The Survivors Read online

  That was a mistake.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ the big man growled.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  We spoke in German, the common language for all the mongrel East Europeans in the camp. But I swore at him in Polish.

  ‘Why do you bring a child down here, you Arschloch?’ He pushed his face closer to mine.

  ‘I was looking for someone who—’

  Alicja stepped out from behind me. I saw no fear on her face, none that she let anyone see. ‘Do you know a man in a check shirt with cracked round metal glasses? He just walked down Churchill Way.’

  I stared at her. She saw too much. She was only ten.

  But the big man’s sidekicks stared at her too. For all the wrong reasons. The one with the sulky face pushed forward to squeeze past his friend and get within touching distance, just as I started to pull her away. But the big man swung out the edge of his hand without even changing his expression. It landed effortlessly across the surly one’s throat, a sledgehammer blow that dropped the nobody to his knees. Brutal noises wheezed from his mouth. The casual violence of it shocked me.

  I tried to draw Alicja back up the path but she had better manners. She detached herself from me and held out her hand to him. Very polite. Very proper.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You are welcome, little one. What’s your name?’

  ‘Alicja.’

  ‘Well, Alicja, I’m Niks. From Latvia.’

  He extended his great bear paw and shook her hand, swallowing it up as if it were a fawn, and I saw his eyes change. Their darkness lost its harsh glazed surface and the muscles around his mouth softened one by one.

  ‘Alicja,’ he crouched down in front of her, ‘tell that Dummkopf mother of yours never to bring you down here again.’ He scowled and I knew it was meant for me. ‘Go now.’ Reluctantly he released her hand.

  Alicja stood there, smiling up at him, unaware that her smile could melt iron.

  ‘Come,’ I said sharply and marched her away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Walking into the camp laundry was like entering one of the outer circles of hell. It was unbearably hot, the air too drenched to breathe. Half-naked figures thrashed with giant paddles at bed linen immersed in massive vats of boiling water. Mangles clanked, scrubbing boards rattled. Everything was blurred by steam and sweat. And everywhere the ammonic smell of lye soap, sharp as the devil’s pitchfork in the huge shed.

  It worked like this. The camp’s maintenance was performed by the inmates who received a small payment in exchange for their work. Each one of the 3,200 DPs was treated to one clean sheet, one clean pillowcase and one clean towel every two weeks. By my reckoning, that meant an awful lot of laundry. The overseer of this mammoth task was Hanna Pamulska. She was Polish. From Lublin in the east. But she chose most of the time to speak German. She wanted to forget Poland, to put its broken heartland behind her.

  Hanna was my friend. I loved her for many reasons – one was her uncanny ability to distil sliwovica out of thin air – but most of all because she could make Alicja gasp with delight. Hanna could juggle. Anything. Not just balls. Tin cans, plates, cups, washing tongs. I once saw her juggle a bunch of chicks that had been smuggled into the camp. Her father used to work in a circus. The first time I saw her pick up six knives and send them twirling through the air in an ever-spinning arc that made Alicja’s mouth fall open with wonder, I knew I was going to love this woman.

  ‘What the devil is chasing your fucking tail today?’ she bellowed at me from across the steamy shed.

  Only then did I realise I was still running. I slowed to a walk. Alicja did the same and I heard a small impatient click of her tongue, though whether it was aimed at me or at Hanna, I didn’t know. My daughter was oddly prim about language. Strictly no swearing. Sure as hell she didn’t get it from me. I put it down to her three years in the convent of St Mary of the Blessed Sacrament when they wouldn’t let me near her.

  Hanna greeted me with a hug and dropped a kiss on Alicja’s head.

  ‘So what are you two cherubs doing here?’

  Hanna was a raw-boned woman, not far off forty. She went round in what looked like one of her own threadbare sheets with holes cut for her head and arms, and trimmed to an indecent mid-thigh length. Her arms were thick and muscular, five numbers tattooed on her forearm, her hands as big and capable as a man’s. But there was nothing masculine about the abundance of her bosom or about the curves of her hips to which the sheet was pasted with sweat. She laboured long and hard to produce spotless linen for Graufeld Camp each week and she expected her workers to do the same. I wouldn’t want to swap places with the one who failed to meet those expectations.

  I slipped an arm through hers and steered her towards the open door at the back that led into the drying yard. ‘I need to speak to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  She turned to me, sharp brown eyes brimming with curiosity as she grinned at me. Hanna loved secrets.

  The laundry yard always made me uneasy. It was enclosed by a high wooden fence, topped by a barbed wire fringe to keep out thieves, who were the curse of the camp system. Anything that was not nailed down was fair game on the black market, but Hanna protected her sheets with the ferocity of a gamekeeper protecting his chicks.

  I didn’t like them myself, the sheets. Though I would never tell Hanna that. Row after row of them, stretched out on lines like the skins of dead animals under a taut white sky. I’d seen too many dead things. That’s why Hanna’s yard and I were never going to get along.

  ‘So?’ she demanded, hands on broad hips.

  I glanced pointedly at Alicja.

  Immediately Hanna raised her voice in a shout that set the nearest sheet billowing. ‘Rafal!’

  ‘Here, Mama.’

  ‘Alicja is here to see you.’

  A frown appeared on my daughter’s face. She hated Rafal to think she cared for him, but Rafal had no such concerns. A wide smile shot across his handsome young face at the sight of her and he beckoned her over to where he was seated on the dusty earth with a chessboard spread out before him. Hanna’s son was twelve, two years older than Alicja, but he had not yet vanquished her at chess. A small smile tilted one corner of her mouth, like a sly cat tasting cream. She could not resist the challenge.

  ‘You can be white,’ Rafal called out.

  Her slight figure drifted towards the chessboard with feigned indifference. ‘I’m not sure I want to play today.’

  She was not yet as good a liar as her mother.

  ‘Isn’t Rafal working?’ I muttered to Hanna.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘He’s on strike.’

  I laughed. A sound I hadn’t expected to hear today. Rafal was Hanna’s guard dog. She paid him in cigarettes – the currency of the camp – to prowl her yard with his slingshot and a pocketful of stones. Word got around. I had seen him break the skull of a fox at twenty paces with his stones. The sheets stopped disappearing.

  ‘Why is he on strike?’

  ‘Because he wants to be off playing poker with the men. I forbid it.’

  ‘He knows better than that.’

  ‘That’s what I told the stupid bastard.’ She paused. ‘What is it?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Will you watch Alicja for me? Just for an hour. Keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Since when did that girl need watching?’

  ‘Since now.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I saw someone. A man I used to know in Warsaw. Here. On Churchill Way.’ I waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the main thoroughfare and was shocked to see it shaking. I snatched it back but too late. Hanna’s keen eyes missed nothing.

  ‘Not someone you want to know again,’ she said shrewdly.

  I gazed blindly at the sheets. ‘No,’ I said at last, ‘I need to say goodbye to him properly.’

  Hanna made no comment. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Watch Alicja for me.’

  S
he nodded.

  I turned to her and found a smile from somewhere to stick on my face. Lopsided, I admit, but still resembling a smile. ‘And a bottle, Hanna. I need a bottle.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ALICJA

  Alicja watched her mother leave. She called out that she’d be back in an hour and to stay there. Where she’d been put. Like a dog. Alicja almost shouted, ‘Why don’t you tie me to the drainpipe with a piece of string?’ The way old Novak tied his fleabag to the metal bed leg, even though dogs were not allowed in camp.

  She knew where Mama had gone. After that man, the one with the eyes. He hid them behind spectacles, and so he should, because they didn’t look like eyes. They looked like the points of knives, silver and sharp, so sharp they could cut you. Mama had dropped to her knee so fast when she saw him that Alicja thought she had been shot. Alicja had made no sound, just stood over her mother, shielding her from another bullet.

  Now Mama had gone off after him again, into the dangerous end of the camp. Why?

  Was he her lover in Warsaw?

  Alicja had learned about lovers from the girls at the convent. They said that a lover makes you go hot and trembling and you want to be with them all the time. When she ran with her mother at the back of the barrack huts, Mama was hot and trembling. Her fingers had been like points of fire on Alicja’s wrist, and now . . .

  She has abandoned me. She has gone to be with him. It was the convent all over again. But this time it was a laundry she was abandoned in.

  ‘Hah!’

  Alicja blinked. Rafal had captured her rook. She nodded quietly to herself as if she’d intended that move and his smile of triumph changed to a downturn of worry.

  ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What are you planning?’

  She moved her queen’s knight, threatening his bishop. The pieces felt solid and safe in her hand and brought her mind back into the yard. Rafal had carved them himself and made the board. He was clever with his hands but not with his brain. He moved a pawn – a pawn! – out of harm’s way but failed to see the two-pronged attack coming for his queen.

  His baffled eyes searched hers for some clue to the point of danger.

  ‘Rafal, do you have anything to eat?’

  His dark eyes with their thick sooty lashes brightened. ‘I can get you something.’

  Three pigeons were strutting on the roof ridge of the laundry. Quietly Rafal rose to his feet and extracted a slingshot from his back pocket. He looked at Alicja. She nodded. Standing there, he made her think of David in the Bible. The pigeon wasn’t Goliath but it came tumbling down the corrugated roof with a noisy clatter when Rafal released the stone. He fetched the bird and laid it out on the ground next to the board. Its head was bloodied but its ash-grey breast feathers were unsullied and felt like petals under her fingertips.

  ‘I’ll pluck it and cook it on a fire for you,’ Rafal offered. He hitched his slingshot back in his pocket with a small pat of satisfaction. It had been a good clean shot. ‘If you tell me one of your stories, Alicja.’

  She nodded agreement to the deal.

  ‘A forest one,’ he added, his hand on the bird.

  Alicja let her eyelids drift closed. She could see better that way.

  We were in a forest. I remember that much.

  I was so tired I couldn’t walk straight. Branches and twigs elbowed my face and the world turned yellow because the wind was snatching leaves from the trees and throwing them at us. Does it hurt? When a leaf is torn off a tree. Do you think it feels like having your fingernails pulled out?

  The Nazis used to do that. In Warsaw. I know this because I saw my teacher’s hands. She had a pretty face but her fingers were ugly. Like Mama’s. Pincers, that’s what they used. The thought of it made my own fingers ache and I pushed them into my pocket but it didn’t help. I could hear the trees whispering, nudging each other, the wind skittering through the branches.

  Mama was there. Dimly I knew she was the grey shape in the ragged dress ahead of me as we walked, but all the time it drifted further away. I called to her but she didn’t hear. I ran to her but she vanished. I started to cry and was ashamed.

  ‘Alicja?’ Mama asked.

  I was flat on the forest floor, a worm among the yellow leaves. I hadn’t called out, I hadn’t run, I didn’t cry. Damp moss lay under my cheek. How did that happen?

  ‘Alicja, my darling.’ Mama’s face floated close like one of the leaves from the tree. I could see a vein pulsing at her temple. ‘Are you all right?’

  I closed my eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you get up? We can’t stop here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  My feet hurt. My stomach hurt. I could feel snakes writhing inside it. Starvation, Mama called it.

  ‘We must find something to eat,’ she urged and took hold of my arm. ‘Come, Liebling.’

  It was one of our German days. When she would speak only German to me. The heavy words were crushing my tongue.

  ‘Ich komme,’ I said. ‘I’m coming.’

  But the words stuck in my mouth and my eyes closed. I dreamed I was walking.

  Alicja opened her eyes. They prickled with tears but she would rather die than cry in front of Rafal. His clever hands were busy plucking the bird, its feathers soft as snow.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ he told her.

  ‘That’s all there is.’

  ‘There must be more.’

  ‘No. That’s the end. Now cook me the pigeon.’

  Reluctantly he took the bird, dangling it by its red spidery feet, and left. Alicja closed her eyes. It wasn’t the end of the story.

  I woke. I was wrapped in a blanket of forest leaves, my head warm on Mama’s lap, but she smelled different. Not of the forest. I breathed in the scent of her skirt and found the stink of a farmyard in my nostrils. Of cattle. Of straw. Like the barns we used to sleep in. But no more. Mama said it was too dangerous to risk going into barns now we were in Germany. The German farmers didn’t want us.

  Night had crept into the forest. The darkness was solid but it was not silent. It shivered with sounds that made me bury my face in Mama’s skirt. Softly she stroked my head, warm and comforting, picking leaves and knots from my long unwashed hair.

  ‘Alicja, sit up. I have food for you.’

  I didn’t move. I knew she was lying. Sometimes she did that to get me on my feet. But I turned my head. I couldn’t stop myself, saliva drowning my mouth. And a small knob of black bread brushed against my lips. I devoured it before it could become a dream. Then more. Tiny piece by tiny piece. Mama fed it to me in the darkness the way I’d once fed a young bird under a hedge. The young crow had a broken leg but Mama said it would mend if I could keep it alive.

  Would I mend?

  ‘Sit up, Alicja.’

  I sat up and she placed the rim of a stoneware jar against my lips.

  ‘Drink.’

  I drank. Greedy and disgusting. It was milk, still warm from the cow, like silk on my parched throat. I was trembling with happiness, but I forced my milky lips away from the rim.

  ‘Mama, you must drink too.’

  It’s what we’d agreed. Half each. Even if it was only a single berry.

  ‘No. I’ve had mine. Milk and bread. This is all for you.’

  I wanted so badly to believe the lie that I drank all the milk. She pulled me on to her lap, as if I was a baby, feeding me again with her fingers, skimpy morsels of cheese this time. I cried. I hated the tears that she brushed away with kisses and I tucked my head in the hollow under her jaw where I could hear her pulse beating. But as I snuggled close against her, my bones moulding perfectly with hers, I knew it was not a farm I could smell on her. It was a farmer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DAVIDE BOUVIER

  Davide Bouvier stood at the window of his office in the Administration block. He kept it open at all times to draw in fresh air. His lungs were bad. Not that he was complaining. Far from it. He knew he was lucky to come away with nothing worse than shoddy lungs aft
er two years of the tunnels at Peenemünde and Mittelwerk. Most came away in sacks.

  His gaze scoured the open square in front of the building, where meetings were often held and where Colonel Whitmore liked to address the various committees from his favourite perch on top of his jeep’s bonnet. Right now there was just a small male-voice choir practising Czech folk songs. The sound was pleasant and gave Davide a stab of homesickness for his own choir in Oradour-sur-Glane in western France. Not that there’d be any more singing in the church there. Not now.

  He turned away sharply but the pain was still there. Like an ice pick in his back. He dealt with it the only way he knew how – by working all hours of the day and night as an administrative assistant to Colonel Whitmore. The amount of paperwork involved in keeping this camp afloat could easily sink one of the Royal Navy’s battleships. He studied the list of inmate questionnaires in his hand, cursed Captain Jeavons for his absence, and was about to pick up the telephone to track him down when he caught sight of a figure crossing the square. He put down his papers and watched her.

  She was slender, but taller than average. She carried herself upright, as if she were wearing armour plate that wouldn’t bend. Her stride was long and determined, and there was something intimidating about her, even though he knew she was quietly spoken. Something in her eyes. Something that made him tread carefully even when she laughed. She wasn’t laughing now. Her expression was stern, inward looking and focused. She must have been good at her job before the war, he’d bet his last franc on that. She had worked on building a métro in Warsaw, an engineer, creating something out of nothing. That appealed to him. A maker of things. Whereas he had been a destroyer of things.

  He watched her coming directly towards the Administration block, but just before she reached the entrance she paused. Shook herself, the way a dog shakes itself after a bath. Her limbs loosened, her jaw relaxed and a smile drew itself across her face. Davide allowed himself a chuckle. She was putting on the charm. She wanted something.