Free Touching the Wire by Rebecca Bryn

Miriam’s
eyes. ‘Suppose this is a Nazi trick, like the postcards home.’
    ‘The plan comes from a
source I trust. They have news of the Polish Home Army… the fight for Warsaw
goes on. If, when they win, the resistance here will be ready…’
    Miriam wasn’t convinced.
‘Mother wrote to Uncle László and Aunt Mariska in Trier.
She was told what to write, to say we were all well. Now Uncle László is in the men’s camp and
no-one knows where Aunt Mariska or the children are. How did the SS find them
if not from the address on the postcard? Mother’s card would have reassured
them. They’d have believed the Nazi promises, just as we did. Mother is torn
with guilt.’
    He paced across the small
room and stopped in front of her. ‘If it is a trick, I shall hang too. I’ll
take that risk. Too many have died.’
    ‘Then so will I … for Efah and her children, for Mary, for Darja’s baby.’
    ‘And for Arturas and Peti.’
He held her close, her ribs sharp against his: she was still so thin, so
tortured by hunger. Here, she could usually have a larger ration. She gave most
of it to Ilse, who was now here in the women’s camp, or her mother who, like
Miriam, slept in Block IIc, opposite the men’s camp and now the Hungarian
women’s camp. It kept them well enough to avoid selection, or let them trade
for a pair of shoes that fitted so they could work and were worth
feeding.  His chin rested on the top of Miriam’s head, which was crowned
by a mass of short, black hair that stuck straight up like a porcupine and made
her small face look even smaller, even more vulnerable. Where did she find her
courage?
    Messages could be wrapped
around stones and thrown over the barbed-wire fences that separated the camps.
It wasn’t the safest way, if a guard saw, but sometimes, if orders meant he
couldn’t go where he needed to go to pass a message himself, it was the
quickest. They waited anxiously for two days before the message came back. Tsepochke svyazan.
    Miriam
shrugged. ‘I don’t understand, Chuck.’
    ‘I
think it’s Russian.’
    ‘Darja
may know.’
    ‘She’s
Belarusian…’
    ‘Afina
seems to understand her. She says Darja was a teacher before she was brought
here. I’ll ask.’
    Miriam
returned after an hour. ‘Darja says it means the chain is linked .’
    Three more anxious days and
the first two packages arrived together, delayed no doubt by their circuitous
route. Miriam handed them to him, still warm from being inside her blouse. He
put them among the small store of medicine bottles and bandages beneath the
table until he could pass them on, hidden in plain view. 
     The door flew open and he strode in. ‘Inspection. Now.’
    Arturas and Peti… ‘Yes,
Hauptsturm f ührer.’
He pushed Miriam behind him.
    ‘Come.’ The imperious figure
swept out of the surgery and into the ward. ‘This woman… how long has she been
here?’
    A selection? His heart
hammered. He’d had no warning, no time to falsify records or blood tests. No
time to warn the boys to hide and stay quiet.
    ‘I asked how long.’
    The woman had been here
three weeks with breathing difficulties, possibly pneumonia, and wouldn’t be
fit for at least a week. He made a show of flicking through the red cards. Out
of the corner of his eye he saw a small foot protruding from beneath a
mattress. He moved to block the camp physician’s view. ‘Only two days,
Hauptsturmführer. She’ll be well enough to work tomorrow.’
    ‘And this one?’
    ‘Oedema of the feet.’ She
couldn’t put them to the ground. ‘A day’s rest and she’ll be fit.’
    He squashed a bug. ‘Lice… A louse is death, doctor. I do not
want a resurgence of typhus. Have all these patients disinfected. Today.’
     His shoulders slumped.
‘Yes, Herr Doktor.’
    ‘I shall inspect them again
when it is done.’ He smiled cordially and tapped his cane against his boot. ‘It
is good. You run a good hospital, my friend.’
    Friend? Never… and if this
was