‘I don’t think so. Yes, I believe we could trust them.’
I don’t think I can bear this, thought Alice, listening to them. I don’t think I can bear the thought of a child – my own child, never mind how he was conceived – being shunted around this appalling place to avoid being the subject of some grotesque experiment that might maim him physically or mentally…
‘We’d be questioned,’ said Ilena. ‘About where he was.’
‘Interrogation,’ said a very young girl, shuddering and glancing uneasily towards the door. ‘It’d be awfully dangerous.’
But several of the women had turned to look at the corner of Alice’s bed, where Alraune was asleep. The dark hair fell forward over his forehead, and there was a sheen of moisture on his eyelids. Alice felt again that stir of deep protectiveness.
‘We’d just say he had disappeared – that he had wandered off. As somebody said – oh, it was you, wasn’t it, Bozena? – Auschwitz is so big he could be lost for days.’
‘Yes, we could say that.’ They seized on this suggestion gratefully. ‘We could be very convincing and we might get away with it.’
‘Lu, you’d have to be the most convincing of us all – you’d have to be distraught. But you could do that, couldn’t you? You acted in films and you could do it?’
‘Yes, I could,’ said Alice.
‘The rest of us will pretend we’re rather glad Alraune’s gone – we’ll let them believe he’s been a nuisance, getting in our way, having to be looked after and fed, keeping us awake by crying—’
The Russian girl said, ‘It would be the most terrific gamble, but if we kept our heads and our nerve we might get away with it,’ and at once Alice’s mind snapped to attention, and she thought: a gamble! All a question of keeping your head! I know better than anyone about taking gambles, about keeping your head!
The tiredness sloughed away from her, and she sat up straighter. ‘I think it might work,’ she said. ‘But only if you are all prepared to risk the danger – the questioning. If even one of you is unhappy or fearful, I won’t attempt it.’
‘We’re all prepared to risk it,’ said several voices, and the rest nodded.
‘We’re all frightened, of course,’ said one of them. ‘Personally I’m absolutely terrified – but it’s unthinkable that Mengele should make use of a child in his experiments. I’ll do whatever’s needed along with the rest of you.’
Alice was fighting not to cry. She thought: if I live to be a hundred – if worlds end and the stars falter in their courses – I will never again know friends as good and as true as these women. These remarkable women who have become closer than sisters to me, and who are prepared to lie and to risk their lives to protect Alraune.
The others were already moving ahead, discussing the practicalities. The Russian girl was concerned about Alraune being frightened. ‘He might give the game away without realizing it.’
‘Not if Lu tells him it’s a new game—’
‘A version of hide-and-seek—?’
‘We could all tell him that; we could pretend it’s something we’re all playing.’
‘When do we do it?’
‘Tonight,’ said Ilena, looking at Alice. ‘We can’t delay.’
‘But what do we do first—?’
‘I’ll creep out to the Polish hut now,’ volunteered the Russian girl. ‘I can dodge the searchlights and the guards won’t see me.’
The huts were hardly ever locked any longer, so that the guards could make surprise visits, but patrolling parties moved around the camp all night. The trick was to dodge them and also the searchlights that constantly swept the darkness.
‘It’ll be quite dangerous,’ said Alice uncertainly. ‘Maria, let me go.’