Page 27 of The Affair
She nodded.
‘So you think it’s right we go? I’m curious, obviously, but is it OK to gawp at somewhere so ghastly? Isn’t it voyeurism?’
There was silence.
‘No, it’s an important memorial,’ Julian said. ‘We need to see just how terrible it was, so we never let it happen again.’
‘I get that,’ Tim said, ‘but fitting it in like a tourist attraction between beer andpierogiseems somehow disrespectful.’
‘Connie?’ The two men looked to her for an answer.
She thought for a moment. ‘I think it is a crucial memorial, as Julian says. We’ll be paying our respects. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know, but Mirek was telling me it’s an immensely powerful place, evocative and so heartrending … There aren’t tour guides shouting and waving umbrellas, or people taking selfies. I feel it’s right to go, personally.’
Connie let her gaze wander across the square. It was still full of people, although after eleven now. Something caught her eye: a figure, walking behind their table in the half-darkness. She twisted round, her heart hammering. But whoever it was had gone by the time she’d turned. There had been something familiar about the set of his shoulders, the way he walked …Jared?She shook herself.Christ, Connie, get a grip.
‘Everything all right?’ Julian was saying, concern in his sharp blue eyes.
‘Yes … I thought I saw someone I know.’
Julian continued to eye her. ‘You look shaken, Connie.’
‘Do I?’ She forced a smile. ‘Too much vodka, I’m seeing things.’
Both men laughed. ‘We ought to be heading back,’ Tim said reluctantly. ‘Tomorrow is going to be gruelling.’
She strolled between them on the short walk to their modern glass-fronted hotel, attempting not to think about Jared. Once in her room, the bright lights, patterned fabric and clean lines, the twenty-first-centuryversion of G-plan furniture – all so anonymous and safe – calmed her. It was unthinkable that he would be wandering the Rynek at the exact time she was eating there. Although even the vaguest thought that he might be both disturbed and excited her – the recollection of their last encounter setting her body on fire so that she found it almost impossible to sleep.
What struck Connie as they arrived in Auschwitz was its stark enormity. Like everyone else of her generation, she’d seen countless films and photographs of the camps over the years, but they didn’t take into account the sheer scale of the place. The images, by reducing the scale, also drastically reduced the impact. The reality – with that deadly railway track running straight through the middle, like an evil truth – was overwhelming.
The temperature had dropped and it had rained heavily overnight, the balmy summer wiped out in a stroke as if it had never been. Which seemed appropriate, in a way, their coach arriving at Auschwitz in the sullen grey light of mid-morning. Not all of the tour group were present. Audrey had cried off at the last minute, another five of her passengers had never had any intention of going, and Connie didn’t blame them.
The buildings seemed solid, almost prosaic, at first. Not immediately ghastly. Not until she faced the infamous glass cases of shoes and matted hair, the suitcases and spectacles. Then Connie went cold. And the silence. Queues and queues of people, hundreds probably, at anyone time, filing slowly past the exhibits in the purpose-built barracks, and barely a sound to be heard.
‘You first.’ Tim stood aside to allow her to enter the wooden hut. It was freezing inside, the floor just mud, the visitors stepping across duck boards. Most of the wooden huts had been burned, but this one had been preserved: a death hut for women too ill to work, not worth gassing, just left to die. ‘And this is the summer,’ Tim whispered, shivering like Connie, although she had on her Uniqlo padded jacket, he a professional-looking anorak. ‘This happened in my lifetime, Connie … Can you imagine?’
On the coach back to Kraków no one spoke. Some of the tour had gone on to Birkenau and a chilling walk through a gas chamber; others had declined, staying in the café by the car park. But all of them were mute with shock.
The group was scheduled to eat in the hotel that night, and sitting in her seat, watching the Polish countryside slide past in a blur through the steamed-up coach windows, Connie wondered how any of them would find words to express what they had seen. Or if they would even try.
In the end, dinner had been drink-fuelled and noisy, her charges letting off steam in a boisterous manner that seemed to verge on hysteria.We just want to celebrate life, Connie thought, but was glad to reach the quiet of her room when the meal was finally over.
She took off her make-up and slipped into the light blue voluminous T-shirt she slept in on tour, took off her watch, plugged in her phone and sank beneath the soft hotel duvet with a sigh of relief. She felt properly warm for the first time that day. England, still on daylight saving, was currently two hours behind Poland, so this might have been the time to ring Devan, to share some of the horror that still clung to her, like a scab, with someone she knew would sympathize.
But, these days, she was so unsure of the reception she might receive that she couldn’t face calling. The last thing she needed right now was to talk to a husband who was either drunk or remote – or both.
She lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. The bedside light was still on, but she didn’t want to be in the dark yet, the images from the day still rolling silently round her head. She must have dropped off, though, because she wasn’t totally sure if she heard the knock on her door, or whether it was in a dream.
Groaning silently, she stumbled out of bed to check.A passenger who can’t undo his toothpaste, she thought, irritable at being woken.
‘Who is it?’ she asked through the door.
‘Me,’ said a voice she instantly recognized.
11
Connie, still clutching the door handle, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe.
The voice again, more cautious this time: ‘Connie?’
