A Woman of War: A new voice in historical fiction for 2018, for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Mandy Robotham
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as midwives could only reassure them – you will know, a power from within like no other, a tidal wave to ride instead of fight. Irena, however, was hanging on to her baby for dear life, a thin snake of mucousy blood just visible now as I looked under her covering. It signalled the body was eager, more than ready to let go. Only a mother’s iron will was clamping the gates shut.
Eventually, after several strong contractions, Irena’s womb won out; a telltale primal grunt, and with the help of the lamplight I saw the baby was on its way, his or her head not yet visible but a distinctive shape behind the thin, almost translucent skin of Irena’s buttocks, rounding out her anatomy. She swished her head in distress, panting and muttering: ‘No, not yet, baby, stay safe,’ fluttering her hands towards her opening in a desperate attempt to will the baby back in. Rosa was at Irena’s head, whispering reassurance, giving her sips of the cleanest water we could find, and I stayed with the lamp below.
Oblivious to its future, this baby was determined to be born. In the next contraction, black hair sprouted through the strained lips of Irena’s labia, and I urged her to ‘Blow, blow, blow,’ hoping to slow her down and avoid any skin tears that we had no equipment or means to stitch, another open wound the rats and lice would target.
Sensing the inevitable, Irena gave in, and her baby’s head slid past the confines of its mother, corkscrewing its way into the world. For a moment or so, as with so many births I’d seen, time stood still. The baby’s head lay on the cleanest rag we had, shoulders and body still inside Irena. Her sweat-stained head fell back on Rosa, a body convulsed with sobs of relief and sadness, and only a sliver of joy. The hut was silent – most of the women had woken, two or three visible heads to a bunk, as curiosity triumphed over the desire for sleep. Still, they only glimpsed, respecting what little privacy she had.
The baby had emerged back to back, looking up at me squarely, and I could see eyes opening and shutting like a china doll’s, mouth forming into a fish-like pout, as if he or she were breathing. The seconds ticked by, but there was no worry, the baby’s lifeline umbilicus giving filtered oxygen from Irena, far purer than the stagnant air around us.
‘It’s fine, all is well, your baby will be here soon,’ I whispered. But nothing, I knew, would make Irena feel anything other than impending fear or sadness.
The contraction brewed, and she shifted her buttocks to make room as the baby’s head made a half turn to one side, allowing the breadth of the shoulders to come through, and Irena’s son slipped out, bathed in only a little more water, mixed with blood. He was a sorry scrap of a thing, a head too large for his tiny, scantily covered limbs and bulbous testicles. Irena had grown him the best she could on her meagre diet of almost no protein or fat, and this was the result. I took the next best rag and wiped off the fluid, stimulating his flaccid body that gave out no sound, and a small part of me thought: ‘Just slip away now, child, save yourself the pain.’ But I carried on chafing at his delicate skin, rubbing some zest into him, as part of our human instinct to preserve life.
Immediately, Irena was back in this world, panicked. ‘Is it all right? Why doesn’t it cry?’
‘He’s just a little shocked, Irena, give him time,’ I said, feeling my own adrenalin peak then as I chanted in my own head: ‘Come on, baby, breathe for her, come on,’ while talking and blowing on his startled features: ‘Hey, little one, come on now, give us a cry.’
After one more vigorous rub, he coughed, gasped, and seemed almost to take in his surroundings with even wider eyes. Instantly, I passed him up to Irena, and settled him next to her skin. The effort of labour had made her the warmest surface in the room and he began murmuring at her, rather than a lusty cry. Still, any sound was breathing; it was life.
For the first time in months, Irena’s features took on a look of complete satisfaction. ‘Hey, my lovely,’ she cooed, ‘what a handsome boy you are. How clever you are.’ After two girls he was her first boy, her husband’s desire. What everyone was thinking, but no one voiced, was that she was unlikely to see any of them grow into their potential, into people. Not a soul would burst her temporary bubble.
Without a word, Rosa and I went into our defined roles. She stayed with Irena and the baby, tucking him further under any covers we had, while I kept a vigilant eye on Irena’s opening as blood pooled onto the rag. It was normal – for now. But since I began my training, placentas had made me twitch far more than babies ever had. Sheer exhaustion could make the body shut down and simply refuse to expel the placenta. Beads of sweat began forming on my brow and at the nape of my neck. To lose a woman and baby at this stage would seem like Mother Nature really had no soul.
Yet she came through, as she had again and again, a constant in this ugly, shifting humanity. Irena’s features, still awash with hormones of sheer love, crumpled with pain, as another contraction took hold. In another two pushes, the placenta flopped onto the rags, tiny and pale. The baby had stripped every ounce of fat from this pregnancy engine and it was a wrung-out rag with its stringy cord attached. Well-nourished German women produced fat, juicy cords that coiled like helter-skelters into blood-red tissue, fed well in their nine months. I hadn’t seen anything other than meagre ones since coming into the camp.
Once I had checked to ensure the placenta had all come away – anything left inside could cause a fatal infection – we opened the door to the hut and threw it outside, away from the entrance. There was a fierce scrabbling as several of the rats, some nearing the size of cats, fought to be the first through their entry holes in the side of the hut, to the lion’s share of fresh meat. Months before, there had been cross words among the women about feeding the rats in this way, since they could only get bigger, but these creatures were relentless in their quest for food. If they had none, they turned towards us, nibbling at the skin of women too sick to move, too lifeless to realise. If the creatures were distracted, or satiated, at least we had some respite from their prowling. I hated the vermin, but at the same time, I could admire their survival instinct. Vermin or human, we were all simply trying to live.
Rosa and I cleaned around Irena with whatever we could find, she enjoying skin-to-skin time with her baby – we had no clothes to dress him in anyway. He fed hungrily at her papery breast, his little cheeks sucking for dear life on almost dry flesh. The hormone release caused more cramping in her tired belly, but you could tell she almost enjoyed the draw on her body. Rosa brewed some nettle tea from the leaves we had saved, and Irena’s face was pure joy for an hour or so. But as the dark diminished and daylight began licking through the cracks in the walls, the atmosphere in the hut became edgy. Time for Irena and her baby was limited.
Some of the women moved towards her, a low hum gathering as they encircled her bed, forming into a welcome song for the baby. In the real world, they would have brought gifts, food or flowers. Here, they had nothing to give, except the love squirrelled away in a protected corner of their hearts, some hope they occasionally let flutter; so many had already lost children, been parted, ached in every way possible for the smell of their babies’ wet heads, siblings, nieces, nephews. They were all part of the longing. One woman offered up a blessing, in the absence of a rabbi, and they accepted the baby as one of their own. His mother named him Jonas, after her husband, and smiled as he became part of history, recognised.
Rosa and I sat in the corner, me as the only non-Jew in the hut, taking stock of the beautiful sound. I had one ear out for the camp waking up, the guards shouting their orders, the constant clumping of their boots on the hard, frosted ground outside. It was only a matter of time before they entered our domain. Hiding the child was pointless. We had tried as much once before – a newborn’s constant, mewling hunger cries were impossible to muffle. That time, it had resulted in the loss of both mother and baby in the coldest, cruellest way possible. If we could save at least one, it counted as something. Irena had children she may well find again. Unlikely, but always possible.
In the end, Irena managed almost three hours of precious contact with her newborn. At seven, the door was thrown open, a fierce wind whipping as the guards came in to make their roll call. This hut had been excused an outside count only because so many of the women were bed-bound and the guards grew dangerously irritated if they fell during the long wait. I had appealed to the camp Commandant for an inside count and been successful – a surprising and