Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (33 page)

When Christopher returned to his
office later Anka was still there, sheltered underneath his desk. The smile
burst across his face as he saw her. He held his arms wide. “Come here, Anka,”
he whispered. “I’ve had the most marvelous news my darling.” He was speaking in
English for some reason. She seemed puzzled and murmured something back. “I’m
sorry Anka, I don’t speak Czech,” he said, switching to German again. “But I
heard today that Rebecca is alive and being transferred here.” He reached down
and picked her up, taking her in his arms and embracing her. “Oh, maybe there
will be some reward at the end of all this misery, for us both.” He brought her
head back to look at her face, still dirty and unkempt, her hair falling over
her face. “I’m going to get you out of here, Anka. I’m going to get you away
from this. I swear I will.”

He washed her hair the best he could
in the bowl of water he had brought in and used a cloth to wipe the dirt from
her face. She cried as he washed her and grasped onto him afterwards, mumbling
something in Czech that Christopher was happy not to understand. When she
settled down to sleep, Christopher finished his work, totting and checking the
numbers from the day, numbers that were sure to please Höss and set
expectations for whomever the new Lagerkommandant would turn out to be. The
numbers were up more than ten per cent from what they would usually have been.
His superiors would be happy that the goods and monies they were stealing were
not being stolen. He and Anka slept on the floor of his office again, this time
with pillows and blankets appropriated from the stores to ward off the winter cold
clawing at the window. After Christopher had turned off the light, after they
had settled down to sleep, the searchlights would pass by the window outside,
illuminating the room so that Christopher could fully see Anka’s tiny face as
she slept, his arm around her.

He thought of her life before the
camp, as he watched her sleeping, imagined that she was from a small village
outside Prague, and saw her playing with her friends, her brothers. He imagined
her coming home to her parents, her father lifting her high into the air and
hugging her before planting a kiss on her cheek and placing her at the dinner
table. But it was useless. Her family were all dead now, her home taken over by
settlers brought in from the Reich or jealous neighbors. What life was there
for her now? If he could get her out of here, get her to his father, he could
hide her, keep her safe until all of this was over. Once he and Rebecca got
out, together, they could take her, raise her as their own, and give her the
life that was stolen away from her. There were still places like the beaches of
his youth in the world. There was still happiness to be found.

Christopher woke with the dawn and
the chill of the air in his office. Anka was still asleep. She seemed to sleep
all the time. He drew his arm away from her and stood up, the only sound the
crackling of his joints. He stood there looking at her, the irrationality of
hope filling him with an unfamiliar feeling. He felt Rebecca with them.

More snow had come during the night,
tingeing the warehouses and crematoria with a beauty undeserved of a place like
this. Christopher wiped the snow from his bicycle seat and set off towards his
living quarters in Auschwitz. Lahm was awake as he arrived. He was standing in
front of the mirror, shaving. He turned his head as Christopher walked in.

“Where were you last night?” he asked
before turning back to face the mirror.

“Oh you know, there’s so much work to
be done at the moment. I suppose I fell asleep at my desk again.”

Lahm did not reply, instead focusing
on the straight razor in his hand as he drew it down his face, exposing the
skin underneath the foam. Christopher went to his locker and laid out fresh
clothes. The two men were silent for a minute or more before Lahm spoke again.

“Yes, it must be very tiring work,
turning in your fellow SS men.” He was still facing the mirror.

Christopher looked up at his eyes in
the mirror. “I have a job to do, just like you have yours. Just like your job,
mine isn’t always the most pleasant. I mean, you can hardly enjoy working in
the punishment block, can you?”

“I do. I enjoy giving these vermin
what they deserve. There is no such thing as an innocent Jew.”

Christopher swallowed and paused,
feeling his heart rate quickening. “Well, many people would not enjoy that
work, but it is important for the security and future of the Reich,”
Christopher countered. “My job is the same. I did everything I could to protect
my SS brothers. If some of them were too stupid to heed my warnings, well, I
can’t be held responsible for that. I didn’t ask for this job, Lahm, I’m just
trying to serve the Führer in the best way that I can.”

“By locking up men with wives and
families?”

“The orders on corruption come
directly from Himmler himself, are you going to question him? Who is next? Are
you going to question the Führer himself?” The words tasted sour coming out of
his mouth. He said them as someone else, as if he were stranger in his own
skin.

Lahm put down the razor and wiped off
his face. He rested his arms on the side of the sink and glared at Christopher
in the mirror. He turned around and put on his shirt and when Christopher
looked at him again, his expression had changed. “I knew some of the men
arrested, Seeler.”

 
Christopher felt good about the arrests
now, for the first time, as if there was finally some justice. “Were they
guards in the punishment blocks?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“Why didn’t you warn them? I told you
to warn them.” The words had changed. He was inside himself now, enjoying the
words as they came.

Lahm raised a hand to push back his
short blonde hair. “I thought I did. I couldn’t see everyone. I thought I told
most of the guys.”

“They probably heard but didn’t
believe you. You tried, Lahm, we both did, and that’s all we can do.”
Christopher picked up his clothes and walked out of the room to the showers and
could feel the smile spreading across his face as he went. Rebecca was a
constant in his mind now. He could feel her breath on him, the softness of her
hair against his neck. The thought of seeing her brought him a happiness alien
to this place, even though he would have to shield her from death every day
that she was here.

Christopher had the remnants of his
breakfast in his pocket as he trudged past the warehouses in Canada towards his
office and Anka. He heard the noise from a hundred feet away. It was the Kapo,
Frankl. He dragged one of the ladies out by her long straggly brown hair and
threw her down in the snow. He shouted something Christopher couldn’t make out
and pulled out his baton. Christopher’s blood froze as it did every time he saw
this. Frankl drew the baton up and brought it down on the woman’s head. The
sound of baton on skull came as a crunch and the nausea came instantly to
Christopher. The urge to run forward to grab Frankl’s arm and throw him back on
the snow was like a dog snapping inside his chest, but he knew better than to
cede to it. Christopher quickened his pace but barely enough that anyone
watching him could notice and Frankl brought the baton down again. Blood
spattered onto the white snow. Two prisoners walked past, pushing a cart full
of pots and pans. They were oblivious to the spectacle in front of them,
forcing themselves to completely ignore Frankl and the screams of the woman as
he hit her again and again. She was holding her hands up and Frankl connected
with the palm of her hand. She screamed again. The seconds it took for him to
reach them seemed like hours, much longer.

“Frankl?” Christopher said when he
had finally reached them. “What’s going on here?” He was completely calm, his
voice absolutely smooth, absolutely even.

Frankl whirled around, his nostrils
flared, his face vicious and unforgiving. He coughed before he spoke, his arm
still raised to strike the woman who lay prone at his feet. “This wretch,
thinks,” his breathing was heavy, the words struggling to get out. “This wretch
thinks she can fall asleep at the table, while she’s working.” He looked to Christopher
for the permission to continue, to beat her to death, or however close to her
death his whim would lead him.

“And you respond to problems by
disabling my workers, Frankl?” Christopher shook his head. “If she falls
asleep, by all means slap her to wake her up, march her outside in the snow
with no shoes on, but don’t disable her. For every worker you kill I have to
find another and that means more work for me. Do you know how busy I am,
Frankl?”

“Of course, Herr Obersturmführer,
it’s just that….”

“Frankl, I appreciate the…thorough
nature of the work you do here but you need to think things through.”
Christopher was trying not to look at the woman on the ground, but he could
still hear her whimpering and the broken sound of her breathing. Two more prisoners
moved past, this time pushing an empty cart. Christopher called them across.
“Pick up this prisoner, bring her down to the hospital.” The woman was bleeding
heavily from her head but her eyes were open. There might still be hope. The
prisoners picked her up and placed her on the cart. Christopher turned to
Frankl. “Just remember that this operation depends on the workers, Frankl, and
so do our jobs here.” It took all the will Christopher had to pat Frankl on the
shoulder before he directed him back into the warehouse he was supervising.

Breitner, Muller and Flick were in
the office as Christopher arrived. They were all at their desks and each man
raised his head as Christopher spoke. “There’s a shipment coming in an hour or
so. I want you three out there, watching everyone and everything.” None
answered, merely nodding their heads. The snow had begun anew outside.
Christopher looked at each man, and then at the locked door to his office. He
moved towards the door. Breitner watched him reach into his pocket for the key
and slide it into the keyhole. Christopher turned around and Breitner put his
head down again. Anka was under the desk as he walked inside. Once the door was
closed, Christopher moved to her, putting his finger to his lips. She nodded and
put her own finger to her tiny lips. She came out from underneath the desk and
knelt down beside him as he sat down. He worked and she drew, in absolute
silence for an hour or more, until Christopher heard the sounds of Muller,
Breitner and Flick getting up from their desks outside. Christopher got up from
his desk to go out to them and delivered some words of encouragement as they
set out. Muller stopped to speak to him when the others had left.

“I saw what happened earlier with
Frankl, I was passing by.” His face was somber and he pursed his lips as he
looked at Christopher.

“Oh, did you? I can’t have my workers
being...”

“Frankl is an animal,” Muller
breathed out. “The word is that he hates you, because he can’t exact his own
blood lust anymore.”

“I’m certainly not threatened by
him,” Christopher laughed mirthlessly. “I am an SS officer, he is just a Kapo.”

“He has killed more prisoners in here
than any other Kapo I’ve ever heard of. The previous Obersturmführer let him
run wild. He must have killed four, five, ten prisoners a week.
 
I’ve seen him beat prisoners to death
with a shovel for the gold fillings in their teeth.” Christopher didn’t answer,
just stared back. “Anyway, I just thought you should know.”

“Thank you.”

Muller put on his hat and went to
walk out into the snow before he turned around. “Oh, and there was one more
thing. I think you might have mice in your office. I could have sworn I heard
some noise coming from inside there earlier, before you arrived.”

The blood drained from Christopher’s
face, his body cold as a corpse. “I’ll check into that. Thank you again,
Muller.”

Christopher put his hand on Anka’s
head as he sat down in the chair behind her desk. She looked up at him, almost
smiling and he picked her up and put her into his lap. He pushed back her hair
as he spoke to her in a whisper.

“What’s wrong with these people,
Anka?” Christopher breathed out a heavy, hot breath. “Thursday morning will
come, even if it doesn’t seem like it ever will. We can start to live again,
because this isn’t life, Anka. This is just the absence of death.” He held her
to him and kissed the softness of her cheek. “Oh why didn’t I do this sooner?
Why did I let so many die?” Anka leant back in his arms and took the lapels of
his SS jacket. She looked happy, as if sitting on her father’s knee on a visit
to his office. She whispered something to him in Czech and he smiled and nodded
his head, the tears bulging in his eyes.

Every minute was a minute closer,
both to Rebecca’s arrival and Anka’s liberation from the camp, but the minutes
drew out like razor blades. Christopher had prepared the way for Rebecca the
next day. She was to be immediately placed into one of the work groups in
Canada. The suitcase he had prepared for Anka sat in the corner of his office.
It was just big enough to fit her tiny body inside. He had cut air holes, but
would leave it until the last minute to pad it out, just in case. It was
Wednesday morning, Anka’s last day in the camp, Rebecca’s first. The
assignments for that day had already come through. The shipment that Rebecca
would be in was coming in at 5.30, around an hour after the setting sun
extinguished the grey light of winter in the camp. The thought of seeing her
filled his heart with a joy he had scarcely believed existed anymore and he
hugged Anka close to him as she awoke.