It was time for Pavli to go as well. He turned and opened the door behind him, just far enough to slip through. He closed it carefully and silently behind himself, then turned and ran down the asylum’s corridors.
He had the freedom of the building. Within its walls at least, he could move about as he wished. The privilege that came with what he had attained, the niche he had clawed out for himself. The false gypsy’s advice had been right – to survive, you had to make yourself useful. To them, the guards and the other SS men, from the officers down to the lowliest rifle-toter. The least of them was more powerful now than even the most exalted Lazarene elder; they could do anything for you, from looking the other way when you walked into some restricted area of the building and its grounds, to increasing your rations. If they wanted to; if you were useful to them.
But most important of all, you had to be useful to him… to Herr Doktor Ritter. No one outranked him here; no one was more powerful, more capable of deciding your fate. Into this sealed little world, he brought the atmosphere of a darker and colder sphere beyond the fences topped with barbed wire, like a wind drifting through mountain crevasses where the sun never penetrated. Especially when Ritter came back from his weekly trips into Berlin, where he met with his colleagues in the Ahnenerbe. Working in the darkroom – or pretending to, when there was no real work to do – Pavli saw through the open doorway whenever Ritter returned, his boots shiny as black mirrors as he strode past to his office and laboratory at the end of the corridor. The next morning, the doctor’s studies would resume, and Pavli would receive his instructions about what photographs to take, what film would be used, every little detail.
Perhaps the angel of the shop window was looking out for him, guarding Pavli from whatever misstep would reveal him to be a fraud, an ignorant youth who was desperately using his few scraps of knowledge to pass himself off as someone useful. He knew it was foolish to think of her that way – he knew it was nothing more than the picture of a film actress, one who was distantly related to him by blood – but it comforted him to do so. It also explained his run of luck, that everything to which he’d turned his hand, everything that Ritter had told him to do, had meet with enough success to make the doctor nod in satisfaction. When something had finally gone wrong, a whole day’s worth of test shots turning out over-exposed and black in the darkroom trays, Ritter had scowled at the wet prints but had said nothing. Pavli’s gut had crawled with apprehension, as he’d expected any moment to be sent back to the dormitory with the others, while Ritter sent for a real photographer to be sent to the asylum. But nothing like that happened; they all had carried on as before, with nothing but a sharp comment from Ritter the next day, for him to avoid wasting the Reich’s precious technical resources.
He turned a corner and saw the Scharfuhrer waiting for him outside the door to the darkroom. The resolve to be more careful tightened inside him. It would never do for him to keep anyone waiting, anyone who could put a boot on his throat.
The Scharfuhrer was all smiles. “Do you have it ready?” He even gave a pleasant nod of his head as Pavli approached.
“Yes… yes, of course.” Pavli opened the darkroom, switching on the light as the other man followed him inside. “Here it is.” He took a flat square parcel from a hiding place behind the ranks of the dark-brown bottles of developing chemicals and handed it over.
“Ah. Wonderful.” The Scharfuhrer had on his finely tailored dress uniform, the one in which he traveled to the city, to visit both his wife and his mistress. He set his peaked cap, with its skull-and-crossbones emblem above the visor, down on the workbench and unwrapped the parcel. He held up a framed photograph, admiring the image of his own face. “ Ausgezeichnet.”
Pavli had no idea which woman would receive the Scharfuhrer ’s present. That was none of his business, anyway. Enough that he had found this means of ingratiating himself with the guards. Another Lazarene, who had been a carpenter in the larger world beyond the fences, made the frames from bits of scrap, carving a grapevine pattern into the wood with a stolen penknife and staining them with a concoction of boiled leaves and pine needles. For himself, Pavli had made a rough studio, a replica of the one that had been at the rear of his uncle’s camera shop, in the storage area behind the darkroom; he had even been able to nail up a backdrop, a piece of canvas daubed with random splotches of paint. To his own eye, the results were little more than adequate, but the guards who came and posed were pleased enough with them.
“This will do very nicely.” The Scharfuhrer smiled and winked at Pavli. “I’m sure she’ll keep it right by her bedside.”
The mistress then, guessed Pavli. He said nothing, keeping himself from being lulled by the SS man’s confidences and friendly show.
“You do admirable work.” The Scharfuhrer laid a hand on Pavli’s shoulder. “Come with me. I have a small token of my appreciation.”
On the graveled drive in front of the building, the Scharfuhrer reached inside one of the staff cars, turned and bestowed a grease-stained package into Pavli’s hands. The rank smell of the sausage it held made his stomach clench with hunger.
Before he could tell the Scharfuhrer thanks, a commotion sounded from the building’s door. One of the Lazarene women, shouting and with distraught face, jerked her arm away from the female guard who had been trying to pull her back inside. The sweep of the woman’s arm knocked the guard sprawling. In a few seconds, before Pavli could react, the woman had run to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Where are they?” Her greying hair come loose from its knotted kerchief. “My babies -” Her fingers dug into Pavli’s upper arms as she forced him back against the fender of the staff car. “They won’t tell me – they say they don’t know – but you know, don’t you? Because you’re close to him, to Ritter -”
The woman had knocked the breath out of Pavli. Through the spatter of black spots in his vision, he could see the Scharfuhrer trying to break her grasp, to pull her away from him.
“Give them back to me!” The woman’s voice had turned into screaming, her head tilted back as the Scharfuhrer and another female guard dragged her along the side of the car. The first guard had regained her feet; standing in front, she leveled a backhand slap across the woman’s face. The Scharfuhrer let go of her arms, and she dropped to her knees on the gravel, the tangle of her hair falling across the angry mark reddening her cheek and jaw. Her spine bent catlike as sobbing tore from her throat.
The Scharfuhrer grabbed Pavli by the elbow and pushed him toward the asylum’s door. He twisted his neck to look back. “What’s wrong -”
“It’s none of your concern.” The Scharfuhrer ’s face was rigid with anger. “Get back to your work.” He shoved Pavli stumbling against the building’s front step, then turned and strode back to where the two female guards were hoisting the crying woman up between themselves.
The sausage that the Scharfuhrer had given Pavli, as payment for the photograph, had been dropped and trampled in the melee; the paper wrapping had come undone, its greasy contents smeared into the dirt. He didn’t care about that. When the shock had passed, he had recognized the woman, and had even known what she had been questioning him about: she was the mother of a pair of twins, nearly the youngest of all the Lazarene children who had been brought here with their parents. Toddlers, little more than a year old… but what had happened to them? Why had the woman been screaming and carrying on? There was no place in the asylum building where they could have strayed, where they wouldn’t have been found. Had someone taken them from her?
He looked up, aware of others watching him. In the windows above were the faces of the Lazarenes, the men peering out through the bars. He could just see, farther away, a few of the women held in the distant wing of the building.