Freedom (Jerusalem)

by Colin Falconer

  It was spring. He had survived almost nine months at Auschwitz.

  He had started the winter as a High Number, but he met the spring as a veteran, a Low Number. The tattoo on his arm set him aside from the others. He was a living fossil, a dinosaur. Of the pathetic knot of humanity who had shared the boxcar from Ravenswald, only he and Mandelbaum remained.

  There were new High Numbers now, first graders to be bullied or duped out of their precious rations. Low Numbers could persuade High Numbers to pay three rations of bread for a spoon; Low Numbers could convince High Numbers that the infirmary was giving away real leather shoes and that they would look after the High Numbers’ soup while they ran and got themselves a pair; Low Numbers could tell when the night bucket was almost full by the noise it made when it was used, High Numbers went at the wrong time and were sent out into the snow by the night guard to empty it.

  There was a simple test to tell a High Number from a Low Number. High Numbers would save a portion of their morning bread ration for later; Low Numbers would eat it all at breakfast, because they knew their stomach was the safest place to keep the grey, pasty treasure from thieves.

  Netanel had learned to organize.

  At the evening ration he would sell half his portion of bread for two pints of soup. He would extract the meager pieces of vegetable from the watery broth and then sell the soup to another prisoner for half a ration of bread. He would then repeat the transaction again and again, sometimes half a dozen times in an evening.

  Three times that winter he sold his shirt for extra rations. Each time he approached the Orphan afterwards and asked him for a replacement.

  “What happened to your shirt, 81305?”

  “It was stolen,” Netanel said. “In the washroom.”

  “You sold it.”

  “No, sir, it was stolen.”

  The Orphan took down the hollow rubber truncheon from its hook in the Tagesraum and beat him around the shoulders and the ribs until he lay screaming at his feet. Then he gave him a new shirt.

  That was the price for extra rations. It was reasonable.

  Pride stood in the way of survival, so therefore pride was too expensive to maintain. Shining shoes for the Orphan or for Mendelssohn was usually worth an extra half ration of bread.

  He volunteered for the team that brought the coffee into the barracks in the morning and fetched the soup on Sundays. It meant losing half an hour of sleep to stagger across the frozen Appelplatz in the snow and wind, but it was worth it because he could steal a turnip or a carrot or perhaps even a potato from the kitchen. Vegetables could be eaten raw or traded on the black market for bread or extra rations of soup.

  He sold the Orphan two gold molars for four rations of bread each. The Orphan removed these treasures himself with pliers. Netanel was amazed how easily the teeth came out; starvation, the Orphan observed laughing, had some side benefits. By now he was inured to the pain anyway; all he could think of was the bread.

  This transaction led to another lucrative piece of Organisierung. He would approach a High Number and offer him two rations of bread for a gold tooth; if the Häftling proved hesitant, he might offer two and a half, or even three. He would then take the seller to the Orphan who removed the tooth, paid the agreed price and gave Netanel the balance of the standard market rate - four rations.

  It was a good trade, even though Netanel knew the Orphan was getting twenty rations per tooth from the Meister at the railyards.

  But no matter how well he organized, there was no escaping the hunger. He could endure the cold, the work, and the beatings, but it was the hunger that broke the spirit. It dogged him day after day.

  Sometimes at night he watched his fellow prisoners licking their lips and moving their jaws in their sleep, dreaming about food. He knew, because he had the same dreams. He was like an adolescent who couldn’t think about anything but sex; he imagined herring frying in a pan, the crumbled texture of a rich torte on his tongue, fantasized about juices dripping from a roasted cut of beef.

  But he did not get to eat, even in his reveries; someone would jog the fork from his hand, or call his name, or steal the plate. He even starved in his own mind.

  Hunger made the belly swell, hollow like a drum. The fat fell off his thighs and changed the shape of his body so that he no longer looked like a man. It left sores on his feet that would not heal. It made his head ache every morning and left him light-headed and faint at night.

  It made it impossible to think of anything but the next ration.

  It made it impossible to think.

  Once he and Mandelbaum had been sitting outside the barracks, in the snow, eating their morning ration of bread and coffee. Mandelbaum had received a larger ration of bread and Netanel could not take his eyes from the sacred grey slab in the other man’s fist.

  “How did you get so much bread?” he said.

  “Do you want to trade?”

  Netanel could not believe his ears. Idiot! “All right,” he said, and held out his own meager ration.

  He accepted the prize in his other hand as Mandelbaum snatched Netanel’s ration away. They stared at each other.

  Netanel realized he had been tricked. Now he had the smaller ration. How had Mandelbaum managed that?

  “You tricked me,” Mandelbaum said.

  “Do you want to trade again?” Netanel said.

  Mandelbaum held out the ration. Netanel snatched it away and tossed the other piece of bread back to him.

  It had happened again. Mandelbaum still had the larger ration.

  They looked at each other, bewildered.

  “Do you want to trade again?” Netanel said.

  “What’s the point? You always get the biggest piece.”

  They ate their ration in silence, defeated by the illusion. The hallucination was a common one; just another torment to be lived with. Auschwitz had many more.

  Once he even imagined he saw Marie.

  It was only for a moment. It was a Sunday and he had been assigned to a special kommando to clean up the perimeter fence. The SS turned off the wire so they could pull a body off the spikes, and then, with the guard behind them, they walked between the rows of wire collecting the refuse that had been blown through the fence by the wind.

  The fence separated their part of the camp from the SS administration and barracks. Netanel looked up for a moment and saw a girl walk out of one of the Gestapo offices. “Marie,” he said.

  “Schnell, mach schnell!' the guard shouted and jammed the butt of his rifle into his back.

  Netanel bent to continue his work. When he dared another glance she was gone. He realized it was just another illusion, another fantasy of his tortured mind.

  The evening ration had been distributed over an hour ago, but a few Müsselmen still squatted on the floor scraping their bowls with their spoons, frowning with concentration as they turned them in the dim light, searching for some morsel that had somehow been overlooked. An old Jew who had once been a doctor in a hospital in Warsaw moved around the bunks offering to tend wounded feet and corns for a half ration of bread; a man who had been a tailor in Lublin squinted as he worked with his precious needle and thread, organizing another extra ration for himself.

  Mendelssohn appeared at the door of the Tagesraum. “Who has broken shoes?” he shouted.

  Men fell over each other in the rush to be first through the door. Only the first dozen or so would get them. A few minutes later another bell rang, and the night guard planted himself on a chair by the door and the lights dimmed.

  Mandelbaum curled into a ball on his bunk, so that no one could see him take the photograph of his son from the straw.

  “The rats have been eating my boy,” he whispered.

  “Better him than you,” Netanel said.

  “They have chewed half the face away. When he is gone, everything is gone. I shall be ready for the Krematorium.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Netanel said.

  It was a different Mande
lbaum these days. He was a Müsselman now. When he took his shirt off you could count his ribs. Netanel reckoned you could even count the bones in his head. But what was worse was the smell of him; Mandelbaum had stopped washing. Netanel had decided that was how the SS chose who was next for the chimneys: by the smell.

  “Sophie is dead, my little Ruth is dead. How can they do such things to children?”

  “They’re not dead. They went to the women’s camp at Birkenau, with your wife. You said so yourself.”

  “No, it’s all over. I’m ready now.”

  Netanel tried to think of some way to keep Mandelbaum alive. Why is it so important? he wondered. Perhaps because he is my last tenuous link with Ravenswald, because I knew him as a name before I knew men as numbers?

  “I heard a rumor today. Even the guards are getting sick of all this killing. Some of them are planning to turn their guns on the commandant and free us.”

  “No, Herr Rosenberg, no one is going to help us. They are going to kill us all sooner or later.”

  So the madman has become sane, Netanel thought, and I have joined the battalion of fools who deal in daydreams. The bell rang and the last rites of another day in bedlam were played out.

  Marie waited while the schreiber flicked through the sheaf of orders. He exuded an air of self-importance, as if each dispatch was secret correspondence to him from the Führer himself. He looked up at her, leering. The sports outfit she wore that was the required uniform of a lauferka - a prison courier - and it did not flatter her, but in a place like this, every woman was Marlene Dietrich.

  “Wait here,” he said, and took the papers into the next office, shutting the door behind him.

  Marie went behind his desk and slid open the drawer of the filing cabinet. Twenty-three women from Block 41 had been selected for the Krematorium, among them three members of the camp underground. She quickly removed their identity cards from the file and replaced them with other cards concealed in her track-suit pocket; cards that belonged to women gassed five months ago.

  She had performed this simple operation half a dozen times. As one of the lauferki she was allowed to move freely about the camp, carrying orders from the central administrative building to the outlying blocks, which extended for several kilometers through guard posts and checkpoints. It had made her a prime recruit for the prison underground.

  When the clerk returned she was standing at attention in front of his desk, as she had been when he left the room. “That will be all,” he said.

  She felt his eyes on her as she walked out. Pig. An SS clerk, and he behaves like Goering. One day, I would love to tell you how many times I have doctored your precious files while you’ve been strutting round your colonel’s office.

  Though I doubt I will ever get the chance. More likely you will find me doing it for yourself and I be shot.

  Perhaps.

  Just last week she had seen a German newspaper lying on the desk and she had been startled by what she had read: “tactical withdrawals” all along the Russian front; “redeployments” in Northern Africa. They were losing. The war would have to end soon, Hitler would have to negotiate. The army might even try to get rid of him. The nightmare would have an end, after all.

  So why do I still risk this?

  Because of what Rolf has done to me.

  And to make them pay for killing my Netanel.

  SS Major Rolf Emmerich sat on the chair by his bed, the soft black leather of his boots gleaming in the glow of the bedside lamp. He was in his shirtsleeves. He smiled softly as the guard escorted Marie into the room.

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said, “that will be all.”

  The door closed softly.

  Rolf reached onto the bedside table and picked up a packet of cigarettes. He lit one, smiling. “My pretty Marie.”

  “Do you want to do it now or do I have to listen to you talk first? I can never decide what is worse.”

  Rolf shook his head, feigning shock. “You try so hard to hurt me, don’t you? Why do you do it, liebling? Has it not occurred to you that I am the best friend you ever had?”

  “I thank God for it every night.”

  “And so you should. Where would you be without me, hein?”

  Marie forced a yawn. “Shall I open my legs for you now?”

  “First I have something to show you,” he said.

  “That will make a change.”

  “Oh, my Marie. You used to be such a prim little girl. Where did you get this dirty mouth?”

  “I’ve been mixing with the wrong people, I suppose.”

  His uniform jacket hung over the back of his chair. He took a thin stack of file cards from the pocket, each one emblazoned with the official eagle emblem of the SS. He held them under her nose and casually flicked through them with his thumb.“Do you know what these are?”

  “They are identity cards.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The ones I switched over in Colonel Schrantz’s office today?”

  “That was stupid, Marie.”

  “Forgive me, but it would seem to me the stupid one is the idiot of a clerk who let me do it right under his nose.”

  Rolf dropped the cards on the bed. “You’re quite right. I think perhaps it is time he moved his desk a little closer to the fighting.” He threw himself on the bed, and put his hands behind his head. “But what should I do with you?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I think you do. Oh, perhaps you might not care if I sent you to the Krematorium. The Frauenblock though - that is another matter.” She swallowed hard. She tried not to show it, but she was afraid. “Yes, that is your weakness, isn’t it, little Marie?”

  “So ... is that my - punishment?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I have a new ‘housemaid’ now, did you know? She is a lauferka too, like you. She is much nicer to me than you are, and she does not do stupid things like this.” He kicked the identity cards off the end of the bed with his boot.

  “I shall throw myself on the wire before I go there.”

  “Yes, I believe you would. That would be a waste. And what should I tell your father?”

  They stared at each other in silence.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  Marie stripped and lay down on the bed. She put her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling. He put his hand on her breast and kissed her on the mouth. “I could help you so much more if you would let me. I could perhaps even get you out of this place.”

  “Could you get me away from you?”

  He pulled off his belt angrily and jerked down his uniform trousers. He pulled her legs apart and rolled on top of her. “Why don’t you close your eyes and pretend I’m your Jew lover?”

  “How can I? Every time I breathe in, I smell you.”

  He squeezed her breast, hard. She flinched and instinctively pulled one hand from behind her head to protect herself. He grinned. “See? You do feel. You only pretend you don’t feel anything.”

  “I feel disgusted.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me, Marie. This is all I want.”

  He forced himself inside her. She uttered a small cry but her face remained expressionless. It’s always like this, he thought. She lies there, she doesn’t even try to fight me. It’s like making love to a corpse.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “This is enough for me. You don’t have anything else to give me anyway.”

  “He was bigger than you, Rolf. Did I ever tell you that? He made yours look like a peanut.”

  Rolf grimaced. He was losing his erection. The bitch was castrating him. “Not any more. He’s dead now, did I tell you? I selected him myself. You should have seen him. His legs were like matchsticks.”

  “Are you enjoying this, Rolf? I can’t feel anything.”

  Damn her. He was losing it completely.

  “Go on, Rolf,” she whispered, “go on, rock me to sleep.”

  He pulled out of her. “Turn over.”

  She stared
at him. He slapped her once, very hard.

  “Turn over!”

  She shook her head. He hit her again, caught her wrist and pulled her on her side. She fought him. He hit her twice more and she screamed and clutched at her mouth. There was blood on the pillow. He forced her wrist behind her back and held it there.

  Yes, this was better. He had his erection back now.

  “I’ll make you feel,” he whispered. “I’ll make you moan for me like you moaned for your Jewboy.”

  She lay sobbing into the pillow. Rolf sat naked by the bedside, tendrils of smoke curling up to the ceiling from his cigarette. He casually stroked the smooth and pale round of her shoulder. “I am sorry if I hurt you,” he whispered.

  “Dear God in heaven . . .”

  “The first time is always the worst. It will get easier.”

  She dragged herself off the bed and pulled on her clothes, wincing at the pain. “You see. You can lose your virginity more than once, Marie.”

  He smoothed back her hair. She knocked his hand away. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  “I love you, Marie.’

  “One day I’m going to kill you,” she whispered, and limped out.

  Chapter 19

  They stumbled in through the camp gates, all of them exhausted beyond pain, dreaming of a hunk of grey bread and a lice-ridden straw mattress. The kapos shrieked at them and lashed out with their rubber truncheons but Netanel had long ago become numb to their brutality. His mind was focused on his ration. Another day over, another victory won.

  But not quite. After Appel a bell rang and someone shouted, “Blocksperre!”

  Mendelssohn and the Orphan grinned at them as they filed in. Mendelssohn gave everyone a card with his name, age, number and nationality printed under the SS eagle, and the Orphan’s unterkapos herded them on to their bunks. The word went from mouth to mouth through the rows of huddled, frightened men: “Selecjwar!”

  “Selection!”

  “This is the end for me,” Mandelbaum said.

  “You’ll be all right,” Netanel said. “Spend a quarter of your ration for a shave. It will be worth it. You still have time.”