by Sarah Rayne
The Macbeth line came into her mind … By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes …
Or was it – By the beating of a drum, something deadly this way comes …?
Something deadly. Memory looped back to herself and Silke in the bedroom in Salzkotten, sharing secrets. Giselle’s secrets had been innocent enough, although she had occasionally embroidered them a bit to keep up with Silke, because Silke’s secrets had not always been innocent at all. ‘Never tell, will you, darling?’ Silke had said, not once, but many times. ‘It’d be deadly if anyone found out …’
Deadly. Giselle came out of the memory to hear footsteps approaching the door – footsteps that were not those of the guard coming to collect the supper dishes. It was Reinhardt – his footsteps were unmistakable. Her heart jumped nervously, and she got off the bed, and stood by the window, watching the door, clenching and unclenching her hands.
He came into the room, and his eyes went at once to the piano, taking in the blank music score, still in a neat stack on the top. ‘It doesn’t look as if you’ve done much work.’
‘I haven’t done any,’ said Giselle. ‘I can’t. I’ve told you that composing isn’t like scribbling a grocery list.’
‘This is a great pity.’ He looked at her for a moment, his expression unreadable, then went out.
Giselle sank back on the bed, her legs trembling. Something had changed. It was almost as if, seeing the blank music sheets, a decision had been taken. She curled up on the bed, wrapping her arms around her for warmth, watching the shadows deepen.
And then she heard Reinhardt coming back.
ELEVEN
Wewelsburg Castle, cont’d
Two officers followed Reinhardt in, and they seized Giselle’s arms, roughly twisting them behind her back before she could speak or protest. There was the painful snap of steel around her wrists. Gyves? Handcuffs? She looked at Reinhardt, wanting him to tell her what was happening, but he only nodded to the two officers, and they took her out of the room and down the wide stone stairs. Were they going to throw her into some wretched underground cell, and leave her to die? If they did that, no one would know what had happened to her, and Felix and the children would wonder for the rest of their lives. This was so unbearable a thought that Giselle tried to thrust it away.
The big hall was lit by flaring lights from iron wall brackets, and Giselle tried to notice where they were going. But she was sick and dizzy with fear, and she started to wonder if she might have died – been murdered by Reinhardt – and was being taken to some ancient hell. She was not especially well versed in the teachings and the beliefs of her people – ‘You’re too frivolous, my love,’ Felix used to say – but even the most cursory knowledge of it allowed her mind to present her with a few dark images from the Koran. Sheol, the underground abyss, the place where you worked out the sins of your life after death. And Gehinnom, the place of torture and punishment, fire and brimstone …
The cold night air when they took her outside was a shock, but after the days of being incarcerated, it felt good, and it snapped her out of the sick, phantom-haunted unreality. She drew in several grateful breaths, then they were pushing her into the back of a jeep that waited, the headlights glowering, and exhaust fumes creating misty vapour on the night air. One of the guards sat next to her, and Reinhardt got into the front.
As the jeep roared away, no one spoke. Giselle could not see where they were going, but the headlights picked out rutted road surfaces and hedges and trees. Occasionally something scuttled across the road and into the dark fields, and once a small winged creature dashed itself against the windscreen. The driver turned off the road, and black iron gates, like the waiting teeth of a shark, came into view. The headlights fell across the iron-scrolled words at the top – words that struck a chill into Giselle’s whole body, because they were words that had become dreadfully familiar. Arbeit Macht Frei. Work makes you free.
The Nazi legend for the concentration camps.
Reinhardt had brought her to Sachsenhausen.
As the jeep stopped, Reinhardt turned to look at Giselle.
‘We have information about a planned escape from that place tonight.’ He nodded towards Sachsenhausen. ‘That’s why we’re here. You’re with us because you should see how we deal with people who defy us.’
Giselle managed a shrug, and sat back as if the whole thing was of supreme indifference.
‘Look there,’ said Reinhardt, and Giselle saw that two people – two men – were walking very cautiously and furtively along the edges of Sachsenhausen’s boundaries. They were weaving in and out of the lights that shone down from parts of the higher sections of the wires, and although they were staying close to the thick barbed wire enclosing the camp, they seemed to be taking great care not to get too near to it. It was obvious, even at this distance, that they were trying to find a break in the wire through which they might scramble. Giselle could scarcely believe they would take such a chance. Or would you take any chance, however slender, to get away from such a brutal place?
The lights appeared to be on some kind of swivel mechanism, because every few moments they turned themselves from left to right, the cold beam sweeping across the enclosure. They were like huge, staring spotlights; they were ogres’ eyes, swivelling back and forth. Each time the lights swung towards the two men they threw themselves flat on the ground to avoid the white glare. Then they carried on tiptoeing along the strip of ground, almost like children playing a game involving forbidden ground. Giselle could almost feel them hoping and praying they would get out, and she could hardly bear knowing their attempt was already doomed.
‘They call that the death strip,’ said Reinhardt, his eyes on the men. ‘There’s only one reason for a prisoner to walk on that band of ground, and that’s to try to break out. If they’re caught on that strip, they’re shot. Executed on the spot. And they always are caught, Giselle.’
As Giselle stared at the furtive outlines, Reinhardt said, ‘Sometimes the guards don’t even need to shoot them. Sections of the wire are electrified, so that if anyone touches it the electricity does the execution very thoroughly. The prisoners all know about it – you can see how those two men are trying not to get too close. It’s very dangerous indeed, but sometimes there’s a couple like tonight who believe they can avoid the live sections.’
One of the men was pointing to the ground just below a section of the wire, and they both paused and looked about them. Then they dropped to their knees and began to crawl towards the wire.
At once, the massive spotlights blazed out, and both men flinched, putting up their hands to shield their eyes. Half a dozen guards sprang out of the shadows, surrounding the two men, their rifles aimed, and the two prisoners fell to their knees, and one held up clasped hands in the classic gesture of pleading for mercy.
Reinhardt turned to say something to the driver, and the man nodded, and drove the jeep closer. Its lights mingled with the ogre-eyed spotlights inside the compound, lighting the scene to even starker clarity.
The younger of the two was being held by the guards, but the other was being forced closer to the wire fence. He was struggling furiously, occasionally holding out his hands in that piteous, useless gesture of pleading, but the guards had already raised their rifles. A sharp command rang out, and the rifles were fired, in shocking rat-a-tat precision. Blood exploded from the man’s body like huge blossoming scarlet flowers, and spattered across the barbed wire behind him, running down on to the ground. He fell back, thrown against the wire by the force of the shots, and a furious sizzling crackle of blue erupted from the fence. The man screamed, jerked again, then fell to the ground and lay there, not moving.
Reinhardt reached over to winch down the window of the jeep, and cold night air – dreadfully mingled with the stench of blood and burned flesh – flooded into the jeep. One of the guards was bending over the shot man, then he straightened up and nodded, as if to confirm death.
‘He was a tro
uble-maker,’ said Reinhardt. ‘He would have known the risk he took. The other one …’ He paused, and then, almost on a note of reluctance, he said, ‘He is a German.’
‘A German?’ Giselle was so surprised that she forgot about maintaining a show of defiance. ‘One of your own people?’ This was remarkable because, as far as she knew – as far as anyone knew – the camps were solely used for incarcerating Jews.
‘Until two or three years ago he was a member of the Hitler Youth,’ said Reinhardt. ‘He was loyal and hard-working, and he had just joined the Nazi Party itself. It was believed he could rise to high office in the Third Reich. But he deceived us all. Last year we discovered him to be a traitor – a defiler of everything the Führer holds dear. He was brought here, to Sachsenhausen, and several days ago he was told he would be executed. That’s probably why he made this naïve attempt to escape tonight.’
The second prisoner was pulled back into the circle of the light, and there was a moment when his face was turned upwards and held in the glare. The features were lit to sharp clarity, and as he turned to look beyond the searchlights, as if seeing the jeep, Giselle felt horror wash over her. She swallowed hard, and bit her lip furiously to give herself a different pain to focus on. She would not be sick in front of these evil creatures, she would not …
In a voice she scarcely recognized as her own, she said, ‘He is very young. Is it really necessary to – to execute him?’ Please not that, she thought. Not this one.
Reinhardt said, ‘Until lately he was a musician. Talented, or so he would have people believe.’
Giselle, still fighting the sick horror, thought: oh yes, he was talented. He was so talented you would never believe it … You can’t shoot him, you musn’t …
‘Shooting is too good for him – especially after tonight,’ said Reinhardt. ‘He will die soon, but there is to be a punishment first. He betrayed us and everything we’re striving for.’
I know he did … And I know exactly what his betrayal of you was … But I promised I would never speak of it – not if hell froze, not if the fires of Gehinnom came down to consume the earth …
‘You must promise you’ll never speak of it,’ Silke had said, pouring out her heart and her secrets to Giselle on a rare two-day visit to Lindschoen.
Giselle had listened, fascinated as always by Silke’s exploits and romantic tangles, at first intrigued by this latest one, then increasingly apprehensive.
‘My parents would never approve of him,’ Silke said. ‘I know I’m of age and all the rest of it, but they’d be appalled and deeply hurt, and my father would do everything he could to put an end to the whole thing. And you know my father when he wants something.’
Giselle nodded.
‘I don’t think they’d mind about Andreas being a musician,’ Silke said, hopefully, ‘although my father would say there’s precious little money in music—’
Silke’s father had said precisely this about Felix, but Giselle had not minded because she had not needed Uncle Avram’s approval to marry Felix, who in any case had had this shop, and his pupils, as well as his small orchestra. There had not been a huge amount of money, and there was not much more now, but there was enough.
‘It’s not the music aspect that would worry them or make my father stomp around issuing prohibitions and things,’ said Silke, earnestly. ‘And as for Andreas being – um—’
‘Not being Jewish,’ said Giselle, helpfully.
‘Yes.’ Silke seized on this gentle designation gratefully. ‘They’d probably come round to that,’ she said. ‘The problem is that—’
‘The problem is that Andreas was one of the Hitler Youth and earlier in the year he joined the Nazi Party.’ Giselle instinctively lowered her voice, and even then she glanced at the door, to where Felix was deep in an earnest discussion with two men over their attempts to sell him a violin which they were maintaining was a Guarneri, but which Felix was saying was no more a Guarneri than the kitchen mangle.
‘Yes, that’s the real problem.’ Silke dissolved into tears at that point, sobbing heart-rendingly. Giselle was horrified to suddenly think that this was exactly how Silke had cried over a pet rabbit who had died.
‘I know I’m always having emotional storms,’ said Silke, as if sensing Giselle’s thoughts. ‘I can’t help it. I love things so very much, you see.’
‘Including Andreas,’ Giselle could not help saying.
‘I’ve never loved anyone as much as Andreas,’ said Silke. ‘When he plays his music to me, it’s as if he’s drawing music from my whole body. I know that sounds like something from a romantic novel,’ said Silke, ‘but truly, Giselle … And he’s so sensitive, so sympathique. He composes music as well as playing it. I’ve heard some of it – it’s beautiful, inspirational, stirring. Some of it is heartbreaking. He would like to dedicate some of it to me, only he daren’t, of course. He daren’t let his name be linked to anyone who’s Jewish. Not while Herr Hitler is striving for his pure race and setting up those frightful labour camps.’
She started crying again, and Giselle fetched dry handkerchiefs, which was usually what she had to do for Silke on these occasions. It was to be hoped Felix did not terminate the Guarneri discussion and come in until Silke had stopped crying.
But Silke was already feeling better, and, typically Silke, was reaching for a powder compact to repair the damage to her complexion. ‘He’s performing in a concert in Paderborn in a couple of weeks,’ she said, having applied the powder. ‘He wants me to go – I’ve never seen him play in public, and I’d love to. Only I can’t go on my own – Paderborn isn’t all that far from Saltzkotten, not as the crow flies, not that I’m a crow … But you know what my parents are. They always want to know where I’m going and who I’m with …’ She looked at Giselle pleadingly.
Giselle said slowly, ‘If I came with you, it would be all right, though. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘It always was all right if you were with me,’ said Silke, eagerly. ‘They never believed I’d get into a scrape if you were with me. Or, if I did, they thought you would always get me out of it.’
There was a moment of amused acknowledgement between them, because there had been many a time when one of them had dragged the other out of an awkward situation. There had also been a few times when one of them had dragged the other into the awkward situation to begin with, of course.
It would be the height of madness to get involved in this latest tangle, but Giselle had never been able to ignore Silke’s appeals. And Felix would understand if she wanted to spend a day – perhaps a day and a night – away with Silke to attend a concert. A friend of Silke’s was performing, she could say. It hurt to think of tailoring the truth in this way, when it was Felix. Was it possible he could leave the shop – Velda would happily have the children for a night – and come with them? But it was probably better not to involve dear, scrupulously honest Felix in this.
So Giselle said, ‘I might manage it.’
‘You could, couldn’t you? You’re marvellous. I knew you’d understand.’ Silke instantly began to plan it all. How they could tell her parents they were visiting an old schoolfriend who was involved in the orchestra – it was as well to keep as closely to the truth as possible. Giselle would come to Salzkotten and they would travel to Paderborn together. There were good trains … And, of course, they would spend a night in Paderborn, and it would all be Silke’s treat; Giselle would not have to pay a single pfennig.
‘Just one night,’ said Giselle, looking at Silke.
‘Oh yes.’ It was said guilelessly, with the most wide and innocent of eyes, but they had both known that Silke would spend more than one night in Paderborn with the sensitive, sympathetic Andreas.
Giselle enjoyed the Paderborn concert, which included a Brahms piano concerto and a Bruckner sonata. She enjoyed the supper afterwards with Silke and Andreas. He was courteous and intelligent, and Giselle liked his faint air of questioning his life, as if he was starting to re
alize that youthful illusions and ideals were not always good or safe. Felix would have liked him, except that Giselle did not think she would ever dare tell Felix about Andreas’s existence. And she had promised Silke not to tell anyone, anyway.
Once home, she tried, and failed, to think how Silke and Andreas might one day be able to be together openly and permanently. It seemed to Giselle that there was only heartache ahead for them.
And, seven months later, it looked as if she had been right. A tearful, barely legible letter arrived, saying Andreas had been taken away by his Nazi masters because they had discovered he was consorting with a girl who was Jewish.
‘Absolutely forbidden by them, of course, and completely against all of the Führer’s tenets,’ wrote Silke, splattering the page with tear stains. ‘They’ve thrown Andreas into some wretched prison somewhere and they’re treating him as if he’s a traitor. I have no idea what’s happened to him, or where he is, but I don’t believe I shall ever see him again.’
Giselle had not dared telephone, mostly because Velda had said, only the other day, that telephone conversations were now being listened to by spies. There was no knowing if this was true or if it was one of Velda’s exaggerations, but Giselle did not want to take the chance. She wrote a careful letter, thanking Silke for all her news, and saying she hoped she was well and safe. She emphasized the word safe slightly. Silke, intuitive and sharp, would know what Giselle was asking.
She did, of course. She wrote back at once, saying all that had been known was that Andreas had been involved with a Jewish girl of what they sneeringly termed, ‘so-called good family’, and that a marriage had been intended. Giselle had no idea if the marriage part was true, but it would have been unkind to question it. She had no idea how dangerous it was for Silke to have written the letter at all, but it did not seem to have been tampered with.
