It seemed much less crowded in the Kantine compared to breakfast. Entire tables were empty and there were only a few people in front of me at the soup lineup. I watched hungrily as the cook filled the bowls of the people in front of me — a Polish prisoner, an Aryan, then me.
The cook looked at my OST badge and set down the ladle he was using. He stepped over to the vile Russian soup and spooned some of it into my bowl with a different ladle. I looked down at my soup. It was the same as yesterday’s — turnip and water, with maybe a lump or two of oats or potato. He filled my tin cup with some sort of hot dark liquid. Then, “Out of the way,” he said, gesturing with the ladle. “You’re holding up the line.”
I looked behind me. No one was there.
I carried my bowl to an empty table and took a seat that faced the entrance. I was hoping that Luka might come in, or maybe Zenia or Kataryna.
“May I sit here?”
I looked behind me. It was the Hungarian girl. If she was so disdainful of me being sub-human, why did she want to sit with me? “You don’t need my permission.”
She set her bowl on the table and sat opposite me.
She was wearing the kind of uniform that those nurses who separated me from Larissa wore, but this girl’s was grey and frayed from many washings. Even from across the table, I could smell the meat in her soup. It made my stomach lurch with hunger. Why in this whole empty place had she chosen to sit with me? I looked around the room. I was the only one here who was younger like she was. I took a spoonful of my soup and swallowed it down.
When she took a spoonful of her own soup, I noticed what looked like a spray of fresh blood on her cuff. Where did she work?
“You didn’t take the train,” she said. “That’s good.”
“Don’t they come back here for their meals?”
She shook her head. “It would waste too much time. Workers are dropped off at different spots along the route. Some move rocks, others work in factories. They eat their soup wherever they work.”
Surely they wouldn’t make Kataryna move rocks? And could Luka or Zenia operate factory equipment? What about the rest of the children? I hoped and prayed that each of them would be able to prove themselves useful.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, my eyes concentrating on my soup.
“Six months.”
I looked up at her in surprise. She didn’t seem as smug as she had the day before. Her eyes — still looking bruised and tired — brimmed with tears. What was her job?
“My name is Juli,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Lida.”
“That’s a pretty name.” She dragged the back of her hand across her face, drying the tears.
“Yours is pretty too.”
A faint smile formed on her lips. “Sorry for being so mean yesterday.”
I nodded, swallowing down a spoonful of soup. “How long do we have before the whistle goes?”
“Lunch is sixty minutes.” She filled her spoon with vegetables and a chunk of meat. As it hovered in front of her mouth, she looked at me guiltily. “I would share this with you, but they would shoot me.”
I nodded. It was kind of her to say. I watched as she shoved the spoon into her mouth and chewed on meat, potatoes and vegetables. How I longed to reach over and take a spoonful from her bowl.
“Where are you working?” Juli asked.
“The laundry.”
“One of the better places.”
“What about you?”
“The hospital.” She shuddered, as if she were holding the weight of the world.
“There were some children from our group who were taken to the hospital this morning,” I said. “Daria, Tatiana, Olesia and Katya — did you happen to see them?”
Juli looked at me with blank eyes. She didn’t answer, but instead methodically dipped her spoon into her soup again, then placed it in her mouth.
I set my spoon down and glared at her. “I asked you a question.”
She chewed her spoonful of soup and sighed. In a voice barely above a whisper she said, “Do not ask about this here.”
I looked around and couldn’t see anyone who was interested in our conversation. What was it that Juli couldn’t talk about?
“Is it as terrible as I’ve heard?”
She didn’t answer, but from the pleading look in her eyes, I knew that I should drop the subject.
“Eat,” she said. “This is the only break you’ll have until we finish at six. You still need to visit the outhouse, wash your bowl, take it back to your barracks and get back to the laundry.”
I looked around and saw that others were quickly slurping. I shovelled in the rest of my soup and swallowed, feeling some vile chunks of turnip going down whole. I held the bowl up to my lips and let the last brown drops drain into my mouth. Juli did the same with her bowl. I gulped down the dark liquid in my cup. It tasted different from the morning’s tea, but was awful in its own way.
Juli hastily stood up and left, as if she wanted to get away from me as quickly as she could.
When I got back to the laundry, Inge was sitting at a table with a piece of waxed paper opened in front of her. On it were the remains of a devoured sandwich — a couple of crusts, a bit of mustard. She was biting into a second sandwich made of fresh light-rye bread and thick slices of roast pork. The aroma made my knees weak. How I longed to eat those remaining crusts.
“Go change,” she said, a bit of pork falling from the end of her sandwich as she bit into it. “Then start taking the laundry off the line out back. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”
The sheets were stiff in the wintry air and they were awkward for someone as little as me to handle all by myself, but I was determined to prove that I was useful. By the time Inge had finished her sandwich, I had taken down and folded four of the sheets. She didn’t praise me, but I could tell by her smug silence that she was pleased with how much work I could save her.
My hands and feet were sore with cold by the time we got the rest of the sheets folded and brought inside.
“These need ironing,” she said. I followed her into a room beyond the washing area. This one had a tall steam press that reminded me of a coffin with a levered lid. Was she expecting me to operate it? I would need a ladder to get to the levers. Along one wall was an oversized table, which I assumed was for folding the ironed sheets. Maybe I could pull that over to the ironing press and stand on it?
“While I’m ironing, you shall mend,” said Inge.
Thank goodness.
I took the stiff top sheet off the pile and spread it out on the folding table. I ran my fingertip along the frayed outer edge. “Is it the seams that you want me to mend? These are all going to fall apart if they’re not re-sewn.”
“That’s what you’re here for.” Inge plugged in the huge ironing contraption to let it heat up and then stepped over to my side. “It would be more sensible to do the seams with a sewing machine,” she said. “But they’re all in use making new uniforms for the war.”
“May I begin now?” I asked her. “It takes time to do this by hand.”
Inge got a wicker sewing kit out of the cupboard — small spools of thread in different colours and weights, a black velvet needle cushion holding several sizes of needles, and a small thread snipper. The kit looked too domestic for an army.
Without wasting any time, I pulled a chair over to the big table and sat down to my work. I threaded the narrowest needle from the cushion and knotted the end of my long white thread. I double-folded the frayed edge of the first bedsheet and deftly worked in a narrow chevron stitch, using the edge of my thumbnail as a ruler.
Inge stood over me and watched. “You’re good at that. Tidy and artful.”
I nodded my head slightly in acknowledgment of her praise and kept on stitching. If I was going to prove my worth to the officer, I needed to have an impressive amount of perfect work done.
The steam press had heated enough for Inge to use, so she left me to my mending and began to tackle the folded mound of damp sheets. As she worked, she hummed a melody that must have been German. I didn’t recognize it. I stayed silent. I needed to concentrate on making faultless chevron seams.
When I was finished my first entire sheet, I stood up and stretched the kinks out of my back. Inge took the sheet from me and examined each stitch.
“This is fine work,” she said. “It will look like new once this sheet has been ironed.”
She put it through the giant press and I was pleased with the results. My stitches were just as I had wanted them — tidy and even like a machine had made them, but with a pattern that no machine could do.
“I guess I can trust you with this, then.” She brought me the roll-call officer’s uniform jacket and shirt and set it on the table in front of me.
The uniform smelled faintly of tobacco and sweat. I threaded a thicker needle with sturdy grey thread and fixed the loose brass button on the uniform. That part was easy. Fixing the frayed collar without having the mend show was trickier, but I managed.
Inge snatched it from me when I had finished, held it up to the light and carefully inspected it. “This will do,” she said. And she almost smiled.
“You can mend one of the ironed sheets,” she went on. “I’ll run the edges through the press a second time to tidy them once you’re finished.”
The ironed sheets were smooth and warm and easier to work with. By the time the 6 p.m. whistle blew, I had managed to hem two entire sheets and a good portion of a third. I had pricked myself a few times, but hadn’t got a single drop of blood on any of the cotton. My hands and back ached from the concentration, but I was pleased with myself. There were worse places than this warm clean laundry.
I had wanted to stay longer to finish the third sheet. I was so fearful that the officer would think I had worked too slowly.
“I will tell him you’re a good worker when I take back his uniform.” Inge tapped her foot, waiting for me to finish. “Now go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”