I repeated this call again and again as his group went past, as we travelled on and I swam and pleaded out of the sea.
His shoulder finally turned. He seemed to sniff the air. Left and right to his name called in such a place. Oddly his first instinct was to smile and wave in recognition and I did the same, as if we were only acknowledging each other across a crowded dinner ball. Then he saw, realised.
And an SS officer was running to me.
Rifles separated the crowd, miraculously, impossibly halted, and Schwarz cursed at the guards and dragged me as if from quicksand and I was on the grass. The cool grass. I sprawled out on it thankfully, tugged at it. He knelt beside me, his leather boots creaking at my ear. A smile as he patted my shoulder.
‘So,’ he said. ‘A rum thing, no? A close thing. We almost lost you there, Herr Beck, didn’t we?’
He rolled me to sit. I could not speak for catching air. I watched the crowd move on through the arch. Turned away from their stares.
‘Thank you, Captain,’ I said. ‘Thank you. It was a mistake.’
‘It very nearly was, Ernst. You are lucky I was here today. I am only taking numbers. I visit all the camps. What would Topf have said to me about this, eh?’
He patted me again, laughed, stood and left me sitting, returned to his fellow officers.
The track empty now. The train withdrawing. The gates under the arch closed. The guards gone. Only the suitcases remained. Piled in a pyramid behind.
I stayed sat. Made and lit another cigarette. It took three attempts. Tobacco collecting in my trouser-cuffs as I trembled. Fingers bruised and shaking. These are the worst cigarettes. When they are most needed. To try and return to normality. For that is the trick about smoking. The confidence trick. A smoker is only trying to feel how a non-smoker does all the time. To return to clarity. I clawed my hands through my hair. Stopped as I heard Schwarz and his officers’ laughs as he explained about the young man sitting on the grass. I kept my back to them. Smoked as I watched the train pull away. The driver watched me this time. With my different cigarette. A pooling of cold sweat on my back.
Chapter 21
I made my way back to the car. Slowly. Eventually. I headed there rather than the office with the laughter and the smoking and the brandy that I imagined happened between men like Klein and SS officers. I smoked and waited. Kept my eyes low to the pleat skirts carrying clipboards, and the uniforms carrying their arrogance and scorn aimed to young men not at the front. I lit up again and Klein appeared the way trams do when you light up waiting for them, and the cigarette goes beneath your foot.
‘Ernst,’ Klein put his briefcase to the roof, ‘you were to come to the office when you were done. I waited.’ He looked over the sweat and ash on me. ‘Are you all right?’ My face of a pallor for interest.
‘I’m fine, sir.’ I opened my door. He raised a palm.
‘No, no, Ernst,’ he said. ‘You are not to come with me now. I have decided with our time constraints you should stay here longer and set to work. Major Norin has an office and a desk for you. You can make a copy of the plan for him. So it does not have to go back and forth.’ He cursed at his briefcase, slapped dust from it and his shirt. ‘Damn this ash! It gets everywhere. Worse than sand at a beach.’
I held onto the door. ‘What time will you come back for me, sir? For the hotel?’
He tossed the briefcase to the passenger seat.
‘Topf’s expenses do not stretch to multiple hotel rooms, Ernst. I have arranged with the major for you to spend the night here. A guards’ barracks. A cot in their kitchen. You will be quite safe.’ He was in the car, reached across to take the door from me and looked up. ‘I will pick you up in the morning. You will probably eat better than I!’ He pulled the door closed from my hand, the starter motor growling instantly. I rapped on the glass. His arm across and the window rolled down an inch. I put my head to the gap.
‘But I must call my wife, sir. Can I use one of the camp telephones?’
‘They are secured lines, Ernst. I doubt the SS allow personal calls. You can ask the major if you want, if you wish. That is what I would do. If you were me.’
If you were me. Not, ‘If I were you.’ Even in his advice he would be the centre. He looked to the path ahead.
‘I will tell you what. I will call her myself and explain for you. It is no trouble. Will you let me do that, Ernst?’ He rolled up the window before I could reply, took off, and I had to step back from the spinning rear wheel.
I still did not have the telephone number for my own house. Etta watching the black object. The silent machine. Mocking her concern with its inaction, its dust. Etta taken from her garden to wait to hear her husband’s voice. The sun setting as she fretted. No neighbours’ noise to distract her silence. No neighbours. Alone. Klein’s car a cloud of dust already.
The telephone number in his wallet, not mine.
Alone. The bag by my feet my only piece of home. I thought of all the suitcases piled outside the camp. I bent and salvaged the crushed cigarette from the sand and ash. Klein had not even passed me my jacket with my wallet and worker’s pass. My hands still trembled as I lit up again.
I was set. By him.
To a night in Birkenau.
*
Major Norin was generous with his coffee over the afternoon. I was at least grateful for that. He looked over my shoulder at my copying of the plan and nodded to my answers to his questions with a practised sagacity. The sun was setting in the one window of his antechamber and I was still nibbling at the doorstep tuna sandwich one of his secretaries had made for me. She had put pepper in it. Something local to her I assumed.
The late afternoon and the loosening of ties that comes with it and the major’s endless questioning of the plan made me feel confident that I could raise the subject that the surveyor suggested. Fifty-six days. Fifty-six days to have all the ovens converted and the new one, the continuous one, functional. I put down my pen.
‘Why such a hurry for all this, Major? If I may ask? The surveyor said something about fifty-six days?’
‘Hmm? Oh, yes. You do not know? Prüfer should have told you. If you are to work on it.’
‘I have not been at the office for a while.’ Not untrue. A small lie. A ‘while’ is subjective. I had not seen Klein for a ‘while’ so what harm?
‘Our scale of work has increased. Or is it work of scale? Never mind. It is simple politics, Herr Beck. The Hungarian ministry fears a Soviet invasion, as Italy did, and so wishes to turn to the enemy as did the Italian cowards. It has become imperative for that not to happen and to remove the Jewish influence. We have installed our own rule in Hungary. The deportations have started to arrive.’
‘I saw the train today,’ I said. ‘I had wondered on the language I heard.’
He laughed.
‘Quite so! You remember when you walked into their shops and they spoke in tongue around you to each other? You would pass them in the street and they would not tip “Good morning” to you. But now you see how rats squeal when they are cornered, eh? That is the urgency.’
I could only think of the Jewish businessman who had employed my father when no-one else would. I looked up at Major Norin from my stool and he pitied my lack of understanding.
‘In fifty-six days we will transport over four hundred and thirty thousand Hungarian Jews.’ He studied the four-level oven with the conveyors and furnace that would never go out. ‘We cannot fit them all in here, Ernst. In the camp.’ He took a bite from my sandwich, spoke as he chewed. ‘And imagine Poland with millions of Jews? We would almost be giving them their own country after the war. What would we have achieved then, eh?’
I picked up my pen and pencil, put them away with my rule.
‘I have finished, Major,’ I said.
Chapter 22
I approached the guards’ barracks as one could only do, probably as a civilian should only do. Heavily. Low in heart. These were soldiers not at the front. Had probably experience
d worse for being here. Voss had told how Himmler worried about the soldiers of the camps becoming brutes, becoming monsters. And I would be their age. And not in uniform. I had begun to realise that regardless of race the man in the suit was despised by the soldier in war. I raised my fist to knock and then lowered it. I imagined Klein. What Klein would do. These men did not know me. I would wear Klein’s impenetrable coat, his shield and manner. The millionaire in the sewer. I opened the door and strode in. My bold entrance lost. The barracks empty. Klein’s shield to the floor.
Beds. Triple and double bunks. All as narrow as coffins. They were not neat or made. I had expected them to be immaculate, to be able to bounce a coin off their starched surface. But not so. It was a room where children lived. Two sinks, face-cloths laying in them. One wood-burner. Detritus everywhere. Clothing lines strung across almost every space so I had to duck through underwear and shirts to find the door to the kitchen, to my bed, my cot.
A good bolt on the back of the door. Two windows opposite each other with bright yellow curtains decorated with sunflowers. A burner stove as heater for room and water and cook-plate, frying pan still on it. A square sink full of pots. Not a real kitchen. A place for tea and eggs and forked toast cooked from a stool. They would have a mess somewhere else.
I put my bag to the cot. It sank. Little more than a hammock. The same grey blankets that you expect. Warm enough. Everything about the army is just enough. Serve beyond. Endure beyond. Earn and be given just enough to survive. That is the soldier. And men like me are not. And they know it. I bolted the door.
I would make tea. Pretend this was my hotel room and spend the time familiarising myself with its corners and cupboards as Klein was surely doing. There is always some pleasure to find in a new place. Even in a prison. I was not the only person spending their first night here. I thought of the children, of the girl I had seen fall. I hoped she saw it as a grand adventure, as a child should, a first holiday, a different bed. A first morning somewhere else and that brief panic yet exquisite moment when you wake and do not know where you are as if you have been kidnapped by pirates in the night. I hoped that was her experience. I hoped. And I did not feel sorry for myself any more. The kettle whistled, stopped everything with its urgency, as they do, thankfully at times, as telephones do, excepting late at night, as the rap at the door after the sun goes. You and your Jewish wife staring at each other from your chairs across the room in the dark. But that had not happened. It would not happen. I was the one in the camp. And I worked for them. Was one of them. Now.
*
I did not drink my tea. I had lain on the cot and there was something comfortable in its weak softness, like laying on your parents newly laundered bed-linen as a child, before your mother shooed you from it. I fell asleep, exhausted from the road and my afternoon tribulations. Strange how you can sleep in such circumstances. The brain wants to switch off. To forget for a moment what it knows. Paul had once told me that he would often wake up widows waiting for their urns in his mortuary, snoring away in the corridor, sleeping with their spouses one more time under the same roof. He would rouse them, they would apologise, be embarrassed, and then he would hand them the urn and the tears would start again and he would feel cruel. He had deprived them respite. Peace. When their life had become a blur. Except the mothers of young children, Paul said. They never fell asleep. Sometimes they would not even wait. And then they would come back the next day and apologise.
‘Those are the worst ones,’ he would say. ‘But it is the worst and the most important part of my job. It can be the best reward. I have helped them in their despair. If we all did that, if that was everybody’s job to each other, the world would have no problems ever again.’ He would be drunk when he said such.
I was woken by the door of the kitchen rattling. The bolt. Someone was trying to heave, to kick the door open.
I shot up, unaware of where I was and then it came back. Had no-one told them I would be here? No. There was the cot. Someone had put it here. The banging on the door continued. It was dark outside and in the room. I stood, guessed that the light switch would be by the door, but did not recollect it. Perhaps there were only oil-lamps. I yelled at the banging door, smoothed my hair. Laughter came back to my yell, drunk laughter. I fumbled to the door that was cut out by a frame of light from the barracks. I opened it and with the light rushing in two fellows crashed through with it. They were in underwear and braces, boots and trousers, and in their cups.
‘How are you, Company Man?’ one of them laughed as they fell into each other. ‘It is good to see you!’ They had the roughened faces of farm labourers, the shaved heads of schoolboys.
‘Good to see you!’ the other repeated.
I found the light switch. A weak bulb trickled on. I straightened my tie, the pin still on it. In the barracks I could see the beds and chairs now full, the room smoky, a table of cards and vodka. An accordion, played badly, a dirging polka. They were all drunk.
I remembered what I had thought about Klein, about his shield. I would only have one chance to cement an impression if I was to have a peaceful night. And they did not know me, know what position I held. But I knew them. And I had Klein’s lessons and a flag on my tie that they obeyed.
‘Are you permitted to be drinking, soldier?’ I was surprised by my own snap. They had bottles that I did not notice and raised them to me, careful not to spill.
‘Sure. Sure we are, Company Man. That is all we are “permitted” to do!’ He was the tall sinewy type that you see on a Saturday night in the gutter. ‘What to you anyway? We just wanted to see your face. Come. Come join us friend. My Company Man.’ He held out his open palm.
‘I am not your friend. I am here on request of Major Norin. SS work. I require silence and sleep.’ I put my hands in my pockets, faced them so they could see the badge, the shield on my front. Both their faces changed, but not in the respectful way I wanted. They were the farm boys again. Their happy drunkenness gone. And the city boy had tried to put them in their place.
The correct way, the only way, to handle such moments is to have no doubts, as Klein would not, as nature would not. You inflate your collar, lizard like, lizard roar. Show your teeth. And hiss.
I put my back to them and walked into the barracks. Kept my hands in my pockets.
‘That goes for all of you!’ But sure they had not heard.
The accordion stopped with a dying whine. Everything stopped. Only the draw of cigarettes went on. Every cherry-tip pointing at me. The boys behind me stumbling out of the kitchen at my heels.
‘My name is Beck. Herr Beck.’ I enunciated my name like a title, like I was pope, walked down the aisle of beds just the same.
‘I have come to this shit-hole to make your lives easier.’
Every man in the room could kill me, I was sure, with just the furniture let alone the rifles and bayonets laid on their beds. But they did not know I was the Beck that was without work a few months ago. The Ernst Beck that went hungry one day a week a few months ago and was lucky to have one apple on the day before that hunger. Now I had twenty marks’ worth of shoes, a white rich cotton twill shirt and thin black tie with a black and white emblem of their masters. I was blond and blue-eyed and their age. There would have to be a reason, an important reason enough for such an example to not be in uniform. I turned and took them all in again.
‘I am here for the SS. I asked to spend the night with the normal men of this camp and not in a hotel. I told Major Norin that I did not want special privilege. I turned down that hotel room. I wanted to be treated as we will all be treated some good day. As equals. I wanted to stay in the camp and be with the brave men of the camp.’ I stopped my walk. ‘But what do I wake up to after my labour?’
I looked around like a school teacher at a class full of farts and giggles.
‘Drink. Gambling. Is this how I am to tell my SS colleagues the German soldier behaves? Kicking at my door when I chose to be here with you? Drove hundreds of miles to
witness you, to assist in your work, to improve your task for your better days to come?’
Silence as I walked again. The only sound my soles on their boards still furred with winter mould.
‘My work here is top secret. It goes straight to Berlin. And I chose to spend the night here. With you.’
Klein now. Woo them now. As he would.
‘Do not make me regret that. I do not wish to deprive you of your kitchen so I will leave the door unlocked but I ask for the importance of my task here, for you, that I be permitted to sleep at least.’ I circled them all, caught them all.
‘I only wish to make your work easier. More efficient. And to not make me regret my decision to be proud to spend some time with the men who are the backbone of us.’
I was back at my door now.
‘Drink. Rest. But let me sleep I ask. I am working. For you.’
I looked to the pair who had disturbed me. Their eyes away. I closed the door behind me, left the bolt, and took my papers and tobacco from my pocket.
There was a small table and I had to sit to roll. Hands shaking too much. Again. The music did not start up, and despite the tremor running through me I felt myself grinning. Did not think of Etta for a few moments.
This was how it was done. The tanks and the aircraft were the hammers, but the bureaucracy, the lists and the files by the men in smart shoes and ties were the nails to keep everything in place. It was done so easily. Even the salute whittled us down. It was mandatory for all citizens from the beginning and then a few years later only for Aryan Germans. Metal signs on the street lights and wall plaques reminded us to use it. If you did not use it you were treated as suspicious and it was a way of singling out the immigrants who were not permitted. Dividing us instantly. From our neighbours. It made social interaction formal, government controlled. The butcher gave you the salute and you had to return it whether either of you wanted to or not. That had been taken away from you. Our professors greeted us so in class and we responded. I have to do this. It is the law. And not the law of fines and chastisement. Camps. Treason. So if every citizen followed the rule what blame on all those desks stamping all those papers, passing all those rules, filling all those trains? If I have to salute my postman how much easier, simpler is it to just do my job? Surely that is more important than saluting a brush-seller? And that was how it was done.
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