The Dutch Wife

by Ellen Keith

  As we neared the end of the blocks, the camp band started up, announcing roll call. I glanced back. A group of inmates was cutting across in the opposite direction, toward the throng of the muster grounds. One of the men had removed his cap to wring out the water, and as he put it back on, I caught a view of his profile. I felt a sharp, sudden twist in my stomach, my breath trapped still in my chest. Theo.

  Without thinking, I stepped out of line, and I ran. But his head had already disappeared into the crowd. The guard shouted after me. I called Theo’s name, but the rain and the brass band and the sounds of hundreds of footsteps swallowed my voice. Twenty metres from the edge of the throng, an arm reached out like a blockade, and I stumbled into this other guard, his body obstructing my view.

  Our guard yelled at me to get back in line. The one who had stopped me grabbed me by the elbow and brought me there. When I craned my neck to see the muster grounds, he slapped me across the face.

  “You dumb whore. Do you want to be sent back to Ravensbrück? Or straight to the crematorium?”

  My cheek stung, and I felt the stares of the other girls on me, their fear and worry. But I could think of nothing except Theo. Behind us, roll call had started, the face I’d seen lost somewhere amid thousands.

  The brothel guard addressed the other one. “Take her to the detention block. The brothel supervisor will come by to arrange her punishment.”

  THE Bunker, as we called the detention cellblock, took up the left wing of the gatehouse. The jailer was uncomfortably handsome, with a nose that spread wide and flat, like it had been broken in his youth. As the guard led me in, the jailer grinned. “I guess today’s my lucky day.” He pointed to a cell on the right. “This one’s free.”

  The cold cell contained nothing but a bare sleeping bench, which the jailer folded up into the wall. I moved to sit against the back wall, but he prodded my legs to keep me from doing so. “No sitting and no leaning during the day. A whore like you should be used to standing on street corners all night. You’ll feel right at home.”

  The steel door slammed shut. He waited a minute before checking the peephole to make sure I was still standing. Then he left me alone in the dark.

  Shivers and the torment of my thoughts kept me awake throughout that first night. I lay with my cheek pressed to the cold surface of the bench, and though my stomach cried out for food, my mind kept replaying that moment. The slope of the prisoner’s nose, the deep V of his jaw. Those protruding ears. His long strides. I swore I’d seen him, but had it actually been him? This man had looked older, perhaps too old, and the shape of that shaved skull looked unfamiliar. Had I wanted it so desperately to be him, that for a single moment, a stranger had become my husband?

  Theo. His floppy hair that never lay flat, the rough spot on his left middle finger from the friction of his pen. The adoring look he would give me as he drifted to sleep. How I longed to wake up in his arms, to feel his warmth against me, to sail together down the Amstel, listening to the silly rhymes he would make up about the brood of children we wanted to raise. Our vow to grow old hand in hand, watching the seasons change, year after year after year.

  The click of a lock woke me the next morning. The jailer nodded when I asked to use the toilet, but while I did, he banged on the door for me to hurry up. The odour in the hallway told me that not everyone in the cellblock received that privilege. Back to the cell I went. I had to fold the bed and stand again, all day, with nothing but water. My legs grew numb; my head started to spin. Again I doubted our decision to get involved in the resistance but kept trying to reassure myself that we’d made some sort of difference, that we’d helped others to safety. When I looked down at the concrete floor, I saw my skull cracking against it. To stop myself from fainting, I tried to keep my mind alert. Like a film reel, my thoughts wound back through my fondest memories of Theo, every little detail. The day we’d met, four years earlier. The frost that clung to the handlebars of the bicycles parked along the frozen stretch of the Keizersgracht. The dusting of snow that sparkled in the afternoon light, while the city ventured onto the ice. The table my father and I had set up with a tray of fresh stroopwafels from his bakery. And then that handsome university student who stopped by with friends to buy hot cocoa. The way his eyes kept darting to me, how he stayed to chat until his third mug was empty. How I’d known, even then, that he would become my world.

  Theo. His face grew fuzzier the more I thought about him. His eyes, the particular shade of brown, or were they hazel? All I could see clearly was the bright blue of Karl’s. My feet, my shins, my knees, the arch of my back—everything swelled and ached. My head throbbed. Every few minutes, a guard checked the peephole, but otherwise I was alone in the darkness. But I heard the jailer, heard the others, heard their screams, their pleas, the crack of a flogging whip. I covered my ears with my hands and hummed, but I felt myself swaying, slipping, like someone had pressed a finger to my forehead, pushing me back toward the floor. And when I couldn’t take it any longer, I reached an arm out to brace myself against the wall, and the door opened again.

  I woke to someone stroking my hair. Sophia. She held out a cup of coffee and a piece of dry bread. “Eat this.”

  My chin felt stiff with drool, my eyelids with sleep. When I tried to rub my face, a slicing pain struck my shoulder. I cringed, trying to remember how I’d gotten back to the brothel.

  “You’re lucky,” she said. “The Schutzhaftlagerführer cut your punishment short. You were delirious when you returned. You’ve been mumbling in your sleep, something about your husband.”

  “Sophia, I think I saw him. Out there, with one of the Kommandos.”

  “I assumed as much. Either that or you’d gone completely crazy, trying to sprint off like that. It’s a miracle nobody shot you on the spot!”

  Her words sizzled with anger, and I realized how worried she must have been. I clasped her hand. “But I was so certain, at least for those few seconds. Now I don’t even know.”

  “You think you’re safe from harm because you’re one of us. None of us is safe, Marijke. What would have happened if Karl hadn’t stepped in? How many days would you have lasted?”

  The noises came back to me, the horrible tortured cries. I tried to respond, but this turned into something half-cough, half-shudder, and I shut my eyes again, desperate to wake up and find myself back at home.

  Sophia paused. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how bad it was. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please, you need to eat.”

  I took the bread and bit off a corner, chewing slowly while she rubbed my back. The dizziness faded, that shred of sustenance bringing the brothel back in focus. When I finished it, I propped myself up on my elbows and considered what it meant that Karl had intervened. If one thing was certain, it was that he had some power to protect me, so long as I made sure to keep him happy.

  AFTER that, my desperation grew, the need to find out about Theo complicated by Karl’s increasing signs of affection. When a blizzard covered the camp in ice, Karl sent fur-lined mittens and a cashmere scarf. I didn’t allow myself to wear them on our walks. I kept an eye out for Theo and detested the thought of him seeing me with luxuries I couldn’t even have afforded back home. Sophia asked to borrow them, but I didn’t like the idea of her using Karl’s gifts either, so the mittens and scarf stayed wrapped in tissue paper in a box under my bed, alongside the violin.

  One night, instead of pulling me to him, Karl bent to kiss my thighs, to touch me, to taste me, and I hated myself for how my body responded, coursing with pleasure, making me cry out. I shut my eyes and repeated my wedding vows to myself, trying to summon every word, every line the minister had said. After Karl left, I curled up in the warm imprint of his body and sobbed. I found myself struggling to hold on to the smell of Theo, the taste of his lips. These had blended deep into the pot of many others. Never had I been anything but honest with him, but I was starting to understand that shame is the very best secret keeper, for I had no idea how to ever face hi
m again. Rationality was slipping away as my emotions took over. And despite my fears of offending Karl, I’d resolved to ask him about Theo. None of the other prisoners I’d met had heard of my husband, and I had to learn the truth. He could find out if Theo was well, but I didn’t know how he would react to the reminder I wasn’t his. I dwelled on how to ask this, how to time it. With so much at stake, the wrong phrasing, the wrong tone, could be disastrous. Karl might have him transferred, or something worse.

  I waited until I couldn’t bear it any longer, until my dreams of Theo became so vivid and tormenting that I couldn’t sleep at night.

  My request came on a chilly January evening, as snow fell outside the window. Karl must have expected my question, for he took it without any sign of surprise.

  “Please,” I begged. “I need to know he’s still here.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” He looked past me out the window, making no attempt to hide the char of jealousy on his reply.

  I prayed I hadn’t made things worse by asking. But after everything that had happened, a persistent voice in my head whispered that I had to know, that as painful as news of his death would be, it could also free me from the heavy guilt that followed me around.

  Later that night, I huddled in a ball on my bed, certain I’d sentenced my love to more suffering. I tried to block out images of his back, bleeding and scarred from lashes, of his shoes, sunken in mud, of his hands, calloused and numb.

  A week passed before Karl came back to me. For days, Sophia had to hide all the SS socks I’d darned, so shoddy a job I’d done. When he strode into the koberzimmer, I clutched the end of the bed sheet, pleating it into my palm. He kissed me and stepped back to brush the snow from his cap onto the floor. “Eight centimetres today and it doesn’t show any sign of letting up. Luckily this servant of mine has years of experience cooking for long Polish winters. He’s learned how to prepare all my favourite dishes.” He winked and checked for my reaction, but his words passed through me. “Now tell me you haven’t been too cold today.”

  “No,” I said, “thank you.”

  He proceeded to comment on the state of the roads leading into camp, all the delays in deliveries, and despite being more talkative than normal, he said nothing about Theo. My fingers twitched, eager to reach out and pry the answer from him. Off came his overcoat and boots. When he straightened up again, his lips brushed mine, but I was too anxious to meet this kiss and he pulled back with a creased brow. He unfastened the top button of my blouse before stopping to look me in the eyes. “Aren’t you even going to give me a proper greeting first?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t try to hide what you’re thinking. It’s all over your face.” He walked over to the sink, gripped its sides in long contemplation. The power he held over me filled the room like mustard gas, and I had to force myself to breathe, fearing my husband gone, his body a pile of ash, death by starvation or punishment for some trifle. Karl turned around and stared at me. “I can’t lie to you,” he said at last, “much as I’d like to. Your husband is alive.”

  My eyes welled up, but I swallowed and bit my lip to keep the joy from spilling out. “Thank you, thank you so much.”

  Karl said nothing.

  I took a deep breath. “Is that everything?”

  “He’s at Ohrdruf, a satellite camp around fifty kilometres from here.”

  “And for work? Do you know what he does?”

  “He builds roads.”

  I wanted to ask for more—could he ensure Theo’s safety, have him transferred to a better work detail? Yet I had to watch my step. With a single word, he could have my husband killed.

  Karl acted rougher that night, pinning my hands above my head, pounding against me. Once he came, he collapsed on my chest, hair pasted to his forehead in sweat, but his lips strayed to my nipples, his fingers between my legs. Later, he drew spirals on my back. “One way or another, this war will end. The question is, will that take you away from me?”

  We both knew the answer I had to give, the only answer that made any sense, but I couldn’t find a way to wrap my tongue around it. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I have this fantasy of us running away together, finding ourselves a small cottage somewhere in Bavaria, somewhere in the middle of the woods, away from everything.” He paused. “I guess what I’m asking is, if we lose the war, will I lose you?”

  Before I said anything, he placed a hand on my shoulder, his grip heavy and unyielding, holding me firmly in place.

  Chapter Fourteen

  KARL

  DECEMBER 24, 1943

  BUCHENWALD

  BEFORE KARL KNEW IT, CHRISTMAS HAD ARRIVED. Shreds of red, green and gold interrupted the monotonous grey. The wives of the SS officers threw endless dinner parties, dressing their children in festive ribbons and ties embroidered with swastikas. To raise money for the celebrations, Brandt withheld rations from the prisoners for twenty-four hours. The SS ordered the bakers to make dozens of stollen. They brought in crates of Champagne. They roasted geese. Nobody mentioned the Soviet advances or the recent bombings in Berlin.

  On the morning of December 24, Karl took an automobile into Weimar. Women and children crowded the streets, and a large tree had been set up in the square. He wandered past market stalls selling chestnuts and tapered candles. The classical Weimar architecture, muted in colour but bold and assured in presence, the monument to the poets Goethe and Schiller—all this reminded him of what they were fighting for. He crossed the square to stand in front of the Haus Elephant, where a balcony hung over the hotel entrance. Hitler had made many speeches from that spot. In the photographs, he leaned against the iron bars of the balcony, arm raised in a salute, promising to make Germany great again. But when Karl looked up at those bars, all he could see were the ragged faces of dying men behind them.

  A little girl in a patched coat appeared beside him on the cobblestones, clutching a pile of spruce boughs. “Christmas garland, officer?”

  He prodded her bundle. “Garland? These are just branches. Where are the decorations?”

  Her face fell. “This is all we have this year.”

  Only then did he notice how empty the stalls looked, when compared to the Christmas markets he knew from before the war. “Very well. And where should I put a Christmas garland, young lady?”

  She smiled as he pressed some reichspfennige into her palm. “Your wife will know what to do with it.”

  Karl opened his mouth to object but thought better of it. He patted the girl on the head and turned away with a smile, his preoccupations disappearing as his mind returned to Marijke.

  BACK at Buchenwald, he traipsed through the woods by his villa. Patches of snow covered the ground, but he searched until he found a rowan shrub that still bore some berries. He cut off a sprig and carried it home with a pocketful of pine cones. The Kommandant expected the officers for dinner. After showering and polishing his boots, he sat at his dining table with a pair of tweezers and glued the pine cones onto the spruce bough. A tedious task that demanded a certain dexterity, a skill he hadn’t used since building model gliders as a boy. It amused him how Marijke brought out this side of him, stirring up interests and passions he’d long neglected in favour of duty. But while her feisty spirit energized, it also warned of the danger in thinking with your heart instead of your head. By following some foolhardy impulse, she’d landed herself in the cellblock, and if he hadn’t fished her out in time, she might have returned to him unfeeling and broken.

  When the glue had set, he tore the ribbon from the package of a scarf his mother had sent and wound it through the branches. The smell of the forest clung to his fingers. The finished product lacked a woman’s touch but still looked cheerful enough.

  BRANDT was all too eager to make a spectacle out of Christmas dinner, boasting about the plumpness of the ducks, the age of the Chianti and all the trouble he’d had getting it shipped from Tuscany. Karl chewed slowly and drank plenty, avoiding thou
ghts of the man he’d seen throw himself into the electric fence the day before. They had granted the inmates some concessions—extra rations for two days and the chance to receive packages from their families—but only the privileged, of course.

  Once the table was cleared, Brandt presented the officers with SS cufflinks and slipped an extra-large bottle of brandy onto Karl’s lap. He handed out toy Viking ships for the officers’ sons, which bore the detailed craftsmanship of the camp sculptor. Karl closed his eyes, wanting to forget him and his son. As a start, he broke into the brandy.

  A short while later, he crossed the camp pitch under the stars, his belt buckle lax after the hearty meal. One of the guards in the watchtowers was taking swigs from a flask, but the muster grounds were empty. At the edge of the prisoners’ blocks, Karl heard a low sound. Men’s voices, rising up in Polish, then in Czech. Another song began, this one in German. A shiver ran down his neck as he caught the tune. The music drifted between the rows, growing louder, more determined with every step he took. Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht! Alles schläft, einsam wacht.

  When he got to the brothel, he arranged to enter the koberzimmer ahead of Marijke. The brothel had closed an hour early and the women were getting ready to sleep. He laid the garland on the bed and pulled a number of candles from his satchel, lighting these and arranging them on the floor.