Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  ‘Soon,’ the kapo replied hastily, lapsing into Czech herself. ‘Wrap yourselves in these blankets for now.’

  She handed over two blankets, snatched the clothes from the girl’s outstretched arms and left the block.

  The mother was still turned away from Anna. Anna motioned towards her with her chin. ‘What are your names?’ she asked the girl.

  ‘I am Marie Malíková,’ the girl replied. ‘This is my mother.’

  Anna could not take her eyes from the mother’s back. The woman was still washing, slowly, unselfconsciously. ‘Your father?’ she asked.

  Marie was drying herself. She stopped and cast her eyes down. ‘Where do they put the men?’

  ‘If he arrived with you they’ll be shaving and delousing him. The men work ten hours a day breaking rocks. So do we sometimes. The men’s block is at the top of the hill. Where have you come from?’

  ‘The workhouse in Brno. We’ve been there for eight weeks. They took us straight from Orlavá and said we would get sent on to Poland. The old woman they took with us died in the cell and it took them three days to remove the corpse. I think they brought us here because we’re appealing against our arrest. My uncle will get us out. He’s an important man.’ One of the listening Romnis gave a snort of derision. Marie put down the blanket she had been using and unfolded the other.

  ‘Just use one for now. Keep the other dry,’ Anna said. ‘It will turn cold tonight.’

  Marie handed the damp blanket to her mother, waited until she had finished drying herself with it, then took it back and wrapped the dry one around her mother’s shoulders. She wrapped herself in the damp one, then gestured for her mother to sit on the concrete island.

  Anna wondered if the mother was mute, but as she thought this, the small dark woman lifted her head and said. ‘It is only women here, in this block? No husbands?’

  Anna looked at her. ‘The men are not allowed within metres of this block,’ she said evenly. ‘If any man tried to come over here, the guards would take him to the Appell-platz and beat him to a pulp.’

  The small dark woman looked up at her daughter. The daughter nodded.

  *

  There were over three hundred of them in the women’s block now. About twenty had gone mad. The mad ones were herded together in a far corner; but they seemed to feed off one another there and make each other worse. The women nearby complained to the block Elder – a large, unsmiling woman – and she suggested that the mad ones were separated and spread throughout the block. Everyone agreed that this was a good idea but nobody wanted to share a bunk with one of them. They were awake all night. They scratched themselves and kicked and screamed. (Everybody scratched themselves but most still had the self-possession to do it surreptitiously.) So the mad ones stayed together in the darkest corner, young and old. The unfortunates who had bunks beside them cursed and shouted at them in the night and slapped them sometimes, and nobody minded that.

  One of the mad ones was a Kalderaška, the only other in the block, apart from Anna’s group. Anna tried to talk to her one evening in the Vlach dialect, thinking that maybe she didn’t understand Czech Romani. The woman mumbled at her, her eyes glistening in the gloom of her lower bunk, flapping her hand in front of her face as if attempting to bat away some invisible threat.

  A woman sitting on an opposite bunk shook her head. ‘That one is lost, sister,’ she said to Anna. ‘She was on my transport. I watched her go mad. Her children are all dead.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Anna. She went and leaned against the bunk. They both watched the mad Kalderaška lying on her bunk, flapping her hands and muttering.

  ‘She was half-mad already. Most of the children were gone. They starved in Transdnistria. The Romanians aren’t even building camps, just dumping them in the open and letting them live on grass. Five of her children and her parents and everyone else were dead already, she told me. Her husband is in the Romanian army but she couldn’t get word to him – he’s on the Eastern front. Somehow, she got all the way up here. She only had one child left, a boy. He was almost dead, anyone could see that.’ The woman shook her head again, and sighed. ‘We were in the train for three days,’ she continued, ‘just standing in the station, waiting to leave.’ Anna crossed herself. ‘They passed some water in but a couple of women at the front got it all. This one’s boy was crying for water, getting weaker and weaker and more hoarse …’

  Anna stared at the woman on the bunk. She seemed insensible of their voices, her gaze rolling crazily.

  ‘She hit him,’ the other woman said simply. ‘Nobody blamed her. We all just wanted him to shut up. Our children were thirsty too. But this boy was crying and crying and everyone knew he was dying and it was driving us all mad. And eventually she started hitting him. And then his crying changed and he was pleading with her but she carried on hitting him and he died.’

  Anna stared at the woman. ‘We should kill her,’ she said quietly. ‘It would be a kindness. Put a blanket over her face.’

  The woman shrugged. ‘She’ll go soon enough. She doesn’t eat. I grabbed her by the arm yesterday. Her flesh was like clay. They’ll all die, the mad ones. First the mad ones, then the old ones, the children of course, then us. The men will last longest …’

  Anna returned to her bunk as the kerosene lamp was doused. The kapo slammed the door behind her. There came the deadly thunk and clunking of the lock.

  She had just closed her eyes when the Kalderaška at the far end of the block began to scream, a hollow, siren sound. She was listening to us, after all, Anna thought. She waited for the noise to fade but it rose in intensity, paused briefly, rose again. The women in the neighbouring bunks began to shout and exclaim: the women next to them shouted back. Eventually, there came thumping and grunting noises. The mad Kalderaška shouted for help, gasping out. The tone of her cries altered. Then there was silence.

  Anna heard a small sob, not far away. A soft, ‘Oh God …’

  ‘Who is it?’ she hissed.

  ‘It’s me, Marie,’ said a tiny voice. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ whispered Anna. ‘It’s the mad woman at the end.’

  Tekla was lying between them. ‘Shut up you two,’ she said in a low voice.

  *

  In the morning, there were two corpses in the block; the mad Kalderaška who lay over the edge of her bunk, eyes staring, and another woman at the opposite end of the block. The block Elder merely nodded as they carried out the corpse of the Kalderaška; when she saw the other one, lying on the dirt floor floor between the bunks, she cursed. She bent and examined the woman’s neck, then crossed herself.

  ‘Who was she?’ asked Marie, as they gathered round in a tight crowd. She was pressed against Anna, peering around her arm.

  Anna pulled a face and shrugged.

  As they queued for their ersatz coffee outside the hut, Eva came up to them and said, ‘I just heard. That woman they strangled was Murková, the one who got over the fence with her husband and children. They did it while there was all that fuss going on at the other end. That’s why no one heard it.’

  ‘The Murkas got caught?’ said Anna.

  ‘She got back yesterday. The husband got away but the children were sent back with her. She was attacked by those two from the North, the big ones who always stick together? When the Murka children escaped, their children were beaten because their bunks were next to theirs.’

  They all huddled together against the wind. Marie and Líba were standing very close to Anna. Eva elbowed them out of the way, glaring at them.

  ‘Don’t be unkind,’ Anna said to Eva, distractedly. ‘So the children will have no one now. The father won’t even know. How come he got away?’

  She was filled with an overwhelming desire to see Bobo and Parni. It came and went in waves throughout the day. Most of the time, she tried to quell her longing, knowing that if she didn’t she would go as crazy as the Romanian Kalderaška, but it caught her at unexpected moments,
like now. She swayed with it. There was pneumonia in the children’s block. Two had died of it last week, three the week before.

  ‘Do you have children?’ Marie asked Anna, as they all shuffled forward in the queue.

  ‘Three,’ Anna said, exhaling carefully. ‘My eldest is in the men’s block, my two Little Ones …’ She drew breath before she was able to continue. ‘You are lucky, to be with your mother.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marie said simply.

  Anna looked at Marie, observing her in the morning light. ‘Your hair still has some shine to it, Small One, I hope they let you keep it. Your cheeks are still plump.’ She gave a half-smile, then brushed Marie’s cheek with the back of her hand. ‘It is nice for us all to have something pretty to look at in here. We have forgotten so quickly what normal people look like.’

  ‘It won’t last,’ muttered Tekla, behind them.

  Anna turned to her. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she hissed.

  ‘Stop making such a fuss of that house-dwelling chava,’ Tekla hissed back. ‘It’s upsetting Eva and Ludmila. They rely on you.’

  ‘Golden God,’ swore Anna under her breath. ‘When this war is over the first thing I’m going to do is find you all husbands, get you off my back.’

  Tekla collapsed.

  Eva and Ludmila shrieked. Other women gathered round in a huddle. Anna knelt beside Tekla and put a hand on her brow. Ludmila had her hands beneath Tekla’s head and tried to raise her but Anna pushed her away. ‘Leave her,’ she said sharply. Tekla’s eyes were flickering open and shut. ‘She’s burning,’ Anna said.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Tekla mumbled, trying to raise her head. ‘Leave me, I’m just hungry, that’s all.’

  ‘She had a headache yesterday,’ said Eva. ‘It was nearly killing her. She was holding her head in her hands.’

  ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me?’ demanded Anna, and Eva and Ludmila exchanged looks.

  Tekla was rising, pushing them all away. ‘Leave me alone. Give me some air. I’m strong as an ox.’

  Anna lifted her head. The women crowding round them had turned to take their place in the queue. ‘Get back in there and make sure we get something to drink,’ Anna said to Eva and Ludmila, who did not move.

  ‘We’ll do it,’ said Marie, turning to her mother and pulling her by the arm.

  Tekla scrambled to her own feet, shoving them all away as they tried to assist her. ‘I’m perfectly capable of getting my own muck to drink.’ She glared at Anna. ‘Worry about the children, not us.’ Supported by Eva and Ludmila, Tekla turned away. Anna was left standing at the back of the queue, the cold wind in her face making her blink.

  *

  They were sent to the workshop for an hour. Then they were sent in a group to dig the vegetable patch. After a piece of bread at lunchtime, which they were allowed to eat squatting by the freshly dug patch, they joined with another group to paint some wooden planks with pitch. A building programme was under way. The camp was going to get bigger.

  After a supper of cold soup, there was the brief period before roll-call when it was possible to go and visit the children. Hurrying lightly over to the children’s block, Anna suddenly felt it was almost worth this terrible separation for the sheer, pure joy she felt in those few hasty steps towards them. Her heart was thumping with the anxiety of the wait, but her whole body was suffused with a brief, wild euphoria at the thought that in a moment or two she would be holding her children in her arms.

  *

  As she opened the door, she saw that the older children must have been kept late at the workshop – there was a little space in the teeming block. Ten or so mothers had got there before her and were holding their little ones or talking to them. A couple of women sat disconsolately by the door – if the older children were not released from the work parties soon then there would be no time to see them before roll-call.

  Some of the Little Ones close to the door raised their heads as Anna stepped in, their faces bright with anticipation. A wail announced their collective disappointment. A small boy, not much bigger than Bobo, flung himself against her legs, crying. Anna placed her hand on his head and patted his hair while she scanned the block for her two. Most of the children were sitting on the dirt floor between their bunks. Some were clambering about. A few simply stood and stared at her, their expressions blank. One large girl had her arms about the iron stove, still unlit despite the recent drop in temperature. She was clinging to it with a contented expression. Anna opened her mouth to breathe in. The stink in this block worsened daily. So many of the children wet themselves at night that their wood-chip mattresses were rotting.

  Since the escape, an Aufseherin had been brought in to take charge of the block, with a team of kapos beneath her. She picked her way over to Anna now and lifted the small boy clinging to her legs. As she turned away, she pointed towards the washroom.

  Inside the washroom, there was a small row of children against one wall, standing above tin buckets. Parni was in the corner, wiping Bobo with a rag. He looked round and saw Anna. He pushed Parni away, his face set, and ran the few paces towards his mother, fists clenched purposefully, legs moving quickly and clumsily. He slipped on the wet concrete floor and she had to dive forward to catch him, allowing herself a brief rush of joy as he fell into her arms.

  She seated herself swiftly, her back against the wall, raised her knees and lifted her blouse. Bobo’s fists clawed at her. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in close. Parni came and stood next to her. Normally, she placed an arm around Anna’s shoulders while Anna was feeding Bobo, communing silently with them, but this evening, she came near her mother but did not touch her, standing with her head slightly bowed.

  It was gloomy inside the washroom – the one small window was dirty and let in no more than a cold promise of light. The children shivered as they stood huddled over their buckets.

  It was a moment or two before Anna lifted her head and noticed her daughter’s demeanour. Parni was staring into the middle distance, vacantly, her arms wrapped around herself. She was wearing a man’s jacket over her sackcloth shift. Her footwraps were filthy.

  ‘Where is your hat?’ Anna asked. She had told Parni to wear her woollen hat at all times.

  Parni stared into a corner of the room, her face dark.

  Anna struggled for a moment to remember the last time she had seen Parni stare like that. It was in Bohemia, last summer, when Parni had kicked over a bowl of milk in her haste to run outside and play with Eva. Anna had slapped her for that. A precious bowl of milk.

  ‘What is it, shei?’ Anna asked gently. Bobo whimpered on her lap and Anna pulled him closer. His mouth pulled at her greedily. There was nothing but a trickle inside her now but it was enough to keep the boy quiet for a short while.

  Anna repeated her question.

  Parni did not answer.

  With her free hand, Anna took one of Parni’s thin arms and pulled her closer. She reached up and pushed her fingers into Parni’s tight black curls.

  ‘The hat was itchy,’ Parni said. Her voice was always so calm and pure.

  ‘See this hair?’ Anna replied. ‘Where did you get these curls and knots? No one in our family has ever had such hair. And now, they trap the dirt. I know the hat was itchy, I told you, you have to pick the insects out of it each night before you sleep. You think you don’t have insects in your hair?’ She peered closely into Parni’s face. ‘When the war is over, shei, I will have to cut this hair of yours, only once I promise. I will cut out all the dirt and the knots, and then we will oil it and comb it and it will grow sleek and shiny, like mine used to be. It will grow back straight. You will be old enough for braids then. I will oil it until it is soft …’

  ‘Dalé …’ Parni interrupted. Anna shifted Bobo again and made a soft, noncommittal sound of encouragement.

  ‘Dalé …’ when the war is over, will I not be a filthy gypsy any more?’

  Anna kept her voice soft. ‘You will always be a Roma girl, shei. Who
has been calling you a gypsy?’

  ‘We are all dirty gypsies. That’s why we’re here. We’re here to be punished for telling lies and stealing all the time and for being a race that God hates, like the Jews. The Jews are even worse, though, because they killed God, in real life, only we just kill him in our hearts. The Germans look like God. They are big and have white eyebrows. We are being tested, and only those of us who have any God in us will ever be allowed out. And to have God in us we have to get rid of the gypsy inside ourselves and be decent and sit on chairs and use spoons and our parents are going to burn in Hell because they’re too old to use spoons but maybe if some of us Little Ones work very hard and pray very hard God will let us be not-gypsy and then it will all have been worth it, our suffering, and we will thank God with all our hearts and we won’t mind that our parents have burned in Hell because we will be glad …’

  She paused to draw breath, then stopped and glanced around fearfully. She leaned towards her mother and whispered. ‘Mummy, don’t tell them I told you. You’re not supposed to know …’

  Bobo had fallen asleep in Anna’s lap. She hoisted him carefully on to her shoulder. He mumbled. She patted his back and stared at her daughter.

  ‘Who has said these things?’ she said, but Parni shook her head defiantly, her lips pressed together.

  The doorway through to the main barrack darkened and the Aufseherin stepped towards Anna with her arms outstretched. ‘Come. They have blown the whistle,’ she said in German.

  Anna rose unsteadily with Bobo on her shoulder.

  As the woman lifted him from her, he stirred. Anna suddenly felt tears spring to her eyes. So short, so short a time. Why can I not hold my son for a few moments more? Wooden God, what reason is there in all this?

  Suddenly, her knees weakened. She collapsed against the wall, her arms angling inwards as she descended like a wounded crane.

  ‘Mummy!’ hissed Parni, petrified, and Anna realised that Parni thought she was responsible for her mother’s collapse, that the small sudden drama might betray what she had told her mother.