Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(56)

And maybe Fernande’s daughter will come back. But I doubt it.

This is what’s so heartbreaking: the fact that I am here, alive, has no doubt given Fernande some grain of hope for her daughter. But the fact that I was there makes me sure there isn’t any.

My hair is not too bad now – softer, the curl coming back. It’s very short. I have been taking ridiculous long baths and stuffing myself with French cream – I eat it in spoonfuls, like soup, separately from the coffee. It is wonderful just on its own, mixed up with a little sugar (I mix margarine and sugar and eat that too). Fat mixed with sugar is the richest thing I have eaten since forever and I just crave it. My hair likes it too.

And I have been able to sleep a little longer each night. I don’t jerk awake at 4 a.m. expecting the Screamer any more. But I still have the dream about the cold wind in the empty bunks. Funny how my Ravensbrück nightmare is about the bunks being empty, because by the end they were never empty. The whole camp was so overcrowded we had to sleep in shifts, even during the day.

I have got to keep writing. I can’t talk about it at all; not to Mother or Aunt Edie over the telephone; not to Fernande in broken French. It would break her heart, I think, if I told her about it. I keep wishing I could talk to Nick, but how could I explain any of it to him? How could I possibly make Nick understand?

I wrote him a poem for a Christmas present, though of course I knew I couldn’t give it to him then. I still feel the way I do in the poem. Apart from the clean clothes, I am still a walking ghost. I don’t know how I can possibly explain to him what’s happened to me. There won’t be anything to say.





Love Song & Self Portrait


(by Rose Justice)

At first I dreamed that you



offered warm arms of comfort and strength,

pulling me close,

your soft lips brushing and kissing my bare head,

all of you loving me,

the nightmare over and the dream come true –

Now I only dream that you

offer me bread.

My dreams still produce you



out of habit, but the sweet

longing for your touch is gone.

I long for nothing from you any more

but something to eat.

And if I did come back,



what in return could I offer to you,

who used to make so free

with my softness and kisses and verse

as if it were your due?

Imagine me

on your doorstep – would you laugh in the old way

and greet me lovingly:

Hello, it’s been a long time,

how are you today?

I would offer you myself



in mismatched shoes and blood-soaked rags,

shaved scalp all scabs

and face gone grey,

no old woman but a walking ghost

on a skeleton’s frame –

And you would be forced to look away.

There won’t be anything to say.





*



If it was a clear night during a roll call, we’d get a whispered astronomy lesson from one of the imprisoned university professors. The astronomy lessons drove me crazy because they were in Polish.

‘What did she say?’ I whispered, getting frustrated, because I really loved learning the names of the stars – except for languages, astronomy was the one class we could do practically, and I couldn’t understand the Polish astronomy teacher.

Karolina whispered, ‘She said it is December, and we won’t see Arcturus in the evening until spring. When we see Arcturus again the war will be over!’

I gasped. ‘It’s December! My gosh – I’m nineteen! I forgot my birthday!’

‘Forgot your birthday!’ Ró?a snickered with scorn. ‘You’ve missed your name day too. Yours is the same as mine, Rose, September 4th, and I never forget. We have a party every year, and my sixteenth, last year, was so special. Zosia and Genca were on firewood-gathering duty in the pine forest, and they made me a flower wreath. And Gitte brought me a cake. A cake, honestly, a centimetre thick and as big around as the palm of my hand, with jam and margarine. They stole it from the infirmary – I’d just been operated on for the fifth time and I was too sick to eat the cake, but I wore the wreath.’ Ró?a knew perfectly well how utterly pathetic this sounded, and poked me slyly. ‘Tell us about your sixteenth. Did you have a cake with roses made out of pink frosting?’

‘I did!’ I exclaimed in astonishment. ‘How did you guess?’

‘Your name is Rose.’

Irina shook with silent laughter.

‘Was there champagne?’ Lisette asked.

‘No, Mother wouldn’t let us. We had Shirley Temple cocktails – ginger ale and grenadine. And Daddy hired a dance band. The party was in the hangar at Justice Field, and we spent the whole day before it moving planes out on to the field to get the hangar ready, and then we decorated it with dozens of coloured paper lanterns shaped like owls –’

Crushing, black embarrassment kicked me in the head at this point and I clammed up.

‘It’s not a crime you weren’t in prison on your sixteenth birthday, darling,’ Lisette said gently.

Ró?a let out one of her insane giggles. ‘Have you ever committed a crime, Rosie?’