We wear as many clothes as possible, but that means it’s hard to move our arms to work efficiently, which makes Kurt cantankerous. Herr Rauchbach has ordered more logs for the range and our stoves, but we suspect Kurt is siphoning off some and selling them, because there’s never enough to keep the stove alight all night.
Despite the extra logs, the patterns of frost are thick on the windows when we wake. The latrine is frozen now, which helps with the smell, but when we pee into it, our urine puddles on yesterday’s layer of ice. As Bill predicted, the taps in our washroom have already frozen twice. Kurt brought a cut-up blanket—better quality than the blankets most of us are using—and we wrapped it around the pipes. Straw would have worked just as well. We wash in the most perfunctory way in the freezing water, rubbing our hands together quickly. Now everyone wipes a cloth over their face like a girl rather than immersing and splashing like a man. I dread the thought of having to rinse out my rags when my monthlies come again. Scotty has stopped shaving, and a huge red beard is starting to sprout, but Bill and Ralph and sometimes Max loyally stand beside me each morning. As I pretend to shave, they do so in reality, cursing blunt razor blades and cold water. They think it draws less attention to my smooth chin if they are clean-shaven too. Max lets his beard grow for a few days, but then says it itches and shaves it off again.
Red Cross parcels aren’t as frequent here as at Lamsdorf, so we are overjoyed one Sunday in early December when an army truck rattles up and there’s a delivery. We don’t know if it’s a mistake, but there are enough parcels for one each, and in our house there’s swift bartering between those who have American parcels with coffee and those who have British ones with tea. I have something called Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut chocolate, which I think may be the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. There’s also an Australian bulk package of raisins, which Scotty proposes we use to make some “hooch” for Christmas, and there’s great debate about the best possible recipe. I wish they could taste my mother’s plum brandy, and I could kick myself for not paying attention when she was making it.
Many of the men have letters and personal parcels too. Max has one letter, which he retreats to the window with. I hope it’s good news for him. Bill has two letters from home, sent months apart, and one parcel.
“A letter from Mum.” He beams. “And one from Flora.”
Scotty and I are the only people in the house who have nothing.
“I kenned it was wiser not to let anyone know where I am,” he sighs. “Ne’er mind, Cousins. Come and play rummy while they read their mail and open their presents. Card games are good for blocking out other thoughts.”
But I can’t help watching Bill’s face while he reads his letters. Everything he feels shows in his expression. I’m sick with jealousy that he’s reading the letter from Flora with such evident relish. I lose hand after hand of rummy, and Scotty says mildly, “Ye needs to put your whole mind to it.”
Then Bill calls me to open the personal parcel with him. It was sent from home last May, first to Italy and then all the way up to Lamsdorf and finally to Saubsdorf.
He wrenches it open with the eagerness of a child, and I watch his joy at the simple things inside: a photograph of his mum and dad taken in a studio, looking self-conscious and unhappy. I study this hard, but can see no sign of Bill in their faces, though his mother is blond, like him, or maybe gray-haired. It’s hard to tell in a black-and-white photograph. They both look overly well-fed. His father has a mustache, but much smaller than my dad’s. I long to have a picture of my father and mother. Already I’m finding their faces difficult to picture. I don’t wonder Bill’s parents look sad when this photo is intended for their only child, who they haven’t seen for five long years, a prisoner in a strange land, so many, many miles away. If we ever have a child, I’m not sure if I would be able to bear that.
The parcel contains: some underwear better suited for summer in Italy, though any new vests are welcome; some socks, which are sorely needed; some Carter’s Elastoplast and an iodine pencil; but best of all to Bill, a new harmonica, made of brass, with more holes than his old one, and a note from Flora saying she got it from an American airman who was a jazz fan but hadn’t mastered the art of playing it. I hope Flora’s fallen in love with the GI and will go back to the United States with him, but Bill turns the harmonica over and over, saying, “Well, I never!” before finally putting it to his lips. Everyone looks up as he blows. It certainly makes a richer sound than his old one, more like chords than single notes, and he determines we’ll have a singsong as soon as he’s worked out what it can do.
When everything in his personal parcel has been admired and exclaimed over, we turn again to the Red Cross food parcels. Herr Rauchbach has ignored the orders to pierce the tins, so we know this food will keep as long as we need it to or as long as we can bear not to eat it.
“What’ll we have tonight?” asks Bill. “We could use some of the dried egg and the cheese to make an omelet. Would you like that?”
He’s so eager that he reminds me of a puppy, though I long to simply cram the biscuits into my mouth, one after another until my cheeks are so full that I can’t move my jaw.
Max’s parcel has books and a belt and a shaving brush. Ralph’s has playing cards, leather bootlaces, a knitted balaclava for someone with a very small head.
“You’d better have this, Cousins,” he says doubtfully, but I think it’s only big enough for a toddler.
He unfolds a droopy hand-knitted sweater and holds it up against himself. “Was I ever really this big?” he asks.
“We’ve all lost a lot of weight,” says Max.
“I was almost chubby when I joined up,” admits Bill.
I’m astonished. I can’t imagine him overweight, and wonder with a rush of anxiety if I will still love him if he becomes overweight like his mother when we get back to England. I try to imagine his finely sculpted face padded out with layers of fat, but it’s impossible.
“We should weigh ourselves tomorrow,” suggests Max. “Where we weigh the marble.”
Bill is eyeing up Ralph’s sweater. “I could probably make two out of that, if I unpicked it,” he says. “Or a jumper with a matching scarf and mittens.” He has been knitting furiously, using patterns and wool brought by the amused Berta. If Berta wonders how he understands the Czech patterns, she never asks.
Ralph laughs and wraps his sweater back up in the brown paper. “I’m sure you could,” he says, “but hands off. It’s mine. Knitted by my sister.”
* * *
The next day Ralph asks permission from Herr Rauchbach, and we weigh ourselves where we weigh the quarried rocks. Bill is fifty-seven kilos, and I’ve dropped from fifty-four to forty-four. This is with my boots and outdoor clothes on, so I guess my real weight might be even less than this, maybe only forty-two. There’s a long debate between Ralph and Max about the conversion from kilos to stones and pounds. Apparently there are fourteen pounds in a stone, and sixteen ounces in a pound. I wonder how I’ll ever be able to bake a cake or buy groceries. It’s just as well I’m good at numbers. Eventually the calculations are done and Bill exclaims, “So fifty-seven kilos is nine stone. I was thirteen stone when I joined up. I haven’t been nine stone since I was fourteen. And Cousins must be—hang on a minute—under seven stone. Six stone something. Blimey, that’s not much.”
Herr Rauchbach has been watching—at first with interest and then with some consternation. Ralph sees his opportunity and saunters over. “Herr Rauchbach. As you see, the prisoners are losing weight. The work here is so heavy. I worry that they will become too weak to be productive.” He points to me. “Cousins here is only forty-three kilos. A strong puff of wind could blow him over.”
“Yes, yes, I can see that. Don’t worry. There will be extra potato rations from now, and dumplings, and God knows it’s not easy, but I’ll try to get sausage, and Kurt can shoot some rabbit.”
/> “Thank you, Herr Rauchbach. Whatever you can obtain will be much appreciated.”
The quarry owner hurries back to the house, and sure enough, that dinnertime Berta has cooked up a stew with additional potatoes, and we each have a portion of sausage—no bigger than the end joint of my thumb, but at least it’s meat. We all still feel hungry, but the rest of the house is delighted, and everyone shakes Ralph’s hand to thank him. We all agree to have one ladleful for lunch and save the rest for the evening. I go to bed feeling less hungry than any time in the past two months.
Ever since the letters and parcels came, I’ve been thinking how much I want to write to my mother, trying to work out what I could say that wouldn’t give away our whereabouts. Finally I decide Bill must write to Flora and ask her to send a thank-you note to the farm where people were so kind to him. We pore over it together as he gives Flora the exact words to use: My cousin Bill has asked me to write to say thank you for your kindness and generosity to him. He is well and happy and taking great care of the gift you gave him. Of course the Oily Captain will know what it means, but Bill’s letter has to go all the way to England, and won’t mention our location, and then Flora’s will go from England to Vražné, and by then surely we won’t be here anymore. I ache for the day I can write to my mother myself.
One personal parcel somehow became separated from the rest, and arrives a few days later. It’s for Max, and he goes white when he sees the handwriting. Most people rip open the parcels from home as soon as they arrive, but Max thrusts his under his bunk. Nobody makes any comment.
When we are all in the kitchen, he slips away to the bedroom, and when he returns, some time later, the dark circles under his eyes seem to have deepened. We all pretend not to notice the fact that he doesn’t speak all evening and retires early. When I go to bed, Max is curled away from us, facing the wall, but I know by his breathing that he’s only pretending to be asleep. During the night I hear him blow his nose as quietly as he can.
* * *
The next day in the quarry Max beckons me over to where he’s working, indicating the chippings around his feet. I begin to sweep them up into my bucket. “It was from Rachel, my parcel,” Max says in a rush.
My heart is full of sorrow for him, but he isn’t looking to me for sympathy. He is bursting with the need to speak, and my silence seems to draw more words out of him. “She sent it over a year ago. Full of things she knew I liked. She must have still loved me then, mustn’t she?”
I know he’s talking to himself as much as to me, before he explodes with these pent-up thoughts.
He glances up at me. “But you don’t know, do you? My fiancée wrote to me. About ten days before you came.”
The words wring slowly out of him, with each fall of the pickax. He doesn’t lift his head again.
“I had a letter. First one for ten months. From Rachel. Saying she had. Married. Someone else. My brother. Married my brother. D’you see?”
He pauses, sweat and tears running down his face, and looks directly at me.
“How could they do that to me? My own brother and my fiancée?” he asks.
He shakes his head, and freezing droplets spin from his face as he resumes work with a hammer and chisel.
“How could they?” he asks.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, and I touch his arm, fleetingly. I hope that conveys the words I want to say, that I don’t understand how she could do that to him, but one day perhaps he’ll meet someone else, and he will be happier than he could ever have been with Rachel.
Max’s voice is raised, as if he is convincing himself, and it attracts Kurt’s attention. “The only way I can get over it will be to have a different focus in my life. To put all my energy into the defeat of fascism. It’s all I’ve got left. I’ll never have a wife and kids. Not now.”
He lifts his pickax, and a few more blows fall.
When I’m nodding to show I understand, Kurt arrives, as if he has a kind of antenna for emotion. He stares hard at Max and points to my half-full bucket of chippings. I lift it to take up to the toolshed, and as I walk away, I hear Kurt say to Max in Czech, “What’s the matter? Won’t he let you shaft him? Or is it a lovers’ tiff? Has he thrown you over for a new one? Don’t you worry. When I catch him, I’m going to bugger him unconscious.”
I stagger away with my bucket of chippings, terror like a cold hand around my heart, taking care not to slip on the wet stone. As I put the bucket down, I imagine these chippings are for Kurt’s grave. I see myself pouring them over his dead body.
* * *
When my monthlies come again in mid-December, there’s less pain than last time, and the bleeding lasts for only three days. I feel my body is returning to the size and shape it was when I was fourteen, before the curse ever began. I wonder if my breasts will shrink to little bumps behind the nipples and then finally flatten away like a boy’s, and if I will become hairless again like a young girl.
On the morning of the seventeenth of December, Kurt greets us with huge excitement. The Germans have launched a big offensive in the Ardennes.
“The war will turn now,” he says in his bad German. “You will never go home.” I think I hate and fear him more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life, even more than Tucker.
We all suffer with huge red chilblains on our fingers and toes, which itch furiously as soon as they regain any warmth. I tell Ralph to ask Rosa for onion juice or potato juice, and Berta hands it to me, saying, “I hope it helps,” in Czech. Her face is full of fake innocence. I bite back the automatic “Děkuji,” and I try to look blank as Cousins would. The kitchen empties, and she stares hard at me, quietly insisting, in our own language, “You’re a Czech boy, aren’t you? Resistance? That’s why you don’t speak?”
I look into her eyes and the desire to tell someone is too much for me. I whisper back in Czech, loving the sound the syllables make in my mouth, “Yes, from Vražné. Please don’t tell.”
She shakes her head and snorts at such an idea. “When they go, I can hide you. We’ll dress you in women’s clothes. Get you back home.”
I want to laugh at the irony of being hidden in women’s clothes, but it’s deadly serious. She must know she would be shot by the Nazis for helping a prisoner to escape. And she has children. Despite my longing to see my mother and my brother, I shake my head. “No, no,” I say, “too dangerous. For you. For all of us.”
I can’t tell her that wherever Bill goes, that’s where I must go, to the end of my days. Bill steps into the kitchen from the hall, and Berta turns away, muttering vaguely to herself in Czech, “Well, just think about it. You can change your mind. Right at the last minute.”
“What did she say?” Bill asks later, but I shake my head, appalled that I’ve given my secret away. I can’t tell Bill what I’ve done, because I’m so furious with myself. I’ve been a terrible fool to admit I’m Czech, and maybe at this very second, Berta is telling a Nazi guard where I can be found. I shake my head, sick to my stomach, wishing I’d said nothing. That night I have trouble getting to sleep, as I wait for the sound of marching boots.
* * *
But the boots don’t come, and the days unwind. We begin to make plans for Christmas. It’s essential to have something concrete to look forward to when the promised end of the war moves away like a mirage. We pool our cigarettes and give them to Berta to bring us a rabbit for Christmas Day. Ralph writes a beautiful menu card, and extra Red Cross parcels arrive just in time. Again we’re given a whole one each. I yearn for Christmas at home and wonder how my mother and Marek are coping alone on the farm, and I wish there was something I could give Bill as a gift on Christmas Eve. But there’s nothing. All I can give him is my love. I hope that’ll be enough.
Bill tells me about Christmas at the pub in Stoke Newington and how the regulars crowd in for a singsong in the morning and how at closing time in the afternoon he and his parent
s go down the road to his aunt and uncle’s house and stay there till late in the evening because the pub doesn’t open on Christmas night. He doesn’t mention going to church on Christmas morning, but I can’t imagine Christmas without singing carols and hearing the old story, with its hope for all the good that might follow hardship and poverty, that one day all of us prisoners who are so hungry and tired might eat until we can’t manage another morsel and rest in soft beds with clean sheets.
Bill lists all the things his family will eat on Christmas Day. I wonder what a figgy pudding tastes of and how it differs from the plum pudding, the Yorkshire pudding and the Christmas pudding. I think that perhaps when we have our own home, I might introduce my Czech Christmas too—the delicious gold-colored sweet vánočka bread on Christmas Eve, and in the evening all his family will gather round our table and we’ll eat pea soup and fried carp with potato salad and black kuba made from mushrooms and garlic. I think how much he’ll love this meal once he’s tasted it. We’ll have the Christmas biscuits I’ll cook and put away starting at the beginning of Advent: the sweet and aromatic vanilla crescents, or “wasp nests” made from walnuts, or Linz cookies with marmalade, or our delicious Christmas gingerbread.
On Christmas Eve, Berta takes pity on us all and brings us a tin of Czech biscuits, a whole carp and a jar of black kuba. One of the other men opens the jar and sniffs it, recoiling from the garlic and passing it on. “What’s this fucking muck?” The others smell it and laugh, calling it “shit” and “diarrhea,” and I’m pleased Berta doesn’t speak English, though she must understand the faces they’re pulling. I’m furious at their bad manners on behalf of my countrywoman. So when the jar is handed to me, I dip in my finger and savor the delicious flavor of home. The other men say, “Ugh!” and “How can you!” but Berta’s watching me, and I smile my appreciation. She nods, imperceptibly. She hasn’t told on me, and now I know she won’t. The other men don’t want it, so I keep the whole jar for myself.
The Prisoner's Wife Page 23
