He took a deep breath, and said, ‘Is it true that Alraune was born inside Auschwitz?’
This time the silence seemed to descend on them like a thick stifling curtain, and with it came a feeling that somewhere beyond the warm safe house something might be listening, and biding its time…
Michael shivered again and waited, and at last, as if she was coming back from a long way away, Alice said softly, ‘Yes. Alraune was born inside Auschwitz.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
If Buchenwald had been hell’s outpost, Auschwitz was its deepest cavern, and the minute Alice entered it she knew that all the stories about hellfire were wrong. Hell did not burn: it froze, with a deep, despairing bone-coldness.
It was night when the armed escort drove through the gates, and the camp was shrouded in a pouring violet dusk. Discs of harsh white light from the watch-towers moved constantly to and fro; they shone on the rows of barrack huts and the concrete exercise yards, and then swung round to the east, to silhouette several massively tall chimneys jutting up from a cluster of brick buildings on the camp’s far side. Alice stared at these buildings for a moment, and then the searchlights moved again, this time catching the glint of black iron on the ground – parallel lines of railway sleepers. There were several open-topped railway trucks nearby. So Auschwitz had its own private railway line. To bring prisoners in? To take them out?
She got down from the armoured truck, and stood for a moment feeling the place’s atmosphere sink its bony fingers into her mind and her heart. For a moment there was nothing in the world save this coldness, and this utter and complete hopelessness. Dreadful. I survived Buchenwald, but I don’t think I can survive this. Or can I? How about Deborah and Conrad? Yes, for them, I think can survive it.
She clutched the small bundle of belongings she had been allowed to bring out of Buchenwald – shoes, some threadbare underclothes, that precious letter from her parents telling her Deborah had reached them safely – and as the gates closed behind the truck, the guards took her through the compound, towards one of the barrack huts. The door was unlocked, Alice was pushed unceremoniously inside, and the lock clicked home once more. Shut in. But with what? And with whom?
It was not completely dark in the hut, but only thin threads of light trickled through the cracks in the window-shutters. Alice could make out only vague shapes – narrow beds with people on them, most of them sitting up and looking questioningly towards her. But she barely took this in, because as soon as the door had closed she had had to fight not to retch from the smell. It was like a solid wall, assaulting her whole being – stale human sweat and other human exudences best not identified too precisely. But she stood still, forcing her body not to rebel and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. Presently she was able to look about her, and she saw that several of the hut’s occupants had padded across the floor and were standing quite close to her. They’re inspecting me, thought Alice. They’re sizing me up.
She was more exhausted than she could ever remember being in her entire life – the journey from Buchenwald had taken over ten hours – but she summoned up her last shreds of energy, and said in German, ‘Good evening to you all. I’m sorry about the abrupt entrance. I’m a – a new prisoner.’ Hateful word. ‘Is there – have you any means of making a light so that I can see you and you can see me?’
There was a pause, and then the thin scrape of a match or perhaps a tinder. Three or four tiny candle flames burned up, and half a dozen or so faces swam through the darkness, lit from below to hollow disembodied life.
‘What’s your name?’ said one, and Alice realized for the first time that they were all women. So at least there was still a semblance of segregation in this place.