Broken Angels

by Gemma Liviero

  The truck of the dead is a term used among some of the guards, even some of the Judenrat.

  “There appears to be a mistake,” I say. “This girl passed Aryan testing. She was meant for one of the Lebensborn centers in the west. She is not to go east.”

  “Lebensborn?” he says, unfamiliar with the name. “She is too sick to go anywhere. You will not want to touch this one.”

  “Check your orders,” I say, ignoring the comment.

  The guard looks at my collar, then flicks through his pages on his clipboard.

  “What is your name?” he asks Elsi.

  I answer for her.

  “No, there is no mistake,” says the man confidently. I believe he likes his job. He likes the power of sending people to their deaths.

  “Then the request has been lost. I witnessed the testing myself,” I lie.

  “It is too late.”

  “Do you know the position I hold, Herr Baimgarten?”

  “Yes, Herr Captain.”

  “Do you know my father?”

  Baimgarten shakes his head, eyes narrowing. He can see where this is heading.

  “My father is Major General Gerhardt, and a personal friend of Herr Himmler. I have full authority to do with the prisoners as I wish. And I will report you if you do not comply with my command.”

  The guard looks uneasily at his feet before he answers. “What are your orders, Herr Captain?”

  “Strike her name from the list and bring her to the car.”

  “Her history says that she is more Jew than Aryan,” he says to me. He can’t help himself. Perhaps he has seen the madness in me. Perhaps he is still unsure I am who I appear to be.

  “Sometimes history is wrong,” I say.

  It is only one person he will lose from his manifest. At the end of the day he will no longer care.

  “Get up,” he barks at Elsi.

  The guard drags her from the line roughly.

  “I will take her from here,” I say.

  She looks at me suddenly, warily, pulling nervously at her own wrist. I can sense her reluctance.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  I help her into the car. She is very frail.

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  I slide in from the other side.

  Her eyes wander around inside the car as if she is expecting someone else. The filth of her dress against a pristine pale canvas of leather. Mud on the backs of her calves, dirt caked under jagged fingernails, lips white.

  “I am not someone’s whore. I won’t be yours.”

  “You are not anyone’s whore. You have passed the Aryan testing. It is my job to recruit for Aryan centers.”

  I say the last bit for the benefit of the driver. Drivers are supposed to look the other way. It is why they are carefully screened and employed. But it depends who they are employed by. One can never be too cautious.

  “I am not Aryan,” she whispers. It is the typhoid fever. It does strange things to the brain. It causes one to lose complete and utter hope and reduces the will to survive.

  I tell the driver to leave the car running as I let myself into the surgery once more. I take supplies of sulfonamide for her infection along with other medicines. The cupboards, I notice, have already been raided of much.

  Back in the car, we follow the streets once more that lead us out of the ghetto. The girl’s head is resting on the back of the seat. She stares out of the window through a cloud of fever. Her legs move restlessly.

  As we pass the checkpoints, I wonder briefly at what I have done, at the spontaneity that I have never had before, whether I will get away with it. How proud it would make Lena to see me do something that goes against convention. To do something truly righteous rather than what looks right. And I feel a weight lifted. For the first time I feel free.

  I smile at the risk I have taken.

  “You are Aryan enough,” I whisper back, but she doesn’t acknowledge this. It is unlikely she even understands the full weight of its meaning. It means, of course, that she will not die.

  APRIL

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  WILLEM

  In the past month I have received several calls from my father, asking when I am coming. I need some more time, I said. I am not yet through my grief. On the other end of the phone line, his silence confirmed his bitter disappointment in a son who continues not to deliver.

  In the kitchen, Elsi is preparing dinner. I have never asked her to do this, but it became her role this last week. It is what she says she enjoys most: to have a kitchen and a stove that works. To have a choice of foods to cook with. Color is returning to her face, fullness to her cheeks. I have trimmed her short hair, neatening it slightly.

  When I brought her to the apartment, she could walk but only just, so weak was she, her temperature high. She was too ill to fight me when I helped her undress to place her in a cool bath. The rash across her abdomen was another symptom of the disease. After she was cleaned and dressed in a nightgown of Lena’s, I led her to one of the spare bedrooms, where she collapsed. There was torn skin and a lump the width of three inches on the back of her skull where she had been struck with an object, most likely by a guard.

  The typhoid fever had not yet reached critical stages—I judged she had been ill for between one and two weeks. Another two weeks and she may have died; however, an even quicker death had been planned for her by way of the trucks for the dead. She stayed in a room of the apartment, speaking vaguely at times but mostly coherent, her large, round eyes watching me as I treated her with medicine to kill the bacterial infection and painkillers to reduce the fever.

  The fever broke after several days of treatment. She had been saved, unlike most who were admitted to the ghetto hospitals long after their fevers had progressed too far to be helped.

  I gave her several dresses of Lena’s and have been helping her improve her German speech. She had not taken to the language in her early years, she confessed, but she was a fast learner and had picked up much of it in the ghetto. It was in the third week that she bombarded me with questions after I suggested we destroy her identity card.

  Why did you help me? What will become of me? Do you know of my sister? These are questions I am still unable to answer. Though she is grateful, I can tell that she often thinks I have more devious reasons for helping her. In time she will see that I do not.

  I have told her briefly about Lena, though it is often in the middle of other things I am talking about, her name so connected with much of my past: the activities we shared and the places we went. I do not discuss my work at Auschwitz, only of the work ahead, and that I will return again to Germany eventually. That is usually where our conversation stops, since I have not yet thought of ways to protect her when it comes to that time.

  Her sister is still in the ghetto, which is a constant concern for her, and I have promised to learn what I can. Her mother is dead, shot by the Gestapo for visiting the ghetto prison. I could not look at Elsi when she told me this for fear that I would give something away. She has yet to know what kind of man I descend from. It is only from the photo at the front of the apartment that she knows I am someone with connections to the Führer and his plan to rid his empire of Jews.

  In recent days it is as if she has come alive. That is not to say that she is unbroken. Sometimes I hear her cries and whimpers on the nights there are no whistling winds. It is a curious thing that we live like this. The question of our future does not come up as often as I thought; both of us will it to remain the way it is now—uncomplicated.

  It is easy to see what type of person she was before the war. She is colorful at times, talkative, a girl with dreams that were suddenly interrupted. But sometimes she is the color gray: withdrawn into memories of her imprisonment. This is to be expected. Grief is neither black nor white.

  Light rain accompanies a howling wind from the north. The streets are almost bare, and those who are out by necessity hold fast to their hats. The blanket of snow has
disappeared to reveal broken pavements and water-filled craters streaked with oil. I pay someone to bring food from the markets to limit my contact with the outside world; to stay hidden within this apartment, now a sanctuary for the disaffected—although I know that such places are only ever temporary. I recently sent a letter to my father telling him that I am progressing well, that it won’t be long now before I can work—words and promises that can hopefully give me more time to come up with a plan.

  Elsi has seen the nursery that Lena had been working on while I was away. Lena had not been as keen to finish the decorating once she had learned we were returning to Germany. Part of the room has been painted, the other half not. It is as unfinished as Lena’s and my time together. I have been inside the room once, to see the lace-covered cradle in the corner. I cannot look inside again. Elsi is sorry for my loss. Her regret is genuine.

  She talks of a boy in the ghetto who nearly sent her to her death, but she stops the conversation suddenly, her eyes sad and fearful; perhaps she is thinking she has said too much.

  “Go on,” I say. “I am not going back to that place. I don’t care to sell your secrets. I am in just as deep.”

  She starts to cry then, and I wonder about the boy.

  “Did you love him?”

  “No,” she says. “Maybe . . . I don’t know.” She puts her head in her hands. The dimming light outside paints the front living room in colors of sorrow. Elsi’s heart is as heavy as mine. I wonder if we can ever heal.

  I reach out to touch her shoulder, then draw my hand back. I cannot contaminate her further. She has been handled enough.

  She raises her head and rubs at her eyes.

  I hesitate to turn on the lamp beside me in case she does not want me to see her face.

  “The nights will soon be warm,” I say, to break the silence. “I do not miss the winter.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I know what it is like to experience a winter in the ghetto. Those unfortunate souls must be grateful for spring.”

  Silence.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  I look not at her but out the window to the mauve-and-orange clouds on the horizon. Such beauty found even here, near the abode of the damned.

  “Elsi,” I say, “do you fear me?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are a Nazi. Because you are a man. I have seen what they do to Jewish women.”

  “Elsi, please understand that I am not like those other men. If I could, I would not have any of you live in the way I have seen. And I will not treat you like other men.”

  “What would you do if you were in charge of the ghetto?”

  “First, I would condemn Hermann Manz to be hanged.”

  She nods.

  “They didn’t need to kill my mother. She did nothing to them.”

  She leaves the room then. We are from opposite sides of the universe. This apartment, a neutral haven where we can meld our pain.

  Morning and rain falls heavily. A knock at the door startles me. There is no sign of Elsi. I open it to find Hermann Manz. Coldness spreads down my spine.

  “So it is true! You are still here.”

  “Yes.” There is a moment of panic. Perhaps he knows what I have done: I have taken a girl from the ghetto.

  “Are you going to leave me out here?”

  “Come in!” I say with feigned courtesy.

  He shakes the raindrops from his coat before hanging it on a hook near the door. The floor of the entranceway is now wet and muddy. He has not bothered to wipe his feet.

  I usher him toward the sitting room near the front viewing window, and I notice with some concern that Lena’s cardigan lies across one of the chairs: evidence of Elsi’s presence. We sit here often to watch the stream slowly filling with rainwater, to sit in silence. Manz does not appear to notice. I look toward the hall. There is no sign of Elsi.

  Manz looks around the room. “Ah yes . . . as nice as I remember. Much nicer than mine.” He turns, his large body blocking out the light, his face in shadow. “Someone in the town saw you. I had to check. To make sure.”

  I clear my throat, which has thickened. “It is taking some time to adjust to her death.”

  Manz thinks a moment. “Oh yes, yes. Your wife. Such a shame.” Forced sympathy, something I have used myself.

  “But I will return to Berlin in due course.”

  “Fortunate for some,” he says. He knows I have more rights than most. Then in a lighter tone, “But everyone should have a break from such a hellhole.”

  Manz walks to the window. “A better view than most, yes?” he says. This is followed by a short, gruff laugh. “You are lucky you are not facing the ghetto.”

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “No, I’d prefer a whiskey.”

  He was warned by the Reich Governor to stop drinking while on duty. He is always breaking some rule.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any left. It was the first thing that went upon my return.”

  “Never mind. This is business. And I can’t help but be relieved that you are here. The hospitals have limited staff now. I need your help . . . it is a sensitive issue.”

  Some of the tension leaves my back.

  “Please . . .” I gesture toward the lounge, where he takes a seat. “What is this business?”

  “There is a particular woman . . .”

  There is always a woman.

  “And she is in a delicate way.”

  “Lilli again?”

  “Yes, unfortunately, but nothing to do with me this time. You would be helping out a friend.”

  He finds it hard to meet my eyes when he says this.

  “I see.”

  “Can you come and see her? I have been transferred elsewhere in Poland and will be finished at the ghetto in several weeks. I owe her this favor, and who knows what will happen to her after that.”

  “Of course,” I say. I need to get him out of here. “That is very considerate of you.” He is an egotistical tyrant who always has an ulterior motive. “I can come straight away.”

  “No. I will send a car to collect you later tonight. It is more discreet. One last favor . . . for comradeship, for the purity of Germany.”

  He laughs, a sound from deep inside his large torso. I laugh, too, a rehearsed response.

  We make small talk. He says that the ghetto is overcrowded. They have had to deport many of the children and elderly, evacuate the hospitals, get rid of the sick. Too much disease. Deport is another name for eradicate. I suspect that Elsi is behind a corner close by, listening intently to this conversation.

  “And you wouldn’t know about the unfortunate incident involving the killing of one of our men. Of course you wouldn’t—you had already left. Apart from her regrettable racial background, she has served us well.”

  “I don’t understand. Who has served us well?”

  “Lilli! She works for us, Willem. I thought you knew that! It was Lilli who revealed the names of the people who were setting fire to buildings. It turns out the woman she had befriended—you treated her once—had a daughter who was part of the group. Lilli is excellent at knowing the right questions to ask, at getting people to trust her.”

  “Forgive me for my ignorance. I had no idea she was a spy.”

  “Oh yes, one of our best,” he says. “I don’t normally believe in gratitude, especially toward Jews, but she is always coming to us with new information, and with your help—”

  There is a sudden, loud clanging noise in the kitchen. Manz stands up.

  “Please, stay seated . . . it is just my housekeeper. Excuse me while I check to see if anything is broken.”

  In the kitchen, Elsi sits in the corner, one hand over her mouth. I rush to her and whisper in her ear.

  “You have to trust me. Don’t make a noise,” I say. “I will find out the truth.”

  Her eyes are wide. She is holding back a scream.

  “Wait!” I put my han
d on her shoulder and scan behind me to check if he has followed me in. Elsi takes her hand away from her mouth. I am not sure what she will do if I leave her, but I must return to Manz and hope she stays hidden.

  “My apologies for the interruption. Everything is fine,” I say, returning to my unwelcome guest. “Just a pot that has fallen on the floor.”

  Manz eyes the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Please. You were saying . . .”

  “Simply that gleaning information is never too difficult. You know those Jews and Poles . . . They always protect themselves first. Friendships crumble for the sake of a nice coat and fresh milk and coal.”

  “Yes, I imagine so,” I say. “If you send around the car, I will come and do as you asked, Hermann.” The time for familiarity in this instance only, since I, too, am about to request a favor. “I must ask that you tell no one I am here,” I say. “I prefer the solitude for a while.”

  “Of course.”

  “And another thing. Tonight, if you could, make sure there is a guard outside the door as is usual. I would feel more secure, in light of the fact that one of our own was murdered.” I use the word only to dramatize, to highlight my supposed concern.

  “Yes, anything you need. Do you require more medicine?”

  “Has anyone had access to the surgery and taken items I might need?”

  “Absolutely not.” He is lying; perhaps the missing medicine was taken for himself.

  “Then I believe there should still be enough.”

  I walk him to the door, the negotiations of our arrangement nothing short of civil, even in times of genocide. Then he is gone, but the scent of his cologne still lingers.

  Elsi rushes toward me. Her eyes are wide, frantic.

  “I want to kill her!”

  “Calm yourself,” I say. “Lilli will be left alone in the ghetto without the support of Manz. She will suffer there—I am certain.”

  “It is not enough,” she says, eyes dry, hatred burning a hole inside her fragile heart.

  “I will speak to her tonight,” I say. “I will find out the truth. Who knows what lies Manz will say to protect himself, to make himself look heroic?” This to appease her, but I am already treating this as truth. It is unlikely that Manz would make this up since I had already agreed to help him prior to this knowledge.