Almost Autumn

by Marianne Kaurin

  At one point everyone had been standing upright, but as the hours crept by people had tried to move around, creating small spaces by their feet where some could crouch down. Miriam was against the wall, the cold air seeping in through the gaps in the planks of wood. Sonja had taken a blanket from the sack containing their belongings and had laid it over Miriam; she had done what she could to tuck her in, to prevent her from getting too cold.

  It was quiet in the train carriage. Close together, bodies in contact, the rhythmic sound of the train was all that could be heard. Gadong gadong. Gadong gadong. Sonja rested her head against the wall, felt the way it drummed against the planks of wood, closed her eyes and opened them again. Through the gaps she could see expanses of white outside, everything blanketed in snow. They passed a farm, children playing outside.

  After a few hours on board their mother had started to hammer at the walls. First gently, a silent, steady thudding. Her hand crept over the planks as if seeking a hidden opening, a loose plank that might allow them the chance to hop out into the snow. But then suddenly it was as if something flared up within her, blazing bright, an imprisoned cry. She began to shove those around her with reckless abandon, barging into the old Russian lady, stepping on a woman in a fur coat who lay on the floor, her arms waving around in the air. Sonja tried putting her arms around her, holding her tight, but her mother broke free, elbowing her way through the group of tightly packed bodies; she needed out, she hissed.

  Now she’s standing with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Her body moves in time with the train’s rhythm; she’s calm now, unreachable. The wound over her eye has dried to form an oval scab, her eyelids look so delicate and fine, transparent. She looks like an old woman, confused and ashamed after having allowed herself to openly panic in such a way, calm like a small child soothed to sleep after a tantrum.

  What day is it now? It must be Tuesday. Only a week since they had eaten herring for dinner; it had been sour and rancid, but even so, they had been gathered around the table on Biermanns gate. Ilse had told her about Hermann that evening; they’d been whispering together as they lay in bed. Sonja had come so close to telling Ilse of her plans, but she couldn’t find the words, she had let Ilse do most of the talking. It seemed like an eternity since that moment.

  Tuesday? She should be somewhere else now. Ascending the carpeted staircase, enveloped by the pleasant scents of the theater, sitting behind a sewing machine, the winter sunshine through the oval windows lighting up her face. She should have been greeting the other seamstresses, signing papers in Mr. Østli’s office. Today is the first of December. Tuesday. She should be somewhere else.

  The train slows. The brakes screech as it comes to a complete standstill. Miriam stands up. They hear voices outside, voices and something else—animals, dogs, barking impatiently. Nobody asks for water. Everyone stands in silence. It is as if they know. They have arrived. Sonja hears the bolts being lifted. The sound of steel, heavy and hard. A white light from the large floodlights streams into the carriage. Men swarm outside, packs of dogs rearing at their leashes. The icy haze forms a cloud around their muzzles. The passengers walk toward the white light, toward the open door, tumbling out of the carriages, their bodies stiff after a day and night, perhaps longer, spent almost stationary. Sonja catches sight of a sign hanging over the platform: Auschwitz. It means nothing to her.

  THINGS MOVE QUICKLY. THEY’RE FORCED out of the carriages and hop down onto the platform. There are no ladders or boards to help them down and several people stumble as they attempt to clamber out. Sonja sees the old Russian woman; she lands on the ground like a heavy sack, then totters back onto her feet, gasping for air with regular wheezes. There are so many people here, the guards call out, the same cries they’ve heard for the past few days, always the same; they need to hurry, they’re nothing but a pack of swine, run, come on, run.

  “Männer links. Frauen und Kinder rechts.” The loudspeaker booms, crackles.

  Sonja, her mother, and Miriam run over to the right with the other women and children; they flock together.

  Large trucks drive in, tarpaulins over the flatbeds, the loudspeaker crackling once again. They are instructed to leave all of their bags in a pile. Several hesitate, unwilling to leave all that they own, all that they’ve brought with them from home. The bags will be forwarded on to them afterward, they’re told, they should leave them, everyone will have their belongings returned to them in due course. Sonja takes the string bag and the coarse woolen sack. She adds them to the growing pile of suitcases and bags.

  They hurry over, the prisoners in striped coveralls, so frail and pale that they look as if they’ve forgotten to perish. The prison uniforms hang from their skinny frames; it looks as if they might snap in two at any moment. Only their eyes are alive, large and dark; they move quickly in their slim faces, darting from person to person. They quickly haul every item of baggage up onto the flatbeds of the trucks. A few trucks drive away.

  A new order is roared. Women, children, and elderly men are to board the trucks that remain. The flock is driven toward the vehicles. They run. The air is filled with cries and screams and barks. Sonja lifts Miriam up onto the back of the truck before climbing up beside her and turning to offer her mother a hand. They keep close to one another beneath the tarpaulin, standing tall, shoulder to shoulder. Before the back of the truck is slammed shut, Sonja catches sight of her father. Lined up with the other men in a row, he looks in their direction, one man within a teeming crowd of hundreds. She calls out to him, waves her arms, but he doesn’t see her; the truck doors are slammed shut, the engine starts, and the truck begins to drive away.

  Through a gap in the tarpaulin Sonja can see low brick buildings, long rows of dark blocks in the grayish light. Evening sets in, dark and chilly, the air like tiny arrows striking her lungs. There’s something here, a smell, it reminds her of the stench of the rubbish in the passageway at home.

  The truck comes to a halt. They park in front of two barracks. A tall man greets them. Behind him are prisoners, the same uniforms, the same large eyes, the same stooped posture.

  “Ich brauche einen Dolmetscher,” the man says, looking around him.

  His voice carries a different tone, not strict, not sharp, but friendly. An elderly man raises a hand. He’s plucked out of the crowd to stand by the man’s side and translate.

  “You are now standing at the entrance to a camp. In this camp there are strict rules relating to hygiene. You have undertaken a long and arduous journey, and you must now bathe. Remove your clothing in the changing room and hang this on the pegs provided. Make sure to remember your peg number—this will make it easier to find your clothing again later. In this camp, men and women share bathing facilities. Women and children will enter first, men afterward. Wash thoroughly and exit through the door marked ‘Zur Desinfektion.’ You will then be provided with a towel. Understand?”

  Nobody answers; nobody says a word.

  They walk into the changing room, take off their clothes, and hang them from the pegs. Two nine seven three. Sonja makes a mental note of the number. They continue into an oblong room. The walls have been painted white, with a row of showerheads protruding from them. There is a strange smell within the room, intense and strong, not necessarily bad, just strange. Sonja hugs Miriam close, her bare body thin, her small arms wrapped around Sonja’s waist. She hugs her mother, her breathing labored, her cold skin carrying the smell of sweat. She sees Erik, his mother’s hand cupping his cheek, her bulging stomach, her navel like a button protruding from her abdomen. The old Russian lady holds her hands in front of her face, her skin hanging in folds from her strong frame; she coughs.

  The doors close again with a bang. The room falls into darkness. They wait for the water. Long, drawn-out seconds. Several of them call out. Loud screams. Sonja stands silent. Her mouth is closed. Miriam’s head rests against her stomach. Her hair is soft. It is still dark. Pitch-black. Impossible to breathe.

  ISAK HOLDS HIS
BREATH, PAUSING WITH the air in his lungs for as long as he is able to, as if to warm himself with his own breath, store it in his body to get through the night. They lie there naked, most curled up in the fetal position, their legs folded beneath them as if to make themselves as small as possible, poised to best defend themselves. They are in a bathroom; it must be below freezing in here.

  He had looked for them when the trucks had arrived. Women, children, old people, all up onto the flatbed of the trucks, it had happened so quickly, there were so many of them, he hadn’t managed to catch sight of them.

  The trucks had driven off and the men left behind were ordered to form rows of five. The commands rang out in the darkness of the night.

  “Vordermann! Abstand nehmen! Im Gleichschritt marsch!”

  They were headed for the unknown. The mud underfoot had frozen, now forming hard sheets; the air was rank, a peculiar smell all around. They marched through a large set of double gates, barbed wire above and below them, the light from the large floodlights in two towers swiping over them, swiping over the area, the brief flashes of light making it possible to form an idea of where they might have arrived. Inside the gate Isak could see long rows of gray brick barracks, an entire landscape of low buildings. Between the buildings emerged a few figures in striped uniforms. The prisoners shuffled as if they couldn’t face the prospect of lifting their feet from the ground beneath them, as if they lacked the strength required to move just a few meters. Isak stared at them. How long could they have been here? It didn’t look as if they had ever lived an ordinary life. Would he be here long enough to become that way too, nothing but skin and bone, shuffling along in a striped suit?

  They continued through more double gateways and over into another camp, Birkenau. Large concrete structures with tall, quadrangular chimney stacks. There, just beyond the fence, there were hundreds of striped uniforms, the place was crawling with them. And just beyond that, in the dark doorway of the concrete buildings, stark naked people. They were being chased. Don’t look, one person said, someone in his own row, and Isak had looked down, concentrated on his own two feet, his shoes, the mud.

  The line of men stopped. They were ordered into one of the barracks. There were bunks on three levels, tightly packed rows lining the walls, eight men to each bunk, all sharing a blanket. They hadn’t been lying down for many minutes before a guard was there, his voice tearing through the darkness, his cries ringing out in the space.

  “Aufstehen!”

  They hopped out of their bunks and onto the floor; hadn’t they just been told to go to sleep? And now this, what next, which rules were they supposed to obey?

  A man dressed in a black uniform and polished riding boots stood at the end of the room, flanked by a small group of men in prison coveralls that looked different from the others they’d seen outside; muscle-bound men standing in a semicircle. The man in uniform moved farther into the room, closer, heavy footsteps, his boots squeaking as he paced the floor. Samuel stood beside Isak. He trembled; he wasn’t able to control the shaking throughout his body. The guard in riding boots neared the pair, walking right up to them and stopping in front of Samuel.

  “Was bist du von Beruf, du Judenschwein?”

  His voice was soft, almost animated. Samuel said nothing. The guard breathed heavily; Isak could feel it, strong, alcohol.

  “Du bist ein Geschäftsmann, was?”

  Samuel shook his head slowly; no, he wasn’t a shopkeeper. It looked as if he was trying to think of a word; he didn’t know much German. The guard hawked up a globule of phlegm and spat it in the direction of Samuel’s face. He carried on walking, asking others the same question. If they couldn’t muster a response, he spat at them. If they could, he hit them. He beat them in the manner of a short-tempered young boy, aiming where he knew he would cause the most pain.

  After a while he signaled to one of the others, a short, stocky man with a green patch on his chest.

  “As you know, you have been brought here, to this labor camp,” he said, thrusting his arms out as if he’d been instructed to give them a warm welcome.

  “Here you will be tasked with similar employment to that which you held previously. Those who work with diligence will be rewarded with an appropriate salary. In a month or two you may visit your family and friends.”

  He paused. There was something concealed in his gaze, as if all of this were somehow rehearsed, his eyes flitting here and there along the rows of men.

  “Questions?”

  For a moment they all stood in silence. Nobody dared say a word. The man with the green patch on the chest of his coveralls waited. A prisoner ventured a hand in the air.

  “Yes?”

  In clumsy German, the prisoner inquired about how they might make contact with their families. The man with the green patch smiled at him, nodding slowly, as if he had asked a good question, as if he were carefully considering his response.

  “Just come to me,” he said after a long pause, laughter flashing in his eyes. “Come to me and you can borrow my bicycle.”

  The guards laughed. The man with the green patch wandered over to them, accepting his applause and jovial slaps on the shoulder, running his hand through his hair.

  They turned back to their bunks, attempting to lie in some kind of formation, four with their heads at one end and four with their heads at the other, their legs weaved together. They shared the only blanket they had, draping it over their legs. Isak lay on the outside. He thought about the others, wondered if things were any better in the women’s quarters; was it equally crowded in there, did they have better bunks, more blankets? The naked people they’d caught a glimpse of in the doorway. Most of them had been women. It had been only a few seconds, but it had seemed just as crowded, he’d seen it with his own eyes, it had been just long enough to catch a proper glimpse; he would never forget such a sight. Some of the men had been convinced it wasn’t real, just some kind of trick of the eye using film that was designed to break them down.

  How long could he survive here? Was it even possible? What about the others? And Ilse. He lay for a long while, thinking, on edge. A single lightbulb emitted a dull glow above a bucket intended for relieving themselves in at the end of the room.

  He couldn’t have been asleep for long before he became aware of it: cold fingers creeping along the edge of the bunk, back and forth, as if looking for something. When he opened his eyes, he was staring directly into a man’s face. Two large eyes gazed back at him, a pair of enormous ears sticking out from a smoothly shaven head beneath a striped cap, his cheeks so hollow that it looked as if he had spooned out the flesh and stretched the remaining skin over the open wound. There was a yellow star on his coveralls. The man quickly withdrew his hand and stood by the bunk, completely still as if waiting for something to happen.

  “Parlez-vous français?” he whispered.

  Isak shook his head.

  “Jiddisch?”

  “Nein. Deutsch?”

  Isak’s German wasn’t particularly good, but he could understand a fair amount. The figure moved with strange, stiff gestures, like a wooden marionette puppet, a few steps forward, then a few back, and then there he was once again. He held Isak’s gaze, his focus entirely fixed as if he was suddenly concentrating. He whispered for a long time, word after word tumbling from his toothless mouth. Isak listened.

  At daybreak they were woken by a roar.

  “Aufstehen!”

  They rose to their feet and lined up alongside the rows of bunks. Metal containers filled with brown liquid were passed around, a kind of tea, everyone forced to drink from the same container. For a moment Isak wondered if he should pass, the prisoner’s advice in the back of his mind. The mixing of saliva, all kinds of bacteria. But as soon as the container reached his hands, his thirst took over and he gulped at the contents.

  Up in lines, they marched out of the barracks and across a square, the snow falling heavily. They stopped outside a white building and were directed into an o
blong room with wooden benches lining both sides. Their clothing was to be folded neatly and placed on the bench. The floor was ice cold beneath their bare feet; it gave them goose bumps. Several of them placed their hands in front of their genitals, trying to protect themselves, to shield their naked white bodies. On the wall were two large signs, fat black lettering above a skull with an X through it: Ein Laus—dein Tod.

  In the next room were more prisoners seated behind low tables, electric razors and scissors laid out at the ready. The hair on their heads. Isak bowed his head and watched as it fell to the floor in thick tufts, his dark brown locks mixing with the hair of the others that had been standing in front of him in the line, the electric razors buzzing. The hair on their bodies. It was simply a case of standing still and allowing the prisoners to carry out their assigned task. Naked and hairless, they were driven farther into a bathroom with showerheads that protruded from the walls. The showers were switched on and ice-cold water gushed forth; his skin stung, the stream of water hitting his upper body like spearheads. The water stopped for a moment and was then turned on once again, this time so hot that he was scalded. The room began to fill with steam, rising from the floor. Hot water, cold water, hot, cold, how long would this go on, how long had they already stood there, hunched over with their arms wrapped around them?