Pursuit

by Robert L. Fish

  “Your son?”

  “No. Does it make any difference?”

  “Of course not.”

  “That’s right,” the man said flatly. The boy seemed to be reviving; the man dragged Grossman back by the shoulder a few more inches to give the boy room to sit on the floor next to the opening. As he bent over the boy his face came close to Ben’s. It was a battered face, like that of a boxer, with fine hairline cracks and scars throughout. The sharp gray eyes studied the scar along Ben’s jaw, then moved to look Ben in the eye.

  “Ward Forty-six?”

  For a second a chill ran through Ben Grossman; then he realized the tone had been sympathetic, and he knew he had been foolish to fear this man.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “Were you?”

  There was a raucous laugh from someone in the rear.

  “Brodsky? If Max Brodsky had been in Ward Forty-six, in two weeks he would have called it a health spa and charged admission!”

  “That’s the reason they transferred him,” another voice said at Ben’s side. “One more month in Buchenwald and Brodsky would have owned the camp. He was getting ready to charge the SS rent when they shipped him out.”

  Ben looked at the speaker. He was a small man with extraordinarily large luminous eyes that seemed to take up a major portion of his thin expressive face. His oversized pajama uniform hung on his emaciated frame in a manner almost humorous, like the garb of a clown or a stage comic. Little spikes of hair jutted from the top of his small head; he was smiling as he spoke, showing gaps where teeth had rotted out, making his clown-like appearance more evident.

  “Wolf, shut up,” Brodsky said without rancor. He checked the boy carefully and then looked down at Ben Grossman. Ward Forty-six, eh? He felt a sudden kinship with this blue-eyed, scarred man. In Ward Forty-six Brodsky had lost his best friend in the camp, and he somehow felt the man beside him might possibly have been sent him as a replacement. “Are you all right? Do you want to get back to the door?”

  “No, I’m all right.”

  Brodsky nodded and raised his deep voice. “Let’s have someone here from the rear!” His hand rested on Grossman’s shoulder; somehow there was something companionable about the slight pressure. “All right! Let him through!”

  There was a rough shifting of bodies and an old man was thrust to the front. Brodsky pulled the boy slightly to one side, still allowing him breathing space, and tucked the old man’s head near the opening. The old man gasped in thankful relief and nestled on the floor, sniffing the fresh air like a dog at a rat hole. There was a restless shifting of bodies. Someone said querulously, “How much longer are we going to be kept here?”

  As if in answer to his question, there was the sound of boots crunching on cinders and two SS officers appeared in the slot of light. Brodsky held up his hand for silence but few could see him. He raised his voice in a bellow.

  “Shut up! Shut up!” And when his roar was met by startled silence he added more quietly, “Let’s hear what they’re saying.”

  The two officers on the track made no attempt to lower their voices, nor did they even glance at the column of anxious eyes staring at them from the narrow slit.

  “… evacuated,” one was saying.

  “What!”

  “Natzweiler, I said. Evacuated.”

  “I heard what you said! When?”

  “Two days ago.” The speaker sounded bitter. “You’d think they would know these things before they send out a string of cars, wouldn’t you? You would think at least they might check. Good God! Nancy was cleared out a week ago, they knew that, didn’t they?” He stared at the line of boxcars as if they represented a personal affront to him and the papers in his hand. “Cars from six camps, some of them three days on the road, over eight hundred men, and what do we do with them?”

  Inside the boxcar voices were breaking out in the darkness.

  “What’s going on? Who are you listening to? What are they saying? Anything about where we’re going? Tell them to open the door more, we need air in here for God’s sake—!”

  They were answered by a variety of languages from those near the slot.

  “Shut up! Keep quiet!” Ears replaced eyes at the slot to catch the words more clearly.

  “… good question. What do we do with this lot? Shoot them?”

  “Without orders? I can imagine the result.” The officer sounded disgusted.

  The second officer shrugged. “Why not send them back where they came from?”

  “Six camps in six different places? Still, that’s what we ought to do.” The bitterness had returned to the officer’s voice. “Serve them right for not checking before they ship them out. They’re the ones at fault, but they’d be sure to manage to blame us.” There was a rustling of paper as the man consulted a list. “Here. We’ll shift them to Celle. To the Bergen-Belsen camp. I’ll get in touch with them and say those were the orders. They won’t know the difference, things are so fouled up these days.” The two men started to walk back down the track.

  Grossman peered up at the shadowy figure of Brodsky between him and the door. “What was it? What did they say?”

  Brodsky raised his voice so everyone in the car could hear.

  “Two SS, apparently discussing where we’re going. It seems we were headed for a place called Natzweiler, but Natzweiler was evacuated a few days ago. I guess the Allies are getting too close for our friends’ comfort.” There was a weak attempt at a cheer from someone, instantly put down by the man’s neighbors.

  Grossman felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. This was certainly no part of his precious scheme! Why hadn’t he considered the possibility that the camp might be evacuated before he reached there? Still, it didn’t neccessarily mean that all was lost—

  “What else did they say?”

  “Something about a camp called Bergen-Belsen, near Celle.” Brodsky raised his voice. “Who knows anything about a camp called Bergen-Belsen?”

  No one answered. Crouched in his little niche, Grossman felt himself getting physically ill. Bergen-Belsen! A Krankenlager—a sick camp! A camp where they send people to die. No gas chambers and the ovens are a joke. They bury their dead in huge pits and why not? There are no gas burns on them, no gunshot wounds, except for those the guards shoot for entertainment. The vast majority die of natural causes, like typhus or dysentery or starvation. Nothing for the SS to be ashamed of should the Allies uncover the pits. Bergen-Belsen! A hellhole of the worst sort, and I’ve sentenced myself to that! Idiot! Imbecile! Fool! Better the Strasbourg Group. Better even the chances of a war-crimes trial! Better anything than Belsenlager!

  There was a sudden jar as a new engine was coupled onto the string of cars. There was a harsh rasp as the bar that had been allowing the slot to furnish at least a little air was suddenly withdrawn. The door slammed shut; then there was the sound of a spike being hammered into the hasp, locking them in. The cars began to move, gradually picking up speed until once more they were bumping and jostling about, and the stifling heat began to build up, together with the overpowering stench. Men began to faint, taking others down with them; those above took advantage of the additional room to sit on the fallen, crushing them with their weight. Grossman sensed rather than saw the large body of Max Brodsky braced against the side of the car, forming a shelter for him, the boy, and the old man against the pressure of the others in the car. He heard Brodsky’s voice.

  “We’ve come through other camps, we’ll come through this one, too.” There was grim promise in the deep voice. “Next year in Jerusalem …”

  More likely next year in hell, Grossman thought. He closed his eyes and listened to the clack of the wheels over the rail joints. Bergen, they said. Ber-gen, Bel-sen, ber-gen, bel-sen, bergen, belsen, bergen belsen, bergen belsen, bergenbelsen, bergenbelsen, bergenbelsen bergenbelsenbergenbelsenbergenbelsen …

  God!

  They arrived in Celle in midafternoon. There was a hammering on the door, the same deafening clangor
they had heard before, a muffled cry of Zuruckbehalten! Zuruckbehalten! from outside. The door was quickly run back. Those inside near the door fought to keep their balance, gulping the sweet air, staring blindly outside, made sightless by the sudden light, fighting the pressure from behind. The old man, dead many hours, tilted forward slowly into the door opening and toppled to the tracks. The chatter of a machine gun responded instantly, making the scrawny body jerk in almost life-like imitation. The guard who had fired the gun swept the muzzle upward, fanning it across the opening threateningly. An officer walked quickly down the line, calling out:

  “Heraus kommen! Heratts kommen! Langsam! Slowly! Get down! Fall in line!”

  They climbed down stiffly, those who were still alive, and lined up in ragged formation alongside the track, looking down the line and seeing other men climb down from similar cars. The last ones to reach the door of their particular car were ordered to go back and drag the dead bodies to the opening, where other prisoners were assigned to handle them. The bodies were directed to be taken across several tracks and piled up beside a fence that separated the freight yard from the town of Celle. From Grossman’s car eighteen bodies were taken in addition to the old man; the boy, he saw, was among them. In the night someone had pushed the youngster to the rear to try for air at the small crack. Through the mesh of the fence several women and children stared at them expressionlessly; they might have been watching the unloading of a cattle car, or a circus.

  The guards were walking up and down the line, their machine pistols at the ready, herding the men into files of two. Grossman was pushed up against Brodsky; he looked at him, seeing the man for the first time in proper light. Brodsky was tall, several inches taller than he was, and unlike most of the other prisoners he stood erect and did not stoop. His battered face was thinner than it had first appeared, and although Grossman guessed that the man was no more than thirty years old, the stubble of his beard was streaked with gray. His clothes hung on his shoulders as from a coat hanger, and the huge fists, when seen relaxed and hanging at his side, were large in size but that was all; they looked like bags of bones dangling from his wrists. But it was the eyes, now staring at the boy’s body being added to the pile by the fence, that were most impressive. They were gray, set deep in the sunken squarish skull, seldom blinking, steady on whatever they were studying. At the moment they were filled with sadness.

  A young lieutenant appeared at the door of the guard’s van at the end of the train. He leaned over a short railing, raising a bullhorn to his mouth. His voice cracked as he began to speak, but firmed as he went along.

  “You will be marched to the camp! Any outbreak will be instantly punished! You will march four abreast! Stragglers will be shot! Is it understood!” He made it a statement, not a question. “You will be marched to the camp! Any outbreak will be instantly punished! You will march four—”

  His voice was suddenly drowned out in the deep baying of an air-raid siren, repeated over and over again in almost hysterical shrieks, as if the person operating it knew the warning was late and was trying to make up for its tardiness in volume. The prisoners stared at each other in alarm, and then cringed as the first bombs were dropped a mile or so away. The trackage there lifted itself in the air as if in slow motion, hesitated a moment, and then crumpled to earth, torn and twisted. The planes were approaching rapidly, low-flying fighters rigged with a few sticks of bombs each, coming in under the radar screen, taking the town by surprise. Their wings waggled as they dove, releasing the bombs. The guards swung their machine guns up and around, firing as rapidly as they could, and then ran for cover as the planes passed over with a deafening roar. The men in line wavered and then broke in panic, scattering, seeking the protection of the boxcars, some rolling frantically under them, others trying to scramble back inside. The guards in equal panic raked the running men with machine-gun fire, and then dove for protection themselves, clutching their guns to their chests, flinching at each explosion as the planes banked to return for a second strike. The air was filled with the cruummmpppp! cruummmpppp! cruummmppp! of the explosions. Boxcars lurched and then disintegrated, boards flying through the air, steel tortured, ripped; trucks were twisted from the tracks, upended, wheels spinning. A car with fuel went up with a loud whooosh, searing the men under it to coals. Bodies were tossed through the air. They looked like dolls thrown about by a spiteful child.

  At the first explosion Grossman felt himself being propelled, half-pushed, half-dragged toward the far fence and the pile of corpses there. Brodsky was bent over, urging him on; a closer explosion half-threw the two men onto the pile. They rolled over the dead, wedging themselves between the bodies and the fence, half-stunned, looking at the continuing scene of destruction in horrored disbelief. Grossman found himself swept with fury, screaming curses. Didn’t the airmen see the striped pajama uniforms? Didn’t they know who they were bombing? Or didn’t they care? Schlossberg was right; the Allies would bomb even their own if there were a few Germans there!

  As suddenly as it had started the bombing ended and the planes were merely small specks in the afternoon sky. Behind them they left the twisted rails, the tortured earth, the burning cars, and the endless dead in every posture of ultimate surrender. The young officer appeared from beneath the guard’s van, which miraculously had not been hit. He brushed off his knees and raised his bullhorn. Those guards not killed also appeared, their machine guns once more at the ready, their fingers trembling on the triggers. Despite the officer’s attempted look of control, his voice was tinged with hysteria, amplified by the bullhorn.

  “In line! In line! The first one who attempts to take advantage will be shot! Instantly! In line! In line! Schnell! Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!”

  The survivors slowly brought themselves together, climbing over the shattered corpses, avoiding in dazed fashion the burning planks of the boxcars scattered about the yard, coming to stand dully beside the ripped track. Grossman looked about, shuddering. There were only about a hundred left of what had seemed to be almost a thousand when they had climbed down from the cars only moments before; the rest were lying where they had fallen, in every imaginable grotesque violation of bodily dignity. The officer walked nervously down the ragged line of men and then walked back to the head of the line. The guards stood well back, their guns trained on the line.

  The bullhorn came up.

  “March!”

  It was evening and a pale listless moon was visible in the darkening sky when they arrived, trembling with fatigue. Camp One of the Bergen-Belsen complex looked like most of the other camps: wired-off compounds, each with its large compliment of wooden shacks scattered between pine trees, the ground flat and muddy, the watchtowers shoddy but well armed, the latrines represented by the open ditches back from the wire in each area. The marching men came into the compound under the plain sign “Bergen Lager” and came to a halt, catching their breath. Fourteen men had died on the march either from exhaustion or from being shot when pleading for a moment’s rest.

  Across the road from where the men stood, behind a separate wired-in area, a naked woman came from her shack, squatted obscenely over a ditch, relieved herself, wiped herself with her fingers, and then wiped her fingers in the mud, and walked back inside, making no attempt to cover herself. Grossman shuddered. He had never thought the day would come when he would have absolutely no sexual feeling at sight of a naked woman; but then, he told himself, these aren’t women. These are animals and so they behave like animals.

  The officer who had accompanied them from Celle, the young lieutenant, came from the command barrack with an SS major. The two stood talking, the major looking irritated by their discussion.

  “We have no papers on them,” the lieutenant said apologetically. “Everything was lost in the bombing.”

  The major shrugged, trying to sound philosophic about it.

  “We’ll sort them out in the morning,” he said, although he felt more prisoners were an imposition on him. “In the mea
ntime we’ll put a few in each of the first thirty barracks in Area Three in Camp One. Those are the barracks with the highest mortality; there’s plenty of room.”

  He called over an adjutant, spoke to him authoritatively for a few moments, and then disappeared into the command barrack, where he had been interrupted in the midst of an important card game. The adjutant barked orders; guards led the file of prisoners away, stopping at each barracks to shove three or four men inside.

  In the gloom of the windowless room, Grossman could make out the curious eyes of the inmates lying on their tiered bunks, staring at the newcomers. Like cats in the dark, he thought, or rats—and suddenly received a vicious jab in the ribs. He turned in anger to face a Kapo, a prisoner who kept other prisoners in line and earned special privileges for doing so. A whip was curled threateningly in the Kapo’s hand, the butt held ready for another jab. The Kapo was smiling coldly, his small eyes alive with delight that this prisoner apparently was one who could be provoked into asking for the business end of the lash, or even to being sent out to be shot.

  “Climb, you Jew bastard! Up, you Jew turd! What do you want? An elevator to your suite? Top tier, Jew pig! Up! Up!”

  Another vicious jab with the whip butt and Grossman felt a blinding fury sweep him. This was too much! To be pushed and insulted by another prisoner, a brute from some eastern country, a Russian, or a Pole, or a Lithuanian, to touch him like this? Him? There was a sudden painful grip of Brodsky’s fingers biting through the thin uniform sleeve on one side. On the other, little Wolf was hissing at him through clenched teeth.