Max

by Sarah Cohen-Scali

  We tear over to the van and wait. Terrified, the boy looks back at the soldiers, the dogs and the Sisters. Not that much is visible. We’re crouching down, so all I can see are SS boots, the ends of their guns, dogs’ paws, dogs’ muzzles when they lower their heads to sniff the ground, and the hems of the brown potato-sack dresses worn by the Sisters. ‘Raz! Dwa! Trzy!’ the little boy hisses at me. ‘One! Two! Three!’ We run over to the forest.

  There, hidden behind a bush, is a group of about ten women. Polish women. Mothers. They must have known the vans were heading for the station, so they followed them to get their children back. Most of the kids who managed to leave the line are already in the arms of their mothers. The one I ran with has just found his and is snuggled in her embrace.

  And what about me? Well, I just stand there, alone. Of course, since I don’t have a mother. I feel stupid. Then all of a sudden a hand grabs me and pulls me away. Does one of these women want to pick me up and hug me? Why? Has she mistaken me for her son? I can’t see a thing. It’s dark; the streetlight illuminating the platform doesn’t reach this far. While the hand pulls me feverishly and the arms encircle me, a crazy idea strikes me: is it Bibiana? Bibiana isn’t dead, she’s come back and is picking me up, crying for joy because she’s found me again. She’s escaped from Ravensbrück, she’s met up with the other women and she’s come here especially to get me. Yes, me.

  But it’s not Bibiana. It’s Jacek’s mother. I recognise her with her broken hand covered in a bloody bandage. She hugs me close and says two words over and over, right into my ear. ‘Jacek! Andrzej!’ The names of her sons. She must have seen that I was next to them in the line, so she wants me to go and get them. She’s sobbing, begging me, wringing her hands, and that must really hurt.

  I stop and think. Then I say to her, ‘Yes, okay.’

  I go back the way I came and hide behind the van, waiting. Then I slip back into line and elbow my way to Jacek and his little brother.

  ‘Where were you?’ asks Jacek.

  He’s white as a sheet and shaking even more than his brother, who’s crying again. I’m pleased they were anxious while I was away, that they missed me.

  Jacek really is a cute kid. He has beautiful blue eyes, thick blond hair. I don’t want him to go back to his mother. What’s the use of a mother? Apart from giving you a shocking stomach-ache when she leaves? It would be so unfair if Jacek remained a common little Polack. He must become German. He deserves it. I can see it in his blue eyes.

  So I leave the line again, brazenly this time. I run so fast that I manage to avoid the clutches of a soldier trying to grab me, and I head straight for Doctor Ebner.

  He recognises me. ‘Konrad! What on earth are you doing here?’ he asks sternly.

  The big vein is throbbing in his temple.

  I point to where the women are hiding, where their children have fled to.

  The siren goes off. The soldiers turn the dogs loose on them.

  Thanks to me, they managed to rescue a dozen children who would have gone off with their mothers, back to their hovels to die of hunger, running from bombs or SS gunfire. A dozen children who have found an adoptive mother. The same one as me: Germany. More young wild animals, just like the Führer wants, to swell the ranks of the all-powerful German youth. More future brothers for me.

  You wouldn’t believe how happy I am! My stomach-ache has disappeared and I feel as fit as a fiddle.

  Doctor Ebner congratulated me. ‘Konrad! You’re full of surprises!’

  There was almost the trace of a smile on his thin, tight lips. The women representing the various organisations at the station also showered me with praise. Even the damn Sisters had to acknowledge what I’d done. The one who’d been in the van where I was hiding told Doctor Ebner that, thanks to me, the children had been much calmer and easier to handle in the selection process. Yes, the compliments flowed!

  Except that Doctor Ebner did get a bit cross with me. Once we got back to the bombed-out house, he took me into his office. We were alone for the first time since the Home at Steinhöring.

  ‘I have something to say to you, Konrad.’

  He double-locked the door, sat in a chair and signalled for me to come over. I stood to attention, shoulders back, feet together, arms by my side, chin up, looking straight ahead at the top of his bald head. To tell you the truth, I was scared stiff. I was convinced Doctor Ebner was going to make me endure another medical test, a new selection process, his speciality. Fortunately I’d got rid of my Polish costume. It stank of piss and shit because the children in the van had been so terrified they hadn’t been able to control themselves. I’d had a shower and put my Pimpf uniform back on: shorts, brown shirt with armband, tie and cap, which I had remembered to take off in front of Doctor Ebner.

  ‘Konrad, do you realise what danger you were in?’

  What danger? I gazed directly at him, questioning, with my big, blue, innocent eyes. Just in case he was planning on a little check-up of how my growth was affecting my ethnic connections to the Nordic race, I thought he could use this opportunity to confirm that my eyes were still bright blue. (I check them regularly myself, whenever I come across a mirror, to make sure they’re not going dark.)

  ‘We could have got you mixed up with a Polish child. With one lapse in concentration, and that can happen’—he clicked his fingers—‘you would have been off to Auschwitz.’

  ‘What’s Auschwitz?’ I asked him, still gazing innocently, when in fact I knew the answer, I just wanted more detail.

  ‘It’s a place where Polish children work.’

  A code sentence if ever there was one. And easy to translate. ‘Place’ = camp. ‘Where children work’ = where they are exterminated.

  ‘Do you understand?’ Ebner added, holding my chin between his thumb and index finger, forcing me to look at him when I lowered my eyes. ‘Losing you would have made me very sad, you know.’

  Adults make such fools of themselves! ‘Losing you’ = your death. Which just proves that I got the first sentence right. You don’t work at Auschwitz, you die there. Or else you die working.

  ‘You were told to stay here and not move,’ he continued in his stern voice. ‘You’re not allowed to disobey orders, you know that.’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Doktor! But our beloved Führer said that children must develop their Draufgängertum.’

  I fired off that long sentence without thinking. It just came out in one go. I didn’t stumble on a single word. Earlier I’d pronounced ‘Auschwitz’ wrongly, changing the ‘sch’ sound into ‘se’, because one of my teeth is loose and sometimes I lisp.

  Ebner looked shaken. I had taken the wind out of his sails with my perfect sentence.

  ‘Correct,’ he said, nodding.

  From then on, he couldn’t lecture me or threaten to punish me. To have criticised my risky behaviour at the station would have meant that he was questioning the principles of our Führer, which is absolutely forbidden. What’s more, German children have been ordered to denounce their parents if they think they have doubts about the fundamental principles of National Socialism. So, I could denounce Ebner, seeing that he was sort of my father. After a moment of silence, I took advantage of my leading position. ‘What is Kalish?’ I asked.

  I remembered the sign on the other train at the station.

  ‘It’s a Home, like the one where you were born, except it’s not for babies, but for foreign children who are racially viable. They’re taught how to become true German children.’

  ‘Like in a school?’

  ‘It’s a type of school, yes.’

  I nodded so he would think that I understood. But I didn’t understand properly. ‘A type.’ Code language again, and this time I didn’t grasp the meaning. I didn’t dare ask him to elaborate. Ebner stood up and was getting ready to start work at his desk, which meant that I had to clear out. But before saluting him and leaving, I thought I’d ask about Jacek and Andrzej. Did they go to Kalish or to Auschwitz?

 
Ebner gestured towards the files piled up on his desk. The answer to my question was somewhere among all those papers and he’d let me know soon.

  I never got the answer, not then, or anytime later. Perhaps Jacek went to Kalish and Andrzej to Auschwitz. That would make sense, as Jacek was bigger and stronger than his brother. Or else, through a lapse in concentration, as Ebner had pointed out, they could both have been sent to Auschwitz. To death. That possibility upset me for a moment. I liked those two a lot, especially Jacek. We could have become buddies. We could have become brothers.

  But I quickly forgot about them because Doctor Ebner gave orders for a big party in my honour, to reward me for my services to the nation. He said we would also celebrate my birthday, which had been completely forgotten. (All the other birthdays had been forgotten too, but Ebner had forgotten that they’d been forgotten.)

  So the next day we would celebrate my five and a half years.

  It’s a good party, even if right now things are going downhill. But I couldn’t give a damn. I’m having a great time. It’s better than staying alone in my room, and I’m enjoying myself more now.

  Earlier in the evening, everyone was seated formally around the big dining-room table, set for the occasion. I was at the head of the table. Doctor Ebner and Frau Lotte were on either side, of course. I wasn’t about to make a fool of myself. The other guests included Herr Tesch, two or three SS officers, Frau Viermetz, Frau Müller, Frau Kruger—who’d witnessed my triumph at the station the day before—and several Braune Schwesten. If I’d been consulted, we’d never have invited Frau Lotte and her lookalike sisters to my birthday party. Who better to ruin the atmosphere than that horde of old crows? I wouldn’t have invited the others, either: all adults. No fun at all. Why couldn’t I have invited Jacek, Andrzej and all the kids from the van? No one asked for my opinion.

  The mood was deadly serious. Everyone was talking about business, statistics, the news from the front. I overheard that the Russians were no longer our allies and that we were invading their country. No easy task, it seems. At a standstill in Moscow and Leningrad, our troops were having a bad time in the freezing weather. I also overheard that the Japanese were now on our side. (But the Japanese are not Nordic people? So what! The Russians aren’t either.) And that they didn’t pull any punches: in a surprise attack, they had totally destroyed most of the American navy in the Pacific. Western Europe was still occupied by our armies, and the south as well. Of course, the super-pilots from the Royal Air Force were inflicting serious damage on our Luftwaffe, but the guests didn’t seem too worried about that.

  I was bored, so I wasn’t really paying much attention. We were going to win the war anyway. We’d known that from the beginning.

  At the end of the meal, they gave me a beautiful cake covered in Chantilly cream. The real thing. Amazing in these times of rationing. I blew out my five and a half candles in one go. Doctor Ebner made a speech in which he said that my birthday present was the astronomical—he emphasised this word—sum of 100 Reichmarks deposited in my bank account, as well as an additional candle to decorate the candelabra presented to me on my birth at the Home. The guests all exclaimed, ‘Oh!’, ‘Ah!’, ‘Wonderful!’ But I didn’t give a damn about the astronomical sum. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t cold hard cash I could buy sweets with. So I made up for it with the cake and stuffed my face, right in front of Frau Lotte, to get my own back for all the boiled carrots, rice and quince jam she’d force-fed me recently.

  ‘Slowly, Konrad! Slowly! You’ll get indigestion,’ she hissed in a contemptuous tone, looking daggers at me with her shark eyes.

  Oh, come off it, you stupid bitch! Tonight it’s my party and I’ll do what I like. I’m a hero. I can gorge myself!

  I even ate the leftovers from the adults’ plates. They didn’t notice because, after clapping when I’d blown out the candles, they barely touched their cake before getting back to their discussions. No one was paying attention to me anymore. I was supposed to go and play with the toys I’d received on top of the astronomical sum of money and the candle. The toys had been requisitioned from shops in Warsaw; I could tell from the labels. But I’d rather eat than play. Playing by myself is no fun at all.

  Then Ebner called a summit meeting in his office, to get down on paper what had been discussed at dinner. (I’ve noticed how much the senior officers love all manner of paperwork and correspondence.)

  So the guests had to vacate the dining room. Frau Lotte didn’t see that I wasn’t following her. She’d drunk too much champagne. She nearly tripped over the rug as she left. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have made it to Ebner’s office and will be snoring in her bed by now.

  The real party starts now. I can have fun with the soldiers who’ve just turned up in the dining room, like they do most other nights.

  They’re already drunk, because they began their evening in a cabaret, with German prostitutes. I like the prostitutes because they’re not uptight like the Sisters or the officer women. They’re relaxed, funny. They don’t bother with stupid rules. Not one of them has said, ‘It’s time to go to bed! Go and clean your teeth and put on your pyjamas!’ That sort of twaddle. On the contrary, they insist that I stay with them. Perhaps prostitutes would really like to be mothers; whatever the case, they all fall for my angel face.

  ‘Oh, he’s so cute! Sweetie pie, little guy! Look at him!’

  They pop me on their knees, pat my hair, pinch my nose, give me big sloppy kisses that leave red marks on my cheeks. Even though normally I don’t like being touched, I let them do it. I don’t know why, but with them it’s different. A few of them drag me into the middle of the room and, holding my hands, pretend to dance with me. They let me taste champagne. I dip my finger in a glass and lick it: they burst out laughing at the grimace on my face. Champagne is bitter and it stings a bit, but it’s not bad.

  Prostitutes can really hold their drink. They get drunker and drunker. I keep being passed around, on their knees, in their arms. One even suddenly decides to show me her breasts.

  ‘You’re going to be one hell of a handsome kid, you are!’ she says. ‘You’ll have heaps of women. It’s never too early to start learning. Here! Your first lesson in biology!’

  She unbuttons her blouse, bares her titties. It’s nothing new for me, because, as you know, on the nights when I couldn’t sleep, before my adventure at Poznan station, I spied on these parties. But nobody knows that. I don’t want to upset the prostitute, so I pretend to be surprised. And I’m amazed to observe that titties come in a range of shapes. Big ones, little ones, ones that look like apples, others like pears, some that sit up, others that hang down. I wonder if there are ‘Nordic titties’. I wonder if you can measure their position, the space between them, the space between them and the navel or the neck…Of course you can. The RuSHA must have standard measurements for titties somewhere on their shelves.

  Now that it’s late and the bottles are empty, the prostitutes aren’t bothering with me anymore. They’re just doing what they usually do with the soldiers. Intercourse. I stay out of the way and play with the dolls I was given as presents. I tear off their clothes and twist them into the same positions as the prostitutes. (Dolls aren’t as flexible as prostitutes so it doesn’t always work.) When I’m sick of that, I imagine that somewhere on the table groaning with glasses is the goblet of the Holy Grail goblet, the one that contains the elixir of immortality. I have to find which one it is, so I drink the dregs from every glass, one by one.

  And I black out.

  Frau Lotte sounds the alarm next morning.

  When she can’t find me in my bed, she scours the whole house until she finds me on the ground, under the dining table, among the empty bottles. No matter how many times she calls out my name, slaps me, shakes me like a fruit tree, nothing happens, she can’t wake me up. There’s no sign of life: I’m completely floppy when she lifts me up, my arms and legs dangling, my head hanging down like a corpse. She calls Ebner in a state. Hurry! Hurry! I
’m taken by ambulance to the hospital where they treat the wounded soldiers from the front. Doctor Ebner, assisted by other doctors, puts me through a barrage of tests and discovers that I have an alarmingly high blood-alcohol reading. I’m in an ‘ethylic coma’—the scientific term for ‘drunken stupor’. It’s serious.

  I almost died. Just goes to show that Auschwitz is not the only place you can die.

  Somehow I end up coming to, unharmed, like after the dehydration episode when I was a baby. Doctor Ebner is gobsmacked: he’s now got yet another proof of my superior nature. I am truly as tough as leather and as hard as Krupp steel. I am truly the prototype-child-typical-of-the-pure-Aryan-race. But there’s something Ebner doesn’t know: the reason I survived was that the elixir of immortality was hidden in one of those glasses. And from now on it’s flowing through my veins. Nothing will ever be able to harm me. I am immortal, invincible!

  Over the following months I continue my mission as an infiltrator. Ebner decided that my presence among the Polish children was so useful that, two or three times a week, I do the same thing as I did on my last escapade. I’m there to reassure the children straight after they’ve been taken from their mothers. I convince them that they have nothing to fear, that they’ll be reunited with their parents as soon as they’ve moved into a better house. I make up any old story, I let my imagination run wild, especially as I’m getting better at speaking Polish. On the station platform I wander around wherever I like among the queues. The soldiers and Sisters are aware of the role I’m playing and pretend to hit me like they do the others, but they never really hurt me. I chat to this one or that one. Sometimes Doctor Ebner sends me over to the Auschwitz train if things are getting too panicky there. I climb into a carriage and tell the kids a quick story. ‘We’re going to a really cool place, a huge park with cabins.’ Once the tears have stopped, I get off, just before the train leaves.