The Thief of Auschwitz

by Clinch, Jon

  “I’m Max, and I survived Auschwitz.”

  But who’d attend? Nobody. Nobody wants to talk about that stuff anymore. Nobody who went through it, at least. Nobody who knew anybody else who went through it. Your mind recoils. Your whole body recoils. It’s bad enough if you happen to see another survivor’s serial number by accident, in a coffee shop or on line at the grocery store or wherever. Imagine the memories that come back, the things that you remember and the things that you picture. I wear long sleeves regardless of the weather, and it’s not to keep the paint off.

  Soon we’ll all be dead, and we won’t be able to frighten each other anymore.

  The young girl I mentioned—that intern or assistant, the one from Washington—she has a couple of tattoos that you can’t help but notice. I’ll bet she has more that you can’t see, too. Private stuff. It just slays me, the idea of disfiguring yourself like that. What are people thinking?

  They’re not thinking about the world I’ve seen, that’s for sure. And the world I’ve seen is just people, when you get down to it. Just people doing the things that people do. The same things that people have always done and the same things that they’ll do again if you let them get away with it. I say why disfigure yourself in advance, when if you wait long enough someone will come along and do it for you?

  I’d tell her, if I thought she’d listen. I’d roll up my sleeve and show her my own tattoo, my serial number, my stigma. But what would that prove? You can’t communicate anything that way. It’s just wobbly ink on an old man’s arm.

  So I keep it to myself. And I paint.

  Eleven

  Jacob makes certain that he gets in the first word. “Chaim!” he says. “Why did they send for me? Do you suppose I’ve disappointed someone?”

  Count on the boy to climb aboard any deception whatsoever, without so much as a moment’s pause to gather his wits. “No, no, no,” he says. “It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s one of the junior officers. Beck. He’s lost a wager, and it’s about to cost him a shaved head.”

  The guard laughs. Perhaps he knows this Beck. Perhaps he thinks he has it coming.

  Chaim goes on. “The water’s boiling and the razor’s sharp. I hope your hands are steady.”

  “As always.” Jacob holds his right hand out before him to demonstrate, the arm stiff and angled up a few degrees. There’s a parodical hint of the fascist salute about it, which escapes no one but does no harm, not now that the pressure is off and the guard understands his connections and is ready to let him pass.

  “They won’t wait,” says Chaim, and off they go together, into deeper darkness.

  Once out of earshot, Jacob asks, “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “You go first.”

  “The usual,” says Chaim. “Plus saving your ass.”

  “Fair enough,” says Jacob.

  “And you?”

  “I have to see Vollmer.”

  “You’re in luck. He’s one of the few of them who can still stand up.” Ahead of them, crossing back and forth in general darkness punctuated here and there by lamps in doorways and lamps in windows and lamps hung high on blank walls, another guard paces, the one who’d signaled back to the Hungarian with his flashlight. They slow before reaching him, just a little bit, and Chaim asks, “How come you want to see Vollmer?”

  “Because you’ve been right all along,” says Jacob, not above employing a little cunning of his own.

  “I can’t wait to find out how,” says the boy, taking Jacob by the hand and dragging him toward the guard at a half trot and then dragging him right on past, not stopping and not even looking up. When they’re in the clear he says, “All right, tell me. What is it I’ve been right about?”

  “That I should explain to him about Eidel,” he says.

  “Of course! It’s about time!”

  “You see, then? You were correct from the beginning.”

  “Take my word,” says the boy. “As long as you play your cards right, there’ll be something in it for you too.”

  “I hope so.”

  “But why now?” says Chaim, for he’s not above suspecting a little cunning either, not even from Jacob. “Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “It’s Max.”

  “What about him?”

  Quickly, Jacob explains. The accident. The broken and bleeding leg. The death watch at the hospital, which is closer to punishment than to anything else.

  “Aha,” says Chaim. “So you’ve already considered how you might profit from this arrangement.”

  “How Max might profit,” says Jacob.

  “Of course,” says the boy.

  Over the door to the Officers’ Club hangs a gas lamp, burning white. There’s no guard posted, because everyone in this part of the compound is either on the same side or so outnumbered as to be utterly overwhelmed. The door hangs open a crack and music trickles through—a jolly number played on the piano, all runs and trills and booming bass notes in rapid alternation, some old folk lullaby speeded up and retooled and accompanied by the fierce and merry pounding of boots and fists—and upon this tide of sound a prisoner bursts through, carrying a carton of empty bottles in his arms.

  “Beg your pardon,” he says, pure reflex.

  Chaim ducks under the carton and Jacob ducks around it and together they go in, down a little hallway with more gas lamps mounted on the walls, and along past a low and dimly lit room where the piano player entertains a mixed audience of SS officers and young women from the auxiliary. There are tables with tablecloths and candles and there’s a jammed dance floor down at the far end, but they don’t look closely. They just scurry past. Some singing starts up behind them, the chorus of that folk song with everyone raising up his voice on cue, and the surprising assault of it makes them jump. One of the officers laughs to spy their terror. “Afraid of a little singing?” he calls, as amused as if he’d shot them himself. “I’m not surprised,” he hollers. “It’s a German number, after all.” They pretend not to hear, and he barks another laugh and returns to his music.

  The card room is at the end of the hall. It’s a little quieter than the music room but no more inviting, humming with low argument, dense with an air of gaiety lost and recrimination begun. A gray pall of tobacco smoke covers everything, mingling with the smells of alcohol and desperate men. Jacob knows these individuals, he knows their lowered faces and he knows the backs of their necks, but he’s never seen them like this. He’s never seen them exposed this way, vulnerable to one another, more like animals than ever. He pauses at the door, reluctant to set foot among them, but Chaim goes first and drags him in.

  A swinging door on the opposite wall opens at the same time, and two prisoners emerge with steins and glasses and crystal goblets on round trays. They raise them up to shoulder level like old professionals, although Jacob is acquainted with both of them and knows that never in their lives were they waiters before now. One was an optometrist, the other a college professor. He doesn’t know whether to admire them for having elevated their present roles as far as they can or to pity them for needing to.

  The officers look up for a variety of reasons: the arrival of the waiters with fresh drinks, the light spilling through the open kitchen door, the chance to catch an opportunistic glimpse at some opponent’s carelessly tilted hand. Not one of them looks toward Jacob and Chaim. Not even Vollmer, who’s shooing off a waiter and shielding his cards low against the table and trying hard not to look as if he’s counting the money stacked in front of him. But he’s counting it all right, and he’s counting the hands he’s won and he’s doing the math and he’s realizing that even this early in the evening someone has shorted him. Probably the commandant himself, and there’s no fixing that. Leave it to the old sot to pull off a stunt like that even though he’s already a few sheets to the wind. He’ll have to be more careful.

  Chaim leaves Jacob standing just inside the door and approac
hes Vollmer alone. The deputy looks up from his winnings and sees the boy coming his way like a telegram bearing bad news. Not that the child is unexpected; he’s here all the time, forever underfoot at the Officers’ Club and in the dining room and the devil knows where else. He’s a recurring bad dream, that child, and from the way Vollmer presses his eyes shut against the thick smoke in the air you would think he’s hoping he’ll dematerialize. But Chaim comes on, and he takes up a position at the corner of the table between Vollmer and Liebehenschel—between God and His Right Hand, for all purposes—and he lifts his little voice above the din of the arguing men and the clanging of the glassware and the rhythmic pounding of the music from down the hall.

  Vollmer’s every instinct tells him to raise a hand and press it across his mouth to stifle whatever words are about to come out, but he’d rather not touch him. Thus the unpunishable child gets away with anything. “The barber has something important to tell you,” Chaim says, and for the first time Vollmer notices Jacob, standing there just inside the door. He waves him over and the boy moves aside, just a step toward Liebehenschel, and the commandant drapes an arm over his shoulder. His breath stinking of tobacco and schnapps, the grizzled old capo di tutti whispers something in the boy’s ear and the boy laughs, willfully or otherwise. Who can tell anymore.

  Vollmer places his cards facedown on the table and looks up at the barber. “What is it?” he says, glad to have Jacob situated between himself and the boy, his mood improving already. He’s about to ask if perhaps haircuts have been rescheduled this week, but Jacob speaks up.

  “It’s about your painting,” he says.

  “The painting? The painting of the girl?”

  “Yes, sir,” says Jacob. “That painting and the other one—the one you want of your family.”

  “The portrait.”

  “Yes. The portrait.”

  “What of it?”

  “Begging your pardon, sturmbannführer—but I have found your artist.”

  “Not that landscape fellow.” Vollmer half turns away, sliding his hand toward his cards.

  “No, sir. Not the landscape fellow.”

  “Good. You’re learning.” He turns up the near corners of his cards, distracted. “I suppose you’ve located some talented fellow prisoner.”

  Jacob can’t answer outright.

  “Someone looking to curry favor.”

  Jacob’s heart sinks for an instant. “I’ve found the artist who painted the girl,” he says.

  “The girl? Impossible.”

  “So you would think.”

  “Whoever painted the girl is in Paris. Holland, perhaps.”

  “No, sir. The painter is right here.”

  “Here in Poland?”

  “Here in Auschwitz.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Not impossible. Right here in the camp.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “The same painter?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “I am.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I watched her paint it to begin with.”

  Vollmer puts down the cards. He sits for a moment dumbstruck.

  “She’s my wife, sturmbannführer.” Jacob can hardly speak. His mouth is dry and the breath is caught within his chest, trapped nearly beyond summoning. He fears that he will strangle himself right here, right on these very words. “She’s my wife,” he says again. “The painter.”

  If Vollmer weren’t suspicious before, he certainly is now. “And thus,” he sighs, “is revealed the favor that you wish to ask. No doubt your dear one has been assigned some painful duty that you’d like to see lightened. So you hope to arrange for a few days’ luxury in the sturmbannführer’s apartment, doodling and sketching and fooling everyone until her charade is found out and she’s sent on her way.”

  “No, sir. That’s not it.”

  But Vollmer isn’t listening. “You’re a cunning figure, Rosen. I’ll grant you that. I don’t know why it surprises me.”

  “I’m not all that cunning, sir.”

  “Cunning enough.”

  “Maybe a little,” says Jacob. “You see, it’s not my wife who needs a favor. It’s my son.”

  “First your wife, and now your son? It’s as I always say. There is no host in the world more hospitable than the SS. We insist on bringing families together.”

  Chaim laughs, a little hysterical shriek which relieves Jacob of the need to answer. “It’s my son,” he says again to Vollmer. “His leg is badly broken. He’s in the hospital block with that French doctor, and one way or another I believe he’s doomed.”

  “It must be very bad.”

  “It is. I’ve been afraid to tell you about my wife, but now I’m more afraid for the boy.”

  “And you think that if I get my family portrait made, then—”

  “Exactly. If you’d be so kind.”

  Alongside them the commandant stops a waiter and takes a glass from his tray and downs its contents in a single pull, his adam’s apple valving. He puts the glass down hard on the tray and pushes the waiter off with the sole of his boot and reaches out the other hand to pinch Chaim’s cheek, reddening it to something approximating the alcohol-infused color of his own.

  Vollmer’s curiosity is up. “What if your wife isn’t the painter you say she is?”

  “She is. Rest assured.”

  “Let’s say you’re correct. What happens if I don’t like her work anyhow?”

  “I imagine you’ll have us killed.”

  “I imagine I will.”

  “All three of us.”

  Vollmer nods. “And you’d risk that?”

  “I believe I already have.”

  Vollmer looks from the barber to the boy, from the boy to the smiling commandant, and then back to the barber. “You’d do this for your son,” he says.

  “Without a moment’s hesitation.”

  “Then so be it,” says Vollmer. “I’ll send word to the hospital.”

  *

  In the morning Jacob will smile more broadly than ever at the fleeting vision of his wife on the step outside the kitchen. She will see his teeth and they will remind her of the skull beneath his skin.

  *

  Pity poor Eidel: Rolak says she has a surprise in store. Such a thing is rarely good news and the capo knows it, so in order to draw out the suffering she lets her spend the rest of the day imagining just what the surprise might be. Not even after supper, when the women of the commando have finished restoring the kitchen to what passes for cleanliness and they’ve lined up to proceed back to the block for roll call, does she let on. She only gives Eidel a slow look, a gravid look of sorrow and shared anticipation, and leaves it at that. Poor Eidel can only speculate. Marching back she decides that the capo has discovered why she ducks outside at seven-thirty every Friday morning, and that she’s reassigning her to some other work crew so as to take away this small joy. Standing in the yard she imagines that the capo has learned not that but something worse—that some terrible thing has happened to Jacob or to Max or to both of them—and that she’s waiting to tell her at a moment when the effect will be the most crushing. Counting off she imagines the only thing worse yet: that whatever has befallen her loved ones is somehow her fault, that she’s committed some unknown sin and that Auschwitz itself, in its infinite and evenhanded cruelty, has caused the punishment to fall upon her husband and her son.

  Yes, she decides. That must be it. So when the count is over and Rolak stops her to explain that tomorrow morning at nine o’clock she will be excused from the kitchen and must report directly to the apartment of the deputy commandant, in a certain building on the main street of the town, she very nearly faints.

  “That’s it?” she asks.

  “That’s it. Tomorrow morning and every Saturday morning after that. Nine o’clock sharp.”

  “The deputy commandant’s apartment.”

  “You he
ard me.”

  “What will I do there?”

  “You’ll mind your manners,” says the capo, “if you have any sense. Beyond that, I can’t say.” She could say, of course—she could very easily say, since it’s her business to know everything about the women under her command—but why spoil the fun? Nine o’clock in the morning will come regardless. Let her wonder.

  Eidel sleeps less than usual, and not only because of the anxiety that’s overcome her. The night turns bitter cold and even the choking proximity of the other women’s bodies doesn’t help. A breeze bearing a few flakes of snow comes in through a crack in the wall and the chill of it drifts down along her neck . She shivers. They all shiver, the same chill passing from one to the next like some contagion. If she still had her silk handkerchief she would tuck it into her collar to help keep out the cold, but it’s long gone and Zofia who took it is long gone as well. The memory of it reminds her of Lydia but doesn’t keep her warm.

  The cold is worse and the dawn is breaking somewhere behind heavy clouds when the three alarm bells ring. The capo rousts Eidel and Gretel and the rest of the cooking commando and with a curse she sends them off to begin their work, the little flock of them emerging together from the dark block into the dark yard with steam rising up from their bodies like wasted prayers. Something precious given up that they can ill afford.

  They enter the kitchen and switch on the lights and with straws broken from a witch’s broom they draw lots to see who gets the pleasure of lighting the coal stoves. Once upon a time—back before Eidel arrived, back somewhere in their collective memory and in the collective memory of all such prisoners, who sooner or later come to believe that they have been here forever and that those who came before and died and have been replaced are but themselves seen from a different perspective, perhaps that of the eternal and omniscient Almighty blessed be He—once upon a time they took turns lighting the stove in cold weather, setting up a rotation and following it faithfully, until there were too many sicknesses and too many exceptional circumstances and altogether too many deaths to make order sustainable. Hence the broom, hence the straws, hence the falling back on the comfort of randomness.