Page 114 of The Girl You Left Behind
“Oh, I could not be more delighted,” Marianne says, waving a cigarette in the air. Nobody has bothered to tell her not to smoke. She leans forward, places a bony hand on Liv’s knee. “Andhe found my favorite handbag.”
“I’m sorry?”
The old woman’s smile falters. She busies herself with refixing a brooch. “Oh, nothing. Take no notice of me.”
Liv keeps staring at her, as the faint flush of color dies down. “Don’t you want these sandwiches?” Marianne says briskly.
The phone rings. “Right,” says Henry, when he puts down the receiver. “Is everyone okay? Ms. Andrews—are you ready to read some of this evidence to the court?”
“I have my best reading glasses in my bag.”
“Right.” Henry takes a deep breath. “Then it’s time to go in.”
30 April 1945
Well, today sure didn’t turn out like I expected. Four days ago, Lt Col Danes had told me I could go into Konzentrationslager Dachau with them. He’s not a bad guy, Danes. A little sniffy at first about hacks, as most of them are, but since I came ashore with the Screaming Eagles at Omaha Beach, and he’s worked out I’m not some green housewife who’s going to press him for cookie recipes, he’s backed off a little. The 102nd Airborne call me an honorary fellow now, say that when I have my armband on, I’m just one of them. So, the deal was, I was going to follow them into the camp, write my piece about the folks inside, maybe get a few interviews with some of the prisoners about the conditions, and then file. WRGS radio wanted a short piece, too, so I had my tape all wound up and ready.
Well, there I was, ready at 6A.M., armband on and almost shipshape, and darned if he didn’t knock on my door. “Why, Lieutenant,” I joked. I was still fixing my hair. “You never told me you cared.” It’s a running joke with us. He says he’s got pairs of marching boots older than I am.
“Change of plan, Toots,” he says. He was smoking, which was unlike him. “I can’t take you.”
My hands stilled on my head. “You are kidding me, right?” The Register’s editor was all lined up for this piece. They’d cleared me two pages and no ads.
“Louanne, it’s... it’s beyond what we thought we’d find. I’m under orders to let nobody through till tomorrow.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Seriously.” He lowered his voice. “You know I’d have you in there with me. But, well, you wouldn’t believe what we saw in there yesterday.... I’ve been up all night, me and the boys. There are old ladies, kids walking round in there, like... I mean, little kids....” He shook his head and looked away from me. He’s a big man, Danes, and I swear he was about to sob like a baby. “There was a train outside, and the bodies were just... thousands of them.... It ain’t human. That’s for sure.”
“Louanne, nobody but the military and the Red Cross is going in or coming out today. I need every man I have to help out.”
“Help out with what?”
“Taking the Nazis into custody. Helping the prisoners. Stopping our men killing those SS bastards for what they seen. Young Maslowicz, when he saw what they done to the Poles, he was like a madman, crying, going crazy. I had to put a noncom on his gun. So I gotta have an airtight guard. And”—he gulped—“we gotta work out what to do with the bodies.”
“Bodies?”
He shook his head. “Yeah, bodies. Thousands of them. They made bonfires. Bonfires! You wouldn’t believe...” He blew out his cheeks. “Anyway, Toots. This is where I need to ask you a favor.”
“You need to ask me a favor?”
“I need to leave you in charge of the storage facility.”
I stared at him.
“There’s a warehouse, out on the edge of Berchtesgaden. We opened it up last night, and it’s pretty much stacked to the gills with works of art. The Nazis, Goering, have looted stuff like you wouldn’t believe. The top brass reckons there’s a hundred million dollars’ worth of stuff in there, most of it stolen.”
“What has this got to do with me?”
“I need someone I can trust to watch over it, just for today. You’ll have a fire crew at your disposal, and two marines. It’s chaos in the town, and I need to make sure nobody goes in there and nobody goes out. There’s some serious haul in there, Toots. I don’t know much about art, but it’s like—I don’t know—theMona Lisaor something.”
Do you know how disappointment tastes? Like iron filings in cold coffee. That’s what I tasted when old Danes drove me down to the facility. And that was before I found out that Marguerite Higgins had gotten into the camps the previous day, with Brigadier General Linden.
It wasn’t a warehouse as such, more a huge gray slab of a municipal building, like a huge school or town hall. He pointed me toward his two marines, who saluted me, and then the office near the main door where I was to sit. I have to say, I couldn’t say no to him, but I took it all with bad grace. It was so obvious to me that the real story was going on down the road. The boys, normally cheerful and full of life, were in huddles, smoking and whey-faced. Their superiors talked quietly with shocked, serious expressions. I wanted to know what they’d found there, horrific as it might be. I needed to be in there, bringing the story out. And I was afraid: Every day that slipped by made it easier for the top brass to decline my request. Every day that passed gave my competitors a chance.
I sat there for two hours, watching through the office window. Military vehicles whined up and down the main street, packed with soldiers. German soldiers, their hands on their heads, were marched in the opposite direction. Small huddles of German women and children stood stock-still on street corners, apparently wondering what was to become of them. (Later I heard they were called in to help bury the dead.) And all the while, in the distance, the shrill siren of ambulances told of unseen horrors. Horrors I was missing.
“Come on then, Krabowski,” I said finally. “Show me around this joint.”
