The Dutch Wife

by Ellen Keith

  IN early 1948, three years after fleeing Buchenwald, Karl left his hiding place on an Austrian dairy farm and travelled to South Tyrol. There, he found a pocket of former SS colleagues from Berlin. They put him in touch with a bishop in the Vatican, who arranged refuge for him in a chain of monasteries in northern Italy. The immigration process dragged on, clogged by all the other high-ranked party members who hoped to slip away through the ratlines, but after several months, Karl’s contacts in the Vatican had false identity papers drawn up for him. With the scratch of a new signature, Karl became Arturo Wagner: a classic German surname, which he’d requested in honour of the doctor who had helped Marijke at Buchenwald.

  That same week, he picked up a German newspaper and read about Brandt’s death: a heart attack in prison while awaiting execution. He brought the paper to the monastery, folded it up and hid it under his bed. The typeface of the headline felt cold, derisive: a reminder of what could have been.

  When the leaves turned colour, he said goodbye to the monks and moved on to the port of Genoa. Rumour had it that the new Argentine president had made thousands of visas available to former Nazis, and within a few weeks, Karl managed to secure passage on a ship bound for South America.

  On the basis of his new identity, the Red Cross issued him a passport. They didn’t ask any questions, but there was always an inside man on the job, smoothing out the process. A few days later, he took an Argentine medical examination. Then, on the twenty-third of October, a sunny morning with a salt-licked wind, he boarded the San Giorgio. He stood on the deck as the crew raised the anchor and flipped through the pages of his new passport. The face in the photo looked tired and unfamiliar. He touched his cheeks, where his skin drooped from the weight he’d lost. For the dozenth time, he studied the identity papers. Arturo Wagner, accountant. A strong, admirable name. Arturo Wagner struck him as the type of man who could live a happy, quiet life. Buenos Aires was reputed to be distinguished and charming—the Paris of the South. He recalled the photographs he’d seen of wide boulevards and corner cafés and tried to picture himself lounging on one of the park benches, perusing a local Spanish newspaper with ease. Maybe one day he would find an Argentine woman to marry, one as spirited and enticing as Marijke. They would settle down together, maybe have children—a son who would carry on his German blood and bring honour to a new family name.

  The ship blew its whistle and cheers broke out across the deck as they set off. The turquoise sea sparkled as the colourful houses on the hills shrank away, leaving nothing around them but water. Karl stood at the railing for some time and became aware of someone beside him, someone who was about his age, mustachioed, and reading a German copy of Faust. Karl recognized him as one of Himmler’s top aides. The man noticed Karl staring at the spine of his book and took in his Aryan features. “German?” he asked.

  Karl looked out at the horizon. The sea spread out like a safety net on all sides, ready to carry him to a strange, new world. He turned and responded in German. “No,” he said, “I’m Argentinian.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  MARIJKE

  APRIL 12, 1945

  BUCHENWALD

  APART FROM THE AFFIRMATION THAT THEO WAS being held in Ohrdruf, one of Buchenwald’s sub-camps, I’d gone almost two years without any knowledge of him and wasn’t sure what I was prepared to learn. I began my search in the blocks nearest the brothel. A large crowd of prisoners gathered outside, celebrating their newfound idleness by sitting in the sun, talking and smoking American cigarettes. A brown crust dirtied their uniforms, blue stripes faded to grey. Hollow stares greeted my approach. I recognized one man, a criminal who seemed to hold some sort of elite status among the prisoners. He had frequented the brothel, claiming feelings for Gerda, but at the sight of me, he butted out his cigarette and headed in the other direction. A tingle crept up my spine, and I wondered if it was easier to pretend I’d never seen him. I searched the crowd around me, throwing out Theo’s name in question to anyone who looked my way. At the next block, I called it out and the prisoners took it up as a chorus, relaying it through the bunks, their feeble voices like the murmur of reeds in a pond. No response.

  I traipsed along, the April sun already hot on my back. Between the blocks stood five prisoners with yellow stars. Two of them women, their bare arms marked with a string of numbers. Later someone told me that they tattooed the prisoners at Auschwitz, so the women must have been transfers. If the political prisoners teetered on the brink of death, the Jews looked wasted away to the bone. At the sight of the women’s shorn, scarred heads, my hand rose to touch my hair, which reached my shoulders. I thought of pillows and sweets in the brothel, of clean clothes and hot baths. As I walked past the women, I looked away.

  The afternoon took me through block after block, each filthier and more depressing than the last. Most men still couldn’t get out of bed. They met my inquiries for Theo with questions of their own: searching for wives, mothers, daughters. I learned the Nazis had evacuated thousands of prisoners to Dachau in the days leading up to the liberation, and worried Theo had gone with them. It was easier than considering the alternative.

  Bodies scattered across the compound, piled like bales of hay, but I was too afraid to look for him among them. I encountered a prisoner who had torn off his triangle, and he guided me to the American officer in charge of the records. The officer admitted the registration ledger was in disarray. He suggested I return to find him in a few days, but pointed me toward another block, where he’d heard of some prisoners from the sub-camps. I didn’t find Theo there. By that time, I felt sick and my shoes pinched my feet. I followed a crowd carrying tin mugs and bowls to a large building with a winding line for food. My stomach grumbled. I had no mug, no spoon. A couple of prisoners had just finished their soup, and I asked to borrow a bowl. They eyed me with suspicion and shuffled away. A few more, the same response. At Ravensbrück, a bowl had been an inmate’s lifeline, and it must have been the same at Buchenwald, but it was as if these people didn’t realize that our imprisonment had ended. I slumped against a wall until I felt a tap on my shoulder. An adolescent boy stood before me, holding out his bowl. “You need this?” he asked in German laced with Dutch.

  He joined me in line, probably to ensure that I didn’t sneak off. As a Kapo dished out my portion, the boy introduced himself as Johan. His family came from Rotterdam, but his father had died of starvation, and he hadn’t seen his mother or his sisters for years. I sipped at the soup, noticing that it contained a few more hints of vegetable than when the Nazis had served it, but it was still watery enough to see the bottom of the bowl. Johan asked for my story.

  “I’ve been here almost two years,” I said. “Before that, Ravensbrück.”

  “Why would they transfer you? I’ve hardly seen any women around.”

  “I don’t know.” I looked past him, out at the rows of heads bent over bowls. “I’m searching for my husband. He was transferred to Ohrdruf in the second half of ’43.”

  “Ohrdruf? I’ve heard bad things. Lots of hard labour. Most men lasted only a few months there.”

  “Not my Theo. He’s strong; he would have pulled through,” I replied, but the strained optimism in my words was no match for the fluttering in my stomach.

  “That’s not all. The moffen evacuated Ohrdruf last week and brought those prisoners to Buchenwald.”

  “But that’s wonderful.”

  He looked down. “From here, they sent those men on a death march to Dachau. We heard gunshots as they chased them down the road.”

  I stepped away. “No, that can’t be true.”

  He directed me to an American soldier, who confirmed what he’d said. Several thousand men, just hours away from freedom, marched back into the bowels of the Nazi death trap.

  Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes while the soldier rambled on about the absurdity of it all, the fact that they’d had no clue that something like this was going on behind enemy lines. I stopped listening, thinking
only of Theo, the way he’d hunched over in concentration as he fiddled with those crystal radios, his lopsided smile when he caught me watching. Had I come so close to finding him only to lose him again?

  The soldier stopped and scratched his head. “You’re searching for someone? Look, those men are long gone, but we’ve sent a squad to clean up the road. One of the officers with them has the evacuation list, but you really ought to wait until they come back this evening. It’s pretty gruesome up there.”

  He followed my gaze as I looked around us at the men too weak to stand, those coughing up blood. “I need to find my husband, come what may.”

  He took me up the hill, out of the prisoners’ compound and toward the edge of camp. For the first time in almost two years, I stepped beyond the barbed wire, but seeing a rifle bouncing against the soldier’s hip I still felt as if I were being led somewhere at gunpoint. We passed the SS barracks, but I didn’t allow myself to check around for Karl. Now that he’d lost possession of my body, I intended to regain control of my thoughts.

  The soldier walked briskly and I matched his pace, knowing every step brought me closer to an answer. The road curved to head out of the camp, but after some fifty metres we slowed down. Bloodstains marked the pavement, while bodies lined the ditch. The soldier reached out to steady me, but I carried on. I tried to picture Theo following that road a few days earlier. As we neared the dead, I forced myself to examine them. Stone-coloured faces, many with open eyes, some bodies with flies hovering over bullet wounds in their backs. The crater in my stomach deepened.

  Up ahead stood a wagon. The horses wore blinders, but they pawed their hooves as they sniffed the death-filled air. A few prisoners carried bodies to the wagon, pausing to read out the numbers on the uniforms to an American officer who was checking these off on a clipboard.

  The soldier who’d brought me approached the officer, explaining my situation in English too quick for me to follow. The officer gestured for the prisoners to wait and then turned to me. “Your husband was at Ohrdruf?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know until when.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “De Graaf.” I held my breath as he rustled through the papers. In that moment, Theo felt so close and yet so far away, like I could both stretch out to touch him and search for years but never reach him.

  The officer ran his finger down the page. “Pieter or Theodoor?”

  “Theodoor.”

  As Theo’s name left my lips, the officer raised his eyes to look at me. “Mrs. De Graaf, I’m so sorry—your husband is dead.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  LUCIANO

  JULY 27, 1977

  BUENOS AIRES

  AN INTENSE PAIN, THE WORST LUCIANO HAD EVER felt, came from his groin. He lay still until he regained some sensation in his fingertips, feeling that he was dressed and lying on a mattress. He assumed it was his bed, but couldn’t remember anything.

  A gash on his tongue rubbed against his gums. It felt like someone had extracted all his organs. He inched his hands down to his scrotum, which was swollen like a grapefruit. He separated his legs to ease the pain and then drifted away and back again.

  Days went by, or maybe just hours, or minutes. Ragged breaths tore at his ribs. All he wanted was for the pain to end, whatever that took.

  At one point, he opened his eyes to find the darkness of the hood comforting. He suddenly knew he was in his cell, and remembered the torture, being shoved under water. He couldn’t recall if he’d told them anything. The Jew to his left was praying again, but there was no noise from his right. Luciano wondered if Gabriel had been tortured, how the guards had discovered the microfilm, if the girl had confessed.

  The pain grew so strong that it dulled his thoughts, so he started counting again. In English this time, to help him concentrate. One, he began, two, three, four, five, six. When he got to twenty-seven, the door to his cell opened.

  They took him back to the basement, near the photo lab. Other prisoners waited nearby, a large group, based on the rattle of handcuffs and ankle shackles. His legs trembled as he tried to stand still.

  They were herded into a small, unfamiliar room. A guard came around to undo their binds, which fell to the floor in a cacophony of steel and iron. The prisoners filed ahead. Someone tugged Luciano’s wrist, and a needle punctured his biceps with a numbing prick. They bound his wrists again, this time with rope. “Don’t worry, you’re being transferred.” The voice sounded like it came through a soupy fog.

  Transfer day. It must have been Wednesday. He was strangely unafraid. He stumbled, feeling woozy, like he’d come home from a night of beers and drag racing down Avenida 9 de Julio with Fabián’s dark hair waving in the wind.

  Someone around him retched. The noise brought a foul taste into his own mouth, but he swallowed and focused on staying upright. He wanted to lie down, to curl up on the basement floor and feel the cement against his cheek.

  A door opened. The shock of the cold prickled his skin. A jab in the back sent him outside as the first fresh air in months hit his nostrils. He collided with a body in front of him, and someone else bumped into him from behind, but they kept moving forward until they reached a steep ramp that they had to clamber up. It led to a stuffy space where they packed together as more prisoners filed in. Luciano’s arm hit a metal bar and a wall, but it wasn’t until he heard the ramp drop away and the double doors close that he understood where he was. The floor began to vibrate as the truck turned on and started to move, but Luciano was too dizzy and saw no point in tracking its movements.

  The others let out distorted cries and groped him as they searched for friends.

  “Gabriel,” he called, again and again. Nobody responded.

  They arrived in a field. Luciano tumbled out onto the soft grass on all fours, pulled out a tuft and brought it to his nose. Summer afternoons in the park, passion-fruit ice cream dripping down the cone, his mother’s tidy laughter. His parents dancing tango. The bandoneon picking up with short, rhythmic barks before the violin seized the melody. The music building up, faster and faster, Mamá circling Papá like the arms of a windmill.

  Luciano was pulled up, pushed forward, the wooziness growing with each step. His feet touched pavement. Forward again, crowding up a narrow staircase, clenching the handrail to keep from tipping backward.

  “Name and number?”

  The prisoners in front of him answered: women, men. Cristina Almeida, Juan Carlos Fernandez, Roberto León. When he reached the top of the staircase, the question came to him.

  “Luciano Wagner. Number five-seven-four.”

  He was calm. He stepped forward, tripping as he met a solid surface, a wall that curved inward. They crammed together, and the door shut with a heavy slam. The air inside was stale, the smell of sweat and fear and last wishes.

  “Take off your clothes.” The order came from somewhere in front of him. He heard belts unbuckling and shoes coming off. He struggled with his own shirt and pants, his arms still leaden, his mind clouding. Every hair on his body rose. He imagined the bare bodies around him, frozen on the spot, like a madman’s sculpture garden.

  Guards came around to strip those who couldn’t undress themselves. Then the prisoners sat on the floor and waited in darkness. A loud rumble as the engines started up. Bodies jostling, skin slick against skin, the comfort of knowing he was not alone. The wall shook, and the noise grew to a roar, flushing out everything else. Then the ground beneath them dropped away as the plane took off.

  Luciano fell back into the mass of bodies while the plane rose higher and higher. When it levelled out, he separated himself, his mind a haze. He knew they would fly over the River Plate, out to the spot where it meets the Atlantic. He tried not to think of the huge fish that circled beneath the water’s dark surface.

  Nobody spoke, or if they did, their voices were carried away. Fingers grazed his torso, and he grasped the hand in his, holding it tightly.

  Then, an icy blast and the howling
of the wind. Someone had opened the hatch. They were ordered to stand and were pushed forward from behind. Screams, swallowed by infinite blackness. Luciano’s teeth chattered, but he closed his eyes and tried to recite Neruda. A few words were all he remembered.

  He took another step and saw a streak of light shifting before him, an iridescence like the inside of a moon snail. As it moved nearer, the light grew and took shape: his grandparents’ ranch, an open field with a group of people. He couldn’t make out their faces, but they were so close, and he knew if he could just reach them, everything would be all right.

  The wind whipped at his toes and through his hood. Tears froze to his eyelashes. A pair of hands pushed him out of the plane and sent him hurtling down through the night sky. All he could hear was a thundering roar.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  MARIJKE

  APRIL 12, 1945

  BUCHENWALD

  MRS. DE GRAAF?”

  The officer’s mouth kept moving, but I missed whatever followed. I stood there, dumb, unable to think. All I could hear was that single word: dead. Theo, my love, dead.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Hard to know for sure. All it says is ‘typhus,’ but that was jotted down in pen. It must have been right as they were preparing the evacuation.”

  The officer pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to me. Only then did I realize I was crying. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, before turning to the soldier at my side. “Find somewhere where she can sit down, and make sure she’s taken care of.” He said something more to me then, what I supposed were words of comfort, but everything hazed over as if I were anchored to the bottom of a lake, peering up at a surface far overhead.

  Somehow I made my way back to the prisoners’ compound. Somehow I ate soup and drank coffee and secured a place to sleep. That night I dreamed of Theo, that we were sailing together around the IJsselmeer. Lightning blazed across the sky, and we heard the rain around us but couldn’t feel the drops. The baby kicked inside of me, and Theo pressed his ear to my belly to listen.