Edelweiss

by Madge Swindells

  ‘I should like to sit down,’ Marietta said in a clear voice. ‘If you would ask one of your men to bring me a chair, I would be prepared to answer your questions.’

  One judge, wearing the uniform of a colonel, looked at her in surprise, then motioned for a chair to be brought. Marietta sat down, crossed her legs, and tried to hang on to her pride.

  ‘I am Countess Marietta von Burgheim,’ she said.

  ‘Countess, you are accused of the gravest possible charges: spying against the Third Reich. A secondary charge against you is of treason. Both charges carry the death penalty.’

  ‘But you can only kill me once,’ she said, smiling sweetly.

  ‘Silence, Countess. The court has sentenced you to life imprisonment. You will be sent to a labour camp where your energy can be put to good use. Heil Hitler!’

  Life! She was going to live. She wasn’t going to hang, or be garotted or beheaded . . . She began to shake uncontrollably and suck in great gasps of air. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. It had all been so quick.

  Trembling, she was led out into the prison yard. Blessed sunlight washed over her for the first time in months. She looked up into the branches of a sycamore tree and prayed her thanks that she could live and hear the birds sing and feel the sun’s warmth. At this very moment she might have been standing before a firing squad.

  She was pushed to the back of a queue of women. Many of them had only recently been arrested, it seemed, for they were not as gaunt as she and their skins glowed in comparison, although they looked dazed and frightened.

  One of them was beautiful. Her features were delicate, her nose tilted, her eyes deep blue and her honey blonde hair was spread over her shoulders. She was wearing a black velvet suit and high-heeled patent leather court shoes. How frightened she looked. She began to cough and Marietta realised that this lovely woman was Greta Brecht. ‘I’m Marie,’ she whispered.

  She was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Looking round she saw Hugo standing behind her. He seemed to have grown larger and even more menacing. Hugo was her enemy, she knew that now. She frowned and stepped away, but he kept his heavy hand on her.

  ‘Father saved you from death, but the result will be the same, make no mistake about that. You are going to Lichtenberg concentration camp and you will die there, Marietta, I promise you.’

  She was too shocked to reply.

  ‘But first you will learn humility and suffering and just what it’s like to be a person of no account. You are going to learn how low you really are before you die. Those are my orders. Goodbye, sister. We won’t meet again.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  At dusk they arrived at the Lichtenberg women’s concentration camp. Bruised and dizzy, they staggered from the railcars and were herded into the prison yard where they stood for hours, shuffling forward at a snail’s pace. Marietta took great gulps of the fragrant evening air. Fresh air was becoming a luxury.

  The line of women moved slowly towards a low, wooden hut. Eventually Marietta wearily took her turn in front of a table where her wrist was roughly tattooed with a number: 798484. The needle pricked and burned. Marietta rubbed her wrist in shock and tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. They had violated her flesh as well as her mind. She had been branded, as cattle were, and now she was merely a number in a long row of slave labour units, owned by the Third Reich. This was the first step in the dehumanisation process, she knew. Looking around, she saw how all the women were suffering and ashamed.

  After being tattooed, the women were sent to another hut where a sergeant sat at a desk. By the look of his pointed nose, his bulbous blue eyes, and his large red hands, Marie guessed that he had recently been a farmhand.

  ‘You are . . .?’ he flicked over a page of a heavy ledger.

  ‘Countess von Burg—’

  A wardress standing beside her struck Marietta hard over the ear with her stubby rubber baton, called a schlag. ‘You’re a number. You no longer have a name,’ she shrieked. Wearily Marietta read off her number. ‘Can you sew . . .?’

  ‘I can work in the fields. I was studying agriculture.’

  The sergeant’s eyes lit up as he stared at her breasts. She felt naked.

  He turned to the wardress and spoke rapidly in the local dialect. ‘She’s ideal for working in my house. She must bypass the barber. Take her over there after delousing.’

  In the next hut, prisoners in striped pyjamas were shaving the women’s hair off. Many of the women were crying.

  ‘Not you,’ the wardress said, pushing her aside. ‘Go to the next room.’ She stuck a green sticker on Marietta’s coat.

  ‘Go in there and strip. Wait.’

  If hair was required for working on her back for that oafish sergeant, then she would be shorn now, Marietta decided. She pushed back into the queue of women. Shortly afterwards her long hair fall to the ground in large handfuls. Her scalp felt raw. She ran her hands over her head, feeling the ugly stubble.

  The wardress returned and flinched when she saw Marietta. She lashed out with her schlag, hitting Marietta in the face. With the taste of blood in her mouth Marietta shuffled forward in the queue to the showers. The water was cold, but she managed to open her mouth and drink her fill. The disinfectant burned her skin and her eyes, she emerged pink all over to find that she must walk naked across the yard. A group of leering soldiers laughed derisively. Some of them were taking photographs. Marietta wondered wearily how many men and women would peer at her nakedness before the day was through. She refused to be ashamed of her body, nor would she be intimidated by these men.

  God, it was endless! She tried not to think of what was happening to her. She was back in Bohemia with grandmother, walking over the fields, examining the crops. She tried to ignore the fingers poking into her hidden places in the medical examination. Naked, she moved on and on, until bundles of prison uniform and clogs were thrust into her arms. She put on her striped straight smock and pants and tied a white headsquare over her head. A tin bowl and a mug and a spoon was thrust at her and soon they were shuffling past a mobile soup unit. Supper was a slice of black bread and half a bowl of thin soup. Some things never change, she thought.

  The wardress returned, followed by the sergeant. ‘I ordered her to move out of the barber’s hut, but she disobeyed me.’ She looked frightened.

  The sergeant stared at Marietta, undecided. She stared back scornfully. ‘Ten lashes,’ he said. ‘She must learn to obey.’

  Another supervisor followed, checking their wrists. ‘You are 798484?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marietta said weakly.

  ‘You are to go to the punishment cell.’

  The punishment block was half a mile away and Marietta was marched there at high speed, her calves lashed whenever she faltered. In her weakened, semi-starved state, she almost collapsed. It was a long, low bunker. As Marietta and her escort approached the handful of guards disbanded their card game.

  ‘Ten lashes for this one.’

  One of the guards stood up. He pushed Marietta into a cell and forced her to bend forward over a table. The wardress flicked her overall up. Ten lashes were given rapidly, without malice or any real thought. To Marietta it was the most humiliating experience of her life. She bit her lip grimly and hung on to her pride. By the time she had stood up and pulled down her skirt, the guard was back playing cards.

  She was marched back to her place on the parade ground where she stood for another hour. Eventually they were all delivered to their various bunkhouses.

  *

  Marietta heard the door slam shut behind her. It was dark and stuffy and smelled of sweat, urine and misery. When her eyes adjusted, she saw that she and six others – all newcomers – were replacements for the empty bunks for which they had to search. With growing horror she saw that the bunks were four deep, in rows down each side of the room, with only two foot of space between them. In the manner of the living dead, two hundred women were lying in this hut.

  She wa
ndered down the aisle, found a space on top, and climbed up carefully, trying not to stand on the others who were lying prone. She knew she would be verminous by morning.

  She lay on her back and tried to ignore the pain from her beating, her sore lip and cheek, and the prickles from the straw and hessian mattress. The moon rose and in its light she was able to see the simple design of the bunkhouse.

  Attic-like, the roof slanted down on either side from a peak in the middle, so that her feet were almost touching the lowest section of the roof. The centre of the ceiling was of glass, reinforced with steel bars. All the light came from this glassed section. The only ventilation, however, was through two air vents at each end of the hut. It was nowhere near enough for two hundred women.

  She turned to the women below her. ‘Don’t they ever open the windows?’

  The woman replied in a stream of unintelligible sounds. Polish! Marietta realised that she was amongst some of the thousands of Polish women who had been dragged from their homes and families to work in Hitler’s slave camps.

  Marietta stood on her bunk and felt towards the roof. It was ordinary glass. ‘Is there a broom anywhere here?’ she whispered. ‘I’ll have a look,’ someone whispered in German. Shortly afterwards a figure materialised below her bunk. She saw the huge eyes of Greta looking up at her from under her shaved scalp. How strange she looked. Marietta realised that she must look as odd. ‘Here’s a broom,’ Greta said. ‘You could die for this,’ she added in a whisper.

  ‘What could be worse than suffocating?’ Marietta replied as she poked the broom through the glass over the passageway at the end of her bunk. There was a loud crack and the sound of falling glass. They listened fearfully, but no one came.

  ‘Pass me the broom,’ Greta said. ‘We’ll die together, but tonight we’ll breathe.’ She, too, made a hole through the glass near her bunk.

  Soon the pressure of the heat abated and cool night air began to penetrate the bunkhouse. Fresh air is worth dying for, Marietta told herself.

  As they breathed the soft air, the two women began to talk and Greta’s self-disgust dominated. ‘What sickens me is that I thought I loved him,’ Greta whispered. ‘And he did this to me. For money!’ She broke off in a fit of coughing.

  ‘I should never have fought him, knowing how highly-placed he is in the Party,’ she said. The fact that her lover had been false and betrayed her, seemed to matter more than the loss of her freedom.

  ‘You have a lovely voice. Were you ever on the stage?’ Marietta said, trying to comfort her.

  ‘Yes,’ Greta said. She sounded pathetically grateful for the compliment. ‘I studied drama and singing. I had some good parts, but then I found I didn’t have the stamina.’ She coughed again. ‘I have tuberculosis.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marietta said inadequately.

  ‘When my father died I put my inheritance into a small restaurant. I built a bar, very discreet and very sophisticated. I used to help with the cooking sometimes, serve at the tables and afterwards sing. I only employed three other people. That’s why it was so profitable. It became a fashionable place. Now he has it all, and I’ve been sentenced to forty months’ hard labour.’

  Later, Marietta lay staring at a star that she could see in her own circle of private night sky. It twinkled and winked and comforted her until it passed out of sight. The moon set, the sky darkened and she lay listening to the heavy breathing of too many women in close confinement. A few snored and cried out in their sleep, some sobbed silently, but most of them lay awake, engrossed in their private misery. ‘Dear God, help me,’ she prayed. ‘Am I to be absolutely abandoned and forgotten in this terrible place?’

  She experienced a strange feeling that she was a leaf drifting in the wind, cut off from the mother tree, abandoned, useless and forgotten, fit only for compost. ‘Dear God,’ she prayed again. ‘Send me a sign that you have not forgotten me. Send me something to hang on to in the days ahead.’

  There was a sigh of breeze and a soft scraping sound as a leaf was blown across the roof. It fell through the hole and fluttered on to her.

  Marietta smoothed it carefully. Even a leaf can be used by God, she thought wonderingly. It’s a sign. I, too, can be God’s messenger. She clutched the leaf against her breast. It was the most precious gift she had ever received.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Ingrid was sitting on her bed, wrapped in a blanket, for the tenth time that morning reading a letter from Uncle Frederick. She shuddered violently as she again absorbed the truth behind his words, that Marietta had been sentenced to life imprisonment and was in a concentration camp. What shocked her more than Marietta’s punishment, was the fact that the von Burgheims had fallen so low and were powerless to change the sentence. Uncle had written to warn her to get out of France before it fell, as she, too, was implicated in the charge of spying. Well, Paris could fall at anytime, she knew. Most of France was under German occupation, but still she sat, waiting for her orders from the elusive Hugo or his minions.

  He had been right, after all. He did have all the power. Despite her guilt about Marietta’s fate, she couldn’t help congratulating herself for choosing the right side.

  When the telephone rang, the noise echoed alarmingly in this new, silent Paris. Ingrid snatched at the receiver. It was Fernando. She shivered.

  ‘I have received our orders,’ he said. ‘We are to flee to Britain as refugees, leaving at the last possible minute. You will apply for political asylum and find work in a strategic industry near London. When you are established, go to this address . . .’

  His voice droned on and on . . . endless instructions. Ingrid struggled to concentrate on his words, her mind in a turmoil. No, she wanted to shout. No, I won’t do that. I refuse. I love my apartment . . . how can I leave it? And they shoot spies in wartime. When Fernando rang off she was frozen with shock and terror of the unknown.

  ‘No . . .’ She pummelled her fist against the wall and tried not to cry out in hysteria. How could they expect her to do this terrible thing? Why should she go? Why not refuse?

  The answer to that question was simple. She wanted her family estates. And she was afraid of Hugo.

  Gripped by panic, she threw some clothes and toiletries into a suitcase and raced downstairs, only to find that the exit was locked and barred and the concierge absent. She managed to force the folding gate aside enough to squeeze through. Weighed down by her case, with no cabs or public transport, she walked to the station and learned that the last train to the coast had left hours before. She heard the sound of heavy engines in the street, and leaving the station, discovered only military traffic was abroad. Checking that the markings on the vehicles were British, she let one shoulder of her jacket slip provocatively and raised a hand as though hailing a taxi.

  *

  Armentieres, at dusk, resembled an army garrison. Trucks and artillery jammed the square. Civilians added to the confusion; the streets were full of cars, people pushing wheel barrows, bicycles, horses and carts . . . anything and everything that could carry a few possessions. The French were moving away from the coast towards the interior, while the British were pushing on towards Dunkirk.

  Ingrid had never seen anything like it. Her hands were wet with sweat and slipping on the metal rail of the lorry she was travelling in. As they began to clear the chaos of the town the first German divebombers strafed the convoy and the vehicles slammed to a halt. The men scrambled out and raced for the ditches.

  Ingrid sat petrified as the bombs fell around her like skittles. The noise had sent her into shock. A plane dived low, shooting at fleeing civilians, but she was unable to move. The divebomber circled and returned from behind, spraying bullets. A soldier raced across the road, hurled her into the ditch and flung himself over her.

  A lorry exploded, igniting three others behind it and the blast hit her like a physical blow. She heard the line of tracer-bullets whining through the ditch. Ingrid clapped her hands over her ears. When at last the planes we
re gone and the troops called the ‘all clear’, Ingrid scrambled up the bank to find her transport was a smoking ruin and was being pushed off the road. Tears of despair rolled down her cheeks. She was finished. Everything she owned was gone. She stood in the middle of the road and watched the pathetic civilians gather around their dead and wounded relatives.

  She looked up at the soldiers who were climbing into their lorry. ‘Can you give me a lift?’ she pleaded again. One of the soldiers winked and held out a hand. ‘All right. Scramble up. We can’t guarantee we’ll reach the coast, but you’ll be better off than walking on your own.’

  She climbed into the back of the lorry and huddled between two Tommies, only too grateful for their warm presence.

  *

  As dawn broke, Ingrid heard a dull roar in the distance. Soon the sound became fragmented. Ingrid could pick out the scream of shells, the drone of the Stukas and Messerschmitts circling overhead, the shrill whine of bombs falling, the deafening blast as they exploded, the repetitive shriek of shells zooming overhead and the aftershocks as they hit their targets. The lorry kept inching forward towards what sounded like certain death.

  Eventually she fell into an exhausted sleep and only woke when someone began pulling her out of the truck into the smoke and uproar that was Dunkirk. She watched the troops march away and had never felt more lonely, or more afraid.

  Feeling stiff and thirsty and very hungry, she climbed to the top of a low cliff. Now she could see that the town was razed. As far as the eye could see were men waiting. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were clustered on the beaches and in the ruined town. A mile out to sea, behind the breakers, was a row of waiting British destroyers and steamers.

  She watched as if mesmerised as a line of planes shot out through low-lying clouds at tremendous speed, splattering bombs and bullets over the beach. The soldiers threw themselves down. The movement was like corn on a windy day. The khaki wave rippled up again. Most of the blast was lost in the sand, but she knew there must be many casualties.