The Survivors

by Kate Furnivall

  I had forgotten that I could feel like this. That it was possible. To breathe without pain. To think without metal bands tightening around my head. To see thoughts emerge that are not dipped in rage.

  I step outside the Recreation building and watch Davide walk down the long straight road through the camp. The wind snatches at his jacket and he pulls it tight around him. The exertion of the walk is making him cough. I fear for his lungs. Though of reasonable height, he is not a man who takes up space. He gives space to others.

  He gives space to me.

  I want to run up behind him and wrap my arms around his tortured chest. To hold him close.

  I waited in the road. I had no intention of spending time under the same roof as Scholz, not even if it was the Recreation hall roof. Outside I did not have to breathe his air. The clouds were racing across the sky trying to outpace each other and the wind was blowing up a dust storm in the flat barren fields that encircled the camp. Crows cruised on motionless black wings. I watched them and thought about being free.

  I watched the two men in the distance, Scholz and Davide. They were heading up from the far end of Churchill Way. Chalk and cheese. Scholz the taller and broader of the two, with a chest that threatened to rush ahead of him unless he remembered to drag it back. Davide was slight but moved with a Gallic smoothness, his hands tracing worlds in the air when he spoke. As I observed him approach, I realised I was smiling.

  The smile vanished as Scholz drew near. I stood, stiff and uneasy outside the hall. I was preparing words for him but they wouldn’t fit in my mouth. I wanted to run, but my feet stayed nailed to the spot.

  ‘So?’ Scholz said when he stood in front of me.

  He knew only too well what this would cost me.

  ‘I apologise.’

  There. It was said. Happy now, Colonel Whitmore?

  Davide took up a position beside me, seeing me through it, as he’d promised. Scholz stared at me. Waiting for more.

  ‘I apologise for throwing a snake on your bed.’

  ‘A poisonous snake. An adder,’ he reminded me.

  ‘I didn’t know it was an adder.’

  ‘What prompted you to turn so vicious?’

  ‘I believed you’d arranged to have someone place it in my bed.’ My voice was cold.

  ‘You were mistaken, Klara.’

  ‘If my child had climbed into that bed and received a bite from the snake, she could have died.’

  ‘But she didn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you have no proof it was me.’

  ‘No.’

  He let a dozen heartbeats pass.

  ‘Klara, you are deluded.’

  I walked away.

  Scholz had said the same words to me before.

  ‘Klara, you are deluded.’

  I held out my hand for him to see what lay in it. ‘This is not a delusion.’

  It was a diamond. It winked a violet flash of light at me.

  ‘I tell you, Oberführer Fleischer is acquiring diamonds from somewhere.’

  Scholz’s mouth was a tight line. ‘You stole this from him?’

  ‘No. He gave it to me.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Ask him.’

  ‘No, I’m asking you, Klara.’

  ‘Because he has others. He says he has lots of others.’

  ‘If the diamonds are the spoils from Jewish jewellery businesses here in Warsaw, he should have handed them over to the Reich. Failure to do so amounts to treachery.’ He was pacing his office, the diamond concealed in his fist.

  If Fleischer were arrested, I’d be free.

  ‘Find out more,’ he ordered.

  ‘My diamond, please.’ I held out my hand.

  ‘I’ll keep it. As evidence.’

  ‘Like hell you will.’

  The time had come. I could delay it no longer.

  Oddly, I felt a reluctance. Which was foolish. Because I knew from that very first moment that I saw Oskar Scholz sunning himself in the doorway of Hut J that I would have to kill him.

  Before he killed me.

  Before he killed Alicja.

  And now I’d seen the way he’d looked at Davide. It had sent a chill through me. Does he see Davide as a threat to him? Or does he feel Davide has too great an interest in me? Whichever it is, I won’t let him turn his venom on him. The snake was just the start.

  There will be more to come.

  It was raining diamonds.

  They came tumbling down on me as I lay naked on the bed. A rainbow painted my skin with splashes of orange and lilac and indigo as the light streamed off their thousand faces. I didn’t move.

  Standing over me was Axel Fleischer, his cheeks flushed, his eyes gleaming at the sight of the jewels. He was naked except for the SS officer cap on his head, tilted at an angle so that the empty eye sockets of its skull and crossbones badge were staring down at me. And his gun. He wore his gun. This was a man who loved his gun. A Walther P38 in its holster on a black leather belt slung around his hips.

  He liked me to look at his body. It was lean and athletic with bands of muscle visible across his stomach and a smattering of pale blond chest hair that added a surprising touch of innocence. But chest hair can lie. A man in possession of hundreds of diamonds was not innocent.

  He held aloft, at arm’s length above his head, a black velvet pouch and it was from inside it that the flow of diamonds came. Stars falling from a night sky. They nipped at my flesh, took bites out of my skin, grazed a nipple. They bounced on my face and slid into a pool of ice between my breasts, and his excitement was plain to see.

  ‘You believe me now, my Klara? When I say I have diamonds.’

  I raised a hand and with the flat of my palm rolled a shimmering of the diamonds slowly up over my breasts and into the hollow of my throat.

  ‘I believe you, Axel.’ I trailed a few of the gems from my fingertips like a trickle of ice water. ‘They are exquisite.’

  ‘So are you.’

  I laughed, soft in my throat, and he lowered his strong body on top of mine trapping the diamonds and the gun belt between us. They dug into my flesh.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ I asked as his full lips came down on mine.

  ‘You ask too many questions, I’m always telling you that. It’s not where they came from that matters, it’s where they’re going that counts.’

  He was in me now, breathing hard. His hands stretched out my arms above my head, pinning me there, and I wondered whether he was pleasured by my total vulnerability in his power. Or if he was checking whether I was concealing a few stray diamonds under my armpits.

  I swept my legs up around his hips and our bodies grew slick with sweat, the diamonds grinding into my skin.

  ‘Is it from the station?’ I murmured in his ear. ‘Is that where you get them? From the suitcases? The ones stripped from the Jews on the trains to Treblinka?’

  I ran fingers down his back, zigzagging between each rib with my fingernails, and bucked my hips, driving him deeper. He convulsed with pleasure.

  ‘Is it?’ I whispered.

  ‘Forget where they come from,’ he grunted.

  I took his face between my hands and forced it back so that I could look directly into his eyes, so fogged with passion right now. I kissed the corners of his mouth that tasted of brandy and lies.

  ‘Axel, I do not want you arrested. Take care. There are eyes everywhere around us. You must hide the diamonds.’ I nestled my cheek against his. ‘Somewhere safe.’

  His eyes came into focus. Fixed on me.

  ‘Trust me,’ he said.

  From his hair I plucked one stray diamond.

  ‘Trust me,’ I echoed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ALICJA

  Some days were better than others.

  Alicja liked to look at it that way. Instead of thinking some days were worse than others. It was a decision she made each morning, whether to go with better or with worse and she
made the choice by writing lists in her head. Today’s list started well.

  1. Her back was not so sore.

  2. There were no snakes in the bed.

  3. Alzbeta and Izak were sitting each side of her on the bed like bookends.

  4. She was reading to them the beautiful book that Mama brought back from the passport woman.

  5. Bella was on her lap – the doll from the village.

  6. She was wearing her scarlet ribbon.

  7. She had porridge oats for breakfast.

  8. She’d seen a butterfly in camp. A silver-studded blue, veins like cobwebs on its wings. Searching for a flower.

  BUT.

  In the worse column, there was this:

  1. Davide Bouvier took Mama away to Colonel Whitmore this morning.

  That was it. Nothing else. But that was so huge it made the other things on her list look like ants.

  Why Mama? What did the colonel want?

  Has he locked you up? Has he? Has he?

  Alicja could still remember the day when she was seven years old and her mother never came back. It was burned into her brain. A German soldier had marched into their tiny Warsaw apartment and told her that her mother had been locked up. She had stared at the eagle and swastika on his sleeve because she could not bear to look at his face. His uniform had smelled of rain and tobacco. His voice was brimming with kindness that meant nothing because he threw her into a harsh convent and left her there.

  If Mama didn’t come back this time, it would happen again. One of Colonel Whitmore’s soldiers would come with the kind smiles they always gave her and throw her into a Soviet orphanage back in Poland.

  Alicja knew this. So it was hard to tell herself it was one of the better days.

  ‘Come and see.’

  It was Rafal. He was grinning at her. Alicja put the book down, hid it under her pillow and followed his grin out of the hut. Alzbeta and Izak trotted behind.

  ‘Look. What do you think?’

  Alicja looked but could see nothing. Rafal had led them to a patch of wasteland behind the workshops – the metal workshop, the wood workshop and the smithy. Alicja always loved the sounds that came from them. Sawing. Banging. Welding. The shriek of metal. The hammering of nails. The curses and laughter. The smells of raw timber and molten iron. Things were made in there. Not destroyed.

  Sometimes at night she feared the whole of Europe had been destroyed.

  ‘There,’ Rafal urged.

  He had drawn a target on the back of one of the workshops. A bullseye drawn in chalk on the wooden planking.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Alzbeta asked.

  ‘You haven’t got a gun, have you?’ Izak’s voice was nervous. The damaged side of his face twitched and he put up a hand to stop it.

  Alicja’s eyes grew huge. ‘You’ve done it,’ she said with the hushed awe used within a church. ‘You’ve made it.’

  ‘Made what?’ Alzbeta asked.

  ‘A crossbow,’ Alicja guessed.

  Rafal nodded. The grin resurfaced. His chin came up, his pitch-dark eyes shone with pride.

  ‘Show me,’ she said.

  He dived into one of the rambling bushes on the wasteland and emerged with a sacking bundle in his arms. Slowly, when they had gathered around him, he unwrapped the sacking to reveal a crossbow.

  All four gazed at it with reverential respect.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Alicja said softly.

  She ran her hand over its curves and taut lines, sleek under her palm. The weapon was constructed of pale wood, sanded to the smoothness of silk. It looked a bit like a wide wooden rifle with a bow attached crosswise to its barrel.

  ‘This is the stock,’ Rafal explained carefully. ‘You put that part against your shoulder and your cheek against that bit. You pull back the bowstring with these two hooks and pulley. Then take aim. Release the trigger. And holy shit, watch it go! Getting the trigger mechanism to work was the hardest part.’ He rested his finger lightly on the wooden trigger and for a moment was silent. ‘But I managed it.’

  ‘That could kill someone,’ Izak muttered. He was the only one not to touch it.

  ‘It could.’

  ‘Why do you want a crossbow, Rafal? You have your slingshot,’ Izak pointed out.

  Rafal draped an affectionate arm around his younger friend’s shoulders. ‘To look after you all, of course.’

  ‘Show us, Rafal,’ Alicja urged. ‘Shoot it.’

  It was what Rafal had been waiting for. Smoothly and efficiently he drew back the bowstring, muscles straining, and notched it into place. The bolt that he slotted into the groove on top of the stock gave her a ripple of shock. It was a length of wooden dowel, over half a metre long with a pointed metal tip of about six centimetres. It looked lethal. Rafal raised the crossbow to his shoulder and eyed the target on the wall fifteen metres away.

  ‘It doesn’t have sights,’ he said. ‘Yet. So it’s not as accurate as I want it to be.’

  He took his time, then pressed the trigger. The bolt shot smoothly from its groove and ripped through the air. It hit smack in the middle of the target fifteen metres away with a solid thud that startled a pigeon from its perch on the roof.

  ‘Your turn.’

  Rafal held the crossbow out to her.

  She took it. It was heavier than she’d expected. He had drawn the bowstring and the bolt was in place. She settled the weapon against her shoulder and pressed her cheek to the warm wood. She did what she’d seen Rafal do, shut out the noise of the camp and the hammering in the workshop. From fifteen metres away the target looked impossibly small. Above her the sky was heavy as stone and the ash-grey clouds sucked all colour from the world.

  She exhaled. And pulled the trigger. The bolt flew.

  It missed.

  Rafal drew the bow again for her. She fired.

  It missed.

  Rafal notched the bowstring once more. She put her cheek to the wood. She tried to quieten her heartbeat but it was racing. So instead she pictured the wild-eyed woman in the forest who would have cut open her mother for the sake of a diamond. Her finger tightened on the trigger. The bolt cut through the air.

  It hit the target.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It started to rain.

  I had rounded up the four children and marched them into school, despite Rafal’s insistence that he was supposed to be working in the laundry today. I assured him that his mother would not be hanging sheets out in the rain, so he would not be needed. All four children were keyed up and nervy, though I couldn’t work out why. I left them at the classroom door with strict instructions to stay together, and hurried first to the laundry.

  Hanna was whistling. Not a good sign. She was an avid whistler when annoyed. And she was always annoyed when it rained. The air in the laundry was the usual steamy stick-in-your-lungs soup, as workers toiled over their vats of hot water. Hanna was overseeing the heavy-duty mangles as they clanked and squeezed the life out of the sheets in preparation for the drying room. At the sight of me she abandoned them.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be teaching today?’ she asked.

  ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘You’ve time for a cup of tea then.’

  I laughed. Hanna’s version of what she called a cup of tea came out of a bottle. She whisked us away to her cubby hole office, poured two shots of a liquid that look suspiciously like it might have come out of a ditch and we drank them straight down. It was ten o’clock in the morning.

  After two shots of her tea my guts were on fire but the tight knot of barbed wire in my head had started to unravel.

  ‘Bad day?’ I asked.

  ‘Rem Marek was in earlier.’

  ‘Ah. That explains it.’

  Rem Marek was the self-important chairman of the Camp Committee. He was a man with a knack for doing harm while convinced he was doing good.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘To inform me that now that UNRRA will be taking over the running of the camp next mont
h, they have a consignment of industrial washing machines they want to install.’

  ‘That’s wonderful, Hanna. It will make your job so much easier.’

  Her red cheeks grew redder. ‘What the fuck do I know about washing machines? They’ll put someone else in to do my job.’

  ‘Oh, Hanna.’ I wanted to throw my arms around my friend’s big broad body in its ridiculous white sheet-tunic and kiss her angry cheek. ‘You need to be thinking of the future out there in the big wide world. Maybe you could set up a laundry. In which case knowing how to use washing machines would be invaluable.’

  She blinked at me. I could see she had forgotten that a world existed outside Graufeld Camp.

  ‘What about your day?’ She’d changed the subject. ‘Bad too?’

  ‘I came over to tell you I have sent Rafal to school.’

  She shrugged. ‘What is the point?’

  ‘An education will help him, Hanna. Once he’s out of here. He’s a bright kid.’

  She rolled her eyes at me. ‘When will you learn? It’s his hands he’s good with. He’s not brainy like your Alicja. What good will knowing the name of the kings of England do him when he’s shoeing a horse?’

  I let it pass. For now.

  ‘Hanna, did you see anyone going in and out of my hut yesterday when I wasn’t there? When you were keeping an eye on Alicja. Someone who shouldn’t be there. I’ve asked the other women in the hut but no one noticed anything unusual.’

  Hanna chuckled. Her bosom bobbed. ‘Yeah, I heard about the snake.’ The chuckle broke into a full-throated laugh. ‘I bet you scared that bastard something rotten. Throwing it on his bed.’

  ‘He scared me something rotten, I can tell you.’

  She frowned, trying to remember. ‘No, I didn’t see anyone out of the ordinary there. It was probably just one of your kids having a joke at your expense.’

  My eyes popped wide. ‘What?’

  She saw my dismay and backtracked fast. ‘Little bastards wouldn’t dare though.’

  I held out my glass. She refilled it and I drank it down. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’