The Red Ribbon Read online

  “If . . . when they come for me, look after my rose, will you?”

  I looked at the stunted little bush sticking out of the veggie patch — more thorns than blooms. When it was warm he’d picked aphids off it by hand. Now that there were frosts in the morning, he’d wrapped the stems with straw to keep them snug.

  I wasn’t much into gardening. Still, there was something about the way Tortoise loved that patch of soil, despite all the gray ash that rained over Birchwood. I suppose he was nurturing his own bud of hope. I thought of Grandad, and how much he’d hate to leave everything he knew and loved.

  Grandad had his own little habits, such as making me paper boats from cigarette papers, or humming a few warning notes when coming through a door, or swinging his walking stick just so every second step he took along the pavement. Surely they couldn’t put him on a List? What had he ever done to anyone, except bore them pantsless going on about horse-racing results?

  I nodded to Tortoise.

  “I will. I promise.”

  Two days later the gardener was plucked out of line at roll call. His number was on the worst List of all: people surplus to requirements. We weren’t there — the men had their roll call in an entirely different part of camp from the women. Even so, I could imagine him shuffling along like a tortoise, prodded by guards with their rifle butts.

  When I told Rose, she ran out of the Washery and straight to the little garden, where she promptly pulled every single rose bloom off the branches, scattering the petals into the ashy wind.

  “I hate Them! Hate Them! Hate Them! They don’t deserve to have any beauty!” she cried savagely. If she hadn’t been crippled by a sudden attack of coughing, she might have ripped that bush up by the roots.

  I hustled her away before any guards came. It was only later, in the prickling straw of the barrack bunk, that I realized Tortoise hadn’t just been talking about flowers when he said, Look after my rose. The human Rose was very still at my side. Too still. I touched my hand to her chest to find a heartbeat . . . and felt only ribs. In a panic, I leaned closer. I was rewarded with a wisp of breath on my cheek. A rose asleep in a world of thorns.

  I sighed at such a romantic image. Rose’s fairy-tale fancies were contagious.

  Indoors was warmer, which was something. It was worse in other ways, though. Hot, claustrophobic, and cripplingly hard work.

  How soon can we escape? was my sole thought as I plunged my bare arms into the scalding heat of a washtub. How soon can we escape? as I rubbed stinky socks and sweaty shirts on a washboard. How soon can we escape? while I rinsed off the stinging soap in biting cold water.

  The other Washery workers were bullies, plain and simple. They banged laundry trolleys against our bare legs. They stole our blocks of soap, kicking them around the wet stone floor like a hockey puck. Then one of them, a broad-shouldered bull of a woman, accidentally jostled me as I carried my soup-water, making it slop over the tin. She was a Birchwood veteran. One of the low numbers who’d been in the camp for several years. She was so bold she actually smoked cigarettes, instead of using them for barter.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d had a go at me. I felt warm liquid splash on my dress and run down my leg.

  “Watch what you’re doing!” I snapped.

  “You shouldn’t get in my way,” bellowed Bull.

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” laughed Hyena, as Bear looked on.

  “I wasn’t in your way,” I shouted at Bull-woman. “You pushed me.”

  “It was an accident,” said Rose. “Here, you can share mine.”

  “It was deliberate!” I cried. “She should give me her soup.”

  Bull’s nose wrinkled. She gave a funny toss of her head, stamped her feet, then reached out and swiped Rose’s soup tin out of her hand.

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” came Hyena’s cry.

  “Now whose soup will you share?” taunted Bull.

  I was in such a fury I smashed my tin around her face, then head-butted her in the stomach. Down she went, and I kicked her for good measure. I only got away with it because she hadn’t been expecting the attack . . . and because no guards noticed. I looked around, fists clenched, to see if anyone else wanted a turn.

  They all shrank away. Hyena stopped cackling. I picked up Bull’s bowl and went to get it filled for myself.

  Rose was horrified, so I said I was sorry. I wasn’t. Not one minuscule bit. Fighting back had been glorious. Later, as I was pounding, scrubbing, swishing, squeezing, I imagined I had Hyena in my hands instead of laundry.

  We weren’t bullied anymore.

  “We do what we can to survive,” I told Rose, trying to justify my attack. “We can’t let people see us as weak.”

  She sighed. “I know. But . . . how much will you toughen up before you start being like Them?”

  “You’re comparing me to the guards? I’m nothing like Them! They signed up for this work! I got dragged off the street on my way home from school! They get decent beds and food and treats from the Department Store. I get excited if there’s a carrot top floating in my soup-water at supper! They’ve got whips and dogs and guns and gas chambers and —”

  “I didn’t mean you’re the same,” Rose interrupted. “But it does remind me of a story, you know. About mice who got guns and learned how to use them against the cats . . .”

  “Guns!” said Henrik, next time I met him. “If we could get our hands on more guns, we’d have a much better chance against the guards.”

  He and I were outside, standing close together as protection from the bitter winter winds. I was watching red ribbons of fire lighting the sky above the chimneys. I’d given up pretending those chimneys didn’t exist. When guards threatened to “send you to the gas” for the slightest minor misdemeanor, it was pointless to pretend I wasn’t living in a world where people were poisoned then burned by the thousands. By the tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands maybe.

  Henrik sensed my mood. He put his arm around my bony shoulders. I said I hoped the War would be over soon.

  “Hope!” He spat the word out. “It’s not hope we need, Ella, you fluff-ball. It’s action — proof we’re not victims, that we won’t go quietly to our fate, like sheep to the slaughter! Something’s planned soon . . . you’ll see. An uprising! Us against Them! Glory and liberty!”

  I reported this back to Rose. “Glory and liberty, Rose! An uprising!”

  Rose sniffed — runny nose or disapproval? “Heroism’s all well and good until guts are spilled. What use is a flag or fancy words when you’re a good-looking corpse?”

  “Henrik’s not afraid. He’s brave.”

  “Are courage and desperation enough against machine guns?”

  “Better than doing nothing at all,” I snapped. “Telling stories about what we’ll be after the War, stories that can’t ever come true if we don’t survive this place!”

  Rose shivered. “You’re right,” she said quietly, too tired, it seemed, to fight.

  When the uprising started, we were both up to our elbows in soap suds and greasy clothes. A great BOOM shook Birchwood. We steadied ourselves against the washtubs in shock.

  “What was that?” we all asked, but no one could answer. Bear stomped off to find out more. Next we heard machine-gun fire and pistol shots. Dogs were going crazy. My heart beat faster than a speeding train. Was this it? Was this the glory and liberty Henrik had been on about? I waited for him to come bursting into the Washery, with some flag waving behind him and a brass band playing marching music. That’s how it would be in a film.

  The reality?

  It was an uprising by the work gangs over by the gas chambers — that much was true — but a failed one. Shrew reported rumors of explosives smuggled into Birchwood to blow up the gas chambers. Stripeys turning on guards. Guards gunning down Stripeys. By nightfall the rebellion was quashed. Dead. Before long all but one of the chimneys of Birchwood were smoking again and a gray ash blew over us all.

  I felt twisted inside, worryin
g that Henrik had been caught up in it.

  Then, relief. I received a smuggled note at the Washery.

  Our time will come soon. Wash and wait X

  It wouldn’t be soon enough for Rose. From the corner of my eye I saw her struggling to heave wet clothes from her tub. She had one shirt gripped in the giant wooden laundry tongs . . . and couldn’t lift it. She caught a sock, and she still couldn’t lift it. Before I could reach her she was flat on the floor, as limp as the wet sock beside her.

  “Rose . . . Rosalind, it’s me, Ella.”

  I leaned over the bed and smoothed little strands of hair from her brow.

  “Shh, don’t try and talk yet,” I murmured.

  Her breath rasped. “Ella.” That’s all she managed. Her eyes turned from side to side then widened in horror.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Rose, I had to bring you here. You were unconscious for hours, then delirious and feverish. I hid you at the barrack block for two days. Girder said you might be contagious. There was nothing else to do.”

  A gasp turned into a cough. Her whole body shook. I held her close — a precious bundle of bones. It was awful to be so helpless. Harder still was the horror the Hospital inspired in me. How could anyone possibly live in this place, let alone recover from illness or injuries? It was more like a morgue than a hospital. Everyone was squished into rotten tiered bunks like stinking sardines in a tin. No toilets. No bedpans. Stripeys with nurses’ armbands checked who was still breathing and who could be hauled out to make room for new arrivals.

  “Here, I brought breakfast.” I hadn’t seen any sign of food in the Hospital block. Most of the so-called patients were too ill to feed themselves, even if there had been enough staff to dole food out . . . or enough food to sustain life. The only nurse who’d come close was a waddling duck of a woman with a grubby apron over her prison stripes. Her job seemed to consist of writing patients’ numbers on a List. So far Rose’s number wasn’t on it.

  I’d already begged this Nurse Duck to treat Rose’s fever. She’d just looked at me as if to say, What with?

  “This place, it’s just for a day or two,” I reassured Rose. “Till you’re better and Girder says you can come back to the barrack block, and Bear says you can work at the Washery again. Here — do you think you can eat a bit? There’s bread, margarine, and this!”

  With a flourish I produced a wizened apple — a princely gift from Henrik.

  Rose stared at it as if she’d forgotten what an apple was. Then she smiled a weak smile. “Did I ever tell you about the time —?”

  “No stories, idiot! Save your strength.”

  Rose took the apple and sniffed in its scent. “It reminds me of a tree,” she said. “In the City of Light . . . the park . . . an apple tree. Just one — branches spilling blossoms everywhere in spring.”

  She spread her fingers and I almost saw those blossom petals fall.

  “If anything happens . . .” she continued.

  “Nothing’s going to happen!”

  “If anything happens, we’ll meet there, at the park, under the tree, the same day we met at the sewing room.”

  I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. “We’ll go together, Rose, you and me.”

  She nodded, but that set off a spasm of coughs again. When she finally caught her breath, her face was glistening with sweat.

  I’d no idea how she even knew the date we were sent to the Upper Tailoring Studio. The last calendar date I remembered was the last day I came home from school. But Rose remembered, and made me repeat to her the date we’d meet at that park, at that tree.

  “You won’t forget? You’ll be there?” she wheezed.

  “We’ll both be there.”

  “Of course we will. But if we get separated, go to the tree and wait for me. Remember — we’ll tie the red ribbon to a branch to celebrate meeting again. Promise me we’ll meet at the tree, Ella. On that day. Promise . . .”

  “I promise.”

  Rose sank down into my arms. Her eyes closed. I felt her cheeks — so hot! How gray she looked in the dim light of the Hospital, my little Squirrel.

  “I have to go now, Rose. Try to eat.”

  “I will,” she whispered. “I’m just not so hungry right now. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

  “Get stronger.”

  Rose nodded weakly, then turned away.

  I wanted to wail and throw things and run at the barbed-wire barrier in a rage. Instead I had to think of a way to get medicine in a world where one aspirin was more precious than a nugget of gold.

  “You again!”

  I stood in the doorway of the sewing workshop. It was all painfully familiar, although not quite as buzzing as I remembered. Francine, Shona, Brigid, and others smiled hello. They mouthed, Hey, Ella, how are you? How’s Rose? I tried not to look at Betty, my grandma’s sewing machine, but there it was, at my old table, with some other Stripey using it. Another woman was at Rose’s old spot too, ironing. How quickly we’d been replaced.

  My fingers twitched to be handling fabric again. I was getting normal movement back in my injured hand. I could hold a spoonful of soup-water without spilling it. I could probably manage Betty with practice.

  “The answer’s no,” came Marta’s voice.

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!”

  “And still the answer’s no.”

  I kept my temper. Since that one short note — Wash and wait — I’d had no word from Henrik, so Marta was my next best hope. Which meant pretending to be humble. I had the red ribbon hidden in one hand. I clutched it for courage.

  “Please — listen. It’s not for me, it’s for Rose. She’s sick.”

  “Then she should be in the Hospital.”

  “She is.”

  That made Marta pause. Just saying the word Hospital had that effect in Birchwood. Usually only lost causes went to the Hospital.

  “Then there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Of course there is, if you wanted to! You’re a prominent. You send Shona to shop at the Department Store almost every day. I’ve seen that place — I know they’ll have something to help with Rose’s fever, or vitamins at least . . . food with more goodness than the watery junk we all get.”

  “So what if I could help? Why should I?”

  I looked her square in the eyes. “Because you’re a human being, the same as the rest of us. I know about your sister Lila, how you saved her.”

  Marta’s eyes blazed. “Shut up! Shut up! You know nothing!”

  Marta grabbed my arm and pulled me next door into the empty fitting room. The thud when I was shoved against the wall made the bobbles on the lampshade tremble. The tin fell from her pocket and scattered pins everywhere. Neither of us moved to pick them up.

  “Don’t ever mention my sister again, you understand?”

  “But it was a good thing you did —”

  “Good? I ended up in here. What’s good about that? What else did you hear about me?”

  “Nothing. Just the sacrifice you made to keep her safe.”

  Marta’s grip on me tightened. “So you don’t know about how I went to the fashion house where I worked — one of the very best places, it was — to ask for advance payment on my wages. Just enough to pay to get my family hidden away safely. These people who’d known me for five years, who’d watched me work my fingers to the bone for them six or seven days a week — late nights, no overtime, since I was a thirteen-year-old apprentice — these people looked down their noses at me and said, We can’t possibly do that. And I know what they were thinking: that I must be tainted if my family was at risk of being deported.”

  “That’s —”

  “Shut up!”

  Marta let go of me. She paced up and down the fitting-room floor, like a shark that can never stop swimming.

  “The next day,” she said, in a low furious voice, “the very next day I received formal notice that I was being sacked. Because way back somewhere in my family history there’s someone
of the wrong ancestry. So, yes, I said I’d go in my sister’s place to some so-called work camp. I was stronger, right? Fitter for work. That seemed to suit the authorities. Next stop — Birchwood. Two weeks later They put my sister on a new List anyway. And not just Lila. Her children, her husband, our parents, our aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws — everyone, smoke and ashes. Much good my noble sacrifice was. I’m the only one still alive now, so don’t talk to me about good. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll follow my example and forget about anything to do with family or friends. The only thing that matters is to survive. I’ll tell you this, little schoolgirl — I’m going out of this place on my own two feet, not up one of those chimneys!”

  Marta finally stopped pacing. She was breathing heavily. Was this a good time to smash the lamp over her head?

  I rubbed my bruised arm. “It stinks, how you were treated.”

  “Damn right it stinks.”

  “So why treat other people the same way?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Nothing more inhuman than a human being. Not just the rulers and politicians . . . all the selfish evil of everyday people, too. Isn’t this place proof enough?” She swept her arms out to include the whole of the Birchwood universe.

  What would Rose say?

  Something nice.

  “It’s also human nature to help, Marta. To sacrifice.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not going to sacrifice any more of my precious time helping you. Get out.”

  We stared at each other for the longest time, in mutual hatred. Then I shrugged.

  “You know something, Marta? I feel sorry for you.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You feel sorry for me? I’m an important person here! You’re, what, working in the Washery? How dare you feel sorry for me?”

  I turned away in disgust.

  Marta wasn’t finished. “Come back here when I’m talking to you! Come here!”

  I walked out. I might have knocked over the lamp as I left. The sound of it smashing gave me a savage burst of satisfaction. But even as the lamp broke and the door slammed shut, I turned the anger against myself — how could all my noble talk possibly persuade Marta when I wasn’t even convinced myself?