Touching the Wire (12 page)

His work in the hospital
camp and the medical block, combined with fear of their betrayal, made sleep
impossible unless exhaustion claimed him, and then his nightmares woke him
screaming: Miriam lay on a dissecting table, or stood while he was forced to
place a noose around her neck and kick away the chair. Her body swung on the
end of a rope… Then it was him facing a firing squad. And worst of all, the
children: he wept for the children.

December followed November
with relentless, mind-numbing cold. Peti and Arturas still lived: so far he’d
managed to shield them from the worst atrocities, playing God again, though
Arturas was unwell. Aaron Schaeler was ill too, with scarlet fever, and
messages came less frequently. He worked as if in a daze, helpless to stop the
horror for fear of swingeing retribution on Miriam and the women’s camp. The
Soviet army must come soon.

A low drone took him
outside. He tilted his head, trying to gauge its direction. In the distance,
rank after rank of bombers flew in formation. Panic erupted around him: Allied
planes. Guards and officers ran from the buildings and hurried towards the bomb
shelters, leaving the internees to fend for themselves in the open. He stood in
the middle of the road and watched their approach, silently cheering them on
and praying they knew which were the command headquarters, and which the
barracks of the prisoners of war.

Time hung like the undropped
bombs. The planes droned on and explosions blasted the still air. Flame and
black smoke rose in a pall of too bitter a memory. Again they’d targeted the
oil refineries, about five miles away. Did the pilots even know the
extermination camp existed? Had they no idea what was happening to the men,
women and children? Did the allied governments not care?

Christmas Eve arrived with
the dread of past Christmas Eves, when the SS had erected Christmas trees under
which to leave their macabre presents of frozen souls. While the officers and
guards celebrated he slipped away. Twins were housed in various barracks across
the camp: Peti and Arturas were in camp BIIe, which had been the Gypsy camp.
He’d persuaded the camp physician to let him move one set of twins to the
barrack set aside for them in the women’s camp, to relieve overcrowding. He
checked the order was in his pocket, and hurried to BIIe.

Inside the barrack it was
dark and cold. He switched on the light and children huddled together, cringing
away from him. ‘Peti? Arturas?’ He found them hiding beneath a blanket.
‘There’s nothing to fear. I’m taking you to see Miriam, that’s all. Come.’ He
took them by the hand and led them across frozen ground, past the guard and out
of the compound.

There were children other
than twins in the women’s camp now that they were no longer gassed on arrival,
and the sight of them warmed his heart. He stopped outside the women’s
infirmary. ‘Wait here.’

The inside of the infirmary
was decorated with fir boughs hung with bright tatters of rag, and crammed with
women determined to celebrate Christmas whatever their faith.

‘Miriam.’ He hugged her and
held her close. ‘Are you well?’

‘I am, but we have an
outbreak of scarlet fever. You look tired, Chuck. You must hang on. They say
the Soviets are near.’

‘Not near enough.’ He
pointed to the fir boughs. ‘You’ve all worked hard to keep up morale. You have
isolated the infected?’

‘Yes, of course… and we
scrubbed the floors with snow and the disinfectant you sent.’

He nodded. ‘You must stay
well.’

She waved aside his concern.
‘We have presents for the children, look. The women have sewn toys from scraps
of material. And we have candy for them.’

‘Candy?’

‘Shared by those who’ve had
parcels from
home.
I’ve saved some for Arturas and
Peti.’

‘Then you’d better give it
to them.’

He went to the door and
motioned the boys inside.

‘Arturas… Peti… You’re
frozen.’ Miriam hugged them close. Other women crowded round to welcome them
home and press small gifts into their hands.

‘I managed to get them moved
to Block 22.’

‘Thank you, Chuck. Thank
you.’

‘I should have thought of it
before.’

‘They’re here now.’ She took
Peti’s hand in one of hers, and held Arturas’s in the other. ‘Look, Peti, one
of the girls has made a little Christmas tree. And we have candles… left over
from Hanukkah.’

Candles organised from
Kanada. They lit the candles as the light failed. Children’s upturned faces
flickered yellow in the light of the flames. Arturas and Peti’s eyes were wide
with wonder. A voice began to sing, quietly and uncertainly. A Polish carol?
Another voice joined in, and then others; those who recognised the tune, women
of all faiths, sang in their own language, swelling the sound to the rafters.
He joined in with the words his mother had sung.
Angels greet the holy
child, in a manger, heart beguiled. Christ is Lord and Christ is born, joy to
all, this Holy morn.

He put an arm around
Miriam’s shoulder. His deep voice underscored the soprano and alto voices of
the women, and the high trill of the children.
Rejoice, rejoice, throughout
the earth, let love embrace the holy birth. Pain and sorrow leave behind; our
saviour’s born for all mankind
.
 
The voices faded to silence,
and women hugged each other and cried.

Miriam wiped away tears.
‘Can you all stay, just for tonight?’

‘No-one will miss us, not
tonight.’ He found space on a bunk for the twins and followed her to her bunk.
They lay in each other’s arms far into the night listening to the strains of a
midnight mass from the men’s camp, and the quiet sob of broken hearts.

On Boxing Day he took the
boys to their new barrack. They were no safer here, but Miriam would be able to
see them and they’d have the comfort of the familiar faces of those who loved
them. Allied planes again dropped their bombs on the oil refinery and the IG
Farben factory at Buna. Days passed. 1945 arrived without fanfare. He left
message after message in the crack in the wall, praying Aaron had recovered.
Direct
orders from Berlin. The four women are to be executed.
Did that mean they’d
confessed?

He waited to be arrested
,  his
guts writhing like a coiling serpent. He’d have
heard if Miriam had been arrested, wouldn’t he?

He wrote another message,
and another.
Send word that you are well, M. I love you.
He walked to
the place where Rabbi Schaeler would look for messages and pushed it into the crack.
It wouldn’t go. His fingers drew out a slip of paper. He opened it, heart
racing.
I long to hear from you, M. I love you
.

He’d left that message three
days ago. She had to be safe: she had to be. He folded both messages, pushed them
back into the crack and returned to his work. Arturas and Peti had been brought
back to the camp hospital from their barrack after only a day in the women’s
camp, and he needed to check on them. Arturas was ill with fever, and isolated.
Peti was in a room with other single twins waiting on the fate of their
siblings. He feared that, for Arturas and Peti, time had run out.

‘I hear they’re hanging the women rebels today,
in front of
all
the female prisoners.’ The camp physician smiled. ‘I’d
have had the names of the resistance out of them in a week.’

His fingernails bit into his
palms. ‘They’ve given names?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. If Miriam was
there, and had been betrayed, she would not die alone.

The gallows stood ready
beneath a snow-filled sky. Two bodies already dangled, swinging in the icy
wind, their wasted faces contorted beyond recognition.
Miriam…
The women
internees stood on the churned and frozen snow: they waited in files of five,
the air silent, but for the creak of the taut gallows-ropes in the breeze, the
sound of shivering bodies, the whip of thin clothing, and the blowing wisps of
ragged breath.

Two physically broken,
sticklike figures were led out. Defiant, they drew themselves up. Bruised,
scarred and bloodied, he couldn’t make out their faces. He searched the
assembled crowd. He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see her.

‘Miriam.’ He scanned the
rows of women. ‘
Miriam
…’

A chair was kicked away with
a crash: condemnation murmured along the wind. A body jerked, kicked and
dangled, swaying and rotating.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us
sinners, now and in the hour of our deaths.
Take me from the dark. Hear
me now, O Lord.

The second woman was led
forward and helped up onto a chair. The fourth noose hung around her pale
throat like a necklace.

She stared straight ahead
and her chest rose. ‘Be strong and be brave!’

The chair fell with a crash and
the body dropped. Snowflakes fell into stunned silence like flakes of ash.
Tears ran unheeded down his cheeks. ‘
Miriam
…’

‘Chuck?’

He knelt in the snow and
helped her sit upright. ‘Miriam… I thought… You are ill?’

‘I have a fever. It’s
nothing I haven’t had before.’

She was thinner, her eyes
sunken. Did she have the reserves left to fight this? The show over, the women
were dismissed. He picked her up. ‘Let’s get you back to the infirmary.’ She
was hardly any weight: light as a flake of ash.

She clung around his neck.
‘They didn’t betray us, Chuck. The women gave only the names of the dead
kommando. They held out. Thanks to them we’re safe.’

Safe? ‘You have to keep
strong, Miriam. The Soviets are only days away.’

‘The boys?’

He was glad she couldn’t see
his face. She would never condone a child’s suffering for her sake. None of
these women would. ‘I’ve done what I could.’ Was that true? ‘If you can just
hold on, Miriam.’

‘And you? Are you safe?’

The question burned long
after he’d left Miriam in the hands of the nurses. They had medicines… they
would take care of her and, when the Soviets arrived, she would be liberated.
He was thirty-two, his life stretched endlessly before him: for him, there
would never be an escape from hell.

***

Walt helped Charlotte remove the Christmas
decorations from the tree.

‘Can we plant the tree in
the garden, Grandpa?’

Jane plugged in the vacuum
cleaner. ‘I doubt it would live, Charlotte, and if it did it would grow too
big.’

He handed the star from the
top of the tree to Charlotte. ‘Eric has a big garden. I’ll ask if he wants to
plant it somewhere. It may survive.’

Jane placed baubles,
garlands and tinsel into a box. ‘It does seem a shame not to give it a chance.’

He unwound the fairy lights
and coiled them into a neat bundle. ‘If it stays fine I may go up the allotment
later, love. I still have a bit of ground to turn over and Eric’s bound to be
there, catching up on his autumn digging.’

‘Can I come, Grandpa?’

 ‘Another time,
sweetheart. When it’s not so cold.’

‘And anyway, it looks like
snow.’ Jane took the box to put in the cupboard under the stairs. Sounds of
tidying came from the hall.

The thought of snow sent a
shudder of something more than cold down his spine. He could still hear the
tramp of Nazi boots on frozen snow and the rumble of trucks fleeing from east
to west, leaving nothing for the advancing allies…

News of the Soviet advance
caused Nazi panic. Inside the camp, work progressed feverishly: demolishing gas
chambers and crematoria, covering over burning pits, destroying evidence.
Rumour had it Sturmbannf
ü
hrer
Baer, the camp commandant, had packed to leave. One by one the chief rats
abandoned their posts, leaving nervous guards to keep control while SS officers
hastily gathered incriminating documents into boxes for removal or destruction.

Officers hurried about their
own business, intent on saving their skins. A file of documents lay on the desk
in
his
office. No-one was near. Quickly, he leafed through pages: this
was damning evidence. He glanced around the room. How to keep them safe? A
flattish tin box with folding wire handles sat on the floor in a corner. He
tried to lift the lid but it was locked. He checked the corridor but no-one
paid him the least attention. He flung open desk drawers. Keys…

He tried several in the
lock. A small, ornate brass one fitted and turned. He opened the lid and forgot
to breathe: this too was evidence. He put the documents in the box and relocked
it, pocketed the key and opened the door.
He
stood talking to another officer.
He ducked back into the room and waited, heart thudding. Footsteps rang along
the corridor, coming closer. Shouting… Running feet. He eased open the door.
Maybe he could lose himself in the commotion. He joined the melee. He’d made it
almost to the corner when the cry went up. Had he been seen? He fled to his
room, hid the box under his bunk and stuffed a blanket in front of it. If he’d
been recognised, it was too late now. He needed to see Miriam.

Rows and rows of wooden
barracks stretched before him as far as he could see; in Mexico camp half-built
barracks thrown up to house the thousands transported from Hungary remained
unfinished. On the road between the barbed-wire fences, ranks of women and
children, ill-dressed for the cold and some barefoot, filed towards the main
gates, a haze of
breath
freezing in the still air
around them. Some helped others, barely able to walk, to trudge through the
snow.

They were evacuating them
from one lethal hell into another. All too soon it would be dark, and the
temperature would plummet further overnight. He searched their faces but there
was no sign of Miriam.

The years of misery and
suffering in the camp were drawing to a bitter, desperate end and, here and
there, the camp bore witness to the rage of the survivors: windows were
smashed, kitchens looted.  The remaining guards held rifles at the ready
with over-nervous fingers.

A staccato of machine-gun
fire split the air. Staff cars and laden trucks rolled past him and turned west
outside the gates. He hurried on, legs weak at the thought of what he would
find. His hand trembled on the door handle. Miriam lay on her bunk, eyes
closed, cheeks flushed. ‘Miriam…’ He touched her forehead. ‘You have a
temperature.’

She nodded. ‘The boys?’

‘You don’t need to worry about
them.’

Her face relaxed.

‘Sore throat?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was a
croak.

‘Rash?’

She loosened her blouse. Her
taut skin was red over protruding bone, blotched, and in places it peeled away.

His heart sank another
fathom. ‘Let me see your tongue.’

She opened her mouth. Her
tongue was the unmistakable colour of a strawberry. She knew as well as he that
she’d caught scarlet fever.

‘They are evacuating the
camp. The women and children are leaving. Miriam, you are all in grave danger.
Any who aren’t able to walk
…’
The infirmary was filled
with sick and dying women. To have survived so long to succumb now… he held her
hand in both of his. ‘You are witnesses to their crimes.’

She nodded helplessly. ‘What
can we do?’

‘The camp in is chaos.
They’re running in panic. Maybe you have a chance.’ He took a calming breath.
‘If they leave the sick behind, a doctor must stay too.  Maybe, I can
protect you. I’ll liberate whatever stores I can find and come straight back.
There’s sulfa, if it’s still there, that will help your infection.’

‘Stay safe.’ She swallowed
with difficulty. ‘I love you.’

He hurried back to the main
medical block and went in search of sulfa. With it, Miriam could make a full
recovery. The pharmacy was locked. He tried the surgery. He found the precious drug,
a small packet, enough for now, and gathered together what few supplies were
left that were useful. He fetched the tin box from under his bunk and strapped
it beneath his coat with his belt, pulling the leather tight through the
handles and around his body.   

He ran outside, arms full,
and an SS officer grabbed his sleeve. The precious sulfa was in his pocket. He
clung stubbornly to his lootings. ‘I’m a doctor. These supplies are for the
sick.’

‘There won’t be any sick.
Tomorrow the men leave. You will go with them.’

‘If I’m to go with them
tomorrow I’m not needed tonight. While I have patients I shall attend their
needs.’

The SS officer spat in the
snow. ‘Then attend your patients while you still may.’

He ran back to the infirmary
and Miriam. He would not leave with the men in the morning.

She lay on her bunk in the
cramped nurses’ quarters. Her eyes were open and Ilse, barely able to stand
herself, held a cool cloth to her friend’s forehead.

‘I brought what I could
carry. I found only a small amount of sulfa.’

Ilse looked up at him. ‘We
have more cases of fever, doctor.’

‘And I fear you are among
them, Ilse. Rest now. I’ll tend to the sick.’

Ilse lay down beside Miriam,
one arm over her friend’s shoulder. Their plight was more serious than he
wanted to admit.

He covered them with a
blanket. ‘There has to be more sulfa in the pharmacy. The SS are too busy
saving themselves to worry about us at the moment. Tonight, I’ll make a proper
search… bring food, more blankets, anything I can find to help us survive. I’ll
be back before dawn, and I shall never leave you again, I promise. I’ll defend
this infirmary with my life if I must.’

Darkness came early and with
it a bitter wind. He stayed with Miriam and Ilse, cooling their fever with
cloths wrapped around snow, and helping them take sips of such water as they
had. He comforted those he could, carried out those for whom liberation came
too late, and redistributed now spare blankets.

Bright stars paled in a
velvet sky when he left the infirmary, the secret box still hidden beneath his
coat, and walked through fresh crisp snow. Some of the lights on the guard
towers weren’t lit. Pools of shadow swallowed the burning pits. Virgin snow
covered the mounded horror with a mantle of pristine beauty: only a hand, like
that of a drowning man’s, stuck above it, while the sickly-sweet stench of
death hung in the air. His breath wreathed in front of his face. It was cold,
so desperately cold.

The pharmacy door stood wide
open. Packages lay scattered across the floor: spoiled or empty. He should have
come sooner. He read labels searching for sulfa. All these medicines could have
been used to save lives.

He pocketed what sulfa he
found and piled together anything of use. If he wanted a future with Miriam
there was one more thing he had to do. A future? He’d failed so many. He didn’t
deserve a future but Miriam did, and she needed him. He found what he was
looking for in another room. He picked up the needle and the bottle of liquid,
and administered the injections that might keep him alive.

Dawn was still far to the
east, barely visible through the ragged cloak of night, but, outside in the
road, lines of men already awaited the start of the march west. A senior SS
officer, rifle raised, motioned him to join the ranks.

‘I am staying behind. The
sick need me.’

‘You think we have no need
of doctors on the march? You’ll come with us.’

A shout went up and rippled
through the men. ‘Soviet tanks have reached Krakow.’

Krakow… how far away was
that? Sixty, seventy kilometres to the east? How long would it take if they had
to fight every inch of the way? How long if they met no resistance? If they had
snow ploughs, Soviet trucks could be here in hours.

‘Quickly… march… units of
one hundred.
Anyone
who lags behind will be shot.’

The column shuffled forward
as more ranks of men formed behind them. Orders were shouted. He searched for a
means of slipping away unnoticed. Behind him a familiar grey-bearded figure
supported a fellow inmate, encouraging him to move forward with the others. A
rifle butt stabbed Aaron in the kidneys and he fell to the ground.
Anyone
who
lags behind will be shot. Doctors were not immune to bullets any more than
rabbis.