The Paradise Ghetto

by Fergus O'Connell

  She and Suzanne spend the rest of the day there. It turns out that this is the hospital for people who are dying – so there is no question of anybody getting better. Rather the job consists of trying to keep these emaciated figures on their mattresses as clean, as comfortable and as warm as possible while they see out their last days.

  It is a quite impossible task.

  There are no medicines to speak of, so anybody who is in pain just has to stay that way. And everybody is starving since these people get less food than anybody else. And people die of the cold. They just close their eyes and don’t wake up again. The head nurse there is a short woman called Irena. She has thin blonde hair and what is still, despite her gauntness and a nose that looks like it was once broken, an extraordinarily beautiful face. She explains to them that here in the Paradise Ghetto, what food supplies are provided are rationed so that the people who do the heaviest work get the most. Children also get more ‘since they are the one hope we have for the future’. She says these words looking in turn into Julia’s face and then Suzanne’s, as though trying to gauge their reaction.

  Despite all these rules, Irena says, there is huge corruption in the way food is distributed. She says this placidly, almost matter-of-factly, with no sign of anger. The result however is that the people here are at the bottom of the list when it comes to food.

  ‘There are people who feel they shouldn’t be given any food at all – that it’s only wasted if it ends up here,’ says Irena.

  With no nursing in the conventional sense, Julia and Suzanne’s job is straightforward. There is only cold water and with so many people so sick there is a never-ending round of trying to clean up people as they lie in their own waste. When she goes to one of the patients she has been allocated by Irena, Julia finds that the person is dead. Julia utters a gasp of surprise that brings Irena over. Realising what it is, Irena says emotionlessly, ‘When somebody dies, this is what we have to do. First wrap them in their sheet if they have one or blanket if they don’t. If there’s a sheet that’s good. It means we can keep the blanket for somebody else.

  ‘Tie the ends. Then you need to carry the body down to the cellar. We use that as a morgue. You also need to tell me or the nurse on duty so that we can record their name and transport number for the central registry. They’ll then give it to the Germans. They like everything to be precise, the Germans.’

  Irena gives the two girls a break at lunchtime so that they can return to their barracks for lunch. By this time they have carried half a dozen bodies down to the cellar and Julia is weak and light-headed from the strenuous work. Something that she can only think of as a zig-zag electric snake runs across her eyes. She is sweating an icy cold sweat.

  They emerge into a bitterly cold overcast day with small flurries of snow in the air. Their clothes smell of the dungeon. At the barracks, they queue as before. They are near the back of the line because they have arrived so late and it is a couple of hours before they are given their food. Since they are amongst the last, what ‘soup’ remains in the wooden barrel is merely lukewarm water. They are given a bowl of this and a boiled potato. The food doesn’t even take the edge off their hunger.

  They go back to the hospital after lunch and finally leave there in a cold darkness with no stars, linked to each other for warmth as they return to the barracks. The cobbles are icy underfoot so they proceed cautiously like two old women, holding on to each other.

  As they turn the corner into the street where their barracks is – the street is known as Bahnhofstrasse – they see a figure coming towards them in the semi-darkness. It is a man, about twenty metres away. The confident crunch of boots, the faint glimmer of a belt buckle and a double row of buttons, the outline of a peaked cap and the skirt of a heavy overcoat tells Julia that he is SS.

  As she recognises this, Suzanne hisses, ‘Bow. We must bow.’

  Suzanne is still linked to Julia and now she pulls her out of the way. Both girls stand and Julia feels Suzanne’s hand pushing her head from behind. The result is that they bow at the waist as the SS man strides past, apparently oblivious to their presence. They continue their bow until they are certain he has turned the corner and is gone.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ asks Julia, angrily.

  ‘They said we had to. You heard them. Severe punishment if we don’t.’

  ‘Fucking Germans,’ says Julia. ‘I’d rather die than ever do that again.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ replies Suzanne.

  Julia sulks while they queue for their bread and coffee. The line goes forward with dizzying slowness. It is an hour. Maybe two. Julia can no longer tell. Eventually, she snarls, ‘Fucking penis.’

  ‘What?’ asks Suzanne, eyes wide in surprise.

  ‘You heard me,’ says Julia. ‘That German. A fucking penis in a uniform.’

  Suzanne starts to laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asks Julia.

  Suzanne is laughing really hard.

  ‘What?’

  Eventually, Suzanne manages to say, ‘It’s just such a funny picture.’

  ‘What – a penis in a uniform?’

  Suzanne nods – she’s still laughing.

  ‘And he did look like a penis,’ she finally manages. ‘That silly cap on top and then widening out with the skirts of his coat. All he needed was a melon in each coat pocket and it would have been perfect.’

  Despite herself, Julia finds this picture very funny. But she’s reluctant to let go of her anger.

  ‘What would you know about it? I’ll bet you’ve never seen one.’

  ‘A melon?’

  Julia nearly caves in at this but her anger keeps her going.

  ‘A penis.’

  ‘I’ve seen pictures of them.’

  ‘Really? Where?’

  ‘Pompeii. They’re all over the place. And you – have you seen one? A real one, I mean.’

  Julia is surprised at herself when she answers, ‘No, I never have.’

  Eventually they reach the window and are given their coffee and bread. They go indoors and find a spot on the crowded stairs to sit and eat. Julia breaks her bread in two, keeping half for the morning. The two girls eat in silence, as does everybody else around them. It’s all gone in minutes.

  Julia looks at Suzanne.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Julia. ‘If you hadn’t made us bow, who knows what might have happened?’

  Suzanne acknowledges this with an upward nod. Julia continues to look into her eyes and then, after a long, long silence, Julia says, ‘I want to write that revenge story too.’

  13

  ‘We’ll talk about it in bed,’ says Suzanne as they climb the stairs.

  The two girls go to the toilet and despite the intense cold, wash themselves. Julia has always been fastidious anyway, especially after she began to make films, and she is pleased to see that Suzanne is too. They brush their teeth. Their toothpaste was taken on arrival so they have only water. Still, there is something comforting about these little rituals of civilisation. And anyway, Julia needs to get the smell of the dead hospital off her skin and out of her nostrils, though on this second she seems to fail because it lingers either there or in her memory.

  In bed, facing each other and once they have stopped shivering and warmed up a little, Julia says, ‘I nearly stole one of the dead people’s blankets today.’

  ‘We would have been a lot warmer,’ says Suzanne.

  ‘So you think I should have?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘No. No, I didn’t think you’d approve. It probably means we’ll end up there, though.’

  ‘We won’t end up there,’ says Suzanne.

  It is another of these pronouncements that Suzanne is prone to making. Sometime Julia finds them irritating. Mostly she ignores them. Tonight, for some reason, she finds it strangely comforting.

  ‘Last night I had a dream,’ says Suzanne. ‘I dreamt I was with my parents, in Italy. We went there before the war. They were working on a
dig at Pompeii. When we were finished, we spent a week at Positano. By the sea. The dream was so real, I really thought we were back there. Then I woke up. I thought that us being at Pompeii and Positano was what was real and this ... this was just some horrible nightmare. Then I saw it was the other way round. I want to go back there when the war is over.’

  ‘Pompeii – we could write a story about Pompeii,’ suggests Julia. ‘Two lovers who get caught in the volcano. I don’t know anything about the history but you could provide all that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I could. But where would the revenge come in?’

  This causes them to go silent for a while. They pull the blanket more closely around their shoulders and move closer together. Suzanne smells of clothes that have been worn far too long but Julia knows that she does too. She thinks about the Count of Monte Cristo. He was betrayed and shipped from his home and his own country.

  ‘What if,’ says Julia, ‘the hero or the heroine is betrayed and shipped to Pompeii from some other place? He gets caught in the volcano, but escapes and returns to get his revenge?’

  ‘I like that,’ says Suzanne. ‘After the failure of Boudica’s revolt, many of the Britons were taken as slaves to Rome. They could have ended up in Pompeii.’

  ‘So that’s what happens,’ says Julia. ‘They’re taken to Rome, end up in Pompeii, escape during the eruption and return to Britain to take their revenge on the Romans, or maybe the people who betrayed them or whatever.’

  ‘When you say “they”,’ asks Suzanne, ‘you mean Fleur – except now in a Roman setting?’

  ‘Yes, Fleur,’ says Julia. ‘I want it to be Fleur. And then you can decide who the other person is going to be.’

  ‘So it’s a heroine, not a hero.’

  ‘One of them is a heroine. The other can be a man or a woman. Whatever you want. It’s your decision.’

  ‘All right,’ says Suzanne. ‘Let me think some more about that. Maybe the conman again, but maybe not. Oh, Julia – I’m so glad that this is what we’ve decided to do. You know, all afternoon, I was thinking about this book of ours. I was thinking that I couldn’t write the Grand Hotel one. Not here. Not in this place. The Grand Hotel is too far away from here. Maybe after the war, we’ll go to America and become famous writers. Maybe when we’re living in a Grand Hotel ourselves – like movie stars do – maybe then we can write it.’

  Julia marvels at these fantasies that Suzanne weaves. She’s a storyteller all right.

  ‘You know, Julia – I think you’re amazing. After all our various ideas and false starts, you’re the one who got it. It’s a revenge book. But it’s also an allegory.’

  Julia’s not sure what an allegory is. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Boudica’s revolt against the Romans – you see, the Romans, the Germans.’ Suzanne is becoming really animated now and having difficulty keeping her voice down. This is different from the way she was with all the other ideas.

  ‘Boudica’s revolt happened in 60 AD. It failed and she died. So what happened after that? The Romans did just what the Germans do, attacking places, burning villages, killing and torturing people, taking people as slaves. So our heroine and this other person, whoever it turns out to be, will be two people of Boudica’s tribe who are taken prisoner and sent to Pompeii as slaves.’

  ‘To fight as gladiators?’ asks Julia. ‘Were there female gladiators?’

  ‘Yes, there were. So maybe as gladiators. Or maybe just as slaves. We can decide. Their master treats them very cruelly. But they help each other and support each other and gradually they fall in love. Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, nineteen years after Boudica’s revolt. We can’t have them slaves for nineteen years. That’d be just too depressing. But in 62 AD, there was a big earthquake at Pompeii. It caused lots of damage. It was that that my parents were investigating when we were on the dig. During the earthquake, the pair kill their master and flee. They make their way back to Britain and live happily ever after.’

  Julia likes it. She really does. ‘It’s good that you know all this,’ she says. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to do it. We’d have to do all this research before we could figure out the plot.’

  ‘That’s the wonderful thing. The research is the plot.’

  ‘The research is the plot,’ Julia echoes and after a thoughtful pause, adds, ‘Yes, I see it.’

  She goes on, becoming excited now too. ‘And how about we do it just like The Count of Monte Cristo? There are three people that they end up having to take revenge on. And they take it in different ways. Maybe somebody in their village in Britain betrays them to the Romans – just like what you think happened to you.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ replies Suzanne.

  ‘So how do we start?’ asks Julia.

  ‘The news arrives at the village of the failure of Boudica’s revolt. Now great fear. They are unprotected. Just like we were in Holland in 1940. The Romans are coming.

  ‘Tomorrow – think it out while we’re working in that awful place. I’ll work out who the other character is going to be. Then, tomorrow night, we’ll start writing. We should be able to do a couple of hours before the curfew at nine o’clock.’

  ‘We certainly won’t have to waste too much time eating,’ says Julia. ‘I need to know something about Britain in that time. What was it like? How did people live? What did they wear? Eat? What was the countryside like?’

  ‘All right,’ says Suzanne. ‘It’s my turn to spoon you so turn around and I’ll start to tell you.’

  Julia does as she is told, and Suzanne presses her chest, belly and thighs against her.

  ‘What do you want to know first?’ asks Suzanne. Her soft voice sounds comforting so close to Julia’s ear.

  ‘Describe the countryside, the landscape. Like in a movie. Start high up and then come down to earth.’

  Julia recalls that what she just said was something she heard Bert say once. If she’s correct today is Friday. Can it really only have been a week since she last saw him?

  But now Suzanne has begun. ‘A bird would see flat countryside, a bit like Holland,’ she says, ‘but heavily wooded.’

  Some time after that Julia falls asleep so that next morning, she can’t be sure whether the pictures in her head are what she heard or what she dreamt.

  14

  They spend the next day at the hospital – though Julia has started to call it ‘the dungeon’. She has lots more questions for Suzanne. What kinds of names would they have had? What language did they speak? What food did they eat? Where did the last battle happen?

  But by evening, after their meal, she is ready to write.

  Chapter One

  After the Battle (Julia)

  It was that first column of black smoke rising slowly into the sky on the northwest horizon that told Birkita that something had gone terribly wrong. The smoke rose slantways, moved by the light summer breeze, before it began to diffuse.

  Up until then, they had heard nothing of the great battle; the battle that was to be the last battle. They had burned the Romans’ cities and now they would destroy its army. That would be the end of the Romans and Birkita’s people could go back to the old ways. The land would be theirs again. They would be able to make weapons as they had before the Romans had prohibited it. There would be plenty of food, prosperity, no shortages or famine – just like it had been before the Romans came. The druids would walk amongst them once more.

  The Romans had arrived the same year she had. ‘The greatest blessing and the greatest curse a few weeks apart,’ was what her mother always said. Now Birkita was seventeen and a warrior herself, left behind to guard the village along with her older brother Banning. He had pleaded to go and had railed at being told to mind the animals, the old people and the children. He argued with their father, saying how neighbouring villages had emptied completely as the entire population had gone to see the final destruction of the Romans and to loot their wealth.

  ‘And while we’re looting the Romans, who’ll be looti
ng us?’ Caedmon, Birkita’s father and headman of the village, had asked. Birkita wondered if she was the only one who had thought not about looting but what would happen if the Romans won the battle. Anyway, it had been settled. Birkita and Banning would stay.

  And so this was why she was lying on her stomach in long grass, the summer sun on her back, watching a ladybird walk along a leaf. The ladybird was actually walking on the underside of the leaf. Birkita marvelled at this. Why didn’t the tiny creature fall off? Was it because it was so tiny? Did it weigh nothing? Eventually it reached the edge of the leaf and like a fat woman scrambling over a wall, worked its way round to the upper side.

  It was said that the Romans sometimes fought in formations that looked a bit like ladybirds. They would form an oblong with their rectangular shields over their heads and on all sides like a protective shell. Then they could attack the gate of a fortress or try to undermine a wall without being hurt. Nothing the defenders could do could touch them. Rocks and spears bounced off the shield roof, burning oil or pitch flowed harmlessly over the sides. Who had thought of this? Was it some Roman long ago, lying in a field and watching a ladybird just as she was now? Why did everything the Romans did have to end in destruction and killing and dying?

  With Birkita were her dogs, Sun and Moon. Sun was two years old but still behaved like a puppy. He was small, short-haired and all black except for a grey moustache and beard around his muzzle. He lay on his side, his tail lazily swatting at flies. Moon was old, much older – furry, bone-creaky and in pain when winter came. In summer Sun teased her mercilessly and forced her to play – which she did. It seemed to keep her young. But eventually she would lie exhausted and nothing Sun did could rouse her. She was like that now, deeply asleep, dog-dreaming in the summer heat.

  Everybody said that after the victories at Camulodunum and Londinium and Verulamium and especially after the destruction of the Ninth Legion, that the Romans were beaten. The remainder were just a formality. Birkita prayed to all the gods that it was so even as she wondered why her heart felt heavy.