Roots of Evil(102)

‘Terrible,’ Ilena said. ‘Inhuman. When the history of these years is written, it will be Auschwitz that will bear most of the shame.’

Alice stored the few belongings she had been able to bring with her beneath the narrow bed in the hut which was already becoming familiar. This, then, was her home. No worse than Buchenwald, really. I shall bear it.

Her bed was directly beneath one of the windows, and each night the outside shutters were firmly fastened, keeping the prisoners in, and keeping the world out.

But the shutters over Alice’s bed had a chink on to that lost world. There was a small split at one corner where the wood had warped slightly, and through this Alice could see a little part of the night sky. She could watch the moon wane and become a thin paring of silver, and she could see it swell and grow plump again. Sometimes its light seemed to be unrolling a silver path along which you could walk freely, if only you knew how to reach it. One day I will reach it though.

As the weeks slid past, and as she watched the moon’s inexorable path, she could think how odd it was that even in this enlightened century, and even in this soulless place, the moon and its phases still ruled a female’s blood. And that there were times when it did not rule it…How many days was it now since that night with Dreyer and the other men? It was difficult to keep track of time in here. But how many weeks had it been?

Two moons went by with no response from her body. Many explanations for that, though. The poor diet in here, the desolation. Oh, please let it just be that. And keep remembering what Dreyer said to those men. ‘Try not to impregnate the bitch,’ he had said, his eye on fire from the stove’s light. ‘Try not to impregnate…’

The third moon brought a bout of sickness – several bouts of sickness, and always in the early morning – and also a perceptible swelling and tenderness of her breasts.

‘We’ll get you through it, Lu,’ said Ilena, when Alice finally asked for help. ‘I told you, we look after our own in here.’

‘The doctors—’

But Ilena made a face expressive of disgust and loathing at mention of Auschwitz’s doctors. Everyone knew about them, she said derisively, and everyone gave them as wide a berth as possible. You did not have to be in here very long to learn about the infirmary block, and the experiments that were carried out there. The sterilization of men and women. The endurance tests where prisoners were force-fed with salt water and immersed in ice-barrels for six and eight hours at a stretch, in order to simulate conditions that German pilots might have to face in battle.

Alice asked hesitantly whether someone – the guards? – might not insist that she receive some kind of medical care. Would they perhaps even enforce an abortion? You could not hide a pregnancy, said Alice, and Ilena laughed.

‘We can hide anything if we plan it carefully enough. But we do not need to do so. No one will care if you are pregnant. Children are born here sometimes.’

Alice thought she would sooner trust Ilena’s half-knowledge of medicine, and the collective knowledge of the other women, several of whom had had children of their own, than trust the doctors in Auschwitz’s infirmary blocks. She thought, and hated herself for thinking, that hampered by pregnancy and later by a baby she would have no chance of escaping. But this war could not go on for ever. Auschwitz could not go on for ever. Yes, but what if the Nazis won the war? What then?

The birth, when it came, came at night and was far worse than she had expected. The months of unremitting toil in the camp, and the sparse, poor-quality food, had taken their toll. There were hours and hours of grinding agony, and alongside the physical pain was the mental anguish of the child’s conception. I will never be able to look on this child with any love, thought Alice.

And even if it survives, it will never forgive me for bringing it into this dark joyless place.

Some of the women had managed to secrete a little store of things for the birth. A few teaspoons of brandy, stolen from one of the guards; cotton wool and antiseptic taken from the infirmary during a cleaning session; a bundle of clean cotton rags. Deborah had been born in a Viennese nursing home with every possible luxury to hand, and a distinguished surgeon in attendance. Conrad had shipped in flowers by the cartload and champagne by the bucket, and later he had written that marvellous music for his daughter – Deborah’s Song…And now Deborah’s half-brother or sister would be born on a pile of straw and rags, with no one except a clutch of women in attendance. But this child had been conceived in fear and pain, and now it was being born into a hating world.

When finally it lay between her thighs, Alice could feel, even before she saw it, that it was small and shrivelled.

‘But alive,’ said Ilena. ‘Breathing well.’

They wrapped the child in a square of blanket, and then Alice felt the small flailing hand against her breasts, and saw the little mouth opening and closing like a bird’s beak.

‘You have hardly any milk,’ said Ilena presently.

‘That was to be expected.’ To Alice’s horror the thought formed that if the child were to die she would be free to plan an escape, and there would be nothing to remind her of what Leo Dreyer and those others had done to her that night. There was a brief and rather terrible glimpse of herself watching the child grow up, searching its features in the years ahead, praying that it would not resemble the features of the man who had stood by the stove’s glow, watching her being raped. And then had raped her himself…