Entwined

by La Plante, Lynda

  Mengele paid particular attention to women and young girls. His experiments purported to discover the fastest means of mass sterilization, which he would then describe in an impressive report he planned to send back to Berlin. His experiments had no apparent order, no rules. So-called gynecologists used an electrical apparatus to inject a thick whitish liquid into the victims’ genital organs, causing terrible burning sensations. This injection was repeated every four weeks, and was followed each time by a radioscopy.

  Sometimes the victims, selected women and young female children, were injected in the chest. The physician injected 5cc of a serum—no one has ever discovered what it contained—at the rate of two to nine injections per session. The injections caused swellings the size of a grown man’s fist. Certain inmates received hundreds of these “inoculations.” Children were often injected in the gums, because Mengele wanted to speed up the reaction.

  The Germans experimented with sterilization in other camps too. Once victorious, they could ensure that they would never again be threatened by a new generation of an inferior race.

  Typhoid swept through the camp, then malaria. When Mengele realized Greeks and Italians were the carriers, he sent thousands of them to the gas chambers on the pretext of curbing the disease.

  Mengele’s experiments were of no scientific value, his actions were replete with contradictions. For instance, he would take every precaution during childbirth, only to send mother and newborn infant to the gas chamber.

  Helen had to stop reading, she simply could not take in any more. She checked her watch, and began to gather the books. One book she had not had time to read was a slim volume, written by an Auschwitz survivor; it chronicled the work and brutality of Josef Mengele, and Helen was about to put it back on the shelf when she saw the words “Angel of Death.” The nickname had been given to Mengele, she read, because he was always charming, smiling as he sent thousands to their deaths. Mengele wore white gloves, and his uniform was specially designed by expert tailors. He was exceptionally handsome, dark-eyed with high cheekbones.

  She stared at his photograph. It was very unnerving; Mengele had Louis’s haughty stare. But Mengele was a monster with no morals, no feelings; he sent babies to their death as easily as he sent men, women, even pregnant women. No one escaped him, except…twins, identical twins.

  Helen looked at her watch again, she could not stop reading. Mengele had one passion, the author wrote, an experiment that he pursued in the privacy of his deathly hospital. Telepathy. He wanted to discover the powers of human telepathy, and he focused his experimentation on identical twins. Twins of both genders were taken from their families and placed in a camp hut. They were well fed and, according to the author, treated kindly.

  Many desperate mothers pretended their children were twins, in a desperate attempt to “save” them, unaware of the sickening experiments that were awaiting those selected. Mengele personally inspected these children, and rewarded those guards who had “salvaged” twins from the gas chamber. Soon, guards would scream out at the tragic new arrivals, demanding whether there were any twins among them.

  Mengele became frantic if a twin died during his experiments; he would send the other to the gas chamber, but only after he had dissected and matched the internal organs of the dead with the living twin. He operated on these children, sometimes without anesthetic; he switched their organs. When both were still alive he would starve one and overfeed the other to watch their reactions. Eight thousand identical twins passed through the camps. Only seven hundred children survived.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Helen walked to the clinic, needing to breathe fresh air. But when she sat down with Franks in his office, she was close to tears.

  “I’m sorry, perhaps everything I have told you, you know already. It’s just—to see it written down in black and white, to read it, to know it happened, to read him described as ‘kindly’…it is beyond my conception of a human being…I’m sorry.”

  Franks gave Helen a steady stare, and in a soft quiet voice said: “People in the camps lived one day at a time. To live through each day…one needed such courage, such toughness, and perhaps most of all, luck. Anyone who collapsed physically would die fast, or was finished off by the Kapos, block seniors, and the SS men—all experts in brutality. The ones who remained alive were, as a rule, young. Some of the older men who survived became used to camp conditions, got by as best they could. It was always worst for the new arrivals, since they had no idea what a concentration camp meant. The key was to discover the art of staying alive, and it was an art, Helen, unless you were exceptionally lucky. The survivors were mostly men with no scruples, those men were able to advance rapidly inside the camp. The most important thing was to ensure your survival: You filled your stomach with stolen rations, you became cruel and ruthless; if not, the hopelessness of your position gave you only one alternative, to run at the electrified barbed wire fences.

  “Helen, I was one of those whom fate spared. But it was many, many years before I could come to terms with what I had been forced to become, simply to survive, many years before I was able to hold my head up high…”

  His eyes met Helen’s before he looked away, clasping the carved wooden arms on the old desk chair. “I think the worst thing is that we forget—Germany, every German, should carry the cross of what was done. But memories fade, scars heal; and today’s adolescents were not even born when this took place. This city, this country, is a monument to a savagery that still makes one weep with shame. But—life goes on…” He hesitated a moment, as if about to continue, then decided against it. He motioned to the newspapers on his desk.

  Franks told Helen the baron had brought them, they had spent time with Vebekka, and now he was gone for a bite to eat. He gave a half smile and a shrug of his solid shoulders. “He is very confused, guilty, I think, and perhaps frightened. Perhaps you would like to see her before we start, it’ll give me a few moments to get something to eat. Are you hungry?”

  She shook her head, picked up her purse. “I’ll see her, I’d like to.” She then reached over and touched his hand. Franks smiled.

  “We all have our secrets, Helen, but thankfully for me, they are no longer a nightmare, but a reality. Whatever is in Vebekka’s past must also become her reality.”

  It was a few moments after Helen had left the room before Dr. Franks looked to the old framed photograph on his desk of his parents and grandparents, his brothers and sisters. He was fourteen years old, it was his parents’ wedding anniversary. There he was, leaning against his mother’s chair, smiling to the camera and wearing plus fours, a hand-knitted sweater, and hand-knitted socks. He could remember their color, a mixture of brown and green wool. His shoes were dark, highly polished brown laceups. It was the only photograph that remained, just as he was the only member of the entire family who had survived.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Vebekka was dressed, sitting on the edge of her bed staring out of the window. She didn’t turn when Helen entered, but seemed to know it was her. “I’m glad you came, come and sit beside me.”

  She seemed very calm, very rational. “I asked Louis that if things don’t go well for me, I asked if he’d make sure I had some sleeping pills. Of course he won’t, he may think about it, but in the end he won’t be able to help me, so, I’m asking you.”

  “Please don’t ask me, I could not do that.”

  “I couldn’t bear to be locked up in a little room like this for the rest of my life…and I know that is a possibility. I know, Helen.”

  She got up from the bed and walked around the small white-walled room. “You know what is so awful? I never know when it will take me over…and now, I can’t stand it any longer, to see the fear in that sweet-faced Hilda, the same fear in my children’s eyes, I can’t tell you what that does to me, to know I’ve hurt them, but not to know what I have done.”

  Helen twirled her ring around her finger. “Do you remember what you did last night
?”

  Vebekka giggled. “Yes, I got very drunk, and I think I got screwed in a toilet, but that often happens to sane people, they get drunk and screw, don’t they?”

  Helen laughed softly. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Vebekka was working her way gradually toward the door, and was directly behind Helen. Helen suddenly felt wary; and spun around. Vebekka was leaning against the wall, her eyes to the ceiling.

  “I met this big fat woman, and she kept on calling me by somebody else’s name. It was strange, frightening, because I knew I didn’t know her, and yet I was sure I had been there before. Do you ever feel that way?”

  “You mean déjà vu?”

  “Yes, yes, that you are in a place that you have been to before.”

  Helen nodded, said she did sometimes, and Vebekka flopped onto the bed delightedly. “I feel it all the time!”

  She rolled onto her back, her arms spread out wide. “You know Louis loves me, he told me so, he’s like a child, like a schoolboy. I think he’s…he’s afraid, Helen.”

  She sat up and wrapped Helen in her arms. “Take care of him, please, and Sasha, look after my baby for me.”

  Helen hugged her tightly. “Now, don’t! You talk as if you were going away, but you’re not.”

  Vebekka rested her head on Helen’s shoulder. “I feel as if I am, Helen, I am so frightened, please don’t let him open the trunk, please tell him not to do that.”

  Before Helen could answer, Dr. Franks walked in. He bowed his head a little and gave Vebekka his arm.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Torsen waited for the director to come to the phone. He cleared his throat in preparation for his speech, but the rasping voice impatiently asked him what the hell he wanted; this was his holiday, the first he had taken since he had been married…whatever it was had better warrant the interruption of his lunch.

  Torsen began his labored explanation of the investigation into the murder of Tommy Kellerman, including the evidence he had gathered and his suspicions. At last he finished, turning to the last page of his copious notebook.

  “And that’s it?…Sounds as if it’s all supposition to me. The woman has an alibi, she has no motive. She’s an American citizen. You need more, you need an eyewitness, the one you’ve got says he saw a man not a woman, you’re going on a fucking imprint of a boot! That’s your main evidence, isn’t it? Have you got the boots? Do you know if they’re hers?”

  Torsen stuttered out that he required a search warrant to get the boots.

  “So you haven’t got the boots? As far as I can tell you’ve got fuck all—and you’ve seen too many American movies.”

  Torsen asked the director what his next move should be. He was instructed brusquely to wait. The director told him that the woman was not going anywhere, she was performing at the circus, so until he had more concrete evidence, he should wait.

  The director slammed the telephone down. Torsen was about to replace his extension when he heard the click from the switchboard, and knew the operator had been listening. He tore out of his office and stormed into her booth.

  “You were listening to a private call! Don’t ever do that!!”

  She made a great show of removing the wires and plugs.

  “I have a call for you, I was simply trying to put it through. This exchange is old, sir, and we need an extension buzzer…would you like me to place the call through to you now, sir? It’s the manager of the Grand Hotel.”

  Torsen snapped at her. “Tell him I am busy, and to call back.” He burst into his office, kicked the door shut, and swiped at his desk. His accumulated lists scattered, his notebook fell into the wastebasket, and his report sheets, neatly typed up for the director to inspect on his return, received the dregs of his morning coffee. “Shit!…Shit!”

  He sat in his chair, refusing to clean up the mess he had just created. He knew Ruda Kellerman was guilty of murder, knew it, and he should have taken the bloody boots…He opened his desk drawer, fished around for the free tickets. At least he had got something out of all the hours he had put in. Attached to the tickets was an advertising leaflet, a colored picture of Ruda Kellerman with the lions grouped behind her.

  Torsen stared hard at her face, and then grabbed his coat. It was a shot, a long shot, but if he could break Ruda Kellerman’s alibi for the night of the murder, then he knew he had enough to charge her, with or without the director’s approval. His one hope was that the bus driver who had described the woman passenger the night Kellerman died might recognize her from the leaflet.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The baron slipped into the viewing room, and Helen turned and smiled, patting the seat next to her. Through the glass they could see Vebekka lying on the sofa, eyes closed, a blanket covering her body.

  “Rebecca, I want you to tell me about your mother, the way she used to say lie down, lie down and talk to me, so you could feel calm. Do you remember that?”

  Franks waited. It had taken much longer this time to put her under, but now she was deeply hypnotized. He leaned forward a fraction. “Tell me about your mother, Rebecca, how she used to encourage you to—”

  She interrupted him. Her voice sounded strangely tired.

  “Yes, it was in the study, in Papa’s study, the big couch, he used to sleep on it, when he was working late.”

  Franks waited again, then coaxed her to continue. “What did she used to say to you?”

  “Close your eyes, listen to my voice…”

  “Do you know why she asked you to lie down?”

  “Yes, because of my nightmares.”

  “Did she get you up from your bed to talk to you?”

  “No, we called them my nightmares, but I would not be asleep, they happened during the day.”

  “Can you tell me about one, about what happened?”

  “Oh, Papa was playing his records, and…it started, I was very bad, I broke Mama’s china, all her precious china, every single piece. It was the music.”

  “What kind of music would make you break your Mama’s china?”

  “I remembered it.”

  “What music was it? Do you know the name?”

  “Wagner. He never played it again.”

  “Why do you think Wagner upset you so much?”

  She whispered conspiratorially, “Uncle played it all the time!”

  Franks looked to the glass, gave a shrug of his shoulders, and then remembered. “Your Uncle Ulrich?”

  “No, no…Uncle, Uncle! My papa, papa!”

  She tugged at the blanket, very distressed. Franks waited, and then gently told her to listen to her mama’s voice, to stay calm. She sighed deeply. Franks leaned forward and checked her pulse. “Can you hear me, Rebecca?”

  “Yes.” She sounded very distant, very quiet.

  “What did your mama mean when she said put her in the cupboard, and throw away the key?”

  “Me.”

  Franks asked if Rebecca was in the cupboard. She grew agitated again. “No, it was my other me.”

  “You mean the one who broke your mama’s china?”

  “Yes, put her in the cupboard, lock away the key, forget her, forget the bad Rebecca, she was a bad girl, she did bad things.”

  “Is Rebecca locked up, is Rebecca in the trunk with chains on?”

  She started to struggle. Again he told her to listen to her mama’s voice, to stay calm. Again she calmed down, and he checked her pulse. She was going deeper and deeper.

  “What is it in the trunk that frightens you so much?”

  Her face crumpled like a child’s as she started to cry; kindly he repeated his question again. She tossed and turned, and mumbled something that he didn’t understand. He asked again, and this time the pitch of her voice was higher.

  “My sister’s in there.”

  “Why is that so bad?”

  “Because I ate her.”

  “You hate your sister?”

  “No, no, I ate h
er.”

  She twisted her body, squirming, and then she began to sob, and her words tumbled out…She had eaten her sister, they told her she had eaten her, that was why she was fat, she had eaten her alive.

  Franks told her again to listen to the calming voice of her mama, and slowly she rested, her head leaning forward.

  “But you know that is impossible, people don’t eat each other.”

  Her voice was strong, it took him by surprise.

  “Hah! You don’t know, you don’t know…they stack the babies up, big piles of babies, and they put them in the ovens to eat them. Hah! See, you don’t know…!”

  “Did you see that, Rebecca?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this person, this person inside you, did she see that?”

  “Yes, we see it, we see it.”

  Franks looked to the two-way mirror, and gave a small shake of his head. “Does this person…”

  “Sister, she is my sister.”

  “Ah, yes, she is your sister?”

  “Yes!…Yes!”

  “And she is inside you because you think you have eaten her?”

  u Yes. Yes

  “Does she have a name?”

  u Yes…Yes!”

  “Will you tell me her name?”

  Vebekka’s face contorted with pain. “Ruda…”

  Franks looked toward the one-way glass. Both Helen and the baron stared back at him though Franks couldn’t see them. Helen jumped up and left the room. She called Maja, asking her to give a message to Franks. Maja asked her to write it down, and then she put her fingers to her lips and entered the study area.

  Helen returned to the viewroom and stared at the glass. Maja gave Dr. Franks the note. He looked to the glass and smiled.

  “Is Ruda your twin?”

  “Yes! Yes, Ruda and me, me and Ruda…!”

  “I see. I understand now, and Ruda is inside you?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  She tugged at the blanket, her brow furrowed.

  “What are you doing?…Rebecca? Can you hear my voice, tell me if you can hear my voice? Rebecca?”