Mike flushed slightly, because he knew that Mrs. Grimaldi had been married to that dwarf. He covered his embarrassment by carrying the trays out to the waiting trolley. "No, I never saw him."
"I think I did," said another voice.
Mike jumped down, not hearing the other young hand who was running water into buckets. Grimaldi turned, easing the door half closed.
"What did you say?"
The boy turned off the taps. "Day we arrived, I think it was him, I dunno, but he came in here, well, came to the steps, asked for Ruda, she was out by the cages."
Grimaldi leaned on the chopping table. "You told anyone this?"
The boy started to fill another bucket. "Nope, nobody's asked me!" He turned back to Grimaldi.
"I saw him later talking to Ruda, so I presumed she must have said he was hanging around here. Have they caught the bloke that did it, then?"
Grimaldi rubbed the boy's shoulder with his hand. "Yeah, they got the bloke, so don't open your mouth, we don't want those fuckers nosing around here any more than they need to... okay?"
The boy nodded, and Grimaldi went out. "I'll see if I can find that bloody woman."
Grimaldi walked through the alley between the cages, and then he stopped. She had lied, Kellerman had not only been to the circus, but he had talked to her! He shrugged it off; maybe she just didn't want anyone to know she had been married to him. He thought about the hat, and then his heart began to pound. He remembered seeing her in the meat trailer, the night of Kellerman's murder... she had been covered in blood, it was all over her shirt and trousers. Shit! He remembered asking why she wasn't wearing one of the rubber aprons... He stopped again, dear God, he had been so drunk that night he wouldn't have known if she was in the trailer or not!
Grimaldi ran back, slammed the door behind him, and went into Ruda's bedroom. He opened the wardrobe, searching for the shirt, trying to remember what clothes she had worn that night, but gave up, he couldn't remember. He rubbed his head. What did that little prick want to check their boots for?
The sound was half moan, half sob, but low, quiet, it unnerved him. He looked around, heard it again. He inched open the small shower door; she was naked, curled up in the corner of the shower, her arms covering her head, as if she were hiding or burying herself.
"Oh, sweetheart... baby."
He had to pry her arms away from her head, her face was stricken, terrified. She whispered, "No... please... no more, please no more... red, blue, red, red, red... blue, green..."
Grimaldi didn't know what to do, she didn't seem to recognize him, see him. Her voice was like a child's. He couldn't understand what she was saying. Some sort of list of colors, the plinths? Then he heard distinctly:
"My sister, I want my sister, my sister, please... no more..."
He took a big bath towel, gently wrapped it around her, talked quietly, softly, but she refused to move. He tucked the towel around her and closed the door. The cats needed to eat if there was to be a show, their routine had to be maintained. He went back to the trolley, and for the first time in years he fed the cats. They were very suspicious, snarling and swiping at him, but they were hungry and the food was their priority... except for Mamon.
If Grimaldi even went near the bars, Mamon went crazy. He couldn't get within arm's length of the cage to throw in the meat. Grimaldi swore and cursed him, then got a pitchfork and shoved the meat through the bars. Mamon clawed at the fork, his jaws opened in a rage of growls and he lashed out with his paws. He didn't want the meat, he never even went near it, but prowled up and down, up and down, until Grimaldi gave up trying and returned to the trailer.
She was in exactly the same position, curled up, hiding now beneath the bath towel. He knelt down, talked to her, keeping his voice low, encouraging her to come out. He was talking to her as if she were one of the cats. "Come on out, that's a good girl, good girl, give me your hand... I'm not going to hurt you, that's a good girl."
Slowly, inch by inch she moved toward him, crawling, retracting, and he kept on talking, until she allowed him to put his arms around her. Then he carried her like a baby to the bed, held her in his arms and began to rock her gently backward and forward.
"It's all right, I'm here... everything's all right, I'm here."
He wanted to weep, he had never seen her like this.
"Sister, I want my sssssister..."
She felt heavy in his arms as he continued to rock her, and then he eased the towel from her face; she was sleeping. He was afraid to put her down in case he woke her; he held her as he would the child he had always wanted, sat with her in his arms, and said it over and over.
"I love you, I love you, love you..."
Then he saw the box on her dressing table, saw beneath the old ribbon the newspaper clipping, "Angel of Death," and he whispered, "Dear God, what did they do to you? What did they do to you, my baby?"
Chapter 17
Helen arrived at Dr. Franks's apartment just as he was on his way out to see a patient. Helen asked if he could direct her to a library. He gave her a quizzical look when she told him what books she wanted to find. "My housekeeper will make you comfortable and bring you some coffee," he said. "I think you will find what you want in my library."
Helen was shown into Franks's living room. The comfortably furnished room was dominated by bookshelves. Helen moved slowly along the shelves, neatly alphabetized, until she found what she had been looking for.
Helen turned the pages slowly, sickened by what she read. At Birkenau Josef Mengele had used shortwave rays in an experiment to deter the rapidity with which cancer cells reproduced. Plates were placed on the female victims' abdomens and backs. The electricity was directed toward the ovaries, the doses were huge and the victims were seriously burned. Cancer invariably developed and subsequently the victims were sent to the gas chamber. The women suffered unspeakable agony as the shortwaves penetrated the lower abdomen. The bellies of the women and female children were then cut open, the uterus and ovaries removed to observe the lesions. Then the victims were left, with no medication or pain relief, to determine how long they would stay alive.
Mengele paid particular attention to women and young girls. His experiments purported to discover the fastest means of mass sterilization, which he would then describe in an impressive report he planned to send back to Berlin. His experiments had no apparent order, no rules. So-called gynecologists used an electrical apparatus to inject a thick whitish liquid into the victims' genital organs, causing terrible burning sensations. This injection was repeated every four weeks, and was followed each time by a radioscopy.
Sometimes the victims, selected women and young female children, were injected in the chest. The physician injected 5cc of a serum — no one has ever discovered what it contained — at the rate of two to nine injections per session. The injections caused swellings the size of a grown man's fist. Certain inmates received hundreds of these "inoculations." Children were often injected in the gums, because Mengele wanted to speed up the reaction.
The Germans experimented with sterilization in other camps too. Once victorious, they could ensure that they would never again be threatened by a new generation of an inferior race.
Typhoid swept through the camp, then malaria. When Mengele realized Greeks and Italians were the carriers, he sent thousands of them to the gas chambers on the pretext of curbing the disease.
Mengele's experiments were of no scientific value, his actions were replete with contradictions. For instance, he would take every precaution during childbirth, only to send mother and newborn infant to the gas chamber.
Helen had to stop reading, she simply could not take in any more. She checked her watch, and began to gather the books. One book she had not had time to read was a slim volume, written by an Auschwitz survivor; it chronicled the work and brutality of Josef Mengele, and Helen was about to put it back on the shelf when she saw the words "Angel of Death." The nickname had been given to Mengele, she read, because he was always charming, smiling as he sent thousands to their deaths. Mengele wore white gloves, and his uniform was specially designed by expert tailors. He was exceptionally handsome, dark-eyed with high cheekbones.