This morning, as we waited for the garbage truck to come down the street, I saw Gitzig. He waved and came over. Up and down, calfactors were taking out the garbage or ladders to begin the spring cleaning—windows, porches, outside walls. Some were tending the flower beds to ready them for blooming. The air was warm and soft for April, and the sky was blue.
“You don’t look so good,” Gitzig said.
I shrugged. What was there to say?
“This spring, it will go,” he said.
“The war? I thought it was going already.”
“Not the way it’s going to go,” Gitzig said.
Of course, he wanted me to ask what was really going on, so he could tell me how much he knew and how he was involved in it. Instead I said, “That kid is starting to look more and more like you, Gitzig, lover man, Gitzig.”
He turned and looked up and down the street. “Do you really think so, Pepperidge?”
“So,” I said. “Blackjack. It is yours.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “when I’m with Bernhardt, I turn and catch him studying me. And I think, He knows. Lily wouldn’t tell. He just knows.”
“Shit,” I said, “if he wants her to tell, he can make her. You know that. But the little fucker looks just like you.”
“It really shows through, Pepperidge?”
“To me, yes. From the first time I saw the kid. But I got different eyes than white people, you know.” I wanted to put him at his ease, but he was already nervous. He wasn’t talking about no love now. “What’re you doing these days, Gitzig? You haven’t asked me to take anything to Werner lately.”
“That’s because I heard you and Werner don’t talk too much now. What happened? You want to tell me?”
Tell him Werner packed my coal in exchange for a favor for Pierre? Why? How could that help me? Maybe Werner’s nature turned on him. Maybe that pussy at the Puff was just too worn out for him. Who knew, shit, who cared anymore? Yet I felt that since I knew Gitzig’s secret, he wanted one of mine in return. In jail everything was up for Valuta, trade-price, exchange, barter. Valuta was also insurance: If you tell on me, I’ll tell on you. That way, no Verzinken, no betrayal.
“Never mind, Pepperidge. I can guess. The Reds are just like everyone else.” Gitzig patted my shoulder. “It’s okay. What am I doing? It’s like being back in Leipzig, back in the business again. I’ve been working on ration books and foreign money—counterfeit—because Bernhardt has to get his. So all this is for Denmark and Norway, and already being put to good use there, you know. Soon, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France.” Gitzig offered me a Players. “I do good stuff, Pepperidge. Looks and feels like real. The Swiss eat it up. I can make Bernhardt rich, so what if his wife has my baby? He doesn’t love her. He loves money. All these cock-suckers are like that. It’s the money. So, more countries, ration books, and money; bet your bottom pfennig on that. I think I’ll be around for a while. In the outside world, Bernhardt would be nothing next to me. All he is now, like the rest of his pig SS-SD-Gestapo, is a goddamn crook in a uniform.”
Gitzig was shuffling around like a boxer in his corner. A taste of the good life had changed him, put some fight in him and took out the rat. The good life and love. I didn’t imagine that Gitzig had spent any time lately with Lily if Bernhardt suspected anything. Maybe that’s what got him steaming. I hoped he wouldn’t get reckless.
The garbage truck was not far away now, and Gitzig went back to the front of the Bernhardt house. The street was jumping and voices called out. Shit. It was spring and it was getting warmer, and you didn’t have to split wood or bring in coal or coke and take out the ashes anymore, and the German army was crushing everything in front of it.
Sun., June 23, 1940
“Es blitz!”
“Blitz Schnell!”
“Blitzkrieg!”
It was on the radio two hours ago. The French have signed an armistice with Germany. The “Blitz” did it. Zing, whing, bam, boom, and it was the English into the sea, the Belgians, Dutch, and Luxembourgers on their knees in the middle of bomb-blasted cities, then “Blitzkrieg!!” around the Maginot Line and voila! France fell over as though it was a cow hit on the head with a sledgehammer.
Could all the food have gone to the army? There seems to be a shortage in camp. Which is good for Dieter Lange’s new brand, Krieger. He had the labels printed in Munich. Not like these regular store labels that look so cheap. We pasted his labels on the outside of mayonnaise jars and put the stuff inside—cabbage soup, beet soup, turnip soup. The new label with the big blond warrior-Viking assures the prisoners that the stuff is okay, 100 percent Aryan. Have to be careful with the Krieger brand, though. It’s not approved by the camp director’s office, and it’s not too tasty. But they move when there’s a shortage of food, and as Dieter Lange says, our prices are right. Next, we’re going to try chicken soup, but that’s going to cost. Dieter Lange has to hire some women out on his father-in-law’s farm to kill, clean, and cook the chickens. Women who can be trusted. Or who’re just plain dumb. There’s already the payoff to various guards in charge of the prisoners who move the stuff.
The details that march out to the civilian plants, though, eat okay. Can’t have those prisoners falling out on the job in front of civilians while they’re making guns and plane, truck, and tank parts.
Dieter Lange and Anna have been arguing all weekend. He has to go to Paris. He wants to see how many goods he can reroute from Les Halles to his canteens in the Bavarian camps. She wants to go with him. I can’t imagine Anna walking along the Champs-Elysées. Anna Lange? All that money must be burning a hole in her pockets. Dieter Lange’s, too. Of course, Anna won. She will go with him.
The Dancing Ground was filled with prisoners taking the sun earlier today, taking the sun and exchanging news about the war. Will England be next? How long will that take? Between a couple of the blocks a small group of prisoners listened to a flute player. The man was doing Bach, what else, and he made me think of Ernst. I watched the man lipping and breathing into that battered, tarnished instrument with such love I could have cried. Some of the prisoners did. Once I looked up and in one place the sky seemed bluer than anywhere else, like there was a hole in it. I watched the hole in the sky and listened to Bach. And for just one minute, things weren’t so bad.
Huebner was not in the canteen today.
Thursday, July 11, 1940
They think I don’t know. They talk in low voices around the table when I’m not in the kitchen, and when I’m there, they hardly talk at all. I could put the pieces together for them, but they still wouldn’t know what’s really going on, because they aren’t supposed to. No one is.
Last Saturday, after two days in the Punishment Company, Gitzig was taken to the rifle range and shot dead—after they had made Hackfleisch out of him. On the range they tied him to a post and began shooting from his feet up.
Just before dawn Sunday morning, Lily Bernhardt, carrying her baby, was led to a cottage beyond the rail sheds and was strangled from a rafter. It was hot in the shed. They just tied a rope around her neck while she cried, drew it tight, and pulled it over a cross beam. In the blocks they did that very slowly. The prisoner sweated and the SS called the strangling a “sauna.” They placed the baby in Lily’s arms and put a rope around its neck, too. Gitzig was buried, Lily and the baby cremated. Different places, different times, of course. That bothered me like a sticky piece of lint on a dark suit, because, maybe, Lily and Gitzig and their baby might have been the most natural, the most—somehow, in some way—honest accident to happen here. Lily, fragile, birdlike, and unloved, pushed out of the nest Bernhardt was crowding with his women (of which, besides Anna, there were many, as befitted his station), kept bumping into Gitzig and must have seen something no one else ever saw in him, and then things happened. How? When? Did Gitzig ever confess to adding ingredients to the iced tea and the tapioca? Later, how did she tell him the baby was his? But she must have told him. And then he told me. The fool
was happy! What did she tell Bernhardt when he asked about that baby? What was his response? How patient a man he must have been. Having horns grown on his head by the ugliest prisoner Dachau must ever have seen only made him more reserved. It was money he was after, I guess, not prestige. Revenge must have been an orderly thing, scheduled in due time, when Gitzig had finished his cataloging, his engraving, had in fact finished his life, which he was realistic enough to have guessed, no doubt.
Ah, but there was the question of Lily’s revenge. How many people stand up to an SS colonel with the kind of story she had to tell? Not to tell it was never her plan, I bet. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with poor Gitzig.
Colonel Fritz Bernhardt transferred to Lyon. All that the Langes know is that Bernhardt is there and Lily, the baby, and Gitzig the calfactor are gone. They do not have my grapevine. But they can guess. Dieter Lange hopes he is now safe from those nasty whims of Bernhardt’s; Anna breathes a bit easier, too, even if she’s still got the itch for him. Women seem to go for dangerous men like him.
My news came from the Reds with their contacts inside the Punishment Company, the rifle range commando detail, the crematorium commando, and so on. I’d bet bottom dollar that Bernhardt knew all along about his wife and Gitzig, but he needed Gitzig then. Poor Lily. I suppose there was no place for her to run to. I’m just happy Bernhardt is a jazz music freak. And that he liked Anna well enough to leave us all alone—her, Dieter Lange, and me. Well. The Langes can guess, or just make it their business not to know. Ain’t none of my business anyway.
So when Dieter Lange finally gets me alone and says, “Bernhardt’s transferred to France. His wife is gone and his servant’s gone and his house is closed up. What do you think of that?”
I say, “Is that so? He’s in France? Everybody wants to go to France these days. And Gitzig, where could he be, what could he be up to? Surely, something with Bernhardt, wouldn’t you say?” But I can’t fool Dieter Lange; he knows I know something, but he doesn’t know how to make me tell it.
“They say he’s divorced his wife,” he says, “and had his man sent to Buchenwald. Might talk too much here, you know.” Dieter Lange sighs. “Anyway, we won’t have to walk on eggshells around here now. A transfer may be a good thing for Bernhardt’s career.” Yeah, I’m thinking, and for yours, too. Not good having too many crooks working out the same kitchen, especially if one is cooking your wife all the time, and you know it but don’t want to do anything about it.
Anna is more direct when she gets me by myself. “He could be a mean man, Fritz Bernhardt. He could hurt you. Well, you know. Look what happened to those people who tried to get you away.” Anna rolls her eyes. “True, he may be in France, but I believe that’s only to get ready to do in England what he did in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, but worse! And if anything’s happened to Lily, I don’t want to know about it.” She looks at me hopefully, as though I might say something. But that’s not going to happen. Not in this life. “Do you believe he divorced her?” I shrug. “Was there anything going on between Lily and that Gitshit? C’mon. You talked with him. He was your friend. He nursed you when you were sick that time, remember?” I shrug again. “Just as well Bernhardt’s gone,” she says. “He wasn’t coming around too much. Busy, he said. And things, well, they changed.”
Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1940
Listen to Goebbels and the Germans are kicking England’s ass; listen to the BBC and the English are kicking Germany’s ass. One thing for sure, though: English cities are catching hell, so everyone believes Goebbels. They think maybe the invasion of England is on the way, or better, that England will quit like France. The Germans would like the war to be over. They don’t understand why the English won’t quit.
Not quite two weeks ago the English bombed Berlin for the first time. At night. You would have thought a colored man walked into a meeting of Kluxers and punched one in the jaw the way the Germans carried on. What did they expect? Then, two nights after that, the English came again.
This past Sunday Hitler spoke on the radio. He swore to destroy English cities, burn them to the ground. Huebner is now in Mauthausen, working in the quarry with other Witness details. Each such commando lasts about four months. Then the SS marches them right off the top of the quarry. Splat. Splat, splat. Huebner was a good man, but good don’t count for shit in these camps. Anyway, you were okay by me, Huebner.
Yesterday after the noon meal, a bunch of Poles were lined up on the Dancing Ground. Lappus said they were officials. They looked scared. I’m sure they would have traded the “P”S on their uniforms for anything else just then. They formed up after a roll call and marched north on the ’Strasse. To the northeast of the camp is the swamp, and mostly Jews work that detail. The Poles weren’t going out there to help the Jews. Beyond the swamp is the rifle range, the Schiessplatz, where prisoners are shot. The Poles marched north, and we waited for the sound of gunshots to carry back to us on the wind. We always waited, but because of the distance and the way the range was built—halfway down into the ground, what they called a Kugelfangen, a bullet catcher—we didn’t always hear the gunfire.
While we waited, the first French prisoners climbed down from the freight cars that had been pushed onto the siding near the southeast side of the camp. They straggled to the quarantine hut. If Pierre were alive, he’d give them uniforms that had been deloused and had “F”S sewn on them. (The pieces go out, the pieces come in, and all they amount to are lots of dead men.)
Thursday, April 24, 1941
It started Monday. A big Svina Exkursiona, the prisoners call it, was set for Tuesday and Wednesday. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler was to visit.
Visits by the big shots, even SS big shots, are good, because no one gets beaten or killed just before, during, or after them. And the food isn’t bad, either, even though the prisoners don’t get the pigs that are always slaughtered just before the big shots are shown into the prison kitchen. On the other hand, the camp has to be made spotless to give the impression that prisoners always live so neatly and are always so clean.
The rain started Sunday night, and on the way into camp Monday morning I could see mud and puddles, and I knew the canteen and the blocks would be filthy by the end of the day. How were things to get cleaned and stay clean until after Himmler’s visit?
The same as always. More ashes and dirt on the ’Strasse and the ’Platz. Shoes off at the door of the blocks, the canteen, all the buildings. It rained all day Monday, into the night. After dinner, Dieter Lange said I should do things around the house on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Himmler’s pig visit would be over by noon Wednesday. This was just in case one of the officers wanted to show off and be cute with the Schwarze Amerikaner. I have to say that sometimes Dieter Lange does try to keep me out of harm’s way.
Tonight he told me and Anna about the visit and how Loritz and his staff stood out there in the rain in the middle of the ’Platz until Himmler’s car, with the license plate SS 1, drove up. This was after Himmler had inspected the SS guards near their barracks. From time to time I threw a small log into the porcelain stove to knock off the damp chill. Anna began to snore softly. Dieter Lange shrugged and continued with his cognac. Himmler came and Himmler went, the shrug said. Of course, he wasn’t one of the big shots in camp, so he missed a lot of what was going on. As usual.
But he had always understood, and so did I, that the things he did he could only do because no one paid much attention to him as long as he did his job. He helped out the SS kitty and his own pocket, of course. And he was going to Paris to see what else he might do to fatten his wallet.
I hate going downstairs when the weather is damp and cold like this, and Dieter Lange and Anna hate going up to their room, but at least they have each other to stay warm by. Dieter Lange thinks Himmler came to look over the problem with space. Germany invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on the 6th, so here we go with more pieces.
Fri., May 16, 1941
Dieter Lange and Anna are du
e to return from France tomorrow. They have been gone a week. Somebody put a bug in Dieter Lange’s ear that they should go before the middle of June because he just might be busy soon after. He told me this one day while we were rearranging the attic for more space. (The cellar, which now has a strange smell, could not hold even a straight pin, it’s so full.) He looked worried when he told me. “The pieces,” he muttered. “The more they capture, the more pieces to feed.” He grunted. “And the more money to make. But where can I put it all, where? Where to put it.” Then he said, “Now Laufen, now Tittmonig, the pieces …” He was talking to himself and moving the cans and jars and links of dried meat as though they were checkers or chess pieces.
I know that parts of Dieter Lange sometimes fly away from him like crazy notes break out from keys you never intended to touch. His life is too much for him. He was a small-time hustler, pimp, faggot, but through the SS he’d become much more: the canteen supply officer for at least thirty camps for which, to which, and through which he has to “move the pieces.” He has to keep two sets of books (one for the authorities and one for himself) and watch the prisoners who work for him or have them watch each other. What he needs is a colored jazz musician who owes his life to him in each of the thirty-odd canteens in his charge, not just me in Dachau.
Like everyone else, Dieter Lange now prefers Witnesses. Next to a colored musician, they’re pretty good workers. But they don’t last long. They are among the fastest moving “pieces.”
I’m glad the Langes went to Paris again. I thought it might be good for Dieter Lange. He might run up on a solution for moving and hiding his money, which I bet my last dollar is what’s really worrying him. I don’t want him to get sick or go nuts. If I am going to live, I need his help. No Dieter Lange, no Clifford Pepperidge.
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