She jerked back around and rolled over.
Erik said nothing but flipped over on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Things had gone about as he had expected. His father and mother shocked and sad but understanding. Corina angry, blaming him, demanding that he fix their future. Maybe she was right, he thought. Maybe he was weak. Karl had said the same. Look at Sauer: ruthless, single-minded, he never let petty things like morals get in the way. He’d risen all the way to the top. A lieutenant colonel now with a future. If there was a future. Karl was the same—same morals, same future.
Erik hadn’t grown up that way. His father and mother had ingrained right and wrong in him from the time he could understand them. You didn’t prey on the weak. You didn’t torture and kill people. Hitler had come along and challenged all their beliefs.
The Führer had conquered half the world. Erik thought they were going to lose, but he didn’t know that for sure. He’d been wrong about so many things. He’d brought near ruin on his family. He knew he had no more chances left, that everyone would be watching him in his new assignment. He would not be coming in as a hero, as an officer. He was a marked man who would have to do what he was told or risk losing everything. He lay there for hours in the darkness, unable to sleep, his thoughts a cauldron of boiling turmoil.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Soldau
March 1943
Trude was awakened harshly by the clanging of metal on metal. She opened her eyes, blinking warily in surprise. What was going on? Then she remembered. She was inside the camp. Gunther had made good on his promise. She was in hell.
They’d taken her from Gunther’s office to the barber, where her beautiful hair was shorn off roughly. She remembered the ripping, the pain. It felt like they were tearing each strand out by the roots. They tore her clothes off until she was naked. The men stared at her, leering and mocking her. She was forced into an icy shower and then doused with a stinging powder. They shoved clothing into her hands. She was still blinded by the powder, but she fumbled through the material, dressing in the ill-fitting, coarse pajamas. She slid on thin slippers that she knew would do nothing to protect her feet against the frozen snow and the cold.
When they were finished dressing her, they dragged her out of the administrative building and into the camp. She was pushed into a barracks not far away. A woman was there, dressed in a striped uniform, another Jew. She was middle-aged and she stared skeptically, perhaps angrily, at Trude as she was brought in. A guard stepped forward and whispered to her in hushed tones, jerking his thumb back at Trude. The woman’s face hardened into stone. The guard turned, smiled at Trude one last time, and the SS men left. Trude was disoriented and afraid. She looked around, trying to get her bearings. The middle-aged woman stepped over to her, moving in close, too close. Trude could smell her hot, fetid breath. She smiled and Trude saw she was missing many teeth. The grin of a malevolent clown.
“Well, what do we have here?” she asked. “The guard tells me you’re Gunther’s special toy but that you’ve been a bad little girl.” She shook her head. “Tsk, tsk. We can’t have any of that around here. Well, that’s where I come in. You’ve been naughty, and it’s time for your punishment, correct?”
Trude shook her head. “That’s not true. Well, it’s partially so. He’s been after me for years. I only . . .”
The woman stepped forward and struck her hard across the face. Trude’s head snapped back and she reeled in surprise. She felt the metallic, bitter bite of blood flowing in her mouth. The pain was stinging in the cold. She was in shock. She’d never been hit before, not even by her parents.
“Shut up, you little slut,” said the woman. “My name is Frau Dauch.” She stepped forward again, standing a hair’s breadth away. “This is my barracks day and night. I run the show.” She looked Trude up and down with disgust, shaking her head. “To think I don’t have enough problems already without getting a piece of Jewish tart dropped on me. A stupid one at that. You think you can tell the Kommandant what to do?” She grabbed Trude roughly by the front of the shirt. “You listen to me. You’re going to play the game for the next couple days. You’re going to work hard and keep your mouth shut. You’re going to suffer with the rest of us, and when we’re done you will go back to Gunther. You will do whatever he says. Otherwise we will all suffer, and if that’s the case I’ll take care of you myself. A knife in the night and no one will be the wiser. Sure, Gunther will be upset, but not for long. All these Germans seem to have a taste for Jewish skirt, but it’s not love. That’s what you better learn very quickly. Forget about the stories they told you about right and wrong. Your life and all our lives are at stake. You do what you’re told with a smile, or you’ll be dead before you know it.”
“I have a daughter,” said Trude.
“What?” asked Frau Dauch.
“It’s not as easy as you say. My daughter’s here. Gunther has her and he’s threatening her, too.”
She looked at Trude in disbelief. “Do you think I care? Do you think anybody here does? I had two children, girls twelve and ten. We were all taken together along with my husband. I was pulled off the train here, they weren’t. They’re gone. They’re dead. Most of the women here are in the same boat. Everyone’s dead but us. We’ve all lost everything and everyone.” She pushed Trude backward, letting go and pointing a finger. “You keep your mouth shut about your little girl. If you care about her at all, you do what you need to and survive. Now go find a bunk. You’re in luck. We had a few fatalities today, so you have plenty of choices.”
Trude made her way down the long corridor between the bunks. A few women stared out at her in curiosity, anger, surprise, every possible emotion. She knew that word would travel quickly among these women. She would be hated, pegged as a favorite of the Nazis. A pariah among the prisoners. She wanted to scream. How on earth could she be put into that position after all she had been through and everything she had done to defy them? She found an empty bunk and pulled herself up to lie down on the hard, dirty wood. The stench was unbearable: sweat, sickness, and fear. She didn’t know if she could stand it. As she lay there she could feel her skin crawling. She realized to her horror the beds were teeming with lice. She pulled one off, trying to crush the insect in her fingers. The woman next to her cackled.
“No sense in trying that, sweetie. Soon you’ll have thousands. They’ll eat you alive. Best to make friends with them.” The woman let her head back down, giggling to herself.
Trude did not respond. She lay there twisting in itchy misery, staring at the ceiling. Soon the lights were turned off and she was in the darkness with the coughing, the moaning, the tears.
What was she to do? She had to put up with the suffering. She knew there was very little chance, but if Gunther somehow relented, she could send her daughter away to safety. There was nothing here in the camp. She knew what the ending would be no matter what promises Gunther made for her safety. She spent the agonizing evening twisting and turning, catching the briefest snippets of sleep before the morning came. Everyone scrambled as best they could in their emaciated, weakened state to pull themselves out of the terrible torture chambers and hobble out into the snow and the cold to line up for roll call.
They stood there shivering. It was still dark out. The guards and the capos (the camp name for prisoners who assisted the guards) walked among them, counting, tallying. They stood for more than an hour. Trude wondered how early it was. She was freezing. Her body shook from the cold. A woman fell to the snow, then another. Nobody helped them or even looked their way.
Finally, they were dismissed, each person rushing back into the barracks. Trude followed behind them, wondering what was next. She lingered near the back of the crowd, pressing to get through the barrack doors. When she finally was inside, she realized her mistake. In the center of the room was a wood-burning stove. Apparently during roll call, someone had cooked some soup and brought in a few tiny loaves of bread. Now the women fought each other, tearing at e
ach other and the bread, stuffing the crumbs into their mouths and slurping up the soup. By the time she could get to the front there was nothing left to eat. Frau Dauch spun Trude around, laughing at her, her voice dripping with mockery.
“Look at you, so strong but hanging in the back with skeletons. You won’t last long like that. You’d better learn to fight your way to the front, or you’ll be weak as a chicken before the month is out.” She reached out, pointing to a couple of wretched forms lying in the bunks, still. They hadn’t even made it out to roll call. “Some of these ducklings won’t survive the day. But don’t you worry about that just yet. I wager Gunther won’t let that happen to you. He has other plans.” She laughed to herself, shaking her head back and forth and holding her sides. “But until then, I’ve been ordered to show you the ropes around here. Come with me.”
Frau Dauch led Trude out into the snow. Her feet were already frozen and sopping wet. Each step was a slippery agony. Trude was led through the barracks and out into a field toward the forest. The other prisoners were coming out in groups, each led by a woman wearing the same special markings of a capo. “I have a special job for you,” said Frau Dauch, guiding her into the forest. She reached a crumbling building in a clearing. The building looked like it had been hit by bombs, perhaps during the Polish war. There were bricks everywhere, many broken, but others intact. A long line of women stood with wheelbarrows, clinging in clear exhaustion, even so early in the morning. Other women laboriously picked up the bricks with great effort and shuffled over to drop them into the carts. When they were full, the women turned and started pushing the heavy wheelbarrows back down the pathway and through the forest toward the camp.
“We are constructing some new buildings,” explained Frau Dauch. “We don’t have enough bricks from this building, but it’s a start. Now listen here, you will run one of the wheelbarrows. You will help the other women load it up, and then when it’s full, you will bring it back to the camp. You better move quickly,” she said. “Everyone knows about you. There will be eyes on you in every direction. If you stop or if you drop your load, you’ll be beaten, or perhaps worse.”
Trude, terrified, nodded in response. Frau Dauch moved away, and soon Trude was among the women, lifting the bricks and placing them in the wheelbarrow, one after another. At first the work was relatively easy, but soon her back was throbbing, and her arms shook with weakness. The worst part was pushing the wheelbarrow itself. The tires were aged and flattened so that the wheel rumbled along through the rubber, stalling behind each twig and pebble of the pathway. The cart was so heavy she could almost not push it. Her arms trembled. Where before she had been frozen, now she was roasting. Her body shook and sweat trickled down her forehead and neck.
Finally, she made it back to the camp. Trude pushed the wheelbarrow over at the location designated, piling up the bricks with so many others. She wanted to take her time on the way back to the forest, but guards shouted for her to move faster. She was so exhausted after a single trip she did not know if she would be able to take another. The sky was just beginning to lighten. She was desperate. The day had barely started and she felt she couldn’t take another step. There was no way she could do this until evening.
She willed herself to continue, starting the pattern again: first one brick, then another, then the terrible crucible of pushing the burden back to the camp. Over and over and over she repeated the cycle. She was dizzy. Her vision blurred. Her body shook. She alternated between freezing cold and stifling heat at the various steps of her journey. All she could see was the snow and the gray feet around her. She heard the screams of the guards at the edges of her nightmare, a reality that threatened her sanity.
She heard a sharp report. Trude saw, out of the corner of her eye, a body crash to the snow in a scarlet pool. She was stunned. A guard had shot a woman right there in front of her. The inmates nearby moved on, increasing their pace, struggling to remain anonymous, she realized. Nobody wanted to attract the special attention of the Germans, who were quick to beat and kill.
On and on the day went. Trude thought she would die, but somehow she kept moving. She no longer felt her feet or legs. Her arms were one throbbing mass of pain. And then it was over. More screams and shouting, and they were herded back to the camp. The capos lined them up again in the snow. They stood at agonizing attention, a near impossibility after the backbreaking day of labor.
Another torturous hour of roll call. She could barely stand, but at least she was not bending over picking up the bricks or carrying that wretched cart. When the guards shouted for them to return to their barracks, she was ready. This time she sprinted as best she could, elbowing several women out of her way. She was at the front of the line and reached the soup and bread at the center of the barracks first. She helped herself to a bowl of the watery liquid and a full loaf of bread. She stepped away and glared at the women coming after her, growling at one who came too close, ensuring that nobody tried to take what was hers. She chewed as quickly as she could, gulping down the soup and stuffing the chunks of bread into her mouth before anyone came after her. In one day, she realized, they’d made an animal out of her. She didn’t care. She was still alive, and she’d had something to eat. She could rest, if only for a little while. Before the torment began again.
The next night of sleep was even more impossible than the last. Her muscles were knotted with pain. She was so exhausted she couldn’t sleep. Her moans joined the symphony of coughing and crying. Only the smell had lessened. Probably, she realized, her own odor had joined the rest. Hour after horrid hour she tossed and turned until she eventually gave up even trying to sleep. In the morning, the frozen roll call was repeated, along with the battle for a little food.
After breakfast, however, she was abruptly marched away by guards and was returned not to the forest but to the now-familiar red brick administrative building. She realized with relief her ordeal was over. At least one aspect of it. She was brought into Gunther’s office and shoved into the familiar seat across from his desk. He was not there yet, and she sat listlessly for an hour before he arrived.
When he walked through the door and glanced in her direction, his whole body jerked in surprise. She saw his cheeks fill with a fiery red. “What the hell did they do to you?” he demanded. He screamed and the guards appeared again. They stood at attention, their eyes wide. Gunther paced back and forth in front of them, apparently too angry even to speak at first.
“Who authorized her hair to be cut?” he screamed. One of the guards stammered, managing to spit out a few words, but Gunther had no interest in the explanation. “Get out of here now!” he shouted. “I will deal with you later. Bring her hot food immediately.” He turned with concern to Trude, his eyes softening. “I’m so sorry, my dear,” he said, taking a couple of steps toward her. “That was not supposed to happen to you.” He extended a hand, and she flinched as his fingers ran along her scalp, lingering on her temple.
“My daughter,” said Trude. “Is she safe?”
Gunther snorted, obviously taken aback. “What do you take me for, a monster? Of course she’s fine. She didn’t share your punishment, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“My punishment. How did I deserve that?”
He threw his arms up in exasperation. “Don’t blame me, my dear. This was your choice. I told you there’s a world out there that you cannot imagine. That I’ve done everything to protect you and your daughter from that.”
“For your own selfish reasons,” she said.
“Nothing for nothing in this world, my dear.” He chuckled. “Look at you, still defiant. A whole day spent at death’s door and still you want to argue with me.” He reached out, pulling her head up toward him by the chin. “That’s my girl,” he whispered, beaming proudly at her.
Gratefully, the door opened just then, and a guard brought in a tray overloaded with food. Trude’s stomach rumbled, the rich, overwhelming smell of sausages and hotcakes assailing her senses. Her stomach alm
ost jumped out of her throat as the guards set the tray down on the desk. He bowed and quickly left the room.
He turned to Trude. “Eat, eat,” he said, motioning to the food. She wanted to stuff the food into her mouth more than she’d ever wanted anything, but she hung back, clinging desperately to her final hope.
“I won’t eat anything until we’ve talked.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but she held herself back for a few moments, praying for a miracle.
“What do you mean?” he said, his voice full or surprise.
“I still need your agreement.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t send you back out there again. You’ve learned your lesson, I’m sure.”
“I have. And I know you will protect me from all of that. But I still need you to let Britta go.”
He was incredulous. The words stammered out of his mouth as he responded. “Are you seriously asking that?” he asked. “You have to be joking. After everything you saw, you still think you can bargain with me?” She heard the hint of steel in his voice. She was angering him now. She had to be careful. There was no telling what he was capable of if she pushed him too far.
She turned her head slowly and raised her eyes, ignoring the pain, the intense, burning flavor of the food so close. “That’s all I’m asking. Just for Britta. You can have me. All of me. Everything you want.”
Gunther stared at her for a moment and then shook his head. He reached down, picking up a sausage. He put it to his lips and took a bite. He watched her carefully.
Her hands shook. She could feel her mouth filling with water. The smell overpowered her.
“Are you sure you don’t want one of these?” he asked. “Come on, my dear, let’s quit playing this game.” His voice was kind, gentle, pleading. “You know I can’t let your daughter go. Just remember, I protected her for more than a year. No harm will befall her. I have everything here for you, for both of you.” He grabbed her hands, holding them tightly with his. “I have the keys to the kingdom. Clothes, food, protection, safety. All you have to do is say yes. You can have a life here. You’ll be able to read and play. You can teach your daughter.” He let go and raised his hands as if in surrender. “Good Gott,” he said, “I’ll even get you a violin. You can play for her, for me. We will be our own little family right here. But no.” He shook his head. “I can’t let her go.”
A Bitter Rain Page 29