Authors: Anita Diamant
“A pleasure, Mrs. Friedman.”
“Good-bye,” she said, in English.
“Let us say instead, Shalom,” said Bryce.
“As you wish,” Tirzah said. “Shalom.”
When Leonie saw the knot of women gathered outside her barrack door, she ran toward
them and pushed her way inside. Aliza was shouting at the top of her lungs, “Enough,
enough,” while Lotte, crouched on top of her cot, shrieked, “
Hexe, hexe, hexe
.”
Her skirt was stained with dirt and menstrual blood, her feet were filthy, her ankles
covered with angry red welts.
“Wait,” said Leonie, stepping in front of the nurse. “Let me.”
Lotte stopped screaming. “Get the witch away from me,
Claudette Colbert,” she said. “She is an evil witch and I know what she wants.”
She dropped her voice and whispered, “She wants to cut open my legs and put glass
needles inside to watch me die. She wants to kill me. Everyone here wants to kill
me. The one dressed like a nurse will break my bones. She is not a nurse at all. That’s
a disguise. She is a witch.”
“Calm yourself,” Leonie said. “You can trust me, can’t you? I won’t let anyone hurt
you.”
“Thank goodness you speak German,” said Aliza. “The doctor told me to bring her to
the clinic, but I told him I will not permit such dirt in my infirmary.” She pointed
at Lotte and shouted, “You need to be washed and fumigated.”
“She wants to kill me,” Lotte shrieked.
“Stop screaming,” Aliza hollered.
Leonie took a step closer to Lotte. “She is not a witch, really. She wants only for
you to bathe, and I think that is a good idea. You will feel so much better when you
are nice and clean. And to be honest, fräulein, you have no choice in this. You must
do as we say, or they will take you to the hospital.”
“No hospital.”
“That’s it. I’m going to send a couple of the guards to get her,” Aliza said.
“It won’t be necessary,” Leonie said. “I think she is afraid of your uniform. Perhaps
it would be better if you let me take her to Delousing.”
“I’m not sure you can manage this.”
“You can see that she listens to me,” said Leonie.
“I will send someone to help you.”
“No need,” Leonie said.
“Oh, yes, there is. Nurses in the mental wards are always
getting bitten and punched. Bring her to the infirmary as soon as you’re done.”
After Aliza left, Leonie said, “You see? I sent the nurse away. But if you don’t do
as I say, she will return with soldiers, and the doctor.”
“No doctors.”
“So you will come with me?”
“We are going to Hollywood, Claudette Colbert?” Lotte asked, with a knowing wink that
sent a shiver up Leonie’s back.
“We are going to get you clean. You’ll have a shower, fresh clothes, and you’ll feel
like a new woman.” Leonie held out her hand, walking backward, as Lotte climbed off
the bed with the blanket wrapped around her.
Outside, Tedi was waiting with a towel and a change of clothes. “The nurse sent me,”
she said, and turned her head away from Lotte’s smell. “Ugh. Let’s get this over with.”
Lotte followed them, dragging the blanket in the dust. When they reached the back
door of Delousing, Leonie told Tedi, “Wait for us here.”
“The nurse said I should stay with you.”
“Just stand by the door. I’ll call if I need anything.”
Tedi needed no further convincing.
Lotte seemed to relax a little as they entered the dim, cavernous room, but the sight
of the showers made her sprint toward the door. Tedi caught her and dragged her all
the way into the stall, where she crouched on the floor with her hands on top of her
head.
“If you do not wash right now,” said Leonie, “I will get the doctor.”
“No doctors,” Lotte hissed. She hurried to her feet and
pushed her chest out defiantly, as though she were facing a firing squad. “I am ready.”
Tedi turned the faucet full on, and although the water was cold, Lotte did not flinch.
“Very good,” said Leonie gently. “You see the soap over there? Start with your hair
and your face.”
“Get
her
out of here,” said Lotte, pointing at Tedi, who was glad to retreat to her post near
the door.
Leonie watched as the water transformed Lotte from a troll into a normal-looking woman.
She was a little older than the rest of them—twenty-eight or even thirty. Her hair
was light brown and fine. Someone had hacked it off at odd angles, Leonie thought;
probably used a knife.
Lotte’s eyes were also brown, but with a yellow cast that made her look less like
a mouse than a fox.
“Now,” said Leonie, “take off your clothes.”
Lotte slipped out of the skirt, which seemed to melt as the dirt washed down the drain.
“Good, but you must remove everything,” Leonie said, pointing at her blouse.
She grumbled but turned her back and unbuttoned the filthy shirt. She slipped off
one sleeve, but then stopped, keeping the other one wrapped around her arm.
“Many women here have the numbers,” Leonie reassured her. “There is no shame in it.”
Lotte glanced over her shoulder, winked at Leonie again, and then crouched down to
urinate. In the moment Leonie turned her head away, Lotte removed the other sleeve
and sat on the floor, leaning against the wall with her legs stretched out in front
of her.
She sat with her head tipped back under the water, which
had warmed up enough to release some mist into the air. Lotte sighed and, for a moment,
let her arms rest beside her, which is how Leonie caught sight of what looked like
an oddly shaped bruise on the inside of her left bicep.
She turned off the water quickly, hoping for a clearer view of it before Lotte folded
her arms.
“Here,” Leonie whispered, holding out a towel and watching as Lotte pulled on a long-sleeved
white shirt and a blue skirt that was too big around the waist.
“I’ll get you a belt from the barrack,” she added, “and a comb.”
Tedi and Leonie walked on either side of Lotte, who kept her eyes on the ground and
her shoulders pinched back. As soon as they crossed the threshold, she bolted to her
bed and burrowed under a new, clean blanket.
Leonie took Tedi’s arm and pulled her outside. “You have to tell me everything that
you know about this woman.”
“What’s the matter?” Tedi said. “You’re shaking.”
“She has a tattoo.”
“No, she doesn’t,” said Tedi. “I saw both her arms when I dragged her to the shower.
There was nothing there.”
“It’s up here,” Leonie said, pointing to the underside of her arm, near the armpit.
“And it’s not a number. She is SS.”
“SS?” Tedi gasped. “That can’t be possible, is it? Are you certain?”
“Not completely,” Leonie said, suddenly not trusting herself. “What do you know about
her?” she pressed.
“Shayndel said that she had been in Ravensbrück,” said Tedi. “I heard that they did
terrible medical experiments on the prisoners there, which explains her terror of
Aliza. But she cannot be a Nazi; Shayndel told me that she has family
here in Palestine. I’m going to go tell her about this right away.”
“Not yet,” said Leonie, gripping Tedi’s arm. “Let me make sure. Don’t tell anyone
about this. If it turns out that I am wrong, the accusation would be too awful to
forgive. I’ll talk to Aliza, so she can stay in the barrack until I can get another
look at her arm and make sure, one way or another.”
Tedi groaned at the prospect of another night with Lotte beside her, but didn’t argue;
she could see that Leonie was set on getting her way. “But if you are right about
her, why in the world would such a person come here? How could that happen?”
“I don’t know,” Leonie said slowly. “But there are times I do not know why I am here,
either.”
Tedi nodded. “I know what you mean. I look at the ones from the concentration camps
and the ones who dreamed of coming here their whole lives, and I feel like a fraud.”
She glanced nervously at Leonie. “If she really turns out to be a Nazi, it might explain
the way she … smells.”
“I don’t understand,” said Leonie.
“I never told anyone this before because it makes me sound like a raving lunatic.
But ever since I got here, I’ve been able to …” Tedi searched for a way to explain.
“My nose, I mean my sense of smell—it became so strong, so keen. I can tell a lot
about a person from the way she smells. Sometimes I think I can smell moods, states
of mind, even something about the past.”
“What do I smell like?” Leonie asked.
“Shame,” Tedi blurted, but rushed to add, “Almost everyone here smells of shame, which
is like fruit going rotten.”
Leonie kept her face blank. “And what about Lotte? What do you smell on her?”
“I cannot describe it, but it’s not shame. It’s not fear, either. Everyone in Atlit
smells of fear, except for the little babies. Guilt, too—I smell that on everyone.
Guilt is sour,” she wrinkled her nose, “like unwashed clothes.
“But on Lotte there is no shame. No fear or guilt, either. Even after the shower,
she stinks of something like gasoline but stronger, and mixed with something animal
and dark, not musk exactly. Whatever it is, being anywhere near her makes my throat
close and my eyes burn.”
Tedi stopped herself. “Now you think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“No,” said Leonie. “I don’t understand but I don’t think you are crazy. Not at all.”
Leonie paced around the outside of the barrack for the rest of the afternoon, waiting
for it to empty so she could talk to Lotte alone.
“Fraülein Lotte?” she said to the shape under the blanket. “Am I pronouncing your
name correctly? Or perhaps Lotte isn’t your name at all?”
Peeling the cover down over her face, she stared hard at Leonie. “I have been lying
here, wondering how Claudette Colbert learned to speak such elegant German. I thought,
maybe she was married to one of my countrymen, or she might have worked for the Reich
in France—a secretary typing the orders to deport her own family. And then it came
to me: Claudette Colbert was perhaps a whore, opening her legs for the German boys
who had no idea that she was a filthy Jew.”
Leonie’s eyes betrayed her and Lotte pounced. “I was right! You were a prostitute!
A Yid bitch streetwalker. And you got
away with it, too, didn’t you? No one shaved your head and marched you out of town,
naked, with the rest of the whores? But maybe that’s what your friends here would
do if I told them your secret.”
Leonie made her face as vacant and pleasant as she had during the long, vicious anti-Jewish
tirades she had heard in Madame Clos’s apartment. Even Lucas would go on and on about
the poisonous Jew when he was drunk.
Leonie had worked hard at charming Lieutenant Lucas and a few other young German officers
who were clean and good-looking, who treated her a little more like a girl than just
a cunt. She flattered them in bed with coos and moans and passionate thank-you’s.
When they brought her nylons and chocolate, she asked for books of German poetry.
She improved her conversation and eventually they refused the other girls, which spared
her from nights with men who never washed, and men who found pleasure in causing women
pain.
When she was with one of “her” men, she emptied herself like a bowl and watched herself
perform, permitting herself to feel nothing but pride in her own efficiency. Leonie
listened to Lotte’s rant with the same detachment.
“When they do find out about you, they will shame you in public. They will send you
away. Maybe they will even stone you to death, which would be very biblical, don’t
you think? And so appropriate.”
Lotte was enjoying herself. “I will tell you what is going to happen next, you little
whore. You will tell that witch of a nurse that I am better now, that the water washed
away all of my problems. And because you will say nothing about my past, I will say
nothing of yours. We are in agreement, yes?”
Leonie lowered her chin.
“Now get out of here.”
Leonie walked away, remembering the last time she had faced a question when “yes”
would have meant death, and “no” meant life.
In the brothel, she would dose herself nightly with two sleeping pills washed down
by a tumbler of cheap brandy. That was how she slept through until morning, and woke
up feeling nothing but hunger and thirst. But one morning, a burst of gunfire roused
her long before the amnesiac cocktail had worn off.
Leonie had opened a swollen eye and saw blood on the sheets. Her jaw ached, and her
sex was bruised. Her legs were black and blue. It had been a horrible night, and worst
of all, it had been Lucas.
He had staggered in drunk with two friends who demanded a turn with the girl he claimed
was so talented, so willing—truly the best whore in Paris. She had wept and begged,
but he’d slapped her and let his comrade turn her on her face and sodomize her. One
of them had the SS tattoo on his upper arm and he made her kiss it before forcing
her to her knees while Lucas watched, and smirked, and played with himself.
She closed her eyes and tried to sink back into sleep but a second burst of gunfire
sent her flying to the window, where a flock of startled pigeons was flying around
in tight circles in the deep, narrow courtyard. There, at the center of the flapping
gray blur, Leonie saw a woman wearing a long gown. She floated midair, suspended among
the birds, waving for her to follow. Leonie had opened the window and climbed onto
the ledge when she heard a voice behind her say, “No.”
She turned to see who had spoken, but there was no one in the room. And when she looked
outside again, the pigeons were
merely pigeons and the flying lady had vanished, a phantom of the drugs.
She crawled back to the bed and thought about the voice that had stopped her. It had
been a woman’s voice saying no to death, as peaceful as it might be. It had been her
own voice, saying yes to life, as miserable as it was.
That night, as lights-out approached, Leonie told Shayndel that she wanted to sleep
in the infirmary. “There’s a girl with a fever in there, a timid thing from Lausanne
who barely speaks. I thought I’d stay with her. Do you think I could get permission?”