Lovely Green Eyes

by Arnost Lustig

  He took his subject seriously. The army prostitutes must be made to smile.

  “Smile at me,” he ordered Skinny.

  She smiled at him.

  “That’s lifeless,” he said. “Again.”

  She had to grin at him 20 times. He promised her chocolate, two hard-boiled eggs and bread with ham.

  From smiling lips, he explained, signals went to the brain and triggered energy which – even if the smile wasn’t spontaneous -produced positive effects. He based this on discoveries of the French neurologist Duchenne de Bologne, according to whom a hearty smile (not just a half smile) gave rise to a “play of sweet feelings in the soul”. He was trying to get results that could lead to a general instruction. He glanced at her file, at the questionnaire she had answered.

  “What do you know? Rat – rabbit? Ox – cockerel?”

  Oberführer S chimmelpfennig remained doubtful about these theories. Either Dr Blatter-Spirit was right, or he was an idiot – and he’d decided which. The Oberführer himself recognized health only, and the opposite of health. Nothing in between.

  Over tea Blatter-Spirit expressed the view that Columbus was a Jew. He had brought syphilis back to Europe. And weren’t the Jews everywhere? The two men talked about experiments carried out by Japanese doctors using horse blood for human transfusions. Then they discussed pressure chambers and the point at which a person’s eyeballs popped out.

  At daybreak on Sunday repair gangs and teams of camp inmates from Auschwitz-Birkenau and Blechhammer, Monowitz and Gleiwitz, where the rolling stock repair shops were located, arrived at the steel bridge. Under the guidance of railway engineers they reinforced the piers and replaced the rails. In the fierce wind they broke the ice on the river with hand grenades. They encased the piers in heavy timber. There was a sound of gunfire, shouting and the clash of metal against metal. The guards were warming themselves at iron braziers with red-hot coke. A few camp inmates drowned in the ice-cold water.

  Throughout the night, troop trains and trains carrying war material roared east. And in the opposite direction came long trains carrying wounded men, bits of booty and damaged heavy weapons. They fought their way through snow, blizzards and artillery fire. The rails were bending. Ruby sparks swished through the darkness and the snow.

  On Tuesday a Mercedes with its escort arrived with a new girl from Festung Breslau.

  The girl addressed the guard at the gate in passable German.

  “My name is Debilia. I fuck like a tigress.”

  The guard liked her guttural “r”. She had been in an institution from the age of eleven to fourteen and believed herself to be a cat. After her discharge, no school or training college would accept her. When the first soldier entered the cubicle she had inherited from Tight-Lips, she sat on his lap, spat, miaowed and purred, and then licked his nose. At dinner she said that she liked everything and then proceeded loudly to list all the things she didn’t eat. At roll-call she got her first three strokes with a cane.

  “In China,” the Oberführer said, “the mandarins used to dish out 30 strokes and nobody thought it out of place.”

  Debilia squealed, so he ordered more strokes. After five he ordered that she be given 25. At the eighth fall of the cane she stopped yelling. After the twenty-first they carried her away. The Oberführer ordered the other prostitutes to sing. He was going to demand a replacement for her from the Wehrkreis, he said. It would be no bad thing if they started to send German girls.

  “It’s up to you to make sure the word ‘woman’ has no bad flavour. Remember, there are two kinds of girl. The first kind were born into the right bed, the second climbed into it. Don’t think that what’s bad for the Germans is good for you,” Madam Kulikowa told them later.

  They should not behave like a bad innkeeper who drove her guests away instead of welcoming them. Or who simply waited for a guest to put his money on the table and leave. They had something to display -youth, hair, breasts, a feast for the troops. They saw the men at their most vulnerable moment. A girl was like a doctor in some respects. She had to discover the best in everyone.

  Was Skinny Jewish? Or Estelle? The Madam sometimes wondered. If the cards had been dealt the other way round, would the Jews behave like the Germans and the Germans like the Jews? You couldn’t tell anything from a girl’s crotch. What could she have in common with the troops who came here for an advance on their home life? The cemetery was nearer for her.

  After supper a messenger on a motorbike with a sidecar brought a parcel for Skinny. A couple of pounds each of sugar and lentils, a chunk of salted beef and some pork crackling in a jam jar. A twopound bag of millet. And a visiting card from Captain Daniel August Hentschel.

  “The Germans are still gentlemen,” observed Madam Kulikowa. “Knights without fear and blemish. They know how to share even what they steal.”

  Skinny shared her parcel with the rest of the girls. The Madam took the salted beef.

  Twelve: Karl Meissner, Hans Bellow, Anton Bruckner, Frank Epp, Hermann Fegelein, Fritz Albert Klausen, Gustav Kriebel, Rainer Maria Hilger, Donar Hörbiger, Alex Neurath, Uwe Schmidt, Kurt Witzig.

  Estelle held Skinny by her hand.

  “I’d never been with anyone before. I didn’t have it off with him; he had it off with me. He told me I was nice and if I weren’t a whore he’d marry me. He waited for me to moan. So I moaned. He wanted me to open my legs; to put them on his shoulders. I heard myself croaking. I was gasping for air. He said it was so good. It hurt me, and I was covered in cold sweat. He slapped my bottom – as a reward. Out of sheer fear I smiled at him. Then he fell asleep. He was no longer interested in me. No-one was ever interested in me afterwards.”

  She didn’t mention those two soldiers, brothers perhaps or cousins, who it was rumoured she was interested in.

  The sky, frosty, deep blue and clear, was filling with stars. The Madam announced that it was Christmas Day.

  “Do you also imagine God as a shiny fish?” Estelle asked. She looked at Skinny.

  “Were you really in a camp? Like the Madam? She was in the Aryan section.”

  The wolves were howling outside the windows.

  Behind their words self-denial was hiding; that secret life no-one knows about, that life which had deformed them, but in which there was still a grain of hope.

  “When I lie next to you, things come back to me,” Estelle said. “I’m walking in the park with my mother. She was raven-haired, like I am. I run ahead, stop in front of her and face her, so she has to stop too. And I say to her ‘Mummy, you’re walking too fast’. And then I do it again and say ‘Mummy, your breasts are wobbling too much’. My mother stares ahead, as if she’s lost in thought. Am I really there? I say ‘Mummy, why are you looking so odd?’”

  Skinny did not tell Estelle that they were killing people at Auschwitz-Birkenau from morning to night and from night to morning, killing on a conveyor belt. She said nothing about the prisoners who were grinding the bones of the dead into fertilizer that was taken away by rail in open wagons. About the mass murders which had become commonplace. About the women waiting their turn in snow and ice and rain, powerless and emaciated. They were no longer being moved by trucks; fuel had to be saved. They had to trudge along, step after step. She remained silent about the things the Germans had thought up in order to cleanse the planet of the inferior race. About the sick bay where experiments were carried out on human beings.

  About the killing of children and the sick, as well as the healthy for punishment, simply to make room for the next transportées. About what seemed normal to the S S men in their service to Germany; about what, after a few weeks, no longer seemed insane to her because it was being repeated every day. That was what she had escaped to save herself.

  It occurred to her, as it had before, that Estelle might not believe her. She would not have believed it herself if she hadn’t been there. And she only knew a fraction of it, the general picture, the taste of damp ash, the choking smell of charred bones like t
he smell of boiled glue.

  “I ran away so I didn’t have to go to a camp as you did,” Estelle said. Skinny remained silent. Estelle turned over in bed and caught hold of her with both hands. She was not the only one to have run away and ended up here. Perhaps she’d just had a different reason. That unknown reason was a bond between them.

  “I don’t have to see killing first-hand. What’s here is quite enough for me – what they did to Big Belly and Krikri, and maybe Maria-Giselle.”

  “They don’t give you a choice,” Skinny said.

  “Is it the same there as here?”

  “No, it’s not. Except that neither there nor here can you get out.”

  Skinny wondered why the camp had such a fascination for Estelle. Why was she thinking about it so much?

  “What did you do there?”

  “I assisted the doctor.”

  “Would they have sterilized me?”

  “They sterilized all the girls.”

  “Did you have any of your family there?”

  “Did you?”

  “My grandfather.” She let go of Skinny’s hands.

  For a while they were both silent.

  “Is it a sin to want to die?”

  “Why do you ask me?” Skinny said.

  “Is it a sin not to want to die?” Estelle asked.

  “Some decide to die with honour if they can’t live with honour. That’s why my father killed himself.”

  “I know why you’re saying this to me. You probably know why I’m asking.”

  “You too?” Skinny breathed.

  It was out now. They had both betrayed themselves, simultaneously. Estelle bit her lips. A little drop of blood appeared, which she licked off in the dark. What would they do with this knowledge, now or tomorrow? What would it do to them?

  The moon had risen to its highest point. In a while it would begin to go down. From the field kitchen, wafted by the wind, came smoke and the smell of pea soup with bacon and lard.

  In the morning Long-Legs gave Skinny ten marks. “An interest-free loan from an Obersoldat.”

  “If they caught you!”

  “That takes two. It doesn’t matter whether you steal or not, just don’t get caught.”

  While peeling potatoes in the kitchen Skinny had stolen a tin of Slovak chicken. She would share it with Beautiful. It was already cooked, all she had to do was let it thaw out. Had Beautiful heard her and Estelle talking during the night? She slept right next to them.

  Twelve: Jürgen Henning, Werner Schlossberg, Erhardt Kassel-Kahdun, Heinz Fe si, Ifoel Schulte, Gerd Siemens, Franz Otto Schröder, Oskar Herder-Altmann, Helmuth Krantz, Otmar Bartelsmann, Kurt Biedenkopf, Reinhardt Eich-Ochmanek.

  Seven

  It was Saturday. Snow was falling. The yard was noisy with truck engines, German shouts and laughter. Piled on the rubbish heap in the corner were broken mugs, pieces of rusty metal and swept-up spent cartridges. All that would be tidied up and removed before the inspectors arrived from the Wehrkreis. Some infantrymen outside the brothel were whistling and calling to one another. Here the German army was not retreating but advancing towards its goals. The guards on the towers heard the same dirty jokes for the hundredth time.

  “A little debauchery does no harm, no debauchery does a lot,” a lanky youngster shouted across the yard. A lock of pale hair showed under his cap. He could not be more than eighteen; this was his first visit to the brothel. He had already had his baptism of fire in battle. There was a new medal on his tunic.

  “Everything in moderation,” muttered Oberführer Schimmelpfennig. Steam was rising from his mouth. He had no wish to act as a father figure. There was no point in cursing the frost. They would all get their full measure of winter.

  The brothel was a long low building. The men leaving it were almost creeping along, some of them let their knees give way. They were greeted with jeers in the yard.

  “I’ve been here before. You’ll read about it in the book on the descendants of the SS,” one S S man shouted.

  The soldiers by the vehicles stood with their hands in their pockets. The Oberführer noted with chagrin that the sight of the army from here was grotesque. That morning he had received a report of a tactical withdrawal. If this batch of troops were thinking that No. 232 Ost was some Lusthaus in France they were mistaken. All they had to do was listen to the approaching artillery fire. The Oberführer would be glad if he was transferred. He was not sure where he would prefer to serve – one’s head was on the block wherever one went. But it was disagreeable to have the Russians at one’s heels. He had a vision of the devil, tongue sticking out and genitals exposed, approaching with giant strides. He had more than once considered applying for a transfer to the front. Here it was not as comfortable as they might think in Berlin.

  It was as though from morning to evening he was fed on something distasteful. He was disgusted by his surroundings, by the animality of the soldiers who came here with an eagerness worthy of a better purpose. He was disgusted by the company of the prostitutes, by his collaboration with Madam Kulikowa. He looked down his nose at the guards, even though they belonged to the same élite unit as himself, the Waffen-SS. He watched them as he used to watch the birds, the wolves, and the rats. He found the Madam distasteful, even if she performed like a virtuoso. He did not care for her solos or recitals. He had not been to a concert for two and a half years, not even on his home leave in Berlin. Was finding himself among tarts really the pinnacle of his career as a medical officer? They were sending him suspect and unscreened girls. If it did not mean such a lot of administrative trouble he would have found out from the Gestapo at Auschwitz-Birkenau about the youngest whore. Was Kauders a German name or a Jewish one? His vigilance and concern were tearing his nerves but he had lost his zeal. He had made it a condition that he did not want anyone below 14 or over 20, and the Wehrkreis was complying. So why was he anxious? He liked to think that the machine was still functioning properly.

  He had a feeling that he was not living well, but wouldn’t admit to himself that things were slipping through his fingers. He proceeded with an unshakeable conviction that man was basically evil just as animals were evil, and anyone good behaved calculatingly and was therefore suspect.

  He glanced at the gilded tin eagle on the gate, its head and beak thrusting from a white collar, its thick rough neck and huge wings. He would have to replace the mouldy mattresses in the cubicles. They squeaked. But he couldn’t really complain. No. 232 Ost ran like clockwork. Yet, as far as his military and medical career was concerned, he was treading water. Gone were yesterday’s dreams of advance, by the army and by himself, collectively and individually. He had every right, when the inspectors from the Wehrkreis came, to liken No. 232 Ost to a railway station with sixteen tracks and a punctual timetable. That was something at least, if not everything.

  On the walls, which were topped with concertinas of barbed wire, the ravens were perching. They seemed to him like vultures.

  The guards standing behind their machine guns were watching the green Daimler of an Einsatzgruppen officer through their field glasses. It was moving cautiously, skidding in places. Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin of the Einsatzkommando der Einsatzgruppen parked by the wall, in the same spot at which he had tied up his horse the last time that he had been here. With the assistance of two guards he covered his windscreen and rear window with tarpaulins to stop them from icing over. It was obvious that he knew his way around. He moved confidently, as if he had come to have breakfast here.

  He’d been on an operation. Just as he was a passionate football player and driver, so he was a useful member of a Jagdkommando. Wherever he served, he did so without fear and with total enthusiasm. He felt that he was getting better with time. It was alchemy of age and experience, the two going hand in hand. And there was a growing sense of belonging. He was becoming part of the Einsatzgruppen just as the Einsatzgruppen were becoming part of him. It was something elemental, it inspired him and became the foundation
of his self-assurance. He felt himself straightening and growing, secure in the knowledge that there was no blemish on his military character. As to his army profile, name and reputation, he had no doubts. It would be ideal if he were just a soldier. Nothing but the Einsatzgruppen.

  Something provoked his irritation. Somebody had torn out the wall hook and ring to which he tethered his horse. Had they donated the metal to help make guns? Or had it been done to annoy him? He had his reservations about the administrative efficiency of No. 232 Ost. The army was getting too bureaucratic. Not so the Einsatzgruppen. For many Germans the organization was no longer what it should be. The era of comradeship between Wehrmacht and Waffen-S S was over. Somebody only had to tear a hook out of the wall and his good humour was extinguished. That was not what he had come here for. He had his own ideas about running things. What would he tether his horse to next time? He despised organizations and individuals who had a logical reason for everything, even the most trivial decisions. He would punish excuses by shooting. The army was full of pen prushers. He was glad to have joined the Einsatzgruppen, on whom no army regulations or laws were binding. He would not like to see the Herrenwaffe change from a company of the brave into a bureaucracy.

  As the snowflakes sailed down, he quoted from Adelbert von Chamisso, one of his teachers: