“Corporal Latteck, sir, we really are full to bursting today. You always seem to cop the really hard work!” The Germans always have to be addressed formally, even if they are only eighteen years old.
“True, enough, Rosenberg. You’ve noticed it, too. I do all the work. You’d think I was the only corporal in this section. That damn sergeant has it in for me. He’s a fucking hick from Bavaria, and he can’t stand people from Berlin. Let’s hope they finally grant me that transfer to the front.”
“Corporal, forgive me for troubling you, but I’ve run out of pencils.”
“I’ll send a soldier over to the guardroom to find one.”
“To make sure it’s not a wasted trip, since he’s going there, sir, could you perhaps tell him to bring back an entire box?”
The SS guard gives Rudi a long, hard look and then allows a smile to appear on his lips.
“A box, Rosenberg? Why the devil do you want so many pencils?”
Rudi realizes that the corporal isn’t as stupid as he seems, so he grins slyly, too, as if they were co-conspirators.
“Well, there’s a lot to note down here. And … there’s no question that if there are any pencils left over, the workers in the clothing area can always use a few to write down their information. Pencils are certainly hard to come by in the Lager. And if you provide those people with pencils, they can sometimes return the favor with some new socks.”
“And the occasional little Jewish whore!”
“Could be.”
“I get it.…”
The inquisitive look the SS man is giving Rudi signals danger. If Latteck reports him, Rudi is gone. He’s got to convince him quickly.
“You know, it’s only a matter of being a bit friendly to people. That way, they might be friendly toward you, too. There are friendly people who give me cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes?”
“Sometimes the odd pack of cigarettes is left in the pockets of the clothes that are sent to the laundry.… There’s even been the occasional packet of American tobacco.”
“American tobacco?”
“Absolutely!” He takes a cigarette out of his pocket. “Just like this one.”
“You’re a bastard, Rosenberg. A very smart bastard.” And the corporal smiles.
“They’re not that easy to find, but I might be able to get a few of these for you, sir.”
“I love American tobacco,” says the corporal, with a greedy glint in his eye.
“It certainly does taste different, sir. Nothing like the dark tobacco.”
“No.…”
“Light American tobacco is like a blond woman … superior quality.”
“No question.…”
The following day, Rudi heads for his rendezvous with Alice carrying two bundles of pencils in his pocket. He’ll have to do a few favors to get the corporal’s cigarettes, but he’s not too concerned. He knows how to go about it. As he walks toward the boundary fence, his thoughts turn yet again to the existence of the family camp. The Jews have never been allowed to stay together as families before. Why have the Nazis allowed it? The mystery is driving the Resistance mad. He wonders if Fredy Hirsch might know more about it than he’s letting on. Is Hirsch keeping something up his sleeve? But then, isn’t everyone? Rudi himself doesn’t tell Schmulewski about the good relationship he has with some of the SS, which enables him to traffic in small items. The Resistance might not approve, but it suits him. Schmulewski himself is never likely to show all his cards at once. After all, doesn’t he revel in the position of assistant to the German Kapo in his barrack?
He strides back and forth behind the barracks until he sees Alice approaching, and then he heads for the fence. If the guard on duty in the tower is one of the bad-tempered ones, he’ll blow his whistle any moment now and order them to move back. Alice is on the other side of the fence, a few meters away. Rudi has spent two days anticipating this moment, and when he sees her, his happiness makes him forget all the miseries.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine standing up. The ground’s muddy.”
“But you’ve got to sit down so the guard knows we’re only talking and doesn’t suspect us of plotting something close to the fence.”
Alice sits down and in the process, her skirt rides up and her underwear—miraculously white in the midst of all the mud—is briefly exposed. Rudi feels an electric current run through his body.
“How’s everything going?” asks Alice.
“Now that I’m looking at you, everything’s fine.”
Alice blushes, but smiles with satisfaction.
“I’ve got the pencils.”
She doesn’t seem surprised, and that leaves Rudi feeling a little disappointed. He was hoping the pencils would have a dramatic effect. The girl must have no idea how difficult it is to do deals inside the camp, and the risk he’s had to take with an SS guard in order to get them.
Rudi doesn’t know about women. Alice really is impressed, as he’d realize if he looked into her eyes. But men always expect to be told everything.
“And how are you going to get the pencils into our camp? A delivery service?”
“You can’t trust anyone at the moment.”
“So?”
“You’ll see.”
Rudi has been watching the soldier in the guard tower out of the corner of his eye. He’s quite a way off, and Rudi can make out only the outline of a small portion of his upper body and head. But since the guard’s gun is slung over his shoulder, Rudi can tell when he’s facing toward them and when his back is turned: The tip of the gun sticking up above his right shoulder points away from the camp when he’s facing them and toward the camp when he has his back to them. Thanks to this makeshift compass, Rudi has worked out that the guard swivels at a lazy pace. When he sees the muzzle rotate toward him, Rudi takes a few bold steps up to the fence. Alice covers her mouth with her hand, terrified.
“Quick, come closer!”
Rudi removes the two bundles of pencils, each firmly tied together with string, from his pocket and, holding them with the tips of his fingers, carefully passes them through the gaps in the electrified wire fence. Alice rushes to pick them up from the ground. She’s never been so close to the fence with its thousands of volts. The two of them step back a few meters just as Rudi sees the muzzle start to swing away and the guard turns to face them.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” Alice asks him, her heart still thumping loudly inside her chest. “I would have prepared myself!”
“It’s better not to prepare for some things. Sometimes you have to act impulsively.”
“I’ll give Mr. Hirsch the pencils. We’re really grateful.”
“We should go now.…”
“Yes.”
“Alice…”
“What?”
“I’d like to see you again.”
Alice’s smile means so much more than words.
“Same time, same place, tomorrow?” he asks her.
She agrees and begins to walk toward the Lagerstrasse of her camp. Rudi waves good-bye, and Alice blows him a kiss from her chapped lips. It flies over the top of the barbed wire fence, and Rudi catches it midair. It never occurred to him before that such a simple gesture could make him so happy.
* * *
There is someone else this morning whose head is spinning. Dita is attuned to every gesture, every raised eyebrow and clenched jaw. She wants to find out the truth that words don’t reveal. Suspicion is like an itch that is barely felt at the start. But when you become aware of it, you can’t stop scratching.
Life doesn’t stop, however, and Dita doesn’t want anyone to notice that she’s worried. So, first thing in the morning, she’s already on duty in her library, sitting on a bench with her shoulder propped up against the air intake of the chimney. The books are defiantly displayed on a long bench in front of her. Seppl Lichtenstern has provided her with one of the assistants to help her control the movement of the books during the hourly book e
xchange, and on this particular morning, there’s a young boy with pale skin sitting beside her so quietly that he’s yet to open his mouth.
The first person to come by is a young teacher who’s in charge of a group of boys nearby. He greets her with a silent nod. She’s heard he’s a Communist, that he’s very educated, and even speaks English. She studies his gestures to work out if he can be trusted, but in the end, she doesn’t know what to think. She does notice a sparkle of intelligence under his studied indifference. He casts an eye over the books, and when he comes across the one by H. G. Wells, he nods, as if in approval. Then he pauses over Freud’s book of theories and shakes his head disapprovingly. Dita watches him closely, almost frightened by what he’s going to say.
Finally, after a moment’s thought, he says, “If H. G. Wells were to find out that he’s next to Sigmund Freud, he’d be angry with you.”
Dita stares at him wide-eyed and blushes.
“I don’t understand—”
“Don’t pay any attention to me. It’s just that it shocks me to see a socialist rationalist like Wells together with a fantasy salesman like Freud.”
“Freud writes fantastical tales?”
“Absolutely not. Freud was an Austrian psychiatrist from Moravia and a Jew. He used to examine what people had inside their heads.”
“And what did he see?”
“According to him, too many things. In his books, he explains that the mind is a storeroom where memories languish and send people mad. He came up with a way of curing mental illnesses: The patient would lie down on a couch, and Freud would make him talk until he’d exhausted the last of his memories. In this way, Freud probed the patient’s most hidden thoughts. He called it psychoanalysis.”
“What happened to him?”
“He became famous. That saved his skin in Vienna in 1938. Some Nazis went into his consulting rooms, destroyed everything, and left with two thousand Reichsmarks. When Freud found out, he remarked that he had never charged that much for a consultation. Freud knew a lot of influential people outside Austria, but even so, the Nazis didn’t allow him to leave the country and go to London with his wife and daughter until he’d signed a piece of paper where he stated that the Nazi authorities had treated him really well and life in Vienna under the Third Reich was wonderful. He asked if he could add something to the end of the document because he felt the Germans had sold themselves short. Then he wrote, I strongly recommend the Gestapo to everybody. The Nazis were delighted.”
“They just don’t get the Jewish sense of humor.”
“As far as the Germans are concerned, humor means tickling your toes.”
“And when he reached England?”
“Freud died the following year, in 1939. He was already very old and sick.” The young teacher picks up the book by Freud and leafs through it. “Freud’s books were among the first to be burned on Hitler’s orders in 1933. This book is pure danger. It’s not only a clandestine book—it’s banned as well.”
Dita feels a slight shiver and decides to change the topic.
“And who was H. G. Wells?”
“He was a freethinker and a socialist. But above all, he was a great novelist. Have you heard of The Invisible Man?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he wrote that novel. And The War of the Worlds, in which he talks about Martians landing on Earth. And The Island of Doctor Moreau, with that mad scientist who combines human and animal genes. Dr. Mengele would like him. But I think his best book is The Time Machine. To go back and forth in time…” He sounds pensive as he continues. “Can you picture it? Do you have any idea what it would mean to get inside that machine, fly back in time to 1924, and prevent Adolf Hitler from being released from jail?”
“But all that business of the machine is made up, isn’t it?”
“Sadly, yes. Novels add what’s missing to life.”
“Well, if you think it would be better, I can put Mr. Freud and Mr. Wells at opposite ends of the bench.”
“No, leave them where they are. Maybe they can learn something from each other.”
And he says it so seriously that Dita can’t tell if this young teacher, who has the poise of an experienced man despite his youth, is joking or absolutely serious.
He turns round and returns to his group, and it occurs to Dita that he’s a walking encyclopedia. The assistant beside her hasn’t spoken a word. It’s only when the teacher has gone that he tells Dita in a high-pitched, childish voice—which makes his normal silence understandable—that the teacher’s name is Ota Keller, and he’s a Communist. Dita nods.
The teachers asked Dita for one of her “living” books for the afternoon—The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson. Mrs. Magda is a fragile-looking woman with snow-white hair and as slight as a sparrow. But when she starts to tell the story, she turns into a giant. Her voice becomes remarkably energetic, and she spreads her arms dramatically to describe the flight of the geese carrying Nils Holgersson through the air. A large group of children of mixed ages climb on board the flock of strong geese, too. They follow every word wide-eyed as they fly, seated on those geese, all over the skies of Sweden.
Almost all the children have heard the story before, in some cases several times, but the ones who enjoy it most are the ones who know it best. They recognize the various stages of the tale and they even laugh in anticipation of events, because they are already part of the adventure. Even Gabriel, the terror of the teachers in Block 31, who is normally incapable of staying still, has turned into a statue.
Nils is a willful boy who plays tricks on the animals on his farm. One day, while his parents are in church and he’s alone at home, he has a run-in with a tomte, or gnome, who has had enough of the boy’s arrogant attitude and shrinks him to the size of a small woodland animal. In an attempt to redeem himself, Nils holds on to the neck of a domestic goose and they join a band of wild geese flying over the Swedish countryside. In the same way that the impertinent Nils, clutching the neck of his goose, begins to mature and to realize that there is more to the world than him, so, too, the group of listeners rise above their harsh reality, full of the egotism of people pushing into the line to get to the soup first or stealing their neighbor’s spoon.
Sometimes, when Dita goes in search of Mrs. Magda to tell her that she has a session with Nils Holgersson at a particular time, the woman hesitates.
“But they’ve all heard the story a dozen times already! When they see that I’m telling it again, they’ll get up from their stools and leave.”
No one ever leaves. It doesn’t matter how many times they listen to the story, they always enjoy it. And not only that, but they always want to hear it from the start. Sometimes Mrs. Magda, worried that she’ll bore them, tries to take shortcuts and make the story shorter by skipping sections, but there are immediate protests from her audience.
“No, that’s not right!”
And she has to rewind and tell the whole story without leaving anything out. The more times the children hear the story, the more it’s a part of them.
The story comes to an end, and the guessing games being played by other groups also finish, along with the craft work. A group of girls has been making puppets out of old socks and wooden sticks. The children leave the hut and return to their families once the deputy director has finished the afternoon roll call.
The assistants finish their tasks quickly. Sweeping the floor with twig brooms is more of a ritual or a way of justifying their positions than an actual necessity. Arranging the stools doesn’t take long, either, or cleaning up the nonexistent leftovers from the meal, because nothing is wasted. The bowls are licked clean down to the very last drop of soup; even a crumb is like treasure. As the assistants complete their pretend cleanup, they leave the hut, and a peacefulness descends on Block 31.
The teachers sit down together on stools and discuss the day’s events. Dita is in her corner behind the woodpile, where she often goes when classes are over to read for a while, since t
he books can’t be taken from the hut. She notices a stick propped up against a wall in her corner. It has a small net at the top made out of string. It could be a crude butterfly net, although it’s so badly strung that if you tried to catch a butterfly, it would escape through one of the many holes. She can’t imagine who might be the owner of such a useless item. There aren’t any butterflies in Auschwitz anyway. If only!
She spots something in the gap between some planks in the wall, and when she pulls it out, she sees it’s a tiny pencil, little more than a stub with a black tip. But a pencil is an extraordinary piece of equipment. She picks up a small origami bird left behind by Professor Morgenstern and carefully unfolds it. She’s left with a scrap of paper to draw on. She hasn’t drawn anything for so long … Not since Terezín.
A very nice art teacher who gave classes to the children in the ghetto used to say that painting was a way of escaping. She was such a cultured and enthusiastic person that Dita never dared contradict her. But unlike books, drawing never took her out of herself or made her climb aboard the carriage of other lives—quite the opposite. Drawing catapulted her inside herself. Her Terezín drawings were dark, with unsettled strokes and dark-gray, stormy skies. Drawing was a way of having a conversation with herself when she was overcome by the idea that her youth, which had barely begun, already seemed to be over.
Dita sketches the barrack: the stools, the straight stone line of the chimney, and the two benches—one for her and the other for the books.
She can’t avoid overhearing the teachers’ voices, which sound fraught this afternoon. Mrs. Nasty is complaining bitterly that it’s impossible for her to teach the children geography over the noise of the yells and orders accompanying the deported prisoners who arrive at the camp and walk past Block 31 on their way to the showers and their death.
“Trains arrive, and we have to pretend that we can’t hear anything. We carry on with our lessons, while the children whisper among themselves. We act as if we can’t hear a thing, as if we knew nothing about it.… Wouldn’t it be better to face up to it and talk to the children about the concentration camp? They all know what is going on anyway, so let them talk about their fears.”
The Librarian of Auschwitz Page 10