“Understand what?” he said finally in a distant tone, giving her yet another small aperture through which she might try to implant a hook.
“That you would understand that a mistake has been made. That I am guilty of nothing. That is, I mean, that I am guilty of nothing truly serious. And that I should be set immediately free.”
There, she had done it, said it, swiftly and smoothly; with fiery fervor surprising even to her she had uttered the words which for days upon end she had rehearsed incessantly, wondering if she could muster the courage to get them past her lips. Now her heartbeat was so violent and wild that it pained her breastbone, but she took bright pride in the way in which she had managed to govern her voice. She also felt secure in the easy mellifluousness of her accent, attractively Viennese. The small triumph impelled her to go on. “I know you might think this foolish of me, mein Kommandant. I must admit that on the surface it sounds implausible. But I think that you will concede that in a place like this—so vast, involving such great numbers of people—there can be certain errors, certain grave mistakes.” She paused, listening to her heartbeat, wondering if he could hear it, yet conscious that her voice still had not broken. “Sir,” she continued, pressing a little on the note of entreaty, “I do hope you will believe me when I say that my imprisonment here is a terrible miscarriage of justice. As you see, I am Polish and indeed I was guilty of the crime I was charged with in Warsaw—smuggling food. But it was a small crime, don’t you see, I was trying only to feed my mother, who was very sick. I urge you to try to understand that this was nothing when measured against the nature of my background, my upbringing.” She hesitated, tumultuously agitated. Was she pushing too hard? Should she halt now and let him make the next move, or should she go on? She instantly decided: Get to the point, be brief but go on. “You see, sir, it is like this. I am originally from Cracow, where my family were passionate German partisans, for many years in the vanguard of those countless lovers of the Third Reich who admire National Socialism and the principles of the Fuhrer. My father was to the depths of his soul Judenfeindlich—”
Höss stopped her with a small groan. “Judenfeindlich,” he whispered in a drowsy voice. "Judenfeindlich. When will I cease hearing that word ‘anti-Semitic’? My God, I’m tired of that!” He let out a hoarse sigh. “Jews. Jews! Will I ever be done with Jews!”
Sophie retreated before his impatience, aware that her tactical maneuvering had rather misfired: she had gotten ahead of herself. Höss’s thought process, far from inept, was also as exhaustive and as unimaginatively single-minded as the snout of an anteater and brooked few deviations. When only a moment before he had asked “How did you come here?” and then specified that she explain just how, he meant precisely that, and now wanted no talk about fate, miscarriages of justice and matters Judenfeindlich. As if his words had blown down upon her like a north wind, she shifted her tack, thinking: Do as he says, then, tell him the absolute truth. Be brief, but tell the truth. He could find out easily enough anyway, if he wanted to.
“Then, sir, I will explain how I was put into the stenographic pool. It was because of an altercation I had with a Vertreterin in the women’s barracks when I first arrived last April. She was the assistant to the block leader. Quite honestly, I was terrified of her because...” She hesitated, a little wary of elaborating upon a sexual possibility which the shading of her voice, she knew, had already suggested. But Höss, eyes wide open now and level upon hers, anticipated what she was trying to say.
“Doubtless she was a lesbian,” he put in. His tone was tired, but acid and exasperated. “One of those whores—one of those scummy pigs from the Hamburg slums they stuck in Ravensbrück and that Headquarters got hold of and sent here in the mistaken idea that they would exercise discipline over you—over the female inmates. What a farce!” He paused. “She was a lesbian, wasn’t she? And she made advances toward you, am I right? It would be expected. You are a very beautiful young woman.” Again he paused while she absorbed this last observation. (Did it mean anything?) “I despise homosexuals,” he went on. “Imagining people performing those acts—animalistic practices—makes me sick. I could never stand even to look at one, male or female. But it is something which must be faced when people are in confinement.” Sophie blinked. Like a strip of film run at antic jerky speed through the projector, she saw that morning’s mad charade, saw Wilhelmine’s mop of flaming hair draw back from her groin, the famished damp lips parted in a petrified perfect O, eyes sparkling with terror; looking at the revulsion on Höss’s face, thinking of the housekeeper, she felt herself begin to suppress either a scream or a peal of laughter. “Unspeakable!” the Commandant added, curling his lips as if on some loathsome mouthful.
“They were not just advances, sir.” She felt herself flush. “She tried to rape me.” She could not recall ever having said the word “rape” in front of a man, and the flush grew warmer, then began to fade. “It was most unpleasant. I had not realized that a woman’s”—she hesitated—“a woman’s desire for another woman could be so—so violent. But I learned.”
“In confinement people behave differently, strangely. Tell me about it.” But before she could reply he had reached into the pocket of his jacket, draped over the other chair at the side of the cot, and took from it a tinfoil-wrapped chocolate bar. “It’s curious,” he said, the voice clinical, abstract, “these headaches. At first they fill me with terrible nausea. Then as soon as the medicine begins to take effect I find myself very hungry.” Stripping the foil from the chocolate, he extended the bar toward her. Hesitant at the outset, surprised—for it was the first such gesture on his part—she nervously broke off a piece and popped it into her mouth, knowing that she betrayed a greedy eagerness in the midst of her effort to be casual. No matter.
She proceeded with the account, talking rapidly as she watched Höss devour the rest of the chocolate, conscious that the so very recent assault on her cunt by the trusted housekeeper of the man to whom she was speaking allowed her a certain freshness of tone, even vivacity. “Yes, the woman was a prostitute and a lesbian. I don’t know where she was from in Germany—I think from the north, she spoke in Plattdeutsch—but she was a huge woman and she tried to rape me. She had had her eyes on me for days. One night in the latrine she approached me. She was not violent at first. She promised me food, soap, clothing, money, anything.” Sophie halted for a moment, her gaze fixed now on Höss’s violet-blue eyes, which were watchful, fascinated. “I was terribly hungry but—like you too, sir, I am repelled by homosexuals—I did not find it difficult to resist, to say no. I tried to push her away. Then this Vertreterin grew enraged and attacked me. I shouted at her loudly and began to plead with her—she had me against the wall and was doing things to me with her hands—and then the block leader came in.
“The block leader put a stop to this,” Sophie went on. “She sent the Vertreterin away and then told me to come to her room at the end of the barracks. She was not a bad sort—another prostitute, like you say, sir, but not a bad sort. Indeed, she was kindly for such... for such a person. She had overheard me shouting at the Vertreterin, she said, and she was surprised because all of us newcomers in the barracks were Polish and she wanted to know where I learned such excellent German. We talked for a while and I could tell that she liked me. I don’t think she was a lesbian. She was from Dortmund. She was charmed by my German. She hinted that she might be able to help me. She gave me a cup of coffee and then sent me away. I saw her several times after that and could tell that she had taken a liking to me. A couple of days later she told me to come to her room again, and one of your noncommissioned officers, sir, was there, Hauptscharführer Günther of the camp administration office. He interrogated me for some time, asking me about my various qualifications, and when I told him I could type and take expert shorthand in Polish and German, he informed me that perhaps I could be of some use at the typing pool. He had heard that there was a shortage of qualified help—certain language specialists. After a fe
w days he came back and told me that I would be transferred. And so that is how I came to the...” Höss had finished eating the chocolate bar and now, stirring, rose up on his elbow, preparing to light one of his cigarettes. “I mean,” she concluded, “I worked in the stenographic section until about ten days ago, when I was told that I was needed for special work here. And here—"
“And here,” he interrupted, “here you are.” He gave a sigh. “You have had good luck.” And what he did then caused her electric amazement. He reached up with his free hand, and using the utmost delicacy, plucked a little something from the edge of her upper lip; it was, she realized, a crumb of the chocolate she had eaten, now held between his thumb and forefinger, and she watched with grave wonder as he moved his tar-stained fingers slowly toward his lips and deposited the tiny chestnut-brown flake into his mouth. She shut her eyes, so disturbed by the peculiar and grotesque communion of the gesture that her heart commenced pounding again and her brain was rocked with vertigo.
“What’s the matter?” she heard him say. “You’re white.”
“Nothing, mein Kommandant,” she replied. “I’m just a bit faint. It will go away.” She kept her eyes closed.
“What have I done wrong!” The voice was a cry, so loud that it frightened her, and she had barely opened her eyes when she saw him roll himself off the cot, stand abruptly erect and walk the few paces to the window. The sweat plastered the back of his shirt and she thought she saw his whole body tremble as he stood there. Sophie was utterly confounded, watching him, having thought that the by-play with the chocolate might have been the prelude to something more intimate. But perhaps it had been; he was now voicing his complaint as if he had known her for years. He struck his hand into his fist. “I can’t think what they imagine I’ve done wrong. Those people in Berlin, they’re impossible. They ask the superhuman from a mere human who has only done the best he has known how for three years. They’re unreasonable! They don’t know what it’s like to put up with contractors who can’t fulfill their schedules, lazy middlemen, suppliers who fall behind or simply never deliver. They’ve never dealt with idiot Poles! I’ve done my faithful best and this is the thanks I get. This pretense—that it’s a promotion! I get kicked upstairs to Oranienburg and I have to endure the intolerable embarrassment of seeing them put Liebehenschel in my place—Liebehenschel, that insufferable egotist with his bloated reputation for efficiency. The whole thing, it’s sickening. There’s not the slightest bit of gratitude left.” It was strange: there was more petulance in his voice than true anger or resentment.
Sophie rose from her chair and drew near him. She sensed another aperture chinking open ever so slightly. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “and forgive me for suggesting this if I am mistaken. But it may be a tribute to you instead. It may be that they fully understand your difficulties, your hardships, and how exhausted you have been made by your work. Forgive me again, but during these few days here in the office I could not help but notice the extraordinary strain you are constantly under, the amazing pressure...” How careful was her obsequious solicitude. She heard her voice trail off but meanwhile kept her eyes fixed on the back of his neck. “It may be that this is really in the nature of a reward for all your... your devotion.”
She fell silent and followed Höss’s gaze to the field below. On the capriciously changing wind the smoke from Birkenau had blown off and away, at least momentarily, and in the clear sunlight the great glorious white stallion romped again around the fenced rim of the paddock, tossing tail and mane in a small windstorm of dust. Even through the window they could hear the thudding collision of his galloping hoofs. From the Commandant’s throat came an aspirated whistle of air; he fumbled at his pocket for another cigarette.
“I wish you were right,” he said, “but I doubt it. If they just understood the magnitude, the complexity! They seem to have no knowledge of the incredible numbers involved in these Special Actions. The endless multitudes! These Jews, they come on and on from all the countries of Europe, countless thousands, millions, like the herring in the spring that swarm into Mecklenburg Bay. I never dreamed the earth contained so many of das Erwählte Volk.”
The Chosen People. His use of the phrase allowed her to press her initiative a little further, enlarging the opening where she was confident now she had secured a fragile but real hold. “Das Erwählte Volk—” her voice was edged with scorn as she echoed the Commandant—“the Chosen People, if you’ll permit me to say so, sir, may only at last be paying the just price for having arrogantly set themselves apart from the rest of the human race—for having posed as the only people worthy of salvation. I honestly do not see how they could expect to escape retribution when they have commited such a blasphemy for so many years in the sight of Christians.” (Suddenly the image of her father loomed, monstrous.) With anxiety she hesitated, then resumed, spinning out another of her lies, impelled forward like a splinter bobbingly afloat upon a rushing stream of fabrication and falsehood. “I am no longer Christian. Like you, sir, I have abandoned that pathetic faith with its pretexts and evasions. Yet it is easy to see why the Jews have inspired such hatred in Christians as well as in people like yourself—Gottgläubiger, as you said to me just this morning—righteous and idealistic people who are only striving for a new order in a new world. Jews have threatened this order, and it is only just now that they finally suffer for it. Good riddance, I say.”
He still remained standing with his back to her when he replied evenly, “You speak with a great deal of feeling in this matter. For a woman, you talk like one who has a certain amount of knowledge of the crimes of which Jews are capable. I’m curious about this. So few women have any informed knowledge or understanding about anything.”
“Yes, but I do, sir!” she said, watching him swivel his shoulders ever so slightly and look at her—now for the first time—with truly attentive concern. “I have had personal knowledge, also personal experience—”
“Such as what?”
Impetuously then—she knew it was a risk, a gamble—she bent down and fumblingly plucked the worn and faded pamphlet from the little crevice in her boot. “There!” she said, flourishing it in front of him, spreading out the title page. “I’ve kept this against the rules, I know I’ve taken a chance. But I want you to know that these few pages represent everything I stand for. I know from working with you that the ‘final solution’ has been a secret. But this is one of the earliest Polish documents suggesting a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish problem. I collaborated with my father—whom I mentioned to you before—in writing it. Naturally, I don’t expect you to read it in detail, filled with so many new worries and concerns as you are. But I do earnestly beg you at least to consider it... I know my difficulties are of no importance to you... but if you could only give it a glance... perhaps you could begin to see the entire injustice of my imprisonment here... I could also tell you more about my work in Warsaw on behalf of the Reich, when I revealed the hiding place of a number of Jews, intellectual Jews who had long been sought...”
She had begun to babble a bit; there was a disconnected quality in her speech which warned her to stop, and she did. She prayed that she would not become unstrung. Sweltering beneath her prisoner’s smock with the sweat of mingled hope and trepidation, she was aware that she had made a breach in his consciousness at last, implanted herself as fleshed reality within the scope of his perception. However imperfectly and momentarily, she had made contact; this she could tell by the look of absolute concentrated penetration he gave her when he took the pamphlet from between her fingers. Self-conscious, coquettish, she averted her eyes. And in fatuous recollection a Galician peasants’ saying came back to her: I am crawling into his ear.
“You maintain, then,” he said, “that you are innocent.” There was a distant amiability in his tone that filled her with encouragement.
“Sir, to repeat,” she answered quickly, “I freely admit my guilt of the minor charge which caused me to be sent here—the business
about the little piece of meat. I am only asking that this misdemeanor be weighed against my record not only as a Polish sympathizer with National Socialism but as an active and involved campaigner in the sacred war against Jews and Jewry. That pamphlet in your hand, mein Kommandant, can easily be authenticated and will prove my point. I implore you—you who have the power to give clemency and freedom—to reconsider my imprisonment in the light of my past good works, and to return me to my life in Warsaw. It is such a little thing to ask of you, a fine and just man who possesses the power of mercy.”
Lotte had told Sophie that Höss was vulnerable to flattery, but she wondered now if she hadn’t overdone it—especially when she saw his eyes narrowing slightly and heard him say, “I’m curious about your passion. Your rage. Just what is it that causes you to hate the Jews with such... such intensity?”
This story, too, she had squirreled away for such a moment, relying on the theory that while a pragmatic mind like that of Höss might appreciate the venom of her Antisemitismus in the abstract, that same mind’s more primitive side would likely relish a touch of melodrama. “That document there, sir, contains my philosophical reasons—the ones I developed with my father at the university in Cracow. I want to emphasize that we would have expressed our enmity toward Jews even if our family had not suffered a terrible calamity.”
Impassively Höss smoked and waited for her to continue.
“The sexual profligacy of Jews is well known, one of their ugliest traits. My father, before he met an unfortunate accident... my father was a great admirer of Julius Streicher for this reason—he applauded the way in which Herr Streicher has satirized so instructively this degenerate trait in the Jewish character. And our family had a cruel reason to be able to accept the truth of Herr Streicher’s insights.” She stopped and glanced as if in wretched remembrance toward the floor. “I had a younger sister who went to the convent school in Cracow, she was just a grade behind my own. One evening about ten winters ago she was walking near the ghetto and was sexually assaulted by a Jew—it turned out that he was a butcher—who dragged her into an alley and ravished her repeatedly. Physically, my sister survived the attack by this Jew, but mentally she was destroyed. Two years later she committed suicide by drowning, the tragic child. Certainly this terrible deed validated once and for all the profundity of Julius Streicher’s understanding of what atrocities Jews are capable of.”
William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice Page 195
