Scheisshaus Luck

by Pierre Berg

  Heading back to my Block, I realized I would have to find a new hiding place for my ring because, if I was admitted to the HKB, they would issue me new clothing on my release. My rectum was not an option this time. I would surely shit it out in there, and I couldn’t hide it in my pillow or mattress because there was no guarantee I would get my bunk back. After everyone had fallen asleep, I hunted for a hiding place. I found a board in the rear wall with a deep knothole. My ring disappeared into it nicely. I slid back into my bunk with chills that made my teeth chatter.

  I awoke with the need to urinate. The soup made everyone get up once or twice a night. In some Blocks it was the night watchman’s duty to empty the piss pail while in others the Häftling who topped off the bucket had to dump it outside. The latter was the law in my Block. With ice on the windowpanes and my body on fire, this wasn’t the time to go outside. Leaning on my elbow, I listened to the streams of urine going into the pail. I had heard that bucket fill up enough times to know the level by the sound. It was full. The pail’s handle squeaked, a door slammed, and a gust of cold air swept through the Block. Now was the time. I jumped out of my bunk and dragged myself to the other side of the Block. A line had already formed. We all used the same method. Shit, I thought, I might be the one topping off the pail after all.

  Standing there, I regretted not wrapping myself in my blanket.

  I was so wracked by chills that by the time it was my turn, I could barely keep a steady hand. To my great relief my bladder wasn’t holding much. As I made my way back to my bunk, I heard the next man swear as he began to piss.

  In the morning, the doctor declared me sick and I was officially admitted to the HKB. I took a shower, was given a clean shirt to wear but no pants, then led into the sick room—a dormitory of the usual three rows of three-tiered bunks. The fetor of shit, puke, and rubbing alcohol made me shiver. If I hadn’t been so ill I would have dashed out of there without looking back.

  “Bist du aus Frankreich?” (Are you from France?) an orderly asked.

  I answered in German, and he asked if I was fluent in other languages.

  “German, Spanish, and Italian.”

  “Are you able to climb?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take the upper tier over there.”

  I climbed up and found all three of my bedmates asleep. The second Häftling over caught my attention. He was close to my age, with red hair and a puffy, jaundiced face that made him look Asian.

  He seemed to look familiar, but his swollen face made it difficult to say for sure. I crawled in with my head at the stinking feet of the man next to me and attended to a more urgent matter—sleep.

  The orderly in my section woke me. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  It was the Pole who had shaved me on my arrival. He was distributing the evening soup. The bastard hadn’t changed. Hell, he looked a little fatter. He remembered me and was surprisingly friendly. He told me his name, Janec, and promised me an extra helping if I did translating for him.

  “What a luxury, young man, to be able to sleep through the whole day,” he winked. I nodded as I sat up; it certainly was. My joints weren’t as stiff and my fever had subsided some.

  Only my jaundiced bedmate was awake and he was greedily slurping his soup. I knew that I had seen him before, but I had no idea where. He glared at me, with soup dripping down his chin.

  “Pourquoi tu me regardé?” (Why are you staring at me?) he muttered with a familiar Mediterranean accent.

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. No, it couldn’t be.

  “Hubert? Is it you?” Hubert was a school chum whom I hadn’t seen since our graduation twelve months ago.

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “Of course, you do. It’s me, Pierrot le Moustachu.”

  That was my nickname. In my senior class I had been the only one able to grow a full mustache. Hubert’s yellowed eyes studied me. He had a hard time recognizing me, and that’s when I realized how severely my body had withered. His eyes began to fill with tears.

  “Yes, yes, it’s you, old buddy,” he choked.

  Hubert had been the captain of our volleyball team and was a real Casanova. His loyalty to friends could never be questioned except when it came to the opposite sex. Nobody’s girlfriend was safe when he was around. I had known Hubert since we entered high school. His parents grew carnations on the outskirts of Nice. Hubert got his red hair from his mother, who had the prettiest freckles.

  He didn’t volunteer, and I didn’t dare ask about his parents, because Hubert was a yellow triangle.

  That night, after the lights were doused, we lay next to each other and reminisced about school and our neighborhood. Remembering escapades and pranks had us giggling like the normal teenagers we should have been.

  “You know, Hubert, actually we were mean kids. All those dirty tricks we played on the teachers.”

  Hubert’s eyes lit up. “Yes, that math teacher with the bad ticker, Mr. Thiriad. He sure turned blue when we exploded that cherry bomb against the blackboard.”

  “Remember how I would weave chewing gum across the aisles when we had that little substitute teacher with the thick glasses who dictated while walking up and down the room?”

  “Yes, yes,” Hubert nodded, “he would have that whole sticky web wrapped all over him before he noticed. I think the idiot only had one suit.”

  “I pulled that on him three times.”

  “Do you remember Leggs?” Hubert asked.

  “How could anyone forget?” I said. “Leggs” was the nickname we had given our history professor, Miss Galand. She had been a beauty-contest winner and I used to drop my pencil to admire her thighs from the correct angle. After class one day someone inflated a condom in her inkstand, then filled it with ink. The next morning when Miss Galand dipped her pen, ink sprayed all over her new dress.

  “She was so angry she was demented.”

  “I’ve never heard someone scream that loud and for that long.”

  “When she transferred to another school I thought my goose was cooked,” Hubert admitted.

  “But Charles told me he did it. He always had a couple of condoms in his pocket.”

  “Well, yes, it was him, but it was my idea.”

  “How was that girl with the big tits?” I asked. “Marcelle. You used to date her.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Was she a good lay?”

  Hubert hesitated, then snickered. “That was only a front.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was really screwing her mother. For two wonderful years.”

  “Her mother?”

  “She’s only thirty-eight.”

  We both burst out laughing, and for a brief second I thought I was back home.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It quickly became apparent that the HKB wasn’t a hospital or an infirmary, but a way station to the crematoriums. The unsanitary conditions along with the garbage they fed us made our weakened bodies unfettered feasts for parasites and viruses. The stink of human decay hung like incense. The bunks were full of men who had no hope for anything except the end of everything. I had seen enough corpses in the camp, but I had never been a fixed spectator to the slow, ugly transition. Every couple of hours someone died, and most of the bodies just lay in the bunks, their bedmates too weak to call out. The bodies would finally be discovered by the orderlies passing out the rations, then they would lay there until a couple of orderlies felt like dragging them away. I was thankful for Hubert’s presence. Our conversations between sleep kept my heart light and my mind far from the nightmares around me. Our shared laughter must have seemed like the mark of insanity among the coughs, moans, and death rattles.

  On my third day, the orderlies collected corpses after morning rations, and when they were finished, the bottom tier of our bunk was empty. Hubert and I climbed down and made it our bed. Janec informed us that we better not get comfortable.

  “You guys are going to get company. I
have a French Jew who’s driving his Polish bedmate crazy.”

  Minutes later Janec returned with a hunched-over Muselmann who was hacking and spitting. He appeared to be in his sixties, but was probably no older than thirty. His shirt, which reached only to his belly button, was soaking wet. I greeted him in French, but he answered me in Greek. I tried Spanish and again he babbled in Greek.

  “This man’s Greek, not French.”

  Janec shrugged. I guessed that to an untrained Slavic ear all the Mediterranean languages sounded alike.

  “What’s wrong with him? Is it something catching?” Hubert asked.

  “Pleurisis is pressing on his lungs. He won’t last,” Janec said matter-of-factly and walked away.

  The Greek kept tugging at my sleeve, muttering indecipherable sentences between moans and coughing fits. He was desperate to discuss something of importance. I turned to Hubert, who was sitting at the other end of the bunk. He wanted no part of this.

  “Talk to him in Hebrew. Find out what he wants. The poor fellow is desperate to tell us something. Maybe he’s going to divulge where a treasure is buried,” I winked.

  “Buried, my ass. I can’t speak Hebrew.”

  “But didn’t you learn the language for your Bar Mitzvah?”

  Hubert informed me that he had learned the prayers phonetically.

  “That way I wouldn’t embarrass my parents in front of all my relatives.”

  Janec came back with a large needle that he unceremoniously shoved between the Greek’s ribs. A greenish fluid gushed out onto the floor. I was fascinated. Hubert got up and headed toward the piss pails. The procedure seemed to give the Greek some relief, but he gave up trying to speak to any of us. By the time evening rations arrived I realized that the man had fallen into a coma.

  With his back turned to the Greek, Hubert giggled.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “You thought that all of us can speak Hebrew, didn’t you?”

  “I guess,” I shrugged.

  “The only thing we Jews have in common are a few traditions, snipped foreskin, and these yellow triangles.”

  After rations the next morning the Greek’s body was carried away along with his treasures.

  Since Hubert had been in the HKB for more than a week, his odds of being “selected” for the ovens were in the Nazis’ favor. To the boches, if you were too weak and sickly to be a productive slave, then you were a useless mouth to feed and had to go. At irregular intervals and always without warning, the SS would conduct a

  “selection”—a weeding out of the Muselmänner, in all the Blocks.

  They made more frequent visits to the HKB because they hated to waste aspirin. Recovered or not, Hubert knew he would have to leave. He prayed that, when discharged, he would end up in a different Kommando. The Kommando he had been in mixed concrete for the ever-expanding plant complex, and the dust from the mixers was ruining his lungs. Many from his Kommando had already been stricken with emphysema. Two days later, and still edematous and yellow, Hubert got a release from a reluctant doctor.

  “Listen, mon ami.” I grabbed his arm. “We have to stay in contact. Together we’ve got a better chance of getting back home.”

  Hubert agreed, but with about 10,000 inmates in the camp, we both knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task. You could go for months without laying eyes on someone if that person wasn’t in your Block or Kommando. And the Nazis made contact more difficult by regularly shifting us around, depending on their labor needs and to prevent gangs of resistance from being formed. Hubert promised that through Janec he would get word to me of his Block number and Kommando.

  CHAPTER 10

  I had fully recovered. I was amazed what a few days’ rest could accomplish. Janec kept telling me that my saving grace was the resilience of my eighteen-year-old body. By rubbing the thermometer, I was able to make it register high enough to allow me to remain in the HKB. Because of my numerous childhood illnesses, I was barely out of bed until the age of five, and thus I lulled myself into believing I was immune to the epidemics raging around me and could pass any “selection.” I managed to switch to a bottom bunk near a window, figuring I would breathe in fewer germs from those coughing and spitting up blood. I would also have a reminder that there was a world, no matter how unsavory, outside this sideshow of unraveling mortal coils.

  For some lucky reason I shared my bunk with only one other man, and though sometimes I woke up chewing his toes, there was enough room for me to roll over. Mario was an anti-fascist Italian who barely uttered a word to me. He was extremely sick and slipping fast. Every night, he would implore some saint or ancestor while his feet kicked my face. Every day the doctor would come by and ask Mario where it hurt. He would point at his whole body, and the doctor would walk away shaking his head. One time I overheard him mention to an orderly that Mario must be a hypochondriac, but I knew better. No one could fake the cramps and convulsions that wracked his body. I was sure that worms were chewing through his guts. A medicine man in the Amazon could have cured Mario with a few herbs, but unfortunately our circumstances were more primitive.

  One night I awoke to find Mario trembling and pressing his abdomen with both hands. He was crying silently, his moist, black eyes staring out the window. I felt uneasy, as if I had blundered into a private moment. I wanted to comfort him, but how? Words were impotent—lies, actually—and although I was lying next to the man, I couldn’t bring myself to wrap my arm around him in solace. I didn’t have the courage.

  His face taut with pain, Mario slowly sat up at the edge of the bunk. I figured he had to take a leak. He dropped to all fours and crawled to the window. Curious, I sat up. Grabbing hold of the window ledge, Mario pulled himself to his feet. He tried to open the window, but he was too weak.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in Italian. “Mario, stop.”

  He shook his head defiantly and kept struggling. Not wanting any trouble for either of us from the night watchman, I jumped to my feet.

  “Alto!” (Stop!) I hissed.

  Breathing heavily, Mario pressed his face against the glass.

  Coming up behind him, I realized he was staring at the barbed-wire fence only a few feet away. A searchlight’s beam swept across it. In the nearby watchtower I could see the reddish glow of a guard’s pipe. Mario tried to open the window again, but it wouldn’t budge.

  He turned to me with imploring eyes.

  “Ajuto, amico” (Help, friend), he whispered.

  How could I ask him to go back to that bunk and continue his senseless suffering? I studied his eyes to reassure myself that this was the best and only way. I pried open the window. My muscles tightened against the rush of cold air.

  Mario grasped my hand. “Gracie, tante.” (Thanks a lot.) At least it’s on his terms, I consoled myself.

  Mario slid over the sill, dropped three feet to the ground, and began crawling toward the wire. The searchlight found him.

  “Halt, halt, oder ich schiesse!” (Stop, stop, or I’ll shoot!) Mario didn’t stop. He reached out. A flash of blue light enveloped him, then a thunderclap rattled the window.

  As I shrunk back into bed, a burst of machine gun fire echoed.

  I guess the guard wanted to leave evidence that he wasn’t sleeping on duty. I had seen many bodies lying next to the fences on my way to work detail, but I had never before seen a person electrocuted. It was hard to fall back asleep. Finally, I got up and closed the window.

  The smell of Mario’s burnt flesh was just too much.

  In the morning, an Austrian named Pressburger became my bedmate. He was a man of forty, relatively old for the camp. I knew at first glance that he wasn’t going to leave the HKB alive. His breathing was labored, and there was a wet gurgling coming from the depths of his lungs. I had to feed him like a baby because he couldn’t hold a spoon in his trembling hands. I wondered if Janec was bunking me with the most critical cases because he knew I would nurse them. Or was it just his way of scaring my ass o
ut of the HKB?

  The second night after Mario’s death I was awakened by the sound of gunfire and guards shouting. The barbed wire glowed red with the reflection of huge flames. One of the Blocks was on fire. I anxiously called to the Häftlinge outside my window, asking if they knew what Block was burning. They shook their heads, no. I flopped down beside Pressburger. With my shithouse luck it’s probably my Block that’s burning, I thought, and my only possession is melting into oblivion. The fire burned through the night because the camp’s poorly equipped fire squad could protect only the adjoining Blocks.

  The next day I got the confirmation. Sixty Blocks in the camp, and it was mine that was charred. Fate is so perverted. How many times had I laid in my bunk with a growling stomach, dreaming about the loaf of bread and cauldron of soup I would buy with my ring? How many mornings, standing in the freezing rain, had I schemed how I would buy myself the position of Vorarbeiter in a Kommando working inside the factory? How many ruses had I concocted? How many risks had I taken during searches? And there was that beating I took after I recovered my ring. It had all been for nothing. My only insurance against becoming a Muselmann was gone.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Every time I had to take a piss I would pass by a section of bunks being tended by an orderly who seemed to be highly competent and compassionate when treating patients. He could have passed for the twin of that Nazi officer on the train from Nice who had the cans of milk, except that the orderly wore a yellow triangle. The day after the fire he came and sat on the edge of my bunk.

  “Mein Name ist Paul. Kannst du Deutsch sprechen?” (My name is Paul. Do you speak German?)

  “Je parle le français.” (I speak French.) He frowned. “Mon Français nest pas très bon” (My French isn’t very good), he told me.

  “That’s okay, I was only kidding,” I told him in German.

  His face brightened. “Did you know any German Jews in France? Two cousins of mine emigrated there in ’33. I haven’t heard from them since the war started.”

  “Only German Jews I met were a few elderly couples while I was in a camp in Paris.”