I have no idea what she’s talking about. 9 страница

I nodded. “ ‘The Lorelei,’ by Heinrich Heine.”

“Ein unbekannter Verfasser, ” he corrected. Anonymous.

That was when I remembered that Heinrich Heine had been Jewish.

“You realize that you stole material from the Reich,” he murmured.

“Yes, I know,” I burst out. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”

He raised his brows. “It was a mistake to willfully steal something?”

“No. It was a mistake to think the photographs didn’t matter to the Reich.”

He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. He could not admit that the photographs were valuable, because that was tantamount to admitting that those who were killed had worth; but he couldn’t admit that the photos were meaningless, because doing so would dilute his argument for punishing me. “That is not the point,” he said finally. “The point is that they do not belong to you. ”

The officer sank back into his chair, rapping his fingers on his desk. He picked up one of the pictures and flipped it over to the side with writing on it. “This story. Where is the rest of it?”

I imagined the guards ransacking the block, trying to find more photographs with writing. When they didn’t, would they just start hurting people until someone gave them the answer they wanted? “I haven’t written it yet,” I confessed.

This surprised him; I realized he had assumed I was simply recounting a tale I’d read elsewhere. I wasn’t supposed to be intelligent enough to create something like this. “You,” he said. “ You made up this monster... this upiór?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Well, I mean, no. In Poland everyone knows about the upiór. But this particular one, he is a figment of my imagination.”

“Most girls write of love. You chose to write about a beast,” he said thoughtfully.

We were speaking in German. We were having a conversation, about writing. As if at any moment he might not take out his pistol and shoot me in the head.

“Your choice of topic reminds me of another mythical beast,” he said. “The Donestre. You have heard of it?”

Was this a test? A trick? Was it a euphemism for some kind of corporal punishment? Was my treatment dependent on my answer? I knew of Wodnik —the water demon—and Dziwo ona —dryads—but they were Polish legends. What if I lied and said yes? Would I be worse off than if I told the truth and said no?

“The ancient Greeks—which is what I studied in school—wrote of the Donestre. It had the head of a lion and the body of a man. It could speak all the languages of the human race, which as you might imagine,” the Hauptscharführer said drily, “came in handy.”

I looked into my lap. I wondered what he would think if he knew my nickname for him, Herr Dybbuk, referred to yet another mythical beast.

“Like your upiór, this brute killed freely and devoured its prey. But the Donestre had one peculiar trait. It would save the severed head of its victim, sit beside it, and weep.” He fixed his gaze on me until I glanced up. “Why do you think that was?”

I swallowed. I had never heard of this Donestre, but I knew the upiór Aleksander better than I knew myself. I had lived, breathed, birthed that character. “Perhaps some monsters,” I said quietly, “still have a conscience.”

The officer’s nostrils flared. He stood up and came around the desk, and I immediately cowered, throwing up my arm to block the blow.

“You realize,” he said, his voice practically a whisper, “for stealing, I could make an example of you. Publicly flog you, like the prisoner the Schutzhaftlagerführer was punishing earlier. Or kill you.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. As it turned out I was not too proud to plead for my meager life. “Please don’t. I’ll do anything.”

The Hauptscharführer hesitated. “Then tell me,” he said, “what happens next?”

• • •

To say I was stunned would be an understatement. Not only did the Hauptscharführer not lay a hand on me but he kept me in his office for the rest of the day, typing out lists of all the items that had been salvaged in Kanada. These, I would learn, were sent to various places around Europe that were still controlled by the Germans, along with the goods themselves. This, he told me, was my new assignment. I would take dictation, type letters, answer the phone (in German, of course), and take messages for him. When he left to walk through the barracks of Kanada, his usual routine, he did not leave me alone. Instead, he had another officer stand guard inside the office, to make sure I did not do anything suspicious. The whole time I was typing, my fingers shook on the keys. When the Hauptscharführer returned, he sat down at his desk without saying a word. He began to punch numbers into an adding machine. Its long white tongue curled over the edge of his desk as he worked his way through a stack of papers.

By late afternoon, my head was swimming. Unlike in Kanada, I had not been given soup at lunch. However limited that sustenance was, it was still food. When the Hauptscharführer came back after one of his patrols of Kanada with a muffin and a coffee, my stomach growled so loudly that I knew that in our close quarters, he could hear it.

Shortly afterward there was a knock on the office door, and I jumped in my chair. The Hauptscharführer called out for the visitor to enter. I kept my eyes trained on the page in front of me, but immediately recognized the voice of the Schutzhaftlagerführer, which sounded like smoke falling over the edge of a blade. “What a pisshole of a day,” he said, throwing open the door. “Come, I need to dull my senses at the canteen before I have to suffer through Appell. ”

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. He had to suffer through Appell?

His eyes fell on me, head bent, diligently typing. “Well,” he said. “What is this?”

“I needed a secretary, Reiner. I told you that a month ago. The amount of paper that gets processed through this office grows bigger every day.”

“And I told you I’d take care of it.”

“It was taking you too long. Write me up, if it makes you feel better.” He shrugged. “I took matters into my own hands.”

The Schutzhaftlagerführer walked around me in a half circle. “By taking one of my workers?”

“One of my workers,” the Hauptscharführer said.

“Without my permission.”

“For God’s sake, Reiner. You can find another. This one happens to be fluent in German.”

“Wirklich? ” he said. Really?

He was talking to me, but since I had my back to him, I didn’t know he was waiting for a response. Suddenly, something crashed down on the back of my skull. I fell out of my chair onto my knees, reeling. “You will answer when you are spoken to!” The Schutzhaftlagerführer stood over me with his hand raised.

Before he could strike me again, his brother took a firm grasp of his arm. “I would request that you trust me to discipline my own staff.”

The Schutzhaftlagerführe r ’s eyes glittered. “You would ask this of your superior, Franz?”

“No,” the Hauptscharführer replied. “I would ask this of my brother.”

The tension dissipated then, like steam through a window. “So you’ve decided to adopt a pet.” The Schutzhaftlagerführer laughed. “You would not be the first officer to do so, although I question your judgment when there are fine volksdeutsche girls who are ready and willing.”

I dragged myself onto the chair again, running my tongue across my teeth to make sure none had been knocked loose. I wondered if this was what the Hauptscharführer planned for me. If I’d been brought here to be his whore.

That was a whole new level of punishment I hadn’t considered.

I had not yet heard of a female prisoner being sexually abused by an officer. It was not that they were such gentlemen. But relationships were against the rules, and these officers were big on rules. Plus, we were Jews, and therefore completely undesirable. To lie with one of us was to lie with vermin.

“Let’s talk about this in the canteen,” the Hauptscharführer suggested. He left the remains of his muffin on his desk. As he passed me, he said, “You will clean up my desk while I’m gone.”

I nodded, looking away. I could feel the Schutzhaftlagerführe r ’s eyes raking over my face, my knobby body hidden beneath the work dress. “Just remember, Franz,” he said. “Stray dogs bite.”

This time the Hauptscharführer did not have a junior officer babysit me. Instead, he locked me into the office. This trust unnerved me. The interest in my writing, the news that he was making me his secretary—a job that would allow me to be warm all day long, now that winter was coming, and that could not be considered hard labor by any means. Why show me kindness, if he planned to rape me?

So it’s not rape.

The thought fell like a stone into the well of my mind.

It would never happen. I’d slit my throat with a letter opener before I developed any kind of relationship with an SS officer.

I silently sent a thank-you to Aron, who had been my first, so that this German did not have to be.

I crossed to his desk. How long had it been since I had a muffin? My father had baked them, sometimes, with stone-ground cornmeal and the finest white sugar. This one was dark, with currants caught in the cake.

I pressed my fingers to the wax paper, gathering up the crumbs. Half of it I tucked into a little torn corner of the paper, and slipped into my dress, saving it for later. I would share it with Darija. Then I licked my fingers clean. The flavor nearly brought me to my knees. I drank the last sips of coffee, too, before carefully putting the paper into the trash, and drying the cup.

Immediately, I began to panic. What if this was not a show of trust, but another test? What if he came back and checked the garbage can to see if I had stolen his food? I played out the scenarios in my mind. The two brothers would enter, and the Schutzhaftlagerführer would say, “I told you so, Franz.” And then the Hauptscharführer would shrug and turn me over to his brother for the whipping I had been expecting this morning. If stealing photographs from the dead was bad, surely taking food that belonged to an officer was much worse.

By the time the Hauptscharführer unlocked the office door and entered again—alone—I was so nervous that my teeth were chattering. He frowned at me. “You are cold?” I could smell beer on his breath.

I nodded, although I had not been this warm for weeks.

He did not look in the trash. He glanced around the room cursorily, then sat down on the corner of his desk and picked up the stack of photographs. “I must confiscate these. You understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

It took me a moment to realize that he was holding something out to me. A small leather journal, and a fountain pen. “You will take these instead.”

Hesitantly, I took the gifts. The pen was heavy in my hand. It was all I could do to not hold the journal up to my nose, breathe in the scent of the paper and the hide.

“This arrangement,” he said formally. “It suits you?”

As if I had a choice.

Was I willing to trade my body in order to feed my mind? Because that was the deal he was striking, or so his brother had said. For a price, I could write all I wanted. And I would be assigned to a job anyone else would have killed for.

When I did not answer, he sighed and stood. “Come,” he said.

I started shaking again, so violently that he stepped away from me. It was time for me to pay up. I crossed my arms, hugging the journal to my chest, wondering where he would take me. To officers’ quarters, I supposed.

I could do this. I would go somewhere else, in my mind. I would close my eyes and I would think of Ania and Aleksander and a world I could control. Just as my story had calmed Darija, just as it had soothed the others in my block, I would use it to numb myself.

I clenched my teeth as we walked outside. Although it was no longer raining, there were massive mud puddles. The Hauptscharführer strode right through them in his heavy boots, as I struggled to keep up. But instead of turning toward the other side of the camp, where the officers lived, he led me to the entrance to my block. The women had already come back from work and were waiting for Appell.

The Hauptscharführer called for the Blockälteste, who immediately began to ingratiate herself. “This prisoner will now be working for me,” he announced. “This book and pen she holds are my possessions. Should they go missing, you will personally answer to me and to the Schutzhaftlagerführer. Is that clear?”

The Beast nodded, mute. Behind her, there was a buzz of silence; the curiosity of the other women was palpable. Then the Hauptscharführer turned to me. “By tomorrow? Ten more pages.”

And then, instead of taking me to his quarters and raping me, he left.

The Beast immediately sneered. “He may be protecting you now, but when he gets tired of what’s between your legs he’ll find someone else.”

I pushed past her, to where Darija was waiting. “What did he do to you?” she asked, grabbing on to my forearms. “I’ve been worried sick all day.”

I sank down, taking in everything that happened, the strangest turn of events. “He did absolutely nothing,” I told her. “No punishment. If anything I got a promotion, because I can speak German. I’m working for an officer who recites poetry and who asked for more of my upiór story.”

Darija’s brow furrowed. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, amazed. “He didn’t touch me. And look...” I took the muffin crumbs from where they were tucked in the waistband of my dress and let her have them. “He saved this for me.”

“He gave you food?” Darija gasped.

“Well, not exactly. But he left it behind.”

Darija tasted the muffin. Her eyes drifted shut, pure rapture. But a moment later, she fixed her gaze on me. “You can put a pig in a ball gown, Minka. That doesn’t make it a debutante.”

• • •

The next morning after Appell I presented myself at the Hauptscharführe r ’s office. He was not there, but a junior officer who was waiting unlocked the door for me so that I could go inside. I realized that he was probably at Kanada, patrolling the barracks where Darija and the others worked.

There was a stack of forms to be typed on my makeshift desk beside the typewriter.

Hanging on the back of the chair was a woman’s cardigan sweater.

• • •

This is how my routine settled: every morning, I would report to the Hauptscharführe r ’s office. There would be work waiting for me while he made his rounds in Kanada. At midday, the Hauptscharführer brought lunch from the main camp back to his office. Often he got a second ration of soup or a slice of bread. Yet he never finished either; instead he would leave these in the trash when he left the office, knowing full well I would eat them.

Every day as he ate his lunch, I would read aloud what I had written the night before. And then he would ask me questions: Does Ania know that Damian is trying to frame Aleksander? Will we ever see Casimir committing murder?

But most of his questions were about Aleksander.

Is the love you feel for a brother different from the love you feel for a woman? Would you sacrifice one for the other? What must it cost Aleks to hide who he really is in order to save Ania?

I could not admit this even to Darija, but I began to look forward to going to work—in particular, to lunchtime. It was as if the camp fell away while I was reading to the Hauptscharführer. He listened so carefully that it made me forget that outside there were guards abusing prisoners and people being gassed to death and men pulling their bodies from the shower rooms to stack like wood in the crematoria. When I was reading my own work, I got lost in the story, and I could have been anywhere—back in my bedroom in Łód ; scribbling down ideas in the hallway outside Herr Bauer’s classroom; sharing a hot chocolate at a café with Darija; curled in the window seat at my father’s bakery. I was not stupid enough to presume that the officer and I were equals, but during those moments, I felt at least as if my voice still mattered.

One day, the Hauptscharführer tilted back his chair and propped his boots on his desk as I read to him. I had reached a cliffhanger, the moment where Ania enters the dank cave looking for Aleksander and instead finds his brutal brother. My voice shook as I described her navigating her way in the darkness, her boots crunching on the hard-backed shells of beetles and the tails of rats.

“A torch flickered on the damp walls of the cave...”

He frowned. “Torches don’t flicker. Firelight does. And even so, that’s too clichéd.”

I looked up at him. I never quite knew what to say when he criticized my writing like this. Was I supposed to defend myself? Or was that presuming that I had any say in this strange partnership?

“Firelight dances like a ballerina,” the Hauptscharführer said. “It hovers like a ghost. You see?”

I nodded, making a note in the margin of the book.

“Go on,” he commanded.

“There was a sudden draft, and the torch illuminating my path was extinguished. I stood shivering in the dark, unable to see even a foot in front of myself. Then I heard a rustle, a movement. I spun around. ‘Aleksander?’ I whispered. ‘Is that you?’ ”

I looked up to find the Hauptscharführer hanging on my words.

“In the dark, there was a soft growl, almost a purr. The rasp of a match. A scent of sulfur. The torch blazed to life again. Crouched before me in a pool of blood was a man with wild eyes and knotted hair. More blood dripped from his mouth and covered his hands, which held a haunch of meat. I fell back, struggling to find air... That haunch of meat he was devouring had a hand, fingers. They were still clutching the top of a gilded cane I could not have forgotten if I tried. Baruch Beiler was no longer missing.”

There was a knock at the door; a junior officer stuck his head inside. “Herr Hauptscharführer, ” he said. “It is already two o’clock—”

I snapped the book shut and began to roll a new form into my typewriter.

“I am fully capable of telling time,” the Hauptscharführer called out. “It will be time to go when I say it is time to go.” He waited for the door to close. “You will not start typing yet,” he said. “Continue.”

I nodded, fumbling with the leather journal again and clearing my throat.

“I felt my vision fading, my head spinning. ‘It wasn’t a wild animal,’ I forced out. ‘It was you.’ The cannibal smiled, his teeth slick and stained crimson. ‘Wild animal... upiór. Why split hairs?’ ”

The Hauptscharführer laughed.

“ ‘You killed Baruch Beiler.’

“ ‘Hypocrite. Can you honestly say you didn’t wish him dead?’ I considered all the times the man had come to the cottage, demanding tax money we did not have, extorting deals from my father that only dragged us deeper and deeper into debt. I looked at this beast, and suddenly felt like I was going to be sick. ‘My father,’ I whispered. ‘You killed him, too?’ When the upiór did not answer, I flew at him, using my nails and my fury as weapons. I raked at his flesh and kicked and swung. Either I would avenge my father’s death or I would die trying.”

I continued, describing the arrival of Aleks, the torture of Ania as she tried to reconcile the man she was falling in love with, with a man whose brother was a beast. And what after all did that make him?

I spoke of her frantic flight from the cave, of Aleks chasing after her, of her accusation that he’d had the power to keep her father from being murdered, and didn’t. “ ‘Your father is not the only person to ever love you,’ ” I read. “ ‘And you cannot blame Casimir for his death.’ He turned away so that his face was in shadow. ‘Because I am the one who killed him.’ ”

When I finished, my final words remained trapped in the office like the smoke of a rich man’s cigar, redolent and sharp. The Hauptscharführer clapped: slowly, twice, and then with sustained fervor. “Brava,” he said. “I did not see that coming.”

I blushed. “Thank you.” Folding the journal closed again, I sat with my hands in my lap, waiting to be dismissed.

But instead, the Hauptscharführer leaned forward. “Tell me more about him,” he said. “Aleksander.”

“But I’ve read you all I have written up to this point.”

“Yes, but you know more than you’ve written. Was he born a murderer?”

“That’s not how it works with an upiór. You have to be the victim of an unnatural death.”

“And yet,” the Hauptscharführer pointed out, “both Aleksander and Casimir suffer the same unfortunate fate. Coincidence? Or just bad luck?”

He was talking about my characters as if they were real. Which, to me, they were.

“Casimir died while avenging Aleksander’s murder,” I said. “Which is why Aleks feels the need to protect him, now. And since Casimir is the younger upiór, he’s not yet able to control his appetite, the way Aleksander can.”

“So in theory both of these men had normal childhoods. They had parents who loved them, and who took them to church, and celebrated their birthdays. They went to school. They worked as paperboys or laborers or artists. And then one day, due to circumstances, they awakened with a terrible thirst for blood.”

“That’s what the legends say.”

“But you, you are the writer. You can say anything,” he pointed out. “Look at Ania. In that one moment, she was ready to kill the man she believed had murdered her father. And yet, she is painted as a heroine.”

I had not thought about this, but it was true. There was no black and white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. Ania was just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.

“Was there something in their upbringing, in their history, in their genetics, that made them the way they are now?” the Hauptscharführer asked. “Some fatal, hidden flaw? Surely there are plenty of men who die and who don’t suffer the fate of being reborn as an upiór. ”

“I... I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s the fact that Aleksander doesn’t want to be an upiór that makes him different.”

“You mean, a monster with remorse,” the Hauptscharführer mused. Then he stood and took his heavy wool coat from its hanger. On his desk was a second ration of soup he had not touched. “Tomorrow,” he announced. “Ten more pages.”

He stepped out of the office, locking the door behind himself. I carefully tied the leather journal again with the ribbon that circled it, and set it beside my typewriter. I crossed to the desk and picked up the soup.

Suddenly I heard the lock turn in the door. I dropped the soup, spilling it on the hardwood beneath the desk. The Hauptscharführer was standing there, waiting for me to turn to him.

I trembled, wondering what he would say when he saw the puddle at my feet. But he did not seem to notice. “What do you think it was like the first time Aleksander bled one of his victims?” he asked. “Do you think even then he felt shame? Disgust?”

I shook my head. “He couldn’t help himself.”

“Does that make it any less detestable?”

“For the victim?” I asked. “Or for the upiór?”

The officer stared at me, his eyes narrowed. “Is there a difference?”

I did not answer. Moments later, when the key turned again in the lock, I got down on my hands and knees and lapped up what I could from the floor.

• • •

One morning after a storm, when the snow had blanketed the camp, Darija and I stepped outside the block to march to work. We shuffled behind other women, all wrapped in ragged layers, freezing. The path, which we took every day, marched us along the far side of the fence at the entrance ramp to the camp. Sometimes we would see the new railroad cars arriving; sometimes there was a selection going on as we passed. Sometimes we shuffled past a line of people waiting for the shower they would not survive.

That day as we passed, a new group of prisoners was being belched out of one of the cars. They stood like we had on the platform, carrying their belongings, yelling out names of loved ones.

Suddenly, we saw her.

She was dressed from head to toe in white silk. On her head, a veil streamed out behind her in the cold wind. She was looking around, even as she was herded into line for the selection.

The rest of us women all stopped, riveted by this sight.

It was, unbelievably, not the most depressing thing we had ever seen: a bride, ripped from her own wedding, separated from her groom, and put on a transport to Auschwitz.

On the contrary, it gave us hope.

It meant that no matter what was happening in this camp, no matter how many Jews they managed to round up and kill, there were still more of us out there: living lives, falling in love, getting married, assuming that tomorrow would come.

• • •

The main camp of Auschwitz was a village. There was a grocer, a canteen, a cinema, and a theater hall that showcased opera singers and musicians, some of whom were Jews. There was a photography darkroom and a soccer stadium. There was a sporting club that the officers could join, and there were matches: prisoners who had been boxers, for example, pitted against each other while the officers bet on them. There was alcohol, too. The officers were given rations, but from what I saw, occasionally they pooled them to get drunk together.

I knew all this because, as the weeks went by, the Hauptscharführer would occasionally send me on an errand for him. I was to pick up cigarettes one day, laundry the next. I became his Läuferin, a runner, who would carry messages wherever necessary. He would send me to Kanada from time to time to deliver notes to the junior officers who patrolled when he was in his office. As the winter came, and the temperatures dropped, I would throw caution to the wind and do what I could for Darija and the others. When the Hauptscharführer left to go to the Officers’ Club for a meal or across the camp for a meeting, and I knew he would be gone for an extended length of time, I would type up a note on his letterhead requesting that prisoner A18557—Darija—be brought in for questioning. Darija and I would hurry back to the office, where for at least a half hour she could warm herself before having to go back to work in the freezing barracks of Kanada.

There were others like me—privileged prisoners. We would nod to each other as we passed in the village, doing our jobs. We walked the finest of lines: people hated us because we had it easy, but they valued us because we were able to steal things that made their lives better—food they could eat, cigarettes and whiskey they could use to bribe the guards. For a bottle of vodka that Darija took from a suitcase in Kanada, I was able to trade a rind from a squash and some lamp oil from a prisoner working in the Officers’ Club. We hollowed out eight thumbprints in the rind, added a wick made of yarn from a sweater, and in this way made candles to celebrate Chanukah. There was a rumor that a Jewish secretary who worked for an officer elsewhere in the camp had managed to swap a pair of reading glasses for a kitten, which was still inexplicably alive in the block where she lived. We were considered untouchable, because of our protectors—some SS men who, for whatever reason, had found us useful. For some, I imagined, that was because of sex. But as the weeks rolled into months, the Hauptscharführer still did not lay a hand on me—in anger or in lust. All he wanted, really, was my story.

From time to time he would casually mention something about himself, which was interesting, because I had forgotten that we prisoners were not the only ones who had a life before this one. He had wanted to study at Heidelberg—classics. He had hoped to be a poet himself; or if not, the editor of a literary journal. He had been writing a thesis on the Iliad when he was compelled to fight for his country.

He did not like his brother very much.

I knew this, from their interactions. Whenever the Schutzhaftlagerführer dropped in to speak with him, I found myself huddling smaller in my chair, as if I could make myself disappear. He did not notice me, most of the time. I was that insignificant to him. The Schutzhaftlagerführer drank a lot, and when he did, he got angry. I had seen this, of course, at Appell. But sometimes the Hauptscharführer would receive a phone call, and he would have to go to the village to bring his brother back to officers’ quarters. The next day the Schutzhaftlagerführer would come to the office. He would say that the nightmares were what made him do it, that he had to drink to forget what he’d seen in the field. It was as close as he could get to an apology, I supposed. But then, as if this very contrition was distasteful, he would start raging again. The Schutzhaftlagerführer would say that he was the head of the women’s camp and that everyone answered to him. Sometimes, to punctuate this, he would sweep his hand across all the papers on the desk or knock over the coatrack or throw the adding machine across the room.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-21