“I’ve seen them all,” Stephen says. “I’ll keep the one I have.” Stephen does not grow tired of the Van Gogh painting; sometimes, the crows seem to have changed position.
“Maybe you’ll like this one,” the orderly says as he pulls out a cardboard print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It is a study of a village nestled in the hills, dressed in shadows. But everything seems to be boiling and writhing as in a fever dream. A cypress tree in the foreground looks like a black flame, and the vertiginous sky is filled with great, blurry stars. It is a drunkard’s dream. The orderly smiles.
“So you did have it,” Stephen says.
“No, I traded some other pictures for it. They had a copy in the West Wing.”
Stephen watches him hang it, thanks him, and waits for him to leave. Then he gets up and examines the painting carefully. He touches the raised facsimile brushstrokes, and turns toward Josie, feeling an odd sensation in his groin. He looks at her, as if seeing her for the first time. She has an overly full mouth, which curves downward at the corners when she smiles. She is not a pretty woman—too fat, he thinks.
“Dance with me,” he says, as he waves his arms and takes a step forward, conscious of the pain in his stomach.
“You’re too sick to be dancing just yet,” but she laughs at him and bends her knees in a mock plié.
She has small breasts for such a large woman, Stephen thinks. Feeling suddenly dizzy, he takes a step toward the bed. He feels himself slip to the floor, feels Josie’s hair brushing against his face, dreams that he’s all wet from her tongue, feels her arms around him, squeezing, then feels the weight of her body pressing down on him, crushing him….
He wakes up in bed, catheterized. He has an intravenous needle in his left wrist, and it is difficult to swallow, for he has a tube down his throat.
He groans, tries to move.
“Quiet, Stephen,” Josie says, stroking his hand.
“What happened?” he mumbles. He can only remember being dizzy.
“You’ve had a slight setback, so just rest. The doctor had to collapse your lung; you must lie very still.”
“Josie, I love you,” he whispers, but he is too far away to be heard. He wonders how many hours or days have passed. He looks toward the window. It is dark, and there is no one in the room.
He presses the buzzer attached to his pillow and remembers a dream….
“You must fight,” Viktor said.
It was dark, all the other men were asleep, and the barrack was filled with snoring and snorting. Stephen wished they could all die, choke on their own breath. It would be an act of mercy.
“Why fight?” Stephen asked, and he pointed toward the greasy window, beyond which were the ovens that smoked day and night. He made a fluttering gesture with his hand—smoke rising.
“You must fight, you must live; living is everything. It is the only thing that makes sense here.”
“We’re all going to die, anyway,” Stephen whispered. “Just like your sister … and my wife.”
“No, Sholom, we’re going to live. The others may die, but we’re going to live. You must believe that.”
Stephen understood that Viktor was desperately trying to convince himself to live. He felt sorry for Viktor; there could be no sensible rationale for living in a place like this. Everything must die here.
Stephen grinned, tasted blood from the corner of his mouth, and said, “So we’ll live through the night, maybe.”
And maybe tomorrow, he thought. He would play the game of survival a little longer.
He wondered if Viktor would be alive tomorrow. He smiled and thought, If Viktor dies, then I will have to take his place and convince others to live. For an instant, he hoped Viktor would die so that he could take his place.
The alarm sounded. It was three o’clock in the morning, time to begin the day.
This morning, Stephen was on his feet before the guards could unlock the door.
“Wake up,” Josie says, gently tapping his arm. “Come on now, wake up.”
Stephen hears her voice as an echo. He imagines that he has been flung into a long tunnel; he hears air whistling in his ears but cannot see anything.
“Whassimatter?” he asks. His mouth feels as if it is stuffed with cotton; his lips are dry and cracked. He is suddenly angry at Josie and the plastic tubes that hold him in his bed as if he were a latter-day Gulliver. He wants to pull out the tubes, smash the bags filled with saline, tear away his bandages.
“You were speaking German,” Josie says. “Did you know that?”
“Can I have some ice?”
“No,” Josie says impatiently. “You spilled again, you’re all wet.”
“… for my mouth, dry….”
“Do you remember speaking German, honey, I have to know.”
“Don’t remember, bring ice, I’ll try to think about it.”
As Josie leaves to get him some ice, he tries to remember his dream.
“Here now, just suck on the ice.” She gives him a little hill of crushed ice on the end of a spoon.
“Why did you wake me up, Josie?” The layers of dream are beginning to slough off. As the Demerol works out of his system, he has to concentrate on fighting the burning ache in his stomach.
“You were speaking German. Where did you learn to speak like that?”
Stephen tries to remember what he said. He cannot speak any German, only a bit of classroom French. He looks down at his legs (he has thrown off the sheet) and notices, for the first time, that his legs are as thin as his arms. “My God, Josie, how could I have lost so much weight?”
“You lost about forty pounds, but don’t worry, you’ll gain it all back. You’re on the road to recovery now. Please, try to remember your dream.”
“I can’t, Josie! I just can’t seem to get ahold of it.”
“Try.”
“Why is it so important to you?”
“You weren’t speaking college German, darling, you were speaking slang. You spoke in a patois that I haven’t heard since the forties.”
Stephen feels a chill slowly creep up his spine. “What did I say?”
Josie waits a beat, then says, “You talked about dying.”
“Josie?”
“Yes,” she says, pulling at her fingernail.
“When is the pain going to stop?”
“It will be over soon.” She gives him another spoonful of ice. “You kept repeating the name Viktor in your sleep. Can you remember anything about him?”
Viktor, Viktor, deep-set blue eyes, balding head and broken nose, called himself a Galitzianer. Saved my life. “I remember,” Stephen says. “His name is Viktor Shmone. He is in all my dreams now.”
Josie exhales sharply.
“Does that mean anything to you?” Stephen asks anxiously.
“I once knew a man from one of the camps.” She speaks very slowly and precisely. “His name was Viktor Shmone. I took care of him. He was one of the few people left alive in the camp after the Germans fled.” She reaches for her purse, which she keeps on Stephen’s night table, and fumbles an old, torn photograph out of a plastic slipcase.
As Stephen examines the photograph, he begins to sob. A thinner and much younger Josie is standing beside Viktor and two other emaciated-looking men. “Then, I’m not dreaming,” he says, “and I’m going to die. That’s what it means.” He begins to shake, just as he did in his dream, and, without thinking, he makes the gesture of rising smoke to Josie. He begins to laugh.
“Stop that,” Josie says, raising her hand to slap him. Then she embraces him and says, “Don’t cry, darling, it’s only a dream. Somehow, you’re dreaming the past.”
“Why?” Stephen asks, still shaking.
“Maybe you’re dreaming because of me, because we’re so close. In some ways, I think you know me better than anyone else, better than any man, no doubt. You might be dreaming for a reason; maybe I can help you.”
“I’m afraid, Josie.”
She comforts him an
d says, “Now tell me everything you can remember about the dreams.”
He is exhausted. As he recounts his dreams to her, he sees the bright doorway again. He feels himself being sucked into it. “Josie,” he says, “I must stay awake, don’t want to sleep, dream….”
Josie’s face is pulled tight as a mask; she is crying.
Stephen reaches out to her, slips into the bright doorway, into another dream.
It was a cold, cloudless morning. Hundreds of prisoners were working in the quarries; each work gang came from a different barrack. Most of the gangs were made up of Musselmanner, the faceless majority of the camp. They moved like automatons, lifting and carrying the great stones to the numbered carts, which would have to be pushed down the tracks.
Stephen was drenched with sweat. He had a fever and was afraid that he had contracted typhus. An epidemic had broken out in the camp last week. Every morning, several doctors arrived with the guards. Those who were too sick to stand up were taken away to be gassed or experimented upon in the hospital.
Although Stephen could barely stand, he forced himself to keep moving. He tried to focus all his attention on what he was doing. He made a ritual of bending over, choosing a stone of a certain size, lifting it, carrying it to the nearest cart, and then taking the same number of steps back to his dig.
A Musselmann fell to the ground, but Stephen made no effort to help him. When he could help someone in a little way, he would, but he would not stick his neck out for a Musselmann. Yet something niggled at Stephen. He remembered a photograph in which Viktor and this Musselmann were standing with a man and a woman he did not recognize. But Stephen could not remember where he had ever seen such a photograph.
“Hey, you,” shouted a guard. “Take the one on the ground to the cart.”
Stephen nodded to the guard and began to drag the Musselmann away.
“Who’s the new patient down the hall?” Stephen asks as he eats a bit of cereal from the breakfast tray Josie has placed before him. He is feeling much better now; his fever is down and the tubes, catheter, and intravenous needle have been removed. He can even walk around a bit.
“How did you find out about that?” Josie asks.
“You were talking to Mr. Gregory’s nurse. Do you think I’m dead already? I can still hear.”
Josie laughs and takes a sip of Stephen’s tea. “You’re far from dead! In fact, today is a red-letter day, you’re going to take your first shower. What do you think about that?”
“I’m not well enough yet,” he says, worried that he will have to leave the hospital before he is ready.
“Well, Dr. Volk thinks differently, and his word is law.”
“Tell me about the new patient.”
“They brought in a man last night who drank two quarts of motor oil; he’s on the dialysis machine.”
“Will he make it?”
“No, I don’t think so; there’s too much poison in his system.”
We should all die, Stephen thinks. It would be an act of mercy. He glimpses the camp.
“Stephen!”
He jumps, then awakens.
“You’ve had a good night’s sleep, you don’t need to nap. Let’s get you into that shower and have it done with.” Josie pushes the traytable away from the bed. “Come on, I have your bathrobe right here.”
Stephen puts on his bathrobe, and they walk down the hall to the showers. There are three empty shower stalls, a bench, and a whirlpool bath. As Stephen takes off his bathrobe, Josie adjusts the water pressure and temperature in the corner stall.
“What’s the matter?” Stephen asks after stepping into the shower. Josie stands in front of the shower stall and holds his towel, but she will not look at him. “Come on,” he says, “you’ve seen me naked before.”
“That was different.”
“How?” He touches a hard, ugly scab that has formed over one of the wounds on his abdomen.
“When you were very sick, I washed you in bed as if you were a baby. Now it’s different.” She looks down at the wet tile floor as if she is lost in thought.
“Well, I think it’s silly,” he says. “Come on, it’s hard to talk to someone who’s looking the other way. I could break my neck in here and you’d be staring down at the fucking floor.”
“I’ve asked you not to use that word,” she says in a very low voice.
“Do my eyes still look yellowish?”
She looks directly at his face and says, “No, they look fine.”
Stephen suddenly feels faint, then nauseated; he has been standing too long. As he leans against the cold shower wall, he remembers his last dream. He is back in the quarry. He can smell the perspiration of the men around him, feel the sun baking him, draining his strength. It is so bright….
He finds himself sitting on the bench and staring at the light on the opposite wall. I’ve got typhus, he thinks, then realizes that he is in the hospital. Josie is beside him.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I shouldn’t have let you stand so long; it was my fault.”
“I remembered another dream.” He begins to shake, and Josie puts her arms around him.
“It’s all right now; tell Josie about your dream.”
She’s an old, fat woman, Stephen thinks. As he describes the dream, his shaking subsides.
“Do you know the man’s name?” Josie asks. “The one the guard ordered you to drag away.”
“No,” Stephen says. “He was a Musselmann, yet I thought there was something familiar about him. In my dream I remembered the photograph you showed me. He was in it.”
“What will happen to him?”
“The guards will give him to the doctors for experimentation. If they don’t want him, he’ll be gassed ”
“You must not let that happen,” Josie says, holding him tightly.
“Why?” asks Stephen, afraid that he will fall into the dreams again.
“If he was one of the men you saw in the photograph, you must not let him die. Your dreams must fit the past.”
“I’m afraid.”
“It will be all right, baby,” Josie says, clinging to him. She is shaking and breathing heavily.
Stephen feels himself getting an erection. He calms her, presses his face against hers, and touches her breasts. She tells him to stop but does not push him away.
“I love you,” he says as he slips his hand under her starched skirt. He feels awkward and foolish and warm.
“This is wrong,” she whispers.
As Stephen kisses her and feels her thick tongue in his mouth, he begins to dream….
Stephen stopped to rest for a few seconds. The Musselmann was dead weight. I cannot go on, Stephen thought, but he bent down, grabbed the Musselmann by his coat, and dragged him toward the cart. He glimpsed the cart, which was filled with the sick and dead and exhausted; it looked no different than a cartload of corpses marked for a mass grave.
A long, gray cloud covered the sun, then passed, drawing shadows across gutted hills.
On impulse, Stephen dragged the Musselmann into a gully behind several chalky rocks. Why am I doing this? he asked himself. If I’m caught, I’ll be ash in the ovens too. He remembered what Viktor had told him: “You must think of yourself all the time or you’ll be no help to anyone else.”
The Musselmann groaned, then raised his arm. His face was gray with dust and his eyes were glazed.
“You must lie still,” Stephen whispered. “Do not make a sound. I’ve hidden you from the guards, but if they hear you, we’ll all be punished. One sound from you and you’re dead. You must fight to live; you’re in a death camp; you must fight so you can tell of this later.”
“I have no family, they’re all—”
Stephen clapped his hand over the man’s mouth and whispered, “Fight, don’t talk. Wake up; you cannot survive the death camp by sleeping.”
The man nodded, and Stephen climbed out of the gully. He helped two men carry a large stone to a nearby cart.
&n
bsp; “What are you doing?” shouted a guard.
“I left my place to help these men with this stone; now I’ll go back where I was.”
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Viktor asked.
Stephen felt as if he was burning up with fever. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, but everything was still blurry.
“You’re sick, too. You’ll be lucky if you last the day.”
“I’ll last,” Stephen said, “but I want you to help me get him back to the camp.”
“I won’t risk it, not for a Musselmann. He’s already dead; leave him.”
“Like you left me?”
Before the guards could take notice, they began to work. Although Viktor was older than Stephen, he was stronger. He worked hard every day and never caught the diseases that daily reduced the barrack’s numbers. Stephen had a touch of death, as Viktor called it, and was often sick.
They worked until dusk, when the sun’s oblique rays caught the dust from the quarries and turned it into veils and scrims. Even the guards sensed that this was a quiet time, for they would congregate together and talk in hushed voices.
“Come, now, help me,” Stephen whispered to Viktor.
“I’ve been doing that all day,” Viktor said. “I’ll have enough trouble getting you back to the camp, much less carry this Musselmann.”
“We can’t leave him.”
“Why are you so preoccupied with this Musselmann? Even if we can get him back to the camp, his chances are nothing. I know—I’ve seen enough—I know who has a chance to survive.”
“You’re wrong this time,” Stephen said. He was dizzy and it was difficult to stand. The odds are I won’t last the night, and Viktor knows it, he told himself. “I had a dream that if this man dies, I’ll die too. I just feel it.”
“Here we learn to trust our dreams,” Viktor said. “They make as much sense as this….” He made the gesture of rising smoke and gazed toward the ovens, which were spewing fire and black ash.
The western portion of the sky was yellow, but over the ovens it was red and purple and dark blue. Although it horrified Stephen to consider it, there was a macabre beauty here. If he survived, he would never forget these sense impressions, which were stronger than anything he had ever experienced before. Being so close to death, he was, perhaps for the first time, really living. In the camp, one did not even consider suicide. One grasped for every moment, sucked at life like an infant, lived as if there were no future.
More Wandering Stars Page 16
