Gratitude

by Joseph Kertes

  Then she saw the kapo, the aggressive Greek Jew, step up in front of the goon to close the vault. The goon would have had to bend around him to maintain eye contact, and he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. She’d almost managed to pull a glimmer of recognition up through his eyes like rope.

  And now Marta’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness of the chamber. She looked up into the showerheads to see what she might ascertain, to wait for it to begin.

  A dread silence filled the room until she heard someone, an old woman, moan, and a young boy or girl say, “I want to get out now. I need to go.” A child said, “The showers don’t work.” Then lots of small, quiet sounds, solemnly spoken, reverentially, it seemed, not loudly, not intended for the outside, small squeals, mostly, yelps, ohs, strangely reassuring to Marta instead of unsettling, strangely comforting, reminding her at least that they were all going into this together, and it was November 7, a day to etch on the dissolving brain. They were standing in this great chamber, like some great elevator, like a cattle elevator, and Marta found that blind Libuse had wrung the life out of her hand, but the taller woman was standing stiff as a trooper. “Hit me,” she was saying, as though she were standing in a boxing ring, or before a firing squad. “Hit me.”

  “I won’t hit you. Think of music instead. Think of Rusalka and the moon.”

  They heard the sound of a canister, then a hissing above the little grunts and caws. They both faced upward. “What was his name?” Marta said. Libuse didn’t answer. “Your son.” Libuse still didn’t answer. Marta was holding her breath with a force equal to that of Libuse’s grip. Someone bumped into Marta, stumbled back against her, the naked flesh cold and stubbly.

  Libuse said, “Emile. He was nine. I was giving him piano lessons, and I made him practise his little heart out—you can count on that.”

  Marta heard what her friend said, but the voice was muffled, distant. Everything in her was closing down. She clamped her eyes shut, her ears, tried to shut down her mind, and the beast between her ears had begun to cooperate. She was wobbly and light-headed as she took in a first delicious draft of air. She imagined Istvan, waiting for her in his hovel with Smetana, or maybe not—maybe they were waiting just up ahead—how nice that would be, how quick and nice. All he’d wanted to do was survive, like Libuse, like her, like Smetana—like her pretty angelica out back, like the walnut trees and apricot trees that were clever enough to keep Marta alive so she could propagate them, harvest their fruit to bake her cake and keep her vases lush, waiting to be appreciated, the fragrance so sweet, waiting to be adored, waiting to be rescued, waiting to mask the scent of human fear—when—when what?—a clanging sound from behind Marta roused her from her reverie.

  The door of the death chamber swung open. Marta felt a cool draft. People started to heave like one mass of flesh out through the chamber’s opening. The goon shoved them back with the butt of his rifle. He was all by himself. The kapo was nowhere to be seen. It was Marta’s goon, the one with the glass eyes. It was like some kind of hallucination. He reached in and took hold of Marta’s free hand. Marta heard a whimpering sound bubble out of blind Libuse’s throat beside her. The goon was pulling Marta outward, and she felt clothed in her reverie. She forgot she was naked, a fleshy young woman being pulled out through the ribby flesh pressing in at the opening, the gash in the chamber—the Air—out from where the gas itself was already flowing, and the goon was trying to cover his own nose and mouth with a handkerchief as he yanked at Marta. He had hold of her hand and was much stronger than Libuse. “Go,” Libuse was saying. The blind woman saw what was happening before Marta did. “Go.” And she released her, let go, gave her permission, a mother setting her child free. He had her hand, and Libuse’s was gone now. He yanked her out of the chamber and tried to force the door closed—old limbs tangled up with new ones, and the goon fired his rifle and fired again into their midst, and Marta’s naked breasts were splashed with red blood.

  Marta heard, “No,” in Hungarian. That one utterance just as the door was clamped shut behind her, and she could feel the air again, the autumn draft, the seasons continuing, November 8 waiting ahead, and she and the goon turned to see the face of the stupefied kapo. He glowered at Marta, then the SS guard, the goon, and the goon turned away from the glare, unlatched the chamber door again, flung the kapo inside with a single whipping motion of his arm and slammed the vault for the last time.

  Marta stood naked and alone with the goon in the air. The first thing she felt was shame. All she wanted to do was cover herself. A moment before, she’d wanted to survive like the walnut tree. Now, she’d moved beyond survival into shame. Next, she might consider her forthcoming meal, her sleep that night, the damp, and the next episode of moonlight. But the first thing she remembered was shame, like Eve exiting the Garden.

  She covered her blood-streaked breasts with one arm and her vagina with the other hand, the hand Libuse had been holding, the hand her own blood was rushing back into. It was the first thing she felt as the goon looked at her with those same glassy eyes, now warmed over, a hot-blooded killer, a discriminate killer. Not very much more, but at least a person now.

  And the goon, too, felt shame. He turned away from her and said, “Go,” from under his breath. “Go, before we both end up in the chamber.” He pointed with his rifle to a flatbed truck parked near the gate, the electrified fence and the barbed wire. The truck was piled high in the back with the filthy uniforms of the women of the lager. Those stinking grey clothes, their broad stripes grimed away, were the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen—the stink of life—and now they represented her exit from shame and cold.

  “Put on some of those clothes,” the goon said, “and hide away in the pile. “The kapo and his minions were supposed to move the pile away to have it laundered for the new recruits, but I will arrange for it to be incinerated and drive the truck outside the gate myself. We do that in a pit outside the gate. You get into the pile, and I’ll move you away, too.” He was speaking slowly in German for Marta’s benefit, speaking as slowly as he could, though his voice was excited. Then she could detect what she thought was a smile on the face of the goon, or something approaching one, and the beast between her ears growled alive, bounded away from the gates of shame, noticed the goon’s white teeth, his black hair, his boiling black eyes.

  The chamber behind Marta was quiet. Up until a moment before, it had sounded like lobsters in a pot, but now they were good and cooked. The pot was quiet. The red claws had stopped clattering. The pot didn’t even simmer. Kosher lobsters.

  The goon and Marta rummaged for clothing together. “I can manage,” she said. “You certainly don’t need to help. You’ve done enough for me already. I’ll just get into the truck if you’ll let me.” And he took her at her word, stepped aside, waited.

  It felt like evening when Marta got out into the cold damp air of the world again, but of course it was still just morning and dark for her beneath the grime of the bodiless clothes. She wiped herself raw to get off the splash of blood. She was not sure it was gone, but she kept rubbing, using the abandoned clothes all around her in the flatbed truck, the clothes and the rubbing making her warmer than she’d been in months.

  Marta was still panting from her unexpected encounter with the goon and had just got dressed, selecting garments at random, a top, bottoms, when she felt him close again through the bodiless clothes, the foul garments whose clean ghosts had flown off, though some might still have been hovering above this truck. The goon tugged down the big pants Marta had pulled on to hide her shame, and then she felt his hot flesh. His eyes were silver in the dim light. “Happy birthday,” said the goon, and except for his breath and a single gasp, it was the last thing she heard coming out of his mouth. When he was done, he slipped away and out.

  She heard the front door open, the truck bounce slightly, the door close, the engine start, felt the truck lurch forward, squeak to a stop, then the door again, some voices in German, the truck bob, the door cl
ose, the truck shift into gear and lurch again as it sputtered for two good minutes before it halted, the engine was shut off, the door opened, the cab bounced, the door closed, the sound of footsteps walking away on gravel or dirt. He was back inside, past the barbed wire and in through the gates. And then Marta heard nothing at all, though her ears were alive to the world. She waited. What if they came for the clothes before nightfall? She could not climb out before nightfall—not in view of the gates. The goon had been thinking like a furtive guard, not like a furtive prisoner.

  Seven hours of silence ticked by, eight, until it was night outside the gates of Auschwitz.

  Twenty-Four

  Budapest – December 6, 1944

  A LETTER CAME to the Dutch insurance company on Ulloi Street. It was over three months since Simon had been taken and almost two months since Zoli had gone. Lili met the mailman and rushed to her cot to open the letter.

  Bereck, Transylvania

  December 2, 1944

  My Dear Lili,

  Since you are holding this letter in your hands, it means that Imre Vollman made it back to Budapest and managed to post it without the beady censors looking over my shoulder here at the labour camp. We can rejoice at the coming of Christmas finally. There’s been a break here, some talk of the Russians moving in and our having to clear out. A couple of dozen of the inmates have moved to the Ukraine, including my friend Laszlo Kis. He wanted me to go too. We had a choice for the first time: we could stay here under confinement, or we could move to the Ukraine and be confined there, which may be even worse. Laszlo thought we’d be safer there from the Russians and Germans both. I had my doubts. You could be safe from the Russians and Germans, but would you be safe from the Ukrainians? Laszlo asked us, rightly, I guess, “Are we safe from the Hungarians?” We had a heated discussion in our barracks—it was about the only heat there was in this hole. Anyway, I’m still here, as you might have gathered. Most of us are still here. The commandant sent that bastard Erdo, the sergeant, up ahead with Laszlo and the rest. He’s supposed to report as soon as he can.

  My dear Lili, your precious package arrived here at the camp, but it contained nothing but your letter, which, ironically, helped incriminate the packet’s violators. The biscuits you must have pilfered from somewhere left their remains in the form of a couple of crumbs among the bits of tobacco from the tin you mention in your note, a cruel fiction, it became. The “fruit” would have been a special treat, whatever its rosy colour, in this bleak and forgotten place—no, I should say not quite forgotten enough, I’m afraid. Was it an apple? A yellow pear to add to my nightly fantasy? I don’t know which image to entertain first as I sink into my frigid slumber in the Transylvanian mountains. You or the fruit? And where did you procure whatever that treasure was? Did you manage, on your brilliant scavenging expeditions, to persuade someone to part with an orange—oh, my God, a holy orange to light this night!

  The mere thought of your package and their author warmed me all the way out to my frostbitten extremities. The winter has been particularly merciless in this godforsaken place. No wonder Dracula arose from these chill Transylvanian highlands hungering for warm blood.

  Do you remember Elemer in the bunk below me, the one I told you about last time? He was permitted a visit by his sister, Margit, and only with a bribe I cannot even mention here. Margit gave her brother the scarf from her own neck and some woollen socks she’d knitted. She tried to be cheerful for the sake of her sick brother, but her anxiety showed. At first I thought she was just worried about him. Then I believed she was upset about what it took for her to get in here. But now I believe it was neither of these. She looked like people on the inside here: grim and beaten, a generation that feels it will not produce another one.

  Sweetheart, a glimmer of kindness revealed itself to me like a religious experience in the middle of this dark season. As I was being hustled off to my trusty lathe machine this morning while it was still dark—you should see me on that thing, that lathe—I’ve produced enough dies for munitions to start my own little army, and I could lose my life just for uttering such a thing now—as I was being hustled off, to get back to my point, Elemer was coughing and hacking—I thought he was going to turn himself inside out. The commandant stepped in and told Elemer he could be excused from duty for a day and could stay in bed. His right-hand man, Erdo, that sergeant, the bastard, would never have allowed it. The commandant even had a pot of tea brought to him. Imagine.

  I feel sometimes as though we were made by a dark, insecure god. Did you ever read the poet Endre Ady? Did you ever get to him in your school in that small town of yours? A singular poem of his still stands out for me. I remember it often in my bunk here in the night. Its title asks, “Am I Not a Magyar?”

  The ancient Orient dreamed him

  as I am

  heroic, sombre, proudly extreme,

  ruthless, but one who bleeds

  pale at a thought.

  The ancient Orient dreamed him

  bold and youthful,

  a noble, eternally big child;

  sun-spirited, thirsty, melancholy,

  a restless warrior;

  the pain-wrought tested masterpiece

  of a true unhappy god,

  the child of the sun, a Magyar.

  Thoughts of you, my Lili, keep me going.

  Simon

  Lili looked distracted when she went to tell Simon’s mother that her son was all right. Klari was sewing, taking in one of Robert’s two pairs of pants. She and Lili were often taking in garments these days, whichever ones they could. Paul had brought them a sewing kit, and they made good use of it. It was a chore even to find thread that winter, and Paul said he had to trade a silver sugar box for the kit, including six spools of thread, four brown and two black.

  “What did Simon say?” Klari asked, looking up.

  Lili looked over at Rozsi, lying on her cot, her arm shielding her eyes from the light.

  “He said he is managing—surviving, but he is very cold.” Lili did not want Klari to know about Elemer or Laszlo, in spite of the moment of kindness Simon mentioned.

  “Poor boy.” Klari put down her sewing and rubbed her own arms and shoulders. She felt cold, too, but lucky to be in a refuge like this one, even in diminished circumstances, particularly diminished since her son was taken. “Poor cold boy. Did he say anything else?”

  Lili had left the letter under her pillow, tucked in its envelope. “I didn’t understand every word,” Lili said meekly. “He recited a whole poem in the letter.”

  “My poor little windbag,” Klari said. She was smiling and shaking her head. “My poor cold windbag.”

  “He said a girl was there to visit her brother.”

  “At the labour camp? They let her in?”

  Lili nodded. Klari looked down.

  “I’m going to go to him,” the younger woman said. Klari put down her sewing and got to her feet. “No, please,” Lili said, “I know you’ll try to dissuade me, but I’m going. I’ve got to go. I’ll make it. It will be all right.”

  Klari had watched this young woman’s determination, had marvelled at the food she was able to scavenge for them, the supplies, and the comfort she’d brought to the Beck family since the Germans had invaded. She thought often, too, about what young Lili had endured to see her own family deported. She’d often seen Lili twirling her mother’s wedding ring in her fingers—or at least the ring she’d salvaged from the deportation train, the one inscribed “Ivan.”

  Klari said, “I’m going to do something. Please let me, and please don’t ask.” She approached her niece and sat gently on her cot. “Rozsi, my darling,” she whispered. Rozsi kept her arm folded over her eyes. Rozsi had turned dark. She hardly spoke to anyone, barely accepted her scarce meals. Her darkness was so apparent, even one of the nuns tried to help. Klari heard her trying to talk to Rozsi in the bathroom. It turned out the young nun’s name was Beata. She was the one who’d been growing the African violets.


  Klari said, “Rozsi, we’ve been cooped up too long. I want you to come with me.”

  Rozsi didn’t answer.

  “I’m not asking,” Klari said. “I insist.” She was losing her patience.

  Lili saw what was going on and wanted to intervene, but Klari held up her hand for her to stop. “We’re going to go back to our old place on Jokai Street. Just for a bit, just quickly.”

  “Zoli?” Rozsi asked, uncovering her eyes. Dark circles had formed around them.

  “No, not for Zoli,” Klari said. She spoke as if to a child. “We’ll have to wait patiently for Zoli, as we’re waiting for the others, too. Lili’s waiting for her whole family.” Rozsi looked blankly at Lili. “Come with me,” Klari said again. “We’ll put on those nice wool coats Paul got for us from the Red Cross. Come.”

  Robert was out. He’d become increasingly despondent as his son’s absence grew long and as the winter settled in. His assistant had come to take him to his home for the morning. It was a nice surprise—a little risky, but nice. It was never easy to venture out, but it had become necessary for the well-being of the Becks. Klari had told her husband she wanted to stay with the girls.