Chapter Twenty-Two Aletta #2
Chloe took her hand. ‘This is a place of death, Aletta. If you get the chance to eat one more piece of bread or feel the warmth of a coat, you take it, you don’t worry about upsetting someone else. We all have to do what we have to do to stay alive.’
Aletta blinked away tears, wishing she was stronger, that she didn’t have such a conscience.
‘You’re teaching their children, Aletta, and these women want to find a way to thank you,’ Chloe said.
‘So let them. Besides, have you seen what the new women are doing? They get someone to hold their things when they arrive, and they hold them and exchange them when they come out of the delousing chamber. It’s why some of them have more than just the striped dress. ’
She knew Chloe was right, but it still didn’t ease her conscience.
‘Just be careful, going down there,’ Chloe said.
‘Why?’ Aletta asked.
‘Just be careful. There’s nowhere in this place that isn’t dangerous. Sometimes . . .’
‘Sometimes what?’
‘It’s nothing. I’m just nervous of going anywhere other than my bunk or the factory in this place. I’ve seen too many women be sent away and not come back, that’s all. Looking at some of the words I’ve written each day makes me nervous.’
Aletta shivered again, this time from fear rather than cold, but she knew that if she wanted to survive the winter, if she wanted her mother to survive and now Chloe too, she would have to do this.
By the time the snow settled, and the temperatures plummeted for days in a row, there would be no chance of survival without something better to cover their skinny, malnourished bodies.
But that would have to wait for another day, because everyone was back from work now, slowly making their way outside to stretch their legs after their meal.
If she hadn’t known better, she’d have expected all the women to want to stay inside, out of the cold, but the hut filled with bunks had a pungent smell that was almost impossible to stand.
The smell of so many unwashed bodies, of mattresses that were beyond saving, the overcrowding, the relentless bite of lice – it was not somewhere anyone usually wanted to linger.
Even if outside was as cold and unrelenting as she imagined it might be in Siberia, it was still preferable to those cabins.
Aletta watched Chloe as a steady line of women dropped by to call on her.
It seemed that her new friend was becoming even more in demand for her collection of writings, and it made Aletta anxious that one of the guards might discover her act of defiance, that Chloe could be hauled away and punished for what she’d done.
But she was also heartened to see how many women were smuggling stolen paper to her, and the protective huddles they made around her so that no one could see her writing.
She was recording little snippets of love and life from these women, writing in tiny words to make use of every inch of paper, and Aletta could see that it meant the world to them, even if it did seem to take a toll on Chloe.
When the women finally dispersed, Aletta wandered over.
She was so tired she wanted nothing more than to collapse and sleep, but the idea of lying down on the lice-infested mattress inside made her shudder.
It was bad enough they had to sit on them to eat their dinner, if that was what it could even be called.
‘Soon you’re going to find it hard to hide all those papers on you,’ Aletta said as she approached, sitting down beside Chloe. ‘I think you should give some of them to me, to hide for you.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. I can’t let you risk that.’
‘I will hide some, and my mother has already told me she wants to take some, too,’ Aletta said. ‘You don’t need to do this alone, especially now that we have more clothes to wear. Look at all the pockets I have.’
Chloe didn’t look convinced, but she eventually nodded.
‘I’m certain there are many women who’d love to help you if you needed them to, Chloe. You’re more widely loved than I think you realise. We’re not the only ones who appreciate you.’
‘Thank you. I don’t think you know how much that means to me.’
Aletta sensed Chloe was going to say something else, so she waited, her hands folded in her lap and her knees drawn up. Her bottom hurt sitting on the dirt as she’d already lost a significant amount of weight, and it felt like she barely had any padding over her bones anymore.
‘Some days there are women who die at the hands of a vicious guard or dog, other times they die from exhaustion or starvation, or even typhoid,’ Chloe said.
‘But I always think that at least I have something of theirs, the ones who have shared with me. I tell myself that when they disappear, at least I have something, but you’re right, I can’t keep hiding them on my own. There are so many papers now.’
Aletta blinked back at her, looking at the papers as Chloe sorted through them, at recipes that made her stomach growl in hunger, at the names printed in the corners.
After a long moment of silence, she spoke. ‘Chloe, how did you end up here?’ Aletta asked, her voice soft. ‘I know no one likes talking about how, but—’
‘You can ask me,’ she said. ‘I don’t like sharing my story, but I’ve told your mother, and I’ll tell you.’
Aletta watched her face, not wanting to make her uncomfortable and wondering whether she should have asked the question in the first place.
‘Sometimes it feels like not talking about home keeps the people I love safe, but I know that’s not true,’ said Chloe.
‘That makes perfect sense to me.’ And it did. Aletta imagined that everyone in the camp would understand in their own way – they all had someone who’d been taken from them or someone they’d been forced to leave behind. ‘You don’t have to tell me, truly you don’t.’
Aletta stretched her legs out, sore from the hours of standing in the factory, surprised when Chloe reached out and touched her legs.
‘Do you want me to massage them for a bit?’ Chloe asked.
Aletta groaned as she started to press into her calf muscles with her fingers. ‘I’ll do yours after.’
‘You know, I was too scared to get close to anyone before you and your mother arrived,’ Chloe said as she kneaded Aletta’s lower legs.
‘I just, I suppose I wanted to keep to myself and not get close to anyone. I couldn’t stand the thought of getting to know someone and then losing them.
Facing each day was hard enough without grieving anyone else, and staying quieter felt easier than talking, which is why I was happier to write, but not to share myself with anyone. ’
Aletta nodded. ‘I understand. It’s the same reason I don’t like talking about Harry. I just want to keep the memory of him in my mind, like if I hold him there and don’t tell anyone what happened, it won’t be true.’
‘He was the man you were hiding? Your mother told me a little of what happened.’
Aletta nodded, closing her eyes for a second and squeezing away the memory of her last moments with him, still hearing the way he’d screamed her name as she was dragged away. She didn’t want to keep remembering him like that, but the nicer memories were becoming harder and harder to hold on to.
‘You’re the only member of your family in here? In any of the camps?’ Aletta asked.
‘As far as I know. I gave myself up.’
Aletta saw the pain cross Chloe’s face. ‘Your parents?’
‘My father is still alive, but after my mother died he just . . .’ Chloe’s fingers stalled against Aletta’s skin.
‘I suppose part of him died that day, too. He just lost himself I suppose, like he’d retreated into a shell and couldn’t find his way out.
Even when I was arrested, he just stood there and watched. ’
Aletta sensed the anger burning inside of Chloe as she spoke. ‘Do you blame him?’
‘For me ending up in here?’ Chloe asked.
‘No, it wasn’t his fault, but I keep thinking that it should have been him standing up to protect our family, sacrificing himself to keep us safe, but it’s like he was numb to everything going on around us.
I thought it might have been enough to make him fight for us, for me, but even with the SS standing in our apartment . . .’
Aletta shifted so that she could massage Chloe’s legs instead, knowing they would be every inch as sore as hers, wanting her to know she was happy to sit and listen, that she wouldn’t judge her.
Chloe’s legs were thinner than hers though, her bones prominent, and Aletta knew that it would only be so long before she lost the last of her body fat, too.
She was convinced that the green floating in their soup each night wasn’t even a vegetable but grass, picked and thrown into the pot.
‘Did you take the fall for someone else?’ Aletta asked, sensing that there was more to Chloe’s story. ‘Is that why you thought your father might have spared you? That’s what you mean when you say you gave yourself up?’
She watched as Chloe tipped her head back and closed her eyes, and when she finally met her gaze again, they were filled with unshed tears.
‘I pretended I was the Resistance member instead of my brother, when they came looking for him,’ she whispered. ‘I gave myself up so that my brothers could be safe. That’s why I’m here.’