The Mystery of Right and Wrong

by Wayne Johnston

  don’t laugh or smile or say a word.

  Don’t dare look up, don’t look around,

  look straight ahead or at the ground.

  Curiosity is impudence,

  to look at them is insolence.

  But there are things that you must do—

  remember what I’m telling you.

  You must care for one another,

  never, never leave your mother,

  never, never leave each other.

  If you are sick, no matter what,

  you have to make them think you’re not.

  Remember, I’m not far away,

  I’ll think about you every day;

  remember, I’m just over there.

  They won’t let you see or hear me;

  remind yourselves that you are near me;

  write letters to me in your head…

  Remember all those books you read,

  the ones about young girls like you,

  remember things you know are true

  no matter what the Nazis do…

  The Allies will be coming soon…”

  The whispering goes on and on. The Frank girls, wide-eyed, nod and nod, looking more and more solemn. The hours left are far too few, the things they must and mustn’t do far too many, a litany that is the measure of his dread and only makes them more afraid.

  I can’t just leave them here like this. A final scene of family togetherness would be a better way to end, the suffering to come redeemed for me, at least, if not for them. I should do something, turn tragedy into romance, something.

  I’ll stay with them until the end, unable to change anything, able only to imagine what they think and feel. For a while, I attempt to finish Anne’s diary, write what she would have written if she’d been allowed to take it with her and still had the strength to write…

  * * *

  —

  For so long confined to one small space, we are now confined to another, but we can feel that we are moving, heading unimpeded from one place to another. This feeling is cruelly exhilarating and makes some of us, especially the children, faintly hopeful of one day being free. There is little water and no food. Even those of us who know about the camps, who know what lies in store for us, feel relieved when we arrive, as if we have made it through the first of a series of ordeals that will lead to our salvation.

  Mama, Margot and I stay together as Papa told us we should do. We sleep as near to one another as possible, though we are often crammed into bunks with strangers. Each morning, we stand side by side at roll call and sometimes dare to hold each other’s hands. At night, for as long as we still have the strength, we make ourselves heard to one another among the many mothers and daughters contending to be heard. By day, when we are overseen by the guards, no one cries. At night, many do, some comforted, some not…

  I tell Anne that the commandant, the Monster of the Land Without, lives with his family nearby. “His house is over there behind a hedge of cypress trees. We see the smoke that streams from his chimney, and he sees the smoke that ours makes. Very often he complains about the ash that it contains: when the wind blows from the west, his children have to play inside.”

  I tell her I’m afraid to die. I tell her that I’ve never seen anything worse than oblivion, which I’ve come face to face with more than once.

  I know so much she doesn’t know; I know that she is soon to go to another camp called Bergen-Belsen with Margot, but Edith will be left behind and, losing them, will lose her mind.

  * * *

  —

  Now comes the quickening of time. In seconds, days and weeks go by. The girls no longer notice me. Unlike them, I’m never cold or hungry. They have no hair, but I have all of mine. I’m wearing clothes; they’re wearing none. There are no numbers on my arm, just blue ink on the heel of my left hand. I’ve never been of any use to them. Is there nothing I can do but shadow them from place to place? Their fate won’t be altered if I stay. They won’t survive or suffer less if I’m among the witnesses. But then, it’s not for them I’m here but for me. I could pretend the Franks are in the heaven of what might have been, but what would be the point? I won’t let myself off so easily as to turn back now.

  * * *

  —

  War has been declared on women; that’s how it seems. The only men are those who guard them with their guns and with their black Alsatians that snarl when they are told to snarl, and heel when they are told to heel. The dogs are what they were made to be: they lick the faces of the guards, then sit and wait for their rewards.

  * * *

  —

  He appears, the commandant, Claws von Snout himself, though there are many clones of him about, men with faces just like his, whose purpose is to repeat the orders that he issues, which are the same day after day. The women know them but are too tired and too sick to obey, which inspires von Snout to say that they are typical Jews, weak and faint of heart.

  “This camp is run by a precise system that I invented, but its success doesn’t just depend on me. There are so many Jews you’d think that we were running out of Zyklon B. I didn’t overestimate the efficiency of the ovens. It’s as if the Jews are multiplying every day by mitosis. The more I kill, the more that come, more trains arriving all the time. I go to bed just after nine, but what’s the point? There’s too much noise to sleep. The older Jews go on about what they could possibly have done to deserve extermination. ‘Who judges us, what is his name? Why does he think we are to blame for all the wrongs of history?’ ”

  Edith thinks that I might be

  a portent of insanity.

  She has two girls but there are three,

  the third a girl her daughters see,

  or seem to, as she cannot tell

  if that’s some kind of trick as well.

  “All this might be my frame of mind.

  I may have left the world behind.

  I wish that one would go away,

  but there she is, all night, all day,

  as if she’s taken Otto’s place.

  I hate to look her in the face

  for there is something in her eyes

  that she’s unable to disguise,

  that makes me wonder if she might

  have the gift of second sight.

  What can that look of pity mean?

  What does she know; what has she seen?”

  The end of October. There is not much heat left in the sun, which sets early in the afternoon. The time that I foresaw has come, when Margot and Anne will be parted from their mother and leave Auschwitz, which is rife with rumours that the Allies are not far away. Von Snout has been ordered to accelerate the Holocaust, silence the last of the Jews, the witnesses to what’s been done, dispose of them or relocate them, for they are evidence that will be used against the Nazis if the war is lost. The healthiest ones are chosen to be sent to Bergen-Belsen, the camp in Germany. Von Snout is glad to see them go. “They’re someone else’s problem now,” he says, “but still a million more remain.”

  Edith, told her girls are gone, begins to push her food aside, convinced that what she doesn’t eat will wind up on her daughters’ plates. She believes that she is saving them and still believes it when she dies.

  Margot and Anne are on the last train that will ever leave Auschwitz, which arrives on All Hallows’ Eve at Bergen-Belsen. I ride with them and so does she, the one in black who shadows me.

  * * *

  —

  Bergen-Belsen, March 22, 1945. Margot and Anne are still alive.

  It is winter in Germany, the camp so far past full capacity that there is no room to lie down at night. The luckiest sit with their knees drawn up to their chins, while the rest must stand, propped up by each other as they drift in and out of sleep. Rememberi
ng what their father said, the girls stay together, holding hands when they are able, Anne doing most of the talking. They must not lose hope like the rest.

  The morning roll call never ends. The number who are still alive plus those who did not last the night must add up to the number who were still alive the day before. If they do not, Margot and Anne and the others stand in line, naked, their bare feet freezing in the snow, until someone or something shows the cause of the discrepancy and all the Jews are accounted for.

  Now comes the quickening of lines

  that almost overthrows my mind.

  The end for most is almost here,

  the dead and near-dead everywhere.

  Fed by the bodies of the dead

  and those that are as good as dead,

  the fires burn throughout the night

  like giant haystacks set alight.

  The prisoners can see the light

  reflected on the cloud of ash.

  “They’re only burning piles of trash,”

  they tell the youngest of the girls,

  who know the truth but like the words.

  Ash mixes with the falling snow

  and gathers on the ground below.

  The ash falls too upon the Jews,

  who have no hats, no clothes, no shoes.

  Some soldiers won’t go near the Jews lest they, too, come down with typhus, the lice-borne plague, the Jew disease, and are charged with insubordination. They say that the best solution would be to set fire to the entire camp and simply walk away, every bit of Bergen-Belsen gone in one great conflagration.

  The commandant won’t allow it. “So many Jews are not yet dead; they’d flee into the countryside and spread the typhus everywhere.”

  Would anyone presume to guess how even war could come to this? The dying console the dying, who need to know that they are loved, if not by God then by someone who, like them, He has forsaken. A few try to pray but only manage to mumble a few words before they trail off into silence.

  I stay with the girls throughout the night. Margot regards me as Anne and Edith did, sees in my eyes the look of pity that can only mean one thing. I don’t feel what the sisters feel. I don’t feel anything at all. I’m like some derelict guardian angel who doesn’t watch over them but merely watches as they fall. Their time is near; they have that look. They speak about their mother, who they hope is still alive, and about their father, the way he whispered to them on the train.

  The time has come to turn back time,

  to somehow beat it back in rhyme,

  to slow it down, give Them a chance—

  I cannot alter circumstance.

  On and on my left hand goes, faster than ever, as if to defy me and spare the sisters what it can. The girls hold hands as they did before the war in Margot’s bed on summer nights when they were hoping for a storm that would clear the air.

  As Margot pulls her hand away, Anne thinks she hears a woman say, “I think this one will go today.” Anne doesn’t know which one of them she means. She drifts off and, when she wakes, Margot isn’t there.

  The woman says, “Your name is Anne,” as if she is so near death she needs to be reminded of her name. “You fell asleep.”

  It’s almost like a reprimand for letting go of Margot’s hand, as if the sisters made a pact that Anne betrayed by coming back. Anne didn’t feel her sister’s death, though Margot died beside her—her time had come and she complied.

  Anne has never been compliant. She thinks about her diary, no doubt long since disposed of. She thinks it wasn’t much good, nowhere near as good as she wanted it to be. She’s no longer the girl who wrote it; she’ll never be that girl again.

  They named her Annelies Marie.

  In August 1942, they went into hiding. How long ago was that?

  She hears Margot’s voice: “In Frankfurt, all the boys asked me, ‘How can a blond girl be a Jew?’ They were too shy to talk to you.”

  Now she is back in her bed at the Secret Annex. The day is done. The time has come for her to write.

  I’m going crazy in this house. I wish the moon was like the sun, but it’s so cold, just looking down. What use is it to anyone?

  Her pen in hand, her writing album on her lap, Pfeffer asleep in the bed beside hers, she looks at me.

  I have to get some writing done, but that girl stands there so silently, watching, waiting.

  I can’t pretend I don’t know why—

  she’s waiting there for me to die.

  Have pity, Angel, pass me by.

  I stand before you, but fifteen,

  so many things I haven’t seen.

  So much remains for me to do—

  must I commend myself to you?

  At last the world is giving way;

  how nice it feels, how warm today.

  I didn’t leave her, not like I left the other Anne. I didn’t save her, but at least I didn’t run away. I stayed with her till the end.

  * * *

  —

  The Shadow She. The gaze of those unblinking eyes. It seems my Shadow She can see nothing at all, nothing but me. She stares at me and shakes her head. Why won’t she speak? She spoke a lot when she still could—perhaps she’s waiting for me.

  “I can’t make up for what I did, for what I let Him do. There’s nothing that will bring you back. The blood of more than three will be on my hands if I tell the truth.” She nods but doesn’t look away.

  From The Arelliad

  THE NIGHT SONG OF THE COMMANDANT (1985)

  The gypsies from the countryside

  play music for them every night,

  and peasants volunteer as servants—

  they love to help the commandant.

  “We’re the lucky ones,” his wife says. “We’re not in Berlin; it’s safer here.” They have bodyguards, sometimes more than one, though all of them look the same and never say a word. They stand at attention at the end of the driveway, rifles at the ready. His children are not sure what it is they guard them from. They’re schooled at home, for there’s no school nearby. They rarely leave the yard and often ask about the sounds that come from beyond the cypress trees, but his wife tells them not to nag their papa, because it only makes his headaches worse. His migraines get so bad she makes him lie down and puts a cold compress on his forehead, but it does him little good.

  From the windows of their bedrooms, his children can see the crematorium. They don’t know what is burnt there. Sometimes the smoke blows their way and gets so thick the children have to play inside, though even inside they can smell it.

  At times, he can’t see a thing from the kitchen windows, not even the sentries, who might as well be out there in a blizzard. When the wind changes, the smoke clears, but still he asks the children to stay indoors until the servants rake the grass, and leaves it to the guards to say when it’s safe to go outside.

  “We live beside a factory that’s busy making history.” That’s his favourite joke, a riddle he tells his daughter Birgitte about the smoke that billows from the yellow stack. She asks him what the factory really makes, but he only laughs and says that she’s not old enough to keep a secret.

  He laughs again and strokes her hair

  and says that, when they win the war,

  when all the missions are complete,

  the world is rid of every rat

  that interferes with purity,

  the enemies of clarity,

  the flaws within the molecule

  that have been with them since the Fall;

  the cleansing of the universe,

  the confounding of the Curse,

  the raising of the Nazi Cross,

  its shadow over every land—

  when all of this has come to pass,r />
  his little girl will understand.

  They never leave the grounds without an escort. The guards go with them everywhere, a car in front, a car behind, a soldier on the running board, four motorcycles with sidecars. The Poles who stand along the roads salute him and the children, and they salute them back.

  In bed, at night, he hears the ceaseless din of the camp. He tells himself there is still a chance that they will win the war.

  The factory goes on and on, the sound seeming to bore into his very brain. Listening to music helps him get to sleep. He likes to be sung to. The last song in the house at night, the night song of the commandant, is something like a lullaby. Ofoozyb. He prefers a voice that’s strong and clear, the kind his family can hear as they, too, are drifting off to sleep. All day he looks forward to it. The singer who stands beside his bed must not get it wrong.

  The song’s the same night after night; the singer, too, if he sang well the night before.

  But if, throughout the song, the master stays awake, someone else will take the singer’s place, another gypsy who will know that he sings to save his life.

  The commandant lies beside his wife, who seems to be unbothered by the noises from the factory.

  The gypsy waits until his master’s eyes are closed—he knows, he knows, how easy it would be, he knows. But he goes on singing till he’s sure that he’s not needed anymore. But if the commandant’s wife should stir or cough, the commandant will wake again and ask him for a second song, a better one, so he must stand there all night long, beside the bed, beside the bed, rehearsing music in his head.

  The ghost assassins of von Snout

  are silent as they move about.

  They can’t be seen, they can’t be heard;

  they never have to say a word.

  The business of the camp goes on

  and will continue when he’s gone.

  Von Snout awakes and soon sits up. He simply cannot stay asleep, such is the clamour in his head. There is no singer by the bed, no one waiting for him to name another song.