The Bible of Clay (42 page)

"You and Miranda seem to have hit it off," Clara said resentfully.

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact. She's a terrific woman. I enjoyed meeting her, and I hope to see her again."

"She's going to stay on in Baghdad."

"So she told me—she's as crazy as you are. Both of you are ready to risk your lives for your causes. Kindred spirits, I'd say."

"We have nothing in common," Clara snapped.

"No, just stubbornness, although that may be a trait common to the entire gender."

"You can leave the rest of us out of it, if you please," broke in Marta, laughing. "Yves, have you talked to Baghdad?" she asked.

"Yes. Ahmed is coming in. I think this afternoon. We'll see what he has to say, then make a decision. But in case we have to leave soon, I'm going to ask Lion Doyle to photograph everything we've found; he's

already done the
in situ
photos, so that'll round out the documentation. We need to be as detailed as possible. I want more than stills, I want video—I hope Lion can do that. I think it's a good idea, as you've suggested, Clara, to detail everything we've done and everything that's left to do. If you like, we'll do that after we hear what your husband has to say when he comes in this afternoon. Is that all right?" Clara agreed. She had no alternative.

36

mercedes was delirious. carlo, hans, and bruno

were watching her apprehensively; they feared she might die. None of them could bear to think about what had happened. It was beyond them. Their survival down there on the cold steps where their mothers had fallen had been a miracle; they'd been kicked and pummeled by the guards, then left for dead. Later, when the onlookers from Berlin went into the infirmary to watch the operations, no one seemed interested in the bodies remaining behind, especially the injured children.

When Hans tried to help Mercedes, one of the kapos had beaten him senseless. Even so, he heard his mother's voice through the torture, strengthening his will to live.

A team of prisoners was ordered to clean up the stairs of death and to take the children to one of the barracks. They were put onto cots, and a Polish prisoner, a former doctor named Lechw, tried to revive them, though he had little more than dirty rags dipped in water at his disposal.

The little girl was in the worst shape. She was unconscious, and Lechw cursed under his breath. There was so very little he could do without medicines. Eventually the orphaned boys would be sent out to work with the men, but the little girl would either be killed on the spot or sent to the infirmary, from which no one ever emerged.

One of the other prisoners, a Russian, removed from inside his mattress a bottle of vodka containing a precious few drops and passed it to the doctor so he could disinfect the wounds. Then Lechw sutured Mercedes' head wounds with the needle and thread that the prisoners used for mending their clothes. The child moaned and writhed in pain, but she remained unconscious.

One of the prisoners was nervous about having a little girl in the barracks.

"If they find her, they'll do something terrible to her, and to us too."

"What do you suggest, that we turn her over to the kapo? That bastard Gustav would strangle her with his bare hands. She wouldn't even make it to the women's barracks, where the poor children came from," Lechw replied.

"You know, you can't tell whether she's a girl or a boy with her head shaved like that," another prisoner observed with a glint of hope in his eyes.

"Are you people mad! If they find her, we'll all pay!" said an older man.

"I, for one, am not going to turn her in; I won't have it on my conscience. You can do what you will," said the Polish doctor.

This little girl reminded him of his own daughter, whose fate he had never learned. Friends of his had assured him that they would protect his wife and daughter, but had they been able to do so? Or was his little darling in a camp like Mauthausen? If she was, he prayed to God that someone might take pity on her as he was caring for this tiny creature lying here unconscious, perhaps never to awaken again.

"Please don't turn her in," he whispered.

The men turned to look at the boy who hours earlier had tried to defend his mother and sister.

"What is your name?" Lechw asked him. "Carlo," he answered bashfully.

"Well, then, Carlo, you are going to make sure that they don't find her," said Lechw gently. "You and your friends must try very hard not to attract attention. It is difficult—the kapos are not nice men—but it is not impossible," he explained.

"We'll be very careful, sir," Carlo said, as his friends Bruno and Hans nodded.

The boys sat on the floor near the cot where Mercedes was lying, waiting for her to regain consciousness. They, too, were injured, although the most terrible wounds had been inflicted upon their souls.

The entire night, Mercedes remained in a coma, near death. It was a miracle, the doctor said, when she recovered consciousness the next morning.

When Carlo saw Mercedes' eyes flutter open, he squeezed her little hand to let her know he was there for her. He and Hans and Bruno had sat by her cot all night. All three had prayed to God—though they really didn't know whether he was listening—to have mercy on their friend. The doctor told them that God had heard their prayer and had pulled her up out of the darkness.

When the kapos came into the barracks and ordered the men outside into formation, they paid no attention to the wounded children who had taken refuge in a dark corner, trembling with fear and hunger and pain. The prisoners had covered Mercedes with a blanket, so she could hardly be seen. No one went over to the cot to look any closer.

When they were alone, Hans gave Mercedes a little water. She looked up at him gratefully; her head hurt, she was dizzy, but more than anything she was afraid. She could taste blood on her Hps—the blood of her dead baby brother that the SS officer had thrown in her face.

"We have to kill him," Carlo whispered, and his three friends looked at him expectantly.

They could all barely move from the beating they'd taken. Their bodies covered by bruises and bloody wounds, they crept closer to Carlo so they could hear better.

"Kill him?" Bruno repeated as quietly as he could.

"The one in charge, with the blond hair. He killed our mothers," Carlo insisted.

"And our little brothers and sisters won't. . . won't be born now," said Mercedes, her eyes brimming with tears.

None of the boys shed a single tear, despite the terrible weight of pain and grief that had settled in their hearts.

"My mother used to say that when you want something very, very much, you get it," said Hans timidly.

"I want to kill him," Carlo repeated, his teeth clenched.

"Me too," said Bruno.

"Me too," said Mercedes.

"Then we shall," Hans said. "But how?"

"However we can," Bruno replied.

"It will be hard to do here," pointed out Hans.

"But when we get out of here . . . We won't be here much longer," insisted Bruno.

"I don't think we will get out of here alive," said Hans glumly. "My mother said that the Allies are going to win; she was sure of it," Bruno insisted.

"Who are the Allies?" asked Mercedes.

"The ones that are against Hitler," Hans told her.

"We agree, then?" proposed Carlo.

They looked hard at one another for a moment, seeming much older than the children they were, and slowly nodded their heads in a silent oath, aware of the solemnity of the moment. Then they hugged in a sign of solidarity; the embrace of friendship made them all feel better.

They spent the rest of the day imagining the moment when they would kill the SS officer, discussing how they would do it, with what instrument. When the men came back to the barracks that night, they found the children trembling with cold, starving, but with a gleam in their eyes that the men could only explain as burgeoning fever.

Lechw examined them, and an expression of concern came over his face. One of Mercedes' head wounds was infected. He used the rest of the vodka to clean the wounds, but he was pessimistic.

"We need medicines," he said.

"Why upset yourself about it—there is nothing to do," said another Polish prisoner, a mining engineer.

"I am a doctor. I shall do everything in my power to keep these children alive—I shall fight to my last breath!"

"Calm, calm," said another of the Poles. "This one here," he said, jerking his thumb at the Russian, "knows the ones that clean the infirmary—we'll get them to bring us something."

"I need it now," the doctor complained.

"Give us time," his friend said.

It was just before dawn when Lechw felt someone touch his arm. He'd fallen asleep while watching over the children. His Polish friend and the Russian with a talent for finding things were standing by the cot, grinning. They handed him a package, then faded into the shadows, back to their cots.

The doctor unwrapped the little bundle carefully and had to stifle a cry of joy when he saw what it contained: bandages, disinfectant, and analgesics, the most wonderful haul he could ever imagine.

He got up quietly, so as not to wake anyone, and observed the four children's fitful sleep. He unwound the dirty strip of cloth with which he had wrapped Mercedes' head and applied disinfectant once again to the wound. When she felt the cold sting of the Mercurochrome, she woke up and was about to cry out, but he gently placed his hand over her mouth, then smiled and told her not to cry. The brave little girl bit down on the blanket that covered her and, pale as death, lay quietly while the doctor, all concentration, went about treating the wound. Then she gratefully accepted a sip of water and two pills he gave her.

Hans, Bruno, and Carlo were also tended by the doctor, who swabbed the cuts and contusions that covered their bodies. Then they, too, took an analgesic to soothe their pains.

"I heard one of the kapos say that the war is going badly," said a Spanish Communist as he watched the doctor care for the children.

"Do you believe it?" Lechw replied.

"I do. He was telling one of the other kapos; apparently he heard one of the officers from Berlin talking. And I have a friend who cleans the radio room. He says the Germans are nervous; they listen to the BBC all day and night, and some of them are beginning to ask what will happen to them if Germany loses the war."

"Oh, praise God!" Lechw exclaimed.

"God? What does God have to do with this?" spat the Spaniard. "If God existed, he'd never have allowed this monstrosity. I never believed in God, but my mother did, and I imagine she's praying right now that I return someday. But if we get out of here, it won't be God who frees us—it'll be the Allies. Do you actually believe in God after all this?" the Spaniard asked almost sarcastically.

"I do—if I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to live through this. God has helped me survive."

"Then why didn't he give a hand to the mothers of these poor children?" the Spaniard asked, pointing to the four little ones.

Mercedes was listening to the conversation avidly, trying hard to understand what the two men were saying. They were talking about God. When they were in Paris, her mother sometimes took her to church; they went to the Sacre Coeur, near their home. They never stayed inside very long; her mother would go in, kneel briefly, make the sign of the cross, murmur something, and then leave. Her mother told her that they went into the church to ask God to protect her papa. But her papa had disappeared while she and her mother had had to flee, and God had done nothing to stop it.

She thought about what the Spaniard was saying—that God was absent—and she silently agreed. God was not in Mauthausen, she had no doubt of that. She closed her eyes and began to cry, quietly, so that no one would hear. She could still see her mother lying broken and bloody among the rocks on those terrible stairs.

Her friends Carlo, Bruno, and Hans pleaded with the older prisoners to let them stay; they promised to take care of Mercedes; they swore

they wouldn't be a bother, that they wouldn't cry, so the kapos wouldn't find them. It soothed her to hear the men agree.

So she would stay there, in those barracks. She was going to pretend to be a boy—she had to act like one and not do anything to attract attention, because if they discovered her there, they would all pay for it. She swore to herself she would never do anything to cause harm to these loving men, or her three wonderful friends.