“I’m passing blood,” Skinny said.
“Maybe it’s only diarrhoea.”
“Perhaps it’s from drinking melted snow.”
“You’ve got to drink something. I can’t get that general in the train off my mind. He was crushed by the walls of the carriage. The compartment was lined with purple plush, with windows that had little dark red curtains with gold braid bands. Those bandits must have had God on their side. Maybe the Jewish God. Before they made me a whore I had a Jewish boyfriend. My family weren’t exactly ecstatic about it, but I would have run away from home rather than give him up. The Jews have hard heads. They’d sooner have their heads cracked like a walnut than give in.”
She remembered how her lover had prayed, also for her: Baruch ata, Adonai: Praised be our God, king of the universe. She’d liked the fact that he never hurried to climax before she got there. He waited for her. She didn’t want to know where he was. Or was not.
Beautiful was pouring water into the tub.
“I’m not ashamed of anything I do. I haven’t done anything so far that I couldn’t admit to my mother, although she’s no longer alive. The nuns told me that a good girl waits. You can wait as long as you like, but you don’t escape that face above you.”
Beautiful had a voice that enchanted everyone, not just the soldiers. Her words floated liltingly, as if she didn’t want to wake from a dream. With the sleeves of her sweater pushed up, she poured in more water. There was passiveness in her eyes. Helplessness, perhaps, or a kind of chastity. Madam Kulikowa had given her perfume and glass earrings.
“Your voice is like a balm,” Skinny said to her.
Beautiful spoke as though she were interpreting. She immersed herself in her own resurrection, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, an errant soul, almost languid, in contact with her mother. She was wearing a trace of lipstick.
“Can’t appear on roll-call all pale. Maybe I’ll tell him I menstruate 31 days a month.”
“You’re stooping today,” Skinny said.
Beautiful hunched, making her shoulder blades stick out from her back so that her breasts would not be too prominent. One soldier had told her that she had a bosom like the waves of the sea.
The tub was now three-quarters full.
“Ever thought that you might die by the side of a soldier?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
“Or he at your side?”
Twelve: Fritz Rattenhuber, Rudolph Mansfeld, Karl Kersten, Hans Lammers, Heinrich Zeitler, Kurt Wunderbar, Julius Scheller, Karl-Ludwig Woos, Dietrich Stahl, Arthur Kengerhausen, Erich Kruger, Hermann Junge.
Twelve: Markus Frotzinger, Joseph Gruss, Bertram Hahn, Franz Prochaska, Roloff Frankenberger, Kurt Boskowski, Willi Titzelm, Juppe Schwartz, Nicolaus Ebner, Jürgen Pazzeller, Bruno Rahm, Ferai Kranz.
Twelve: Peter Drier, Dutrow Tello, Franz Hase, Egon Stolzfuss, Benedikt Bergmeier, Bartolomeo Stein, Martin Luther, Edmund Bernard, Franz Dietel, Dietrich Blumenbauer, Siegfried Ripke, Sepp Springer.
“I can’t rinse that soap off,” Estelle said. “Rub yourself with your towel,” Skinny said. “My skin gets all dried out in the cold.”
The noises of the night were carried away by the wind. Now and again a searchlight cut through the darkness. Another train clanged over the bridge.
“What astonishes me is that I hate myself almost as much as they hate me,” Estelle said. “They want a world without you or me. So that only they are left. The noble race. This morning a lance-corporal told me how two Judenweiber had been hiding out in a coal shed by the depot. He caught them as they were trying to get rid of the tattooed numbers on their forearms. One of them was cutting her skin off with a knife; the other was trying to burn the numbers off with a candle. War to the Germans is a vendetta. The honour of the knights must not be diluted by Slavs, Jews or Gypsies.”
*
Madam Kulikowa looked drunk, but wasn’t. There were dark rings under her eyes and fine red lines formed a pattern on her eyeballs after the thrashing she’d received. The Oberführer was not one for kid gloves. Her long fur coat was torn at the seams and on the sleeves. Skinny offered to mend it for her after evening roll-call. The Madam noted, without comment, how quickly Skinny had learnt Polish.
“I know what I’m saying. And I know, unfortunately, who I’m saying it to.” The Madam spat out a tooth. “Defending oneself isn’t always as fine a gesture as one might want it to be.”
At roll-call the Oberführer yelled at them.
“Maybe someone promised you you’d have a ball here every day?”
The Oberführer had forbidden the dormitories to be heated. He had been up all night, planning urgent measures. If there was the slightest unrest, he informed Madam Kulikowa, he was prepared to nip it in the bud. The back wall was still there.
The Madam had no illusions. The Frog’s severity probably signalled the coming end of No. 232 Ost. The approaching gunfire spoke for itself. She had no doubt that he would unhesitatingly hand them all over to the execution squad.
In the yard, Skinny was pushing with all her might against the stiff gate. It was 3.40 a.m. The oiled iron hinges yielded with a squeak. She swept the snow in the driveway. The previous day a truck had skidded there, smashing its headlights and right-hand mudguard and buckling the door.
She raised her eyes. A wolf cub was standing about 20 metres from the gate. It had long thin legs and a yellowish, almost white, fur. The snow was turning blue in the dawn. She lifted her broom, and the cub jerked, turned and ran away. Twice it looked back as it fled. In that first moment when they had looked at each other she’d seen in the cub’s eyes the look of a brother. Finally she saw herself. The wolf cub would turn up at daybreak, when the night ended and the mists gave way to daylight. The first time it came was on the day of Captain Hentschel’s visit to Skinny, the last time on the day when Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin of the Einsatzkommando der Einsatzgruppen turned up again. While still in the doorway he had informed her that they’d caught the saboteurs who had derailed the train. They had executed them on the spot. He regretted that they couldn’t have executed them twice, a hundred times, a hundred thousand times. A dead man cannot carry another, said a German proverb. These punitive actions rarely failed to be effective. Every spot at which an enemy was killed would one day be declared sacred. Fools, all those who believed they could destroy the Reich! In the Obersturmführer’s squeaky voice she heard unassailable conviction.
In her mind Skinny ran with the wolf cub along the river down to the snow-covered quarry and beyond. The cub ran to where all wolves were equal and were allowed to breathe the same air. Where that was did not matter.
Beautiful swallowed the gram of cyanide at the moment that artillery corporal Fritz Möhlen – one of Major von Kalckreuth’s men -lay on top of her. A snowstorm was raging outside. From the start they had not spoken a single word. She had undressed, opened her legs and waited for the corporal to come to her.
Now he was hammering on Madam Kulikowa’s door.
“Is anything wrong?” the Madam asked.
“Not with me,” he replied.
Big Leopolda found Beautiful in Cubicle 7 with her head turned back and her legs drawn up as if she were sitting while lying down; her lips were parted and already stiffening, her glassy eyes slowly getting darker. Like a frightened fish, the Madam thought. There was some raspberry-coloured lipstick, badly applied, on Beautiful’s lips – the lipstick which the Madam had given her that very morning. Over her face fell the shadow of the dead. Her arms were flung wide open, her hair slightly dishevelled as if she were half a sleep. Her naked throat was like that of a pigeon. Her breasts had begun to sag, still fresh and at the same time already those of an old woman. On her face was a mixture of sadness, pain and horror.
It struck the Madam that if the corporal had called the doctor, and if the doctor had used a stomach pump on the girl, there might have been hope. Who could tell what the Oberführer would have done? Finally, as if s
he felt it her duty, Madam Kulikowa picked up the girl’s lifeless hand. For the first time in her life she felt that in the girl who had taken her own life she had lost a piece of herself. In the dead girl’s expression there was an unanswered question. But even if they had saved Beautiful’s life she would only have gone to where she was already, via the wall. The Frog would have pumped her stomach so he could have stood her up against the back wall.
For some reason Madam Kulikowa could not tear herself away from the dead girl’s face. She was like a drowned body pulled from a lake. Beautiful had not just been a pretty girl; her attractiveness lay partly in her ability to resist subjugation: it implied more strength than most other women have, a special female strength. Would this puzzle the Gestapo?
The Madam drew a deep breath and let it out with a wheeze. No doubt I’ll get it in the neck, she thought to herself. But she could not delay reporting to Oberführer Dr Gustav Schimmelpfennig.
“There must be no disruption of operations, you bitch!” the Oberführer screamed at her. He interrogated Corporal Möhlen. He took notes. His first instinct was to hush it up. He got the man to sign the standard form about keeping official business secret. The corporal signed without even reading it. Then The Frog went along with Madam Kulikowa to look at the dead girl.
One of her hands was resting on her stomach, the other was flung out to the edge of her mattress. Hadn’t she had both of them on her chest before? The Madam was not sure. They were long girlish arms, now turning bluish, with slender wrists. She looked at the girl’s tattooed abdomen as though she were seeing it for the first time. At the spot where Beautiful had felt the coiling snakes.
“Where did she get the poison?” the Oberführer wanted to know. Even though Feldbordell No. 232 Ost enjoyed an exceptional reputation among brothels, without Oberführer S chimmelpfennig having done anything to enhance it, he feared that Corporal Möhlen’s encounter with the dead girl would not help his standing with his superiors. It was sickening that a corpse should detract from the merits he had earned. In his mind he saw himself retreating, just as, in the larger picture, the Herrenwaffe was on the retreat.
“Damned sabotage!” he growled.
He was about to slap the Madam’s face. “And that applies to you, too. Not a word to anybody. This is a military and police secret. She left this place under escort, you understand? I’ll make sure none of you lives to a ripe old age here. At roll-call you’ll announce a punishment. Three strokes of the cane for everybody, without exception. You won’t say what for. One day and night without food. If they ask why, you don’t know. The heating ban to be extended for another three days. Not a single shovelful of coal, not a single log. Do you hear?”
“Yes. Three strokes for everyone tomorrow.”
“No, today!”
Then it was as if a sharp razor blade had run down her cheek, drawing blood. Her face twisted with pain. It was the most powerful blow she had ever received from The Frog. He nearly lost his balance, and had to steady himself, legs apart, and even take a step or two back. Madam Kulikowa shut her eyes. The corners of her mouth hung down.
Slowly she opened her eyes, as if even the half-light hurt them, and under her lids she turned her grey pupils on the Oberführer. Before her she saw an executioner.
“You’ll lock up this cubicle. How the hell could you have left it unlocked? You’ll hear about this later. We’ll carry her out when it’s dark. You’d better make sure operations proceed normally.”
The Oberführer spared her the second slap. But she could bet her life that he wouldn’t forget it.
In the waiting room Corporal Möhlen was listening to Strauss waltzes, a lecture on racial hygiene, and then more waltzes. He had been waiting three hours for the Gestapo. He studied the posters stuck up in the waiting room. They included the one with the big ear: Feind hört mit! The enemy is listening. The soldiers waiting their turn suspected nothing. Ginger, Long-Legs, Smartie and Maria-from-Poznan each got two extra men. A prostitute had fallen sick. Corporal Fritz Möhlen had been with her.
They could hear the artillery barrage. It seemed quite close. The bursts were continuous, no longer like the distant rumble of thunder.
“I can’t go to sleep,” Estelle whispered. “My eyelids are heavy.”
“You’ll fall asleep in a little while.”
“Do the roots of your hair hurt?”
“No. I haven’t got much hair, combing’s no problem.”
“I only spoke to her this morning. We’ve been here the same time. Forty-three days.”
With no heating it was cold in the dormitory. They were covered up to their chins, their overcoats on top of them. Estelle knew that if she got no sleep she would be looking at the soldiers with lifeless eyes. She bit her nails in the dark.
“Have you ever been to Galicia?”
“No.”
“It seems to me that each one of those 43 days I’ve shrunk a little.”
“Better not shrink any more,” Skinny said.
“It’s already three o’clock. It’ll be foggy,” Estelle said.
Madam Kulikowa put Beautiful’s belongings in a sack and tied it up with string. The gold coin bearing the head of a Russian Tsar went into her own pocket. What plans did the Germans have for them?
Twelve: Robert Kaiserhof, Günther Bomber, Friedrich Ochse, Siegfried Jawornik, Kamil Ficke, Johannes Bonner, Fred Spirit, Hans-Fritz Beyer, Jeremias Archer, Klaus Landmann, Jürgen Kihalek, Adalbert Schönfeld.
Twelve: Jochen Reitmann, Hans Deutermann, Maurice Snagenberg, Willy Steyer, Heinrich Streber-Munte, George Bittner, Hannes Schlafrock, Helmut Winkler, Karl Sachsenberger, Arthur Rota, Frederick Gaube, Thomas Binder.
The Madam massaged the major’s shoulders, the muscles below his neck and around his shoulder blades. The major liked this, just as her cat Rosina had back at Kopernik Street. She told him how, in Warsaw, they used to dance the cancan for special guests. They would not have been ashamed even in front of professional dancers. Good Lord, the things you can express with your body! They wore high-quality black tights which did not wrinkle, which showed not the slightest crease even during the wildest movements, high-laced boots of the finest calf leather, long full skirts whose hems they would hold raised between thumb and forefinger from beginning to end, and white lace panties made even more dazzling by the spotlights. She could still hear the deafening applause, the flourish of the band, the air electric with desire, the readiness of the best of them to come up to all expectations. She still heard the clinking of glasses, the popping of champagne corks – the most expensive and sometimes also the cheapest – and the shouts of “Bravo, bravo!” – that went on so long that they had to repeat the number. And shouts of “Sto lat” and “Zivijo, zivijo,” until these were replaced by German “Prosits,” but not for long.
Major Karl Maximilian von Kalckreuth screwed his monocle in place in order to see her better. He too remembered a cancan, in Germany, at the Salon Kitty. The girls right by the footlights, almost above you!
Madam Kulikowa proceeded to massage the major’s thighs with a dedication and strength he did not expect from her. She was thinking of the hairy legs of the 60-year-old lover she’d had when she was 14. To the Germans all hairy men were gorillas.
*
Long-Legs was executed three days after Beautiful poisoned herself. Present at the execution were The Frog, three soldiers, a doctor and Madam Kulikowa as witnesses. Maria-from-Poznan and Ginger held the Madam responsible.
An Unterführer in the Waffen-SS, 37 years her senior, had complained about Long-Legs. He had asked where the Polish rivers, the Oder, the San and the Vistula ran. The answer he had wanted was “to the German sea”. Germany was everywhere. Her answer instead was that she couldn’t care less. She wasn’t here for a geography lesson. He told her she looked like an emaciated mare and she retorted that his face was like pork schnitzel, already hammered but not yet breaded, whereupon he spat into her face that she was a sea sow. Finally, during an unsuccessf
ul coitus interruptus, she reached out and stole a ten-mark piece from his trousers on the chair. She was not co-operative – the most common complaint at Feldbordell No. 232 Ost. She created a hostile atmosphere, he claimed. She made inappropriate jokes. This should not be tolerated. She had disgraced his uniform, his self-assurance as a soldier, his honour. He had been fighting since 1939. He deserved more than this.
“You’re a whore if you give them what they want, and a whore if you don’t. The bastard. He kept talking about the battles in Flanders in the First World War, when men died like flies. He said that their bodies manured the soil. The old bastard even talked about them in his sleep,” Long-Legs told the Madam.
That morning a sapper sergeant had said to her that if her legs were just a little shorter and her wrists a little slimmer she could be an actress. He had seen Lady of My Dreams and had sung her a hit from it.
But none of this mattered any longer.
Long-Legs undressed by the back wall. She was allowed to keep her boots on. She folded her clothes and underwear into a neat bundle, as if it was important to her. She held the bundle under her arm; it warmed her side a little. The crash of the salvo, which she heard, and the flashes, which she barely saw, went through her like demons of grief. The bullets smashed her teeth, as they were later to smash those of Big Leopolda Kulikowa. At the end came the sharp, clear report of the Oberführer’s Luger.
That same morning Ginger was taken away by the Gestapo. A letter from her had been found on the body of Sturmmann Manfred Bormann. She had got him to pass on 632 marks from her to someone else.
Thirteen
Maria-from-Poznan told them how the local population would organize hunts for people who escaped from concentration camps. The Gauleiter, she said, announced rewards to be paid by the municipal office. For proof of capture it was sufficient to produce the ears, the nose or you know what. People were making a tidy heap of money. The girls imagined bloodstained noses and black wrinkled skin.
Lovely Green Eyes Page 22