Then We Take Berlin (19 page)

This woman was no ostrich. She knocked both hypodermic and kidney dish flying and leapt from her bed to the next and from the next to the next, and in a dozen leaps to the far corner, pursued by all the nurses.

All the other women in the room fled screaming, flocking like birds, as far away from the nurses as they could get.

Nell shoved her way to the front, trying to get between the Germans and their reluctant patient.

“Please, leave this to me.”

“Ridiculous. Chit of a girl.”

They paused, all the same.

Nell turned to the woman defending her corner. Knelt down.

“Trust me. It’s harmless. It’s for your own good.”

She seized Nell’s head between her hands.

“Don’t let them touch me. The SS. Auschwitz. They injected benzene to make us burn better.”

Nell prised herself free, the woman’s fingers like twigs in her hands, and faced up to the nearest nurse clutching a hypodermic.

“We can’t do this. They won’t have it.”

“We are the nurses, you are just an interpreter, stand aside.”

“They won’t let you do it. In Auschwitz . . . in Auschwitz they were injected with benzene so that their bodies would burn better.”

“That is nonsense!”

“It may be nonsense but it’s what she’s saying. We don’t know what they’ve been through. But it all comes down to the same thing. They are terrified of needles and they’re terrified of you!”

Nell saw the nurse flinch and crouch and turned to see what she had seen. A tin plate, thrown like a discus, sliced through the air and into Nell’s cheek. She felt the warm blood washing down her face, clapped a hand to the cut and fled.

§50

It was a deep cut, but Dekker was reluctant to stitch.

“You’ll be scarred for life, I’m afraid, but it will be a neater scar without stitches. With any l,uck I can tape you tight enough for it to heal properly.”

When he’d finished he held up a scratched, stainless steel mirror for her to look in. She looked like an Apache in war paint—a broad white stripe that started on the side of her nose and travelled left to end just under the corner of her eye. Scarred for life. Such a telling phrase.

“My war wound,” she said.

“Well . . . your visible war wound. You did the right thing, you know, running when you did. They ripped the clothes off their backs.”

“What?”

“You were just the first casualty. The Polish women damn near stripped those nurses naked. But there is a plus side. Perhaps they’ll listen now. Perhaps they’ll start realising their patients are human.”

“Will they carry on with injections?”

“They have to or we’ll have an epidemic on our hands. All depends on their attitude, how they go about it.”

“What about what the Polish woman told me, about Auschwitz and benzene?”

“Might be true. Might not. There’s one bugger we have locked up right here, rumoured to have injected his victims with creosote. Who knows what went on at Auschwitz? Who knows what they were injected with? God knows, it would hardly make a difference. Human flesh burns pretty well.”

“And Auschwitz. What is Auschwitz?”

§51

Approaching the main gate she found her
Tabak
man. He had moved she was almost sure, but he had resumed the same position—and he’d found another source of tobacco and was puffing on Klaus’s pipe. He was, the last two days had taught her, one of the “healthy” ones. She doubted he weighed much more than fifty kilos, but that was health by Belsen standards.

She crouched down, copied the posture, tried to look beneath the tilted brow.

“
Pamiętasz mnie. To ja, dziewczyna z tytoniem
.”

You remember me. I’m tobacco girl.

The head lifted. The light not yet on behind the eyes.

“
Nazywam się Nell. Nell Burkhardt. Jestem Berliner. Jak masz na imię?
”

My name is Nell. Nell Burkhardt. I’m a Berliner. What is your name?

The merest flicker. For the first time he seemed to know what was beyond the reach of his hand, to what he reached out, to be able to see the person he had heard and never looked at.

“
Tabak?
”

“Yes.
Tabak
.”

“Berlin?”

“Berlin.”

Now he looked directly at her for the first time.

“
Jestem
. . . Kraków,” he said.

Then his head tilted, he drew on the pipe and said no more.

She waited, hoping that her silent determination might draw more from him. Minutes passed, the pipe smoked out, the head lifted.

“
Jestem . . . byłam . . . nikim . . . mniej niż nikim . . . jestem . . . niczym
.”

I am . . . I was . . . nobody . . . less than nobody . . . I am . . . nothing.

“
Nikt nie jest niczym. Nawet pies ma imię
.”

No one is nothing. Even a dog has a name.

“
Jestem mniej niż niczym . . . mniej niż psem
.”

I am less than nobody . . . less than a dog.

§52

In the morning she asked Klaus for more tobacco. As she passed the main gate, the same hunched figure, the same hand extended, the same head bowed.

“
Dziewczyna z Berlina. Gib mir Tabak
.”

She found Dekker.

He said, “I can’t put you back in with the German nurses. I really don’t want to take that risk.”

She said, “I have found something better to do. You’re treating people whose names you don’t even know. Give me access to the records, the papers, the card indexes, whatever system the SS had. Let us give them back their names.”

“The buggers burnt the lot.”

“So the only way we have of finding out anything at all about anyone is to ask them?”

“And you’re going to be the one to ask, is that it?”

“If you let me.”

Dekker did what he always did, looked away, took his eyes off her, took in some object in the middle distance and made up his mind without the persuasive glare of her gaze. He picked up an RAMC battledress. Tossed it across the desk to her.

“It’ll be as well if they don’t think of you as German. Put this on. It’s the smallest I could find. You may look daft wearing it with a skirt but no dafter than any other ragamuffin in the camp. And it may just protect you from another attack. See the stores NCO, Staff Sergeant Cox, ask for pen, paper, cards, whatever you need or more precisely whatever he can spare. When we can we’ll set you up with a desk somewhere. But you can’t do this on your own. We really could use some sort of record, but it’ll only stand a chance if we have nurses and the med students involved. That will take a while. A few days at least. We’re moving people out haphazardly. I’d prefer to take the sickest first, but it just isn’t possible. It’s selective, and a selection will be about as welcome as an injection. Meanwhile what we have is a mixture. The walking “healthy”—that is anyone who can stand unaided—and the chronic. Start with a “healthy.” Someone who’s fit enough to talk. See what it yields. See what you can do for him or her. For all we know you may be the first person to ask anything of them in months. Even if we don’t get answers, your asking may be worthwhile. Implant the idea that they matter to someone. And if they do answer, get what you can, in particular get medical history. Operations, permanent conditions, immunisation. I’ll give you a checklist to tick off. I suggest two of everything. One card for us, one for them. Give them the second card and hope they don’t lose it. For a while, possibly for months, it may be the only identity card they have.”

He stopped as suddenly as he had begun. Drawing breath. Hitting the buffers.

“That’s quite a speech,” Nell said.

Dekker was smiling now. “I was improvising. It’s quite an idea. It may not work, but it’s quite an idea. And I have to ask you . . . why?”

It was her turn to pause. She knew what she wished to tell him, but it had to be precise.

“Having been nothing, they wish to be someone,” she said.

“Yes,” Dekker replied, “I suppose they would.”

“These are people who have families . . . brothers . . . sisters . . . children . . .”

“Nell—the tense of what you say may be your biggest mistake. These are people who
had
families, who
had
brothers, sisters, parents, children. These are the survivors. The rest are probably dead. Germany is an open grave. The dead we are burying here are the tip of an iceberg. People are dying every day, and many more will die. This is not peace, this is merely the absence of war. And if you can help these people resurrect their identities you will also be invoking a roll call of the dead. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” she said.

And Dekker thought that perhaps he was looking at the most determined, the most po-faced child he had ever met.

“Then perhaps in the end you may find all you can do is listen.”

§53

Of course, it did not work.

She began with her pipe-smoking acquaintance. The next time she saw him, he had moved fifty feet, was sitting in the sun and had traded his camp stripes for a brown woollen jacket that fitted loosely and grey flannel trousers that bagged around his bottom and thighs. He still squatted, but instead of dirty bare feet he balanced in a pair of shining brogues, confiscated from some bourgeois citizen of fastidious cleanliness. The dust of Belsen had not even had a chance to settle on them.

She squatted opposite him, a leaky fountain pen and a small stack of index cards in her hand. In the absence of a camera, she would sketch. She would put in a name, a date of birth, a place of birth, an occupation and a simple sketch. If possible she would add medical history. If further possible a date and place of arrest.

He raised his head. His pipe was lit. He did not ask for tobacco.

“
Dziewczyna z Berlina
.”

The girl from Berlin.

“
Tak to ja. Czy mogłabym Cie prosić o Twoje imię?
”

Me again. Could I ask you your name?

“
Co tu robisz w tym brudzie?
”

What are you doing down here in the dirt?

“
Cóż . . . Co robisz w tym brudzie?
”

Well . . . what are you doing down here in the dirt?

“
Jestem psem . . . jestem gorzej niż psem . . . jestem niczym . . . jestem numerem.
”

I am dog . . . I am less than dog . . . I am nothing . . . I am number.

He rolled up the left sleeve of his woollen jacket to reveal the number tattooed into his forearm.

“
Jestem Auschwitz
.”

I am Auschwitz.

§54

In the morning she passed him again. He was standing now. She’d never seen him stand before. He was over six feet tall. He was looking out through the wire.

She didn’t wait for him to speak, and held out the tobacco before he could ask for it.

The eyes that had looked at nothing could see her clearly now. He took the tobacco, looked at it in the palm of his hand, looked down at her.

“Nowak,” he said simply. “My name is Aurelius Nowak. I should have told you that when you asked me. I am sorry. It was rude of me. Hunger is madness. You must forgive me.”

She took out her pack of cards.

She had two for him, all they showed was an inky sketch and the word “Krakau.” She wrote in his name.

“Did you think I had forgotten my own name?”

“I thought it was possible . . . hunger is madness.”

“I can forget nothing. I wish I could.”

“Anything would help. The SS burnt everything. We have no records. Nothing. Can you tell me your date of birth?”

“I can but I won’t. It’s just another number. I am . . . through with numbers. I have been a number too long.
Sit with me a while. Play the prisoner with me in the dirt again.”

While they squatted Nowak lit up his pipe and in scarcely more than fragments gave her the bare facts of his life.

“I was professor of music in Kraków. They shot most of my colleagues in 1939. Perhaps I was not enough the intellectual to merit a bullet. I was merely expelled and found work in a bakery. They came for me only in the March of last year. My entire family was sent to Auschwitz. My son died on the train. I never saw my wife again after we arrived. In January this year, at least I think it was January, they marched us out of Auschwitz fifty kilometres to a railway yard and put me back on a train. This is where the train stopped. I fell from it alive. Many did not. The rest you know. I was, I have been, as you found me that day in the dog kennel . . . mad with hunger.”