pulled over so it is in front of the big window, and I was writing with not a stitch on. I did have that incredible silk bedspread thing wrapped round me, but it slipped right off when I turned around to see who had come in.
Oh God, we were both SO EMBARRASSED. I look like a corpse. The Red Cross did a good job of delousing me and getting the scabies under control, but you can still see the rash all over my breasts and arms, and if those scales and Bob Ernst’s metric conversion are right, I have lost forty-five pounds in the last seven months. (Amazing, because I am still heavier than Irina, who is taller than me. But she was there longer.) I saw myself in the mirror over the dresser when I was taking my clothes off yesterday, and I am so horrible I had to cover the stupid mirror with a sheet so I don’t scare myself by accident.
‘Come back! Come back!’ I mewed pathetically after the chambermaid as she backed out – I got the right word in French, but used the familiar form by accident because we did all winter (‘
Reviens!
’) – trying to pull the bedspread up and to remember how to say ‘Don’t go’ politely. She left anyway, shutting the door softly behind her, and I put my head down on the table and cried. I am
so lonely.
I should get dressed and go back to the Embassy and see if I can find some way to get back to the Swedish Red Cross people. But I don’t even know their unit name or number or where they were headed next. ‘Sweden’ is not very specific.
The chambermaid came back ten minutes later with coffee and rolls for me on a silver tray. Real coffee. She plunked it down on the vanity table and told me her name and rushed away to make the bed.
Her name is Fernande. She doesn’t speak English. She is busy with the bed now – she has even brought up a new spread so I can stay wrapped in this one. She hasn’t started on the bathroom and
that
will take her some time, because the one thing I did do last night was take a two-hour bath in that gigantic tub. The only reason I didn’t make it last longer is because they shut the hot water off at 9 p.m. I am going to write as fast as I can while she’s here. I’ve been putting off remembering what that night on the ground was like, and I don’t want to think about it when I’m by myself.
They let me use the pilots’ restroom at Neubrandenburg also, but they took away all my pilot’s gear except my flight bag. Womelsdorff turned me over to a grouchy mechanic who took me on the back of his motorbike to this so-called women’s prison. There
is
a women’s prison camp outside Neubrandenburg – it is one of the Ravensbrück satellite camps. But you were supposed to be processed through the main camp first. I was in the wrong place, I wasn’t on their radar, and they didn’t know what to do with me when the mechanic turned me over to them.
I remember standing uncomfortably in a drab office somewhere, standing very straight and trying to look more official than I felt – I’d even slapped my uniform cap back on when I handed them my papers. They passed my papers around and argued for half an hour while I just stood there waiting. Then, as it was getting dark, they took me outside at gunpoint and locked me in the back of an empty armoured truck. I had no idea I was in the wrong place – I had no idea why they’d put me in the truck (for a few horrible minutes I thought they were just going to shoot me right there). I didn’t understand anything anyone said. I know
now
what was going on – I know that the truck was just an empty transport and was returning to Ravensbrück the next day for another load of prisoners, and that they were going to drop me off before loading up again.
But that night –
Oh God, that truck smelled
so horrible.
If there is a smell that goes with fear and despair, it is like that – sweat and dirty underpants and pee. I was already retching as they slammed the doors shut on me, and for a long time I just stood in
Oh God, we were both SO EMBARRASSED. I look like a corpse. The Red Cross did a good job of delousing me and getting the scabies under control, but you can still see the rash all over my breasts and arms, and if those scales and Bob Ernst’s metric conversion are right, I have lost forty-five pounds in the last seven months. (Amazing, because I am still heavier than Irina, who is taller than me. But she was there longer.) I saw myself in the mirror over the dresser when I was taking my clothes off yesterday, and I am so horrible I had to cover the stupid mirror with a sheet so I don’t scare myself by accident.
‘Come back! Come back!’ I mewed pathetically after the chambermaid as she backed out – I got the right word in French, but used the familiar form by accident because we did all winter (‘
Reviens!
’) – trying to pull the bedspread up and to remember how to say ‘Don’t go’ politely. She left anyway, shutting the door softly behind her, and I put my head down on the table and cried. I am
so lonely.
I should get dressed and go back to the Embassy and see if I can find some way to get back to the Swedish Red Cross people. But I don’t even know their unit name or number or where they were headed next. ‘Sweden’ is not very specific.
The chambermaid came back ten minutes later with coffee and rolls for me on a silver tray. Real coffee. She plunked it down on the vanity table and told me her name and rushed away to make the bed.
Her name is Fernande. She doesn’t speak English. She is busy with the bed now – she has even brought up a new spread so I can stay wrapped in this one. She hasn’t started on the bathroom and
that
will take her some time, because the one thing I did do last night was take a two-hour bath in that gigantic tub. The only reason I didn’t make it last longer is because they shut the hot water off at 9 p.m. I am going to write as fast as I can while she’s here. I’ve been putting off remembering what that night on the ground was like, and I don’t want to think about it when I’m by myself.
They let me use the pilots’ restroom at Neubrandenburg also, but they took away all my pilot’s gear except my flight bag. Womelsdorff turned me over to a grouchy mechanic who took me on the back of his motorbike to this so-called women’s prison. There
is
a women’s prison camp outside Neubrandenburg – it is one of the Ravensbrück satellite camps. But you were supposed to be processed through the main camp first. I was in the wrong place, I wasn’t on their radar, and they didn’t know what to do with me when the mechanic turned me over to them.
I remember standing uncomfortably in a drab office somewhere, standing very straight and trying to look more official than I felt – I’d even slapped my uniform cap back on when I handed them my papers. They passed my papers around and argued for half an hour while I just stood there waiting. Then, as it was getting dark, they took me outside at gunpoint and locked me in the back of an empty armoured truck. I had no idea I was in the wrong place – I had no idea why they’d put me in the truck (for a few horrible minutes I thought they were just going to shoot me right there). I didn’t understand anything anyone said. I know
now
what was going on – I know that the truck was just an empty transport and was returning to Ravensbrück the next day for another load of prisoners, and that they were going to drop me off before loading up again.
But that night –
Oh God, that truck smelled
so horrible.
If there is a smell that goes with fear and despair, it is like that – sweat and dirty underpants and pee. I was already retching as they slammed the doors shut on me, and for a long time I just stood in
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