My Name is Eva(76)
One of the few remaining Wildflecken inmates to whom she still felt close was Irene Komorowski. The Countess was not only too old to leave, she was also too ill and so too were several of the women she had protected and kept close by her side since they had first been incarcerated at Ravensbrück. Tuberculosis had finally snuffed out any hope they might have had of making a new start across the Atlantic, although early on a handful of the women had been fit enough to escape to Canada, which was recruiting seamstresses. Irene had urged them to go when they had nervously asked about this distant country. ‘Take it, take it,’ she had said, in front of Eva, when the offer came through. ‘You have the chance of a new life now. You must go. I will be happy for you.’ Some went, some stayed and now those who had declined to accept the posts would stay in Germany for ever, their chance to return to villages annexed by Russia snatched from their grasp and the opportunity to make a new life in a new country denied them by declining health.
Eva did not know for certain if her efficient form-filling, her patient questioning, her interpretation had ensured that all the people she had encountered in the last six years would go on to have a happier life; all she could know was that for the most part they had a chance of a safe life, free of persecution and abuse. They had been rescued from misery and might now be able to achieve happiness and maybe even prosperity.
‘Would you really have wanted to return to Poland?’ Eva asked Irene on the last evening out of many, as they sipped damson plum liqueur by the glowing light of the stove in Irene’s room, the walls draped with richly embroidered shawls just like the one she wore over her shoulders.
‘Poland, my homeland, yes, but not Russia. We have no love for the Russian bears. Nor they for us.’
‘But you must miss your country and your family very much.’
Irene shrugged her shoulders. ‘My family is here now, there is no one waiting for me back there. My aunts and uncles were left behind, but all of them and also the cousins who were taken with me are long gone.’ She waved her elegant but bony hand towards the door and the room beyond, where her countrywomen were cooking cabbage dumplings and brewing tea. ‘My girls are all the family I have now, these women and the others who are staying. We have a little Poland here.’ She laughed and tossed back her drink, then poured more into their glasses.
‘No matter how hard we tried, we could never get rid of you all,’ Eva laughed. ‘Even though we did our best.’ Eva and the other aid workers had been given a target of producing 10,000 visas a month, but in the last few months of operation they had only processed half that number, as the remaining residents of the once-teeming camp of many thousands were either too old, too ill or too resigned to their fate to win the fabled prize tickets for America or Canada.
And now she too had to leave. She had not returned to London once during her time at Wildflecken, nor had she visited her family in the furthest green hills of Surrey. I could not face their continual questions about how I coped after Hugh’s death, she thought. And I could not bear their tears once Charles, my older brother, had died. But above all, I wanted to stay as long as possible to drink in every snatched moment of my one and only child’s life. The only child I will ever have. She hugged that secret tight within herself.
Whenever she could, Eva walked or cycled to the village, ostensibly to visit some of the former camp residents who had decided to settle in the locality, in reality to catch a glimpse of Lieselotte running around in the cottage garden, out walking with her parents and, now that she was nearly four years old, playing with other children nearby. Her occasional periods of leave were spent walking in the mountains, and she and the other girls went to dances at the British army bases, where they met officers in need of company and where the NAAFI ensured they were well fed.
Could I have found someone else? Eva often asked herself this question. But the memory of Hugh and everything else is too much to inflict on a new love. Besides, I’m not sure I have any love left to give. So she flirted, laughed and danced the lindy hop with enthusiasm, but always left the dance hall alone to return to her hard single bed.
A smiling woman entered the room from next door, bearing a large plate, which she offered to Irene and Eva. ‘Kielbasa,’ she said, pointing to slices of dark red sausage flecked with fat, and ‘Ogórki kiszone,’ indicating the pieces of green pickled gherkin.
‘Eat,’ said Irene. ‘Then we can toast some more. It is better with vodka, but I know how much you like this,’ and she poured another drop of the scarlet liqueur into Eva’s glass.
‘So, do you really think you’ll stay here for the rest of your life?’
‘Why not? I have all I need here and’ – Irene waved her hand towards the window, which overlooked the forests and land around the camp – ‘there is even a place out there where I will finally lay my head to rest in peace among my fellow countrymen.’
Eva knew what she meant. During the years the resettlement camp had been in operation, residents who died were buried in a Polish cemetery within the camp boundaries. Some inmates had never been able to recover from their time of terrible deprivation, some had suffered terminal illness and some had simply grown old and died waiting for their turn to leave. And maybe, Eva thought, somewhere among those burial plots, there are also bodies that didn’t die a natural death, unless those still lie undiscovered among the dark trees all around the camp and across the countryside.