Page 40 of The Dressmaker's Gift
‘Silence!’ roared a guard. ‘Keep moving there!’
As they filed through the archway of the gatehouse, Claire lifted her eyes to read the now-familiar words set into the iron gates:Arbeit Macht Frei. This time, she read them in silence.
The women were led to barracks far bigger than the ones in the camp at Flossenbürg. Row upon row of them stretched away into the distance. It seemed to Claire that Dachau was as big as a town. In the centre of the camp, behind a cluster of trees, a tall chimney rose into the August sky, staining the blue with a cloud of grey smoke. It was a sight she recognised from the previous camp and she shuddered, knowing that this must be where the handcarts of corpses were being taken for disposal.
Vivi tugged at her sleeve. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s find a bunk before they’re all taken.’
After they’d queued for meagre rations of watery soup and a small hunk of hard black bread, they went back inside and their new hut senior called for the women’s attention. She consulted a clip board, telling each group where they had been allocated to work the next day. She looked at the numbers sewn on to Claire and Vivi’s jackets and consulted her list. ‘You two, report to the reception centre. You’ll be in the sewing room. Do you know what you’re doing?’
They both nodded.
‘Very well. Finish your food and get some sleep. It’s an early start in the morning.’
In the crowded bunk that they shared, top-to-tail, with two other women, Claire whispered to Vivi, ‘We’ll be alright in the reception centre here, won’t we? Just like we were before. Thank goodness for our sewing experience. It might just save our lives.’
Vivi brought her hand to her mouth, her body juddering as she tried to suppress her cough. When she could speak again she whispered, ‘We’ll be alright. Get some sleep now, Claire. It’s been a long day.’
Claire grew used to the rhythm of work in the sewing room at the Dachau reception centre. All day long, a continual stream of new prisoners was admitted and the sewing machines whirred as the workers attached the numbers and coloured triangles to the blue and white striped uniforms, one of each on the shirt just above the heart and one of each on the right leg of the trousers. It tore at her soul to have become a part of the grim machine processing each new inmate with ruthless efficiency and she felt a sense of guilt as she passed back each completed item to its recipient, meeting eyes filled with fear and despair. She tried to encourage them at first, with a kindly word or two, but the guard who oversaw the sewing room had shouted at her to stop talking and concentrate on her work. So now she had to make do with a faint smile instead.
She knew she was lucky, though. With only a short walk to the reception centre each day, she and Vivi conserved what little energy they were able to glean from the scant rations that formed the prisoners’ diet in the camp, and Claire felt a little stronger than she had done when she’d worked in the textile factory at Flossenbürg. At the end of the day, as they made their way back to the barracks, beneath the watchful eyes of the guards in the towers around the camp perimeter, she noticed that Vivi’s cough seemed a little better too, although maybe that was just because it was summer now. She knew as well, from what the other women in their hut said, that her work was a little easier than jobs in the factories and the surroundings were less harsh.
They’d been prisoners in these camps for more than a year, she realised, and for a moment a sense of desolation threatened to overwhelm her. Would they ever see Paris again? She glanced across to where Vivi sat at her sewing machine, her head bent over her work. As if sensing she was being watched, Vivi looked up and shot Claire a smile and a nod, reassuring her.We are together, Claire told herself, repeating the mantra that had kept her going through so many times of despair.Everything will be alright.
All at once, the guard, who had been leaning against the wall watching the women work, strode across to where Vivi sat and yanked her to her feet, hitting her hard around her head. The line of prisoners shrank back and one woman screamed at the sudden violence of the gesture.
Claire watched, horrified, as several yellow triangles fluttered to the floor from Vivi’s lap, scattering like the wings of broken butterflies on to the bare boards at her feet. The guard shouted, and two of her colleagues came running in from the room next door.
‘Traitor! French whore!’ the guard screamed. She reached down and scooped together the triangles of yellow cloth. ‘How many of these have you exchanged for blue ones? Don’t deny it! I’ve been watching you. I saw you do it. And you’ve been leaving off the yellow ones when there are two to be sewn on, as well. I can have you shot for this.’ She glanced around at the terrified seamstresses and prisoners who had all frozen in their places. ‘Let this be a lesson to you all. Don’t you dare think you can disobey orders.’
In the stillness, the sound of Claire’s chair scraping on the floorboards as she stood up made everyone turn to stare at her. Vivi’s face was white and a trickle of blood ran from her bottom lip, but she looked pleadingly at Claire and shook her head, almost imperceptibly, wordlessly begging her to stay where she was.
‘You too?’ snarled the guard. ‘Are you also a traitor? Or do you simply want to volunteer for hard labour alongside your friend here?’
Claire opened her mouth to reply, but just then Vivi called out, ‘No! Leave her. It was me, on my own. No one else knew.’
‘Take her away,’ snapped the guard. ‘And you,’ she spat at Claire, ‘sit back down and get on with your work. I’ll be watching you, so don’t think you can try any such clever tricks, either.’
‘Please ...’ said Claire.
‘Silence!’ roared the guard and she pulled her revolver from its holster. ‘I will shoot the next person who opens her mouth. Now, are you going to get on with your work or do I have to clear the whole lot of you seamstresses out of here and allocate your cushy jobs to others who won’t be so ungrateful?’
Slowly, numbly, Claire sank back down into her seat and bent her head over her sewing machine, her tears falling on to the blue and white striped shirt on the table in front of her, as Vivi was frog-marched out of the reception centre.
Claire was frantic. No one knew where Vivi had been taken. The senior in the barracks just shrugged when Claire begged her to try to find out. ‘She shouldn’t have been so stupid as to try to trick the guards. Pulling that stunt, hiding the yellow triangles to try to save prisoners. After she was so lucky to have that job, as well.’ She shook her head. ‘She’s probably in the crematorium by now.’
It must have been about two weeks later – Claire had lost track of time, and another prisoner had taken Vivi’s place in the shared bunk – when Vivi reappeared in the barracks one evening. She was thinner than ever and her cough had returned. Her clothes hung like rags from her frame and she walked with a stoop, seeming to have crumpled in on herself. Claire ran to her, and helped her to the bed, making the grumbling woman who’d taken Vivi’s place move to another bunk. She fetched some soup and tried to give it to Vivi, but Vivi’s hands shook so badly that she couldn’t hold the bowl without spilling it. ‘Here,’ Claire soothed her, ‘let me.’ Little by little she spooned the watery brew of potato peelings and cabbage into Vivi’s mouth.
Later, when she’d regained her strength enough to speak, Vivi told Claire that she’d been put in solitary confinement for two weeks. She’d lain alone in the darkness, listening to the moans and cries from the neighbouring cells, and kept herself going by repeating over and over the words that she and Claire had whispered to each other so often:I’m here. We’re still together. Everything will be alright.‘As long as I knew you were okay, I could bear it,’ she said.
Claire had helped Vivi to lie down. ‘You’ll get better now,’ she said. ‘I’ll look after you. Will you go back to work in the factory, do you think?’
Vivi shook her head. ‘They’ve told me to join the labour detail tomorrow morning after roll call.’
‘No!’ Claire’s eyes widened in horror. ‘You haven’t got the strength to do that work. It will kill you.’
‘That’s exactly what they’re hoping. When the guards took me from the sewing room, one of them pushed me up against the wall of the reception centre and put his pistol to my head. But then, just as he was about to pull the trigger his colleague stopped him. “A bullet is too good for a French whore like her,” I heard him say. “We can get some more work out of her – let her die a slower death.”’ She stopped, struggling for breath as painful coughs seized her body.
‘Hush,’ Claire urged her, ‘don’t try to talk. Rest and get your strength back.’
