The Venice Sketchbook(112)

“So you can make it easy for yourself or very hard. Who gave you the radio?”

That was easy. He was long gone. “When the English had to leave Venice, the former consul came and asked me if I would monitor the shipping for them. In those days it was Italian vessels. I agreed. A man came and installed the radio. He gave me instructions on how to send messages and how to read codes. I never knew his name. I never saw anyone after that. Codebooks were dropped off at my door. But none for a long while now. I presume this small outpost is of no use to anyone.”

“Or your contact has been captured by us and the chain of communication has been broken.”

I decided to appeal to him as a human being. “You speak very good English,” I said.

“Yes, I studied for one year at Cambridge, before the war,” he said.

“What did you study?”

“Philosophy.” He laughed. “The fools never realized I was sent by the German government. You British were so hopelessly unprepared.”

“Nevertheless we seem to be winning at last,” I couldn’t help but saying.

His expression changed. “You realize I could have you shot right now as a spy.” He paused, savouring those words. “But as it happens, the spying is a noble cause, not your most serious offence. You were aiding a Jew to escape, were you not? Your housekeeper alerted us to the fact that you had a Jew in the house. Like most good Christians, she has a profound distrust of Jews.”

“What will happen to her?” I cried. “She’s only a child. An innocent child.”

He gave me a look of utter scorn. “A Jewish child. I begrudge the amount of air she breathes. She will be sent to a camp like all Jews.” He paused. “As will you. I don’t have the time or the men to deal with you here. There is a camp for non-Jewish political prisoners north of Milan. That is where you will go.”

“And Hanni?”

“The girl will go with other Jews to a camp somewhere in Eastern Europe. Poland, I believe.”

“Can I not say goodbye to her?”

Again that withering smile. “Your devotion to a Jew is quite touching, Fr? ulein. Are you sure you have no Jewish ancestry yourself?”

“As you can see from my red hair, I am entirely Celt,” I said. “But I would stand up for the ill treatment of any human being.”

He said something rapidly in German. I was grabbed by the arm and dragged out of the room. I tried to get a glimpse of Hanni as I was hurried across the station, but then I was shoved into the back of a lorry. The door was slammed on me, and I was driven away in darkness.





CHAPTER 45


Juliet, a camp in the north of Italy, November 1943

Of the next weeks I will say little. I was housed in a barrack with around thirty other women. Some had been working with the partisans. Some had written or spoken against Mussolini. Others had helped Jews. Most of them were young. Some had already been raped by the Germans before they came to the camp. I think all of us were traumatized to a certain extent. We didn’t talk much, as if we didn’t want to risk making friends, and I was suspicious to them, as I was English and not one of them. That was fine with me. I had no words left to speak. No tears either.

We slept on wooden bunks, stacked three high. Our mattresses were stuffed with straw and crawling with fleas. After a few days I was covered in bites. It had also become bitterly cold, and the huts were not heated. Our clothes and belongings had been taken. We were made to wear a prison uniform of coarse cotton that did nothing to keep out the wind when we had to stand for morning roll call. We shared a blanket at night, huddling against each other for warmth. We were fed a meal of soup each day—sometimes with pasta, sometimes beans, sometimes just hot water with bits of greens. And a piece of stale bread. While I was there, one of the women became really sick and was carried off. I never saw her again, so I don’t know if she died or recovered in hospital.

The only saving grace was that the camp was still run by Italians and not Germans. That meant that standards were not as rigid or brutal as they might have been. If we had a decent guard on duty, he wouldn’t keep us standing outside in the cold for roll call. He’d send us back inside and take roll while he smoked a cigarette. On particularly good days, he handed it, half smoked, to one of us and it was passed around—one puff per woman. Luckily I didn’t smoke. I would give my puff to someone else and get an extra piece of bread in exchange.

Every now and then, a German armoured car would drive up. Someone would be hauled off for questioning and either return with marks of brutality upon her or not return at all. Every time we saw the gate opening and a motor car driving through, we held our breath, or even clutched at each other. I knew it would be my turn one day. Would they believe that I had nothing to tell? How would I hold up under torture?

There were good days amongst the bad. When the weather was clement, we were allowed to walk around outside. Our camp was divided from the men’s section by a high barbed wire fence. On fine days we watched the men playing football. They waved and called out to us, unless a strict guard was on duty who would prod them to silence with his rifle butt. Then one day, after I had been there for what seemed like an eternity, we were sent outside while those women on clean-up duty replaced the straw in the bedding. The men were playing football while others cheered them on. We went to the fence to watch, and I found myself staring directly at Leo.