Spark of Life (6 page)

He turned round. Why was he suddenly thinking of this old story? What was the matter with him? All this had been forgotten long ago. One had to live. If he hadn’t bought the house, then someone else in the Party would have done so. For less money. For nothing. He had acted legally. According to the law. The Führer himself had said that his faithful followers ought to be rewarded. And what was this trifle he, Bruno Neubauer, had gotten hold of compared to what the big shots were getting? Goering, for instance, or Springer, the Gauleiter who had risen from a hotel porter to a millionaire? Neubauer hadn’t stolen anything. He had only bought cheap. He was covered. He had receipts. Everything was officially certified.

A flame shot up from the railroad station. Explosions followed. Probably ammunition wagons. Red reflections fluttered above the building—as if it were suddenly sweating blood. Ridiculous, thought Neubauer. I’m actually nervous. The Jewish lawyers who had been dragged out from up there at the time had been long ago forgotten. He got back into his car. Too close to the station—perfect place for business but damn dangerous in bombardments; no wonder it made one nervous.

“To the Grosse Strasse, Alfred.”

The Mellern newspaper building was completely undamaged. Neubauer had already heard about it by telephone. They were just bringing out an extra edition. Copies were being snatched from the sellers’ hands. Neubauer watched the white stacks disappear. One pfennig in every paper was his. New sellers arrived with new stacks.
They dashed away on their bicycles. Extra editions meant extra income. Each seller had with him at least two hundred. Neubauer counted seventeen sellers. That meant thirty-four extra marks. At least something good to come out of it all. He could pay for some of the cracked show windows out of it. Nonsense—they were insured. That is, if the insurance paid. Could pay, with all the damage. They would pay! At least him. The thirty-four marks were net earnings.

He bought one of the extra papers. A short appeal by Dietz was already in it. Quick work. With it came a report that two flyers had been shot down over the town, half of the others over Minden, Osnabrueck and Hanover. An article by Goebbels about the inhuman barbarism of bombing peaceful German towns. A few pithy words from the Führer. A report that the Hitler Youth was in search of flyers who had dropped by parachute. Neubauer threw away the paper and entered the cigar store on the corner. “Three Deutsche Wacht,” he said.

The salesman produced the box. Neubauer chose without interest. The cigars were bad. Pure beech leaves. He had better ones at home, imports from Paris and Holland. He asked for the Deutsche Wacht simply because the shop belonged to him. Before the Rising, it had belonged to Lesser & Sacht, a firm of Jewish exploiters. Then Storm Leader Freiberg had snapped it up. Had owned it until 1936. A gold mine. Neubauer bit the end off a Deutsche Wacht. What could he have done about the fact that Freiberg, in his cups, had made treasonable remarks against the Führer? It had been his duty as an upright Party member to notify the authorities. Shortly afterwards Freiberg had disappeared and Neubauer had bought the shop from the widow. He had advised her urgently to sell. He had let her know that he had information, that Freiberg’s possessions were about to be confiscated. Money would be easier to hide than a shop. She had been grateful. Had sold the shop. For a quarter of its value,
of course. Neubauer had pointed out that he wasn’t flush and it had to be done fast. She had seen the point. The confiscation had never taken place. Neubauer had explained that to her, too. He had used his influence on her behalf. In this way she could keep the money. He had acted decently. Duty was duty—and the shop might really have been confiscated. Besides, the widow would have been unable to run it. She would have been squeezed out for less money.

Neubauer took the cigar from his mouth. It didn’t draw. Filthy stuff. But the people paid for it. Were crazy about anything that could be smoked. Pity it was rationed. The turnover would have been ten times as much. He glanced once more at the shop. Damn lucky. Nothing had happened. He spat. He suddenly had a bad taste in his mouth. It must be the cigar. Or what else? After all, nothing had happened. Nerves? Why was he suddenly thinking of all these old stories? That old business from way back! He threw away the cigar as he got into the car again and gave the other two to the chauffeur. “Here, Alfred. Something special for tonight. And now let’s be off—to the garden.”

The garden was Neubauer’s pride. It was a large plot of land on the outskirts of the town. Most of it was under vegetables and fruit; there was also a flower garden and a shed for livestock. A number of Russian slave laborers from the camp kept everything in order. They cost nothing and in fact should have paid Neubauer. Instead of working hard from twelve to fifteen hours in the copper foundry, with him they had fresh air and light work.

Dusk lay over the garden. On this side the sky was clear and the moon hung in the crowns of the apple trees. The freshly broken earth smelled strong. In the furrows sprouted the first vegetables and the fruit trees had sticky swelling buds. A small Japanese cherry tree which had spent the winter in the greenhouse was already
sprayed over with a hue of white and pink—shy blossoms just opening.

The Russians were working in the section opposite to the plot. Neubauer saw their dark bent backs and the silhouette of the guard with his rifle, its fixed bayonet seemingly piercing the sky. The guard was there only because of regulations; the Russians didn’t run away. Where could they have run to, anyhow, in their uniforms, without knowing the language? They had with them a large paper bag filled with ashes from the crematorium which they were strewing along the furrows. They were working in the beds of asparagus and strawberries for which Neubauer had a special predilection. He couldn’t eat enough of them. The paper bag contained the ashes of sixty people, among them twelve children.

The first primroses and narcissus shimmered pale through the early, plum-colored dusk. They were planted along the south wall and covered with glass. Neubauer opened one of the horizontal windows and bent down. The narcissus did not smell. Instead, there was a scent of violets, invisible violets in the dusk.

He took a deep breath. This was his garden. He had paid for it himself and properly. Old-fashioned and honest. The full price. He hadn’t taken it away from anyone. This was his place. The place where one became a human being after hard service for the Fatherland and concern for the family. He looked around, filled with satisfaction. He saw the arbor overgrown with honeysuckle and rambler roses, he saw the box hedge, he saw the artificial grotto of tufa stone, he saw the lilac bushes, he smelled the acrid air in which there was already a touch of spring, he felt with tender hand the straw-covered trunks of the peach and pear trees on the trellis work against the wall, and then he opened the door to the shed.

He didn’t go to the chickens which were squatting like old women on the perch—nor did he go to the two young pigs which slept in the shed—he went to the rabbits.

They were white and gray Angora rabbits with long silky hair. They were asleep when he turned the light on and then they began slowly to move. He stuck a finger through the wire mesh and scratched their fur. They were softer than anything he knew. He took cabbage leaves and pieces of turnip from a basket and pushed them into the cages. The rabbits came over and began to nibble with pink snouts, gently and slowly. “Mucki!” he crooned. “Come here, Mucki—”

The warmth of the shed made him drowsy. It was like a faraway sleep. The smell of the animals brought with it a forgotten innocence. It was a small world in itself of almost vegetative life, far away from bombs and intrigues and the struggle for existence—cabbage leaves and turnips and furry mating and being shorn and giving birth. Neubauer sold the wool; but he never allowed an animal to be slaughtered. “Mucki!” he crooned again.

With gentle lips a great white buck took the leaf out of his hand. The red eyes gleamed like bright rubies. Neubauer stroked its neck. His boots creaked as he bent down. What did Selma say? Safe? There in the camp you are safe? Who was safe anyway? When had he ever really been?

He pushed more cabbage leaves through the wire mesh. Twelve years, he thought. Before the Revolution I was a post-office clerk with hardly two hundred marks a month. Could neither live nor die on it. Now I have something. I am not going to lose that again.

He looked into the buck’s red eyes. Today everything had gone well. It would continue to go well. The bombing could have been a mistake. Such things happened with newly appointed formations. The town was unimportant; otherwise they would have tried to destroy it before. Neubauer felt himself growing calmer. “Mucki!” he said, and thought: Safe? Of course, safe! After all, who wants to pop off at the last moment?

“
FILTHY SWINE
! Count again!”

The labor gangs of the Big camp stood in columns of ten, according to blocks, in strict formation on the roll-call ground. It was already dark and the prisoners in their striped garb looked like an immense herd of dead-tired zebras.

The roll call had already lasted more than an hour, but it still didn’t tally. It was due to the bombing. The labor gangs which worked in the copper foundry had suffered losses. One bomb had fallen into their division and a number of men had been killed and wounded. On top of this, after the first shock, the supervising SS-men had started firing on the prisoners who sought cover; they had feared they might escape. Thus a further half-dozen had perished.

After the bombing the prisoners had dragged out their dead from under the rubble and wreckage—or rather what was left of them. It was important for the roll call. Little as the life of a prisoner was valued and indifferent as the SS were to it, dead or alive the numbers at the roll call had to tally. Bureaucracy did not stop short at corpses.

The labor gangs had carefully taken along everything they could
find; some had carried an arm, others legs and torn-off heads. The few stretchers they had managed to improvise had been used for the wounded whose limbs were missing or whose bellies had been ripped to pieces. The rest of the wounded had been supported and dragged along by their comrades as best they could. It had been possible to make only a few bandages; there had been hardly anything to make them with. Those bleeding to death had been tied off hastily with wire and cord. Those wounded in the stomach had to hold in their intestines with their own hands while lying on the stretchers.

The procession had climbed painfully up the mountain. Two more men had died on the way. They were dragged along dead. This led to an incident in which Squad Leader Steinbrenner had made rather a fool of himself. At the camp’s entrance gate the band had been standing as usual playing the Fridericus Rex March. The march-past had been ordered and with eyes-right and legs thrown high the labor gangs had marched past SS Camp Leader Weber and his staff. Even the severely wounded on the stretchers had turned their heads to the right and tried to assume a somewhat more military posture while dying. Only the dead had no longer saluted. At this moment Steinbrenner had noticed how a man, while being lugged along by two others, had allowed his head to droop. He had not observed that the man’s feet also trailed, but had promptly leapt into the line and hit him between the eyes with his revolver. He was young and eager and in his haste had assumed him merely to be unconscious. The dead man’s head had been flung back by the blow and the lower jaw had fallen down; it had looked as though the bloody mouth, with a last grotesque movement of the skull, were snapping at the revolver. The other SS-men had roared with laughter and Steinbrenner had been furious; he had realized that some of the respect he had earned with the hydrochloric-acid cure on Joel Buchsbaum had been lost again.

The march up from the copper foundry had taken a long time and it was later than usual when the roll call began. According to custom, the dead and wounded had been laid out in strict military order, rank and file next to the block formation to which they belonged. Even the severely wounded had neither been taken to hospital nor had their wounds dressed; the roll call count was more important.

“Get on! Again! If it doesn’t work this time you’ll get assistance!”

Weber, the SS camp leader, sat astride a wooden chair which had been placed on the roll-call ground. He was thirty-five years old, of average height, and very powerfully built. His face was broad and brown, and a deep scar ran from the right corner of his mouth down across his chin—it was a souvenir of an indoor brawl with a Reichsbanner crowd in the year 1929. Weber had his arms propped on the back of his chair and stared with boredom at the prisoners among whom SS-men, block seniors and kapos ran excitedly to and fro, clubbing and shouting.

The block seniors sweated and gave the order to number again. The voices sounded monotonous: “One—two—three—”

The confusion arose as a result of those who had been torn to shreds in the copper foundry. The prisoners had collected heads, arms and trunks as best they could; but not everything had been found. No matter how they tried, it seemed that two men were missing.