Page 42 of The Dressmaker's Gift
‘If you have a blanket, bring it with you,’ shouted the block senior. She strode the length of the long room, shaking awake the exhausted inmates who’d worked the night shift and telling them to get up. ‘Hurry. You will be leaving shortly. Assemble on the square as quickly as possible.’
Claire gently tapped Vivi’s arm, but there was no immediate response. She nudged her more firmly and Vivi coughed, that dry, rasping sound that was so painful to hear. Then Claire realised that her friend’s body was burning. She sat up, as best she could in the confined bunk, and drew back the collar of Vivi’s shirt. And she saw what she’d been dreading: the dark rash had spread to cover Vivi’s chest. It was a sight that she was familiar with from trying to help other women in the block. It was the sign of typhus.
As the hut emptied, the block senior hurried over to the corner where Claire was trying to get her friend to take a sip of water from the tin mug. Vivi’s eyes were glazed with the fever that was blazing within her wasted body. ‘Get up! Be quick! You need to be on the square now for a roll call.’
‘She can’t ...’ Claire said, turning frantically to the senior. ‘She’s ill. Look at her.’
After a cursory glance, the senior snapped, ‘Well, you’ll have to leave her then. Those who are too sick to go will be left here for the guards to deal with.’
‘Go?’ Claire asked. ‘Go where?’
‘The Allies are advancing. They’ll be here any day. My orders are to evacuate the camp. We’re to march west, to the mountains. Bring what you can and get outside now.’
Claire shook her head. ‘I won’t leave her,’ she said.
The senior had already started to walk away. She turned to glare at Claire. ‘In that case,’ she snapped, ‘you can stay for all I care. You two have been nothing but trouble from the very start. But I’m warning you, the camp is being destroyed. The SS are disposing of anyone left behind, the sick and the dying. If you stay, you will die with her.’
Claire’s voice was quiet, but determined. ‘I won’t leave her,’ she repeated.
The block senior shrugged. Then she turned on her heel and left the hut, slamming the door behind her.
Claire lay back down next to Vivi and tried to cool her fever by wetting a corner of her shirt and gently stroking it over her burning forehead.
‘I’m here,’ she whispered. ‘We’re together. Everything will be alright.’
The sounds from beyond the hut walls were muffled: running footsteps gathering in the square, then silence for what seemed like hours while the headcount took place, she assumed, and then the sound of shuffling feet as a few thousand prisoners began their long march out through the metal gates, beneath that grotesque slogan, towards the Vosges Mountains where the beleaguered German forces were trying to consolidate one of their final strongholds.
As dusk dimmed the light that filtered through the grimy windows of the hut, the camp beyond fell silent. Claire continued to bathe Vivi’s forehead and to sponge down her skin, which seemed as fragile as tissue paper and so hot it might burst into flames. Her friend muttered and coughed and groaned, as the pain and the fever consumed her. All through the long darkness of the night, Claire kept trying to get her to drink a little water and continued to whisper reassurances – ‘I’m still here. We’re together. I won’t leave you, Vivi.’ – until at last she, too, fell into a troubled sleep.
At daybreak, Claire woke to find Vivi’s eyes on her. They were still glazed with the fever, but she was awake. Claire smoothed the halo of sweat-soaked hair back from Vivi’s face, praying that it was a sign that the fever was breaking and that she might pull through.
The sound of heavy boots running past the door of the hut startled Claire. Was this it? Were these the guards, coming to dispose of the sick and the dying as the senior had predicted?
But the footsteps faded away round the end of the barracks. And then suddenly a rattle of gunfire sounded, close by. A shouted command made Claire sit up. The voice wasn’t German; it was American.
‘Vivi,’ she whispered, ‘they’re here! The Americans. We’ve made it.’ But Vivi seemed to have sunk back into unconsciousness, each gasping breath making her chest rattle.
‘I’m going to get help, Vivi,’ Claire told her. ‘They’ll have medicine. Hold on, I’ll be back very soon.’
She staggered to the door and pushed it open, blinking in the April sunlight. Her legs felt so weak that she could scarcely stand, but she knew she needed to go and find someone who could help Vivi. Every minute counted. Holding on to the walls of the hut for support, she made her way to the open space of the square in front of the rows of barracks.
From force of habit, she glanced up nervously at the nearest watchtower in the fence that enclosed the camp. But instead of the silhouette of a Nazi soldier with a machine gun trained on the camp interior, an empty square of sky was framed beyond the abandoned tower. Leaning against the side of a hut for support, she stumbled towards the central square.
It was the smell that hit her first. Overlying the background stink of death and decay, the usual wisp of acrid, grey smoke still hung in the air above the brick chimney behind her. But as she neared the square a more pungent stench filled her nostrils. As she rounded the corner of the last hut, she choked as a thick pall of smoke enveloped her, eddying around her on a gust of breeze. As it cleared, she could make out a smouldering heap of what looked like railway sleepers in the middle of the parade ground. A charred hand reached from the top of the pile, pointing towards a heaven that she no longer believed could exist, as her numbed senses told her that this was a hastily assembled funeral pyre. The crematorium was too slow: the camp staff had tried to burn as many bodies as possible before the camp was liberated, in an attempt to destroy the evidence of what had gone on there.
Lined up on the parade ground, where once they had forced the prisoners to stand for hours on end in all weathers as headcounts were made or punishments meted out, were some of those same camp guards. American troops, wearing rounded helmets and khaki uniforms, held them at gunpoint. A prisoner staggered on to the square, his legs barely able to hold him up, and launched himself forward, trying to attack one of the SS guards. He screamed as he did so, uttering inarticulate, agonised cries, giving voice to the outrage that the guards’ inhuman treatment of so many innocent people for so many years warranted. His weakness made his attack ineffectual, though, and two of the American soldiers caught him and held him off the SS personnel, gently helping him away.
Relinquishing the support of the hut wall, Claire stumbled across to where a soldier wearing a white armband emblazoned with a red cross was stooping over the body of a collapsed prisoner. ‘S’il vous plaît’ – she clutched at his sleeve – ‘my friend. You have to help her. Please.’
The medic straightened up, realising that the prisoner on the ground was beyond help. She tugged on the sleeve of his jacket again. ‘Please, come with me.’
His voice was kind, even though she couldn’t understand the words he said. He tried to make her sit down but she found the strength to resist, to pull him towards the hut. Realising her intent, he went with her, following her in through the door and over to the corner of the bunk that she and Vivi shared.
Claire knelt down and seized her friend’s hand. ‘Vivi, help is here!’ she cried.
But there was no answering squeeze of her fingers, no flutter of eyelids opening to display a pair of clear hazel eyes.
And then she realised that the rattle of Vivi’s breathing had fallen silent and the blue and white striped shirt hung in motionless folds over her heart.
