real test.
The guard sighed, smiling. ‘Very well.’
Another pail, this time laced with shards of ice that scraped and pierced my skin. I felt numb to my bones with a shiver I was sure had turned my lips blue, but she pressed on, pouring another and then another, the barrel filling with water, first over my ankles and then halfway up my calves.
‘I’ll stop when you tell me who you are,’ she said.
‘Let me see my friend.’
‘No!’ she barked, and my gaze drifted to the wall, which made her huff and puff.
‘I need to urinate,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘If you pee in that bucket, you’ll get ten more pails on you.’
Instantly I started peeing—the cold water made it impossible to hold.
Her eyes got wide and her mouth snarled. She lifted another pail, but she bobbled it and a wave of water splashed onto her face.
I laughed, soft at first, bordering a giggle, taunting her with my only weapon.
Her face scrunched up like an old prune listening to me laugh, and she dumped what was left in the pail over my back and then threw the pail at the wall. ‘Amusing, is it?’ She opened the door—someone was screaming not far away as she called out to another guard. ‘More pails!’
Soon enough more metal pails were brought in and laid out in a line. The guard gave me a strange look as he left, probably wondering how I was able to handle more, and it was that look that lit a fire inside my cold bones. My laugh turned into a screeching shrill, which startled even me, getting louder and more pronounced the more pails she poured over me. ‘Stop that laughing!’ she yelled, which only made me laugh more. ‘Get out!’ she finally said, lips puckering, pointing to the door with a stiff finger.
I stepped out of the barrel, my feet unfeeling against the cold stone floor, my laugh more like a metal pitchfork scraping against slate. ‘Ah ha, ah ha, ah ha…’ I screeched, following her down a long corridor and into a room with floral paper peeling from its walls and a hole in the floor for a toilet.
I flung my arms out, laughing in the face of the guard, ignoring the little voice in my head telling me to shut up and put my arms down, but all I could think about was Marguerite and that maybe she’d hear me… know it was me. The guard threw a plain beige smock at my face and then slammed the door, locking it up tight. I succumbed to a wave of tears and sobs when I realized she’d left, then everything got very hazy, and I wobbled. I heard a slap—my face hitting the ground—and I plunged into a dark, cold dream.
*
After weeks of cold-water treatments without talking, and no signs of Marguerite, the Gestapo moved me to Lyon’s infamous Montluc prison for what the guard called, ‘formal interrogations.’ Three times a day a guard brought me a hunk of stale bread and a cup of rust-coloured water, which was pushed through a slit in the door. If I was lucky, I got a rotted apple or a bowl of mouldy mush. These were the easy days, when I’d sit on the floor and stare out the caged window in my room. But when I heard footsteps marching down the corridor and the clinking and clanging of keys near my door, my heart began to race, and I had to remind myself who I was, and who I wasn’t.
I sat up, listening to the key as it slid into the lock, wondering how much cold water I’d have to stand in, or how much yelling I’d have to endure, lips to my face.
The door opened, and a Gestapo officer I’d never seen before stood in the doorway. ‘Hallo, Jeanne.’ He laughed. ‘Or whatever your real name is. I’m Klaus Barbie.’
I scooted away from the door. I had heard of Klaus Barbie every day since I arrived at Montluc. The guards had warned me this day would come, the day when the head of the prison would visit.
‘You’ve heard of me, no?’ He ran his fingers down the lapels of his woolly Gestapo uniform. His face, stern with sharp lines, was typical for a German.
‘I’ve heard.’
‘They call me the Butcher of Lyon. But look,’ he said, holding his hands out, ‘I have no knives.’
He poked his finger into my ribs, where my bones protruded from under thin skin. ‘But if I