Touching the Wire Read Online Free PDF

you
can find a drier blanket.’
    ‘Vis…
Wasser…’ Weak pleas followed him. These faces and voices would haunt him to his
death.
    ‘There is no
clean water. I’m sorry.’
    Already
women formed into weary rows outside the infirmary doors, shoes in hand, inured
to the humiliation of nakedness that showed protruding ribs and hip bones,
sores, raw feet and sagging, fleshless breasts: inured to endless waiting in
all weathers. They needed treatment, though what with… no bandages, ten aspirin
for more than a thousand patients… and today he couldn’t admit them: they were
safer in their barracks.
    The
inspection began half an hour before midday.

Chapter
Four
     
    The portable radio in Walt’s workshop played a
jaunty tune: fiddles set his feet tapping. He could almost see the colours,
whirling with the joy of life. Violins and accordions chased lilting melodies
through death-laden air. Tumblers bounded and leapt, women and men in bright
costumes danced with wild abandon, children laughed and shouted. 
    The Roma and Sinti had begun
arriving in the early months of 1943 and many had perished from cold,
exhaustion and starvation before winter loosened its grip on the land. Now
another consignment had arrived, unaware of the fate of their predecessors. At
least this year they’d arrived in May.
    The sight of children was
like sun at midwinter, and made his blood run as cold. Most children survived
only hours, but the Roma and Sinti, being gypsies rather than Jews, had a
family camp.
    He addressed the guard at
the guard post. ‘Orders to inspect the Roma sick.’
    The guard laughed. ‘To make
sure they’re well enough to go up the chimney?’
    His heart fell. ‘They’re to
be gassed?’
    ‘So they say.’
    ‘When?
    ‘Don’t know. The fit are
being transported to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück, I heard. Hard labour.’
    He shrugged as casually as
he could. ‘I have my orders. I work where I’m sent.’
    The guard opened the gate,
escorted him inside and locked it behind them.
    As if by telepathy, hands on
bowstrings stilled. The dancers stopped, and the pyramid of tumblers
disintegrated as its members somersaulted gracefully to the ground. Women in
bright rags that sported black triangles, brown faces wrinkled like store apples
kept too long, stared at him with suspicion. Men followed his progress with
defensive eyes. A small, pinched face peeped from behind a full skirt. His
mother pushed the child from view.
    Ahead of him the sick stood
silent, waiting. The infirmary was like others in the camp, a low wooden
barrack crammed with bunks, three-high. Here, the low brick flue that ran the
length of the floor from the stove, acted as beds, seats, stage, treatment
table, food preparation area, office and general thoroughfare: a stepping stone
across the open sewer that was the floor. One prisoner-doctor, a Jewish woman
from Berlin, had contracted typhus here.
    The morning’s sick presented
the usual array of problems: lice, sores, wounds, and the rare water-cancer,
the noma of the mouth, particular to this group of people. He treated them with
what he had. No fresh supplies had been sent. Could it be the guard was right?
He sighed beneath his breath. He couldn’t save these people.
    Next he visited the
children’s block, closing his ears to the sounds from Block 32, opposite. A
woman pushed forward a child of about five years from behind her skirt.
‘Diarrhoea, doctor.’
    The thin but defiant face
looked up at him: the child’s eyes were different colours.
    He smiled. ‘Do you have a
name?’
    The boy shook his head and
held out a tattooed forearm.
    ‘Has he been drinking
contaminated water?’
    ‘He’s always thirsty… ’
    ‘He must only drink the tea
or coffee.’
    ‘There is never enough.’
Another child, the image of the first, was thrust forward.  ‘Arturas has
diarrhoea, too.’
    His pulse quickened: zwillinge .
‘They’re twins?’ Had they been missed at selection? They were mere yards