Roots of Evil(103)

And then the child let out a thin mewling cry, and something of the old defiance stirred. Alice was suddenly aware of a fierce protectiveness. She would force this child to survive, she would see it as a symbol of hope. Forgive me, little one, I didn’t mean it about letting you die.

But her breasts were empty and barren, and the tiny daily allowance of milk for the hut would not be anything like sufficient for such a weakling. Alice looked at Ilena, who was still seated on the edge of the bed.

‘Help me,’ she said. ‘There must be something—’

Ilena said slowly, ‘I think there is one thing you could do. Something I have seen animals do in my village. Not pleasant, but an immediate and immense form of nourishment – it would mean you could feed the child properly. My grandmother used to point it out to us when animals were born. You see how Nature always provides, she used to say.’

Alice stared at her for a moment, and then quite suddenly her own country upbringing asserted itself, and she understood. Nature provides.

After a moment she reached down between her thighs, feeling in the bloodied straw that Ilena had spread on the bed. Almost at once her hand closed about the still-warm afterbirth.

The child would live, even inside a place such as this. Alice would make very sure of it.



‘I don’t know it all,’ said Michael, seated opposite to Fran in Trixie’s kitchen, the three-quarters-empty wine bottle still between them. ‘That’s mostly because I don’t think she wanted to tell it all. But over the years I managed to fill in a good many of the gaps. One of the things I do know, though, is that Alraune was born in Auschwitz and that the birth was the result of Lucretia being raped by several Gestapo officers.’

‘Dear God,’ said Fran softly, and without thinking put out a hand to him. His hand closed about her fingers, and at once something passed between them. Like an electrical spark, thought Fran. Or like being in the shower when the water suddenly catches a glint of sunshine so that for a couple of seconds you stand inside a rainbow. She withdrew her hand, but the brightness of that moment stayed on the air.

The dishes were stacked in the sink: Fran supposed they would get washed up at some stage, but for the moment there were more important things to consider. Alraune’s photograph was on the table where they had left it and she put out a tentative hand to touch the glass covering it. ‘Michael, that is Alraune, isn’t it? I mean – there isn’t likely to be a mistake? The name written on someone else’s photo by mistake or anything like that?’

‘No. It’s unquestionably Alraune.’ He had taken an apple from the dish of fruit Fran had put on the table, and was quartering it rather abstractedly. Fran waited and after a moment he said, ‘Alraune was smuggled out of Auschwitz some time during 1943 or 1944. Lucretia fixed that, although I’m not sure how, and after the war she brought Alraune back to England. Later on Alraune got married, although it wasn’t a very happy marriage.’

Francesca glanced at him, but his eyes had the shuttered look again, so with the air of one concentrating on the nuts and bolts of the situation, she said, ‘If Alraune lived in Austria, Trixie could have found the photograph this summer. She used to go on walking holidays in the long summer holidays, and this year she went to the Austrian Tyrol.’

Trixie had in fact suggested that Fran went along with her. ‘Good fresh air and lots of brisk, hearty exercise, that’s what you want. It’ll stop you brooding and moping over that rat, Marcus,’ she had said, but Fran had still been in the stage of wanting to brood and mope, and the thought of tramping briskly and heartily all round Austria in Trixie’s undiluted company had been so daunting that she had stayed at home.

Michael said, ‘Where exactly did Trixie go, d’you know?’

‘Not in any detail. But when she got back she talked about staying for a week or two in a place called Klosterneuberg. It’s one of those tiny villages in the Vienna Woods, apparently. There’s a miniature monastery and vines are hung over the doors of inns for the wine festivals, and all the villagers get sloshed on the new harvest. Trixie got to know some of the locals while she was there – she taught modern languages so her German was fluent. She mentioned being invited to some of the local houses for supper.’

‘You think she might have come across the photograph then?’

‘I think it’s more likely that it came from a bookshop somewhere. Trixie liked foraging in second-hand bookshops – she used to look for stuff that might be useful as translation projects for some of her classes. Boxes of old books and leaflets, or even theatre programmes and playscripts – something a bit out of the normal run of textbooks. She liked old prints and maps as well – she sometimes bought those jumbled-up boxes of stuff at sales on the grounds that ninety-nine per cent would be rubbish, but that there was always that unpredictable one per cent.’

‘The wild card,’ said Michael thoughtfully.

‘Yes. Alraune’s photograph might have been tucked into one of those boxes – or perhaps in a silver frame that was being sold.’ Francesca looked at the photo again. ‘It’s a face that stays with you, isn’t it? And juxtaposed with the name—’

‘Would the name have meant anything to Trixie?’

‘It might have done. She might have known about the original book. She might even have chosen her thesis subject because of that photograph,’ said Fran. ‘Put all the elements together, and you’ve got quite a good mix. The whole psychology of what happened at Ashwood Studios – Lucretia and Alraune, and the war and Ewers’ book—’ And the reasons for Lucretia killing two men, said her mind. Oh God, no, I can’t think about that one, not yet.