Now, just like the other girls in the block, Magda doesn’t have a job to go to. The days unravel, and she spends more and more time curled up in the bunk she once shared with her sisters. There is no comfort in having all this space.
*
Only a few officers are out in the snow, ordering the girls through the gates, telling them to move faster, calling them lazy, work-shy, filthy Jews. But it’s not the soldiers that Livi is afraid of: she has seen Isaac. He is wrapped up warm against the cold, sharing a joke with the officers when he sees Livi. He raises a hand in greeting, Livi stares at her boots. She is afraid she is going to wet herself.
‘I see you, girlie,’ is all he says, as she joins the long line of girls walking away from Birkenau.
She doesn’t speak a single word the entire length of the journey, but then neither does Cibi. Each girl is wrapped up in her thoughts, but they are broadly similar thoughts. Will they die before they reach Auschwitz? Despite their layers, it is freezing. Why can’t Magda join them? Will she be safe at Birkenau? And finally, if they are to die, why can’t they do it together? Livi is shaken by her encounter with Isaac, but takes some comfort in the fact that she no longer has to worry about seeing him around the camp.
Now they pass through the gates Cibi had hoped to never lay eyes on again. Livi had almost stopped believing Auschwitz had ever existed, but here they are, cut off from Magda, only two miles up the road, but a universe away.
Livi and Cibi are put to work in the Auschwitz post office together, sorting letters and parcels as they arrive, in much the same way Cibi did in Birkenau. They are sent from families throughout Europe and beyond. No effort is made to locate the addressees, no journal consulted to see where the prisoner might be, whether they’re dead or alive. Cibi continues to open the parcels and separate the contents into edible and inedible, and burn the letters. The girls work to the sound of planes flying overhead, bombs dropping. Everyone wants to stay inside these days, fearful of attack, but not Cibi. She wants to be outside to see their saviours before they arrive, and welcome them.
One morning, on her break and lost in her thoughts, Cibi finds herself under the Arbeit Macht Frei sign. She looks up and wishes a bomb would drop on it right now, even though she stands directly beneath the evil signage. She doesn’t really register the black car which has just driven through the gates until it pulls up beside her.
The window rolls down to reveal a pretty officer with strawberry-blonde hair. ‘What are you doing here?’ Volkenrath asks. She seems genuinely pleased to see Cibi.
‘They moved us back here,’ Cibi says, and then adds, desperately, ‘We’ve been separated from Magda.’
‘And who is Magda?’
‘My sister. There are three of us, but she only just arrived a few weeks ago. She is still in Birkenau. Can you help me?’
Cibi’s pleas seem to fall on deaf ears, because Volkenrath doesn’t respond. Instead, she rolls up her window and the car moves off.
Neither Livi nor Cibi sleep that night, worrying that Cibi has put Magda in danger. The officers, however friendly they might appear, are not at the beck and call of the prisoners. They are by turns indifferent, or deliberately cruel.
Cibi can’t settle down to work the next morning, and once again finds herself back at the main gates. She watches cars and trucks pull in and out of the camp. No one pays her any attention. And why would they? A half-starved wretch who can’t even keep the promise she made to her father. Magda was here and she lost her. She wonders what would have happened if they had simply refused to leave Birkenau. Cibi shivers.
Once more, Cibi fails to register the same large black car roll up and stop next to her. Volkenrath is winding down her window and Cibi gulps, convinced she is about to be castigated for dawdling.
‘Hey, Cibi,’ say Volkenrath, her painted lips parting in a smile. ‘I have something for you. Here is your jewel.’ She rolls up her window and Cibi wonders what kind of cruel trick is about to played on her.
The passenger door opens and a figure steps out and shuts the door behind them. The car speeds off, leaving Magda in its wake. She stands in the snow, wearing all her clothes.
‘That officer is a good friend to you, Cibi,’ is all Magda says, before she bursts into tears.
‘They’re hanging on to whatever scrap of humanity they have left,’ Cibi says, bitterly, as she pulls Magda into her arms. ‘I’m not grateful to them for anything. But we’re together again, as we should be, and that’s all that matters.’