The Linz Tattoo

by Nicholas Guild

  And now, it seemed, she had an aunt in America.

  Every year at Passover dinner. Her father would make the same toast: “Next year, in Jerusalem.” Had he meant it? Perhaps, toward the end, when “next year” had begun to seem as unreachable as the fulfillment of prophecy. It was a tradition and, after a while, something of a dare. “Next year, in Jerusalem.”

  “The secret government of Israel reaches out its hand to you,” the woman had said. “You are a Jew. We are Jews, working for a Jewish state. There is nothing else.”

  And she had meant it, standing there beside her in the recreation yard, her burning eyes looking past Esther toward some distant prospect only she could see. She had been a Zionist, this one—Esther had known a few others like her. They all believed in a future.

  Lately, because the weather had turned slightly warmer, everyone who was regarded as medically fit spent the hour between noon and one in the tiny exercise yard that was enclosed by the prison building on all four sides. The prisoners tramped around in circles for twenty minutes, one line inside another, moving in opposite directions, and then, for the remainder of the time, they stood together in little groups, talking quietly and trying to keep warm. The guards watched nervously from the doorways, but they did not interfere. Even Russians knew that there was nothing to fear from the conspiracies of a crowd of underfed women convicts.

  People tended to cluster according to barracks assignments, the prison was wormy with informers and everyone was frightened except among familiar faces. As a Jew, an enemy of the state that had vanished, Esther had few friends—the Viennese ladies, residents of Mühlfeld, had little enough reason to regret the good old days of Nazi rule—and the constant attentions of Filatov hadn’t made her any more popular. Almost everyone, probably, assumed she was a spy for the guards. So it was something of a surprise, almost a pleasure, when the tall woman with the heavy, muscular arms and the zealot’s eyes—a new prisoner, since her fingernails still looked freshly cut and filed—came to stand beside her, asked her when they were likely to be let back indoors, and glared up into the pale winter sun as if it were her mortal enemy. For perhaps a minute they stood together like that, sharing the square meter or so of cobblestone between them just like people who did not have to answer roll calls six or seven times a day.

  “I don’t think there will be another opportunity,” she said suddenly, turning her shoulder toward Esther, throwing her into shadow. She was close enough that Esther could smell the carbolic soap in her newly issued prison dress. “I think there is something you ought to know.”

  She turned her left hand so that the little finger was pressed against her thigh, exposing the inside of her forearm. There, just under the elbow, in blue ink, was tattooed a worn-looking five-digit number: 39789. The hand closed into a fist.

  “Auschwitz, class of 1943. Perhaps I look a little strange to you? A little unfeminine? I have Doctor Mengele to thank for that. He was experimenting with hormones for his race of supermen. I haven’t had a period since my twenty-first birthday.”

  “I’m sorry,” Esther said, the tears glistening in her eyes. It all came back in that moment—Chelmno, the deaths of her parents, Hagemann, everything. She couldn’t tell what she felt, whether pity or shame. She didn’t know what to say, except to repeat, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry about me, Esther Rosensaft—my business here isn’t about me. And don’t look so startled either. You can’t tell if the guards might not be watching.”

  It took no more than a few seconds. Two or three slow, deep breaths and she was all right again. She glanced around, looking for Filatov, but he wasn’t there. It was all right.

  “What do you want with me?” she asked, surprised at the sound of her own voice. “Leave me alone. There’s nothing I can do for you here.”

  “Which is why we are getting you out. This is no health spa—you think I checked in here just because I like prisons? You’re leaving. Tonight”

  “You’re insane!” Esther began to edge away from the other woman, who took her arm, just above the wrist, in a grip that felt as if it might crash the bones. “Let go of me. You talk like that and you’ll have both of us in trouble. What do you think, that people can just walk out of here?”

  “Listen, you little guttersnipe. Haven’t you heard of the Mossad? Yes. I rather thought so. Then pay attention. The day before yesterday I was in Istanbul. They flew me here so that yesterday morning I could buy a bowl of onion soup at the Kaffeehaus Franz Josef and spill it all over a Russian sergeant, telling him in the ensuing argument that, since all Russians were pigs anyway, he shouldn’t even notice the difference. I’ll probably get eighteen months for it, but who cares? When I come out, if everyone does their part, I’ll have a country to come home to. Israel. You’ve heard of it. I may hardly be a woman anymore, but I’m still a Jew. They can’t rob me of that. And so are you, whether you like it or not.”

  She had never let go of Esther’s arm, and the passionate murmur of her voice was almost hypnotic. She made it sound—yes, almost believable.

  “Why me?” she asked finally, shaking her head. “It’s not. . .”

  “Why not you? I don’t know the reasons. I was told, ‘Do this.’ I do it—I don’t ask questions. I don’t know why they want you, but they do. So here I am, and tonight you will be going out.”

  “You came here? You consented to it? Here?”

  “Yes, why not?” The woman actually smiled, but even that seemed a kind of defiance. “After what you and I have been through, what difference can it make? If I can’t be in Israel, why should I care where I am? And I can’t be in Israel, at least not until after we’ve gained our independence. Two weeks ago some of us blew up a police station, and I was recognized. This, I expect, will be almost restful.”

  A guard standing at the entrance to the western cell blocks glanced at his watch. There probably weren’t more than two or three minutes left before they would all be herded inside and this opportunity would be lost forever. Esther could feel the blood throbbing in her neck. It was as if a hand were trying to squeeze the windpipe shut.

  “How will you get me out?”

  “There is a capsule.” the woman said calmly. She seemed almost bored. “Dinner last night was at six o’clock—take it with dinner tonight. The timing is important. Shortly after midnight you will become very sick, so sick you and everyone else will think you must be dying, but don’t worry. Just let things take their natural course. By tomorrow morning you’ll be out of this place. You’ll probably be having buttered toast and coffee in the American Zone.”

  “A capsule? How did you get it inside? They strip-search all the new prisoners.”

  “You are young, aren’t you. Tell me, when you were brought in did they bother to check the inside of your mouth? I didn’t think so. It was fastened to the gums behind my lower set of front teeth with a dab of flesh-colored putty. Nothing could have been easier.

  The guard carried a whistle to his mouth and blew it. The hour was over. Everyone began shuffling toward the doors, to get inside where it would be warm. In this cold, if they lingered even a few more seconds she would attract attention.

  “Where is it? Give it to me, quick!” Esther whispered fiercely

  The woman was already turning away. And then, for just an instant, she looked back, smiling contemptuously.

  “When you have a few seconds alone.” she said, “you might look in your dress pocket.”

  Lying on her plank bed in the flickering light, she reached into her pocket for perhaps the tenth time to make certain it was still there. It was a flat little pill about the size of a drop of water.

  “You will become very sick, so sick you will think you must he dying.” It had, of course, occurred to her that should she take it she might really die. Perhaps someone was trying to poison her—how could she possibly know? Of course, there was no reason why anyone should wish her dead, but there was also no reason why anyone should go to so much trouble
to help her escape from Mühlfeld. It was necessary, for the moment, to leave the whole question of motives aside.

  Of course, her aunt in America. . .

  The lawyer had said all she needed to do was to remain patient. He was petitioning the military governor and, as everyone knew, Russian clemency was as much a commodity to be bought and sold as cheese. If her aunt was rich enough. . . And the Americans were all supposed to be fabulously rich.

  It was almost too good to believe. In Trenton. New Jersey, she could begin life all over again. Perhaps her aunt would pay for a surgeon to remove the number from her arm—no one would ever have to know that she had been in the camps. She would take the past, everything that had been done to her and everything she had done, and bury it all somewhere deep inside her, where it would never find its way out again. Perhaps she could even get married someday. Why not? If she herself could start believing she was once again a nice girl—not the sort of girl who lets herself be used by soldiers because she wants to be sure she will be alive and have something to eat when it’s over—then perhaps some man might. She could. . .

  “Is my aunt here?’

  “No. Your aunt has young children.”

  It really was too good to believe.

  Julius Rosensaft had been the only child born to Immanuel Rosensaft and his second wife, Sophie, née Charmi. There had been an earlier marriage, producing two daughters. Anything could have happened to them, one of them might even have survived to have a husband in Trenton, New Jersey.

  But Esther’s father, had he lived, would have been forty-seven years old, and the younger of his half-sisters would still have been ten years older. Even in Trenton, New Jersey, it was a rare woman who, leaning hard on sixty, had children young enough to keep her at home. The attorney Piessen had made an error. There was no aunt in America, no infant cousins. He had made the lie just a shade too elaborate.

  And this man had been no Zionist missionary, trying to save her from going mad in a prison cell. If she left Mühlfeld in his custody, she realized at once, with a clarity that astonished her, no one would ever hear from her again.

  As she lay there, listening to the light bulb click, her eyes misted over and she felt curiously lethargic. She wanted to stay where she was, forever and ever. At least here, at Mühlfeld, no one was trying to kill her. She was safe, if for no other reason than because to be here was to be dead already.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, hardly even forming the words with her lips. “Oh, God, will I really have to stay here forever?”

  And then a voice inside her answered, No. Take the capsule.

  Why not? It was a chance—she had no right to ask for more than that. By morning she would be either free or dead. At that moment it hardly seemed to make any difference which. She would take the risk that strange, distorted woman had been telling her the truth.

  By the time the guard unlocked the door and brought in her tiny tin tray with a piece of gray bread and a bowl of thin, dust-colored soup, she had regained her composure and was sitting up. It was all very simple once one had made up one’s mind. After that, everything was easy.

  “Comrade guard,” she asked, making her voice softly timorous—she was begging a great favor and wanted him to know it. “Comrade guard, could you please tell me the time?”

  “Why? You afraid you might be late for an important appointment? Hah, hah, hah!” He was a big man, in his middle forties, his crinkly hair turning white at the edges, and his laughter made the cell vibrate like the inside of a drum.

  “Please, citizen guard, I only want to know because—”

  “Be quiet, girl,” he answered, with a casual wave of his enormous hand. “I don’t care why you want to know. The time isn’t a state secret. It’s five minutes after six.”

  “Thank you, comrade guard.”

  After the door slammed shut behind him, she waited another minute, counting off the seconds to herself—it was perhaps the longest minute of her life. And then, with a deft movement, she tore the soft center out of her piece of bread, wrapped it around the capsule, and swallowed it. She drank off the soup as fast as she could, before she lost her nerve. It tasted faintly of iodine.

  In six hours it would begin to work. In seven, or perhaps eight, she would know the worst. She lay down again on the plank bed to await her deliverance.

  9

  It was dark, everywhere dark. No sound except the guns, miles away, murmuring like sullen old women. But they would come closer. By first light, certainly by seven or eight tomorrow morning, the Russians would come—that was what Hagemann had said. All the morning she had crouched in her room, behind the locked door, listening to the crackle of machine guns. They were liquidating the prisoners in the other camp, in batches from the sound of it. It seemed to take forever. And then, of course, Hagemann would come back, unlock the door, and shoot her too. The Germans were making preparations for their retreat, and they intended to leave no witnesses.

  But Hagemann had never come back. Trucks had driven up and down along the gravel roads, and now and then there had been another short burst of rifle fire, and then silence. Esther waited a long time—hours, it seemed—and then tried to break open the door. There was no window, only the door, and she couldn’t. . .

  It was too strong. She was trapped inside.

  Her shoulder ached from throwing herself against the door, and she had skinned her hands on the rough wood. She sat down on the edge of the iron bedstead, thinking she was about to cry, but she didn’t cry. All she could remember was that soon it would be over—either the Russians would burn down the camp, and she would die inside this room, or they would find her and kill her as a collaborator, or they would set her free. One way or the other, it would all be finished in a few hours.

  She had no idea of how long she had been sitting there when suddenly there was the sound of boot heels on the floor outside.

  The Russians? It couldn’t be the Russians, not so soon. Esther could still hear their guns firing in the distance, louder now but still far away. The Russians were still far off.

  It was Hagemann. He had remembered and was coming back to kill her. It would be like him to leave it to the last, to let her begin almost to believe that he was gone forever and then to come back so he could make a slow job of her death.

  He would cut her throat—he had threatened to often enough. He would grab her by the hair, pull back her head, and push the point of the knife across from one side to the other, taking his time. He would want to enjoy himself.

  She tried not to make a sound, to pretend she didn’t exist. It was no good thinking she could fight him off—she had never been able to resist him. She had always been too frightened of him for that. And now the doorknob rattled, and the key turned in the lock with a snap. . .

  “Esther, I’m surprised to find you here. Didn’t he take you with him?”

  It was not Hagemann. It was the General.

  He was carrying a gas lantern that threw a thick, yellowish halo of light across the floor and made his pink, heavy, utterly familiar face look cavernous and deathlike. He set the lantern down on a table and pulled up its shade, flooding the room with light.

  “I didn’t want to give the Russian spotters something to shoot at,” he said “They’re only about six hours away. I was just having a final look around before I left.”

  “Is. . . Is Hagemann—?”

  “No. No, my dear.” The General shook his head sadly, as if he were beginning to realize that the joke was on him. “They’ve all gone, some time ago. You and I, I’m afraid, are the only ones still here. Come along—I expect you must be hungry.”

  It was a cool April night as they walked through the deserted camp. In the east, the horizon was a burning red. The flashes from the Russian artillery provided almost the only light, throwing the guard towers and garrison buildings into sudden relief against the flaming night sky. The General carried his lantern and moved with long strides, hardly seeming to notice.

  Fi
nally they came to the officers’ mess. Esther found some bread and a plate of cold ham. and they sat down at one of the large tables.

  “We’ll leave in a few minutes,” he said. He wasn’t eating. He didn’t seem to be hungry. “The British have reached the Elbe, so we’ll head for them. You’ll come with me, Esther. I don’t like to think what the Russians would do with a pretty child like you.”

  “And what of you, Herr General?”

  “Me?” The question seemed genuinely to surprise him. “I should, on the whole, prefer to be hanged by the British rather than by the Russians, but that aside, it makes remarkably little difference. I’m afraid I have been a very wicked man, my dear. I’m on the lists, so certainly they will hang me.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, as if dying already in imagination.

  “You are wondering, perhaps, why I don’t simply shoot myself? It is a fair question. I am a Catholic. I should like to die in a state of grace.”

  There had been over fifteen hundred prisoners at the Waldenburg camp. They were all dead now, shot on the General’s orders, and their bodies lay not two hundred meters from where the General was commenting on the state of his soul. Esther put down her sandwich—she too had lost her appetite.

  “But don’t be too scornful of me, Esther dear. One’s duty sometimes takes strange forms.”

  “You are a butcher. I heard the firing squads this afternoon—you murdered all of them.” She could hardly believe that she was saying such a thing. It was like asking to be killed.

  “Yes, my dear, I did.” He made a gesture with his gloved hand, a vague pass through the air as if wiping something away. “But I haven’t had you killed.”

  “You gave me to Hagemann.”

  For an instant he looked as if she had struck him—yes, the accusation had gone home. And then, just as quickly, he recovered himself and smiled.

  “I did do that. But you see, my dear, he needed distracting. It gave him something else to think about while I. . . I suppose you are alive now only because in the confusion he forgot your existence, and now you will live, the only witness, because of my caprice. I’m sorry about Hagemann, Esther, but that’s not why I’ve saved you. You see, I discover I have a use for you.”