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.There was one SS guard known as the Mechanic who rode about the camp on a bicycle repairing broken-down vehicles and machinery.He would occasionally stop and talk to the women, and offer a kind word.It was remarkable how important even little things like this became.Anne had been suffering from dysentery and was barely able to work, but she had no choice.On one particularly bad day, the Mechanic saw her distress and actually gave her his lunch.He suggested she go to see the camp doctor, without apparently realising that once you went to see him, you didn't come back.She was so unused to the relatively rich food that she immediately threw it back up.The Mechanic knelt beside her and whispered encouragement: that he believed that life was like a great wheel, that some days you were moving up on that wheel and some days you were moving down.She was down right now, but one day she would be on the top of the wheel while he would be at the bottom.After this he took to coming every day and surreptitiously giving one of them part of his lunch.As Christmas approached, Elsa, the Oberaufseherin, decided that a programme of entertainment should be mounted, featuring dramatic sketches, music and dancing.Auditions and rehearsals were held in the early hours of the morning.Anne was dragged there by friends, just to watch, and with no desire to take part – she was far too ill and weak – but when she saw the selected dancers perform she forgot herself and shouted that they didn't know what they were doing.She had, after all, been a professional dancer – and those on the makeshift stage reacted by telling her that if she knew so much, she should show them how to do it.Thus, barely able to walk, she made it to the stage, and as the musical accompaniment began – an accordionist – something miraculous happened.She felt power in her legs again.She felt adrenaline course through her pathetic body.She danced the valse from Coppelia in her torn and stinking pyjamas, with block clogs on her rancid feet.It must have looked bizarre indeed – but it worked.Anne was not only recruited as the lead dancer, but to choreograph the entire production.A week before Christmas it was announced that the Ober would be attending the rehearsal to see how her great idea was progressing.She duly clapped and laughed through the entire show, until it came to Anne's turn to dance.She watched without reaction – and at the end simply got up and walked out.Anne naturally feared the worst, especially when, the next morning at roll-call, her name was called out and she had to step forward.But then it was announced that from now on she would be excused from outside work and would receive an extra portion of soup every day.The show took place on Christmas night, and Anne remembered it better than anything else in her life.Hundreds of women prisoners crowded into the hall, dozens of SS were there as well – not to guard them, but to enjoy the show.The sketches were greeted uproariously, everyone sang along to the music, and then the climax of the show – Anne dancing Coppelia – and for a few minutes she and the entire audience were transported to another dimension.They gave themselves up to the grace and passion of the music and the movement; the horrors they were all living through were forgotten, and she danced as she had never danced before.The bare wooden stage was better than any stage in the world, the heavy-fingered accordion more powerful than a great orchestra; as she danced she glimpsed snow falling through the hall windows, almost as if it was washing away everyone's sins.She felt love and hope and knew that it didn't matter if she survived, that her life's purpose had been fulfilled, that she had given hope to the poor people around her and perhaps given pause for thought to their tormentors.When she finished the audience stood as one and cheered so much that she was forced to perform an encore, this time a South American tango.It was a triumph.Afterwards the cast were treated to soup with real meat in it.In the telling of this, Anne Mayerova had raised herself on her spindly legs and did her best to ape the movements she had performed on that Christmas night in Auschwitz; we made space for her to shuffle back and forth.She looked like a nut.But she absolutely lived it again.Alison was sobbing.It was powerful stuff.You couldn't imagine what it had been like in those camps.Although I would do my best.After Anne's recounting of what had happened at the show, a lot of the life went out of her; in her eyes the rest was an anticlimax.Her story-telling became more vague, and quite listless.She said that the 'good times' could not last, and very soon she was back with her kommando, working outdoors.The difference was that she had several weeks of comparatively healthy eating behind her, which made her better able to cope, at least for a short while, with the appalling conditions.Within a few weeks, however, their situation changed again.The war was all but lost, and the Russians were closing in on the camp.The SS, frightened of what the enemy would do when they discovered what had been going on, forced the prisoners to go on what became a death march, walking for days at a time without food or shelter in freezing weather and without any apparent destination.If a prisoner stumbled and fell, they were shot where they lay.Anne became so ill that she began to hallucinate and soon could no longer walk.She lay down to die.But instead of her being murdered, an Allied air raid distracted her guards and in the confusion she found some last surge of strength, just enough to allow her to find a hiding place.Her fellow prisoners were marched off to their deaths, and she was taken in by a Polish farmer.She hovered between life and death for several weeks, but eventually recovered enough strength to be handed over to the by-now Russian victors; and from there she made it home to Prague, only to discover that she was the only one of her family who had survived the war.But then only two days later another miracle – her husband, her Mark, whom she had presumed dead in Auschwitz, walked through the door, like a ghost.They had both survived.I sat at the kitchen table and worried.This was not unusual.I had a hot chocolate and a Twix.Neither was this.I worried about what Alison was thinking of me, and about whether she was thinking of me at all.After all, how important was supper with a vague acquaintance compared to the astonishing story she had just listened to? She was quite probably entirely consumed by that.It was an epic of survival that spoke volumes about the power of the human spirit.It illustrated exactly how art could raise you up out of the most dispiriting situations imaginable.No, Alison wasn't wasting any thought at all on this mystery-bookshop owner [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]