“We’ll modify the plan. Let me work on it.”
Renée looks at him and doesn’t know what to think. Is there even the remotest possibility that Viktor is capable of getting the two women out of there alive? And if they got out, what would happen after that? Would two Jewish women escapees from Auschwitz and a traitor be able to hide themselves from the Nazis? And even if they could … would she link her life to that of a Nazi, even if he was a deserter? Does she want to spend the rest of her life with someone who, up till now, has not been troubled when it’s time to take hundreds of innocent people to their death?
Too many questions.
Once again, she falls silent. She limits herself to not saying anything, and Pestek understands her silence as acceptance, because that’s what he wants to believe.
*
It finally stopped raining, so Dita took advantage of the soup break to try and find the man from the Resistance. But the earth, which had become a sticky, muddy quagmire, seemed to have swallowed him up. She was circling the workshop when the prisoners had their break, but she didn’t come across him.
Now, sitting on her bench, she carefully smooths out the wrinkles in the French novel, which is missing its front and back covers, and applies some glue to its spine. The glue comes from Margit, who secretly removed it from the workshop to which she’s assigned, where they make military boots. Dita wants to do a thorough repair job on the book before she lends it to the only person who ever asks for it, a teacher with a somewhat sour disposition called Markéta. She has straight hair that is too gray for her age, and her arms are like sticks. They say she was governess to the children of a government minister before the war. She teaches one of the groups of nine-year-old girls, and Dita occasionally overhears her teaching a few words of French to her pupils, who are very attentive because she’s always telling them that it’s the language spoken by elegant young ladies. To Dita, the musical words sound like a language invented by troubadours.
Although Dita found Markéta somewhat distant and not interested in conversation, the teacher had asked Dita for the novel so many times that one day, Dita asked her if she knew the book. Markéta looked her up and down in utter amazement.
Thanks to Markéta, Dita was able to catalogue the book formally by its title and author, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The teacher also told her that it was a famous book in France.
Today, Markéta asked her if she could have the book for a while, so once Dita has finished fixing it, she goes over to the stool where the teacher is sitting by herself, sunk in her thoughts. Markéta rarely talks to anyone, but Dita has given some consideration as to how she can approach her, and now is the time. The hut is quiet because Avi Fischer’s choir is having a rehearsal down the back, and they’ve driven everyone else away with their warbling. Without waiting to be invited, Dita plonks herself down on the neighboring stool.
“I’d like to know what this book is about. Would you tell me?”
If the teacher tells her to get lost, she’ll get up and walk away. But Markéta gives her a look and, against all the odds, doesn’t send her away. Rather, she seems glad of Dita’s company. And what’s even more surprising is that this woman of few words begins to tell her the story with unexpected warmth.
“The Count of Monte Cristo…”
She talks to Dita about a young man called Edmond Dantès, whose name she pronounces the French way, with very open and striking vowels, thereby instantly granting him a literary pedigree. She says that Edmond is an honest, strapping, young man, who’s sailing back to Marseilles in command of the Pharaon, and looking forward to seeing his father and his Catalan fiancée.
“He had to take command of the ship after the death of the captain at sea. The captain’s dying wish was that Edmond take a letter on his behalf to an address in Paris. Life is treating Edmond well at that stage: The ship owner wants to make him captain, and his fiancée, the lovely Mercédès, loves him madly. They’re going to get married right away. But a cousin of Mercédès, who is also wooing her and is an officer on the ship, is angry because he hasn’t been named the new captain. He denounces Dantès for treason, and the dead captain’s letter incriminates him. It’s terrible. So on his wedding day, Dantès plummets from the heights of happiness to the depths of despair when he’s arrested during the wedding ceremony and taken as a prisoner to the horrific penal island of If.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a small island facing the port of Marseilles. There he’ll spend many years locked up in a cell. But Dantès finds a companion in misfortune in a nearby cell, the Abbé Faria. He’s an abbot whom all consider mad because he constantly shouts at the warders that if they release him, he’ll share a fabulous treasure with them. The abbot has spent years patiently digging a tunnel with tools he himself has made, but he has miscalculated the direction the tunnel should take and, instead of exiting outside the prison wall, he turns up in Dantès’s cell. Thanks to the tunnel, about which the warders know nothing, the two cells are now connected, and the two men keep each other company and ease the burden of their imprisonment.”
Dita listens carefully. She identifies with Edmond Dantès, an innocent man whom malice has caused to be most unjustly imprisoned, just as has happened to herself and her family.
“What’s Dantès like?”
“Strong and handsome, very handsome. And above all else, he is kindhearted, good, and generous.”
“And what happens to him? Does he get the liberty he deserves so much?”
“He and Faria plan their escape. They spend years digging a tunnel, and in the meantime, Abbé Faria becomes Dantès’s mentor, almost like his father, teaching him history, philosophy, and many other subjects during their hours of imprisonment. But when the tunnel is almost complete, Abbé Faria dies. Their plan falls apart. Just as Dantès thinks freedom is centimeters away, his friend’s death wrecks everything.”
As if her own misfortune weren’t enough for her to worry about, Dita now purses her lips and laments poor Dantès’s bad luck. Markéta smiles.
“Dantès is a very resourceful and brave man. After the warders have ascertained that the abbot is dead and have left his cell, Dantès goes through the secret tunnel to Faria’s cell, transfers the body of his good friend into his own cell, and lays him down on the bunk. Then he returns to Faria’s cell and sews himself inside the dead abbot’s body bag. When the people charged with burying the body arrive, they take away Dantès, whose plan is to get out of the bag and escape the moment he’s left unattended in the morgue.”