‘No,’ she says quietly.
Momentarily Jung drops his rifle. ‘You defy the orders of an armed guard?’
She nods. ‘Oh yes. And whenever I can from this moment on.’
Jung presses the rifle to her throat. ‘You have one more chance, Untermensch!’
And his shout tells her she has won this battle, that regardless of whatever bullets and blood are to come, she knows she has now beaten him. She snarls, then spits in his face.
He runs his fingertips across his cheek, then wipes his hand on his jacket. Then he glances at the mess on his otherwise pristine uniform, and smiles as he cocks the trigger.
Susannah mumbles a prayer, then grabs the cold metal muzzle of the rifle and places it in her mouth. She grips the barrel tightly with trembling hands, closes her eyes and swallows, her throat sticky with dryness. She feels every muscle in her body go rigid with fresh, liberating energy.
The next thing she hears is a solid click. Jung takes back his rifle and pulls its bolt back and forth a few times, grunting through clenched teeth. He throws it onto the floor, then reaches for his pistol. He searches frantically, but there is no pistol. He curses a few times, then sighs and his body relaxes.
He looks her up and down, and slowly the corners of his lips start to tilt upwards.
He rasps out a laugh. ‘You’re lucky today, aren’t you?’
She knocks past him and lunges for the door. But he flings a hand out and manages to grasp her arm. She feels his fingers digging into her shrunken muscle fibres but manages to wrench herself free. A stumble and she runs to the door. Wildly shaking hands grab the handle and pull. Now it opens, but Jung thumps his boot against it solidly and it slams shut again.
He grabs her by the throat and pins her to the door. ‘From now on, you are “The Lucky One”,’ he says. ‘Now get out!’
The door gives a screech from its hinges as it opens again. Susannah feels the shove of his boot in the small of her back and flies through the door.
‘Back to your cabin!’ he shouts.
She falls onto the concrete path and looks up to see Jung staring beyond her and into the distance. She jerks her head to follow his gaze, only to see Mother, Father and Jacob, together with the three bloodied men, all naked, all standing up against a wall. Her vision fades as she hears the six gunshots.
Her skull hits the rough concrete path and drags along it as she curls up and lets out a scream from her soul. She screams again and trembles, her mind flooded with echoes of the sound she’s just heard. She lifts her head and looks across to her family to be sure of what she’s just witnessed. She lets out another scream – one that turns to a whimper as she hits her head against the path again. She wonders what the point of the last fifteen years has been, and feels her biggest regret so far in her short life: that she isn’t there with them.
And then Susannah stirred, blinking in the clean sunlight, drawing one leg out from underneath her and slapping her shoe on the ground. With a struggle that brought water to her eyes she pushed down on her better knee, telling the arthritic groan in it to shut up, and slowly pushed herself to her feet. She stumbled around for a moment, the buildings in front of her appearing and disappearing like the numbers of a roulette wheel spinning past. She turned and spotted a man a few yards away, at first fearing him, then somehow confused to see no threat. Yes, he was a gardener busy raking up leaves. She staggered across the path towards him and grabbed his arm, almost pulling him over in her panic.
The man dropped the rake and held her in his arms. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Jung. I’m sure he’s going to kill me. Please help.’
‘Jung?’ the man said.
‘He’s an SS guard. And there are others. Please. Please help me.’
He held her to his chest, her tears turning patches of his bib a darker shade of green.
‘No, madam. That’s not possible.’
‘Yes, yes!’ She pointed back. ‘Over there, in that building.’
The gardener briefly glanced to where her wrinkled hand was cast. ‘But, madam. There are no buildings left here. And definitely no guards.’
‘But I . . .’ She turned and gasped.
The gardener removed his gloves and put his hand behind her, gently stroking the top of her back. ‘I take it you’ve been here before – a long, long time ago – yes?’
Susannah looked again as a solitary wood pigeon landed in the emptiness – the beautiful, natural emptiness. She took a moment to catch her breath.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was one of the lucky ones.’
PART FOUR
The Lucky One
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
In the weeks that follow the loss of her mother, father and brother, Susannah’s only consolation is Ester. She’s too upset to even enter her own cabin and sleeps next to Ester at night. She also stays there during the day, retreating into her mind, to the happy times in Berlin with her family, before all this madness started. She reconsiders the reservations she had about moving to Amsterdam, now long gone, the times she spent getting to know new friends and enjoying the thrill of being in a new city. Yes, for a while it even felt like an extended vacation.
Even the stay at the remote farmhouse didn’t feel dangerous or depressing. In spite of the cold, cramped conditions and the arguments, she still held sweet, dear memories of her time with Uncle Paul and Aunt Helena, and of learning to play what seemed like every card game ever invented.
Westerbork was worse but just bearable, still a pleasant life of sorts, with warmth, edible food and the constant company of her family.
Of course, falling off a cliff can hold some pleasures until you reach the bottom.
So she spends the days lost in her own world, thinking of the good times, and crying for the family she knows she will never see again. She cries for Keller too and knows that if it wasn’t for her stupid mistake they would all be alive. She knows there is blood on her hands that she can’t simply wash off. And she knows there is only one way she can be with them all again and ask for their forgiveness.
And so, in her confused state, she also tries to forget the good times – because when she doesn’t think of these, the pain is merely a dull ache in her heart that she can cope with – and she yearns for the time when she will see them all again.
For weeks she relies on Ester to tell her what’s been happening in the camp, but in truth doesn’t care – she might as well be listening to a news report:
The small crematorium used for burning bodies has quickly become overwhelmed.
Even the mass burnings and burials have stopped because too many people have been dying.
The prisoners have resorted to dragging the corpses as far away from the buildings as possible and simply leaving them there.
Now the prisoners are too weak and the sheer volume of dead flesh too much, so all they have energy for is making sure the bodies are taken out of the cabins.
And the cabins are so disgusting even the guards no longer visit.
End of news report.
On the few occasions Susannah leaves the cabin she sees the piles of bodies for herself – and realizes Ester isn’t exaggerating. Conditions have spiralled into the animalistic, making life at Westerbork seem luxurious.
For weeks Susannah does no more than exist, getting up only to eat the twice-daily meal – the thin soup and chunk of stale bread – that Ester brings her. She doesn’t turn up for roll-call and the guards don’t come and tell her to – perhaps they too have given up. She doesn’t wash or change her clothes; she hardly ever leaves the cabin, but mainly stays on the floor with her eyes closed, imagining a bright light – a strong sun of the purest white – concentrating her mind on absorbing its motherly warmth, bathing in its healing light. Think of that, not reality, and the pain stays still. Think of the fantastic and her mind has no room for the thoughts of reality that hurt.
Yes, if she concentrates on the light in her mind, then perh
aps she can make whatever world she wants there and she can choose whoever she wants to be in it. And then the horrible other world will be all over and she will be released from this misery.
Occasionally she feels her shoulder being gently shaken; it’s Ester taking her pure white dreams away by bringing food. Although younger in years than her, Ester talks to her, comforts her like Mother used to, and tells her to hold on, that the rumours of the advancing British army become stronger every day with each new set of prisoners.
Susannah has heard that too many times before and prefers the reality in her mind.
Only in early April do Susannah’s thoughts of wretchedness start to wane just a little, and she feels well enough to go out and experience some real sun. Perhaps there’s some water too. Her weakened legs are barely able to carry her, but she goes – something, somewhere, guiding her to the door, to a freedom of sorts. Her pale skin isn’t used to the sunlight and, although it’s only early spring, it feels as if her skin is being burnt. Even if she faces away from the sun she can’t bear to open her eyes to anything more than slits. But she stumbles over ruts in the mud tracks, then glances down to see the ruts are not made of mud but are bodies – not fresh ones but rotting ones, the skin diseased and spotted with areas of squirming maggots.
And yet there’s more to see. The mud that’s everywhere is splattered in parts with faeces, blood and vomit. There’s the occasional body that has had its internal organs raided – because in these desperate times any common, decent humanity has long since expired, along with hope.
The images before Susannah shock her awake and she looks further, now ignoring the headache caused by the pain of the light in her eyes. What’s a headache when you’re living in hell?
The things that move most – apart from the creatures that have started to crawl and feast on the carcasses of the prisoners – are birds that flutter and gaily swoop along. Sparrows twitch, thrushes and blackbirds hop, wagtails bob their back ends merrily up and down. All are oblivious to the sorry scene before them. In contrast, any human that moves does so as slowly as a slug.
But there’s more to see. The gates are still shut, the barbed wire still threatens to release what little blood is left in any bodies that venture near it.
Susannah soon feels too weak and tired. She’s scared that if she moves any further away from the cabin she won’t have the energy to return, so retreats into the stinking cave she now thinks of as her home.
Over the next few days Ester tries to keep Susannah’s spirits up, but it’s a hopeless case. She, like Susannah, is covered in itchy scabs and rashes – the legacy of the lice and fleas that celebrate the squalor.
And then the food stops completely.
And then the water supply gets turned off.
They’ve been locked in the camp and left to rot.
This is nothing more than a mass oubliette some distance beyond the ragged edges of a twisted civilization.
And in that mass oubliette Susannah would lie still and let herself die if it weren’t for those damned lice and fleas, constantly itching one area of skin or another. They’re everywhere, but congregate mostly around armpits, the pubic area, and on heads that once again have hair because there’s nothing to cut it with. Now her sole activities are resting, scratching herself until she bleeds, and picking off and crushing the lice. On one occasion she picks one of the creatures out of her hair, rolls it between her fingernail and the palm of her hand to crush it, then tries to look more closely. She holds it up to the light and squints her lazy eyes to focus on its broken body, which looks like a tiny fragment of brown glass covered in brown liquid. She closes her eyes, opens her mouth, and places the tiny speck of meat on her tongue. Sickness spreads across her face like black cloud spreading darkness. She knows the grimace costs her more energy than would be gained by eating the louse, and spits it out – or rather she forces it off her tongue and out of her mouth with her front teeth, leaving it to dribble in its saliva cocoon down her chin.
Her clothes are baggy on her shrunken frame. She’s dehydrated, riddled with fleas, lice and their eggs, and diseased with the rash of typhus. She knows that if she had the energy to inhale through her nose she would smell just like the rest of the prisoners – of stale sweat, urine, faeces and dried blood. Of creeping death.
How on God’s earth did she get from life in Berlin – and being protected by loving parents – to this?
Is she really ‘The Lucky One’?
And soon she doesn’t even have the energy to scratch. She curls up, covers her head with the crusty blanket, and begs God to take her.
Now she doesn’t dream or reminisce, she doesn’t sleep but drifts in and out of consciousness, visiting the other side. The better side. The pure white side. As she connects to this better world her thoughts flutter back and forth like the birds that criss-cross between the pine forest and this hell on earth.
At least Mother, Father and Jacob have avoided this torture.
Perhaps it’s they who are the lucky ones.
There are no more tears. There’s no more scratching and scraping of skin. There are only barely noticeable movements of Susannah’s chest, and gasping breaths from a dry, sticky mouth held agape.
Susannah curls up a little more. She waits to die.
And then, between the bouts of delirium that make the whole room sway, she feels her shoulder being rocked, as though someone or something is trying to wake her from her sleeping death. Her eyes slowly open but can’t focus and see only blurry movement. Then she hears Ester talking – because hearing takes no energy. Even Ester has little spirit left in her, but still manages to talk to Susannah, to tell her in some dull shadow of those excited tones that something is happening outside, that the gates are open, and that soldiers in different uniforms, who don’t speak German, are all around them.
But Ester is wasting her breath.
Susannah curls up yet more. She wants to die – to slip into her pure white world and stay there for ever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
With help and warmth from the memorial gardener, Susannah eventually calmed down enough to see that she was back in 2009 – that there were no old buildings left, and that there were no SS guards.
‘Here,’ he said to her. ‘Let me help you walk back to the Visitor Centre.’
She drew herself away from the man’s strong arms. ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Thank you. That would be nice.’
And then, as they started walking, she looked across to him. ‘You must think I’m an old fool, making such a fuss about something that happened years before you were even born.’
The man swiftly shook his head, then said, ‘Forgive me for asking, but were you a prisoner here?’
‘A prisoner?’ She cast a glance around her. ‘This was once my home. I remember the wooden cabins, the barbed wire, the electric fencing, the mud that was absolutely everywhere. But, you know, most of all I remember the voices; they seem to linger in my mind more than anything else.’
They walked in silence for a while longer, then Susannah stopped to catch her breath and looked towards the surrounding forest. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Actually I’m wrong. What I remember most of all are the birds flying back and forth between here and the forest just as they used to all those years ago. Nothing seems to have changed as far as they’re concerned.’
As they approached the Visitor Centre Susannah stopped still. ‘I . . . I don’t want to go into the cafeteria again.’
‘You don’t have to eat in there; you can just rest.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I can’t face . . . I know it sounds stupid, but it’s the noise, and the people.’
The gardener thought for a moment. ‘There’s always the multimedia room.’
‘The what?’
He pointed to a newish building at the far end of the Visitor Centre. ‘The multimedia room. It plays documentary video films.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s usually very quiet there, with comfortable seats. Like bein
g at the movies, yes?’
Susannah nodded. ‘Quiet and peaceful with comfortable seats. You know, young man, that sounds exactly what I need.’
He showed her to the door, which opened without a sound, and led her inside.
‘Are you sure you’re okay now?’ he said. ‘I have work to do.’ He edged to the door.
‘You’re a very kind man,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll be fine now, thank you.’
Only when the gardener left did she take a look around and realize she had the place all to herself. And he was right; it was, indeed, just like a small movie theatre. And, yes, the seats were large, well-padded affairs. In fact, the place resembled one of those home movie theatres that one or two of her better-off neighbours back in North Carolina had in their basements or in shacks in their back yards.
And it was dark. But it wasn’t quiet.
She settled herself down into one of those big, comfortable seats with a relaxing gasp and closed her eyes.
No. It wasn’t quiet.
On the display screen that dominated the front of the room a man was talking. There was something about him Susannah warmed to. It was partly because he was such a sweet old thing, and partly because she felt an immediate empathy with him. What was it about him? Of course, it was only because, just like her, he was one of those dewy-eyed old fools who obviously couldn’t forget what had happened all those years ago, someone else still quite obviously suffering over sixty years later. He stuttered and almost broke down as he talked about how he worked around the clock and catnapped here and there to get sleep, and described how he buried bodies and couldn’t get someone or other out of his mind.
And then he stopped talking, and there was peace and quiet. Good. As cute as the old guy was, Susannah had herself to think of. She was exhausted – physically and especially emotionally – and perhaps Judy and David had been right: perhaps dragging her weak and decrepit old body all this way hadn’t been such a clever move after all.
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