The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  My silence was my answer. He placed me gently in his vehicle and I remember leaning back against the plush seat and smelling the comforting leather that reminded me of my father’s car and happier times.

  ‘You can’t sleep yet, promise me.’

  I don’t think I responded.

  ‘Katka!’

  I must have groaned.

  ‘Don’t sleep. Do you understand? You have a head wound and I need to look at it properly before I can let you sleep. Are you hearing me? Say yes!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, stay awake. It’s only up the road a little bit.’

  He hadn’t lied. We were at his villa before I could drift fully into sleep and then I was being picked up again and carried into a warm house. I heard a woman’s voice gasping and clucking and Otto’s voice joined it and it became background noise to me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to forget for a while. But they were rousing me, wanting me awake, if not alert. I tasted brandy, began to splutter, to cough a little, and my head cleared as heat traced its warm path down into my belly.

  ‘Sip more, Katerina.’

  I snapped my eyes awake and stared into the compassionate expression of Mrs Biskup, a widow from the village. I panicked but she shook her head kindly as if to say all would be well. ‘Let Dr Schäfer examine you.’

  There was no fight left in me anyway, not since the brandy hit the pit of my stomach. I just wanted to disappear into oblivion but I became compliant instead because I caught sight of my reflection in a mirror and couldn’t recognise myself, even though Mrs Biskup had. It was as though someone had tipped a bucket of blood over the top of me.

  ‘Head wounds,’ the doctor muttered. ‘Always a lot of blood,’ he continued. ‘Why did you lie about your name?’

  Mrs Biskup answered. ‘Wouldn’t you, in her shoes, if you were found by a German?’

  I watched his face twist into an expression of disappointment, as if he accepted her excuse but didn’t have to like it. ‘So there are two injuries here, Katerina. One looks like a trauma created by blunt force.’ He peered through rimless glasses using a magnifying glass and I could see the oblong was a handsome face, unpitted with neat, thickish eyebrows over darkly lashed eyes of a sad blue. I say sad because they looked like the colour of the sky on a wet and windy day … the sort of day that imprisons a child indoors when all they want to do is run wild and free. His hair was cut short but slightly longer on top, while his exposed ears sat neatly against the sides of his head. He was older than Mayek, younger than my father. In my state I couldn’t guess and I would get it wrong anyway; at fourteen most adults seem centuries older. His voice was as gentle as Mrs Biskup’s and I had to trust they meant me no immediate harm. She had known me since I was a baby in my mother’s arms. Surely she wouldn’t help to entrap me, send me back to that grave to lie on top of my sisters and parents?

  ‘Mmm,’ he grunted. ‘There’s grit in here. Did you hit your head? On a stone, a rock, a tree perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I murmured. ‘I was unconscious for a while,’ I managed to mumble, sticking cautiously to German.

  ‘Yes, that’s what troubles me. I’m just going to run some simple vision tests. Do your best.’ It took a few minutes while he made me follow his finger, peering into my eyes, shining a small torch into my pupils. I smelled liquor on his breath but not so much that I imagined him intoxicated. He’d obviously been on his way home from being out for dinner or with friends. ‘Good,’ he finally said, more to himself than to me. ‘That’s a relief. You’ll have a small scar, I suspect, but it will heal on its own once we clean it properly. Now, this other one,’ he continued, moving to peer over the top of my head. ‘This is still bleeding heavily, and I think I shall have to stitch it.’ He knelt before me so he could look me in the eye. ‘What occurred this evening, Katerina?’

  The brandy had woken me sufficiently that I could think and I hesitated as I considered my options; I flicked a glance to Mrs Biskup as I wasn’t sure of my best course. Would honesty get me flung into Terezín? I thought in a heartbeat that I’d rather die now by an overdose of the doctor’s drugs than face Ruda Mayek again in his new role.

  ‘Katerina is from Prague,’ she said into the awkward silence. ‘Her family – a very good one – has a villa not too far from here.’

  ‘I see. Well, that’s good news, then. We should contact them; they’ll be worried, surely? But I’m trying to understand how this injury was achieved.’ He looked between us both, neither of us offering more. His puzzlement at our silence became a frown. ‘Am I missing something?’

  Mrs Biskup couldn’t know for sure but she was a villager and I imagined she could likely guess at who might be behind this. I suppose in the frame of mind I was in I no longer cared what happened other than not wanting to be handed back over to Rudy. I would take any measure to avoid that. ‘I am Jewish,’ I said, trying to sound defiant again.

  His hands dropped away from holding my head but his confused expression within that sympathetic face didn’t change. ‘I didn’t ask your religion. I asked what happened. How did you get this odd wound?’

  I wanted to trust him. ‘From a bullet aimed at me as I tried to run away from some terrible men,’ I admitted.

  Mrs Biskup sucked back a breath of dismay for all of us.

  He blinked and I watched him swallow as he took this in. After another protracted pause, the doctor stood. ‘Mrs Biskup, please take our guest to the bathroom and allow her to bathe and help her to clean her hair, please. Be extremely gentle and use tepid, not warm, water on her head. Then I shall stitch when I can see the wound properly. Use a soft flannel to soak off the dried blood.’

  I reached for his hand, and the hair at his wrist felt downy, tender like his gaze that looked upon me. ‘Doctor, if you are going to contact the soldiers, I’d rather you ask Mrs Biskup to drown me in the bath. I won’t fight it. Perhaps give me something to make me sleep – permanently, I mean, and make it easier on all of us.’

  I could swear his eyes glistened with moisture but the lamp had been turned to highlight my head, so he was now in shadow. ‘Katerina, not all Germans are Nazi or even share its ideology. And most of us doctors, certainly the ones who were originally called to medicine as a vocation, don’t make a distinction between patients based on anything other than need. Go with Mrs Biskup. I am not about to tell anyone you’re here … not yet, anyway.’

  As she led me away, she whispered to me. ‘Is Ruda Mayek behind this?’

  I hated that I began to cry but it was answer enough.

  ‘He’s trying to make a name for himself, you know, catch the attention of the Nazis. Well, there’s no love lost with him, my dear, whereas both of my sons and their families owe their livelihood to your generous father. You can count on my silence.’

  I squeezed her hand, not ready to explain that my father was dead.

  ‘Now, you be still. Let me help you so the doctor can take proper care of you. He’s a good man, not like the others.’

  Guilt erupted at feeling soothed by the warmth of soapy water against my skin while visions of the twisted limbs of my sisters cooling pale in the grave were companions to that guilt. I sat in sullen silence while Mrs Biskup sponged away the obvious evidence of my trauma and I stood silent, like a child, while she dried me. I couldn’t climb into my shredded clothes so she brought a pair of the doctor’s pyjamas that engulfed me in soft brushed cotton, before I was led back out before him, cheeks glowing from the flannelling.

  I had already surmised that the doctor seemed to blink whenever he was disconcerted; I don’t know what troubled him in this moment but his sad gaze watched my every step towards him intensely.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Most young women would probably have to roll the cuffs up on my pyjamas.’

  ‘I used to hate being the tallest girl at school,’ I offered in a lame excuse.

  ‘And now?’ He briefly smiled.

  ‘Now I don’t go to school,’ I replied.

 
; He scratched his nose after blinking, looking embarrassed. ‘Right, well, come and sit down,’ he gestured.

  Mrs Biskup gave me a small push in the back to follow his instructions.

  ‘Do you feel a little better?’

  ‘On the outside,’ I admitted.

  ‘I couldn’t stop it bleeding,’ Mrs Biskup said.

  ‘Yes, let’s get that stopped with some sutures. Mrs Biskup, perhaps some coffee?’ He looked at me expectantly. ‘Are you hungry?’ I was but I shook my head. ‘I think some warmed milk for Katerina, please.’

  She left us to prepare a tray.

  ‘So, I’m going to stitch. It won’t be too painful because the scalp is forgiving. Will you permit me to do this without a fuss?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He moved behind me and tilted my head down slightly before shifting the lamp so he could see the wound clearly and I heard him make a clicking sound in his mouth. ‘Just a few millimetres deeper and you wouldn’t be here. You say you were running away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is like pulling teeth, Katerina. Will you please tell me what occurred?’

  ‘I don’t know that I want to recall it.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do. The fury of it is threatening to explode out of you. Tell me. Say it aloud; it might make you feel easier.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe I shall ever ease the memory of watching my family murdered, Dr Schäfer, but I shall tell you because Mrs Biskup has asked me to trust you and I have no one else that I can.’

  I could feel the prick of the needle pressing into my flesh and the tug of the thread a moment later but, as he’d warned, while it wasn’t exactly comfortable, it didn’t hurt, certainly not enough to squawk over. I began to talk as he stitched. Mrs Biskup walked in and put down a tray as I was telling Otto Schäfer about our old family friend closing the door of the hut and locking me in with him. I watched her lips purse at the mention of Ruda Mayek undoing his belt. She put a hand to her mouth in a gesture to prevent a sound of dismay.

  But I no longer cared about how inappropriate my words were. I had nothing left to respect in my life, and my virginity, though I mourned how it had been stolen, had become the least of my concerns. Rudy was back in my mind, horribly real. ‘He bent me forwards over the table so he wouldn’t have to look me in the eye – my devil’s eye, he called it.’

  The doctor took my hand and I flinched. ‘Katerina —’

  ‘No, that’s only the start,’ I said, gulping back fresh tears. I couldn’t control the surge of memory now. It all came out; a detailed recount was relived and I could see the full horror of my story reflected in Otto Schäfer’s eyes and fallen expression when he had finished his ministrations and came around the chair to look at me.

  Mrs Biskup couldn’t watch me. She sat on the edge of a nearby armchair, seated sideways, wringing her hands in her lap, her eyes downcast.

  ‘He made me run but I think he always intended to kill me. This was a final bit of …’ I couldn’t find the right word.

  ‘Sport,’ Otto finished for me and his mouth twisted as though the word tasted ugly.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly how it was. It was a game. I was his toy. He could do whatever he liked. I think I knew even as I ran for my life that he didn’t intend to give me that chance. I wanted to stay, I really did. I wanted to lie down with my family and have a bullet in my head so my spirit could join theirs. But still I ran.’

  Otto was now crouched in front of me looking so wounded by the story unfolding for him that I curiously felt more pity for him than I did for myself. ‘So he took aim and the bullet he fired, I presume, created the wound I’ve just stitched?’

  I agreed. ‘I heard the laughter and the gunshot. I didn’t feel it but I suppose I must have hit my head as I fell,’ I said, touching the second wound, ‘because I remember nothing after that. I woke up in the grave, lying on the cooling bodies of my naked sisters, my parents beneath them, I suppose. The men must have thought I was dead.’

  Schäfer nodded. ‘The drama of the head wound would have saved you.’ He looked away in disgust. ‘Mrs Biskup, I’ll need you to take a look at Katerina in case there are wounds … er, elsewhere.’ He nodded at her. She nodded once back as the couched message was received but I didn’t follow their line of thought because I could hardly believe how matter-of-fact I had sounded in my retelling, but there was a hardening inside me. I might compare it to the withering of a rose: all those joyous petals, full of perfume and sunshine, falling away. What was left was the impervious hip with its hard, shiny case that enclosed all the goodness and the secrets of the rose within. In that moment I didn’t think anything could hurt me again and I was no longer scared of death in whichever manner it might come.

  ‘This is horrifying.’ Mrs Biskup stood; she looked traumatised and wouldn’t make eye contact. It was as though she were the victim. ‘This is happening all over.’

  Schäfer, in contrast, was able to look at me with a direct gaze. ‘I have no words that could possibly console you, other than to say you have my protection from here on. I want you to trust Mrs Biskup and let her check for any further wounds. Are you hurting elsewhere?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ I replied but I sounded vague.

  ‘I understand.’

  Mrs Biskup gave the thanks that I couldn’t. ‘Her father was one of the finest men you could hope to meet, Dr Schäfer. He had factories, he employed so many people and he was good to them – good to all of us in this village too. When the family was in residence during holidays they would often hold a summer picnic and invite all the village to come up to the gardens. We didn’t have to bring anything – although we enjoyed baking for it – and Mrs Kassowicz would put on a feast … do you remember that, Katerina?’

  I nodded. I really didn’t want to remember happy times.

  ‘I don’t need convincing, Mrs Biskup,’ he replied evenly. ‘What has happened to this young lady today is heinous. There are rules to war. My father was a proud German army officer, as was my grandfather, and I grew up understanding they both showed enormous respect for the protection of prisoners. The man who now leads Germany may have fought in the previous war but he doesn’t hold the same regard for the protocol of the military. Katerina, I want you to know that I’m ashamed tonight to be German.’ He reached to tilt my chin up so I was forced to meet his stare. ‘I give you my word, then, as a man … as a doctor … that I will let no further harm come to you while you’re under my protection. Will you trust me?’

  The sorrowful eyes that spoke of wintry days landed softly upon me in what I believed was genuine remorse. It was not his fault but it’s true I wanted to blame everyone who called themselves German. ‘Yes, but I do not want you going after Rudy Mayek.’

  ‘Rudy? You speak as though you know him.’

  ‘Since the day I was born. He is – was – a family friend. My parents regarded him with much affection.’ I forced down a sob. ‘My father probably thanked him for his compassion in killing us privately and not making us suffer the indignity and potential torture of one of the work camps.’

  ‘And you do not want me to officially report him? Why not?’ He sounded understandably shocked.

  ‘Because he boasted of having the ear of Reinhard Heydrich.’

  Otto’s brow furrowed with fresh concern and a dawning of understanding.

  ‘Rudy is going to Terezín shortly, or so he brags. He will have a senior position there and I think he’d love to know I’m still alive and potentially within his grasp again. I’m imagining that at Terezín he won’t even have to cover up his shame.’

  Mrs Biskup tutted as she poured the coffee.

  ‘Put another nip of cognac into Katerina’s milk. She needs a long, deep sleep tonight.’ He could see in my alarm that sleep frightened me. ‘No one is coming here. No one knows you are here and by tomorrow morning I promise I shall have a plan for you. Mrs Biskup?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor?’

  ‘This is our secret. Can I cou
nt on you?’

  She put a hand over her heart with an expression of dismay that he’d have to ask such a question. ‘No one will ever hear a word of Katerina’s presence in this house or that I even sighted her … not from these lips.’

  ‘There, Katerina. Now you have two friends to trust. Take your milk and go to bed. I’ll see you when you wake. You’re going to have an aching head tomorrow.’

  Mrs Biskup tipped another slug of liquor into my milk, disturbing the wrinkled skin that had formed on its surface while we were speaking. I tasted its fumes as they rose on the steam and the smell of cognac would forever remind me of Otto Schäfer … the first and only German I would ever count on since the start of the war.

  Daniel could see he had worn her out.

  ‘Enough, Katerina. You must be exhausted.’

  ‘Not particularly; just relieved to have brought that all out into the open.’

  He looked out onto the streets, busy again because the rain had subsided. ‘I’m going to put you in a taxi. No arguing. Will you meet me again?’

  She looked at him. ‘Not tomorrow. Perhaps the day after.’

  ‘Then how about joining me for lunch next time we meet?’

  ‘All right. Where?’

  ‘Will you let me cook for you?’

  ‘Your apartment?’

  ‘With Madame Bouchard nearby, of course.’

  She gave her smoky laugh.

  ‘Friday? Shall we say noon?’

  She nodded. ‘That would be lovely. You go call a taxi. I’m going to pay the bill.’

  15

  He’d been staring out of his kitchen window since eleven-thirty. He knew her to be prompt but not early; his watchfulness was redundant. She would likely step out of a taxi or move into view at minutes before twelve … there was at least another eight or nine minutes before that time. He returned to his stove to stir the stew that had been on a gentle simmer since the morning. He’d cooked it the evening he’d last seen her, knowing it would only improve with age. This meal he’d prepared with much affection felt important; he wanted to impress, wanted to see her close her eyes and smile for him when she tasted it.