SHE THOUGHT she was awake – but it was only in her dream that she sat looking up at the pale square of blue sky. The window that she saw there was cracked, and streaked with rain-crusted dirt. Yet despite this the blue of the sky was clean and pure. High up above her, dissecting the square, a white vapour trail disintegrated slowly. She watched, fascinated. She couldn’t understand why Rachel was asking her to wake up, pushing at her shoulder.
‘Good morning.’
A man’s voice, speaking Polish. A rush of consciousness. The cold air on her face, the muggy smell of the other women’s bodies from under the shared blankets. The stiffness in her neck from where her head had fallen forwards. She opened her eyes. Two men were standing inside the room, looking down at them.
She couldn’t see the taller one’s face. The window was behind him so his features were in shadow – but she could see the machine gun he carried, its stock nestling under his armpit, the barrel pointing at the ground. It must have been him who had spoken. He was the leader between the two of them. They wore red arm-bands.
‘You have nothing to fear,’ Joanna said, in German. She must be translating.
‘Is German preferable?’ the Pole said.
‘More of us speak German,’ Agneta answered carefully. She thought about standing up, but she felt safer here, under the blanket, the other women’s warmth close around her.
‘You’re from the SS hut. Prisoners, yes?’
It wasn’t a question – the man knew. Perhaps he understood that she couldn’t see him because he moved to one side, turning his head slightly so that some of the light fell on his face. He was younger than she’d thought.
‘Don’t worry. You’re safe with us. We’ll look after you.’
Agneta realized that she, in his eyes, was a German. Even though she might have spent the last five years behind barbed-wire fences, she and the others still bore some burden for the crimes committed by their countrymen.
‘I’m not German,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘They took my country from me.’
He looked down at her, unsmiling.
‘If you say so.’
‘What do you want with us?’ she asked.
‘We need to move you. One of our men was captured last night. He knows you are here. He may talk.’
He must have taken her blank look as some kind of misunderstanding.
‘He may be forced to talk.’