“Poor thing,” said Hannah, tears on her cheeks. “They will take her to hospital straightaway.”
“Humph,” said Lillian, a plump Austrian girl with a weak chin who was never seen without lipstick. “She is crazy like a fox. That performance will get her out of here in a hurry.”
“Aren’t you the heartless one,” Hannah said.
“Not at all,” she said. No one liked Lillian, but she was tolerated because of the hoard of cosmetics in her suitcase. “I’m only being honest. We all look out for ourselves in this world.”
“That woman is never going to be right in the head,” Hannah said. “And it’s all the fault of those damned English for putting her into a prison camp all over again.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Tedi said, placing her finger on a spiky barb. “Aren’t we all hanging by the same little thread that snapped for her?”
Hannah grabbed Tedi’s hand. “Enough of that,” she said. “You can help me get the new ones settled in.”
The main gates were closed now. All the newcomers stood, huddled together, staring at the biggest structure in Atlit, an imposing wooden barn that the inmates had dubbed “the Delousing Shed,” or just “Delousing.” Prison guards and translators from the Jewish Agency were trying to move them into two lines: men in front of the doorway at the right, women in a queue by a door on the left.
Tedi caught the strong, sweat-soaked smell of fear even before she saw the faces fixed in horror at the spectacle of men and women being separated and sent through dim doorways on their way to unseen showers. Beside both doors, twelve-foot-tall drums clanged and hissed, exactly like the ones near the entrances in Auschwitz, where they had also been told to surrender their clothes to be cleaned and fumigated.
Some of the women wept. Some of the men mumbled prayers. Couples called to each other with words of encouragement or farewell.
One of the translators asked Hannah to see if she could do anything with a stoop-shouldered man who refused to move or speak and was holding up the men’s queue. Hannah grabbed Tedi’s arm and pulled her along, too.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said gently. “But this is not what you think.”
He glanced at the machines and shook his head.
“I know,” Hannah said. “They look like the ones in the concentration camp. But no one here will be killed. Here you will get your clothes back, I promise.” He let her lead him up to the door so he could peek inside. “Look,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “You see the open windows there? None of the rooms here is enclosed. The shower is only a shower. The water may be cold and the disinfectants are unpleasant, but there are no gas chambers. And once you are cleaned up, you will have food and hot tea and delicious fruit grown by the Jews of Palestine.”
Tedi could see that the man wanted to believe what this glowing Jewish girl was telling him, but he could not reconcile what she was saying with the testimony of his eyes and ears.
“Like Terezin,” he muttered at last, naming the Potemkin village that the Nazis had used to fool the Red Cross, showcasing Jews playing in symphony orchestras and mounting operas for children—all of it a stage set on top of an abattoir.
“This is not Terezin, comrade,” said Hannah. “Remember, you are in Eretz Yisrael. You will not be killed. You will be taken care of. If you are ill, the doctors will look after you. I promise.”
He sighed. “You promise,” he said with a sad shake of his head, but he followed her to a table where an English soldier, barely old enough to shave, had been watching them. The young man got to his feet, offered his hand and said, in Hebrew, “Shalom. I am Private Gordon.”
“Is this man a Jew?” he asked Hannah, incredulous.
“I don’t think so.”
Tedi was struck by the young soldier’s kindness, and then watched as his eyes wandered down toward Hannah’s chest.
“Thank you, Private Gordon,” Hannah said, showing off her English as she sternly ignored his attentions. “This gentleman is ready for you now. My friend and I go to help with the girls who get ready. Yes? Okay?”
“Okay.” He grinned.
As she followed Hannah into Delousing, Tedi had to stop so that her eyes could adjust to the dimness. It was much cooler inside the building, but the noise was overwhelming. Hissing machines, running water, and voices rose up to the distant metal ceiling, magnified and distorted as they bounced between the bare walls. A burst of shrill laughter issued from somewhere deep in the back of the hall, a demented grace note that made her shudder.
In the changing room, they walked into a loud argument between one of the newcomers and a woman from the Jewish Agency who didn’t speak enough Yiddish to make herself understood.
“What’s the matter?” Hannah asked the distraught girl.
“I’m not putting my dress into that thing,” she said, pointing to the revolving dumbwaiter that ferried clothes into the machine on the other side of the wall. “It’s the only thing I have left of my sister.”
“You will get it back,” said Hannah. “Listen to me, all of you,” she said, trying to make herself heard. “My friends, listen. They are only getting the bugs out of your clothes, getting them clean. There is no reason to worry. Lunch is waiting for you. Maybe you’ll sit next to a handsome boy; there are many here. If you can understand me, translate for someone who does not.”
The women seemed to respond to Hannah’s smiling certainty and did as she asked. She is a natural leader, Tedi thought. She will run a school, a kibbutz—maybe even a government agency. And for a moment, she was sorry that she would have to forget Hannah, too.
Hannah handed her a pile of worn towels and led her to a row of open shower stalls where Tedi dropped her eyes to avoid the blur of gray flesh stretched tight over ribs and hip bones, scars and scabs. The girls faced toward the walls, hiding themselves as best they could. Some held their arms tightly against their bodies, like injured birds.