The Dressmaker's War
Page 17
“Sister Clara.”
“Well, Sister Clara,” he said. “I’m taking a hunch on you. We should haul you in, make sure you’re a bona fide prisoner and not some Kraut pretending, or some traitor with the shits under them, excuse my language, Sister.” He again fished out the chocolate from his pocket and offered it to Ada.
“You change your mind?”
Ada shook her head.
“That camp is no place for a nun,” he said. “I can’t send you there, with the other prisoners. Believe me, lady, you don’t want to go there.” He paused, screwing his eyes in concentration. “Now, those other nuns—” He bit his lip. “Say, can you give me some of their names?”
“Sister Brigitte,” Ada said. “Sister Agatha, Sister—”
“Sister Brigitte. Yeah. She’s like the boss one, who speaks for you?”
Ada nodded.
“Well, Sister Brigitte says they’re staying where they are. They can’t abandon their old people. War or peace, makes no difference. They serve God, and their vocation.”
He held up both his hands and rolled his eyes. “So why don’t I restore you to your flock? We’ll register and classify y’all later.”
“When can I go home?” Ada said. “I must find my baby. Frau Weiss has my baby.”
“Sure,” the sergeant said. “Sure.” He turned to one of the soldiers. “Get the jeep, and drive her there.” He pointed to the sewing machine on the floor. “And take that, if it keeps her happy. I’ll get Battelli to go with her.”
—
THE SOLDIER WHO had taken her to her room helped her into the back of the jeep, scowling the whole time. There was a tarpaulin stretched across the top and the sides, and a rough tailboard. He pointed to a seat, dumped the sewing machine by her feet, and handed her a blanket. He backed away, turned towards the house. She could see the road ahead through the back of the vehicle. A pall of smoke hung, drifting thick as a cloud. There was a smell of burning, of rubber, the bitter stench of cordite.
Another soldier climbed on board and sat down beside her. He was young, with thick, black hair and dark brown eyes. He seemed more friendly than the others. He smiled at her. “Sister,” he said, “my name’s Francesco, but they call me Frank. I’m a Catholic, too. I’ve been detailed to look after you.”
She stared past him, to the tarpaulin behind him. It had faded in the sun, streaked by rain. The eyelets were rusty and the tie ropes had turned brown. I’m not a nun. She should say it. Not Sister Clara. Not a Catholic. Not anymore. I’m nothing. She stared at her hands, riddled with veins, her knuckles sharp as mountain crags. Her skin was raw, her nails bitten to the quick. That’s all that she was. Bones and veins. An empty carcass.
The driver started up the jeep and they jolted out of the driveway, passing army trucks, their dull green camouflage splattered with mud. On the left were the bombed-out ruins of a large building, dust and smoke hovering above the rubble and the warped remains of a train and a railway line, twisted like a broken hanger.
“Yeah,” Frank was saying. “We got the big one. Munitions. Went up like Coney Island at Fourth of July.”
Was it last night? Or last month? Boom, boom. Ada winced at the meaning. Flashing sky. Explosions. The windowpane belching from its frame, shattering on the stone floor, the death rattle of the stricken house. Munitions. The big one. It made sense.
Frank pulled out a packet of cigarettes. “Old Gold,” Ada read. He took one and lit it. She hadn’t had a cigarette since those sour French Gauloises she and Stanislaus had smoked in Paris all those years ago.
“Please,” she said. “May I have one?”
Frank looked puzzled. “I didn’t think sisters smoked,” he said. “You sure you want one?”
Ada nodded.
He raised his eyebrows and passed her the packet. “I guess you might need it.” He winked at her. “I won’t tell Reverend Mother.” He leant forward and lit the cigarette. Ada took a deep drag. The tobacco tasted foul, and left flecks on her tongue. She felt the coarse, hot smoke fill her lungs. She coughed, watched as the smoke furled through her nose.
“Say, don’t inhale,” Frank said. “Just puff. I guess you’ve never had one before.”
The cigarette made her even more light-headed than before, but it cleared her mind, opened a memory. A man, taking care of her, lighting her cigarette. This was her, Ada, coming back to life. A second cigarette wouldn’t taste so bad.
They passed another factory. The gates were open. Arbeit macht frei. Of course, she had passed that when she first came, remembered the words. Work makes free. People were milling inside. Some were wearing striped jackets and trousers like the men in the house. She could see soldiers standing with clipboards.
“What happened there?” she said to Frank. “What did they make?”
The muscles clenched in his jaw and he turned his face away. “Corpses,” he said.
He pinched out the cigarette with his fingers and flung the stub out of the back of the jeep. “It was a concentration camp.”
The camp. That was the camp.
The driver built up speed. Dachau was a bigger village than Ada remembered. They passed another railway station, its roof ripped off, a large crater on the platform. The windows and doors of the nearby houses had been blown out. They passed a church and a water tower, drove down long, curved cobbled streets with tall houses either side. There were soldiers on the road. Americans, Ada guessed from the color of their uniforms. A man in a striped jacket staggered across the road, his face gaunt. Ada twisted to get a better look. Perhaps she had met him once, perhaps he was one of her men. He turned, his expression vacant and ghostly. The jeep came to a stop. A crocodile of children were crossing the road. They wore identical shabby gray coats and scuffed shoes with socks concertinaed round their ankles.
Ada flung her cigarette away, scrambled towards the tailboard, lowered herself to the ground.
“Hey!” Frank called.
She hitched up her tunic and ran after the children, grabbing the last one by the sleeve and turning him round.
“Thomas,” she said. The little boy cried out, and the teacher at the head of the crocodile stopped and walked towards her.
“Go away,” she said, her face twisted with fear. “Let him go.”
“Thomas,” Ada said. “I’m looking for Thomas. Or Joachim. Yes, Joachim. That’s his name. Is he here?” The children had stopped and were staring at her. She scanned the pallid faces, noting how their cheeks were chapped and their lips sore. They must have been eight or nine years old. Too old for Thomas.
“No,” Ada said. “Where is he?”
Frank was beside her, taking her elbow, leading her away. “Come with me,” he said. “Don’t ever do that again.”
He walked her towards the jeep, lowered the tailboard, helped her climb back in. Thomas was still a little boy. Such a very little boy. A war baby. That was all he’d ever known, the black thunder of war.
She shut her eyes. “I thought I saw him,” she said. The driver moved forward. “Where are you taking me?”
“Munich.”
The jeep was drafty, and she pulled the blanket tight round her.
The road was full of potholes, and the jeep had to swerve and slow. They had to stop twice for a checkpoint, Okay, buddy, that’s fine. They passed a group of people, an old woman, and a younger woman with a boy. The younger woman was pushing a cart piled high with suitcases, an old man balanced on top of them. The countryside looked wintry. Patches of snow on brown, barren fields. The villages were deserted, the houses bleak and dowdy. They drove through a forest of beech, trees with mossy trunks and naked limbs as far as the eye could see.
“Am I free?” she said to Frank.
“Sure,” he said.
“Is it over?”
“Sure.”
Free.
“And Frau Weiter?” she said. “And Anni?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
But the mending. She had
to do the mending. She rummaged in Sister Jeanne’s bag, pulled out the tatty habit. The bag was empty.
“I’ve left the mending,” she said. It was in the suitcase, on top of the wardrobe, with all the other samples back in Paris. Stanislaus had to stop the jeep. “We have to go back.”
“Forget it,” Frank said.
“Please.”
“Why do you need the mending? It’s over, Sister.” He laughed, Ha ha. “You’re a funny one.”
She shook her head. This wasn’t Stanislaus. It was another man. “Where am I?” she said. “What’s happening?”
The jeep slowed again, and Ada saw they were in a wide street with houses set in large gardens. They had come to a town. Beyond the gardens Ada could see other buildings, a church spire, attic roofs.
“Nearly there,” Frank said. They turned the corner. The houses on one side of the road had been rended apart, as if an arm or a leg had been torn off, exposing the socket beneath. Sinews of wallpaper hung in shreds; a mattress tipped over the edge like a muscle ripped from its tendon, a table with jagged edges, snapped like a bone. Another corner. The shell of a church. A bronze lion knocked from its plinth, lying on its side, its paws clawing the air. There was dust everywhere, and smoke. And people, wandering, lost and silent. Buildings smoldered, piles of rubble tall as slag heaps. There was half a railway bridge, the tracks humped like roller-coaster tracks. They drove across a square. The buildings on all sides had had their windows and doors blasted out, gaped with empty eyes and hungry mouths. Debris everywhere. There were three tanks in the far corner, and soldiers leaning against them. Ada froze.
“It’s okay, Sister,” Frank said, “they’re ours.”
Nothing was as she remembered it from that brief truck ride years ago. She guessed they were in the center of Munich.
—
THE GERIATRIC HOME had survived. It had lost its gates and its walls, and the gardens were as bare as the fields, but she recognized it. Frank helped her down, took Sister Jeanne’s bag and the sewing machine.
“After you,” he said. Ada walked towards the doors, opened them, stepped inside the hall with its checkered floor. Sister Brigitte was there.
“Sister Clara,” she said. She walked forward, her arms open. Ada fell towards her, and Sister Brigitte enfolded her, pulling her close.
“Thank God,” Sister Brigitte said. “Thank God.”
—
SISTER BRIGITTE BURNED Sister Jeanne’s habit, Ada’s, too. “You don’t need to give it back,” she said, pushing Ada forward in the bed and plumping up the pillows behind her. “Now lie back and stop fretting.”
“Herr Weiss?” she said. She could see him tapping his way into the room, lying on the bed beside her.
“Herr Weiss? He passed away, God rest his soul.”
God rot his soul.
“And the sewing machine?”
“The sewing machine is under your bed. No one can take it away.”
“Humor her,” Ada heard Sister Brigitte say to Sister Agatha. Nervous exhaustion. The war was properly over now. Hitler was dead. Germany had surrendered. Ada lay in a bed, covered in a soft eiderdown. A Federbett. Frau Weiter had used one. Ada couldn’t see how it kept you warm without blankets, but it did, cozy and snug. She was in a large, light room, could see the gardens through the windows. No guards there now. Just a spindly birch frothing with new leaves and a couple of old men with blankets over their shoulders, shuffling along on the arms of Sister Josephine. She was taller than them, her wimple fresh and white. It was a miracle that they had all survived, these old men, even Sister Thérèse, fingering her rosary with ancient, arthritic fingers and snoring gently at night. There were six beds in the room, one for each of them. Proper beds, on legs, with headboards and linen, frayed at the edges and threadbare in the center, but clean. They woke at dawn, said their prayers, went off to do their duties, leaving Ada to doze.
She would look for Thomas, once she was back on her feet. He couldn’t be far. She wrote home: “Dear Mum and Dad, I hope you’re well and gave Mr. Hitler what-for.” She could picture their faces when they got the letter. Everyone would know. Foreign stamp. The neighbors would talk. I bet it’s from their Ada. Give it here. “I’m fine.” She mustn’t worry them. They’d have been frantic enough as it was. “It’s been a bit of an adventure here.” Better not say anything about Thomas, not yet. “I’ll tell you all about it when I’m home, which will be soon, I hope. Your loving daughter, Ada.”
“Frank was asking after you today,” Sister Brigitte said, placing a tray of soup on her lap. “He comes twice a week, with the rations. Taken a shine to you, I reckon.”
Ada smiled. He was a good-looking man. “May I have a mirror?” she said.
“No,” Sister Brigitte said, “you may not. Not until you’re better.” She sat on the edge of the bed, so Ada had to grab the tray and steady it. “I know you’re not a nun, Sister Clara, but we’re proud of you. You’ve been a credit to us all. What’s your real name?”
“Ada,” she said, “Ada Vaughan.” She said it softly, over and over. This is who she was, Ada Vaughan. She hadn’t said those words since, since when? She scrolled the years, counting on her fingers. Since the Germans had captured her. Nineteen-forty. Five years, almost to the day. She could be Ada again, be herself again, go home, back to normal. Dressmaker extraordinaire. She could turn on the light when she wanted, wear nylons, wash her hair. She’d have to see what the new styles were. Dance. Meet a young man and settle down. She and Thomas. A little family. Hope.
“Well, Ada,” Sister Brigitte said, smiling at her. “Have you considered a vocation?”
Ada couldn’t help herself. She laughed, shaking the bed so the soup slopped out of the bowl onto the tray.
“Perhaps not,” Sister Brigitte said, “after all.”
“No,” Ada said. “Perhaps not.” She picked up her spoon and stirred the soup. She took a deep breath. “When I’m better, Sister Brigitte—” She paused, unsure how to frame the question. “I must find Thomas. Will you help me?”
Ada saw Sister Brigitte’s face in profile. She had aged in the war, worry lines etched round her mouth.
“Don’t raise your hopes, my dear,” she said. Her voice was quiet. “Terrible things happened in this war. We find out more and more each day. Please eat your soup.”
“I don’t want it.” Ada lifted the tray.
“I insist,” Sister Brigitte said. “You must build your strength. Physical and mental.” She nodded towards the soup and waited until Ada picked up her spoon. “Little and often.”
She stood and walked to the window. “We survived because we grew vegetables,” she said. “And we kept a pig, chickens, ducks. People stole the chickens, and the ducks. They would have stolen the pig but it made too much noise. They know, pigs,” she went on. “Intelligent animals. They know when their time is up. They don’t go quietly.”
She looked at Ada. “Even so, we had to dig up the garden to feed us all. Now it’s the Americans who feed us. We’ll plant flowers soon, back where they belong. So our old people can look on beauty. Have you finished?”
Ada nodded, and Sister Brigitte took the tray, balancing it on her hip, supporting it with one arm. “Father Friedel was killed,” she said.
“I know,” Ada said, “for speaking out.”
“Well,” Sister Brigitte said, “not in so many words. He was killed in reprisal for a bishop who spoke out. He was a little old, Father Friedel. I’m not sure he knew what was going on. They caught him the day your child was born.”
Ada lifted her hand to her mouth, sucked in air through tight lips.
“They don’t think he had the baby with him, so we were told. But we have no idea what he did with him. We can’t ask him now.”
“Perhaps he took him to an orphanage, to a Catholic orphanage,” Ada said.
Sister Brigitte frowned, took a deep breath, and opened her mouth as if to say something, but then adjusted the tray on her hip instead.
It was a moment before Sister Brigitte replied. “Perhaps.” Her voice was hesitant, and she paused again. “The orphanage was bombed.” Ada let out a cry. “The children were evacuated.”
“Where?”
“I understand they took over an institution somewhere.”
“Where?”
Sister Brigitte paused. “In Dachau. In the town.”
It all made sense. Frau Weiss. She had picked Thomas. In Dachau. A beautiful baby. The children Ada had passed, they were orphans. She’d go back to Dachau, find the orphanage. They could tell her, help her find Thomas.
HER HAIR HAD grown and she had put on weight. Ada had been in bed for two weeks before she was allowed to stand, shaky at first, two feet on the floor, push off from the bed, easy does it, like a child learning to walk. She went a little farther each day, round their dormitory, down the corridor, into the conservatory. Ada grew rigid with terror at the thought of seeing Herr Weiss there. Come, my dear. Sit by my side. Sister Brigitte had said that he was dead. Suicide. Slit his wrists with a cut-throat razor. Left a note addressed to his nephew, Obersturmbannführer Martin Weiss. In accordance with the Führer’s plans. Ada kept walking. Into the garden. The weather was cold for May, but the midday sun held the promise of warmth. Sister Brigitte brought some clothes for her, a pair of shoes, an old-fashioned skirt that was too long and too large, a blouse of brushed cotton.
“Frank bought them. Paid good cigarettes for them, so he said.” Her face was serious. “No one has food. They’re desperate. They’ll sell anything. Cigarettes are money.” She pointed to the sewing machine gathering dust under the bed. “You can use that. Take them in, make them fit.”
“Did I bring that with me?” Ada said. “What was I thinking?”
“You weren’t,” Sister Brigitte said. “You were deranged.”