The Extra (25 page)

One evening she was working late long after everyone had left the theater. The lights of the tailor’s workshop had been switched off except for the feeble glow of the single table lamp where she sat repairing Snow White’s costume for the performance the next day. The puppet was perched on a revolving stand in front of an oval mirror so Lilo could see the hem length as she turned it to check the evenness. She had for perhaps the tenth time wondered if Sepp’s advance could have been an accident. And the next moment, she thought how she and Django, whom she seemed to miss more each day, had never touched each other that way. Would she want him to touch her? Would she want to touch him? Maybe kiss him?

She felt a shudder deep within her heart and then grew very still.
I love him. I truly love Django.

Soon the very air in the tailor’s room throbbed with this new awareness that burst upon her like a splash of moonlight on a dark and cloudy night. She set down the small scissors with which she had been snipping a seam from Snow White’s gown. He was alive; she just knew it. He was alive and missing her. Loving her. He was aching with a love for her as deep and profound as her own.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall.” A voice came out of the shadows. Then an image slid across the small oval mirror that crowded out the one of Snow White.
Sepp!
A hand dropped onto her shoulder. She felt herself being spun around on the swivel chair as he wrapped her in his arms.

“No!” she screamed.

“No one will hear!” His inky blue eyes had dilated in the dim light. He was holding her so tight she could hardly breathe. The thoughts came slowly to Lilo — one by one, like pebbles dropped into a pond. She dared not close her eyes but stared into the dead ones of his bland, expressionless face. Evil did not wear the grimace of Rumplestiltskin demanding the firstborn of the miller’s daughter. Nor was it the wicked queen in Snow White. Evil needed no such grimaces, but here it was before her — this soulless being, this iniquitous vagabond, this emissary from a godless world. She was unsure of how the scissors came to be in her hand. She thought she had set them down. But suddenly his mouth pulled into a scream. She jerked away from him. “Goddamn no good cursed German!” But then the vile words that sputtered out loud like an over-boiling cauldron were not German but Roma. Roma! Not even Sinti. “Bengesko nazi,” a cursed German. She couldn’t stop the cataract of Roma curses. He still held her wrist tightly. She saw realization dawning in his eyes. It was as if she could see the tumblers of his brain like the jewels or workings of a clock turning.
He knows!
She tried to wrench free but felt her knees buckle beneath her. She was on the floor. She saw a bloodstain blossom on his shirt beneath his armpit. But he seemed oblivious to the wound. His eyes were now fastened on her.

“Zigeuner!”
The word swelled in the dimness of the tailor’s room.

He began yelling, “
Versteckt! Versteckt!
You’re one of the hidden ones. They’re picking them up all over Salzburg. Jews in the attics, and now I guess under the cover of daylight — Gypsies, in our beloved theater! Like vermin!” He locked his arm around her neck, dragged her to the alarm box, and pulled the lever.

She looked down at her shoes and blinked. Perfect shoes. Perfect for running, she thought minutes later as the Gestapo surrounded her. But it was completely over.
Ganz vorbei.
The two words reverberated in her head, sang through her bloodstream. And oddly she felt no fear.
Ganz vorbei.
Fear was useless. All the fear she had ever known simply leaked out of her. She was hollow, empty. She felt nothing.

Ganz vorbei.

S
he had stabbed Sepp, but it was a superficial wound. He had simply overpowered her and pulled the alarm for the security guard. Within minutes, the Gestapo had arrived. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything except that Marta not be caught. But she knew that was ridiculous. Sepp would surely tell the Gestapo that Marta had been hiding her and that would be the end for Marta. Sepp and the guard were dragging her across the floor. She was as limp as the marionettes that twirled slowly above her, their strings taut on the hangers, their heads lolling to one side waiting for “life.” Her life was over.

She was taken directly to a city prison in the local police building, not a camp. She expected to be sent to a camp, but now it had been nearly two weeks since her arrest and nothing had happened. Every time a new prisoner was brought to the women’s cell block, she expected to see Marta, but so far they had only brought in prostitutes, drunks, and the occasional thief. The drunks were let out when they were sober. The prostitutes languished a bit longer. Finally, when a guard came around at the beginning of her third week, she got up her nerve to talk to him.

“Why am I here? Why haven’t I been sent someplace? A Gypsy camp?” At least if she were sent to a Gypsy camp, her chances of meeting up with Django were greater. The guard merely shrugged and walked off. She heard a snort from behind her. It was the red-headed prostitute who was in for the second time in the two weeks Lilo had been in jail.

“I know why you are here still.” She spoke in a low, smoke-scarred voice.

“I suppose I must pay you something to find out. But I have nothing. Nothing at all,” Lilo said. She had become acquainted with the prison economy — no one got anything without paying in some way. Cigarettes were a major part of the currency, as was sex.

“No matter, sweetie. It’s really not worth anything.” She smiled. “It’s . . . it’s rather humorous, as a matter of fact.”

“Humorous?”

“Yes.” A huge grin broke across her face. “You are still here because they cannot find your papers.”

“Papers? I never had any papers.”

“Oh, someplace there are papers but they haven’t been found. And they can’t exterminate you if they don’t have your papers. It’s the German way. They have an unnatural obsession with order.” She now burst out in loud guffaws. She laughed harder and was soon doubled over on the cot.

An unnatural obsession with order.
The words rang in Lilo’s mind like the muffled toll of distant bells. She found them oddly hopeful, though not for herself. But for the first time, she began to think that just possibly Germany might lose this war. The Germans had many unnatural obsessions, but could something like this actually be detrimental to their ability to strategize? Between July 1942 and January 1943, the German army had failed miserably in its attempts to take Stalingrad, and Hitler had blamed it on the weather. It became the turning point of the war for the Germans. Had they been looking for papers instead of long underwear?

There was one small window in the cell that looked out on an exercise yard. Snow was beginning to fall. It was mid-October. She had been in prison for six weeks. This was still a bit early for snow. But apparently in Russia, winter was coming early.

It was nearly two months later that a guard came to fetch her. She was driven to a train station several miles outside Salzburg. It was really not a proper station at all but just a stop. A bitter cold wind was blowing. There were other prisoners, she was not sure from where, who were standing on what appeared to be a makeshift platform. Shortly a train pulled in from the east. The doors of the freight cars were opened, and the guards shouted orders for them to enter. The cars were packed. Packed, it seemed, with Russians and Poles. There was a mélange of languages. Most of the prisoners were women and children. A mother held a child of about three or four on her lap. She nodded toward Lilo, indicating that there might be space next to her. Lilo squashed in. She turned to her to thank her.
“Danke,”
she whispered. The woman smiled ever so slightly.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
Lilo asked. Do you speak German?

“Ein wenig,”
the woman replied, and pinched her thumb and forefinger together, indicating “just a bit.”

“Where are we going?” Lilo asked.

“Hölle,”
the woman replied.

Hell.

“M
arta is free. Not Marta’s fault.” Her eyes felt stuck, but she could feel a light so bright that even with them shut, she was aware of the pink lining of her lids — a garish pink, speckled with dancing dots.

“Marta? Who’s Marta? This one is blabbing about Marta.”

Shut up,
Lilo commanded herself. She can’t give away Marta. Marta was all she had thought about since her arrest. Would they arrest Marta?

“Where am I?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Recovery,” someone whispered. It was a gentler voice. “I’ll take care of this one.”

Was it Good Matron? Could she be back in Buchenwald? There was something familiar in that voice.

“Open your eyes, Lilo. They’re gone.”

She clenched her eyes shut even tighter. She did not want to wake up. “Where am I?” Then she felt a wave of nausea and began to gag. Someone lifted her shoulders, and a flood of vomit filled her mouth. Luckily the person was holding a bowl.

“Are you done?”

Now she opened her eyes. “Zorinda?”

“Yeah. Welcome to Ravensbruck.”

“They . . . they . . . they did it to me.” And another thought crowded her brain.
This is where my mother died. I know it. I know it.

Zorinda nodded solemnly. “But they did it to me, too, and look, I’m alive.”

“For what?” Lilo asked, and gave a laugh, which despite her weakness sounded harsh. “You were right, Zorinda.”

“Right about what?”

“You said we should be so lucky.”

Zorinda looked momentarily confused. Then a smile broke across her face. “Oh, the chapter when Huck left the Grangerfords and met up again with Jim and they get back on the raft.”

“Yeah, you remember.”

“I do . . . I do. Now, listen to me. You have to do everything I say. I survived the operation. Now I work as kind of a nurse assistant. Not one girl I’ve worked on has gotten an infection. I’m good at keeping you clean and all that. But better yet, I can organize food.”

Lilo shut her eyes tight, but tears squeezed out at the mention of organizing food. Her thoughts instantly turned to Django. What did she care about food? Django was all she had left to care about. Where was he now? What had they done to him?

“I don’t want to live.”

“You do want to live! You have to live.”

“Why? What for? Everything has been taken from me. They have hollowed me out. I am empty.”

“Don’t argue with me.”

“I’m not arguing.”

“Look, you don’t want to die of an infection. It’s horribly painful.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do. Let me tell you something.” She crouched down close to her head and cupped her hand over Lilo’s ear.

“They’re losing in the Soviet Union — losing bad. We just have to hang on. American troops landed in Ireland last year. They have established bases in England now. Some say they are going to cross the Channel and invade. And by then the Russians will come in from the east. There’s hope. You’re going to eat. You’re going to do everything I tell you. I am risking my life for you to get you this food. To make you strong. Because when they come you’ll be ready.”