by Elly Welt
In response to the orders, four of the men moved slowly, muttering softly to themselves, to the vats, to the scale, to the piles of starch and dye. The other four lay down on the stacks of bags. No one communicated with another. The foreman picked up the galvanized bucket lying on its side near his feet, moved to the scaffolding surrounding the vats, climbed the three rungs with heavy legs, walked along the planks, stirred the contents of the vats with a wooden shovel, tasted, and called out, “more blue shit,” or “more fuckin’ shit,” or “more shit”—random amounts, random temperatures. At the Institute I had to measure a speck with a Geiger counter or determine if there was a little vein missing from the wing of a fruit fly. The foreman filled the iron pail from one of the vats and climbed down from the catwalk, swearing quietly to himself. When he was again on the floor, several of the men resting on the bags rose, came to him, scooped up pudding from the bucket he held, drank it, scooped up more, and returned to their sacks. The foreman put the bucket down, threw himself, sighing, upon the bags, and closed his eyes.
“Pardon me,” I said from my shadow, “are you Herr Freulisch?”
“Eh?” He opened one eye.
“Pardon me,” I moved closer, bowing slightly. “Are you Herr Freulisch? I was assigned to work duty here.”
I did not understand his reply to me, so I said, “I beg your pardon?”
He was on his feet in an instant, mimicking me. “I beg yer pardon, I beg yer pardon? Get his. Hey, get his.” He made a mock bow to me. “Lah-dee-dah. I beg yer pardon.”
Two apparitions arose from their starch bags and floated into the light, bowing and bending in curtsies. One picked up an empty bag and hung it from his shoulders, like a cape or a royal train, and the other lifted its edges. They pranced and bowed, clicking their heels and I-beg-yer-pardoning.
Freulisch said, “Well, they done it. They sent us a rich pisher. How d’ye like the way the real people live, rich pisher, little pisher? Here now, little pisher, pick up that fuckin’ bag of shit.” He motioned toward a bag of starch.
It was over a hundred pounds. I lifted it an inch from the stack. The room was hot and humid; I was dizzy and weak; my legs folded, and I was on the floor.
“All you can do, you limp prick, is fuck a juicy broad, but you can’t lift this fuckin’ shit,” said the one with the cape. And with that assessment of my character and strength, all but the foreman returned to their bags.
I jumped to my feet, lost my balance, and sat down hard on the floor.
The foreman gave me a metal cup and motioned toward the bucket of pudding. I stood up, slowly, walked to the bucket, dipped in, and drank. Sweet, rich, it was made of potato starch, sugar, and milk. He motioned for me to take more. I did. I drank a liter or so and then sat on the bags and waited for someone to tell me what to do. It was warm and dark and wet—a womb. One became used to the stink. I was tired and my stomach full. I lay back on the soft bags, slept, and dreamed my dream.
Clanging and pounding on the closed iron doors awakened me abruptly. Two workers grabbed my arms and jerked me to my feet; a third put a shovel in my hand. “Shovel that shit, little pisher.”
The iron doors burst open. I shoveled blue dye from a mound on the floor into a bucket. All the men worked furiously now—shoveling, carrying, weighing, stirring. Through the opened iron doors clattered a warehouse truck carrying two empty vats, pushed by two shouting men: “Two blue shit. Two blue shit. Two blue shit.”
The empties were exchanged for two full, steaming vats lifted with an overhead crane on a trolley, and, grunting and swearing, out through the doors went the two men, pushing the full vats on the platform truck.
Freulisch slammed and locked the doors—the only ventilation—and the moist heat and the smell settled again. The workers opened their hands and dropped their shovels, buckets, bags of starch and dye. Four returned to sleep. Freulisch and the other four began to fill the empty vats according to a formula called out:
“Piss to fuckin’ blue line.”
“One fuckin’ shit.”
“BL blue shit.”
I drank another cup of pudding, curled up on my sacks, and was asleep.
They awakened me again for the air raid. It was ten at night, which meant it was the British. We hurried down to a subcellar beneath the basement kitchen, ten men and two buckets—one filled with fresh, hot pudding, the other for us to fill. There were several cots and more piles of bags in the subcellar. I drank another half a liter of the pudding and slept until they awakened me for the all-clear: “Up, little pisher.” Then I slept in the dye kitchen until shortly before six in the morning, when the night shift hurried out and the day people shuffled in.
I went directly to the canteen for a breakfast of stew, bread, and ersatz coffee, then to the dormitory, where I showered, shaved, dressed in clean clothes and a sweater, and climbed into my cot, covering myself with two blankets. The moment I fell asleep, I was on the racing train. I awakened, exhausted, at noon to eat lunch; slept again until shortly after five: ate my supper of stew and so before going to work, where I was given an assignment: to weigh the dry ingredients for the first batch. I stood in the circle of light beside the scale.
“Number three fuckin’ shit,” the vat man yelled at me.
Two other workers began to shovel potato starch onto the platform of the scale. I just stood there.
“Number three, little pisher,” yelled the vat man.
The two workers stopped working and leaned on their shovels. “Number three, little pisher,” said one.
A row of weights sat on a shelf behind me. Each had a number or a letter or two on it, but no weight. I found one that read 3, hung it on the balance, and asked the shovelers, “How many pounds is that?”
They did not answer. They shoveled until the No. 3 balanced out. Only then did one of the shovelers answer me: “Do you think it puts more fuckin’ shit in yer belly if yer know what the shit weighs, little pisher?”
“BL, BL blue shit.”
I found the weight marked “BL” and hung it on the balance. While they carried the blue color to the vats, I read the recipes pasted to the scale. Here is the recipe for blue dye:
Water to blue line.
Milk to red line.
No. AS wt. sugar.
No. 3 wt. potato starch.
No. BL wt. blue dye.
We then prepared a batch of green and a brown. After two hours, my work for the night was done. I drank some pudding and slept—on the train—until morning, interrupted now and then by the warehousemen, exchanging empty vats for full, and by the British.
I was forgotten by the authorities. No more orders. Unlike some others—unlike Mitzka Avilov—all my actions were self-protective. Stay quiet. Stay safe. I drank at least three liters of pudding each night, and I slept my unrefreshing sleep on bags of starch. I was very tired. I dreamed one dream. If there were others, I did not remember.
During the day, too, I slept, waking to eat the three meals in the canteen, to shower and shave, to wash my clothes in the laundry room every other day, and then to sleep again. I could not read; there were magazines in the dayroom—propaganda—and the classics—Goethe, Schiller, or so—but I could not concentrate on even the simplest ideas. I did not know when February came or March or April. I moved only where I had to move, said only what I had to say. Mostly one was able to be silent. But not always.
Respecting Professor Kreutzer’s admonitions, I always ate alone. But one day, at lunch, a man approached me. He was of early middle age and dressed in work clothing.
“Josef Bernhardt?”
I looked up at him.
“Mind if I sit down?” He spoke in High German.
I extended my hand toward the empty chair across the room.
Still standing, he said, “Name’s Schneider. Professor Schneider. University of Heidelberg, Department of Sociology.”
“How do you do, Herr Professor,” I said, rising slightly from my chair.
“Sit down.
Sit down, son.” He sat. “We’ve had our eye on you.”
I said nothing.
His eyes appeared larger than normal through the thick lenses of his spectacles. “You must wonder how I knew your name?”
I nodded.
“We have our resources.” He smiled broadly. “We know that you are one of us.” He indicated with a nod a group of ten or so sitting at a table in the corner. “You are welcome to join us at any time.”
“Thank you, Herr Professor,” I said. Do not talk. Be alone. Do not join any groups.
“And I bring to you the collective sympathy.” He laughed. “We understand they put you with those sub-humans in the dye kitchen.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Did you know that the difference between the higher and lower human beings is greater than the difference between the higher primates and man? Ah, well, I see you think me unkind, Bernhardt. And perhaps you are right. They are not to be blamed; it is due to environmental retardation rather than heredity. I’ve had a field day collecting data during my . . . ‘holiday’ here.”
One must answer something. “My aunt is a sociologist in America,” I lied, for no reason I could understand.
“Oh is that true? A fascinating science, a new science. And even while on . . . ‘holiday,’ I try to keep up. Do you know, has she published?”
“We haven’t been in touch recently, Herr Professor. She’s in Iowa.”
“Iowa? I know my colleagues at Harvard, Chicago—people of that ilk.” He smiled down at me. “But I don’t think I know of any sociologists from Iowa.”
So deeply is it engrained in our German souls to revere superiors and teachers, I rose and extended my hand across the table to him. “Well, thank you very much, Herr Professor, for your kind invitation.”
He stood and shook my hand. “That’s quite all right. Courage, Bernhardt. This will all be over very soon, and people like us will be the future leaders. The privileged status will belong to us.” He rejoined his privileged colleagues, several of whom waved at me from across the room.
For the next meal, I brought along a volume of Goethe from the dayroom and pretended to be deeply engrossed as I sat alone and ate. Thereafter, I always carried a book, even to work.
My new habit did not escape my colleagues in the dye kitchen, one of whom summarised the situation. “Sure,” he said, “you can read a fuckin’ book, you limp prick, but you can’t fuck a juicy broad.”
But they would do me no harm. I had the same right to eat the starch pudding and to sleep on the bags. I was absolutely part of the gang. And although they thought I “talked funny,” mostly they asked no questions. Once only, when I was at the scale, a shoveler resting on his shovel said, “How come you aren’t a soldier?”
“My mother was a Jew.”
Several nights later when I was again at the scale, he said, “I think my daughter was livin’ with one of them. They got taken away to a concentcamp early on, and he wasn’t no commie.”
Which gave me the courage to approach him after a week or so. “Don’t you like the commies?”
“Crooks. They cheat us.”
“Do you think the workers are treated well now?”
He snorted and walked away. Almost a week later, he shook me awake, gently, as I lay on my bags of starch.
“They all cheat us, little pisher,” he said. “The commies and the rich fuckers. We like to choose our own crooks from amongst ourselves.”
It was he along with Freulisch, who warned me, the two of them motioning me aside just as we were filing down into the subcellar for a nightly air raid. I actually knew it already—my “privileged” co-workers had not shown up for either lunch or dinner that day—but I refused to let myself recognize the implications.
“They took some o’ them others,” said Freulisch, handing me a card. “This is sent for you.”
“The ones like you,” said the shoveler.
The note was handwritten, unsigned, and not dated: Josef Leopold Bernhardt is to report to the Personnel Office with all his belongings at promptly 6:55 tomorrow morning.
We hurried to join the others, for the bombing seemed particularly close and heavy.
In a thunderstorm one sees the lightning and then hears the thunder. With a bomb, the order is reversed. One hears the howling, even underground, then feels the shaking, and then there is dust. One cannot see anything, and can hardly breathe. Then one hears booms and crashings and feels a jolt. All is very silent until people begin to cry and one hears glass breaking. The lights were gone. We were in total darkness. Even from the subcellar we could tell that the factory had been hit.
“Let’s see if we can get out of here.”
Someone lit a candle.
“Put out that fuckin’ candle. You’ll use up the air.”
Darkness.
Freulisch: “There might be gas leaking. No fuckin’ matches.” He sent someone up the stairs to see if we were trapped.
Very shortly, a voice shouted down to us. “We can get out easy, Freulisch.”
Freulisch: “D’ye think we can wait till the fuckin’ planes are gone?”
Voice: “I don’t think so. Gas leakin’.”
I did not want to leave. And yet I knew that I must, for I was certain that in the morning I would be “relocated to the East.” I had not been out-of-doors since I came to Wolff in January. I had not heard a news report or read a paper. Obviously, the war was not over. Maybe it never would be over. When it was, if I survived, I was obliged to marry Tatiana and be a mathematician and have two children, a boy named Josef and a girl named Tatiana. I always carried the Veronal with me. It was against the law to be on the streets during air raids. I had no papers. Our basement kitchen was probably the only warm place left in Berlin. It was a crime to bring children into this fucking world. I did not want to leave the dye kitchen.
We filed out of the cellar and, because of the smell of leaking gas, ran through the dye kitchen, up the stairs, and into the open air. Most of the building was standing, although one section was badly damaged. There was no big fire, only small ones here and there, giving enough light to see. The brick wall surrounding the compound was intact. The snow was gone. We huddled together inside the gate. The bombers had moved on, but the all-clear had not yet sounded.
I said to Freulsich, “My papers are in the office. I don’t have any papers.”
He didn’t answer me.
“My papers are there. I don’t have papers.”
“They’re hangin’ them without papers. Especially the young ones.”
“Who?”
“The young ones without papers. Deserters.”
“Who’s hanging them?”
“You can see them hangin’ from the light posts on every fuckin’ corner.”
I was cold. The all-clear sounded and they began to move slowly toward the factory, leaving me standing alone by the gate. The streets beyond were jammed with people swarming from bomb shelters. There were fires everywhere. I slipped through the gate and, in an instant, was in the middle of a moving mass of bodies, pressing and crushing toward the trams and trains. I shoved and pushed to stay in the center. Two corpses, both young men, dangled from a dark lamppost on the corner. The fires illuminated large white placards attached to the ropes on their throats; there was not enough light to read the inscriptions.
Berlin had gone wild. Jammed in the midst of the living throng, I let myself be carried into the Ostkreuz S-Bahn station. The train toward Friedrichstrasse would take me deeper into the heart of Berlin. I had no ticket. Most likely, they would not be checking for tickets; if they did, I was lost. I had no papers. Remember Uncle Philip. Staying in a crush of other bodies, I jumped onto a train which would take the Berlin Circle north—toward the Institute. At Gesundbrunnen, a busy transfer point, I moved in a jam to a train heading northeast. Three stops before Hagen, the crowd became dangerously thin, and I detrained in the center of a group and cut off across the fields, stumbling and falling in the
darkness. I came across no one at all; it was quiet and very peaceful, and yet I knew to be found wandering at night was suicidal, so I stopped and hid in dense shrubbery until, at the first light of the eastern horizon, I ran through the fields and woods to the tiny village of Hagen, past more fields, the little forest, the hospitals to the Institute, through the guardless gate, around the circular drive, past the flagpole that still flew no flag, and into the park, where I sat on a stone bench along the winding drive. It was chilly. I could smell the apple blossoms from the orchard beyond—and lilac. It must be late in April.
Everything looked the same—deserted, of course, because of the early hour—but well-kept. I knew I must hide; the Institute was the first place they would look for me. And I knew that if I went to anyone but Tatiana, the wrath of God would descend upon me, and it would come from her. I pictured her, the braid falling across her breast, one fist clutching shut the pink quilted robe—worn and mended—eyes narrowed, lips tight. If the proper wife were to be chosen for me, I supposed it would be someone like Tatiana. But sitting on a stone bench in a garden in April, I could not help but think of Sheereen, that lovely face engraved permanently in my memory, and I thought of the breasts of Kirsti Krupinsky. I stretched out on the cold slab and closed my eyes to dwell on my fantasy, holding, in my pocket, the glass tube with the twenty Veronal tablets.
The sun was up. There no longer was an excuse to avoid Tatiana. I arose from my slab and walked slowly toward her apartment building, feeling hopelessly trapped and guilty. I did not love her, and perhaps that is the only characteristic I had in common with Mitzka Avilov.
She wasn’t there.
I knocked lightly. “Tanya? Tanya. Psst, Tanya. It’s Josef.” My first assumption was that she did not want to open the door to me. It was terribly early, and I didn’t want to awaken the other tenants, so I avoided loud banging. I wasn’t alarmed yet, although it did occur to me that she might be gone, that they might have tried to “relocate” her, too. If so, Tatiana most certainly would have fled to safety. This, of course, would not release me from my obligation.