The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [109]
Annette had been speaking with Marshall in English most of the time, but now she lapsed into rapid, excited French. Gently, he guided her back.
“Slowly,” he said. “You’re going too fast for me.”
“Désolée.”
“Go slowly.”
She sat down beside him and took a deep breath. “The SS made everybody who could walk go out on a forced march back to Ravensbrück,” she continued, in English. “I could walk, but my mother could not walk, and I could not leave her! I could not leave her. I hid in the infirmary with her. We were in the room with a nurse who was very good with my mother. She had been arrested for falling in love with a German. She was a nice girl, and when the Germans routed everybody, she warned them away from the infirmary.
“ ‘They have the typhus!’ she cried. The Germans backed away then.
“There were only a handful of us left behind in the infirmary, and all the others were sent back to Ravensbrück, on foot. Eighty kilometers. I knew they wouldn’t live.
“The SS put out the fires in the stoves and removed the fuel. Then, with the fuel, they set the camp on fire. They locked the doors and left. Our little group, left behind in the infirmary, was going to die in the fire! Frantic, we managed to break the door. And then”—Annette clasped her hands together in a quick gesture of thanksgiving or prayer—“it began to snow, and the snow stopped the fire! Our infirmary survived the fire. But six of us died. We had to bury them, and the two Frenchmen. It was true. We did have the typhus.
“We waited. There were so few of us. The nurse, who stayed behind with us, had reserves of strength, and she built a fire to keep us warm. And she cooked for us. But I slept then for two days. I slept through the Battle of the Oder! The Russians and the Germans were shooting at each other across the camp, near the infirmary. But I was so sick I didn’t care.”
Annette’s hands flew up, quivering, then lighted in her lap. Again she had spoken rapidly, mixing French with her English. It had taken Marshall a moment to decipher “typhus,” which she pronounced TEEF-us. He took her hands and quieted them down. She turned her head away from him for a time.
“After two days the Russians arrived, with their tanks and their large guns, and they liberated the camp. It was such joy for us! Oh, they were very good with us. They spoke some English.
“We spent three weeks at the camp with the Russians. They were like children with us. Playing, laughing. One of them shot a cow so that we could have meat. But the nurse told me that my mother should not eat meat because of the typhus—it would make her bleed more. She was losing blood, leaving a trail. But the Russian, a big high officer, wouldn’t obey the nurse. He ordered a soldier to cut a bifteck and barbecue it for her. We couldn’t make him understand. He insisted.
“There are two images that stand out in my mind the most strongly now. One is my sister and her poupée—dressed in baby-chick yellow!—on the day the milice came. And the other is my mother with the bifteck—her joy at having it, and the Russians’ delight with themselves for providing it, and my own despair that it was bad for the typhus. It made her dysentery worse. We all had the dysentery from eating so much when we plundered the abandoned German quarters. So much jam! And beautiful vegetables and cans of asparagus and boxes and boxes of crackers.”
She sighed. “I was increvable. Indefatigable.” She laughed, then hid her mouth with her hands. “So much had happened.” She paused, looked at him, then turned away. “I can’t go further now.”
Marshall’s feelings were whirling. He could scarcely comprehend how she had survived, or that she was here now with her strength and her beauty. He didn’t know how to respond to her words. No response could possibly be adequate.
He put his arms around her. He felt her body relax, and they held the quiet embrace for several long moments.
“We will eat now,” she said,