by Steven Uhly
Anna had never found Ranzner’s imagery particularly original, but the expression in his eyes told her that he was not interested in felicitous comparisons, merely in upsetting her. She understood and obeyed. Let him see her upset, if that made him happy. Like a whore, somewhere deep down she felt nothing but sympathy for her punter. Sympathy and revulsion.
Ranzner allowed his gaze to roam.
“The Jewish rats have barbarically slaughtered one of the jewels in our ranks!” he cried at the top of his voice, as if trying to make his fury audible through the walls. Now his stare bored into the vanquished eyes of the woman cowering in the chair before him, her shoulders hunched. “But we shall set an example, to show everyone in this town who is master here, who is in charge, who decides over life and death!”
Anna knew that, one day, he really would line her up with other prisoners in front of a firing squad. A man incapable of raping her must be far more dangerous than one who acted freely on his urges. Sometimes she wished he would take her, make her his plaything like other officers did with their girls. There would have been a physical, tangible dependency she could rely on. But, as she had come to understand, Ranzner was a prisoner of his own aloofness. He would rather have Anna killed than confess his love for her.
Ranzner brushed a strand of hair from his face and shook his hand threateningly, the index finger extended. Everything had begun with gestures like this in Germany, in her Germany that she had perhaps lost forever. The meadow by her village flashed up briefly in her mind, the daisies, but Anna must not get off track now. She swept the image away.
“We shall not allow anyone to believe he can play cat and mouse with us. We know all too well that the Jew remains the primary instigator for the complete and utter destruction of Germany. Wherever in the world we see attacks on Germany, they have all been manufactured by Jews! Is there any filth, any indecency of whatever form, but especially in cultural life, in which no Jew has played a part, not even one? You need only make a careful incision into such a tumor to find—like a maggot in a rotting corpse, and often blinded by the sudden light—a Jew! This is why, men, you must never forget the true meaning of our mission: the total Germanisation of the Wartheland. This was and remains our sacred assignment!”
What a paradox, Anna thought. The only person able to understand him is a Jew. His men must have become indifferent to these outlandish ideas long ago. From conversations she had overheard she knew that the war was getting tougher, Ranzner was having to send more and more of his soldiers to support the Wehrmacht on the eastern front. The heavy losses obliged him to recruit new men all the time. But that did not trouble him. While Anna played the terrified subhuman, she was both fascinated and nauseated by Ranzner’s artful way of inhabiting his town hall as if it were a stage set. In here they were both actors, Ranzner just as much as she.
And yet, something was different from normal. Ranzner appeared agitated and impatient, as if the rehearsal was bothering him. Naturally his face betrayed nothing of the kind, it glowed as if he really was the fanatic he made himself out to be. But Anna had become accustomed to keeping an eye on the chief’s feet. By now she was able to do this out of the corner of her eye, she even used her fearful expression as a cover to observe Ranzner unnoticed. Sometimes she felt like a dog guessing its master’s mood. A worthwhile endeavor, for Ranzner’s feet led an independent existence that remained concealed from their owner. Or perhaps they were a cryptic language in which he spoke to her—not Ranzner the great S.S. actor, but the secret Josef Ranzner, who must be hiding somewhere, just as she lay hidden beneath her subhuman exterior.
The language of the feet was easy to understand. Whenever Ranzner was stirred by emotion Anna witnessed it in his feet. If he was impatient, he would tap one of them or beat rapidly on the floor. If he was seized by doubt, they moved sideways: left, then back right, then left again until Ranzner had gained some sort of assurance.
Today his entire right leg was quivering uninterruptedly, even when he spoke or yelled, as now:
“The resistance of the Jews can be broken only by the energetic and tireless engagement of our shock troops, day and night. Your utmost vigilance is of the essence. Our aim is the total annihilation of the subhuman Jewish race—I cannot emphasize this clearly enough.” Then he shouted so loudly that his voice cracked and sounded hoarse. “As true brothers in arms we shall work indefatigably to fulfill our mission, always standing our ground as model and consummate soldiers! Sieg Heil!”
As he spoke he gazed at Anna with furtive eyes, like a wolf seeking an opportunity to pounce and gobble her up. And yet today there was something volatile in his expression, which exposed his posturing as an act. Now Anna was shocked for real. There were things she did not wish to see. For her game to work she needed to believe in the merciless Ranzner. Whenever he made it too easy for her to look behind the façade, the fear suddenly became very palpable. Where was the boundary? How much must you see before you could no longer lie? Sure, she depended on her ability to gauge Ranzner accurately. But she could not guard against his involuntary honesty, it found its way to her unchecked. Never must the shadowy figure standing there acquire a sharp outline.
Ranzner appeared not to have noticed a thing. He kept up his tirade, while his gaze wandered aimlessly around the room as if trying to keep a legion under control. He bellowed about the exemplary life of the Sturmbannführer, his Aryan virtues, the grave loss for the S.S., his paternalistic feelings, but most of all he bellowed revenge.
“Even if the Jews were alone on this earth,” he roared, “they would still choke in dirt and filth, and attempt to cheat and exterminate each other as if locked in bitter struggle—that is assuming their sheer lack of any spirit of sacrifice, which shows up as cowardice, didn’t turn the struggle into play-acting!”
And then, all of a sudden, he was finished. Ranzner looked Anna solemnly in the eye and said, “Sturmbannführer Karl Treitz was a good comrade, an outstanding soldier and an ardent patriot! We shall miss him and his sound work.”
Ranzner paused. He was unsure. On the one hand Treitz had given him an unmistakable sign. But he had also allowed himself to be lured into a foolish ambush. No member of the master race would commit such an error. This meant Treitz had Jewish ancestors, so it was a good thing he had been slain by one of his own. Ranzner knew that he should not lend credence to this theory, otherwise every dead S.S. man would be transformed into a Jew for the sole reason that he was dead, and by extension the same thing could happen to him. But the idea was swimming in his head; why, he could not articulate.
He looked at Anna. There was something more he needed to say: “While carrying out his sacred duty for his people and his Führer, Sturmbannführer Treitz died an Aryan hero. More than this, he died a hero of the S.S., the racial vanguard of our beloved Fatherland!”
He paused once more and looked around the room as if in search of something. Then he opened his mouth and said, “May the Black Sun light your way home, Karl Treitz. You will return and exact revenge.”
At that moment something peculiar occurred. Anna was sitting on the chair, Ranzner standing in front of her, they were alone in the room. The crack in the mirror was gone, the imaginary army was gone. The game was over for the time being. She was confused. She gazed at Ranzner. She detected shame in his eyes. This was something she had never seen before, and for a moment she doubted that she had seen it. The words “May the Black Sun light your way home” resounded in her head. Ranzner stood there hesitantly, as if uncertain how to proceed. Eventually he turned away and sat behind his bulky, nineteenth-century English desk. As he leaned back in his chair his jaw muscles twitched, he was nervous. Anna wanted to look away, she had no desire to watch Ranzner struggle to regain his composure, the danger emanating from him was so palpable that she had to overcome her panic. But she did not move, she merely sat on her chair, staring at him as if frozen.
Ranzner felt naked. He did not know why he had mentioned the Black Sun, even less
why he now felt so defenseless. It was as if he had allowed Anna a glimpse of an intimate secret. At Ranzner’s back a wide, paneled double door with rectangular windows led onto the large terrace. The town lay in complete darkness, the street lamps had been switched off and the windows in private houses blacked out.
“Do you know what the Black Sun is, Anna?” Ranzner asked after a while, without looking at the girl.
“No.”
“The Black Sun,” Ranzner said slowly, as if intimating that it was something quite special. But Anna knew this desperate act.
“The Sturmbannführer murdered by your people will return. And he will remember—me, you and his murderers. He will take revenge. Do you believe that?”
“No.”
“Of course you don’t, because then you’d have to accept that you’ll never be rid of us.”
Anna looked straight past Ranzner, as if he were no longer in the room. Now she seemed like an animal opening its eyes for the first time after a long hibernation. Deliberately and in a flat voice she said, “If we all return, why do you Germans want to annihilate us?”
“Who said you all . . . ?” Ranzner retorted brusquely, then tailed off. “Leave, the rehearsal is over!”
Anna stood up slowly and mechanically, once more an actress playing the role of housekeeper. She left the room and shut the door. It was only as she went down the stairs on the way back to her room that she grasped what had just happened: in clutching at this absurd hope Ranzner had confessed his fear of death. In truth, she thought in the vestibule, there are no superhumans or subhumans. In truth, she thought, he’s nothing like what he pretends to be, he isn’t a chief, just a fellow human who, for unknown reasons, has become an anti-human. He had deceived her, for two years she had believed he truly was inhuman, impervious to anything normal, without weakness or vulnerability, because his hardness protected him against everything.
When Anna left, Ranzner opened the door and stepped outside. The terrace was directly above the entrance to the town hall, through which his dead subordinate had been carried a few hours before. The square was in darkness and he could hear nothing save for the regular footsteps of the sentries. The rain had finally stopped. The only other sound was an occasional rumbling in the distance. It was the war getting closer.
4
No light in the darkness.
No thought of light.
No thought at all.
For an eternity.
When at last she regained consciousness it began with just a glimmer. She drifted, feeling far removed from everything. She remembered. He was dead. Shot by a woman. Margarita Ejzenstain. A Polish Jew. Subhuman. Her. Which year was it? She could not remember. How long had she been lying here? These pains, everything hurt, if she lay like this any longer she would get thrombosis and die anyway. She had to get out, to the light, move, be free, no matter what happened. But she lay there inertly, trying to return to the nothingness from which she had awoken. Buried, she thought, I’ve been buried alive. If she ever got out of here it would be like reincarnation. Not even when the Kramers lifted the floorboards to bring her food, not even when they brought her the pot so she could do her business, did she see daylight. She lay in the cellar, on the hard earth only covered with a few blankets. It was damp and she lived with the permanent threat that the stream might burst its banks, leading to a flood and the loss of her hiding place. How absurd that, of all people, it was Germans who had taken her in, given how much she despised the Germans. She would rather have stayed with Poles, but in such a hurry none could be found who would take in a Jew. When the pastor told her they were Germans she was ready to refuse. But Piotr had said, What would you prefer, to be hidden by Germans or killed by Germans? There’s no other choice. At that point she acquiesced.
The Kramers had been remarkably friendly, from the very beginning they had treated her like a daughter. Frau Kramer in particular made her feel welcome, something she had not expected. It had caused her opinion of the Germans to collapse like a house of cards and she felt disoriented, unable to comprehend why some of these people wanted to kill her, whereas others protected her. To start with she felt as if someone had restored her faith in humanity, but gradually the anger built up inside. For now the Germans were no longer a cruel race of monsters, now the Germans were human beings who had gone mad and who no one had stopped.
The Kramers were not from this region, they had been planted there without knowing what they were letting themselves in for. The house, a farmstead with a few hectares of arable land, had previously belonged to Poles who had been expelled, deported, killed—who knows? It was not hard to imagine. The Poles had also dug out the hole in the cellar. Two days after the Kramers moved in a man in filthy clothes appeared in their living room, out of the blue. He introduced himself as Adam Herschel, a Jew from Łódź who had been hidden by the previous owners. The Kramers, as Frau Kramer once told her, had been lost for words, but soon composed themselves and accommodated Herr Herschel until it was possible for him to make his way to the coast. From there he planned to take a boat to Sweden. They never heard from him again.
Of course the pastor had taken note of what had happened, which is why she, Margarita Ejzenstain, ended up in the hole where she had been lying for four months now. Everything would be easier were she not pregnant. She could have kept moving, might have made it to the coast herself. Oh well. Frau Kramer looked after her with such tenderness. Once a day she exercised with her because she was of the belief that this was good for pregnant women. She had given birth to two children herself, a boy and a girl. The boy had died at the front, Operation Barbarossa, Frau Kramer had told her with bitterness in her voice and tears in her eyes, neither of which were consistent with her cheerfulness. Then she had wiped away the tears with rapid and resolute hand movements as if banishing a nightmare, and smiled like someone asking for forgiveness.
Perhaps that is why they had hidden Margarita in their cellar. As revenge for their son who had been killed in action. Sometimes she thought about this in those long hours spent idle in the darkness of her hideaway. She would imagine a barely detectable link between the Kramers’ dead son and herself, like a gossamer thread attached to her soul, pushing its way out of the cellar through the gap between the floorboards, out into the fields, through woods and across rivers—green, gleaming woods and crystal-clear rivers where children played with shrieks of delight, oblivious to the gossamer thread extended above their heads, or perhaps along the river bed at their feet, where it passed through the gravel to the other bank and beyond, far beyond until it vanished into the earth at the spot where the Kramers’ son lay buried, if indeed he were buried. Margarita often wondered about the nature of this thread, but the only idea that came to her, the only feeling, was retribution.
She did not actually care about the reasons for the Kramers’ compassion. Perhaps their hearts were simply in the right place, perhaps good people really did exist, irrespective of their race. If only there were not so much time to brood. And to remember. Often she was assaulted by images, like a horde of wild animals she was powerless against, and the longer she spent looking, the more strongly she felt that each image was its own reality and another life. Her past thus disintegrated, she lost all cohesion and became a loose collection of impressions that no longer seemed to belong to her. Tomasz. Their honeymoon to Łódź. Tomasz’s first car. His job in Kraków. Tomasz would have built a solid career, this she knew. And then maybe they would have emigrated to America, like his brother. The invasion. Tomasz had been perfectly calm, he had said, France and Britain won’t let this happen. And to begin with it seemed as if he was right. But then came Dunkirk. The Germans drove the British from the mainland and conquered France. Who was going to help them now? Tomasz had been at a loss, she had seen him in despair for the very first time. It was painful. She wanted to console him, but there was nothing to console him with. Her parents urged them to flee. But it had been too late, far too late.
She had no desir
e to think about that now, not again. If necessary she would learn how not to think. Not to think until the Germans had gone. If they ever did go. If you let your thoughts wander you neglect your soul. This is what her grandmother had said when she caught other people brooding. The saying ended, You forfeit your life—even if you live, you are as dead. But she was already as good as dead now, she, who wanted to move to Uncle Max’s place in Berlin and study art—Berlin, of all places! She had heard from Uncle Max up till 1938, but nothing since. Even back then rumors went around that dreadful things were happening in Germany. But nobody wanted to believe them, rumors were always exaggerated, you had to strip away two-thirds of what was said to get to the truth. Well, this time it was the other way around, and who could have informed her about it? Everything had descended upon her almost like a natural disaster, even the Germans behaved as if they were obeying a murky destiny, whose long arm reached from somewhere in the past into the present and manipulated them like puppets. The German she had killed. He had entered the street like a lamb coming to Passover. She had waited behind the door, as arranged, heard his heavy boots and Piotr’s light footsteps leading the officer to his doom, to her. She had opened the door and watched both men walk along the street toward her, side by side. For anybody witnessing this scene in isolation, the two might have been friends. And she might have been a mutual friend of theirs. She often thought of those few seconds prior to the first shot from the ancient revolver that Piotr had stolen from the pastor. A museum piece, the pastor had been proud of having such an item in his possession. He kept it in the sacristy, beside the wine and communion wafers. How fitting, Margarita thought. Piotr had removed it from there after witnessing what the Germans did to Tadeusz and a handful of other Jews. He had said, That German gave the order, I swear I’ll bring him to you, Margarita. And he had brought him to her. How long ago was that? Four and a half months? Approximately. When the two men stood beside each other in the street like good friends she had caught sight of the German’s eyes. She had expected evil eyes, but instead she gazed into blue, innocent child’s eyes. She had not been prepared for that. Child’s eyes and murderer’s hands, she had thought, feeling a sudden revulsion, as if the German were a slimy monster, not a human being, an abortion, half embryo, half violent criminal. The disbelief on his face when the first bullet hit him! As if he had been granted surprise leave. The officer had suffered a nice death, he had been shot and that was it. Far too short, far too painless for what he had done to Tadeusz. To Tadeusz and the others.
