The Paradise Ghetto Read online

  ‘Fucking weird,’ says Julia.

  But now the conversation stops because suddenly there is the sound of several sets of footsteps in the corridor. The cell goes silent. Everybody listens and stares at the door. The footsteps stop. There is a jangle of keys and then the metallic clatter of a key being put in the lock and turned. The cell door squeals open.

  ‘Jesus, these Jews stink,’ a voice says in Dutch.

  3

  They are taken, carrying their luggage, out into the rear yard of the police station where a truck waits, its engine running. It is still dark though the shell of night has cracked and the first traces of colour have appeared in a part of the sky.

  Julia remembers the two eggs she bought; she had planned to fry them.

  The cobblestones are slick with frost and the truck’s exhaust smoke is grey in the bitterly cold air. Julia is shivering and she doesn’t know whether it’s from the cold or from fear. Suzanne is beside her, shaking too.

  So much for bringing your weather with you.

  Julia wishes Suzanne would go and cling on to somebody else; Julia needs to be alone. To think. To try and get to grips with all of this. To find a way out. There has to be a way. Last night, she was too tired and shocked to think but now her mind is racing again. She just needs to be by herself.

  They are made to climb up into the back of the truck, the canvas cover is pulled down, tied and then the truck lurches off. A few rips in the canvas let a little light in. Julia and Suzanne sit beside each other in the semi-darkness. Nobody speaks.

  They are not in the truck for long. When it stops again and they emerge, they are at Muiderpoort station. The station is almost deserted at this time of the morning. They are taken inside and put on a regular passenger train in a compartment with other Jews. The doors are locked from the outside and the train pulls out.

  Everyone is silent at first – even the children, who all sit by the windows. But once they have been going for a while, people begin to bring out some food. It’s just as Julia has always said – people have to eat; life has to go on. Julia has the bread and ham from yesterday. She takes it out of her case and isn’t in the least surprised to find that Suzanne has nothing. She apologises for this, explaining how it was the people hiding her who used to bring her food.

  ‘What happened to them?’ Julia asks.

  Why do I keep doing this – entering into these conversations that I don’t want?

  Suzanne shakes her head, a forlorn expression on her face.

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing good, that’s for sure.’

  Julia feels she has no choice but to share her food. The result is that her portion hardly takes the edge off her hunger. Suzanne thanks her profusely but after that, she is silent as she gazes out the window as though entranced.

  It is a blue and white winter’s day lit by a bright, low sun. It’s a day for skating or a long walk in the woods followed by a big dinner in front of a roaring fire, plenty of wine and then collapsing into a deep warm bed. Meadows and bare fields fly by, dusted with frost like icing sugar. There are the black limbs of bare trees, villages, people going about their business, three women in scarves chatting while they wait at a level crossing, two men meeting and shaking hands. The telephone wires along the track swoop up and down like swallows. The pale, wintry sun chases along beside them.

  During the whole journey, Suzanne speaks only once. This is when she turns to Julia and with a radiant smile on her face, says, ‘It’s like freedom.’

  ‘What direction are we going in?’ asks Julia.

  Julia isn’t surprised that Suzanne knows. There are people who know which way north is and those who don’t. Somehow, she knew Suzanne would be one of those who did.

  ‘East. Towards Germany.’

  This answer makes Julia even more afraid. For some reason, she thinks about her parents. She wonders if they are still alive.

  The train stops numerous times and it is just after noon when they arrive at their destination. There was nothing to say they had crossed into Germany so Julia hopes that maybe they are still in the Netherlands.

  The train has entered some kind of camp. The doors are unlocked and they disembark. There is a distant high barbed wire fence, watchtowers and a lot of long, low wooden huts that look like sheds with a few windows. There are no German soldiers to be seen – only members of the Dutch constabulary, the Marechaussee who guard the new arrivals.

  ‘What do you think they’re going to do to us, Julia?’ Suzanne asks, inevitably, as she – equally inevitably – stands next to Julia.

  ‘How the fuck would I know?’

  Suzanne just stares at her. Go on, the tears again.

  They find out soon enough. The constables herd them to a hut where they queue up and are registered. The people doing the registering are not Germans or constables but camp inmates. They sit at tables with typewriters. As she queues, Julia overhears the questions being asked – name, date of birth, occupation. Julia isn’t quite sure what to say to that last question but something tells her that, in a place like this, ‘actress’ wouldn’t really be a good answer. ‘Cook,’ she announces when her turn comes. The middle-aged man in the threadbare coat doing the registering looks up when she says this. He eyes her up and down, appears to consider it for a few moments and then writes it down as though it doesn’t matter anyway. She is told she will be in hut sixty-five.

  After registration, males and females are separated and Julia and Suzanne go, with other women and children, to another part of the camp where they find hut sixty-five. Inside are rows and rows of three-tier metal bunks and hundreds of people. The place smells of stale vegetables, bodies and dirty toilets. The huts have walls of thin wooden planks so that inside is as cold as outside. Clothes lines are strung between the bunks and there is washing everywhere. The women seem to all be washing clothes; children run about. One lot is playing a game of hide and seek. They stand in a circle, hands over their eyes, counting. As they reach a hundred, they scatter in different directions.

  Julia and Suzanne manage to find a pair of bunks that are unoccupied. Suzanne takes the middle one, Julia the top – it feels less suffocating. Julia resigns herself to the fact that it looks like, for now, Suzanne is going to be her shadow. Julia tries to feel indifferent about it, consoling herself with the thought that if Suzanne finds somebody more like herself she’ll be off. In the meantime, Julia will try to be as unpleasant as possible.

  The end of each bunk consists of a series of steel bars and so she is able to climb up without standing on anyone else’s bed. She puts her case on the bed and then clambers up onto the mattress, kneeling on it.

  It is filled with straw, some of which escapes through rips in the seam. It is so thin that she can feel the slats of the bed underneath. There is also one weary blanket which was once yellow but is now brown and stained. While Julia’s own apartment had been pretty run-down, the one thing about it was that it had had a really deep, comfortable mattress. And she had managed to accumulate a number of blankets so that it had been the one place where she was guaranteed to be warm. It is going to be cold here but she has brought a blanket of her own and remakes the bed with her blanket inside and the yellow-brown one on top. It’s all about order. Julia likes order.

  There is no place to put anything – no cupboards – so everything is either in her suitcase, on the bed or underneath the covers. She wonders how safe her things are going to be. She knows that it’s not something she can really worry about or guard against. She resolves that if anybody steals any of her belongings, she will steal other people’s. With that comforting decision made and as she is climbing down, there is a flurry of activity by the door of the hut. Apparently it’s lunchtime.

  Some inmates have pulled a cart into the room in which is set a big steel vat. Julia has a vision of battleships from the last war – great, grey steel. The occupants of the hut form a line carrying spoons and bowls. Julia returns to get hers and Suzanne says, ‘Maybe they will give me o
ne.’

  They join the line and Julia engineers it that Suzanne is in front of her.

  ‘I have no bowl,’ she says when she reaches the head of the line.

  ‘Just take your bread then,’ says the woman who is ladling out the soup. ‘And make it last. There’ll be no more for three days.’

  ‘But what about the soup?’ asks Suzanne.

  ‘No bowl, no soup,’ says the woman. She has grey, stringy hair and an ashen face. ‘Next.’

  ‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ Julia says without thinking, stepping forward from behind Suzanne.

  ‘Fair?’ says the woman with an unpleasant smile. ‘When was the last time you saw fair?’

  Fucking bitch.

  ‘There must be spare bowls,’ Julia says. ‘People who have left or –’

  ‘Died?’

  There is a man with the soup bitch – a big man. It looks like he must be there to guard the food. But he doesn’t look like a guard or a bouncer – there is something refined, educated about him. Julia looks at him and flashes her warmest, most winning smile. It isn’t sexy, exactly – she feels that would be wrong for this situation – but she reckons it is guaranteed to please.

  ‘That woman who went during the night,’ he says.

  ‘It’ll cost you,’ says the woman. ‘What do you have? Got any cigarettes?’

  ‘I don’t smoke –’ Suzanne begins to say.

  ‘I’ve got cigarettes,’ says Julia.

  The price is set at ten cigarettes, which enables Julia to hold on to the remaining three. She curses herself. She needs to cut Suzanne loose – the girl is way too much of a liability.

  Suzanne is given a bowl and spoon. The two girls receive their so-called ‘potato soup’ and bread. They find a place to sit, against the wall of the hut.

  ‘Thank you so much, Julia. I think you just saved my life.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ snaps Julia. ‘You’d have figured it out. You’d have stolen somebody else’s. Or something.’

  Suzanne says nothing, the implication being that she wouldn’t have done that at all. Daddy’s little angel.

  The soup looks like dishwater and smells awful so that Julia finds it difficult to pass it under her nose. There appears to be no nutrition to speak of in it. After it, she doesn’t feel full or satisfied, just bloated. The pair go outside in the air. Julia wonders how she can get rid of Suzanne.

  ‘What do you suppose happens here?’ Suzanne asks, as they walk in the open space between the huts.

  ‘How should I know? I suppose we’ll have to do some kind of work. When they asked your profession, what did you say?’

  ‘I told them I was a nurse.’

  ‘A nurse. And are you?’

  Suzanne smiles.

  ‘I was studying English literature at university.’

  Julia is both unsurprised and resentful. ‘So what will you do if they ask you to do nursing?’

  ‘I’ll worry about that when it happens. My parents were both archaeologists at the university. They used to spend their summers on digs – once in England but mainly in Pompeii in Italy. I would go with them. I became the resident nurse on the site – if people cut themselves or got stung or bitten or something like that. That’s about as much as I can do.’

  ‘You’ve been to Pompeii?’ asks Julia, annoyed because she is unable to say it without sounding awestruck. This girl has had it all – happy family, world travel...

  ‘You’ve heard of it?’ asks Suzanne.

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of it,’ Julia snaps. ‘I may not have been to university but I’m not stupid. I’ve read about it.’

  Julia’s hoping Suzanne will get angry or walk away or just pick up that she’s not wanted. But instead Suzanne says, ‘You like to read,’ and then, after a pause, ‘I’m glad.’

  They are silent for a while. Suzanne appears to be deep in thought. Then she says, ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me what?’

  ‘Your profession.’

  ‘I’m ... an actress.’

  ‘Really?’ asks Suzanne. ‘What kind of actress? Theatre? Movie?’

  ‘Movie.’

  ‘Would I have seen any of the movies you were in?’

  Julia can’t help smiling.

  ‘I doubt it. I was just starting off my career. I only got small parts.’

  Sometimes they were very big parts.

  And now, weirdly, Julia feels unsettled. She thinks that she wouldn’t ever want Suzanne to know what she did. After another long silence, Suzanne says, ‘I wasn’t very good at bringing my own weather with me during the night. I’m sorry for being so teary. You were so strong. I thought you were amazing. All along.’

  ‘I was feeling the same as you,’ says Julia. ‘I just didn’t want to show it. Didn’t want to give the fuckers the satisfaction.’

  She is annoyed to find that her swearing doesn’t seem to shock Suzanne like it did at first.

  They spend the rest of the day either trying to keep warm or aimlessly exploring their surroundings. They have to go to the toilet a lot because of the soup. There is a latrine building that consists of a long plank attached to the walls, above an evil-smelling ditch. The plank has a series of regular holes in it. You climb onto the plank, being careful not to slip into the ditch, and then sit on a hole. There is no privacy and no toilet paper.

  Once it gets too cold to stay outside, they go back to the barracks. There is more potato soup for dinner. Julia reluctantly drinks it, knowing that she will be up and down to the toilet all night. They eat more of their bread ration. It is shitty bread. Julia would happily eat it all and she knows she still wouldn’t be anywhere near full. With great difficulty she resists.

  There is nothing much to do and anyway it is so cold. The girls decide to go to bed which is what most other people seem to be doing. As well as the latrine hut, there is a washroom at the end of this hut. It contains one long sink with taps spaced a metre or so apart and one toilet. They go to the toilet for what Julia hopes will be the last time until morning, wash in cold water and climb up onto their beds.

  Suzanne says, ‘Goodnight, Julia.’

  The homely wish takes Julia by surprise. It’s so long since anybody wished her goodnight or that there was anybody with her when she went to sleep.

  ‘G’night,’ she says, unable to bring herself to use Suzanne’s name.

  The soup goes through Julia rapidly so that she has to go to the washroom several times during the night. People complain whenever she climbs down as the rickety bunk shakes. There is often a queue in the darkness for the single toilet.

  Sometime during the night, she thinks she can hear Suzanne crying.

  There also turn out to be fleas in the bed. Julia starts to itch. She sleeps fitfully and when she wakes in the morning she has bite marks all over her body.

  4

  In the queue for breakfast – the inevitable potato soup – Julia and Suzanne get talking to the woman in front of them. She has a pale, gaunt face and wears an ancient overcoat with a scarf tied under her chin. There is a child with her, aged maybe three or four.

  ‘Haven’t seen you here before.’

  ‘We came yesterday,’ says Julia.

  ‘What work are you doing?’

  ‘They haven’t given us any work yet.’

  The woman’s eyes widen. There is fear in them.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Julia asks, amazed by the woman’s reaction.

  ‘You must get some work,’ she says. ‘If not they will put you on the transport.’

  ‘The transport?’

  ‘Every Tuesday – they fill a train and send it to the East. They say it is to a work camp but...’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘They are Germans. Who can believe what they say? They are capable of anything.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Suzanne asks Julia, outside after breakfast, walking the perimeter of the camp to keep warm. ‘Could it be worse than this?’

  Why is it always throw
n back on me? Why am I always the one?

  There are a couple of things that Julia has always lived by. She thinks of them vaguely as ‘principles’. They are things she has learned as she has grown up – especially in the last few years. One is that she is capable of dealing with anything. The second is that tomorrow is going to be a better day than today. It is this that guides her now.

  ‘I don’t see how,’ Julia says. ‘Anyway, how do we get work? Who do we go to? And you couldn’t do any kind of hard work on this shit food they’re giving us. I think we should just wait and see what happens. Conserve our energy. Save our strength.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ says Suzanne.

  Of course you do. Anything rather than think for yourself.

  Then Julia says, ‘Was that you crying during the night?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Suzanne. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No.’

  Suzanne says, ‘I was just going through a “why me?” moment. Why was I born a Jew? In this time? In this place? You know how it can be in those dark hours of the night. I’m over it now.’

  ‘You’ve got the weather back with you again?’

  The words were intended to be mocking but if Suzanne notices, she doesn’t respond. Instead, with a smile, she says, ‘Exactly.’

  Then she says, ‘You said you like books. Reading.’

  ‘I love books,’ Julia says.

  But it’s not a conversation she wants to have with Suzanne. Julia regards books as part of her own intimate life.

  ‘I love books too,’ says Suzanne. ‘I think I live my life by them. Sometimes I think they’re my only real friends.’

  After a silence, Suzanne says tentatively, ‘I was wondering ... what would you think ... if we wrote a book?’

  ‘What – here in the camp?’

  ‘That’s right. Here in the camp.’

  ‘You mean about the camp?’

  ‘No, not about the camp. Not about the camp at all. It would be about anything but the camp. Something out in the world. It would be a way of escaping the camp.’