by Clinch, Jon
This time, though, the figures seem to match, and the capos deliver their various papers to Drexler for review. He studies them under a flashlight’s dull beam, frowning dramatically, looking like a man who’s trying to persuade himself that this job—an enormous and soggy demotion from the clean, dry office work he once did—is not only important but worthy of him. He flips through the wet pages—cheap paper that clings to itself and tears and separates—and he scans the columns with the help of a gloved finger. Everyone holds his breath.
“No good,” he says finally, stabbing at the tally sheets. “This one’s missing.”
The capos bend together in a little circle of dismay. Two of them add their pointing fingers to Drexler’s. “That’ll be one of Slazak’s,” says one. “Just look at the handwriting,” says the other.
Slazak bows his head, beaten. “That’s one of mine all right,” he says.
Drexler tears the pages loose and thrusts them at Slazak and tells him to count again. The other capos risk smiles, and the young officer with the bicycle sees them and clears his throat, and Drexler says everyone must count again, not just Slazak. It’s all or nothing.
They all step away, but Slazak stops. “Wait a minute,” he says.
“Wait a minute?” Drexler looks as if he’s never heard the words before.
“Just so. Another count will do no good, you see. I know the man.”
“The missing man?”
“The missing man,” says Slazak. “I know who he is. I know where he is.”
“Are you quite certain?”
“Leave it to me.”
“It will be my supreme pleasure,” says Drexler.
Slazak leaves the platform and strides off down among the ranks of prisoners. No heads turn to track his progress, but each man he passes relaxes just a little as he goes by. It’s not me he wants, their postures say. He’s after someone else.
He slows as he draws near to Jacob. He stops and he folds his hands behind his back and he smiles, his face streaked with rain. “You” he says. “You know the missing man.”
Jacob has no answer. He knows so many missing men, after all.
Slazak goes on. “Don’t be coy,” he says. “He would be right here among us if not for you.”
So now it’s twenty questions. “I don’t—” says Jacob.
Slazak leans in toward him and spits out a mouthful of numbers.
Jacob shows the serial number sewn to his jacket. It’s not a match.
“I’m not talking about you,” says Slazak. “I’m talking about Schuler. The man whose job you stole.”
Of course. Everyone must be accounted for at roll call. Even the dead.
“Go get him,” says Slazak. “We won’t wait forever.” He takes Jacob by the collar of his new uniform and heaves him down the line, from darkness into darkness.
Max calls after his father. “Three days,” he says. “He’s been in the ground for three days.” It’s a hint as to how far back in the excavation his father will find the body, and Slazak doesn’t appreciate it. He steps back and clouts Max’s jaw with the back of his hand and Max staggers backward but doesn’t fall. It takes courage not to fall. The sweep of a searchlight freezes this instant and one of the guards raises his gun but Slazak lifts his hand. Perhaps he has other things in mind for the young man. The guard shifts his stance and aims instead at Jacob, tracking him as he moves down the line.
The men wait and the rain comes down and Jacob trudges off with a shovel over his shoulder and a guard at his back. There’s no speaking to the guard and there’s no telling what time it might be other than by his own weariness, and his weariness makes a poor indicator because he’s always weary. They come to the course taken by the water project and they follow the line of the excavation to the road it passes beneath and then beyond that, the earth growing more disturbed as they go, more heaped up and less compacted. Jacob counts his paces. He casts back in his mind as to how many days ago it was that they tunneled underneath the road and he subtracts from that number the three days that Schuler has been dead, thinking that he can calculate an average number of paces per day and perhaps get close to the man’s corpse on the first try.
The ground is soft enough where he sinks the shovel in, but it’s heavy, mostly clay, and it’s saturated with rain. He digs a channel perpendicular to the water line and not much wider than the blade of the shovel, pausing whenever he strikes something harder than the surrounding dirt and going down on his knees to see if he’s located Schuler. No. Not on the first pass anyhow. He digs all the way down to the iron pipes without finding a trace of him. All the way across to where the clay is solid and undisturbed and too hard for digging. The guard shakes his head and laughs. He would be out somewhere standing his watch in the rain anyhow, so this is nothing to him.
Jacob paces off a yard’s distance further on and starts back across. “Not so fast,” says the guard. “Fill in the first trench.”
“I’ll fill that one with the dirt from this one,” says Jacob, daring to speak to the armed Ukrainian thanks to the darkness and the rain and his desperation, demonstrating his intent with the first shovelful. “It’ll save time.”
“And you’ll dig ten more holes and find what you’re after and then what?” says the guard. He lifts the gun and lets loose a fusillade of bullets into the ragged earth three feet from Jacob, showing him exactly where he wants the dirt restored. Jacob does as he’s told.
So it goes until the fourth pass, when the shovel finds bone and the touch of it is unmistakable. It’s no rock, no root, no iron pipe or bit of substrate from the road. Oh, no. He can feel a human being at the other end of the shovel the way you can feel a human being on the other end of a telephone connection, perhaps more so because of the unmediated physicality of it. Flesh to flesh and bone to bone. He goes to his knees and clears away the mud with his hands and sure enough, it’s Schuler’s pantleg and shin and ankle. A dead man in a dead man’s shoes, buried no more than three feet down. It could be worse.
Jacob comes to his feet and begins excavating the spot, calculating the position of the body inch by inch, working the shovel as cautiously as he dares. He’s conservative but within limits. Come too close, and he risks striking the dead man again, perhaps even taking off a finger. Give the corpse too wide a berth, on the other hand, and he’ll do more work than is entirely necessary. The rain keeps up and the clay turns to mud and the mud runs. Schuler’s striped uniform is saturated with it and Jacob’s is saturated too. His hands slip on the wet handle of the shovel and he pitches forward onto the dead man in the ditch, embracing him. The corpse gives under his weight, limp, a couple of days past rigor mortis. Swollen and straining the wet burlap. Just something in a sack. He lifts it up.
The Ukrainian makes him fill in the hole before he goes, although when the time comes he will make him dig it open again and lay Schuler back down at the bottom of it and cover him up once more, but until then it’s a matter of principle. Jacob labors on steadily, wet and cold. He pictures the men standing at attention in the yard waiting for his return. He pictures Max, standing there all night without a thing in his belly, a bruise growing on his jaw like a shadow from the blow of Slazak’s hand. Fourteen years old. Then he takes up the body and hoists it onto his shoulder and drags it back, like some figure in a fairy tale bearing a burden that whispers its own well-known and wordless demands.
With the addition of Schuler’s body, the count is complete. Everything adds up, so Slazak is happy and the other two capos are happy and the young officer is happy. Even Drexler is happy or at least satisfied. No one says a word more than is necessary. Conservation of energy is the order of the day.
The sodden men, prisoners and guards and SS alike, wait in the rain while Jacob drags Schuler’s corpse back to the water project and buries it where he found it. It’s another hour’s work. Dawn would come soon if it could break through the cloud cover, but the rain keeps up and threatens to keep up forever. One more black day. He come
s back staggering, supporting himself on his shovel, as unsteady on his feet as some golem conjured up. Drexler recognizes him at last. The barber. He calls to Slazak and asks how a man in such condition is supposed to present himself before officers of the SS in the administration building tomorrow, never mind the commandant’s villa and the deputy commandant’s apartment on the main street.
Slazak’s eyes light up with complicity. He bobs his head and says that Drexler is correct. Such a figure is unfit to go on so elevated a series of errands.
Drexler says, “Then that makes two mistakes you’ve made.”
“Two?” says Slazak.
“Two,” says Drexler. “The body from the water project. It was three days old at least.”
“Three days, sir,” says Slazak. “That’s correct, sir.”
“And you certified the count this morning? And yesterday? And the day before that?”
“Yes sir,” says Slazak. “All by the book.”
Drexler shakes his head. “And all of it lies.” He calls out Jacob’s number, and Jacob comes to the front. “The two of you,” he says, “exchange uniforms.” Jacob swims in Slazak’s, and Slazak’s pot belly keeps Jacob’s from buttoning up properly, but they accomplish it. “Now come close,” says Drexler, and they do. He draws a folding knife from his pocket and leans down from the platform and cuts the green patch from the uniform that Jacob wears now, the patch denoting capo. Slazak puts out his hand to accept it, but Drexler crushes the little scrap with a muttered curse and jams it deep into the pocket of his overcoat. “Plenty of better men are waiting for your position,” he says. “In the meantime, I have no doubt that these prisoners will do everything in their power to welcome you back among their ranks.” A harsh murmur goes up among the scores of wet and weary men, a kind of animal hunger made audible.
“As for you,” he says to Jacob, looking from his wet uniform up to the cloud cover that simply will not disperse, “hang those clothes up to dry. Make yourself presentable. The night won’t last forever.”
And thus they’re dismissed.
Max
I’ve walked with a cane ever since the days when I could pass it off as an affectation. One of those things that artistic types just do, like dressing in those diaphanous hand-dyed fabrics if you’re a woman, or wearing a beret if you’re a man. Like using a cigarette holder. Not that I’ve ever smoked, and not that I could ever see myself in a beret. Berets are for old Frenchmen, and as far as people of my background are concerned, an old Frenchmen is most likely a sympathizer.
I’ve sold them plenty of pictures, though, the French. They have a number of pretty fair museums, and their money’s as good as anyone else’s, although I do confess to having experienced a little shiver—I wouldn’t call it a frisson, exactly, ha ha ha—when the euro kicked in and all of a sudden they started using the same currency as the Germans. Time was, you could make a distinction between a French franc and a Deutschmark. Not anymore.
I told my agent from that moment on I’d only accept payment in American dollars. I suppose I sounded like one of those jingoistic political hacks or oafish country musicians—Barry Goldwater or Merle Haggard or someone like that. Love it or leave it. Demagoguery and fiddle music. I hate that kind of thing, but on that one occasion I don’t think anyone could have blamed me.
Anyhow, back to that cane of mine. For a time when I was young, people couldn’t decide whether it was an affliction or just an affectation. That was fine with me. It was no concern of theirs. The leg was stiff and I’d have limped without the cane to lean on but I never complained, and when it hurt—which was most of the time even then—I never let it show. Ever. A rumor went around for a while that I’d had polio when I was younger. Polio was something that people got back then. You got it and it damaged you for good and even though it went away you never entirely got over it.
Maybe I should have told them I’d had polio after all.
The first cane I had came from an antique shop right here in Manhattan. I didn’t have one when I came over from Europe. Everybody in Europe needed a cane then, or worse. A cane or a crutch or a wooden leg or a gurney. The whole continent was on its last legs, shot full of holes and staggering forward, trying with every last bit of strength not to fall into its own grave. The hospitals were packed with men whose needs were far greater than mine. Who could even think of depriving them? So I limped across Germany and I limped across France and I limped to the boat that took me across the channel to England. And then I limped to the ship that took me over the ocean blue, all the way to New York, New York.
Seven
“If the first one was a down payment,” Eidel asks, “then what would this one be?”
Zofia leans over her chopping block, slicing carrots, and in the pocket of her uniform Eidel can see the tip of a second cigarette. Who can say where or when she got it? The day is still early, the sun isn’t even up, and the delivery commando isn’t due for hours. Perhaps she met Blackbeard overnight somewhere, in an alcove between the blocks or against a wall lit only now and then by the searing arcs of the searchlights. Perhaps, in other words, out there somewhere in the black rain, she’s already lived up to her end of the bargain. The more Eidel looks at her the more she decides that she looks flushed and content, or as flushed and content as a living corpse can be, She looks like a person keeping a gratifying secret.
Zofia leans into the knife.
“Paid in full, then?” says Eidel.
“You could say.”
Rolak passes through, using an iron poker as a walking stick. She frowns to see that some of the carrots aren’t quite transparent, and she growls at Zofia. “You,” she says. ”Thinner.” Zofia glances at the pale orange pyramid remaining to be whittled down slice by tiny slice, and she sighs and sets aside the knife. In the drawer is a whetstone. She locates it and takes it out and cleans the rust from it on her apron. “Don’t fall behind,” says the capo, for there’s no satisfying her either way. Zofia permits herself a half-dozen rapid strokes on either side of the knife and puts the whetstone back and resumes cutting, faster than before. If an ideal round of sliced carrot has the qualities of a thick copper coin, these have the qualities of yellowish dappled sunlight on a woodland floor. Just try picking one up. Just try subsisting on a diet so ephemeral.
Eidel dabs her forehead with the silk handkerchief. The coal stove is roaring and no breeze stirs in the predawn gray. The capo watches the two women work and gives her head one abrupt nod to indicate that she’s satisfied for now. Then she moves on.
Eidel indicates the pile of carrots. “At this rate,” she says, “you won’t have a free minute to smoke that cigarette you worked so hard for.”
“Who said it was work?” says Zofia.
“My point exactly,” says Eidel.
Zofia smiles and shakes her head, a naughty schoolgirl. She smiles and takes the cigarette from her pocket and says in that case maybe she’d better smoke this while she works, raising the knife in one hand and the cigarette in the other and stepping away from the chopping block in the general direction of the stove—until the specter of the capo materializes in the doorway again, and she freezes.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Rolak raises the poker.
In an instant Zofia is back at work, the unlit cigarette jammed cold between her lips, one hand going for a carrot and the other raising the knife, but it makes no difference. It’s too little, too late. The capo has been itching to use that poker and now she does, catching Zofia across the shoulders and buckling her forward over the block. The newly sharpened knife slices away two fingers at the first joint.
Rolak laughs. “Too thick,” she says. “You’ll never learn.”
Without a moment’s reflection, Eidel binds up Zofia’s hand in the silk handkerchief. She would go with her to the hospital if she could—this will probably be the last time she will see her, since there’s a selection at the hospital every other day, a few prisoners left behind and the rest sent on to the gas�
��but there are carrots to be sliced and she doesn’t dare ask. Her work has doubled, at least for now.
She doesn’t know which she wishes more: that she’ll see Zofia alive again, or that she’ll somehow regain the silk handkerchief that once belonged to her daughter. And she doesn’t know which of these outcomes is the less likely.
*
The men stink like wet dogs. Jacob lies among them naked and shivering, waiting for the three bells to ring. He hasn’t slept. He’s too exhausted to sleep, too full of anticipation for what the day ahead might bring, so he’s lain awake on the hard bunk unable to move and unable to breathe, locked in position with his face pointed toward the spot where Slazak’s old uniform jacket hangs ghostly from a crossbeam. It occurs to him that just this once there is no capo in the block. He can’t remember ever experiencing such a thing. There’ll surely be a new one in the morning. Drexler has no doubt reported Slazak’s demotion, and some individual or some mechanism has arranged for his replacement. Roll call will reveal his identity. Jacob wonders what kind of beast this new capo will be, what crimes he may have committed in the outside world and what crimes he will commit here.
His mind runs to Max. The boy is sleeping beside him now, but when he awakens he must tell him to be especially wary of the new overseer. To keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, because you never know. Any man taking Slazak’s job will be particularly keen to make a good impression on the SS. There’s no telling what such an individual might do.
He realizes that while he’s at it he ought to tell Max to be wary of Slazak himself. After what happened last night, Slazak will be a wounded animal, angry and bitter and certain that he has nothing much to lose. Max, good boy that he is, might have an instinct to be kind to such a creature, but that instinct will not serve him well. Slazak has never liked Max and he’ll like him less now. He’ll pull him down to his level if he can.
