Chapter 2
The survivors of Dachau arrive the next day, and the hospital rings with the sound of the newcomers all day. It's only when night falls that a measure of peace returns. It's the nearest hospital to the camp and even though most of the soldiers in the hospital have left, it's once again very crowded, and Erik suspects that they will be soon asked to leave the cramped building and take over the tents the army left behind. He doesn't mind as much as he thought he might. The weather's warm, and at least they won't have to be so afraid of being seen together.
He had never particularly cared about the specifics of their relationship. Homosexuality was not something he'd even heard of until Charles explained it to him- the problems of living in a fairly isolated town, Erik supposed. So far the only people he'd met who he'd seen disagreeing with it were the Nazis, and since they also seemed to disagree with Erik's basic right to breathe, he was going to ignore them on both counts.
He expects it would have probably bothered him more had they met in different circumstances, but in a place where he saw people dying every day, and in which it took nothing short of a miracle to survive himself, he saw no point in trying to borrow more trouble in worrying about what was between Charles and himself.
Even though he's silent, Erik is close enough to feel Charles' sigh, his friend is rolled over on his side, facing away from him, and hasn't spoken since their last conversation, although Erik feels quite sure he hasn't slept.
He has to hold back a sigh of his own, staring at the back of his friend's head in irrepressible irritation. He knows why Charles was upset, just like he also knows perfectly well that it had nothing to do with the dead SS. Charles had hated- still hated- those monsters in human flesh just as much as Erik did.
The ground shook with such force that Erik lost his grip on Charles, his friend jerked awake and scrabbled to stay on the bed, failing and falling down on top of the unfortunates too weak to climb into the bunks.
Another explosion rocked the block and the bunk shook dangerously, Erik half slid, half fell out of it, wondering if it was going to collapse under him. He dropped onto his hands and knees, found Charles, and pulled them both unsteadily upright.
This time the explosion was so close that it felt like it had landed on top of them. The windows blew in and the floor seemed to vanish from under them. Charles' arm was torn from his grasp and the ground rushed up to meet them so hard that it knocked the air from Erik's lungs. Someone who had managed to stay in the top bunk screamed, his hands lacerated from flying glass.
Erik and Charles pulled themselves free of the tangle of arms and legs and Erik decided, on reflection, to stay on the floor. That way if it happened again it might not hurt as much. Charles appeared to agree, and they crouched near the door, as far away from the broken glass as they could.
"It's the bombers!" Someone shouted from outside.
"The Russians!" Someone else exclaimed- Erik recognised him, with a stab of guilt, as the man he had stolen potatoes off a few days ago- "The Russians are bombing the camp!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Another inmate, a French Jew, "The Russians don't have bombers- it's the English!"
Erik didn't say anything. He covered his head with his hands and pulled Charles against him. They had seen the bombers in the sky for days now, so many that they'd resembled stars in the sky. He had begged and screamed and shouted at them to drop their bombs and blow the whole horrible place to pieces- they all had- but they hadn't. Erik screwed his eyes shut, he wanted the camp destroyed, but he didn't want the two of them to die along with it.
But the explosions were dying away now, growing more distant as the planes flew on- Erik could hear the sounds of their engines over the shouts of dismay from the other prisoners.
Charles hadn't tried to shelter himself as Erik had, and was staring fixedly towards the shattered windows and out into the night sky, glowing red from the fire. "I hope it got them." He whispered absently.
Erik wiped bits of chipped brick and whitewashed ceiling from their bare skin and shivered in the cold night breeze filtering through the broken windows. "Got who?" He asked, distracted.
"The Nazis." Charles smiled, still staring out at the fractured night. "I hope those bombs hit their part of the camp and blew them all to pieces."
They'd all hoped that, although Erik would have preferred if the gas chambers had been hit, that or Mengele's laboratory. But when they emerged the next day they were intact. Charles had got at least part of his wish though, several of the blackened bodies had belonged to the SS, judging by the melted insignia. Charles had given them a ghastly smile when he saw them, they both had. He hadn't been bothered by the deaths then, had agreed, as everyone else had, that the SS had completely deserved their fate.
It was the actions of the army itself that bothers Charles, not the result of these actions, and again Erik withholds a sigh. So this was how it happened then. It was probably all for the best that his friend's illusions were shattered quickly, before he'd had time to start believing them. His desperately hoped for ideal of the 'real world' outside the camps would have fallen through sooner or later.
The American army had shot the Nazis after they had surrendered, and that Charles can't equate with his image of the 'good guys'. Erik doesn't blame the soldiers in the least, and knows that in his heart, Charles doesn't either. Dachau had sounded no better than Belsen, and Erik knows their first reaction would have been to kill those responsible and burn the place to the ground.
But in Charles' world, so-called good people don't shoot unarmed prisoners.
As though he hears his thoughts, Charles stirs, pulling the blanket closer around him. It was late, the ward is fully dark now and the hospital has returned to silence. After the chaos and bustle of the last few hours, it's a relief.
It was ironic, but the same event that so hurt Charles' already tattered faith in mankind restored a little of Erik's. He had never liked the orderlies and nurses, but even he couldn't deny that they had helped them, and seeing them help the survivors of the camp made Erik grant them at least some respect. The former inmates were little better than he and Charles had been when they'd arrived- than they were now although they were cleaner and the treatment given to their injuries had helped- skeletal, filthy, many not able to carry themselves. Erik didn't know how many of them had been brought here, but the sounds of these new arrivals had been heard all over the hospital.
Erik burrows down further under the covers, until the scratchy wool folds over his head and everything goes even darker. Even that movement sends aches and pains up his stiff limbs, and tires him more than he could believe. He rolls over on his side, and slides his arms around Charles' waist, the warmth of his friend's body easing his sore joints. The edges of his ribcage digs into his arms, and Erik is again struck at how thin he is.
He'd never gotten used to that, even though he barely blinked any more at his own emaciated state. It was hard to tell how Charles looked during the day, with his over-large clothes, but at night, when the lights went out and either through daring or lack of space they slept curled up against each other, he couldn't suppress a wince at the feeling of his friend's bones when he touched him.
Not that they had dared to do that much. Erik might not have cared about the Nazi's opinion of their relationship, but he certainly hadn't wanted to risk the beating and probable death that would come should they have found out. But sometimes it had been enough to just lie facing each other, alone in the bunk, and listening to the other breathe, perhaps risking a touch of hands, or a brief kiss.
The contact is so surprising that Charles starts, glancing around the dark ward to make sure they haven't been seen, before allowing himself to relax into the embrace. He reaches down and touches Erik's hands, clasped in the hollow under his ribcage, and smiles when he feels his friend's breath on the back of his neck.
They no longer bothered with disguising their relationship in Belsen, there was no point. Those in their block had far more important things to worry about that what their fellow inmates did.
Curling up together against the tearing cold of the first few months at Belsen, trying to keep warm even as the winter wind shook the broken down barracks.
Falling asleep, chest to back, Erik's arms crossed around his chest, not letting go even in sleep.
The burning touch of Erik's skin against his, that first realisation of sickness.
The sound of Erik's heartbeat and his own when they woke up. Still alive. Another day closer to freedom.
The other inmates in Belsen had ignored them, but it wouldn't be like that here. Charles feels a hot flame of alien anger at the thought, a twisting counterpart to the warmth his friend's touch had lit in his stomach. It isn't fair, he thinks savagely. Haven't they suffered enough? Would they have to deny this also?
It hadn't been easy, passing as brothers here. At first it hadn't been a problem, Erik had been unconscious and the two of them had looked pretty much alike, both bone thin, shaved bald and covered in lice and sores. It had only been when Erik had returned to lucidity that the problems had started. They hadn't been confronted yet, but he could see the questions in their eyes. Why should two brothers look so different? Why did they have such different accents? Charles tried not to talk when they were in earshot, and Erik didn't seem to want to talk to them at all, but if it continued, the nurses would start asking questions that Charles really didn't want to answer. Even if they didn't realise what they were to each other, they would no doubt try to separate them and send him back to America.
Charles tightens his grip on Erik's bony fingers, he has nothing left in America except the remnants of a family that has made it abundantly clear they never want to see him again, just the thought of being shipped off there is frightening enough by itself, never mind that he would have to make the journey there without Erik. The thought of being alone in this insane world is so terrifying he refuses even to think about it.
Erik's free hand strokes along his side soothingly, resting of the edge of his hip, while the other rubs a slow circle against the sore skin of his stomach. Charles turns his head slightly, Erik nuzzling the back of his neck.
Erik hadn't known what the pink triangle had meant at first, or even what homophiles were, outside childish taunts he had never really understood, and when he'd learnt, he hadn't cared. Charles envied him for that. After suffering his stepfather and stepbrother's insults- and the last's horrible consequence- on the subject of a sexuality he didn't understand himself, he wished he had Erik's disregard. But in the circumstances, he probably didn't think it mattered. He had stolen Charles a shirt with a Jewish star, and the next day when they'd been registered, he'd lied to the SS holding the register and been marked down as Charles Lehnsherr, a Jew from Poland. There had been so many there, the man hadn't even looked at him.
Erik's fingers coast over the inside of Charles' left arm, and he fights the urge to pull away as they brush over the numbers he knows are tattooed there. It's too dark under the blanket to see them, but he knows they're there, twenty nine thousand, three hundred and thirty seven. The ink feels like acid injected under his skin.
It had been when it had hit him, that moment when they tattooed him. It was when it had hit most of them just what had happened to them. Just what was going to happen to them now they had nothing. They had no belongings of their own. No clothes of their own. No passports. No rights. No names. He remember clutching his stolen shirt around his shoulders and shivering uncontrollably, his arm burning dull pain from the blunt needles. He remembered some men crying, and Erik's pinched, pale face, numb and expressionless, his own number reflected in his wide eyes- 29338, one more than Charles, since he had been next in line.
He can't help it, and pulls his arm away. He hates that number, hates knowing that he'll be carrying it for the rest of his days. A fragment of Auschwitz, as if he didn't carry enough of that place in his nightmares.
Erik lets go of Charles' arm, and closes his eyes. He can feel the warmth of his skin against his lips, even though they aren't quite touching, and it's with the greatest regret that he pulls away from the tender comfort. He may not care about peoples' reactions, but he doesn't want to tempt fate by risking being seen in the morning entangled with Charles in a very un-brotherly fashion.
He knows Charles doesn't want him to move either, his friend catches his hand and squeezed it again. Erik opens his eyes and in the faint light that filters through the window, he can see Charles roll over and give him a grateful smile. Appreciative of the comfort. Erik smiles back, then lies back on his back and lets the exhaustion built into his bones carry him off to sleep.
The rest of the night passes swiftly, and Erik wakes up the next morning with, for once, no nightmares. He's even spared being awoken by the breakfast bell, a sound so tied in with his memory of the camps that more than once he's ended up trying to stand out of sheer instinct before Charles pulled him back to bed.
It had been a different bell there, and the sound had been accompanied not by the clink of plates and nurses' voices, but by the stamp of boots and the high-pitched shrieking of the block Kapo. There had been a bell in the Auschwitz hospital too, but at least they were spared being beaten if they were too slow in getting out of bed. If anything, that had made them even more eager to get dressed, anything not to lose that position and being ordered back to outside work.
There had been no official bells in Belsen by the end, and although they rung all the same, there was no one to make sure they were obeyed. He remembered the dread when he heard them, not knowing if today would be the day when a Kapo or an SS toured their barracks and put a bullet through his head.
Erik shakes his head. Not today. It's a pleasant enough day outside, cloudy, but with a few patches of blue sky, and a shaft of sunlight coming through the window onto the bed to warm the covers. It's later than usual, and Erik wonders where the breakfast is; a slight warmth of pleasure building inside him at knowing that food is no longer a worry, and that instead of fighting for scraps they'll have everything given to them. An old stab of fear that there won't be enough food to go around, now that so many more have arrived, and the sudden instinct to fight. He crushes the thought. Not here.
Still, one look around the ward threatens to restart his fears, because it is full. Beds previously occupied by recovering soldiers have been claimed for the starving prisoners of Dachau, and even though they have no doubt been given a wash by the hospital staff, the smell still lingers, the smell of filth and mud and blood that had been in their every breath in the concentration camps.
And ash. In Auschwitz their block had been near one of the crematoriums, and every breath took in a mouthful of fine ash that had been, only hours ago, living people. They all hated it when the flames licked out of the chimney, not only because of the people being burnt, but because everything, including each other, became covered in ash. They would be made to clean the block, but as the ash was still coming down, everything they cleaned became blackened almost immediately. They would be beaten, some would die and be dragged to the crematorium, and whole process would start again.
Not now.
Charles is still asleep, and Erik is just wondering whether to wake him before the bell rings- which he know his friend enjoys even less than he does- or letting him sleep for as long as possible, when the choice is taken out of his hands and the nurse walks in, followed by three orderlies and the breakfast trolley.
Erik smiles ironically, it seems as though the hospital staff have realised that very few people will be able to come up and serve themselves now. Which explains why they were so late, they had to tour the other beds in the other wards. He's hungry, it seems almost absurd to think so, and to label the faint gnawing as 'hunger' after knowing times when he couldn't stand straight for the cramps in his stomach, but it's a pleasant kind of absurdity, and a reminder that while this may not be Charles' mythical 'real world', it doesn't make these simple pleasures any less real.
As the trolley trundles slowly towards them, Erik prods Charles' shoulder. The nurse seems to have forgotten her bell and his friend is in danger of sleeping through breakfast.
He dreamt of the past mostly. It was strange, but when waking Charles couldn't really call those dreams nightmares. They were memories, alien inside the dreamscape, but memories nevertheless. They were horrible enough to be classified as nightmares in any sane, waking world, but then this was no sane, waking world, and in the camps there had been so little difference between the horrors of waking and reality that they didn't even scare him any more.
This however, was a nightmare.
He was clawing at Erik's arms; his nails renting his friend's skin, trying to hold still him as shapeless, faceless hands dragged him away. He had this nightmare so often, too often. Sometimes it was an SS, one hand holding a gun to Erik's head, the other half-strangling him as he was torn away. Sometimes it was a pack of dogs, the same dogs who had killed his family, their teeth embedded in his friend's shoulders and a trail of blood staining the floor. Sometimes it was Mengele, expressionless and cold, white gloves and scalpels. Or sometimes, like now, it was nothing, just hands pulling Erik slowly and relentlessly away. And Erik was screaming.
He'd never heard Erik scream like that, but he knew what it meant. Erik knew where he was being taken, and it terrified him. His head thrown back, screaming his lungs out until his voice ran hoarse and faded to a cracked sob. His hands grappled against Charles', trying to find purchase, but it was as thought their hands had been drenched in oil, and no matter how they struggled, they couldn't find a hold.
Charles choked back a cry of his own, one hand grabbing at his friend's shirt and feeling the fabric tear as his pulled back and he was left holding a handful of striped cloth. Erik screamed again, snatching at Charles' shoulders. Charles felt his hands slip, nails scratching his cheek raw and flying loose. He tried to catch hold of him, but missed. Erik scrabbled at the ground, digging his fingers into the earth in an attempt to stop himself being dragged away, but the hands paid that no attention, dragging him to his feet. He screamed a third time, one hand outstretched before one of the hands clenched around his throat and cut his voice off. But like the dead in the gas chambers, Charles could hear him in his head, so loud and crazed with fear that he thought his skull would burst.
But he couldn't move, his legs didn't work, and he was tearing at the ground with hands and screaming in turn-
"Ah!" Charles' eyes snap opened and he's almost immediately blinded by the sunlight. He scrambles backward, striking his back against the metal headboard of the bed with such force that it almost knocks the wind out of him.
His eyes haven't adjusted yet, and even when he closes his eyes, the afterimages are dazzling. Charles draws up his knees against his chest and regrets it almost instantly as the cold air hits him after the warmth in the bed.
Bed?
Oh, of course.
Charles rubs his eyes furiously with the back of his hand, blinking against the light. The ward. Right. With the orderlies glaring daggers at him- breakfast already?- some of the more traumatised patients starting to scream in their turn after his cry, and Erik- Erik- looking at him with wry concern. Charles lets out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding. Erik is fine, or as fine as he ever gets normally. It was a nightmare, like all the others. He slides back down under the covers, and huddles against Erik, trying to warm up. Erik's hand touches his from beneath the covers, and Charles folds his fingers over it, the details of the dream fading at the contact.
"Did you have a bad dream?" At least, that's what Charles thinks Erik's saying, since he's whispering so softly he can barely hear him. He can feel Erik's breath on the back of his shoulder, warm against bone, and glances around to check that no-one's looking.
They're not, the orderlies and nurse are still busy, but as the ward slowly quietens he feels Erik move away, a last squeeze on his hand before he releases it and pulls back.
Breakfast is the same as dinner the night before, and lunch before that, and breakfast before that. The same thin grey gruel that they had been given since they arrived here.
They had often talked about food, when they were at their hungriest. It was torture, but it was all they could think about. What they'd liked to eat before they came here, the dishes their families cooked that they always remembered. And always, what was the first thing they would eat when they got out of here? Not if, when, because even though they were dropping with exhaustion and hunched over with hunger, they couldn't give that hope up. So they'd talked, and grown more hungry, and wished endlessly for an escape.
And it was strange that after so long wishing and hoping, their actual rescue had been… almost anti-climatic. There had been no great surge of relief as they had imagined, only a compounding of previous fears. There had been no- Charles sighed- so-called 'heroic rescue'. And bizarrely, he didn't feel very hungry, and the foods Erik and he had dreamed up now seemed faintly repulsive. The gruel they were given might be tasteless and thin, but at least it would stay in their stomachs, which their dreamt of meats and puddings wouldn't.
He'd studied the effects of starvation in Harvard, while he was training as a medical student. The examples given were mostly from the drought and poverty stricken countries in Africa, and while he had felt some vague sympathy for the poor people, and made a decision to send part of his allowance to the aid agencies, he hadn't really understood. He hadn't know what it felt like, or that in civilised Europe, there were hundreds of people in the same state. And he would certainly never have imagined in his wildest nightmares that three years later he would look like them. Muselmann. Dead and still walking.
The next mouthful of gruel has to be forced down through the lump in his throat. Erik doesn't notice, he's sitting up for once- although he looks a little unsteady- hunched over his bowl and eating much too fast. Charles touches his arm to remind him to slow down, they don't have to rush everything here, no one's going to take the food away.
They always had to eat fast in the camps. If they had stolen it, they had to swallow it quickly to avoid having it taken away by their angry target. If it hadn't been, then they had to eat even faster to make sure no one stole from them. They had to pay for eating like that though, the stomach cramps they got could be agonizing, and more than once their hard-earned meal had come up again when their bodies simply couldn't cope with the half-chewed food.
Erik gives him a slightly self-deprecating nod, and slows down, finally putting aside his spoon and swallowing down the last few mouthfuls straight from the bowl. Charles can't hold back a smile. To think that only a few weeks ago Erik couldn't even feed himself, and choked whenever his friend tried to feed him dry food. Charles' smile broadens, Erik is so stubborn that it seemed at times as though even death gave up when he was concerned.
He remembered when they had fallen ill in Auschwitz. Typhoid fever had spread through the camp in the spring of their second year, and they had both caught it. They had been in the hospital at the time, and found themselves transferred from medical staff to patients, and no longer allowed the larger ration of food their previous position had allotted to them. There had been one night that stood out in Charles' mind. They knew that there would be a selection the next day, a selection that would almost certainly have ended with them in block 25- the last stop before the gas chamber. That night Erik had used the handle of his tin spoon to grind their names into the soft, half-rotted wood of the bed, as proof that they'd been there, since by tomorrow there'd probably be nothing left of them but a cloud of ashes. But come the next day, their fever had broken and they were able to stand. They had hurriedly resumed their duties as if they had never been ill, and while it had probably made it harder for them to recover, at least they'd been able to survive the selection.
Charles wonders if their names are still there, carved on the footboard of the bed. It seems only fair, he decides, looking down at the blue number etched into his skin. That place left a mark on them, and they left one in turn. Poetic. He looks over at Erik, who's looking at the orderlies, clearly wondering if they can serve him a second helping.
Well, he really doesn't feel all that hungry, and anyway his stomach still feels too stunned from the miracle of regular meals to complain. Charles passed Erik his bowl. His friend looks at the bowl in surprise, rolls his eyes, and pushes the bowl back. Charles is reminded of his expression in the truck, when he'd given him the water flask. "I'm not hungry," He insists quietly, an eye on the nurse, "Finish it, you need it more than I do."
Erik doesn't dignify that with an answer, only scowling and dumping the bowl unceremoniously in Charles' lap. Gruel slops out onto the blankets and Erik rolls over, facing towards the wall. Charles sighs. "Fine, if you really don't want it-" He puts the half-full bowl on the floor and lies back down, feeling his backbone creak as it straightens and biting back a groan as his body relaxes.
Erik isn't relaxed, although he's making every effort to appear so, and Charles knows that his attention is still fixed on the food when he asks "Aren't you going to eat that?"
Charles rolls his shoulders back, "I told you," he manages to hide the note of triumph from his voice, "I wasn't hungry."
"Oh." It's just as well Erik can't see him, because his smile would give the game away. "Are you sure?"
Heaven forbid that he would actually admit that yes, actually he did want the food. Charles rolls on his side, "Hmm-mm." He confirms, reaching down to where the bowl is lying on the hard tiles of the floor.
Lowering himself enough to be able to peer under the bed brings all the blood to his head, and he can feel his heart pounding in his ears when he sends the bowl sliding along the tiles to Erik's side, then crawling back into the welcoming warmth of the blankets.
Erik doesn't say anything, and Charles is turned away so he can't see him, but by the clink of spoon on bowl, he's not so stubborn that he would turn down free food.
