Tamar (25 page)

By the time he returned to the farm, after the thaw, he was clear about the way he would behave towards her. He would simply pretend that nothing had happened. There would be no confrontation. She would see that his love for her had not faltered. Eventually, inevitably, she would recognize the strength of that love and turn away from Tamar’s poisonous embraces. Of that he was certain. All he had to do was stay alive for her. And do something about Tamar.

But this calm resolve had been overthrown as soon as he’d arrived at the farm. Marijke had opened the door and blurted the news of her grandmother’s death before he’d had a chance to speak. It had not crossed his mind that anything might have happened to Julia Maartens. He had not given the old woman a moment’s thought, so he had no idea how to react. And while Marijke was pouring her grief out to him, he was falling helplessly and angrily in love all over again. She was wearing black, naturally, and it deepened her incredible eyes. He’d wanted her so much that he could not think of the proper things to say.

She’d taken him to the crude grave, and he’d been shocked. To have buried her in the potato patch, to have heaped rough stones on her! Dear God. The man was a brute. Marijke couldn’t see that herself, of course; she’d been blinded by misery. He’d been so outraged that he couldn’t speak, or even reach out to touch her, even though she obviously wanted him to. That had been a failure on his part, a lost opportunity, and he bitterly regretted it. Then they had gone into the house and Tamar had been there. Smiling, damn him. It had been difficult not to recoil from his greeting, knowing where those hands had been, what they had done.

Now, on the road to Mendlo, Dart shook his head to dislodge yet again the vile image of Tamar working his body against hers.

The sky was the colour of an old knife. In the ditches and in the dark and furrowed fields, small mounds of dirty snow still lingered. They looked, Dart thought, like slaughtered sheep that had been left where they had fallen. He made himself pedal faster in the hope of warming his slow blood.

The guards at the Merchants’ Gate were unusually sullen. They checked Dart’s papers for the first time in weeks, not looking him in the eye. There was none of the meaningless banter he’d become used to, and this made him uneasy. When he remounted the bike at the far side of the archway, he glanced back; the Germans were watching him.

He’d got as far as the junction where Canal Street met the wider avenue that led to the town hall when two Waffen-SS troopers came round the corner. One pointed at Dart, and they ran towards him, the skirts of their coats flapping wildly, machine pistols slung over their shoulders.

Dart stopped. Panic rose in him like black water, threatening to shut down the valves of his heart. He imagined, as he had imagined so many times before, a cellar full of torture, a final bullet fired casually into the back of his head. His legs began to fail. Before he could topple, a hand seized the handlebars and another grabbed his arm. He looked up into the face of one of the German soldiers. It was a young face, tense and beaded with sweat.

“
Doktor?
You are a doctor?”

“I . . . Yes. I am. I am.”

“Come with us, please. Come,
schnell
!”

They took him, running alongside the bike, past the town hall and onto Albrecht Street. He had a mad desire to say “No, stop! I must get to the puppet shop before quarter to twelve!” Seeing them approach, a woman pulled two children into a house. Dart and his escort went past them and turned into the small square called Westerplein.

It was a space shadowed by tall, narrow houses. The ground floors were shops and offices, now dark and shuttered. Three houses had long since been gutted by people scavenging for firewood, their doors, shutters, window frames ripped out; they drooped like old flesh.

The first thing he saw was the corpse. Lying facedown. It had been a young man, a teenager, perhaps. Its head was a mess, and from it blood had spread, making a dark and sticky grid of the square cobbles. Close to the body an old man, grey-bearded and black-clad, was chanting some sort of prayer, rocking his body back and forth. Behind him a dozen or so people, adults and children, stood in two rows. Their clothes were too big for them. Their faces were as pale as bone. Some of them had their eyes open, huge eyes, as if they had seen nothing for years.

Dart thought, My God. Jews. How the hell have they stayed hidden so long?

A platoon of SS men in grey greatcoats stood in a semicircle facing the captives. One of them had a dog, a big Alsatian, on a leash. It sat motionless, amber eyes fixed on the old man who was praying. Dart dismounted from his bike and, because he was supposed to be a doctor, he walked shakily to the corpse and kneeled beside it. Almost instantly he was yanked to his feet, but not before he saw the legs of a young girl who was standing close to the body. They were trembling out of control, and a stream of urine ran down one of them into her shoe, which was a man’s shoe and far bigger than her foot.

The sergeant who pulled Dart upright had teeth missing. He spoke to Dart in a fierce whisper, spraying spittle. “Not the Jew, you idiot! The major! Come!”

Dart was marched across the square to where a military staff car was parked. An officer, immaculate in field-grey uniform and polished boots, leaned against the passenger door. He was bareheaded. Close to him a trooper stood holding the officer’s cap with its death’s head insignia. He held it rigidly in front of him as if it were some kind of religious object that pilgrims might queue to touch. The major was so white, so pale-haired, that at first Dart took him for an albino. With his right hand he held a field dressing to the side of his head. A track of blood ran down his neck; the double zigzags of silver on his collar were smeared with it. In his left hand he held a Luger pistol.

The sergeant thrust Dart into the officer’s line of vision and said, “Sir! A doctor.”

The German straightened and looked into Dart’s face. The only sound in the square now was the old man’s chanting, and Dart was surprised that no one put a stop to it.

Dart managed to say, “What has happened, Major? How are you injured?”

The German’s eyes seemed unnaturally wide open; perhaps, Dart thought, a symptom of shock. He stared at Dart for a second or two, then gestured with the gun towards the dead body.

“The little Jew rat tried to bite my ear off. He tried to bite my ear off!”

It took Dart a second to understand the words. “May I see, please?”

He took the major’s hand and pulled away the wad of dressing, thinking, This is the first time I have touched a Nazi.

The ear was bleeding freely, as ears do. Where it joined the skull there was a slight rip but most of the blood was coming from the lobe, which was almost split in two. Probably the boy’s canine teeth had been clamped there when the German shot him, and the flesh had torn as he fell to the ground. Dart was surprised to find himself working this out so logically, surprised that his terror allowed him to think at all.

“This will need one or two stitches, Major. I cannot do that here, of course. I would rather leave it to your own doctors. The wound is not really serious.”

He was extremely startled by the officer’s furious reaction to these words. Two small red patches appeared as if by magic just below the pale eyes. The voice came as a harsh whisper, a scream barely under control.

“Not serious? Not serious? What sort of damned stupid Dutch bloody doctor are you? Listen, idiot: a Jew who has lived underground like some kind of filthy little animal has bitten me. His dirty Jewish spit is in my blood. What I care about is disease, Doctor. Disease! Isn’t that obvious?”

Dart had absolutely no idea what to say. He could see the little pink threads that had appeared in the German’s eyes. He forced his mouth to work.

“Yes. Of course. I . . .” He cleared his throat. “I have swabs. And iodine. I do not have much else. Times are hard.”

“Iodine? Will iodine kill the poison in Jew spit? Will it?”

“Yes,” Dart said. “I’m sure it will.” He fumbled with the clasps of his bag. In its false bottom was the Smith and Wesson revolver. Dear God, he thought, I want to kill this man.

He took out a swab and the iodine and painted the Nazi’s ear a brownish purple. It was good to know that it hurt. While he was doing it, the chanting behind him stopped. He heard the dog whine. The major sat on the running board of the car while Dart put a fresh dressing on the wound and bandaged it in place. When it was done, the major carefully examined Dart’s handiwork with his fingers. If there had been a mirror available, Dart thought, the man would have spent some time studying his appearance.

By now, Dart was extremely anxious, but he did not dare look at his watch.

“Herr Major? May I go now?”

The German considered this for a moment. “No,” he said. “Stay here.” He took a slim metal cigarette case from his breast pocket, flicked it open and held it out to Dart. “Smoke?”

Dart took a cigarette and stood smoking it while the SS loaded the Jews into a high canvas-covered truck.

It was a surprisingly subdued business. A man who was making a low continuous moaning had to be pulled away from the dead boy, but there was little of the crying and screaming that Dart had steeled himself for. Even the children were quiet, presumably because they had not yet been separated from their parents. That, Dart knew, would happen later. Perhaps at a railway siding somewhere near Belsen or Dachau. If they lasted that long. He took a last drag on the cigarette and crushed the butt under his heel. The truck reversed and pulled out of the square. Its engine sounded sick. Dart’s last sight of the ghostly faces of its passengers was through a haze of bluish exhaust.

The major returned to his car. He picked up his cap and settled into the front seat beside the driver. The sergeant and another soldier climbed into the back and sat with their weapons aimed at the sky. The major studied Dart for several seconds.

“What is your name, Doctor?”

“Lubbers. Ernst Lubbers.”

“Well, Dr. Lubbers. I am fortunate that you were nearby. You are attached to the hospital, I presume? But I have not seen you before.”

Oh, shit. “Er . . . actually, I’m based at the asylum.”

The driver had moved to start the car, but the major now put out a hand to stop him.

“What? You work at the madhouse? Are you telling me that you are a psychiatrist?”

Dart forced a laugh. “Oh, no, no. Not at all. I look after the general health of the patients. Also of the people here in the town. We are short of doctors. I do everything.”

The man’s eyelashes were incredibly white. Like a pig’s, Dart thought. That was what gave him that permanently surprised expression.

“I shall remember you, Dr. Lubbers.”

“Thank you,” Dart said stupidly.

The German gestured at the square. “One day none of this will be necessary.” He sighed like a burdened man. “One day, people like you and I will live in a clean world. Do you understand what I mean? As a doctor, you will know that surgery is sometimes unavoidable. What happened here today was a medical procedure. Our children will someday thank us for having the courage to cut the infection out.”

Dart said, “I understand you, Major. Really.”

“And my ear will be healthy?”

“I think so.” Dart could not resist leaving a germ of doubt in the man’s mind. “I’m pretty sure we got to the infection in time.”

The white eyelashes flickered. “I hope you are right, Doctor. It would be bad news for both of us if you were wrong.” He turned to the driver. “Let’s go.”

Dart stepped back from the car, but the major hadn’t quite finished with him.

“Dr. Lubbers? The clean world I spoke about — there is a small thing you could do to help create it.” He gestured with a thumb towards the centre of the square. “You could clear that up.”

Unwillingly, Dart turned to look where the major had pointed, to where the dead boy still lay facedown on the cobbles. As the car moved off, the town hall clock began to sound the twelve chimes of midday.

“Honest to God, I still can’t believe it,” Yoyo yelled. “We’re really on our way!”

Then he braked and we came to a dead stop in a traffic jam on the Chiswick flyover. We’d been travelling for all of fifteen minutes. It was still early in the day, but the sun was already fierce and light flashed from metal and glass all around us, from car roofs and windscreens and from the windows of office blocks. We crept at glacier speed for several miles, and by the time the traffic thinned out on the M4 and we picked up speed, I was slippery with sweat.

Yoyo reached up and opened the sunroof. “So tell me,” he said, “how did you do it? How did you make Sonia change her mind?”

It hadn’t taken much. Just three weeks of reasonable argument, unreasonable argument, nagging and whingeing, tearful discussion, begging, throwing tantrums, sulking, being charming, and emotional blackmail.

“Just by being my sweet self,” I said.

He peered at me over his amber owl-eye glasses.

“Hey, watch the road,” I said. “Anyway, I’m more interested in what Mum said to you last night.”