“Spasibo, synok.”
Not knowing what else to offer, he extracted two big, round potatoes and handed them to Willy. Not having the heart to refuse him, Willy took them.
He was still holding them as he watched the peasant shuffle away in the direction of the market.
“He called me son,” he said finally and put the potatoes into his pocket.
“Since when do you speak Russian?” I smiled, thinking it to be positively splendid that he didn’t throw the potatoes away but kept them despite having no actual need for them.
“I have just begun learning it.” With those words, he extracted a small Russian-German military dictionary out of his pocket and demonstrated it to me. His smile, however, faltered. “I didn’t have to go the base. I made that up to make an excuse… I wanted to talk to Weizmann, you see. To try what he had suggested earlier, with his Messerschmitt. Yes, yes, I know your views on all that business and don’t waste your words telling me now that it won’t work. I was willing to try. Anything is better than this torturous unknown. But it’s all finished anyway. He wasn’t even there when I arrived; just a note and this dictionary he’s left for me. They transferred him to the front two days ago. With such urgency, he didn’t even get a chance to call, to warn me. I don’t know anything anymore, Ilse. That was the only plan we had. Now, everything is finished.”
“I didn’t know you were such a pitiful defeatist, Willy Schultz.”
He chuckled along with me, looking darn miserable. He leafed through the dictionary, paying closer attention to the words circled by Otto’s hand, repeated some of them out loud. Zdravstvyite, tovarish, mama, otets, reka, spasibo, doroga, pomogite pozhalyista, kak proity k, partisan…
“Partisans… Yes, there are, of course, partisans…” He began musing out loud.
“Liza’s Nahum had managed to escape to them.”
“Did he really?”
“Yes. To Zorin’s Brigade, she said.”
“Lucky old chap,” Willy sighed wistfully.
I regarded him incredulously.
“Are you telling me you’re envious of an escaped Jew?”
He stared vacantly ahead before answering, “I am. He’s a free man now.”
“And you’re not?”
He was just going to reply but suddenly stiffened and pulled himself up at the sight of Schönfeld – I saw him too now as he had just turned the corner and was making his way toward us in a purposeful stride. Grinning and looking positively happy with himself, he exchanged salutes with Willy and stood next to him, pretending to observe the workers as well.
“A splendid day, is it not, Parteigenosse?”
“It is,” Willy said through his teeth.
“By the way, what happened to your Party badge? I haven’t seen you wearing it lately. You didn’t lose it, I hope?” His concern was anything but genuine. “I can get you a new one if you did. Such things happen.”
“It’s being cleaned,” Willy replied venomously as he stared straight ahead of himself.
“Ach, then it is,” Schönfeld consented surprisingly easily and clasped his hands behind his back.
“Is there anything you wanted, Untersturmführer?” Willy didn’t care to conceal his desire to rid himself of the SS officer’s company.
“Just wanted to express my sorrow concerning your comrade Weizmann.”
Willy turned to him, suddenly pale. Schönfeld’s grin widened.
“Such a shame about his transfer, eh? I understand you two were good friends. You will miss him terribly, no doubt.”
“How do you know about his transfer?”
“How do I know, is one way to put it. Another way to put it is, what I had to do with his transfer.”
Willy’s hands closed into fists. I coiled my fingers around his wrist. Do not hit him now. Do not make a scene. This is precisely what he wants, to provoke you.
“What do you want, Schönfeld?” he finally growled.
“What do I want as in ‘what is my end goal’ or what do I want as in ‘what do I want for me to stop pursuing that end goal of mine’?” He purred pleasantly. “You ought to be more specific, Herr Leutnant.”
“Understand it as you like.”
Schönfeld was suddenly serious. “I only want to serve my Führer, Leutnant. That is my end goal, just as it should be yours. Weizmann is already gone; there are rumors that Sturmbannführer Bröger is going to be promoted and transferred soon. It would be a shame if they sent you, along with everyone else, to Ukraine.”
“I don’t see it happening. You see, I’m the most terrible flyer. They don’t allow me near their aircraft, anymore.”
“So I heard.”
“You’re not even bothering to conceal the fact that you tried making my transfer happen?” Willy seemed to be amazed at such audacity.
“Why should I? You think of me as your enemy when in fact, I’m your best friend, as of now. You are heading someplace very dark with that Jewess of yours. Do you want to end up in the same pit, perhaps? A court-martial, is that what you want?”
Willy kept obstinately silent.
“I’m only trying to set you back onto the right path before it’s too late, Schultz.”
“Watch how you address a superior officer, Schönfeld.”
“If you keep being a pigheaded numbskull, you will lose your rank along with your life, in the near future, Schultz. Think about it and do something about that broad before it’s too late. There are plenty of very willing, Gentile girls in Minsk. She’s not worth dying for.”
“What do you care? You’re not the one to get shot.”
“I’m the one to hold the rifle and I terribly hate shooting at my own fellow officer kin, you see. So please, be so kind, spare me such a grim responsibility.”
“Go hang yourself, Schönfeld.”
The SS man only shrugged and made off. The day had long ceased to be splendid.
Chapter Twenty
September 1942
“Damnable business, I tell you.”
I was listening to the voices in Willy’s office as I typed some report or the other – they had all morphed into a ceaseless infinity of numbers and letters a long time ago.
The officer who was talking was in charge of the newly arrived Staffel that Willy was to put up in the Government Building until he, as the administrative officer, could find a new suitable place for their quarters. The village that housed their previous lodgings had been razed to the ground by the SS – that much I had learned from the Staffel commander’s half-indignant, half-astounded report, as though the man himself couldn’t quite believe such a turn of events.
“Were they truly aiding the partisans then, your hosts from the village?” Willy inquired.
“Not from what I know but the most damnable part is that the SS didn’t even bother with an investigation, of any sort, on their account. They simply rode into the village one morning, showed me the paper signed by General-Kommissar Kube, gave my men and me one hour to collect our belongings and got down to their business.”
“Do they not realize that they’re only making it worse for themselves?” Willy said incredulously. “When we first arrived in Minsk, some of the villagers and townspeople even welcomed us or at least didn’t display any hostility towards the occupying forces.”
“Indeed!” The other officer agreed emphatically. “We gave them food for cooking from our own field kitchen; we paid them for laundry and cleaning in occupation money—”
“And the partisans?” Willy interrupted him in the heat of discussion. “It all also began with the SS and their treatment of the Soviet prisoners of war. Have you stepped inside our Shirokaya camp? You’d be appalled by the conditions in which those men are forced to exist. I’m not even touching on the subject of the ghetto,” he added very quietly.
“Ach, that. I’ve heard… People talked, in the village, about the entire affair. Some of them had friends in the city – they saw it all with their own eyes.” The officer released a trem
endous breath. “I’m ashamed to call myself a German after what our fellow countrymen are doing to those poor devils. The nation of Goethe and Wagner, aren’t we? High culture and all that rot! And now those numbskulls from the SS wonder why the partisan problem is out of control. Because now, even the locals have turned on us, following their new policy. If we only suspect a village of aiding the partisans, all of its inhabitants will be subject to immediate measures of retribution,” he spoke in a mocking voice. “The forests have already been crawling with partisans since April; you watch how fast the rest of the formerly neutral locals turn on us as well. Even the ones who haven’t been aiding the partisans, now will.”
“I don't blame them.”
“I don’t either. Do you think you can find us something suitable any time soon, Schultz?”
“Give me a few days; I’ll find you such a base, it’ll be even better than the other.”
“Not too close to the forest, though.”
“I wouldn’t think you’d want to be close to the forest.” Willy laughed readily along with his guest.
“And with some flat field nearby, if possible. For the aircraft.”
“Naturally. How many do you have there? Twelve?”
“Twelve.”
“Any other machinery?”
“Two regular army trucks, in which we arrived.”
I heard soft whispering of Willy’s mechanical pencil as he quickly jotted down the information on the piece of paper. I removed the finished report from the typewriter and stared vacantly ahead as I listened to his approaching steps. Now, he’d place this new paper in front of me and I’d be typing a new report, in which the annihilated village would become yet another name, yet another number in the list of casualties of the Neues Deutsches Reich. Through an open window, a gust of September wind burst, bringing with it the faint smell of carbolic and decay. Broodingly, I wondered which would happen first, our total annihilation, or their running out of paper for such reports.
Willy must have seen it all written on my face for he caught my hand before I could reach for the paper he’d just brought and kissed it.
“Leave it. It’ll wait. Come have coffee with us. I’ll introduce you to Hauptmann Greiser. He’s a first-rate fellow!”
I followed him, with reluctance, into his office and hesitated before offering my hand to a tan, middle-aged officer clad in a somewhat faded, wrinkled uniform which distinguished frontline soldiers from “office pen-pushers,” as Willy jokingly referred to his own kind.
I stiffened even more as Greiser plainly remarked, you’re not local after I replied to his “how goes it,” in perfect German. He gave me another once-over, noted the absence of the uniform, which all German secretarial staff posted in Minsk wore and smiled. “Jewish?”
I searched Willy’s face instead of responding. He nodded calmly, so did Greiser and pulled up a chair for me as if such introductions were the most ordinary thing in the world. He not once, again, mentioned my Jewish nationality or position here but still spoke carefully choosing his words and topics for a conversation, much like healthy people talk with their sick relative who has already been sentenced by the doctors, with a diagnosis which can only be mentioned in a hushed manner and as far away from the doomed relative’s ears as possible. I was still grateful for that; grateful that even after Otto had been sent away, there still remained other such Ottos who at least didn’t hate us openly and were, if anything, apologetic. We’re sorry that you are to die and we are to live. We are sorry that the disease claimed you and not us. We will still visit you and bravely hold your hand and pretend that perhaps you will get better one day and walk out of here alive, even though deep inside we all know the truth… However, we’ll still pretend; for your sake, we will.
Only Willy never looked at me with that painful sympathy and pitiful compassion. His eyes were always frank and bright whenever he looked at me for he was the only one who stubbornly refused to acknowledge the diagnosis no matter how many second opinions or third ones were brought up before him. Death? We’re having none of that. No, my dear, you will live because I said so. I love you and therefore death has no rights over you. You were mine first and therefore it can’t have you. I will fight it to the bitter end and you will see that I will win.
To him, for those frank eyes of his, I was grateful the most.
By dinner time, Liza and I were tasked with arranging the newly arrived airmen’s living quarters in suitable rooms. While the Staffel had their meal in the officers’ mess, we made their beds – temporary cots promptly brought in by the soldiers summoned from their nearby barracks and ensured that each had a clean, folded towel to use. It was all done in such an incredible rush that we were still hurrying between the rooms long after they had returned from the mess, writing down their requests and answering torrents of questions.
“The restrooms are at both ends of the corridor,” I answered for the millionth time in the course of the past thirty minutes. The entire floor was in wild confusion, buzzing like a beehive as these knights of the sky, as they were good-humoredly addressed by their local administrative Luftwaffe counterparts, were settling in. Willy generously offered his own quarters to Staffelkapitän Greiser and his immediate staff. With the sofa and the additional cots, we managed to lodge, not only the Staffelkapitän himself but his Staffeladjutant and three pilots as well. “The showers are on the first floor, left from the bottom of the stairs and you’ll have time to shower only from seven to eight in the morning – from eight to nine Field Police use the showers. For the night, keep the windows closed and the blackout curtains drawn at all times; the Soviet aircraft don’t often pass our parts but there were acts of sabotage when the local underground directed Soviet bombers onto the SS barracks with the aid of their signal installed on the roof. We have sentries on the roofs now but keep the windows dark in any case.”
“Any casualties?” A perky, dark-haired pilot asked, his eyes alight with mischief.
“There were many casualties, yes,” I replied carefully.
“Good,” he concluded merrily, causing a burst of laughter from his receptive audience. “Those swine had it coming if you ask me. I hope you awarded the brave fellow who thought of the whole scheme?”
“He was never caught,” I explained, hiding a grin.
“I bet it was one of ours, not Minsk underground,” the Staffeladjutant supplied from his cot that we had squeezed in between Willy’s bed and the desk, at which I usually typed. “Merkel, was that you, you cast-iron limb of Satan?”
The small room was once again in an uproar of laughter.
A blond pilot, who couldn’t have been older than twenty, ceased his rummaging in his suitcase and straightened out with a grave look about him. “As much as I would love to ascribe such a feat to my modest persona, I’m afraid this time it was not me. But now that I think of it,” he turned to face me, “how often, did you say, those sentries patrol the roofs of the new SS barracks and how easily are they distracted?”
“Watch yourself, Merkel, or you’ll find yourself in the disciplinary battalion faster than you think,” Staffelkapitän Greiser added his voice from the round table, which had been pushed close to the wall and at which he was perusing a map together with Willy. Despite the noise, the two were deeply in search of the new possible base location. “Those muttonheads share a building with us now. If they hear you, not I, not Göring himself will get your sorry face out of the court-martial.”
“Chance worth taking, Herr Staffelkapitän.”
A tall officer with raven black hair and pale face, who sat at my desk staring into nothing the entire time, suddenly leaped to his feet and stormed out of the room, bumping into his superior’s chair in passing. The room was instantly immersed in silence.
“Nice going, numbskulls,” Greiser muttered poisonously. “You had to go and bring the damned SS up when Konradt is still all out of sorts after what happened and joke about it on top of it. A lot of sensitivity you have on you comrade’s acco
unt; nothing to say.”
“Sorry, Herr Staffelkapitän.” Merkel made a move toward the exit, his previous playful expression all but gone. “I’ll go fetch him at once and apologize.”
“Let the poor bastard be.” Greiser caught Merkel’s sleeve. “You’ll only make it worse. Let him walk it off. In cases like this, a man has no need for company and particularly yours, you miserable clown.”
“I truly didn’t think, Herr Staffelkapitän—”
“You never think.” Greiser buried his head in the map again. I shot Willy an inquisitive look but he only shrugged his shoulders slightly. With that, the subject was dismissed.
Liza and I were to sleep in Willy’s bed that night. He, himself, after much protesting from his guests’ side and suggestions to put the ladies on their beds while they slept on the floor, insisted on using the bedroll as his sleeping arrangements for the night. Ladies. Even Liza eventually warmed up to the pilots after all of the harmless flirting and compliments they subjected her to. It was nice to be looked at and addressed as young women and not as sexless, nameless objects which were to be exterminated as soon as their usefulness had run out. In this respect, the Luftwaffe differed greatly from the SS.
While the men were settling down to sleep, we used the chance to slip into the now silent and empty corridor and headed for the restrooms to brush our teeth and wash up.
“Liza,” I called out to her quietly. “Everyone’s in their beds; shall we try the showers downstairs?”
“Are you quite mad, Fräulein Stein?” Her eyes glistened in the darkness as she regarded me in amazement. “I have no desire to get shot by some Field Police sentry on duty. Two Jews in the shower for German officers! That’ll go down well with them! Say thank you it’s the Luftwaffe floor and we’re allowed to use their sinks. Showers, indeed!”
She snorted and proceeded to the restrooms. I halted in my tracks; she did too.
“Ilse, are you really considering it?” Her tone was serious now.
No Woman's Land: a Holocaust novel based on a true story (Women and the Holocaust Book 2) Page 19
