She closed her eyes against her own stupidity. If it weren’t for the band, they would have executed her on the spot and it would be all over with. Regular inmates were fair game. Kapos were appointed either for their ruthlessness or other advantageous attributes the SS could use. It was an unspoken rule among the camp administration—whenever it came to punishment, Kapos were subject to certain consideration. Shooting a senior camp officer’s pet Jew certainly wouldn’t earn one a promotion.
“Music Block?” one of the shadows demanded, recognizing the number of the block on her armband.
For a moment, Alma considered confessing to it, telling them the entire story, but stopped herself. “I need to see Dr. Mengele,” she said instead. Her voice was hoarse and hollow, still not her own. “It’s urgent.”
“That’s putting it one way,” the second shadow remarked to his comrade in a certain tone. Alma saw him twist his finger next to his temple a few times, clearly implying that the broad was off her rocker.
The first one merely waved the tip of his gun at her to follow him.
“Shut the blasted thing off!” he shouted in the general direction of the searchlight. “The Soviets can see you from their airbases!”
Once again, the night had enveloped them and this time it was even darker than before. The sky itself had disappeared, along with the gigantic coffins. Before Alma’s eyes adjusted to the black, all she could see were the two small yellow circles of the SS men’s pocket torchlights chasing one another in the mud like two deranged fireflies.
She didn’t remember for how long they walked and in which direction; she only came to herself before the displeased Herr Doktor. His arms crossed over his chest, Dr. Mengele stood in front of her in his immaculate white gown and stared at her feet with disapproval. Still dazed and not in full possession of her faculties, Alma lowered her gaze and saw, for the first time, that they were bare and covered in mud.
“We found her near one of the barracks in this state,” the older guard reported. Just like his younger comrade, he looked as though he wished to be as far away from Dr. Mengele’s quarters as possible. Just then Alma noticed a body, with its chest open, lying on a slab behind Dr. Mengele’s back. A man of about fifty stood beside it, his gaze downcast, holding an instrument of some sort in his bloodied, gloved hand. “She just stood there asking to be shot.”
Dr. Mengele finally shifted his gaze from Alma’s feet to her face and searched it carefully. “Is that so?”
Alma made no reply. Her right arm was throbbing painfully, but despite it, she felt nothing at all. It suddenly mattered not if she replied to him or not; if he ordered the guards to beat her just for his own pleasure. He could dissect her alive for all she cared. She was finished with this place.
Something shifted in Dr. Mengele’s countenance. His signature, slightly mocking expression was gone, replaced by something different.
“Dismissed until further orders.” He waved both guards off. “And send someone here to mop the floors!”
A snappy “Jawohl” came from the door, along with a click of the heels. The men were gone as if the entire Soviet army was chasing them.
“Now will you tell me what happened?”
Dr. Mengele’s calm tone had the opposite effect on Alma. Before she could get one word out of herself, a violent spasm shook her entire body, turning into dry, heaving sobs. This was worse than the laughter. This new attack terrified her, for, all at once, everything inside her body felt as though it had come loose. Some chord that had held it all together this entire time had finally snapped and out came the terror and the tears and the grief and everything else that she had kept bottled up for much too long.
She felt Dr. Mengele’s hands dig into her shoulders as he squatted next to her. Alma was sitting on the floor now, leaning against the wall and didn’t remember how she came to be here, in this pool of mud and tears—a ragged doll that he was trying to shake, none too gently, back into its working state.
“You’re having a nervous breakdown. You ought to breathe.” But his rational explanation didn’t help.
He slapped her hard across the face. Startled, Alma clasped her reddening cheek and stared at him with wild eyes.
“What happened?” he repeated, rubbing his palm in annoyance.
“An SS man broke my forearm.”
“One of those who brought you here?”
Alma shook her head. “He came into our block after the curfew…” The scene began to replay itself before her eyes. “I was in my room. I heard one of the girls scream. He must have tried getting into her bunk or dragging her out of it—I don’t know. He was very drunk. I told him to leave and then he came after me… Came into my room.” A ragged breath escaped her. “I only wanted him to leave, but he wouldn’t go. I was trying to get past him, but he caught me by my foot. I fell on my bed and hit my forearm on the metal bedframe.” The tears were back, still silent for now, but Alma could already feel another attack coming. “I kicked him in his face. I think I broke his nose; there was a lot of blood… And then I ran. I wanted to get help and—” There it was again, the violent, uncontrollable sobbing. “I can’t be here anymore. I can’t go on like this… That drunken pig—” She couldn’t finish. She would never play anymore; not on the professional’s level, at any rate. Her life was effectively over.
Alma clutched at the sleeve of the doctor’s pristine white gown with her good hand. “Give me an injection of phenol, Herr Doktor.” Her eyes were gleaming feverishly. “If there’s anything human left in you, give me the injection. Put me out of this misery. I won’t be able to perform anymore anyway. I’m of no use to you now. Please, do this one favor for me, I’m begging you.”
“Which did he break? Left or right?” His tone was oddly businesslike.
Alma pulled up the sleeve of her coat and turned her bruised arm toward him. He seized it at once and began prodding at it, completely disregarding the fact that his patient was screaming in pain.
She was slapping at his hands, yanking herself free of his grip with the desperation of a wild animal struggling its way out of a cast-iron trap. “I said it was broken. Do you not have a heart at all? Just give me that shot!”
Without another word, he suddenly released her, rose to his feet and went to a medical glass cabinet containing neat rows of ampules and jars.
Aware of the inmate doctor’s tragic eyes on her, Alma watched Dr. Mengele fill the syringe with a clear liquid.
Before long, he was crouching beside her once again. “Last chance to change your mind.”
It was an odd moment. Alma didn’t expect him to agree so fast and to proceed so quickly. Although, what else did she expect from the one whom they called the Angel of Death? Sympathy? Compassion? A promise to look into the case? To protect her from harm, as in the oath he must have given in exchange for this white gown of his?
Alma saw the crystal drop collect on the end of the needle. It gleamed, seducing and terrifying at the same time.
Dr. Mengele was watching her with some unhealthy interest in his eyes. Alma couldn’t shake the feeling that he was conducting an experiment of sorts with her just then; only which sort, she couldn’t tell for the life of her.
Slowly, she pulled the edge of her slip down, offering him her heart. Dr. Mengele placed her left arm on his knee instead. Confused with the change of the protocol—everyone in Auschwitz-Birkenau knew that phenol executions were performed only straight into the heart muscle—Alma watched him insert the needle into her vein.
“Sweet dreams.”
Those strange words and his sly grin were the last things she remembered before the darkness suffocated her.
Chapter 14
When Alma came to, the sun was bathing the entire room in a soft glow. She was lying in a bed, which wasn’t hers, covered by a woolen blanket that bore a faint smell of disinfectant and someone else’s body. Besides the bed, a small desk and a chair stood next to the window. On the chair, her coat was laid out, brushed and neatl
y folded. Underneath stood a pair of her boots.
Her head still swimming slightly, Alma pulled the covers off her legs and saw that they were perfectly clean, and that a bandage was wrapped around her forearm as well. Thoroughly confused and trembling, she stumbled toward the door and pushed it open.
The same inmate doctor, whom she had seen previously with Dr. Mengele, straightened next to the dissecting table of polished marble. A new body lay on it, pasty white and still untouched.
“Good morning.” The doctor greeted her with a gentle smile.
For some time, Alma merely stared at him.
“It didn’t work,” she spoke at last. “The phenol didn’t work.”
The doctor shook his head with a grin. “It wasn’t phenol. It was a regular sedative.”
In that second, Alma felt both mortally betrayed and infinitely relieved.
“Why would he do that to me?” she managed at last. “That’s just cruel…”
The doctor only shrugged. His kind, lined face seemed to say, He enjoys games of that sort.
Still stunned, Alma kept staring at the body on the dissecting table. It lay on its stomach, in some odd, twisted position.
“The deformity of the spine,” the doctor explained with an impassiveness of a scientist, motioning toward the body with his scalpel. “Herr Doktor brought him this very morning. A new transport…”
That’s who had gotten her dose of phenol in the heart. Poor devil.
“Why did he do that?” Alma repeated, still failing to understand Dr. Mengele’s warped logic.
“Herr Doktor is very interested in deformities of all sorts,” the inmate doctor replied, misinterpreting her question. “He always brings them to me for dissection, so later he can forward the results of the autopsy to the Institute of Biological, Racial and Evolutionary Research in Berlin. He’s writing a scientific work for them of sorts… About the inferiority of degenerate races, like ours.” He glanced up at Alma. “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
“I’m asking why he did that to me,” she repeated without replying to his question.
“Did what? Gave you a sedative? You were having a nervous breakdown. That was the only logical solution in this case. I would have done the same.”
“No; why he didn’t kill me like I asked.”
“Oh. Your arm is not broken. It’s just a nasty bruise. He even had the inmate X-ray it while you were asleep to ensure that it was indeed the case. You will be playing your violin in no time. He said you’re a very good violinist. He enjoys listening to you play.”
In resignation, Alma lowered herself onto the only free chair that stood beside the desk piled with journals and books. Only when the inmate doctor covered her gently with a medical gown did she come out of her reverie.
“Forgive me, please.” What had this place done to her? She was sitting in the presence of a man she didn’t know wearing only a thin slip and wouldn’t have even noticed it if he hadn’t brought her attention to it. “I didn’t mean to offend or embarrass you.”
The doctor merely waved her apologies off. “Your head will be fuzzy for some time. Why don’t you lie down? That’s my personal room over there. And there’s a library in the adjoining room, if you wish to occupy yourself with something. It’s mostly medical journals and books, but the editions are all recent, and if you’re interested in that type of literature…” As though remembering himself, he pulled the glove off his palm and thrust out his hand. “I’m Doctor Ránki, pathologist.”
“Alma Rosé, violinist.”
They smiled at each other. It felt alien and oddly pleasant, introducing oneself by name in the place where they had been reduced to mere faceless numbers.
“Perhaps, I should go back to my block. My girls—”
“No, no!” Dr. Ránki cried, alarmed. “You can’t leave here without Herr Doktor’s direct orders.” Seeing Alma’s expression, he softened his tone, tilting his head apologetically to one side. “He wants to ensure that you’re… safe to be released to the general public, so to say. Surely, you understand, after last night… You can’t quite run around the camp and make such a ruckus. One inmate starts doing this and soon they shall have a revolt in their hands. He doesn’t want that.”
“Of course not,” Alma answered mechanically.
“Would you like more sedative?”
“No. Can I just sit here with you? I won’t bother you. I can’t be alone just now.”
He appeared to hesitate. “I need to dissect the body.”
“All right.”
“It’s a rather frightful sight for the unprepared eyes.”
Alma released a sigh and pressed the back of her head against the tiled wall. “Living people scare me, doctor. This poor fellow is already dead.”
Alma was helping Dr. Ránki with his notes when Dr. Mengele walked in, briefcase in hand. He halted in his tracks as he noticed Alma at the inmate pathologist’s desk and blinked at her attire of the white medical gown.
“Have you decided to take up a new profession?” he asked nonchalantly, concealing his initial surprise at the fact that she sat in such close proximity of the dissecting table. “Or has Dr. Ránki decided to make you into his forced labor assistant while I’m not here?”
Dr. Ránki stood frozen to attention before the slab, his face now displaying the same cadaverous tint as the body on the table in front of him. “I didn’t think it would do any harm if I permitted her to take notes as I was performing…” The pathologist’s voice trailed off. He was suddenly aware of the kidney he was holding in his right hand. Not quite knowing what to do with it under Dr. Mengele’s penetrating glare, he dropped it into the medical scales and began to peel off his gloves. “Please, allow me to take your overcoat, Herr Doktor.”
Alma rose to her feet too but, unlike the pathologist, didn’t salute the SS man.
“I hope you don’t mind, Herr Doktor,” she said, wiping her hands down her gown. “I couldn’t bear sitting locked within four walls like in some mental institution. It was me who asked Dr. Ránki to assist him, if it was within my capabilities. He was kind enough to grant me his permission, solely for the sake of occupying my time and hands with something. If anyone is here to be punished, it should be me.”
His head cocked slightly, Dr. Mengele was watching her with interest. A wry smile appeared on his face as he observed the pathologist’s discomfort. Shifting his gaze back to Alma, he tutted in mock reproach. “Frau Alma. The noble martyr. Ever the protector of the defenseless.” He broke into chuckles. “What am I to do with you?”
“Release me back to my orchestra, please.”
He snorted at that with even greater mirth. “Still want to get shot? Or poisoned?” he asked in a casual tone.
Alma shrugged indifferently.
Dr. Mengele approached her, deposited the briefcase on top of the desk and took her face in his hands without removing his gloves.
“You didn’t give her any more sedative,” he spoke to the Hungarian pathologist after examining Alma’s eyes closely.
“She said she didn’t want it.”
“What happened to the things that I want or order for that matter?” Dr. Mengele demanded, only half-in-jest, judging by Dr. Ránki’s anxious expression. “Do they not bear authority all of a sudden?”
“Of course, they do, Herr Doktor. I only thought… she appears to be perfectly calm today and in full possession of her faculties.”
“Is she now?”
“You can see for yourself, Herr Doktor.”
At last, Dr. Mengele peeled off one of his leather gloves and pressed his thumb against Alma’s wrist. Excruciatingly aware of his fingers on top of her skin, Alma forced herself to remain still while he watched the hand of his wristwatch make a complete circle.
“Hm. Not bad, considering,” he announced his verdict. “Open your mouth.”
Alma did. He inspected her gums by forcing his thumb under her lips.
“Beautiful teeth.”
After
he took his hand away, the faint taste of nicotine and disinfectant of sorts remained in her mouth. It took Alma great effort not to spit on the floor to rid herself of it.
“How’s your arm today?”
“It’s all right. Sore, but I can even write with it just fine. As long as it’s not broken, a little pain I can deal with.”
Dr. Mengele nodded his approval. “Flex your fingers and wrist.”
After she did what she was told, he prodded at her muscles around the bandage.
“I wrapped it tightly to decrease the swelling. If you don’t overexert it, we’ll remove it in a couple of days.”
“Thank you, Herr Doktor.”
“You wish to go back to your girls?” he asked, unbuckling his briefcase and extracting charts and papers out of it.
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
“Not for the next few days.”
“Why not?” The words flew off her lips before she could stop herself. “You have just examined me—I am perfectly fine!”
“So it appears. The trouble is, I don’t trust you yet.”
“Herr Doktor, I promise you—”
“I said no and that’s the end of it.” Despite the refusal it clearly wasn’t up for any further discussion, and his tone remained just as conversational as before. “If I release you back to your block and you begin throwing tantrums again, it shall be me who will look like an idiot before the administration. We don’t want that, do we?” He finished quietly and ominously, lifting his eyelashes in a sideways glance, and Alma saw that there was no humor in those dark eyes of his anymore.
In spite of herself, she pulled back. “No, of course not.”
“Good.” Back to smiling from Herr Doktor.
For some time, Alma watched him sorting his paperwork.
“Can I at least keep helping Dr. Ránki with his notes?” She licked her lips anxiously and added, as though an afterthought, “Please? I really need to occupy myself with something. I can’t just sit here without action. Then I’ll really go mad.”
Dr. Mengele straightened next to the desk. “You aren’t squeamish, are you? Not even next to that open carcass?” He gave her a teasing look and smiled, displaying a gap between his two front teeth. “My wife faints at the sight of a simple needle and you, you sit here in front of a cadaver with his chest pried open, write down all the gory details of his autopsy—not even an elevated heartbeat.” He regarded her with some unhealthy, newfound admiration. “Yes, you may help Dr. Ránki if you wish. In fact, the doctor and I shall be rather busy tonight, if these temperature charts don’t lie. A temporary secretary will be most welcome.”
The Violinist of Auschwitz: Based on a true story, an absolutely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel Page 15
