Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  Within a week of their arrival, their block had become so crowded that he and Josef were sharing a bunk. When Emil awoke he would feel both annoyed by and grateful for his father’s proximity. It was good to have human warmth but Josef seemed constructed of angles. (He had refused to eat the soup the first week, saying he could not lower himself to such filth. Many of the men had done the same. None were doing it now.) It was less than a month, but Emil had to struggle to remember the time when his father had been a bulky man; solid-chested, with muscular arms and a paunch that betrayed a fondness for meat puddings. Josef had altered so quickly – the stubble growing on his head was grey. Emil had been so narrow already that the change in him was negligible. He glanced at Josef sometimes and thought, is this man my father?

  After the initial shock of being woken, Emil would close his eyes, snatching another second of nothingness. As the shriek of the whistle perished, he could hear the minuscule clatter of the dried pea inside it, spiralling crazily in its prison of tin.

  *

  That morning, there was something else.

  ‘Raus! Alles raus!’ shouted the kapo, a short, white-haired convict who fancied himself to have a sense of humour. ‘Time to get up and earn a living you gypsy scum!’ he added in Czech. This one was lazy about his German. When he spoke it at all it was with a heavy, mocking accent.

  ‘Come on! Come on! Schnell, raus and all that goddamed nonsense, you scumbags. Up!’ He strode down the centre of the block pulling blankets from the men and throwing them on the floor.

  The kapos were not normally enthusiastic about the reveille, preferring to lean against the doorway while their charges roused themselves. As the men staggered towards the door, he was shouting, ‘Line up outside, directly outside. Appel just outside today!’

  The men pushed their way out of the block. The kapo was shouting names from a list, in alphabetical order. Confusion reigned. What did he want? He said to go where?

  The kapo finished his list. ‘The rest of you can go and wash!’

  Josef turned to Emil and pulled a face. ‘We’re on the list. We have to line up at the gate.’

  As they trotted across the camp, Emil glanced over to the women’s barracks but the shutters were still closed. His block had been woken early.

  The sky above was white and the air light and cool. The hills above the camp, beyond the forest, were soft, grey, kindly almost. Emil yawned and ran his tongue over his teeth to clear the sticky, metallic sensation in his mouth. The cold air made him shudder as he ran.

  *

  At the gate, a guard duty of ten policemen was waiting, including Emil’s old friend from the registration line, the one who had ripped his shirt from his back. They called him Čacko, Emil had discovered, and so far he had managed to avoid him. He had seen him beating other prisoners, twice, both young ones like himself. He had been drunk at the time but the other guards either didn’t notice or care. He was popular with the others, loud-mouthed, jovial – drinking on duty was common anyway. Most of them had been sent to the camp as a punishment, for dereliction of duty elsewhere. ‘We get the scum,’ Josef had put it when he told Emil. He had befriended a Roma kapo from North Moravia who was a useful source of information.

  The guards seemed in high spirits that morning. Čacko stood in the middle of them, buttoning his uniform with one hand, glancing around and grinning. In his free hand he clutched a length of black pudding, lifting it to tear off ostentatious chunks with his teeth and talking while he ate. Black pudding. The guards get black pudding. Emil ran his tongue over his teeth. They had not even been given the vile ersatz drink they called coffee, that morning. His breath tasted sour. Now he was properly awake, the dawn air was damp and unpleasant rather than refreshing. A thick mass of cloud was banked above than, waiting to be burned off by the sun. He gave a slow shudder which travelled the length of his body.

  Čacko left the group of guards and strode amongst the prisoners, still eating, pausing here and there. He stopped by Emil and stood in front of him while Emil concentrated on his clogs. He belched. ‘How’s your German lessons coming along, my little schoolboy?’ he asked eventually, in Czech. Emil caught a wave of the fat man’s breath. It smelled of meat.

  ‘Fine. Sir,’ he replied sullenly.

  Čacko’s baton came swinging down on his shoulder. Emil bent under the blow but did not fall.

  ‘In German!’ shouted Čacko in Czech, and the assembled guards laughed.

  Čacko moved back to join the others, gesturing and shaking his head.

  Josef stood close to Emil and said softly. ‘It has become a joke, the way that man treats you. They have talked about it amongst themselves. It’s an act. You must stay away from him, especially when he is with the others.’

  Emil rubbed at his shoulder with his hand. ‘I know,’ he replied shortly. Drop the advice, he thought bitterly, turning away. If I’m old enough to take the blows I’m old enough to work out where they are coming from. He did not expect his father to fight back – that would be lunacy – but he felt angry that Josef could not think of some way of distracting Čacko, of drawing his attention away from his son on to himself. Wasn’t that the kind of thing that fathers were supposed to do? Anyway, it was his father’s decision that had landed them all in the camp. The rest of the kumpánia were probably still lying low in Bohemia, making fruit puddings out of berries and moaning about the sugar ration.

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me …’ Emil muttered to Josef, but his father had already moved away to speak to someone else.

  ‘Form them up!’ the shout rang out from the steps of the staff hut, several metres away. The prisoners and the guards all jumped. The Camp Commandant was striding towards them, shouting as he approached. The guards wiped the smiles from their faces. Emil caught a gratifying glimpse of Čacko looking panic-stricken and swallowing hard.

  The men formed a squad – drill was the one thing they had learned so far in their three weeks in the camp.

  At a motion from the Commandant, two of the guards ran down to the gate and pushed it open.

  Emil knew that they were only going to work, to the quarry or the road-site, but he permitted himself a moment of joyous longing at the sight of the gate swinging back, at the thought that for the first time since their arrival they were about to get out of the camp. He felt suddenly strong – as if he could march all the way back to Bohemia, leave behind this thin, weak father and stride back to the strong, healthy Dad and the others who were waiting back there in the Bohemian cottages, in the past.

  *

  That night, as he sat on his bunk, Emil eased off his wooden clogs, one by one. A layer of skin came away from each heel, and when he looked inside each clog, the wood was stained with blood. There were huge blisters on both of his large toes, great white bulbs on the point of bursting. His eyes prickled with tears. How would he be able to walk the next day?

  Josef was standing by the bunk, massaging his shoulder with one hand. They had been carrying and breaking rocks for ten hours. He picked up one of Emil’s feet and examined the heel, wincing. ‘Why didn’t you take these off earlier, as soon as we were back? We could have swapped clogs for the rest of the day.’

  ‘I told you my feet hurt.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t realise it was this bad.’

  ‘You thought I was just complaining about nothing …’ mumbled Emil resentfully, still holding the other foot, rubbing the toes gently.

  ‘No,’ insisted Josef. ‘I just didn’t think you meant …’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Emil, lifting his head. ‘What happened to your deal with that kapo, about getting our boots back?’

  Josef’s look darkened. ‘Hush. You will be heard.’

  ‘So what …?’ mumbled Emil, glancing from side to side, where the other men were preparing for bed. ‘You haven’t done anything, have you?’

  His father glared at him in response, but the debate was ended by the whistle from the doorway. Immediately, every man in the block tur
ned to his bunk. Josef climbed up beside Emil.

  Emil turned swiftly away from his father. They slept head-to-toe, Emil with his head to the wall, so that his father had the luxury of sleeping with his face pointing outwards, maybe getting a little air. Emil hated being jammed inwards. The ceiling was right above him, and the air so thick and fetid he had to close his eyes as soon as he was lying down to stop himself from panicking.

  He lay still as the men around him fell swiftly asleep, resenting his father beyond measure. He did not think he would sleep at all – the pain of his feet was too great. An insect of some sort was crawling up his left leg but reaching down was impossible with his father packed so tight against him. The man on the next bunk always rolled towards them in the night. It was like being trapped in a coffin made of flesh.

  Then, all at once, he snapped awake, aware that if he was now conscious that meant he must have slept. It was pitch dark and he was gasping for breath. The other men were silent. His father’s foot was in his face. When he tried to roll over he found that his blanket was wrapped around and trapped beneath him. He couldn’t move. His face was bathed in sweat. He managed to free an arm and push his father’s foot away, then scratched at his scalp which was burning and itching. His fingers felt damp when he took his hand away. He lifted them to his nose and sniffed, trying to discover if his head was bleeding.

  His father stirred in his sleep, groaning, and shoved his foot back in Emil’s face. Emil gave a sigh of desperation and managed to turn. The man sleeping on his other side had his head towards the wall, like Emil, and his face was so close to his that his exhaled breath was like a furnace blast. Emil clamped his eyes shut and tried to slow his ragged breathing. Last night, a man at the other end of the block had had a screaming fit. His neighbours had pulled him from his bunk and thrown him on the floor, then beaten him into silence. Emil wanted to jump down from his bunk, kick at the door in a fury, but if he disturbed the others then he too would be thrown to the ground and punched into unconsciousness, and rightly so. The next night he would be back in the same bunk in the same position with a few extra bruises. He squeezed his eyes even tighter, willing himself to lie still and think of the only thing that gave him comfort, his favourite fantasy.

  This is what I would like to do, he thought. I will do it, one night. I will sneak down from the bunk, quietly, waking not a soul and find the door surprisingly unlocked. Then I will steal like a spirit across the camp and I will find my mother sitting on the step of her block. She will look up at me and smile her beautiful smile and say, ‘Yenko, I wait here every night, just in case you manage to sneak out.’ Then she will open her arms, and I will get down beside her and lie my head in her lap while she strokes my forehead. The air will be cool. She will talk to me about the stars.

  He lay still, replaying the fantasy over and over again, adding more detail each time, more soft words, more stars …

  *

  In the children’s block, the night-shift kapo walked up and down, bouncing a crying infant on her arm and waiting impatiently for dawn.

  As she passed the bunk where Bobo and Parni slept, the crying infant woke Bobo and he began to wail. The wail woke Parni, who joined his cry with hers, a groaning, adult sort of cry – and the cry was passed from bunk to bunk down the length of the barrack, each child waking the next in turn.

  The kapo bared her teeth with frustration. This was the way it was in the children’s block. For a brief time, they would all sleep. Then every half hour or so, sometimes less, one would wake, then wake the others, and a susurration would begin, a slow collective tide of cries which would rise in intensity until the kapo would lose her temper and shout and the wailing would subside to snivels as each child forgot the other children around them and, wrapping themselves in their own misery, gradually sobbed themselves to sleep.

  Each night, every night, every half hour or so – sometimes less: the kapo could not stand it, this constant rise and fall of small, wretched voices. God bless the little ones, she was sorry for them, but it drove her crazy.

  *

  In the women’s block, Anna lay awake, listening to the whispers of the dark. She often did this, close to dawn, her eyes open, straining to hear a recognisable wail from the small ocean of cries that came in waves from the children’s block. Sometimes, she would strain not to hear.

  There was a small window close to Anna’s head. She often watched it, trying to distinguish the exact moment when the blackness in front of her showed the first glimmer of grey. There, she would think, and there – but it always seemed as though, when dawn began, she had missed it.

  She reached out a hand and splayed her fingers against the smooth pane of glass. She watched as melting night defined her hand.

  O Del, she thought. Enough. Devla yertisar ma… Forgive me. It is enough. I deserve this perhaps, but my children? Must my children suffer too? She knew her sin. I thought I was so strong, so capable, whatever was thrown at us. I congratulated myself often enough. We were surviving the war so well I thought, thanks to my resourcefulness. I always fed the children a little something every day, even when we had to beg. Other mothers lost their tempers and shouted when their little ones were hungry but I always managed something. When our ration cards went missing I marched all the way into town with Bobo on my back and went straight into the meeting of the Landrat and told Emil what to say in German. They couldn’t believe their eyes, this woman had just marched right in. I charmed an egg out of that old man in Brno. When Bobo was thirsty on the train I spat in his mouth to moisten it. Right up until we got here, I thought my strength was limitless. Other women would falter, their children would suffer and die, not mine. I would always save mine. Forgive me my pride, O Del. I admit that I have failed. I thought I was God and I am not. I am penitent now. Will you forgive me now?

  She waited for her prayer to be answered but the greyness around her hand continued to gleam, stronger and stronger. God, Holy One, she thought. Enough! But the greyness grew and grew until her hand was trapped in a clear square, whitening with each passing moment.

  Silently, her tears came. Devla yertisar ma … Forgive me. Forgive me my pride in believing I could protect my children. She kept her hand pressed against the window but closed her eyes against the coming day. She thought of each of her children in turn, of how, when they were born, she had held each in her arms and whispered their real names in their ears; Yenko, Doikitsa, Branko. She thought of how she had sworn by the moon and the stars to defend them, always. By the moon and the stars, I have failed.

  She opened her eyes. It was dawn.

  *

  In the men’s block, Emil lay awake, trapped in his blanket, while the wooden wall a few centimetres from his nose gradually gained texture in the light.

  *

  In the children’s block, the night-shift kapo paced up and down, bouncing the infant in her arms, oblivious to the fact that it had fallen asleep.

  CHAPTER 14

  September brought a sudden plunge into autumn.

  Emil awoke to leaden skies. As he stood sipping his ersatz coffee beside the ersatz coffee-hut, he looked up and saw that the clouds were heavy with weather, dense, as though the weight of portent in them made them sag down from the sky. The air had altered. There was a briskness in the atmosphere, a bite.

  They were marched out of the camp as usual, before the other blocks were stirring, so it was only when their lunch arrived – a piece of dry bread each – that the story went round the work detail. A whole family had escaped in the night. Their name was Murka. They were from Blansko. The father had been in the infirmary, with swollen feet. It was easy to get out of the infirmary. The mother had somehow evaded being locked in the women’s block at night. Then she had succeeded in getting four children past the kapo in the children’s block – some said the kapo was asleep, others that she must have been bribed. All six of them had climbed on to the roof of one of the wagons that was being used for storage and got over the perimeter fence.
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  The news was talked over and over, the few known facts repeated endlessly. Others had run, of course, in the first few weeks, but they had all been young men, and a couple of girls, who had made a dash for it when out on a work party and were brought back beaten within hours. This was different This was planned. Who knew where the Murka family was now? Perhaps they had friends or relatives on the outside – perhaps even now they were sitting together around a pot of boiled chicken, drinking the broth while they waited for the bird to cook.

  For the rest of the afternoon, the men worked with renewed vigour, even their Sinti guard shared a joke with them. Who could not be happy that someone had managed to get away?

  *

  When they returned to the camp that evening, they discovered that their joy was not shared by the women and the rest of the men, who had stood on the Appell-platz until lunchtime while the alarm was raised and the camp searched. Those in the infirmary had been turfed out to sit or lie on the ground. The children were kept locked in their block without food or water, screaming in fury and fear. The kapo who had looked after them since their arrival was seen being frog-marched out of the camp by two guards. The woman sent into the children’s block to replace her could be heard shouting for quiet.

  Emil and his father managed to spend a few minutes with Anna and the Little Ones after the supper of turnip soup had been served, in the wide dirt space between the women’s and children’s blocks, now unofficially designated as the area where the families could get together. It was the only time they were allowed free association, after supper but before the evening roll-call. His mother seemed fiercely gloomy, Emil thought. She pointed at the two Little Ones as they ran around in the evening light: after a day’s incarceration, Parni and Bobo were maniacally grateful to be allowed outside.