The Hidden

by Mary Chamberlain

  ‘Even the SS call it the arsehole of the world,’ a man said. Joe turned. His neighbour wore a striped uniform, with a red triangle sewn onto his breast.

  ‘SS?’

  ‘Schutzstaffel. The worst of them all. Makes the OT look like kindergarten teachers.’

  He smiled. ‘Ernst. Your name?’

  ‘Joe,’ Joe said. This was the first time he’d spoken to anyone that day and he was grateful. ‘Where are we going?’

  The man tilted his head at a watchtower in the distance.

  They marched on in silence. Joe saw a tough chain-link fence with razor wire coiled along the top, interspersed with round concrete towers. They approached a pair of large iron gates, above which were the words, Lager Sylt. Ernst hawked and spat when he saw the sign, turned to Joe. ‘Welcome.’

  They filed through the gates, across a yard. The men lined up and Joe followed their lead.

  ‘Nein!’ He was yanked out of the ranks by one of the guards, pushed with the others who had arrived that day, filed into an office where a guard handed them a metal bowl.

  ‘Ein. Drei. Vier. Sieben.’ He wrote the number on Joe’s hand. 1347. They joined the others in the yard as the roll call continued.

  Joe could barely think, or stand. No one spoke. Fatigue made mutes of them all. When it was over, the men filed into a narrow wooden building, stood in line with the bowls as another prisoner, a cook, Joe guessed, a large man with curly hair and a swarthy complexion, a green triangle sewn crudely on the breast of his jacket, tipped a ladle of grey, watery cabbage soup, and a slice of hard black bread into each bowl. Joe stood, shuffling forward. Sometimes the ladle, Joe noted, was full to the brim, other times, it was half empty. The cook didn’t care whether it all went into the bowl or dribbled down the side. He breathed like a raging bull. He has a temper, Joe thought. Vicious. His bowl was half filled. Joe said nothing. The men crammed the bread into their mouths and slurped the soup and Joe did the same, dust from his hands forming a film over the surface. It was lukewarm, tasteless, but he could feel it dribbling into his belly, making him sleepy.

  The prisoners walked out, towards a row of huts. It was dusk now, the purple light turning the world into shadows and silhouettes. It took a while for Joe’s eyes to adjust inside, but he saw the rows of bunk beds and the huddled forms of the labourers in their striped clothing. He pulled off his clothes and knelt down, made the sign of the cross, hands together. Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned.

  It was the first time he’d thought of Trude since they had arrived.

  The guard pushed Joe with his baton.

  ‘Sie, hier.’ Pushed Ernst too. ‘Bringen Sie dieser Stücke weg.’

  Ernst said nothing, turned away from the gang, grabbed Joe’s arm, follow me, walked back to the huts. A truck started up, crawled behind them. Joe could feel the heat from its bonnet. Ernst stopped at the first hut. Three bodies lay on the ground. The truck stopped, engine running. Ernst opened the tailgate.

  ‘You take the legs,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the arms.’

  Joe stared. What? These bodies. Tossed and tangled.

  Joe’d never lifted a dead body before, only ever touched them when they were laid out, clean and calm, ready to meet their makers. Joe placed a hand on one of the shins. The bone was hard, the skin soft, cold, the flesh spongy.

  ‘Now,’ Ernst said. ‘Now.’

  Joe shut his eyes, gripped the ankles, swayed as Ernst swung the body and threw it into the back of the truck.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. And again. Each hut. Bodies. Knotted. Naked. One was a woman’s body.

  ‘Get up,’ Ernst said, climbing into the back of the truck and holding out a hand for Joe. He pulled up the tailgate, stepped over the bodies to the side, held onto the railing. Joe followed him as the truck began to lurch forward. Joe grabbed the rail. Dared not lose his balance and fall.

  Ernst stood in silence as the truck picked up speed. Joe couldn’t look down at the corpses by his feet, or those that lay behind him. He looked ahead, at the barren grasses and the shore beyond. He could see the coastline wherever he turned.

  The truck pulled to a halt and backed close to a cliff, next to another pile of bodies, the flesh bloated and mottled.

  ‘Executions,’ Ernst said, releasing the tailgate. ‘Garrotted. That’s the way the bastards do it here. Or beaten to death.’ He flailed his wrist, as if it held a truncheon. ‘Crucified, sometimes.’

  It was a sheer drop to the sea. Joe could see its shades of violet and sapphire, hear the waves lick against the edge. No birds. No birds. If he jumped now, he’d smash his head against the rocks. It would be over.

  ‘Come,’ Ernst said, pulling at a body, holding it by the arms.

  Joe hesitated. Jump. Do it. Now.

  ‘Throw them over.’

  Joe stared at Ernst. This wasn’t true. He couldn’t mean it.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Ernst said. Yanked at a body, rolled it over. Joe heard the splash as it entered the water.

  ‘No,’ Joe said. ‘I can’t do this. I can’t.’

  ‘Do it,’ Ernst said. ‘They’re dead.’

  Joe raised his right hand, in nomine patris.

  ‘Shut up,’ Ernst said, eyeing the guard who leaned against the door of the truck, smoking. ‘Work.’ He pulled at another corpse. ‘Faster.’

  Joe spoke the rest of the prayer quietly, so Ernst couldn’t hear. Swinging the bodies over the cliffs like mailbags from a train. Eyes stinging with the salt from his tears. ‘Rest in peace. Amen.’

  Tailgate up, the truck moved off. Joe heaved, wept. Dry tears. Shock as deep as a crater, black, fathomless, infinite. Neither Ernst nor Joe spoke. The sentences couldn’t come. The words weren’t there.

  In the back of the truck with the sun bright as a spotlight, Joe could see that Ernst was a young man, no more than a year or two older than himself.

  ‘Pieces,’ Ernst said. ‘Bits. That’s what the bastards call us. Stücke.’

  The truck bumped over an unmade road towards the building site. Joe held on tight.

  ‘You steel yourself,’ Ernst said. ‘But you never get used to it.’

  There was a small table in the middle of the barrack and four men were playing poker with a deck of cards that they had filched from a German. They were betting high, Joe could hear, fantasy money, stakes in their dreams.

  Ernst stood by watching them.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Joe asked.

  ‘On Alderney? About six months. But I’ve been a prisoner for ten years.’ He smiled. ‘And I’m still here. The bastards won’t kill me.’

  ‘Ten years,’ Joe said. ‘That’s a long time.’ He wasn’t sure he’d last ten days.

  ‘I was arrested in 1933,’ Ernst went on. ‘Clamped in Sachsenhausen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t agree with them.’ He smiled. ‘We’re all commies here. Or crooks. What happened to you?’

  Joe wasn’t sure what to say. He saw her frail body, the dark sweat under her arms. Had they thrown her off a cliff? Fed her to the fishes and the monsters of the sea? He felt the tears run down his cheeks, his lips quiver. Don’t cry.

  ‘No matter,’ Ernst said. He put his hand on Joe’s arm. Joe swallowed. Be a man. The poker players roared, slapped the cards on the table. The dealer began to shuffle.

  ‘Your English is good,’ Joe said, for want of something to say.

  ‘I need to practise,’ Ernst said. ‘So stay strong, little man.’

  Little man. He hadn’t been called that since he left Cloghane for the seminary, felt a rush of homesickness as sudden as a squall.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DORA

  London: June 1985

  The asparagus. Dora cooked it all that evening, testing it as if it was a precious spice, just right. She’d been to Waitrose and bought unsalted French butter, melted it in the little pan and poured it over, sprinkled ground sea salt and pepper. New potatoes. Jersey potatoes, but no matter. Parsley. Trea
ted herself to a bottle of Riesling, chilled down. Asparagus. The shortest season. Enjoy, Doralein. Enjoy. Tasting the lush, tender spears, savouring their sweetness, she was transported back to Vati at the table in Charlottenburg, this Hitler man. It will blow over. He won’t hurt us. Uncle Otto had already left by then.

  She’d try and grow it. She could ask at the garden centre whether it would be possible to buy the crowns. If not, perhaps Barbara could bring her some seeds, next time she went to Germany? Or send them to her? Asparagus took years to mature, Dora knew that, but there was room enough in the garden, and Dora had all the time in the world.

  There was nothing to worry about. Barbara’s interest was in List. Dora had been a means to the end. There would be no reason to show List her photograph. And if she did? Would he try and find her now?

  And if he did?

  No, Dora thought. No. That could not happen.

  Barbara had accepted her word that she didn’t know who the woman in the photograph was. If she asked her again, she’d deny she knew, over and over. This O’Cleary man who claimed to recognise her. What did he know? Dora was puzzled as to how he had her address. If Barbara suspected anything, Dora would suggest that the woman was a friend of her mother’s. Why shouldn’t her mother have a photograph of her friend?

  In an odd way, Dora understood Barbara. She was probably lonely. Was reaching out for truth, for family. She would want to indulge her curiosity, if she thought there was a story. Dora couldn’t help her solve her quest, but she understood loneliness. She had done something similar when Uncle Otto died. Tracked down some cousins in New York who had escaped the war. Spread feelers, tentacles, to the world. Let me touch you. You tell me I came from somewhere. Was that the cry of a refugee? The howl of the exiled?

  She’d opened her heart to Charles then, too. I don’t want to be alone.

  ‘I want you as a friend,’ she’d said. She knew it was lame.

  ‘And a husband is not a friend?’ He’d winked. ‘We could just live together. In sin.’

  He had to be more than a friend, and she wasn’t ready. The scars were too deep.

  Barbara returned from Hamburg ten days later. They sat outside, on the green wrought-iron chairs that Dora had bought in the Homebase sale, a pot of coffee and some cherry torte that Dora had made placed on the garden table.

  Dora had never been back to Germany. The country had made strides in the last forty years, she knew that, the cities rebuilt, the past confronted. But she had no one there now, although her soul was with Vati, in the Jüdische Friedhof in Weissensee. She could see it now, the branches of the beech and birch trees linked into a canopy that shed a dappled light over the ground, amber in the autumn when the fading sun filtered through a filigree of red and yellow, luminous in the spring when the world was fresh and the leaves were green. He lay next to Mutti, beneath a matching granite slab. She’d chosen the inscription. Hier ruht mein geliebter Vater. Dr Alfred Simon. 1880–1933. He’d died too soon, in a rush. She should have written, always in a hurry, as his epitaph, but that would have been frowned upon. It was her last memory of him. But the Weissensee cemetery was on the eastern side of the Wall. It would be difficult to visit it, even if she went to Berlin.

  ‘He’s an architect,’ Barbara was saying, ‘Maximilian List. Still designing. His name was there, in the telephone book, in plain view.’

  Dora didn’t want to hear this. She slumped her head forward, put her hands to her forehead. ‘Still designing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of things? Offices? Houses?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Barbara said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Dora said. Ja, ja. Added, ‘I don’t know this man, and I don’t understand why you want to tell me about him.’ Couldn’t say, Don’t you understand how this kills me all over again? Brings out demons that I must confront?

  ‘If you prefer,’ Barbara shrugged. ‘I didn’t meet him, as it happens. He’s old, and ill, and his wife guards him like a Rottweiler.’

  She broke off a piece of torte with her fork, took a sip of coffee.

  ‘But I want to tell you this, if I may. I did speak with his wife. They’ve been married now for sixty years, she told me. Apparently, my mother turned up in Hamburg one day in 1944 with a baby and claimed List was the father. She said that my mother had been infatuated with her husband during the war, followed him to the Channel Islands when he was sent to Alderney. Made a real nuisance of herself.’

  ‘Well there you are,’ Dora said. ‘He wasn’t the only one who was unfaithful in the war.’ And I know that, she thought, more than most. ‘So that must be the end of the question.’ She sat straight up, imagine a string, her physiotherapist had told her once after she’d had some back pain, pulling your spine… ‘Out of curiosity,’ she said, trying to sound casual. ‘What was his house like?’

  ‘His house?’ Barbara said.

  ‘Yes,’ Dora said. ‘I’ve always wondered how architects live, since their buildings are often so brutal.’ She smiled, added, ‘It’s a little beef I have, you see.’

  Barbara picked up her coffee, sipped. ‘Well, I must disappoint you,’ she said. ‘It was a square box.’ She threw her head back and laughed when the telephone rang, loud and shrill, and Barbara jumped, splashing her coffee into the saucer. Dora pushed herself up from her chair, glad of the interruption and padded into the house.

  Jersey: June – December 1943

  Dora sat on the edge of the bed, breathless. She tried not to think about what had just happened, but the memory was too large, too overpowering. She could still feel his weight, smell his sweat, his semen. Her heart was racing, her muscles quivering, out of control. She’d never felt so tired, a weariness that drilled to her core. And numb. Numb. She couldn’t think where she was, what she should do. Wash, wash. Rub the filth away. She was contaminated, used. Entered. She heard the lock turn. She jumped.

  ‘Follow me.’

  The nurse led her along the corridor, down two flights of narrow stairs. She opened a door, pushed Dora inside. Slammed it shut, pulled the bolts. It was night outside, and the room was dark save for a shaft of moonlight that filtered through a light well. A cellar. Dora stood while her eyes adjusted. She could smell the unwashed bodies and hear the slow breathing of sleepers. She could make out platforms, stacked in tiers, and on each a huddled form or two. Bunk beds. She walked along the rows but they were all occupied, except for one on the top in the far corner. Dora took off her shoes, heaved herself up and lay down on rough sacking. She was exhausted, but too scared to sleep.

  She must have dozed off, for she woke with a start. Someone was hammering on the door. It was twilight outside and the room was shadowy, but Dora saw the bodies stir in the gloom and shuffle in a line.

  ‘Venez!’ A woman pulled Dora’s ankle. ‘Appell!’

  Dora pushed herself down from the bunk and joined the queue. They were all women, dressed in identical, shapeless cotton dresses.

  ‘What is this?’ Dora said.

  ‘Do you speak French?’

  ‘A little,’ she said.

  ‘The roll call. They count us every morning.’

  Dora wanted to say, At this time? But the door had been opened and the women were filing out, along the corridor and out through the back door into a small courtyard behind the kitchens. Three soldiers guarded the space, rifles at the ready. The women lined up in rows, about ten in a row. Stood. Dora shifted her weight from left to right, right to left. The dawn air was cool and her flimsy evening frock gave no warmth.

  The sun rose and illuminated the sky and Dora could hear, in the distance, a clock chiming the hour. Five. Five o’clock. A man came out in the grey uniform of the Wehrmacht. Next to him was a woman wearing the same shapeless frock as the others, except she wore a green armband on her left arm. They walked along the rows.

  ‘Nummer?’ the Wehrmacht officer said. He ticked a form, stopped at Dora. ’Nummer?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Do
ra said. What for?

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Dora Simon.’

  ‘Your clothes?’

  ‘This is all I have,’ Dora said. The officer threw his head back and studied Dora through slits of eyes. He curled his lip, nodded to the woman with the green armband.

  ‘Kommen,’ the woman said, adding in French as they left the parade ground. ‘I’m Agnes Moreau. I’m the Kapo here.’

  ‘Kapo?’ Dora said.

  ‘The boss. I run the place.’ She tossed her head towards the officer. ‘They haven’t a clue.’

  She led Dora into a small room stacked with folded dresses. Took one from the shelf, handed it to Dora, lifted a pair of shoes from another shelf and threw them down on the floor. ‘Change.’ She pointed to Dora’s dress. ‘That is for the evening.’

  ‘I have no underwear,’ Dora said.

  Agnes blew through her lips, shrugged.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Dora said. ‘I need knickers.’ I want underwear. It was privacy, security. Comfort. She was bruised.

  ‘Puh,’ Agnes said. ‘Dress.’ She spoke in French. Dora slipped out of her red frock, threaded her arms through the cotton garment and tugged it down. It was rough and coarse, cheap cotton, shapeless. Agnes handed Dora a metal bowl and spoon.

  ‘Keep hold of this,’ she said. ‘Your number is two hundred and seventy-one.’

  ‘What’s the number for?’

  ‘For? To keep count. You’re the two hundredth and seventy-first woman to pass through. The Germans like their records.’ She laughed, and Dora caught her breath, foul as a bat’s cave. ‘Alors, sors!’

  Dora followed her out. The other women were still standing in line and Dora took her place. The soldier began the roll call again, from the beginning.

  ‘Nummer? Nummer?’

  The women were subdued, and Dora caught their mood. They were counted three times. There was no order to the numbers, and there couldn’t have been more than seventy here. No wonder the Germans were muddled. They had been standing for two hours. She was tired, too, with a headache. She hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.