THE MADNESS LOCKER

by EDDIE RUSSELL

  Every day our work is stopped due to the shortages. But we are not relieved to go out and enjoy the shelling. Instead we are commanded to clean the floors, bathrooms, work areas, and tend to the compound to clear the rubble.

  I return to my quarters totally exhausted and near to starving. I must be approaching womanhood by now and imagine that my normal weight ought to be twice what I am currently. In the shower my ribcage protrudes through my skin. My hipbones jut out to my sides and my legs resemble matchsticks. Skeletal is the term. Despite there being many more of us in the barrack, order is maintained and, after consuming our meagre rations, the lights are turned off. I now sequester half my bread. Breakfast may not be coming.

  UTRECHT

  WINTER 1944

  He had hardly finished saying the words when two sets of hands grabbed him from behind, thrusting him against the adjoining wall, knocking the wind out of him. One of the men forced his head backwards, exposing his neck, thrusting a knife under his larynx. A trickle of blood oozed from the pressure.

  “Who are you?” It was Koert, holding his head in a vice-like grip.

  “Friedrich Becker.”

  The two men pinning him against the wall exchanged rapid dialogue in Dutch. Friedrich, in his state of confusion and panic, didn’t grasp any of the words.

  “You better tell me that you had nothing to do with her shooting,” the man holding the knife flush against his neck growled at him, edging the blade deeper.

  “What? No. Of course not.” Despite the chill, he was perspiring profusely. He could feel the cold sweat trickling under his arms and down his back. He heard his voice burbling from the pressure on his vocal cords. But more likely it was the fear pounding in his ears.

  A weak voice interrupted their interrogation, coming from the floor behind them. It was the woman who had been shot. She spoke in Dutch.

  The knife and vice-grip relaxed simultaneously. The other man, not the bearded hulk who had assisted Friedrich earlier, relaxed his grip, letting Friedrich’s body come away from the wall. “Sorry.” A crooked smile spread over his craggy face. He patted Friedrich’s shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles, and stepped sideways to let him return to his patient.

  Wobbling, Friedrich fumbled his way back to the mattress and knelt down. His hand shaking, he picked up the makeshift tweezers and set about dislodging the bullet.

  "Friedrich?! Are you really here or is my life flashing before my eyes?" Even in her weakened state her resolve strengthened wanting to believe that hope had rekindled and somehow he had returned in the darkest moment of her life.

  “Where else would I be, Emma?”

  “Buying postcards from Hitler.” She tried to laugh a little, but her voice shook and a tremor coursed through her body.

  “Please don’t speak. I need to do some more work here. Try and stay calm.”

  Emma took as deep a breath as she could, then let the tension seep from her body.

  Friedrich pointed to the lamp and asked Lotte to bring it closer. He peered into the wound, which was now clean and free of gunshot residue. Nothing. He started to prod again. Emma lurched forward. The bearded man who had pinned her down earlier leaned forward again, holding her down by the shoulders.

  “I will need to prise the wound open; you will need to get me more alcohol. Also more rags.”

  He could hear feet move around behind him, objects being moved. From the corner of his eye he could see rags and a bottle of what looked like spirits tossed onto the mattress.

  He nodded toward the bearded man, who now didn’t seem to mind being seen in the lamplight. Despite his shaggy, rugged appearance he had a kind pair of eyes and an avuncular face. In another time he could have been a strong but gentle family man.

  The rugged man introduced himself as Theo. He picked up the bottle and leaned forward, pouring slowly into Emma’s mouth. She spluttered but held most of it down, heaved, then lay back again.

  “You trying to get me drunk, Fred? You know it won’t work.”

  “It’s working.” He tried to smile again.

  Friedrich resumed his prodding, prying, prising, and soaking up the blood. He stopped every few minutes to mop her forehead, check her pulse and temperature. She stabilised, but was a long way from recovery. It was going to be a long, dark night of morbid thoughts and a fight against the damage of the injury: without instruments, without anaesthetic and without medicine; in dim light and unhygienic conditions. The odds were terrible. Worse than terrible, hopeless, but he couldn’t give up.

  Emma had fainted. The pain would have been excruciating, beyond even her good humour and great strength to withstand. In a way he was glad. If she died, she would never know.

  After what seemed like an eternity, while he was prodding, he sensed something solid stalling his progress. He leaned back, took off his shirt and ripped a sleeve. He tied it around his forehead to stop the perspiration dripping onto the wound. Behind him Theo and Koert stood guard, every so often checking the doorways. Neither of them enquired as to his progress.

  Friedrich resumed his primitive surgery, using both the penknife and the makeshift tweezers. He was terrified of nicking an organ or cutting a blood vessel. Then it would be the end and he would be responsible. He had both his knees on the mattress for comfort and purchase and, leaning over the gaping wound, he delved again. Again, the clinking sound and feel. He found the bullet. Slowly, evenly, carefully, he clamped the tweezers around the base of the bullet and pulled. The tweezers slipped, and the bullet remained lodged, unmoving.

  The metal casing was twisted and he couldn’t get a firm hold on it. He tried again, putting more pressure on the tweezers. It started to move, but the tweezers folded back.

  “Scheiße, verdammt, Scheiße!”

  Koert and Theo came closer. “Can we help?”

  “I need proper instruments,” he shouted back at them. He looked at his watch hurriedly: 1.40am. He had been going at this for nearly an hour non-stop. She won’t last much longer.

  Koert and Theo exchanged urgent words. Theo left in a hurry.

  All that Koert said was, “Wait. Can you wait?”

  As if he had a choice.

  Half an hour later Theo burst in, sweating, with a gleam in his eyes and a hearty smile. He was holding a swaddled blanket. He set it on the floor beside Friedrich. He unfurled the blanket to reveal a set of instruments, gauze, a roll of bandages, and medicines.

  “What did you do, rob a hospital?” Friedrich couldn’t help but smile to himself.

  “Never mind what we did, save Emma,” Koert ordered him firmly.

  Heartened, Friedrich reached for the forceps. He clamped them a few times, disbelieving their presence in his hand. He moistened one of the rags in antiseptic and once again leaned into the gaping wound. Following the same path as before he delved into the aperture between the renal artery and the kidney where the bullet was lodged. Clamping the forceps firmly, he pulled at the crumpled metal and pulled it outward. It came out with ease and he dropped it alongside the lamp. It landed with a clink.

  Moistening another rag with antiseptic, he cleansed the wound and picked up the penknife, flicking it open. He warmed its edge over the flame and then cauterised the edges of the wound. Emma twitched, moaned and then returned to her unconscious state. He continued in this way until the wound ceased oozing and firmly pursed it together. He finished by placing an antiseptic gauze over it, holding it firmly in place with bandages.

  The rest was in fate’s hands. He had done his best. All they could do was wait. The time: 3.05am. Exhausted, they all sat back against the walls and attempted to catch some rest. Sometime during the early hours dawn crept through the transom windows, bathing the basement in a greyish light. Shapes and forms were beginning to coalesce into people and objects. He could almost see them clearly now: Theo, Koert, Lotte and the man who had forcibly held him against the wall.

  It all seemed like a nightmarish tale that had unfolded and now, with the danger dissipated, he was once
more in a dingy basement with the strangers who had crowded his brain in an effort to save the woman he loved, lost and hopefully regained.

  The adrenaline seeped out of him, and he felt drained. He hadn’t slept properly in days, always on the lookout for danger, wondering if at the next checkpoint, the next city, he would be stopped and questioned. Now, for the first time, he might be able to rest. They couldn’t betray him without suffering the same fate, and neither could he.

  “I am going to lie down for a little to regain my strength. If anything happens, wake me.” He was speaking to Koert, who merely nodded.

  He crawled over to the edge of the mattress and lay at Emma’s feet. His brain was muddled with images: the train station at Grünewald, his parents, the SS, trains again, this time to Eindhoven and then to Utrecht. Trains and more trains, with tracks stretching out in front of him leading nowhere. Ultimately he was lost.

  At some time in the day (he knew it was day, because the basement was bathed in natural light), a hand touched his, clasping it firmly. The feeling surged through him, taking him back to an earlier time, before this darkness and madness. A feeling that he never forgot, just shelved in the quest to survive.

  He couldn’t come awake.

  The next time he became conscious it was dusk. A blanket had been spread over him. But he was no longer alone. Someone was lying next to him. He felt the shape: Emma.

  He came fully awake. Theo was seated in the corner by the door.

  “Is she all right?”

  Theo held up his hand, rose, went to the back room and fetched Koert.

  “You feeling better?”

  “Yes. Is she all right?”

  “Weak. But she woke hours ago and then fell asleep again.”

  “Thank God.” He was momentarily relieved, but the anxiety returned. He had crossed over; there was no turning back. Any day now he would be reported as a deserter. If he were caught the penalty would be swift and certain. He had to escape the confines of the Third Reich.

  He lay back next to Emma and starting planning the next part of his journey.

  A soft voice woke him from his reverie. “Friedrich.”

  He looked up; Emma was looking at him from the pillow.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better than you look, I hope.”

  “Still the one with the funny lines.”

  “Ja. See where it got me.”

  “I am glad that I was here to help.”

  Her eyes brimmed momentarily, and she reached for his hand and held it close to her chest. “Thank you.”

  He couldn’t think of what to say.

  “What happened to you, Friedrich?”

  “I don’t know, Emma.” He paused, trying to assimilate, with the benefit of distance and hindsight, the last six years. “I am not sure. I tried to be a hero. But the truth is, I was afraid to die, so I hid inside a uniform thinking it would protect me. In the end it didn’t make any difference. I was going to die. So I deserted.”

  “We are all afraid to die, Friedrich. Me too. I got shot, not because I was a hero, but because we were ambushed; outnumbered.”

  He tightened his grip, affirming the love which he had lost and rediscovered.

  “What now?”

  “Well, I was making my escape when I was summoned here by a little girl. Lotte. But I am a wanted man now. So I can’t stay. I need to leave as soon as possible.”

  “Don’t think that I am not wanted either. They know about me now. So I am on the target list as well.”

  Friedrich paused to consider the new reality. “Can your friends, colleagues, help?”

  “There is a way across via Belgium and then the Channel to England. But it is risky.”

  “No more than staying here.”

  Emma called out to Koert. He came in from the back room. She spoke with him briefly in Dutch and then reverted to German to address Friedrich. “The crossing is arranged for tomorrow; do you think I can make the journey?”

  “If not, I will have to carry you.”

  Now it was her turn to smile. Only it still hurt.

  They reminisced for many hours about the time lost. Emma had never married; had completed her study, and then the Germans invaded. Her parents, fearful that her mother would be arrested and deported, fled to England to live with her brother. She then led a double life: a doctor by day and helping the underground by night with medical assistance, money and safe houses. This was one of them.

  “I often thought of writing but I was afraid that I would get you in trouble. I wasn’t sure how or what you were doing. I knew that the Gestapo would be vigilant. If I had written to you, me being Jewish, that would have caused you problems. Was I right not to write?”

  “In the end it didn’t matter. Trying to stay my destiny became my destiny. Not staying here with you all those years ago, I ended up here anyway. It’s like we can’t cheat our fate. It finds us and makes us realise who we are.”

  He edged slowly up the mattress and came close up by the pillow. He found her lips and kissed her, gently at first, then when she didn’t react with pain, more deeply. Together they lay on the mattress, hugging each other closely.

  Friedrich fell asleep feeling secure in himself for the first time in his life, regardless of the physical danger that surrounded him. His love for Emma, the only other person he had ever truly loved, sustained him. Whatever happened tonight, tomorrow and the day after that, he would take one day at a time until he reached his destination, wherever that may be. Love - it protects you, was his last conscious thought before his eyes closed.

  SURRENDER

  MAY 1945

  Roll call.

  We step outside and mechanically line up in rows and columns in our designated quadrants. And wait. And wait.

  After nearly an hour the realisation sinks in that the camp commandant and his officers have deserted the factory and left us to be shelled to smithereens. We start to disperse in a disorderly fashion. Each group walks up to their designated Blockälteste. They shrug at our questions; they know as much as we do, which is nothing other than that we have been abandoned.

  It takes a while longer to sink in that we are, in essence, free. But free to do what? We have been incarcerated for so long, commanded to work at certain tasks, that our free will has been abolished. We can’t function without commands, we can’t be motivated without threats and we don’t know where to go, where we are. Spiritually we are still imprisoned.

  We walk to the gate and stop. This is the only home we know. The only refuge that we have in this world is this compound. We have no money, no belongings and no way to contact anyone in the world from which we were forcibly removed. So we loiter, wander over to the food supply shed and force open the doors. We find little inside. Certainly not enough to feed the thousand or so inmates incarcerated here.

  We have to organise and leave, or stay and starve. A bleak choice under the circumstances, but that is the reality.

  Suddenly we hear excited shouts from the direction of the gate. We dash out and join the small group gathered there. In the distance, almost a mirage it is that far away, we make out the shimmering image of an army approaching: tanks, armoured vehicles, jeeps, marching troops. At first we are apprehensive that our freedom has been short-lived and this is the replacement for the deserters.

  But that fear is quickly dispelled when we recognise that the flag flying at the front of the contingent is a red star, not a swastika.

  We are liberated; the Third Reich, which, from the vague memory of my early teens, was supposed to last a thousand years, has come to an abrupt and early end. The army advance until they are facing our group gathered at the gate. They stop and stare at us. We must be a sore sight: a ragged group of emaciated inmates on the verge of utter despair and death. An officer steps forward from the Soviet army and comes up to our group, studying us intently from left to right. He addresses us in Russian.

  “Who is in charge here?”

  No answer. I m
ust be the only one that understands the question thanks to my years of sewing with Hannah and then Sarah: the sisters from Minsk. My first inclination is to point to the Blockälteste, but they are prisoners just like us and with the Germans gone, so is their authority.

  I step out of the group and stand in front of him. I explain in halting Russian that there is no one in charge and the Germans have abandoned the camp.

  He turns back and addresses the lieutenant colonel in charge of the battalion.

  “Do you need medical help and food?”

  I presume that the question is perfunctory. I merely nod and wave at the crowd amassed behind me.

  He turns to the lieutenant. An order is issued and two large trucks rumble into the compound. Within minutes the tarp is rolled up and basic supplies are brought down: bread, potatoes, milk, rice, beans. We set out to get tables from the work factory and create a serving counter for the food. We are so used to order that those being served get in a queue and hold up their mess bowl, cup and cutlery. I assist with the serving.

  My service at the food queue is interrupted and I am asked to help translate for the medical staff: malnutrition, too extreme to be relieved with a simple meal; sores; welts; blisters; dysentery; amputated gangrenous limbs; lice; dental caries. There is such a variety of ailments that only the most urgent, life-threatening cases can be tended to.

  After a while I get to sit and have a small meal myself. I am starving too, though I neglected that in the exigency of tending to the others. I sit on a makeshift bench next to the barrack wall and cradle my bowl. The officer who addressed me at the gate approaches and sits next to me.

  “I am sorry about what happened to you.”

  I shrug. Though many are weeping quietly, others are crying openly with relief and remembrance now that their harrowing ordeal has come to an end.