Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(91)

‘I know I’ll do the same thing tomorrow. It’ll be worse tomorrow. Vladyslava and Maria were operated on in the Bunker just like I was, but they can talk about it and I can’t. They’ll answer the questions so calmly and precisely and I’ll just burst into tears or start screaming at Fischer again –’

‘Well, that could be impressive, too, you know.’

‘I’m not going to do it, Rose. They’ve got four smart, educated grown-ups to show off and they don’t need my testimony and I’m not going to do it.’

I held on to her tightly while she calmed down a little.

‘Will you tell Dr Alexander for me?’ she begged.

I could see why she didn’t want to do that herself.

The wily Ravensbrück prisoner in me rose to the surface.

‘I’ll tell him for you,’ I agreed. ‘But only if you sit with me and watch the trial.’

‘You bitch,’ she snapped automatically, and I was so relieved to hear her being nasty. But she didn’t act like she was mad at me. She hugged me tightly round the waist, snuggling all her weight against me.

She was so much heavier than I expected. No lift balancing her life at all.





3. Drag





Dr Alexander took it very well, considering how early it was and that I had to interrupt him in his office right before the session started so I could catch him privately, and this was the last day before the Christmas recess. He is such a kind man.

‘I’m not surprised,’ he admitted. ‘I thought someone might back out, and I’m glad it’s Ró?a. She’s a volatile witness. She’s different from the others.’

‘Different how?’

‘She isn’t finished. She has no sense of who she is. The others knew that before the war started – but how old was Ró?a when she went to prison, fourteen? Sixteen when she underwent the first experiment? She grew up in Ravensbrück. In a way, she’s still there.’

I knew exactly what he meant. There wasn’t any part of Ró?a that wasn’t connected to Ravensbrück, even her work, even the parts of her body that had escaped experimentation – she hadn’t started her period until she was eighteen, after the war was over.

It is true that Ravensbrück shaped me – whatever I would have been without it interfering, I am someone else now. On the simplest level, I don’t think I would be in Scotland or in medicine. But Ravensbrück doesn’t define me. I had a lot of ‘being Rose’ to cling to when I landed there – I was a pilot, I was a poet, I was a Girl Scout, I was part of a family, I was the captain of the Mount Jericho High School County Champion Girls’ Varsity basketball team, and I still bore traces of all these things even in the concentration camp. I wore my Air Transport Auxiliary USA flash on my shoulder and identified the aircraft that flew overhead, so we could guess at how the Americans or the Soviets were advancing. I was given jobs only a tall girl could do; I taught my companions Scout songs and learned theirs; I produced more poetry in six months than I’d ever produced in my life, most of it in my head. And I was part of a family – Lisette, Irina, Karolina, Ró?a.

Ró?a was part of my family. But her own real family had all been killed before she’d even arrived at Ravensbrück. I knew mine were safe. That made a difference, too. Ró?a’s Camp Family was her only family.

When I told anyone at the camp who I was, I’d say, ‘I’m Rose Justice. I’m a pilot.’

When Ró?a first told me who she was, she’d said, ‘I’m Polish Political Prisoner 7705. I’m a Rabbit.’

When you’re flying, the changing balance of lift and weight pulls you up or down. But another pair of forces pulls you forwards or backwards through the air: thrust and drag. Thrust is the power that pulls the kite forward – you run with it to get it up in the air. You have to have thrust to create lift. Drag is there because your kite’s surfaces push against the air and slow the kite down. Drag doesn’t pull you out of the sky; it makes you fly more slowly.

For the most part, Room 600 in the Palace of Justice, the Doctors’ Trial courtroom, looked just like you imagine any courtroom – actually, it looked spanking new, with its wood panels gleaming with varnish, and modern lighting installed in the ceiling. That was all done last year just before the IMT, the International Military Tribunal. The four American judges were all wearing new robes flown there specially from Washington DC. But the outstanding feature of the courtroom was that it was entirely snarled in telephone and electronic cables for the simultaneous translations, everybody caught in a huge black spider’s web. Everyone was connected by this web – defendants, witnesses, lawyers, judges, observers, reporters and, of course, the panel of translators themselves – everybody had his or her head plugged into this amazing machine. You could tell right away who’d been here before and who was here for the first time by their nonchalant or inept use of the headphones.

Talk about drag! You were so dependent. Also, it was easy to see why people just stopped listening when Madame Vaillant-Couturier was telling them about the gas chambers at Auschwitz. It was like turning off the radio. You can’t bear to listen? Just pull the headphones off.

Ró?a, who understands English and Polish and German, didn’t need headphones.