Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“What do you mean, ‘dead’?”

“You cannot use a language and make it to mean many things except the truth, you cannot—” Froelich stares at Jack then says, as though uttering a password, “Deutsch.”

Jack nods carefully in response.

“They torture it. The Nazis. And now there are many words that cannot any more remember themselves. The other meaning, the false one, is there always behind it like a coat, like a— nein, wie ein Schatten….”

“A shadow.”

“ Ja . But I forget nothing. This is how I will help my son.”

He tips the bottle over Jack’s glass. “This man from Dora is here, and someone on this station knows this.” He looks up. “But they do not say it. And I know why.”

Jack refrains from swallowing. He waits.

Froelich says, “The West has need of these people.”

“What people?”

“People who have worked on technologies such as the rockets.” Jack keeps his gaze level. He knows the answers to the next questions, but it’s advisable to ask them anyway. “This guy worked on rockets?”

“ Ja .”

“What? The V-2?”

“ Ja .”

“At Peenemünde.”

“At Dora.”

“Dora?”

“Peenemünde is bombed.”

“That’s right, we bombed it. Canadians did that,” he adds, feeling foolish, like a schoolboy boasting. He wasn’t there. He was in England behind a desk, managing supply at an RAF station.

“The factory moved underground after the bombs, inside a mountain. The Nazis called it Dora,” says Froelich. “I was there.”

“With the V-2s?”

Froelich nods and falls silent.

Jack’s interest could almost douse his anxiety. If only he were simply sipping wine with Henry Froelich, listening to tales of a subterranean rocket factory. He pictures it: pristine concrete floor twelve storeys deep. A fifty-foot V-2 cradled on a rail car, its guts and brain exposed, triple gyroscope to guide it through space and time in a slow minuet. He sees the rocket roll up the sloping tracks to meet the night sky, through hatches camouflaged with rocks and pine trees; war is the grandmother of invention. Carefully the rocket is winched until it is erect on the test stand, pointing at the stars, tanks replete with the secret, crucial mix that will produce enough thrust to take it across the Channel to London in five minutes. Vengeance-2. Hitler’s secret weapon. Yet this is what will take us to the moon. This is what will keep us free. And Henry Froelich worked there.

“Did you work on the rockets themselves?”

Froelich nods.

“Holy liftin’,” says Jack quietly. Then, because he cannot resist, “Did you ever see one of them fired?”

Froelich shakes his head. Beneath the table, the dog groans and rests its chin on Jack’s foot.

“When I saw Dora, it was no longer a mystery how the pyramids were built. The rockets are built by slaves.”

“Slave labour,” says Jack. Somehow the addition of the word “labour” blunts the force of the first word, and he wonders if this is what Froelich meant a moment ago when he talked about words losing their memory.

“Hitler’s ‘secret weapon,’” says Froelich, draining his glass, getting up. “Slaves only are trusted to work, because we arrive but we do not leave.” He almost smiles. “We leave through the chimney.” He makes an upward spiralling motion with his finger.

“They had a crematorium? At Dora?” Jack swallows. “I didn’t know it was … a death camp.”

“Not extermination, no, but many workers die, and they burn bodies, otherwise more disease.” Froelich lifts the lid of a pot on the stove and stirs. “So you see they are not afraid that we will tell the secret, but they are terrified of sabotage. They are right, there is sabotage, but often they hang the wrong ones.” He picks up the bottle, finds it empty and bends to the cupboard once more. “Mornings, when I finish the shift, there are men hanging from ropes. Do you know how they hang them?”

Jack doesn’t answer.

Froelich twists the corkscrew into the bottle. “A piece of wood here between the teeth”—he indicates with his finger—“so no screaming. They tie with string at the back of the head. The rope goes about the neck, so, and the other end is tied to a plank that is attached to the crane….” He describes the mechanics with the precision of the engineer he is. “We are ordered to watch or they will hang us too, it is to remind us of the reward for sabotage. The crane lifts them slowly … the SS have calculated this method. With hands tied behind, but the legs are free to move because this is the show, entertainment, ja? I heard once two secretaries from the office, one to say to her friend, ‘Hurry up, you miss the legs.’” He proffers the bottle. Jack complies, pushing his glass forward.

“They hang at the entrance to the tunnel, perhaps a metre and a half — five feet? — from the ground, so we must pass among the legs — they have lost their trousers, you pass through like curtains, the SS enjoy to watch this.” He lifts the lid once more and steam escapes. “Will you join me?” he asks, ladle poised over a bowl.

“No. Thanks, Henry, but I’m not hungry.”

Froelich returns to the table with his bowl. “It was used to be a mine,” he says, and eats.

“What?”

“Dora. In the Harz Mountains.”

“The rocket factory?”

“In a mountain cave.”

A secret, in a mountain cave, worked by slaves. It sounds like a fairy tale.

“Near Buchenwald,” says Froelich. “Near to Goethe’s home. They bring the Häftlinge —the prisoners — to dig to make the cave larger. With bare hands they have digged and many die. These are no Jews at first, these are French and Russian, German, English, Poles and Czechs and many others. They wear the triangle, many different colours, but all wear the stripes. And on our feet, the wooden clogs, bare in winter also. In the beginning, the slaves must sleep in the earth with the rockets and many die.” Froelich raises another spoonful to his lips but pauses. “You see, the Nazis have two intentions and these did not go together, but they were efficient with each.” Jack sees the professor again as Froelich raises two fingers consecutively. “Erste: to produce the weapons. Zweite: to kill the workers, ja .”

“Henry—”

“When I arrive to Dora from the other place—”

“What other place?”

“From Auschwitz Drei —Auschwitz Three, ja? I am not so strong but I have learned to say ‘electrical mechanic’ and so I do not die with carrying the skin, the shell of the rocket, how you say?”

“Casings.”

He is speaking quickly now. “I am fortunate also because I have not terrible dysentery, only somewhat, but there are many children and they take them away and beat them to death. I am lucky because I have not marched all of the way from Auschwitz to Dora, I have been on a railway Wagen , it is open, no roof. This is good because it is winter and I drink the snow from my shoulders, you see? Also I can breathe. I do not freeze because many die around me so I crawl beneath their bodies. I am thin but when I arrive to Dora I am fortunate, I do not build my barracks, others must do this and many die.”

The word “Auschwitz” sizzles like acid in the air around Jack. His home is across the street. His bed. His children in their beds. His wife. He feels heat on his face, but it is not comforting. He is too close to something. He should move back, but he cannot.

“We sing for the guards.”

“What?”

“It is winter and I do not know the date, only that it snows and they make us to sing ‘Stille Nacht.’”