‘Heard what?’ Cibi says, distracted.
‘About Mala, the interpreter.’
‘What about her?’ another girl asks.
‘She’s escaped!’ Rosie is gleeful. She has Cibi’s full attention now. ‘She and her boyfriend Edek have escaped together – they’ve been gone for days. How exciting is that?’
‘You’re sure?’ Cibi is trying to make sense of the word ‘escape’。 To flee this place, to live without fences, without beatings, without the guards. She doesn’t often let herself think of her life before Birkenau. The camp has expanded to stifle her memories of a different time, and she rarely imagines life after the camp.
‘The Nazis are going crazy,’ Rosie informs them. ‘One of the girls who works in the administration block told me they’re all blaming each other to save themselves.’
‘I hope she makes it,’ Cibi says, quietly. ‘I hope she makes it and can tell the world what’s going on in here.’ She dares to allow a small flicker of hope to ignite.
The girls are animated that night. Cibi and Livi, their hunger and fatigue forgotten for a moment, engage in the joyful speculation about Mala’s escape. Mala, the talented translator from Belgium who had been assigned ‘protected prisoner’ status by the Nazis. The girls guess she must have used her freedom from the constraints the rest of them have to endure to somehow get away. She is a hero to every prisoner, and stories of her bravery escalate as the weeks pass. They hang on to the fantasy that they will be saved once Mala has revealed the truth of their situation.
But the weeks become months and there is no Allied rescue. The transports from Hungary arrive each day, the gas chambers and the crematoria function morning and night. No one mentions Mala’s name anymore.
One September evening, after everyone has returned from their various work details, they are instructed by the SS officers to gather in the assembly yard. Organised into long, semicircular rows, they form a horseshoe shape around a central clearing in which something, obviously, is about to happen.
Livi, standing beside her sister at the end of a row, hopes an announcement is to be made. She prays that they are not about to be punished, or forced to watch a punishment. But it is still a shock to the sisters when Mala – naked, filthy, thinner than ever – is marched into the clearing by SS officers, and shoved to the ground. Bloodied and bruised, the young girl staggers to her feet, standing as straight as she can manage, a defiant tilt to her head. Livi finds the tiny knife in her pocket and closes her fingers around it.
‘Oh, Mala,’ she says, under her breath. ‘What have they done to you?’
And then SS Mandel steps into the compound. Her high ponytail catches the setting sun and glows red. Livi thinks she could be anywhere between forty and sixty years old. Livid patches of rouge on her cheeks make her look like a clown. She is not on her horse today, but she is no less intimidating as she begins to strut up and down the rows, berating the girls furiously, telling them to forget about escaping, that they are wasting their time even thinking about it. Look at Mala, they had found her, hadn’t they, and they would find any girl who was stupid enough to test them. There was no corner of the earth that the Germans could not cover. Mala wasn’t so clever after all, was she? She and her ‘boyfriend’ – Mandel spat this word from her mouth – had been recaptured so easily. He was being hanged right at this very minute, but Mala wouldn’t be so lucky – hanging was too good for Mala. She would be burned alive.
While Mandel is raging in their faces, she doesn’t see what is going on behind her – what every other prisoner is now witnessing. From the matted remains of her dark hair, Mala withdraws a small blade, which she drags along the length of her arms, from wrist to inner elbow. Into the eerie silence between Mandel’s outbursts, she lets out a low moan and collapses. Mandel spins to find her ‘prize’ lying on the ground, blood gushing from her arms.
‘She is not to die like this!’ she rages. ‘She is to die by fire!’
An officer runs into the clearing with a wheelbarrow. Mandel points at Livi and another girl. ‘Load her in and take her to the crematorium. Now!’ she screams.
‘Let me go!’ says Cibi, grabbing her sister’s wrist, but it’s too late: Livi is moving past the girls into the clearing.
With the other prisoner, Livi heaves the emaciated, bloody body of Mala into the wheelbarrow. The girls each take a handle and began the journey to the crematoria.