‘Erna’s son was at Hadamar,’ Marta said quietly, and smiles fell diplomatically from faces. Nobody said anything and Marta feared she had overstepped herself while wiping rain from her brow. It wasn’t her story to tell.

  ‘Horst, my son, died at Hadamar,’ Erna said with an odd brightness before smiling at Marta in one of the kindest gestures Marta could recall. Nobody said anything as the rain and wind continued to slap the group in the face with its weight. Rain drops ran down the ends of everyone’s noses. Hans checked behind him with a smirk, knowing his wife hated the elements, pulling his hat down over his head to fix it more securely, while Father Maier walked unprotected without a hat or a coat. He looked drowned and more foolish than any of them had seen him before.

  Mrs Beck gave in to her habit and pulled a cigarette from her case in her handbag. She immediately failed and then failed again to light it during the downpour. Marta and Mrs Kohler noticed, and couldn’t help but share a smile, conspiratorial schoolgirls once more. Mrs Beck then realised. She looked across at the two of them and, for the briefest moment, Marta thought it was going to end badly before the three of them erupted into loud laughter. Hans and Father Maier cast a look back, over their shoulders.

  Mrs Beck, at the heart of the trio, then locked arms with Mrs Kohler, flanking her to one side and Marta to her other. The warmth of each of them was welcome against the wet and even if only for a second, the small act represented something greater.

  ‘I’ve never liked a man in a moustache,’ Mrs Beck said, with the beginnings of a smile, raising her head high in spite of the rain, refusing to relent. A final look of confirmation between the three of them before laughter, more natural now, warmed each of them, including Hans and Father Maier, steadfastly out front and leading the walking party. Then, a small wonder, magical in every way the world could still be. A gang of women, five or six, almost too many to count, stood waiting for them outside the local school gates. They approached and, amid knowing nods and murmurs of greetings and hellos, they joined them on their walk, now fast reaching the city’s final outskirts. Soon, open fields before Hadamar itself. Father Maier resumed the lead at the head of the pack, and he deliberately looked around, walking backwards briefly and completing a full circle, smiling. He clasped his hands together.

  Have faith, he reminded himself, looking forward once more and bringing his head up to the heavens.

  48

  A black car, National Socialist flags in miniature fluttering on the bonnet, drove up to Hadamar hospital’s grand entrance with a hum. The two soldiers on duty outside the institution’s front looked uncertain.

  ‘I am here on the wishes of Reichsführer Himmler,’ the SS officer said, without looking up as he exited the vehicle, his driver holding the door open for him. The young soldiers said nothing.

  A sharp knock at Devil No.1’s office door.

  ‘Enter,’ Hadamar’s chief doctor said, lost in paperwork at his desk.

  ‘Dr Vogel… Heil Hitler,’ a man said, entering the space and casually performing the ubiquitous salute with a seasoned flip of his wrist. He carefully removed his officer’s hat as Devil No.1 rose to his feet, surprised. The Party had not informed him of an official visit. The man before him swept his hair over to one side in a rehearsed movement. He rested his hat underneath one arm. The doctor could not read him.

  ‘Can I offer you a drink, Officer?’ Devil No.1 said, walking from his desk to a drinks cabinet, too large, the officer noted, for an office this size.

  The doctor had his back to the room’s window, which overlooked flat, green grounds. He was unsure if he was about to be congratulated or condemned.

  ‘SS Officer Kramer. I am here this morning on behalf of SS Reichsführer Himmler,’ he said, eyes cast aside slightly, like he was evading someone invisible in the room. ‘I don’t drink on duty,’ he interjected, and the doctor withdrew his hand holding out a generous glass of schnapps.

  Devil No.1 shrugged mentally and proceeded to pour himself a drink, looking out of his office window and finding his eyeline drawn to a tree branch, at the end of its influence. He savoured the taste of alcohol momentarily.

  ‘How can I help?’ he said.

  ‘I have a letter to deliver, personally from Reichsführer Himmler,’ the officer said, revealing and holding up a white envelope. ‘It details how you will terminate all activity here at Hadamar, liquidate all evidence of what has been done here. All evidence. There will be nothing for anyone to discover.’

  The doctor failed to absorb what he was being told. He could not prevent his head scrambling vainly to calculate whether this was good or bad for him. The officer remained silent, not wishing to say anything further, instead observing as the doctor drained his schnapps and proceeded to light a cigarette. He did offer his guest one.

  The superior officer mentally summarised what he had found here: a drunk practising medicine, in the loosest terms, on cripples. His mind was soon filled with desire to leave, return to Berlin and prepare for meetings he had later today.

  ‘Reichsführer Himmler was not happy when I left him last night,’ the officer spoke.

  Devil No.1 inhaled the last of his cigarette hurriedly and retreated to the chair behind his desk.

  ‘All the details are here,’ the officer said, placing the envelope down on the desk so the doctor had to reach to retrieve it. ‘They are quite… simple,’ he said, allowing the last word to hang on his lips like an unsolicited kiss. The officer turned his back on the doctor and surveyed himself the view from the office window. He continued, ‘There was an incident. A Sunday. A local priest led a small march to this… your hospital,’ the officer said like a surgeon taking pride in making so few incisions on a patient. ‘News has spread,’ the officer said, choosing to fix his hat back smartly on his head. ‘You understand?’

  Devil No.1 rose to his feet, quiet fury creeping up his face but with no outlet here. He began fixing himself a second drink. Paperwork could wait. He knew the day was already a write-off.

  ‘It was a minor incident,’ the doctor then said, keeping his back to the officer. ‘My guards informed me it was no more than ten people.’

  ‘My’ guards, the officer’s imagination complained. But what else had he expected to find here? It was not a question.

  ‘It does not matter,’ the officer said. ‘If those ten people each tell ten others, and they then… you understand,’ he said once more, drawing the debate to a close like he was cleaning his knife of blood, ready for the next operation. In the pause, the two of them made eye contact for the first time. The doctor was first to pull his gaze, turning away and blinking rapidly, like when he was anxious as a boy.

  49

  Alfred stood in his usual spot, at the fence bordering Hadamar’s grounds. He lifted his head slowly following his constant prayer, asking God for Meike to be here. He looked up and he opened his eyes, scanning the grounds and patients out today greedily. Meike wasn’t among them and his head, like his spirits, immediately dropped. Alfred stomached the disappointment, breathing through his nose and looking up, taking in the universally grey sky, so monotone and unfeeling, like there could be nothing magical like the moon or the stars beyond.

  It was Friday and normally, at the end of the week, he would hurry home after the day’s final lesson, but something in him couldn’t face doing so today. His pull towards Meike was like the tide and yet, in his heart, she only felt further away from him, drifting out in the ocean somewhere.

  Alfred gripped the wire with renewed frustration. He tilted his head up and he breathed. He looked ahead once more, and his eyes were quickly drawn to a tall girl he did not overly recognise from the usual suspects he spotted each day. She was thin like a rake and pushing a fellow patient in a wheelchair, but it was not Meike. He sighed. His mother would be beginning to wonder where he was. Eight. Nine. Nearly there. Ten. Then chaos.

  The thud of a vehicle in the distance, buffeting angrily over the potted road which led up to the hospital front. It sounded like a large vehicle. Alfred raced towards the noise like a hare, drawn increasingly to the chatter of teenagers. He ran and his senses were greeted by the sound of adult authority ordering the group loudly off the bus. It was a bus. A bus. He hadn’t seen one since the day he had first had the idea.

  The easiest way into Hadamar was not through some hole in the fence, of a neglected corner of the hospital grounds. It was right through the front door.

  50

  Alfred pulled the slack of his satchel tight on his back. He had water and a chunk of chocolate he was saving for the journey back home. Through the mess of bodies congregating outside Hadamar, he safely navigated his way to the blind side of the bus, opposite to where its cargo of teenagers were still being unloaded by soldiers. He stood there gasping for a moment. The soldiers’ voices were close, frighteningly close. Alfred tried to collect himself. He couldn’t believe how brave he was being. Or stupid. Fear deafened his senses from every angle.

  Suddenly, he felt himself being heaved up off his feet by a granite-like grip, which had lassoed hold of his satchel on his back and was manhandling him, at the back of a growing line of other teenagers now entering the building. No way out now. Eight. Nine. Nearly there.

  Alfred was then surprised again, this time by himself. Standing claustrophobically in line and being buffeted by other teenagers, either stony silent or excitedly loud, he began to quietly cry, tears creeping down his cheeks like the first crack in a dam. He coughed up increasing releases of emotion. He felt small, glancing up the flight of stairs, underlining Hadamar’s portentous doors.

  ‘Quickly, quickly!’ a soldier shouted and a boy in front of Alfred, who he thought did not look disabled, received a jolt in his back, jarring him forward. Alfred did not understand. Why wasn’t there a rich gallery of life limping ahead, aided by an array of wonderful contraptions? But nothing. Just youngsters. Like him, scared, uncertain and cowering if a soldier raised a hand or a rifle to them. Alfred’s instincts were on acute alert. Eight. Nine. Nearly there. Ten. Then chaos.

  ‘Quickly!’ a soldier boomed in Alfred’s ear, causing him to shrink a little closer to the earth. ‘Quickly… idiot!’ the voice elongated with relish and the line of teenagers lurched forward until it was Alfred’s turn to climb the first concrete step leading up to the doors of the hospital itself. Amid the maelstrom, encircling his senses like wolves, Alfred forgot how to put one foot in front of the other, his right foot snagging the first step and stumbling his frame forward and knocking the boy in front of him. Alfred felt a thick slap across the back of his head which immediately began to throb.

  ‘Idiot!’ a voice yelled and Alfred feared he might cry again, but, to his relief, he didn’t. He managed to move his feet up the flight of steps and he was only a few feet from the entrance. He would be inside. He prayed he’d made the right decision.

  Once a few feet inside, Alfred could see up ahead, towards the front of the queue of teenagers patiently in line. A nurse checked someone’s hair before funnelling them forward with an unforgiving start and a final stumble into the real belly of the building. Alfred watched another nurse walking up and down the line of teenagers, surveying them. She’s the only nurse not carrying a clipboard, Alfred tried to mentally note, despite a thumping heart in his chest.

  ‘Good afternoon and welcome to Hadamar,’ the nurse began, turning around each time she reached the end of the line, only to walk hypnotically back up it. ‘Where you will remain for the rest of the war. Today, you are useless… worthless to the Reich. It is our job here to discover which of you may be worthy and in future, be able to contribute to society.’

  Alfred successfully began to slow his breathing, as he focused on the nurse’s welcome message. The corridor where they stood didn’t look to Alfred like a hospital corridor. He did not know what to make of that, but his instincts were telling him loudly that he only had himself to rely upon now. Alfred’s focus switched, with a turn of his head, to a girl crying behind him in line. He could only catch her face fleetingly. He dare not look around fully. The girl’s crying became worse, and Alfred was worried of the repercussions, for her and them all.

  The lead nurse stopped pacing up and down the line, and she stood alongside the crying girl, half a step behind so she was not quite parallel.

  ‘Could I get your parents?’ the nurse asked the girl. ‘Your father, perhaps? Or mother? Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ the girl sobbed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘They… are… not… coming,’ the nurse whispered in her ear before turning her voice back up to full volume. ‘Your parents consented to you coming here. They don’t want you as you are,’ the nurse said and the girl stopped crying.

  Nobody made a sound as they all slowly shuffled forward, in readiness for waiting nurses to roughly check their hair for lice, Alfred saw, tilting his head to gain a view of what was happening, what he was about to face. Afterwards, he noticed each teenager was handed a bar of soap and a white towel. They were asked to strip to their underwear and to form a new line hugging the corridor’s opposite wall. Boys and girls were present.

  A snigger. Met with a slap across the back of a head, silencing it and any seditious thoughts of adding to it. Eyes dropped forward staring at bare feet. Alfred was still waiting for his hair to be checked, stood on wooden floorboards, liable to creak underfoot like landmines. Anyone unfortunate enough to set one off was met with a clipboard thumping the back of their head. More of the youngsters were stifling quiet sobs now.

  A nurse startled Alfred and began coarsely checking through the hair of the boy in front of him, like he was subversively hiding something up there. Alfred could only listen in stereo to aggressive jabs of the nurse’s hands and fingers, alongside helpless complaints from the boy. Any resistance was followed by a sharp slap and Alfred braced himself to remain absolutely still when it was his turn. It soon was.

  The nurse’s hands yanked rudely his head this way and that, abruptly tilting it. Alfred felt his neck jar under the shocks of movement. He closed his eyes and began to try to separate his body from his mind. It felt weird in the darkness, experiencing the assault to his hair in almost complete submission. Time began to shift to a new rhythm and Alfred succeeded in not making a sound. The ordeal was over. Eight. Nine. Nearly there. From the nurse, Alfred accepted a bar of soap like cold clay and a fresh towel. He could feel his mind revolting against the circumstance. The longer Alfred spent here, the closer he came to danger. His mind fought an urge to turn and run, run like the wind out of this place, out of here, and to never look back. But he couldn’t. Alfred didn’t.

  He had come here for Meike. She was here and she had been here for weeks now. What had she suffered during all that time? Alfred’s imagination could not answer, but he was appreciating it can’t have been good. She needed his help. She needed him. He just needed to find her. Eight. Nine. Nearly there. Ten.

  Then chaos.

  51

  Pinching, pulling, pushing, Alfred felt each assault of his limbs intimately. A nurse was grabbing his arms and roughly removing his school shirt. A shirt button pinged to the floor and Alfred heard it dance on the wood floor below. Alfred tried once more to remove his mind from the situation, but being undressed by an adult woman was more disturbing, more difficult. Alfred found his mind giving in and he watched her fail to make eye contact with him like he was subhuman. She slapped him crassly on the back of his head and he attempted to cease all struggle in each of his limbs. His head stung. He was a teenage boy, and this was a grown woman. The distaste in his mouth curdled like off milk.

  Alfred surprised himself at how immediately hardened he was becoming to this process, whatever it was. Had this hardness been hidden in him all his life? He glanced down, amid the tornado in miniature enveloping him, and he kneaded wooden floorboards with his bare feet and toes. The sharpness of his senses was like pins. Eight. Nine. Nearly there.

  All the new patients stood in line, stripped of their previous selves and semi-naked in only underwear, quietly holding soap and a towel. Their heads were submissively lowered, eyes fixed downcast on the heels of the person in front. Everyone’s skin was breaking out into red rages from where the nurses had clawed them. Most were past crying. Alfred realised how cold he was, running a finger over large goose bumps populating his naked arms and legs. He tried to hold himself in to stay warm, but it wasn’t really helping. He was too exposed. They all were. A girl with auburn hair stood in front of Alfred in the line and she was breaking the tacit silence, weeping openly. Alfred turned his head and looked out the corner of his eyes. He could not see a nurse nearby. They had been left alone briefly.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, placing a hand like a butterfly on the girl’s cold arm in front. She jumped at his touch and span her head around before realising it was benign. Alfred had always had a kind face. She tried to smile back, but the experience was overwhelming. Alfred smiled sadly and he knew it best to leave her be and let her deal with what was happening in her own way. If the roles had been reversed, that’s what Alfred would have wanted, wondering what lay waiting for them. Eight. Nine. Nearly there.

  52

  The fresh intake of patients was walking into a dressing room of sorts, filled with wooden benches. The floor was frozen like ice, forcing Alfred and the others to pick their feet up like they were dancing on hot potatoes.

  ‘Remove your underwear,’ a nurse said, and she was instantly met with paralysed refusal from every teenager. The group had still not been split by sex. Teenage glances crisscrossed the group. Making the first move seemed unthinkable.

 

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