They were almost at the rear of the column. That the men had marched ahead of them was obvious. Bodies at the side of the road; bodies across the road leaving no option for the women but to walk on corpses.
Méret tried to count the intervals. It seemed the Germans stopped them every hour for a few minutes rest. Some fell asleep in the snow at once, and any who did not rise at the shout of “Raus!” were shot where they lay. Anyone who lingered or faltered was shot where they stood.
Just before dawn they were steered off the road and into an abandoned barn.
Méret had dry, grey camp bread. Magda produced half a dozen cooked sausages from her coat pocket.
“You’ll never know who I fucked to get these,” she said. “Just eat. Remember what the bastard said—you might well survive.”
As they marched through the next day it was Magda who began to falter. Méret matched her pace until they were in the last dozen in line. Only stragglers and guards behind.
Another night in a barn—or was it the same night? She was beginning to lose count of days and had long since lost count of hours.
Another day on the road—or was it the same day? They were last now, everyone behind them had been shot. Just one guard to bring up the rear.
Magda could hardly walk at all. Méret propped her up and their pace slowed to nothing more than a slug crawl through the snow. The guard walked blindly past them.
For a moment she thought they were free, that, scarcely less numb than they were themselves, he had turned off to his task and failed to notice them.
Magda sank.
“Leave me.”
“Sssh. He has forgotten us.”
And as she spoke the guard turned back, trudged towards them, unslung his rifle, pointed it at Magda, and said, “Auf, auf—weitermachen.”
“No. Shoot me. Shoot me, you crazy bastard!”
For a minute or more he kept his rifle trained on Magda. Méret watched the barrel waving unsteadily, saw his grip slacken.
Then he slung it over his shoulder again, muttered, “What’s the fucking point?” and walked off the road and into the woods towards a tumbledown shed.
For several minutes Méret could hear nothing. The silence of landscape under snow, the like of which she had never heard before. A world without music. She had learnt to tell how cold it was from the sound snow made underfoot. The sound was music, the note rising with the fall in temperature as the crust got firmer. And if you didn’t move you made no music.
Auschwitz was remote now, no smell of burning flesh, no film of grease at the back of the throat. Vienna remoter still. No music. She could not recall a day without music. Silence was . . . unheard. They were alone, painted onto a fairy-tale landscape, at one with a mute, near-translucent nature—two children, Kay and Gerda, waiting/not waiting for the appearance of the Snow Queen on her silver sleigh. Silent upon a plain in Poland.
Méret recognized this for what it was—the onset of madness, a madness she had held at arm’s length, at bow’s length, for the best/worst part of a year.
Magda broke the spell.
“Why . . . why aren’t we dead?”
Méret put an arm under Magda, lifted her to her feet.
“He’s Wehrmacht. He’s not SS. Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.”
And they followed the soldier’s footsteps in the snow.
Inside the hut, half the roof had collapsed and he was gathering wood and straw from the debris to light a fire. Méret scooped a clear space on the ground and the soldier turned out his pockets for scraps of paper and a box of matches. Between them they fuelled the fire well into the night. Their eyes never meeting.
When he was ready to sleep, the soldier slipped his arms from the sleeves of his greatcoat and sat inside it like a wigwam, head down below the collar, snoring. Méret copied him, buttoned von Schönbeck’s greatcoat around herself and Magda—she a human blanket for Magda, Magda a human blanket for her—and slept.
She awoke alone. No German soldier. No Magda.
It was light.
She heard feet on snow.
Magda put her head in the door.
“He’s gone,” she said. “He was gone before I woke up.”
And as she spoke Méret heard a diesel engine and watched Magda turn in the doorway and vanish.
“Magda? Magda?”
Then feet, running feet crunching across the snow and Magda’s scream.
Méret stood in the doorway. Half a dozen men in quilted, white winter overalls, giant babies in romper suits with tiny red stars on the forehead were standing around watching as a comrade ripped Magda’s rags from her body and fumbled at the zips on his whitesuit.
Magda screamed. Méret stood rooted to the spot, facing Russian troops, wrapped in the uniform of an SS Sturmbannführer.
Behind the troops, two officers approached without urgency. One short, one tall, major and lieutenant. The short major put a revolver to the rapist’s right ear, and what she said needed no translation.
The man spat, cursed, and ignored her.
She shot him in the head, turned her gun on the spectators, and waited until they slowly turned away and walked back to the road.
The tall lieutenant came right up to Méret.
“At last. I was beginning to think we’d never find you,” he said in flawless German.
It was as though he was talking to a wayward child lost now found in a street market.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe now. Both of you.”
Her own helplessness appalled her. She let the man take her by the arm, hustle her past Magda. The woman major was helping Magda dress. The rapist lay sprawled on his back, blood melting the snow around his head.
She wanted to see Magda’s eyes, to look her in the face, but they moved too quickly.
The lieutenant opened the rear door of an armoured half-track and gently pushed her in.
“Trust me,” he said. “Your friend will be fine.”
A minute later the woman major joined them and the half-track started up—a fug of smothering heat and diesel.
“Where is Madga? I want to see Magda.”
The man answered.
“She’s fine. No harm will come to her.”