The Road Between Us

by Nigel Farndale

  A second whistle slashes through the nothingness like a machete through powdery snow and the frantic activity begins: the vibrating of the hut as the men who are half-men half-ghosts make their beds, shake out their blankets, raise clouds of fetid dust. Anselm has to wait for the occupants of the two beds that lead to the aisle to move first before he can get out. The narrow wooden bunks have three tiers and are pushed tightly together. He sleeps on a middle bunk, three in. Shares it with a Frenchman whose name he does not know. Nor does he know what age the man is – his hair is white and thin and he could be twice as old as Anselm. All he knows is that they sleep head to feet, and the Frenchman’s feet smell ripe. Under the same blanket, the strangers exchange their flatulence and their sweat; the flat and sour odours of their bodies. Bony hips meet in the middle and fight for space, applying a progressive pressure at the base of the spine.

  Anselm gathers his bundle: a bowl and clogs wrapped in his jacket. He uses this as a pillow, for fear the possessions will otherwise be stolen in his sleep. After performing his ablutions, he endures the agony of putting his sore feet into the clogs. While still only half dressed, he limps outside into the dirty dawn and, as he joins the procession of the damned, breaks into a run. Some urinate as they move, to save time, because time can be a matter of life and death here. To be late means a beating, and the more beatings you receive the more likely you are to die. Each beating makes you slower, which makes you more likely to receive another beating.

  There has been rain in the night and the dust has turned to orange mud. Anselm stands with shoulders dropped, his hands dangling by his side, his neck rigid. He is shivering. The straw he has used to pad out his jacket is no protection from the cold this morning. The rags he has wrapped around his feet are not preventing them from aching either. They are too calloused, too raw, too swollen from chafing. He is as rotten as the rags and, with his emaciated limbs and distended belly he looks like he belongs to another species, something inhuman, something bestial.

  Under a sky pregnant with rain, he checks his wide collar is not raised and that his buttons – big ones, like a child’s – are properly done up. There must be five. Even one less will mean a beating. And now the Appell, roll call, begins. It will last for an hour, an hour of standing to attention that will seem like a day. Anselm has no watch. It was taken from him when he arrived and, with it, his last vestige of human identity. For the first few days he still looked at his bare wrist to check the time. Phantom watch. Phantom time.

  The guards, he has worked out, belong to the Totenkopf or Death’s Head division of the SS. The rankers wear a skull insignia on their caps, jackets and olive-green uniforms. The officers tend to wear the more traditional black uniforms of the SS: the long leather overcoats in winter, the black jodhpurs, the jackboots. They, too, have been stripped of their identity. It may explain why they are so efficient in the way they strip the prisoners of theirs.

  From the shaving of heads to the replacing of names with a tattooed number, the guards have been methodical. Ingenious even. Anselm recognizes this. As a German himself he ought to be able to relate to the Ordnungsliebe, the passion for order. Yet he is Dionysian chaos. He could never keep things tidy. Could never remember his appointments. Charles was Apollonian order. They used to joke about it. About being the wrong way round. He was Nijinsky performing en pointe for the lumbering benefit of Charles’s Diaghilev. Dear, uptight, English Charles. His Charles. His fire. His soul …

  No.

  He must not think of Charles. Such thoughts will sap his strength, his will. Yet his mind cannot help but picture Charles’s face, forming it feature by feature, like two or three ascending notes that build into a familiar symphony.

  As he shifts his weight from leg to leg, Anselm wonders what Charles would make of this place. Perhaps in his cerebral way he would compare it to a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Perhaps he would talk of Dante and the circles of hell. Perhaps he would say the sign over the gate should read ‘abandon hope, all ye who enter here’.

  Anselm accepts that God has no dominion in the camp, yet he still has hope and he still prays, not to God but to Charles. Charles will come and save him one day soon. Charles will descend into this underworld, this manmade hell. Charles will rescue him from his tormentors with their whips.

  When he had written to Charles to tell him about his sentence he had not known what an education camp was. That must have been a year and a half ago now. Did the letter ever reach him? And what could Charles do to help him now, even if it did? Anselm closes his eyes, draws air deep into his lungs and thinks: If you come for me, Charles, will you even recognize me any more?

  He tries to recall the song they had sung on the way home from seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the picture house, but it won’t come back to him.

  According to the strip on the chest of his striped jacket, Anselm is ‘Häftling 15567’, prisoner 15567. This number is also tattooed in bluish characters on the underside of his wrist, where his watch used to be. He has no name. No watch. No hair.

  But losing your identity can have its advantages. He is a Reichsdeutscher, an Aryan German, but he has no wish to advertise this here. Without his blond hair, Anselm looks less Germanic. If it weren’t for his height, he wouldn’t stand out at all. And it pays to be anonymous in this place. Anselm, indeed, has learned well the art of anonymity, of deflecting attention away from himself, of never making eye contact, of always keeping his posture unthreatening. He removes his cap whenever a guard is near. He never asks questions but instead replies ‘jawohl’, the one cold, hard German word he allows himself. Even the French prisoners must use it.

  Every now and then a guard will ask ‘Wer kann Deutsch?’ but Anselm never steps forward. He knows the guard will speak in German anyway and the French prisoners will have to work out what he is saying for themselves, or suffer the consequences. There have been occasions when he has been tempted to help them, translating for those who speak no German. But he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. You have to be selfish to survive here.

  If the guards know he is German they don’t care. He never speaks. All he does is listen. And he runs when he is expected to run. He shows his masters utter subservience. They are the Übermenschen, after all, he the ape. And what is the ape to man? A joke. A painful embarrassment. Anselm has read his Nietzsche, he used to read him with Charles, but the guards and the other prisoners do not need to know that. His secrets are his own. He knows he is an Übermensch, too. Part of this Nietzschean master race. Indeed he is more Aryan-looking than the strange little dark-haired, short-sighted, club-footed men who strut around the Reichstag. Better educated, too. What was Himmler? A farmer. Hitler? A corporal. Upon reflection, he thinks Goebbels might have a doctorate from somewhere. But still.

  As well as making himself invisible to the guards, Anselm has made himself so to his fellow prisoners. The first lesson in survival he learned in this place was not to make friends. If the guards notice you making friends, that makes you vulnerable. You can be killed with your friend, beaten with your friend, punished with your friend. If they suspect you of something, they will torture your friend until you confess.

  Besides, most of the prisoners are French, and if they knew he was German he would not last long.

  There are perhaps a dozen Untermenschen in the camp, distinguished by a red triangle over a yellow to form a Jewish star. But no more than that. Most of the five thousand or so inmates here have plain red triangles which signify that they are Nacht und Nebel, political prisoners who are made to disappear in the night and the fog. The F that comes before their prison number indicates they are French. Partisans. The Resistance.

  But some at this camp have pink triangles, three hundred or so. The SS are known to use these triangles for target practice. This is what Anselm has – what he is – a walking target with a pink triangle, a human being reduced to a single proclivity.

  He is also a survivor and part of his survival strategy is to t
une out the barks of the Alsatians, the metallic whistles, even the wet noises made by the whips as they slap the air. He has also trained himself to avoid thinking of happier times, because with those thoughts come tender feelings, and they are dangerous. They make you vulnerable.

  But even when he empties his mind, what he cannot ignore is his hunger. It is so chronic it leaves him delirious, imagining he is gnawing at himself from the inside out. He thinks about food at least once a minute and when, at dawn and dusk, the bread and the watery soup arrive, he tries to eat and drink slowly to savour them. But he cannot. Without pausing for breath, he holds the bread to his chin as he eats it, so as not to drop any crumbs, and he crams his mouth like a hog. Afterwards, he feels neither sated nor drowsy but more keenly aware of his hunger. Forget my sexual persuasion, he sometimes thinks, this is my essence here. A man reduced to an empty intestine.

  He has learned to time his arrival in the soup queue carefully. Those at the head get the most watery soup. Those towards the end get the soup that has chunks in it, potatoes or turnip, settled on the bottom of the vat. Once his bowl is drained, he scrapes the bottom of it repeatedly with his spoon, as if willing more to appear.

  His only relief from these obsessive thoughts of food is sleep, and this is disrupted by a soup-weakened bladder. His kidneys are no longer capable of filtering his blood efficiently and, without the relief of the bladder, his ankles swell with fluid. It means at least three visits every night to the piss bucket, and this in turn means having to climb over five prisoners – the Frenchman he shares his bunk with and the two pairs in the bunks on the way – and to run the gauntlet of their fists and curses. Last night he mistimed his visit and had to take the bucket outside into the cold air to empty it in the latrines. For that is the rule. He normally listens to hear how full the bucket is and makes sure he goes before it has filled to the top. Such are his little victories in this place of cruelty.

  II

  London

  AS CHARLES STRIDES DOWN THE STRAND, HE LOOKS LIKE A MAN who doesn’t spend much time in front of the mirror. The collar of his checked shirt is frayed and his tie is carelessly knotted. His trilby looks as if it has been lifted too many times by oily fingers, his flannel trousers are shapeless and his hairy jacket has patches on the elbows.

  Whistling as he hastens across Trafalgar Square – ‘Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho! It’s Off To Work We Go!’ – Charles swings his heavy black portfolio of drawings by his side. When a woman approaches with short, urgent steps he raises his hat in greeting. It has taken a year – a year in which he has been working as a volunteer air-raid warden by day and painting by night – but the Picture Post has finally accepted and now published his paintings of Dunkirk, and it has given him an idea of how he might find Anselm.

  His positive mood is dampened when he passes two Royal Navy officers with medals on their greatcoats and white cotton covers on their peaked caps. He cannot be sure, but he thinks he hears one of them say to the other: ‘queer’, or ‘dear’, or possibly ‘fear’. Whatever the word, the look of contempt that accompanies it makes him shiver. Had they taken him to be a conscientious objector? Was his court martial for gross indecency somehow written on his face?

  He is still feeling rattled by the encounter as he climbs the steps to the National Gallery. The receptionist has sandbags piled up around her desk and Charles notices with curiosity that she is in uniform. She is also wearing make-up, which surely must be against Auxiliary Territorial Service regulations. They are about the same age. If he were that way inclined, he would say she is attractive. White teeth. Good bone structure. Glossy chestnut hair worn in a neat roll around the nape and over the ears. She looks bored.

  ‘Do you know what I miss most?’ she says in a crisp, Ascot voice.

  Charles points to himself as if to ask if she is addressing him, then says: ‘What?’

  ‘Church bells.’

  ‘They can only be used as an alarm, in the event of an invasion.’

  ‘I know.’ The receptionist is trying to suppress a smile as she taps some papers on her desk. ‘I’m just saying I miss them, that’s all. What do you miss?’

  Charles thinks for a moment, amused by the receptionist’s peremptory manner and relieved to find a friendly face. If she is wondering why he isn’t in uniform, she isn’t showing it. ‘Love,’ he says.

  ‘Oh yes, love. That’s much better than mine.’ She cocks her head to one side and gives him an appraising look. ‘Can I change mine to love, too?’

  ‘I’ll see if it can be arranged. Meanwhile, I’m here to see the director. I have an appointment. Charles Northcote.’

  ‘Follow me,’ the receptionist says, her brown leather shoes creaking as she walks. Charles notices how the tightness of her uniform shows off her curves and he suspects she has taken it in at the back to make it do just that. She turns and, catching him staring, gives a smile he is clearly supposed to feel in his hip pocket. (Since coming across that phrase in a Chandler novel, he had been wondering what it meant.) He has, and knows he has, always been attractive to women. It is the great irony of his life.

  The gallery is bare. Rectangular shapes of unfaded wallpaper show where paintings have been hung. The high windows are taped with crosses. ‘Looks like you’ve been burgled,’ Charles says.

  The smile again. ‘They’ve been sent to Bangor,’ she says. ‘I suppose they think Nelson’s Column makes a good aiming point for German bombers. But I can’t believe that they would bomb the centre of London. Even Hitler wouldn’t be that beastly. The docks perhaps. But not these beautiful old buildings. Have you met the director before?’

  ‘No, what’s he like?’

  She thinks for a moment. ‘Mercurial. No one ever sees him arrive or leave. Although the caretaker claims he once saw him flash through the wall of the Renaissance gallery leaving a strong smell of brimstone behind him.’

  Charles grins. ‘I see.’

  ‘And you, I take it, are an artist?’

  Charles pats his jacket self-consciously. ‘Do I look like one?’

  ‘You have paint on your hands.’

  He inspects them. ‘Ah.’

  ‘My last boyfriend was an artist. That’s how I ended up here.’

  Her choice of words strikes Charles as being loaded with ulterior meaning. She is not a novice in the ways of the heart, he thinks, and something about the way she said ‘last boyfriend’ makes Charles suspect that she is sizing him up to be her next.

  She has reached the door to the director’s office and, with her fingers on the handle, she turns smartly on her heel, so that one arm is behind her back in a submissive gesture that simultaneously manages to make her bust look more prominent. ‘I used to model for him,’ she says. She then leans in closer to Charles’s ear and whispers: ‘In the nude.’

  With this, she turns again, taps on the door and opens it. ‘Mr Northcote here to see you, sir.’

  From inside, a clipped patrician voice. ‘Come in, come in.’

  Sir Kenneth Clark is a short, compact man with a large forehead and a beaky nose. His handshake is firm and dry.

  Feeling buoyed by his encounter with the receptionist, Charles finds himself raising his chin and making eye contact for the first time in a while. ‘Like what you’ve done with the place,’ he says.

  ‘I know, I know. I’m a gallery director without any paintings. We were considering sending them to Canada, but Winnie doesn’t want a single picture to leave the country. Bad for morale. If the royal family can stay, he reckons, the paintings should, too.’

  Charles notices that on the director’s desk is the copy of the Picture Post that has reproduced two of his paintings. They are dramatic compositions with swirling smoke, staring eyes and blackened faces that contrast with the oranges and yellows of the explosions in the background, illuminating the night skies. The evacuated soldiers look as if they are being eaten away by the shadows.

  Clark follows his gaze. ‘You have a good eye, Mr Northcote. A fluid style. Is this y
our first publication?’

  ‘It is, yes.’

  ‘The Prime Minister dabbles, you know. Says he prefers painting landscape to portraits because trees don’t complain that you haven’t done them justice. Anyway, he fancies himself as an artist.’

  ‘Like Hitler.’

  ‘Indeed, like Hitler.’ Sir Kenneth claps. ‘From your letter I take it you know all about the War Artists Advisory Committee.’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Well, you’re in luck. We have three hundred active official war artists at the moment and we’ve just been given the budget to recruit a further hundred. You trained at the Slade, did you not?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘Who was your professor there?’

  ‘Matthew Waterhouse.’

  ‘I know him. Good man. When were you commissioned?’

  ‘To be honest I’ve never really had a commission.’

  ‘I meant in the navy.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m not an officer.’ In his mind he finished the sentence with the word ‘any more’.

  Sir Kenneth looks confused. ‘But weren’t you part of the evacuation?’

  ‘As a civilian. I went over to Dunkirk on my own initiative.’

  ‘And you haven’t been called up yet?’

  ‘I’ve been working for the ARP, but I’m keen to see some action.’

  Sir Kenneth seems satisfied with this. ‘You know war artists are not permitted to carry weapons?’

  ‘I know, I meant …’

  ‘We can pay you a salary. You would be, if you like, part of the Ministry of Information.’

  ‘Thank you. You won’t be disappointed.’

  ‘Do you have any languages?’

  ‘French. Some German.’

  ‘That might be useful.’

  ‘And I can go anywhere? Any theatre, I mean.’

  ‘Up to a point. But you have to be assigned. We need to know where you are. Would you consider the Atlantic convoys? North Africa, perhaps?’

  ‘I was wondering if I could do something with the RAF.’