The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  On a signal the men took aim and I don’t even know what Rudy said. I was staring at my father. My father was staring back at me – his expression a ruin of apology. I heard gunfire – it seemed to last forever but it was likely not more than three seconds of repeated blasting and I watched my family collapse beneath the ripping of bullets that tore through their fragile flesh. It was my mother who toppled last and I hoped in that horrible vision of blood exploding from her torso that she went to her death without even the vaguest clue of what was occurring. I couldn’t say the same for the rest of my family. One of the men strolled over and, turning on a torch, checked the bodies and chose to fire another single bullet from a pistol into one of my beloveds. I couldn’t know which.

  Fresh fluid ran down my legs; the vague waft of ammonia erupted as I let out a single sob that seemed to come up from my toes where the steaming liquid gathered.

  ‘Oh, Katka, it’s done now. No more fear,’ the monster said as though genuinely pitying me as my bladder emptied without my permission. ‘I want to give you a chance.’

  I looked at him in fresh despair but he didn’t give me an opportunity for discussion.

  ‘Run,’ he said.

  I couldn’t move, frowning with incomprehension. I watched him unlock his pistol from its holster and I heard the click of what I presumed was him arming it to fire.

  ‘I said run!’

  I ran. I didn’t want to, I wanted to join my family, but there was fear and indecision and in that terror I couldn’t trust that Rudy wouldn’t rape me again or make me a plaything – a reward for the men who did his dirty work. Instinct drove me. I was fleet and couldn’t imagine where my strength to move so fast had come from. I could hear his laughter through the trees; it carried his derision through the canopy that formed a perfect tunnel. ‘I’m a deadeye shot, Katka,’ he called from well behind me. ‘And quite good in the dark.’

  The sound of the gunshot seemed to come after I was felled. It was as though something unseen tripped me. I heard distant laughter from all of them and then I was drowning, being sucked into a place of no light or sound.

  Katerina let go of the memory of the smell of the forest and returned to the present and the pungent flavour of aniseed. She’d barely touched her pastis but the strong taste of her first sip remained. Daniel was not meeting her broken gaze and she could understand.

  ‘I’m sorry’ was all she could think of to say.

  ‘For what?’ He finally looked up from the depths of his drink.

  ‘For making my hideous memories part of yours now. I have come to accept that my story is merely one sad tale amongst a sea of sorrow. And I’m not just talking about the Jews.’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Katerina, I don’t have the right words to express how deeply affected and horrified I am.’

  ‘I don’t expect anyone to, which is why I haven’t spoken about it to others.’

  He covered her hand lightly with his. ‘Whilst the loss may not be comparable, I do understand the impotent rage of feeling powerless against him.’

  Katerina nodded. ‘And why I have, until now, locked him away in my mind. I have to carry on in this world and I can’t let the memories send me insane.’

  ‘They won’t. The next part to tell is how you defied the monster and survived. You will share that, won’t you?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Just give me a moment,’ he said.

  He left her to her thoughts as the rain intensified, battering against the chilly window. There was no point in heading outside yet. She figured she should finish her story and then make a decision about returning to London.

  Daniel was back with a hesitant smile, a small array of tarts and a three-inch square of opera cake. ‘I’ve had them placed on one plate because I know you would leave yours untouched, but this way you can pretend it’s only me eating.’ He handed her the second pastry fork and looked surprised but pleased when she accepted it.

  ‘You should know my other weakness, other than a syrupy sherry, is opera cake.’

  ‘You are playing with me!’

  ‘No.’ She dredged up a smile. ‘Distracting myself.’ She sighed and cut off a neat corner of the small square of cake. ‘There is debate about who invented this squat tower of deliciousness.’

  She was relieved Daniel was smart enough to let her have this break, happy to let her discuss something mindless. ‘I thought it was a Parisian patisserie that was located near the Opera House.’

  ‘And you could be forgiven for thinking that,’ she said, cutting off a small triangle of the treat with its several thin layers of almond cake, coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache. ‘But the Dalloyau brothers, who served Louis XIV and were ennobled through their gastronomic delights that so pleased His Majesty, would argue that it was their work that inspired its invention many generations later by one of their clever and creative staff. Monsieur Cyriaque Gavillon first trialled his layer cake at the Dalloyau salon on rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré about eight years ago. It is said his wife named it “Opéra” to celebrate the Palais Garnier. The idea behind it was that just one bite gives you the entire range of flavours for the whole cake.’ She put the morsel balanced on her fork into her mouth and gave a sound of genuine pleasure. ‘This is a good version of it.’

  ‘Eat up, then. It will cheer you in this moment but what will cheer me is learning how you escaped the forest.’

  She nodded as she chewed.

  14

  I blinked into consciousness but again my animal survival skills warned me to take stock of my situation first. I was alive; that didn’t make sense to me, but it was the truth and I needed to accept that I wasn’t dreaming. I was prone and cold down my back plus I was aching in many places but none I could pinpoint. I tried to make sense of where I was and realised I was lying on something uneven but my underside felt warmed. I could taste dirt, and grit was in my eyes … no, grit was all around. I was buried but with a small air pocket to breathe and I fought the immediate panic.

  Stay still, be silent! I repeated in my mind. The horror flooded back, not gradually but in one terrible blitz of images of bullets and blood … and of death, including mine, I thought. Rudy’s bullet had found me, I was sure of it, so it must have only wounded me even though I fell. Perhaps I had hit my head or blacked out. What I did decide in this ghastly heartbeat of understanding is that I was lying atop the cooling body of one of my family members. As that dawning ripped through my blurry thoughts like a lightning arc across a night sky, I had to use all of my will to stop myself screaming. I could taste hair now. My mouth was over the head of one of my sisters, I didn’t know which. It didn’t matter … my family were a pile of corpses now beneath me in the pit I’d seen and I was amongst them. And as I was flung here so carelessly it surely meant that Rudy and his death squad had believed me dead as well. They’d obviously found my lifeless body and hurled it atop the rest and covered us with earth, presuming the forest would keep us hidden until the ground froze us and dealt with us in its own way.

  Was it then in that moment that I decided to fight … to survive? It’s hard to counter instinct; my mind told me to accept it and lie there and wait for death. The freezing temperature of night would immobilise me soon enough but the animal in me overrode my inclination. And with the stealth of a cat I moved in the smallest of increments, using just my fingertips to scrabble through the still-loose soil and reach towards the surface. He had promised a deep grave but he hadn’t kept that promise; I felt the breath of surface air within moments. Rudy had been sloppy, cocksure that no one would know we were there. He was likely right.

  I created a makeshift breathing hole and despite swallowing soil and insects I was able to take a clear, shallow, silent breath of the night air. And then I remained still. I don’t know for how long. I felt like I aged in that time span but the whole of it I spent listening. I strained every muscle, gave every ounce of my remaining energy and alertness to my ears. I knew the sou
nds of the forest – I knew the call of night birds, the rustle of small animals – but I was listening for the heavier, two-legged animals with guns. Not a cough, not a murmur, not a sigh, not a snore. There was no movement that I could pinpoint as being made by men.

  And that’s when I allowed the pain to arrive properly. I didn’t want to unleash the scream that was gathering so I kept my eyes closed and allowed it to come, but instead of the terrified shriek I’d anticipated, it found its way out as a long, injured growl of pain. I let it rage. I tipped back my head and I howled into the night. I was like a lone wolf but I was not calling for help or friendship … or a mate. I was mourning; my pack was dead. I wished I was dead with them. When no more sound would come, I lay there and wept: deep sobs that shuddered through me, shaking my body atop the others, reminding me of physical pain elsewhere.

  And then, when even that anguish had subsided, came the silent despair. How long I lay still, buried there with a numb mind to match my cooling limbs, I don’t know. At some point rationality crept up on me and I felt like it was speaking in my father’s voice. ‘Move!’ it urged. ‘Get away from here!’

  I didn’t want to leave but I knew I had to. I had been spared for a reason, the voice pressed in my mind.

  As far as I could tell, we were still deep into the night and I didn’t imagine the grave had any light pointed its way. I went back through the hours of torment and recalled there had been no bright moonlight when Rudy took me into that hut and when I’d emerged we’d relied on the single lumen of a candle. The men hadn’t even taken the cigarettes from their mouths in the span of time it took to kill my family.

  I shifted the earth until I could feel a soft gust of air upon my face. With the patience of a hunter advancing on nervous prey, I began to shift my position. Every movement was calculated, performed, held still for another long minute until I managed to raise myself onto an elbow, the point of it digging into the flesh of one of my baby girls. I had to fight hard to prevent a fresh sob escaping, reminding myself she couldn’t feel it; her spirit had flown and was safe now. She no longer feared life. I was breathing noisily with the effort of simply caging my emotions and perhaps it was in that second of carefully lifting my head to look over the edge of the grave that I decided I would live for her; I would live for all of them. I would defy the Nazi regime and I would survive it.

  I scanned the surrounding forest. There was no sign that a slaughter had taken place – nothing to suggest that anyone had been here except this pit where a mother, a father and their daughters lay. It took me another half an hour, perhaps – I couldn’t judge – to finally move sufficiently to lift myself out of the grave and stand at its edge. I felt broken, like a wooden puppet cast aside. I didn’t know what to do or how to make the next step – in what direction, to whom … and why to even bother. All I knew was that I was alone.

  I sat on the edge of the grave, glad that it was too dark to make out any shapes below. Time passed in a blankness where none of the subtle sounds of the night forest had any impact on me. It was a void of indecision and blind despair.

  Once again the voice of my father broke through, or whichever angel it was that impersonated him. It urged me to stand, to mark the grave where those I loved cooled and then to leave them … to find safety for the night. It forced me to move my numb limbs and to come back to the present, to accept my situation and think for myself.

  ‘What other choice do you have?’ the voice asked. It was a reasonable question and the alternative was too heinous to contemplate. I wouldn’t even know how to kill myself in that moment.

  And so I moved. Arms and legs obeyed me. I found a stick, tore off some of my already ripped frock and tied the fabric around that stick. It would be too obvious to ram it into the ground as a marker, in case Rudy came back. So I took more time, scraping my knees and arms using the skills he’d taught me to climb a nearby tree. I slithered along a sturdy branch, begging it to hold, and then with the help of leaves and some creeping ivy I tied that marker overhead, pointing directly at the pit.

  I knew roughly where we were in the woodland surrounding our villa and one day I would come back and claim my family. I couldn’t even keep a vigil for them so their spirits could leave safely. But I would make it right one day. There was the temptation to take cover in the nearby hut but nothing could make me crawl back into that place of torture; besides, all I could think of was getting to the villa – reaching home, a safe place to think.

  Not risking the path but skirting it, using trees for cover, I picked my way back over the journey we had taken. It wasn’t hard to follow as it was mostly in a straightish line that took me from forest onto a track that became a path and ultimately a road. It took me an hour in my estimation, moving slowly but steadily, pushing the physical pain aside to somewhere else. I registered it but I refused to capitulate by using only willpower, I’m sure, plus the charge of vengeance through my body. Finally, I could pick out the shape of our villa, and while there was fleeting relief, it was chased away by a fresh thrill of fear. There were lights on and momentarily I panicked and froze. Rationality returned; who else could it be but the one person I knew it had to be? It was that surety that gave me new courage because suddenly I no longer felt afraid. I had already faced death; believed I’d died. Now I felt only a need to survive and fight him another day. I climbed another tree – one I knew so well it was like an old friend – and from my vantage I watched Rudy moving around upstairs. He had used the key my father had meekly handed over so he could ransack the house. I imagined I could hear him through the silent night, opening drawers and cupboards, looking for money he knew would be there, as well as any valuables. He could have it all, but once again I hoped it would be a curse upon him and bring him no joy.

  In the light of my parents’ bedroom I saw him suddenly stand from where he’d presumably been crouching, looking under the bed and I saw him place a box on the chest of drawers. I knew from its shape what he’d discovered, and soon I saw the sinuous outline being lifted from their resting place to be admired. To my knowledge no one outside of our circle knew of the Ottoman Pearls, as my mother called them. She told me she’d worn them only once in her married life and warned I’d likely not find many occasions to wear them myself.

  ‘Perhaps on your wedding night, like the chosen odalisques of old,’ she had jested with a conspiratorial wink. ‘Remember, naked except for the Pearls,’ and then she’d laughed at my thunderstruck expression at hearing my mother make a sexual reference. I must have blushed too because she pinched my cheek. ‘Oh, my darling, when you’re first married and so in love, your clothes will be more off than on, anyway.’

  It was obvious he was entranced by his discovery. Rudy stared at them long enough for me to realise there was no point in me waiting there; I would likely die of cold or my wounds, whatever they were, if I didn’t get to somewhere warm and dry, with a chance to take stock. I had hoped to steal back into the villa to find clothes, perhaps rest for the night, hidden in the cellar, but I could see now that was a hopeless thought. Rudy was still admiring the Pearls that were now mine, I realised, as I carefully lowered myself to the near-frozen ground. Once I stood upon it, I refused to look back at the villa. This was my new life: heartbroken, damaged, bleeding and on the run.

  I couldn’t go back the way I’d come. There were only dead people I loved waiting for me there. I couldn’t go down the hill into the village, which was swarming with soldiers, and I couldn’t remain here. So I headed higher into the foothills. There were a few tiny hamlets I knew of. Perhaps I could steal into someone’s barn and at least have this night in safety to think everything through. Short of killing myself and ending it all, which I’d already decided was pointless, there was no option but to attempt to survive the night.

  And that’s what I think the angels wanted for me. Survival. I can’t imagine any other reason that Dr Otto Schäfer, a German, was pushed across my path that terrible night. I had been picking my way along the tree
line, breathing hard in the frigid dark as I struggled uphill, my face whipped by thin stray branches. My mind was still blanked out with shock but instinct forced me to put one foot in front of the other. At one point I realised the hillside was becoming dense with trees and I was going to hurt myself further so I risked crossing onto the road and being exposed. It wasn’t really more than a dirt track but I knew it from childhood. It led into the hamlets of scattered villas of wealthy folk, as we had once been. All around me it looked deserted and I became wearied, lost in my need to put distance between me and the slaughter of my family. I didn’t hear the purr of the car and it was only when the headlights picked me out in the black night that I startled like an animal and just as helplessly collapsed in the illumination. I was blinded by their eerie glow, like two huge eyes watching me, and resigned to the tall, smudgy shape that appeared from behind them to loom over me …

  ‘What on earth!’ said a voice in German.

  It was not Ruda Mayek. The last vestiges of instinct served me. ‘Help me, please?’ I said in his language.

  He let out a curse of despair and I was picked up, cradled in his arms. ‘I could have killed you!’ he admonished me.

  I didn’t reply but lay limp, staring into an oblong face.

  ‘What is your name?’

  I thought about lying but I didn’t have the strength. ‘Katka,’ I said, at least making a go at withholding the truth.

  ‘Katka, what has happened?’

  I shook my head and now the resilience fled and I wept.

  ‘Right,’ he said with a sigh. ‘We can work out the past later. For now, let’s worry about this moment. My name is Otto Schäfer. I am a physician and I am taking you to my villa. You have nothing to fear from me, Katka. Do you understand? I will not hurt you but you have wounds. There’s … there’s blood all over you, and now over me,’ he tutted. ‘I must see to your injuries and we’ll concern ourselves with everything else later. All right?’