The Storyteller

by Jodi Picoult

  "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 Hauptscharfuhre 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 Hauptscharfuhre r's office. There would be work waiting for me while he made his rounds in Kanada. At midday, the Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Hauptscharfuhrer. 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 Lod; scribbling down ideas in the hallway outside Herr Bauer's classroom; sharing a hot chocolate at a cafe 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 cliched."

  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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Hauptscharfuhrer," 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 . . . upior. Why split hairs?' "

  The Hauptscharfuhrer 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 upiordid 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 upior. You have to be the victim of an unnatural death."

  "And yet," the Hauptscharfuhrer 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 upior, 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?" th
e Hauptscharfuhrer 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 upior."

  "I . . . I don't know," I admitted. "Maybe it's the fact that Aleksander doesn't want to be an upior that makes him different."

  "You mean, a monster with remorse," the Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 upior?"

  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 Hauptscharfuhrer would occasionally send me on an errand for him. I was to pick up cigarettes one day, laundry the next. I became his Lauferin, 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer 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 Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer drank a lot, and when he did, he got angry. I had seen this, of course, at Appell. But sometimes the Hauptscharfuhrer 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 Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer 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 Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer 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.

  I wondered if the other officers knew that the two men were related. If, like me, they wondered how two such different individuals might have emerged from the same womb.

  One of the other perks of my job was knowing when the Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer was likely to be on an angry tear, since these tears followed his bouts of private contrition like clockwork.

  I was not stupid. I knew that what the Hauptscharfuhrer saw in my book was not simply entertainment but an allegory, a way to understand the complicated relationship between himself and his brother, between his past and his present, his conscience and his actions. If one brother was a monster, did it follow that the other had to be one, too?

  One day, the Hauptscharfuhrer had dispatched me to the village to pick up a bottle of aspirin from the pharmacy. It was snowing hard, and the drifts were so deep that my feet in their wooden clogs were soaked. I wore the coat I had been given, and a pink wool cap and mittens that Darija had stolen from Kanada for me as a Chanukah gift. The trip, which usually took only ten minutes, was twice as long due to the howling wind and the spitting ice.

  I picked up the parcel and was headed back to the Hauptscharfuhre r's office, when suddenly the
door of the canteen burst open and the Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer flew through it, pounding the face of a junior officer.

  Believe it or not, there were rules at Auschwitz. An officer could beat any prisoner for no more reason than that the prisoner looked at him funny, but he could not kill without reason, because that meant eliminating a worker from the great cog that was this camp. He could treat a prisoner like pond scum, and could abuse a Ukrainian guard or a Jewish kapo, but he was not allowed to show disrespect to another SS man.

  The Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer was clearly important, but there had to be someone more important than him, who would get word of this.

  I started to run. I raced across the camp, slipping on patches of ice, my cheeks and nose numbed by the cold, until I reached the administration building where the Hauptscharfuhre r's office was.

  It was empty.

  I hurried outside again, this time to the barracks of Kanada. I found the Hauptscharfuhrer talking to several of the guards, pointing out an inaccuracy in their reporting.

  "Excuse me, Herr Hauptscharfuhrer," I murmured, as my pulse raced uncontrollably. "May we speak privately?"

  "I am busy," he said.

  I nodded, moving away.

  If I said nothing, no one would ever know what I had witnessed.

  If I said nothing, the Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer would be reprimanded. Maybe even demoted or transferred. Which would certainly be a good thing for all of us.

  Well, maybe not for his brother.

  I don't know what was more viscerally shocking to me: the fact that I turned around and marched back into the sorting barracks, or the realization that I cared about the Hauptscharfuhre r's welfare. "I am sorry, Herr Hauptscharfuhrer," I murmured. "But this is a matter of grave importance."

  He dismissed the officers, and dragged me outside by the arm. The wind and snow howled around us. "You do not interrupt me in my work, is that clear?"

  I nodded.

  "Perhaps I have given you the wrong impression. I am the one who orders you around, not vice versa. I will not have officers beneath me thinking that I--"

  "The Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer," I interrupted. "He is in a brawl outside the canteen."