried out in pain from the uncontrolled thrusting. As he withdrew he put out his hand to touch her face as if in apology, and their eyes met. But then he seemed to recollect his surroundings and he got up quickly, turning away, embarrassedly fastening his trousers.

The lower half of her body felt as if it was one massive bruise, and she thought she was bleeding as well, although it was impossible to be sure because the sofa on which she was lying was a wet squalid mess from the men. ‘Try not to impregnate the bitch,’ Leo Dreyer had said, and most of them had withdrawn before reaching orgasm. One – a heavy, fat-jowled man – faltered after a time, and Alice felt him slide flaccidly out of her. But he reached a hand down, guiltily and furtively, and fumbled frantically between his legs until there was the sudden wash of hot stickiness on her stomach. A wave of nausea engulfed her. Dreadful! This man is a Nazi murderer – he probably took part in the massacre of
Kristallnacht
– and he’s masturbating on to me!

She had expected Mildner to take his turn, but he did not; he remained near the door, the wolf-snarl strongly evident, and when the men had all finished, he rapped out a terse order and went out with them, closing the door behind him.

Leaving Alice alone with Leo Dreyer.

She had thought he had not been physically aroused by the rape, and she had thought that like Mildner he had obtained his satisfaction simply by watching.

But he walked slowly to the sofa, and looked down at her, and said, ‘And now it is my turn, baroness.’

The pain was threatening to swamp Alice’s whole body by now, but from out of its clawing depths, she said, ‘Why do you still call me that? Why did you maintain that identity with Mildner and the others?’

‘Because tonight I am settling an account with the arrogant creature who double-crossed the Führer,’ said Dreyer. ‘It was Lucretia von Wolff who played her arrogant game inside Buchenwald so tonight it is Lucretia von Wolff I am punishing.’ As he unbuttoned his trousers and lowered himself on to her, Alice realized that far from being unaroused, either the sight of his officers raping her or his own burning hatred – or perhaps both of these – had brought him to an almost unbearable pitch of hungering excitement. And that he was about to slake that hunger.

He was far more brutal than the others had been, and he was vicious and pitiless.

Alice, already in more pain than she could have believed possible, finally slid into a semi-conscious state, where she was no longer fully aware of her surroundings but where the pain was still a monstrous black and crimson swelling tide hammering with rhythmic insistence against her body. On and on and on, until you wanted to die…On and on and on, until at last you knew you were dying, and you welcomed it, because once dead you would feel nothing…

And then swimming back to the surface for a moment and to realization again – oh God, yes, I’m in this dreadful place, and I’m being raped…Oh, for pity’s sake, reach your horrid climax – for the love of all the saints in the world, just
come
and let me fall back down into this uncaring darkness…

There was a final unbelievable wrench of agony, and she heard herself cry out, and then the darkness closed over her.

A slightly harsh, but vaguely familiar voice, somewhere beyond the darkness, said, ‘I think she’s coming round now,’ and another voice, also vaguely recognizable, said, ‘If only we had a drop of brandy – or proper bandages.’

‘No, she’s all right. She’ll recover. She’s a very tough lady.’

Alice opened her eyes to the thick-smelling atmosphere of the hut, and the concerned faces of the women who, a few hours earlier, had denounced her as a spy. She was lying on a narrow bed; two of the women were sponging her face, and there was a thick comforting pad of something between her thighs. Someone had wrapped blankets around her – they were thin and not very clean and the surface was scratchy, but Alice did not care.

‘You’re still bleeding a bit,’ said the woman with the slanting cheekbones. ‘But we’ve cleaned you up as well as we can, and we don’t think you’re in any danger.’

Alice sat up and her head swam. She started to ask a question, and then said, ‘I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to be sick—’ and at once the woman put a tin basin under her mouth.

‘Thank you,’ gasped Alice when the spasms had stopped. ‘I’m sorry – this is disgusting for you.’

‘Not in the least. My father was a doctor, and my brother was training with him. If the Nazis had not come to my village I would have studied medicine as well. My name is Ilena,’ said the woman. ‘Do we call you baroness, or my lady, or what?’

And again there was that flare of warning that came not from within but from without. Don’t give away any more than you have to. On the crest of this flare, Alice said, ‘Lucretia. Just Lu, if you like. It’s quicker.’

‘And it doesn’t have the Borgia ring to it,’ said Ilena, and Alice caught the dry irony of this, and suddenly liked Ilena very much.

‘We’ve managed to brew some coffee,’ said one of the others, carefully carrying a tin cup from the stove. ‘It isn’t very good, but it’s hot.’

Alice said, gratefully, ‘I don’t care what it is. Thank you.’ She sipped the coffee gratefully, and then said, ‘You’re being very kind to me.’

‘We look after our own,’ said Ilena, and the others nodded.

We look after our own…

With the women’s help Alice recovered from the physical effects of the rape, and was pulled down into the grinding routine of Auschwitz.

‘Terrible,’ Ilena said. ‘Inhuman. When the history of these years is written, it will be Auschwitz that will bear most of the shame.’

Alice stored the few belongings she had been able to bring with her beneath the narrow bed in the hut which was already becoming familiar. This, then, was her home. No worse than Buchenwald, really. I shall bear it.

Her bed was directly beneath one of the windows, and each night the outside shutters were firmly fastened, keeping the prisoners in, and keeping the world out.

But the shutters over Alice’s bed had a chink on to that lost world. There was a small split at one corner where the wood had warped slightly, and through this
Alice could see a little part of the night sky. She could watch the moon wane and become a thin paring of silver, and she could see it swell and grow plump again. Sometimes its light seemed to be unrolling a silver path along which you could walk freely, if only you knew how to reach it. One day I will reach it though.

As the weeks slid past, and as she watched the moon’s inexorable path, she could think how odd it was that even in this enlightened century, and even in this soulless place, the moon and its phases still ruled a female’s blood. And that there were times when it did not rule it…How many days was it now since that night with Dreyer and the other men? It was difficult to keep track of time in here. But how many weeks had it been?

Two moons went by with no response from her body. Many explanations for that, though. The poor diet in here, the desolation. Oh, please let it just be that. And keep remembering what Dreyer said to those men. ‘Try not to impregnate the bitch,’ he had said, his eye on fire from the stove’s light. ‘Try not to impregnate…’

The third moon brought a bout of sickness – several bouts of sickness, and always in the early morning – and also a perceptible swelling and tenderness of her breasts.

‘We’ll get you through it, Lu,’ said Ilena, when Alice finally asked for help. ‘I told you, we look after our own in here.’

‘The doctors—’

But Ilena made a face expressive of disgust and loathing at mention of Auschwitz’s doctors. Everyone knew about them, she said derisively, and everyone gave them as wide a berth as possible. You did not have to
be in here very long to learn about the infirmary block, and the experiments that were carried out there. The sterilization of men and women. The endurance tests where prisoners were force-fed with salt water and immersed in ice-barrels for six and eight hours at a stretch, in order to simulate conditions that German pilots might have to face in battle.

Alice asked hesitantly whether someone – the guards? – might not insist that she receive some kind of medical care. Would they perhaps even enforce an abortion? You could not hide a pregnancy, said Alice, and Ilena laughed.

‘We can hide anything if we plan it carefully enough. But we do not need to do so. No one will care if you are pregnant. Children are born here sometimes.’

Alice thought she would sooner trust Ilena’s half-knowledge of medicine, and the collective knowledge of the other women, several of whom had had children of their own, than trust the doctors in Auschwitz’s infirmary blocks. She thought, and hated herself for thinking, that hampered by pregnancy and later by a baby she would have no chance of escaping. But this war could not go on for ever. Auschwitz could not go on for ever. Yes, but what if the Nazis won the war? What then?

The birth, when it came, came at night and was far worse than she had expected. The months of unremitting toil in the camp, and the sparse, poor-quality food, had taken their toll. There were hours and hours of grinding agony, and alongside the physical pain was the mental anguish of the child’s conception. I will never be able to look on this child with any love, thought Alice.

And even if it survives, it will never forgive me for bringing it into this dark joyless place.

Some of the women had managed to secrete a little store of things for the birth. A few teaspoons of brandy, stolen from one of the guards; cotton wool and antiseptic taken from the infirmary during a cleaning session; a bundle of clean cotton rags. Deborah had been born in a Viennese nursing home with every possible luxury to hand, and a distinguished surgeon in attendance. Conrad had shipped in flowers by the cartload and champagne by the bucket, and later he had written that marvellous music for his daughter –
Deborah’s Song
…And now Deborah’s half-brother or sister would be born on a pile of straw and rags, with no one except a clutch of women in attendance. But this child had been conceived in fear and pain, and now it was being born into a hating world.

When finally it lay between her thighs, Alice could feel, even before she saw it, that it was small and shrivelled.

‘But alive,’ said Ilena. ‘Breathing well.’

They wrapped the child in a square of blanket, and then Alice felt the small flailing hand against her breasts, and saw the little mouth opening and closing like a bird’s beak.

‘You have hardly any milk,’ said Ilena presently.

‘That was to be expected.’ To Alice’s horror the thought formed that if the child were to die she would be free to plan an escape, and there would be nothing to remind her of what Leo Dreyer and those others had done to her that night. There was a brief and rather terrible glimpse of herself watching the child grow up,
searching its features in the years ahead, praying that it would not resemble the features of the man who had stood by the stove’s glow, watching her being raped. And then had raped her himself…

And then the child let out a thin mewling cry, and something of the old defiance stirred. Alice was suddenly aware of a fierce protectiveness. She would force this child to survive, she would see it as a symbol of hope. Forgive me, little one, I didn’t mean it about letting you die.

But her breasts were empty and barren, and the tiny daily allowance of milk for the hut would not be anything like sufficient for such a weakling. Alice looked at Ilena, who was still seated on the edge of the bed.

‘Help me,’ she said. ‘There must be something—’

Ilena said slowly, ‘I think there is one thing you could do. Something I have seen animals do in my village. Not pleasant, but an immediate and immense form of nourishment – it would mean you could feed the child properly. My grandmother used to point it out to us when animals were born. You see how Nature always provides, she used to say.’

Alice stared at her for a moment, and then quite suddenly her own country upbringing asserted itself, and she understood. Nature provides.

After a moment she reached down between her thighs, feeling in the bloodied straw that Ilena had spread on the bed. Almost at once her hand closed about the still-warm afterbirth.

The child would live, even inside a place such as this. Alice would make very sure of it.

‘I don’t know it all,’ said Michael, seated opposite to Fran in Trixie’s kitchen, the three-quarters-empty wine bottle still between them. ‘That’s mostly because I don’t think she wanted to tell it all. But over the years I managed to fill in a good many of the gaps. One of the things I do know, though, is that Alraune was born in Auschwitz and that the birth was the result of Lucretia being raped by several Gestapo officers.’

‘Dear God,’ said Fran softly, and without thinking put out a hand to him. His hand closed about her fingers, and at once something passed between them. Like an electrical spark, thought Fran. Or like being in the shower when the water suddenly catches a glint of sunshine so that for a couple of seconds you stand inside a rainbow. She withdrew her hand, but the brightness of that moment stayed on the air.

The dishes were stacked in the sink: Fran supposed they would get washed up at some stage, but for the moment there were more important things to consider. Alraune’s photograph was on the table where they had left it and she put out a tentative hand to touch the glass covering it. ‘Michael, that
is
Alraune, isn’t it? I mean – there isn’t likely to be a mistake? The name written on someone else’s photo by mistake or anything like that?’

‘No. It’s unquestionably Alraune.’ He had taken an apple from the dish of fruit Fran had put on the table, and was quartering it rather abstractedly. Fran waited and after a moment he said, ‘Alraune was smuggled out of Auschwitz some time during 1943 or 1944. Lucretia fixed that, although I’m not sure how, and after the war
she brought Alraune back to England. Later on Alraune got married, although it wasn’t a very happy marriage.’

Francesca glanced at him, but his eyes had the shuttered look again, so with the air of one concentrating on the nuts and bolts of the situation, she said, ‘If Alraune lived in Austria, Trixie could have found the photograph this summer. She used to go on walking holidays in the long summer holidays, and this year she went to the Austrian Tyrol.’

Trixie had in fact suggested that Fran went along with her. ‘Good fresh air and lots of brisk, hearty exercise, that’s what you want. It’ll stop you brooding and moping over that rat, Marcus,’ she had said, but Fran had still been in the stage of wanting to brood and mope, and the thought of tramping briskly and heartily all round Austria in Trixie’s undiluted company had been so daunting that she had stayed at home.

Michael said, ‘Where exactly did Trixie go, d’you know?’

‘Not in any detail. But when she got back she talked about staying for a week or two in a place called Klosterneuberg. It’s one of those tiny villages in the Vienna Woods, apparently. There’s a miniature monastery and vines are hung over the doors of inns for the wine festivals, and all the villagers get sloshed on the new harvest. Trixie got to know some of the locals while she was there – she taught modern languages so her German was fluent. She mentioned being invited to some of the local houses for supper.’

‘You think she might have come across the photograph then?’

‘I think it’s more likely that it came from a bookshop somewhere. Trixie liked foraging in second-hand book-shops – she used to look for stuff that might be useful as translation projects for some of her classes. Boxes of old books and leaflets, or even theatre programmes and playscripts – something a bit out of the normal run of textbooks. She liked old prints and maps as well – she sometimes bought those jumbled-up boxes of stuff at sales on the grounds that ninety-nine per cent would be rubbish, but that there was always that unpredictable one per cent.’

‘The wild card,’ said Michael thoughtfully.

‘Yes. Alraune’s photograph might have been tucked into one of those boxes – or perhaps in a silver frame that was being sold.’ Francesca looked at the photo again. ‘It’s a face that stays with you, isn’t it? And juxtaposed with the name—’

‘Would the name have meant anything to Trixie?’

‘It might have done. She might have known about the original book. She might even have chosen her thesis subject because of that photograph,’ said Fran. ‘Put all the elements together, and you’ve got quite a good mix. The whole psychology of what happened at Ashwood Studios – Lucretia and Alraune, and the war and Ewers’ book—’ And the reasons for Lucretia killing two men, said her mind. Oh God, no, I can’t think about that one, not yet.

Michael said, ‘You didn’t find anything else relating to Lucretia among Trixie’s things?’

‘No.’ Fran drained her wine glass and set it down. ‘But I didn’t actually open envelopes or read letters. This
was just in a pack of old photographs – it didn’t seem especially private.’ She hesitated and then said, ‘Michael – earlier tonight you said that after Alraune came to England there was a marriage.’

‘Yes, but it was a very unhappy marriage,’ said Michael. ‘I lived with Alraune until I was eight.’

Francesca looked at him. ‘Alraune was your mother,’ she said carefully. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Lucretia von Wolff was your grandmother, and Alraune was her daughter. So Alraune must have been your mother.’

For a moment she thought he was not going to answer and the silence stretched out and threatened to become embarrassing.

Then he reached for his jacket, which was on the back of the chair, took out his wallet, and opened it to show Fran a small, and quite old, photograph tucked into the front. A man of about twenty-eight, and a woman a little younger. The woman had Michael’s eyes, and she looked as if she was trying not to laugh while the photograph was taken. Her dark hair was slightly wind-blown, and she was leaning happily against the man who had his arm around her shoulders.

Fran stared at the photograph, and then looked back at Michael. ‘But that’s—’

Michael said very quietly, ‘It’s a photograph of Alraune. But Alraune wasn’t Lucretia’s daughter, Francesca. Alraune was Lucretia’s son. Alraune was my father.’

‘Arranging for the baby to be baptized as Alraune was Leo Dreyer’s cruellest jibe,’ Alice had said on the night
she told Michael about Auschwitz. ‘I hadn’t especially thought about baptism or any kind of christening – I was too caught up with making sure the baby survived and that I survived with it.’

Michael registered that she referred to the child as ‘it’.

‘But a week or so after the birth, one of the camp commandants came into our hut, and took the child away to be baptized. There was some diatribe about Jews with the order, of course – they were still trying to maintain the myth that I was Jewish at that time, and one of the subtler tortures they had devised around then was to force Christian baptism on all new-born Jewish children. To a real Jew that would have been torment, of course. But I had no feelings about it.’

‘So the baby was given Christian baptism.’

‘Yes. And on Leo Dreyer’s instructions – he was Colonel Dreyer by that time – the name given was Alraune.’

There was no need for Michael to suddenly shiver and to glance uneasily over his shoulder to the partly open door, but he could not help it. At once, Alice said, ‘It’s perfectly all right, Michael, you’re completely safe here.’