Some of the men were crying, others prayed; most, like Dov, were silent. He lay down on his bunk.
His neighbor, also selected, tugged at his jacket. “Why did they pick me?”
“Because you’re a Jew!” a voice shouted, laughing.
The Orphan, Mendelssohn and the Stubenaltester stood at the doorway of the Tagesraum and watched. Free entertainment.
“They wrote my number down by mistake!” someone shouted. He appealed directly to Mendelssohn. “Look at me, I have months more work left in me, Herr Blockaltester! Tell them they’ve made a mistake!”
“Certainly I shall tell them,” Mendelssohn said. “The next time I see Dr Mengele I shall tell him. Next month some time!”
The Orphan liked that one. He and the rest of the Stubenaltester roared. Then they went back inside and the door to the Tagesraum slammed in their faces.
Dov sat up. “Rosenberg, do you want to buy a spoon?”
“Why would I want a spoon?”
Dov shrugged. “Do you ... or not?”
“How did you know mine was stolen?”
“Half a ration of bread. The usual price. Yes or no?”
“You’re going to die. What do you need with bread?”
“I don’t want to die hungry, Rosenberg.” He held out the spoon.
Netanel took it. Half a ration of bread to a dead man. What a waste.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Dov said. “You are dead too. All these poor little Häftlings are dead. It’s just a question of time before it’s your turn. So don’t feel sorry for me.” And he started to laugh.
“Well, Marie, how delightful to see you, here of all places. Silesia does get a little grey and drab this time of year. Why don’t you sit down here? Thank you, Sergeant, that will be all.”
Major Rolf Emmerich walked around his desk and held out a chair for her. When she was seated, he took a packet of cigarettes from the desk and lit one. He offered her one.
She shook her head.
“It was most fortunate for you I happened to be at the station this morning. It is not my regular duty. I have only recently been transferred here from Buna. If I had not seen you ...”
Marie held her hands in her lap and concentrated on the floor.
He leaned forward and forced her chin up. “What are you doing here?”
“Where is here?”
“Oswiecim. In the south-west of Silesia, in Poland.”
“It’s a death camp, isn’t it?”
A muscle in his jaw rippled. “Now what makes you think that?”
“Why don’t you kill me and be finished with it?”
“Why would I want to do that? Hermann would never forgive me.”
“What do you want?”
Rolf drew on his cigarette and weighed her in his gaze. “First, you answer my questions. How did you get to be on that train? The shipment was supposed to be just Jews from Theresienstadt.”
Marie shrugged her shoulders. Why should she tell him anything?
When he spoke again, there was a harder edge to his voice. “I can find out soon enough. A few phone calls. But I would rather hear it from you. It would be a gesture of friendship. You might need a friend right now, Marie. You are a long way from home.”
“I was arrested by the Gestapo.”
“What for? No, let me guess.” He grinned again. “Did it have anything to do with your Jew lover?”
“They found me at his house. I was sleeping with him.” Rolf jumped to his feet as if he’d been stung. When he realized he had given himself away he tried to cover the gesture by pretending to walk to the window. “Go on.”
“I was interrogated and I spent God knows how long in the prison in München.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Would you have liked that?”
“Don’t be stupid!”
“I don’t think they could make up their minds what to do with me. They sent me to Theresienstadt. Then two days ago I was put on a train and sent here.”
“Theresienstadt is a summer camp.”
“I must have gone at a bad time.’
He turned from the window and leaned on the back of her chair. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”
“Yes, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
He stroked her hair. She flinched, so he took a handful of hair in his fist and pulled her head towards him. “This is not Germany. You have a lot to learn. The first thing to learn is that you must be nice to me. If you want to stay alive.”
“You decided I want to live so badly. I didn’t.” She gasped as he twisted his fingers tighter in her hair.
“There are many ways of dying. Many ways. The worst kind is when you are still breathing long after you are dead.” He kissed her throat. “I shall give you a choice.” He let her go and walked round his desk and sat down. “What do you think happened to those women who were with you on the train?”
“I imagine they are all dead by now.”
He nodded. “Yes, it is a pity, but those are our orders. You see, it creates problems. Women here are very scarce. On your way in, did you see the big building just beyond the main gates?”
Marie nodded.
“That is the Frauenblock. To be frank, it is the camp brothel. It is reserved for the use of the Aryan prisoners, as a reward for performing certain duties. These men, you understand, are not the best that Germany can produce. Most of them are unreasonably violent, a few of them are psychopaths. The girls are mainly Polish, and they are kept very busy I’m afraid. We are always short of girls because for some reason many of them die after a few months.” He paused to draw on his cigarette. “So here is your choice. I can arrange for you to be sent to the Frauenblock and you can have your pick of our country’s most depraved criminals as your sexual partners. Or, I can arrange for you to take up a post of some comfort inside the camp, and in return you will be required to satisfy just one customer, a man of quality, position and some gentleness on occasion.”
“You.”
“It is a good bargain, I believe.” He stubbed out the cigarette and leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. “I waited a long time for you, and you refused me. Well, I thought, so be it. But now fate has brought you here. I do not have to plead my case anymore. The choice is yours.”
Marie hid her face in her hands. It would have been easy to have chosen death, to have screamed defiance to the end. She had prepared herself for that ever since she was arrested. But to die that way, by brutality and rape in a death camp brothel . . .
She took her hands away. Damn him. She would not let him see her break. “Am I really so desirable?”
“We shall have to find out . . . won’t we?”
Netanel saw Chaim waiting outside the Meister’s hut when their Arbeitskommando arrived at the marshalling yard. The snow had vanished today but the coal-stained slush seeped through his shoes.
Chaim called him out of line. “So you survived the selection?”
Netanel nodded.
“Herrgottsacrament, have you any idea what you look like?”
“They took my shaving mirror.”
“You don’t have to go on with this.”
“Neither do you.”
Chaim snorted in disgust. “I was at the barracks this morning when the Leichenauto came for your friends.” He nodded towards the chimneys at Birkenau, visible this morning for the first time in weeks. A black-yellow smoke drifted lazily into the blue sky. “There they go now.”
“If you want to help me, get me an easier kommando.”
“They don’t let the Jews have the easy jobs.”
“Thank you, Chaim. Your mother would have been proud of you.”
Chaim shrugged. “It’s a long winter, Netya. There are new Häftlinge arriving all the time. You survived this selection. You don’t really think you’ll survive the next one, do you?”
He walked away.
Netanel watched him go, the large black “K” stenciled on the back of his pri
son jacket. A Jew like me. But I cannot betray my own soul as he has done. They can beat me, but they cannot break me unless I agree to become one of them.
Yet I want to survive so much; I have to know if Marie is all right.
The Orphan hit him between the shoulder-blades with his truncheon. “Back to work, Jew shit! The good doctor didn’t save your skinny ass so you could stand around in the sun dreaming!”
Netanel shuffled towards the others, standing in line to receive their tools at the Meister’s shed.
Marie . . .
PART FIVE
PALESTINE, 1942-3
Chapter 15
Talbieh
Henry Talbot took his breakfast on the patio. It was a bright, still morning. The best time of year, he thought. Swallows swooped and played in the branches of the fig tree, and sparrows fidgeted overhead in the vine trellis, feeding on the sweet black grapes. Old Abdollah sat on a wicker stool in the courtyard shelling peas.
Whenever he caught himself enjoying such moments, he felt like a truant schoolboy. He reminded himself that in England his sister was probably standing in a ration queue, and his younger brother was watching rain drip through an olive drab tent somewhere on Salisbury Plain. Their war seemed so far away.
Yet it had come so close for a time.
It was this time last year that Rommel had converged on El Agheila, just ninety miles from Alexandria. The Mufti, who had fled to Berlin after the start of the war, made frequent appeals on Radio Damascus for the Egyptians to stage a revolt. For a few weeks it seemed almost inevitable that the German Panzers would roll through Cairo and Jerusalem, as they had Paris and Warsaw, and for weeks the lights had burned through the night on the Hill of Evil Counsel and in the David Building, as the British administration prepared for an ignominious exit. Instead the German rush had broken at Alamein and now Rommel’s Afrika Korps was crushed, its remnants trapped on the Cape Bon peninsula.
It was all a great disappointment to the Arabs.
Majid appeared with a fresh pot of tea. He placed it in the centre of the table, fussily brushed away some crumbs of toast, and waited.
Talbot glanced up at him, apprehensively. Their relationship had become complicated recently, and now he wished he had not so recklessly fudged the distinction between master and servant.
“How are you this morning, Majid?”
“Splendid, thank you, Talbot effendi.” He hesitated. “In fact, effendi, there was something I wished to ask you.”
Knew it, Talbot thought. One of his little schemes has run foul of the Palestine police. “Are you in trouble?”
“Oh no, effendi. It is my youngest son, Yusuf. He is to be circumcised this Saturday.”
“And you’d like the day off? By all means, we shall manage.”
“That is very kind, effendi … but I wondered also if you and the Rod - Lady Talbot, would do my family the honor of your presence?”
Talbot put down his newspaper. “It is very kind of you to ask us, Majid.” And the invitation was indeed a great honor, Talbot realized. It might also be rewarding. What Elizabeth would think was another matter.
“It is to take place in my village, Rab’allah. You will come?”
“I shall have to discuss it first with Lady Talbot.” But why not? he thought. It was all in the cause of good British-Arab relations; assuming, of course, that they did not still wish to assassinate him.
Off Salah ed-Din Road
Rishou parked the black Plymouth taxi in the street outside Majid’s apartment and punched the horn. Majid leaned out of the upstairs window and waved. A few minutes later he reappeared, resplendent in his best western-style suit of wide check. Mirham followed behind him in a thaub of white silk, a black scarf wrapped around her face. The same contrasting styles was reflected in their sons and daughters.
Majid jumped in next to Rishou, while Mirham and the children piled into the back. Mirham and the oldest boy were struggling with large sacks.
“Sugar,” Majid beamed. “Good Britisher sugar. Tate and Lyle!”
“Father will be delighted.”
“The Britishers have been good to us,” Majid said, conveniently ignoring the fact that the British knew nothing at all about the transaction. “How are you, Rishou?”
“I am well, Majid.”
“How is the taxi business? Do we prosper?”
“At this rate we shall soon be the most prosperous Arabs in Jerusalem. We shall be invited to tea with the Mandoob es Sami.”
The taxi had been purchased with money largely provided by Majid. The war had been kind to him. Talbot had entrusted him with the purchase of all their household requirements, and Majid took fifteen per cent commission from this weekly allowance.
“As easy as scooping cream from a bucket,” he had boasted.
He used this money to buy items readily available from the British quartermaster stores - such as tinned food and kerosene - that fetched a handsome price in the souks on the black market. In this way he regularly doubled or even trebled his profits. He had reinvested the proceeds in the Plymouth and a taxi license.
Rishou studied him from the comer of his eye as he drove. Majid was getting plump. There were extra rolls under his chin and his belly bulged over the waistband of his western-style trousers. The Britishers have indeed been very good to us.
They had not meant to be, but they were.
Rab’allah
When Rishou was not working the taxi, he parked it outside the coffee shop, radio blaring, so the customers could listen to the news bulletins from Damascus. Syria was under the control of the French Vichy government and the reports on the war’s progress were quite different from the ones they heard on the British radio station in Jerusalem. One thing, however, had become quite clear. The Germans would not be throwing the British out of Palestine anytime soon. The miracle the Mufti had promised them would not take place.
“We are betrayed,” Izzat shouted when the broadcast finished. It was his personal litany.
“Insha’Allah. It is God’s will,” Zayyad said.
“Is it God’s will for us to sell our apples and our figs and our sheep to the Britishers? Is this the way to fight our enemies?” There was stillness inside the smoky room. Everyone knew it was Zayyad’s decision to sell produce to the Mandate government and to allow some of the villagers to work as laborers at the RAF base in Jerusalem. Izzat’s accusation was tantamount to a challenge to their muktar’s authority. How would Zayyad react?
But it was Majid who spoke first. “The Britishers are not our enemies,” he said.
“They are in conspiracy with the Jews!”
“How? How are the Britishers against us? Look at you! Are you starving? All over Palestine there is a shortage of sugar, coffee, rice, wheat. But I get it for you. How? From the Britishers! Some of you have bicycles now. Jamil Sinnawi has his own outside toilet because the Britishers gave him work in their army stores. And look at how you are all dressed!” Self-consciously, a few of them peered through the haze of cigarette smoke at each other. It was true: some of them wore western-style jackets under their abbayahs, many of them owned wristwatches, clutched packets of Player’s cigarettes. Perhaps Majid was right. “Would you have all these things if it were not for the Britishers?”
“All gifts come from Allah,” Izzat said.
“Perhaps the Jews were a gift as well,” Rishou said.
A few men laughed and Izzat’s face turned a mottled pink. “The Mufti says Adolf Hitler is the sworn enemy of the Jews. So he is a friend to us. The Britishers are the enemy of Hitler. So the Britishers are our enemy too!”
“The Britishers have promised to give us our independence,’ Majid said. “The Britishers don’t lie.” Majid said.
“Why should anyone have to give us what is ours by right? If we had risen up together and fought when the Mufti declared the jihad, the Germans would be here now!”
Majid tried to shout him down but Rishou held up his hand. “No, brother, our friend i
s probably right. Perhaps that is what would have happened. But tell me, Izzat, how did the Mufti, you know, plan to get rid of the Germans?”
“The Germans would have left us in peace to rule ourselves.”
“But if they like us so much, they might have wanted to stay.”
“They have given the Mufti their word.”
Rishou shook his head. “You know, Izzat, your intelligence is not exactly something from which poets would draw great inspiration.”
“I did not go to the Britisher school like you did, Rishou, but I know what I see. The Jews have come here and taken our land away from us. The Britishers let them do it. When you walk up to the Place Where The Fig Tree Died and look over the valley, what do you see? You see Jews. Jews on what was once our land.”
“It was a swamp.”
Izzat ignored him. “What about the Jews who built a farm near my village at al-Naqb? My grandfather grazed his sheep on that land.”
They say he did a lot of other things to his sheep there, as well, Rishou thought. But Izzat had made his point. “What is done is done. The Britishers have promised no more Jews will come.”
“There are already too many! We don’t want Jews flaunting their women at us, with their naked legs and arms, we don’t want their men staring at our women, we don’t want them taking the wilderness Allah made in His wisdom, we don’t want them taking our fields …”
“Enough,” Zayyad said.
The room fell quiet. Every head in the room turned towards the muktar. Zayyad knew he should have silenced the argument sooner, but if he did not let the young men speak their minds here in the open, they would otherwise whisper among themselves in secret. For nearly a decade this talk of the Jews had been tearing his village apart. Izzat was right. The Jews now resided on land that had been theirs for hundreds of years. But it was too late to do anything about that now.
Freedom (Jerusalem) Page 12
