Transgression (20 page)

“Why?”

“They were trying to find out something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Étienne tried to turn his small body toward her. She could feel him shaking. She wanted to say, “It’s all right, Étienne. She wanted to say, “It’s over now,” but the words stuck in her throat.

“Shhh,” she said.

When they could, on most evenings, Char and Pierre and Adele went for short walks outside the perimeter of the camp. It helped to walk out under the high wooden entrance gate and lose sight of the shuffling men for awhile.

“According to Maurice,” Pierre said, giving another of his lectures, “this camp was specifically designed to provide slave labour. Men and boys to Buchenwald. Work them to death. Ship in a new supply and do it all over again.”

“I know,” Char said.

“They had their own munitions factory here, before it was bombed to smithereens.”

Adele felt like the grey air in front of her was solid, as if she had to push a way through.

“The Jews usually went straight into the incinerator, though,” Pierre said.

Adele sat down abruptly on the slope of the hill.

“What’s the matter?” Char sat down beside her.

“I don’t know. I’m tired.”

“That’s not a big surprise, Adele. Running after those kids all day.” Pierre sat down on her other side.

A kind of darkness was falling all around. The stars were falling. Everything was so cruel and hopeless. Adele choked off a cry and put her head between her knees.

“Adele?” Char said.

Pierre touched her arm. “What is it?”

Adele didn’t answer. They made her keep her head down for two minutes. Pierre timed it on his watch. Char rubbed her neck and told her to keep breathing. After a while Adele put her head back up.

“We can stay here a little longer if you like,” Pierre said.

They sat on the hillside for a long time, looking down the dark slope in front of them, looking toward the faint, far-off lights of Weimar.

It was Étienne who told her about the bodies. They were running the crematorium day and night but they couldn’t get through all the bodies so they had to leave them piled up on wagons.

“They were naked. The American general made the people in the town come and look.”

Étienne was standing in front of Adele. The other boys were watching from their tiers of bunks. It was a strange bedtime story Étienne was telling. Adele sat on a chair under the light and continued to sew a button on a shirt. She wondered if she should change the subject.

“Everyone from the town, women too, they all had to come up here and look. “See what you’ve done?’ That’s what the general said. And other people came from a long way to see the bodies. They came from America. They took pictures. They took pictures of us, too.”

Étienne fell silent. Adele glanced at him. He was looking back at her, his bright eyes full of anticipation. He crept closer and touched her shoulder as if he were trying to wake her up.

“What is it, Étienne?”

“One night we went again to look.” He turned to the other boys. Adele turned toward them, too. They were still paying attention, their luminous eyes fixed on Étienne. Only two spoke French, but they all seemed to understand, they all seemed to be remembering the walk through the dark to see the bodies.

“They didn’t smell,” Étienne said.

“They didn’t smell?”

“No. And a blue light came down from the sky. And the bodies stood up.”

Adele felt a bolt of electricity race through her.

“The light woke them up,” Étienne said.

The children murmured in agreement. They were all nodding their heads. They had all seen this.

Adele got up from her chair. She knew that they were waiting for her to answer Étienne’s silent question. How could that be? How could the dead come alive again? Adele wasn’t going to argue with them. They had seen what they had seen. “The bodies woke up because God was there.”

She hadn’t meant to say that, not exactly. She had meant to say that their souls were leaving their bodies because they were going to Heaven, their bodies were dead but their souls were not.

The boys continued to stare at her. They were waiting for something more.

“They had defeated death. You see? They didn’t die, after all.” Adele turned to Étienne.

Étienne was looking up at her as if she’d come down from Heaven herself just to tell him that. “Yes, Adele,” he said.

All the children went to sleep more easily that night, even the habitual screamers-it was the best night they’d ever had. In the morning Étienne was gone.

Adele got dressed and ran through the camp looking for him. He didn’t appear in the mess tent for breakfast. He wasn’t sitting on his bunk with a mischievous grin when they returned.

Adele made a game out of it, sending the children through all the buildings looking for Étienne’s hiding place. He didn’t appear the rest of that day, or that night, or the next day, either.

Adele sat on her chair by the open door paying almost no attention to the other boys. Of course Étienne was getting stronger. No one was holding him in the camp against his will. He was actually eleven years old. He was free to walk out the gate. But where would he go? There was nowhere for him to go.

She knew why he’d left. It was because of what she’d said. He’d believed her when he hadn’t believed his own eyes, when he hadn’t believed himself. Étienne had pushed out the door to look for his dead parents because she’d told him that they weren’t really dead. They were alive somewhere.

She had made a terrible mistake. What was it that André had said about running away from the orphanage, about living on the streets? He was forced to do such terrible things he couldn’t even tell her what they were.

Adele sat by the open door for several more nights. She felt like she was dying. Étienne did not come back. The other boys were upset at Étienne’s disappearance, too. Adele no longer thought of leaving the camp to travel to Dresden. She’d wait now until all the children were safely assigned to new families and new homes, until all their paperwork had come through, until the very last one of them had left the camp forever.

She tried to feel better. She tried to feel like she had when Étienne was there. She worked twice as hard as before, she invented new games for the children to play, she sat up all night with anyone who cried or had a temperature or as much as moaned in their sleep.

One day she installed a new boy in the bunk above her head. He was one of the other two French speakers. His name was Simon.

“Are you asleep yet?” he said the first night.

“Not yet. Are you?”

“Yes.” This was to become their little joke. Simon repeated it to her every night and then he’d fall asleep. Adele couldn’t fall asleep, though. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she had failed Étienne, that she had failed everyone she’d ever known. And the red-headed soldier had come back into her dreams.

The boys, all twenty-three of them, were being examined by a doctor in the infirmary. This happened every week and took most of the day. Char and Pierre came into the waiting room and asked Adele if she wanted to go into town. Another worker had volunteered to watch the children.

“No,” Adele said.

Char looked disappointed. “You must take a break.”

“Maurice said to make sure you go along. It’s an order.” Pierre was trying to look stern.

“Come on, Adele.” Char picked up her hand and began to drag her toward the door. Most of the children were playing among themselves. A few were watching her. Simon was watching her.

“All right,” Adele said.

Two jeeps were waiting outside. One was full of American nurses sitting on each other’s laps, talking and laughing. The other one was empty except for the soldier driving it. Adele got into the back. Char and Pierre climbed in. Two more nurses came running up to join them.

They had no trouble finding the most raucous beer garden in town because the street in front of it was swarming with soldiers and with quite a few young women, too. A few days before, Pierre had translated a poster that had been tacked up outside the mess tent. It had said that all Allied soldiers were strictly forbidden from fraternizing with the local population. The order didn’t seem to be taking effect.

Adele looked at the young women’s faces. They seemed familiar, their anxious smiles, quick forced laughter, the fear of no future in their eyes. She knew them well.

Adele sat down with Char and Pierre and the American nurses at a long, beer-smeared table. Giant porcelain steins, white froth spilling over their tops, descended from somewhere. One landed in front of her. She picked it up and took a drink. It had been too long since her body had felt the warmth and comfort of alcohol. She’d missed it. The beer tasted bitter, though. She took another drink. And another one.

They were sitting in a courtyard and despite the absence of a roof the noise was deafening. Everyone was shouting at everyone. Soldiers came over, leaned across the table, chatted with the nurses. Adele remained frozen, unresponsive to any look they were sending her way.

Bright faces were everywhere, mouths going up and down, a bedlam of sounds that seemed to Adele to become one giant rush, like a building on fire, like a giant tumbling wave. Nurses. Soldiers. German girls, too. They smiled too much, the German girls, they hurt Adele’s heart the way they puffed on their cigarettes, bony shoulders sticking out of thin cotton dresses.

“Dresden.”

The word came through the storm of sound like a strike of lightning. And again “Dresden.”

Adele looked for the source. A large soldier was sitting at a table talking to some other soldiers and shaking his head. His hair was blond, and he had a big face to go with his big size. One of the other soldiers had his arm draped around a German girl.

“Dresden?” Adele called out, looking directly at him.

The big soldier looked back at her. She expected to feel the fear she always felt when she had to have anything to do with soldiers. He smiled across the tables.

“Have you been to Dresden?”

“I do not speak French,” he replied in the most terrible French possible. And smiled again, a broad, warmer smile this time. He got up, circled around his table and sat down opposite her.

“Hello. My name is Alex. I am a Canadian.”

He seemed determined to speak unbearable French. He held out a large meaty hand. It seemed a strange, foreign thing to do. Nevertheless, since it was there, Adele shook it and tried to smile.

“Adele,” she said. She looked up the table toward Pierre. He and Char were looking back at her like two Cheshire cats.

“Will you translate for me?”

“Of course,” Pierre said.

“He was talking about Dresden. Ask him if he’s been to Dresden.”

“My friend would like to know if you’ve been to Dresden,” Pierre said in English.

The Canadian looked at Pierre, then turned back to Adele. “Are you going there?” he asked in English.

“What did he say?”

“He asked if you’re going there.”

“Tell him I have a relative who lives there and I’m worried.”

“She has a relative who lives there and she’s worried.”

“Worried about what it’s like there?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Pierre said.

“If she’s thinking of seeing for herself, tell her not to go.” He touched Adele’s hand and shook his large head from side to side.

“What is it?”

“He says not to go there.”

Adele could feel her heart beginning to race. “Why not?”

Pierre turned back to the soldier. “Why not?”

Though he was speaking to Pierre, the soldier leaned closer to Adele. His blue eyes held hers. “Tell her there was a fire there. Tell her it was bombed by incendiary bombs. It caused a great fire. The pavement melted. Everything turned to lava. Bricks and steel and glass. People. We’ve just been there. It’s like nothing anyone’s ever seen before. There is nothing left of Dresden.”

“He says the city was fire-bombed. It melted. There’s no one left there,” Pierre said.

“Don’t go there,” the soldier said.

“Don’t go there, Adele,” Pierre said.

Adele was rocking a little on the bench. There was no air to breathe.

“Tell her the Russians have taken over. It’s their sector. They own Dresden now. No one comes or goes without their say-so. And the Russian
soldiers-what they’re doing to the women-tell her she doesn’t want to go there.”

“The Russians are there now, Adele. No one can go in or out. You’ll just have to hope your relative is safe.”

“Yes,” Adele said. And “Thank you,” she said to the big soldier. And though there was no roof, the air had disappeared. She got up from the bench and walked away.

It took Char half the street to catch up. They walked along together for a little while.

“Are you all right?” Char asked.

“I just needed some fresh air.”

“I’m sorry about Dresden. About your relatives.”

Adele nodded.

“Where are we going?”

“For a walk. I just want to walk by myself.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“That’s all right.” Char stopped. “Don’t be long, Adele. We’ll be waiting.”

Adele kept walking and turned at the first corner. She crossed several more streets. After a while she got tired and sat down on some steps. She began to notice that, unlike the others, this street had been bombed. The row of buildings across from her was a pile of rubble. One wall, three storeys high, remained standing.

She could see large patches of variously coloured wallpaper still clinging to it. Splintered window frames. A remnant of a curtain hanging down. Families had lived there. Cooked supper. Children had played in those rooms. Argued. Laughed. What were their names? What had they thought and dreamt? What had they hoped for?

Where were all the families?

A dog came over the top of a pile of rubble and began to pick its way slowly down through the bricks. Adele could hardly believe her eyes. When the dog walked stiffly out on to the street, she stood up and called out, “Robber!”

The dog ignored her.

“Robber!”