A Woman of War: A new voice in historical fiction for 2018, for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Mandy Robotham

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СКАЧАТЬ they are.’ I did, in essence, mean it. The rules of my training as a midwife didn’t discriminate between rich or poor, good or bad, criminal or good citizen; all babies were born equal at that split second and all deserved the chance of life. It was the moments, months and years afterwards that fractured them into an unequal world.

      She caught my meaning, clasping her hands in front of her, nails perfectly manicured.

      ‘Good. You will spend today getting prepared, and then travel to meet your new client tomorrow.’ She said the word ‘client’ as if I was a private professional about to take on a task of my choosing. I wondered then how much, and how deeply, they felt the lies. Or if they really believed their own propaganda? Truly believed it?

      I said nothing, refusing to qualify her offer even with a ‘thank you’. She wouldn’t let it go.

      ‘You should be clear that this is a good opportunity for you, Fräulein Hoff. Not many would be trusted with such an important task. We feel you will be a midwife first, whatever your own politics.’

      They were taking a gamble, but they were probably right. I was no angel in life, but I took my duties seriously. Mothers were pregnant to have healthy babies, and babies were meant to survive, for the most part. That was the golden rule.

      I turned to go, seeing a shape ghost past the doorway.

      ‘Joseph?’ she called from behind me. ‘Joseph, come and meet the midwife we have engaged.’

      A small, dark-suited man clipped towards me with a slight limp, stopped and pulled his heels together in that automated way. This was no Aryan, but his face was often in the papers my father had pored over in the days before we became the disappeared. Joseph Goebbels – one of Hitler’s trusted inner circle, master of the truth twist, gilding lies and hoodwinking good, honest Germans. Wasn’t it Goebbels who had declared: ‘The mission of women is to be beautiful and to bring children into the world’? I remember my sister, Ilse, and I laughing at the words, but now that I looked at his wife, I understood why he imagined it possible.

      ‘Fräulein Hoff, pleased to meet you.’ He gave that half smile Third Reich officers clearly practised in training, designed to err on the edge of threat, his little spiny teeth just visible. He was rakishly thin, dark hair slicked back, cheeks sunken; if Himmler – Hitler’s right-hand man – was painted as the rat in the Reich’s higher circle, then Joseph Goebbels was the perfect weasel. For his wife, the attraction must have been more than skin deep. I felt an immediate shiver that he even knew my name.

      He faced his wife. ‘The arrangements, they are all in order?’

      ‘Yes, Joseph,’ she replied with clear irritation.

      ‘Then I bid you good day. I hope you are well looked after, Fräulein Hoff.’

      He walked out, his wife’s red lips thin and her gaze fixed on his back. She may have been beautiful and a copious breeder, but I had the feeling Frau Goebbels was more than a pretty face.

      The interview over, Christa appeared in the doorway to lower me back to the servants’ quarters. The ‘getting ready’ consisted of making me presentable for my mystery client, something of a task in just one day. Christa was sent with carbolic, tackling the lice eggs embedded on the shafts of my thin hair. She worked cheerfully, talking affectionately about her family near Cologne, and although she skated over the hardships of war, it was evident that real, working German families were suffering too. Her brother was already a casualty, blinded and returned from the Eastern Front, leaving her father struggling on the family farm without a younger man’s muscle. She hinted only briefly at his disdain for the Reich.

      She had been a nursing auxiliary before the conflict, in a home for elderly women. Part of the care, said Christa, was in teasing their thinning locks into something of a style, far better than any medicine. After the last of the lice were evicted from my own head, she worked miracles with her scissors and the hot iron, appearing to double the volume of my weakened strands, skilfully hiding my scabbed scalp. I barely recognised myself in the mirror, having not glimpsed my own face for what seemed like years. I had aged noticeably – lines around my eyes, gaunt cheeks, and tiny red veins pushing out in patches on my skull bones – but Christa’s efforts lessened the shock. Much like my body below, I chose not to dwell on the reflection.

      Christa brought several suits and skirts, plain and practical, gleaned from the wardrobes of previous governesses or house managers; I mused only briefly on how many had left under a cloud of death. In the camp, we scavenged greedily on the corpses for useful clothes without a second thought. ‘The dead don’t shiver,’ we said, as justification for our guilt. It was accepted as survival. So that now, I didn’t flinch as I pulled on rough stockings, which morphed into silk, and buttoned a blouse that wouldn’t cause my skin to itch with renewed insect-life. They hung on me loosely, but Christa nipped and tucked, spiriting the clothes away and returning them within hours for a neater fit.

      Towards the end of the day, an unexpected visitor appeared at my door. Christa noted me tensing at the sight of his small black carrying case, balding head and thick glasses. She spoke quickly, as if to reassure me he wasn’t a caricature of Dr Death: ‘Fräulein Hoff, this is Dr Simz. Madam has asked that he attend you before your trip tomorrow.’

      Dr Simz had a dual role of both physician and dentist, checking over my body from top to toe, giving me balm for the most obvious of skin sores, pronouncing my lungs ‘a little wheezy’ but not infected, and my teeth in surprisingly good condition. He didn’t balk at the sight of my ribcage or sorry breasts, working methodically to check I was no threat to my proposed client. His positive mutterings told me I was ready. I would do.

      I slept uneasily that night, despite the sumptuous bedding. I thought of Rosa, cold and vulnerable, of all the women in the maternity hut, my own hut too, and of Margot, eight months into pregnancy, barely recognisable as a mother-to-be. Her bulge was tiny, but it had sucked every particle of nutrition from her needy body nevertheless. On the day, she would be stripped of energy and life and baby in one fell swoop, and Rosa left to deal with the physical debris, as well as Margot’s deep, vacuous keening, rising above the hut as she grieved the life and loss of her baby. And here I was, sleeping in near luxury. ‘Unfair’ didn’t begin to describe the lottery by which we lived, died, or merely existed.

      I took my last meal in that house with Christa, who had been almost my only real contact since arriving. In such a short time, we had struck up a small friendship; I recognised in her some spirit that was here simply to live, for her family, and yet she revealed in those young, green eyes that she wasn’t one of them. It was survival, of a different kind to my own, but survival nonetheless. Maybe there were more of us than we imagined, just doing our best.

      But was it enough? Was it right?

       4

       Climbing

      The large saloon engine gave off clouds in the crisp air as Christa waved me goodbye. ‘Be careful,’ she said, giving my hand a meaningful squeeze. ‘Look out for me – I’m sometimes sent up to the big house on errands.’

      ‘I will, and thank you, Christa. Thank you so much.’ I was genuinely sad to leave her, feeling we might have been better friends given time. We drove about a mile past large, lodge-style houses before the road started upwards, banked on either side by tall evergreens, climbing higher and higher up a stone coil of good road. The СКАЧАТЬ