“Georges and Jean are here, you know,” Marc said.
“Yes, I know. I was just thinking the same thing,” Jacques said.
The concert closed with a wild rendition of
Tiger Rag
. The men stood for the number, and the entire room shook with the excitement of the band and the singer. For Marc, the concert was a sweet memory, like an eternal moment of time of freedom. He had found the freedom to enjoy himself again, even if only for a while, and most of all, the freedom to confess to Jacques in a gentle way his lies regarding Jean and Georges. The timing seemed predestined to him, like he had fallen into just the right moment, where he had the freedom to speak of them as passed, but also a way to speak of their presence as eternal.
April 23, 1945
Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for Women, Sweden
T
orquette shook inside, out of fear of what was to come next. The guards called the entire camp together for a spontaneous roll call, and she knew by their voices this was a selection.
“
Français seulement, Français seulement ici, maintenant
,” the guards called out. Slowly, all of the French women of the camp lined up separately. Torquette’s stomach boiled with fear. She thought of her husband and her son, and the last time she’d seen them at Moulins. A scab on her face, from a rat bite the previous week, bled.
As she reached near the front of the line, she saw the guard mark the back of women with chalk.
“The final selection,” she thought to herself.
On the back of her coat, the guard drew down from the left and then the right, in heavy white chalk, a cross. Then all the women with a white cross on their backs gathered to one side. Rumors went wild through the group, as some cried and mumbled they were going to shoot them all.
“The Swedish Red Cross has agreed to care for your needs. You have been selected to be turned over to their care,” the guard said. Torquette began to cry, because she had prepared herself to die and now she knew she would live.
May 3, 1945
Bay of Lubeck, Germany, S.S.
Thielbek
Philip looked up from the deck of the ship. He could hear planes overhead, but could not determine their direction just yet. The holds and lower decks of the ship contained a world worse than any he had seen in the other camps or prisons. Guards began to shout out commands, and men started to run back inside the ship as the planes opened fire.
Pandemonium broke out, and soon the ship began to roll over. Philip jumped into the sea without his father. On the shore, machine gun fire rained down on the swimmers. Philip made it out of the water just past the gunners. He recognized another prisoner, and asked him, “Have you seen my father?”
“Yes, he was swimming toward the shore over there,” he pointed back toward the ship. It burned, sinking into the sea. Only fifty prisoners survived, and Philip soon accepted that his father, Dr. Jackson, was not among the survivors.
May 7, 1945
Buchenwald, Germany
“Tolbert, Tolbert?” Marc heard as he stood in the crowd surrounding the American soldier passing out the mail.
“Here,” Marc said, moving toward the soldier to get the letter, the first since December 1941. He quickly tore open the American Red Cross telegram seal.
“Start: Dear Marc, I am well, living with auntie in California. Mum gone in ’42, and Papa last year. I am so thankful for you to be alive. I believed I was alone. More to follow. Love, Your Sister, Elda: Stop. Richmond, California. USA.”
“What does it say?” Jacques asked Marc.
“Everything is great. My sister misses me,” Marc said, and his voice trailed off a bit. Marc quickly stuffed the letter into his pocket while looking around, as if he had a secret to hide. His jaw became stiff and his eyes hollow.
“Do you think you are going back to America?” Jacques asked next in a neutral tone.
“No. I believe I am going to stay in France for a bit longer. We need to get ready. The trucks are going to be here soon, and today is our day to leave,” Marc said, quickly taking Jacques with him back to the blockhouse.
“Did you get good news from America?” Jacques asked.
“Yes, everything is fine,” Marc said, trying to measure his voice.
“Is that so?”
“Do you have everything you need for the trip?” Marc asked.
“I am leaving what I have here.”
“But, don’t you want to take …”
“It stays here. I am not going to hold on to anything,” Jacques said.
That afternoon, Marc, Jacques, and Yves boarded the trucks that took them to a city near Buchenwald, called Eisenhart. In the lobby of the hotel, piles of pants, shirts, and jackets, along with shoes and socks of every imaginable size and color, laid waiting for the men. They stood mulling around the piles, uncertain of what to do, as if the clothing intended for them seemed too good to be true. Marc started to sift slowly through the garments, looking for something that might fit. He felt self-conscious, aware of his camp uniform, as he picked up some dark slacks and a white button-down shirt.
Marc then took Jacques with his new garments up to his room. Yves took the room opposite to Jacques, Marc next door. Yves had not spoken much since the concert. Marc could tell by his mood that this silence was not directed in anger at Jacques or Marc, but inward toward himself. In his room, Marc opened the closet door, but resisted closing it after he had put away his new clothes. Anxiety arose inside of him with each hour in the room. The bed did not welcome him, and he felt unworthy of the clean water.
Eventually, he took a long bath, overwhelmed by the idea that all of this warm, clean water was for him alone, without anyone else waiting or watching him in the room. The bed’s warmth and comfort pained him until he found the space to let go into sleep.
Early in the morning, he awoke from a deep dream, hyperventilating. Marc was back at Monowitz, before the march. He was near the fence, and one of the guards took his cap off and threw it toward the barbed wire. The guard taunted and mocked him to get the cap, or he was going to have him hung for sabotaging his uniform. But Marc could not get the cap, because he knew the guard was going to shoot him if he went near the fence.
He sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. Marc sat confused for a moment as he struggled to decide which was more real, the dream or his room. The dream took him back to the day in Monowitz, when the same guard took off his cap and threw it against the fence. An air raid siren had gone off and the guard disappeared into a bomb shelter. Then Marc ran for cover. He stole another cap later from the oven room. It was still difficult for him to shake the dream that had no siren of salvation.
Marc put on the pants, and cinched his new belt all the way to the last hole. He then put on the shirt, buttoning the collar, followed by his socks and shoes. When he walked, the shoes slipped, even though they were, at one time, his size.
Marc gazed at the striped wool shirt and pants that he had worn from the camp. He then remembered the telegram and took it from the pocket, along with the small square piece of brown paper used as a pass from the camp. As he turned, he caught himself in the mirror. The shirt did not fit but just hung on him. The collar circled his neck like a loose tire. He looked like some kid wearing pants meant for a giant. A swell of emotion started to overtake him, and he could feel a breakdown coming as he looked at himself. He was in better health than many, but still he weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds when released. He had gained twelve pounds since April 11, but it had not been easy.
“No, NO, NO, goddamn it, NO!” he shouted as he pounded his fist into his hand with the telegram and small pass.
Why did I survive these camps, but my own parents did not even survive back at home?
raced through his mind. He gained his composure and said to the mirror, “I think you have gained some weight,” and then turned away. The camp uniform sat piled in the chair. Marc thought to fold it, but then stopped himself. He turned to leave it as trash, but stopped at the door.
“Jacques is right. I should just let it go,” he said softly to the walls of the empty room. Marc closed his eyes and then looked back at the uniform again. He then tore off the small red triangle and number and put it into his pocket with his camp pass and telegram.
Jacques basked in the sunlight and wind in the back of the truck with Marc and Yves as it drove down the roads of Germany.
“Where are we now, Marc?” Jacques asked.
“We have left Coblentz, going west to Luxembourg.”
“We have passed the Rhine, then. I guess I missed it,” Jacques mused. He must have been so happy that he could take a nap and let go of knowing exactly every detail of a trip to someplace unknown.
They arrived then at a camp for displaced persons at Longuyon, in northeastern France. The next morning, the sudden jerk-and-stop motion that Marc made as he walked, shocked Jacques.
“What is wrong?” he asked Marc.
“Uh, just waiting,” his voice cracked. Jacques’ ears scanned the station. He could hear the footsteps stopping, but none climbing onto the platform.
“Come along now, please, one at a time,” a French voice called to the men. Jacques could feel Marc’s shoulder tense up and his movements became forced.
“Where are you going? This is the right train to take back to Paris,” he heard a voice to his right call out.
The word
train
split the air in Jacques’ consciousness.
Of course
, he thought as Marc lurched forward in the line,
it is the train they fear
. Another man then brushed up against him, walking away.
“You sang the other night, didn’t you?” Marc asked a young Frenchman sitting across from them.
“Yes, for the soldiers. Yes, that was me up there,” the young man said. Marc looked at him and guessed him to be just about eighteen or nineteen years old, his stature far shorter than Marc’s. His eyes smiled with warmth.
“Were you in show business before the war?” Jacques asked him.
“Yes, I sang and danced. I had a small band of friends. I don’t know what has become of them.” His voice grew quieter. “I must be an orphan now. I am sure of it.”
“I can understand that feeling,” Marc said, his voice clear.
“Did they get your parents, too? They rounded us up and put us in train cars, like animals. They were screaming and yelling at us like a bunch of lunatics back in Paris. Are you Jewish, too?” he asked next.
“No, but my parents passed away during the war. It really is not the same thing, but still. Actually, I am rather lucky because I have one sister left. You must hate the Germans?” Marc then asked.
“No, I don’t hate the Germans. In fact, I don’t want to hate at all. I am finished with all this hate. That is the problem, you see, people hating other people. We all need to stop hating. I do not want to become like the people who hated me just because I am Jewish,” he said with a passionate voice. “Do you believe in God?”
“No, not in the one I cannot see. You know, the one in the sky,” Marc said dismissively. Jacques sat and listened to them speak, deep in thought.
It was so odd that Marc could casually tell a stranger that his parents died, yet would hide the fact from me.
Jacques even wondered if Marc was aware of the fact that he had told Jacques nothing of the death of his parents.
“How can I believe in someone like that after everything I’ve seen?” Marc went on, trying to shake off the question. Yves looked up at Marc and smiled, nodding his head in silence.
They arrived in Paris at the East Gate station. Crowds of people waved French flags and threw flowers at them as they left the train. The buses drove through the streets of the city and then arrived at the hotel.
“Where are we, Marc?” Jacques asked, trying to get his bearings.
“Hôtel Lutetia. We are on the Left Bank,” Marc’s voice squeaked out with the tension of a piano wire.
“Why are you so tense? Is something wrong? You don’t seem very happy to be back,” Jacques asked.
Marc pulled him to the side, and then cupped his hand over Jacques’ ear so he could hear over the noise in the room. “This was the Gestapo headquarters. They brought me here the first night of my arrest.”
“Marc, I will be outside,” Yves said.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, but I can’t go in. Can you tell them that I am outside and need someplace else to stay?”
In the hotel lobby a woman screamed “Robert!” Then the teenager on the train turned and screamed back. Marc understood them speaking in French. She was Robert’s sister.
No one called out Marc’s name. He checked the list to see if the Jackson family had arrived, but he could not find them among the names.
“Name?”
“Marc Tolbert.”
“This will be your room, and here are the instructions.”
“I can’t stay here. Neither can my friend Yves. He is outside. Is there another place?”
“Oh. Yes, I understand. We have had other requests. Let me go and check what can be done.”
Marc walked back outside and found Yves and Jacques, with Jacques’ family. After a small conversation, he went back inside the hotel.
“We have other places, but they are full. In a few days we can move you. I am sorry, but you will need to stay here for the next few nights. If there is a room that you wish to avoid, perhaps we can do something,” the clerk said.
“No need. We have a place now for a few nights. But we’ll take the other location when it becomes open.”
“Excellent. Here are your papers and Yves’.”
To celebrate, Marc and Jacques went out for a drink and smoke at a local café. Yves came in a bit later and joined them. Marc continued to eat whatever was given to him, and ordered more. He rolled in satisfaction, so happy for the glorious food.
“Marc, you should be careful. Remember what they told us,” Yves said.
“It is no use. I’ve tried. He is like a goat now?” Jacques said.
A group of British soldiers sat close to Marc and his friends. The soldiers broke out into a chorus of singing.