The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [114]
“There are some things that will keep repeating somewhere in my consciousness always, till my last breath. The throes of childbirth are like birds singing at dawn compared to the harshness of wearing broken shoes in winter as I lifted my ax again and again to work the ground. And now you arrive to me, like a ghost, stirring me until I could think I was eighteen years old again. Since that time I have never known misery. I have never felt discomfort on a train, or waiting a long time for a seat, or in a line. I am never bored. I never feel that a minor discomfort is insupportable. I know what I can bear.”
“I’m amazed at what you had to bear.”
“Maman had to protect me from the depravity. Oh, it was so horrible. What they did to her—No, I can’t visit that. It’s gone.”
Annette threw her hands up to cover her face for a few moments. He thought she might be crying, and he pulled her to him, but then she resumed in a soft, low tone.
“I cannot tell of the worst things. You will think it was all like that. The friendships with so many wonderful women—I don’t want to say that was the happiest time of my life, certainly not. But in a way it was the best time, the most important.”
“Tell me what you mean—the best time.”
“You had to have a best friend in order to survive. For me, it was my mother. But there were so many women willing to help. We helped each other to live. At some point a person stops helping and thinks only of herself. But I knew women who never gave up their willingness to help. When I arrived at Koenigsberg, I had an ear infection. A girl who was a nurse stole some medicine from the infirmary and gave it to me. ‘Don’t say a word,’ she told me. She could have been shot for that simple kindness.” Annette paused. “And in fact she was shot, later, on the Death March.”
“So with the friendships came loss.”
“Yes. There were some very brave English girls at Koenigsberg with us. They were British agents who had parachuted into France to work with the Résistance. They were sent back to Ravensbrück early. We hoped they would be liberated, but we learned much later that soon after they arrived at Ravensbrück they were shot. I had been deported with those girls, and I had worked beside them at Koenigsberg, and the news of them made my heart so heavy.”
She paused. “I apologize,” she said, squeezing his hand.
“The idea of shooting a woman …” Marshall couldn’t finish the thought.
“Of the two hundred and fifty Frenchwomen I was with, fifty-six of us returned to France.” Pausing, she took a deep breath.
Her eyes focused on the homme debout.
“There were moments of pleasure. In the evenings we talked, we shared our lives. We made poésie, songs. On Sundays we had prières. On Christmas a very nice Polish girl who was artiste made a pretty Christmas tree, using every little scrap to decorate it. The German directress, who was so cold and brutal, liked our tree. It brought a little smile to her face, but she wouldn’t admit it. Her eyes were blue and hard like metal. She was terrible, but she was a simple woman.
“We had the poux—I don’t … what is the word? In our hair—oh, you know what I mean. I won’t go into that.”
“It’s all right,” he said.
“But it was one of the good times!” she said. “On Sundays we helped each other pick out the poux from our hair. We found the greatest pleasure in this!” She smiled.
“I’m running on, in all directions,” she said.
They were now sitting side by side on a divan by the window. She was quiet, and he reached for her, holding her shoulders and resting his cheek against hers. She resumed.
“Earlier at Ravensbrück the pregnant women weren’t allowed to keep their babies. The SS women, the baby-catchers, they were called, seized the newborns and drowned them by holding them upside down, their heads in a bucket—in front of the mothers. I didn’t see this. When I was there, they were allowed to keep the babies, but how could these babies survive? Some women saved their meager rations for them, or sometimes they got packages and shared the cans of milk.