The Survivors

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘How could I not be happy here?’ I laughed.

  Axel Fleischer relaxed and leaned his elbows on the table to speak to a tense-looking officer seated opposite. His name was Oberführer Sammern-Frankenegg. He possessed a huge domed bald head and uneasy eyes hiding behind round spectacles. His moustache was absurd, an imitation of Hitler’s, and he had a cleft in his chin you could hide a tank in. His face would sit better on a bureaucrat than on a soldier. Every time he and Fleischer spoke to each other they lowered their voices. Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg was a man I could barely look at. Or share the same air with. Because I knew what was in his head.

  He had every right to be tense.

  Yes, Oberführer Sammern-Frankenegg, I know.

  Whenever he addressed a remark to me, I replied to the showy bar of medals on his chest, so that my eyes did not have to look at his.

  ‘Would you care to dance, Klara?’

  It was Oskar Scholz inviting me so politely, his voice a soft purr in my ear. I opened my mouth to decline, but then I looked at his face, and shut it again. I knew those silvery grey eyes of his. They wanted something from me.

  I had learned not to grind my teeth when a Nazi touched me. My skin did not burst into flames. Or turn black. That was just inside my head.

  I was wearing a long silver gown, made from the finest Parisian silk that knew exactly how to skim my hips and left my arms and shoulders bare, shimmering in the glow from the crystal chandelier. When Oskar Scholz took me in his arms with only the lightest of touches, I did not hesitate to rest my hand on the uniformed ridge of his shoulder. Without spitting. I looked him directly in the eye.

  ‘What do you want, Oskar?’

  He smiled. ‘Always to the point, Klara.’

  The dance floor was crowded and noisy. He leaned close.

  ‘I hear that Fleischer called a meeting yesterday.’ I felt his breath hot on my cheek. ‘With a number of the Polish factory owners in Warsaw.’

  ‘You are well informed.’

  ‘You must have attended the meeting as his interpreter.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Who was there?’

  ‘Six of them. Manufacturers of metal hinges, ball bearings, shell cases, flour, cloth for army shirts and light bulbs. All supply the German army.’ I stared over his shoulder at the drinks table where a mammoth silver punchbowl was being refilled. ‘They are demanding higher prices for their goods.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Of course they are. What was Fleischer’s reaction?’

  I switched my gaze back to Oskar. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who.’

  ‘If you mean your daughter, she is well. The nuns send me a weekly report on her.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘No.’

  I halted. My feet didn’t move. I didn’t take my eyes off his.

  ‘Klara,’ he said impatiently, ‘we’re causing a blockage on the dance floor.’

  I remained still and silent. Waiting.

  He sighed. ‘The nuns say that Alicja is good at her lessons, especially mathematics. This week they mentioned that she has her first adult tooth coming through and that she has a chest cold at the moment, so disturbs the whole dormitory at night.’

  I realised I was breathing fast, pulling in extra air for my daughter’s lungs.

  ‘They ended,’ he continued in a rush, ‘by saying she can be difficult at times. She has escaped from the convent. Twice.’

  I was picturing my seven-year-old daughter at night. Coughing. Alone. Awake. In darkness. Plotting a way out.

  ‘Listen to me, Klara.’ He shook me lightly but I barely noticed. ‘She is looked after. She is safe.’

  ‘Why can’t I receive a letter from her through you?’

  ‘Leave her alone. She is better off there, happy in her new life. Not thinking of you.’

  ‘You don’t run away if you’re happy.’

  ‘Now,’ he said curtly, ‘you have your answers. Time to give me mine.’

  I nodded. I danced. I gave him his answers. Fleischer had given the factory owners an angry response and refused to pay even one zloty more than the price he was already paying for their goods. The exchange was heated but the Oberführer was adamant. Not one zloty more. He accused them of being traitors to the Nazi General Government of Poland.

  Oskar Scholz steered a neat path through the throng of dancers but I could tell he was shaken.

  ‘What is Fleischer trying to do?’ he murmured close to my ear. ‘Sabotage Polish supplies to the German army by forcing these factories into bankruptcy? Is that it?’ I could feel the tension in the muscles under my fingers. ‘To weaken the army of the Third Reich?’

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’

  He pulled his head back. ‘What?’

  ‘I think he is taking a rake-off for himself. As simple as that.’ I withdrew my hand from his. ‘I think we are done for today, Oskar.’

  I walked away and left him on the dance floor.

  My first stop was the table with the punchbowl. The drinks waiter was busy piling full glasses on to a tray, so I had no problem helping myself with the ladle and a glass of my own. As I moved away I passed the birthday cake in the design of a gigantic castle.

  ‘Cake, madam?’

  A young woman in a waitress uniform was standing in front of me, offering me a plate with a slice of cake.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  She was small and sinewy with brown hair pulled back harshly and a thin face that was all sharp angles. She gave me a polite smile, but her eyes were jumpy as they flicked around the room crowded with grey uniforms and boisterous laughter. I could see that Axel Fleischer revelled in being the centre of all the attention.

  ‘So many of them,’ the waitress murmured under her breath. ‘Like snakes in a pit.’

  I flashed her a warning look and headed straight for the powder room.

  The nightclub’s powder room was stylish. Elegant black and white tiles in geometric patterns and a wall of mirrors that threw my face back at me at different angles. I kept my eyes off the mirrors and checked each of the six stalls, pushing each door open with my foot just to make sure. All were empty.

  I tipped my punch away, ran hot water into one of the basins and used an excessive amount of fragrant soap to wash Oskar Scholz off my hands. Almost immediately the main door swung open and the waitress walked in. She didn’t hesitate but hurried across the tiles to me and wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her tight. For a moment neither of us could speak.

  ‘Klara,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve been worried sick about you.’

  ‘Don’t be, Irenka.’ I kissed her thin cheek. ‘What are you living on? You are just skin and bone.’

  ‘We get by. How does he treat you?’

  ‘We get by,’ I smiled. Because what else could I do?

  She looked at my Paris dress, smelled my Paris perfume, and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m not worth your tears.’

  Irenka was my friend. I trusted her. For the past two years we had fought side by side in the Polish Resistance, covered each other’s back, saved each other’s life. She was a radio expert and a talented codebreaker, but I hadn’t expected her to be here tonight. I’d dropped a note, unobserved, into the hand of the man who sold me my newspaper in the kiosk to state that I’d be at this party tonight and to request an urgent meeting.

  ‘I didn’t think it would be you here,’ I said.

  ‘I insisted.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  She kissed my cheek. ‘But worth it to see you again.’

  ‘I’ll be quick. Anyone might walk in.’ I went over and stood with my back against the door. ‘The troops are going into the Jewish Ghetto tomorrow. To sweep out at least five thousand people. Adults and children.’

  ‘No.’ It came out of her as if she�
�d been kicked.

  ‘It’s true. Fleischer has been holding meetings with Oberführer Sammern-Frankenegg all week to make the final arrangements. Sammern-Frankenegg is going in with troops tomorrow, January the eighteenth, for a major action to transport thousands more of them to Treblinka concentration camp.’

  Irenka’s lips were white. ‘God help them.’

  ‘No, my friend, we have to help them.’

  The Jewish Ghetto was a terrible place. An inhuman cage. Four hundred thousand Jews imprisoned in three miserable square kilometres by a three-metre perimeter brick wall. That’s seven people to each room. Imagine it. Inhaling each other’s fear with every breath, jammed so tight you hear every heartbeat. Slowly starving to death and no wood for fires in this brutal winter. Yet tales leaked out each day of extraordinary feats of love and courage by the inhabitants to smuggle in the tiniest scraps of food and fuel to keep the children alive. Escapees were shot on sight.

  This was only the start. Oberführer Sammern-Frankenegg had orders to destroy the whole Ghetto and all its inhabitants. I’d heard him discussing it with Fleischer. Four hundred thousand Jews.

  Four hundred thousand.

  ‘You have to warn them, Irenka. To be prepared. Hide the children. In cupboards. Inside suitcases. It’s time to take out the guns from under the floorboards. To make the petrol bombs to—’

  The door to the powder room slammed against my back as two women in evening gowns forced their way in and made a rush for two of the cubicles. The sound of them being violently sick filled the small space.

  My mouth was dry, my heart pumping. I exchanged a look with Irenka and she vanished from the room. I returned to my washbasin, ran scalding hot water and began to scrub my hands.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I woke. Forced my eyes open. A pulse throbbed behind them. To my surprise it was still daylight in Hut C. The steady hum of conversation elbowed out the violent sound of the gunfire that followed that evening in the nightclub. The carnage. The cries. The rumble of tanks. The reek of cordite. I could smell it now.

  The way I could still smell Axel Fleischer’s cologne, if ever I let my guard slip.

  I lay immobile on my bunk bed in this bleak No Man’s Land that I was trapped in and without warning something broke in me. Something snapped. I heard it. Such intimate knowledge of man’s capacity for inhumanity was too much. It was crushing me. I fought to push it away but it was closing over my head, black as oil. I jerked upright to gasp for air and that was when I froze.

  I’d felt something move. Inside my bed.

  Something brushing against my calf.

  I threw myself on to the floor and dragged back the bedding.

  A snake.

  It lay in the centre of the white sheet. Its muddy brown body was almost as long as my arm. What looked like darker paint splodges zigzagged down its back. Its long head was raised, scenting me, its chestnut-brown eyes gleaming like glass. We stared at each other. Both in shock.

  ‘Alicja,’ I whispered softly, ‘give me your pillowcase.’

  Whatever it was that my daughter heard in my voice, it made her act without question. She pulled the cover from her pillow on the top bunk and held it out to me, her eyes fixed on my face. Very slowly, I took it. But even that small movement was enough. The frightened creature shot under my pillow and I jumped back, every pulse racing.

  Alicja leaped from her bunk to stand beside me. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A snake.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In my bed. It’s under my pillow now.’

  ‘Hold the pillowcase open.’

  She moved, fast and calm. She stripped the sheet from her own bunk, flicked its layers around her arm and hand, and pressed down hard on my pillow to trap the snake. In one swift sweep of her sheeted hand, she scooped out its long twisting body by the tail and dropped it into the pillowcase that I was holding open. It was surprisingly heavy.

  I stood there, aghast.

  She unwound the scarlet ribbon from her wrist and tied it tight around the neck of the pillowcase. It was that simple.

  She turned her sweet smile on me. ‘You’re safe now.’

  ‘Where did you learn to handle snakes?’ I was still trembling.

  ‘There were lots of them around the convent. This one is an adder. We used to catch them for fun.’

  There was so much I didn’t know about my daughter.

  We both stared at the pillowcase and then at my bed.

  ‘Who put it there, Mama?’

  As if we didn’t know.

  The doorkeeper of Hut W was snoozing in the sunshine. He was seated in a home-made chair, his chin nestled on his chest, a faint snore rumbling out of him. I stepped around his legs and marched right into the hut. It smelled of men’s sweat and boredom and cigarettes. Heads turned. Voices called out, suggestive comments trailed alongside me. A hand gripped my shoulder. I shook it off and walked down to Oskar Scholz’s bed.

  The pillowcase sack was in my hand, held out in front of me at arm’s length and the scarlet ribbon looked like a rivulet of blood around it. I wanted to shout at these men to get outside and dig a vegetable patch or learn how to mend a burst pipe. Do something. Instead of crowding around me, smelling my hair, touching my neck.

  I saw Scholz ahead of me, stretched out on top of his bed and reading a book. He wore no spectacles and was engrossed, blocking out the rowdy noise in the hut. He was always good at that. He had the ability to ignore distractions, to focus on what he wanted. I’d seen it a thousand times, the pupils in his grey eyes like bore holes that sucked in the information he needed. I’d once watched him sitting on the floor writing a report in my Warsaw apartment at one of Axel Fleischer’s wild parties, while half-naked girls pawed at him and a euphoric cocaine-snorting general blasted away on a trombone.

  ‘You!’ I called from the end of his bed in the hut.

  I could not bear to call him Jan Blach. That name belonged to my brother.

  Scholz lowered the book. At the sight of me he was startled. I saw him jump, saw his mouth drop open. He was not expecting me. But the unguarded moment was gone as quickly as it came and he rose to his feet.

  ‘Klara, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Did you imagine I would be in hospital now, writhing in pain?’

  I held up the pillowcase, slipped off the ribbon and upended the pillowcase over his bed. The snake slithered out and dropped on to the sheet, a sleek brown blur of movement with venom in its fangs. A gasp went up around me and men scattered in all directions.

  But the snake had learned that beds were not a safe refuge, so shot on to the floor. Shouts and curses burst through the hut as grown men jumped up on to beds in panic.

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ one yelled at me.

  I did not wait for more. I turned and walked out.

  I wound the ribbon around Alicja’s wrist once more and tickled the palm of her hand. She smiled, refusing to laugh for me, and took her hand away, but lay down on my bed, her blond head in my lap. It was a long time since she’d done that.

  ‘Mama, the snake could have bitten you.’

  ‘I was lucky, sweetheart. All it wanted was my warmth.’

  ‘A snake bite can be bad.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope it finds someone tasty in Hut W.’

  Again a faint smile. Nothing more.

  ‘Does your back still hurt, Alicja?’

  A shake of her head. She wouldn’t tell me if it did. I tenderly stroked her curls, winding one around my finger. She closed her eyes, her golden lashes lying like silk threads on her cheekbones, and for a moment I shut out all else. Just us. In the world. My beautiful brave daughter and me. I leaned down and kissed her forehead.

  ‘Mama, tell me about Papa.’

  The shock of the question rippled through me. She had not mentioned him since we entered Graufeld Camp.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Tell me what he looked like.’

  She was forgetti
ng. Just like I was forgetting. But she had an excuse, she was only five when he was killed. I had no excuse.

  ‘Your father was handsome and strong with wavy brown hair that curled over his ears. He loved engines.’ I laughed at a memory of his tanned cheek streaked with oil. ‘More than he loved me, I suspected sometimes. But never more than he loved you.’ I stroked a curl back from her ice-cream smooth skin. ‘He loved you more than anything else in the world.’

  The corner of Alicja’s mouth lifted. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘He would have been proud of you today, protecting me from the adder. He would have sat you on his shoulders and jumped into the river with you.’

  She laughed. At last she laughed.

  ‘One day before you were born,’ I told her, ‘your papa and I went for a picnic in the forest.’

  It was actually for something infinitely more fun than a picnic, but that was not part of the story.

  ‘A massive hairy boar came snuffling out of the undergrowth, took one look at me, snorted like a car backfiring, then dropped its head and charged straight at me. Its tusks were huge and vicious. But do you know what your papa did?’

  She was holding her breath.

  ‘He snatched up the picnic rug,’ I continued urgently, ‘and waved it in front of the animal like a matador with a bull. It charged at him instead.’

  I heard her small gasp.

  ‘He sidestepped it a few times and in the end it gave up and snuffled off into the forest. Your papa saved my life that day. He was my hero.’

  Alicja buried her face in my thigh. I ran a hand over her bony young hip, but I was careful where I touched. I didn’t want to hurt her back. She clung to my leg the way she used to cling to her father’s.

  ‘Papa is my hero too,’ she whispered.

  ‘He would have been so proud.’

  There was a long silence that sat soft and comfortable between us. Her muscles were relaxing and melting back into me.

  ‘Mama,’ she said in a tight voice, ‘you won’t marry someone else, will you?’

  I wasn’t going to lie to her. From a pouch hanging around my neck but hidden inside my blouse, I extracted the two dark blue booklets that had cost me so dear. I held them in front of my daughter’s face.