Resistance (26 page)

Sometimes they hit her with a flat hand to the face; sometimes they used fists—on her arms and back and chest. Occasionally there was only one man who beat her; at other times there were three. Always, though, her interrogator was the same: a slim Belgian officer with a sharp chin and an eye that wandered. He was Flemish, from the north. He called her
Liebchen.
He gave the signal for the beatings with one raised, well-manicured finger.

On the last day of the beatings, the interrogator had her tied in the chair but the guards did not hit her. He queried her once again, but with a weariness she had not seen before. He didn't seem to care anymore about her answers.

She risked a question.

She asked where Henri was. The officer didn't answer her. She asked if she could see her husband. He refused her. She asked if Henri was well, or even still alive. He remained silent.

She didn't know if Henri had been taken to Antwerp or to Brussels. Or if he'd been shot resisting arrest. Or $$$ miraculously, he was free.

Odette stirred beside her. She leaned her face into Claire's chest. “They broke a chair against my head,” she said.

Claire smoothed the woman's hair. “It will end soon,” she said.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“It's better for you if you don't know,” Claire said.

Suddenly, Odette coughed blood onto her chin and neck, Claire held her arms.

“Am I going to die?” the young woman asked.

“No,” Claire said. “Sleep if you can. Whatever is injured inside you needs to heal.”

She didn't believe the woman would heal. She believed the woman beside her would die that day. Or if not today, then soon. In some ways, she thought the woman lucky.

“When the war is over, Georges and I are getting married,” Odette said. “Were you very happy with your husband?”

“Yes,” Claire lied quickly.

“Georges was with me in the Partisans.”

“Shhhh,” said Claire.

“But I’ve already said his name. I
had
to say his name.”

The woman began to weep quietly.

“We all do it,” said Claire. “No one can withstand the torture. And you didn't tell them anything they didn't know already. Your Georges will be all right. I’m sure it's not the first time his name has been given. He's probably more worried about you.”

“I was supposed to meet him,” she said. “At the house of Barbier. And then they came for me. They took my mother and my father and my grandmother. They dragged my grandmother by her dress….”

“Shhh …,” Claire said again. “Try to sleep. It's best.”

Sometimes, sitting in her cell, she thought of the twenty days they'd had together. Occasionally it would seem to her that it had not really happened—that such an interval could not have existed simultaneously with the events that occurred on a daily basis just inside this prison—but then a detail would come back to her, and then another, and she would know that what she remembered was true. The details were tiny, seemingly insignificant: a fragment from a tune he had whistled through the wall; his face turning away to the side when he laughed, so that she saw his smile in profile; the way he sat slouched with his hands in his pockets, as if nothing in the world were serious. She could see his skin from his cheekbone to his jawline. She could remember how he looked that first night, wounded and naked by the fire. She could not remember everything, and she could no longer
feel
much, but she knew for certain it had really happened. She tried then to imagine him at his air base, the leg healed, as he walked across a green lawn toward a silver plane, his hands in his uniform pockets. Was it at all possible that, against the odds, he'd really made it back to England?

Abruptly, she became aware of now familiar sounds: the corridor door; the boot heels; the echo of the massive ring of keys. They've come, she thought. She brought a hand up to shield her eyes from the light. A figure stood in the doorway.

In a small room, they moved away from her and asked her to strip. She let her shift fall to the floor. Instinctively she sucked her belly in as best she could.

The bright electric light illuminated the bruises. They looked like purple and yellow spills that had stained her arms and thighs. There was so little flesh on her legs that her knees stood out sharply—knobby, awkward joints. She resisted the temptation to cover herself. A nurse handed her a sliver of soap and a cloth, and pointed to the door to the showers.

“As you have been told, you are being transported to Ravensbrück today,” the nurse said. “But first you will see the doctor.”

Claire gripped the soap and cloth. She was unable to move. The doctor, she thought.

“What is it?” asked the nurse, turning to Claire with irritation. “Is there something wrong?”

The water was not hot, but it was not cold either. In the showers, there were other women with her. It was the first time she had bathed properly since she'd been taken from her house. She wondered if the showers were a good sign. Perhaps the sanitary conditions were better at Ravensbrück, and the Belgians didn't want to be accused of sending dirty women to the German prisons. She wondered how long they would give her in the shower. She was careful with the sliver of soap—she needed to make it last so that she could wash her hair, too.

Her hands trembled, and she had trouble keeping the soap from sliding out of her grasp and onto the tiled floor. How thorough would the doctor be? Mightn't he miss the signs? Or would he be looking for this very thing in the women he examined?

She herself had almost misinterpreted the symptoms. One month, then another. She thought it was the trauma to the body; the near starvation. Other women, long-timers, told her they hadn't menstruated in months. But then she'd tasted the strange, metallic swallow at the back of her throat, and felt that her breasts were tender in a way the bruises weren't. Tender from the inside out, and swollen. This sudden and absolute knowledge had passed through her with a shiver of unexpected pleasure. There was life inside her—proof of the twenty days.

She dried herself with a small towel. Even the rough nap was luxurious on her clean skin. She was told to comb her hair, and she was given a clean shift. Her anus and her vagina were searched. Then she was told to dress and stand along the corridor with the other women.

As she leaned against the tiles, she heard French and Walloon and Flemish, many dialects. The cleanliness had produced civility and chatter. The women talked among themselves of the upcoming transfer as if they were secretaries in a firm. Would they go by train? she heard a woman ask. No, answered an older woman, it would be the trucks like always. But would it take more than a day? Ravensbrück was deep, said the older woman, deep into Germany. Claire did not know if this was true. It must not be so bad in Ravensbrück, said another woman. They wouldn't have given us the showers.

The line moved briskly forward one woman at a time. A doctor's assistant would open a door and call a name. Claire's feet were cold and lined with blue veins. The shift was too big for her and kept slipping from her shoulders.

She hadn't prayed in nearly two months, not since the first beating. When the beatings continued with no sign of mercy—indeed grew worse—she stopped the prayers. And even when the beatings ceased, she found she couldn't pray.

Now, leaning against the wall, moving forward in small increments, paper slippers barely covering her toes, she prayed. No matter what else happened to her, she said silently to God, no matter what she was asked to do, she would keep the baby inside her. It was a declaration, a challenge.

The woman in front of her was small and graying. Her back was hunched at the top of her spine. Claire saw the bruises on the woman's naked arms. How strange we all are, she thought. Each of us with the same awful medallions, chatting as if this were merely an outing.

The graying woman's name was called. Claire watched her disappear behind the door. She caught a glimpse of a leather gurney, metal stirrups, a sheet. Somehow, she knew, she had to avoid putting her feet into those stirrups.

She waited for her turn. She wondered what happened on the other side of the doctor's office. Where did the women go? Were they given more clothing for the journey? It was late March or early April. Perhaps there would be a calendar in the doctor's office. But whatever the date, they would all need warmer clothes. They couldn't travel in trucks in cotton shifts. They'd all be frozen before they even got to Germany.

She thought about Henri. She tried to imagine him alive. But if that was so, how had he eluded the Gestapo? He'd have had to flee to another village, perhaps even across the border into France. She did not think it likely she would ever see Henri again, even if he was alive. She fervently hoped that if he were caught he'd be shot and not hanged. She did not feel guilt for what she had done to Henri. It did not seem to her an act of betrayal. It was only twenty days out of a lifetime. She could not bring herself to believe that loving the American was wrong. And then she wondered briefly: If she did not feel guilt, was she entitled to the prayers?

“Daussois.”

The doctor's assistant held the door. Claire wanted to say, I too am a nurse. Was a nurse. In a corner, she saw a tall, dark-haired man in a white coat who had his back to her. The doctor.

The room was all white and glass and chrome with the brown leather gurney. Over the moveable cabinets were fixed cabinets with paned glass fronts. In some of them she recognized the contents: the instruments, the sizes and shapes of the plasters and dressings. There were two other doors to the room. One was unmarked; the other had a sign:
Contagion
.

The doctor was working with something Claire couldn't see; he seemed irritated and called to his assistant to help him. With a sigh of frustration, he told the assistant he had another syringe in the laboratory. The assistant went quickly through the door marked
Contagion
, closed it behind her.

The doctor seemed to have forgotten Claire's presence altogether. She looked quickly at the unmarked door, wondered where it led, how far she would get. She moved silently a step closer to the door. She watched the doctor raise a small vial to his face, tap it twice with his finger.

The door marked
Contagion
suddenly swung open, and the doctor's assistant walked through, holding a syringe. Through the open door, Claire could see a narrow hallway, and across that, another open door. She could see a doctor with a pince-nez and in front of the doctor, with his back to the door, a man seated at a table.

The man had his shirt off. There were no bruises or cuts on his skin. She saw the back of his neck, the line of his shoulder.

She sucked in her breath and took a step forward. How had he been taken? And when? If he was in Antwerp, didn't that mean he hadn't made it out of Belgium?

Something in her posture—a start, the hand on her abdomen—made the doctor who was examining the man glance briefly up at Claire. Mistaking her stare, he smirked, said something to his patient.

Ted turned around.

He looked at her, but he seemed not to know her Didn't he recognize her?

She took another step forward, opened her mouth as if to speak. The doctor behind Ted turned away, removed his stethoscope from his neck.

He was thinner in the face and paler. His eyes seemed somehow larger—translucent circles in beautiful shadowy sockets. Seeing him, she could finally remember what it was like to feel the skin on his face. His hair had been badly cut.

He did not turn away, but his face remained expressionless.

She wanted to hear his voice, to have some small indication that he knew it was she. She wanted to say his name.

He sat perfectly still, his body half-turned, his bare arm braced on the back of the chair.

She put her hand to her chest. In all the time since the door had opened, she had not drawn a breath.

Briefly—so briefly it might have been a baby's kiss—she put a finger to her lips, took it away.

Casually, her back to Claire, and remembering the door, the doctor's assistant reached over with her hand and pushed the door shut.

Claire closed her eyes, swayed on her feet. She put a hand on the gurney for balance.

He was gone, and she didn't know if he had seen her.

The trick God plays so that everything won't happen at once.
Frances used to say that to him in answer to his endlessly tedious questions about time: How long until my birthday? How many days until Christmas? When will we be there—a long time or a short time? A long time or a short time. Twenty days or a thousand days. Yet an entire lifetime could change in a second. A catch in an engine, the giving of a name. He was not sure he understood time any better now than when he was a kid. Not so long ago, the thought of only four days was an agony, Now the idea of four days more seemed almost intolerable.

From his position on the bed, he could watch the day begin in increments—almost imperceptible degrees of light, until soon he would be able to discern the outline of the objects in the cell. A slop bucket. A chair. A pair of boots by the wall. He shivered on the cot, drew the blanket higher on his chest. He coughed hard, breathed deliberately and slowly to stop the coughing. They had made him wear a khaki shirt and pants. They wanted him to be an American pilot. He could not imagine how Belgian prison officials in Breendonk had come by American military khakis. He didn't like to think about it much.

They called him Lieutenant and asked about his plane and crew, but always he responded the same way—with his rank and his name and his military number. They threatened to beat him, but they never did. They appeared to be holding to a code that Ted could only guess at. At Breendonk, they had kept him in solitary confinement, withheld some meals and all medical attention, and woke him at all hours of me day and night to disorient him. Yet they never touched him except to take him to and from the cell. Occasionally they offered Ted cigarettes and lit them for him and asked him questions about the B-17 or the P-38; not, Ted thought, to elicit information, but rather in the same way two men might smoke and compare the features of a Ford versus a Chevy.