by K. W. Jeter
“This is water, is it not?” He smiled, his voice calm and measured. The water ran down his wrist as he thrust his palm before the nearest of the Lazarene men. “It is not heated, I grant you – the boilers have not yet been returned to service – but surely you can endure that slight discomfort, that small sacrifice for the benefit of all Germany? It’s not too much to ask, is it? And this -” He bent down and picked up a thick grey lump from just inside the raised edge of the shower area; he held it to his nose and sniffed. “It seems to be soap. Not of the finest quality… but your homeland is at war.” The smile disappeared from his face as he squeezed the rough block in his fist; the soap crumbled between his fingers, bits falling to the damp floor. He wiped the mess off with his handkerchief.
Ritter had spoken softly. The sudden change in his voice snapped the Lazarenes awake again.
“I promised that no harm would come to you.” The anger spoke in the officer’s booted stride as well. “But then, that depends upon you, does it not? Upon your cooperation, upon your following orders, upon your trust.” Ritter’s voice dropped to a whisper once more. “You do not know, from what dangers I have already saved you. And this is how you repay me…”
His steps took him to the guards and their kneeling prisoner. Pavli could see the cringing fear in the eyes set in the blood-spattered face.
“There are none of you so valuable,” said Ritter, “that I can tolerate the spreading of falsehoods.” He didn’t turn to address the crowd of Lazarenes. He nodded to the guards, who yanked their prisoner to his feet. “You should learn from this one’s example.”
Herr Doktor Ritter strode out of the room. The guards dragged between them the false gypsy, no longer struggling, another thing of rags.
The Lazarene men didn’t speak among themselves as they stripped off their clothes. They listened even as they lowered their heads beneath the icy sting of the showers.
Pavli heard the distant rifle shot, as did the other men, from out in the forest, beyond the walls of the building. A sound that Ritter and the guards had wanted them to hear.
The cold water trickled into the corners of Pavli’s mouth. When he closed his eyes, he could see the startled birds wheeling up from the tops of the trees and vanishing into the sky.
FIFTEEN
Pavli stood among his Lazarene brethren, with the wet smell of the showers and the cloying, sickly odor of the delousing compound drifting between their bodies. They had all submitted to their genitals being swabbed with a fluid the bright orange color of iodine, a bored-looking male nurse dipping a rag on a stick into the bucket beside his wooden stool. No resistance or jokes had been made, not even by the younger men; the echo of the rifle shot from out in the woods, faded except from memory, still oppressed the group.
His brother Matthi had taken advantage of the milling about that had followed the men’s emergence from the tiled washroom, to come close to him and lay a hand on his bare shoulder. “Are you all right?” Matthi whispered close to his ear.
Pavli nodded. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about…” He was trying to be comforting in turn. He craned his neck, trying to look past Matthi and the other Lazarene men, back to where they had left the little mounds of their folded clothes near the entrance to the showers. Something did indeed worry him: a secret treasure tucked inside the lining of his boots, a precious thing of paper curved against the worn leather. Perhaps all the boots and shoes, and the good coats and other bits of clothing, were to be gathered up and shipped off as part of the Winterhilfe, the charity for poor deserving Germans, the real ones. Or one of the Lazarenes might steal Pavli’s boots, leaving behind a shabbier pair, without a treasure hidden inside. The thief might never even discover what he had taken, the only thing of value that Pavli had left to him.
Would one of his own kind, his brethren, do that? Steal from him? He didn’t want to think so, but he couldn’t be sure; there was an empty place near his heart, where there once had been the sure knowledge of being one of them, of being Lazarene. That had leaked away, a hidden wound of his own, when his brother and the elders had determined not to initiate him into the faith upon his coming of age. Matthi had explained it all to him, that these were bad times, the worst since the Catholics in France had washed the streets with the blood of those they called heretics; to be marked with Christ’s stigmata was to draw the wolves upon oneself through the dark corridors of the forest…
Pavli got a grim satisfaction out of the failure of his brother’s plan. All the elders and Matthi had conspired to cheat him of his rightful heritage, and for what result? Here he stood with the other Lazarene men, stripped naked under the hard eyes of the SS guards, their skin turned to gooseflesh by the winds that sifted through the cracked and dusty windows high above the walls’ green tiles. Rounded up with the others and brought here, the eyes in his face enough of a mark to claim his place among them. With the young men, some only a year or so older than him, the muscles of their legs and arms grown lean and taut on the meager diet their ration cards had allowed them; and the true elders, the greybeards, wisps of white hair across brown-spotted skulls, sunken chests and spindly legs bowed by the weight of years. The old men folded their gnarled, large-knuckled hands over their shriveled privates, bearing the shame of their nakedness with silent endurance.
“Silence!” The Scharfuhrer shouted, unnecessarily; his voice slapped against the damp walls. “You, the first ten – step forward.”
Using the muzzles of their rifles, two of the guards separated a small group out from the rest of the Lazarene men; both Pavli and his brother Matthi were part of the chosen number. He glanced over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of his belongings left piled against a far wall, to see if the treasure hidden inside one of his boots was still safe. The broad chest and scowling face of the nearest guard blocked his view.
“You heard the order,” said the guard. He jostled the wooden stock of the rifle against Pavli’s shoulder blades. “Move!”
Another room, smaller, the naked forms of the ten Lazarenes filling one side. An eye of glass, a little curved window, stared at them; Pavli blinked at the distorted reflection of his own image before he realized that it was a camera lens. It was like a piece of another world, the one that had been left behind on the other side of the truck journey, the world that had held his uncle Turro’s shop on a narrow street in Berlin.
The guards shoved the Lazarenes in a line against the wall; the camera, mounted on a heavy tripod, stood only a few feet away from Pavli. A model he’d never seen before, a big professional machine, the likes of which had never been displayed in his uncle’s shop. At the front of the black folding bellows, the Zeiss lens seemed nearly as broad as his flattened palm; behind the blue glass, the blades of the shutter could be seen.
Raised voices, the harsh words of Ritter and the Scharfuhrer, brought Pavli back from his study of the camera.
On the other side of the room, near the doorway that led to the building’s central corridors, Ritter gestured with an upraised hand, his face darkened with anger. “Where is he? What’s wrong with him this time?”
The Scharfuhrer echoed Ritter’s demand, turning to call down the corridor. Another pair of guards appeared, dragging a man between them. A drunken man, from the looks and smell of him – the acrid scent of schnapps and sour vomit curled in Pavli’s nostrils as the man was thrust forward. He caught himself against the camera, nearly toppling himself and the tripod over to the floor. He swayed unsteadily, fumbling a hand across the stains that covered the front of his uniform jacket, the tight-fitting military collar loosened and flapping open. From just the color of the uniform, Pavli could see that the man was not SS, but regular German army.
“Get to work!” Ritter confronted the drunkard; a backhanded slap across the face brought the bleary eyes open wider, head wobbling upon the man’s neck. “There’s much to do. You’ve shirked your duties long enough.”
The other smiled, eyes slitted and red. “Put me on repo
rt, then… Herr Doktor Ritter. Send me to the Eastern Front. I don’t give a damn -”
“Shut up!” The Scharfuhrer ’s voice barked out, and the two guards lifted the drunkard even higher between them, so that his feet dangled, barely touching the floor.
“And to hell with you, too.” The drunken man’s gaze grew sharper, nostrils flaring as he looked down at Ritter. He knew how far he had already gone, that there was no turning back, no begging forgiveness. “I don’t care what you bastards do. But I’m not part of it anymore -” He struggled against the guards’ grasp upon his arms. His voice was raw with alcohol. “You hear me? You can send me back to the camps, you can put me on the other side of the wire, I don’t care. I’m not going to help you -” He started to kick, and the toe of one boot caught a slender wooden strut of the tripod, sending the camera crashing onto its side. “I’m not -”
Ritter struck the man with his fist this time, hard enough to knock him free from the support of the guards and send him sprawling against the corner of the floor and wall. The man suddenly burst into sobbing, his hand smearing tears through the blood pouring from his nose and torn upper lip.
“Get him out of here.” The guards scrambled to carry out Ritter’s orders. The drunken man was dragged out of the room while the Scharfuhrer righted the fallen camera. Ritter’s expression changed to one of exasperated disgust. “Cable the Ahnenerbe offices in Berlin; tell them we’ll need another photographer sent out. He’ll have to have the same security clearances as this last one… Schei?! ” Ritter ground his teeth together. “There’s no telling how long that will take.”
Another voice, one that had not spoken before. “Sir…” One that was neither a guard or an officer. “Excuse me, sir…”
All eyes, those of the uniformed men and the Lazarenes alike, turned toward Pavli, making him feel even more naked and exposed.
“Get back in line!” The Scharfuhrer gestured angrily at him. “Speak when you are spoken to!”
“Pavli…” His brother’s whisper hissed behind him, Matthi grabbing at his elbow to pull him back with the others.
He shook off his brother’s hand. “Sir, I can operate the camera. Any camera – I can do it -”
“Silence!” The Scharfuhrer slammed the heel of his hand against Pavli’s shoulder, knocking him back a step.
“Wait.” Ritter laid the tips of his fingers on the Scharfuhrer ’s arm, forestalling another blow. He turned a bemused smile toward Pavli. “Who is this, who volunteers his services so eagerly? What is your name, boy?”
“Iosefni, sir – my family name. Pavli…”
“Ah, yes.” Ritter nodded. He took his hand from the Scharfuhrer ’s arm and touched Pavli’s wrist. “Our rara avis, our oddity, the unmarked Lazarene.” His fingertip traced the path along the underside of Pavli’s arm, where the tattoo of Christ’s wound should have been. “Perhaps you are a surprising creature in more ways than one.”
“Sir…” The Scharfuhrer tried to butt in. “I’ll take care of this interruption. This impertinence -”
Ritter ignored him, continuing to gaze straight into Pavli’s eyes. “Do you claim to know something of photography, boy? You might be bluffing about that, for all I know. Or perhaps you overestimate your skills. What is required here is a technique suitable for a rigorous medical and scientific investigation. Not the snapping away of a few holiday shots with a cheap box camera, while on holiday on some sunny lake shore.” The needle of Ritter’s examination shifted from Pavli’s right eye, the golden-brown one, to the left eye, the blue. “What is the source of your supposed expertise?”
Inside Pavli’s head, he heard two voices, the one of the SS doctor murmuring questions almost at his ear… and the false gypsy’s whispered advice and warnings. Make yourself useful to them. That is how to survive…
He found his own voice. “My uncle owned a camera shop… back in the city. It was the best one in all Berlin.” He knew that would sound like boasting, but it had been true. “I worked there, with my uncle. He showed me everything. People came from far away, to buy, or with cameras that needed to be repaired. My uncle taught me how to do that, how to fix them, how they worked -” Pavli bit his lip, to keep the words from rushing out so fast. “I know these things.”
Herr Doktor Ritter nodded slowly. “Iosefni… yes, of course, the Josefsohn premises. A pity your uncle is no longer alive; I’m sure we would have found his expertise to be of value.”
“I know as much as he did, sir. He showed me.”
“Oh?” One of Ritter’s eyebrows lifted. “This is specially designed equipment, boy. Crafted for military requisition. I doubt if you ever saw its equal in your little shop.”
The false gypsy’s words, the whisper in his memory, prodded Pavli forward. “All cameras are alike, sir. They work on the same principles.”
Ritter smiled. “Very good -” He nodded in satisfaction. “If you are as much a craftsman in the darkroom as you are a budding scientist, you will serve well.” He crooked a finger at the Scharfuhrer. “Take him back out and get him his clothes. We can’t have him standing behind the camera completely bare-assed.”
Under the gaze of the Scharfuhrer, Pavli quickly drew on his trousers and shirt. He only had a moment to check the lining of his boots – the precious objects were still tucked safely there – before he was ordered to hurry up. He finished tugging on the boots and stood up, away from the little piles of the other Lazarene men’s belongings against the wall. Buttoning his jacket, he ran to catch up with the Scharfuhrer ’s long strides.
The camera hadn’t been damaged when it had been knocked over by the drunkard. He’d been worried about that, that the camera would turn out to be inoperable, and that he would have to tell the SS officer that; Herr Doktor Ritter would accuse him of being a liar and a time-waster, a useless creature. But there had only been a spot of black enameling knocked off a corner of the case, exposing the bare metal beneath, and a dent in the folding bellows that Pavli was able to straighten between his thumb and forefinger.
“ Bist du fertig?” Ritter used the familiar mode of address, the way one would speak to a child. “I hope you are ready, that you’re done fiddling around with that device. We’ve all waited long enough.”
Pavli nodded quickly, as he rotated the take-up spool until the film had tautened snug inside the camera body. He made the adjustments to the lens and shutter, estimating the brightness of the overhead windows’ light by the edge of the shadows cast upon the floor. One of the guards shoved the first naked Lazarene into place.
“Hands at your side,” instructed Ritter. “Turn your wrists outward so the markings may be seen.”
The Lazarene complied, maintaining his dignity by the lack of expression on his face. In the camera’s mirrored viewfinder, Pavli adjusted the upside-down image until it was precisely centered, then cocked and triggered the shutter. He breathed a small prayer, hoping that his skills hadn’t left him, that he’d remembered all his uncle had taught him. That the picture would come out perfectly exposed and in focus, and precisely what Herr Doktor Ritter wanted…
“Turn and face the other wall.” Ritter’s voice sounded behind Pavli. “Raise your arm above your head.”
The stigma of Christ’s wound, the cut of a Roman centurion’s lance rendered in blue ink, was revealed upon the Lazarene’s ribs. Pavli advanced the film and took another shot.
“Bring the next one forward.”
His hands, his fingers, became things separate from him. Clever things, that went about their business as he watched from a greater and greater distance. They would serve him well; they would save him. They were useful, at least; Herr Doktor Ritter would see that.
“Turn…”
The line of naked men shuffled forward, their bare feet making tiny noises against the slick floor. In silence, without protest, as though their cooperation were the price of the contract into which they had entered. They merely had to do as they were ordered, and a thread of hope was extended to them.
“The next one…”
Pavli didn’t hope. He dreamed as he let his hands go on automatically with their tasks. He dreamed even as his brother’s face, inverted, appeared in the camera’s viewfinder. His thumb tripped the shutter.
Hours later, he saw his brother’s face again, the image of Matthi standing unclothed and somber-faced, slowly emerging in a shallow pan of chemicals in the darkroom. When the photograph had finished developing, Pavli lifted it out with a set of wooden tongs and hung it on the thin line with the others.
In the room’s red light, Herr Doktor Ritter inspected the photos. He nodded with satisfaction. “These will do very well indeed.” He turned to the Scharfuhrer beside him. “As soon as the boy is finished, take him down to the men’s dormitory. He’s earned his rest.”
The hallway outside the room had been kept completely dark. Ritter paused as he opened the door, directing his thin smile back to Pavli at the workbench. “You’ve saved me the trouble, and the delay, of having another photographer sent to this project. Your continued efforts will not go unappreciated.” He stepped out and closed the door behind him.
Pavli put the developing chemicals back onto the darkroom’s shelves, working carefully and taking his time. Until he could delay no longer, and he had to let the single remaining guard take him back to where the other Lazarene men were sleeping.
He heard a key turn in the lock behind him, and the echoes of the guard’s heavy boots retreating down the corridor. His fatigue and the thin cold light of stars and moon sliding through the high, barred windows told him that the time was well past midnight. All he could see were rows of bunk beds, each with a human form beneath thin blankets. Snoring, muttering, the protests and entreaties of those mired in dreaming. Despite those sounds, he knew that some of them were awake; he could feel their unseen gaze turning toward him, heads lifting from pillows to study him, to mark the one who had fallen even farther from their number.