Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #3)(67)

Slowly and methodically, the women clear small areas, and enjoy the bread, milk, potatoes and even pudding they are offered on their breaks. The sisters eat slowly, devouring every morsel, only returning to work when they have the energy and enthusiasm.

One afternoon, Cibi is startled by the sound of an approaching aircraft. Air raid sirens scream across the airfield and the sisters watch the SS guards flee to the bunkers.

‘Run!’ a voice yells.

‘To the kitchens!’ shouts another voice. And then Cibi, Livi, Magda and Eva, and all the other workers, are pounding the tarmac to the corrugated iron shack that functions as a kitchen.

Outside, bombs are exploding as they crash into the airfield.

‘Better to be killed by the Allies than the German pigs,’ the cook announces to the room. ‘And if we must die here, at least our stomachs will be full. Come on. Eat!’ she commands.

The sisters stuff food into their mouths and their pockets.

When the all-clear sounds, the women return to the airstrip to find their careful work undone by fresh blasts.

The work the next day is back-breaking, but somehow they fall into the rhythm of their labour.

‘This is easy work for us,’ jokes Cibi to Magda. ‘We had to clear an entire demolition site when we first got to Auschwitz.’

‘The bricks had to be placed “just so”,’ says Livi, delicately placing a piece of shrapnel into the wheelbarrow. ‘If it chipped or cracked, you would be cracked.’

It is easy, but it is also thankless work: for every crater they fill, another bomb decimates it until, one day, Cibi announces to Magda and Livi they won’t be going back to the airfield. There is no point, it’s too dangerous, and no one seems to be monitoring them anyway at Retzow. Cibi waits for their kapo’s admonition, but none comes and the sisters confine themselves to the camp, accompanied always by little Eva.

Spring arrives and a strange malaise settles over the camp. The guards are distracted. The inmates are fed, and counted at rollcall, but few do any work. They are all waiting for something to happen.

*

‘Cibi Meller, show yourself.’ A female guard is standing in the doorway of the block, reading her name from a sheet of paper.

It is raining and the sisters are lying in their bunk, listening to Eva tell the story of her mother – a kind woman who loved the little girl, but who was taken away one morning, along with a dozen other women, never to return.

Cibi squeezes the girl’s hand and climbs down off the bunk, Magda and Livi on her heels.

‘I’m Cibi Meller,’ she announces.

‘Come with me. It’s your lucky day.’

‘Why?’ asks Cibi, following the guard into the camp.

‘You’re being sent to Sweden.’ She eyes Magda and Livi. ‘Not all of you. Just Cibi Meller,’ she snaps.

‘We go where our sister goes!’ Magda insists.

‘Sister? But your names aren’t on the list.’

‘What list?’

‘The Red Cross is taking all American prisoners to Sweden and then back to the United States,’ the guard informs them.

Magda and Livi exchange a look and burst into laughter, but Cibi isn’t laughing. Her joke has backfired, and now the Germans will separate them. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Cibi, in a small voice. ‘It was a stupid joke. I’m from Slovakia, not New York.’

‘Do you think I care about your jokes? Your name’s on the list and you’re coming with me.’

Before she follows her, Cibi turns to her sisters. ‘Go back to the block. I’ll sort this out. Don’t worry. Please, don’t worry.’

Magda and Livi stare after her, their laughter a bitter ring in their ears.

And, sure enough, Cibi returns eventually and climbs into the bunk where her sisters wait for her. ‘I had to work hard to persuade the clerk,’ she explains. ‘He took pity on me in the end, I guess.’ But, Magda observes, Cibi doesn’t look relieved. Her brow is furrowed, as if she’s trying to work out a problem.

‘What else?’ she asks.

Cibi takes her sisters’ hands. ‘He told me they’re emptying the camp,’ Cibi says, slowly. ‘We might be taken on another march.’

*

A few days later, the inmates of Retzow are lined up and led out of the camp. Once again, the SS monitor the walkers, but this time, fallen inmates are not struck or shot, they are just ignored. The road they are walking on has been bombed, and the girls have to step carefully to avoid twisting an ankle in a crater. They pass bombed-out German vehicles, the limbs of dead soldiers scattered over the ground. The forests and fields of the German countryside are lush with plants and flowers as the heat of the midday sun pounds down – just as the snow had done months earlier. They walk slowly, Cibi and Livi each holding one of Eva’s hands.

‘Have you noticed the guards are disappearing?’ says Magda. ‘I just saw one wander off into that bit of woodland and he didn’t even look back.’

Cibi and Livi glance around. Cibi steps out of the line and looks back at the hundreds of women behind them. She lets out a long slow breath. ‘You’re right. Where have they all gone?’

‘They’re abandoning us,’ another prisoner says. And then another echoes the same line.

Soon Cibi and her sisters are surrounded by a group of women.