“In a faraway world…” Greta read to the barely conscious man on the cot who stared up blankly, “through the veil of mist you see an image of beauty…”
She came here and read most every afternoon. Today, after what Kurt had done earlier, she couldn’t go home. As hard as it was to see the withering, disfigured shapes, more bones than flesh, many in their last throes of life, it was also one of the few places that made her feel whole. Made her believe in life again. To see a brief flicker of a smile or twinkle in the eye of someone on the edge of death, whose mind was now set free. She wasn’t permitted to tend to the sick, since she wasn’t a trained nurse, nor was it appropriate, Kurt insisted, for the wife of the Lagerkommandant to touch the Jews directly or, even more so, to try to mend them. So she did what she could.
Which was to speak soothingly to those who were dying, assure them that they weren’t alone. No one should leave this world without someone holding their hand or sitting by their side. Once she smuggled in precious sulfanilamide to treat a patient with gangrene, which was generally a death sentence in here. And once, when a young female prisoner who tended the sick and kept her pregnancy hidden gave birth—in a state of abject fear, as it generally meant death for both mother and child, because Kurt would insist this wasn’t a nursery, and bringing a Jewish life into the world was not worth the milk it would take to feed it—she took the newborn baby and arranged for her housemaid, Hedda, to smuggle it out of camp. And she prayed with all the hope still in her that though she had not brought a child into the world herself, somewhere there was one still living because of her.
One against all who had died.
Mostly she just read. Rilke. Heine. Holderlin. Most of the people she sat by were already more corpse than living. Three days, and then they shipped you to the crematorium and your fate was sealed. But she knew they liked to hear the sound of a woman’s voice, momentarily transporting them to a place of calm and rest. And as she helped a few let their final thoughts fly over the dark cloud and wire back to their homes and families, it made Greta feel, at least for a brief time, less trapped and alone herself.
Almost free.
“Pani…” the patient she was reading to reached out and touched her arm. His lips quivered. He indicated he would like a sip of water.
“Just rest. I’ll be right back.” She marked the place and got up to pour him a small cup.
That was when she heard the sound of the siren.
An unmistakable, repeating wail, penetrating the entire camp like a blade through the ears, designed to alert the guards in the case of an escape or emergency and to signal to the prisoners that a capture had been made, since no one ever got beyond the second row of electrified wire.
In her heart, she always cheered for those brave enough to try.
But now she feared, from what Kurt had told her, that they had found the intelligence officer’s mole. It demoralized her that they had won again, just as Kurt had predicted.
Still, for just a second she hoped that maybe this time they hadn’t won. Maybe this one time someone had made it free.
She put the cup of water to the patient’s lips and let him drink, then she excused herself and went outside.
Guards were hurrying, weapons in hand, in the direction of the front gate.
“Rottenführer Langer,” she called, seeing the corporal coming from that direction. “What is going on?”
“An attempted escape,” he announced.
“Escape…?” Then maybe the mole hadn’t been caught yet. There was still hope.
“But do not worry, Frau Ackermann,” Langer said, sarcasm showing through. “You will be pleased to know that it has not succeeded.”
Pleased … She would have been pleased if anyone had made it beyond the wires, if only for a moment, to die there, as many did, just to end the misery for good. But whoever these escapees were, she knew they would not face such a quick death. “Excellent, Corporal,” she replied, transparently enough that even a dull rod like Langer could see right through.
“But I think you will be particularly interested, Frau Ackermann, to know the identity of one of the escapees…” The Rottenführer’s eyes lit up with kind of a gloating grin. “The young boy, I’m afraid,” he clucked.
“Boy…?” Her heart rose up in alarm.
“Your chess partner, Wolciek, Frau Ackermann.”
“Leo?” Greta’s blood stopped cold.
“I always knew the little prick had a devious side,” the Rottenführer sniffed, “and with all the kindness you graciously bestowed on him. Anyway, you should make sure he didn’t rob you blind before we put him out of his misery.”
Leo.
Her heart felt like it was tied to a weight and cast into the sea. For a moment she thought that maybe Kurt had set it up himself. She knew how much he resented their intimacy. And what had he told her, My hands are tied. He could not protect him anymore. She knew he would do anything he could to hurt her. This was right up his alley.
Leo.
She felt shaken. He was a dead man now, she knew. Worse than dead. Kurt would always find something special for those caught trying to escape as a warning to any who harbored the same thoughts. And this one he would apply himself to with relish. How he would gloat later, with that repulsive, self-assured, I-told-you-from-the-start smirk. “As I recall, Greta, I warned you not to open our house to a Jew and let your defenses down.”
“Yes, you are right,” Greta said back to Langer. “I will check.” Though inside her heart was torn at the devastating news. “And where have they taken him, Rottenführer?” she asked, though, of course, she knew.
“Where they are all taken, Frau Ackermann.” Langer snorted with a cynical laugh. “To give them a fond welcome back to camp. Not to matter, by breakfast he will be on the gallows for all to see as they pass by. An example must be made of such vermin, do you not agree?” he asked. He who had dragged Leo visit after visit to her door and had been told to wait outside, who was now seemingly delighting in the pain he knew it caused her.
“Yes, Corporal.” Greta nodded. “An example for certain.”
The corporal excused himself with a smirk and hurried off, cackling inside. No doubt the entire guardhouse would be laughing over it within the hour. An example, he had said. Yes. An example indeed.
Greta headed back to her house. Leo was the only thing of goodness she had ever touched in here.
But for once the Rottenführer was right.
That is precisely what needed to be made of these people. An example.