“That is enough,” his mother said.
“Time to go, Marie. Nice having you,” his father said.
“And, Marie, if you are ever in New York, be sure to go to the Empire State Building,” his mother said.
“Oh, yes, good idea, and you can see all of New York, Marie,” his father said.
“And it is so much taller than the Eiffel Tower,” his mother added with a smile, “and you can JUMP. People do it all the time, all the way to the ground,” she said, bristling with a wide grin.
“Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Tolbert, that is a great idea. I might need to get out of France after the war, and it could be good for me to get away,” Marie said.
“Oh, you’re not just pretty, naked, but a smart girl, too,” Marc’s father said.
Marc checked his pockets to make sure she had not stolen any of his food.
“Game time,” Marc’s mother said as the car rolled passed a group of German guards. They ran slower now, and an officer broke away and stepped into the car. Officer Sean now sat across from Marc.
“Marc Tolbert, you are the worst cribbage player the New England Catholic Church has ever produced. I was so hoping that when Joan pulled you from the sea that day, you would be someone I could finally play cribbage with, while wasting my time in Saint-Nazaire,” he said, and then dealt the cards, just like he had done all those months back at the port, after a day of Marc digging in the church yard.
“I used to think I was lucky, but I was wrong,” Officer Sean said with a smile. “The bad cards just seem to go to you each time I deal them.” Marc picked up his hand, which was crummy as usual.
“So, I have an idea,” the officer said, grinning. “We will trade hands. I will give you my cards and you will give me yours,” and then he took Marc’s cards and started to laugh. The car then shook and backfired again. Marc looked out the window, worried.
“That sounds like, like, someone was shot,” Marc said, covering his pockets of food.
“Marc, eyes forward. Pay attention and no more looking out the windows,” his father said, looking at his eyes through the mirror.
“Marc, this is great. I have never had such a bad hand before. You really do just have a shitty hand of cards,” the officer joked, “but, Marc, I’ve got good news. These cards are not that bad.” The car chugged and sputtered. His mother looked back at the hand, and his father looked through the rearview mirror at him.
“Marc, my plan did not work out so well for me. You are alive but I am dead,” Officer Sean said as he glowed with a golden light.
In a flash, Marc was then staring at himself. He was a little boy sitting across from himself in the car, wearing his schoolboy knickers. Outside, it was the golden hour, that timeless period of the day. The light had a warm, blue tint to it. His mother and father sat in the front seat and they drove through the hills of Maine, going off to the cabin. Marc, the boy, held a children’s book on his lap, and he did not look at Marc, the prisoner. The car did not backfire at all. Marc, the prisoner, could smell that it was brand new, shiny and fresh inside the car and outside; he could smell and taste the woods as the wind passed through the open windows.
Then Marc, the boy, looked up at Marc, the prisoner, and said very softly, “We are here.”
“Halt. You have run twenty-one kilometers,” the guard said, exhausted.
The prisoners started to collapse in the snow all around Marc. Jean and Georges swayed back and forth, struggling to remain standing.
“Don’t lie down, don’t fall asleep,” Georges said to Jean.
“Fall in, by fifty, five per row,” the call went out. Men stumbled over the bodies of those who collapsed into the snow. The train waited on the tracks with the doors open.
They packed them one hundred per car. Men wailed and cried through the next three days as the train moved slowly westward, deep into Germany.
Jean started to cry, and then became very quiet. “We can stop for lunch here, Jacques,” he said, gazing into a far-off distance as he spoke to his old blind friend from Paris.
Georges shook him over and over again. “Jean, Jean, wake up,” but nothing worked.
“Yes, I have the food,” Jean said in a whisper.
Marc remembered then the food. He searched his pockets but found nothing. Where did the pancakes go? And the toast? It was all gone. He was numb with pain, and he dared not sleep because he could see death come upon those who fell in the car.
“That fucking bitch got the pancakes,” he murmured under the groans of the others in the boxcar. He knew she must have taken the food from him. Marc found a small crust of bread in his shirt pocket but he feared bringing it out for Jean.
They will jump me and kill me if they see it
, he thought as he looked through the boxcar at the ravenous men. Men jumped upon the bodies, searching the pockets for any extra rations of bread.
Marc loathed himself for losing the food to Marie. He hated that he was not brave enough to bring the bread out of his pocket. Drifts of shame built up around his feet like the snow that fell through the roof and slats. Marc kept checking his pockets, as if the food would return.
“Jean, get up, get up now, please,” Georges pleaded with him as he slumped down. “Get up, Jean, get up.”
“Here, we can stop here for lunch now. The view is beautiful,” Jean whispered just above the sound of the railcar clicking along the tracks.
February, 1945
Buchenwald, Germany
M
arc watched the doors on the car next to his slide open. Boys, or just maybe teenagers, started to pile out. The guards gathered them in front of a pile of dirt at the rail yard. Marc looked away as they started to shoot the kids. He could not resist looking up through the slats. He saw a group of boys run just beyond the guards and disappear into the forest.
A day later, Marc’s car doors slid open. The guards yelled into the car, “Everyone out!”
Georges moved toward the door and Marc followed. Jean lay on the floor of the car, among the dead. Marc gave no thought any longer to Jean, for he was convinced that he would soon be joining him in a winter sleep.
Marc could not escape the echo of Georges calling out to Jean. “Get up, get up. You cannot sleep here.”
There were no machine guns for Marc and Georges, but instead a ragged horde of ghostlike creatures playing various instruments. These ghostly figures were the welcoming band to the camp.
Marc felt haunted by Jean lying in the railcar they’d just left.
Maybe he was sleeping a very deep sleep?
he thought. Marc’s own body ached for sleep and food.
It would’ve been just a bit more and he would’ve been in the camp
, he thought as the memory of Jean quickly passed away.
Maybe he is right behind me?
Maybe he was not yet dead.
The thought clung to Marc, like a child dragging along, holding his leg. Just then, one of the twenty-eight men left alive, marching toward the gate of Buchenwald, fell face down dead. The doubt disappeared, and Marc accepted that Jean actually had died.
“Jacques, Jacques,” the man called through the block.
“Yes, what is it? I am here,” Jacques answered back.
“Some new arrivals have come, and there are some French among them from Paris. They are held up in the small camp, but maybe you know a few? Thought you would want to know.”
“Let Yves know. Tell him I need for him to take me down there, and check. Do you know any of the names?”
“I will find out. There are only twenty-seven. If you do know any, well, you will need to move fast because they are in very poor shape.”
“Go get Yves and try and find out the names,” Jacques said to the prisoner clerk. He wondered if any of them could be someone he’d known from Paris. It was another lifetime for Jacques. He was the head of a resistance group, and writer for an underground paper, but that was another lifetime ago. Now, he just sits at the door of his blockhouse in charge of sweeping the floor after the men leave for the quarry.
That evening, before the last roll call, Jacques and Yves walked down into the small camp to search out the new arrivals. Yves stood taller than any of the other prisoners, and he was nearly bald. His face wore wrinkles, but not due to his age.
“Are you Georges from Paris?”
“No.”
“Are you Georges from Paris? We are looking for a friend,” Yves asked another prisoner. He pointed over to two men lying down next to a wall within the camp theater.
“Are you Georges from Paris?”
“I am Marc, New York, but yes, Paris. This is Georges, from Paris. Wake up, Georges, wake up,” Marc said, shaking him.
“Jacques, is that you?” Georges said.
“Yes! I thought it might be you. Can you get up? Can you walk?” Jacques asked. He could hear the moans of the men, dying from exhaustion. Then he could see in his mind’s eye Marc helping Georges to stand.
“Look, we have come to get you. Stay right here,” Jacques said. He pulled out some camp money from his pocket and stuffed it into Yves’s hand. Yves patted Jacques on the shoulder and then guided him over to Marc, placing Jacques’s hand on Marc’s shoulder.
“I will take care of it,” Yves said.
“Marc, we need to get you out of here. Yves is going to go talk to them now.”
“They said we are here for a few days, to make sure we are not sick,” Marc slurred.
“How long have you been here? When did you arrive?”
“Uh, they said we will have jobs soon,” Marc’s voice drifted off into the distance of thought. Jacques gripped his shoulder, trying to give him some hope.
“Let’s go, now,” Yves said after he returned from the guard.
“Can you help Georges?” Jacques asked.
“Georges, Georges, come along. Let’s go. You are coming with me,” Yves said, grabbing him by the elbow and lifting him to his feet. Yves took from his pocket two armbands, giving one to Jacques.
“Marc, put this on, over your arm,” Jacques said to Marc, stuffing the armband into his hand. Yves took another armband and pulled it up over Georges’ arm.
“Now, let’s go, before anyone else comes in,” Yves said firmly.
Yves supported Georges as he walked toward the door and out of the theater. Marc walked with Jacques, holding his shoulder as they followed Yves. Outside, Yves looked for any sign of other guards. At the gate between the small camp and the large camp, the keeper said, “Who are they?”
“Friends,” Yves said, stuffing camp script into his hand.
“French?”
“
Oui
.”
“Wait here,” the gatekeeper said as he walked toward a man standing against the wall of a blockhouse. After a few moments, he returned to the gate.
“Jacques’ block first, then after roll call, take them to block twenty-seven. Make sure to get the armbands back to us once they are in for the night.”
While at Jacques’ block waiting for evening roll call to finish, Jacques asked Georges about Jean.
“Yes, I did see him. He got away,” Georges said to him. “He escaped, Jacques, he escaped!”
Jacques could hear the lie. It was such a sweet way for Georges to tell him. So sweet of him to lie that Jacques could not bear to let him know that he knew it was a lie.
“He escaped,” Georges said a second time. Jacques not only knew it was a lie, but that Georges actually believed it to be true.
“Marc, is that so?” Jacques said, reaching out his hand for Marc’s. Marc took his hand to his face and shook his head from side to side.
“He got out of the train, I saw him. He walked away into the woods, but the guards did not follow. He escaped,” Georges said in a euphoric voice.
“I am so glad he got away,” Jacques lied back. “It will not be long. We need to have courage. In a just a few moments, we are going over to a new block. Good French—they will watch after you. You need to eat some more, Georges, please. Another piece of bread.”
“He escaped, Jacques. He got away,” Georges repeated again.
“I know, Georges, I know,” Jacques said softly. “I will see if I can get you any more rations. You need strength.”
Each day there was roll call before the men would march out to work. Georges fell sick again and could not make roll call. Then, even work in the quarries came to a stop. The guards only showed up for roll call.
Georges burned inside and begged for water from Marc. “Eat. You need to eat some soup,” Marc begged him. He got extra bread from Jacques. But he just grew weaker with each passing day.
A prisoner doctor came into the barracks to see Georges, and Marc pleaded with him to do something. “There is nothing. Stop giving him your food. You need it for yourself.”
Marc stirred awake in the middle of the night. Georges said over and over again to the top slats of the bunk, “Three months and you can survive the war, three months they said, three months.” His voice became softer until Marc fell back asleep.
The rule was if someone should die during the night, the others still needed to carry the body to roll call to be counted in the morning.
“Georges, Georges, wake up,” Marc pleaded. “Please, Georges, wake up,” but he was gone. Everyone in the blockhouse had already left for the roll call. Marc tugged at Georges’ body and pulled it to the edge of the bunk. He then gave a great heave of strength, and then collapsed onto the floor with Georges’ body on top of him.
The door flew open and Yves stood in the doorway. “Marc, you need to get out to roll call, now.”
“I need help. He is too heavy for me to carry,” Marc cried as he struggled to get out from under Georges.
“Is he dead?” Yves asked.
“Yes. I have to get him out of here. I cannot let Jacques find him,” Marc pleaded. Yves then helped carry Georges out of the blockhouse to the main assembly area.
Afterward, he helped Marc put Georges on one of the flatbed trailers, hidden and away from clear view of the rest of the camp.
“They took him to Dora, you understand me?” Marc said to Yves. “No matter what, when Jacques asks, they took him to Dora,” Marc cried as he walked away from the flatbed filled with bodies.
“Marc, he will know. They are not even making selections for Dora. Why?” Yves said.