I did not want to bring Rachel. “Yes . . . maybe.”
“She’s sad since Klaas left,” she said.
“Yes, we all are,” I said.
“She misses him.”
“We all do.”
“What’s that?” She pointed to a fire burning a short distance outside the fence.
I could see only the rising smoke.
But up ahead were Maples and another guard. I usually walked past him when he was not alone. I could not tell whether he saw me. If he came this way by himself, I would introduce Cee-Cee to him. It would be good for her to see that the British aren’t all hateful, destructive savages.
But what if he said something and she repeated it to Moeder? I couldn’t risk it.
“Time to go back, Ceec,” I said. “Remember, Moeder didn’t want us to go far.”
She smiled. She looked tired from the walk, anyway.
MAPLES’S EYES SAGGED AT the edges and his smile produced no warmth. I had hoped he would lift my spirits, but he looked more grim than I felt. I did not need disappointment from him. I almost turned around or simply walked past him this time.
“Wait, Lettie . . . peace,” he said.
“Peace,” I answered. I had to stop.
“Have you talked to any Englishwomen?” he asked me.
Where would I talk to Englishwomen? “The nurses?”
“No . . . a visitor . . . Hobhouse,” he said. “Emily Hobhouse.”
“No.” I hadn’t heard the woman’s name. Surely he would hear about the visit of a British woman before I would.
“She’s from Cornwall, and she’s raising a stir back home,” Maples said. “Got my Betty in a fit.”
“How?”
“She’s been down here nosing around.”
“A British woman visiting the camps? Why?”
“Making trouble.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and unfolded several pages of a letter. I could see the feminine writing.
“Betty said this woman has been putting articles in the papers and giving speeches in Parliament about the conditions in the camps, and Betty now thinks I’m an animal,” he said. “Says the women aren’t refugees but prisoners.”
That point was beyond dispute. That was just now an item of news in England? “Have you told her nothing?”
“I never share much because she would worry or, worse, would tell Mum, and Mum would worry even more than she already does,” he said. “I usually complain about the weather and the food and tell her how much I miss her and all the things we will do when I get home.”
“But nothing about the war?”
“Don’t want her to know.”
“She doesn’t ask?”
“Not really . . . just asks after my health,” he said. “I don’t think she wants to know, either. But now . . . I would rather she heard it from me . . . to get our side of it.”
“What does this woman say?”
“Well, this Hobhouse has been to different camps. . . . Said some are run better than others, but most of them are bits of hell.”
“That’s what I heard from my friend Janetta. . . . Some are worse. . . . Some much worse.”
He read from the letter. “Here’s what Betty says: Disease, malnutrition, high fatality rates among children . . . starving, poor medical care . . . not getting soap for sanitary purposes.”
I had taken conditions for granted so long that they seemed normal, merely the way things were, and to get from day to day you stopped expecting things you knew you couldn’t have. I hated to think of it that way. But Moeder’s attitude had conditioned me. We dealt. We moved on. Strange that it took a woman from England to remind me.
“Betty is learning things about other camps that I don’t even know about . . . worse conditions . . . abuse.”
“This woman is telling other Brits about this?”
“Telling Parliament . . . telling the newspapers . . .”
“Good,” I said. “Maybe they’ll do something about it once they hear about it from one of their own.”
“She’s rounding up supporters . . . trying to raise political pressure to stop the war. Betty said one of the members of Parliament said we’ve been using ‘methods of barbarism’ and conducting a war against women and children.”
Yes, exactly.
“Also talks about farm burnings.”
The pages of the letter shook in his hands.
“They didn’t know about it before?” It had been more than a year.
He didn’t answer. Maybe this woman could help our cause. Maybe she was helping everyone’s cause.
“Wouldn’t the end of the war be a good thing for you?” I asked.
He looked wounded.
“Yes . . . of course,” he said. “But like this? I joined because Betty’s father thought I wasn’t good enough for her. I joined because I thought it would impress her. And now she thinks I’m some kind of animal.”
“You’re not an animal,” I said. He touched my shoulder, and I leaned into his touch.
I would ask about Miss Hobhouse. I hoped she would come to our camp. I would love to talk to her. She might have questions for me, but not as many as I would have for her. I would tell her everything. She would have to beg me to stop. I would go through my journal for her and tell her everything. Not about Maples, but everything else. She might want to print my journal, and I’d be famous in England. It would be my first book.
He folded the letter and turned away. He leaned the rifle on the fence and reached into his pack.
“Here, I have something for you.” He handed me a small package wrapped in brown paper with a twine string in a bowknot. I hoped it was another book, but it was a different shape. I looked at it and considered its weight. It was thick and heavy. I untied the twine and put it in my pocket to keep, then carefully unwound the paper.
It was a candle, one of the biggest I’d seen in a long time. My legs buckled.
“In case you want to sit up.”
I went dizzy, and my mind filled with possibilities.
He wanted to sit up with me. He had come to respect our ways and knew my parents would appreciate this as proof he wanted to be one of us. The flame would reflect off his red hair . . .
“Wait, there’s really no place for us to sit up in the tent,” I said. “No privacy for us.”
“What?” he said. “There are no boys here for you, anyway . . . are there?”
I realized that I’d said “us,” but he’d said “you.” Damn me as a foolish child, I thought. I tried to think of anything that might make my face not show disappointment. I knew I failed.
“Maybe when you get home . . . when this is over . . . boys will come to your home,” he said. “I saw the candle sitting in a guard tent and thought about you and that sitting-up tradition you folks have. I took it. . . . Thought you’d need it someday.”
“Of course . . . someday.”
29
September 1901, Concentration Camp
The sound of the match scrape and the flash of a brave little flame carried ominous meaning.
“Ma?”