‘Leave it with me,’ the officer says, turning away.
*
The snow is falling hard as Livi sets off to deliver a message to the medical block. She is halted in her tracks when a truck pulls out in front of her. Two SS guards climb out of the canvas-covered van. The canvas flaps swing back into place, but not before Livi catches a glimpse of the naked women huddled inside.
She takes a step back when a young woman jumps out, landing in front of the SS guards. She raises her hands in the air. She doesn’t seem to feel the cold or the snow. ‘Shoot me now, because I will not walk into your gas chamber!’ she yells.
Livi takes a step back, and then another, wary of becoming the victim of a stray bullet.
The guards point their rifles at the naked woman. One takes aim, but another guard slaps his arm down. Livi notes the cruel smile on his face as he tells the girl she is not to be granted the easy death of a bullet. Instead, she is to die like all her kind – slowly, painfully, gasping for air as the gas robs her of her life. He moves towards her, swinging the butt of his rifle into her stomach. She collapses, but struggles to her feet and starts to run, to Livi’s horror, towards her.
But the rifle swings once more through the air and connects with her skull. She goes down. Her blood colours the snow pink. When she makes no attempt to stand up, a guard grabs her arm and drags her back to the truck. The women haul her inside.
As the vehicle moves off, Livi drops to her knees, dry retching. When will this madness end? Her eyes find the blood and she waits for the snow to obliterate this new horror before she moves off. Her fingers close around the little knife in her pocket, her talisman now. She imagines plunging it into the heart of the SS officer who wielded his rifle against a naked woman in the snow.
Later, Livi doesn’t tell Cibi what she witnessed earlier that day. She hasn’t told her about Isaac either, the crazed kapo. It’s easier somehow, to not speak of these things. And there are newcomers, in any case, to distract them.
The sisters watch these fresh inmates repeat the questions which consumed them on arrival: Why are we here? What will they do to us?
One of the girls introduces herself as Vanoushka and asks if any of them have read Oscar Wilde’s story of Dorian Gray. Several laugh at her, incredulous she is talking about a book and reading while they wait at the very gates of hell. Undeterred by their mockery, she says, ‘Let me tell you about The Picture of Dorian Gray.’ She holds her audience rapt as she recounts the story. Gasping and giggling, the girls learn of the sensual and sinful twists and turns of Dorian’s life and his longing for Sibyl. Like every good storyteller, she ends her tale on a cliff-hanger, the girls begging for more. Vanoushka promises further adventures the following day.
The next evening Vanoushka waits until the lights go out. Everyone gathers by her bunk while she delights them with the story of the infatuated artist, Basil, the painter of Dorian’s portrait.
These sessions become a lifeboat for the girls to cling on to, but especially so for Livi. Slowly, the memory of the bloody woman in the snow begins to recede. She and Cibi both dream about finding their Prince Charming, and sitting for portraits while a famous painter fixes their images in thick oils onto canvas.
When, finally, Vanoushka has exhausted Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, she offers the girls other stories from other books, but they only want more of Dorian Gray. She must go back and repeat his adventures again and again. Livi finds these tales as comforting as the feel of her knife in her palm. Somehow, they remind her of home: Mumma used to read to her in bed as a child, and Livi finds herself desperate to share these memoires with her mother now. She just prays she and Cibi will live long enough to see her again.
*
The SS officer had been true to his word and now Cibi works at Birkenau. Sorting mail at the post office is easy enough, and she no longer has to make the trek to Auschwitz; but, most importantly, she no longer has to be parted from Livi.
A few months earlier, the Theresienstadt family camp had been established within Birkenau, housing German, Austrian, Czech and Dutch Jews from a north-western ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Letters and parcels, often containing food, arrive regularly for these prisoners and Cibi’s role is to note the names and addresses of the prisoners receiving this mail. She types up the information and sends it to an address in Switzerland.
Initially, Cibi doesn’t know who in Switzerland receives this information, but the answer comes to her a short while later when food parcels start arriving for these families from the Red Cross. There are numerous rumours about the ghetto, with many saying it was a propaganda machine for the Germans to show the outside world it cared about its Jews, treating them well, feeding them, displaying their largess to the Red Cross, before sending them to extermination camps across Nazi-occupied Europe.