by John Lawton
“No matter. You’re Charlie Parker and, alas, I am Betty Bourke from the moment we leave here. Could be worse. I could be Ella Fitzgerald and then no one would believe either of us. Try checking into a motel under those names.”
“Leo is sending me to Los Alamos?”
“Leo is sending both of us. He won’t or can’t go himself. He’s fallen out with the army. You know Leo, you can imagine how he reacts to the military mind. So Leo is sending, Robert Oppenheimer is summoning. Ideally, Oppy would like Leo in person but that’s not going to happen.”
“So, I follow the trail.”
“Eh?”
“I sent the first shipment of plutonium nitrate to Los Alamos only ten days ago.”
“Well, as long as we don’t have to carry the stuff with us.”
Afterwards, each avoiding the damp patch on the sheets, half-asleep, half-awake, half-thinking, half-dreaming, he half-thought half-dreamt not of Zette, the English, Jewish, Cambridge-and-Sorbonne educated, cynical sophisticate but of the girl in the strawberry dress with the down-home Dogpatch accent of whom he knew nothing.
“In what concentration?”
So she wasn’t asleep after all. And she was no more thinking of him than he was of her.
“I’m sorry?”
“Plutonium nitrate. In what concentration?”
“I couldn’t say without notes, but low.”
“Have you considered that you might achieve a higher concentration at lower temperatures?”
“How low?”
“Minus 80. Minus 100. Whatever it takes.”
Ah, they were back on her territory now. The pursuit of absolute zero.
“I can’t create temperatures that low. I don’t have the apparatus.”
“When we get to Los Alamos, I’ll build it for you.”
“Will it work?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
§52
The army would not let them, or any other member of Robert Oppenheimer’s team, fly. The train ride took them in a dogleg, from Memphis to Chicago, from Chicago to Lamy, a one-horse town just south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A uniformed Wac corporal met them at the rail station, saluted, blushed slightly when neither of them returned the salute.
“Sorry, sir, ma’am. Force of habit. If it moves, salute it.”
Inside the gates at Los Alamos, a young lieutenant greeted them with a by-the-numbers lecture on security, secrecy, careless talk, fraternization.
Zette looked at the landscape, stared at the mountains. Ignored him.
“Ma’am?”
“Spare me the lecture, I’m not in your army.”
“Ma’am, it’s very important that you understand the rules.”
“Fuck you, Sunny Jim. I’m not some private you can kick around, I’m the talent. Without me this bomb won’t get built.”
“Gadget, ma’am, we call it a gadget.”
“Okay. Without me this gadget won’t get built!”
“And you, sir, you do understand?”
Szabo had politely feigned attention. It cost him nothing.
“Yes, lieutenant. I know the rules. One prison is much like another.”
The lieutenant muttered, “Jesus,” and walked off.
“Did you have to be quite so rude?” Szabo said.
“I answer to Robert Oppenheimer, not the United States Army. And do you really think it’s a prison? Oppy has fought battles with the bastards to give us freedom of movement and freedom of speech. Lecture or no lecture, rules or no rules, we’re not trapped here.”
He looked around. Mountains, desert, barbed wire. You could no more run from here than you could run from Alcatraz.
“In Germany I narrowly escaped Oranienburg. Plenty of people—friends, colleagues—did not. In England I was locked up in Bury St Edmunds, a place I do not know the name of but somewhere near Manchester, the Isle of Man, another place I cannot identify but somewhere near Liverpool, and in Canada somewhere out on the Great Lakes. Their common characteristic was barbed wire. I appreciate what you say. On an intellectual level. But on the emotional level . . . once I’m behind barbed wire . . . it’s just another camp.”
She slipped an arm through his. He could almost swear there was affection in her smile.
“You know, Charlie Parker, that’s the most intimate thing you’ve ever told me.”
“We don’t do intimacy, Betty Bourke. We do sex.”
§53
Auschwitz: November 1944
When the Russians got within striking range for their planes, the lights went out. For the first time in nine months Méret saw darkness.
One morning early in November she awoke and vomited. When she could lift her head she made out Magda in the half-light, hanging over the side of her bunk, pale and sweaty with a trickle of vomit on her chin.
“You, too?” she said.
The door burst open, SS banged in, women leapt to their feet and stood at attention.
“Aufstehen! Get dressed and muster outside. All of you. Macht euch fertig! Get ready to leave! Schnell! Schnell! Raus!”
Driving them out of the door and into the cold of morning, an SS Unterscharführer turned back, saw Méret and Magda struggling into their clothes—Magda doubled over, one arm flailing to find a sleeve in her cardigan.
He cupped Méret’s chin in one hand and lifted her face.
“Can you walk?”
“I . . . I . . . can. I can.”
“No, you can’t.”
He let her head fall, called out to his men, “Not these two. Leave them behind.”
She heard Magda mutter, “This is it. The final fucking selection. Too ill to travel. It’s the gas for us.”
The Unterscharführer said, “Krankenbau!”
Infirmary.
She fell back on the bottom bunk.
Half an hour passed. A train pulled away from the ramp.
The ever-present buzz of Auschwitz, the life inside the machine, dropped to a murmur. The clatter of boots, the screams of women died away—even the bells and whistles seemed lessened. For the first time in nine months Méret heard something like silence.
An hour passed. An infirmary orderly in stripes appeared.
Méret slipped off the bed to the floor.
The room was a mess, clothes abandoned, sheet music scattered, instruments overturned, a double bass knocked from its stand and looking slaughtered.
He hoisted her to her feet, an arm around her shoulders. Braced himself when she buckled at the knees.
“Krankenbau,” he said gently.
§54
Auschwitz: January 18, 1945
For weeks now Méret and Magda had played only for each other. Every childhood piece they could think of, transposed for cello and trombone. They sounded like a musical interpretation of Laurel and Hardy.
Meanwhile, Block 12 filled up again. Women grateful for the warmth of the stove.
One morning in mid-January a boom like the gates of hell opening up ripped through the air, a cloud of dust swept past the window, and Magda came running in, wide-eyed and breathless.
“What was the bang?”
“The crem . . . they blew up the crematoria.”
“Blew them up? I don’t—”
“The lot. Boom!” Both hands in the air, fingers and thumbs pointing upward.
“Boom and they were gone—crems, gas chambers, the lot. They want to kill us now, they’ll have to shoot us.”
“Mind you,” she added. “They might just do that anyway.”
As dusk came they began to notice specks of red light around the compound and a change in the air—the smell of burning flesh overlain now with the smell of burning paper—grey flakes of it floating down like confetti.
“They’re burning the evidence,” said Magda.
“Aren’t we evidence?” said Méret.
§55
That night no food was served.
One a.m. Darkness.
“Raus! Raus!”
They lined up in the snow. Smoldering bonfires dotting the darkness with pinpoints of light. A blizzard stirring up around their heads. Grey paper confetti mingling with flakes of snow.
The Germans tried to count them one more time and gave up. Five by five became anything by anything. This was no Appell for the sake of it. The sense of urgency was almost palpable. A whisper, woman to woman.
“The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.”
And Magda whispered back to her, “Not soon enough they’re not.”
They passed under the arch, the motto high above them, Arbeit Macht Frei. Just another German lie.
Fifty yards on, an open staff car stopped them.
Von Schönbeck, got out, wrapped against the winter in his jackboots and his field-grey greatcoat with its fur collar. He walked straight up to Méret. She was wearing every scrap of clothing she could find, her head swathed in a piece of torn blanket. She was surprised he knew her.
He took off his greatcoat and held it out to her.
She did not move.
“Take it.”
She did not move.
“Take it!”
“Méret, for Christ’s sake. Take it before he shoots us,” Magda said.
“Take it,” von Schönbeck said once more, “You might well survive.”
She took it from him without a word. She put her arms in the sleeves, buttoned it, turned up the collar, felt the fur on the back of her neck, looked down at her feet to see the coat trailing in the snow, looked up at von Schönbeck but he had gone.
§56
They were almost at the rear of the column. That the men had marched ahead of them was obvious. Bodies at the side of the road; bodies across the road leaving no option for the women but to walk on corpses.
Méret tried to count the intervals. It seemed the Germans stopped them every hour for a few minutes rest. Some fell asleep in the snow at once, and any who did not rise at the shout of “Raus!” were shot where they lay. Anyone who lingered or faltered was shot where they stood.
Just before dawn they were steered off the road and into an abandoned barn.
Méret had dry, grey camp bread. Magda produced half a dozen cooked sausages from her coat pocket.
“You’ll never know who I fucked to get these,” she said. “Just eat. Remember what the bastard said—you might well survive.”
As they marched through the next day it was Magda who began to falter. Méret matched her pace until they were in the last dozen in line. Only stragglers and guards behind.
Another night in a barn—or was it the same night? She was beginning to lose count of days and had long since lost count of hours.
Another day on the road—or was it the same day? They were last now, everyone behind them had been shot. Just one guard to bring up the rear.
Magda could hardly walk at all. Méret propped her up and their pace slowed to nothing more than a slug crawl through the snow. The guard walked blindly past them.
For a moment she thought they were free, that, scarcely less numb than they were themselves, he had turned off to his task and failed to notice them.
Magda sank.
“Leave me.”
“Sssh. He has forgotten us.”
And as she spoke the guard turned back, trudged towards them, unslung his rifle, pointed it at Magda, and said, “Auf, auf—weitermachen.”
“No. Shoot me. Shoot me, you crazy bastard!”
For a minute or more he kept his rifle trained on Magda. Méret watched the barrel waving unsteadily, saw his grip slacken.
Then he slung it over his shoulder again, muttered, “What’s the fucking point?” and walked off the road and into the woods towards a tumbledown shed.
For several minutes Méret could hear nothing. The silence of landscape under snow, the like of which she had never heard before. A world without music. She had learnt to tell how cold it was from the sound snow made underfoot. The sound was music, the note rising with the fall in temperature as the crust got firmer. And if you didn’t move you made no music.
Auschwitz was remote now, no smell of burning flesh, no film of grease at the back of the throat. Vienna remoter still. No music. She could not recall a day without music. Silence was . . . unheard. They were alone, painted onto a fairy-tale landscape, at one with a mute, near-translucent nature—two children, Kay and Gerda, waiting/not waiting for the appearance of the Snow Queen on her silver sleigh. Silent upon a plain in Poland.
Méret recognized this for what it was—the onset of madness, a madness she had held at arm’s length, at bow’s length, for the best/worst part of a year.
Magda broke the spell.
“Why . . . why aren’t we dead?”
Méret put an arm under Magda, lifted her to her feet.
“He’s Wehrmacht. He’s not SS. Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.”
And they followed the soldier’s footsteps in the snow.
Inside the hut, half the roof had collapsed and he was gathering wood and straw from the debris to light a fire. Méret scooped a clear space on the ground and the soldier turned out his pockets for scraps of paper and a box of matches. Between them they fuelled the fire well into the night. Their eyes never meeting.
When he was ready to sleep, the soldier slipped his arms from the sleeves of his greatcoat and sat inside it like a wigwam, head down below the collar, snoring. Méret copied him, buttoned von Schönbeck’s greatcoat around herself and Magda—she a human blanket for Magda, Magda a human blanket for her—and slept.
She awoke alone. No German soldier. No Magda.
It was light.
She heard feet on snow.
Magda put her head in the door.
“He’s gone,” she said. “He was gone before I woke up.”
And as she spoke Méret heard a diesel engine and watched Magda turn in the doorway and vanish.
“Magda? Magda?”
Then feet, running feet crunching across the snow and Magda’s scream.
Méret stood in the doorway. Half a dozen men in quilted, white winter overalls, giant babies in romper suits with tiny red stars on the forehead were standing around watching as a comrade ripped Magda’s rags from her body and fumbled at the zips on his whitesuit.
Magda screamed. Méret stood rooted to the spot, facing Russian troops, wrapped in the uniform of an SS Sturmbannführer.
Behind the troops, two officers approached without urgency. One short, one tall, major and lieutenant. The short major put a revolver to the rapist’s right ear, and what she said needed no translation.
The man spat, cursed, and ignored her.
She shot him in the head, turned her gun on the spectators, and waited until they slowly turned away and walked back to the road.
The tall lieutenant came right up to Méret.
“At last. I was beginning to think we’d never find you,” he said in flawless German.
It was as though he was talking to a wayward child lost now found in a street market.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe now. Both of you.”
Her own helplessness appalled her. She let the man take her by the arm, hustle her past Magda. The woman major was helping Magda dress. The rapist lay sprawled on his back, blood melting the snow around his head.
She wanted to see Magda’s eyes, to look her in the face, but they moved too quickly.
The lieutenant opened the rear door of an armoured half-track and gently pushed her in.
“Trust me,” he said. “Your friend will be fine.”
A minute later the woman major joined them and the half-track started up—a fug of smothering heat and diesel.
“Where is Madga? I want to see Magda.”
The man answered.
“She’s fine. No harm will come to her.”
§57
The half-track had only slits to see through. Méret had stopped trying to look out. Trees in winter all looked the same. North and south looked
the same, but when a line of barbed wire flashed by the slits she became alarmed—and when she caught a glimpse of the words Arbeit Macht Frei wrought in steel and realized where they were heading she lunged for the back door. The man blocked her way, got both arms around her, said, “It’s not what you think.” And it wasn’t.
A few hundred yards farther on, the half-track pulled up and the rear door opened. The Russians got out first, both of them extending a hand to her. They had stopped outside the commandant’s house. Two huge Soviet supply trucks stood in the road and a generator truck had backed though the hedge onto the remains of the rose garden and sat like a great, grey tomcat, purring with electricity.
“You will be warm,” the Russian man said to her. “You will be clean.”
They went in through the front door.
To her right was the drawing room in which she had played Bach. It had been ransacked. A Russian private was righting chairs and sweeping up broken china. The Russian major babbled in Russian and the lieutenant translated.
“We’ll have things sorted soon. The prisoners took all the food and bedding. It’s surprising they didn’t take everything, but they didn’t.”
To her left was the kitchen. Every drawer and cupboard open.
“They took what was useful,” Méret said. “Food tastes the same from a tin bowl as it does from Dresden china.”
§58
They sat her down at the kitchen table. A cup of hot, black tea in front of her. She had no idea what they expected of her. And they seemed to be arguing: the man still somewhat deferential to rank, the woman on the verge of exploding at him. A flurry of Russian in rising volume went back and forth. Then the woman put her hands in the air, fists clenched in exasperation, and yelled, “Fuck it, you dumb fuckin’ Ivan, you’re doing this all wrong!”
And she had yelled it in English.
Méret put out a hand and touched her arm.
“I speak English,” she said simply.
It seemed to be the one thing the major needed. She turned to the lieutenant, uttered a softly spoken instruction, and he left the room. Then she sat down opposite Méret.