The skinny woman’s brittle smile cut her feeble explanation short. “We all are.”
A small door at the bottom of the cell opened and a tray was roughly propelled inside, almost sloshing the watery soup over the rim of the single bowl. The bit of moldy bread rolled from the thin metal side and fell onto the floor.
It was hardly enough food for one person, let alone three women. The two eyed Elaine, but she shook her head. They clearly needed it more than she. Their hands trembled as they ate, snatching the meal back and forth rather than passing it to one another. The greedy gulps were followed by the sweep of their tongues over the bowl to lap up anything remaining. The scene was reminiscent of starving animals more so than humans.
This was what the Nazis had reduced them to, starved to the point of primitive, bestial behavior. Was this what Joseph had become?
The ache of pain simmered into rage at everything the Nazis had stolen from them. Lives, careers, loves, humanity. The French had lost everything under their brutal occupation. Elaine had lost everything too.
Not long after the foul meal, the lights clicked out, smothering them in darkness.
“It is time to sleep, housewife,” the brunette said, the malice gone from her voice.
Perhaps the refusal of their scant food garnered Elaine some favor with them after all.
“Where?” Elaine whispered.
There were no beds in the concrete cell that was barely large enough to fit if one laid out completely straight. In order to rest on the ground, the three of them lay side by side, their bodies nesting together with their knees bent.
“This is a luxury compared to what the men have, housewife,” Collette said in a quiet voice. “They sometimes have nine men to a cell like this one.”
Elaine’s thoughts reeled to imagine how nine men could even stand in a room this size, let alone lie down. “How do they sleep?”
“In shifts.”
The warmth of the body behind Elaine ebbed the chill, and the jacket she was thankfully left with offered some cushion for her protruding hip bones against the unforgiving floor. But she still found no rest.
It wasn’t the gnaw of hunger at her empty belly, the unnerving tickle of bugs creeping over her skin or even the incessant blaring alarm that kept her eyes from falling closed. It was the need to witness what Joseph had lived through in his time at Montluc.
Through experiencing the desolate despair in person, haunted by the sobs that echoed ominously through the open area, Elaine connected with Joseph in the only way she could. Suddenly she was grateful for those previous nights she went to bed hungry so she could save him an extra crust of bread or a cooked rutabaga or even an egg. If her gifts had ever made their way to him at Montluc.
She had to think they had. To consider otherwise was too dark a consideration and filled her with such despair, she could hardly draw breath around the squeeze of pain in her chest.
The morning did not come quickly.
At last a sharp rap of a truncheon on the metal door sent a clang reverberating through the small space and snapped Elaine from sleep.
Bleary-eyed with exhaustion and rumpled in clothes still damp from the storm, she was forced from the cell with the other two women for morning ablutions. A large sink ran along the back wall of the prison, like a trough where livestock might be fed. It was there they received a splash of water so cold it took their breath and so short-lived, they all had water dripping from their chins. Several of the more seasoned inmates walked away with dirty faces, and cupped hands filled with water that they tipped into their eager mouths to slake their thirst.
Watching them made Elaine’s parched throat burn and had her licking at the droplets lingering on her own lips.
Her two cellmates did not try to speak with her further, and she did not bother to strike up conversation. It was best not to know anyone as even acquaintances could leave one vulnerable.