by Ellen Keith
The next morning, I woke up on a bunk beside two strangers. Johan was on the bunk across from us, watching me with worry. I’d forgotten how he’d found me the night before, what I’d told him. My eyes felt puffy from weeping, but my senses had returned. I got up, nodded at him and then slipped outside. I needed to know what they’d done with Theo’s body, whether I still had a chance of burying him.
A few answers from some nearby soldiers led me toward the mass grave. Dense fog cloaked the ground, and as I walked, I thought about my time in the infirmary, shaken by the understanding that Theo could have been dying in one of the blocks next to me. The idea left me hopeless, defeated, but I told myself to have courage, if only for the baby.
At the burial site, I realized that I didn’t know what I’d expected to find. The Nazis had discarded the remains of the innocent just as you’d dump out an ashtray. Now we were left to bury the remaining bodies. The wagon from the day before was parked at the side of a pit, which a number of prisoners and soldiers were busy digging. The fog masked the features of the dead, so for a while I stood at a distance, watching the rote movements of the workers, the arch of their arms, the spray of earth through the murky air. The prisoners grabbed corpses by the limbs, struggling under the weight as they swung them into the grave.
The sight of the purple eyelids, the hanging jaws, the tangle of feet became too much to take. I covered my mouth and turned away. It felt impossible to go on alone.
I started back toward the blocks. Up ahead, three figures rounded a bend, pushing wheelbarrows filled with even more bodies. I averted my eyes, but as I did, something caught my attention. One of the prisoners had stopped. He stood still, beholding me, and in that moment, everything I had thought was true unravelled again.
Once, at the Theater Tuschinski in Amsterdam, I’d watched a pair of star-crossed lovers run across the screen toward each other, their faces aglow. Not us. We stared, afraid to move.
“Theo?” I took a step through the fog and then another, until I was close enough to know for certain that it was him. “You’re alive,” I whispered, and I began to cry.
Then he was right there in front of me. “Oh, Marijke.”
I reached out and embraced him. His body felt so fragile against mine. After a long moment, he pulled away and looked down at his ragged uniform in shame. He appeared a decade older, a mere spectre of the husband I remembered. His cheeks were sunken, his glasses held together with chicken wire, his chin scabbed. “I didn’t want you to ever see me like this.”
“Theo—” I said, but I didn’t know how to respond, how to speak to him anymore. My attention returned to the din of voices around us, the gawking soldiers. Theo studied me with a sad, broken smile.
“I always knew you’d survive.” He held me again, whispering into my hair, while I started to fear the questions that would inevitably arise.
After that, I wouldn’t leave his side. We held hands like newlyweds, as if any interruption to this contact might tear us apart again. He led me to the block where he’d spent the past week, presented me to the men who had helped him obtain extra rations and warmer shoes. Afterwards, we found a secluded spot to sit, and he shared stories of his friends from Ohrdruf who had been evacuated to Dachau.
“They told me you were dead,” I said. “How can it be you’re here?”
He replied in a hoarse voice. “I was supposed to go along with them, but I switched uniforms with a man who was dying of typhus. With all the chaos, nobody noticed.”
The stench of that mass grave came back to me, the feeling of sickening devastation that had arisen with the belief that Theo lay in one of the piles of corpses. What jagged paths our lives had taken, how close I’d come to losing him forever.
“You look radiant,” he added. “I knew these camps couldn’t mar your beauty.”
I kissed his cheek, hoping to allay his curiosity, and focused on the bony protrusion of my knees, one of the few signs of what I’d endured.
“It’s such a relief to find you in decent health. And that dress—what happened to your uniform?”
“Oh, I found this when the Americans arrived. One of the nurses abandoned it.”
He asked where I’d been held, in which part of the camp, to what labour force I’d been assigned. “Please tell me they didn’t do anything to hurt you.”
I looked away, torn between the pain of keeping secrets and the knowledge that the truth could hurt him more. I could neither answer his endless questions nor bear to tell him about the seed growing in my belly. “We’re together now, darling. Let’s forget about everything else.”
He passed me a cup of water, watching lovingly as I sipped it, and I sensed how he longed to be able to take care of me again. I leaned back into his embrace. His eyes shone with tears. “You know,” he said, “I’m only here today, alive, because of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember the time you invited me to your cousin’s birthday party a few weeks after we met? I showed up in Haarlem in my Sunday best, and I couldn’t figure out why you thought that was so funny until we ended up at the family farm instead of a seaside café. You see, every time things got dire here, every time I was sure I wouldn’t make it, I thought back to that afternoon, you doubled over in hysterics as I learned to milk a cow, mud splattered all over my suit and hat. That devious grin of yours and your loud, goofy laughter.”
How long ago that seemed, the two of us engrossed in our fledgling romance, so happy and naive. I held him closely, trying to return to that day. Then I shared my own memories, those little life rafts that had carried me through it all, and my love for him felt more certain than ever.
It didn’t take long for the exhaustion to surface in his voice, so we returned to his block for some rest. The beds were all occupied, but Theo motioned to one near the entrance. The men lying on it had gone cold. We lifted them up and carried them outside. Without speaking, we climbed onto the empty bunk, and as Theo fell asleep, I pressed up against him, cherishing the sound of his breath in my ear.
THE week that followed passed like the changing of seasons as Theo and I grappled with what it meant to be together again. He’d lost the hair on his legs and a strange scar marked his back, long and curved in a wide hook. When the Americans gave him a tin of beans, he vomited. It took days to wean him off the diet of watery soup. He spoke of railway ties and tunnels and munitions factories. I said nothing in return. When he held me at night, his feeble touch reminded me of prisoners in the brothel, and when he whispered promises of our shared future, his words blurred with Karl’s in my head.
We put up with constant reorganization by the Americans, who couldn’t figure out what to do with the tens of thousands of people they’d stumbled across. More than once, they summoned us to stand before groups of locals they forced to tour the camp. We lined up near a display of lampshades made from tattooed skin. Women in warm jackets and felt hats came into Buchenwald smiling like they were on a nice outing, but these soon became looks of horror, and they lifted handkerchiefs to their noses as they filed past.
“I feel like an exhibit in a museum,” I whispered. “They won’t even look us in the eye!”
“Still,” Theo said, “they claim they didn’t know.”
“Couldn’t they see the trains coming in full and leaving empty? Or smell the burning flesh?”
Theo said nothing more until we returned to our block. “I’ve had two years to think about this. I don’t think there’s any way to move forward if we blame everything on the German people. You’re right—what you said the other day—we need to try to forget all of this.”
“That doesn’t mean we should forgive them.”
“The Allies will take care of Hitler soon enough. After that, they’ll go after the top Nazis, but the bloodbath can’t go on forever, can it?”
I climbed onto our bunk and placed a hand on my belly as I tried to block out the rough baritone of Karl’s voice, his smell of leather and pine, the i
mage of him shot in the head.
AFTER that, Theo stopped pushing for answers. I told him I’d cleaned one of the buildings and sewn for the officers and left it at that. He nodded, but I could see the unasked questions stacking up. Sometimes, the truth played on my lips, but I reminded myself what I stood to lose by telling him.
Several more days passed before he was strong enough to travel, but this allowed time to arrange transport. A couple of American soldiers fixed us a spot on a convoy headed west. A military truck would bring a number of other prisoners a hundred kilometres toward the border. From there, we had to find our own way.
The morning we left, Buchenwald was draped in fog. Theo and I crossed the compound hand in hand, the ground still wet from early rainfall. At the top of the slope, I turned back to the rows of blocks. Behind them and out of sight stood the brothel, but beyond that, the camp fell away into forest, the first green signs of spring. The sun sliced through the thick grey sky to brush the roofs of the buildings. For a moment, it felt like the camp was just an illusion. But then I spotted the prisoners trudging through the puddles, and again I felt their sharp shoulder bones, smelled illness on their skin.
Theo’s grip tightened as we neared the iron gate. We stared up at it one last time. Somewhere, a crow cawed. Then we passed through it and we were free. He stopped to pull me in, the tears on his cheeks blending with my own. Behind him, I saw a group of camp guards and officers being herded at gunpoint toward the petrol station. A tall, hefty figure stood among them, his face battered blue. I watched while the soldiers loaded Bruno into the back of an armoured truck, his hands bound, head to the ground.
I held Theo close. “I love you.”
“It’s just you and me now.” He kissed my hair. “We’ll be home soon.”
I nodded, but as he let go, the familiar queasiness returned.
We boarded our own truck with anxious relief. I sat down next to Theo, as ten others crammed on the floor beside us. The Americans left the back canvas open so we could take in the fresh air. We started down the road that led out of Buchenwald. The truck drove by the terminus of the railway line, abandoned except for an empty railcar and a suitcase that lay open on the stones between the tracks. From there, we headed through the forest. In places, the road was still stained red, so I concentrated on the trees and inhaled the scent of moist soil, wondering if I would ever again be able to find the beauty in nature. When we passed through Weimar to stock up on supplies, I refused to look at the residents buying groceries in the streets and buried my face in Theo’s chest.
Before we set out on the road again, a soldier jumped in the back to distribute a pile of clothes. I accepted a green coat without question, but when I ran my finger over the worn collar, the sweat stains under the arms, I couldn’t help but feel a mix of curiosity and hatred for the woman who had worn it.
Our group included two other women, one a Jew, the other a communist. The communist had the same round features as Sophia, though in place of Sophia’s thick hair, she hid her baldness beneath a kerchief. The sight of her made me sorely miss the girls. Selfish worries had preoccupied me—the baby, my future with Theo, the fear we’d run into someone who would tell him about Karl—so I’d made no effort to find out what happened to them. I promised myself that I would track down Sophia one day. I’d ask her forgiveness and show her my little one. Once life returned to normal.
After a day’s travel, the soldiers left us at an emergency camp that had been set up near the border, while we awaited further transportation. Allied offensives in the Netherlands kept us there for a week. The Americans left to supervise us had a gambling habit and always invited Theo to join their card games, though he had nothing to wager. To pass the time, I offered to patch up the soldiers’ uniforms. I declined the request to darn their socks.
Almost a month had passed since my hospitalization and my breasts had swollen to their pre-war size. Everything ached. Theo started to worry every time I darted off mid-sentence, hit by a new bout of nausea, but I blamed it on the fresh rations.
On a balmy evening, Theo shook me awake. “It’s a warm night,” he whispered, “and the stars are out.”
A Frenchman snored on the cot next to me, whistling in his sleep. I pulled on my coat and let Theo lead me out of the warehouse where we slept. Outside, the sky glowed purple with stars and far-off explosions. The rumbling drone of British planes sounded overhead, bombers headed east. The smell of wood-smoke drifted from fires at the edge of the camp, where privates gathered with playing cards and mugs of beer. Their laughter reached us in shards.
“Come with me.” Theo wrapped an arm around my waist and guided me toward the trees. His embrace felt stronger, a touch I recognized as his.
A soldier watched as we crossed the left boundary of the camp, where a dark hedge of trees stretched above us. I waited for him to take aim, to order us back to the warehouse, and felt a strange sense of relief when we passed out of his sight. “Where are we going?”
“I want to be alone with you.”
We moved into the darkness, until we found a spot where the trees parted to offer a window to the sky.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“So are you.”
He kissed me. Undressed me piece by piece, like he’d never touched a woman before and never would again. He trailed kisses down my neck. When he unbuttoned his shirt, I tried not to notice the way his chest caved, the loose skin that had replaced his muscles. After spreading our clothes out on the ground, he eased me down onto the mossy forest floor. Dry pine needles crunched under our weight. As he unclasped my brassiere, I shivered and reached for him, my legs goose-pimpled.
He bent to kiss my breasts. “I’ve thought about this moment so many times.”
I said nothing. His legs trembled as he entered me, and he clutched my back with desperate longing. But his kisses didn’t stir the same current they once had, and I found myself wishing he would hurry up and get things over with. He thrust into me with what little strength he had, but my body refused to embrace his, and I bit my cheek to keep myself from wincing. I cradled his prickly scalp and looked past him, up at the bare branches that shuddered overhead.
OUR train pulled into Amsterdam a few days after the official liberation. Crowds waved handkerchiefs at the passing tanks, and couples danced in the squares while accordionists played the national anthem. Dutch flags hung from almost every gable. Canadian soldiers drank pints on the sidewalks with flirty girls who wore orange ribbons in their hair. The bridges, the cobblestone streets, the red-tile roofs—so many things were the same. But then we saw buildings with broken windowpanes, a gap of rubble where a bomb had hit. Children in patched clothing three sizes too big. The milkman’s horses looked on the verge of collapse, and he had only a few litres of milk to sell. Mistrust filled the streets: it lay in the rubbish bins people set out in the darkest hour of the night; at the market, where the butcher seemed as round as before the war; in the Jewish quarter, where families returned to find their homes ransacked or occupied. We walked up to our own house without a key, unsure what to expect. When a young man opened the door, I sank into Theo, but as soon as we introduced ourselves, he beckoned us in, explaining that my parents had arranged tenants for our house following our capture. Our home was still ours. The couple returned the place to us two days later, and in some improbable twist of fate, we found it almost as we’d left it. Old dresses on the hangers, my embroidery in the drawer of the coffee table, Theo’s razor under the sink. A few stools and the china cabinet were missing, along with my grandmother’s silverware, all likely sold off for fuel and food, but we were lucky. It was as if the couple had lived there as guardians. But even with everything back in its place, I went to bed that first night feeling like I was in a stranger’s house and knew that nothing would ever be the same.
THE countryside had been stripped of tulip bulbs during the Hunger Winter, the trees on the boulevards chopped up for firewood, but scattered roses reappeared. They c
lung to the tired facades that lined Noordermarkt, where we shopped for second-hand clothes. One Monday, Theo and I strolled through the market square as a few bicycles wove around us. Most of Amsterdam’s bicycles had disappeared from the streets, and these ones had scraps of garden hose wrapped around the wheels for tires. An organ grinder set himself up at the base of the church with a sign asking for payment in food scraps. The stalls contained trays of costume jewellery and old porcelain, which everyone ignored as they sorted through the tables of worn coats and sweaters. Two mothers bickered over a pair of shoes, until one raised a fist and the merchant had to step in. Theo shook his head and picked out a few pairs of socks before we made our way back to the canal. A crowd had gathered at the edge of the square, the spectators hooting and jeering.
“Come on; let’s keep going,” Theo said, but I approached the edge of the circle to take a peek.
A young woman cowered naked on a stool, a sign around her neck. Moffenhoer. Traitor. Dirty, filthy, moffen whore. Two men held her wrists while a third took a pair of shears to her hair, which fell to her shoulders in dark clumps. When they raised a bucket of tar, I ran back to Theo, who took me home without a word.
THE morning Theo returned to the university, he left my old violin at the foot of our bed. He had fixed a broken string and tied a blue bow around its neck. I picked up the instrument, stroked its curves, traced a finger down its neck. Then I put it down and left the house.
It was July, and children and shopkeepers filled the streets. I kept walking toward Noordermarkt. There, I found a bench and stared at the spot where the crowd had gathered around that woman, the one they had taunted and called a whore. While I sat there, a boy ran past, chasing a rolling hoop until it came to a stop against a signpost. I moved a hand to my belly. In the past week, it had begun to swell. I’d taken to wearing loose blouses, dresses that gathered at the waist, and I changed with my back to Theo, but soon enough he would see. I tried to anticipate how he would react, given everything we’d been through. We still had to cope with ration coupons and had only just begun to buy meat again, with our list of impending expenses growing by the day. But preparations for the baby had to begin. Of course, the question that kept following me into my dreams was how Theo would respond if I told him the truth, whether it was better to be honest or to save him from that hurt.