“Leave it be,” she snarled. “It’s my roach! You white people always tryin’ to take everything from colored folk!”
Chapter 70
That morning, at the same time Emma was preparing to head downtown to the Department of Buildings, news came via telegram from Kings County Hospital that Irene had passed away at 4:14 a.m.
Ethel doubled over and screamed.
Aubrey, who was seated at the table eating breakfast, sprang from his chair, rushed to his wife, catching her by the shoulders just as she sank to the floor.
“Ethel, what’s happened?”
“She gone, she gone, she gone!” Ethel wailed, beating the telegram against her forehead. “Why, God, why!”
Gwen appeared in the doorway. “Mummy?”
Aubrey gently pried the telegram from Ethel’s grip. After he read it, his face seemed to cave in on itself. The look he gave Gwen was the saddest expression she’d ever seen on her father’s face. It terrified her, and without knowing what had happened, she began to cry.
* * *
They did what any family does after losing a loved one: they shouldered the hurt as best they could, well aware that the pain could and probably would linger on for years.
Nearly every night, Gwen would burst into tears when she climbed into bed and glanced across the room at her sister’s empty bed. She so missed seeing her propped up on a pillow, her head covered in rollers, her face buried in the pages of her Bible.
Mealtime was hard too. If not for the radio and the scraping of silverware against the porcelain plates, there would have been no sound at all around that table.
During one of those silent meals, Ethel asked Gwen to pass the dish of roasted yams. When Ethel reached for the platter, her eyes fell on her daughter’s fingers which were fat as sausages. The platter slipped from Ethel’s hand and clattered onto the table, scattering the sliced yams across the blue eyelet tablecloth.
Aubrey sucked his teeth.
“Mummy!” Gwen exclaimed, rising from her chair, already cleaning up the mess.
Ethel’s hand hovered over the table, her fingers eternally reaching.
“What a mess,” Aubrey muttered disgustedly.
Gwen said, “Mummy, you okay?”
Aubrey’s eyes swung to his wife’s astonished face and then to the reaching fingers. “Ethel?”
“Right in my face, right under my nose. How could I have been so blind? You . . .” Ethel fell back into her chair, the rest of the words dissolving on her tongue.
Gwen backed away from the table, lips trembling, wringing her hands.
Ethel swallowed. “Who breed you?”
Aubrey straightened his back and frowned. “What’s that you said, Ethel?”
Gwen’s eyes began to water.
Ethel stood, planted her palms on the table, and hissed, “I said, who breed you?”
Chapter 71
Beyond the barbed-wire fence of Buchenwald, nestled on a slope dotted with spruce trees, sat a brown and redbrick house with crowstepped gables and a wooden front door.
Twice a day, when the sun made its ascent and descent, its rays struck the door’s brass hardware, creating shards of multicolored light. The moment was always magical, reminding even the most disheartened that anything was possible, even the creation of rainbows without the benefit of water.
The first time Harlan saw the woman who lived in that house, he was trudging to the latrines, having been ordered there along with six others. He stopped to watch her gallop across the property atop a white mare, mesmerized by her bouncing blond hair. The black leather crop she held was fitted with a red glass bauble shaped like an Asscher-cut diamond. It looked more like a scepter than a jockey whip.
The scene was both breathtaking and bewildering. Harlan gawked until someone behind him warned in a hushed and panicked voice, “Don’t look, drop your eyes!”
He realized then that she was the one the prisoners whispered about: Ilse Koch, the commandant’s wife, the Bitch of Buchenwald. Heart-shaped face, intense blue eyes—an attractive woman who didn’t look like she had an ounce of devil in her.
Harlan lowered his eyes and continued to the latrines where a sewage pipe had ruptured, creating a sinkhole large enough to hold eight men. The stench was ungodly. His stomach lurched; he bent over and emptied his guts. Four other men did the same.
“Dig!” one soldier barked from behind the handkerchief he had pressed over his nose and mouth.
Harlan righted himself, dragged the sleeve of his uniform over his mouth, and looked stupidly around for a shovel. The other men jumped obediently into the hole and began clawing at the filth with their hands. After a moment, Harlan reluctantly joined them.
Someone gasped. Harlan looked into the horrified face of the man standing beside him and followed his eyes down to a point just inches from their feet. Jutting from the broken pipe were human bones sagging with burned flesh that bore an eerie resemblance to scorched, scalloped lace.
Chapter 72
October swooped down on Buchenwald like a famished crow, gobbling up all the summer flowers. Within weeks, the green leaves of the red beech trees faded to brown, curled, and drifted to the ground.
Every day more prisoners were killed or died. Every day new ones arrived. Every day Harlan wondered why he hadn’t yet gone mad.
By then the soldiers were calling him Jesse Owens, after the black American track-and-field athlete who’d gone to Berlin in 1936 and had embarrassed Hitler by winning four Olympic gold medals.
Harlan hadn’t seen Lizard since the day they’d first arrived. He feared Lizard might be dead, prayed that he wasn’t. When Lizard shuffled past him in the mess hall one afternoon, Harlan couldn’t hide his joy. He leaped off the ration line, caught Lizard by the arm, and pulled him to his chest in an awkward hug. “It’s so good to see you.”
Sapling thin, Lizard’s complexion had taken on a gray tint. Not only that, it was if he had molted—his skin was so thin, it seemed transparent.
Lizard blinked at him.
“Hey, man, it’s me, Harlan.”
Lizard swayed, blinking again. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he mumbled sluggishly.
Harlan cast a puzzled glance at the yellow star on Lizard’s shirt. As the question formed on his tongue, a soldier came charging toward them.
“Weitergehen!” His demand soared above the din of metal spoons scraping the bottoms of metal bowls.
Harlan shook his friend’s arm. “Lizard, you gotta hold it together, man. You hear me? You gotta hang on, brother, you hear me?”
Lizard’s head bounced. “Uh-huh. Hold it together.”
Watching the swiftly approaching soldier, Harlan pushed Lizard toward the door and rejoined the line.
* * *
One morning Harlan woke, glanced out the window, and spied a large object at the center of the square covered with a black tarp.
What is that? Where did it come from?
No one had answers.
They lined up as usual, waiting for the day’s cruelty to begin.
After two hours, the wind picked up, thrashing the tarp. The sound was annoying, but the sight of it—black canvas flailing like the devil’s cape—was even more unnerving.
Three hours later, an officer ordered the tarp removed. The four prisoners charged with the duty did fierce battle with the weight of the covering and the wind. Just when Harlan thought Mother Nature would win, the tarp came flying off, revealing the horror beneath.
He’d seen it in Westerns and depicted in comic strips. Just looking at it made him gasp for air: the gallows was large enough to hang four men at one time.
* * *
Ilse, astride her horse, appeared just after noon. The prisoners had had neither breakfast nor lunch. Waving away the helping hands of soldiers who rushed to assist her, Ilse skillfully dismounted the beast in one fluid move.
She circled the gallows, admiring the workmanship, head nodding with satisfaction, her fingers stroking the red bauble on the end o
f her riding crop like a good luck charm.
On the platform, her boots clomped across the wooden floor, reverberating inside the prisoners’ rib cages. Ilse gave each beam a sturdy shake and tugged roughly on the looped ropes. She did all of this with a cheerful smile on her face.
Ilse summoned a soldier and spoke to him in a whisper. The prisoners strained to hear but were unable to catch a word.
The soldier then turned and signaled to the guard in the watchtower. A second later the sirens began to wail.
Back on the ground, Ilse strolled casually from one prisoner to the next, whacking her jockey whip against her thigh.
The sirens continued to howl.
Twenty minutes, thirty, forty-five.
Finally, Ilse raised her whip into the air, and the sirens fell silent. “That one,” she said, aiming her whip at the unlucky soul.
Harlan craned to see who it was, but from his vantage the man’s face was unrecognizable.
The prisoner was dragged from the line and thrown onto the gallows’ steps. He lay there, still as death, until a soldier brought his boot heel down on his head. Shrieking, the prisoner grabbed his head and flopped around like a fish until the soldier pulled him onto the platform and ordered him to stand behind the middle noose.
Ilse calmly followed, her jockey whip tucked securely beneath her arm. Sliding her free hand through the noose, she splayed her fingers, waggled them at the prisoner, and then laughed in a high-pitched titter that raised the hairs on Harlan’s neck.
Another soldier, carrying a chair, jogged up the stairs and placed it before the poor soul.
Harlan held his breath, waiting for the man to spring up and fight for his life. But the man did nothing. He just stood there, shoulders hunched, head lolling like a weight on his neck.
The soldier grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at his fellow inmates.
It was Lizard.
“No, no, no,” trickled from Harlan’s mouth.
“Eins . . . zwei . . . drei!”
The soldiers lifted Lizard onto the chair, slipped the noose over his head, and pulled the knot. Lizard’s knees buckled, the rope cut into his Adam’s apple. His eyes bulged—gagging, he clawed savagely at the rope, locked his knees, and held his weight on his tiptoes.
Ilse circled, smiling, pleased with his struggle to survive. Minutes later, she hopped off the platform, mounted her horse, and rode away.
One hour. Two. Three.
“Hold on, Lizard, hold on,” Harlan chanted.
The sun moved west, dragging long, dark shadows across the prison grounds. The temperature plunged; prisoners rubbed their arms, shivering.
Lizard held on.
A woman crumpled to the ground; her husband threw himself protectively over her unconscious body. The soldiers beat them both and dragged them away.
At six o’clock Ilse returned on foot, adorned in a sweeping burgundy dress embroidered with purple running vines.
On the platform, she rounded the chair, gripped the backrest, and gave it a little shake.
Lizard wobbled. Harlan inhaled so abruptly the air made a whistling sound down his throat.
Laughing with childish glee, she shook the chair again, this time with vigor. Lizard rocked forward, wheezing. The arteries in his neck bulged, his face reddened, and his eyes dripped water.
With each rattle, the chair slid backward a little bit more, until his toes balanced on the edge of the seat, his eyes looking as if they might explode from their sockets. Harlan wrapped his arms around his shoulders, dropped his chin onto his chest, and closed his eyes.
Ilse pulled the chair away. Lizard’s feet paddled the air and then wilted.
* * *
They left his body there for weeks, rotting away in full sight.
The birds roosted on his head, night animals gorged themselves on his flesh, insects laid eggs in his ears.
Finally, in late November, when the chilly north winds rolled over the hills, undressing the trees, scattering leaves, the prisoners were ordered to take down what remained of Lizard.
Days later, December arrived bearing soft snow.
Chapter 73
On Christmas Eve morning, scents of roasted goose, carp, and sour cabbage mingled with fragrant Obatzda and marzipan wafted down from the Koch home, into the yard of the teeth-clattering prisoners turning blue from the gnawing cold.
At four o’ clock, before the sun faded away, Ilse came down to the yard in a chauffeured black Mercedes-Benz, bearing baskets of cookies, as if she were St. Nick. Wrapped in fur, puffing on a cigarette, she watched from the warmth of the car as the soldiers distributed the treats amongst the prisoners.
The cookies, shaped like swastikas, were as large as a man’s palm. Harlan brought the treat to his nose and sniffed. He hadn’t smelled anything that appetizing in a long time. His stomach groaned with longing, but he was already thinking about throwing the cookie to the ground and stomping it to crumbs. She had, after all, murdered his best friend and brother. Eating the cookie would be like an act of forgiveness and Harlan could never forgive her.
But still . . .
It wasn’t just Christmas Eve; it was also his birthday. After all he’d been through—all he continued to suffer—didn’t he deserve a gift? Even one molded into this heinous image?
Harlan shook his head. Held the cookie in the air, released one finger and then another. In his mind, he saw the cookie hurtling to the frozen ground. But his body refused to comply. His thumb and index finger remained tightly clamped to the pastry.
Harlan looked down at himself; he was so emaciated that he could press his hands into his back and feel his grumbling stomach. And he wasn’t sleeping; his dreams were filled with nightmares of Lizard—more than a hundred of him, swinging from ropes dangling from oblivion. On top of that, Darlene had returned, flocking through the darkness of his sleep, batting wings bright with flames.
He raised his head, mumbled an apology to the heavens, and devoured the cookie in two bites.
The sweet taste still in his mouth, Harlan broke into sobs.
Chapter 74
No one was more surprised than Gwen when she went into the maternity ward on December 28, 1940 and delivered not one baby, but two.
A set of twin boys.
Gwen didn’t even have one boy’s name, let alone two. She looked pitifully at her mother who was seated beside her hospital bed. “What do you think I should name them?”
Ethel was, at that moment, rifling through her purse in search of the bottle of nerve pills prescribed by the family doctor. It had all been too much—Irene’s death and Gwen’s pregnancy. Ethel had developed a twitching eye and then her hair began to shed. Other people drop weight, but not Ethel—she put on twenty pounds and was diagnosed with hypertension and diabetes. Her emotions swung between episodes of wailing grief and raging anger.
“What?” Ethel hummed absently as she emptied the contents of the purse onto her lap. Two quarters, a stick of gum, a wallet, and a prayer card. No pills. “I must have left them at home,” she mumbled to herself, shoveling the items back into her purse.
“Mummy?” Gwen called softly.
“Yes.”
“I was asking what you think I should name them.”
Ethel tapped her finger against the silver clasp of her purse. “Well, the Bible has some very good names.”
“Yes, I guess.”
“Um, your father always wanted a son. It would be nice to name one after him.”
Gwen smiled. “I like that idea.”
“The other one, you could name after his father.”
Gwen’s face turned to stone. She had refused to divulge the name of the father, not even when Ethel flew at her with her fists, lashed her with the iron’s cord, or threw her and her clothes into the hallway, shrieking that she never wanted to see her again. Not even then would Gwen give Harlan’s name, and she wouldn’t give it now.
Ethel sucked her teeth. “Anyway, it was just a suggestion.”
> Gwen rolled the bedsheet in her hands. “What’s the name of that man who lives in apartment 3C?”
Ethel thought for a moment. “Mr. Henderson?”
“Yes, Henderson. That’s a nice name.”
Ethel shrugged. “I guess it’s okay. His first name is better, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Robert.”
“Robert? Hmmm. Bobby for short.”
“I guess.”
Mother and daughter continued to mull over possible names until the nurse wheeled the babies in for their afternoon feeding.
“Aubrey and Robert,” Ethel cooed.
“Bre and Bobby,” Gwen sang.
* * *
Uptown, amidst boxes filled with a lifetime of memories, Emma took to her bed, sick with grief for her missing son.
Outside, the December wind tore up and down the Harlem streets, howling Emma’s anguish.
Chapter 75
In ’41 America entered the war, dragging her allies along with her.
Buchenwald’s population swelled exponentially with daily arrivals of captures of all ethnicities: Jews, Gypsies, cripples, accused spies, Poles, blacks, and mixed-race people.
One man, Sebastian Abel, with his white-blond hair and sapphire eyes, could have been a poster boy for Hitler’s master race campaign. But alas, Sebastian did not fit the führer’s bill, because he was a man who loved men.
German father, Dutch mother, Sebastian had spent the first twenty years of his life in German Southwest Africa before he and his family moved to England. A smart fellow, versed in four languages including Afrikaans, Sebastian loved the classics—both music and literature. He had a sweet tooth that had, at times so he claimed, been more of an inconvenience than his so-called homosexual sickness.
Sebastian talked the entire time he was at Buchenwald, which was less than a week. He talked while he ate, while he moved stones from one end of the quarry to the other, and even while he slept. More annoying than his insistent babble was the sunny smile that almost always graced his face.
The prisoners thought he was crazy. No sane man would behave as if Buchenwald was a day in the park instead of hell on earth.
The Book of Harlan Page 18
