Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(37)

So now I remembered my sanity-saving poem, but I didn’t move. I was still lying flat on my face.

‘Go on,’ the Polish student prompted me.

I remembered the whole thing.

I wrote a few words of it in England last summer – I think it is in this notebook, but I haven’t got the heart to look back at anything I wrote last summer. This will be the first time I’ve ever written down the finished poem.





Counting-out Rhyme


(by Rose Justice)

Silver tube of fuse and hollow



cylinder of detonator

cap and gyro.

Toppled gyro forcing action,



copper wire to spark ignition,

pulse jet engine.

Amatol before explosion,



Bosch and Siemens, Argus, Fieseler,

in production.

Shining fragile fuse and hollow



warhead fuselage awaiting

detonation.





‘Is that by your favourite poet as well?’ the Polish girl asked. ‘Edna Millay?’

‘No, that’s by me. I made it up.’

‘What is it about? Not trees this time.’

‘Flying bombs. It’s about making them. Or not making them – that’s why they punished me.’

‘I will give you one slice of bread for every poem you make me. I can do it. I’m one of the camp Rabbits, the Króliki, and people take care of me. Every time you make me a new poem I’ll get you an extra slice of bread.’

I didn’t know it then. But I know it now and I’m sure of it. My counting-out rhyme saved me from starving to death this winter.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘I’m Polish Political Prisoner 7705,’ she reeled off, glib and bitter. ‘I’m a Rabbit.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

I don’t know how I knew I could talk to her like that. I hadn’t even looked at her yet.

‘My name is Ró?a Czajkowska,’ she said.

In my ears it sounded like a meaningless babble of foreign sound. Very humbly, and worried that she would go away if I offended her, I asked her to spell it.

‘Oh, I can’t do English letters out loud,’ she answered with deep scorn. ‘Ró?a. How difficult is that? It means rose in English.’

I turned my head for the first time since I’d woken up. It was exhausting. But I could see her now.

She was – she is – seventeen. She was the tiniest seventeen-year-old I’d ever seen – I thought she was about eleven when I first saw her, the thinnest, most starved-looking kid alive. Being starved-looking was the only thing I noticed about her at first, her only distinguishing feature – it still hadn’t dawned on me that this wasn’t a distinguishing feature at Ravensbrück, and that Ró?a had other, more significant peculiarities. She had long hair – a lot of the long-term prisoners did – but it was hidden beneath a headscarf, and her dress was one of the old-style grey-and-blue striped uniforms.

‘Rose!’ I exclaimed.

‘Ró?a,’ she corrected. ‘People call me Ró?yczka sometimes, little Rose, because I am so little.’

‘Little Rose – like Rosie? How do you say it?’

‘Say “Ro-shij-ka”. Ró?yczka!’

‘Ró?yczka!’

‘It is my pleasure to meet you, English-speaking French Political Prisoner 51498. What’s your name?’

‘Rose Justice,’ I said, remembering who I was. ‘Rose. Or Rosie. Same as yours.’

She gave a shrill, maniacal howl of laughter.

At the other end of the narrow aisle that led between the rows of bunks, there came the sound of footsteps. After a moment the footsteps stopped – another turbaned head appeared (it was Gitte, our extremely wonderful German Blockova). I couldn’t have begun to guess Gitte’s age when I first saw her face that afternoon – honestly, she could have been anywhere between twenty-five and a hundred. She said something sharply to Ró?a in German. Ró?a patted me on the head like a dog. She said to Gitte in English, ‘Look – Justice has come to Ravensbrück!’ and let out another cackling peal of laughter.

Then Ró?a patted a thin cotton blanket which was folded near my head.

‘Listen, English-speaking French Political Prisoner with the same name as me. I have to go back to work. There’s a blanket here if you want it now, but you have to give it back to the others later and no one will thank you if she has to wash blood out of it, so keep it off your backside. I’ll bring your supper here, but you’ll have to get up to come to the 6.30 roll call.’ She giggled again before she added, ‘I’ll help you if you can’t walk.’

Gitte gave an indulgent sigh. She assured me in English, ‘Someone else will help.’

She reached towards Ró?a to help her down from the bunk. At first I thought it was just because Ró?a was so little. She put her arms around Gitte’s neck like a monkey and let herself be lifted to the murky floor. Then I saw the back of her legs and I understood why she needed help climbing down, and why her offer of support to me was such a joke.

Both her legs had been split in half. That’s what it looked like – from knee to ankle in the back of her calves were long clefts so deep you could poke your finger in them up to the second knuckle.