Panorama (65 page)

Sometimes Josef would like to lie in the woods, to pick bright berries and look for fragrant mushrooms, these being the start of the Harz Mountains, it not being far to Goslar, and Wernigerode after that, followed by so many wonderful places, though they are still distant. Josef also longs for solitude, which he’d give anything for, as he is exhausted and drools at the idea of rest. Everything is a useless nightmare, no one able to think beyond the day itself, the panorama narrow and closed in, the panorama underground with its view of nothing more than the concrete hall that is now complete, where garish neon lights glow, everything at last ready, the masters imagining that they can make airplane parts here, a firm with the fablelike name of Malachite Works, Inc., Halberstadt installed here, the firm part of the Junkers airplane works, nothing more has been done as yet, for first the lost ones have to wearily install the machines under duress, as well as fill the hoppers with material made of aluminum.

After a difficult start in Langenstein, Josef is assigned to a typewriter, his fingers stiff and clumsy in the ice-cold chill of the underground hall, he
not being allowed to wear a coat, though it’s much better than having to slave away at backbreaking work on the transports, where one of the overseers even beats German civil servants, while even in front of the typewriter Josef is not freed from being ordered to schlep heavy goods, whereby he is exhausted after an hour. The man in charge of Josef and some of his comrades is named Kiesewetter, and demands high productivity, though he doesn’t beat the lost ones who sit at the typewriters, and at the request of his prisoners he even makes sure that his people are excused for the most part from having to schlepp heavy goods. Josef has a view of the continuing armament of the Conqueror, despite being on his way to defeat, hundreds of letters from German firms passing through Josef’s hands, he having to fill out orders for supplies and confirmation of their arrival, all of it in duplicate, though it’s all quite chaotic, the whole war machine having run itself into the ground, the foolhardy game played out no longer winnable through the slave labor of the starving lost ones, their labor of no value even if they worked their best, the slave holders having miscalculated, as it doesn’t matter if Herr Langer, a German who has a minor position here, and who, after wondering why Josef is “in this club,” pompously claims that “German ways will save the day,” and that once the war is over better days will dawn for Josef and all the Jews, and when Josef looks him in the eye and asks directly, he answers convincingly that of course Germany will win the war, the Conqueror has yet to realize his greatest triumphs, there are new secret weapons, and the Conqueror is a good person who will find for Josef and all the Jews a nice spot on earth where they can live well. No, such empty words no longer work, for chaos is already spreading its demoralizing effects among the Conqueror’s own ranks, orders greeted by counter-orders, the civil servants no longer working full tilt, but instead continually going through the motions until exhaustion sets in, the belief they had at the start now lost, they having lost their wits as well, no longer seeming human, but instead continually ridiculous, for even if they remain a danger until the very last moment they can no longer be taken seriously.

Josef laughs at how they carry on, how they order equipment to be moved from one hall to another, then back again, no one knowing what the other is doing, a confusion of terms having set in, all of them speaking the same language but no longer understanding one another. This makes
Herr Weber want to scream, though it does no good to complain about the conspirators and the collaborators in charge, all of them are already confused, having been told only a couple of days ago that the malachite operation was to be moved from Zwieberge to Leopoldshall, and that prisoners from Langenstein were also to be sent there, but now that’s not what’s going to happen. Instead, it’s too late, the fools have run out of time, though they themselves still don’t realize it, and so the gears keep grinding, each day consuming more lost ones. Meanwhile, the tank works at Zittau are supposed to be moved to Zwieberge, railcars full of machines from Zittau standing on the supply lines that run from Halberstadt to Zwieberge, some already having been unloaded and schlepped into the hall and set up by the lost ones, who are continually tormented, though the civil engineers cannot get them to work since they have been damaged and won’t work anymore, the efforts of millions of men wasted, the work of the Conqueror destroyed, it having done itself in, though don’t the masters see at all that it’s time to give up? No, they don’t see it, and so death continues its harvest in Zwieberge, the conspirators continue to harass the lost ones, six men always assigned to the foul-smelling morgue of the Langenstein camp to carry rough-hewn wooden boxes, two skin-covered skeletons in each, those carrying them hounded out of the gate and toward the pits, despite almost buckling at the knees because of their own weakness, the skeletons tipped out there, some chlorinated lime spread over them, then the boxes are carried back to camp. This goes on for days, maybe even weeks, for here in the halls bad characters can still swing their heavy batons and yell, “Hurry! Hurry!” At this you schlepp pieces of airplanes out of the bins that are no longer fitted together, schlepping them to the waiting railcars, which will transport them to Leopoldshall, Zwieberge emptied out more and more, a frayed network of finished and unfinished passages, a maddening ant heap full of whining and whimpering, the lost ones as lost as ever, an idiot from the factory guards watching over the spigot that only uniformed men and civil servants are allowed to drink from, though the old man in black clothes fends off each lost one wanting to ease his thirst, as if he were death itself.

The atmosphere in the mine shafts, as well as outside them, is unreal, the air-raid alarm never stops, locals flood into the halls, these people having nothing to do with either the malachite works or the tank works, among
them worried mothers with fearful children, everyone thrown together, only the tormenting of the lost remaining ceaseless, the sufferings of the others only mixing in with their own. The day passes very slowly for Josef at his boring typewriter, he feeling restless and wanting to walk about, some of the lost seeking the side shaft that serves as a latrine, though Josef stays away from the stinking mess, it also not being safe, as an overseer has been installed there, a professional thug who is called a shithead capo, he rushing everyone and sometimes knocking some of them to the ground from the toilet, his bad mood growing when the little Czech lost one whom the shithead capo has taken a shine to doesn’t rub his arthritic back with both hands. And so Josef takes his chilly place in front of the typewriter called Olympia, an audaciously vain name for this place, he able to chat pleasantly with the Dutch civil servant who now and then sneaks him something and shares the news from the army, the translator Jacques another one he can talk to while keeping an eye on Milan, who still has a head wound as a consequence of being mishandled, Josef also looking over at Étienne, who understands only a few camp expressions and cuss words in German. Josef then buries himself in his work again, or at least appears to, as he secretly takes more notes.

Thus each day stretches on, things carrying on out in the hall, murderous events occurring as a result, more and more prisoners falling absent, almost all of the lost ones now devoid of their own humanity, nasty to one another and pushing one another around, any sort of restraint having fallen away like walls from the soul, they now no more than poor, frightened animals, robbed of their intelligence and their reason, blind and broken, wanting only to cower in their lousy rooms and wait and wait until these inhuman creatures are able to head back to the camp. They have to withstand what is pounded into them, the count taken over and over, it not being right, then not right again, and never right, then finally it’s right, Hurry! Hurry! Then they rumble and pitch over the many obstacles, over the sand and the stones, past the railcars, bent over, sweating, wounds dripping. They are the lost ones, not people, for they know nothing, raw unbridled drive still moving them along, constant blows still pushing them to hurry, as they scramble down the slope to the rumbling sounds of the dumping sites. Then they have to gather together, four rows, fall in, line up, the one in
front count off again, followed by “Hurry! Hurry! Keep together!” Then the tramping and slipping down the embankment, the small embankment. “Hurry! Hurry!” Finally, on a smoother path, “Everyone halt!” The open gate, “Hats off! March through the gate in step!” Count off, fall in, stand there, stand there, count off, some talking, then threats, blows, finally in their rooms, cold, sour watery soup, scuffles and screams, chills, bread, margarine, hunger, odors, no one full, everyone sinking down, the living dead, a pigsty, order, idiots, greedy bastards, dirt bags, this is no sanatorium, just a voice: “You were shipped from Auschwitz to escape death! What shit!” You should kick the bucket, you lice, lice crawling around, nothing to be done, one is crushed, rattles, is flattened, dead, too bad, the iron rails sing and hum, air-raid alarms, lights-out! It’s over already, the camp guards barrel in: “Everyone asleep! Close your eyes!” Night, the lights are off, the lost ones have crawled under the blankets, Josef, Étienne, and Milan whisper to one another as comfort, as they press tight against one another to fight off the cold, everything done, finished, yet quiet, no, someone is moaning, on and on, otherwise it’s almost quiet, cold comfort arriving with sleep.

I
T IS VERY QUIET, HARDLY ANYONE CAN BE HEARD TALKING, AND ONLY A BIT
of the ruins of the castle erected by William the Conqueror is visible. The tower is mostly what’s left, crowning a small hill, surrounded by a park full of shade trees and bright flowers and dozens of benches. Parts of the gates also survive and serve today as entrances to the site now stripped of its walls, a plaque informing one about the castle dungeon where Oliver Cromwell kept George Fox, the Quaker elder, imprisoned for a long time. Yet now it is quiet, only some children playing, a couple of visitors looking at the tower without really taking it in, and then, as if fulfilling a duty, climbing its hard steps, which don’t go all the way up, it only being possible to walk around outside or within its walls, there being no privacy amid these ruins, though where the bulwark is broken through from behind there opens a pleasant view of the Cornish countryside, with its lovely rolling hills and valleys, the small town of Launceston, which is named after the castle, situated directly on top of the hill. Josef is alone here, sitting quietly upon the grass, for he needs quiet, he having been initially forced (and then of his
own free will) to live among others all too much in recent years, while the question of how to think about that time has remained unresolved for him, even though it has taken up almost all of his energy since the end of the war, during which time most of the people he knew did all they could to escape this same question once they had survived the immediate consequences of their imprisonment. Now for the first time Josef weighs whether or not he should set such deliberations behind him, even if leaving behind the source of such suffering seems both strange and almost overwhelming, but he believes that he has to arbitrarily turn away, realizing as well that the source of suffering is much older than even the experiences he himself has survived, and that he must crawl further and further toward a future of inconceivable length.

Josef is almost asleep, happy to stretch out his limbs, no one caring what he does, no one speaking to him. He was one of the lost ones, but today he is one of the forgotten, the times having forgotten him, such that he is alone. No, he doesn’t really sleep, but within him is the remoteness of sleep, in which the clouds of lucid memory swim, called up perhaps by the view of the town from which occasional muffled sounds waft, perhaps by the sundrenched view of the countryside, a peaceful view into the distance that at first manifests the sensible landscape but then behind it reveals incomprehensible landscapes, landscapes of the memory that contain unreachable distances, and yet they are near, they are within Josef and leave him never, saturating him and nourishing his thoughts, which indeed rest, but which amid the quiet never stop occupying him. Josef feels that he will never be free of his own preoccupations, though he also feels a continuity without purpose, nothing resulting from it, and nothing really there, it being actually a memory of the fact that nothing is there, even though everything seems to be there, a kind of accompaniment, much like what this site presents in and of itself, as one speaks of history, memory, something deeper than commemoration or what the plaques inform one about, the pride of the inhabitants of Launceston wanting to involve the visitor in the past. All the details of such experiences that are embedded in Launceston Castle are almost too precisely posted at the entrance to the park, such that the visitor is awestruck when he reads about the ungraspable past in catch words and dates in golden script, though the visitor thinks nothing of it, or he is briefly
amazed and almost doesn’t grasp that something happened here, here the Conqueror spent some time, here this count and that duke did this or that, here they locked up the Quaker elder with bread and water, because it satisfied a whim of Cromwell, who once again in history unintentionally demonstrated that from power, even when it doesn’t shrink away from employing dungeons or murder, nothing comes, it only maintains the suffering of the world, acknowledging it openly, in order that people remain unsatisfied. For why should they be satisfied? It doesn’t matter that they may wish to be, for most likely such wishes are sinful or, actually, not the wishes but the means to fulfill them are sinful and lead, in the long run, to a reality negated by perverse means.