Rose Under Fire

Page 46

‘I’m a witness. You know what I did at Ravensbrück. I’m a good witness, because I’ve been on both sides of the fence. But I guess they won’t get to me till after Christmas now – it would spoil the show after those other girls.’
She held out a packet of cigarettes to offer me one – Lucky Strike. She’d definitely been making friends with the American soldiers.
‘How long are you here?’ she asked casually.
‘Just this week. I go home on Sunday.’
‘To Pennsylvania?’
‘No, I live in Scotland. I’m in my second year at the University of Edinburgh.’
‘Studying what?’
‘Medicine.’
Anna smiled, and sighed. ‘Well, good for you, Rose,’ she said. ‘Except for these trials I’m not really going anywhere with my life. I guess you noticed the guards.’ She nodded at the attendant. ‘I’m a witness here in Nuremberg, but at the Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg I’ll be one of the accused. The Americans are just borrowing me here. When they’re done with me, I get handed into the custody of the English.’
‘Anna!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you accused of?’
‘Angel of Sleep, remember? Anaesthetising those kids before their terrible operations? And I knew what I was doing too. I knew. I didn’t have to do it. I made a lot of choices – good, bad, bad, good.’
She struck a match and held it out to me. I leaned in to light my cigarette, then stood up straight and took a deep breath.
‘What will happen to you?’ I asked.
She let out a puff of smoke before she answered. Finally she said slowly, ‘I’m not a murderer, but . . . you never know. This new “Crimes against Humanity” covers a lot of ground. And the British are running the Ravensbrück trial. Four of their special agents were murdered at Ravensbrück – you know, the spies, the ones everybody called the Parachutists. Some of the British prosecution team is here now, interviewing the Ravensbrück defendants.’ She gave me a curious look. ‘Aren’t you involved in the Ravensbrück trial too?’
I shook my head.
Anna shrugged. ‘Well, I’m expecting about ten years in prison. It’ll be interesting to see what Oberheuser gets. She was a witness at the International Military Tribunal before being put on trial here, so I feel like we have a lot in common.’
‘I guess it’d be good for you if she got acquitted.’
Anna laughed bitterly. ‘I damn well hope she doesn’t get acquitted! Evil bitch.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Nice to share with you, Rose. Seems a little strange.’
Words cannot describe how strange it seemed. I just said, ‘I know. I have the same feeling eating dinner with Róa.’
‘She’s one of the Rabbits? Which one?’
‘The one who looks like a little china doll. The one who didn’t testify.’
‘You were pretty lucky to have the Rabbits taking care of you at Ravensbrück, you know.’
‘I know it,’ I said with my teeth clenched together, because I was in danger of bursting into tears if I tried to talk normally. ‘My whole transport was gassed. The Rabbits hid me.’
‘Oh –’ Anna closed her eyes for a moment. ‘What, all the French girls on our work crew?’ She was silent for a moment. ‘God. Those poor kids.’
When she opened her eyes again I tried to shrug offhandedly, the way she had about going to prison, and couldn’t do it. I looked away, blinking. The attendant was knitting peacefully, oblivious to the intense conversation we were having – I suddenly realised that we were speaking English so she probably couldn’t understand us anyway.
‘How’d you get out, Anna?’ I asked.
‘I swapped my number for a dead woman’s – a Jehovah’s Witness. Lavender triangle, nobody ever pesters them. And I just kept moving from block to block. No one tries to count you when they think you’re dead! I was still there when the Russians turned up. I walked back to Berlin.’ Anna let out a long, smoke-filled breath. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to picture her anywhere but leaning against a porcelain washbasin and smoking.
‘Must be nice to be back in school,’ she went on. ‘I spent a year struggling to feed my miserable mother and my grandmother in one room, with no heat, and then the Yanks arrested me. It was kind of a relief. Mama’s having to pull her own weight now, and it’s about time too. Poor Mama.’ Another long drag. ‘Everybody got raped when the Soviets took Germany. Everybody. I turned up in Berlin not long after they got there, and Mama had stopped going out. She was letting her mother forage for both of them – this seventy-three-year-old woman out on the streets in the rubble, selling herself to Russian soldiers in exchange for bread. Gott im Himmel.’ Anna took a deep, shaking breath. ‘Makes Ravensbrück look civilised. I put a stop to that. Found work for Mama too, a good office job, work I should have taken, keeping accounts for a small building company that’s been taken over by the Soviets. I guess she’s all right now because she sends me packages.’
‘My gosh, Anna.’
‘I wonder what those American judges think,’ Anna said fiercely. ‘What are they thinking when those girls get up and tell them about what happened to them? The soldier boys are OK. They’ve seen things. They have some idea. But sometimes I really feel like everything is so fucking unfair. What gives those old men the right to guess what I’ve seen – what I’ve had to do? The right to judge me?’
She stubbed out her cigarette in the sink. The attendant sighed, tutted and put down her knitting. She heaved herself to her feet again and pushed the ashtray that was sitting on the little dressing table right next to her a little closer to Anna, then turned on the tap and swooshed out the sink. Anna lit another cigarette.
‘How’d you make your mother go to work, when she was too scared to leave the house?’ I asked.
‘Forced her,’ Anna said. ‘I mean, I really forced her. Pulled her out the door, pushed her down the stairs. I’m a Kolonka – green triangle, red armband, I know how to bully people, remember?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Every morning for a month, till she started coming along without a fight. I fought her and fought for her too. I wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She’s better now – she made friends with the woman who runs the canteen where she works, and they visit each other – you know, play cards, darn socks, gossip about their terrible daughters. She gets up and eats every day. And you have to, you know? You can’t just sit in a corner weeping or you’ll die.’
She looked over at me suddenly. ‘You know, Rose. You’ve seen people do it. You’ve seen what happens.’
I have seen it.
‘I don’t know . . .’ Anna shook her head. ‘Maybe I did the wrong thing. Maybe I was too hard on her. But I had to do something. I had to get her going.’
‘Anna – is there anything I can send you? Anything I can do for you?’
‘Well . . .’ Her face hardened in its cynical frown. ‘Bah. Bribe the judges?’ Then she smiled a little, hesitantly, like it was something she wasn’t used to doing. ‘Look, if I ever get out of prison, and we’re ever in the same place at the same time again, I wish you’d take me flying.’
I stubbed out my own cigarette in the ashtray and held out my hand. She took it.
‘Deal,’ I said forcefully. ‘Scout’s honour. I will take you flying.’
‘I am looking forward to it already,’ Anna said warmly.
4. Thrust
There’s got to be power somewhere. The engine has to turn the propeller, and something has to start the engine. Someone has to lift the kite, maybe run with it. A bird has to beat its wings. Things don’t magically take off and fly just because it’s a little windy.
I spent twenty minutes on the telephone at the reception desk in the hotel, driving everybody crazy because I had to make someone translate for me whenever an operator came on. But I finally got through to the Operations hut at the temporary European Air Transport airfield where I’d landed nearly a week ago. I knew they were doing supply runs all the time, keeping Nuremberg stocked for the lawyers and soldiers and newspapermen.
‘Yes, I know they’re not supposed to take me back to Paris till Monday, but is anyone going anywhere tomorrow? Anywhere? Taking reconnaissance pictures or something? I just wanted to come along for the flight. We don’t need to land –’
‘Let me put you on the line with a pilot, honey,’ the disembodied, gum-cracking American voice said kindly. ‘You’re Roger Justice’s niece, right? Yeah, we heard all about you. How’s the trial going?’ She laughed. Fortunately she didn’t give me time to try to answer – I think she was just being polite and didn’t really want to know. ‘I got somebody here you can talk to –’
‘Hello?’
She’d handed the phone over. The voice was gruff.
‘Can’t get enough of joyriding in the C-47s, huh?’
It was Chuck Brewster, who’d flown the plane from Paris. I’d told him my story about buzzing the Eiffel Tower on VE Day and I’m not sure he believed me – I’m sure he didn’t believe I’d been flying longer than he had, which is also true. He was a serious guy – neither one of us suggested he let me take over the controls for the fun of it – but we got along all right.
‘Well, you’re in luck, Miss Justice, because I’m doing a run down to Ronchi dei Legionari in Italy tomorrow morning to pick up Christmas dinner for this outfit.’
I laughed. ‘Christmas dinner?’
‘Yep, a couple of hundred frozen turkeys straight from a farm in Connecticut, plus, would you believe it, a dozen Christmas trees and all the trimmings, waiting at the docks at Monfalcone for the GIs camping out here over the holidays. You can come along if you want – it’s about an hour and a half down, another hour and a half back. Plus a few hours there while they load her up. You can go to the beach!’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Nah, I’m serious! We’ll get someone to run you to the beach while we pack up. Right on the Adriatic Sea.’
For a moment I couldn’t talk – I could hardly breathe.
In my head I heard the voice of my murdered friend Karolina, whispering an impossible fantasy in my ear as we lay clutching each other for warmth on the filthy wooden bunks of Ravensbrück: Let’s go to the beach on the beautiful Adriatic Sea.
‘Hello? Hello?’ came Chuck’s voice. ‘You still there, Miss Justice? Bet you weren’t expecting to spend the first day of winter on the Adriatic, were you?’
I let out my breath in a gasp. I didn’t cry.
Instead I asked brazenly, ‘Can I bring a friend?’
I shamed Róa into coming with me to the airfield.
‘You know the story I used to tell about how my boyfriend Nick was going to come and rescue us in a little plane – he’d land in the middle of the Lagerstrasse and we’d all fly away to the beach? You and I are going to fly to the beach today.’