The Paradise Ghetto

by Fergus O'Connell

  ‘That’s what makes it so wonderful, I think.’

  They fall asleep, Suzanne with her head thrown back, Julia with hers on the table. What wakes them is a sense that the train has begun to slow. Blearily, they open their eyes. There is darkness still outside. Yes, the train is definitely slowing. Julia looks across at Suzanne who has fear written all over her face. For some time the train travels at little more than walking speed and eventually squeals to a shuddering, shaking halt like a passionless orgasm.

  And now Julia is very afraid

  10

  The doors are opened but the scene is not at all what Julia was expecting. Instead of a camp with huts and barbed wire and watchtowers, she is looking at the side of a building, a tall building with lots of windows. The building looks very run-down. Its walls were long ago painted yellow but now, chunks of plaster have fallen from the wall, exposing the red brickwork. Paint flakes off the window frames. Some of the panes of glass are broken and the holes are stuffed with paper or rags.

  Julia and Suzanne get down from the train which has come to a steaming, hissing stop in the street of a town. The line of cars empties quickly. Most people alight unaided. Old people are passed down almost as if they were fragile pieces of pottery or glass.

  The cobbles are broken in many places and there are large potholes filled with dirty water. There are tall buildings on either side, all looking very similar to one another, all painted the same ruined yellow colour and in the same state. There are Germans in helmets and heavy overcoats with dogs on leads and rifles on their shoulders. There are also men in other uniforms – they look like police – just like the Marechaussee in the Dutch camp. It is a foul day – dank, overcast, with air that feels like it’s raining even though it isn’t. Julia’s hands are cold and an iciness seeps into her body, down her neck and into her spine. Her foot splashes into a chill puddle, wetting her shoe and her sock.

  Julia and Suzanne look at each other in bewilderment. Inevitably Suzanne asks, ‘What is this place? Where are we?’

  Julia hardly notices the irritation this causes her. There is something very weird about this place.

  The police organise the train’s passengers into groups of four and then they are marched up some steps into the hall of a decrepit building. A queue forms. The place is dark due to both the leaden daylight outside and the lack of electric light inside. A single broken lightbulb hangs from a black wire that disappears into a hole in the plaster in the ceiling. Julia glances across at Suzanne, whose pale face is set rigid, her eyes unblinking. Becoming aware of Julia’s gaze, Suzanne turns to look at her. Heroically, she manages a faint smile. Then she takes Julia’s hand and squeezes it. Suzanne goes to let go but Julia holds on to the hand.

  It is freezing cold. There is little difference between the temperature inside and outside. The queue shuffles forward slowly. There is a bad smell from the concentration of people. Julia knows that she smells awful. She hasn’t been able to have a proper wash since Friday and now it’s Thursday – she thinks. With unbelievable slowness, the queue wends its way into a room on one side of the hall. Here tables have been set up. It is the same registration process they went through in the last camp.

  What is it with the Germans and their registration?

  The process takes hours. The queue hardly moves at all. Some who go to sit down are made to stand up again – there is no sitting. Several people faint as the long morning moves into an even longer afternoon. Julia is hungry, incredibly thirsty and her back and legs ache from the standing.

  Eventually their turn comes.

  They approach a first table. An SS man sits at the table while a second one – an officer – stands beside it. Both wear heavy overcoats with the collars turned up and thick gloves. The standing SS man is tall with immaculately groomed hair and a handsome face. He speaks in German, telling them in a bored voice that they must hand over all valuables at this table. This includes money, whatever the currency, jewellery and watches. If they are in any doubt, they are to hand the item over and the SS man at the table will decide. Anybody caught trying to hide anything will be severely punished.

  Reluctantly Julia gives up her watch. She hated it because it had come from her father but she loved the sense of order and control it gave her. Her wrist feels naked and her world feels that bit emptier without it. She also hands over the last of the money Bert gave her on Friday.

  After the valuables, Julia’s case is taken from her by one of the police. He places it on a table and rifles through it, removing the better items of clothing and underwear. She also has soap, sanitary towels and the remains of a roll of toilet paper. These are all taken. The case is then returned to her.

  Now she is well and truly destitute.

  Next a second man pats Julia down and discovers her last couple of cigarettes which he confiscates. He lets his hands linger on her breasts and then weighs them with his hands. Julia looks defiantly into the man’s face as he does this but all she sees are dead eyes. He appears to be taking no pleasure from it. So why is he doing it? Because he can?

  Julia is moved on to the next table as the man also gropes Suzanne. Her processing is much quicker – she has nothing.

  Finally comes the inevitable table and man with a list. Julia gives her personal information again. The man writes it down on an index card. She is given a number that the man calls a ‘transport number’.

  ‘This is your identification from now on,’ he says.

  He gives Julia a yellow star which he tells her she must sew on to the left-hand side of her coat and which must be visible at all times. She is also given a ration card for January – a small rectangle of cheap card with the days of the month on it. She has today off, she is told. Tomorrow she will be working in the old people’s hospital. Finally he tells her that she will be housed in this building in the attic. He gives her a slip of paper and tells her to go right to the top of the building and hand it over to the person in charge.

  With that, her processing is complete.

  Julia waits for Suzanne who says that she is also going to be working in the old people’s hospital. Then, together they climb the seemingly endless stairs with curved ceilings overhead. The girls’ backs are bent – they are like old people. There are numerous people sitting on the stairs or lying on the landings. There is one old woman with wild hair who lies with her skirt and filthy knickers around her knees, exposing her hairy groin. She seems unaware of her surroundings and nobody pays her any attention.

  On another landing a child that looks like it has only just learned to walk totters around. It is dressed in nothing but a fouled and reeking nappy. It is impossible to tell whether it is a boy or a girl. It has an unhealthy face and vacant eyes and seems to be quite alone.

  They reach a landing and pause to catch their breath. As they do so a vile wave of shit smell comes down towards them. They look at each other. Julia is thinking that the place is a madhouse. Turning the corner and climbing the steps, they encounter a man squatting on the next landing taking a shit. Much as they try, it is impossible not to glance at him as they go past. He looks up and his eyes meet theirs. The man is crying and Julia thinks she has never seen such a mixture of humiliation, sadness and helplessness as she sees in that face. By now all Julia wants is to get warm, lie in a bed, sleep, forget about all this for a while.

  They reach a door at the top of the building and enter. The room is crammed – people, bunks, washing – just like their last camp, but much more crowded. Inside the door is a rickety-looking wooden staircase that climbs higher. They are told to go right to the top so they take it, holding on to the rail. Julia feels weak from hunger. She is sweating. Overhead are huge rafters like the beams of a ship. Entering they find a room that is indeed the attic. It is small, with dirty whitewashed walls. Like everywhere else, it is crammed with three-tier bunks, people and washing. The people smells are quite overpowering.

  They ask who is in charge and are directed to a man who is like a wraith
, he is so thin.

  ‘There are no bunks at the moment,’ he says.

  He points out a foul-looking mattress with a blanket on top lying in the aisle between two rows of bunks.

  ‘Share that for tonight. It’s never too long before bunks become available.’

  ‘What is this place?’ Julia asks. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  A smile appears on the man’s face, a smile that manages to be patronising or could be sly or even slightly insane, all at once.

  ‘Why, pretty lady, you have come to the Paradise Ghetto.’

  11

  Some time after it grows dark. The attic begins to empty.

  This has to be about food.

  ‘Come on,’ says Julia.

  She and Suzanne grab their bowls and follow the flow of people downstairs. From what Julia has seen in the few hours she has been here, everybody seems to move in a sort of weary slow motion.

  Except now.

  Now everybody hurries as best they can.

  Because lots of the people are old, Julia and Suzanne hurtle down the stairs, passing many of them. If Julia feels any tinge of guilt about this she pushes it to the back of her mind. They arrive out into the building’s courtyard where stars glitter overhead, their brightness accentuated by the three storeys of the building. An arcade surrounds the courtyard on all sides and it is in this that they queue, Julia and Suzanne about midway along the line. People continue to arrive long after that. Julia pictures migrating birds gathering on telephone wires.

  And there they wait.

  And wait.

  And wait.

  Without her watch Julia has no way of knowing how long they are there. But by the time the line begins to move, she feels she has become a block of ice. Eventually they come to a window. In front of it, a woman takes Julia’s ration card and tears off the coupon for today. Then she is given a brown liquid in her bowl and a third of a loaf of bread.

  They are so hungry they eat the food there in the courtyard, even though the air is freezing and frost is starting to form on the cobbles and roofs. So do most of the other people. Eating seems to only take a couple of minutes. At least Julia now has something warm in her belly.

  They drag themselves up the steps again, past occasional pools of piss or vomit, or scattered piles of turds. It is as though a dog has passed by – but they have seen no dogs. The attic is freezing. Their breath forms little clouds in the frosty air. Julia’s fingers are like frozen sausages. They settle onto the mattress wearing all their clothes and their coats. Facing each other they pull Julia’s blanket and the other threadbare one over themselves. It hardly makes any difference.

  Julia doesn’t know how she is going to get through all of this. She has only been here a few hours and already she feels like an old woman. She now knows that there is a very real possibility that she could die here – that the Germans have no particular interest in keeping the people in this camp, or town or whatever it is, alive.

  ‘Are you warm?’ asks Suzanne, interrupting her thoughts.

  Julia is shivering.

  ‘Are you fucking joking?’

  ‘Maybe if we held each other? You know – the body heat.’

  They try to do so face to face but it doesn’t really help a lot – the great area of their backs remains chilled.

  ‘What if we spooned?’ Julia suggests.

  ‘Spooned?’ Suzanne asks, as Julia was almost certain she would.

  ‘Like two spoons in a drawer. Your tummy to my back or the other way round. One of us can go first and then we swap.’

  They do so, lying on their left sides, with Julia’s front to Suzanne’s back and Julia’s right arm encircling Suzanne. Her hair tickles Julia’s nose. Apart from when she was working, Julia hasn’t been this close to another person since that boyfriend she’d had just after she left home. His name was Ad – short for Adriaan. It didn’t last very long. Julia lost her virginity to him. He fucked her and then he fucked off.

  Suzanne says that the new arrangement is really good and Julia finds that it helps a bit too. Her feet are still like blocks of ice though, the policeman having taken all her socks except the ones she was wearing.

  ‘We’ll do it every second night,’ suggests Julia. ‘Me on you and then you on me.’

  ‘Or if we turn over during the night.’

  ‘That’s a better idea,’ agrees Julia.

  The two girls hold each other as other people also settle down in the attic. Eventually the single lightbulb goes out. In the darkness, Suzanne takes Julia’s hand, which is closed in a fist, and holds it in hers, pressing it to her chest.

  Suzanne has been almost completely silent since they arrived but now she says, ‘You know that the book is the only way we’ll survive this, don’t you? We have to write the book.’

  ‘Where are we going to get the energy for that? I feel half-dead already. If they’re going to make us work...’

  Julia leaves the sentence unfinished.

  After a long silence, Suzanne says, ‘We have to. I just know it. It’s how we’re going to get through this.’

  Julia is angered by this but too tired to say anything more than, ‘How do you know? How can you say something like that?’

  ‘I just know, Julia,’ Suzanne’s voice comes back in the darkness.

  And then she says, ‘If we don’t, we’ll die. We’ll die, for sure.’

  Julia says nothing. There’s no point in arguing. It’s just going to make her weaker, weaker and pissed off with Suzanne whom she’s now embracing like a lover – a strange, fragile thread running between them.

  ‘But I don’t think I can write the Grand Hotel book,’ Suzanne says after a long silence. ‘Not now. Not here. Not having seen this place.’

  ‘What then?’ asks Julia.

  ‘A revenge book,’ says Suzanne, and she says the word ‘revenge’ with a viciousness Julia would not have thought possible of her mild-mannered friend.

  ‘A revenge book? How...?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly yet but it’s going to be about someone who gets revenge on the people that have wronged her. Have you read The Count of Monte Cristo?

  Julia has – an abridged version, when she was a kid. She knows the story.

  ‘Like that.’

  Suzanne is still holding Julia’s hand. It is closed in a fist and becoming stiff. It is uncomfortable and Julia wants to flex it. She eases it open slightly and, as she does so, Suzanne leans back a fraction, opening a gap between her left breast and the mattress. It is like an invitation – or even if it isn’t, almost without thinking, Julia takes it as such. She opens her hand and cups it around Suzanne’s left breast. She can feel Suzanne’s heart, beating sturdily. Julia has a picture of holding a little bird in the palm of her hand. It is like she is holding Suzanne’s life. Suzanne settles back, closing her hand softly around Julia’s hand once more.

  And this is how they go to sleep.

  12

  During the night, Julia wakes with a full bladder. The fucking coffee – or whatever that brown piss was. She knows she won’t make it until morning.

  Since there is no bathroom in the attic, going to the toilet is going to be a huge undertaking. She disentangles herself from Suzanne, trying not to wake her and slips out from under the blankets. The icy cold makes Julia gasp. They’re going to have to find more blankets – if they don’t, they’re will surely freeze to death. She puts her stockinged feet into her boots and begins the journey. In the pitch darkness she finds the doorway and then the staircase. Carefully she makes her way down, holding both rails. She is already shivering.

  The toilet is at one end of the much larger room below. Julia gropes her way through the strata of sleeping figures and finds it. It has three cubicles and one of them is free. The stench from the other two is overpowering and Julia is aware of how bad she smells herself as she lowers her knickers and lifts up her skirt.

  Having finished, she retraces her steps. When she a
rrives back at the mattress, she finds that Suzanne has turned onto her right side and is awake. Julia can see her eyes glinting in the faint light that comes through the single window. Suzanne holds up the blanket. Julia slips in underneath it.

  ‘My God, you’re so cold,’ says Suzanne, enfolding her.

  ‘Do you need to go?’ asks Julia through chattering teeth.

  ‘Not me. In the attic I developed a bladder of steel.’

  It is still dark when the light goes on and there is the sound of much movement. Julia has slept the sleep of the dead. The effort to drag herself awake is monumental but she knows that if she doesn’t get down to the courtyard now, she will miss whatever passes for breakfast. Suzanne is already sitting up rubbing her eyes. She looks confused, dazed – as though she’s not quite sure where she is.

  ‘Come on,’ says Julia. ‘We’ll be late.’

  Breakfast turns out to be nothing more than a bowl of the same brown ‘coffee’ they had the previous night.

  ‘Isn’t there any bread?’ asks Julia at the window.

  ‘You should have saved some of last night’s, new girl. Next!’

  Julia feels like throwing the coffee in the woman’s face but thinks better of it.

  Having drunk the coffee, the two girls ask the way to the old people’s hospital. It is a short walk over icy cobbles through the gauzy, frost-laden air. They go down the street and round the corner – which brings them not to another building as they had expected but to the outer wall of the town.

  This wall is not just a thin rampart sufficient for one or two men to stand on. Rather, it is wide enough to house large rooms embedded into it. They find themselves in front of a casemate with two barred windows and an entrance gate. They look at each other uncertainly and then enter what is for all the world a damp, dark, subterranean dungeon, feebly lit by naked electric bulbs. The place is unbelievably cold – colder, though Julia didn’t think that was actually possible, than outside. There is a stone floor covered with filthy wood shavings and no beds – just mattresses with figures lying on them under single thin blankets. If this is a hospital, it is unlike any hospital that Julia has ever imagined.