Chapter 33
When Elisavet came to translate on Friday evening, her skin was flushed from the evening sunshine and it seemed to Cora as if she was slowly coming to life, thawing out.
Elisavet sat down in Frank’s chair and flicked through the notebook pensively. ‘I notice that Frank doesn’t say you’re the enemy,’ she said. ‘It’s strange, don’t you think?’
Cora hadn’t given it a moment’s thought, until now. ‘You’re right.’
She played with the string of pearls around her neck and realised how nice it was to be sharing his story with Elisavet.
She was close enough to be comfortable with, but enough of a stranger not to take anything to heart.
She said, ‘You know, it means a great deal to me that you’re giving me your time like this and I—’
Elisavet interrupted her, flicking her hand. ‘Please. It’s an interesting story.’ She scooped her hair away from her face. ‘Actually, I have started my own journal.’
‘Good idea,’ Cora said warmly. ‘It’s easy to forget things if you don’t put them down.’
Elisavet nodded. ‘It’s for my family to know what it’s like for me. It’s important. Like Frank, no? He kept this book for you.’
‘Yes.’ Maybe he did keep it for her. It would be nice to think so.
Elisavet took a sip of wine and put the glass down. ‘So. If you’re ready, I will start.’
The main headache was disposing of the orange clay that they were digging out of the tunnel.
I had come to the limit of how much I could dig into the vegetable garden. We had tried flushing it away, but the drains couldn’t cope and smelled bad when they flooded.
The boredom of the camp was making us intensely creative.
Clay was the one thing that we had a surplus of and in a burst of divergent thinking we put in a request for modelling clay, to boost creativity and keep ourselves occupied, and to my surprise the request was granted and we blended it with our own clay, which we’d dug out ourselves, as a new way of getting rid of it.
The guards were pleased at the enthusiasm for pottery, and it was a revelation how many items you could make from a small amount of clay.
Soon the hut was overrun with homemade ashtrays, figures, and trinket boxes.
I, with still not a word from home, decided to sculpt my family, to make a diorama to remind me of them.
I started with my younger sister, giving her a big round head, a small round body, skinny legs and snaking ringlets for hair.
The result was a crude figure, something primitive dug up by an archaeologist. I understood that archaeologists always liked to attribute meaning and importance to their finds, but maybe these ancient civilisations were just bored and trying to get rid of an abundance of clay.
And no one had a head that was perfectly round, not even my sister.
It looked cartoonish and ridiculous. I decided I could do better than that, do her justice.
I rolled the clay head between my palms, warming it until it was malleable again, shaped it, thinking of her. But it was painful to think of her because I missed her. I missed her innocence. I’d never thought it was something that you could long for, that you could yearn for the sweetness of life.
‘Can I tell you something?’ she would ask me, looking up at me with serious eyes.
‘Of course.’
I hadn’t always said of course. More likely I would say, not just now, can’t you see I’m busy? When I saw her again, I would give her all the time she wanted.
It took me a while to shape her head, and then I tried again with her body.
Her back was straight and her tummy jutted a little.
Or maybe, with rations, it didn’t any more.
Her clay legs were too spindly to hold her and I laid the figure flat.
Her face was a blank. With a matchstick, I poked two holes for her eyes, but the two grotesque empty sockets made me shudder.
I apologised to the effigy and smoothed over the holes again. I felt the features of my own face, pressing my fingers into the protective bone indent in which my eyeballs sat.
I had another attempt at her eyes, first of all making the sockets and then little balls for eyes. But eyes didn’t bulge out like that, not in life, anyway, because they were half hidden behind eyelids. So now. Eyelids.
There was a lot of detail in the making of a human, I reflected as I pressed the sliver of clay eyelids over her clay eyes.
I was pleased with the result. It didn’t look much like her still, but it was her, that’s what mattered.
I pinched the clay to give her a nose, and poked two holes for nostrils.
She had neat little nostrils, I remembered fondly.
Who to make next?
I wanted to replicate my father but I couldn’t visualise what he looked like. It frightened me, the sudden blank in my memory. I shut my eyes. Come on, you can do it.
I tried to put my father into words, talk myself through it as if I was describing him to an outsider.
Tall, with a long, studious face. That wasn’t a description though.
How could a face look studious? He only looked studious because of his spectacles, which told the world he did desk work, that he looked at the finer points of things in close-up detail, meticulously.
Not like me. I had no need for spectacles myself.
My eyes were used to searching for the enemy and retaliating, or ducking as enemy planes darkened the brightness and dropped bombs, the sudden clear realisation that despite my proximity to my comrades, I was totally alone and close to God and hopefully my ascension to heaven would be swift.
It was a profoundly pious prayer, beguiling at the time. All I had to do was climb out of the trench, hold out my arms and wait for the bullets. Be done with it. Relax, it’s nearly over now. I’m in His hands.
But each time I’d taken responsibility for myself again and kept on living, with the nauseous feeling that I’d made the wrong choice because it wasn’t over at all, it was still going on and endlessly on.
I rolled the clay thoughtfully between my palms. My father had narrow shoulders and an apologetic stoop.
The stoop was moulded by his desk work, his spine helpfully curving to bow his head and hold it closer to his papers.
My mother had tried for a little while to correct the curvature of his spine with strapping, to pull his shoulders back.
And every night she would unstrap him when he came home from work and I would see the vicious red welts cleaved into my father’s soft skin.
I tried to remember my father’s eyes. A fresh panic. I didn’t know what colour they were. How could that be? The realisation saddened and frustrated me. Had I never, in all those years, looked into my father’s eyes?
Those two circular glass lenses of his spectacles reflected everything, but the man himself remained hidden behind them. I felt a sudden panic as if my father had ceased to exist and I squeezed my eyes shut and willed him back into being. Show yourself!
And then I saw his smile, his gentle smile. I smiled back at him.
Yes. That’s what I remembered.
I was still working on the clay model of my father when the two SS officers came into the room.
I stood, saluted and sat down again. I’d very nearly captured it using the curve of my thumbnail.
It wasn’t a grin, it wasn’t a beam, it was the gentle smile of a man who finds the world to be a good and decent place.
The officer waved a card and announced, ‘You are all ordered to sign this.’
I said, without looking up, ‘What is it?’
‘Hitler’s birthday card. It is a new initiative in order to cheer up the Fuhrer. We are sending him uplifting messages for his birthday in April.’
I had continued writing to my parents without any expectation of a reply.
I hadn’t received any news of them at all.
It felt like an act of faith to keep sending them mail.
But I didn’t feel obliged to send Hitler anything.
Our glorious leader had got us into this and I didn’t feel the slightest bit inclined to send him a birthday greeting.
The officer handed me the template for the birthday card.
My Fuhrer,
On the glorious occasion of your fifty-sixth birthday, we send our personal greetings and hearty regards from your comrades in Hut 9, Camp 198. We are not downcast at our situation, because we continue to have faith in your power to lead us into victory with our heads held high.
May you continue to wield power and strength against our foes, until the realisation of the glory of our new empire, the Thousand-Year Reich. Our hearts believe in you!
Wishing you health and strength in your fifty-sixth year.
Long live the Fuhrer!
Heil Hitler!
‘Leave it there,’ I said, distracted. I had heard Hitler’s broadcast on German radio that certain victory had unquestionably been forecast by astrologers.
All this talk of glory – our leader, I thought, had lost his mind.
‘You can add a donation, if you like. Birthday money. A suggested a gift of RM327,230.’
I grinned – it was ludicrous, a joke. ‘You think sending the Fuhrer birthday money is going to cheer him up him now?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ The officer’s tone of voice was flat.
I shrugged. ‘Never mind. Forget it.’ There was always something. You didn’t get a moment’s peace in this place and I wanted to get back to making my clay family.
A hot voice in my ear, harsher now. ‘You refuse to sign it?’
I flinched. ‘No, I’m just saying – give me a minute, will you? I’m doing something.’
‘Not any more.’ Bam! The officer’s fist flattened my clay father, wiped the smile of his face, the violence making the bench jump.
I leapt to my feet and responded with a ferocity that exploded from deep inside me. I aimed a punch, saw myself doing it.
My act of aggression was short-lived. Suddenly I was knocked to the floor and both officers were on me, kicking it out of me, every blow of the heavy boots delivering a sickening pain to my guts, my kidneys, my ribs.
A final kick to the head sent sparks of light flashing behind my eyes and when they stopped kicking, one of them grabbed my hand and crushed it until the knuckles cracked, stuck a pen in it, signed my name.
I lay on the floor staring up at the rough brown underside of the bench through slits in my swelling eyelids.
Couldn’t make it out. Ow ow ow. My skull felt as if it had cracked open, spilling my thoughts, leaving them exposed, pain everywhere.
‘Papa—’ I said in a tight, frightened voice.
My thoughts were mashed up. I had the wild sensation that they’d crushed my father in front of me.
Otto crouched over me. ‘Hey. Let me help you up.’ He put his arms around me, helped me onto a chair.
I whimpered in pain and looked at the bench in dismay. My clay father and sister, flattened. They’ve broken me. I was sipping in air, ribs hurting as I breathed. There’s nothing good in this place, I thought. I wanted… I wanted…
What I wanted was elusive, like the fading of a happy dream.
The sharpness of the pain was subsiding into a throb, my head pulsing, each individual ache giving precedence to the loudest and most persistent from my ribs. I looked at the time, held onto the table and got to my feet unsteadily.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have to go home. Where’s my coat?’ And with this desperate thought the curtain came down, the room went black and I passed out.