by Lily Brett
“Laugh at,” Ruth said, “is where you have slipped up. Laugh with, maybe.” Ruth heard a series of groans and grunts. “Scheisse,” Höss said, “I will never get to Himmel if I make bad mistakes like this.”
“I know what scheisse means,” Ruth said. “Shit.”
“I did not mean to say scheisse, and I did not mean to say laugh at.”
Höss said. “I meant to say laugh with, of course.”
“Of course,” Ruth said.
“I have not managed to graduate yet from the sensitivity-training class in Zweites Himmel’s Lager,” Höss said. “It is a requirement, a prerequisite that one graduates from this class before they will even consider a request for transfer to Himmel, to heaven. I have studied this class for fifty-one years and eight months.
“They forced me to enroll the day after my execution. Sensitivity training. What a subject. It was not very sensitive of the Polish military tribunal to decide that I should be executed in Auschwitz, right next to the house where I lived with my wife and five children. Only two of these tribunal members are up here, with me. I have looked for the others.”
Ruth realized, with a shock, that she no longer felt ill. She felt almost normal. Suddenly, it seemed normal to be talking to someone who wasn’t there. Something must be wrong with her, she thought.
“Why can I hear you?” she said to Höss.
“Some people are more sensitive to what is around them than others,”
he said. “You are sensitive. You would probably pass the sensitivity-training class that I have this trouble with. Being able to hear people who have departed is just an ordinary aspect of sensitivity. There is nothing out of the ordinary about this ability. It is a sensitivity. I know a lot about sensitivity.
Don’t forget I have studied the subject for nearly fifty-two years.”
“ ‘Departed’ is a stupid word,” Ruth said. “People die, they don’t depart. Anyway, you don’t know that much about sensitivity. You fail the class year after year.”
[ 6 6 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“They discriminate against me,” Höss said. “The judges, as soon as they see me, they say, ‘fail.’ I see plenty of unintelligent people who pass this class. And I can see that I am more sensitive. I can definitely sense more things than I used to. I can sense, I think, that you have an understanding of what has made you so sensitive.”
“What are you talking about?” Ruth said. She knew that she was always interpreting and translating words and actions, always exploring and observing facial expressions and physical gestures.
“I am talking about sensitivity,” Höss said. “It is a very irritating topic.
‘You are so sensitive,’ someone said to Himmler recently. Of course you know Himmler, Miss Rothwax?”
“You know my name?” Ruth said.
“Of course I know your name,” said Höss. “A name is the easiest thing to know about a person. I was talking, was I not, about Himmler. Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS. The second most powerful man in Nazi Germany. Sensitive indeed! Just because he is a small man who looks like a bank clerk, they think he is sensitive.” Höss sighed. “Nobody talks to me, here. For years nobody has talked to me. Even my former colleagues pretend that they do not know me.”
Ruth realized that she had been blinking her eyes and tapping her leg rapidly. She wondered if Höss had noticed.
“What is that action you are making with your leg?” Höss said.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just a nervous mannerism.” She steadied her leg. “Oh God,” she said. “I have to go. I have to meet my father for breakfast.” She started to walk back to the hotel. She felt surprisingly well.
“God?” Höss said. “Surely you do not believe in God? Not after what you have seen?”
“What did I see?” Ruth said. “I wasn’t there.”
“Sometimes you do not have to be in a place in order to see,” Höss said.
“I think that you know this.”
“That’s absurd,” Ruth said. “I only know a fraction of what happened to my mother and father.”
“You do not have to know everything in order to know that there is no God,” Höss said.
“Funny, that’s what my mother said, ‘There is no God,’ ” said Ruth.
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 6 7 ]
“If there was a God,” Höss said, “do you think that I would speak about him in this way? Of course I would not. It would ensure that I would never obtain a place in heaven.”
Ruth looked up at the sky. The whole time that she had been talking to Höss she had been looking at her feet.
“You cannot see me,” Höss said to her. “And you will not be able to see me until you come to Zweites Himmel’s Lager. But I do not know if this will be your destination. Maybe you will go to Himmel? And in Himmel, people cannot see into Zweites Himmel’s Lager. In Himmel, people are spared those sights that are too disturbing.”
Ruth looked back down at her feet. Her feet looked just the same. The same as they were before she was involved in this conversation with Rudolf Höss, SS-Obersturmbannführer. Her black and green Nike Air Max shoes were still slightly spotted with mud from her run yesterday in the Saxon Gardens. Her socks were still just socks. Part of her had, briefly, wondered if she had died. She patted her face. Her face was warm, despite the cold.
She felt her hips. They were still the large hips she was always trying to diminish.
“Let me get back to why I lost my faith,” Höss said.
“Maybe I don’t want to hear about it?” Ruth said.
“I think you can be truthful with me,” Höss said. “You want to know about me. I can see it on your face. I had my reasons for choosing you.
Even though I am restless, with not too much to do, in Zweites Himmel’s Lager, I would not waste my time with just anybody. I chose you because I knew that you wanted to know.”
Höss cleared his throat. Ruth found it interesting, that in hell, you still had to clear your throat. It added validity to Höss’s claim that he could still feel his bones. If you couldn’t feel your vocal cords, why would you clear your throat? Höss must be telling the truth about that, she thought.
“I was thirteen years old when I lost my faith in God,” Höss said. “This came about as a result of a completely innocent episode in my life. I accidentally pushed one of the boys in my class, at school, down the stairs and he broke his ankle. You can imagine how many hundreds of schoolboys had fallen, without harming themselves, down those stairs. I myself fell down those very stairs and was not hurt. I was very unlucky that this boy was hurt.”
[ 6 8 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“I went to confession as I did every week,” Höss said. “Are you listening?”
“I thought you could tell whether I was listening or not,” Ruth said.
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“I went to confession,” Höss said, “and I confessed the whole episode of the accident. At home, I said nothing. I didn’t want to spoil my mother’s and father’s Sunday. Coincidentally, the priest that I confessed to happened to be a close friend of my father, and he happened to come to our house for dinner that night.
“The priest, in a betrayal that I could not have dreamed about, told my father about the incident,” Höss said. “My father, of course, punished me.
I was overcome. Quite stricken and brokenhearted. Not from the punishment, but on account of this betrayal.
“My whole faith in the most sacred nature of the priesthood was destroyed,” Höss said. “I could no longer consider the priesthood as being worthy of my trust. I gave up going to confession, completely.”
“It’s just as well you gave up going to confession,” Ruth said.
“Why do you say this?” Höss asked.
“Because your confessions would have been very lengthy. They would have occupied an awful lot of your life.”
&
nbsp; “I see what you mean,” Höss said. “From that day I stopped believing that God heard my prayers. My father, I told you, was a devout Catholic.
He always let me know in most adamant terms that he expected me to become a priest. My father died suddenly the year after the school stairs incident. I cannot in fact remember being very much affected by his death.
Soon the war started and I wanted to go to the front. I had soldier’s blood in my veins. I could listen to soldiers’ stories of the front, for hours. I never got bored. My relatives wanted to ship me off to a training college for missionaries. My mother didn’t want me to go to the front; she, too, thought I was destined for the priesthood. But I am an obstinate person, and I finally managed to join the regiment in which my father and my grandfather had served. I was fifteen years old.”
“A child prodigy,” Ruth said.
“Thank you,” said Höss. “For me, being a soldier was very much a calling. The first time I shot a man, I was ice calm. I was completely composed.
I said to myself: ‘My first dead man.’ For me, the spell was broken.”
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 6 9 ]
“The spell of thinking that to kill is difficult?” Ruth said.
“Precisely,” said Höss. “I think you know something yourself about spells and superstitions and illusions.”
“I know nothing about killing people,” Ruth said.
“During the war, I kept thinking about my parents’ desire for me to be a priest,” Höss said. “I was, as you know, disillusioned about the priesthood, but even if this had not been the case I would have questioned my suitability for the priesthood. In the last letter my mother wrote me, before she died, she told me never to forget the path my father had chosen for me.
My guardians and in fact all of my relatives pressured me to go immediately to a training college for priests. I did explain, did I not, that the war I am referring to is of course the war before the one in which your parents were involved.”
“That’s the best use of the word ‘involved’ that I’ve ever heard,” Ruth said. “My parents were not ‘involved.’ My mother was starved and beaten and raped and brutalized in about as many ways as your people could devise. I don’t think that that could be termed ‘involved.’ You’ll have to improve your English.”
Ruth felt herself feeling shaky again. “You are very concerned about words, aren’t you?” Höss said.
“Some words make me feel sick,” she said.
“It was not an easy time for me, this time that I am talking about,” Höss said. “The full significance of my mother’s death hit me, just after she died.
I realized that I no longer had a home. My relatives had divided out our possessions. They were so sure that I would become a missionary and my sisters would remain in the convent to which they had been sent. I knew then that I would have to battle my way through the world alone.”
Ruth looked around her. Krakowskie Przedmiescie was quite crowded now. She must look odd, she thought. She must look as though she was talking to herself. The Poles thought her exercise clothes were odd enough.
Now she must look like someone from another planet.
“You are not listening to me,” Höss said. “I can see you are concerned with what other people think of you.”
“Well, I must look pretty strange,” Ruth said.
“You do not need to be self-conscious,” Höss said. “Nobody else can hear what I am saying to you.”
[ 7 0 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“They can hear me,” Ruth said. “I obviously look as though I’m talking to myself.”
“When you speak to me, it is not so apparent to other people,” Höss said.
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Ruth.
“Not very much in the world makes sense,” Höss said, “I think you know that.” Ruth’s head started to spin. She felt exhausted. “Don’t worry,”
Höss said. “You worry more than is strictly necessary. You will be all right.
Nobody will arrest you. I was arrested myself for a very unfortunate incident when I was a young man. It was June 28, 1923. I remember the date exactly. I am very good with numbers.”
“Is this a long story?” Ruth said.
“No, not at all,” said Höss. “I was in the Freikorps. The Freikorps were volunteer soldiers who were formed to guard the frontiers and to prevent internal disturbance.”
“ ‘Internal disturbance,’ ” Ruth said. “ ‘Internal disturbance’ sounds like a gastric disorder.” What a stupid thing to say, she thought. She could tell that she was no longer thinking clearly. She had to get back to the hotel.
“What a stupid thing to say,” Höss said. “I will ignore it. The German government needed the Freikorps for those situations in which the police force—and later on the army—was too weak to deal with the trouble. The result was that they could not punish offenses committed by the Freikorps, so we administered our own justice. Treachery was punished by death, and there were many traitors. Our murder trials were modeled after the Vehmgericht, medieval courts that sat and passed sentence in secret. This worked very well for us. But I was unlucky. A Vehmgericht murder trial in which I was involved became known, and I was brought to trial at the state court for the Defense of the Republic. We had killed a man who had betrayed one of us to the French. Schlageter, who was betrayed, was as a matter of fact an old comrade of mine.”
“Could you edit this story?” Ruth said. “I’m not feeling well.” Why was she listening to him at all? Surely she could just walk back to the hotel.
“I will be brief,” Höss said, “you do not look well. I was, of course, there when the traitor was killed. But I was most certainly not the ring-leader. During our interrogation I saw that the comrade who did the actual killing would be incriminated by my testimony so I took the blame myself.”
T O O M A N Y M E N
[ 7 1 ]
“I wondered how long it would take you to get on to your innocence again,” Ruth said. “First, you accidentally pushed a boy downstairs, now you say you’re innocent of a murder. I can’t wait to hear what else you are going to come up with.”
“How can you speak to me in this way?” Höss said. “I am trying to tell you the story of my innermost being. The psychological heights and depths of my life.”
“What a prospect,” Ruth said.
“I am trying to be as truthful as I can,” said Höss.
“I can appreciate how hard that is for you,” Ruth said. Höss didn’t seem to notice the irony in her voice.
“It is painful for me,” Höss said. “Remember that in Zweites Himmel’s Lager we feel pain.”
“That is one of the most interesting things you’ve said to me,” Ruth said. “I wouldn’t forget that.”
“On March 15, 1924,” Höss said, “I was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for the murder of this traitor. Let me tell you that serving a sentence in a Russian prison is not an experience that I would recommend. As a political prisoner I was kept in solitary confinement. This was what saved me.
“I watched my fellow inmates from my window. I watched them exercise in the courtyard. I watched them in the washhouses or getting their hair cut. I listened to them talking to each other every night. I listened to their warped minds, to their monstrous thoughts, their depravities, their odiousness, and their aberrations. A world I did not know existed opened before my eyes. I had the time, in prison, to reflect on my life. To think about mistakes I had made and weaknesses that I had shown.
“I made a promise to myself. I would do everything in my power to ensure that the future would be as rich and rewarding for me as possible. I slowly adjusted, to the crude language of the prison guards and to the des-picable, vile, squalid, and sordid language of the prisoners. But I could never adjust to the cynicism with which the prisoners treated all things of beauty. They used their reprehensible, filthy language to describe things that many men view as sacred. I learned,
too, from observing myself, that a sensitive prisoner suffers more from unjustified hostile spiteful words than from any physical cruelty.”
[ 7 2 ]
L I L Y B R E T T
“Fuck, shit, asshole, dickhead, piss face,” Ruth shouted. The words flew out of her mouth and left her stunned. Where had they come from?
“Motherfucker,” she shouted at Höss.
“This does not offend me,” Höss said. Ruth thought that she detected a puritanical pinch to his consonants and syllables.
“I think you must be feeling better,” said Höss. “The color in your face is greatly improved.” Ruth didn’t answer. “I had a very upsetting time at the end of my second year in prison,” Höss said. “I became unable to eat or to sleep. I could not concentrate on anything, and all day I paced up and down in my cell. The doctor diagnosed it as prison psychosis. I was given tranquilizers and put on an invalid diet. One night I saw my dead parents standing next to me. I spoke with them. I have never told anyone at all about this episode.”
“I’ve got to go,” Ruth said. “I have to have a shower and change my clothes before I meet my father for breakfast.”
“It is not very sensitive of you to choose this moment to leave,” Höss said. “Anyway, I was lucky. A majority was created in the Reichstag by a coalition of the extreme right and the extreme left when I still had five years of my sentence left to serve. Both parties wanted political prisoners to be set free. An amnesty act was passed on July 14, 1928. I was a free man.”
“Hooray,” said Ruth.
“It is useless to use sarcasm,” Höss said. “It does not affect me. The freedom was not so easy for me, at first. I went to Berlin. Kind friends there insisted I go to films and theater and all sorts of parties. It really was too much for me. I longed for peace. I needed to get away from the noise and the rush of the city. I was lucky. After ten days I left Berlin to take up a job as an agricultural officer. I wanted to live on the land. I wanted to rebuild Germany. In prison I had decided that I would fight and work for one thing only. To own my own farm, and to live there with a large and healthy family.”
