Alexander Altmann A10567 (20 page)

Alexander shook the memories off as Midnight came galloping through the gate. He was sure that the horse had taken the jumps easily, but he wanted to see – needed to see – the commander’s ugly smile, just to be sure. Alexander shuddered at the sight of so many perfect white teeth.
There’s no such thing as miracles
, he said to himself. All he could hope for was days like these: meat days, days when he was left alone to dream. Days which ended with his fingers around a lead rope and his cheek pressed against Midnight’s neck.

On the eighth day of Hanukkah, as the men were marching to the stable, the sky lit up with fireworks. The snow-laden branches of the trees glowed orange and the frozen ground shimmered in the early dawn. The guards lowered their guns and looked up at the exploding sky.

“Monowitz is burning!” Isidor shouted, a smile stretched across his pink face. Alexander pulled his hands from his ears. He’d heard of Monowitz, another in the long list of work camps scattered around Auschwitz. Men who were sent to Monowitz to work in the mines lasted less than a month. Those who got jobs in the nearby Farben chemical plant lasted longer. Alexander searched the sky for planes. He’d heard the stablehands talk about the Allies coming to save them. He didn’t pay them any attention. Their talk of advancing Soviet troops made them feel better, but that’s all it was – desperate talk. He chose not to listen, chose to ignore the rumbling planes too. He’d heard the bombers months ago – it was before Jewish New Year and he’d hoped the rattling sky heralded a new beginning. But it had changed nothing. The Rat still pulled them from their beds each morning, the kapo still marched them to the stable, the commander still beat them.

As soon as the Horse Platoon arrived at the yard, Alexander charged at the stable door. He could hear the sound of hooves crashing against wood and Midnight’s high-pitched whinny. He flung open the stable door and ran to Midnight’s stall, past a grey mare trying to escape her stall, and a bay stallion hurtling for the exit. He threw open the door to see Midnight backed against a wall, his feet splayed, his ears pricked, trying to make sense of the blasts. He was panting in short, nervous snorts and his body was trembling. He was terrified.

“It’s okay.” Alexander let his hand hover in the space between them. Midnight had been wrenched from his home, he didn’t like surprises. He needed familiarity: a smell he recognised, a voice he trusted, a friend. Midnight lowered his nose and snuffled Alexander’s fingers and when his breathing slowed, Alexander hushed him gently and placed his hand on Midnight’s neck until the horse’s body grew still.

When the stable shook a second time and the sky glowed orange, Midnight’s eyes widened but instead of starting back he nickered and put his face forwards for Alexander to rub. With his heart churning, Alexander pulled his hand from the horse’s neck and swept his trembling fingers along Midnight’s wet nose, and when the horse didn’t move, trailed his hand up Midnight’s soft white blaze to his forehead.
I’m touching his head.
Alexander held his breath.
The top of his head!
He swept his fingers over the soft skin of Midnight’s poll and rubbed him between his black eyes, tears sliding down his cheeks. It felt good to feel something other than guilt, to have pride butt up against regret and joy trump shame. To feel like he mattered. To feel whole. To feel hope.

“They’re coming to save us,” he whispered in the crackling silence between bombs.

The days folded into each other and soon it was Christmas. Birkenau’s blackened chimneys had stopped spewing smoke and the Allies’ bombs rained down on Monowitz. The distant rumble of gunfire made Alexander’s heart balloon in his chest. He stood, half-starved, next to his well-fed horse, looked up at the beautiful, frightening sky and dared to imagine stepping beyond the barbed wire without a gun at his back. He pictured himself walking down Gregor Lane and opening his front door.

At night he closed his eyes and the Rat’s footsteps became his father’s, the whispers from surrounding bunks, his mother’s quiet voice. “The Russians are coming,” he whispered to the walls and the floor. “They’re on their way!”

It was so close to the end of the war – and so close to getting home – he could
taste
freedom.
It’s just a matter of time
, he told himself.
I have no choice but to survive.

He tore the mould from his bread and cut what was left into thin slices so it would last. He swapped his cigarettes for an extra pair of socks and let Isidor fall asleep butted up against him so they could keep each other warm.

Alexander tried his best to avoid the guards, who’d grown sombre and taken to drinking, and the commander, who’d grown angrier and more violent with each day. He no longer beat the stablehands he caught smuggling food from the stables – he shot them. He didn’t hurt Midnight, but he rode him fast and hard. He seemed to be chasing something. “Whatever it is,” he told Isidor, “he won’t find it on the back of a horse, no matter how hard he rides him.”

While the commander’s mood worsened, the Rat, sensing the end of the war was near, sought to switch sides. He stopped taking the men’s food and only beat them occasionally. On New Year’s Eve he got his hands on a few extra loaves of bread and divided them among the men, tossing the last piece onto the floor so the inmates could scrabble over it.

“Happy New Year!” He stumbled towards Alexander and held out a bottle. Alexander wrapped his lips around the mouth of the vodka bottle and pretended to take a swig. He wasn’t going to share his first drink with the Rat. He’d drink to the death of the German Reich. He’d drink to his first night back home. He’d drink with his father to celebrate a new beginning, but he wouldn’t drink to blur the hard edges of the barrack or the Rat’s mean smile. He didn’t want to forget, not when he was so close to the end, so close to going home. He owed it to Lili, and to himself, to remember everything the SS had done to them.

He took note of everything – the bodies stacked outside the barrack door like blocks of wood, the screams from the execution wall, the blood-soaked snow – and spent his hours at Auschwitz nervously, waiting for the Rat’s wake-up call so he could escape to the stable where, hidden between the close walls of the stall, he felt safe and warm.

He spent his days feeding Midnight and grooming his winter coat, but mostly he talked to him. He told him about the farmhouse at Gregor Lane and his sister’s favourite hiding spot, behind the woodpile in the shed. He told him about his father’s rickety milk cart loaded with ice blocks to cool the milk and the day the soldier came for Sari’s foal.

“I still remember his face,” Alexander said as he worked to untangle Midnight’s tail. “It was pockmarked. He wasn’t much older than me. He said the army needed our horses. My mother said we couldn’t run the farm without them. She argued with him until he pulled out his gun, then she sent me the stable to get them. She told him we had four he could use.” Alexander stopped brushing. “We had five horses: the plough horse, the mare who pulled the milk cart, the Arabian my father had bought to help herd the cattle, Paprika and Sari. Paprika was Sari’s foal. She was a yearling, just one and a half years old and not yet broken in. The army couldn’t use her.” Alexander looked at Midnight. “I had to give the soldier four horses,” he sighed, “I wasn’t going to give them my favourite, so I locked Sari into her stall and gave them Paprika.”

Alexander counted down the days, carving their passing into his wooden bunk with the sharpened tip of his spoon. He figured it was the middle of January when the Rat met the Horse Platoon at the barrack door.

“I have an announcement,” he shouted, driving the men inside the barrack. The other barrack inmates, the corpse collectors, tailors, machinists and welders were sitting on their bunks, waiting.

“We’re being evacuated tomorrow,” he said, the news twisting his mouth. The barrack erupted. Men jumped from their bunks and leaped upon the barrack boss, pelting him with questions. Where were they going? Would they be fed? How long would the march last? Where would they sleep?

“Stand back!” He flicked his whip. “All you need to know is that tonight was the last rollcall. Tomorrow we march out.” The men’s eyes widened. “We leave after dark. Only the sick will remain in the infirmary and …” he scanned the room and caught Isidor’s eye, “… the Horse Platoon. You’ll stay for as long as you’re needed. Once your officers leave with their horses, there’ll be no need for you to stay …”

…
alive
, Alexander thought, finishing the Rat’s sentence.

The Rat turned to the whispering men beside him and clubbed the nearest man on the head with the handle of his whip. The whispering stopped. “I don’t know how long we’ll be walking, or where we’re headed, so don’t ask me.” He swung open the door and bent over the pile of dead heaped on the snow. “Now someone get over here and help me undress these bodies. Once I’m good and warm,” he said, grabbing a dead man’s coat, “you can fight over what’s left.”

Alexander climbed onto his bunk and looped his arms around his knees.

“It’s a death sentence.” A man three bunks down buried his head in his hands.

“I haven’t fought to stay alive for two years to die now,” another voice joined the chorus of panic. One of the tailors ripped a sheet in half and took a needle from his coat pocket while another draped a blanket around his shoulders, securing it at the waist with a piece of fraying rope. “Got to stay warm,” they whispered to each other, packing mattress stuffing into their coats.

“You need those boots?” The boy on the bunk next to Alexander blinked nervously. “I can trade you a coat for them. A coat and a hat.”

Alexander shook his head, pulled a carrot from his sock and bit into it. With or without boots, the boy wasn’t going to survive the march. Not in the snow. Not without food or shelter.

Maybe that was the plan.
Alexander swallowed the stump of the carrot.
I’ve been stupid
, he thought.
Stupid to underestimate the SS. To imagine they’d put down their guns and admit defeat. To expect they’d hand us over and leave Hitler’s job undone.

Isidor climbed onto his bunk. “I’ve heard the guards talking,” he whispered to Alexander. “They have orders to liquidate whoever’s left in the camp. In a couple of days this place will be a graveyard. I’m not joining the march. And I’m sure as hell not staying here.”

“So what do we do?” Alexander turned to face him.

“The onIy thing we
can
do. We get on our horses and get the hell out of here.”

Alexander shook his head. “The guards have guns. They’ll stop us.”

“The guards don’t care any more. They know it’s over. They’re just trying to work out how they can survive this. I only need to buy off the two in the yard. A few bottles of vodka, a promise to put in a good word for them with the Russians …”

Alexander pulled himself up to rest on an elbow. “A bottle of vodka’s not a guarantee.”

“You’re right,” Isidor conceded. “But if we do nothing, we’re as good as dead.”

“Maybe.” Alexander shrugged. He thought of all the times Midnight had allowed him to steal food from his bucket. The horse had kept him warm on the coldest of days and nudged him awake when he fell asleep on the job. Midnight had done everything the commander – and Alexander – had asked of him so that neither of them would suffer at the hands of the commander’s whip. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t ride into a forest that might be teeming with SS and risk Midnight’s life. Not after the horse had saved his.