The White House

by O’neil Sharma

  ‘Soooryyy,’ she said and tried to wipe it up, smearing it across Saul’s thigh.

  ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ said Saul, passing Aisha to Mira.

  Grabbing a handful of chips he made his way to the toilets munching as he navigated his way past the islands of sunbathers.

  The changing rooms were typical of those found in most pools: white tiles, shower rooms, toilets, lockers, benches and cubicles for the modest. The floors were wet and streaked with waves of wet dirt. The heat made the air muggy and the chlorine stench was almost tangible.

  At the sinks Saul splashed his legs with water and did his best to clean up with a paper towel. Looking in the mirror he caught the reflection of a body being dragged along the floor. Saul turned, but the body had vanished behind some lockers. He followed and soon found himself in a section of the room where piles of bodies awaited transportation to the furnaces.

  A hole in the wall was filled with a simple metal platform that elevated the bodies fifteen to twenty at a time to the floor above. Two Sonderkommando stacked the lift while others took their meal break amongst the corpses like it was the most normal thing in the world to sit on a dead body or use it as a table. Saul could smell the neat vodka mixing with the smell of hard work and death. As they ate and drank one of them noticed Saul.

  ‘Better get to work before the Kapo sees you.’

  Saul nodded and headed back into the main hall. He passed a colleague dragging two bodies: A woman, with a belt tied around her neck, her heels making tracks on the wet floor and a baby; which he carried by its left arm, the body dangling freely.

  Saul’s 1944 hallucination blended so seamlessly with the shower room of 1987 that Saul could not tell the difference. He reached the shower room to discover that the doors to the gas chamber had recently been opened. There must have been over a thousand corpses to shift and Saul felt tired just looking at them.

  Will it never end?

  Several Sonderkommando stood on top of the dead heap and used pitchforks and brute strength to separate the bodies: no kid gloves here, the clock was against them. An SS guard oversaw the activity in silence.

  The bodies; some blistered from the gas some covered in faeces were thrown down to the men who dragged them to the lift.

  ‘Give a hand Saul,’ said one of the men, pitchforking a small boy in Saul’s direction.

  The boy fell at Saul’s feet with a sickening thud and slide. Saul looked at the boys face: contorted in pain; eyes pleading and blood red blisters on his cheeks.

  That’s when Saul started screaming.

  #

  Hannah saw the commotion by the shower room and in the pit of her stomach she knew it was Saul but did not move until a small boy ran past confirming her fears.

  ‘Mama, Mama, there’s a crazy man in the showers.’

  And like that Hannah was up and running. Aaron shouting after her:

  ‘Mama, where are you going?’

  But getting no response he got up too.

  ‘Stay with Aisha,’ he told Mira.

  Hannah reached the crowd and began to force her way to the front not caring who she barged out of the way. Aaron, not far behind made apologies for his mother’s behaviour.

  They entered the shower room to see Saul, alone, shouting and raging against unseen phantoms. No one had dared to go near him and for a moment it looked like Hannah would be unable to either. Aaron stared helplessly at his father.

  Hannah forgetting caution walked up to her man and tried to calm him down, but Saul did not see her nor seem to be aware of her presence.

  Somehow she managed to grab hold of him and convert the grab into a hug. Saul struggled but started to calm down, tiring of the exertion, panting heavily but still moaning. Hannah brought him down to the floor and cradled him like a child, rocking backwards and forwards.

  ‘It’s okay now,’ she said. ‘I’m here. It’s over. I’m here.’ She brushed his hair back with her hands.

  Aaron frightened out of his wits found his voice:

  ‘Papa!’

  But there was no response from either of them; he could have been watching a movie so removed were they from the surroundings or was it him that had become detached? He remained in this unreal state for several moments, refusing to believe the man on the floor was his father. The sounds of the spectators behind him brought him vigorously back to the world and he turned on them by way of punishment:

  ‘What are you looking at? Get out of here!’

  The audience did not move and so Arron flailed with his arms shouting all the while.

  ‘Get out! Get out! Aawwwwwt!’

  They moved but by now he was in tears too.

  CHAPTER 31

  Aaron entered his father’s darkened bedroom without knocking to find him awake, propped up by pillows with Hannah at his side holding his hand.

  ‘I’d like to be alone with him, Mama.’

  Hannah got the nod of approval from Saul and left without word. Aaron took a few steps forward but stopped short of sitting on the bed. The air was stale and musty so he made an awkward move to the balcony and opened it. As he turned their eyes locked and then Saul looked away, bested by his son. To Aaron, Saul looked shrivelled up inside his pyjama top, which stood shell like, not touching his dry skin.

  Once they had got home and Saul was in bed Hannah had told him and Mira the truth. Saul had not done the telling but had delegated that honour. He simply could not face it. He was helpless, tired and shamed and now he waited for his son’s verdict. Aaron said nothing for a long time. His look said it all and for a second Saul wondered if his son would say nothing at all and simply leave the room, never to be seen by him again. Saul noticed a softening in his eyes and thought that perhaps the boy understood.

  ‘Why didn’t you kill yourself? How could you kill Jews?’

  ‘We didn’t kill-‘

  ‘No? What would you call it then?’

  Saul tried to think of an answer, but given that he had been struggling to find one for forty years it seemed unlikely that he would find an adequate response now. He had imagined this conversation many times over the years. All the different scenarios in which he would tell his family the truth; how the children would be gathered around him while he spoke at length and described the ins and outs of his time in Auschwitz. How they would nod and understand and continue to love him. He had imagined the opposite conversation too and that was one of things that had made him hold his tongue. Never in all his imagination had he seen the venom that he now saw in Aaron’s eyes; so powerful he could not hold his gaze.

  ‘You’d be surprised how strong life’s pull is,’ he said. ‘My death would not have saved one soul anyway.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say.’

  Saul shrugged.

  ‘In the end you just get used to it. Do you think doctors cry about the dead they see?’

  ‘You weren’t doctors.’

  ‘Damn it! It was not a club we could leave,’ Saul lashed back. ‘Who are you to judge what happened there? Do you think normal standards apply in hell? We were selected the moment we stepped off the train: You and you, here. The rest murdered. Not that we knew it at the time. There was no choice but to live and I am not ashamed. I have a beautiful family and not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for you and the happiness I feel every time I think of you.’

  ‘But you could kill me, couldn’t you, Papa?’

  There was only room for truth now: Saul’s truth.

  ‘A man can do anything,’ he said.

  ‘It’s right that you should suffer God’s punishment,’ said Aaron.

  ‘Aaron! Come back!’

  But the door shut leaving Saul alone with God’s punishment hanging in the air. Was this it then? After a lifetime of not believing, was this how God made you suffer; by taking away your very being and then taking away your family? God’s punishment: who turned his back on whom first? He felt like crying but knew t
here was nothing more to give. If there was a God he had won, but Saul was not ready to give him his victory yet.

  Mira watched Aaron return to the room and fall flat on the bed next to her. He started crying, deep sobs of despair coupled with mattress pounding. She put her book down.

  ‘Stop crying,’ she said gently stroking his back.

  He kept crying and shrugged her off. Somewhere outside children could be heard playing in the courtyard and beyond that a plane could be heard on it’s way to Tegal Airport. Life went on oblivious to tragedy and something about that made her lose patience.

  ‘I said stop! Be a man!’ and then softer, ’You have to do what’s right for your family now. They need a strong man, not a boy.’

  Aaron pulled his face out of the pillow, looked at her and forced himself to stop. She was right. His father would soon be dead. He was the man now. He dried his eyes and she came to him, giving him the comfort and support he craved.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘It doesn’t change anything. Life goes on and so shall we. This is nothing more than a test of faith in God. Or did you think life would always be easy?’

  She wiped his tear streamed faced and Aaron nodded out a weak agreement. They hugged each other tight and for the first time Aaron saw the benefit of being able to hold a woman close. At that moment he felt like he could remain in her arms forever, taking nourishment from her heat and scent.

  CHAPTER 32

  Timo loved his job: He loved the hours – he had always been a morning person – this job gave him much of the day free; he loved to bake and nowhere had he felt more at home than in the kitchen. This was all he wanted to do before he knew it was a profession. He was making bread and cakes for his family by the time he was ten. Later for friends and later still he took requests. All this without one jot of encouragement from his parents who seemed not to care what he did as long as he did not make waves at home. Borrowing a book from the library one boring day during the Christmas holidays had changed his life. Unlike Saul, who liked the experimentation of cooking, Timo liked its exactness. Too much yeast, not enough sugar or salt would result in disaster. Perfection was what he strived for. These days he would sneak looks at the customers as they entered the store and smelled the product of his labour and during his lunch breaks he sometimes sat on the grass in Savignyplatz watching the customers devour his bread. His love for his chosen career was almost unconditional.

  The only modifier was the summer: a room where the oven burned full tilt hours on end was no place to be in the summer and today it must have been fifty degrees Celsius. Matters were not helped by the fact that Saul decided to take the day off and he had to make the cakes too. Anja was not a cake maker. The walk-in freezer became his new friend and he liked to linger, savouring the blast of cold air and prolonging his return to the sauna.

  Work done, he had stripped down to his vest to clean the appliances. Typically, Anja would take the machines and the work surfaces while he did the oven and the floors. Much to his regret Anja decided to keep her top on. Why is it that women did that? If they went swimming or to the beach it would be fine for him to see woman – her - topless and they seemed happy to bear all; yet in the summer they kept their tops on in the streets where it was fine for men to strip off. What was the difference? Why the modesty? That brought him to the other thing he did not like about the job: the early nights. How was he supposed to meet anybody with a self imposed ten o’clock curfew? Berlin nightlife did not warm up until after midnight.

  Picking up a brush he leaned further into the oven to clear a blockage, hoping that Saul would be back tomorrow. He had arrived at work to find the kitchen closed and had had to wait until Anja showed up with her key to start work. They had never known Saul to be late or ill and had thought the worst. He was old after all. Hannah arrived at her usual time and told them that Saul would not be coming today. No further explanation was offered and Timo and Anja were left to draw what conclusions they could from the terse statement.

  The blockage failed to shift so Timo did what most men would do at this stage and reverted to brute strength. He flipped the brush around and attacked the blockage with the wooden handle. On the second strike it came free and Timo reached inside to see what the cause was.

  Withdrawing his hand he examined the object with keen interest. He had no idea what it was but it certainly did not belong in the oven. It was about two centimetres long, white – but obviously charred from being in the oven and had a strange white appendage stuck to one side. He was about to call Anja over for her opinion when the jigsaw completed in his mind. As if it had bit him, he dropped the piece of jawbone with tooth still attached.

  #

  Saul had never had a sick day in the last ten years. Hannah had ordered him to stay in bed and rest. She left, assuring Saul that they could manage the store for one day without him. He had heard the front door close a second time as the kids left for a day trip. They had not bothered to say goodbye and Saul wondered if that was a deliberate snub to him or if they just did not know he was still home. He hoped the latter. Sooner or later he would have to come to terms with his son; he desperately did not want things to end this way.

  Lying in bed had proven impossible so he had got dressed, deciding to make the most of the beautiful summer sunshine. A walk would serve him better than lounging in bed all day anyway; that was torture for a man who spent his life occupied, avoiding sleep.

  Initially he headed west out to Lietzensee and strolled along the banks of the small lake not ten minutes walk from his home. It was refreshing to have the feeling of not being in the city. The only trouble with the lake was its size and half an hour later he had completed his leisurely constitutional, left the lake and headed east back towards home. There was not much of interest to the west except the ICC exhibition centre and that to him was a monstrosity of modern architecture that belonged more on the moon than on earth.

  Leaving the bustle of shoppers on Wilmersdorferstrasse behind, he was on his way home when he decided he would head to the bakery and surprise everyone, showing them he was fine. If he hurried he would catch Timo and Anja before they finished for the day. He liked Timo, the boy was an intuitive baker and hard worker. Timo had come to the bakery after leaving school with little in the way of qualifications and Saul, who needed a hand had agreed to invest his time training the boy and was surprised at just how much he already knew. In contrast when Saul started out his boss had to explain things several times before he understood, but not so with this boy. Saul wished for him to take over the kitchen one day. He also wished he would get a move on and ask Anja out on a date. Watching those two flirt was worse than watching one of Hannah’s soaps. He had once joked that the worst she could say was no and in that case he would be happy to fire her for him. On Timo’s shocked expression Saul had had to explain that it was a joke, but was still not sure if Timo had understood. Still, who said good bakers need humour?

  He turned into Savignyplatz and came to a dead stop. Parked outside the shop was a small swarm of people, two police cars and police van.

  Heart pounding, Saul ducked back into the small passageway that connected Savignyplatz with Bleibtreustrasse, turning into the street and heading home. As he walked he realised that home was also an impossibility: that would be their next port of call. He’d need more money and would have to get to the bank if he was to stand any chance of escaping.

  Why am I running when I don’t even know the reason? Maybe we got robbed?

  He found a payphone, dug some change out of his pocket and started to dial the number. He stopped, hung the phone up, dug back into his pocket and redialed the number while reading from the cheat sheet. His hands were sweaty as he gripped the plastic receiver.

  ‘Hello?’ said Hannah.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Saul? Where are you?’

  ‘Why are the police at the store?’

  There was no answer right away, she seemed to be
conferring with voices he could not make out.

  ‘They want you to go home, Saul. They say it will be all right, but you have to go home. Where are you?’

  ‘What do they want?’

  Again a pause, but this time there was no conference that he could hear.

  ‘Timo-‘ she started and stopped and then tried again, trying to keep her voice from cracking.‘- Timo, found a tooth. Saul, please..’

  But she couldn’t speak anymore. Saul listened to her crumble over the phone.

  ‘Saul? It’s Steffan Müller.’

  Saul made no reply.

  ‘Saul? Are you there? I need to talk to you.’

  Still nothing from Saul. Steffan continued regardless.

  ‘I’ve talked to your wife and I know everything. I know that you’re confused and that maybe you can’t remember everything, but I promise you that this will be taken into account. I just want to see you to make sure you’re safe. Saul-‘

  Saul hung up the phone. A tooth in his oven? How could that be? He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate but all that came to him were the horrific images of crimes he committed. The smell of petrol filled his nose and he was transported to another time and place:

  Saul dousing Mark’s body in petrol, flicking the stub of his cigarette into the liquid and watching as the flames engulfed Mark’s contorting screaming body.

  He saw himself standing over Isaac, pliers in hand wrenching a tooth from his mouth while Isaac wailed and pleaded for mercy, the blood flowing freely down his chin.

  It was clear to him that he could have murdered his friends and then forgotten all about it. But why? Why after all these years had he killed? Dementia? Post-traumatic stress? Was he so ashamed of what they had done that he could kill? He recalled the irrational anger that he had felt of late, was this a by-product of the murders working its way out of him? He had told Steffan that the deaths required some knowledge of the jobs they had had in the camp: he had that knowledge. It would also explain why he had remained untouched these last few days. He had been on the hunt for a killer and found himself the prime suspect.