A Feather on the Water(11)

There was a creak of metal springs as Delphine turned to face the window. Like the others, she was imagining what lay beyond the trees. She was trying to picture the camp hospital. Who had been looking after the patients since the doctor disappeared? What was she going to find when she got there tomorrow morning? And there was something else hovering like a specter on the margins of her mind’s eye. Just a few miles beyond the boundary of Seidenmühle lay Dachau. What had she been thinking, coming here? She had hoped for a feeling of closeness to Claude and Philippe from being near the place where they died. But all she felt was the horror of it, the unfathomable injustice.

“Are you okay?” It was Martha who called out in the darkness.

“I can’t sleep,” Delphine replied. “Sorry—did I wake you? These beds are rickety, aren’t they?”

“I can’t, either.” Kitty sat up.

“Shall I make us all a hot drink?” Martha got out of bed and made her way downstairs.

In the kitchen she found a big jar of Nescafé. Coffee had been severely rationed in American grocery stores since Pearl Harbor. Hooray for the US Army, she thought. Lying next to it on the counter was a loaf of bread wrapped in waxed cloth. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she investigated the contents of the cupboards. She found canned milk, a jar of raspberry jelly, and a bag of sugar with the Domino logo emblazoned on it. It seemed strange to see something so familiar in a DP camp in the heart of Germany. Had it been only three days since she’d hidden in the shadows of the refinery in Williamsburg? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

She found a tray and some tin mugs and carried the coffee upstairs. But there was no sound when she pushed the door open. In the time it had taken her to make the drinks, the others had fallen asleep.



Major McMahon arrived as they were finishing breakfast the next morning. He took them to the camp office, which was a short walk along a trail through the pine trees. On the way he explained that the army expected to relinquish responsibility for Seidenmühle as soon as possible. “We gotta concentrate on denazification,” he said. “Round up the ones that got away before they can regroup and start a partisan war against us.”

Martha turned to him, startled.

“That’s why we need to pull out of running this place—we gotta hunt ’em down and lock ’em up.”

The women exchanged anxious glances. “When will you leave?” Martha asked.

“End of the month,” he replied.

“But that’s only a few days away!”

“We’ll be on hand if you need us,” he said. “We’re only ten miles from here. And I’ll be leaving a couple of guys to guard the place.”

“What about a doctor?” Delphine said. “Will the army send a replacement for the one that left?”

“No ma’am,” he replied. “But one of the DPs was a surgeon in Kraków—poor guy lost a couple of fingers in a loom before this place was liberated, but he can still use a scalpel. You’ll be fine, believe me.”

The office was a large, bare room with a single window. The only furniture was a row of filing cabinets and a huge desk with a couple of mismatched wooden chairs behind it. On the desk was a field telephone, and on the wall behind it was a drawing of the layout of the camp.

The major was carrying a short, blunt cane, which he pointed at the symbols on the map. “The black squares are the blockhouses. You got around a hundred and fifty people in each one. These two yellow circles are the kitchens. They bake thirteen hundred pounds of bread every day.” He moved the cane across to a green diamond. “This is the mess hall. Lunch is the main meal of the day, served in four sittings, between twelve thirty and two o’clock. Mornings they get bread delivered to the blockhouses, cheese or jelly to go with it, depending on what’s available.

“The red cross is the hospital, and this blue triangle is the warehouse. We guard that twenty-four seven, but stuff’s always disappearing. They sneak around after dark. Sometimes it’s cigarettes they’re after, other times it’s sugar for their vodka stills. If we catch ’em, they spend a night or two in here.” He tapped an orange triangle next to the warehouse. “We confiscated ten stills last week. They’ll find a way to make new ones—they’re a cunning bunch. You gotta keep that in mind.”

Martha’s eyes went back to the black squares. She was counting them, multiplying numbers in her head. “So, there are more than two thousand people living here?”

“Close to three thousand at the last count,” he replied. “But it’s growing all the time: we had twelve babies born this month, and I heard we’re expecting about thirty by the end of August.”

“Can I see the hospital?” Delphine asked.

“Sure—I’ll take you.” He glanced at his watch. He turned to Martha, talking faster as he rattled off more facts about the camp. Each of the blockhouses had a leader who made sure everyone had a job to do; that person was also responsible for allocating living spaces and monitoring the basic hygiene of the occupants. He told them about the supply of DDT kept in the guardhouse for delousing new arrivals, and the storeroom full of secondhand clothes and shoes that were available for those who turned up in nothing more than rags.

“The biggest challenge facing you ladies will be getting in enough supplies and firewood to see this place through the winter,” he said. “When the snow comes, the roads will be impassable. You might be holed up for a month or more with nothing coming in.”