The Survivors

by Kate Furnivall

  He smiled at me and tweaked my chin. ‘If I left, who would bring you bandages or buy that paint stripper you make and call samogon?’

  I knew he had sidestepped the question but I smiled and leaned my shoulder against his. ‘Helping me may not be a wise move, mon ami. Have you considered that?’

  But again he let the question lie unheeded. ‘I don’t want to know how Alicja got out of here,’ he said, his finger rubbing the kitten’s dusty ear, ‘but I would keep her under lock and key in future, if I were you.’

  ‘I will.’

  He heard something in my voice, something I thought was buried.

  ‘I’m not accusing you,’ he said quickly.

  ‘I know.’

  He didn’t need to. I was accusing myself.

  Hut W.

  Written in Davide’s stylish hand.

  I screwed up the piece of paper, set a match to it and watched it writhe as it turned black.

  Hut W. Branded in my brain.

  ‘What’s eating you?’ Hanna asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘If he is the man you think he is, masquerading as a homeless and helpless German refugee, when in reality he was a fucking Nazi SS officer pig who had thousands of people in Warsaw shot, then what are you fussing about?’ Hanna chuckled so hard that her broad bosom rose in a tidal wave. ‘You’ve got the bastard over a barrel.’

  She slapped me on the back and I nearly brought up the ground-acorn coffee she’d poured down me. We were briefly alone in the steamy laundry. It was during one of the lulls between shifts when the exhausted night workers had staggered out, blinking like moles, in search of their beds and the morning shift had not yet arrived to start their twelve-hour day. Graufeld Camp was a noisy place, too many people crammed into too small a space, so we took advantage of the moment.

  Inside the Laundry block by the far wall stood a long row of large waist-high containers that held the mountain of dirty bed linen. It always smelled unpleasant back here. I pushed my way to the one at the rear, squeezed in behind them and started to unload the dozen sheets at the top of the container.

  ‘You after something special?’ Hanna asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it this time?’

  I burrowed deeper. ‘Dieter Koch has broken two teeth on his saw. He needs a new one. It takes him ages to requisition a replacement.’ Dieter was one of the inmates who was employed to do odd jobs around the place.

  ‘You got one?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘One of Rafal’s pickings?’

  ‘Yes. He’s good.’

  Hanna snorted, pleased. ‘He enjoys the missions.’

  ‘I know.’ I paused and glanced back at her over my shoulder. ‘But I am calling a halt to them. I never believed anyone would shoot at a child and I’m not willing to risk your son’s life any more. Or any of them.’

  My hands touched metal. A pair of shears. I shifted the tools to one side. This was my secret stash. This was what was going to buy us a ticket out of here. Except it wasn’t enough yet. I drew out a short, cross-cut saw, dusted it off with my skirt and slid it into a deep canvas bag on my shoulder.

  ‘That boy loves you, you know,’ Hanna commented.

  It took me by surprise. I couldn’t tell what she meant by it. ‘I love him too.’ I smiled at her.

  ‘If anything happens to me, I want you to . . .’

  ‘Nothing is going to happen to you,’ I said briskly. ‘Nor to me. We are invincible.’

  We looked at each other and laughed. Suddenly she seized my face between her rough hands and rubbed my cheeks hard, as though scrubbing one of her pillowcases.

  ‘Klara, promise me you will be careful.’ She glanced beyond the wide entrance doors to the laundry where the sunlight softened the harsh grey edges of camp internment. ‘There are people out there who would give more than their right arm for the stash you have here.’

  ‘I know, Hanna.’ I removed her hands before they bored through to my teeth. ‘But it’s going to get both of us Polaks to England.’ I kissed her round sweaty cheek.

  ‘Hah! Not if your filthy Nazi pig has anything to do with it. He’ll have us sent back to a Soviet Russia firing squad in Poland if—’

  ‘No, Hanna. No. I will deal with him.’

  From inside the container I extracted a handful of items and slipped them into my canvas bag. But not before Hanna had spotted the stubby skinning knife among them. Her eyes narrowed to slits and I thought for a moment she would wrestle me for it. We both knew she would win. And we both knew if you got caught carrying a knife in the camp it meant a month’s solitary confinement.

  But instead she tightened the strip of white sheet around her head and glared at the first girl who arrived early for her shift.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she announced.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Jan Blach,’ I repeated. ‘You know him?’

  The man sitting on a stool beside the doorway of Hut W was Czech. His thick brown hair was oiled back off his face leaving it bony and naked except for a two-day stubble on his jaw. But his eyes were lazy. He did not look as if he would give me any trouble.

  ‘Yes, lady, I know him.’

  ‘Is he billeted here in Hut W?’

  He nodded. Watching closely. ‘You want to see him?’

  My mouth was dry. I nodded in return.

  ‘Go on in then.’ His gaze fixed on Hanna’s breasts. ‘You and your friend.’ He adopted a helpful smile and waved a hand towards the doorway. ‘We like visitors.’

  ‘I would no more visit inside your hut than I would a Nazi death camp,’ Hanna snapped. ‘Now go and get this Blach Mensch out here to talk to us.’

  I liked having Hanna at my side. It was like having my own personal tank. Before the man could decide whether to deprive himself of the pleasure of ogling my friend’s breasts, another inmate emerged from the hut, a man with broken veins on his cheeks and a freshly shaven head. He inspected us with oddly inert eyes that did nothing to hide the damage within him. Whatever he’d been through in the last five years of war, it had ripped the life out of him.

  ‘Blach is not here right now,’ he stated flatly.

  I didn’t like this man. I’d seen eyes like that in Warsaw. In men who took pleasure in inflicting pain. My hand slid into my bag. I glanced around to check our exit route but it wasn’t looking good. Hanna and I had walked down the full length of Churchill Way to the far end of the camp where the huts of single men were huddled like the rejects many of them were. Bored, angry, suspicious and terrified. Damaged men. Deprived of comfort and the civilising influence of women.

  I understood that. But it didn’t mean I would tolerate their lustful stares as they gave up their card games and abandoned their arm-wrestling to drift closer in a wide circle of about twenty men around us.

  ‘Time to leave,’ I muttered and turned away.

  There was a moment when I thought we’d get away with it, a kind of pause. When the pack mentality seemed to fragment. But no. I felt it surge back into life when one man clutching a bottle of beer in his hand called ‘Putains!’ The atmosphere suddenly changed. Full of naked desire. Sparks leaped from one man to another. Bright. Fierce. I could feel their heat from ten paces away.

  ‘Come,’ I said to Hanna and grasped her wrist.

  But the man with the cold eyes darted from the doorway right into our path and with no warning grabbed himself a handful of Hanna’s abundant bosom encased in its sheet-tunic. She didn’t hesitate. She threw a fist the size of a meat cleaver at his face but he smacked his elbow into the side of her head with such force that she collapsed down in the dirt. Her eyebrow spurted blood.

  Instantly the bastard crouched down next to her. Both hands on her breasts now. ‘I can see clearly what you like, you whore,’ he yelled in her face.

  Dimly I heard a cheer rise from the circle of onlookers. But there was a roaring in my ears. A spike of hatred in my heart. I dropped to one knee. Seized th
e back of his thick neck. It was slick with sweat. With my other hand I pushed the point of my skinning knife just under his eye where the skin was soft as putty.

  ‘You see this clearly enough?’ I hissed in his ear.

  He froze.

  A thin tear of scarlet oozed over his cheekbone.

  ‘Take your hands off my friend or I will pop your eye out.’

  His hands shot in the air in surrender. He was breathing hard. But I was too. I was frightened I would not be able to stop myself pushing the knife deeper.

  But abruptly our tight-knit huddle on the ground burst apart. Hanna and I were yanked to our feet by a grip of iron around our upper arms while a massive boot with a metal-tip slammed into the left kidney of the man still on the ground. He screeched like a stuck pig.

  I twisted my head round and found myself staring at five tattoos spilling down a man’s stubbled cheek, each one in the shape of a tear. I grinned up at him.

  ‘Niks,’ I said.

  ‘This is Niks,’ I said to Hanna as I dabbed the end of my headscarf on her eyebrow, mopping up the blood. ‘He’s from Latvia.’

  She was leaning her weight on him heavily as the big man walked us back up into the centre of the camp. I wanted to hug him tight despite the smell of him, despite the guttural growls of disapproval in a language I couldn’t understand, despite the fact he was probably one of the most dangerous men in the camp. Instead I walked on the other side of Hanna, helping to support her with an arm around her waist.

  Though it did occur to me to wonder if my friend was quite as groggy as she seemed. I saw the way she slid glances at our grizzly bear of a rescuer from the corner of her eye, and the innocent pressure of her pillowy breast against his massive ribcage as his arm held her on her feet as if she were thistledown. As innocent as Alicja when she denied any knowledge of the army pencils she’d been handing out to kids in the camp.

  ‘This is the second time Niks has helped me,’ I explained to Hanna. ‘Thank you, Niks. I am grateful for—’

  ‘You are a fucking Arschloch, I told you before. You must not go there. It is dangerous. They are no better than the rats I get rid of down this end of camp.’

  Again he towered over me and again his face was hard and ferocious, hacked out of tectonic plates, but his dark eyes beneath the black undergrowth of his eyebrows were actually smiling at me. In spite of the Arschloch insult, Niks from Latvia was pleased to see me again.

  ‘How is Alicja?’ he rumbled, surprising me.

  ‘Not so good at the moment, but getting better.’

  ‘What is wrong with her?’

  ‘She fell off a hut roof and broke some ribs.’

  He glared at me, drawing his brows together. ‘You should look after your daughter better.’

  It was like a kick from his metal-tipped boot.

  ‘I know,’ I said softly.

  Hanna intervened, pulling her arm away from the Latvian. ‘She is a good mother. Don’t you say otherwise.’

  Without a goodbye she marched off towards her laundry, steady as a rhino. For a moment we stared after her in amazement, then both of us broke into a laugh, but it faded quickly.

  ‘Niks, I’m still looking for the man I told you about before.’

  ‘The one in spectacles.’

  He had forgotten nothing of our encounter.

  ‘Yes. It seems he is going under the name of Jan Blach and billeted in Hut W. Do you know him?’

  He rubbed a hand back and forth over his huge black-furred jaw. ‘I might.’ His dark gaze focused on mine and I let him see my anger, hard as stone. ‘Or I might not,’ he added. ‘This man will bring you nothing but grief.’

  He shifted his hand from his jaw and placed it on my shoulder. It felt like a rock. I wanted to tell him that Oskar Scholz had already brought nothing but grief into my life. Into Alicja’s life. But now was not the moment. I dug into my canvas bag, burying the knife, and pulled out a sealed envelope that I stole from Davide’s office. I held it out to Niks.

  ‘I’ve written a note to him. Will you give it to him, please? Make sure you put it into his hands.’

  The big man stood staring at it for a full minute and I thought he was going to refuse, but eventually he took it. He ran a thumb thoughtfully over the writing on the front.

  ‘What do these words say?’ he asked.

  I allowed no surprise to show in my voice. ‘It says To Mr Jan Blach.’

  He nodded without the faintest trace of embarrassment. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Klara Janowska.’

  ‘So, Klara Janowska, give this gift to your daughter from me.’

  From his baggy trouser pocket he drew out a small packet wrapped in greaseproof paper and tied with string. Suddenly he was awkward. Uncertain what to say. ‘For Alicja.’

  I was touched by his thoughtful gesture and said, ‘Why don’t you give it to her yourself?’

  ‘No, no.’ He scowled at me from under his black brows. ‘She is an angel. I am the Devil’s bastard son, I warn you.’ Suddenly he flashed his tobacco-stained teeth at me. ‘I look after the camp’s vegetable garden, you know. Why don’t you and your friend come and visit me there some time?’ Then he lumbered off, his broad back and tattooed face forming his armour in this uncertain world.

  ‘Thank you, Niks,’ I called after him.

  He raised a hand but didn’t turn. I opened the packet, peeling back the layers. Inside lay a scarlet ribbon.

  How long had he been carrying it in his pocket on the off chance of seeing me?

  That night I woke shuddering. My whole body in spasm. In bed. In darkness. My blanket in knots. A violent throbbing between my legs and my heart thundering behind my ribs.

  Had I cried out?

  I clamped a hand over my mouth to silence the screams of joy that streamed through me and threatened to burst out into the sleeping barrack hut.

  How long since I’d had a sex dream? Six barren years. Not since my husband had been shot out of the skies in his P.11 fighter in a ball of flames above Warsaw, but tonight he had come to me, my Dymek. My love. My breath. My joy. My reason for being on this earth. He had come to me, his naked skin like fire on mine again, his lips teasing secret places till I almost ripped the hair from his head with need. And his hands, his strong and clever hands, cupping my breast, my cheek, my buttocks as if he would devour my flesh.

  I had forgotten. In the long dark nights. Forgotten how that searing moment of release strips you free of this world and hurls you into another pulsating existence. My hands reached out, desperate in the blackness, and searched in vain for Dymek. They found only vacant air. I curled over on my side, wrapping myself tight around the tiny fragile bubble of joy. Tears streaked my cheeks and my chest refused to cease shuddering.

  I was losing him. I knew that. Day by day, month by month, he was abandoning me. The clean lines of his face were fading, the outline of the taut muscle on his chest where I used to lay my head, was blurring. But tonight I could smell him. The scent was fierce in my nostrils. The scent of the hollow at his neck, of his hair, of the engine oil that infused the skin of his hands. I smiled because tonight I could recall his smile; I laughed because I could remember a reason to laugh. I reached out.

  ‘Please, Dymek,’ I mouthed. Only blackness.

  I could feel it leeching the last traces of goodness from me the way fleas leech the blood from a filthy gutter hound. I opened my eyes wide, staring the blackness in the face. It didn’t realise what it was dealing with.

  No more than Oskar Scholz did.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He would come.

  I was sure he would. This displaced person. This Oskar Scholz. This man who stole my brother’s name. Writing Jan Blach on the envelope almost broke my fingers, the effort was so great, but I knew that if I wrote Oskar Scholz, he would not come.

  I wished I could have seen his face when he opened the note and saw my name at the bottom. Did his eyes half-close in that odd way he had when seeking t
o hide shock? Did his mouth quiver? Did his finger rub that spot on his high pale forehead where pain seemed to stab in moments of upset? He believed he was safe here. Now he knew better. Now he would kill me.

  So why tell him I am here? That’s what you’re thinking.

  I told him because however much I want this man dead, a part of me wants to make a deal.

  A deal?

  I know. It sounds crazy. I knew from the moment I saw him in the doorway of Hut J that Scholz would scratch his own eyes out rather than make a deal with me. That’s why I had to resolve to kill him. But the part of me that has seen enough killing and enough dying to last ten lifetimes won’t shut up. It sits in the back of my skull and throws rocks at me.

  I perched on a seat at one of the chessboards in the Recreation hall and waited.

  My mind would not steer clear of the memory of that other chess game, however hard I tried. It was a warm summer evening in Warsaw. Oskar Scholz had brought me to his elegant apartment. But in those days he was Sturmbannführer Oskar Scholz, an officer in the Waffen SS.

  He was holding up a photograph in front of me.

  ‘So what do you think, Frau Janowska? Handsome enough for you?’

  I gave it the barest of glances.

  ‘You recognise who he is?’ he pressed me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know his name?’

  ‘SS Oberführer Axel Fleischer.’

  ‘Good.’

  Scholz was seated opposite me at his 18th century ebony and ivory inlaid chess table. It had been looted from the Royal Castle in Warsaw’s Castle Square when the Nazis marched into Poland in 1939. But that was not all. This man was greedy. Around us in the sumptuous salon of his Warsaw apartment spread a lavish array of tapestries that dated back to King Stanislaw Augustus and royal silverware that glittered brighter than stars in the candlelight.

  The spoils of war, he called them.

  I called them stolen property. To his face.

  He just shrugged and smiled his amusement at the anger I made no attempt to hide.

  ‘Oberführer Fleischer is coming to play chess with you tonight,’ he announced.