Our Darkest Night

by Jennifer Robson

  The oberaufseherin was present for evening appell, and her expression seemed a little less pinched than it had been that morning. She didn’t acknowledge Nina, not even with a nod, but neither did she order that Nina be punished. That was what passed for mercy in the camp.

  That night, tired and sore and miserable though she was, Nina couldn’t manage to fall asleep. She lay where she was, not wishing to disturb anyone else, and tried in vain to think of good things. Happier times.

  For so long she had told Stella that the war would be over soon. That they only had to stay strong a little longer. A few more weeks, perhaps only days, and it would be over and they would be free.

  She began to cry, silent tears that she was too tired to swipe away, and after a moment she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. It moved to her brow, stroking back over her cap of still-short hair, and the touch was wonderfully familiar and welcome. Stella must have woken and noticed her crying.

  “Antonina,” came a voice. Her father’s voice.

  She opened her eyes. He was there, standing by the end of her bunk, his back stooped a little so he might set a kiss upon her cheek. He was exactly as she remembered him.

  “Oh, Papà,” she whispered. “It’s so good to see your face. Even if it is just a dream.”

  “Why must it be a dream?” he asked, and his accompanying smile was gentle and so wonderfully familiar. “Why doubt what you see?”

  “I don’t want to doubt, but you can’t be real. You died there . . . at that place.” She couldn’t think of the name. It didn’t matter, though. Not when her Papà had returned to her.

  “Why can’t you sleep?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Worries. Just like when I was little, only now they’re worse. Now the monsters under my bed are real.” She closed her eyes, and then she remembered something important. “Is Mamma with you?”

  “She is, my darling. We were never parted. Now I want you to listen. Are you listening, my Nina?”

  “Yes, Papà.”

  “You will survive. You will live to see the end of this war. I promise you will.”

  “I miss you and Mamma so much. And Nico, too. Even thinking about him, remembering . . . it hurts so much. It makes me so sad.”

  “I know, my darling.”

  “I wish you could have known him, Papà.” And then, even though she knew it was silly to ask, “Can you see him where you are now? Can you tell him that I miss him? That I love him?”

  She tried to stay awake, for her father hadn’t yet answered her question, but she was so very tired, and her sadness was such a weight upon her. When she opened her eyes again he was gone, and all she could recall was the lingering memory that once, not so long ago, not so very far away, she had been loved.

  Chapter 30

  9 April 1945

  Winter gave way to spring, even in the mountains. The snow was melting, the days were growing longer, and one morning, during appell, Nina was captivated by the sound of birdsong, joyful and exultant, in the nearby trees.

  Later that day, while wiping a pan dry, she flipped it over to ensure she’d polished away every speck of grease. The pan’s bottom caught the light just so, and she froze as she glimpsed a face in its reflection.

  The face was pale and wan, and was framed by a nimbus of frizzy ringlets. It had wary, searching, deep-set eyes. Lips that were cracked and dry. Cheekbones so angular they’d be better suited to a caricature. It was the face of a woman who was dying.

  Closing her eyes, she forced herself to turn the pan away, finish with it, set it down, move on.

  “Nina.”

  It was Georg, come to stand at her side, his gnarled hands taking the pan before she could drop it.

  “Die Sowjets sind nicht weit entfern.” The Soviets are not far.

  She was afraid to move, even to breathe.

  “Nicht verzagen.” Don’t give up.

  Reaching out blindly, she found and grasped his hand. Only for a moment. Just so he would know she was grateful for his kindness. And then she got on with her work.

  THE FIRST TO fall ill was a guard. Fever, came the whispers. The woman recovered, but was weak and addled and hardly able to stand.

  Then it struck the prisoners. One after the other they sickened, grew ever weaker, and died. They were given no medicine and saw no doctor.

  Klap no longer left her rooms; did she fear the contagion, or had she, too, fallen ill? There was no way to prevent it, at least not that Nina could discern. She and Stella kept themselves as clean as they were able, and they drank nothing but water that had been boiled, but others did the same and were still struck down.

  The outside workers had stopped coming to the camp; the furnaces had cooled and the workshops were empty. Even Georg had vanished from the kitchens. The end had to be near, but there was no knowing how long it would be. How distant they were from their liberation.

  There was no warning when the train arrived to evacuate the prisoners, only a shouted call for appell before the sweating, nervous guards pushed the women through the gates and into a string of waiting boxcars. Nina knew a moment of panic when she couldn’t find Stella, but the girl appeared after a few minutes, pushing her way through the crowded car, her eyes glittering with excitement.

  “This is it! They’re sending us home!”

  “I don’t think—”

  “That’s what everyone is saying. They’re sending us . . . well, we’re not sure, not exactly, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “We’re still under their thumb, Stella. They could be sending us to another camp. Back to Birkenau, even. That’s probably what they’re doing.”

  “But the war is over—”

  “No, it isn’t. Not yet. The guards on this train are scared and angry, and if we get in their way they’ll kill us. They won’t even think twice.”

  “Why can’t you believe in something good for a change? Why can’t you let yourself hope?”

  “I want to. I do, but—”

  “But what? What now?”

  Suddenly she was too tired to go on. And what was the point, besides? Either the train was taking them straight back to Birkenau, in which case they were doomed, or the train was going somewhere . . . else. Somewhere better, as improbable as it seemed. Wishing or wanting or hoping would change nothing.

  Stella believed, though, and it was too cruel to steal that away from her. Not after she had already lost everything else. So Nina smiled, and sat down, and patted the dirty floor beside her.

  “You’re right. I’m just being grumpy. Come and sit. Aren’t we lucky there’s enough room this time?”

  The rest of the day scraped by with painful slowness. Nina’s head began to pound, but she told herself it was only because she was hungry and thirsty. That was all. The train stopped and started, over and over again, and the guards opened the door to give them water and change out the latrine bucket every few hours.

  “Where are you taking us?” the others cried, but the guards ignored their question.

  On the second day Nina was woken by muscle pains, deep and racking and violent.

  On the third day the fever set in. Along with it came roiling waves of nausea, though her stomach was so empty she heaved up nothing more than air.

  On the fourth day she saw the rash for the first time, scattered constellations of red, impossible to ignore against the pallor of her skin. And she knew, at last, what the fever meant.

  Typhus.

  The others in the boxcar kept their distance, and if Nina hadn’t been so weak she’d have told them not to worry. The typhus bacterium had been the gift of an infected louse, not another person, and the wretched insect itself was likely still in the barracks back at the camp. If there was any justice in the world, of course, it would have instead found its way to the oberaufseherin and bitten her.

  She lay on the disgusting boxcar floor, her head in Stella’s lap, and wondered what would become of the people who had terrorized them over the past months. Who had
tried to reduce them to nothing. To zeros.

  Would the aufseherin from Birkenau, the one with the cold, dark stare, go back to her old life, as if she’d only been away on some sort of demented holiday? Would Klap’s former teaching colleagues ever think to ask where she had been during the war? Would any of them ever be compelled to give an accounting of their crimes?

  Already she knew the answer. It was no, for there was no justice, or peace, or mercy left in the world. Simply—no.

  On the fifth day the train stopped in a little town that might have been in Germany or Poland or any point in between. The expressions of horror on the faces of passersby when she and the other women lurched from the fetid boxcar and staggered through their tidy streets would have made Nina laugh if she’d yet had the strength to do so.

  It was Stella who propped her up, who bore her weight, who kept her moving as the guards drove them ever onward. And she wanted so badly to tell the girl to just set her down at the side of the road and keep walking, for the bacteria from the louse bite she hadn’t even felt were going to kill her anyway.

  Her throat was so dry, and it hurt so awfully to swallow, let alone speak, but she had to make sure Stella knew what to do.

  “Promise to go to Mezzo Ciel. You’ll find a home there. You won’t be alone.”

  “Of course I won’t be alone, because you’ll be with me. Now stop talking and keep moving. They’ll shoot us if we stop.”

  “Rosa will take such good care of you. I know she will . . .”

  It was so hard to keep going. She was becoming a shadow, closer to wraith than woman, stripped bare of everything save her stubbornly yearning heart.

  She tried to sit down. Tried to persuade Stella to stop, just for a moment, just stop and let her rest. They both needed to rest. But Stella would not listen.

  “We’re almost there, Nina. Only another kilometer or so.”

  “Promise me you’ll tell them I tried. Tell them how much I love them all. Tell Lucia . . .”

  “You’ll tell them yourself. Come on—”

  “It’s too far.”

  “But we’re here—can’t you see? We’re here in Terezin. No one can hurt us now, and we never have to see that awful Klap again—and there are doctors, Nina, doctors and nurses from the Red Cross.”

  Stella was crying, and then she was shouting at someone, and Nina plucked at her sleeve, trying to get her to pay attention.

  “It’s all right. You go on without me,” she told her friend. Her only friend.

  “Don’t you dare—you can’t die on me now. Just let the doctors help you—oh, please, won’t someone help her? She’s so sick, and I don’t know what to do!”

  “That’s all right,” Nina whispered. “I’m all right now.”

  She was floating. She was rising, flying, soaring high over the wretched road and its caravan of ragged refugees, over the neat little towns and fields, higher, ever higher, until she was across the mountains and rushing down to the familiar hills of Mezzo Ciel.

  She was home, and Nico was there, too, standing under the olive tree in the courtyard, his arms open wide. He was waiting for her. All this time, he’d been waiting for her to come home.

  WHEN SHE WOKE she was in a bed, a proper bed with a real mattress and clean sheets and an ethereally soft pillow beneath her head. The room was bright with sunshine, and one of its windows was open, and she could hear children playing and laughing outside.

  Children.

  She blinked hard, and tried to raise her hand to rub at her eyes, but she only had the strength to lift her arm a centimeter or so before it flopped back onto the pristine coverlet.

  “You’re awake!”

  Stella had been sitting in the corner of the room, reading, and now she put down her book—a book, an actual book—and came to sit on the side of the bed.

  “What happened?” Nina asked fretfully. “We were walking somewhere. You were helping me.”

  “You don’t remember when we arrived?”

  “I think . . . maybe? You were saying we were almost there. That there would be doctors. That we never had to see the oberaufseherin again.”

  “Yes to all of that. We’re in Terezin now. Near Prague. They took you straight to the hospital and put you in quarantine, and I was worried they were going to leave you to die, or, well, just finish you off. But the nurses—they have proper nurses here, and doctors, too, from the Red Cross—they promised to take good care of you. And they did.”

  “How long . . . ?”

  “We got here on April twenty-first, but I wasn’t allowed to visit until just last week.”

  “Oh,” Nina said, and already she was so tired, so tired. But she still had one more question for Stella. “Is the war over yet?”

  WHEN SHE WOKE again Stella was still there, still waiting, and the look of delight on her face was enough to make Nina cry.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just so good to see you smiling. And you’ve put on some weight.”

  “Only a little. They’re very strict with us—in a good way. If we eat too much we’ll get ill, so we have a sort of diet to follow. The nurses say it’s safer to put the weight back on slowly.”

  “Is the—”

  “Is the war over? Yes! It’s been more than a week now. The Soviets got here on the seventh of May, and then the next day it was over. I asked the nurses to tell you, but I think you were still mostly sleeping then. You don’t remember hearing the cheering and shouting and the car horns?”

  Nina shook her head. “Not one bit of it. What day is it now?”

  “The sixteenth.”

  “Your birthday,” Nina said, remembering. “Happy birthday, my dear. And thank you for staying with me.”

  “As if I would have left you. Oh—I almost forgot. The Red Cross nurses were handing out postcards, so I sent one for you. I put down that you had been ill but were getting better.”

  “How did you know where to send it?”

  “Well, you said that Mezzo Ciel was a small place. So I just addressed it to your husband. Niccolò Gerardi in Mezzo Ciel. Do you think it will get to him?”

  Nina nodded, and she clutched at Stella’s hand, and she forced her tears to retreat. “Yes,” she lied. “I’m sure it will.”

  Chapter 31

  At the beginning of June they were moved to a hospital in Prague, though Nina tried to persuade her doctors that she was well enough to make the journey home. They were sympathetic but unmoved. Not until her lungs were clear—she’d also developed pleurisy—and she’d put on another ten kilos would she be allowed to travel. Nor could Stella, as a minor, be permitted to leave on her own.

  So they waited. Nina wrote to Rosa every week, though she couldn’t be certain her letters would ever be delivered; nor was there much she cared to tell her sister-in-law at such a distance. But still she posted her letters every Monday, without fail, and waited for replies that never came.

  By some unfathomable stroke of luck, the doctor in charge of the clinic had recognized Nina’s maiden name on one of the forms that had crossed his desk.

  “Are you any relation to Gabriele Mazin? The nephrologist?”

  “He is my father. Was. He was killed at Birkenau.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it. I met him once. He came to speak at the university, and I was invited to the dinner afterward. Are you . . . do you have any family left?”

  “Yes. My husband’s family live near Bassano. How soon—”

  “Soon. I promise.”

  Dr. Koller came to visit her nearly every day, taking a marked interest not only in her health but also her plans for the future. He was skeptical, though politely so, that the daughter of Gabriele Mazin would be content to live on a farm for the rest of her life.

  “With your husband gone, there’s no need for you to return to live with his family in the middle of nowhere, generous though they have been.”

  “My home is with them. They are my family, too.”

/>   “I understand, I do. But did your parents not wish for you to have an education? I know your schooling was interrupted, but you’re a bright girl. A spot of private tutoring, a year or so of hard work, and I’m sure you’d pass the entrance exams.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve my daughter to think of.”

  “Only consider it. Your father has many friends who would be glad to help.”

  “What are you suggesting, Dr. Koller?” she asked at last.

  “That you go to medical school. I’m certain your father, were he still alive, would encourage you to at least try. And you’re more than capable. Our conversations over the past weeks are ample proof of that.”

  Dr. Koller’s belief in her was flattering, and terribly encouraging, but his plans would have to wait. All she wanted, now, was to return to Mezzo Ciel. One day, perhaps, she might go back to school. One day.

  By the middle of September she and Stella were judged well enough to travel. There had been no objection to their remaining together, though Dr. Koller had fretted that Nina was too young to take over the care of a teenager.

  “It’s quite one thing to care for an infant, but you’re not much older than Stella yourself. Perhaps it would be better if we tried to find a place for her through one of the orphanages—”

  “No. Never. She is coming with me. She will have a family with us in Mezzo Ciel.”

  For their journey home, she and Stella traveled in the unimaginable luxury of a third-class carriage, complete with upholstered seats, windows that opened, a WC at the end of every car, and a tea trolley that passed their compartment once an hour. They had bread and cheese and apples, a gift from one of the nurses, and Dr. Koller had given Nina ten whole American dollars. The steward happily accepted fifty cents in return for eight cups of tea, two each for the days they spent on the train to Munich.

  From there she and Stella were put on a bus heading south to the Allied base in Mittenwald, right at the Austrian border, where they and the other passengers, all refugees, were furnished with new identity papers and the nearly unimaginable sum of five hundred lire each. Fearful of being robbed, they retreated to the nearest restroom, opened a seam in the lining of Nina’s new coat—yet another parting gift from the hospital staff—and tucked the money inside.