It is easy, but it is also thankless work: for every crater they fill, another bomb decimates it until, one day, Cibi announces to Magda and Livi they won’t be going back to the airfield. There is no point, it’s too dangerous, and no one seems to be monitoring them anyway at Retzow. Cibi waits for their kapo’s admonition, but none comes and the sisters confine themselves to the camp, accompanied always by little Eva.
Spring arrives and a strange malaise settles over the camp. The guards are distracted. The inmates are fed, and counted at rollcall, but few do any work. They are all waiting for something to happen.
*
‘Cibi Meller, show yourself.’ A female guard is standing in the doorway of the block, reading her name from a sheet of paper.
It is raining and the sisters are lying in their bunk, listening to Eva tell the story of her mother – a kind woman who loved the little girl, but who was taken away one morning, along with a dozen other women, never to return.
Cibi squeezes the girl’s hand and climbs down off the bunk, Magda and Livi on her heels.
‘I’m Cibi Meller,’ she announces.
‘Come with me. It’s your lucky day.’
‘Why?’ asks Cibi, following the guard into the camp.
‘You’re being sent to Sweden.’ She eyes Magda and Livi. ‘Not all of you. Just Cibi Meller,’ she snaps.
‘We go where our sister goes!’ Magda insists.
‘Sister? But your names aren’t on the list.’
‘What list?’
‘The Red Cross is taking all American prisoners to Sweden and then back to the United States,’ the guard informs them.
Magda and Livi exchange a look and burst into laughter, but Cibi isn’t laughing. Her joke has backfired, and now the Germans will separate them. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Cibi, in a small voice. ‘It was a stupid joke. I’m from Slovakia, not New York.’
‘Do you think I care about your jokes? Your name’s on the list and you’re coming with me.’
Before she follows her, Cibi turns to her sisters. ‘Go back to the block. I’ll sort this out. Don’t worry. Please, don’t worry.’
Magda and Livi stare after her, their laughter a bitter ring in their ears.
And, sure enough, Cibi returns eventually and climbs into the bunk where her sisters wait for her. ‘I had to work hard to persuade the clerk,’ she explains. ‘He took pity on me in the end, I guess.’ But, Magda observes, Cibi doesn’t look relieved. Her brow is furrowed, as if she’s trying to work out a problem.
‘What else?’ she asks.
Cibi takes her sisters’ hands. ‘He told me they’re emptying the camp,’ Cibi says, slowly. ‘We might be taken on another march.’
*
A few days later, the inmates of Retzow are lined up and led out of the camp. Once again, the SS monitor the walkers, but this time, fallen inmates are not struck or shot, they are just ignored. The road they are walking on has been bombed, and the girls have to step carefully to avoid twisting an ankle in a crater. They pass bombed-out German vehicles, the limbs of dead soldiers scattered over the ground. The forests and fields of the German countryside are lush with plants and flowers as the heat of the midday sun pounds down – just as the snow had done months earlier. They walk slowly, Cibi and Livi each holding one of Eva’s hands.
‘Have you noticed the guards are disappearing?’ says Magda. ‘I just saw one wander off into that bit of woodland and he didn’t even look back.’
Cibi and Livi glance around. Cibi steps out of the line and looks back at the hundreds of women behind them. She lets out a long slow breath. ‘You’re right. Where have they all gone?’
‘They’re abandoning us,’ another prisoner says. And then another echoes the same line.
Soon Cibi and her sisters are surrounded by a group of women.
‘It’s time to leave,’ one says.
‘We can take our chances,’ adds another.
‘I’d rather be shot in the back than spend another day, another hour, imprisoned by the Nazis,’ says a third.
‘Let’s do it!’ says Cibi. ‘Let’s move to the side of the road.’ Her heart is in her mouth as she meets her sisters’ eyes, but Magda and Livi nod. They too are hopeful, feeling a sudden strength in their limbs. They can’t face another march, another camp, another cruel order from a heartless man.
Magda wonders for a moment whether they should leave Eva, but one look at her, clutching Livi’s hand, convinces Magda the little girl must stay with them for now.