The Paradise Ghetto

by Fergus O'Connell

  The hours creep by with painful slowness. Darkness comes and there is still no sign of the list. By then they are back in the barracks and the smell of fear is acrid and overwhelming. The single toilet, which usually fills up some time during the night, is already overflowing and there is a constant queue for it.

  Finally, the list is posted up. The occupants of the hut surge around it and the place descends into uproar. Those at the front who get to see the list first turn away, pushing their way back through the surging mass of people. Some are ashen-faced with relief. Some are hysterical and it’s hard to tell whether from happiness or from terror. Some scream, some hold their heads in disbelief, women embrace one another, tears stream down the faces of those who are on the list. Some appear to be on the point of insanity and some seem to have tipped over into madness. There are wide eyes, people talking to themselves. There is urine on the floor and the sharp smell of faeces in the air. Mothers grip children until they cry out. Fathers look helpless, lost. A man in his thirties comforts a woman of the same age whose face is contorted with crying. ‘I will come with you,’ he says.

  When the crowd thins and Julia and Suzanne get close enough to read, they find that they are both on the list.

  5

  A train is drawn up on the railway line that runs right through the centre of the camp. It is a regular passenger train of Pullman cars. The constabulary supervise the loading of the train while a few Germans stand in a group. Julia carries her suitcase while Suzanne has a cloth bag which she managed to pick up and which contains her bowl, spoon and the notebook. She has nothing else.

  The two of them join the flow of people, all carrying luggage, that pass along the railway cars. The hysteria is pretty much over now. Everyone is muffled up as best they can against the cold – hats, scarves, coats. People wear what appear to be their best clothes but the shabbiness of these garments makes the whole scene appear a bit surreal. Julia sees a man and a woman shaking hands and she is reminded of the end of the summer holidays when she was a child – her parents saying goodbye to people they had met at the hotel.

  Three Germans go by, an officer in the middle and two enlisted men. They wear heavy winter coats, caps and are all smoking. The officer is explaining something to the other two, accentuating his words with a chopping gesture of his gloved right hand that holds the cigarette.

  An old woman is brought to one of the wagons on a wheelchair. Two men raise it and two other men gently lift her from the wheelchair into the interior of the car. A group of young women, looking like secretaries or shop assistants, crowd together in the doorway of one of the cars. There is much waving from people already on the train. Two middle-aged men shake hands and Julia has a sense of a friendship, forged in the camp, being sundered.

  The loading is supervised by the constabulary. It is almost as if the Germans have nothing to do with it and are watching some local custom. Julia and Suzanne pass along the cars, looking into their interiors, trying to find one which isn’t already too crowded. They choose one and climb aboard.

  The car fills up quickly. A heavily pregnant woman comes into view. Julia watches from the window as a man helps her up the steps onto the train. Julia expects the man to join her but he doesn’t – the pregnant woman appears to be quite alone. The woman enters the car and with a tortured look on her face and holding her belly, she eases herself down into a seat.

  Outside, some constables can be seen approaching a knot of German officers. They hand over a sheaf of papers to one of the officers who leafs through the pages as though checking them. Having done this he gives them to the one who appears to be most senior. This man signs them before handing them back to the subordinate.

  Meanwhile the doors of the cars are locked from the outside. Shortly afterwards, the locomotive whistle shrills and there is a hiss of steam. Couplings clank, the cars shudder and the train begins to move.

  During all this time Julia and Suzanne have said very little. Julia feels that it has been like watching a movie. She knows this feeling too well. She experienced it the first time she did a film. She had thought it would be with one man, but it turned out to be with two. She realised afterwards that this was a thing Bert did. It was about showing who was in control. Julia nearly refused but the rent was due that day so she had no choice but to go through with it. When she made her painful way home afterwards she was in shock.

  She is in shock now – in a train being carried away to an unknown destination. It is Suzanne who snaps out of it first. As the train begins to pick up speed and find its rhythm, she says, ‘Now. Now we need to do the next piece of our book.’

  Julia looks at her and at first she is astonished.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she asks.

  But Suzanne is already rummaging in her cloth bag and produces the notebook along with a pencil that has been carefully sharpened with a knife.

  The train is rocking along gently, rhythmically. For Julia, it is a rhythm familiar since childhood – it is the rhythm of going on family holidays. There is no conversation in the car. Most of the people seem locked inside their own thoughts. One or two people change places or help one another to get comfortable. An old man takes a blanket off his lap and drapes it over his wife’s shoulders. She protests a little but he insists. The pregnant woman has a blanket over her lap and is staring off into space with a frightening intensity.

  ‘You are serious, aren’t you?’ Julia says and she slowly breaks into a smile. It is the first time she has smiled today.

  Suzanne smiles back.

  ‘Of course – but let’s have breakfast first. We can’t work on an empty stomach.’

  6

  British newspaper report

  October 1st2015

  Twenty-one transports went from Westerbork in 1944. Eight went to Bergen-Belsen. Eight went to Auschwitz. (The last of these – on September 3rd – was the one that took Anne Frank and her family.) The remaining five went not to a camp in the way we might normally imagine it – with watchtowers, barbed wire fences and gas chambers – but rather to a town in what is now the Czech Republic. These days it is called Terezin. In 1944 it was known by the Germans as Theresienstadt.

  7

  They eat some of the three days’ bread ration they were given before boarding the train. Other people in the car are doing the same, carefully portioning out whatever food they have. There is a hum of conversation now. Julia thinks how strange it is that once there is food, everyone relaxes – a little.

  She and Suzanne finish eating. Julia feels hungrier after the food than she did before but this is now becoming a familiar sensation to her. Just as Suzanne opens the notebook, a man with a grey beard across the aisle from them asks, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘We’re writing a book,’ announces Suzanne cheerily.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re starting something like that. You’ll never get to finish it.’

  At these words, Julia feels a churning in her stomach. It’s as though a great dark cloud has gathered inside her head.

  ‘Then we’ll just have to write quickly, won’t we?’ Suzanne says jauntily.

  ‘Fools,’ he says, turning away.

  Without missing a beat, Suzanne says, ‘We’re going to need a hero and a heroine. What if I come up with the heroine and you come up with the hero?’

  Julia thinks about this for a moment.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If you have to think up a heroine, what will she be like?’

  ‘Beautiful, smart, passionate –’

  ‘There, you see, there’s the problem. All women aren’t beautiful and smart, you know. We want our heroine to be unusual, to stand out –’

  ‘So, what, make her ugly with spots and hairy legs?’

  ‘No, but she needs to stand out in other ways. Why don’t I take care of the heroine and you do the hero?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Suzanne agreeably.

  ‘And why don’t we do
this as well,’ continues Julia. ‘Why don’t you make up your hero and I’ll make up the heroine, but we won’t tell each other what they’re like. We’ll just start the plot and we’ll gradually find out what the hero and heroine are like – just the same way as the reader would find out. You know – as the plot gradually unfolds.’

  Suzanne thinks about this and after what seems like a long time during which Julia wonders whether she had made a very stupid suggestion, Suzanne says, ‘I think that’s a brilliant idea.’

  Julia spends most of the rest of the morning working out who her heroine is going to be. She decides to call her Fleur. Julia gives her long hair that is dark auburn – the same colour as Julia’s. Fleur is tall, a bit taller than Julia – more Suzanne’s height really – and she is given a fringe. Despite what Julia said to Suzanne, she makes Fleur pretty – very pretty, in fact. Fleur has long legs and breasts the size of big oranges. She is twenty, the same age as Julia, and she is also given the same birthday as Julia – December thirteenth, so she is a Sagittarius.

  Now that Julia can picture her – and it doesn’t take her that long to do all of that – she spends the rest of the time wondering why Fleur has come to the hotel. How can she afford it? If she is staying at the hotel she must be rich – or certainly well off. Is she alone? Is she married? Single? Even though she is young, does she have children? Is she a virgin? What part is she going to play in the murder mystery? Who is going to get murdered? And why?

  There are so many questions to be answered that Julia reckons it will be impossible to answer them all before they start. Anyway, she decides that she is starting in the wrong place. Fleur must want something. That’s why she’s come to the hotel. And in their story, she will either have to get it and so, a happy ending, or not get it and thus, a sad ending.

  And there has to be excitement. That in turn means that the stakes will have to be high. Fleur can’t just want a couple of weeks of being pampered at a luxury hotel. What are the highest stakes of all? Well, they would have to be that Fleur’s life was in danger. She has come to the hotel to get away from something. Somebody is pursuing her and wants to kill her. But why?

  Maybe Julia doesn’t need to figure that out now. Maybe she can get to that later. All she needs for now is that Fleur has a secret. There is something in her past that has made her flee wherever she was living and come here to the hotel.

  And there’s a related issue. Is she going to be fleeing for the rest of her life? Maybe. Julia could imagine an ending where Fleur gets safely away from the hotel but, whoever it is, is still pursuing her. That would leave the door open to a sequel. Or maybe even a series.

  At this Julia has to laugh. It’s a bitter laugh. As the man said, she’ll be lucky to survive long enough to get one book written. Again the black cloud hovers in her brain but she dismisses it by throwing herself back into this other world that is starting to take shape in her head.

  No, the ending – if it is to be a happy one, and right now that is what Julia would like – has to be final. Whoever was pursuing Fleur, whatever the secret was – all that has to be brought to a conclusion and resolved at the end of the book.

  Julia ponders these and many other questions and later in the day, tells Suzanne that she has her heroine.

  ‘And I’ve had some thoughts about the hero,’ says Suzanne. ‘I thought I would make him a –’

  ‘No, don’t tell me,’ says Julia. ‘Didn’t we say we would find out as the story unfolded?’

  ‘Oh yes, you’re right,’ says Suzanne. ‘I’m dying to tell you about him. I think you’ll really like him.’

  ‘I’m sure I will – but I’ll meet him soon, I’m sure.’

  ‘So now,’ Suzanne says, ‘we have the characters. We have the setting and the atmosphere. Now we just need the plot.’

  ‘Well, the start point is pretty simple,’ Julia replies. ‘The hero and heroine arrive at the hotel.’

  ‘And the murder takes place,’ says Suzanne.

  ‘And then we take it from there,’ says Julia. Then she asks, ‘How are we going to write the book? You write a chapter and then I write a chapter? You write the hero parts and I write the heroine parts?’

  ‘I don’t really know. We only have two hundred and forty pages in the notebook. We need to make sure we don’t waste any of them. How about we discuss what’s going to happen next and then one of us goes away and writes it.’

  ‘That sounds like the best idea,’ agrees Julia. ‘Let’s try that and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work we can always change it.’

  Then Suzanne raises her index finger.

  ‘We’ve forgotten one of the most important things,’ she says.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A title. What are we going to call it? What title is really going to grab the attention of somebody looking at it in a bookshop?’

  ‘A bookshop?’

  Julia looks at Suzanne to see if she’s kidding.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘A bookshop. If we’re going to go to the trouble of writing this thing, we should be thinking of getting it published. After the war. After we get out of here – out of all of this.’

  Julia suddenly feels like she is going to cry.

  ‘Do you think we ever will?’ she says.

  ‘We have to believe it, Julia. You and I will leave here, alive and with the book. We’ll go to America or some place. The book will be published. We’ll make loads of money and live happily ever after.’

  She pushes her glasses up her nose.

  ‘That has to be the plan.’

  Suzanne looks steadily into Julia’s eyes. ‘Agreed?’ she asks, extending her hand.

  Julia takes it. It is icy cold. ‘Agreed. And the title?’ she asks.

  ‘The Murder at the Grand Hotel?’ Suzanne ventures.

  Julia frowns. ‘Sounds like it’s been done before.’

  ‘Probably has,’ Suzanne agrees. ‘But it will do as a working title until we find something better.’

  It’s agreed.

  ‘So the only remaining question now,’ says Suzanne, ‘is who goes first. Who arrives at the hotel first?’

  ‘Ladies first?’ Julia suggests.

  ‘I don’t see why not. And I guess we don’t need to discuss this because you can decide the manner of your own arriving.’

  ‘Sounds like a good title for a chapter – “The Manner of Her Arriving”. Think we should have chapter titles?’

  ‘Maybe’ says Suzanne. ‘Do whatever you think is best for the moment and we can decide that later. So – here, you take the book and the pencil. And remember to write small.’

  Julia carefully opens the notebook. It has a black cover and marbling on the inside front and back covers. The marbling is beautiful in black and blue and white. She fans the pages and inhales the smell of new, unused paper.

  Julia places the book on the table. Then, turning to the first blank, right hand page she writes at the top, ‘The Murder at the Grand Hotel’. She does this in letters about a centimetre high. It is an extravagant use of paper but she hopes that Suzanne will understand. After all, it’s the start of their novel.

  After a moment’s thought, underneath she adds in smaller writing, ‘By Julia Snel & Suzanne...’

  She pauses. ‘What’s your second name, Suzanne?’

  Julia is aware that it is the first time she has used Suzanne’s name.

  ‘Helman.’

  She adds the surname. Then she writes, ‘Chapter One’.

  Chapter One

  The Manner of Her Arriving (Julia)

  Well now it’s done, thought Fleur as she came out of the police station, hailed a taxi and went to catch the train. She had relaxed somewhat during her interview but now her heart was pounding again. She had felt safe in the police station talking to the two officers. She had felt that at least while she was there, there was somebody to protect her, but now she was out in the world again she felt exposed, naked. She looked at her watch. Had she really been there for
nearly four hours? She would be lucky to catch the last train to the Grand Hotel and there was no way she wanted to stay here another night – so close to him.

  Even though there was no rational reason for it, she kept looking over her shoulder. He was out for the night. Gone to a meeting from which he was scheduled to return late – so late that he wouldn’t notice until the morning that she was gone. At least this was what she hoped. And by morning ... hopefully the police would be there then.

  So he couldn’t possibly be here at the station. Unless his plans had changed. It had been known to happen. Or unless he had suspected something all along and the meeting was just a story to cover the fact that he was coming here to catch her. Even though she had confided in nobody, had written nothing in her diary, was it still possible that he knew what she was up to? That now he would appear smiling. Malevolent. Triumphant. It could happen here at the station, she thought as the taxi driver thanked her for her generous tip. The idea chilled her to the bone.

  Once inside, she bought a ticket and retrieved her bag from the left luggage. A few days ago, she had managed to slip out of the house unseen and deposit it there. It was just a small, tired nondescript travelling case. She had other, newer, quite magnificent pieces of luggage but she had wanted everything to be as unremarkable as possible. The case contained a few of her favourite clothes, underwear and some toiletries.

  The train sat hissing like some strange metal monster at the platform. Fleur could easily have afforded first class but once again she opted for something that would be less noticeable – a ticket in second class. Also he’d be less likely to look for her there. Him or the people he might send.

  It wasn’t ‘might’. He would send them. There was no question of it.

  The clothes she wore were drab. Those in her case were more suited to the Grand Hotel. There were only a few but they were beautiful – beautiful and the ones she liked most, the ones she thought she looked best in, the ones that she just couldn’t bear to leave behind, the ones that were timeless. Between her dowdy clothes, her battered suitcase and sitting quietly in second class, looking like a mousy schoolteacher, she reckoned she had done everything she could do to make the manner of her going as unremarkable as possible.