Fatelessness (18 page)

Around that time, there were occasions at the camp when it happened that the roll at the morning
Appell
did not tally—like the other day in Block 6, next to us. Everyone was perfectly well aware what might have occurred, since reveille in a concentration camp does not awaken anyone who can no longer be awakened, and there are such cases. But then that is the second method of escape, and who has not felt that temptation, if only the once, a single time at least; who could remain unfalteringly steadfast, most especially in the morning, when one awakes to—no, has dawn on one—yet another new day in the environs of an already noisy tent, neighbors already making preparations to go: I, for one, could not, and I would undoubtedly have made an attempt, had Bandi Citrom not prevented me from doing so time after time. Coffee is not so important in the end, and anyway you will be there for
Appell
, you think to yourself, as indeed did I. Naturally, you do not stay in your bunk—no one is that infantile after all—but get up, properly, honorably, just like the rest, but then . . . you know of a place, an absolutely safe nook, you would stake a hundred to one on it. You had picked it out, spotted it, or it caught your eye yesterday or maybe even longer ago, quite by chance, without any plan or premeditation, doing no more than vaguely intimating it to yourself. Now it comes to mind. You might squeeze beneath the lowest boxes, for example. Or seek out that hundred-percent-sure crevice, hollow, niche, or nook, then cover yourself well with straw, litter, blankets. All the time with the thought continually in your head that you are going to attend
Appell
. Yes, there was a time, I tell you, when I understood that well, very well indeed. The bolder ones may even suppose that a single person will somehow pass unnoticed; there might be a miscount, for example—people are only human after all: a single shortfall, just today, just this morning, is not necessarily going to be conspicuous, and anyway, by the evening the numbers will add up, you’ll make sure of that; the even more reckless, that there is no way or means by which anyone will ever be able to find them in that safe place. But those who are really determined will not think even of that, as they simply consider—and there have been times when I too supposed the same—that an hour or so’s good sleep, in the end, is worth any risk, any price.

But then there is not much chance of them getting that much, for in the morning everything unrolls swiftly. Look! A search party is already forming up in great haste, the Lagerältester in black, freshly shaven, fragrant, with dashing moustache at its head, the German Kapo close behind, and behind him a couple of senior block inmates and Stubendiensts, with clubs, bludgeons, and hooked sticks all grasped at the ready, and they turn straight into Block 6. From inside a clamor, pandemonium, and just a couple of minutes later— listen to that!—the triumphant, strident jubilation of those who have found the trail. A sort of squeaking is mingled into that, ever feebler and eventually stilling altogether, and before long the hunters themselves emerge. That thing they are lugging along out of the tent—from here it looks by now like no more than a motionless pile of inanimate objects, a tangle of rags—is tossed down at the very end of the row and left lying there: I do my best not to look over. Yet a shattered detail, a contour, lineament, or distinctive feature that can be made out even so, would draw, compel me to look across, and I did indeed recognize it as the man who had bad luck. After which: “
Arbeitskommandos antreten!
”—and we can depend on it that the soldiers are going to be stricter today.

Finally, the third, the literal, and true mode of escape can also come into play, it seems; there was a single instance of this too in our camp, a one-off occasion. There were three escapees, all three Latvians, seasoned prisoners, well equipped with German and local knowledge, sure of themselves—that was the whispered rumor doing the rounds, and I can tell you that after the initial realization and secret glee—even, here and there, awe—at the expense of our guards and a nascent burst of enthusiasm as we contemplated emulating the example and weighed up the chances, we were also pretty incensed about them, every one of us, by that night, around two or three a.m., when we were still standing (though tottering would be the more accurate word for it) at
Appell
in punishment for their action. The evening of the next day, on marching back, I again had to do my best not to look over to the right. Three chairs were placed there, and on them were seated three men, or men of sorts. Precisely what kind of sight they may have presented, and what may have been inscribed in clumsy big letters on the paper sign hanging from their necks—I felt it simpler not to ask about all that (I got to know anyway, because it was a topic of conversation in the camp for a long time after: “
Hurrah! Ich bin wieder
da!
”—or in other words, “Hooray, I’m back again today!”), apart from which I also saw another piece of gimcrackery, a stand which reminded me a bit of the carpet-beating racks in the courtyards of apartment blocks back home, on which there were three ropes tied in nooses—and thus, I realized, a gallows. Naturally, there could be no question of supper, but right away “
Appell!
” and then: “
Das ganze Lager: Ach
tung!”
²⁰
as the Lagerältester in person, up front, bellowed at the top of his lungs. The customary punishment squad assembled, then, after a further wait, the representatives of the military authorities made their appearance, after which everything went ahead in due form, if I may put it that way—fortunately, up front near the washroom, far from where we were, not that I watched anyway. My attention was drawn rather to my left, from where all at once came a sound, a muttering, some sort of song. In the row I saw a slightly tremulous head on a scraggy, forward-stretched neck—little more, in fact, than a nose and a huge, moist eye that, right at that moment, was somehow swimming in a crazy light: the rabbi. Soon I also picked out his words, particularly after others in the row had slowly taken them up from him—all the Finns, for instance, but many others as well. Indeed, though I don’t know what the mechanism was, it somehow passed across to nearby groups, the other blocks, spreading and gaining ground as it were, because there too I observed a growing number of lips in motion and shoulders, necks, and heads cautiously, almost imperceptibly, yet distinctly rocking back and forth. Meanwhile the muttering was just about audible here, in the center of the row, with a continual “Yitgaddal ve-yitkaddash”
²¹
being sounded over and over again, like some murmur issuing from the ground below, and even I knew that this was the so-called “Kaddish,” the Jews’ prayer of mourning for the dead. It is quite possible that this too was sheer stubbornness, the final, sole, and perhaps, I could not help realizing, in some ways slightly forced, I might almost say prescribed and in a certain sense fixed, so to say imposed, and, at the same time, useless mode of stubbornness (for it altered nothing up at the front: apart from the last few twitches of the hanged men, nothing moved, nothing wavered at these words); yet all the same, I could not help somehow understanding the emotion in which the rabbi’s expression seemed almost to dissolve, and even his nostrils quivered so strangely. As if it was only now that the long-awaited moment were here, that moment of victory of whose coming he had spoken, I recollected, back in the brickyard. Indeed, for the very first time, I too was now seized, I don’t know why, by a certain sense of loss, even a touch of envy; for the first time, I now somewhat regretted that I was unable to pray, if only a few sentences, in the language of the Jews.

But neither stubbornness nor prayers nor any form of escape could have freed me from one thing: hunger. I had, naturally, felt—or at least supposed I felt—hunger before, back at home; I had felt hungry at the brickyard, on the train, at Auschwitz, even at Buchenwald, but I had never before had the sensation like this, protractedly, over a long haul, if I may put it that way. I was transformed into a hole, a void of some kind, and my every endeavor, every effort, was bent to stopping, filling, and silencing this bottomless, evermore clamorous void. I had eyes for that alone, my entire intellect could serve that alone, my every act was directed toward that; and if I did not gnaw on wood or iron or pebbles, it was only because those things could not be chewed and digested. But I did try with sand, for instance, and anytime I saw grass I would never hesitate; but then, sad to say, there was not much in the way of grass to be found, either in the factory or within the grounds of the camp. As much as two slices of bread was the asking price for just one small, pointy onion bulb, and the fortunate well-offs sold beets and turnips for the same price: I personally preferred the latter because they were juicier and usually larger in volume, though those in the know consider there is more of value, in terms of contents and nutrients, in sugar beets; but then who’s going to be fussy, even though I find it harder to stomach their tough flesh and pungent taste. I would make do with, and even take a certain comfort from, the thought that at least others were eating. Our guards’ lunch was always brought into the factory after them, and I would not take my eyes off them. I have to say, though, that I derived little joy from this as they ate quickly, without even chewing, just bolted it down; I could see they had no idea what they were doing, really. There was another time when I was in a workshop Kommando, and here the workmen unpacked whatever they had brought from home; I recollect watching for a long time—quite possibly, I would have to admit, not entirely without a smidgeon of obscure hope—a yellow hand covered in big warts as it fished long green beans, one after another, out of a tall jar. But that warty hand (by then I had thoroughly familiarized myself with every single one of its warts, every foreseeable grip it might make) just kept on moving, plying the passage between jar and mouth. After a while, though, his back concealed even that from my gaze, since he turned away, which naturally I understood as being out of a sense of decency, though I would have liked to tell him to just take his time, just carry on, as for my own part I set great store on the spectacle alone: that too was better than nothing, in a manner of speaking. The first time I purchased the previous day’s potato peelings, a whole bowlful, it was from a Finn. He produced it very casually during the lunch break, and luckily Bandi Citrom was not with me in the Kommando to be able to raise any objections. He placed it in front of him, then dug out a tattered bit of paper, and from that some gritty salt, all very leisurely, at length, even picking up a pinch with the tips of his fingers and carrying that to his lips to taste, before calling over, just kind of casually: “For sale!” The price was normally two slices of bread or a dollop of margarine; he was asking for half of that evening’s soup. I tried to haggle, appealing to all sorts of things, even equality. At this, he shook his head, the way Finns do: “
Di bist nist ki yid, d’bist a shaygets
. You no Jew.” “So why am I here, then?” I asked. “How I know that?” he shrugged. “Lousy Jew!” I retorted. “That won’t make me sell it any cheaper,” he replied. In the end, I bought it for the price he had asked, but I have no idea from where he materialized that evening at precisely the moment my soup was being dished out, nor how he had managed to get wind in advance that it was going to be noodle milk pudding for supper that day.

I would maintain that there are certain concepts which can be fully comprehended only in a concentration camp. A recurrent figure in the dumb storybooks of my childhood, for instance, was that of a certain “itinerant journeyman” or “outlaw” who in order to win the princess’s hand enters the king’s service, and gladly so, because that amounts to only seven days altogether. “But seven days with me means seven years to you,” the king tells him. Well, I can say exactly the same about the concentration camps. I would never have believed, for instance, that I could become a decrepit old man so quickly. Back home that takes time, fifty or sixty years at least; here three months was enough for my body to leave me washed up. I can safely say there is nothing more painful, nothing more disheartening than to track day after day, to record day after day, yet again how much of one has wasted away. Back home, while paying no great attention to it, I was generally in harmony with my body; I was fond of this bit of machinery, so to say. I recollect reading some exciting novel in our shaded parlor one summer afternoon, the palm of my hand meanwhile caressing with pleasing absentmindedness the golden-downed, pliantly smooth skin of my tautly muscular sunburned thigh. Now that same skin was drooping in loose folds, jaundiced and desiccated, covered in all kinds of boils, brown rings, cracks, fissures, pocks, and scales that itched uncomfortably, especially between my fingers. “Scabies,” Bandi Citrom diagnosed with a knowing nod of the head when I showed him. I could only wonder at the speed, the rampant pace, with which, day by day, the enveloping material, the elasticity, the flesh around my bones dwindled, atrophied, dissolved, and vanished somewhere. Every day there was something new to surprise me, some new blemish, some new unsightliness on this ever stranger, ever more foreign object that had once been my good friend: my body. I could no longer bear looking at it without a sense of being at war with myself, a species of abhorrence; for that reason alone, after a while, I no longer cared to strip off to have a wash, to say nothing of my antipathy to such superfluous exertions, to the cold, and then too, of course, to my footwear.

These devices, at least in my case, caused a great deal of vexation. In general I had little reason to be satisfied with the items of clothing with which I was equipped in the concentration camp; there was not much of the practicable, and a lot that was faulty about them, indeed they became direct sources of inconvenience; they failed to measure up at all, I can safely say. During spells of fine gray drizzle, for instance, which with the change of season were prolonged when they occurred, the burlap outfit was transformed into a stiff stovepipe, the clammy touch of which one’s skin strove to avoid in any way possible—quite in vain, naturally. A prison overcoat (these were issued, it has to be said in all fairness) was quite worthless here, just another handicap, yet another damp layer, and in my view no satisfactory solution was provided even by the coarse paper from a cement sack that Bandi Citrom, like many others, had filched for himself and wore under his jacket, in spite of all the risks, since this sort of transgression soon comes to light: it only takes the whack of a stick on the back and another on the chest for the rustling to make the offense manifest. On the other hand, if it no longer crackles, I ask you, then what is the use of the fresh annoyance of this soaking-wet pulp, which again can only be discarded?