The Keeper of the Walls (73 page)

L
ily
, who had never undressed in front of anyone except Mark, felt the mortification spread through her, ripping away the last threads of self-respect to which she had been clinging. Naked, she had been pushed into a room where SS men stood leering at the nude women parading before them. At a large wooden table, three girls, in coarse gray dresses, kerchiefs around their heads, sat holding scissors and razors. Their faces were hard, closed, rough.

“Next!” the SS captain called.

Maryse moved forward, trembling, her thin body caving in already. The first girl seized her by the hair, and cut it off in a series of blunt snips, and then, with a razor, shaved the rest of it off. Lily stood staring, agape, at the friend she had known all her life, and whom she now could hardly recognize. But the second girl was busy shaving off Maryse's pubic hair, so harshly that at one time, Maryse cried out. The SS captain, slightly unsteady, laughed. “Jewish whore,” he said in German.

The third woman was daubing Maryse's pubis, and her shaved head, with a pungent, acrid liquid. Lily stepped forward, chin firm. And then the captain said: “This one. Save this one for us. I like the way she looks.” Lily could smell the odor of whiskey on his breath.

“She's too old,” another countered. “When we can have them young and pliant, why take this old broad? Let her go.”

Impatient at the wait, the first girl called to Lily with a strange accent . . . perhaps Slovakian? The Czechs had been here longer than anyone but the Poles, Lily had to guess. She moved up, and the beautiful brown hair that she had never shorn in all her life, was snipped off as if it had been the mane of a horse. Lily shut her brain off again, traveling back in space to that small, prim convent room, and began to whisper the words of the Ave Maria.

“What's she mumbling?” the captain asked.

“It's a Hail Mary,” Lily replied, in her accentless German.

The man stepped up, swung back his arm, and slapped her suddenly across the face, bringing tears of surprise and pain to her eyes. “That's one of ours, not one of yours, you Jewish sow,” he spat at her.

Behind her, Nanni was standing, almost in front of the hair cropper. Lily's pubis was being shaved, the girl's hand harsh and careless as she slashed the razor across the sensitive area. The captain was eyeing Nanni with interest. “Blue eyes and dark hair, young, plump, and rosy,” he stated. “Not so striking as the other, but with the right outfit, she could be a beauty. How old are you?” he demanded.

“Eighteen.”

“Virgin?”

Lily felt the shock passing through her, but Nanni's voice was perfectly calm and assured, as she replied. “Yes.”

“Then get out of this line. Heinz, you take her with you. We've selected three from this batch, and that's enough.”

Nanni's arm was roughly gripped, and she was pulled out of the line. Behind her, Maryse, a hairless, nude animal, was asking, her voice congealed with fear: “Where are they taking her?”

The Slovak girl who was daubing Lily's scalp answered, in bad German, her voice a hard whisper: “To the whores' barracks. She's lucky . . . luckier than any of us. And she doesn't look like anything special, if you ask me!”

Their exchange had lasted a mere few seconds. With a hard push, a young SS officer forced the two new deportees to exit into another room, where they were subjected to scalding baths followed by brutally cold showers. Another set of grim-faced women watched over them, moving them in and out with the precision of drill sergeants. When they were dry, their skins burning from the hard chemicals, Maryse and Lily were issued the same kind of rough, gray, tattered rags that the Slovakian girls were wearing. Lily's was tight and short, showing vast expanses of her thighs, while Maryse's, on the other hand, floated around her, dropping to midway between her knees and her feet. They were handed wooden clogs, reminiscent of what Dutch children wore in holiday pictures. Then they followed a young woman out the back door, along a path lined by low stone huts and a fence of wiring and stanchions.

“Lily, Lily,” Maryse cried. “What are those men going to
do
to Nanni? They're going to rape her—”

“She's alive.” Lily surprised herself with the hard tone of her voice, cutting into her friend's words. “They didn't make her cut her hair. That awful woman at the table told us she was one of the lucky ones. Just remember that, Mari. One of the lucky ones.”

After a walk of perhaps half a mile, they found themselves, in their absurd clothes, lining up again in rows of fives, to be counted. Behind them stood a long, low building with three chimneys, from which emanated odors of food. A well-fed, strong woman of about thirty, her red hair curling around her face, her body clothed in an attractive skirt and blouse, was saying to them, in a loud voice: “My name is Malka Sandikova. I am a Slovak. I am your
Kapo
—your trusty. The Germans are going to count you. Every morning, and every evening, you will be counted. I have been here since ‘39, and you are all to be my responsibility. You are to do everything I tell you. If you disobey, I shall punish you. I report directly to the
Oberscharfúhrerin,
Irma Griese, who is in charge of all of us ... groups and groups of us; and if you do something she doesn't like, then I too shall have to pay. So you see, I want to make sure you do exactly what she wants . . . what they all want.”

And then, in the oncoming dusk, the three hundred women were counted like sheep, in front of the kitchens. It was only after that that they were finally taken to their hut. In front of the long, low stone building, Malka Sandikova looked quickly around, and then pointed to an area behind the women's heads. “You're just fodder for the ovens,” she hissed at them, her face contorted into a grimace beyond humanity. “Whenever you get the illusion you're still a person . . . check the smokestacks going day and night!”

Uncomprehending, Maryse stared at Lily. But Lily quickly shook her head, and reassured her with the light pressure of her fingers. “The point is, Mari,” she whispered, “never to disobey, and never to think. It's the way we're going to survive.”

“And Nanni?”

But someone was poking them in the back, and so they entered, leaving behind them any hope beyond that of simply pulling through.

S
udarskaya
, in Rosine's black and white uniform, splitting around her fat hips, opened the front door, keeping the chain on. “Yes?” she demanded, a deep frown forming between her brows. Atop her yellowish-white hair crested a small, starched white cap.

The thin, fashionable woman, her dark hair hidden beneath a velvet strip mounted by a froth of egret feathers, blinked, startled. “Madame Bertholet is expecting me,” she stated. “Who are
you?
Where is Rosine?”

Sudarskaya's chest expanded in a lugubrious, long sigh. “I'm Rosine's cousin. Her mother's cousin, that is. Rosine had to go home, unexpectedly, to help out. And so I came. Madame Bertholet's quite ill, I'm afraid. The doctor's come and gone, and has requested that no visitors be admitted. She needs absolute rest.”

Nervous fingers massaging her throat, the other hesitated. “But ... I'm her niece ... I always come, on Fridays.”

In her best imitation of a French peasant woman, the tiny Muscovite piano teacher shrugged, making a compassionate face. “I beg Madame to excuse me, then,” she declared. “But . . . orders are orders. Especially when they come from Madame Bertholet. When she heard the doctor . . .Madame should have been here! ‘Raymonde!' she cried. That's my name: Raymonde Soudaire, at madame's service. ‘Raymonde! I don't want to die! You are not to let a living soul in, under any circumstance.' And Madame knows Madame Bertholet: what she wants, she gets. So all that I can say is that if Madame will leave her name and telephone number on this piece of paper, I shall be glad to call her every week to give her a precise health report on Madame Bertholet.”

Perplexed, the other nodded. “But—perhaps I should speak to the doctor . . . directly.”

“Oh, no!” Sudarskaya cried, almost losing her cap in her excitement. “Madame Bertholet would never forgive Madame, and would fire me, for interfering in her life!” Again she added, conspiratorially: “Madame
knows
my esteemed employer.”

“Madame,” on the other side of the chained door, remained perplexed under this barrage of third-person explanations, still trying to figure out who had said what to whom. At long length she lifted a helpless hand. “All right, then. Perhaps you're right, Raymonde, and my aunt would be angry. Here's my card. Call me every Friday morning, and if Aunt Marthe gets better, I'll come right over.”

“Madame's generosity will be most appreciated by Madame Bertholet.” And without waiting for a farewell, the small Russian closed the door firmly in Henriette Bruisson's face, and leaned against it, mopping her wet forehead.

Kira was emerging from the kitchen, her face pale, her heart pounding. “How did it go?” she whispered.

The old woman plumped out her pigeon breast, and smirked. “I should have gone to Petersburg, Kirotchka,” she stated. “To the Imperial School of Dramatic Arts. I would have made a
grand
career, not like your Jeanne Dalbret, who has only her legs to boast of!”

Suddenly relaxing, Kira steadied herself against an end table, and smiled. “But I'm afraid you'd have made a lousy
coiffeuse,
Raïssa Markovna,” she added.

Tilting her round head to the side, Sudarskaya examined the young woman. Her lustrous black hair had been cut off at her chin, then bleached in cheap peroxide to a strange, reddish-blond hue; and then it had been subjected to a makeshift permanent wave, executed in Aunt Marthe's bathroom. “You do look different,” Sudarskaya remarked. “And that's the whole point, isn't it, little one?”

“My own brother wouldn't recognize me,” Kira said, and suddenly they were both still, thinking of all the ones they loved who were completely out of reach to them.

But the buzzer was screeching, and Kira hurried off to Aunt Marthe's room, already out of breath.

T
he barrack looked
like a stable for no more than fifty horses, the purpose for which it had originally been intended; but close to one thousand women slept in it. Entering, one passed the small room occupied by the
Blockälteste,
or senior block prisoner, and then proceeded into the long room illuminated only by a thin strip of clerestory windows. A single stove stood in the center, and, proceeding outward, were never-ending three-tiered bunk beds, their wooden slats fitted unevenly, with only scant mattresses scattered around. The women slept five to a tier, in simple nightshirts, with only a single, thin cover, and, at night, were not allowed outside to the bathrooms, and had to use a covered pail. Even in the spring and summer, the floors and walls oozed with dank moisture. This was home for Maryse and Lily.

Several days after their arrival, they were taken to yet another gray house, where they stood in line in front of several young girls. When it was Lily's turn, the girl in front of her asked her for her left forearm, and, with a small needle, punctured a series of numbers onto her skin. Lily held her breath, the dreadful burning branding her, she realized, forever. But she made it a decision not to flinch, and not to cry out. These women who had come here years before had learned to protect themselves by dropping all human sensitivity; she would have to survive by never giving in to her moral or physical pain, keeping it all inside.

Outside, in the bleak, white sunlight, she examined her fresh skin. In bold blue letters, she had been stamped
B-14448.
Gone was her identity except as that tattooed number. She was hairless, shapeless, and without name.

She waited for Maryse, and together they took their places in the usual lineup by rows of fives. Next to them stood a reed-thin girl from Budapest, who had introduced herself as Magda on the first day. She'd arrived only weeks before, as part of a tremendous deportation of Jews from her country. They'd spoken French together, and German, for it seemed that upper-class Hungarians were fluent in these languages. She was a quick, bright creature, in her early thirties, and had been assigned to the coveted “Canada” brigade. She'd been a dancer in the ballet, and had struck up an immediate rapport especially with Lily. It was good to know where they were, what would be going on, and how they should behave, because it looked as if Magda, before them, had already gleaned a great deal of precious information.

“Canada” was not, as Lily had thought, a place where they sorted through incoming luggage to ensure delivery to its varied owners. Instead, the brigade of gray-dressed women and blue-and-white striped men sorted through all kinds of riches, and set them aside in different groupings to be mailed back to the Reich. Sometimes, one was able to find a special something that could be hidden under a skirt, if the watchful SS guards were just a trifle drunk.

Magda had explained to them that the tattooing occurred irregularly. Sometimes it happened on the first day; other times, as much as two months later. Now the three of them stood in line, and marched back to the barrack. Maryse had tears of shame in her eyes, but Magda's head was proudly lifted in an attitude of defiance. “It's a badge of courage,” she said to them. “They're daring us not to burn, or die of starvation.”

The starvation, Lily and Maryse already could attest to. In the morning, before the dreaded roll call, or
Zeile Appell,
when the entire camp of thirty thousand women was counted, they were handed a cup of black, thin
ersatz,
an imitation coffee to which no milk or sugar could be added. Sometimes, but not always, a piece of bread was added. “Hannah in the kitchen
Kommando
told me that it's made with parsnips and sawdust,” Magda had informed them. And it was nearly inedible, tasting like blotting paper. At noon, on the job, they received their ration of soup (“made with grass, water, flour, and one potato for seventy gallons”), and sometimes bread with one and a half ounces of sugar beet jam. At night, after the far more lengthy, far more trying
Appell,
they would be given an occasional strip of sausage or a piece of cheese, and a cup of soup. Magda had already lost twenty pounds since her arrival.