‘Rot,’ Alice had said, after she had got over the extravagant romanticism of this sufficiently to remember Conrad’s most recent entanglement with a red-haired Florentine actress from the commedia dell’arte. ‘Utter rubbish. If you worship anything at all, you worship music.’
And so Conrad, who worshipped music, might die if they took that away from him. Alice wondered how she would bear it, and then she wondered whether it would be worse simply to lose him without knowing what his fate had been.
After a few weeks the staccato music of the prisoners’ weary footsteps and the grinding pain of working for twelve hours at a stretch, and being constantly, achingly hungry and thirsty, changed. Now the music drummed out a different rhythm. I-must-get-out…I-will-do-anything…
I will do anything to get out, thought Alice. There is nothing I will not do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
There is nothing I will not do to get out…
But it gradually became clear that escape was impossible; the prisoners were closely guarded, and in the first two weeks of her imprisonment, two young men – Russian Jews – were shot for trying to climb over the electrified fence by night.
Nightmare visions of Conrad, hungry and beaten or lying dead in some wretched unknown grave, haunted her, and to quench them she began to look for SS men who might be open to seduction; when you have been living in hell you will take the devil himself to bed, and although Alice had temporarily abandoned the idea of escape she thought she would not flinch from one or two sessions in the guards’ quarters if it would improve her lot, and that of her companions. Hot water for washing. Better food – or at least more substantial food. Clean clothes occasionally.
I’d do it if I could, she thought. Yes, but how can I exert any kind of seduction technique with my hair chopped short, and the smell of sweat on my skin, and wearing this shapeless half-shirt, half-dress they give the prisoners? But she was prepared to try, even though she was already recognizing the black irony of her situation. Not so long ago my most pressing concerns were whether to enamel my nails silver or scarlet, or the problem of obtaining eyelash-black. Now I’m contemplating going to bed with men who are sadists and torturers and murderers, just to get a few extra slices of bread.
From time to time, news from the outside world reached Buchenwald. Germany was being mobilized for war, although it was being said that Herr Hitler did not really expect to have to fight any kind of war at all. Against this was the fact that Hermann G?ering, always the evil genius of the Nazi Party, had lately announced a fivefold extension of the Luftwaffe.
‘The Third Reich seems somewhat divided,’ observed Alice rather caustically to the others in Hut 24. ‘Or does G?ering intend to fight on his own?’
‘I heard there were rumours that Herr Hitler means to annexe Czechoslovakia in the way he annexed Austria,’ said one of the women – Mirka – who was from a village just outside Prague, and who had been raped and beaten on Kristallnacht, before being brought to Buchenwald. ‘But if he does, he will not find it easy. Slovakian people are strong and fearless, and they will defy the Reich armies. They will fight. And our good friends in France will come to our aid,’ said Mirka confidently. ‘You will see.’
The spring buds were just starting to unfurl when the information reached Buchenwald, via a new consignment of prisoners, that Hitler’s armies had marched into Bohemia and Moravia, and that France had done nothing to prevent them. Mirka had sobbed with angry despair that night, muffling the sounds in her pillow, and Alice sat on the side of her bed, trying to comfort her. The two of them had talked softly until dawn, exchanging memories, and Alice thought they had both drawn strength from one another.