PHRIX RAYON FACTORY‚ SOLITARY CONFINEMENT‚ FEBRUARY 1945
Margot awoke in her solitary cell and watched her breath plume for a few beats before she threw off her blanket and crouched by her pail of water.
She cracked the thin layer of ice with her elbow, cupped the water and tried not to flinch. Freezing liquid slapped against her skin as she began her bathing ritual. When she was clean all over, she brushed her teeth using the toothpaste and toothbrush Müller had smuggled her the night before. Her hair was braided, the threadbare blanket folded neatly into quarters and draped at the end of her bed, and she pulled on her thin pinafore and mismatched socks, and slipped on her clogs.
Margot had been in solitary confinement now for ten days—or was it eleven? Her hands were healing well as Müller dressed them again every evening when he did his final round. She’d tried to tell him last night that it was a lost cause—her hands would be every bit as raw and infected again as soon as she went back to work in the factory—but he persisted with the re-dressing.
She understood his reasons. To survive, they needed to cling to tiny gestures. To quit the rituals that made up a life—even the worst kind of prison life—would be to give up.
She thought of Joséphine, Susie, Gertrude and Annika, who would be fighting over the slop bucket and performing their own ablutions before heading off to their shift.
Gertrude had swallowed a few gulps of acid last week. A handful of women committed suicide every month the same way. But Commandant Jäger had been nearby and forced the antidote down Gertrude’s burning throat by holding her mouth open with his fingers as if she were a dog. She had been taken to the ‘first-aid’ room by Müller, who insisted she have at least a day to recover. Jäger gave Gertrude twelve hours before he dragged her back onto the floor by her hair. ‘Let her be an example to all of you human waste.’
Margot’s body remained thin but hard. Her will to survive was strong. She traced one of her braids and felt something like pride. Or at least felt something. The trick to survival lay in the details, seemingly inconsequential moments. A clean face. A folded blanket. A neat braid.
She’d taken the everyday moments for granted when she was growing up, and again when she went to work. Seen them as necessary, but unremarkable. Now these rituals were all she had.
Margot thought of her mother. To think she’d railed against Vivienne’s insistence on routine and strict grooming. Margot had been embarrassed about her mother’s pernickety ways—her job in service—along with her aprons and gloves. Now she understood the gift her mother had given her.
She counted out the seven steps of her cell.
The factory guards would be stationed outside her door. They didn’t even bother to check in now; it made no difference to them if she were alive or dead, she supposed.
Her small square was grey. Thudding could be heard from a distance. The walls murmured but didn’t shake. Her chest tightened—were the Allies getting closer? The thudding and rumbling seemed to be unchanging. Just like her days.
With a sigh, and a check at the door, she felt under the mattress for her last gift from Müller: a paperback novel—German, of course. ‘My mother is partial to them,’ he’d said, the tips of his ears turning red, as she’d imagined this tall grown man smuggling a crime fiction paperback from his mother’s front parlour.
Hard to believe that when Margot had arrived three years ago, she could barely count to ten in German. Now she hungrily devoured their paperbacks, and could cuss and count respectably in Flemish and Russian too.
With one ear to the door and the other to the window, she curled up on her bed and started to read.
On the fourteenth night, a key turned in the door. Margot sat up, blanket over her knees. Her slop bucket had already been tossed in the latrine; the younger of the two guards marched her there at the end of every shift.
Müller had not visited for days, and she’d been surprised at her disappointment when she thought that he might not come again. She missed the news. The reminders that there was a world waiting for her outside these walls.
And now, this scratching at the lock. Usually the metal scraping made her cringe—like when classmates used to run their fingernails down the blackboard at school—but tonight the turn of a key in the lock was as merry as village church bells.
She heard his voice dismiss the guards. Heil Hitler.
She stood, as had been demanded in the presence of all Germans since the day she’d entered Fresnes.
‘Sit,’ Müller commanded when he entered the cell.
Shocked at his abrupt tone, she dropped onto the bed. He slammed the door and took some agitated steps to the window.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘Dresden has been bombed, destroyed, by the Allies. A whole city is burning. Nazis killed. Innocents dead.’
Müller’s brother was in Dresden.
‘Have you … ?’ She let the words hang in the air.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing. I need to go home and tell my mother. I’m not sure what is worse. I’m relieved my brother is dead. His cohort of monsters are dead. But the civilians … the children.’ His eyes were full of shame. He swallowed. ‘Lukas was my mother’s favourite son. The scholar. The eldest. The captain.’
‘You’re a guard—’
Müller gave her a withering look. ‘I neither earned nor wanted it. At least my brother had conviction. He stood for something—for Germany, the Third Reich. I’m a coward.’
‘You are not. Look!’ She held out her bare palms. ‘My hands are healing. I removed the bandages to let them dry—but I still use the ointment. I owe my hands to you. Gertrude owes her life to you. You’ve helped Joséphine smuggle her letters, and you bring us news of France. The Eastern Front. Belgium, now Poland.’
Müller hung his head with shame.
She’d been surprised when Müller had told her last week that Joséphine had asked him to post a letter for her. Her sceptical friend must have begun to trust him after all.
A flicker of light at the window—was it fire or anti-aircraft shells? She no longer cared if she got hit. It might be a quicker, less painful death than the ones she saw every day at the factory. She caught his eye. ‘Herr Müller.’ She shivered but held his gaze.
‘Klaus. Please, just Klaus.’ He stepped to the far side of the room, as if wanting to put as much distance as possible between Margot and himself, to show he wasn’t a threat.
But she couldn’t bring herself to call him by his first name. After all, they could not properly be friends.
He slid down the far wall and sat on the floor, cradling his head in his hands.
Margot crouched in the corner of her bed. She wanted to reach out to him, to offer him some comfort. To hug him and brush away his tears like she used to do for Maxime. But he was still a guard—and a Nazi. The gulf between them was too great.
At another thud of a faraway bomb, she imagined herself checking into a seaside hotel with fresh daisies on the bedside tables, lace curtains flicking about in the breeze. With each breath, she started to fantasise about what her life would be outside this cell.
She would move to Paris with Joséphine—there was nothing at Sanary for her now. They would pick their way through the markets, buy bushels of white asparagus, cockles and fresh bread.
She breathed in as if she could smell the bread. Germans knew nothing about bread. Or salted butter, croissants and pains aux raisins.