And even if it survives, it will never forgive me for bringing it into this dark joyless place.
Some of the women had managed to secrete a little store of things for the birth. A few teaspoons of brandy, stolen from one of the guards; cotton wool and antiseptic taken from the infirmary during a cleaning session; a bundle of clean cotton rags. Deborah had been born in a Viennese nursing home with every possible luxury to hand, and a distinguished surgeon in attendance. Conrad had shipped in flowers by the cartload and champagne by the bucket, and later he had written that marvellous music for his daughter – Deborah’s Song…And now Deborah’s half-brother or sister would be born on a pile of straw and rags, with no one except a clutch of women in attendance. But this child had been conceived in fear and pain, and now it was being born into a hating world.
When finally it lay between her thighs, Alice could feel, even before she saw it, that it was small and shrivelled.
‘But alive,’ said Ilena. ‘Breathing well.’
They wrapped the child in a square of blanket, and then Alice felt the small flailing hand against her breasts, and saw the little mouth opening and closing like a bird’s beak.
‘You have hardly any milk,’ said Ilena presently.
‘That was to be expected.’ To Alice’s horror the thought formed that if the child were to die she would be free to plan an escape, and there would be nothing to remind her of what Leo Dreyer and those others had done to her that night. There was a brief and rather terrible glimpse of herself watching the child grow up, searching its features in the years ahead, praying that it would not resemble the features of the man who had stood by the stove’s glow, watching her being raped. And then had raped her himself…
And then the child let out a thin mewling cry, and something of the old defiance stirred. Alice was suddenly aware of a fierce protectiveness. She would force this child to survive, she would see it as a symbol of hope. Forgive me, little one, I didn’t mean it about letting you die.
But her breasts were empty and barren, and the tiny daily allowance of milk for the hut would not be anything like sufficient for such a weakling. Alice looked at Ilena, who was still seated on the edge of the bed.
‘Help me,’ she said. ‘There must be something—’
Ilena said slowly, ‘I think there is one thing you could do. Something I have seen animals do in my village. Not pleasant, but an immediate and immense form of nourishment – it would mean you could feed the child properly. My grandmother used to point it out to us when animals were born. You see how Nature always provides, she used to say.’
Alice stared at her for a moment, and then quite suddenly her own country upbringing asserted itself, and she understood. Nature provides.
After a moment she reached down between her thighs, feeling in the bloodied straw that Ilena had spread on the bed. Almost at once her hand closed about the still-warm afterbirth.
The child would live, even inside a place such as this. Alice would make very sure of it.
‘I don’t know it all,’ said Michael, seated opposite to Fran in Trixie’s kitchen, the three-quarters-empty wine bottle still between them. ‘That’s mostly because I don’t think she wanted to tell it all. But over the years I managed to fill in a good many of the gaps. One of the things I do know, though, is that Alraune was born in Auschwitz and that the birth was the result of Lucretia being raped by several Gestapo officers.’