Three Sisters (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #3)(72)

As the sun sets, the girls take their seats.

‘We’ve survived the camps,’ says Cibi. ‘We survived the marches. We’re not home yet, but today, tonight, I think it’s time to celebrate our freedom. Our freedom march!’ She raises her glass.

‘Our freedom march!’ the girls echo. They clink glasses and, smiling, begin to reach for the food. They eat slowly, savouring every mouthful.

The moon is full, throwing a spotlight on her sisters, and Cibi is finally confident that whatever lies ahead for them, they will face it together.





CHAPTER 25

Germany

May 1945

T

he whole group is unanimous in their desire to rest and gather their strength before they decide what to do next. That first night, the sisters agree they cannot sleep in any of the bedrooms, and, to their surprise, the other women feel the same. They gather blankets, pillows and throws and hunker down in the dining room.

Magda, with Livi’s help, draws up a roster of work for the girls. Some of them will help the farmer with his cows, others are allocated chores around the house. For two weeks, the group works, eats well and slowly, and each of the women finds her strength returning. Their hair grows thick and glossy, and pale cheeks fill with colour. The sisters’ dreams are as disturbing as ever, and at least three of the women wake up screaming every night, but that’s what this moment of respite is for: some time to heal more than their bodies.

*

Cibi steps out of the house, preparing to head over to the farm; it is her turn to help the farmer round up his cows. All the air in her lungs escapes in one long gasp when she sees the open-bed trucks parked in the courtyard.

Soldiers.

She takes a step back, one hand on the door, the other at her throat. The fear is sudden and painful, she feels faint and stumbles into Magda, who is standing behind her.

‘It’s OK, Cibi,’ whispers Magda. ‘They’re Russians. Look at their uniforms.’ The men are indeed wearing Russian uniform. Cibi scrambles to recall her Rusyn dialect.

The officer in charge identifies himself and asks, ‘Are you the owner of this house?’

Cibi wants to laugh, but she just waves at her rags, at the equally ragged figures who now crowd around her. ‘No, sir. We are escaped prisoners from Auschwitz.’ She pulls up her sleeve and holds out her arm to show him the tattooed numbers.

The officer shakes his head slowly and speaks in a low voice to the other officers in his truck.

‘How did you escape?’ he asks.

‘The march, we ran away from the march.’

‘Do you know why you were marching? Where you were going?’

Cibi didn’t know – so much made little or no sense: the violence, the torture, the killing machines. She had learned never to question orders. She shakes her head.

‘They were going to use you to bargain for their freedom,’ he tells her, adding, ‘and other reasons too: to carry on working for them, but also to stop you telling your stories to the Allies. Thank God you escaped.’

The girls shuffle awkwardly from foot to foot; none of them wants to imagine more camps, more work, more brutality.

Cibi tilts up her chin and stands straighter. ‘It’s behind us now,’ she says. ‘We want to look forward.’

The Russian officer smiles and nods. ‘I agree. Will you show me around the house?’ he asks.

Cibi nods and steps aside to let him into the room, where the girls’ crumpled bedding covers the floor. After a tour of the house, the officer returns to the living room. ‘You are all Jews?’ he asks. The girls fidget and grumble, reluctant to answer: how has being Jewish ever helped them?

‘We’re all Jewish,’ Cibi says firmly, with a defiant nod of her chin.

‘I promise you will come to no harm,’ the officer says. ‘Not from me or my men. You have my word. I am also a Jew.’

Cibi informs the officer of their routine: the cleaning and collecting of vegetables, and the rounding up of cows in exchange for milk, bread and cheese.

‘I need to talk to this farmer,’ he tells Cibi. ‘We Russians need meat!’

Cibi witnesses the transformation of one of the outbuildings into a slaughterhouse for pigs, and introduces a new chore into their roster. They will now help to prepare food for the soldiers.

‘I know it’s pork,’ Cibi tells the group. ‘But we don’t have to eat it.’

‘I’d eat it,’ says Livi, giggling. ‘If there was nothing else, but it does stink.’

All this work has taken a toll on their clothes, and now the pungent aroma of pork fat is embedded in their tatters.

‘Help me sew these into dresses?’ Cibi corners Magda on her way to the farm. She is holding up old curtains she found in a cupboard, and has also uncovered an ancient sewing machine.

Now, every night, Cibi and Magda cut cloth to the measurements of the girls and soon they have functional dresses made of blue and red cotton. Eva dances in her new clothes, delighted. Livi thinks she is turning back into the little girl she was before the camps, despite the haunted expression in her eyes.

*

Another couple of weeks pass in the happy company of the soldiers, after which Cibi decides it’s time to move on. They are stronger now and they have new clothes and food. They pack bread, cheese and salami into the capacious pockets of their new dresses and head to the farmer’s house to say goodbye.