Touching the Wire (30 page)

‘And their gold fillings,
with chisels if necessary. Those nuggets are the gold fillings of gassed Jews.’

‘Dear God.’ She forced down
bile; she should have guessed. She didn’t want the gold anymore. She wanted no
part of it.

Charlotte stared out of the window of
Sunnybank. Sunday: her five days to last her a lifetime were over, and Adam had
left for his London broom-cupboard to prepare for starting his new job at
Duxford. Life alone was a reality she could no longer avoid. She bent back to
her work, scanning the fragile pages of the diary into her laptop: the original
was too precious to entrust to a stranger, even one Adam trusted, and a
translation could be done just as easily from a copy. She scanned the last
page. Brief entries in a foreign hand degenerated into a painful scrawl. What
was Miriam so desperate to tell her? She attached the files to an e-mail to
Adam.

Her fingers sped over the
keys.
I’ll always love you but…
 She buried her face in her hands.
She couldn’t do it, not this way; he deserved better. She hit delete and send
without saying more than
Love you
.

She made another coffee and
sat on the sofa with the diary. Part of her wanted to reconnect with Grandpa:
part of her, like Gran, didn’t want to know. She owed it to Grandpa to read it,
to finally understand.

An
infirmary in an extermination camp. It sums up the contrary nature of the Nazi
mind. Yet, I count myself fortunate to work here. Every morning the band
marches the work groups out. Every night the same tunes march them back
injured, beaten, exhausted. Their limbs move as if pushed by a weak spring in a
clockwork toy. Only pain and hunger fills their minds. Yet there is dignity and
courage in their endurance, in their refusal to consent.

The vow she
had made before Rabbi Cohen:
Who keeps silence
consents.
Nothing would make her stay silent.
Why had Grandpa? For the same
reason she hadn’t told Adam the truth? Fear? Shame?

Every day
they send the same pitiful supplies: ten aspirin tablets, ten charcoal tablets,
ten of urotropine, sometimes a little sulfa or caffeine. We never have enough
cotton to make a decent dressing. The patients rub their margarine ration onto
their skin to ease the torment. How can we treat so many with gangrene,
scabies, pneumonia, dysentery, weeping abscesses? How can we treat someone with
a limb torn off by a guard dog?

Grandpa
helped in the infirmary: not a patient? She pictured him in a white coat,
dealing with emergencies, comforting patients with his calm voice. Why, after
the war, hadn’t he used his medical knowledge for more than grazed knees?

Last
night another of the top bunks collapsed. A woman on the bunk beneath was
crushed to death by the four women above her, and others have terrible
injuries.

No wonder Grandpa
had been angry, so insistent on taking down their bunk beds when she and Lucy
were little.

We have
no water, splints or dressings. There is little light to work by. Yet more
cases of diarrhoea this morning. Blankets are soiled with excrement and there
is only one per bunk. Why did they build this place where there is only swamp
water? Potable water is a scarce resource. Do we give a sip to ease a fever or
use it to prevent spreading infection with unsterilized medical instruments?

She’d
imagined an infirmary of years ago, before wards were divided into smaller
units. Rows of neat iron-framed beds with clean sheets, not tiers of filthy
bunks crammed to breaking point: death traps. The script led her on.

I have
witnessed such things today as can only be works of the devil. Why does God
allow this torture of innocents? Dr Josef Mengele pursues the vision of the
master race with the insane fanaticism of Hitler. He sees twins as the key to
doubling the speed of the breeding programme and furthering his understanding
of genetics. Little twins killed with chloroform. He compares their bodies like
lab specimens and makes meticulous notes. He injects methylene blue into the
brown eyes of living children to see if he can turn them blue, as if he could
make pseudo-Aryans to populate Hitler’s new Europe. He has created Siamese
twins, an abomination before the God, above whom he sets himself.
I can do nothing openly to stop this suffering but must
resist in any way I can. He knows of my love for Miriam and my care for my
patients. If it is discovered I work to oppose the Nazi will, I will not be the
only one to die.

She swallowed hard,
struggling to hold down her lunch.

Blindness and terrible
pain was caused by the methylene blue. His research has no validity. Why does
he persist in it?

The next entry looked penned
with a shaky hand.
Today I saw into his office. He has pairs of eyes pinned
to the wall like butterflies. He talks of experimenting with freezing to see
how long a person can endure. He justifies it saying it will aid treatment of
pilots shot down in the sea. There is no justification for his methods.
What
can he learn by removing a little boy’s limbs? Or killing his twin as a control
to observe changes in organs? Or removing those vital organs while they still
live? If he is not mad then he is evil. How can I stop him murdering children
without endangering more innocent lives than I save? I would pray to God if I
still thought he existed. They say the Nazis hung God on their gallows.

She knuckled away tears, but
it wasn’t
her
tears that blurred the ink.
He gives them chocolate.
They call him Uncle Mengele, the Good Uncle. He plays games with them, and then
he tortures and kills them.

The huge grey ghost of
Wselfwulf lurked, licking hungry lips. Had it only been a story, or something
more? Grandpa had survived these horrors but what had happened to Miriam and
Mary, and the rest of Miriam’s family?

***

Monday morning, and Charlotte woke sweating.
Mengele had ridden her nightmare like all four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at
once. Nauseous at the memory she reached out, but her hand felt empty space.
Adam had been gone for two weeks, two weeks when she’d longed for his every
call, two weeks when she’d tried to find the courage, the words, to end their
relationship. He’d been frantically busy with his new job and trying to
house-hunt at weekends, but they’d e-mailed, texted and spoken on the phone
every day, several times a day. The more she vowed to end it, the less she was
able.

The worm of guilt twisted in
her gut: sometimes a whole hour would pass without her feeling guilt at all.
Maybe, if she could learn to live with it, Adam need never know. The worm
twisted tighter… guilty, guilty,
guilty
. She
showered, forcing her mind to the day ahead. Today she had her appointment at
the clinic.

The possibility of a serious
underlying medical condition made her feel sick. She forced down coffee; she’d
skip breakfast. She took her coffee into the living room and caught sight of
the tin box sticking out from behind the sofa. She opened it reluctantly,
covering her mouth with her hand at the sight of the gold. She removed the
wedding ring and pushed the box back behind the sofa, out of sight. If this
ring had been taken from the dead, wouldn’t there have been other jewellery?
She wanted no part of the gold, but this could have belonged to Miriam.

She put it in an envelope
and slipped it into her pocket for safekeeping. She’d promised Albert she would
take Lucy to visit him and before that she had to show her sister the diary.
She only just made it to the bathroom in time.

In Adam’s absence, she
reviewed her decision. She would press for the gold and copies of the documents
to be sent to the holocaust museum, at Terre Haute. The originals, if Gran
agreed, Adam would take to Duxford for further study, and more copies she would
take with her when she made a personal pilgrimage to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a
gift for the museums there. That way, no part of the truth could be hidden. The
children of Auschwitz deserved whatever justice they could garner from the
records for which Grandpa had risked his life to bring to England. Maybe later,
when the diary had given up its secrets, if Gran agreed, it too would find a
home at Auschwitz.

She recognised the truth of
what Albert had said; Grandpa, knowing the evil of Mengele and Schmitt, and the
danger of Nazi sympathisers, had been afraid for his family’s safety, but could
she condone his keeping silent all these years after what he’d witnessed? The
thought nagged at her, her own silence informing her thoughts. By not telling
Adam she’d slept with Robin, she was consenting, in her own way, to betraying
his trust.

Seduction by need was hardly
the same crime as murder, however much she regretted it, but had it been
Robin’s need or her own? Adam said people would have killed for the information
Grandpa brought out of Auschwitz, or to keep it hidden. Had Grandpa
done the
right thing
? What would
she
have done in Grandpa’s place? What would
Lucy have done? Put like that the answer was clear enough, Lucy would die for
her children, but Grandpa must have known he was in danger: a danger. He’d
fallen in love; would he have risked marriage and a family if he hadn’t found
out Gran was pregnant? He’d hidden the truth all those years but those who
might have endangered them were surely long dead or, like Albert, verging on
senility.

Mengele may have escaped
justice but she would make sure those others, like Hans Wolfgang Schmitt, were
named and the evidence made public. Grandpa had held back, despite his last
Latin quotation. The unfulfilled command drove her relentlessly.
Let justice
be done though the heavens should fall
.

She retched in the toilet
and flushed away drinking water that would have kept camp internees alive for
days. She took a bottle from the bathroom cabinet to do the urine sample the
clinic would want, and knocked a packet to the floor. It was a pregnancy
testing kit she’d bought months ago, in a hopeful moment, and had found among
the toiletries she’d packed when she’d left Robin. How many times had she and
Robin done them only to be disappointed? It would be waste to do one now: she
was barely even late yet. She had to take a urine sample anyway…

She did the test and waited.
She stared at the result as if she’d become dyslexic.
Pregnant.
It
definitely said pregnant. She was going to have a baby. Her time with Adam had
gifted her something more precious than she’d dared dream.

She grappled with the
implications; this changed everything. It put her life into perspective. She
couldn’t endanger her future, her child’s future, for one stupid, meaningless
mistake that was in the past. She and Adam loved each other: they could have
the future they’d hoped for. She skipped down the stairs and picked up the
phone, eager to give him the good news. She dialled his number and then
replaced the receiver before it could ring, her heart fluttering weakly around
her ankles: the child could be Robin’s.

***

Charlotte opened the cottage door to a knock.

Lucy stood on the doorstep,
holding Duncan in her arms. ‘I was passing… I thought you might have the kettle
on. How did you get on at the clinic?’

‘I cancelled.’

‘Why, for God’s sake? Sis,
you must get yourself checked out, even if you’ve given up on the idea of
children.’

‘I haven’t given up.’

‘Sometimes I fail to
understand you. Have you discussed this with Adam?’

Discussed the baby? Of
course not the baby… Lucy was a step behind. ‘About the cancellation?’

‘No, idiot, about you not
being able to have children.’

‘Yes, and he was okay about
it but…’

‘But?’

‘I did a pregnancy test this
morning.’

‘And?’ Lucy’s face lit.
‘Don’t tell me you’re pregnant. That’s great, sis… Isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Why aren’t you over the
moon? What aren’t you telling me?’

‘I don’t know who the father
is.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It might not be Adam’s
baby.’

‘You mean it could be
Robin’s? But you haven’t been with Robin since…’

‘Since he visited me here.
Two days after I first slept with Adam.’

Lucy frowned. ‘I don’t
understand. If you’d chosen Adam…’

‘Robin reeled me in, Luce,
the way he always does. He seduced me. I didn’t mean it to happen… I’ve worked
it back in my head a hundred times. My most fertile day was when I slept with
Robin. Oh God, what have I done?’

‘Oh, sis. Come here.’ Lucy
put one arm round her and hugged her. ‘This is the baby you’ve always wanted.
Does it matter who the father is?’

‘It matters to me. And what
do I tell Adam?’

‘The truth, of course.’

‘That I slept with Robin
after I let Adam believe we had a future together? That I expect him to wave
aside my betrayal and bring up Robin’s child?’

‘If he loves you he’ll want
you anyway.’ Lucy sat on the sofa and fiddled with Duncan’s socks. ‘You realise
you’ll have to tell Robin, too.’

‘I can’t. I want him out of
my life.’