Peacetime (30 page)

‘I went and said hello to them. I don't think Jacob was very well. He could barely talk. Until I showed up, Mathias was standing with his arm around him. He told me that Bail had had some unwanted visitors and that he'd brought Jacob away from the yard until they'd gone.'

‘What visitors?'

‘He didn't say. Everybody knows about Bail. Mathias asked me what I was doing. I stayed with them for half an hour. I don't think Jacob wanted me there. I think I make him uncomfortable.'

‘Oh?'

‘Probably something to do with his sister,' she said,
but with no true understanding of what she was suggesting.

‘Perhaps,' Mercer said, unwilling to speculate on what he only half-understood himself, and hoping to divert her from any closer understanding of how Jacob might regard her.

After that, she rose. ‘I ought to be going. I only came to bring the lighter.'

‘No you didn't,' he said. ‘I'll find out who lost it.'

‘The reward was my idea,' she said. ‘Not hers.'

‘It's still a possibility,' he said.

‘Besides which, you'd already guessed.'

He followed her down the stairs, but she told him to stay inside as she let herself out.

‘You think he'll be watching?' he said.

‘He usually is. That or he'll get to hear about it.'

‘The new shoes suit you,' he said.

‘No, they don't. But I could hardly make my appearance in fashionable society wearing a pair of old sandals, could I?'

It occurred to him then, watching her go, and watching the men uncoiling the cable running to walk alongside her, that she possessed nothing, and that when she finally did leave her home and her childhood behind her, then she would leave them completely, taking nothing with her, and afterwards reinvent herself anew in the eyes of a world which knew nothing of her.

‘Among my liberators' – Jacob paused, as though surprised at his own use of the word – ‘was a Scottish medical orderly. A Scotsman. Few of us, even those among us who spoke some English, could understand much of what he said. He told us to call him “Jock” and said he was from Glasgow and that this was why we couldn't understand him. I was still suffering from dysentery, a result of the typhus. I shall never forget his first words to us upon opening the door to the barracks in which we awaited him, fearful and disbelieving. He stood there, bathed in the sunlight of the opening, looked in at us all, some of us already stumbling and groping towards him, and he said – I shall spare you his accent – he said, “Oh, my poor bloody boys.” Those were his words. “Oh, my poor bloody boys.” Even draped in the blankets and overcoats we had been able to gather from the already-emptied huts, we were still all so thin and so small to him. There were men there old enough to be his father, his grandfather even. “Oh, my poor bloody boys.” It
was all the compassion I needed. That, for me, was the moment when I knew for certain that I alone would continue to live.' He paused again, blinking rapidly at the memory, savouring it, ensuring that not even the tiniest part of it had been lost to him.

‘This was in Belsen?'

Jacob nodded.

‘How long had you been there?'

‘Since the start of that last winter. By train again to a compound outside Braunschweig, and then marched to the camp.'

‘And was Anna still with you?'

‘Not
with
me, but she was embarked on the same journey. I heard afterwards that a great number of women had been taken to Sachsenhausen – there was a camp there – and from there to Belsen a few weeks later.'

‘Fleeing the Russians, presumably.'

‘Of course fleeing the Russians. They were animals. What horrors they would commit, what atrocities. Imagine: sixty miles on the other side of the Wieser and I would have been back in Holland. It made no sense to move us, weak and suffering as we were, most of us never likely to be well enough to work again, but the orders were to move us and so they did.

‘The barracks in which we awaited our release stank to the heavens. It was a designated typhus barracks. Corpses lay where the life had departed them. There were only makeshift latrines. Even those of us long accustomed to that stench were made to retch by it. Anyone else opening that door would have been knocked over by it. As if the sight of all those skeletons was not enough. But that Scotsman just stood there. “Jesus dear God All bloody Mighty.” He had come past mounds of corpses to reach us, and I imagine his own
recollection upon opening that door will remain with him for as long as my own memory of him will remain with me.'

‘What happened then?'

‘He went away. I could barely stand. I wanted to call something out to him in his own language. I wanted to explain to him what he was seeing. I wanted him to know that we were men in there, and not some grunting, shuffling animals he had unexpectedly come across.'

‘He wouldn't have thought that.'

‘No, but it was how some of us had come to regard ourselves. A man swinging himself down from an upper bunk kicked me in the face.' He opened his mouth wide to reveal the gap which still remained in his teeth. ‘By the time I myself reached the doorway ready to explain all this, the man was standing back from the barracks and in the company of several others. They all wore berets, I remember, not helmets, black berets. Our liberator was explaining to these others what he had seen. He was standing with his back to us, and the other men were looking over his shoulder at us. And seeing that they were distracted, he too turned and saw us again. He pointed to us. He was crying as he spoke, and the other men, I noticed, kept their distance from him. Someone shouted for us to go back into the hut, but no one heeded the call. Eventually, I made my way outside and called out to these men in berets. Someone heard me and came to me. As he came, another of the prisoners reached out and touched this man's arm, and he flinched at the contact, struck out and shouted for everyone to stay away from him. I saw that he wore an armband with a red cross on it. He shouted to me from beyond the gathering crowd. He wanted to know if I
was English. Needless to say, my answer disappointed him. He called for me to tell the others not to go any distance from the barracks. I told him that there were corpses in there, too, and that few of us had been outdoors in over a week. It was a bright, dry day. Some of the others lowered themselves awkwardly to the ground and sat with their heads in their hands.

‘I remember a woman came to us, another prisoner, asking everyone she encountered if they knew of the husband she had not seen for two years. Or if not her husband, then her father, or her brothers, or her sons. She wore a yellow headscarf, I remember, and I remembered that Anna, too, had worn one of the same colour. It was all I could do to stop myself from shouting to ask her where it had come from.'

‘Did you see Anna upon her own arrival there?'

‘I was fortunate. Everything was in disarray. We were the sweepings, swept one way and then another, each push of the broom leaving so many fewer of us to brush away. I learned of Anna's arrival from a man selling home-made alcohol. He told me where she was and how to find her. There were still guards, of course, but they were not the men they had once been. Most guessed what was coming, and most, I imagine, were just pleased to be far beyond the reach of the Russians. There was even a rumour that the Germans had signed a pact with Churchill and the Americans to fight the Russians when Hitler finally capitulated. When our Scotsman first appeared, the man beside me, a Pole, listened to his impenetrable accent and said, “American? Russian?”'

‘I heard the same rumours,' Mercer said.

‘I found Anna in the company of some of the women she had known in Auschwitz. They had travelled there together. There were three times more women in
Belsen during those last months than there were men. And among them there were at least a thousand children, most of whom died before the end. There were furnaces for the corpses, but too many corpses for the furnaces, and so the bodies piled up. Someone had decided that the children should not be thrown into piles, but that they should remain clothed and that they should be laid out in lines to await disposal. There were even babies, who must have been born, lived and died using only their bodies' reserves.

‘Anna was already sick and weak from the journey, but there was little doubt then in my own mind that this was where we would remain until the war's end, and so I told her to rest and to save her strength, to do whatever was necessary to
persist
. I lied and told her Holland was only twenty miles away. I told her that the English and the Americans would be there within weeks, days even. Month after month I told her this, as though it were all that was needed to keep her alive. I even managed to buy some medicines for her – though God knows what was in the bottles I was given. I told her to eat all she could. I told her where I was, told her how she might contact me. I asked the women who were with her to take care of her and they promised me they would. It was a desperate fool's paradise we inhabited. How could
I
ask anything of
them
? How could they promise me anything in return? All I had left to try and persuade them to help was the fact that we were brother and sister, that this connection still existed between us where so many millions of other similar connections had been so brutally and arbitrarily severed, and where countless thousands now wandered completely alone. Perhaps I thought that by showing them how we two had survived, they might be able to accept or believe the same for themselves.
Perhaps somewhere out there, waiting or wandering alone and without hope, was their own brother, or husband, or father. I know it makes little real sense now to think like this, but it made sense then. For almost two years we had lived without any real expectation of surviving, and now here, at last, was the faintest light towards which we might both turn our faces. So much. And even if it was a few more months, and not weeks or days, then surely it was still something we might endure.'

‘How long did she survive after her arrival?' There was no other way for Mercer to ask the question. He had not gone to Bail's in anticipation of hearing this tale, merely to determine what had happened concerning Bail's visitors of two days earlier. His concern was unfounded. Nothing in the place had changed, and only Bail and Jacob continued to live there.

‘I worked it out afterwards,' Jacob said. ‘She survived for thirteen weeks and one day; and four weeks and two days later, the camp was entered.'

‘And you were safe.'

‘Saved. I was saved. No one waved a wand and brought the dying back among the living. That, too, had seldom been a journey that might be travelled in reverse in the past, but now it was possible.'

‘I'm not sure I understand.'

‘To stop dying and to start to live again. For a sick man to become healthy and strong again. For some – thousands – it was already too late – they were too ill, too far along that particular road. For some, I think it was the shock of knowing they might survive that killed them. They had lived as nobodies for so long, as those animals, that suddenly to turn back into a somebody again, a human being, with thoughts and feelings for the others around him, was too much for them. I
saw one man killed by a bucket of clean water thrown over him by his friend in an effort to revive him. He was barely conscious and the water hit him and the shock of it knocked his head back against the ground, and when the water had finished running from his face, he was dead. He hadn't even seen the men in berets who had come to save him.'

‘How soon were you able to go in search—'

‘In search of Anna?'

The remark made Mercer cautious. ‘I was going to say in search of anyone who had been with her when she died.'

‘No – it was Anna I went in search of. Anna. Of course, she no longer existed. I knew that. I knew she had died. I was kept isolated for a further twelve days until my own recovery was secured. I weighed almost three stones less then than I do now.'

Mercer deliberately did not lower his gaze over Jacob's wasted body and limbs.

‘Imagine that. A walk of fifty yards and I needed to sit down and rest for an hour. I went in search of Anna's ghost. I went in search of all the places she had ever been in the camp. I sought out the planks upon which she had slept, the chairs upon which she might have sat. I sought out the door handles her hands might have turned, the panes of glass through which she might have once looked. I searched for the plates from which she might have eaten, the cloths that might have bandaged her feet. I sought out all those others who had known her and who had been unable to keep their promise to me. I filled all the empty spaces she had left behind her. I walked upon her ground, I breathed her air.' He fell silent.

‘And was there much of her left to find?' Mercer said.

‘Plenty,' Jacob said proudly. ‘I found everything. Everything I searched for, I found. Only
she
was missing.'

Mercer remained wary of what Jacob was telling him, uncertain where these breathless revelations might lead.

But Jacob had finished talking, and he leaned back where he sat, his eyes closed, a look of contentment on his face. He wiped a hand across his wet mouth.

‘I'm pleased there was so much left for you to find,' Mercer said, expecting Jacob merely to nod his acknowledgement and for them both to know that this difficult conversation was at last over. But instead, Jacob sat forward until his head was close to his knees, where he held it in his hands, and began gently to convulse.

Mercer rose. ‘I'll leave you,' he said.

‘“Oh, my poor bloody boys”,' Jacob repeated, this time perfectly mimicking the man's accent, his fingers tightening and growing pale where they gripped his head.

Two days later a strong wind blew in from the sea and work on the site became impossible. Clouds of dust and sand enveloped the men and the machinery. Sand covered the road in a perfectly corrugated pattern – the pattern left behind by an ebbing tide; it collected in scalloped mounds against everything in its path. And as the wind rose, it started to rain, lightly at first, but then with a sudden ferocity that had the workers running for cover, and which quickly turned the whole site into a quagmire. A shallow skim of water lay over everything, through which only the mounds of rubble and the supply stacks now rose. This heavy rain lasted several hours, and by the time it slackened and the wind finally dropped, it was too late to resume work.