Ralph overhears and calls out, “He’s a jockey!” which seems to impress Frank.
“A jockey!” he repeats.
My job is to sweep and shovel away the loose stone chippings and gather them in buckets. When my buckets are full, I have to carry them to the door of the toolshed. Within half an hour, my back and arms are beginning to ache, for all I tell myself I’m young and strong and so recently used to physical work on the farm. I make the mistake of filling the first bucket too full and can barely lift it. As I’m staggering to the toolshed, I feel Kurt watching me.
Frank lays down his pickax and says, “I was doing this yesterday. I filled the first bucket half full, then took another half bucket to top it up.”
I nod my thanks. I can see I’m the one who has the easy work. The men heft and wield their heavy pickaxes, time and time and time again, until sweat runs down their faces. Even in this autumn chill, some of them are stripped to their vests from the heat of exertion. Then they have to strain to lift and carry the huge slabs of marble to the waiting horse-drawn cart.
Blisters are starting to form in the palms of my hands, and the others have the same problem. Max and Ralph tear a spare foot rag into strips, and we share them out among us, wrapping them around our hands. Kurt hurries over, shouting and waving his pistol to urge us to resume work, and Ralph explains in German that we’ll work faster if we aren’t in pain. Kurt spits into the dust of the quarry floor, and I watch the little ball of spittle soak away. I’m careful not to make eye contact with him.
My hands are better for a little while, but then the blisters start to rise again and burst, wetting the dirty rag. And there are still hours and hours of this to go before we can lie down on our beds. Hunger starts to gnaw at my insides, and I try to take my mind off my pain by thinking about the food I’d most like to eat. I think of my mother’s borscht and the delicious little parcels of meat and vegetables she would make, wrapped in cabbage leaves.
I try to calculate how many hours it will be until a dinner break, and then how many more until it gets dark. I thank God that the days are shortening fast so that every day will have a little less working time than the one before.
I look over at Bill, his face caked with dust apart from the smears where he’s wiped away sweat with the back of his arm. He is wearing his shirt, but the underarms and back are dark with sweat. I worry that this will be too hard for him when we have so little to eat, that he will become ill.
“Concentrate on shoveling and sweeping,” Cousins tells me sternly. The watery sun lifts from the trees and makes its slow progress across the sky.
I jump into the air as a loud bell rings. The old hands tell us to retreat toward the offices, while dynamite is detonated. Once we are all clear of the quarry, there is a loud explosion, which makes my ears ring. On the way back, Bill and I call at the quarry latrine. I sit at the end of the plank, and he pisses into the hole next to me. I think how in normal life a husband and wife would never see each other urinating, never smile secretly at each other while they are doing it. Bill asks me how my hands are, and I nod as bravely as I can, knowing the rags have now fused into the burst skin of the blisters, but I can’t complain when I’m sure his are the same or worse. I wonder how they’ll ever heal when we have to do this every day.
At midday we are allowed back to the house, and a fresh pot of soup stands on the range, being stirred by a large-boned Czech woman who clearly has enough to eat. There’s fresh bread too, proper bread, not like that sawdust muck at Lamsdorf. Herr Rauchbach gives out a loaf to each of the “combines” of men.
“How long does this have to last?” asks Bill, and Frank tells us the ration here is half a loaf a day for each man. Half a loaf of good bread seems so much better than a third of a rotten one, even if we are having to use so much energy. I’m thrilled to discover the soup is sour, like my mother’s. The Englishmen complain and pull amusing faces, but I love it. The soup’s full of vegetables, and there’s enough to have a second portion. I long to pass just one word with the Czech woman who’s cooked it, to talk to her about the ingredients, to speak my own language. She smiles at my obvious relish of her soup and offers me more. She has slightly hooded eyes and strong cheekbones. I refill my mess tin three times. When she reaches out toward me with the ladle, I notice her hands are large, and her wrists are twice the width of mine. I think she would make a better man than me. Ralph asks her name, and she says she’s called Berta. Her German is poor. The longing to speak Czech to her is so strong that I have to clamp my teeth together.
Scotty wanders over to the range and sniffs the pot appreciatively. “It’s got some herbs in it,” he says to Ralph. “Can you ask her what they are?”
Berta says majoránka and libeček, but she doesn’t know the German names. She tells Ralph she’ll ask Rosa, and she beams at Scotty.
“Didn’t know you were a cook,” says Ralph.
“Aye, in the canteen at the biscuit factory. No that we used any herbs there. Plain food for plain working men and lasses.” Scotty sighs. “We’d think nothing o’ geein’ leftovers to the pigs, which I’d merrily kill for now.”
After a twenty-minute break, Kurt hurries us back to the quarry, and on the way, Frank tells us that Rosa and Berta and the Czech women who do our washing will bring us black-market eggs and rabbit in exchange for soap and cigarettes. He says they’ve even smuggled in radio parts, and a crystal radio is assembled every few days to make sure we have news of the war. I wonder if the Czech women could be trusted to take a message to my mother.
The afternoon is never-ending noise and dust, pain in my hands and aches in my back and arms. I try not to show how hard I’m finding this. I remind myself this is all my choice, that Cousins can work this hard and harder.
By four o’clock the sun is setting, but we work on into the dusk, until Herr Rauchbach comes down to tell Kurt it’s time for us to stop.
“What are you thinking of?” he asks Kurt in Czech. “They can’t see what they are doing. The marble will be ruined. And this is a very special order.”
Kurt obviously doesn’t like being told off in front of us, even though he assumes nobody can speak Czech, and he protests, “But, Herr Rauchbach, we are already running behind, and these new men are too slow.”
He takes our tools from us as we file past, locking them away again for the night.
Herr Rauchbach grimaces. “You don’t need to remind me. But they can only work while they can see. It’s too dangerous, and the slabs will be uneven and spoiled.”
Kurt slams the door of the toolshed.
Ahead of us on the track, at the entrance to our quarters, the men stand in line and wait for Kurt to finish locking away the tools. He hurries past us all and stations himself at the door, where he pats down each man, searching, I suppose, for anything that could be used as a weapon or to aid escape. The old Lamsdorf terror surges through me as I get closer and closer. Then it’s my turn. I lift my arms to the side as the others have done, and Kurt leers into my face as his hands pat my waist and hips. “Breathe easy,” Cousins tells me. “Breathe easy.” Kurt bends to grope around my ankles, and I think I could kick him over and run. Then the moment’s past, and I stumble into the light of the house, my heart banging like the hammers and chisels I’ve been hearing all day.