by Ellen Keith
As he removed his tunic and folded it, he pointed to the plant that hung from the ceiling in a knotted contraption. “This is a cheerful addition. What’s this called again?”
“Macramé.” She started to strip off her clothes as if undressing for a medical examination.
“What’s wrong, dearest?”
“I’ve had a rough day.”
His fingers stopped unbuttoning.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I don’t want to hear the details.”
“You don’t like the thought of what happens when you’re not around?”
He walked over to the window. The other potted plants obstructed the view and withered from the frosty air that leaked through the thin glass. “You think I could forget?”
All of a sudden, the room felt stuffy. He lifted a handful of soil from one of the pots, squishing it in his fist. He reminded himself that nobody had forced her to join the resistance or help those Dutch Jews, just like nobody had pushed her into prostitution.
Her arms slid around his waist. He turned around to see a thin trail of sweat clinging to her hairline, her cheeks mottled red.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
She guided him to the bed and raised his fingers to the collar of her dress. As he undid the clasp, she tilted her head to expose the nape of her neck. When he kissed it, she pulled him in, sucking his lip. With his free hand, he parted her legs, but she winced at the touch.
“What is it?”
Her eyes clouded. “Nothing, go on.”
He tried, but her body wouldn’t respond, so he leaned back against the wall.
“You don’t have to stop.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
She tucked her knees to her chest and sighed. She looked tired, and the light that had first drawn him to her had dimmed. “It hurts.”
Thoughts of those prisoners in the waiting room came back to him, and he tried to ignore these while his erection ached against his thigh. He brought her toward him and rested her head against his shoulder. “Nothing has to happen. Don’t ever feel like I’m forcing you.” He kissed her forehead. For the next half-hour, they sat together. The only sound was the slow pattern of her breathing against his own.
LOSING the promise of sex should have discouraged him from visiting. But every morning, he woke to visions of her heart-shaped face, her slight but tempting curves, the faded sunspots on her shoulders. Each song the brass band played became another story to share. The first buds on the trees, the party for the Führer’s birthday—he tried to capture every detail for her. He filtered out the heavy bits, of course. He wouldn’t bore her with the progress of the war, worry her with the growing camp death toll. He didn’t want to burden her with his complaints, his own fears.
BY late spring, Karl could no longer ignore the fact that Marijke wasn’t his to keep. She dominated his thoughts, and for months, he had been sending a steady stream of gifts. Dried meats, wine, even a gold watch. But no matter what, she was still a prisoner, and he was one of many men.
It had been almost a year since his arrival at Buchenwald. Brandt remarked he was pleased with how Karl had taken to camp life, that he seemed to have found the backbone for it. A month earlier, Karl had revoked Ritter’s holiday leave after he’d tried to crack a joke about Karl’s leniency toward the prisoners, and since then, Karl’s SS inferiors had showed him more of the respect he deserved. The officers had stopped inviting him to their card games and gave him a buffer of space. He held no objections. Aside from Ritter, they were a thick-headed bunch. They swore and smoked tirelessly, chugged Champagne as if it were beer, and had no interest in music or opera or nature or anything that didn’t contain a trigger or a fuse.
Most of the officers followed the rules and used the SS brothel, believing that the girls were far prettier, and for the most part, they were right. Karl had gotten rid of the haughty SS supervisor at the prisoners’ brothel and her sidekick. Not only was he sick of their disdain, but he also knew that they let any guard or officer into the brothel who would offer up an appealing bribe. He found two middle-aged female prisoners to take over the administration of the brothel, hoping it would keep his men away from Marijke.
He made up his mind to take further action the day the Allies invaded Normandy. Berlin gave them little information about the attacks. All morning, he stayed in his office with the radio turned up loud, but he couldn’t get a good hold on the facts. The reports spoke of countless ships, paratroopers, amphibious landings, but assured them that the Wehrmacht would have no difficulties stifling the attempted invasion.
Lunch and dinner passed without stoking Karl’s appetite. As he pushed his cut of beef across his plate, he debated what to say to Marijke. News of the invasion would excite her, but the termination of the war would mean the end of the two of them. He didn’t know what had gotten into him. What they had was no relationship. If he never returned to the brothel, she would probably be relieved.
He stewed all afternoon, trying to distract himself with a visit to the kennels. One of the Alsatians jumped into his lap, which calmed his nerves as he sat there petting it. But this was only a temporary bandage, and by eight that evening, he’d worked himself back into a panic. The Allies would advance on them, and who really knew how long that would take. Months, weeks? He refused to lose her so quickly. But he knew he should have been more worried about his own skin. An Allied victory would plunge Germany back under water; Uncle Sam would hold them under, laughing while they thrashed and struggled to stay afloat. Luck might take them to a POW camp, although he doubted the Americans would look on him with sympathy. Not when they grasped what they were doing at Buchenwald. Maybe it would be smartest to run, he thought, but his father had warned him about that before Karl left for Buchenwald. You may not be fighting right on the front, son, but you must show the strength and bravery of a soldier no matter what. There’s no room in the Reich for cowards.
Karl told himself it was pointless to dwell on the invasion. He had to stay strong, stay dedicated to the cause. It was his duty, to his family, to his people. The Wehrmacht had insurmountable power, and he trusted the Wehrmacht generals to launch a fierce counterattack. Hitler would lead the Reich to a magnificent victory.
KARL had planned to stop by the brothel at nine as per usual but couldn’t wait any longer. He checked with the radio operators for updates one last time and made his way over there. The evening felt cool, even though the sun still rested over the peaked roofs of the blocks. He thought of how nice it would be to bring Marijke out to watch the sunset, but that would be taking a big risk. Rumours about Marijke could reach Brandt, and there was no telling how he might react.
The new cashier—a plain but friendly woman—nodded as Karl entered. He glanced at her clipboard for the koberzimmer number, but the cashier asked him to wait while she checked to see if Marijke was ready. A row of prisoners stared down at their shoes when he entered the waiting room. Green triangles and a pink one. Red grooves ran across the back of the queer’s wrists, evidence of a recent whipping. Himmler had sent a memo to the camps on updated Reich procedures for dealing with homosexuals. The problem had worsened, he argued, and they had to crack down. The Jews were one thing—a pest, as Himmler saw them—but the pink triangles were eating away at the German race from the inside out.
The prisoner must have noticed Karl’s staring, because his leg started to vibrate against his chair. The noise irritated Karl. He rose and marched into the hallway, ignoring the cashier who turned to call out to him. As he rounded the corner, he stopped. A guard had his piggish face pressed up to the peephole of Marijke’s koberzimmer, while one of his hands jerked up and down in his trousers.
“You—get the hell out of here!”
The guard spun around and sputtered out an apology as he wrestled his hand free and did up his zipper.
“You’re a disgrace.”
The guard hid his hands and stood at attention. “A few pink triangles ca
me in tonight. I was told to make sure they were doing what they were brought in for.”
“You’re despicable, you know that? What’s your name?”
The guard paled as he told Karl, but as soon as he had scurried off, his name dropped away and all Karl could think about was the man in there with Marijke. His fingers curled around the doorknob, but then he stopped himself. She would feel humiliated if he walked in on that, but there was no way in hell he wanted it to go on another minute.
The new brothel supervisor appeared in the hall to investigate the commotion.
“I sent the guard away,” Karl said. “This one needs to get out of there.” He gestured to Marijke’s door but the woman didn’t move.
“They have three more minutes.”
“Now.”
She rapped on the door, and he moved a few metres to the side until the inmate emerged, shutting the door behind him. The man didn’t look like someone who’d just fucked. His hair was shaved too short to appear dishevelled and he was so pale that Karl expected him to keel over at his feet.
She pointed down the hall. “Please go see the doctor for another injection.”
The inmate kept his head down as he walked away. A flash of worry struck Karl. All those men, it must have been hundreds by now. Even if these prisoners were cleaner than most, did he really want to be sharing her at all?
The brothel supervisor gave him a curious look. “Are you going in?”
“Send the rest of her clients to someone else.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he didn’t mean for that night alone.
Chapter Fifteen
LUCIANO
MAY 15, 1977
BUENOS AIRES
LUCIANO STOOD IN THE BASEMENT WAITING TO FILE into the Documentation Office. Hawk called out to him, “Number five-seven-four, step out of line.”
Luciano’s heart fluttered like a caged hummingbird as he moved to the side. A door at the other end of the basement creaked, and he almost pissed himself at the idea of more torture.
“Three-four-one, you too.”
Gabriel moved behind him. They waited while the other labourers filtered into their respective rooms. Luciano could hear Gabriel’s teeth chattering nervously. He squinted through the hood, trying to see what Hawk was doing. Hawk took him by the elbow and guided him forward. Gabriel fumbled to match the pace. They crossed the basement and stopped farther down. Hawk led them into a room, undid their handcuffs and instructed them to remove their hoods.
“Five-seven-four, you’ve been reassigned to go through these files.” He placed a folder on the desk. “Three-four-one, show him what to do.”
Luciano blinked a few times to bring the room into focus. A smaller space than the Documentation Office, with a single desk and a wall of metal filing cabinets. In the hall, someone cried out in protest. Hawk strode over to the doorway to check what was going on. He glanced back but paused only a second before disappearing.
Luciano and Gabriel didn’t speak. They listened, waited. When Hawk didn’t return, Gabriel approached the folder and opened it. For the first time, Luciano was left without supervision for more than a minute and had a chance to speak to Gabriel openly, to study his friend from head to toe. It was fine to call him a friend, after everything Gabriel had done to arrange the translation job, but they knew so little about each other. As Gabriel picked up the top file and began to read, Luciano noticed how long his eyelashes were. Dark curls spilled over his ears, and a few sprang loose against his brow like escaping thoughts. The unbuttoned collar of his shirt exposed a triangle of an almost hairless chest, and Luciano wondered if somewhere out there, Gabriel had a lover pining after him, a girl who liked to dance her tongue over the contours of his skin.
Gabriel looked up and caught Luciano staring. They both lowered their eyes. Luciano ran his fingers over the marks on his arms, the scars of the Machine, reminding himself they had a job to do.
“They had me organizing these files when I first got here,” Gabriel mumbled, so Luciano went over to the desk to stand right next to him. From outside the room came angry shouts and a loud thud.
“Do you think he’s coming back?” Luciano asked.
Gabriel chewed his lip and glanced at the door. “I wouldn’t give it more than five minutes.” He held out the folder for Luciano to see. It contained a list of prisoner numbers and a pile of index cards as thick as a matchbox.
“How long have you been here?”
“They nabbed me in February. The first two months, I got nothing but the hood and the Machine. Then they had me scrubbing the blood from the torture rooms. You don’t know the luck you had to get a job right away and a good one, too.”
Luciano lifted up the top index card. Attached to the back was a black-and-white shot of a woman in her late thirties, with information about her background and capture. The woman wore a striped shirt that draped like a nightgown and faced the photographer straight on. Listed under her name was her profession: schoolteacher. “What university do you attend?” Luciano tried to distract himself from her haunting stare.
“I dropped out.” Gabriel paused. “What’s the point in being a journalist if your mouth is taped shut?” He took the index card and held it so Luciano could see. “We need to file these by prisoner number.” He opened a cabinet drawer that contained hundreds of index cards. From the top of the cabinet, he pulled out a hefty record book and flipped through the sheets of numbers until he found the one that matched the index card. Columns covered the page: name, personal data, date of entry and exit, and a final one with annotated letters. “Look,” Gabriel said, pointing to the letter T. “She was ‘transferred’ last week. They transfer twenty people every Wednesday.”
“Transferred where?”
Gabriel shook his head. “You still have a lot to learn, don’t you?”
Luciano scanned the names in the first column as the truth twisted through him. He pulled the drawer all the way out and flipped through the cards.
“What are you looking for?”
“A friend.” He rustled through the cards until he got to where Fabián’s name would have been. Then he snatched the registry from Gabriel, found his own prisoner number and checked the other entries from the same week.
Gabriel looked suspicious. “This isn’t the only detention centre, you know. Dozens are hidden throughout the city.”
Luciano nodded but let out his breath before laying the registry open on the desk. In the background, the music began, a soprano’s aria, and he braced himself for the screams that would leak through her song. “They can’t get away with this.”
“They already have.”
“If people knew what was going on in here.”
“What do you expect to do about it? Rattle your chains a little louder, hoping someone on the streets will hear? Every day they pick up more and more of our comrades, the people who are already trying to make a difference.” Gabriel checked the door again. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have pinned you as a revolutionary.”
“All we need to do is survive.” The first scream broke through the music. Luciano winced and closed his eyes, picturing the way Fabián seemed to grow taller as soon as he got in front of a crowd. “This can’t go on forever. And when we’re free, we can rip off that tape.”
“They won’t ever believe what we’ve gone through. The military will do everything they can to make these places vanish.” His gaze fell on the book. “We’d have to remember every last detail, down to the number of steps it takes to get to the toilets.” He started to add something else, but someone entered the room. Like Hawk, this guard was still a teenager, with a wiry frame and long sloth-like limbs. A thick pair of glasses took up most of his face. He had the look of a guy who had always eaten his lunch alone at school.
The guard reached for his waist and pulled out a pistol. “What are you doing in here?” He walked toward them with the gun pointed, his lip curled into a practised sneer. “Well?”
“I’m—I’m showing him t
he filing system,” Gabriel stammered. “One of the guards just left.”
The guard scrutinized Luciano, making him feel like he was laid out on a table for dissection. “Is that true?” His accent sounded provincial.
Luciano nodded. The guard lowered his gun and ran his finger along the barrel as he considered their answer. Luciano wasn’t sure what frightened him more: the flash of pleasure in the guard’s grin or the fact that someone he could have babysat was toying with their lives.
The guard stayed for what felt like a minute before taking a step back. “Get to work, then.” He retreated to the doorway, where he pulled out a cigarette, his eyes still on Luciano.
Gabriel turned back to the index cards, but they shook between his fingers. The music played on as they bent over the files, and Luciano flipped through the cards, trying to block out the vacant black-and-white faces, trying to ignore their fates. He heard a low discussion behind him, but didn’t dare turn around. When he finally had to reach for the registry book, the guard with the glasses was gone, and Hawk stood in his place.
AFTER they returned to La Capucha, Gabriel scratched on the particleboard between their cells. Luciano shifted as close to the partition as possible before scratching in return.
“You know that guard with the glasses?” Gabriel asked.
“Yeah?”
“We call him Shark. Watch out for him.”
“Why?”
“He likes to prey on guys, you know, ones like you.”
A guard passed by and banged on their cell doors. “Shut up in there!”
Luciano’s throat went dry as he rolled over to the centre of the mattress; all the possible meanings of that phrase flew through his mind. Ones like you. Again, he pictured some girl caressing Gabriel’s shoulders, the same spot Luciano touched every day on the march downstairs, kissing the small of his back, which Luciano would never feel. He should have known Gabriel would guess the truth, as Fabián had. A flicker of relief passed through him, the realization that he wouldn’t have to pretend, wouldn’t have to lie, make up stories of girlfriends and sex as he had so many times before. But then he cringed, overcome by shame, worrying what Gabriel thought of him.