The Paradise Ghetto by Fergus O'Connell

Author:Fergus O'Connell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2016-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

28

Julia puts down the pencil. It’s been one of the longer chapters and took her the best part of a week to write. She sits up in bed using her knees as a desk. Her writing hand is aching. She shakes it out.

It is nearly lights out. Julia looks down at Suzanne, but discovers that she is asleep, breathing deeply. She lies on her side, blanket pulled up around her shoulder. Both her hands lie on the pillow in front of her face, fingers interlaced. The effect is not so much like she is praying but rather that someone is holding her hand. Her hair is just starting to become tossed. People look so gentle and soft and vulnerable when they are asleep. Julia wonders if Nazis look like this when they are asleep. What does Hitler look like? Julia wonders when Suzanne fell asleep. She didn’t say good night.

Birkita’s words keep going around in Julia’s head. You betrayed me. You betrayed me.

She had.

She has betrayed Suzanne.

Maybe not as bad as Flavia’s but a betrayal just the same. She led Suzanne along and then walked away. As Julia was writing the bits about Cassius mistreating Birkita, she felt a certain grim satisfaction. Instead of Birkita, it was Julia being punished for her betrayal.

The lights go out and the place is plunged into darkness. Julia slides down into the bed wearily. The words keep buzzing around like angry bees in a disturbed hive.

You betrayed me. You betrayed me.

The next day Julia and Suzanne go their separate ways to their work. But when Julia arrives at hers, the painting foreman tells her that she has a new job. He tells her where to go and who to look for.

Her new boss, the Austrian that Suzanne told her about, is called Adolf.

‘I share a name with our beloved Führer,’ he says with a faint smile, as he shakes her hand and welcomes her.

Julia can’t tell whether or not he is being sarcastic.

He has black hair and a long face with chiselled features – strong nose and chin, good cheekbones – that, if anything, have been even more accentuated by the poor food. He looks like he might have been some kind of athlete – he has that physical presence about him that sportsmen have. He is handsome in a craggy sort of way, reminding Julia of an eagle.

He seems an unlikely choice to be heading up the team that are planting flowers but he explains that it is more than that. They are one of a number of teams – he calls them ‘kommandos’ – who are turning ‘desolate and decrepit areas of the ghetto into green and flowering spaces’.

‘There will be a lot more nature in the ghetto,’ he says.

Julia thinks that the whole ghetto is desolate and decrepit and should be blown up or bulldozed. She hopes that after the war it will be, though she knows this is a bit unlikely.

‘Suzanne says you are a good worker,’ says Adolf. ‘You Dutch girls seem to be – that’s if Suzanne is anything to go by.

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