Too Many Men

by Lily Brett

  “I am in Zweites Himmel’s Lager,” Höss said.

  The other people in the lobby of the Grand Victoria seemed oblivious to the fact that she was talking to someone. Even the group of gold-chained and -linked men, clustered in a circle of armchairs next to Ruth, didn’t appear to have noticed. Their girlfriends certainly hadn’t noticed. Maybe talking to dead people wasn’t as obvious as talking to living human beings.

  Why did Höss have to turn up now? She had just been beginning to relax.

  She had planned to make notes for Max on the structural aspects of a handwritten letter. How to select the paper and what size paper was required for particular text lengths. Until now, Ruth had selected and purchased all the stationery that Rothwax Correspondence used for handwritten letters and documents.

  Ruth had planned to give Max a list of points to be taken into account when selecting envelope size and quality. And a corresponding list about paper selection. For example, Ruth always chose plain paper for formal letters, and made sure that casual letters were not written on paper that was too formal. She made sure there were no sentimental flourishes, colors, patterns, or borders on love letters.

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  She also made sure that the weight of the paper reflected the subject matter. Ruth chose fragile Japanese paper for people who saw themselves as more idiosyncratic. In certain careers idiosyncrasy was an asset.

  Where was Höss? Ruth realized that she had slipped into a reverie. A reassuring reverie in the self-contained, well-ordered world of letter writing. In letters, if you were careful, there were no slips and spills. No one to take a thought or sentence into a direction that you hadn’t intended. No one to question the sentiments and statements. The letter was all yours.

  And, if there was a response that was less than what you hoped for, it was made out of your presence.

  Ruth could feel Höss’s presence. She knew that he was still around. She wondered why she was so sure of this. She couldn’t easily define why she was sure. It was something in the air. A thickening. A coarsening. “I really am feeling so much better,” Hoss said. Ruth nodded to herself. A congrat-ulatory small nod. She knew she was right. She had known Höss was still there. “I have been thinking about the various prisoners in Auschwitz,”

  Höss said.

  “Wow, you must really be trying to get out of Zweites Himmel’s Lager,”

  Ruth said. “Some more thoughts in this direction and you’ll be the star of your sensitivity-training class.”

  “Thank you,” said Höss. “Of all of the prisoners in Auschwitz, it was the gypsies who caused me a great deal of trouble, but, ironically, they were, and I must be careful to phrase this correctly, they were my most beloved prisoners.”

  “You just lost all credibility,” Ruth said. “No wonder you’ve been stuck in the sensitivity-training class for fifty-two years. It’s not smart to make statements like that. It doesn’t have even a hint of reality about it. Your most beloved prisoners? What were you doing, walking around Auschwitz as the director of a love fest, a love-in?”

  “I was very fond of the gypsies,” said Höss. He sounded hurt. “I am telling you the truth,” he said.

  “I bet,” she said.

  How could he be so stupid? Ruth thought. Men, on the whole, seemed to be so much less aware of what they were saying. She looked at the men around her. They were still in their armchairs, smoking and drinking. They had no idea of how unattractive they were. They held themselves with the

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  smug arrogance of men who believed they were attractive. There was probably a plentiful supply, in Poland, of young women who would flutter their eyelashes at these men. Poverty created climates for that sort of relationship.

  The two girls who had accompanied this group of men had left. Ruth was now the only female in the lobby. She looked at the men, with what she hoped was an expression of contempt. She caught herself. Why was she doing this? Why did she have to be so harsh and judgmental about these men? She would hate any man who dismissed women in the way that she was dismissing these men. Poland was definitely not bringing out the best in her. If she wasn’t careful, she would leave the country as unpleasant a human being as the most unpleasant of the Poles she was railing at. If she wasn’t careful, she would turn into one of them.

  The lobby did feel cloaked in testosterone, to her, though. There were too many men. Too many men. Ruth was startled by the phrase. Was this what the gypsy woman, in Warsaw, could have meant by “too many men”?

  Höss and all of these Poles? But Höss wasn’t a man. He was a ghost. A phantom, a shadow, an apparition, an appearance. He was not a man. He was more like a bogeyman, or a scarecrow, or the hobgoblin in a frightening fairy tale.

  “There are very few gypsies in Zweites Himmel’s Lager,” Höss said.

  “The ones that are there work mainly as fortune-tellers.”

  “They work in Zweites Himmel’s Lager?” Ruth said.

  “They are in a better category than I am,” said Höss. “I am in the top punishment category, which is, to my mind, a little unfair. As a result of this I am unable to work. I am forced to remain idle.”

  Ruth could hear the sound of teeth grinding. It must be Höss, she thought. She herself had a tendency to grind her teeth in annoyance. “Why would gypsies be telling fortunes in hell?” Ruth said. “Everyone there has already had their future. They know what it was. They are dead. Their future is behind them.”

  “People still have a future in Zweites Himmel’s Lager,” said Höss. “And the future is as unknown to them, there, as it is on earth. People are, of course, as always, concerned with their future.” Höss sounded annoyed with her. How was she supposed to know how things worked in the after-life? “There is more to life, than life and death,” Höss said.

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  “So the gypsy fortune-tellers in Zweites Himmel’s Lager get a lot of business, do they?” Ruth said to Höss.

  “Yes, yes,” said Höss. “We all want to know what the future holds for us. And the gypsies have expertise in that field. I still have a soft spot for gypsies. In the spring of 1943 there were approximately sixteen thousand gypsies in Birkenau. I am not sure exactly how many. We included, of course, half-caste gypsies in this number. They lived in huts that were built to house three hundred. Each of these huts contained between eight hundred and a thousand gypsies.

  “In July 1942, the Reichsführer-SS visited the camp,” said Höss. “I personally led him on an extensive tour of the gypsy camp. Himmler was very thorough in his inspection. He saw the crammed barracks, the unsalutory and unsanitary conditions. He saw those gypsies who were ill with infectious diseases. Himmler also saw the children who were suffering from noma.”

  “From what?” Ruth said.

  “From noma,” said Höss. “You know so much about medical conditions I am surprised that you do not know about noma. It is a cancerous growth that appears most often on the face as a result of starvation and other physical depletions. The noma was particularly difficult for me to look at.

  “Himmler was not so happy himself to look at the gypsy children with big holes in their cheeks,” Höss said. “Holes big enough to see through. I could see that Himmler was keen to move on from this viewing of the slow decomposition and rotting of the living flesh of those wizened and shriveled-up children.”

  “He was probably warned about infection,” said Ruth.

  “Most probably,” said Höss. “It did look terrible.”

  “My mother was haunted by children with holes in their cheeks,” Ruth said. “She used to tell me about them.” Ruth had always hoped that she had imagined this detail that her mother had talked about. She hoped she had imagined half of what her mother had said about her life. Hoped that it had been untrue. As a teenager, she had wanted to believe that it was all make-believe. That her mother had made it all up. That none
of it had happened. None of the degradation, none of the disease, none of the brutality, none of the loss, none of the death, none of the mayhem. She used to hope

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  that her mother had been exaggerating. Like all mothers. She used to hope that her mother was exaggerating the pain, exaggerating the suffering, the cruelty. Exaggerating her exhaustion. Ruth used to watch other mothers.

  They were always voicing complaints. Complaints about pains and aches and exhaustion. Maybe her mother was just like the other mothers.

  “My mother must have seen the gypsy children,” she said to Höss. He coughed.

  “Himmler ordered me to destroy the gypsies,” he said. “Himmler said those still capable of work could live, but the others had to be destroyed. It was not so easy a task to drive the gypsies into the gas chambers. They were the most trusting of people. I do not understand why their trusting natures bothered us. But it did. Many of us did not feel so good about killing the gypsies.

  “During the night of July 31, three thousand five hundred to four thousand gypsies were murdered. Technically, I must add, it was also August 1, as the gassings went on after midnight.”

  “You concentrate on the technicalities, don’t you?” Ruth said.

  “I did not witness the killings of the gypsies myself,” said Höss.

  “Of course,” said Ruth. “You were a witness to nothing other than the Reichsführer-SS’s orders.”

  “The gypsies who were left after this had to go into the gas chambers eventually, too,” said Höss. “Four thousand of them went into the gas chambers in August 1944.”

  Ruth remembered a question she had wanted to ask him. “Is there a devil in hell?” she said.

  “What?” said Höss.

  “Is there a devil in hell?” she said. “Or is the place full of devils?” Höss was quiet for a minute. Ruth thought that maybe it was hard to detect the devil in a place teeming with unseemly denizens.

  “It is, as you suspected,” Höss said eventually. “There is not one devil in Zweites Himmel’s Lager.”

  “There are demons and fiends and dybbuks everywhere, are there?”

  she said.

  “Dybbuks?” said Höss. “What is a dybbuk?”

  “I’m surprised that you don’t know what a dybbuk is,” said Ruth.

  “After so much contact with Jews you would think you would know a few T O O M A N Y M E N

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  things about Jewish life. A dybbuk is the soul of a dead person that enters and takes control of a living person.”

  “I did not know this,” said Höss.

  “There are probably dybbuks in the middle of the cutthroats and thugs and roughnecks in Zweites Himmel’s Lager,” Ruth said. A disturbing thought occurred to her. Did she have a dybbuk in her? Did she have Höss’s soul living inside her? She shook her head. She was being stupid.

  She didn’t believe in dybbuks.

  “It is not only lowlife that live in Zweites Himmel’s Lager,” said Höss.

  “No, there are fine upstanding citizens like you,” Ruth said. Höss snorted.

  “Could we leave this subject, please?” Höss said.

  “And go on to a more savory one?” she said. “Of course.”

  “Despite the adverse and disadvantageous conditions,” Höss said, “the gypsies did not appear to suffer very much psychologically as a result of their imprisonment.”

  “You could work for me,” Ruth said. “You have a real way with a syn-onym and antonym.”

  “How could I work for you?” Höss said. “I am not permitted to work.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” Ruth said. “I was referring to your use of the words ‘adverse’ and ‘disadvantageous.’ ”

  Höss snorted. “I have asked you before not to interrupt me with irrelevant observations.”

  “So the gypsies were happy to be in Auschwitz, were they?” Ruth said.

  She shook her head. She noticed another woman in the lobby of the Grand Victoria. The woman looked Polish. She was about Ruth’s age. She was well dressed. On the third finger of her left hand she sported a very large diamond. Ruth looked again. It was an enormous diamond. It stood out on her hand and looked quite incongruous in the less than elegant lobby.

  “I have always had a great deal of respect for women,” Höss said. Ruth almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of this notion, and the self-delu-sion involved, but she also felt a shred of alarm. Could Höss read her mind? Did he know she had been thinking about women? Probably not. It was probably a coincidence.

  “In Auschwitz, however, I saw very quickly that I would have to rethink this position,” Höss said. “In Auschwitz it became apparent to me, quite

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  quickly, that even a woman must be observed carefully and scrutinized before she is entitled to complete respect.”

  “Oh yeah,” Ruth said. “Your enormous respect for women must have dissipated fast. Those standards you applied for complete respect? Not many women must have measured up.” Höss snorted. “You must have been full of concern for women,” Ruth said, “when you asked Professor Carl Clauberg of the University of Königsberg to look into the question of female sterilization.”

  “What do you know about Professor Carl Clauberg?” said Höss.

  “I know he was thrilled to have official support for his research,” Ruth said. “He specialized in the treatment of sterile women. He was thrilled at the prospect of unlimited numbers of patients to work on.”

  “That is enough about Clauberg,” said Höss.

  “Am I making you uncomfortable?” Ruth said.

  “Not at all,” Höss said, with a stern tone.

  “When Clauberg arrived in Auschwitz in the spring of 1943, you installed over two hundred women in Block Ten, for him,” Ruth said. “He injected a series of chemicals into their fallopian tubes. It was a secret formula.”

  “It certainly stopped the women from menstruating,” Höss said. “But we do not know if it was effective sterilization.”

  “That’s because when the experiments were over most of the women were sent to the gas chambers,” Ruth said.

  “The Girl from Ipanema” was now playing, in the background, in the lobby of the Grand Victoria. There was something strange about the recording. Ruth realized after a minute that it must be a Polish recording.

  “She goes walking” was coming out as “She goes vucking.” It sounded just like “She goes fucking.” “She vucks slowly,” the woman sang. Ruth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Yesterday, she had been startled by another Polish recording. “I look into your arse,” a singer had crooned. It had taken Ruth several minutes to work out that the line the singer was trying to sing was, “I look into your eyes.”

  Ruth looked around her in the lobby. No one else seemed to perceive the lyrics as lewd. The woman with the diamond had been joined by another woman. An elderly woman. They looked like mother and daughter to Ruth. It made her happy to see a mother and daughter who looked as T O O M A N Y M E N

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  though they were enjoying each other’s company. Ruth forgave the woman her large diamond. Being a good daughter, she thought, showed something infinitely more important about her than her choice of jewelry.

  “The breaking up of families during the selection process,” Höss said,

  “caused much distress to the Jews. When we separated the men from the women and the children, it caused a terrible apprehension and panic in the entire transport. It was frequently essential to use force in order to restore order. Jews have highly developed feelings of family. They stick together like leeches or limpets. The confusion that was brought about by this nervousness at being separated from each other was so great that frequently whole selections had to begin all over again.”

  Why did she have to listen to this? Ruth thought. A better question would be why wasn’t she trying to get rid of Höss?
She was too tired to get rid of him. He wore her out. He rendered her almost comatose, unable to move. As though she were in a trance. A hypnotic trance. She knew that she wasn’t. Anyone who could be critical of the size of a diamond on the finger of a stranger was not in a coma or a trance.

  “What psychological effect did imprisonment have on Jews?” Höss said, as though Ruth had asked him that question. “Even in the early days, in Dachau, the guards were particularly vicious with them. Jews were used to being tormented and hounded and victimized as the defilers and debasers of the German people,” Höss said. Ruth could feel that Höss was in the swing of his story. She could feel the relish in his retelling of this part of the world’s history.

  “I observed,” Höss said, “an interesting phenomenon in Dachau. A copy of Der Stürmer was put up in the camp.” He paused. “Do you know what Der Stürmer is?” he said.

  “A pornographic anti-Semitic weekly publication produced by Julius Streicher,” she said.

  “I thought you would know of it,” Höss said. “I myself did not approve of the pornography. After the copy of Der Stürmer was made available, it was immediately apparent that fellow prisoners who had previously displayed no antagonism toward Jews became anti-Semitic. The Jews, of course, behaved in a typically Jewish manner by bribing their fellow prisoners. Of course the Jews had plenty of money.”

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  “This was before 1939, when most of the money that most of the Jews had was taken from them,” Ruth said.

  “Of course,” said Höss. “It was before Kristallnacht. After Kristallnacht, for their own good, to save them from reprisals from the German people, Jews who were traders and businessmen were arrested. They were taken to concentration camp as protective custody Jews.”

  Ruth laughed. “How can you say that with a straight face?” she said.

  “Protective custody Jews. Maybe you haven’t got a straight face. I can’t see you. Maybe behind that steady and serious voice you’re making the facial gestures of a lunatic or a clown or an unsettled, mentally deficient buf-foon?”

  “You could probably see me if you tried hard enough,” Höss said.