Weyrauch's nose wrinkled at the unpleasant smells, the
stench of dried urine and feces, of unwashed people and
filthy cloth, all intermingled with the smell of wet,
rotting straw and the sickeningly sweet odor of the ubiquitous population of rats. He did not know if the
smells were of recent origin or if they had been absorbed by
the stones over the centuries, but the smells
seemed to be a permanent characteristic of the dungeon.
Lord, let me go back to Kappelburg! he prayed miserably.
Schlacht came to a halt in front of one of the cells and nodded his head in its direction. "These are our guests. The younger one is called Janos Kaldy. The older one is called Blasko. No given name, apparently, which is not uncommon
among inferior breeds." As Schlacht spoke Blasko came forward and began to speak rapidly and with obvious agitation in a language which was comprehensible to none of the three onlookers. Schlacht frowned. "Unfortunately, we
have already shipped the Gypsies off to, ah, relocation
centers, and we have been unable to find anyone who can
understand his barbarian tirades." He chose to make only oblique reference to the extermination camps to which
the Gypsies had been sent. Now that it was drawing close to
sunset and what he hoped would be an observable seizure on Kaldy's part, he had no wish to waste further time arguing
with his cousin.
"Surely some linguists from the university�" Weyrauch
began hesitantly.
"No, we've tried that already," Schlacht said,
shaking his head. "The ones who are still here have no knowledge of this language, and we understand that the ones who would have been of use are Jews, and so are, shall we
say, unavailable." He ignored Louisa's glaring eyes.
Blasko continued to speak in a desperate, frightened, imploring tone, and he seemed to be shifting back and forth
among a variety of languages. Weyrauch shrugged. "I can't be
of any help to you with this, Helmuth. Greek and Latin and Hebrew I know. French and English I know, but this..." and
he shook his head.
"Don't be obtuse, Gottfried, " Schlacht said curtly. "I
have already told you why you are here. I need a psychological observer, not a translator. It is Kaldy in
whom we are interested, not Blasko. We are keeping him with Kaldy simply because they were found together, and we don't wish to separate them until we know for certain what
occurred, and why."
Louisa was trying not to be interested in what she was
seeing and hearing, and she had thus far been quite
successful. The brief glimpse she had of the contents of the
freezer had disturbed her greatly, but it was this confrontation of the naked reality of the S.S. which truly filled her with anger and sorrow and revulsion. She looked at the two men before them in the cell, and she felt pity and shame rising in her simultaneously.
The poor men
, she thought, and at the same moment,
We have done this, to them and to God knows how many others, we have done this, my
nation, my people, my own family
.
She
looked in at the two prisoners, noting the effect
imprisonment
had apparently had upon them. The older
one
,
Blasko, was a sturdy, if haggard man in his sixties. His hair was white and his handle-bar moustache was a soft gray. H
e wore the tattered garb so common among the oppressed and uprooted, clothing once colorful and now faded, though some small hint of past beauty still clung in spots to the faded wool and cotton.
Janos Kaldy, the younger gypsy, looked ill, and Louisa attributed his appearance to his circumstances. He seemed to be a man in his twenties, but his eyes, which gazed vacantly
ahead of him at a blank spot on the dark walls, were old
and weary. His skin was a chalky white and his luxuriant black hair was matted and filthy, but he was oddly free of facial hair. His thin mouth and slightly hooked nose gave him an ascetic cast, and his stooped
shoulders and thin, boney chest reinforced the impression of
disease.
She had begun to formulate a protest, a diatribe, a potentially fatal objection to the treatment of the two men; but suddenly Blasko's pleas began to sound familiar, somehow slightly comprehensible to her.
Is that Italian?
she
wondered. Louisa had studied Italian in the university, and
what she was hearing now sounded vaguely similar to that
Mediterranean tongue. But it was not identical to the precise and melodic Florentine dialect which formed the
basis of formal Italian, and she was uncertain of her
knowledge as she asked,
"Mi scusi, signare, ma sta parlando
italiano?"
Blasko's eyes widened joyfully.
"
Mi fuo capirend? Oh
signora, mi fuo capirend?"
"Mi sembra," she replied, "Mi sembra di capire, ma questo non e italiano vero?"
"Parlo romanschi, signora, romanschi, una linguar dal Alpi," the Gypsy answered excitedly.
"What language is that?" Schlacht demanded. "How is it
that you can speak it?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously at
his cousin.
"He says that he is speaking Romansch," Louisa replied. "I've heard of that language. It's spoken in only one place,
one Swiss canton. It's close enough to Italian for me to understand him and for him to understand me."
Schlacht smiled broadly. "How fortunate that I was so eager to see you again, my dear Louisa! Well, then, tell us
what this fellow is so upset about!"
Louisa turned to Schlacht and said viciously, "I'm not going to assist you, Helmuth! I'm not going to play a part
in
this...
in this barbaric...in
this..."
Her anger was so
intense that she was unable to find words sufficiently
strong to express it.
"But our friend here seems to want very much to
communicate with me," Schlacht replied, still smiling. "You really must serve as translator, if not for my sake, then
for his." He leaned forward, secure in his logic and certain
of her response to it. "Surely you don't bear this poor
creature any ill will, do you, my dear?"
Louisa's eyes burned into Schlacht's, and the S.S. colonel watched with detached amusement as his cousin bowed to the reasoning she would have greatly wished to be able to r
efute. At last she turned back to Blasko and asked, "
Che ci
dire, signare?"
"Liberatea
mich
di questa cells!" Blasko screamed. "Incatenate Kaldy, incatenatelo en mettetici il fiore
del
luper dormente sulle catene e liberatea
mich
di questa cella!"
"He wants to be removed from the
cell,"
Louisa said.
"Oh, I'm sure he does," Schlacht laughed.
She ignored his amusement. "He also says that his
friend must be securely chained and some sort of plant must
be tied to him. I don't recognize the name of the plant
."
"A function of their primitive superstitions, no doubt,"
Schlacht said. He placed his hand upon the heavy iron bars. "Well, he is staying right where he is. And these bars are more than sufficient to keep our friend Herr Kaldy safely confined
. "
"They will not suffice," Kaldy said softly in clear but
accented German.
The sudden and unexpected comment by the hitherto silent
prisoner was followed first by a moment of startled silence
and then by a very angry response from Schlacht. "You were
spoken to in German when you were arrested and again when y
ou were brought here. Was your refusal to reply some weak
attempt at humor?"
"The bars of this cell will not confine me when the
change comes," Kaldy said, ignoring Schlacht's question. His
voice was even and emotionless, and a subtle undercurrent of sadness permeated every word. "If my friend Blasko is
left here with me, he will be killed. If you do not follow
his instructions about restraining me, you will also be
killed."
Schlacht's face grew red and he folded his arms across
his chest. "It has been my experience to observe that prisoners are well advised not to threaten their captors,
you Gypsy pig!"
Kaldy sighed. "The distinction between a threat and a warning should not be lost on someone like you, someone obviously so well-experienced in both forms of intimidation."
The Gypsy's words were well-spoken and indicated a level
of intelligence which surprised Schlacht, and before he
could respond to him Weyrauch broke in tentatively, "Helmuth, whatever else you decide to do, it might be a good idea to
separate them. I mean, if this man is a violent madman, you
might very well find that he will kill the other Gypsy, and
you yourself said that..
.well,
that you wanted to keep him here until you understood everything about this...this
situation."
Schlacht was reluctant to appear to be acceding to the request of the older Gypsy, and he was determined not to allow the younger one to believe that his warning had been effective, but he was forced to accept the fact that Weyrauch was making sense. "Very well, Gottfried," he muttered, looking angrily at Kaldy. "I shall take your advice." He looked over at the guard and said, "Remove the old man to another cell." Then, still speaking to the guard but looking directly at Kaldy as if challenging the Gypsy to
contradict him, he added,
"We'll
leave Kaldy where he is.
The bars will be sufficient to keep him there." Kaldy did
not reply. He was once again gazing vacantly at the wall. It
was as if he dwelled in a private, interior world, from which he had been momentarily summoned to make his few
comments, and to which he had retreated once he had
finished speaking.
The next half hour was spent in quiet, methodical preparation for what was assumed to be Kaldy's impending seizure. Schlacht had assigned only two guards to the prisoners, reasoning that even that number was probably excessive to keep watch over two Gypsies but not wishing to take any chances with what he hoped might be a very useful captive. The first guard transferred Blasko to a cell down the corridor while the other unfolded a tripod and then affixed a motion picture camera to it. He checked the hand crank on the side of the camera, took a light reading, and
then began to hook up additional lights in Kaldy's cell.
While he was doing this, he left the cell door open for a
short time. It was true that had Kaldy attempted to escape
at that moment, the other guard could have shot him down
easily; but the Gypsy not only made no effort to leave the cell, he did not even look over at the doorway. He continued
to sit motionless upon the wooden stool, gazing at the wall.
"If this fellow is the lunatic we suspect him to be,"
Schlacht explained to Weyrauch, "it may be useful to have a photographic record of his behavior for further study."
It was Louisa who replied to this, not her husband. She had managed to restrain her anger, and when now she spoke to her cousin it was with an almost plaintive tone. "Helmuth,
do you remember when we were children, when your mother and
my mother used to take us to church together?"
"Of course I remember, dear cousin," Schlacht replied amicably. "The memories of childhood are usually sweet, and are therefore cherished."
"Well, didn't anything you learned in church mean anything to you? Didn't any of it stay with you, even a
little?" She seemed on the verge of weeping. "Helmuth, don't
you understand that what you're doing, what we're doing, what our country is doing, is wrong, just simply morally
wrong?"
Schlacht seemed almost embarrassed by what he regarded as her childishness. "Come now, Louisa!"
"Don't you remember what Christ said about loving your
enemies, turning the other cheek, forgiving seventy times seven times? Don't you remember what he said about the
peacemakers being blessed?"
Schlacht leaned his face close to hers and, as if uttering a profound, significant truth, he said, "Do not forget, Louisa, that Jesus was a Jew!"
Weyrauch decided to diffuse the tension with a humorous remark. "Only half-Jewish, actually." He began to snicker
and then fell silent as Schlacht and Louisa both glowered at him,
the latter angered at his blasphemous weakness, the former
angered at his trivial response to what was, to Schlacht, a very important point. Weyrauch seemed physically to shrink
under the steady glare of the two pairs of icy blue eyes. He cowered away from them into a corner near the door of the corridor
.
Odd
, he thought
, that the only thing which Louisa and Helmuth
have in common is their dislike of me.