Chapter 5
Dachau Concentration Camp, Munich, Germany
March, 1943
Four days and three hours had passed. And the healing had been slow and gradual. He was forced to move every hour, to coax his joints loose, remind his skin that it needed to be flexible, and reduce the amount of scar tissue trying to form. His hair had begun to grow back in about the 82nd hour. A shard of broken glass in the corner of his cell told him that it was coming in white, snow white.
He wondered if the color would change once his body was no longer under stress. At this point it was nothing more than a light layer of fuzz covering his healing skull. He briefly amused himself with the thought that if he had tossed himself in an incinerator in New York months ago he might have been able to avoid his unfortunate 'death'.
He finally looked his age.
Nikola was weak. Weak from hunger. Weak from the part of him that he had been carefully stuffing away into a box deep inside. The part of him that was still screaming, and hadn't stopped since the nightmare began.
When he was able to walk he padded barefoot around the cell, at first using the wall for support, then gaining his independence from it. The room was about the size and length of a boxcar, probably part of a larger complex of buildings. It might have once been used for storage but had been cleared for the sake of its newest prisoner. There were toilet facilities in the corner but no running water. No windows and only one door that locked from the outside. There was a single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling that remained lit constantly. The walls were beige. The floor wood.
Almost exactly at five days the door of his cell opened. He had checked it enough times to know that it was locked and he didn't have the strength to break it down. Through the door came a bundle of clothing that he assumed was meant for him given that what he wore was nothing more than ashes and a flea infested blanket from the cot.
The clothing was also flea infested. Not to mention the lice and the smell. The blanket had been hard enough. He ignored the gray and blue striped pile and let it sit there.
Another hour passed before a young child was shoved into his room.
He assumed it was a child, and not a midget. He couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl because all the hair the child had once possessed had been crudely shaved from his or her head. The waif was young enough that there were no other bodily indicators and underneath the striped thread bare clothing, the adolescent was nothing but skin and bones, in the most literal sense.
The child entered the cell and leaned immediately against a wall, its eyes facing downward. The door was closed and the child stayed against the wall, perhaps not even aware that Nikola was in the room as well.
When his young visitor did look up it was to spot the clothes lying abandoned on the floor. Immediately the child began to undress. Nikola then discovered it was a boy, or perhaps the waste of a boy. His former clothing was discarded in favor of those meant for Nikola. He pulled them on, quickly forcing the oversized pants and tunic into complicated folds and tucks that allowed the clothing to conform to his size and shape.
Once dressed again the boy finally seemed to notice that he wasn't alone in the room.
Nikola looked into the boy's eyes and was astonished.
He recognized those eyes. He had seen them before, and had seen other eyes so similar in construction there was no mistaking the relationship.
They stared at each other for long moments. Nikola waited for some sign of recognition on the boy's face. But there was nothing. Not recognition, or curiosity or even fear. Not even hatred, or sadness. There was nothing in the boy's eyes at all.
When he grew tired of staring the boy moved to a corner where he could see both Nikola and the door at the same time, sat against the wall, and went to sleep.
The rest of that night Nikola thought about Bijou. He wondered if she had escaped Liege before Kohrber and his guards could get to her. He wondered if she was somewhere safe, curled into Marga's arms. He imagined her with the camera in her hands, years in the future. Running in the streets of America, somehow he couldn't imagine her anywhere else. He saw her in a park in New York, taking pictures of Marga's other children as they ran and played. Developing the pictures with Dane's help and showing them off around the home.
When he rose to walk around the room the boy in the corner stirred, lifting his head just high enough to observe the Serbian. To keep from upsetting him Nikola stayed near the cot, pacing between it and the door instead of the length of the room.
He had begun counting out loud, forcing his voice into action. At first there was nothing but hissing sounds coming from his vocal chords. He counted to one thousand and then down again, backwards. He recited alphabets, Greek, Romanian, Serbian, American, French, and German. The boy responded to the sound of his native language, sitting a little straighter against the wall, and then shrinking back when Nikola slipped into the language of their enemy.
The Serbian noted the reaction and when he finally sat again he arranged the blanket over him and began to speak.
He described New York, in French, naming every street, business and the names of every doorman within a five block radius of his hotel. When he started to drift, closing his eyes, finally tired enough to attempt something like sleep he was interrupted. Something shook the corner of the cot, then shook it again a moment later when he didn't immediately wake.
He raised his head from where it rested against the wall and eyed the boy. He had moved from the wall to an arm's length away from the cot, and sat now with his knees drawn to his chest, impossibly small for a boy of his age.
"You like New York?" Nikola asked.
The boy nodded.
"You'll go there someday.." Nikola told him. He knew it was a lie. And as soon as he said it he could see that the boy knew it too. But it was a nice thought.
Seconds later there were other voices in the hall. The boy skittered away from the bed, retreating to the corner and staying there, poised to defend himself.
Nikola stared at the door and waited.
When it opened two men stepped through. They were dressed in the same clothing as the boy, but they looked stronger. Like they had been fed some time that week, like they were being fed regularly. Behind them was a German soldier, dressed in the dark black uniform Nikola was seeing entirely too much of. The soldier ordered the two men to grab the boy and get rid of him.
Nikola started to rise from the cot, not fast enough to do anything but unable to sit still while Bijou's only living relative was taken away from him. The soldier didn't blink. He drew a gun and pointed it at Nikola, his eyes cold and hard and void of compassion.
Tesla knew what would come. He was so sick of pain. He was tired of death and blood and darkness, and he knew he couldn't possibly win against a gun, not as weak as he was.
Kohrber stepped into the room behind the soldier, looked to the two men holding the boy, then to the young soldier in the dark uniform.
"Put your gun away." Kohrber said, his voice calming and controlling. The soldier did as he was told.
Kohrber looked back to the boy before approaching Nikola. A glare from the vampire stopped him in his tracks before he got too close.
"You were to use him to regain your strength." Kohrber said, his expression translating that he was surprised. "I am learning so much about your species, but there is so much more to know." He held up a small paperback book and tossed it toward the cot. Nikola sneered at the worn copy of Drakula.
"Mr. Stoker's work hasn't been much help." Kohrber admitted. He turned to the door ordering that the boy be removed from the room.
The men left quickly, the boy going without resistance.
"Bring me the chair," Kohrber ordered the soldier, then glanced to the blanket Nikola had wrapped around his thin frame. "And clean clothing." When the chair arrived Kohrber sat, dismissing the soldier.
The clothes, apparently, would take longer to retrieve.
"Sit, Mr. Tesla, please. You look pale."
Nikola stood, caught between retching and launching himself at the Colonel.
Kohrber seemed almost amused by his small act of defiance, but was uncomfortable with the silence that followed his words. The blonde man looked around the room slowly, as if searching for inspiration before he became too uncomfortable to remain seated and stood. He paced around behind the chair, leaning against the back for a moment.
"Do you know where you are? Mr. Tesla? You are in Dachau. A work camp. A place for criminals and crazy people."
"That boy wasn't crazy." Nikola said.
That caught Kohrber's attention and his eyebrows shot up, pleased that he had gotten a response. "Ah…" He said satisfied, before he addressed the comment. "You had a conversation with him, did you?"
"No…before he was brought here, before you murdered his family in front of him, that boy wasn't crazy." Tesla's voice was shaking. His whole body was shaking and he couldn't make it stop. The only reprieve was to keep talking, his hands clenched tightly around the blanket. "Before you shaved his head and dumped him in this hell hole, starved him of food and his…his humanity! Damn it! That boy wasn't crazy."
"You know that boy?" Korhber snapped in response. The question caught Tesla off guard before he realized that Kohrber had no idea who the child was. Nikola didn't know if it was because the boy was less than human to the Nazi, if it was that Kohrber had never made the connection between the boy, Bijou, and that night in Liege, or if this was part of some twisted, insensible game.
"You know him? How do you know him? Are you his father? Is he one of your kind? Are all vampires Jews, or are all Jews, vampires?" The questions came in an angry stream, Kohrber's face starting to redden.
There was a knock on the door. The soldier stood in the opening holding clothing. Real clothing. Trousers and shirt and jacket. Shoes, socks. They looked clean and recently laundered.
Nikola stared at the clothing, still baffled by Kohrber's questions. He wondered how many of them had come from the Colonel and how many had he been ordered by someone higher up to ask.
"Get rid of them. Burn them." Kohrber said, turning his face quickly so that he could watch Tesla react. "Unless you want to tell me something."
"Nothing you've asked me makes sense!" Nikola shouted, narrowing his eyes, choking back bile. It was like being stuck in a vacuum, where the negative space was the idiocy of the Nazi party, and he the matter being sucked into the endless void.
Kohrber turned away, his anger tightly controlled as he left the room without another word. The soldier watched him leave, opened his mouth to ask the Colonel what he should do with the clothing, then in a rare act of compassion, tossed the pile into the room, shutting and locking the door of the cell behind him.
It took Nikola an hour to get dressed.
When he was done, he dragged his cot across the room to the place where the boy had been crouched, sat cross-legged on the mattress and stared up at the light bulb. A plan beginning in his mind.