It was a week after Čacko had smashed his face into the wall. The swelling had gone down and hard scabs had formed across Emil’s upper lip. He still had no sensation in three of his teeth but if he tried to bite his bread then tiny pains sparked around the lower part of his face, like small electrical impulses. The bruises around his ribs were going green and yellow at the edges.
Čacko had spent his lunchtime drinking, that was apparent as soon as he returned from the staff hut. His face was florid. He was muttering to himself. When they returned to the pump for the third time, he sank down on to the concrete step and leant against the well while Emil filled the buckets. He sighed heavily and muttered something about dumplings. Then he closed his eyes.
Emil stood by the well, pumping slowly. The cold iron handle resisted his efforts, forcing him to lean his weight against its protesting creak. From the depth and tenor of Čacko’s breathing, it became apparent that he had fallen asleep. Emil slowed his efforts and stood a little away from the pump, pushing lightly on the handle with his arm at full stretch, which made it creak as though he was pumping much more effortfully. He had a chance to take a good look at the man he hated more than anybody in the world.
At some stage in Čacko’s life, Emil thought, something had gone wrong with his face. It was as if the separate elements of it had started to grow out of proportion to one another. The bulbous nose had put on a spurt to get ahead of the rest of the features, becoming globular and producing a few fine, downy hairs. The cheeks had puffed in jealous fury, the blood vessels bursting to sketch a myriad of tiny bright red tributaries. The eyelids had formed fleshy twin dewlaps. And finally, the lips had ripened. They were now a deep, damp purple-brown, like figs on the point of bursting. He is a dead man, Emil thought to himself, still pumping slowly lest the cessation of the handle’s creaking wake Čacko from his stupor. His face is that of a corpse which grows plump with decay instead of desiccating, like a man who has drowned.
Emil knew that Čacko’s unhappy features should excite pity in him, but it merely made his hatred more refined. One day I will kill you, he whispered to himself. The plainness of the vow tasted cool and clean in his mouth. One day I will kill you. He allowed himself a brief panorama of fantasies – Čacko’s disgusting features becoming more and more livid as he felt the grip of Emil’s hands around his throat; the top of Čacko’s head exploding upwards as a bullet entered his eyeball; white flesh blossoming outwards from the thin slicing of a knife down his solid white chest.
Suddenly, Čacko’s eyes popped open, as if the virulence of Emil’s thoughts had woken him. Emil dropped his gaze, leaned over the handle and increased the ardour of his pumping. The first bucket was now full to overflowing but hidden from Čacko’s sight on the other side of the pump. Emil did not dare reach down to exchange it with the empty bucket. He would pump for a while longer in the hope that Čacko might go back to sleep. A change of movement was always unwise. It prompted response. It was far safer to keep doing whatever you were doing, to be tedious to observe.
‘Finished yet?’ Čacko asked indifferently. He coughed once, then closed his eyes.
*
They did two more trips, then Čacko decided that he had had enough and needed to go and sleep it off somewhere. They returned the buckets to the store. Čacko stood outside for a moment or two, yawning and stretching as if he had done a hard afternoon’s work. Emil stood next to him, head bowed. He was aware that Čacko was staring at him, looking him up and down.
Suddenly, Čacko reached out a hand. Instinctively, Emil ducked, but instead of striking him, Čacko grabbed him round the head and pulled him into his chest. With his other hand, he ruffled the downy stubble on Emil’s head. ‘Your hair is growing back soft,’ he murmured. Then he pushed him away. ‘What shall we do with you this afternoon, while I take a rest, eh? We’ll find you a seat somewhere, so’s you won’t go wandering about all over the place and get yourself into trouble.’
They walked over to the kitchen block, passing a guard who stood in front of it, round the back, to where there was a small door in a lean-to adjacent to the main part of the block. ‘Go,’ said Čacko cheerily, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Go and join the mad Hoover salesman, little František. He’ll know what to do with you. Later on we have some building work to do.’
He gave Emil a friendly shove, friendly enough to send him stumbling headlong towards the door. As Emil pulled it open, he was assailed by a damp, putrid smell. The stink was so acidic in his nostrils that his eyes began to water and he blinked as he mounted the step.
The hut formed a small wooden ante-room, with a door that led through to the kitchen on the other side. The kitchen door was ajar and steam bellowed through it, carrying the putrid smell. There was shouting from inside. Emil was so taken with disgust that it was a moment before he noticed a small man in the middle of the room, seated on a stool before a huge pile of turnips. The small man looked up. He was in prisoner’s uniform but had a yellow armband like a kapo and a shock of thick brown hair that stood upright on his head like a brush.
Emil gestured towards his head. Unable to think of anything else to say, he said, ‘You’ve kept your hair …’
The small man pulled a face. ‘We all did to start off with. Then we all didn’t. The fuss …’ While he spoke, he rose from his stool, opened the door to the kitchen and disappeared into the steam.
Emil stood for several minutes. The smell was not so bad once you got used to it. It was warm in the shed; and nobody was beating him. These were reasons to be pleased that he was standing there doing nothing, wondering what to do.
The small man with the shock of hair re-entered and pulled the kitchen door closed behind him. He was still talking. Emil had the impression that he had continued their conversation while he had been out of the room. ‘… myself in a position of authority but sometimes you don’t always get to choose, do you?’
He was carrying another stool which he placed next to his own. As Emil sat down, the small man handed him a short blunt knife, picked up another knife from beside his stool, leaned forward and grasped a turnip. Emil copied him.
While they peeled the turnips, the man kept up a ceaseless flow. ‘I was the very first prisoner, yes. In other camps you get a tattoo with a number. I should have liked one of those. I would be number 0001. I was the only mistake. The first one, and the only administrative error. I would have been okay if I hadn’t been so good at my job. I had sold the last Hoover, you see. My papers were back in my lodgings but I couldn’t possibly give them the address because my landlady had been arrested by the Gestapo and had her toes broken one by one so she would tell them where the ammunition was hidden. I’m no fool. It was only the police holding me, on the orders of Brno County Council, they said, but I still wasn’t going to tell them I lived there. I thought they’d release me when they went to check with the lady who bought my Hoover but she was so frightened about having enough cash to buy it she denied all knowledge, the prune. Find the Hoover, I told them. Then you’ll know I’m telling the truth. Go back, if she’s thrown it down the well then check the state of her floors. You’re not telling me she got them that clean with a broom. Listen, I’m an honest salesman, I don’t take any job unless I believe in it, and I’m telling you, those machines are a bloody miracle.
‘That was back in 1940. It wasn’t much fun then. All in one block, we were over two hundred in the summer. We built your block, you know, with our bare hands. I’m a sort of intellectual really. I asked them, couldn’t they make me a politico – I didn’t like being an asocial. It was demeaning. Okay they said, if you insist, but the politicos all get sent to the Reich to work in bomb factories. I thought better of it. Then this spring they told us they were closing everything down and it wasn’t going to be for asocials any more, only Gypsies. They asked for volunteers to stay behind and help run things, sort of prisoners still but a bit better off, like staff. Any more building barracks? I asked. When they said no, I said, grand, count me
in. Do you know, I was the only one who volunteered to stay?’ He shook his head. ‘People are strange …’
While he was speaking, the Hoover salesman had been casually sticking the dirty turnip peelings up his sleeve. He performed the action automatically, as if his brain had no idea what his hands were doing.
Emil had been watching. After a while, he began to copy; peel a turnip; toss it in the zinc tub between the stools; stuff the peeling up your sleeve and reach for another turnip. The Hoover salesman’s sleeves were already bulging. When the left sleeve was full, he transferred the small blunt knife to his other hand so he could perform the action more easily the other way around.
‘Imagination,’ he was saying. ‘That’s what you need. You have to make yourself useful in some way if you want to survive. Of course …’ he gave Emil a knowing look. ‘Some people manage to make themselves useful to other certain people without even realising it. Some people make themselves so useful that they get introduced to other people who might be useful to them.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Emil. It was the first chance he had had to speak.
The Hoover salesman rose from his stool. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Must perform a certain duty. It’s this soup we make. Drops right through and out the other end – excuse my coarseness, you’ll have discovered that for yourself by now.’
When he had gone, Emil put down his blunt knife, allowed his shoulders to sink and closed his eyes. It was wonderful to be sitting down, but who knew what Čacko had in store for him later? He was so tired. Each night, he plunged into unconsciousness on the hard wooden pallet, only to wake an hour later, fretful, unable to rest for the pain in his jaw. The electrical impulses that fired around his mouth were fading, to be replaced with a dull, agonising ache. He got nosebleeds every day. (‘Pinch the end of your nose, not the bridge,’ Dr Steiner had told him. ‘You want it to heal straight, don’t you?’)
Čacko himself never referred to the injuries he had inflicted, not even to gloat, and Emil’s father had only stared at him when he saw him later that day, just stared, his mouth a disbelieving O as he clenched and unclenched his fists. Emil felt as if everyone in the camp knew who he was, now, and knew about how Čacko treated him. He had to walk around each day with the marks of it on his face, advertising his inability to defend himself to anyone who cared to glance at him. He was ashamed to look another man in the eye.
I could cope if only I wasn’t so tired all the time, he thought. Even the hunger, I could cope with that. But then I am tired because of the hunger, I suppose. Who would have thought that I would ever look forward to that terrible soup?
He raised his head and lifted a finger to scratch at his arm. The turnip peelings were itchy.
When the Hoover salesman returned, Emil saw that his jacket sleeves were empty. The Hoover salesman resumed his position on his stool and picked up his knife. They began to peel again in silence.
‘František,’ the mad Hoover salesman said, and Emil looked at him, surprised that he knew his name. The Hoover salesman did not lift his head. ‘Cultivate a little eccentricity, František. Lick the dirt off the peelings and spit it out before you eat them. You’ll have to chew on the side of your face with a mouth like that. Chew them as slowly as you can, break them down with your saliva before you swallow. Don’t share them with anybody, and don’t tell a soul. These blunt knives will be taken away from us soon, when they realise there’s no point wasting resources peeling the turnips, so make the most of this opportunity. Winter is coming, and however indigestible you think turnip peelings are, you are going to need all your strength when the snows come. It hasn’t even started yet.’ He sighed. ‘Keep your eyes open. Stay quiet. Don’t give in to lethargy. Pick fights if you have to. Cultivate a little eccentricity.’
The Hoover salesman had kept his head down throughout this speech, talking softly. ‘Ta-da!’ he cried suddenly, leaping to his feet. ‘My hundredth turnip this afternoon. I’ve been counting, you know.’ He performed a small jig around his stool, then sat down again. ‘My best ever performance was seven Hoovers in one week. I bet you don’t believe me, do you? Neither did my bosses. I kept sending them urgent telegrams to get more stock to me and do you know what my Regional Operator accused me of doing? He said I was burying them in the woods and stealing money to send the company. I ask you. Can you imagine? In years to come do you seriously think that somebody is going to dig over the copse near Troubky and find seven Hoovers? Some people have a problem with reality, that’s their problem …’ As he was talking, he was filling his sleeves with peelings once more.
CHAPTER 15
Anna and Tekla were stitching blankets in their block with a group of eight other Romnis. Eva and Ludmila were on a work detail at the workshop. Autumn was beginning to bite.
They were sitting just inside the open door, where the light was good but they were sheltered from the wind. The Moravian Romnis were on upturned boxes but Anna and Tekla were cross-legged on the floor. Of the many gadje habits she could not get used to in this place, Tekla said, the most uncomfortable was sitting down. In the workshop one day, a kapo had insisted they use the benches and the only way Tekla could do it was to squat on her haunches on top of the bench seat.
Anna didn’t have a problem with sitting, but she squatted down next to Tekla to keep her company. The Moravian Romnis were laughing at them and shaking their heads.
‘They’re virtually gadje, some of them,’ muttered Tekla. ‘Do you know some of them don’t even speak Romani? Black on the outside, soft and white in the middle.’
The woman sitting nearest them overheard. ‘Wanderers!’ she said with casual scorn. ‘You think you’re the only ones!’
‘I’ve run out of thread,’ said Anna, holding up her needle, and one of the Moravian Romnis passed the spool down to her.
Anna had just re-threaded her needle when a shadow fell across her work. She looked up.
Two girls were standing in the doorway, new arrivals; sisters, maybe twins. They were the exactly the same height, and they were holding hands. They were standing close together, their shoulders touching, two small women fitting snugly into the doorway like dolls.
Anna peered up at them. The light was behind them and she couldn’t see their faces properly. ‘Come in then,’ she grumbled in Romani, gathering her blanket on to her lap. ‘I’m trying to see what I’m doing. Come in and take a proper look around. I can tell you now it won’t get any better if you stand in the door staring at it.’
The two girls entered and it was only then that their faces became visible. Anna saw that they were in fact mother and daughter, identical but for the mother’s face being several shades darker than the daughter’s. They were dressed in skirts and blouses with shawls and headscarves, wooden clogs on their feet. They were still holding hands.
Anna tossed her head. ‘You can put your stuff on that bunk there for now,’ she said in Czech, ‘it’s mine. The block Elder will assign you a bunk when she gets back but you’ll probably be dumped next to us. Don’t help yourself if you know what’s good for you. I chose this end when we arrived because I wanted to be close to the door. Stupid. I get no heat from the stove and no light from the lantern. The others had more sense. If you want more warmth you can separate and ask some others down there to share. You might get lucky.’
‘We want to stay together,’ the daughter said firmly.
A woman sitting on a chair opposite the door whistled to signal the approach of a kapo. Anna lowered her head over her stitching.
The kapo, a Czech woman with a shaved head, stepped into the block and folded her arms. ‘You two, take your things off and get clean. Use that there.’ She pointed at the zinc tub on the concrete island in the centre of the barrack. The water in it was dirty, left over from that morning’s ablutions. The kapo’s German was halting and heavily accented. She had been shipped over recently, from Brno prison. Probably a prostitute, Anna thought, a gadji whore.
The two women were looking a
t each other.
Dear God, thought Anna. Where have these two been? Helpless little rabbits: they won’t last long.
She mimed removing her blouse to the daughter. The daughter comprehended and, nudging the mother to copy her, began to undress.
The kapo stood in the doorway, rubbing her upper arms with both hands against the chill. ‘Headscarves too,’ she said in a bored voice, leaning against the doorframe to wait.
Anna bent her head over her sewing, raising it to her face to try and see in the poor light. When she lifted her head again, the mother had undressed and turned to the tub of dirty water. In the dim light, Anna saw that the woman’s back was a criss-cross of scars, ridged and lumpy, with the skin so thin in places it showed the speckled red of the flesh beneath. Anna glanced at the kapo and saw that she had seen too. They exchanged a look that transcended the boundary between prisoner and guard.
The daughter saw them looking and said in Czech, defensively, ‘When do we get our clothes back?’
Fires in the Dark Page 21