The Crooked Path

by Irma Joubert

  Marco tried to prepare Rachel for what was waiting. “It’s possible we’ll be separated, men and women. Just see that you survive—that’s what’s most important.”

  She gave him a serious look. “You too, Marco Romanelli,” she whispered past her parched tongue.

  “I will,” he promised. “I’ll wait for you, Rachel. When the war is over—and I know it can’t be long now, the Allies are getting the upper hand everywhere—when the war is over, you’re going to be my wife.”

  She nodded slowly and pointed upward, through the crack above their heads. “Marco, look at the stars.”

  He looked up. The sky was black velvet, the stars glittering diamonds—unchanged for centuries. “Remember the words of King David: ‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou are mindful of him?’ Yet God is always near.” He was silent for a moment before adding: “I suppose it’s in your Torah as well.”

  Rachel nodded again. “I . . . think so,” she said uncertainly. “These are our stars, Marco. They’ve come all the way with us, no matter how crooked our path may have been.”

  They sat in silence, relishing their closeness.

  By early morning the train slowed down and stopped. Marco looked outside. They were in open country. In the dim moonlight he saw a landscape carpeted with snow as far as the eye could see, interspersed with a few sparse trees rising like silent, dark skeletons.

  After a long wait the train slowly began to puff and jerk again. Inside the carriage, no one looked up anymore.

  At first light the train blew off steam and jolted to a halt. They had entered through large gates to arrive in the middle of an open area—Birkenau, the sign said.

  “I think this is the end of our journey,” Marco said quietly.

  chapter

  SIX

  Each day was exactly like the one before. In the morning a siren wailed, and the numbers lined up for a bowl of thin porridge. Day after day the starving people wasted away, dying a slow death. They were fed a daily ration of thin soup, a handful of rice grains, and half a slice of bread until they could no longer get up. Those who were strong enough pushed others out of their way for a sip of water and pounced on any crumb that happened to fall.

  By day they worked long hours in the snow, wind, driving rain, or blazing sun.

  At night they lay on their thin mattresses.

  Sometimes the smell of burned hair and flesh shrouded the camp like a dense fog. “The corpses are being cremated,” the inmates whispered.

  More prisoners kept arriving at the camp—disheveled, petrified creatures, staring blankly with eyes that had seen too much. On arrival they were stripped of their possessions and squeezed into any available space.

  On a warm summer’s day at the end of June 1944, a group of Jews from the camp Fossoli di Carpi arrived at Birkenau. More than five hundred children and elderly people were immediately separated from the rest and taken away. “Straight to the gas chambers,” the people whispered.

  “But the Allies are so close!” the new arrivals protested.

  “How close?” asked Marco.

  “They invaded Rome on the fourth,” a young man said. “The Allies are close to the Gothic Line. The province of Modena is a battlefield, but the English are gaining ground.”

  “And they’ve landed in France, in Normandy,” his friend said. “The Allies crossed the English Channel. They’re in France this very moment. I believe they’ve driven the Nazis out of Paris.”

  “So they’ve finally launched their second front,” someone said excitedly.

  “Rome, Paris—Berlin will be next!” someone else cried.

  The news lifted the spirits in the camp and became a burning hope for the future.

  It was high summer now. It had been more than three months since Marco’s arrival in Birkenau, three months since he had last seen Rachel. Slowly Marco climbed up to his bunk. If he sat up, his head touched the ceiling. But he preferred the top bunk. It was more private, and no one scrambled past him at night to get to the slop bucket in the corner of the cell.

  He took off his coveralls and stretched out his tall, aching frame. It was stifling in the cell with its four tiny windows high up in the walls. By morning the air was thick and stale.

  The folds of the gray blanket scratched his bare shoulder.

  There was a rustling sound.

  He frowned and rolled over.

  The rustling sound was there again, like paper.

  He raised himself slightly and felt under the blanket.

  Between blanket and mattress he found a scrap of paper, folded tightly.

  His hands trembled. He unfolded it slowly. Could it . . . ?

  It was too dark. He couldn’t see.

  He lay awake until the early hours, the tightly folded paper clutched in his fist. When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed of Rachel, her figure soft and full as it used to be, her hair blowing in the wind, her cheeks rosy, her laughing mouth turned up to him. When he woke, he was pouring with sweat. The paper was still clutched in his fist. It was pitch-dark. No stars were visible through the narrow windows.

  Rachel! His entire being longed for her. If only he could hold her one more time . . .

  Eventually he could make out the paper was a letter, but it was still too dark to read the words.

  Dawn broke at last. He saw Rachel’s round letters. They turned into words:

  I am fine. Sister and I in good health. We work in the gardens. My love keeps me strong. There will be a future after this.

  Emotion such as he had not experienced for weeks welled up inside him. Rachel was alive. She was well.

  He looked at the letter in his hand, but the words were swimming.

  He blinked again and again. He read and reread, burned the words into his heart. At last he raised the scrap of hope to his mouth and slowly chewed the paper, as if it were sacramental bread, before swallowing it.

  All through the day he was filled with joy.

  In the night longing began to gnaw at him again.

  The next morning he tore a page from his notebook. His head was resting on his rolled-up coat, which served as a pillow. He took a blunt pencil stub from its pocket. His hands were trembling. He could almost feel her presence.

  He formulated the words with care, choosing those that would let her know he got her letter.

  I am fine. I am healthy. My love grows stronger every day. The future is waiting.

  He hid the letter in the same place he had found the one addressed to him two nights before.

  All day long his heart rejoiced. There was a future waiting after this hellhole where they were imprisoned. He knew it.

  That night he searched his bed, but his own letter was still where he had left it. He must be patient. Whoever smuggled in Rachel’s letter couldn’t manage to come every day.

  A week later the letter was still there.

  When two weeks had passed, he destroyed the page. He felt he had lost all chance of contact with his Rachel.

  The days and nights dragged on interminably, indistinguishable from one another.

  One early morning in a series of identical early mornings, a new trainload of Jews arrived at Birkenau from northern Italy. “Today is August the fourth,” said an elderly man from Trieste as they ate together.

  August the fourth? Marco thought. How unimportant days and dates had become.

  “Conditions in Italy are appalling,” another man said.

  “For non-Jews as well?” Marco asked quietly.

  The man nodded. “For everybody. The towns have been blown to pieces, our currency is worthless, children walk the streets begging for food, people are even killing their . . .” He fell silent. “It’s . . .” He shook his head.

  Marco turned away, the runny porridge sticking in his throat. My family, my brothers, my father, he thought. And . . . Mama?

  Would peace never come?

  Their workday wa
s fourteen hours. As long as the sun was shining, the prisoners got no rest. That day was even longer than usual, longing and anxiety eating away at his reserves. At nightfall he drank his thin soup and enough water. He didn’t stay to talk to the others, to listen to the new arrivals’ news. His mind refused to accept any more information. His aching body wanted to rest.

  His hand felt around under the blanket, as usual. He searched every night, though two months had passed since he discovered the letter. It was something he looked forward to every day, a scrap of hope in a hopeless existence.

  Then his fingers touched it.

  His heart jumped, his stomach churned.

  He clambered from his bunk and rushed outside. The sun had gone down but there was still plenty of light.

  On this day, this specific, endless, hopeless day, the letter was there.

  He turned his back to the men sitting in a small circle just outside the door, talking. Slowly he unfolded the paper, his eyes caressing the familiar handwriting.

  Sister gone. Like Mama. Heart aches. I see the stars at night. I remember.

  Marco drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  No. No.

  He looked at the note in his hands.

  It was true. Ester was gone. Ester was dead.

  She was only seventeen. She would never eat the crunchy apple she had craved.

  And Rachel was all alone. In body and in soul.

  His heart reached out to her across the high walls and the barbed wire. She was so near, only a few hundred yards away. Yet she was so incredibly far.

  Maybe she was watching the birds circling in the sky high above the camps at this very moment. Yet she was unreachable.

  No, he told himself, she’s only a letter away.

  And she’s alive.

  The future is still waiting after all.

  The days were getting colder when Marco was sent to work in the synthetic rubber factory. It was a long walk, but at least he worked indoors by day. The snow fell steadily all night long.

  After a week or two the smell of the hot rubber began to irritate his chest. He soon learned to stifle his impulse to cough.

  More and more Hungarian Jews arrived at the camp. Most of them were immediately transported to an unknown destination.

  Rumors of the gas chambers grew stronger. “Those aren’t just burning corpses we smell,” people whispered.

  With the new arrivals came the news that some weeks earlier there had been an attempt on Hitler’s life. “But he’s alive?” the people asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” came the reply. “But it’s only a matter of time. The net is closing around Germany.”

  Deep in December, close to Christmas, Marco figured, a letter was waiting for him one evening.

  I am well. I know you are there and you are waiting. That is why I am able to carry on. All my love.

  He sank down on his knees. “Mother of God,” he murmured, “you are here, and that is why I, too, am able to carry on. Please take care of Rachel, even though she’s not your child. I love her deeply. And be with my family at Christmastime . . .”

  Then he was overcome by emotion.

  One day the flood of prisoners dried up, the trainloads of people vanished like smoke in the air.

  “The Nazis are no longer in control,” the men told each other.

  The guards were restless. They screamed at the prisoners, sounding anxious. “They know the end is near,” the people whispered.

  More and more people disappeared. The two bunks below Marco were empty, the lumpy mattresses and thin blankets claimed by others in a desperate attempt to keep the cold at bay.

  “It won’t be long now,” the men told each other. They needed the reassurance more than the dry lump of bread they were given every day.

  Less than two weeks after the previous letter, Marco found a new scrap of paper under his blankets. His heart jumped with joy as his trembling fingers unfolded the letter.

  The handwriting was not hers.

  I regret having to write this letter. She is gone. It was a short illness, but she had no reserves. We gave her coat and cap to a young girl. She had no other possessions. The coat was very good. She spoke your name before she left us.

  The letters on the paper did not make sense. The coat had come all the way from Lithuania.

  Then the words sank in. The realization filled his entire body, his scrawny legs gave way, his heart burst apart, darkness descended on his mind.

  Someone picked him up where he was lying in the snow and dragged him inside. He woke in a strange bed, one of the bottom bunks without mattress or blanket.

  He didn’t feel the cold. With enormous effort he hauled himself up to his own bunk. Sleep eluded him.

  So this is how it ends. “All is vanity,” says the Preacher.

  That night Marco Romanelli coughed up flecks of blood while his heart bled dry and died.

  The next morning and all the mornings that followed he got up, ate his daily bread, worked by the sweat of his brow, coughed. Every night the blood was there.

  By day he suppressed the coughing bouts until the guard had done his rounds. Then he bent double, coughing until he felt his chest would burst and flecks of foam plastered his lips. When he wiped his mouth, the back of his hand was covered in bloody mucus.

  His mind was dull, his eyes dim, his heart empty.

  His body was cold cold cold.

  One early evening the planes appeared. “The Russians!” someone shouted. Sirens wailed, people screamed and ran, guards barked orders through megaphones.

  Then the bombs came down—like huge hailstones, ripping the earth apart. An outbuilding was hit and went up in flames.

  The planes departed as suddenly as they had come.

  The evening was filled with the screams of people, the hysterical barking of dogs.

  All night long the lights remained on as trucks roared and orders were bellowed over loudspeakers.

  Marco was aware of the scrambling around him, below him.

  He lay motionless and ice-cold on his thin mattress, his emaciated body wrapped in his old coat, the thin blanket drawn over his head, unaware that cell B8 was being evacuated, its inmates loaded into the back of covered trucks.

  “We’re burning the camp!” a guard roared at the cell door. “Everyone out!”

  The words did not reach his feeble body, his exhausted brain. His chest seemed about to rupture from violent coughing fits. He no longer tried to suppress them.

  Sleep engulfed him, merciful and pitch-black.

  At sunrise no sirens were wailing. Marco closed his eyes—he could not go on.

  Sometime during the day he was dragged from his bed and taken outside. The camp was silent, the kitchen doors and gate wide open.

  They propped him against a wall in the pale sunshine. “Eat, Marco,” someone said. “The guards have left everything. Have some food.”

  Around him men were opening tins: meat and fish and sweet canned fruit. They ate like savages, choking, throwing up, eating some more.

  The stronger ones filled their pockets and draped blankets around their shoulders before setting off through the gate.

  Someone helped Marco to one of the lower bunks and covered him with blankets. “Here’s bread, Marco, and water. And a slab of chocolate,” the man said. Then he too left.

  It grew quiet.

  Several days and nights passed before the tanks arrived. The soldiers spoke Russian. They took him along.

  Days and nights merged into one. He was in a bed. Occasionally someone fed him or gave him a drink of water. Each coughing fit ripped his chest apart. He vomited blood. No one cleaned it up.

  “He’s Italian,” someone said in Russian. “Sometimes I hear him mumble.”

  “What’s your name?” they asked.

  Marco did not answer.

  “We must send him to Rome,” a voice said one day, speaking the language of Milton and Shakespeare and Wordsworth. What are the classical poets doing
here?

  “What’s your name?” the voice insisted . . . What’s in a name . . . ?

  If only it weren’t so terribly cold.

  He became aware that his bed was shaking. The pain was unbearable. He sank into darkness.

  The train rocked and jolted, carrying his aching, starving body back along the winding route.

  Occasionally the mist dispersed. The periods of daylight grew longer. The pain remained, as did the battle for breath.

  He found out he was in a military hospital in Rome. The staff spoke mainly English. “What is your name?” they asked.

  “Marco Romanelli.”

  “Romanelli?” The voice sounded puzzled.

  His eyelids were too heavy to open. “I’m . . . not . . . Jewish . . .” His lips were too tired to continue forming words.

  It was the end of July 1945, he found out. The Russian tanks entered Birkenau at the end of January. He had spent nearly six months in a Russian military hospital. He had been transferred to Rome a month ago.

  Hitler took his own life on April 30, he heard a voice say. Germany surrendered on May 7.

  At the end of April, communist guerilla fighters caught and hanged Mussolini and his lover, Clara Petacci, in a public square. A crowd gathered to watch as the body was hung upside down, someone else added.

  “Only Japan is still fighting,” a male nurse told him. “I honestly don’t know how we’re going to get food into you. If you don’t eat, you’ll never get strong.”

  But even the thinnest soup came back up.

  “Let me . . . go home,” Marco pleaded.

  The doctor shook his head. “You won’t survive the journey and with the roads the way they are . . . Besides, you’re being fed intravenously. No, first you must get stronger.”

  On August 6, an American plane dropped an atom bomb called Little Boy on the industrial city of Hiroshima in Japan. More than one hundred thousand people died, and a dense cloud of smoke hung over the city. “They’ll have to surrender now,” the male nurse said, pleased. “Don’t move. You’re so full of holes already, I fear today I’m not going to find a vein for this needle.”