“Kiss me,” she said.
He took her in his arms, trying not to appear mechanical, and pressed her against him. She had never been beautiful, but she was attractive in her youth. Now, he could hardly look at her, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered if she were beautiful. Taavi knew that real love was the only thing that mattered, not beauty, not money, just love. Family, wife, home. These were the things that were precious. It took losing them—but also coming close to death—to understand just how much he valued the gifts God had given him in Michal, Alina, and Gilde. Taavi felt Frieda’s body melt into his and wondered if he would be able to get an erection. The other night he had been able to perform because it had been so long since he’d been with a woman. But now? Dear God, he didn’t want to do this. Not now. Maybe after he learned Michal was all right he would be able at least to fake his way through it. Maybe then. Frieda’s perfume saturated his nostrils, but instead of being seductive it made him feel sick to his stomach. Somehow, he had to trick his body into cooperating. In the past when he was in the camp and felt that he was drowning in misery, he’d masturbated, thinking about Michal. At that time the only joy he could find was in the memories that lived only within his own mind. Then he’d been able to become aroused. But now, it was difficult to bear the pain of thinking about Michal while trying to make love to another woman. If he tried to think about Michal, he knew it wouldn’t help. And there was no hiding the fact from Frieda that he was not aroused. She reached down and felt his lack of desire for her. What lie could he tell her?
“I’m sorry. I’m tired, and I am weak. Besides, I am just so worried about my family. Forgive me, Frieda.”
But she didn’t stop. Frieda continued as if she never heard him. She seemed instinctively to know what he needed. She bent down and took him into her mouth. The power of his need overcame him and Taavi closed his eyes and saw Michal. Michal, he whispered in his mind. Then his natural instincts took over again.
After Frieda slipped out of his bed the following morning, Taavi got up and took a shower. He scrubbed his body for a long time, but he could not wash away his guilt. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair. Then he vomited.
Chapter 46
Michal, Winter 1943
If Ravensbruck was unbearable before, it was even worse now without Heida. At least when Heida was alive Michal had a friend, someone with whom she could talk and share her feelings. Now she was utterly alone. She’d lost her family, her daughters, her husband, and now she’d watched her best friend die. In fact, Michal had even done the unthinkable. She’d murdered another woman. The crime she’d committed against God and another human being followed her every moment of every day. Her body had become a mass of lean muscle and skin covering bones. She worked until the sweat soaked her uniform and she was beyond exhausted. But at night instead of finding rest, she was haunted by her own mind. Deep purple puffy circles had formed around her eyes, and her hair fell out in clumps on the straw where she slept. Michal was doubtful that she would survive this prison, but then her mind began to disconnect from reality. She started to see the faces of those she loved in her mind’s eye and she could speak to them and hear them answer in their voices. Many times she was sure they were right there beside her. It gave her such comfort to speak to Taavi, to hear his advice and promises for their future. She spoke to Alina, and slowly began to create an imaginary life. A world that existed only in her mind. Michal imagined that Alina was engaged and she and her daughter were planning a wedding. She talked to Gilde, who was growing into a beautiful and precocious young woman. And she had long conversations with Heida, who told her to forgive herself for shooting that poor woman. “It wasn’t your fault,” Heida said. “You did it to try to save me.”
“But you’re dead now,” Michal answered Heida in her mind.
“It’s all right, I am with Iris. I am fine here. Don’t worry about me,” Heida said, smiling.
Michal’s mind played tricks on her. Maybe it was the hard work, or the frostbite that had caused her to lose three of her toes, or the near starvation, but Michal began to have difficulty separating reality from fantasy. Her body continued to follow the rules that were set before her by the cruel Nazi guards, but her mind had escaped the prison and entered into another realm.
But even though Michal tried, she could not see or talk to the woman she murdered. All she saw was a shadow of the woman’s eyes and it terrified her.
One day as Michal was waiting in line for soup, she heard someone call her name. “Michal….” Was it in her mind or was it real. It was a woman’s voice, a familiar voice. But she couldn’t place it. She took her bowl and sat down on a rock, shivering from the cold. The little finger on her left hand had turned black. She noted that it would probably fall off soon. “Who was that voice?” she heard Alina ask in her mind.
“I don’t know,” Michal answered, still shivering.
Then a woman came over to her. Was she real? The woman wore the uniform of a Nazi guard. The gray jacket, the culotte skirt, the black leather boots and little hat. “Michal Margolis, is that you?”
Was this real, or was this another person talking to her in her mind. She couldn’t distinguish between the two anymore. “Do I know you?” Michal squinted, looking up at the guard.
“It is you. It’s me, Bridget. Otto’s sister.”
Otto, that was a name from her past. Otto, he’d been her lover so long ago, in another lifetime. She remembered Bridget, his sister. What a sweet girl. “Don’t you recall how close Bridget and I were?” she heard Alina say in her mind. “Yes, I do, Alina,” she answered but not aloud.
“Michal, Michal….” The girl who called herself Bridget was talking to her, trying to get her attention. Obviously she didn’t hear Alina.
“Yes, I remember you,” Michal said.
Bridget looked like she was going to cry. “I had to take this job. There was no other work….”
Bridget was rambling on and on, but Michal couldn’t hear her. Michal’s mind was traveling back to the days when she and Otto were living together and Bridget and Alina were like sisters.
“I’m going to help you.” Bridget had tears in her eyes. “I am going to get you another job. A job where you are not outside in the elements all day. There is a laundry in town that uses slave labor from Ravensbruck. At least you would be out of the cold. I will have you transferred there. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
True to her word, Bridget came back with a heel of bread and gave it to Michal. “Eat this. I’ll try to get you more. You are so skinny. My God, how did it come to this? I am so sorry, Michal. But I have to keep up a front too, or I will be a prisoner instead of a guard. I’ll do what I can to help you. But, I can’t speak out. I must not tell them that you are my friend. I am ashamed, but it is the only way to survive here. Do you understand?”
Michal nodded. Yes, she understood. She understood everything. Michal smiled. Was this real, or just another vision? It didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered. She was eating the bread, but she was thinking about how grown up Bridget was. Why, the last time she’d seen her, Bridget was just a child going to live with her aunt and uncle, and here she was a woman.
“Alina would love to see you....” Michal said. “She loved you so.”
“Alina, how is Alina?”
“She is fine. We talk often. You probably haven’t heard the news, but she is engaged. She and I have been so busy planning her wedding.” Michal smiled and took another bite. She noticed that her little finger was hanging by a thin piece of skin now. It will be gone by tomorrow, she thought.
And, it was then that Bridget realized that Michal had escaped Ravensbruck the only way that she could. Michal had lost her mind.
Chapter 47
Bridget
Bridget knew that transports of women were being taken away every day to be murdered, gassed. Most of the women chosen for extermination were sick with tuberculosis or other diseases, but there were healthy women being m
urdered as well. Bridget wished that she didn’t know the truth. She’d taken this job because she was desperate for money and rations too. She felt terrible about what she saw. But what could she do? She was only one person. Still, even if she could turn a blind eye on the misery of strangers, she could not stand by and allow Michal to be tortured and killed. And she was certain that once the guards realized that Michal had gone insane she would be exterminated immediately.
Bridget asked that Michal be transferred to work in the laundry in town. But the laundry was only taking twenty prisoners, and at the present time they had a full staff. It wasn’t easy work either, but it was better than Michal’s present job. Bridget was pretty sure that she could probably have bumped someone and put Michal in her place, but she had another idea. Siemens electric had opened a plant adjacent to the camp. They were using slave labor to build parts for rockets for the war effort. The hours were long, twelve-hour shifts. But it didn’t matter where Michal was working; all of the jobs were now required to have at least twelve-hour shifts. It wasn’t always that way, but once Himmler learned that some of the women were working eight-hour shifts, he adjusted his rules and all women at all jobs were now required to work twelve or more hours a day. If she could have Michal put on an assembly line, Michal might be able to do her job. It would be repetitive, perhaps even dangerous. She would try to find the job with the least risk factors. And then, maybe by some miracle Michal might slip by unnoticed. At least Bridget was hoping this would be the case. Since Bridget was well liked by her superiors at the camp, she thought she might not have too difficult a time arranging this for Michal. She had to be careful how she approached it, because no matter how much the officers liked her, Bridget knew that it was not safe to become known as a Jew lover.
The superior officers liked and respected Bridget’s willingness to work hard. They took notice of her strong athletic body. She fit the ideal of a Deutsches Mädchen. And it didn’t hurt that Bridget was always making every effort to please them. So when she explained that Michal had been a teacher of hers and she wanted to have her transferred to the Siemens electrical factory, permission was granted. Then a few days later Michal was sent to work at Siemens. Bridget told herself that at least Michal was inside, at least she was warm. However, even though she knew this, it still didn’t alleviate the guilt that Bridget carried like a weight on her shoulders, but it helped.
Chapter 48
Michal
Since Michal’s mind had left the earthly plane, she was spared the trauma of seeing her fellow prisoners tortured. When a woman was being whipped to death, Michal’s mind simply turned off like a hose in the garden where the spigot had been twisted until the water stopped running. Michal answered when questioned, but many times things that were said to her did not register in her mind.
Bridget came to Michal’s block at night whenever she was able to bring bits of extra food for Michal.
Michal was always happy to see Bridget, and she reminisced with Bridget in a faraway voice about Otto as if he were still alive.
It was strange to Michal that Bridget always had glassy eyes as if she’d been crying. Once Michal asked Bridget why she seemed so sad, and Bridget just smiled and shook her head. But tears flowed down her cheeks. Michal wiped them away just like she did when Bridget was a child and Michal was taking care of her.
Michal was surprised that it took two days for her finger to fall off. The other appendages had been much quicker. It happened one afternoon when she was working at Siemens. It had been a long time, in fact she could no longer remember how long, since she’d had any feeling in that finger. She picked up the black finger and held it for a moment, looking at it as if she wasn’t sure what it was, or whom it belonged to, then she tossed it into the trash in the factory and continued working. Her job was easy, repetitious. Her hands did the work just as she had been instructed, but her mind was not at Siemens; her mind was at home with Taavi and the girls. Softly so no one could hear her she sang the song she and Taavi had always sung to their children when they were small.
“You’ve got to have a little mazel because mazel means good luck. If you have a little mazel you’ll always have good luck.”
A smile came over her face as she closed her eyes and saw her daughters and their father sitting on the living room floor singing this song along with her. She kissed Gilde’s cheek. It’s so good to be home. Michal thought.
Chapter 49
Bridget
Bridget did what she could to keep watch over Michal, but it was difficult. She was training to be a guard, and to survive, Bridget had to work hard and make sure her superiors were pleased with her. If she didn’t she would lose her job, and she desperately needed the money. Besides all of that, she was afraid she might be pregnant. She had a boyfriend, and they had become lovers just a few months ago. Now her period was late. Other guards had given birth at the camp and they were not chastised. The babies were sent to live with their families, but at least they were permitted to keep their jobs and their income. If she was pregnant, she would have to send the child to live with her boyfriend’s sister. That was, of course, providing that his sister was willing to take the baby. With all of this on her mind, Bridget still tried to steal food and bring it to Michal at night. It was easy to see that Michal’s mind was slipping away more every day. There was nothing Bridget could do. Perhaps it was better. At least Michal was not suffering. One night Michal was so delusional that she told Bridget that she’d spent the day with Gilde and Alina. Bridget thought of her brother and how much he’d loved Michal. Alina had been like a sister to her and Michal like a mother. All Bridget could do was pray that Alina was still alive and safe somewhere.
As Michal got worse, Bridget became afraid for her. It was only a matter of time before one of the guards realized how mentally ill Michal had become, and when they did, it would all be over for Michal. Bridget had been forced to witness a gassing of a group of women once. She couldn’t forget the horror of it, and the very idea of Michal suffering the way those poor women had suffered was unbearable to her.
One exceptionally cold night when Bridget came into the block to see Michal, she noticed that Michal lay on her side, hacking. A small trickle of blood made a jagged line from her lips to the pillow. The wrenching cough would surely attract the attention of the block guards. Bridget shivered. Michal could be sent to the hospital where she would probably be instantly killed. But if they didn’t kill her, they were sure to discover that she was insane. Not only was she mad, but she was a Jew. The Nazis had been euthanizing the insane for a long time. And Bridget feared that Dr. Treite, the camp doctor, would not euthanize Michal, but he would torture her until her inevitable annihilation. Dr. Treite was known to be a sadist. He had created a special room for the insane. Bridget heard the other guards talking about the terrible experiments he was performing, using the prisoners as subjects. He enjoyed the suffering. Bridget cringed at the idea of Michal enduring such terrible pain. Between coughing fits, Michal was shaking. Could it be tuberculosis? Bridget pressed her hands hard against her temples. If she left Michal in this block, she’d probably be transferred to Dr. Treite by morning.
Bridget smoothed Michal’s hair. “You’ll be all right.”
“Is that you, Bridget?” Michal asked. “Where is Alina? I haven’t seen her all day. And, I don’t feel well. It’s very hard to breathe.”
“She’ll be here soon.” A tear formed in Bridget’s eye, but she knew what she must do. “You just be still and try to relax. I’ll be right back with some medicine that will help you…” Bridget said, and a memory of a picnic she shared long ago with Otto, Alina, and Michal flashed across the screen of her mind. “Don’t think,” Bridget told herself. “Leave the past in the past.”
Bridget snuck into the hospital. It was easy for her to get in because the nurse on duty was one of the guards she’d become friendly with.
“What do you need?” her friend asked.
“We have morphine, don
’t we? I can’t sleep.”
“Yes, but, you can’t just take it. If you get caught—”
“I won’t get caught if you don’t tell on me.”
“Have you taken it before? Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Of course. I’ve done it before. I just need a little to help me sleep.”
“All right,” the nurse said. “But don’t tell anyone that I gave you the key.”
“Heidi, do you think I would ever get you in trouble?”
“No, I know you wouldn’t.” Heidi hesitated. “Bridget? Listen, can you do me a favor too?”
“Sure. What?”
“Can you keep an eye on this place for me for a half hour? I’m not supposed to leave. But I’m starving, I want to go and get something to eat.”
“Of course, I will. Go on, and when you get back I’ll go and get the morphine.”
“Are you sure?” Heidi asked.
“Certainly.” Bridget smiled.
As soon as Heidi left, Bridget went into the medicine closet and took two small tubes of morphine. She wrapped them carefully in the handkerchief that she always carried with her and stuck the package deep into her pocket. Then she sat down at the desk and waited for Heidi to return.
When Heidi got back she accompanied Bridget to the medicine closet and not knowing that Bridget had already taken two tubes she allowed Bridget to take a single dose of morphine and a needle to inject it.
“Now, you promise you won’t tell?” Heidi asked again.
“I won’t tell. I am upset and can’t fall asleep. Boyfriend problems, you know? I appreciate your helping me out with this.”