The Keeper of the Walls (72 page)

She'd simply have to confide in the janitor, who'd always been fond of her mother, and who had much experience in the clandestine. Lily had told her daughter that on the first floor, an escaped prisoner lived; on the third, a British family whose existence was not known, and who should long ago have left the country; and on the top floor, two men who had been sent to Germany for forced labor, and who had escaped.

Kira fingered the small gold heart that she wore on a chain around her neck, and that her grandmother had given her on her last birthday. At its center lay a tiny diamond. It was the only thing she possessed with which she might bribe the janitor. But she'd have to trust that it would be enough.

O
ne had
to train oneself
not to think.
Lily's background as a Roman Catholic, dwelling among the nuns whose lives had been defined by abnegation and renunciation, by strict obedience and poverty, had perhaps prepared her better than some of her fellow deportees. She remembered staying up endless nights in her narrow stone room at the convent, reciting Hail Marys and rosaries, making lists of sins “of the mind” that prevented her from falling asleep; and with the discipline of her adolescent days, she had tried to throw her mind into another gear, so that she would cease to exist on this plane, and her five senses cease to register what was happening around her.

Otherwise, allowing herself to remember the near present, since the Gestapo captain had come to arrest her, might have reduced her to craziness . . . like the old man in the corner, whose pants had dropped, and who had repeatedly defecated over the shoes of the woman next to him. Or she might have sunk into total despair.

A kaleidoscope of events crowded her brain. She'd spent a night in a Paris police station, and been told that if she wanted, she might alert Madame Portier to put together fifty kilograms—one hundred ten pounds—of clothing, jewelry, books, furs, and foodstuffs, which would be allotted to her for the journey. She'd felt in a constant state of panic, dislocated from her family and in terror as to where she would be taken next. Deportation. They killed the Jews, though exactly how was still a mystery. And, she now realized, she
was
a Jew: free choice in this matter had long since ceased to exist.

She'd shaken her head. When Misha had left, Lily's last vestige of interest in material goods had left with him. She preferred to go alone, without any ties. And besides, she had no idea what had happened to Kira and Sudarskaya. She'd wanted to leave the house in Chaumontel as swiftly as possible, to prevent the captain from deciding to recheck the rooms. Her heart squeezed into a tight knot, she worried about her daughter, and asked herself over and over whether the young
gendarme
had met her and warned her.

Kira had never been alone.

After a few days, she'd been sent with other prisoners, old people in fur coats, their backs bent with fear, in a small van with grilled windows, used to transport derelicts and disorderly whores after their arrests. They'd been taken to the enormous Vel' d'Hiv', the Vélodrome d'Hiver, a sports stadium that had been filled, not with eager spectators, but with frightened men, women, and children, who, like her, had wondered to where they were being uprooted.

Horribly alone, Lily had stood, without baggage, and for one terrible moment, had almost asked to send a message to Ambassador Abetz. Had she not been stupid to refuse Charles de Chaynisart? And then, strength had returned. Not because Lily was so valiant, so upright and noble—but because, in the crowd, she'd thought she'd seen the bright, auburn curls of Nanni Steiner, her young figure proud and light, in a trim sealskin coat, heavy for the May weather. Lily's heart had turned over, and she'd pushed her way through the crowds, trying to guess where the person had stood that she'd assumed to be Nanni.

At long length, exhausted and perspiring, she'd elbowed herself into a dense group of wailing old people who didn't understand her need to get through. Maybe she'd imagined Nanni; she hoped so with all the might of her heart. For if Nanni was here, her parents might be, too, and Maryse. But, if it
had
been Nanni ...she had to admit a wish not to be alone at this desperate time.

They'd left on buses, and had arrived a few hours later at Drancy, a suburban town that, Lily knew, had been converted by the Germans into some kind of detention station for Jews, like that of Compiègne. “A way station,” she'd been told. And it was there, finally, that she'd been reunited with Maryse and Nanni.

It was in the refectory that she'd seen them, and they her. The young girl had come running, throwing her arms around her. And later, Maryse, her face white and drawn, had burst into sobs and told her about her mother. Lily had sat like a stone, willing the pain to lift from her heart. She hadn't wept. She'd pushed this death far back, telling herself she'd deal with it later. Because Maryse needed her. She'd seen the barely masked hysteria in her friend's eyes, and rallied to bring forth some hope, as vain and as stupid as she knew her words to sound.

The next morning, the Germans had driven thirty-five hundred of them to a train station far removed from the beaten track, and she'd found herself being shoved to the back of a cattle car. She'd remembered Raïssa Markovna's joy, explaining to Kira how her wish to travel on a freight train had finally been fulfilled. But this was no joke. Fifty, seventy, maybe one hundred people were being crowded into a boxcar built to accommodate eight cows or fifteen pigs. Lily had held tightly to Maryse's hand, and to Nanni's, feeling her back pushing against the wooden planks, and her neck onto an iron bar. And then the doors had been shut, bolted . . . and almost total blackness had come over the doomed passengers, relieved only by tiny windows, like slits, high above Lily's head.

How many days had they traveled? They'd been pressed tight, one against the other, in a fashion so monstrous that some had begun to scream, from lack of air. And then, they'd received only fourteen ounces of food for the first three days. After that, only an isolated piece of bread. Starving had been less painful, however, than thirst. Once a day, at some station where, amid big jolts, the boxcar had come to a stop, perhaps to be hooked up to a different convoy, or to move to a side rail, a water bottle had been flung through the slit windows, and had been seized by anxious hands. Often, the will to survive had obliterated all other human sentiments, and the contents of the bottle had been gulped before it was ever passed to the ones near the door.

And the only sanitation facility had been a covered bucket, soon uncovered, soon overflowing. The worst part was that few people could ever reach it. For many hours, the young, the valiant, had held out. And then, Nanni had said: “I can't. I have to go, here.” And Lily had told her to go ahead. There'd been no point in helping her to squat, or to remove her panties. They hardly had the room to stand. And so Nanni had wet her pants, and after that, Lily and Maryse had done the same, like incontinent animals.

Amid the pungent odors of excreta, old men vomited, and a baby suffocated. In front of them, an old woman tried to collapse, but couldn't, her dying body maintained upright by other living bodies. We don't even have the room to
die,
Lily thought. And then she wondered how she had steeled herself . . . how young Nanni had known
how
to steel herself, to accept death, decay, and ignominy. Perhaps the losses Lily had sustained, and her last years of poverty, had helped her; but she marveled at Nanni's inner strength, she who was still a child, and who had always known comfort.

It had turned cold, and, standing on tiptoe, Lily had seen a bleak landscape. And now they were clanging into a station, she could feel it, and her fingers tightened over Nanni's, and she said to Maryse: “Fresh air. We'll have fresh air.”

Only Maryse didn't answer. She'd long ago ceased to speak, her head on Lily's shoulder, her blue eyes unseeing . . . dazed by hunger and shame, and abysmal fear.

All at once, the door to the outside was flung open, and the prisoners, momentarily blinded by the strong white light, stood shakily hooding their eyes. “Out!” came the brisk order in German, and slowly, the fatigued people made their way to the platform. Lily, Maryse, and Nanni, at the back of the boxcar, were among the last to leave.

They were standing on a platform set against a gray background. Across some tracks, they could see barbed wire held up by myriad fence stanchions, and, beyond, an A-frame gray house with chimneys that belched smoke. But on the platform itself, SS guards, dressed in black uniforms, with silver pistols and batons, were busy marshaling the prisoners together. And then, men in blue-and-white striped jackets and pants, with matching caps on their shaved heads, stood gathering together the luggage being heaved off the wagons.

The SS men were lining the deportees into rows of fives. Lily noticed that the women and children had already been divided from the men. She found herself pushed, between Nanni and Maryse, next to a young woman carrying a baby. In front of them, two older women, in elegant clothes, stood clutching each other's hands. One of them turned, and asked Lily: “Why are we here? What are they going to do to us?”

“I have no idea,” Lily answered, smiling to give herself, as well as her interlocutress, courage.

“They're selecting us for work or the family camp,” the young woman next to Lily told her.

In the ensuing silence, Nanni stood fidgeting with the buttons of her coat. Lily faced Maryse, and began to fluff up her lifeless hair, to pinch her cheeks. “Whatever this is, you'll need to look strong,” she told her, tersely. “We all must, if we want to stay together.”

The line was moving forward rapidly, and now they could see a tall, handsome man in a formfitting uniform waving each person to the left or right with a flick of his thumb. He reminded Lily of the dandies she had known in Paris—younger versions of Charles de Chaynisart, always a little nonchalant and careless in their exquisite, perfumed elegance. The contrast between this man, clearly not yet forty, and the bedraggled prisoners who were parading in front of him, their throats parched with thirst and their clothes soiled and smelly, shocked her to the core of her being.

What have we done to deserve this? she asked herself, a deep revolt forming. We've committed no crime, any of us! And yet we're being stripped of our dignity, brought here on cattle trains like soulless animals . . . just because we are Jewish.

A young boy, looking barely older than Nanni, was loading some luggage into a truck. He was bone-thin and dressed in the pathetic blue-and-white striped uniform, yet one could tell that his smooth, pleasant features, and his bright brown eyes, would, in a normal setting, have made him good-looking. Nanni put her hand out, and touched him. Instinctively, a fearful animal, he jumped back.

“I didn't mean to frighten you,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “But . . . what's going to happen to us?”

Glancing quickly around, he asked, in a low, hurried voice: “How old are you?”

“Fourteen. And you?”

He shook his head, fear making him impatient. “Just remember this: if the selector, Dr. Mengele, asks you the same question, you will tell him you are eighteen. Then he will send you with the able-bodied women to be a slave laborer.”

“But . . . isn't he going to check the records?”

The boy laughed, but the sound was totally mirthless. “He never does. The secret in this place is never to look weak, old, or sick . . . and not to be a child.”

“Why not?” Her grave blue eyes searched his face.

“I have to go,” he said, taking hold of a rucksack and throwing it into the truck.

“What's your name?” she asked, hesitantly.

“Mihai. Mihai Berkovits. You?”

“Anna Steiner, from Vienna. My family calls me ‘Nanni.'. And you, where are you from . . . Mihai?”

“From Hungary . . . Transylvania. But look—”

“Will we see each other again?”

“That's not likely. The men are kept separate from the women, and almost never come together. Try to get placed into this work detail. It's the best. We call it ‘Canada,' because of all the loot we have to sort through, like the wealth of North America.”

“But . . . aren't those
our
things?” she asked, with dismay.

“I could get one hundred fifty strokes of the whip for even having spoken to you,” he mumbled. “Just remember, Anna . . . you have to be
eighteen
. . . just like me.”

“You're eighteen?”

“If I weren't,” he told her, his dark eyes fastening on her, “I certainly wouldn't be here, talking to you, and risking my life.”

Then he quickly moved away, an emaciated young boy among loads of heavy parcels. Nanni watched his receding backside, and felt Lily's hand around her wrist. “You've made a friend?”

“I'll probably never see him again,” the young girl said. “But he gave me precious advice. I'm to be eighteen. Tell Mama.”

It was their turn up. Lily held tightly to Maryse's arm, feeling her about to faint with fright. She herself could feel her knees weakening. The elegant man had taken a single look at the boy on their far right side, and had flicked him and the woman with the baby to the left, following the two older women from the line ahead. Now he was scrutinizing Maryse. “Tell me,” he asked, smiling. “Are you strong? Perhaps you would prefer the family camp. You appear to be ... well . . . delicate.”

“She's really very strong,” Lily spoke up, in her flawless German. “Small bones run in the family. But she's never been sick in her life.”

He shrugged. “Well, then, to the right. You, too,” he added, a trifle impatiently, flicking his thumb at Lily.

The two women hesitated, waiting for Nanni, but an SS lieutenant waved them on, brusquely. Behind them, as they walked away, they heard the selector ask: “And how old are you?”

Her head proudly raised, Nanni replied, unflinching: “Eighteen.” He placed his fingers over her shoulders, felt the firm young muscles, and nodded. Not ungently, he turned her resolutely to the right. She started to run, to catch up with her mother and Lily, her face breaking into a smile. Reaching them, she announced: “I made it!”

“And all the others?” Maryse asked. “Where are
they
going?”

“It doesn't matter, does it? We're going to be together,” Lily replied. And, linking arms, they entered a long line of able-bodied women, moving slowly across the tracks.