The Edit

by J Sydney Jones

  That’s why I loved him so, we could talk like that, as equals. We made love as equals, too. Side by side. He used to look into my eyes as he climaxed. He never closed them, never shut me out. He was always aware of that other human he was touching even as he became lost in the sensations of touch. I remember his eyes at those times: almost pleading. And surprised! It’s the sort of surprise I imagine to feel at death. So this is what it is like? This slipping away. This jerk of the body as before sleep.

  Someone on the boxcar emitted a noxious sound; some men laughed at it. I realized I had not heard a word Frau Gigi had been saying for the past several minutes.

  One could not tell when daylight ended and night began, so dark was it in the cattle car. After what seemed hours of huddling together on the floor, taking turns holding the children, the husband suggested we adults sleep in shifts. He allowed me and his wife the first sleep. By this time, we were all terribly thirsty, for they had shared some of the wurst they had brought along. But no one had thought to bring water with them. Also, I had a terrific need now to use the facilities; there were none.

  We shall soon be stopping, the husband assured us. That is one thing we can trust the Germans for: efficiency. He laughed. They will have this thing organized.

  I curled around the little boy, and in his sleep, he snuggled closer to me, sighing in a primal sort of relief at the feel of another human being next to him. I slept but did not dream. The boy twitched in his sleep and cried out. I put my hand to his brow and smoothed back his hair. It was damp with sweat, though the car itself had grown quite cold with the night. He was feverish, and I felt an instinctual fear for him.

  I speak of instinct, yet I no longer know if I should be allowed that vanity. In truth, I do not know instinct any more than I know what love is, or when love is. Was it my instinct that brought me to my husband? Was it instinct that told me he was dead long before the news arrived or that spoke to me of the new life inside of me before the doctor confirmed it? And was it instinct or despair that made me trade that new life? Or simply another vanity?

  I had no conception of time or distance. The rattling of the boxcar made it seem we were going quite slowly, as if through shunting yards. Several times we stopped for hours on end, it seemed. Hope would rise then that we would be allowed to use the facilities, or that food and water would be supplied. I checked the boy’s fever periodically, and the back of his neck. Both were clammy to the touch, and he whimpered once when I touched him behind his ear. There was a swelling there.

  The train started up again, then stopped. People around me stirred in their sleep. For all any of us knew, it had only just gone dark. One loses sense of time when deprived of light. But the other senses grew more acute: the smell of fetid bodies and dirty socks grew more unbearable as people settled down to sleep; somewhere in the car someone had obviously relieved himself. The stink of excrement grew increasingly palpable, making one’s own bowels loosen in disgust. Hearing, too, became refined. Someone only two or three crumpled bodies away was drinking. That is certain. It made me all the thirstier and not just for my sake alone, but for the boy’s as well. He needed liquid to cool him. As I was thinking this, the boy gave a little shudder, a shiver, a spasm as if cold. I took off my winter coat and wrapped it around the poor little thing. I clung to him even tighter now, as if clinging to life. We slept that way for some hours.

  I was walking along the Danube Canal, my young husband at my side. White bodies, some sprawled like commas in the sun and others sitting hunched in question marks, punctuated the banks of either side of the water. Summer. Heavy, torpid heat. Those who could afford it were in the mountains. We held hands as we walked. I could feel the callus ridge above the palm of his right hand; not separate ones at the base of the fingers as one would get from usual manual labor, but one large callus stretching from index to little finger. The tram conductor’s knob, the men at the transport bureau called it. From operating the metal lever for speed and direction. The dutiful hausfrau, I knitted him warm wool mittens for the winter; mittens not for his hands but for the metal steering knob. All tram wives did so for their husbands. So many woolly tram mittens knitted over the years! He squeezed my hand and nodded at a barge coming down the canal. A dog on deck was barking at the birds flying by. It was a little dog, sturdily built, and as it barked it lunged forward on its stubby front legs. It made no movement forward for all this exertion. It kept barking and lunging forward, but stayed in place as if it were on a lead. Why should that dog make me suddenly sad? A feeling of extreme melancholy washed over me, as heavy and thick as the humid air. I knew in that instant that our lovemaking last night had created life in me.

  I squeezed my husband’s hand in return, but he was no longer there; a young boy had taken his place and on his hand there was no tram conductor’s knob. The dog barked on the passing barge; a pair of women’s bloomers hung like pennons from a clothesline on the deck. The dog barked once more, lunged, and this time he did not stay in place but went skidding over the edge of the vessel into the canal. The little boy on my hand laughed as the dog paddled its way to shore. My breasts suddenly ached; they were full of milk and the little boy had not been a baby first and so had not nursed on me. And in my breast was an ache for the man with the tram conductor’s knob who was gone forever.

  I awoke and knew two things simultaneously: We were no longer moving, and it was morning. There was a faint glow coming from outside; several lines of light shone between the boards of the boxcar’s walls. Birds were chirping nearby; their lives continued as usual, indifferent to what happened to us inside the boxcar. Others began stirring now, as well. There were grumblings about hunger and thirst, about the desperate need to relieve oneself. We still kept to our small groups; no one attempted to organize us as one body. A man of very dark and oriental appearance began pounding on the door, demanding fresh air. His shouts and pounding on the door woke the boy up. He asked me if we had arrived yet. I told him soon. The man at the door grew increasingly frantic, for no one outside had answered his calls. The echoing silence angered him; it frightened me. One man nearby tried to restrain him, but it did no good. Soon the man had enlisted others and stood on the shoulders of a fat bearded man and pounded with his fists at what looked to be a slatted transom above the sliding doors. He succeeded finally in breaking the closed slats; fresh air flooded the car and a beam of light, narrow and filled with suspended motes, shone into the car straight into the upturned face of the young boy at my side. Then a burst of shots tore the silence; the men at the door, both the fat man and the dark one who had been on his shoulders, were thrown back like marionettes and lay crumpled atop several other screaming people. Blood was everywhere. The two men were dead. Quite dead. A new smell filled our cattle car.

  We stayed at the siding all day. The men’s bodies were pulled to one corner. Sunlight now streamed in through the splintered bullet holes in the door as well as through the transom. I managed to avert my eyes from the bodies for a time, but some perversity made me finally look at the crumpled and bloody mess. The boy did not register what was happening; to him we were all a dream from which he tried valiantly to awake. He murmured and rolled about. I asked Frau Gigi if he had been sick before getting on the train. She did not remember: The night had taken its toll on her, and the shooting had completely broken her resolve. She, like all the others on the train, was only now fully awake to the enormity of our fate. A thought went through my mind: As with the men’s bodies, a perverse curiosity made me face this thought. Unruly behavior deserved some punishment, perhaps, but guards could only fire blindly into a car loaded with men, women, and children if they firmly believed there were animals inside. Quite literally, we had been relegated to the position of cattle headed to market. Worse. For cattle would be supplied water. Otherwise they would lose value. We were less than cattle in the eyes of the Nazis. And if that were the case, why should they bother to “resettle” us on the land they had promised
? Why not simply eliminate the nuisance? That was exactly what Hitler had been urging for years in his public speeches: destroy, eliminate the Jewish malignancy. Why not take his word at face value? That was the thought that perversity made me confront.

  And Frau Gigi could not remember if her boy had been sick days or minutes. Her husband stared blankly at the holes in the door. The ragged rays of light flooding through these holes mocked us by their joy and lightness. The birds began singing again. The boy shivered under my heavy coat as sweat poured from his forehead. Neighbors nearby—one of whom I knew had water—looked at his frail body guiltily, but offered no help. The death of the two men at the door had torn humanity from them, for they all were staring at the same dark thought I was. The time for self-delusion was past. Yet we were still breathing, weren’t we? We still had life. And that was the most precious thing at the moment: each of us in his own private compartment delineated by skin. Each against the other. Only others die. Any possibility for unity was gone by now. I cradled the boy in my arms and rocked him to sleep.

  All that day we remained at the siding. By midday, it was stifling inside. It was nearly spring. The sun was still weak, but it pounded on the flat roof of our boxcar. The stench inside was unbearable. Not only the old and infirm, but also the younger by now had relieved themselves in a corner. The urine drained along the floorboards. Excrement steamed in a ghastly pile. We had now fulfilled the Nazi prophecy: We had become little better, possibly worse, than cattle. A fight broke out between two men over a bit of wurst one had been hiding. No one attempted to stop it; the stronger of the two simply took the wurst from the weaker, beating his head against the floorboards until the man lay still. By the time the victim had regained consciousness, his food had been devoured. He whimpered for hours afterward. At one point, we heard men in jackboots march by the gravel siding outside; they spoke, laughed. We could not understand what they said, but it was in German. We had no idea where we were; we could have been hundreds of kilometers from Vienna or only hundreds of meters.

  Frau Gigi, her husband, and the young daughter drew into themselves, leaving me in possession of their young boy. I did not even know his name. Would my own baby, left behind yesterday, grow as old as this boy? Would he understand the risk I had taken for him? The reason? The faith in life rather than in death that had prompted my decision? Would the orphanage give him away to the authorities? There was no way to trace his birth registry; he looked the perfect Aryan, the spitting image of his father.

  They had come with the news on a Friday. I had just done the shopping and was unpacking the basket. The tram official and his wife from across the hall were suddenly at the door. Their son and daughter peeked out of their flat at us, giggled, and then ducked their heads in again. The man worked with my husband; his wife was an acquaintance, no friend. I had sat with their children at times when they went out to the light opera. I saw by their faces that something was terribly wrong. I heard the man’s words, smelled wine on his breath, registered the stain of an egg yolk on his blue tram conductor’s uniform. The woman folded her hands in front of her. One finger played with the wedding ring, turning it around and around on her finger. A radio sounded from down the hall: the call signal of the first channel on the state radio, then music by Strauss. All these things I took in, but not the content of what the man said. Though I knew the import: that my husband was dead. The baby in my stomach kicked violently as if to refute the notion. Twelve hours later, I was delivered of a baby boy. I named him after his dead father. Three months later, I answered a Gestapo summons. My baby is with the nuns of the Cistercian abbey.

  We sleep; we wake. An old lady passes gas in her sleep; a young man stares at me. The sun no longer streams in the holes; it is now on the other side of the car and the light is failing. Another day. We have survived. And now comes the long night. I think of my baby and in so doing, notice how my breasts ache for him. I feel him at my nipple feeding, suckling. Warm waves pass over my belly at the thought. The young boy I cradle wakes for a moment, his eyes wide and frightened. I soothe him with words. With a touch. He sleeps again. A man by the door says loudly that they will surely come tonight. There will be food and water. God has spoken to him, he says. Others tell him to shut up, to keep his mouth closed, to go fornicate with his god.

  It is inevitable now, I know it. I only wait for darkness to carry out fate. Only the boy matters now; it is as if he is my baby. I stand for a time; my legs have fallen asleep. The boy whimpers when I release him, but I must have circulation. The man next to me tries to crowd into the space I have allowed, but I kick at him and retrieve it. He looks at me with hatred in his eyes.

  More time. An enemy now. But so finite. The counting of it makes it unfriendly. Being aware of it makes it the foe. It is limited, therefore suspect. Cursing from others nearby. Snores. A pounding at the door from the inside. A man and woman copulate in the back of the car. She tries to stop him at first, then gives way to the feeling, her moans clearly audible. There is electricity in the car for the instant of her climax, then stillness. More snores. I sit again and instantly wet my pants. I can no longer hold it; the wet warmth is all over my legs. The standing has done it.

  Total darkness at last. Coolness descends. A fresh breeze that partially restores. My tongue has begun to swell. The dryness in my throat extends to my stomach. The man with his god by the door begins to pray in Hebrew. A thump of flesh against flesh; a groan. Then more silence. More minutes; more hours. The woman and man perform their pleasure again, her cries almost desperate as he moves on her like an animal. The boy’s breathing comes slowly, painfully it seems. I wait until I can wait no longer, until the copulating couple have finished, until those around me are no longer stirring. Then I wait a few more minutes. Quietly, I unbutton my bodice. There is already moisture at my pulsing nipples. I bring the boy’s lips to them, rub them against the nipple to agitate, to make them erect, to make the milk flow. A drop on his lips. His tongue swipes it automatically. I put his mouth to my nipple and slowly, spasmodically his lips respond. They are chapped and dry and tickle my flesh at first. They make smacking sounds, then go hard and suck against me. The milk flows. I feel my life pour into him. A warmth and exultancy spread over my middle, a gentle tingling sensation. My baby will live.

  But as quickly as this feeling comes over me, so sharply is it ripped away. The boy is dragged from my lap by the man next to me who pushes me back and takes the boy’s place. I try to resist, to scream out, but his hand is on my mouth. He is sucking the life out of me and smothering me with his hand. I feel more hands on me, on my body, ripping my blouse away. Another’s lips at my right breast: two of them chew and suck on me at once. Others hold my hands down; someone tears my skirt, my panties. I am mounted like an animal. Useless to resist. Someone beats me about the face after I bite a hand. I no longer squirm. Mouth replaces mouth; penis follows penis. But my passivity enrages them as much as my earlier struggles excited them. Fists pound at me; there is wetness in my mouth, teeth come loose; I try not to choke on them. My hair is ripped out. A kick at my body. I sense no more. I sense no more. I am back walking along the Danube Canal and my husband’s calloused hand is in mine. The dog barks on a passing barge. My baby lives inside me. …

  Early in the morning, the transport continues to the concentration camp of Mauthausen. At first light, it is pulled up to the platform. The camp orchestra is on hand to welcome the new arrivals. The “Kaiser Waltz” is the day’s selection. Music in the air, the order is given to open the doors. Stunned, weakened near-humans stumble out of the boxcars. Kapos and guards check the transports to make sure no malingerers are hiding. Three bodies are found in one of the cars: a short dark fellow and a stout bearded one, both shot to death. And a female of indeterminate years, apparently gang-raped and bludgeoned to death so that her features are unrecognizable. The camp second in command receives the news with fatalistic chagrin. After all, what can one expect from such people. Men o
n the left, he shouts, women and children on the right. …

  “This is one of your most vile fictions.”

  “I do not believe in fiction.”

  “Have you no sense of humanity, Miss O’Brien? No decency at all?”

  “It’s a report, not a creation. It happened, over and over and over.”

  “I want you to stop giving me these … these pornographic snippets.”

  “It’s history and prophecy. Can’t you see that? It’s life that’s sometimes pornographic. I only report it. You did these things in the Reich. It goes on today in cells around the world. It is called interrogation and information gathering and counterterrorism. But it is all pornography at heart. And you are the pornographer, not I.”

  “I trusted you with all this information. And what do you do? You twist it. Pervert it. Then throw it in my face. Why do you harp on that woman? You’re fixated, that’s what you are. It’s become an obsession with you.”