Our Darkest Night

by Jennifer Robson

  “We’ve got half an hour before lights-out,” Stella translated. “There’s a bucket at each end of the barracks for anyone who needs to use the latrines during the night.”

  “What did that woman say to everyone at appell?” Nina asked. “I couldn’t keep up.”

  “She said she is Oberaufseherin Klap. I think that means she’s in charge of the others? She said we’re here to work, and if we don’t work we’re useless to her. We need to earn our keep. We need to meet our quotas and behave or we’ll be punished.”

  “Did she say what sort of work we’ll be doing?” another woman asked.

  Stella shook her head. “Only that appell tomorrow morning is at five o’clock and work starts at seven.”

  They found space on an upper bunk without much trouble, and soon they were settled under the blanket, which smelled of nothing worse than muddy sheep, and when the lights went out it wasn’t quite so hard to face the dark.

  THE CAMP, THEY soon discovered, was a small armaments factory, set up only weeks before to produce submachine guns. Nina had hoped that she and Stella would be allowed to work together, but instead she was sent to the kitchens and Stella to the foundry. Alarming images of molten metal and blazing furnaces came to mind, but there was nothing she could do without marking herself as a troublemaker; no protest she could raise that would make the slightest difference. She watched her friend march away, across the muddied appell ground to a shambling row of brick-built workshops, and turned to follow her own group to the kitchens, which were just next door to their barracks.

  She and the other women were forbidden from doing any of the cooking, which was the sole province of local laborers, all of them men, all of them too old for military service. Instead she was set to washing dishes, so many that Sisyphus would have declined to take her place at the sinks, and her only tools for the task were a threadbare rag, a pail of sand, and a jar of caustic lye soap.

  By midday her hands were raw from the paste of sand and soap that she used for the dirtiest of the pots and pans. By evening her fingertips were cracking and bleeding and her forearms itched unbearably from the hours of immersion in greasy water.

  Stella returned from the foundry even more miserable, her hands and arms marked by countless small burns, like bee stings but a hundred times more painful.

  “I was filling molds with metal,” she explained. “The men pour the molten metal into these smaller containers that look a bit like pitchers, only without any handles, and we have to pick them up with tongs and fill the molds for the gun parts.”

  “With your bare hands?” Nina asked, swallowing her own complaints about soap and sand and greasy water.

  “The tongs aren’t hot. And they gave us leather aprons so our uniforms wouldn’t catch on fire. These are from all the sparks.” Stella held out her arms, looking them over, tracing her fingers over the myriad burns.

  “Can’t they find men to do that work?”

  Stella shrugged. “There are plenty of men in the foundry, but they’re busy with the furnaces. And it’s not so bad, you know. We’re inside. We’re not up to our knees in a muddy field. It could be worse.”

  She was right, of course. So why could Nina not stop herself from hoping their lives could become just a fraction more bearable?

  The guards ate well, their meals hearty and plentiful, and some days the smell of the forbidden dishes was almost enough to make her swoon. Fresh bread, meaty stews, and even fruit-laden dumplings emerged from the kitchens and were borne upstairs to the guards’ dining room, and all that ever returned were empty plates, for the scraps were fed to the guards’ dogs.

  One of the other kitchen workers, a Polish girl not much older than Stella, was caught reaching for a carrot top that had fallen near the patch of floor she’d been scrubbing. She’d only reached for it, hadn’t even laid a fingertip upon the forbidden scrap of food, but that had been enough. The oberaufseherin had been summoned, and she’d laid the girl’s hands raw with a leather crop, and then she’d watched and smiled as the girl had been forced to mop her own blood from the floor.

  It was torture to be surrounded by food, day after day, and be given so little to eat. A cup of tea for breakfast and another at bedtime, then a few hundred grams of stale bread for supper, never quite softened by its accompanying scrape of dismal jam.

  Their main meal, taken at midday, was nothing more than soup. Nina saw it being prepared each day, and she knew that it was made of water, vegetable peelings, and a rare handful of slimy turnip greens. Whatever scraps the dogs wouldn’t touch, and would otherwise be thrown out, went into the soup pot, and not so much as a gram of salt was added, not ever, to season it. Often the peelings were thick with dirt, and on those days the soup tasted of mud.

  She and the other women were starving, their cheekbones and noses rising into high relief, their bodies reduced to knobbled elbows and protruding shoulder blades and skeletal hands. Centimeter by centimeter, gram by gram, they were being erased. And each day was harder to endure than the one before.

  Yet every day, every hour, Nina forced herself to hope. She made herself believe that she would survive. For herself, for Lucia, and for Stella. And since hope was fragile and needed nourishment to grow and bloom, Nina tended its seedlings the only way she could: with memories of Mezzo Ciel, shared in whispers with Stella before they fell asleep each night.

  She described Bello and his moods, Selva and her loyalty, the green gardens and golden fields of the farm, the clear, cold waters of the rushing stream, and the dappled shade of the olive tree by the kitchen door. And she told her friend about Nico and his family, and baby Lucia, too, but only the good parts. Only the sunny days.

  Stella, in turn, talked of her childhood in Livorno. Of her parents who had doted upon her, for, like Nina, she had been an only child, and their family had been small. They had lived in a tiny flat above the print works where her parents’ guides were made.

  “I can still hear the presses sometimes. When I’m half-asleep. Whirring and thumping. And the smell of the ink, too.”

  “Tell me about your parents. What are their names?” Nina was careful to speak of them in the present tense.

  “My father is Andrea Donati. My mother is Caterina del Mare. Her hair is fair like mine. Papà calls her his little star because she shines so brightly. That’s why they called me Stella.”

  “What of your grandparents? Your other family?”

  “They died when I was little. My father had a brother, but he moved away a long time ago. To France. I remember visiting him once. He had a house in a place not far from Paris. It was called Colombes, and his house was on the rue des Cerisiers. The street of the cherry trees. Only he didn’t have a cherry tree in his garden. I was annoyed when there weren’t any cherries to eat, but the grown-ups just laughed and told me I was being silly. ‘It’s only June,’ Mamma said. ‘It’s too early for cherries.’ Funny how I remember that now, but I can’t remember her voice.”

  They were silent for a while, both of them listening for the lost voices of their loved ones.

  “We didn’t have any cherry trees in Mezzo Ciel,” Nina said once she was sure she wouldn’t cry. “At least, not at the farm. But there were apricots and peaches and apples and pears. Far more than we could eat at once, so Rosa bottled them and dried them and we ate them all winter long.”

  “Was it nice there? On the farm?”

  “It was. I . . . I think you should come home with me. After the war. You’re of an age with Agnese.” And then, when Stella didn’t answer, she rushed to reassure her. “Everyone will love you. I know they will. And when the summer comes we’ll go to the seaside and eat gelato and let the freckles sprout on our noses. I promised the girls I would take them to the seaside after the war.”

  “We used to go to Sottomarina on holiday,” Stella whispered. “Did you ever have holidays there?”

  “A few times, but my parents liked the Lido best. It was closer to home. And the water was always so warm.�
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  “I don’t remember what it’s like to swim in the sea. Not really. I was eight when the laws were changed.”

  “After the war we’ll be able to go wherever we want,” Nina promised.

  “We will. We’ll go to Paris and I’ll teach you how to speak French, and we’ll use every one of the phrases from my parents’ guidebook. ‘Can you recommend a good dentist? Does this hotel have a laundry service? What time is the next train to Biarritz?’”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  “I won’t use any of the words I’ve learned here, though. I’ll never say them again. I won’t even think them. No oberaufseherin or appell. No schnell or steh auf or blöde sau. And no strings of numbers instead of my name. None of those words. Never again, not ever, after this war is done.”

  Chapter 29

  The gray days blurred together, and winter settled deep upon the valley, and Nina could no longer remember what it was like to feel the sun on her face. November—gone. December—gone. A new year begun, and still the war raged on.

  Her days were long and lonely, for the women in the kitchens were forbidden to talk to one another, and when the men gave her an order she was allowed only to nod or say “ja.” She worked in silence, her mind occupied by memories of happy days and comfortable nights and the smiling ghosts of those she had lost, and if there were moments when she could bear the loneliness no more, and she wept silently over her work, there was no one to notice or care.

  It was some weeks before she realized that one of the local workers, despite every order to the contrary, was trying to help her and the other women. He was careful about it, and only intervened when the guards were distracted or absent, but he was watchful and persistent and was never far away when Nina needed to lift the heaviest of the pots from the sink to the draining boards. He even saved her from a beating when she splashed water on the floor, claiming that he had jostled her first.

  She never spoke with the man, was too cowed by the guards to even whisper her thanks, and had he ever walked past her in the yard she wouldn’t have recognized his face, for she was careful never to look him in the eye.

  She knew his first name was Georg, for that’s what the other men called him. She knew he suffered from pains in his hands, just as she did, for she noticed how he rubbed at his arthritic knuckles and sometimes stopped to massage them with a salve he scooped from a little tin.

  He knew she was a Jew, for her uniform still bore its yellow symbol, and she had to wonder if it mattered to him. If he, like so many others, had been taught to hate her for it. Or if he had decided to embrace kindness instead.

  He must have seen how raw her hands had become, working as she did at the sink each day, and one morning, when the guards were still milling about in the yard, he pressed his tin of salve into her hand. It was small enough for her to slip inside her shoe, and she was able to rub a little of it into her hands at lunch, and the relief was immediate and lasting.

  The salve helped with Stella’s burns, too, and though Nina was fairly certain it was a simple concoction of beeswax and rosemary-scented oil, with no special healing properties or analgesic ingredients, it soothed her hands, and it comforted her soul, and it let her believe, if only fleetingly, that her tomorrow might be better than her yesterday.

  THE SALVE LASTED a month. When it ran out, the pain in Nina’s hands was so unbearable that she was driven, within days, to the unthinkable. Thievery.

  The cooks kept an empty can on the floor by the range, and when they had drippings that were too burned or rancid to use again, they poured them into the can and let the fat solidify. When it was full they sent it over to the foundry, where it was used, Stella told her, for greasing machinery.

  The empty salve tin held so little, barely an ounce. It would make no difference to anyone. It was only an ounce of inedible fat.

  She was able to scoop out what she needed without anyone noticing, but then, before she could put the tin back in her shoe, one of the guards walked past, and she must have noticed the glint of metal in Nina’s hand. Perhaps she thought that Nina was trying to steal a knife.

  The woman snatched the tin from Nina. Opened it and frowned at the contents. And then she dropped it in her pocket and hurried off, and Nina counted herself lucky that her punishment had amounted to nothing more than the loss of her little tin.

  Her reprieve lasted only minutes.

  “Sie will dich in ihrem oben Zimmer sehen,” the woman said when she returned, and Nina knew, even before she’d finished deciphering the words, that she was being taken to see Oberaufseherin Klap.

  Her stomach heaving at the prospect of the punishment to come, Nina followed the guard upstairs and along a darkened corridor to the oberaufseherin’s sitting room.

  Klap was dozing in an easy chair, her right leg propped up on a footstool, and when they came to stand at the open door she startled, her mouth thinning, her eyes glassy with pain. Likely she’d been self-medicating with whatever liquor was provided to the guards.

  How long had it been since Nina had set foot in such a homey place? Apart from the upholstered chair and footstool, the room held a desk and chair, a small stove pumping out so much heat that her fingers began to tingle, and an oil lamp with a frilly glass shade. The rosy glow it cast belonged to another world entirely.

  “Come forward,” Klap ordered. “Why did you think you could steal?”

  Nina didn’t answer straightaway; she was too surprised. The oberaufseherin had spoken to her in Italian, not German.

  “Out with it!” the woman barked.

  “I took the grease to make a salve for my hands. To heal them. To heal the burns on my friend’s arms.”

  “You lie.”

  “Her burns will become infected if they aren’t treated. We all have burns. We all have chilblains and sores that are making us sick.”

  “What do I care if you fall sick?”

  “Then care about what your superiors will say. If none of us can work, who will make your guns? And it takes so little to keep us well.” The words were out of her mouth before Nina could stop herself. She held her breath, waiting for the inevitable outburst. Waiting for Klap to scream for the guard.

  But Klap only frowned and fussed with a loose thread on the upholstered arm of her chair. And then she surprised Nina again. “What do you know of healing? Are you a doctor?”

  “No. Only a student of medicine.” That was close enough to the truth.

  “The doctor in Zschopau is an idiot. I want you to look at my leg. Help me with my boot.” And then, when Nina didn’t leap forward immediately, “Are you an idiot? Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I did. I wasn’t certain that I understood properly.”

  “I want you to look at my leg. Is that simple enough?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  Nina approached the footstool and took hold of the woman’s heel. Slowly, carefully, she pulled off the boot, revealing a leg that was bandaged from shin to knee.

  “I didn’t realize it was bothering you. I never saw you limping.”

  “As if I would ever let the others know that I’m afflicted. I’m not stupid. Go on—look at it.”

  “May I have more light? By the window, perhaps?”

  It took a while for the oberaufseherin to rise so that Nina might push her chair and footstool a scant meter closer to the window, and then the curtains needed to be drawn back and the window heaved open to admit some fresh air.

  Crouching by the footstool, Nina unwound the smelly and none-too-clean bandage on Klap’s outstretched leg. Nearly all the exposed skin, from her lower shin up to her knee, was covered in a bright red rash that radiated heat when Nina let her hand hover a centimeter or so above it.

  Nina chanced a look at the woman: her eyes were squeezed shut, and her hands had curled into fists on her lap.

  “I’m just going to pick up the lamp. I need some extra light.”

  Holding the oil lamp in her left hand, Nina bent low to examine th
e rash. She now saw that the rash was slightly raised and, tellingly, had a defined edge that set it apart from the surrounding skin. She sat back on her heels and considered what to say next.

  “What did the doctor in Zschopau tell you?”

  “I am not sure of the word. In German it is Ausschlag. I think, perhaps, that ‘rash’ is the correct term.”

  “Yes. Well, I can see how he was mistaken. It’s not a simple rash, though. I think you have erysipelas.”

  “Erysipel,” Klap said. It was fortunate that the German term was so similar.

  “Yes. It’s a bacterial infection in the skin. It must be treated or the infection will spread.”

  Klap nodded again, seeming to understand. “How will you heal it?”

  It had been years since Nina had discussed the new sulfa drugs with her father, and she couldn’t be sure the doctor in Zschopau would have any version of them at hand. But she had to offer Klap something.

  “There isn’t much I can do, but there is a medicine that might help. Sulfanilamide. It’s German. Made by Bayer.”

  Klap reached into the breast pocket of her uniform tunic and pulled out a little notebook, the sort that came with its own pencil clipped to the side. “Write it down,” she said, and handed it to Nina.

  Erysipel, Nina wrote, hoping she had spelled the German name of the disease correctly. Rss: Sulfanilamide, she added.

  With a gesture, the woman indicated that Nina should rewrap her leg.

  “I was a teacher before the war,” Klap said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “I taught literature at a school in Berlin. One of the best schools. The very best. And now . . .”

  Now she fixed Nina with an implacable stare. “I will provide salve and bandages for those who are burned. You will care for them.”

  Nina nodded.

  “If you steal again I will have you shot. Now get out.”

  Nina spent the rest of the day in a lather of anxiety. What if the doctor in Zschopau disagreed with her diagnosis? What if he objected to a prisoner second-guessing his judgment? What if Klap was allergic to the drug? Nina hadn’t even thought to mention that possibility.