by Andie Newton
‘Excuse me?’ I nonchalantly dried my hand off on my skirt.
‘He’s an automobile buff,’ Alma said.
‘Oh, quite nice,’ I said, ‘interesting tyres.’
He looked at me curiously as if he expected more of a reaction. ‘Here are the files. They don’t belong here simply because they aren’t our prisoners anymore.’ He paused. ‘Do you get many file transfers to your Munich office?’
I nodded. There had been a few boxes of information transferred to our office from political prisons, but most had been coming from around the Königsplatz. Some departments didn’t want the added responsibility of archiving their own files. Others thought it was document control’s responsibility all along. Regardless, Hoffmann turned everything away that didn’t pertain to enemies of the state, saying it wasn’t our problem.
Pister pushed a heavy cardboard box to my feet while Alma placed a release form on his desk. ‘You’ll need to sign for these, of course.’
‘Is there time for a tour of the facility?’ I bent down to sign the form and talked as I wrote. ‘My train doesn’t leave for a few hours, and Director Hoffmann mentioned that if given the chance I should see what changes you’ve made since the fire a few years back. Said it was impressive.’ When I looked up, Alma and Pister had duelling smiles. The prison nearly burnt to the ground once, and Pister had been in charge of its restoration.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We’re excited to show off our handiwork.’
The three of us walked the prison’s paved inner perimeter. The huts housed short-term prisoners, serving less then fourteen days. During the day they laboured on the construction sites that dotted the compound. A wooden fence that lined the forest had been broken in places to bring in supplies; barbed wire was planned as a replacement but hadn’t arrived. Pister said the main building had an additional holding facility on the bottom floor, but stopped short of saying what kind of prisoners it kept inside. The flowers, he added, were there to console his staff, who complained about the distance the prison was from Polert village. At the end of the property he had plans for a vegetable garden.
When the tour ended, Alma took me into the lunchroom until it was time to leave for my train. She made a scalding hot pot of herbed tea and served it in a carafe of sterling silver, pouring it into gold rimmed white china. When I blew on it, the tea’s flowery steam permeated from the cup and into my face. Cubes of sugar piled high on a dish too small for anything else melted into spots of white and fizzled when I plopped some into my cup. I stirred my tea slowly and tried to think of a way to bring up Night and Fog. They had to be the prisoners on the bottom floor. I wasn’t leaving without knowing if I was right.
Alma brushed her hair behind her shoulders and a pair of diamond-studded earrings sparkled from between the strands. When I complimented her on them, she blushed and spun her hair around her finger until it curled. When I commented on her shoes, her face turned gooey.
‘I’m the only woman who works at this prison.’ She took a slurped sip of her tea and sighed. ‘It’s so nice to have this girl-time. Sometimes I feel old out here with all these men. I’m only twenty-two! You’re my age, right?’
I nodded. Eighteen.
White powder flecked from her forehead and into her eyes. She wiped her brow line with the back of her hand, and it rubbed her makeup off completely, leaving a stripe of pale skin that ran from temple to temple.
‘What’s the prison like downstairs?’ I said, taking a drink.
She hesitated. ‘I’m not allowed to talk about it.’
I gently put my hand on top of hers and squeezed. She grinned, and a white-headed pimple surrounded by pink skin burst from the dimple near her mouth like a greasy mole.
‘Oh. I understand. It’s just… you see… my first love was the prison system.’ I shrugged with a little smile. I had gotten so good at lying, given some time, I might have even believed my own stories. ‘But my mother got ill and I had to stay close to home.’
‘Poor thing,’ Alma said.
There was a moment of silence as I let her absorb the thought. Then her eyes brightened. ‘You know, I’m sure a little peek wouldn’t hurt anybody. We’ll just have to be quiet.’ She took another sip of her tea, but this time she left a pink stain in the shape of her lips on its edge. The gloss was gone, and her lips withered with moult just like Frau Dankwart’s used to. The thought crossed my mind they could be related.
‘What a treat,’ I said, ‘and who knows, maybe someday I can work here with you… if I’m lucky.’
Alma gulped the mouthful of tea in her cheeks, and then nodded as if the thought had already percolated in that strawberry-blonde head of hers. ‘I can’t imagine not being able to work where you want to work.’ She leaned over the table and whispered. ‘We have people imprisoned here for safe-housing Jews. Can you believe it? Right here from Polert Village.’ A disgusted look took over her face as she stirred her tea. ‘Thank goodness they are in the east now.’ She looked up. ‘Those Jews.’
I tried to look disgusted too, then I thought about what the Reich did to the Kortens, and the Jews they shot at the train station, and my face contorted all right. ‘Awful. And right under good German noses.’
Alma set her spoon down after she’d finished her tea. ‘Shall we go?’ Her eyes lit up.
She led me to a small space in the main building no bigger than a large shower, in-between a lounge with overstuffed divans and fluffed pillows and a pantry filled with strudels, biscuits and cakes the guard’s wives had brought in. The space had a casket-shaped window that overlooked a clay courtyard with a freestanding stone wall. A guard looked out the window and stood with his arms crossed, as if waiting for something to happen.
‘I’m betting on nine,’ the guard said.
‘Nine?’ Alma said. ‘I think it will be prisoner number three.’ A bell rang and I jumped. ‘Relax,’ she whispered. ‘Here they come.’ A slight giggle trailed in her voice.
Seconds later a steel door opened into the courtyard and a guard walked out with nine shoeless inmates holding on to a knotted rope. They had burlap bags over their heads and wore tan prison smocks that hung down to their knees. The guard led them past a set of barred windows that were half-buried in the ground and then faced them toward the stone wall.
It was the first time I had seen a real prisoner before, and the thought of one of them being Claudia made me want to crumple in a fit. I could feel it in my back, which had started to slump, and in my throat, which had balled up.
‘See that one in the front,’ she said, pointing to one of the prisoners. ‘His girlfriend is standing right next to him.’ She laughed. ‘He doesn’t even know she’s here.’
‘He doesn’t?’
‘We caught him because of her. Resisters are careless—the boyfriends are easy to catch.’ She turned to me. ‘You don’t have to do the acts to be guilty of them—he knew what she was doing. Crime enough.’
My stomach dropped. Max.
Alma said something else but all I could hear were my own thoughts, wondering how careless I had been. How many students have seen us together on the balcony? What about at Joseph’s party?
I reached into my bag and felt around for the one cigarette I had left in my pack, trying to hide the nervous tremble on my lips.
‘Dirty little resisters,’ Alma said. ‘They deserve the heat.’
The prisoners wobbled and swayed, their feet baking on the burnt-orange clay. Then one hopped, alternating his feet on the slab before collapsing to the ground like a limp rag. The guard picked that prisoner to pull the burlap bag from their head.
I held my breath, thinking it could be Claudia under there—but it was a man. He covered his eyes, shrieking, as the guard laughed through gritted teeth. He grabbed the prisoner by the scruff of the neck and hurled him through the air until he hit our window and splattered against the glass.
My cigarette bobbed nervously on my lips as I tried to light it with a sparking lighter, running my t
humb over the flint wheel over and over.
Alma put her fists in the air. ‘I won!’ She was so close to the prisoner they would have touched had the glass not been there.
Patches of hair spotted his scalp. Blood oozed from a wound near his ear and stained the bald spots on his head red. One blue eye—focused to a pinpoint—looked directly at me. His arm swung up to the glass and my cigarette fell from my mouth along with the lighter that was in my hand.
Alma watched me drop to the floor and pick up my things. I could tell by the look on her face she was wondering what had gotten me so shook up, which made me even more nervous.
I pulled myself together the best I could, stood straight and tugged on the lapels of my jacket to keep my back from slumping. I kept my eyes on her, knowing if I looked at the man my legs might buckle or I’d cry out for him myself.
‘What did you win, Alma?’
‘It’s a game we play call Betteln.’ The squeal of the man sliding down the glass eclipsed her voice.
‘Beg?’ I stuck the cigarette into my mouth and lit it, finally, puffing hard to cover the shake in my hands.
She touched my arm. ‘It gets boring here in the evenings.’ She paused to watch the guard kick the man back to the basement door they had walked out of. ‘All of these inmates are from a special holding area below the prison. We bring them to the courtyard for our own amusement and make them stand on the hot clay. If you can predict which prisoner will fall first then you get to pick someone to play Betteln. They have to tell us a good story, beg for our attention, and if we’re entertained then we let them have an item from the cloakroom for the night. It’s where their belongings are kept. If they don’t have anything we sometimes let them root around in the pantry. Pister pretends he doesn’t know, we’re not supposed to do it, but it’s fun for us.’
‘All right, Alma,’ the guard said. ‘Which one is it tonight?’
‘You mean the prisoner who fell isn’t called in for Betteln?’ I said.
‘God—no,’ Alma said with a laugh. ‘If they fell it’s because they’re useless. You want someone who isn’t half-dead.’ She smiled. ‘Fräulein Strauss, why don’t you do the honours? Pick a number between one and nine. That’s how many Night and Fogs we have.’
My heart jumped when she admitted the prisoners were Night and Fog. ‘Me?’ I glanced at the ceiling as if I was mulling over the choices, but if that six on the back of Claudia’s photo meant anything, it had to be her inmate number. If she did what they asked, she’d get an item from the cloakroom, if indeed she was still inmate number six. Another prisoner fell to the ground. He crumpled into a ball and the guard kicked him in the ribs as I talked.
‘My nephew in Berlin turns six today,’ I lied. ‘How about number six?’
Alma put a finger to her chin. ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘Number six.’
*
Alma escorted me outside even though she didn’t have to. When I saw my car and driver waiting for me at the end of the path, I walked so fast gravel spit out from the bottom of my shoes.
I barked at the driver to put the box Alma was carrying into the trunk, and then get in and start the car. Alma stood next to the door, a sad, pathetic look gleaming in her eyes. ‘Maybe you could come back again?’
The heat had liquefied the rest of the makeup from her face, and it slid down her cheeks like warmed icing, leaving a moustache of pink skin under her nose and tan spots of various sizes spackled on her chin. She put her hand on my forearm, stopping me with one foot in the car, and looked out into the distance at the forest. ‘So beautiful here, isn’t it?’
I smiled. ‘It really is.’ The driver had got into the car and I shut my door. Alma waved a limp-wristed wave, mouthing her goodbye from the other side of the window.
‘Go, driver!’ I said.
Remembering the image of that prisoner as he hit the glass made me want to throw up, and I thought that if I vomited, Alma and everyone else would know something wasn’t right with me.
The driver shot me a strange look.
‘I’m late, fool,’ I said. ‘If I miss the train you’ll be responsible.’
He stepped on the pedal and we sped away, leaving Alma and that disgusting prison in our dusty wake.
*
My train arrived back into Munich that evening. A courier picked the documents up and transferred them to my office, but not before I had my eyes in them. There were plenty of files on former prisoners who’d long since moved on to other prisons. Nothing on Night and Fog or Claudia though.
I went up the back stairs to my flat, trying to avoid Max all together, quietly opening my door and sneaking inside. Each of the glockenspiel’s forty-three chiming bells competed with a quarrelling couple on the street as smells of beer and leavened bread wafted up from the square, through my window and into my dark room.
I lit a cigarette from a case I found in the foyer. The smoke was brown and thick; the kind that could kill you if you smoked too many in one day. I inhaled deeply and listened to the couple argue down below amid the bells with my eyes closed.
‘Ella?’
Max’s voice at my door scared me straight from my chair. My heart thumped, thinking about what to do and what to say. Then the shaking started up again. It began in my fingertips and worked its way up my arms like an earthquake. The boyfriends are easy to catch.
I tiptoed to the door.
‘Ella?’ I thought if I didn’t make a sound he’d go away, but then he tried the doorknob. ‘I heard you come home.’
I gulped, trying to think up a lie to get him to leave and leave quickly—at any given moment a student could walk by and see him at my door. ‘I’m ill, Max. You’ll have to go.’
Everything got quiet. I felt like I was alone in the woods just after the sun goes down with nobody around. My cigarette burned incredibly close to my fingers as I waited for him to reply.
He let go of the knob. ‘All right.’ I could tell he was let down by the sound of his voice. ‘Get well.’
‘I will,’ I muttered, my back pressed against the door.
I listened to him walk away, nervous someone had heard us talking.
*
I woke the next morning with the memories of Hinzert playing over and over again in my head. By the time I had got to work, my nerves had frayed into fragile split-ends. One look by the wrong person and I was either going to burst into tears or scream madly.
I needed a cigarette, but I had smoked everything I could find, and they had become harder and harder to buy since the Reich linked them with cancer. I opened my desk drawer, searching for the old pack I thought I’d stuffed in there days ago, moving notebooks, pencils and paper clips aside, before finally finding it—crumpled and all the way in the back. But it was empty, and a strange urge to punch something came over me. Then I noticed the most amazing thing, a lone cigarette sticking out from the corner of my desk drawer. My last cigarette.
I cradled the precious little thing in my palm, scurried down to the ground floor of the V-building, and out the side service doors to a small patio to smoke in private. But when I swung the door open I saw Erik, dressed in his Nazi Party uniform, and Louise, sitting side-by-side at a picnic table. Her notebook was spread open like a cookbook with notes written in the margins. I turned to go back inside before they saw me, but the doorknob slipped from my hand and the door shut with a loud bang. I struggled to open it back up, and then leaned up against the building in defeat when I realized it had locked.
Off in the distance a cluster of men sat at a similar table under the eaves of the Braunes Haus. They waved with a whistle and laughed, watching me scramble with the door. Damn NSDAP boys.
‘Look who’s here,’ Louise chirped.
Erik stood up and adjusted his swastika cuffband on his Party uniform, one of several different uniforms he wore to work. That was the beauty of Nazi Headquarters; all branches and all departments of the Reich had offices around the Königsplatz, so if you didn’t wear a suit to work,
you could wear one of your uniforms instead.
He nodded once. ‘Eva.’
‘It’s Ella,’ I quipped, putting my cigarette in my mouth. He got up from the table and walked off as if he didn’t care what my real name was.
I flicked my eyes at Louise, patting my pocket for a light. ‘Hello.’
Louise folded a page in her notebook as if to mark something important. ‘Well, I trust Hoffmann won’t be sending you back to Hinzert anytime soon.’
I lit my cigarette. ‘Why not?’ Smoke spewed from the corner of my mouth and she fanned it away.
‘You didn’t hear?’
‘What are you talking about, Louise?’
She slowly turned a few pages of her notebook as if they were delicate, museum quality pieces of paper. ‘There was an escape after you left. Stripped themselves naked, covered their body in lard and slipped out the barred windows.’
‘What?’ My cigarette slipped between my fingers and I jumped up when it landed on my skirt. ‘An escape?’ Claudia kept lard in her rucksack for when I’d plait wigs through her hair; it was the only thing that kept the locks in place.
Louise put her pencil down. ‘How interesting you didn’t know.’
‘Was it a girl?’ I sat back down.
‘Girl, boy… does it matter? They’re all criminals.’
Louise glanced at her watch, and then quickly gathered up her belongings as if she was late for something. ‘Oh, and this is for you.’ She slid an article torn from a Gesundes Volk magazine at me. Its title read: The Reich’s War on Tobacco. ‘The Reich doesn’t want women to smoke. It could make you barren. And then what would you do?’ She waved her hand near her nose, coughing. ‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’
Her lips pursed and she tapped the end of her pencil on the table. ‘What would you do if the smoke made you barren, Ella?’
‘Smoke… barren…’ I rambled; my mind was on many things, and not one of them involved Louise and her talk about babies. ‘I’m young,’ I said, smoke filtering through my teeth. ‘I don’t need to think about that right now.’