Lovely Green Eyes

by Arnost Lustig

  It seemed laughable to Adler, but it was the first thing he told us that day.

  “It’s an unfinished story,” he said.

  Fortunately we were at an age when you didn’t feel sad for 24 hours a day, even though it was just as impossible to feel happy for 24 hours a day. We endeavoured to raise our spirits with free meals in one of Prague’s soup kitchens, where the three of us were frequent visitors. Once Adler said that he wouldn’t like to be a widow dining there, being reminded by the blobs of fat floating on the soup of the eyes of her dead husband. Skinny did not find this remark funny. Where did Adler get his ideas from?

  “Who did they kill in your family?” he asked her.

  “All of them,” Skinny said.

  “Same here,” Adler said.

  They fell silent. It was the same for practically everybody. Adler had found it rather ridiculous when his concierge asked him how the world could have permitted it. Now it seemed just as ridiculous to Skinny. I was glad no-one asked me the same question. I had been in an orphanage even before the war. I imagined my grandmother Olga’s fate without having to ask. People over 35 had a slim chance, those over 60 none whatever.

  “What will you inherit?” Adler asked her.

  She didn’t answer him.

  Because Skinny had so often lost all she had, after the war she clung to everything she could get hold of. She had three pairs of boots. She called them “my dear little boots,” even though she just looked at them and wore other shoes. Or she would play with a new skirt (or rather an old-new one she’d been given by Mrs Jäger of the Jewish Community’s social welfare department) and address it by name, as “my dear little red skirt”. That one kept its name: the Red One. She also had a green one, a check one and a striped one which was pleated. She had to feel things, to touch them. She would reassure herself during the night – getting out of bed – that they were hers. She reconciled herself from the outset to the fact that she could lose her things and she was surprised if she kept anything. To have and not to have, to receive and to lose: inversely proportional dimensions. Loving her new things as she did, she was unaware that some of it looked like stuff from a second-hand clothes shop. But while her wardrobe became more and more colourful, she felt naked and impoverished – probably because she wanted to be ready in case misfortune once more befell her.

  She spoke about her family.

  “My father saw Germany as a locomotive at full speed. Us he saw as tied to the rails. The train was rushing towards us. Nothing could stop it.”

  She did not say then that her father had thrown himself at the high-voltage fence at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nor did she say anything about Rottenführer Erich Schratz. Schratz had beaten her father’s face, his head, his private parts for six days running. The seventh day was a Sunday and the Rottenführer was not on duty. But he had given instructions to the block leader. This man did not beat her father so hard, but he could not ignore his orders. That was the day her father took his life.

  Her mother had met her fate on a bridge, just a few steps from her native land. And Ramon was dead too. He was almost 14. Would he have gone on with school? Her father had believed that a trade would be preferable.

  I could guess what she was thinking of, because she added: “Good and evil. Perhaps Hitler didn’t think he was a devil.”

  I shall not forget the way Adler – with whom we became a threesome with all the advantages and disadvantages of such an arrangement -inspected Skinny one day. It was in Wenceslas Square in front of the Hotel Europa, where we used to meet. For an instant his eyes rested on the centre of her skirt, then he raised them. She was standing before him in a thin blouse, a rather long skirt, high boots as for mountain walking, and floral-patterned socks – a very pretty girl. He appreciated her reticence. Adler was apt to seek in others what he was afraid of in himself. Probably the thing that bound us together was that we didn’t have a lot to share, since none of us had very much – a subsidy from the Repatriation Office, a few clothes supplied by the social welfare department, and in Skinny’s case, a green US Army blanket from which she had fashioned a single-breasted winter coat with green buttons made by an acquaintance of her mother’s. It matched her eyes. We spoke about her, Adler and I. I didn’t want to wind up like Adler – he loved her one day and spoke ill of her the next.

  I watched her closely when she was unaware of it. There was something of the expression of a frightened deer, as well as its charm, in her green eyes with their gingery lashes and paler eyebrows. Her face seemed to me every bit as pretty as Greta Garbo’s, whom the three of us had seen in Ninotchka, La Dame aux Camâias and Queen Christina. She had a kind of dignity, that of the humiliated, in her face, her features, her head and her movements, in the way she behaved and expressed herself.

  After all she’d been through she still believed in that empty place between her crotch and her abdomen, which no-one would fill or dishonour or violate unless she invited him in. It was not, of course, the only empty place in her. I tried to imagine her belly as a hidden secret box. And she still believed in her father’s love for her mother when she was conceived.

  She viewed the world as a huge camp that contained a variety of divisions and reservations. If she was lucky she might stay in one of them for a long time, perhaps all her life, in transit. But to ever escape, to ever be truly free, seemed out of the question to her.

  I met Skinny every day because I came to feel as though every hour, minute or second I was not with her was lost time. I talked to her of everything possible. I didn’t search for details, even though I nearly knew. It was several weeks before I saw her Feldhure tattoo. She didn’t show me her belly for the reasons I would have preferred. She wanted me to know where I stood with her. And perhaps also where she stood with me, or with herself.

  On Petrin Hill I spoke of love for the first time in my life. I was sending a message to Skinny, Hanka Kaudersovâ, that the waters were receding – as with Noah’s ark. I loved her blindly – if love is blind. This I did not say, I only thought it. I was starting out on a new life, like her, willing to squeeze a whole ocean out of every puddle. I loved her with that invisible urge which has to overcome the boundary between the courage and fear to say that we are in love, because the fact that it’s not a lie is not nearly enough.

  I loved her with that wonderful and vertiginous balancing act between what we have and what we dream of. The moment when no disease is infectious, no sin unforgivable, no obstacle insurmountable. And, ultimately, no past forbidding and no bad experience decisive. It was not only uncertain, tormenting and wonderful at the same time; there was also an element of ambition, a wish to climb a steep hill regardless of what we might see from the top.

  In her mind she returned to Poland. The worst day had not been the first day at No. 232 Ost, but the second when she told herself, “Oh Lord, now It’s starting all over again.”

  Twelve: Gustav Habenicht, Sepp Bartels, Rolf Baltruss, Fritz Puscha, Heinrich Rinsfeld, Otto Scholtz, Heine Baumgarten, Friedrich Heindl, Wilhelm Kube, Johann Kurfürst, Hans Bergel, Rudolf Weinmann.

  The Oberführer appeared at the end of the corridor in fur-lined boots and a fur coat that reached to his ankles. The girls fell silent. He looked at them as if they were not naked, or else it made no difference to him. He regarded them as inferior beings.

  A huge gale had uprooted the remaining trees by the river. It had swept through at 90 miles an hour. The torn-up trees were lying in the direction of the wind, their roots uncovered and their branches snapped. The Madam had ordered the girls to drag the branches into the yard. The guard who accompanied them had lost his faith in army meteorologists.

  Madam Kulikowa had to chase the girls away from the window. Bumping over the frozen snow, one wing almost dragging on the ground, was a Heinkel. It came to a halt by the gate, its fuselage full of holes. The guards ran up to it and released the pilot from his harness. His temples were crushed, he was bruised and blood was oozing from a shoulder wound. His knees ga
ve way and he sank down and crouched on the ground, letting out his breath as if it were his last. The weak sun was reflected from the gilt tin eagle over the entrance and cast flickering patches on the pilot. He looked like a caricature of an airman from the film Quax, the Pilot without Fear or Blemish that the Madam had seen. The guards picked him up carefully.

  “Where am I? Mein Gott…”

  “Feldbordell No. 232, Herr Hauptmann,” a guard with a scar stretching from one ear to the other reported smartly.

  Oberführer S chimmelpfennig came running out to the sentry box by the gate. He introduced himself, giving his rank and title.

  “Into my surgery,” he commanded.

  The airman’s blood had stained his flying helmet. He was on the brink of fainting. In his half-closed eyes there was guilt, lethargy and exhaustion. He was shivering now, all but unconscious. Life was draining from him.

  “You’ll be all right,” the Oberführer assured him. His voice was serious but not compassionate. His eyes swept over the aircraft. Pride not pity. We were born to perish, the Oberführer thought.

  The guards carried the dead airman away. His blood was on their gloves and on their white snowsuits.

  The truck from the Wehrkreis that arrived to remove the plane delivered some cases with winter wear. It included three pairs of felt boots with thick soles.

  That evening, in her room with the vaulted ceiling, the Madam was massaging Major von Kalckreuth’s back. A sebaceous cyst had formed on his right side. He hoped it was nothing worse. The Madam told him that she had dreamed, of all things, of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each time she mentioned the camp she emphasized that she had been in the Aryan section.

  The massage made him feel good.

  “Know what I heard?” he asked. “That a baby in his mother’s womb will turn into the correct position, head down, if they prick her thumb with a needle and at the same time light a candle with a special Chinese herb.”

  The major was interested in alternative medicine. The Oberführer did not hold with it.

  “The Chinese practise acupuncture on most parts of the body, something our doctors don’t even dream of.”

  He heaved a sigh. He recalled what he knew about the Japanese attack on Nanking, when the soldiers had practised bayonet drill on their Chinese prisoners of war and the civilian population. He had also read in a brochure that the Chinese police in Shanghai were the first, as early as 1920, to equip their men with pistols with six-round magazines. History was racing ahead, that was a fact.

  “All our watches are showing five minutes to midnight,” he said. “How come you don’t have a portrait of Adolf Hitler in here?”

  He heaved another sigh.

  “Some people still confuse freedom with impertinence.”

  Twelve: Horst Hoffe, Jünger Strasser, Hermann Bock, Franz Klang, Hans Rössel, Manfred Kaas, Ernst Tippelkirsch, Gregor Schleichner, Uwe Hugehberg, Boris Fricke, Hans Besitz, Harry Höppner.

  Estelle had narrowly escaped a flogging.

  “I’m marking off the days,” she said. “So far I’ve got away with it. I’m being careful.”

  Something familiar made them compare their fates. Skinny examined every remark, every hint of Estelle’s. In Germany and the occupied territories there were masses of such girls, driven into brothels by the authorities. And thousands who had volunteered.

  They were waiting in the corridor for a tub to become vacant. On the thick wooden floor slats, which could be lifted and stacked up, Estelle looked slight, almost frail, with long black hair whose ends she singed and mother-of-pearl earrings in delicate lobes. She burped, but she didn’t have sour breath.

  “I’m waiting all the time,” she said, undoing her buttons. Had she crossed the boundary beyond which girls were no longer forgiven?

  “I get cramps – herpes. I’m terrified I might get a rash. When I bleed I’m afraid I might be dying. I feel like when you crack a hazelnut, or when someone steps on your belly.”

  They stood facing each other. White steam came from their mouths.

  “You’re warming me,” said Estelle.

  “The Oberführer went to Festung Breslau this morning.”

  “To recruit girls?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The first three hours are the worst for me.”

  It was with them all the time, even if they appeared hardened: Virginity, the first experience, the worst and the better ones, anything that was the first time and began to repeat itself, like menstruation.

  Estelle was naked now, and climbed into the tub. Skinny joined her. “Yes,” Skinny said.

  Madam Kulikowa taught Skinny to sing “The Cocotte”. There would be an evening entertainment. Did she know “Deeper than the Sea, Hotter than the Sahara”? They might rehearse a cabaret number about Lucifer meeting Beelzebub.

  When the full moon wasn’t hidden by clouds and as long as the stars were shining, the wolves seemed white, with huge silver eyes. They emerged from the darkness, phantoms of the night, enfolded in a kind of unknowing. They moved about the snow-covered wasteland wrapped in a cloak of darkness, illuminated by the moon. They made her aware of what humans lacked: fierceness, the dark rays of night. She admired them and she was afraid of them. Now and then the guards caught them in their searchlights. It was a different light from the one the wolves were born into. Day and night made no difference to them. They came from lairs in the quarry and among the rocks. They did not recognize frontiers, any more than the Germans did.

  Crows were flying across the same night sky. They could not be seen, like the rats and the wolves, only heard. Croaking, howling and whistling pierced the night. Like unintelligible messages, vague prophecies. Something more ancient than man.

  In the morning the guards exercised in the snow without shirts, just in trousers. The S S maintenance staff were extending the gym by breaking down the wall between what had been the cowshed and the stables. The buildings were made mainly of stone, partly from wood. Commandant Trillhase had had the yard paved wall to wall. When the girls had swept the snow away, the stones shone like ancient hieroglyphs. Oberführer Brandenburg-Luttich said once that the stones looked as if they had been inscribed by the Jews who had worked in the quarry. The inscriptions seemed to him like Hebrew letters, or like ancient Germanic runes.

  The Oberführer thought that No. 232 Ost was an ideal spot linking them to the front, the hinterland and the Wehrkreis, as if made for defence and attack. He agreed with Oberführer Schimmelpfennig, The Frog, that the substance of which the German soul was made was hardness not compassion. Those who would read the stones would read German.

  Twelve: Kurt Wegener, Gerd Wolf, Alexander Penske, Albert Heller-Kaiser, Max Gunther Friedenthal, Martin Schwitzer, Hans-Peter Krume, Kleo Hahn, Fritz Mani, Hans Lage-Hegern, Helmut Binder, Hans Anglia Jürgensohn.

  When they had let the water out of their tubs they were to report to Oberführer S chimmelpfennig’s surgery to get an injection against Ebola or Marburg disease, something spread by rats and bats and their excrement. Their temperature would go up temporarily. No cause for alarm. As a special concession reveille the following day would not be until 5.30 a.m.

  Big Leopolda Kulikowa got the Pole who came over to tattoo the girls to pull out a painful back tooth for her. She didn’t want to ask the Oberführer, but she needed a painkiller from him. She hated asking for anything. Out in the corridor she spat out some blood.

  “You don’t get out of anything on your own – only exceptionally. It’s better with some help. You don’t have to love them,” she said to Skinny, almost apologetically.

  Long-Legs called them to the window. For about five minutes a wolf had been dancing, twisting about its own axis as if trying to catch its tail. Abruptly it ran off.

  “You can want, but you don’t necessarily get,” Skinny heard the Madam say to Fatty.

  Twelve: Reiner Dressier, Rafael Habe, Paul Hoffmann, Klaus Rune, Christian Schulte, Fritz Adler, Seigfried Knappe, Uwe Welt, Demian Schuhma
cher, Volker Werner Blind, Willi Lump, Heinrich Burke.

  Before lights-out the rats gathered between the latrines. Motionless, they resembled piles of wolf’s hair. Suddenly they would scatter, leaving raven’s feathers behind on the snow.

  During the evening a truck from the Wehrkreis delivered three barrels of salted beef.

  Over the radio came the voices of three German singers, one of them Lile Anderson. In a direct relay from Paris, Maurice Chevalier was appearing for the benefit of frontline soldiers, war widows and the victims of the air raids on Germany. He sang “Give me Your Hand, Mam’zelle”. The commentator mentioned the soul of Europe and its full stomach. The audience applauded. One mother, he said, gave birth to her baby during an air raid. Her husband, a doctor, had handed the child out through the window to some air defence personnel, so they could take it to a shelter. The child was named Adolf. In honour of the child, Monsieur Chevalier would sing …

  The station’s signal faded.

  They were all examined during the week by an army psychologist, Oberführer Michael Blatter-Spirit. His dissertation had been about Oswald Spengler; on the extinction of life, on the duty to die. The Frog had his own opinion of Blatter-Spirit. The body knew four million kinds of pain? Could one agree with Arthur Schopenhauer that man’s most essential longing was to be free from pain? Blatter-Spirit could look back on his respectable series of researches. He had studied the psychological features of blond and blue-eyed people over five and a half feet tall. He’d probed into the Viking and Nordland Divisions of the S S that had levelled the miners’ village of Lidice in Bohemia and razed Oradour near Limoges in France. He had examined those who participated in the massacre of Malmédy. One S S man had recalled the end of Oradour. This man had described how it had occurred on a sunny Saturday in the peaceful quiet of a German village. He had exhibited all the qualities of Waffen-S S members -the sons of middle and upper class parents. In Oradour he had killed more women and children than men: 190 men, 207 children, 245 women. Blatter-Spirit had also studied the Germanization of foreigners, that which made the Waffen-S S so attractive to them, a magnet for Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Slovak, Romanian and French SS. The psychologist wore small round spectacles, his eyes behind them shone like opal glass. His face was pockmarked with childhood acne and duelling scars from his days at the German University in Prague.