The One Man

by Andrew Gross

  “The chess boy…?”

  “The camp champion. They play here every couple of weeks. You’ll see them. Over by the infirmary. Sorry. I can’t be more help.”

  The chess boy. They play every couple of weeks … Blum said to himself. His hope plummeted. He had two days. Less, now. I think he’s dead. Had he risked everything, come all this way, he thought as he lifted the wretched shit bucket out from under the stall, only for a corpse?

  He considered checking at the infirmary. If he’d been sick, someone had to know of him there. But that might also arouse suspicion. This “chess boy…” It couldn’t be too hard to find him. But he’d already put himself out there, showing the photograph to anyone who would look. Now, to suddenly start asking around for someone else … That would definitely make him stand out.

  But what other choice did he have?

  He lugged his new set of buckets outside the gate. Guards were everywhere. He was especially careful here, to avoid direct eye contact. And not to spill a single drop. Yet these particular buckets were especially heavy and filled to the top. He sensed a guard snickering at him as he hurried by. Just get past him …

  “Stop!” someone called out from behind him.

  Blum stood there, erect.

  “Where do you go so quickly with such fine wares to sell?” a guard said to him mockingly.

  Blum closed his eyes for a second and then shuddered when he opened them and saw it was the very guard pointed out to him during roll call this morning. Dormutter. He’s just a lunatic. At all costs, don’t provoke him. He’s one to avoid.

  The guard had a khaki SS cap tilted over a square face, deep-set sunken eyes, thick lips, and a sneer of superiority in his gaze. “Looks heavy,” he said, brandishing a thick club. He stepped up behind Blum.

  “It is heavy, sir,” Blum replied. “But it’s fine.” He took a step forward. “If I might just continue to the—”

  “I’ll tell you when to go, yid,” the guard snapped back with ice in his tone.

  “Yes, sir.” Blum froze.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mirek,” Blum answered, his tongue dry and coarse as sandpaper.

  “Yes, they’re definitely overloading this poor man!” Dormutter said loudly to his fellow guards nearby in mock concern. From behind, Blum felt a tap from the club on his left arm. The bucket lurched forward. Blum brought it back as best he could to keep it from tipping over.

  “Hmmph,” Dormutter grunted, from behind him.

  Then Blum felt a second tap. On his right arm this time. And this time, the bucket, filled almost to the rim, swung forward too. Remembering what the blockschreiber had warned, Blum put every ounce of strength he had into righting it. But it was clear what the guard was trying to do.

  “We don’t like it when they are careless and let these buckets fill too high. It brings up the possibility that…”

  Blum felt the club bump into his left arm again. This time harder. Both buckets swung. Petrified, Blum struggled to keep them righted. The handles dug into his fingers. The pails grew heavier.

  If one spills on public grounds, you’ll likely get a bullet in your head, echoed through Blum’s head.

  “You can see what a health risk it is, should any happen to drop. Jew shit, all over a public setting. Not so good?”

  “No, Sergeant.” Blum nodded in agreement. His arms began to feel like they would soon give out.

  This time he felt the end of the heavy club jab into his back. The buckets lurched forward. Blum did everything he could to keep them from tipping. Literally commanding them not to spill. Somehow they didn’t.

  “By health risk, just to be clear…” the German said, digging the club into the small of Blum’s back. “Of course I meant to you, yid.” He jabbed the club into him again.

  The buckets dug deeply into Blum’s fingers. He knew he couldn’t withstand a much harder nudge. Sweat wound down his brow. At any second he expected to feel the weight of the club smack into his skull like a bat on a ball and he would drop, a dead weight, the buckets spilling, and then be finished off.

  Blum felt the club nudge him forward again, the buckets jerking, and he took a step. Waste lapped right to the edge and dripped onto the side of the pail, sending panic through Blum.

  He could not hold them much longer. If so, he resolved he would not die like his family. Without putting up a fight. A similar man, with a similar hate in his eye, had likely murdered them all. He would turn and empty his buckets all over the guard. Let whatever would happen, happen. He tightened his grip, waited for the final provocation. Waste that had accumulated lapped over the rim’s edge.

  This could be it.

  “I merely wanted to tell you,” the SS guard said with a sniff, “that the officers’ guardhouse needs to be cleaned out as well.”

  “The officers’ guardhouse,” Blum muttered back, dry-mouthed. “Yes, sergeant.”

  “And consider yourself lucky,” Dormutter said, “that we have an important visitor today in camp and that I’ve just shined my boots. Or otherwise…” The German made a kind of clicking noise with his tongue. “I might find some other Jew to lick out the guardhouse latrine. Now go.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Blum nodded, picking up his step.

  “And remember, the guardhouse. You’ll need a pass.” He came up again and stuffed a white form into Blum’s clenched hand.

  “Thank you, sir.” A breath of relief blew out Blum’s cheeks. He hurried on with his buckets.

  “And Mirek … You have quite good sense of balance with the pails there,” the SS man called after him. “You should consider the high wire in your next life.”

  He laughed, as did a couple of the other guards in listening range, and turned away, letting Blum go on.

  Blum hurried through the gate, his legs almost giving out from under him. He put down the buckets next to the waste ditch and let out a grateful sigh. He wrung out his fingers and then disposed of the waste.

  He just wanted out of this place now. It was clear, there was no longer a mission to fulfill. Mendl was likely dead. Now he just had to make it back out himself. He wanted so much to have brought back the man they needed. Do not fail us. You have no idea how much depends on your success. But what could he do? Even if Mendl was somehow here, alive, it was clear there were so many places and no way to search them all, and not enough time. Three days. That was all they had given him. A needle in a haystack. From the very start … In a hundred haystacks, Blum said to himself. The task was impossible.

  He hurried back through the gate and replaced the buckets in Block 31. He still had two more barracks to clean. But he didn’t want Dormutter finding him again before he had fulfilled his task. He knew where the guardhouse was. He had memorized every building in the camp on Vrba and Wetzler’s map. Part of him said, Go fuck the Nazi bastard. With God’s help, Blum would only be in here another day. The name “Mirek,” if Dormutter looked it up, would mean nothing. There were thousands and thousands here. The SS man would never find him. Just as he had never found Mendl. Let some other yid lick out their shit.

  Still, he went.

  He went because some other yid would only be taunted or even killed to do his job. And he went because he had been lucky at the gate, and to ignore God’s grace that had been bestowed on him would make him undeserving.

  The officers’ guardhouse was through a gate near the clock tower.

  “Over there.” The guard manning it pointed without even looking at Blum after inspecting his pass.

  It was a long, brick building with a peaked, slate roof. On one side, there were a couple of vehicles parked. An empty troop truck with a war cross on the door. And the German version of a Jeep. A guard stepped out, heading past him.

  Blum showed him his pass. “Latrine…?”

  The SS man pointed around the back. “Back there.”

  On the other side of the building, there was a bicycle rack, and in front of it, a man, another prisoner, hunched over, scrapi
ng the tires of mud. Blum prepared to go around the back as his gaze fell on him.

  Blum’s heart came to a stop.

  The man was clearly older than most here. Hair, white now, no longer gray, and thinned. But still combed over to the side.

  Thinner. His cheek bones coming through. A shadow of himself.

  Barely even resembling the photo Blum carried on him.

  But when he looked up, Blum saw the full, flat nose, the sagging line of the chin that had been burned into his memory. Can this be? And then, a tide of joy rising up inside him, the black mole on his left cheek. That will be your confirmation, Strauss had said.

  Confirmation, Blum said exultantly.

  He took a step forward. “Professor Mendl?”

  FORTY-TWO

  The man looked up.

  For Blum, it was like he was seeing a mirage, in the desert. Was it real? Or was it only what he wanted to be real? The old man looked so gaunt and sickly, it was amazing he hadn’t already been shipped off to his fate. It was amazing Blum even recognized him.

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “Professor Alfred Mendl? You taught at the University of Lvov? You lectured in electromagnetic physics?”

  The old man squinted at Blum as if he was some student he had once had. “Yes.”

  Elation surged in Blum. It was him! Thinner. The color gone from his face. His eyes beaten. Barely a shadow of his former self, physically. Somewhere between a ghost and a man.

  But him!

  “Don’t be alarmed, sir.” Blum came a step closer. “And please don’t think I’m crazy, what I’m about to say.” He looked around to make sure there were no other guards around. “But thank God I’ve found you. I’ve been looking for you all over.”

  “Looking for me…?” The professor squinted back uncomprehendingly.

  “Yes.” Blum nodded. “You. Look.” He brought out the photograph he had tucked inside his uniform.

  Mendl stood up and stared at his own likeness, his eyes growing wide. Then, not quite understanding, he handed it back to Blum. “Why me?”

  “Professor, what I’m about to tell you may sound crazy.” Blum met the old man’s gaze. “But it’s not, I promise, and I can prove every word.” He spoke low enough that no one could overhear. “But I’ve snuck inside here. Inside the camp. I’ve come from Washington, D.C. In the States.”

  “Washington…?” Now the professor did squint back with a look of incredulity. “And you say you’ve snuck in here? Into the camp. Why, possibly…?”

  “For you, Professor. To get you out.”

  “Out of here…?” Mendl sniffed, as if he were definitely speaking with a lunatic. “Now you are talking nonsense, whoever you are. Only two people have ever gotten out of here. And no one’s ever known how they ended up.”

  “Wetzler and Vrba,” Blum said back. Mendl’s eyes raised. “Look…” Blum yanked up his sleeve and showed his wrist. “This is Rudolf Vrba’s number. A22327. They made it, Professor. They’re in England now. They helped me. In order to get inside.”

  Mendl took Blum’s arm and stared, bewildered, at the number, then back at him.

  “I realize how this sounds, sir. But I can prove every word.”

  “Then who the hell are you, having gotten your way inside here? Some kind of commando? You hardly look it. But your Polish is flawless. Yet you say you came from Washington? I’m old, but I’m not a fool, young man.”

  “My name is Blum. I am Polish. Until three years ago I lived in Krakow. My family was killed by the Nazis, and I escaped to the United States. I enlisted there in the Army. A month ago they contacted me to come back here. For you specifically. To get you out. And take you back to the States.”

  “To the States…” Mendl’s eyes grew wide. Then he just smiled and shook his head. “Look around, son. Do you not see two rows of electrified wire and all the guards? Do you intend to just call a cab and have it drive up to the front gate? Get out how, do you propose?

  “We have a way. It’s been worked out. They are still working on the train tracks, are they not, outside the camp gates?”

  “Day and night. You can smell the ovens over at Birkenau. Twenty-four hours a day. The more trains, the more fuel for the fires.”

  “Tomorrow night, we volunteer for the work detail there,” Blum said under his breath. “There’ll be an attack. By Polish partisans.”

  “Partisans? Here?”

  “Yes. It’s all been arranged. We have a plane. Two days ago it dropped me off. It’s to take you back to England and then on to the United States. Whoever you are, sir, I can only say they want you very badly.”

  “Whoever I am…?” The professor’s look grew skeptical. “If this is a ploy of some kind, I assure you I—”

  “They tried to get you out before with papers from the Paraguayan embassy. You were contacted by an emissary from the embassy in Bern.” Blum rattled off what he knew. “You went to the Swiss border and then on to Rotterdam to board a cargo ship. The Prinz Eugen. Is that not right? Then you ended up in France, at the detention center at Vittel…”

  Mendl’s look slowly changed from disbelief to one of astonishment. Gradually, he nodded. And then smiled. He saw now.

  “This is no ploy, sir. I promise you.” Blum looked him in the eyes. “They wouldn’t tell me what it is you did or why they need you. Only that it was vital to get you out. Which is why I’m here. And to give you this…”

  Blum tore a seam on the inside of his uniform and reached inside. He came out with a folded piece of paper and handed it to Mendl. The old man looked at it, still suspicious at first or, at least, still a bit unsure, and then unfolded it, continuing to eye Blum with a bit of wariness. He took out his wire glasses and put them on.

  It was a letter.

  An image of the White House at the top.

  The professor’s eyes stretched wide.

  “Professor Mendl…” He read softly under his breath in English. “The war effort needs you. I am encouraged to tell you that we are close. On what, due to security, I am unable to say here. But I know you know of which I speak. I am writing to say that you can trust this man, Nathan Blum, with your life. He is my direct emissary. Freedom and the fate of the war require that you come here and share your research. The grateful arms of the United States need you and await you. With all God’s speed, Professor. And for the good of mankind.”

  “My God,” Mendl uttered, his jaw slack.

  It was signed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States.

  Mendl looked back up at Blum, the color drained from his face. “How did you possibly get this?”

  “It was given to me. In England, before I left.”

  “The heavy water experiments?” Mendl began to put it together. “Are the Americans close? They must be, if they sent you here for me.”

  “I’ve heard of this, but I don’t know. I was only told to give you that letter. And to get you back.”

  “The bastards have destroyed all my work.” Mendl shook his head forlornly. “Not once, but twice. And besides, you can see I’m hardly in the top of health. I’m way too old to be playing secret agent.”

  “You must come.” Blum insisted. “I’ve put my life at risk to bring you out. And that’s what I’ll do. I don’t know what it is you know, or why they want you, above all others, but many people have put their lives on the line to get me here and to hand you this, Professor. So you must. You must come.”

  Mendl let out a breath and ran a hand fitfully across his face. “We must put this away now.” He folded the letter back up again. “If anyone would see this…” He looked around with both foreboding and bewilderment in his gaze, still in shock, stuffing the letter into his waist.

  “I have to ask, sir,” Blum inquired. “Your family…?”

  Mendl shook his head. “They are gone. Soon after we arrived.”

  “I’m sorry. Mine are gone as well. So then there is nothing to hold you back. I can vouch for the partisans. T
hey are capable and dedicated soldiers. They will do what they are charged to do.”

  “And then we do just what?” The professor chortled skeptically. “Throw down our shovels and run? Toward the woods. And the Nazis will simply look the other way?”

  “No. Not toward the woods. Toward the river,” Blum said. “The opposite direction. We’ll be met there.”

  “Met there…” The professor laughed cynically. “It’s been a while since my track running days, I’m afraid, if you can’t already see that. Plus, I’ve been sick.”

  “They’ll be chaos all around. The attack should occupy the guards. I’ll get you there.”

  “And when is all this to happen?”

  “Tomorrow night. At zero thirty hours.” Blum said, “I’ll be going, whether you’re with me or not. Though I’d much prefer it if it was the two of us.”

  “And you say that there’s a plane?”

  “It will land about twenty kilometers from here. The partisans will take us.”

  Mendl closed his eyes for a second and nodded as if deep in thought. “This is where my Marte and Lucy died. A part of me feels it’s right that this is where I should die too.”

  “What’s right, to me, is that you make something of their deaths, Professor. As I am trying to of mine. I’m only here another day. That’s all the time there is. Whatever it is you know, sir, the Allies seem to desperately need you.”

  “This is all just so incredible…”

  “That may be, sir. Nonetheless, you must come.”

  Two soldiers stepped out of guardhouse, chatting. They came down the wooden steps, spoke for a second, then noticed Blum and Mendl. “Was gibts hier?” one questioned. What’s here?

  “Latrine, sir.” Blum held out his pass to them. “I was just asking…”

  “Then get on with it,” he snapped. “Let the old man do his work. It’s back there. Go on.” They went off, resuming their conversation, and climbed into the half-track on the other side of the building. The engine started up.

  Blum looked at Mendl. “I need your answer, sir. I should go. It’s best I don’t draw any attention…”