She tells herself she would rather die than live here.
A few minutes later, when the salty stream has run dry, Susannah wipes her face and exhales the last whimper of her cry. She tries to prepare herself mentally for doing what she knows she has to do – go back into the cabin – and looks to the side. The familiar figure of Ester is there, in a coy pose, playing with her hands.
‘I’m sorry, Susannah,’ she says.
Susannah turns her head away.
‘Do you want to be alone?’ Ester says.
Neither of the girls speaks for a few minutes. Then Ester skips over and sits down next to Susannah. ‘Do you want me to tell you about the camp?’ she says.
‘I hate the camp,’ Susannah says.
‘It’s a home of sorts.’
Susannah looks at Ester, sees that effervescence in her eyes again, and shrugs. ‘It’s the only home I have,’ she says. ‘So I suppose I need to know about it.’
They talk – or rather, Ester talks.
Ester says her parents are in another camp, so she never sees them. Susannah finds out that there are, in fact, many separate camps within the Bergen-Belsen complex, each separated by more fences and more barbed wire. She’s at least relieved to find out that the guard was telling the truth – that Father and Jacob will be close by in the same camp, sleeping in separate accommodation but able to meet Susannah and Mother every day. Ester tells her about work, food, roll-call, and more.
They talk for half an hour, then Susannah says she has to return to her mother, who will be worried. Reluctantly she trudges back to her cabin, and to Mother.
When she gets there Mother sits her down and says, ‘I didn’t come after you. I’m sorry. But I didn’t know what more I could say. It’s difficult for everyone else too, Susannah. You’re starting to grow up, you must realize these things. You must accept what is happening.’
Susannah already has. The place is starting to feel like home already. She wonders whether that’s a good thing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It only takes a few weeks for the process to complete. As far as Susannah is concerned the Star Camp of Bergen-Belsen is now home.
She gets used to the stench that once made her feel nauseous – there seem to be simply too many people and hence too many dirty, smelly clothes. A few women are incontinent with dysentery. The cabin is made of wooden planks, with large gaps between them. This is good now, giving some ventilation – the smell would be unbearable otherwise. Susannah says nothing to Mother, but worries what it will be like when it gets colder. For now all prisoners have a single blanket each, but Susannah thinks that perhaps in the winter months someone brings in hot bricks to provide heat, like they did in the milking shed.
And with Ester’s help, day by rotten day, she gets used to camp life. First thing in the morning is roll-call. Whether it’s wet or dry, cold or warm, all prisoners must quickly put their clothes on, run out into the courtyard and line up in the correct order to be counted. Nobody is allowed to move, and if there’s a discrepancy the counting starts all over again. Sometimes this takes hours. On some days, during this roll-call, horses pull carts right in front of them. The carts are full of dead bodies. Some have their necks twisted at unnatural angles, some have dark red streaks across their torsos. All of them, like the living, are very thin. The guards laugh at the corpses and strike them with whips. They proudly announce at the top of their voices that these are the bodies of prisoners who have tried to escape, or who have disobeyed orders, or who have tried to organize rebellions. Occasionally there are bodies hanging from the fence throughout the roll-call; these are the ones who have flung themselves onto the electrified fences rather than live.
The first time the bodies were exhibited Susannah felt sick, and managed to stay standing only by calling on every last ounce of her willpower. The second time was the same, the third a little easier. Now, weeks later, all she can think is that she’s glad Mother and Father made her do as she was told.
At one corner of the camp is a large pool, which is used for washing clothes. Susannah helps Mother with the washing because it’s close to the perimeter fence, which is close to the pine trees that smell clean with an almost citrus-like freshness. It’s a welcome change from the vile smell of the cabins. She always wants to stay longer, but as soon as a guard approaches they speed up their washing and leave.
All prisoners – apart from the younger children – have to work for most of the day, and for this they get extra food. For most of the women that means the shoe tent, where worn-out shoes from all over Germany are brought and piled into a mountain as high as the cabins. The job of the prisoners is to undo the stitching of the shoes and separate the materials. Leather, fabric, waste. Leather, fabric, waste. Leather, fabric, waste. There are tools to do this, and because some of the tools are sharp there are always armed guards near the tables they work on. Father and Jacob often carry out heavy labour, chopping wood and making more cabins, but also sometimes work in the shoe tent. Mother usually works in the kitchens, peeling vegetables and making bread and soup.
After Susannah’s first few days at work her hands are red, blistered and painful, but calluses soon form where once there was tender skin. The pain in her knuckle joints leaves after a few weeks too, and she quickly becomes skilled at the job.
And working means extra food. The prisoners spend more time talking about food than actually eating. The standard rations are as degrading as the sanitation. For breakfast they get a kind of weak coffee drink with a chunk of bread. For lunch they have another chunk of bread and a bowl of watery soup made from root vegetables – usually potato or turnip – and supper is the same as breakfast. Workers get an extra chunk of bread each day. There’s no other food. There are rumours that some prisoners get meat that’s stamped ‘not for human consumption’. Very soon Susannah dreams of such a treat, as all four of her family lose even more weight. The time after the last meal of the day is the only time Susannah looks forward to – the mixing time when the whole family can be together. However, it’s always a long time coming and over as quickly as a child’s birthday.
A regular group of guards is allotted to Susannah’s section of the camp. The guards are dangerous and Susannah is repeatedly told not to look any of them in the eye unless being addressed. Three of them seem to cover most of the shifts at the shoe tent; Susannah gets to know all three by name.
Müller is one of the few female guards. She’s stout with bulbous facial features, a blank stare and a permanently downturned mouth. She walks and stands with her shoulders back and her head high. She looks more like a man than a woman, the only different feature apart from her chest being long blonde hair tied at the back.
Jung shows himself to be dangerous every day. He looks you in the eye and smiles frequently, which makes him seem approachable and friendly, but on more than one occasion Susannah has seen him beat women as well as men for simply saying the wrong thing.
The third regular guard is Keller, apparently new, with young, taut skin. Susannah is very wary because appearances – as in Jung’s case – can be deceptive. Keller is just a little more unkempt than the others – no, not unkempt, that isn’t allowed. But he never has his tie completely straight, has tufts of hair poking out at various angles from under his cap, and has frequently been scolded by Jung for having scuff marks on his boots or stains on his jacket. Out of all the guards Susannah dislikes Keller the least because he somehow seems more human, less like a machine. Although Susannah doesn’t understand the ranks of the SS, she knows from the way the three interact that as well as being the youngest and newest, Keller is also the lowest in rank.
Susannah has learned very quickly from what she sees and from talks with others in the cabin to keep a low profile.
One day, while the families are mixing, she also finds out that anyone who is different tends to get taken away. They are alerted by a commotion outside the cabin and, one by one, carefully venture out to see what has happened.
A man is arguing with Jung. He says that three days ago a doctor came to visit his son, who is deaf. He says the doctor told him he would take the boy away to cure him of his deafness. But he hasn’t returned. The man is shouting at Jung, saying he wants to see the Kommandant to find out what happened to his son. At first Jung simply smiles, but the man continues and so Jung raises his voice and tells him in an understated monotone to be silent. The man carries on complaining about his son. Jung strikes him across the face with the butt of his rifle. The man’s head gets sharply twisted to the side and he cries out in pain, but then looks at Jung with wildness in his eyes and starts shouting again. Jung, his face now starting to redden, adjusts his hold on the rifle and strikes the man more strongly. He falls to the ground and curls up, covering his head with his arms. Now he’s quiet and still but Jung hits him again and again. Then Müller rushes over and strikes the prostrate figure with her rifle too. Together they continue to smash their rifle butts down onto the man’s head, back and legs. The man is still and quiet, but five or ten more blows come before the guards stop and look up to the crowd. Every prisoner who catches a glare immediately turns, and the onlookers all shuffle away to their cabins. The last thing Susannah notices before she pulls her head back into the cabin is Keller on the far side of the courtyard, looking across to the incident but standing still.
The next day Susannah sets off for the shoe tent, but halts abruptly as she sees the man who was beaten. She sees but can hardly bear to look; his clothes are coated in a shell of mud, he has blood all over his hands, and he walks with the heaviest of limps, dragging one leg behind him. She trembles at the sight and hurries as far away as she can – towards the perimeter fence, or as close to it as she dares. She takes a moment, holding her head in her hands, to compose herself, before continuing on to the shoe tent.
As she approaches it she hears a familiar voice from behind her.
‘I forgot to tell you about that,’ it says.
Susannah turns. ‘Ester. I . . . I was . . .’
‘It’s horrible, I know.’
‘You know what happened?’
‘To Mr Vega’s son? Of course I do. There’s a lot of that.’
‘A lot of what?’
Ester pauses, then shrugs before speaking. ‘A lot of . . . people who are different being taken away. I mean, I don’t know why – I don’t know what they do with them, but they never bring them back.’
‘What do you mean, different?’
‘Just unusual. A few weeks ago new people arrived in my cabin. A woman had twin girls. The doctor came to visit them, and the next day the twins were gone.’
‘Gone where?’
Ester shrugs.
‘I don’t know how much I can take of this,’ Susannah says, shaking her head. ‘Every day, when I think I’m getting used to it, something else horrible happens, and I feel I . . . I want to . . .’
‘You must keep hoping,’ Ester says, now holding Susannah’s arm and shaking it. ‘You must do your best to survive and hope that things will get better eventually. Otherwise there’s nothing – no point in living.’
‘If . . . if you say so.’
Now Ester squeezes Susannah’s hand. ‘Don’t you want to leave here?’ she says.
‘Of course I do. Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Then don’t give up.’ Ester tilts her head in a carefree way and looks to the greying sky beyond the lookout tower. ‘You have to think of your dream and hold onto it with all your strength no matter what happens.’
‘I can’t dream,’ Susannah says, her face feeling slack. ‘I can’t see any way out of here.’
Ester shakes Susannah’s arm again, imploring her. ‘You must have a dream. What about when you’re free? Think of what you’ll do when you leave here.’
‘When I leave here I’ll go home to Berlin,’ Susannah says. ‘All of us together. My father has promised it.’
‘Then that’s exactly what will happen,’ Ester says. She speaks slowly, and Susannah notices – and is jealous of – her wide-mouthed smile, bright eyes and hair almost down to her neck.
Susannah lets out a sigh, then starts walking again. Ester follows, with her usual mixture of hopping and skipping.
‘So, what about your parents?’ Susannah says. ‘Will they take you back to the Netherlands?’
For a few moments Ester’s skipping gait falters, the smile falls away, the eyes drop to the muddy earth. Then she nods, says, ‘Of course,’ and runs away, leaving Susannah to face the shoe tent.
Susannah never hears Mr Vega speak again. And his son is never seen again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As the coach drove off Susannah took a few steps towards the gates of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial.
After all these years there was little structure remaining of the original site apart from the entrance gate. And it looked as if nature had covered and smothered everything that hadn’t been torn down. Creeping ivy, climbing brambles and a sprawling lawn of moss had all played their part in trying to bury the place in a green and peaceful grave.
The other tourists spent a few minutes taking photographs, then headed straight for the Visitor Centre, but Susannah stayed at the gate, looking up, and was soon alone.
And in a flash the clear blue sky was hidden by clouds of hot ash swirling and billowing up above the trees, the perimeter once more formed a barbed-wire cage, and she could hear little over the drone of military vehicles. Then she heard boots approaching behind her.
‘Excuse me?’
The accent startled her.
‘Are you okay?’
The man was dressed in chinos and an open-necked shirt. His smile kept with the smart-casual theme.
Casual is good, Susannah thought. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘I was just . . . going in, just steadying myself.’
‘You’re American, yes?’
She looked once more to the gates. ‘I guess I am. Do you work here?’
‘Yes. In the Visitor Centre.’
She pointed beyond the gates to the path as wide as a street. ‘Perhaps you can tell me where all the buildings are?’
‘Buildings? No, there are no buildings. They were all burned by the British to get rid of the typhus.’
‘Oh.’
‘I know there’s not much here, but please, go to the Visitor Centre, listen to the talks and see the displays in there. Once you’ve done that it’s a little easier to take a walk through the site and . . . well, use your imagination.’
She nodded and smiled politely. ‘Yes, thank you. I think I might manage to do that.’
She followed the man, and when she entered the Visitor Centre a talk was under way, an elderly man telling a group of twenty or thirty people, including children, of the events that took place in times Susannah had long ago forced into the darkest corners of her mind.
Behind the speaker pictures of a slide show faded in and out. There were photographs of the camp as it had been during the war, with wooden cabins in regimented formation. There were also thousands of faces, all gaunt and pleading to the camera, all belonging to people now long, long gone. And Susannah just knew that every single one of them once had dreams of returning to their homes and their normal lives, just as she once did.
She took a seat in the back row and started listening to the speaker talk of how many men were held in the camp, how many men died, how the men suffered.
‘Excuse me?’ she heard herself ask in a confident but fractured tone. ‘But weren’t there women prisoners here too?’
‘Oh yes,’ the speaker replied. ‘A lot of them; there was even a special women’s camp.’
‘Why did they imprison women?’ a young girl at the front asked.
‘Well, because they were Jewish,’ the speaker replied.
And it was then that Susannah started to remember events with a clarity that made her pulse race. Uneasy, almost in tears, she went to stand, but stopped as the girl spoke again.
‘Were they treated the s
ame as the men?’
The speaker nodded slowly. ‘I . . . I guess so. Except, of course . . .’ He blushed, glancing to the children and lowering his voice. ‘It’s difficult to explain. The female prisoners, they had, shall we say, other uses to the guards.’
‘You mean, as informants?’ the girl asked.
‘Okay, Lisa,’ the woman sitting next to the girl said. ‘Enough questions.’
‘No, no,’ the speaker said. ‘That’s quite all right. The girl is correct. Some of the younger women were very popular with the guards, and those who became, shall we say, good friends with the male guards went on to become informants, telling them which prisoners were causing difficulties, perhaps those who were likely to lead any rebellion or plan an escape.’
‘You mean they were on the side of the Nazis?’ the girl asked.
‘No,’ he said firmly, then hummed a pause. ‘Well . . . in what they did, possibly. But never in what they thought. Never.’
‘So why would they do that?’
An awkward, sickly smile grew on the speaker’s face. ‘Because it spared them,’ he said.
Susannah now stood, a hand went to cover her face, and she shuffled away, trembling.
At the door a member of staff placed a consoling hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you okay, madam?’
Susannah kept her head down and gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
‘I know it’s hard sometimes. Bad memories are common around here. Your feelings are nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve been here before, yes?’
The Sugar Men Page 10
