Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #3)(39)

Livi decides to say nothing to Cibi, or anyone else. Tomorrow will be a day like every other day there. All she has to do is wake up and keep moving.

*

The next morning the sisters woke up to heavy snow showers, which haven’t abated. Now, in her position at the gates of Birkenau, waiting for the messages she will deliver around the camp, Livi watches another train pull in; men and women clamber down from the carriages into three feet of snow, where they huddle together, frozen and terrified on the platform.

Livi can’t seem to avert her gaze. Occasionally she catches the eye of one or other prisoner, but she quickly glances away.

It is still snowing when the selection detail arrives. In a heavy coat, one officer considers the crowd, before flicking his hand to the left, to the gas chambers. Today, it is not their age or their health or gender which has sealed their fate, but the weather.

That night, when the sisters climb into their bunk, they discover that their blanket has been stolen. Cibi and Livi cuddle together for warmth. They are wearing every single item of clothing they own, including their shoes. The freezing wind howls around the block, forcing its way through the cracks in the mortar, the gap beneath the door. Snot from their noses forms icicles.

Instead of sleeping, Livi whimpers, quietly, to herself. ‘Cibi, are you awake?’ she says, finally.

‘Yes. What is it? Can’t you sleep?’

‘I don’t think I can keep doing this. And now, without our blanket, we’ll freeze to death. Cibi, if we’re to die tonight, I don’t want it to be in here.’ Livi starts to cry.

Cibi reaches out with gloved hands and holds Livi’s face. She blows warm air onto her sister’s icy cheeks. She swallows once, twice. She feels something like a punch in her stomach. Livi is right. They will die in this block and, in the morning, their frozen corpses will be loaded onto a truck with hundreds of others and taken away to be set on fire.

‘Let’s go,’ is all she says, and Livi nods.

The girls quietly climb out of the bunk and tiptoe across the concrete floor. Cibi pushes open the door and the girls take a step. They are almost blasted back into the room by a flurry of snow and wind, but they keep going. They hug the walls as they round the block, behind which lies the forest. Together, hand in hand, they head towards the electrified fence.

‘When I say run,’ Cibi whispers into the falling snow, ‘run!’

Cibi and Livi take a last look at the camp; at the floodlights illuminating the brooding buildings; at the gates, which will never set them free; at the empty watchtower.

The faces of Mumma, Magda, Grandfather and their father are never far away. In a strange way, these images give the sisters strength.

Together they take several steps. Cibi pauses for a moment and Livi knows the next word, the last word she ever will hear from her sister, will be ‘run’.

‘Don’t do it!’

The girls jump and turn round.

‘Don’t do it,’ the voice repeats. A silhouette of a slim figure hovers in the shadows of the block.

‘You can’t stop us!’ says Livi, squeezing Cibi’s fingers tightly, as if to urge her forward.

‘I know I can’t. But just tell me why. Why tonight? What is so different about this night from any of the others?’ It is a girl’s voice, plaintive, faltering.

She steps out of the shadows and Cibi recognises her as one of the new girls.

‘Someone has taken our blanket,’ says Livi. ‘And we don’t want to die in there, in that stinking bunk in that stinking room. There, is that enough of an explanation? Will you leave us alone now?’

‘Come inside. I promise I will find you a blanket,’ the girl says.

Cibi looks into her sister’s eyes and senses hesitation. They could run now for the fence, hold on for an instant and this would all be over.

‘If there’s a small chance we can live long enough to see Magda and Mumma one more time, then we should take it,’ whispers Cibi. ‘Shall we go back? Or shall we go forward?’

Livi doesn’t move for a long time. She stares at her boots and then, almost painfully, she puts one foot in front of the other and leads Cibi back towards the block.

Inside, Cibi and Livi watch the girl who has tempted them back inside move around the room, tugging at the blankets of the sleeping occupants. When she meets resistance, she lets go. She does this again and again, until, finally, she lightly pulls two heavy blankets free.

She hands these to the sisters without a word and goes back to bed.

The next morning as the sisters prepare to leave for rollcall, Cibi looks across to the bunk from which their blankets were liberated. Two girls lie bonded together; their eyes are open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Cibi turns away, her mind a necessary blank.





CHAPTER 16

Vranov nad Topl’ou

December 1943

A

flurry of snow follows Magda into the house. She pulls off her coat and shakes it, scattering soft flakes onto the threadbare rug. ‘I don’t believe it, Grandfather,’ she says, hanging her wet coat on the peg. ‘I just don’t believe it.’ She holds out a small cloth bag to her grandfather.

‘What is it?’ he asks, his face suddenly pale. ‘What happened?’

‘It’s not bad enough that I got given stale bread even though I could smell the new loaves coming out of the oven, but that Mrs Molnar went out the back and found an especially dry loaf – just for me! I wanted to throw it at her.’