Touching the Wire (9 page)

She nodded, grinning.

‘I hope they explode as
those bastards walk past.’

Her eyes opened wide. Her
grin turned into a giggle: her mirth was infectious and they clung to each
other shoulders heaving with helpless laughter.

He held a finger to his
lips. ‘Shush… He’s coming back.’

‘There is nothing here. Your
patients may return.’ The officer swept out of the hut, averting his nose from
the night-soil buckets and driving his guards before him to their next dawn
raid.

The women filed back inside.
He still couldn’t see Arturas and Peti. Two women looked fatter than he
remembered, and he didn’t think they had starvation oedema. They unclasped
their hands and a sleepy child slid to the floor from beneath long dresses that
had fitted months before, but were now several sizes too large. They’d won
another precarious day of life for the Roma twins.

Zählappell came too soon and
took the laughter from their hearts. They were marched in silence to the
gibbet, where a boy of fifteen or sixteen stood on a chair, hands tied, with a
rope around his neck. Miriam’s face turned pale. The boy’s eyes were wild, like
a cornered animal, his gaunt features twisted in fear.

The crowd tensed as the SS
officer spoke. ‘This boy will hang, and as a punishment and a warning, a
barrack in each camp will be decimated.’ The word ran in a susurration from lip
to terrified lip. All were considered guilty of sabotage.

Miriam fingered the leather
lace she wore around her neck and took half a step forward. He put a hand on
her arm and shook his head. Giving herself up would be pointless; it wouldn’t
save the boy, or her friends or patients. And, if tortured, she might be forced
to give away others.

The officer raised his arm.
The boy’s eyes darted from face to face and stopped when he saw Miriam. No-one
moved, no-one spoke, no-one breathed: his heart thumped wildly. The officer
watched and waited, searching the assembled faces. A gloved hand fell and a
guard kicked away the chair. Miriam closed her eyes and her lips moved
soundlessly. The young body jerked and twisted, too light for a quick death:
prayers for the dead bathed the air in a low moan.

‘Line up… here.’ The SS
officer motioned impatiently and Miriam was forced to join a row of fifty
women. The wall was pock-marked at chest height.

Dear God, no…

The officer began, pointing
to each victim in turn. ‘Eins, zwei, drei, vier, f
ü
nf,
sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn.’ A rifle cracked and the tenth woman in the
line slumped to the ground. He began again from the next white-faced figure.
‘Eins, zwei, drei…’

Panic blurred his vision.
Miriam was number nine, wasn’t she? The rifle cracked again, another body fell.

‘Eins, zwei, drei, vier…’

He was past Miriam: she was
safe.

Death changed direction and
began counting back. ‘F
ü
nf, sechs, sieben…’

Miriam was eight… Blood
pooled at her feet. She was shaking visibly but her eyes held his. The count
began once more. ‘Eins, zwei, drei…’ The officer had begun in a different
place… he kept changing direction, playing, like a cat with mice… it was
impossible to know who would be next… The woman on Miriam’s other side
collapsed to the ground. ‘Eins, zwei, drei…’ The count progressed along the
line, a shot rang out. Five bodies: one in ten. The shoulders of the remaining
forty-five relaxed visibly. ‘Eins, zwei, drei…’ No… no… he’d had his one in
ten… Time slowed. ‘F
ü
nf, sechs, sieben.’ If the count
continued in a straight line Miriam was number ten.

He closed his eyes; he
couldn’t bear to watch.

‘Acht.’

Coward. He forced them open.

‘Neun…’

Time
stopped. His heart and lungs would burst.

‘Zehn.’
The rifle aimed at Miriam’s heart.

He
forced himself to stand still. If he attacked the officer the whole barrack
would be massacred. It wouldn’t save Miriam.

‘
No
…’
Two women held back Miriam’s mother. ‘
Miriam
…’

Please God, let it be a good
shot. He mouthed the words that were etched on his heart. ‘I love you.’

She drew herself up and
smiled. ‘
Szeretlek.’

It
was forbidden to speak. Forbidden to love. 

The
officer waved his rifle aside. ‘Next fifty. Quickly.’

He
couldn’t breathe. The surviving women stumbled back to their places while the
five bodies were thrown in a pile and fifty more innocents lined up. ‘Eins,
zwei, drei…’

He
couldn’t breathe.

***

Walt gagged, tried to get up from his chair and
failed. Weight compressed his lungs; pain burned across his chest and throat,
and into his arm.

‘Walt? Walt what’s the
matter?’ Jane ran back out into the hall. ‘Jennie, call an ambulance.’

Feet thudded down the
stairs.

‘I think your dad’s having a
heart attack.’

‘I’m… all right. The girls…’

Jane’s voice, calming.
‘They’ve gone to school. They’ll be fine… You’ll be fine.’

Jenny’s voice, urgent. The
slam of the receiver. ‘It’ll be here in five minutes. Dad?’

Pain consumed him. The world
went dark: voices… voices… A mask smothered him. He had to get it off, had to
breathe: his arms were made of lead. Faces bent over him, voices offering
comfort and demanding answers… answers he couldn’t give. Cold air, an
ambulance… He was going to the gas. More cold air and a white ceiling rushing
overhead.

A white-gowned doctor leaned
closer. ‘What was that?’

‘Miriam…’

‘Let’s get him to Cardiac.’

Lights shone hot on his
face; he drifted in space. Two cherubs dressed in white, with long golden hair,
bore him along. Charlotte? Lucy? Angels of Death or Angels of Mercy? He was
lying on a cold slab, his arms pinned at his side. Faces crowded. Brown, blue
and hazel eyes watched and worried. ‘Jane?’

Pale eyes blinked in forest
shadow. Wselfwulf stirred: watchful, waiting, full of the promise of death.
He
beckoned and a group of children went with him, skipping along hand in
hand, playing a game,
On the Way to the Chimney
: he led them, dancing
along like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn. They called him the Good Uncle.

‘No, please.’ No sound
escaped his stricken throat.

Charlotte and Lucy joined
the growing band.
His
eyes filled with greed.
No, you two can go to
the zoo.
He screamed until his throat was raw but no sound came. The eyes
still stared: the hairs on the back of his neck bristled. He was in a room with
white walls. It bore in on him, closing like a net. Eyes of every hue were
pinned to the walls in pairs, like butterflies and moths on an entomologist’s
display board.

 ‘BP’s dropping.’

Charlotte held a scalpel in
long talons, holding it poised above his chest. The knife tip followed her gaze
down his body. It pierced the soft skin of his scrotum. He screamed as it
sliced away his testicles. Dispassionate, she handed the scalpel to Lucy. The
knife cut again, searing a path of hot pain from throat to navel. No
anaesthetic: they wouldn’t use it… why should they? Lucy parted the flesh above
his heart. Fear clenched his soul and the smell of blood and burning flesh
choked him.

‘Shocking… Clear.’

Someone was screaming: it
must be him. Lucy opened her mouth to show huge, yellowed fangs. She lifted out
his heart. It beat rhythmically, pumping lifeblood around a body that longed
only for death. She ripped out his liver and kidneys, staining her white robes
with his blood.

Nemesis had sent her
sisters, the Keres, released from Pandora’s Box to plague the world with death,
and they were eager to exact her price and fulfil their purpose. Charlotte and
Lucy were the Keres all along.

But merciful death was not
yet his. His life paraded before him in a macabre dance: Miriam, the new-born
innocents, the children… all those he’d failed. He deserved to suffer. He
closed his eyes but the screaming continued. Small fingers prised open his
eyelids and light blinded him. A syringe, its needle growing ever larger,
pierced his eyeball while other needles pierced his arm.

‘Shocking again… Clear.’

He looked down at himself
from above; he was one of identical twins and both were restrained on
mortician’s slabs. Tubes connected them and blood flowed from one to the other.
His twin had no legs, just stumps, pumping fountains of blood; he was drowning
in it, drowning, choking, even as his twin drained his life away. When his twin
died he would die too… but they’d already done his autopsy. Fingers forced open
his eyelids again and the syringe pierced his other eyeball with indescribable
pain. Mercy… he could not beg. The pulsing of his heart slowed. He watched it
stop. The Angel of Death took him.

‘Shocking again… Clear...’

‘We have
output.’    

Walt pushed Lucy on the swing. Push and let go,
push and let go. Bunting hung in gay garlands between the trees: triangles of
cloth in breezy colours… red, yellow, blue and green.

Red triangles had denoted
political prisoners, Jews wore yellow stars sewn to their clothes, and green
triangles were for criminals. Gypsies were considered asocial and wore black,
like murderers who were recruited for the role of Kapo or Blockälteste and
inflicted their own particular brand of savage control on their fellow inmates.
Jehovah’s Witnesses wore purple, and homosexuals, pink. They were all
considered enemies of the Reich. The swing came back into his hands. Push and
let go.

‘Push, Grandpa.’

He pushed.

‘Harder.’

He pushed harder, hoping he
wasn’t overdoing things. At eleven, the twins were growing tall, and heavy to
push. The trip to the local park was their first family outing since his heart
attack six weeks ago.  He felt alive, if a little more mortal.

‘Higher, Grandpa.’

Charlotte ran across to him
and climbed on the next swing. ‘Push me too, Grandpa.’

Jennie intervened quickly.
‘I’ll do it.’

She meant well but it made
him feel old. He shrugged the feeling away and pushed Lucy higher. He’d already
lived far longer than he should: far longer than his sepia girl. He
concentrated on her life, not her death, as he pushed and let go, pushed and
let go with a hypnotic rhythm.

Despite sealing Miriam’s
photo away, he couldn’t seal away his guilt. More and more he found himself
reading her written words, and every word accused him.
Ma
Darja
 
megérintette
 
a vezetéket
.
Could
he have done things differently? The slides and climbing frames became watch
towers and barbed wire. The leaves on the birch trees were turning yellow, and
dust blew across the grey earth and stung his eyes. A voice called. Miriam?

‘Darja… Please…’ She tried
to hold the woman’s arm.

Pale tracks of tears
streaked Darja’s dirty face. Somehow she found the strength to twist away and
run.

‘Darja,
nincs
...
 nicht...
no.
’

Darja ran with Miriam in
pursuit. He pounded after them, sure of a rifle’s cross-hairs following their
progress. ‘Darja… Miriam… Stop!’

Darja leapt at the wire. Her
hands gripped it. Her back arched and spasmed as the electricity arced through
her, her face frozen in a mask of pain. Miriam screamed and reached for her. He
snatched her arm away and held her in a grip of steel as she struggled to get
free. Darja’s body hung on the wire. He’d killed her baby and broken her heart.

Guards arrived with long,
hooked poles to pull down the body and drag it away. For Darja it was over.

‘Why did I have to play God?
She could have had precious hours with her daughter before they were both
killed. I took even those from her.’

Miriam’s eyes were soft with
tears. ‘You did what you thought best, Chuck. How could she have taken her
new-born to the ovens? Watched her burn alive… suffered the same fate. You
saved her that horror.’

‘They say they use babies as
kindling… efficiency…’ His voice broke. He let her go. It was dangerous to show
love or compassion. ‘Come. There’s something we must do.’

She followed him to the
infirmary. Inside, he reached beneath the boxes of supplies and drew out the
slim book he’d hidden there. ‘Miriam, this must be kept secret. If the SS know
it exists… I record events here, things the outside world must be told. I want
you to write too. What happens… yesterday, today, tomorrow… anything you want
to write.’

She turned the pages and her
brow furrowed: she was used to conversing in a mixture of German, Hungarian,
English, Italian and other languages, as all inmates learned to do to be understood,
but she could only read and write in Hungarian. ‘What language is this?’

‘English.’

‘What does it say?’

‘It’s the numbers of sick
who are selected, dates… conditions in the infirmary, diseases, injuries. A
record of supplies, water and food allowed. A record of camp liquidations…
estimates of the numbers gassed. I don’t see all that goes on outside the
infirmary. You must write what you see, what you hear, what you suffer. The
world must be told.’

‘The world will listen when
we are saved. Rumour has it the allies are pushing towards the Rhine, and the
Soviets are forcing the Germans westwards. Hope is high. We must keep faith.’

He pushed a pencil into her
hand. ‘Miriam, we may not live to be saved. Do you think the Nazis will leave
anyone alive to tell the tale if they lose this war. We must put this somewhere
it will be found, afterwards. It must speak for us, for Darja. Write the
truth.’

‘So we die, either way.’ Her
voice held anger softened with grief.

He looked at what she’d
written.
Szeretlek
. He smiled. ‘I love you,
too.’

She
knuckled away tears. ‘Chuck, we saw Father yesterday in the men’s camp. He’s
worn out. He has the look of a Muselmann. We have precious little… And we have
Arturas and Peti to feed, now. Can we spare a little bread?’

‘If
we break a piece from each portion we order for the dead.’

‘I’ll
make a bundle. If I can throw it over the fence as I walk back to my barrack…
If he has the strength to get to it.’

‘I’ll
come with you. I’ll say I have orders to visit the quarantine camp. When will
your father be there?’

‘If
he understood us, straight after supper.’

They broke tiny pieces from
the rations, tied them in a scarf and weighted it with a stone. When they had
eaten he pushed his bowl aside.
‘Let’s go now. The
others will finish here.’

They
walked together along the road. ‘Look, there’s Mother.’

The
men and women faced each other, caged animals separated by the road and the
wire. It was forbidden to approach the fence, forbidden to shout to husbands,
wives or lovers.  It was forbidden to love.

He
stared at the faces behind the wire. ‘Can you see him?’

‘There
he is. Father!’

Miriam’s
mother drew closer to the wire. He glanced anxiously at the guard towers.
Figures watched, as always, rifles slung over their shoulders. He looked back
to the men’s compound: a pitiful scarecrow of a figure shambled towards the
fence.

‘Father…
we’ve brought food.’

‘Jani…’

Emboldened,
other internees approached the fence to call to loved ones and friends. The
figure held out his hands and Miriam threw the bundle high into the air. 

Her
mother urged him on. ‘Quickly, Jani.’

Jani
bent to retrieve the bundle and stood again: stepping towards the wire he
stretched a helpless hand towards his wife and daughter. Machine-gun fire
strafed the compounds: bodies twisted in the air and hit the ground with dull
thuds.

He
wrestled Miriam to the ground and threw himself across her. ‘Miriam?’

She
struggled to push him away and sat up. ‘Father…’

‘
Czigany
…’
Jani hauled his riddled body towards them and lay still, one arm outstretched.

‘
No
…
Mother, Father…
no
…’ Miriam stood in the road, torn between her parents,
unable to reach either: finally she knelt by the wire, near to the body of her
mother, and screamed her grief to the sky. An emaciated figure wrested the
scarf of bread from Jani’s limp fingers and scurried away.

If
the guards on the watch-tower opened fire again they would all die. Miriam
walked towards the wire. ‘Miriam, come away…’ What misery was he saving her
for? She had no family left: no-one to go home to.

 ‘Let
me die… please, let me die.’

He
supported her back towards the infirmary. Ilse, the only real friend she had
left but him, was in the women’s camp, in a barrack near the infirmary. He’d
find space on an infirmary bunk for Miriam: her mother didn’t need her now and
he would not let her suffer this grief alone.

Ma Darja
 
megérintette
 
a vezetéket
.
 
Today, Darja touched the
wire.

Push and let go, push and
let go, push...

‘Walt, we’re going for an
ice-cream… Walt?’

The swing slowed and
stopped.

‘Walt, are you feeling all
right?’

‘Yes, love… Sorry. I was
miles away.’ He hugged Jane, and smiled at Jennie and the twins. ‘Ice-cream…
yes… wonderful idea.’