by Libby Cone
They were each put into solitary confinement and interrogated separately. The passing of notes was impossible at first, though Lucy could occasionally catch Suzanne giving a hand signal out of her second-storey cell window when the light was good (in August, a ‘V’ to signal the liberation of Paris).Although they were in military prison, and were scheduled for a court martial, they were still treated with the odd deference shown Islanders even in the most degrading conditions, plus more deference because they were rather well-known as longtime Island residents. Lucille concluded that, instead of being tortured, they would be ‘shot in style or deported’.
The prison warden, Otto, who looked as though he would be a beefy sort if he had an adequate diet, regarded Lucille as she examined the pewter washbasin and tin mug in her assigned cell.
‘Lady Schwob,’ he began.
‘Nicht korrekt, nicht gut Englisch,’ she snapped in heavily accented German. ‘Say “Miss Schwob”, if you will be correct.’
He managed a ‘Fräulein’ or two, then just called her ‘die Kleine’, which was in a way good, because she knew the taller Suzanne was ‘die Große’, and the linking of their names afforded a kind of intimacy.
Prisoners would, upon awakening, be escorted to the bathroom with their basins, to fill them at the bath tap. The sink did not work. The basins were so heavy and the prisoners so weak that to fill them more than halfway was to ask for trouble. They seldom had soap. The stench of the bathroom was cut by a small opening in the wall allowing air and a view of the outside, something they could capture and hold onto for the rest of the day, to feed their dreams as their bodies wasted. A few words could also be exchanged. Three times a day they had swede soup and potato bread with ersatz coffee. Often gruel, some milk, and the occasional piece of tripe. They were not allowed writing instruments or paper, but most were able to improvise.
CHAPTER 52
St Brelade, Jersey
July 1944
Marlene awoke first. She stood and looked out of the grimy window; it was almost dusk. She put her shoes on and opened the door, crept around to the far side of the building, and peed. She thought back to Suzanne and Lucille’s discovery of her in the cemetery chapel. How were they, she wondered. Were they being sent to Germany? She could not think about anything worse, like execution. She saw them sharing a cell, subsisting on swedes and water, drawing armadillos and saxophones on the wall of the cell with a stolen stub of pencil.
She returned to the shed and woke Peter. For the first time he stood up in front of her; his emaciation was a stab in her heart. He looked apologetic. He wore a shirt and trousers that were too big for him; the trousers were held up by a piece of rope. A rag bandaged one ankle.
‘I come back soon, Marlene.’
He opened the door clumsily, carrying his water bottle. Five minutes later it was growing dark; she heard him fumbling with the door.
‘Do you want some more water? I get it from stream.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Look.’ He dug into his shirt pocket and took out a thumbnail-sized piece of soap. ‘Please, you take it.’
How could she refuse? She had been bathing with ashes and lard for weeks. She took the soap, splashed some water into her hands, washed her face, and gave the tiny piece back.
‘Thank you. It’s so refreshing.’
They set out in the moonlight, Marlene leading the way. She took him to a farm near La Rocquaise. He whispered, ‘It is not safe to look for food they give us now. We should dig it.’ They edged onto a field, their eyes scanning in the dim moonlight for the leaves of a swede or potato. Marlene found a stunted cabbage; Peter, some beetroot in the next plot. They carried these back to the shed, where the vegetables were devoured.
‘If we have luck,’ said Peter, ‘we will find a rat.’
‘You mean, to eat it?’
‘Yes. The meat, it is good. I am even sometimes able to make a little fire.’
Marlene was horrified, but said nothing. She had helped slaughter a pig in the bath, but not a rat. She had never experienced hunger like that. What other horrors had he been through? She tried not to think about it. Not thinking about things had become an important survival skill.
They fell into a routine, sleeping during the day, foraging at night. To their relief, the extra patrols seemed to have ended and some brave householders again left food out for escaped prisoners, so the occasional piece of cheese or rabbit leg kept them from eating rats. They tried foraging at La Rocquaise, but quickly exhausted the garden.
He told her stories after they ate. She was surprised to hear of his several prison stints, usually for demonstrating against Marshal Pilsudski. He and his comrades had been fixtures on Muranowska Street and other areas of Jewish Warsaw, slipping into factories at lunchtime to agitate for the Polish Communist Party, arguing with Bundists and Zionists, gesturing over their well-thumbed copies of the Literary Monthly.
Marlene picked up some pieces of wire and began trying to get the crystal set to work. One night she succeeded. One of the newsreaders was talking about something happening in the Pacific. She called Peter over, took the earphone out of her ear, and pressed it into his. She could almost hear him smile.
‘Oh, is good! Is BBC? Oh, they speak so fast!’
‘Sometimes they play music. The German stations play a lot of music, and you don’t need to understand their English. It’s all rubbish.’
‘Oh, I want to hear music!’
Tears filled her eyes. How long had it been since this man had heard music? She fiddled with the coil but found no music broadcast. She found she was filled with the desire to be kind to him, in a way different from her kindness to Lucille and Suzanne.
The next day, while he slept in his pile of rags, she connected several pieces of wire together into one long strand and looped it around the doorway, keeping the shorter ground piece attached to a stake in the corner. She gently ran the pin along the coil and heard several promising bursts of static. That night, after they had returned with a cabbage and a piece of cheese, she tried again and brought in German Overseas Radio with Charlie and his Orchestra. She called him over. They lay prone on the floor, taking turns listening to the catchy cabaret tunes, ignoring the hateful content. He was entranced; it was so difficult not to hum along. When their necks were both stiff from the rock-steady position demanded by the little crystal set, they retreated to their respective sides of the shed and slept. Marlene felt a secret joy that she had restored something so intensely missed by this miserable man.
CHAPTER 53
St Brelade, Jersey
July 1944
The next night there was no moon, and clouds covered the stars.
‘We cannot go to the farms tonight. We will be lost,’ Peter whispered.
‘We don’t have any food.’
‘I saved beetroot. We can drink water. Also, we can go to the stream and have bath.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’
‘No people will see. It is too dark.’
They certainly needed baths. They had been able to only wash their hands and faces occasionally with water and the vanishingly small piece of soap. There was nothing they could do about the lice.
Peter had washed two pieces of canvas the day before, and they hung drying in the stuffy shed. These would serve as towels. After a repast of beetroot and water, they slipped out and walked slowly and clumsily in total darkness to the stream. Marlene carried a surprise, a small tablet of soap she had found in a handkerchief deep in the lining of her coat.
They stepped into the cool water, knee-deep, standing awkwardly, several feet apart. Marlene decided to show him the soap; she did not want to risk losing it by tossing it. She assumed he was still dressed, as she was, and was startled when she touched bare skin. He gave a little jump.
‘I found this,’ she whispered, grasping his hand and slipping the soap into his palm.
‘Oh, Marlene, thank you!’
‘Here, let me wash your hair.’
She playfully splashed water on his hair and soaped it up.
‘Wait.’ He reached forward in the darkness, grasped her shoulders, and then began to unbutton her blouse. ‘I will wash your clothes. Is all right?’
Is it all right? She found she wanted him to touch her, she suddenly wanted it very much. Especially him, this man who shared his water, his foraged vegetables, his soap with her. This man who was made so happy by music. She smiled.
‘Yes, it is all right.’
He removed her blouse, then her skirt and, with her whispered consent, her underwear. He quickly soaped and rinsed them along with his own clothes, feeling for a grassy part of the stream bank to put them down. She stood shivering in the water. Then she felt him steadying her with one hand on her shoulder while the other wet and soaped her hair. He lifted her up suddenly with a strength neither imagined he had, braced her back on his knee, and rinsed her hair as she suppressed squeals at the coldness of the water. He stood her back on her feet and washed her face. He then put the bar of soap in his mouth and spat it out, rinsing his mouth. Then he kissed her, lightly on the forehead and then hungrily on the mouth. She was astonished at the heat that rose out of her, the sudden need to feel his closeness. He soaped his hands and washed her neck, her back, her breasts. He gave her the soap and she began to lather him, starting with his face. They both were aware of each other’s rank odours giving way to the faint scent of the soap, of the quiet stream, of the night breeze. She caressed each bone in his poor, thin back. She lathered his chest, buried her face in the sudsy hair, drew him close. She soaped his navel, loved the thin line of hair below it. He gently guided her hand down, feeling that it would be impolite to wash his own sex in front of her, though it was dark. She soaped the hard part and the soft parts, thrilled to touch them, feeling his breath on her forehead. Then he took the soap from her, again lathering her breasts with the cold-hardened nipples until she moaned and swayed on her feet, then slipped his hand down to her softness. She was already honey-drenched but he splashed cool water onto her and took up the soap, lathering as she leaned against him. When had he last felt something so soft? Abruptly he took his hand away.
‘Let us wash the soap off,’ he said, and, holding hands, they squatted together so the flowing water reached up almost to their necks. Water-cleansed, love-drenched, they gathered up their clean clothes and felt their way back to the shed. Peter tossed their clothes haphazardly onto the makeshift clothesline and removed the canvas, spreading it on the floor in the darkness. She found his hands, clasped and kissed them. Then they were on the canvas. She was urgently hungry for him, to join souls and bodies after so much terrible loneliness. She was unafraid; she was not, she could not, be afraid to love. He pulled her close.
‘Is all right, sweet Marlene?’ he whispered hoarsely.
‘Oh, Peter, yes, please.’
She felt stretched, and then united with him. Everything that had been closed and separated and muffled was open and joined and glistening. They were one clean, sweet-smelling skin; then he suddenly shuddered and collapsed upon her, weeping. After a while he rolled on his side and dried her own tears with his finger, slipping it into her mouth, then drawing a line down the contour of her body, lingering in her navel, and then down into the nectary velvet. She nuzzled into his chest as he caressed her until she found herself lifted, as if in a tiny boat on a great heartstopping swell; then she was thrown from the boat and showered with dazzling diamonds and enveloped by the softest down, somehow all at the same time. She sank back, exhausted.
CHAPTER 54
Gloucester Street Prison
July 1944
First Interrogation
Major Lohse was the officer in charge of their upcoming court martial. Tall, with greasy, colourless hair and tiny blue eyes behind round glasses, he had a detached air. He seemed preoccupied by other matters. Well, it’s better than zeal, Lucy thought as she sat in the chair, waiting for the session to begin. Lohse sat with another soldier whose name was never revealed; she thought of him as the Unknown Soldier. A nurse sat behind her. They were waiting for the interpreter, a short, ragged officer, who rushed in, saluted, and sat in front of her.
The Major removed his glasses and looked at Lucy. He said something softly in German and glanced at the interpreter. ‘Please state your full name.’
‘Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob.’
‘Where were you born?’
‘In Nantes.’
‘Where is that?’
‘In France.’
‘Where do you live now, Miss Schwob?’
‘Right here, in Gloucester Street Prison.’
He seemed unfazed by this little impertinence.
‘No, I mean prior to your arrest.’
‘La Rocquaise in St Brelade.’
‘Did you have a printing press in La Rocquaise?’
‘No.’
‘Did you have a typewriter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you have occasion to buy large amounts of coloured tissue paper?’
Oh, I know the bitch who ratted on us, she thought. The one we bought the paper from.
‘Yes, occasionally.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘To write letters.’
‘Letters to whom?’
‘To various people.’
‘Did you write to soldiers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you write letters as “Der Soldat Ohne Namen?”’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you write a poem as “Colonel Heine”?’
‘Well, I adapted a poem by Heinrich Heine called “The Lorelei”.’
The interpreter frowned. Many Germans knew the poem, but not its author, who was Jewish.The Major recited the last stanza of the poem, about a beautiful siren who lures sailors to their death with song, in English himself, without the interpreter. It was useful to know that he had a good facility with English.
‘“I think that the waves finally swallowed up the boatman and his boat / That is what the Lorelei did with her singing.”’
‘That’s a very good translation. Of the original, that is.’
The Major, finding himself flattered by a Jew on his translation of German poetry by a Jew, coloured slightly. Nobody else said anything.
‘But you wrote in German, and I translate: “I think that the waves finally swallowed up the boatman and his boat / That is what Adolf Hitler did with his bellowing.”’
She observed the facial expressions of the Unknown Soldier and the interpreter. The interpreter was exerting a mighty effort to keep a poker face; to chuckle right now could be fatal. The stonefaced Unknown Soldier was probably an informant for the secret police.
‘I’m sorry, it rhymes better in German.’
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘I did not know you knew the German language. Does Miss Malherbe?’
‘You will have to ask her yourself.’
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly as he shuffled papers. The room was nice and clean, cooler than her sweltering cell, with no odour from the toilets. If the questioning continued in this manner of false civility, she could almost look forward to it.
‘Miss Schwob, when did you, uh, distribute this poem?’
‘I believe it was about a year or so ago.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Yes.’ Oh, I know what he’s getting at. He’s trying to link us to the Ritz Hotel mutiny. When was that? I think in May of last year; I remember because we remarked on its closeness to May Day. If the poem wasn’t out by then, certainly some other letters with even clearer incitements were; thank God he didn’t find them. I flattered his English; perhaps he won’t try too hard to corroborate my dates.
Lohse shuffled papers again. The nurse brought Lucy a glass of water. She gulped it and remained sitting very straight. Lohse sat forward and took another tack.
‘Miss Schwob, do you think the Jews are responsible for the war?’
‘No, I do not.’
‘Are you a Jewess?’
‘You know I am.’
‘Do you think Adolf Hitler has improved the condition of Europe?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Do you not think that Germany has the right to rule over Europe, given that we are a superior race?’
‘I think it’s about time you learned to manage with your own territory and stopped invading your neighbours.’
The room fell completely silent; no one wanted to make the slightest gesture that could be interpreted as agreement. The informant’s eyes darted around the room. Lucy suppressed a smile. Lohse picked up his papers and tapped them on the desk, lining them up.
‘We will talk more soon, Miss Schwob. You will be escorted back to your cell now.’
He nodded to the nurse, who took her by the arm and walked her down the hallway, around the corner, through an increasing gradient of stench, to the cellblocks. She looked at the heavy oak door of Suzanne’s cell as they passed it, but could not tell if she was inside or not. They went down the stairs to Lucille’s floor, down another corridor to her cell. The nurse tossed two cigarettes and a small box of matches onto her mattress as she led her in, then slipped away, leaving Lucy to inspect them. Lucy decided to reward herself with one cigarette and to save the other for possible barter. She huddled against the far wall of her cell, below the window, lit up, and greedily sucked the smoke in. She blew the smoke on her blouse and skirt in a futile attempt to kill the fleas, carefully saving the ash to use for writing or drawing.
CHAPTER 55
St Brelade, Jersey
July 1944
Dawn and hunger woke them. They split a beetroot, guzzled water. Sleep seemed impossible. It rained off and on all morning; they wedged the shed door open a little to catch some breeze. Lying under the canvas afforded some protection in case a stranger glanced through the door or window; they dared to whisper to each other, holding hands dyed pink by the beetroot.