by Guy Saville
The other marines were emptying kegs; round their boots gushed Burgundy meant for the officers’ mess on Nosy Be.
“It’s too far.”
“Then you surrender, Major. Or drown.”
Salois looked toward the land. It was at least two kilometers, but the shore was distinct for the first time: a sliver of sand and the dark protective shawl of the forest. “Get everyone off the starboard side,” he said. “It’ll give us more protection.”
A whistle.
Xegoe stood at the edge of his boat, a sow-skin purse swinging from his neck. It was the one Cranley had given him, full of gold reichsmarks for their passage to Madagaskar.
“You bringed this on us,” he shouted at Salois. “You demon!” He tossed him a sack and leapt overboard, swimming toward the rest of his crew.
Salois retrieved the bag, which gave a wine-bottle jangle, and peered inside. The marines were rolling the empty barrels to the far side of the dhow. Salois stepped round them, scanning the swilling debris on the deck. The sack contained three rocket heads.
The dhow bobbed through the second ring of mines, so close it threatened to scrape against one.
The S-boat’s main gun erupted. Salois flattened himself against the floor as shells poured overhead, dismembering the life raft. Xegoe was caught between it and the dhow, a bawling brown head in the ocean. Two of the marines took up covering positions and returned fire. There was an instant reply of BK44s, then: “Hold your fire! I want Cole alive.”
Salois found the discarded Panzerfaust. He wiped it down, speared on a rocket head, and got to his knees, focusing on the S-boat through the sight. The Germans saw him; there was a cry of alarm, and bullets whistled through the air. A stillness took hold of Salois; all the noises in his ear—the crackle of rifles, Xegoe screaming—faded to whispers. He searched the Nazi vessel for Cranley, thinking of the daughter he’d described, a spoiled girl with no mother, as blessed as the orphans of Madagaskar were shunned. When he failed to locate the Englishman, he squeezed the trigger.
The command deck exploded.
Without pausing, Salois loaded another warhead and targeted the main gun. The rocket smacked into it—a burst of star clumps—hurling men and munitions into the sky. A lingering satisfaction filled Salois as he squinted through the scope for a third time.
A hush descended: the immense silence of the ocean disturbed only by the rumble of smoke and Germans shouting, their voices tiny as they battled the fire. Two inky columns spiraled from the S-boat. It remained seaworthy but was listing, the waves teasing it away from the dhow.
A head emerged from the burning sea between the two vessels, gasping for air. Salois lowered the rocket launcher. It was Cranley.
“Major!” On the other side of the deck, Denny had ushered the rest of the marines off the boat. He thumped an empty barrel. “See you on the shore.”
“Watch for sharks,” Salois replied, turning his attention back to Cranley. He swam away from the S-boat, using a graceful front crawl. The one-eared Brigadeführer grabbed a life jacket and dived in after him.
The final ring of sea mines was approaching. The dhow drifted toward them, close enough for Salois to distinguish the detonation nodes. Cranley motioned at him to leap.
Salois rolled the last barrel overboard. There was a saying in the Legion: Lose your weapon, lose your mind, but never lose your boots. A maxim for the desert, not for a soldier at sea. Salois yanked them off his feet, tied the laces together, and dangled them around his neck. Then he hugged the soles and stepped barefoot to the edge of the deck. He’d never been a good swimmer.
The nearest mine rose from the water like the hump of a black whale.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tana–Diego Railway, Madagaskar
18 April, 14:30
IT WASN’T THE Nazis who put a stop to Madeleine’s plan; it was the other Jews.
She was hunched over the floorboards, sawing as quietly as she could, her arm sore with the effort. A greasy tarpaulin screened off the toilet—a hole in the corner to squat over—from the rest of the passengers. The train rocked with a soothing rhythm. Like a cradle, thought Madeleine.
She banished the image and focused on cutting through the wood. Since she’d left the hospital, her mind had been absorbed by mundane activity, burrowing into itself to a place that was nebulous, numb. In the abattoir she’d been sent to, surrounded by Polish Jews with their ghetto stoops and incomprehensible talk, she’d worked for twelve hours a day in a trance, churning shovels of salt and cloves to make brine, scalding pig carcasses to remove the bristles. In that state, one urge dominated: to escape. It was a familiar thread in her life: escape from Vienna, escape from Cranley. Now this island.
After she had given birth to Alice, her body took months restoring itself, and she’d suffered a bout of depression, but in the meat plant Madeleine healed as rapidly as the lice that bred in her hair. It had been shaved to the scalp a month before and was growing back in spiky black tufts that itched. As her strength improved, she was moved from checking the labels on cans to more grueling duties, constantly shifted round the abattoir till she was familiar with its layout. Every place she went, she was occupied by the gates and fences, whether the windows were barred or not, when the guards took cigarette breaks, always alert for some chink that would allow her to break free. Several times she was convinced she had seen Burton—a pair of shoulders the same as his, a similar gait—and for an instant her haunted brain struggled to understand why he had joined the SS.
Finally she was assigned to the Müllschlucker, a series of chutes at the rear of the complex where the waste was flushed away into a slurry lake. The work gang had to keep the chutes clear, sweeping the detritus of industrial meat processing into the water. On the far shore was a mangy barbed-wire fence and an unmanned guard tower. The air broiled and stank.
“I’ve been watching you,” said one of the women during the midday break (ten minutes of rest, a mug of water, squabbles over green bananas). “You’re thinking you can swim to the far side and break out. It’s only a couple of hundred meters.” She spoke in German, her voice mocking and resentful.
Madeleine’s mouth and nose were covered by a scarf; she tugged it down. “Has anyone ever tried?” The words emerged haltingly. It was the first time she had spoken in weeks; her throat felt narrow, cracked.
The woman was startled. “I’m sorry. You’re German.”
“Austrian.”
“I thought you were just another peasant girl, a Pole. I can’t bear them—they’re so uncouth. Uneducated. And the Nazis say we’re all the same.” Her tone became more hospitable; like most people starved of conversation, she wanted to chat. “How come you’re here?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I shouldn’t be in the Eastern Sector, either. We’re from Berlin, me and generations of my family. Where did you live in Austria? I love Vienna. Sitting in the Burggarten, drinking a cappuccino. I was a teacher once, linguistics and riding.” The joke that followed was automatic: “I could have taught horses to speak! Now I’m in this pit. I swear, Jehovah above can smell it. I got mixed up in a work detail and lost my papers. That was a year ago. A year talking Yiddish. I’d forget my mother tongue if it wasn’t for the guards; they’re my only conversation. I keep telling them I’m a German Jew, shouldn’t be with these animals…”
Madeleine wasn’t listening. “Did anyone escape?”
“Several. I’ve thought about it myself, getting back to Antzu. My daughter’s there.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Swim through that?” She looked at the crust of excrement and bobbing offal, and made a puking noise. “Breathing it is bad enough. And afterward, kilometers of barren plateau, no food, no shelter. The last time someone got away, they didn’t bother with patrols—just picked up the bones. Hung them from a gibbet on the parade ground to let us know.”
“You’d be free,” said Madeleine.
“Free?” She cackled in r
esponse. “No, I’ll follow the paper route. I put a request in to the Ark. When my documents come through, they’ll send me home. I used to help the vet at Governor Quorp’s stables…” She became silent, staring at Madeleine through the haze. Her lips narrowed; they were blistered from the sun. “But I can see that you, girl, you are looking to hang.”
There was a whistle blast.
“What’s your name?” asked Madeleine.
“Jacoba.”
The women pulled their scarves over their mouths and went back to work, Madeleine’s eyes fixed on the far shore; her senses were lighting up. In the days that followed, she studied the guards’ routines more closely and stole food from the production line: pig ears meant for the guard dogs, trotters she could save for the journey and suck marrow from. Everything was ready. For the first time in months she woke with a fleck of hope. She would hide in the chute on Führertag and escape that evening when the Nazis were filling their veins with toasts to Hitler. Then the others ruined her plan.
In the dingy light of the train’s toilet, Madeleine flowed with sweat. She was wearing the factory uniform of sallow-gray pajamas; on her feet were the hobnailed boots she’d stolen from one of the Polish workers. They were a size too big and she had no socks, but they were stout enough to take her miles. She was hacking into the urine-soaked planks around the hole. If she could cut through two of them, she’d be able to pry up the others and get under the railcar.
The first slat had almost given way when someone tried to open the curtain. Madeleine cursed Jacoba, who was supposed to be keeping watch, and grasped the screen.
“You going to be much longer?” asked a man’s voice.
“I’ve got the shits,” she replied, startled by her own ferocity.
“You’re not the only one.” Beneath the curtain she saw a pair of bopping feet with twisted black nails.
“Give me a couple minutes.”
Her arm pumped more vigorously. She sucked in mouthfuls of stinking air and ignored the blots in her vision. The last thing to pass her lips had been a bowl of broth so meager she’d counted the rice in it, all twenty-three grains; that had been hours ago. The knife continued its creeping journey through the wood. Madeleine had lifted it from the factory; it had a serrated edge and was meant for pig flesh, not three-inch timber. Her palm was blistering. Beyond the curtain, she heard the desperate pad of feet.
When she judged that she’d cut enough of the second slat, she released the blade from the wood and yanked at the board. After the first tug it gave easily; another plank and she would be free. She removed it and eagerly stared down at the ground below: the rush of crossties, the smell of damp stones and steel.
The wood slipped through her fingers and bounced on the filthy floor. The bottom of the railcar was reinforced with a row of iron bars. Even a child wouldn’t be able to squeeze between them. A deadening crept through her, a deep despondency like the one that had overcome her two nights earlier, in the abattoir.
Madeleine never knew if it was spontaneous or long planned. There had been no whisperings in the barracks after lights-out, despite rumors of revolt elsewhere on the island. Her first sense that her escape might be jeopardized was when the alarms started to shriek. From somewhere in the factory came the ring of single gunshots; later, shouting and automatic weapons. Soldiers arrived at the chutes—agitated, screaming—and ordered the workers to the parade square. Already Madeleine was cursing whoever was responsible for this nonsense; in the coming days the guards would be more vigilant.
They stayed in the square all night, beneath curtains of drenching rain. At dawn there were two volleys of gunfire in quick succession; a helicopter arrived. Madeleine and the hundreds of other workers continued to sit outside through a magic lantern of sunshine, downpours, and stars. Next morning, before the sun rose, they were herded through the factory to the transport pens where the pigs and cattle arrived. An empty livestock train waited for them.
Madeleine replaced the floorboards. She hoped the guards would think it too demeaning to check the shithole. If not, she would accuse one of the Poles. The ease with which she blamed others continued to shock her. Whenever she felt guilty, she heard Burton encouraging her: survival had its own rules.
“Hurry up!” pleaded the voice beyond the curtain.
Madeleine dropped her trousers and tied the knife to her inner thigh. Smuggling the weapon on board the train had been a risk. Some guards were repulsed by frisking Jews; others groped with a dedication the Reichsführer would not have extolled. She pulled the waistband back up and sedately opened the curtain. Outside was an old man, clutching his belly. He resembled one of her father’s colleagues from the clinic, except tatty and starved.
“Sorry,” she said and let him pass before making her way to Jacoba.
The cattle car was misty with the coughing and sneezing of two nights in the rain. Jacoba lolled beneath one of the high grilled windows that let in ventilation and a wan light. She was fanning herself with a large reed hat and wore her usual look of repulsion; she hated being close to so many bodies. “You were gone a long time. Gripes again?”
“I wasn’t using the toilet.”
A sigh. “Do you remember bathrooms? I mean proper ones, a lavatory seat that was your own and a bath—wallowing up to your neck in water. Hot water!”
Jacoba shifted on the floor, making a space for Madeleine—but she didn’t take it. She stood on tiptoe and stared out the window. Through the bars she saw a valley crowned with hills and knee-deep grass. Several hours earlier, they had passed Tana and she’d glimpsed the governor’s palace, white as a sugar cube, atop the city’s highest hill. After that she counted the miles till she figured they must be in the Mandritsara region. That’s when she hurried to the toilet, the knife rubbing against her thighs.
Mandritsara: the constant, aching void in her. Mandritsara: the hospital where her babies had been stolen..
Madeleine grabbed the bars and rattled them, tears scalding her eyes. Then a voice from above:
“Was machst du da, Jüdin?”
A hatch in the ceiling opened, letting in drizzle. Blocking the sky was a guard in a khaki-spotted poncho, aiming his rifle at her. Each car had a soldier riding on the roof, in addition to the contingent of troops at the rear of the train. Madeleine had glimpsed their car as she shuffled on board: wide windows revealing padded seats, baskets of fruit, a steaming canteen. The scent of coffee and warm milk tortured her stomach.
The guard flicked the muzzle of his rifle. “Abstand halten.”
Madeleine wanted him to pull the trigger, to be embraced by the same darkness that had swallowed Burton. Then she heard the wail of her babies fading down a hospital corridor and she uncurled her fingers from the bars. She stepped back, made a display of her open hands, and slumped to the floor.
“You look like you’ve got a fever,” said Jacoba, flapping her hat in Madeleine’s direction.
Fetid wafts of air cooled her face. She thought she had been so clever, waiting for Führertag to escape. “I should have gone as soon as I was ready,” she said bitterly. “I’d be free now.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. Imagine being on this stinking train alone.”
Madeleine glared at the woman opposite. She had no idea how old Jacoba was—too old to bear any more children. She had a witch’s chin, made sharper by emaciation, and a tobacco-croaky voice, though she couldn’t have smoked in years. Cigarettes were banned for Jews: the Nazis didn’t want them to benefit from their soothing effects in the humid air.
“We’re heading north,” continued Jacoba, “which means the Sofia Reservation. I’ve heard it’s easy enough if you keep your head down. We can live together, keep an eye out for each other.” She glanced around the train car. “Because none of these Poles will.”
“I’m going to escape.”
“Not from the reservations. That’s why they’re sending us there.”
“What about your daughter, getting back to Antzu?”
“They call this railway the ‘Line of Fates.’ It decides where you’re taken, who lives or dies. What your future holds.” Jacoba rubbed a filthy sleeve across her nose. “Perhaps I’m not meant to see my daughter again.”
“The Nazis worship fate. I never have. I’m not giving up.”
“You’re kidding yourself,” replied Jacoba softly. “Wherever you break out, you’re still in Madagaskar. The sooner you accept it, Madeleine, the sooner every one of us accepts it, the simpler life will be. There’s no way off this island.”
Madeleine didn’t want to speak after that. If Jacoba tried to reminisce—about Berlin or the apple macaroons she used to bake—she ignored her. Even when Jacoba mentioned her husband—he’d been a horse trainer, had died in 1932 and been spared the future—Madeleine met her with silence.
She gazed at the blank steel sky, her mind creeping toward her babies but not daring to imagine what might have happened to them. She thought of Alice and was ashamed of the crushing realization that the twins meant more: they were the reliquary of all she had treasured with Burton. They. Them. She hated thinking of her own children as nameless bundles of newborn flesh and screams. Never before had she appreciated how a few letters gave substance to the soul.
During their final morning together, before Burton left for Africa, they had discussed what to call the baby. To her surprise, Madeleine had slept deeply, waking only as Burton slipped out of bed. She sensed that he had watched the dawn break.
“Burton?” she called after him.
“You sleep.”
She put on her nightgown and followed him downstairs, to the chilly kitchen. In Hampstead it was the domain of the servants, a room she rarely visited. Soon all her mornings would begin here. She found the thought humbling and wholesome. Burton made them breakfast: toast and butter, quince jam from the pantry, black coffee from Kamerun. Jared refused to have German groceries in the house; Madeleine approved except for coffee. The Germans were better at it, the Nazis’ one contribution to the world. The only time she drank Kaffee aus Deutsch-Afrika was at the farm.