Chapter 20
Waiting for Elisavet to come and translate on Friday night, Cora got everything ready for her the same as before.
She refreshed her lipstick and laughed at herself because she felt as if she was preparing for a romantic date with Frank.
There! The pillar candle was lighting up the hearth in shimmering gold and the ruby glow of the wine in the wineglass shone on the black book.
She went to the window, looking out for Elisavet, eager to see her and at the same time feeling strangely nervous because she had never before had access to Frank’s unspoken past.
Despite her waiting, when the doorbell rang Cora shrieked in surprise. ‘Sorry about the scream,’ she apologised to Elisavet. ‘I was lost in my thoughts, I was. Come on in.’
Elisavet nodded gravely as if she perfectly understood.
She went into the front room and sat in Frank’s chair, casting her eyes over the notebook and the wine with what seemed like approval.
She picked up the book and stroked the leather cover in exactly the same way that Cora stroked it.
It was smooth and tactile and it seemed to invite it.
‘Okay, so,’ she said.
Okay, so, Cora thought, and she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes.
When we arrived at Camp 198, left-right!
Left-right! My personal belongings, except for my fountain pen, were taken away from me.
I felt disorientated without them. Only my memories identified who I was to myself, and some were memories I was desperate to forget.
I wondered if I’d died and was forced to relive recent events on a nightmarish loop in my brain.
I waited for my orders. I hadn’t thought for myself for a long time now.
I hadn’t had to, the Wehrmacht had done all the thinking for me.
Those in charge told me what to do, and I did it.
It didn’t matter whether I thought the orders were right or wrong, I carried them out regardless, and if ever the question: Am I going to survive this?
arose in my doubtful mind, I told myself impassively to Wait-and-See.
Wait-and-See was my motto.
Life in Island Farm Camp was as regimented as it ever had been.
The SS officers were in charge, every day had its own timetable, but the difference was that when work finished I had time to think, and what I was mostly thinking about was the yellow-skinned girl who smiled at me from the silent crowd, eye to eye, warmth to warmth, humour to humour.
For a split second she had made me real to myself again.
I went through the humiliation of writing a postcard to my family to say I was detained in a prisoner-of-war camp in Britain.
It was humiliating because in the beginning I saw war as an adventure.
I’d imagined myself returning home as a conquering hero, hoisted on the shoulders of my family and my grateful neighbours.
Oh well. For them, it would be good news to know I was still alive and that they would see me again.
They would be happy about that. At the homecoming they would open their arms to me, their eyes alight with joy.
The SS officers in charge of the camp still retained the motivating fire and zeal of the Third Reich. I wasn’t so sure. Hiding my disillusionment, I kept quiet, listening more than I talked, getting the measure of my fellow inmates in the small room we shared.
We were strangers to each other, each of us trying to work out who the other was, who we could trust. Steffan, the boy who cried at the station, was in the opposite bunk above Kurt, a shell-shocked man my own age who barely spoke. And in the bunk beneath mine was Otto Fiegel.
Otto was older than any of us, in his late forties. He had a toothbrush moustache and a stern expression. He had fought in the Great War and was called up for military service again in 1939 and worked as a military construction and building official.
He could easily be a Nazi but I noticed he too kept quiet as the SS officers talked about the inevitable victory. He neither agreed nor disagreed, but kept his own counsel.
I saw him as something of a father figure. I trusted him, too. Behind the small round glasses, Otto had seen the world at its best and at its worst.
When I despaired at our situation, Otto clapped me on the shoulder and assured me that this was a holiday camp. Take it from him, he knew all about camps because he had made an unfortunate habit of being captured, he told me ruefully.
During the Great War he had been interned in Siberia and as a lasting souvenir he wasn’t in the best of health.
The experience had taken its toll and he was given a disability pension once he was released from military service in 1921.
And twenty-three years later, here he was, back in captivity again.
Sharing my own information in turn, I told him about my extraordinary connection with the yellow-faced girl by the station.
‘Don’t start believing you can love the enemy,’ Otto reprimanded me.
He stroked his moustache and his glasses reflected the light.
He had a way of thinking carefully about his words before responding, making it difficult for me to know whether he hadn’t heard or whether he was still considering his reply in depth with his usual solemn attention.
I was lying on my narrow bunk thinking for myself, and forced to think of my family in particular, how much I longed to go home, when Otto handed me this little notebook.
‘Write down your thoughts, it will help you,’ he said.
I thanked him politely, although I didn’t see how a notebook would help me at all. ‘My thought is that we should think about escaping as soon as we can,’ I said quietly, so that if the statement caused trouble I could deny I said it.
‘Of course,’ Otto replied, as if it went without saying.
I was encouraged. ‘We are not too far from the sea and ports, and rail links – I know this because I copied a map in the railway carriage,’ I said.
‘Really? Show me,’ Otto demanded.
I admitted awkwardly. ‘I don’t have it now, unfortunately.’
‘Oh.’ Otto smoothed his moustache with his finger.
‘No matter. If you saw this map in the railway carriage, no doubt other men will have seen it too. Pity you lost it. It would have given you a role as a valuable member of the escape team. As it is, you have nothing to offer, you see, Frank. Priority will be given to those with a better chance of making it home.’
Singing started up again from another hut close by. The singing was not particularly musical, more like the united fellowship of a football crowd. ‘This singing business…’
‘It will cover the sound of digging when we start on the tunnel. Also,’ Otto added, polishing his spectacles with a faint smile, ‘it’s a good way of annoying the British. And who doesn’t want to do that?’