by Clinch, Jon
She keeps her eyes down and looks only from a calendar on the desk to a pad of paper on which she makes a mark now and then, but she looks up as Jacob approaches—as if among all of these individuals this Jew is the only one with the ability to attract her attention. She looks up smoothly and without emotion, the way one of the men in the guard towers would raise his gun.
If she knows his name, she doesn’t use it. If she knows that he even has a name. She looks down to read his serial number aloud from her pad and she looks up again and Jacob nods. He shows the tattoo on his left arm in confirmation. This is the way it always goes. Your capo might use your name, but no one higher.
She stands. “The scharführer is waiting.”
But the sergeant isn’t waiting. Not really. He’s on a telephone call, apparently with someone higher up, and Jacob has to wait outside the office where the receptionist leaves him. Standing at attention, not touching the wall, not touching anything. Just listening. Standing there as if he has no more sentience than a potted plant.
The sergeant’s name is Drexler, and he’s the commandant’s senior clerk. Jacob watches him as he listens and consults a piece of paper and idly runs his finger down the pages of an enormous ledger. The ledger sits on top of another one just like it, and there are many more on a tall set of bookshelves just behind him, rank on rank of them like volumes of an encyclopedia. Jacob has seen ledgers like these before, elsewhere in this very building. His own name and serial number were recorded in one on the day he arrived.
“Already this week,” says Drexler, into the telephone, “we have had twelve die of heart attacks, nine more of inflammation of the kidneys, and fifteen of bronchitis.”
Murmurs from the other end.
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Pneumonia is always good, but in my opinion it’s more credible in the cold weather.”
Murmurs.
“Yes, sir. I have indeed requested a greater variety of diagnoses, but as you know, the doctor has many other things on his mind. Yes, sir. I have done so under your authority. But you know the doctor, sir.” Drexler glances up. He flashes a reflexive smile at the figure in the doorway, a smile either submissive or predatory depending, and when the figure in the doorway proves to be only the Jewish barber he withdraws it.
“Very well, sir,” he says, smiling at the telephone instead. “My thoughts exactly, sir. There is no need to carry on this charade any longer. We shall close the book on it, so to speak. Yes, sir. Very good, sir. Heil Hitler.” He hangs up and touches the tip of the pencil to his tongue and draws a line across the open page before him, and then he shuts the book and waves the barber in. There is a wooden chair in the corner, alongside a round table arrayed with towels and soap and the rest. An empty basin and a jug of steaming water. A hand mirror and a white linen sheet and a barbering kit which although not half so fine as the one that Jacob lost along the way is nonetheless immaculately maintained and sharp as weaponry.
“Hurry up,” says Drexler in Polish, carrying the ledger with him to the chair. “I don’t have all day.” He takes his seat with the book in his lap, and reaches up to loosen his collar. Jacob approaches from the front and bows his head a little bit and Drexler looks right through him, so he goes about his business. He locates and unfolds the white linen drape, and as he sweeps it around Drexler’s shoulders he takes note of the word inked onto the front of the ledger. Totenbuch.
The Registry of Death. His head spins. They must keep such records, after all. It’s the German way: everything in its place, everything properly noted. Even murder. But to happen upon it is like happening upon Satan himself in some dark mountain pass, Satan with his endless scroll of the damned. And this Drexler is the devil who maintains it.
“Schnell,” he says, settling beneath that death-white sheet with the book in his lap. And then he speaks in Polish again, assuming that Jacob could not possibly understand even the simplest of commands in more than one language, “Just a little off the sides, and trim the nape while you’re at it.” He points with his finger.
Concentration is impossible. Jacob tries the scissors and brings the comb toward Drexler’s hair. His hands shake. He withdraws, breathing irregularly, and Drexler turns his head in question. Without thinking, and strictly against orders, Jacob speaks: “Straight ahead, please,” he says, in German. The words are a combination of reflex and self-defense, and Drexler’s response is reflexive as well. He straightens his neck and looks forward, the conventions of the barber’s chair and his military background combining to produce automatic obedience, even to one so low.
The establishment of a familiar rhythm soothes Jacob. His hands steady a bit. He tries the scissors again and puts the comb to Drexler’s head and finds himself all at once back in his element. Click click. Snip snip. He works briskly and automatically and he tries not to look at the outline of the ledger in Drexler’s lap. He wonders how long before his own name will be inscribed there, or Max’s name. He wonders if Eidel’s is there already, and he is certain that Lydia’s must be.
“Watch the ear,” says Drexler.
He watches. Barbering a man in an ordinary straight-backed chair is different from using the old mechanical chair he had in Zakopane, his father’s overstuffed leather chair with its pedals and its levers and its million fine adjustments. As many haircuts as he’s given in one ghetto after another, on benches and straightbacked chairs and milking stools, he has never quite accustomed himself to the difference. These last few months of digging ditches haven’t refined his skills either. But he perseveres. He empties his mind and he straightens his back and he keeps on.
“That’s better,” says Drexler.
Jacob dares to breathe. He thinks perhaps he’ll get this assignment after all. Every Friday he’ll come here for a few hours, and on the other days of the week he’ll be sent to a soft job like Schuler’s in Canada, and as a further benefit he’ll acquire the right to move around the camp with more freedom than any ordinary prisoner. He’ll go from assignment to assignment by himself, at least on Fridays. On that day he’ll even be able to go outside the fence, since the commandant’s villa is known to be on a street just beyond the entrance. He wonders where such freedom will lead him. What he might discover and what he might learn. It’s possible that he could even get word of Eidel, regardless of whether or not she’s being transferred to the new women’s camp.
How happy that would make him. How happy it would make Max.
He sinks into this reverie and lets his hands operate according to their own will, and they work a kind of small magic on Drexler’s appearance. When Jacob holds up the mirror, the Nazi smiles. It’s a smile directed only at himself, but it’s a smile nonetheless. “Go ahead and give me a shave,” he says, indicating the jug of hot water and drawing a hand across his chin.
Jacob shaves him carefully and well, for Eidel and for Max.
Moments later he’s outside again, shading his eyes from the bright sun, beginning the long walk back to the excavation. All alone out here he feels vulnerable and exposed—there’s no pack of men to work his way into the middle of, and no protection from whatever brutality some stranger may choose to inflict upon him—but the truth is that no one notices him at all. Not the prisoners standing in one of the yards enduring a roll call that began sometime the night before. Not the capo in charge of those men and not the guards. Not the SS officer who careens past on a motorcycle and not the two wasted prisoners standing like supplicants outside the door of the hospital. He may as well be invisible. He wonders if it will always be this way, should he get the job and be permitted to come and go alone. If he will always be beneath notice.
He’s thought all along that exposure would be the worst thing, safety in numbers and so forth, but now he’s not so certain. As long as he keeps moving, and as long as he stays clear of the fence, he seems entirely safe. To test this idea he turns down a passageway between two blocks, not knowing where he’s headed, and wanders freely for a while. Turning one way and then anot
her at intersections between the buildings, moving steadily, looking purposeful. Nothing happens. He emerges into the clear and turns again, this time back in the direction of the main gate instead of toward the excavation, and once more no one notices. Not a pair of guards smoking alongside the fence, not a woman looking down from a high window overhead, not a group of prisoners queued up in front of the block waiting for something.
All of this walking takes energy. He’s getting tired, and he realizes that he ought to save his strength for the dig. A commando of prisoners passes by at double time, raising dust with their torn boots and their bare feet, and under the cover of their passing he turns back.
He looks down at the tattoo on his arm as he goes and he thinks of the ledgers where such things are recorded. He thinks of Drexler and his Totenbuch. The sergeant was talking on the phone to someone higher up—Vollmer, perhaps, or even the commandant himself—about the entries filling that infernal volume. Bronchitis. Inflammations of the kidneys. Heart attack after heart attack.
More diagnoses were required, he said, a greater variety.
Jacob stumbles and nearly falls but catches himself at the last second. A misstep will draw attention. A misstep will destroy his anonymity. So he takes a deep breath and keeps on, understanding at last that he of all people has just seen the end of the Totenbuch. It has been a compilation of lies all along—how many prisoners can die of heart attacks in a single day? in a single hour?—and the Nazis won’t be bothered to keep it up anymore.
Anonymity indeed. When men and women die from now on, their names and numbers won’t even go on the record.
He steadies himself and picks up the pace ever so slightly. Not enough to be noticed, but enough. He must get back to the excavation. He must return to his son.
Max
This retrospective certainly wasn’t my idea.
They could have waited and done it without me. After all, I’m pushing ninety or thereabouts, depending on who you ask. But no. The National Gallery is the National Gallery and they do what they want to do when they want to do it. They don’t ask you what you think.
A person can’t help being flattered, though. At least a little.
Wyeth had to put himself through all of that Helga business to get his day at the National Gallery. I mean it. Don’t think he wasn’t fishing for the attention, for the Time cover and the Newsweek cover and all the rest of it, one last hurrah in his declining years. A nice infusion of cash, too.
Once his wife found out, I figure the two of them cooked up the whole deal together. It must have been harder on Betsy than it was on him, but what else was she supposed to do? Her husband spends ten or fifteen years making naked pictures of this Helga and hiding them in his buddy’s place down the road. His old buddy Frolic Weymouth. That’s right. Frolic. A full-grown man named after a foxhound. That tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it?
So when Betsy finds the pictures, what’s she supposed to do? Anybody could answer that question. Lemons into lemonade. It’s the American way. She capitalizes on her own misfortune, picks up the phone, and the two of them ride their pathetic little homegrown scandal all the way down to Washington, D.C.
The important thing is this: even though the Helga show came toward the end of Andy’s life, it wasn’t a retrospective by any means. It was just Helga. Helga and the chance for every curiosity seeker in the world to have a peek into Uncle Andy’s private little world.
I guess they’d had their fill of Christina’s World by then. Everybody had.
This retrospective of mine they’re mounting, though? It’s the real deal.
Five
“How shall we go on without Lydia and Max?”
That’s the message the deliveryman carries to Jacob. He knows exactly where to find him. He knows his commando and he knows his block. There’s no reaching Jacob during the workday, though, not with the Ukrainian guards keeping an eye on things. His commando has dug their way under the road and come out the other side with only a half-dozen men lost to Slazak’s temper and the guards’ eager trigger fingers, and the road presents an additional barrier even if it’s not a physical one. The delivery commando has no obvious business over there, not with coal and definitely not with flour, and time has proven again and again, to the little junkman and to every other individual who has passed through his commando either to be reassigned elsewhere or to die of overwork or to be shot for one offense or another, that the minute you have to start explaining things it’s already too late.
The delivery commando works long hours, though. Longer than most, impossible as it seems, for just this reason. A black market operation requires access and access requires opportunity and opportunity requires a flexible schedule. So they start work early and quit late, and they constantly adjust their route to accommodate certain ever-shifting exigencies.
Thus they arrive at Jacob’s block when the men are done for the day. They’re done working and done with the first evening roll call—the one that happens before they get their rations, the one that sometimes goes on forever and supersedes the meal altogether—and now they’re lingering for a few precious moments in the yard. The junkman wipes his brow with the back of his wrist, adding black to black. The day is still warm and he’s wearing his coat in spite of it, for the usual reasons. Bits of coal collect in every fold of it. He tore the flaps from the outside pockets long ago to help the process along, and then he sold the fabric for a couple of cigarettes. It’s the pockets inside where he tucks whatever secret merchandise he’s transporting on any given day, although at this moment the merchandise is strictly in his mind.
He looks around for Jacob, stretching his shoulders and taking a shovel from the wagon. His partner draws the horse nearer to the building and the junkman lets down the gate and they begin scraping coal into the bin. They’re in no hurry. There’s not a capo to be seen, no authority figures at all except for the guards scattered around the perimeter of the yard with their machine guns and their flat looks and their eyes like coin slots.
The junkman spies Jacob squatting in the dirt alongside the building, his head bent in conversation with a younger man. A boy almost, a boy who’s big and strong enough but a boy all the same. He can’t get Jacob’s attention but he gets the boy’s. He winks at him and jerks his head. The boy speaks to Jacob and Jacob looks over toward the junkman and the junkman does it all over again. Standing there pretending to work, going slow, dribbling coal onto the dirt and over his shoes and into his pockets.
Jacob looks away but the boy looks back. He says something to Jacob again, and Jacob shakes his head. The boy begins to stand but Jacob puts a hand on his knee. His touch doesn’t stop the boy. He rises and slaps dust from his trousers—long, comical trousers doubled over at the cuffs and doubled over again—and then he approaches the wagon.
“I’ve got a message for Rosen,” says the junkman.
“I’m Rosen,” says the boy.
“Good for you,” says the junkman. “But this is for the other Rosen.”
“You mean my father.”
The junkman almost stops shoveling, but not quite. One of the guards has turned his attention their way, so he keeps his eyes down and his hands busy.
“I’ll go get him,” says Max.
“No no no no no no,” The junkman doesn’t look up. “Not so fast. The guards.”
By the way he’s speaking not to him but to the ground, Max gets the picture. Slowly, slowly, hardly moving at all, he takes a half step away and leans his back against the green tarpaper wall of the block as if he isn’t here to talk to the junkman at all. After a minute the guard has turned his attention elsewhere.
The junkman goes on. “You Max?”
“I am.”
“Max Rosen?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Son of Jacob and Eidel Rosen?”
Max steadies himself. “What do you know about my mother?”
; “I know she thinks you’re dead is what I know.” More coal goes onto the ground and he stoops to pick it up, slipping a few grams into his pocket along the way. “I take it Lydia would be your sister, then?”
That’s enough. Max can’t contain himself. He springs away from the wall and leans in toward the junkman, avid. “She is.”
“Watch yourself. The guards.”
But the guards haven’t taken note.
“What do you know about Lydia?”
The junkman makes as if to wring his own neck. “Sorry, pal.” The look on his face would suggest that he’s sincere. It doesn’t last, though, because the capo has materialized in the doorway. He stands on the top step surveying the yard and sniffing the air, on his way to see about rations. “Oops,” says the junkman. “Slazak.”
Poor Max is so overwhelmed with thoughts of his mother and his sister that he can hardly understand. Slazak. It’s the name of some demon conjured from another realm, a word that suggests something not entirely real, and he can’t quite grasp its meaning. He can’t quite grasp anything. He has been raised up and stricken down all at once, brought low in a way that all of the ditch-digging and starvation he’s endured have been unable to accomplish.
“Slazak,” hisses the junkman again.
Max falls back against the wall, leaning there like lumber, and the junkman finishes his work. Max hardly breathes. He closes his eyes and keeps them closed for a minute and then opens them again as if he expects the world to have changed in the meantime. To have gone back to the way it was before the junkman arrived. But it hasn’t. The junkman throws his shovel in the wagon and raises the gate. He drags a chain across it and the clanking of the chain gets Max’s attention the way a ghostly visitation might. “Tell your old man,” he says to the boy.