The Shadowboxer (26 page)

Four cooks held Spangler in position. Three more tried to raise the giant. When they couldn't, Tolan was lifted to his feet. Spangler was pulled forward. Tolan gripped the club and raised his arm. When it came down Spangler made sure he was underneath it.

Twelve motionless men lay sprawled on the blood-splattered ground. Klempf strolled casually through them and faced the ranks of stunned new arrivals.

“A Czech Jew once wrote a story,” he said, with a faint smile. “In this story a man awakes one morning to find that he has been changed into a large bug. The story goes on to prove that if you put the mind of a man into the body of a bug, it will soon become the mind of a bug. The Czech Jew only had a
theory;
we have the
means!
Birkenau will soon turn you into bugs. But not
individual
bugs—you will be communal bugs! There is no more individuality; your ten fallen comrades are the last attempt at that. Now, you are part of a community. If one of you commits a crime, all will suffer. If one is good, all will be rewarded. And that is how it shall be—from this moment forward.”

Spangler felt the tugging. He tried to open his eyes and couldn't. He knew vaguely that he was being dragged over the frozen mud. He was certain time was lapsing. He had the sensation of being lifted and carried. He felt a distant jolt as he was dropped on a hard surface and rolled over and over. Again he drifted. Sensations returned intermittently. He felt a chill. A stench was evident. So was a noise. He fought to open his eyes. Finally he did. Dimly he realized that he was on an upper shelf of a tiered bunk. Two other men were asleep beside him. Both were snoring. Both stank. The barracks was not heated. One thin blanket covered him and his bedfellows. Spangler tried to raise up. His effort stirred the man next to him. A somnambulistic arm engulfed him. He sank back with a far-off vision of tier after tier of bunks jammed with sleeping refuse. Cold and noise grew faint. Spangler fell back into unconsciousness.

43

Water dripped on Spangler's forehead. He opened his eyes and looked up into the grinning toothless face. The wide square head was covered with scars and bruises. One eye was permanently closed. The ears were cauliflowered tight to the skull. There was no neck, only massive shoulders set directly under the large battered jaw.

“Come,” the Kapo uttered in low guttural German.

“I don't understand your language,” Spangler answered in Hungarian. “We want you, come,” the Kapo repeated, this time in pidgin Hungarian.

Spangler raised up on one elbow and looked around. The four-tiered rows of bunks were empty. He eased himself down to the floor and followed his guide out of the barracks.

The afternoon sun blazed bright in the steel-blue sky. Even so, the paradeground mud remained frozen. The compound gate was pulled open by the Ukrainian SS guard, and they started down the icy road. Barbed-wire fences stretched on both sides. Row after row of windowless barracks lay beyond. Directly ahead, thick black smoke curled from two tall chimneys.

After a quarter of a mile they turned through a gate. Here too a Ukrainian SS guard stood sentry. The compound they entered looked exactly like the one they had left. Spangler followed the Kapo around the long stone-block kitchen and into a whitewashed barracks.

Spangler counted twenty-four beds: four cots and ten double bunks. All were empty, with one exception: the giant red-haired cook he had fought the night before lay unconscious and breathing heavily on a far cot. Rewashed bandages bulged around the massive neck.

“His name is Vassili,” a voice called out in accented Hungarian. “He was once chief cook here. Now I am—at least for the present. So I thank you.”

Spangler wheeled about. Tolan stepped from the doorway. He too bore the bruises of the previous night's battle. Behind him waited a pair of scrawny prisoners laden with bedclothes.

“I am Friedrich, better known as Brilly,” he told Spangler. ‘Brilly' is short for
Brillenschlange
. Here we are no longer numbers. We can afford the luxury of names, but the SS prefers them to be nicknames.

“Your guide,” Tolan said, indicating the Kapo who had accompanied Spangler, “is Anvil. He killed his wife and two infant children by dropping anvils on them, so we felt the title appropriate. If you last long enough we will find something appropriate for you. Yes, around here we all have nicknames—except that one,” he said, nodding at Vassili.

Tolan moved across the room and slapped the mattress of a top bunk. “This shall be yours,” he said. The two prisoners hurried forward with their load. “And look what I have brought you. Blankets. Three
woolen
blankets! That's something in this place, eh? And there's more. Look, a whole sheet. You'll soon learn there aren't many who can boast an untorn sheet or a pillow—with a pillow slip. Have you eaten?”

Spangler shook his head.

“Come,” Tolan said as the two prisoners quickly began making up the bunk.

Spangler followed Tolan and Anvil through a well-equipped kitchen and out into the large front room. One wall was lined with lockers. Table and chairs stretched across the other. Spangler was seated opposite Tolan and Anvil.

“Do you speak German?” Tolan asked.

“Some,” Spangler replied.

“Some is not good enough. You will have to learn quickly. Speak German always, no matter how badly. Soon it will come to you.”

Anvil let out a short giggle and nodded.

The second prisoner came from the kitchen and set a tray of sliced meats, fresh bread, butter, cheese, coffee and sugar before Spangler.

“Slowly,” Tolan counseled. “Eat it slowly. Your stomach is empty and the meat is tinned. Chew well and slowly or it will go off like a bomb in your gut.”

Spangler took his advice.

“You fight well,” Tolan said, rubbing the lump over his eye. “You move quickly. You know how to use the darkness. I thought I had you for a moment, but you slid into the shadows and the light blinded me. Ha, that was a good trick. Tell me, where did you learn to fight so well?”

“I grew up in an orphanage. Then I was in prison.”

“Prison is a good place. That is where Anvil developed his techniques. Yes, prison is good, but not as good as the streets. I learned in the streets of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, a dozen other cities,” Tolan said. “No one fought better than we did. You're Hungarian?”

“No, Russian,” said Spangler.

“Why do you speak Hungarian? What were you doing on a Hungarian shipment?”

“I worked in Hungary before the war. I returned to Russia in 1938. They forced me into the Army. I ran away. They found me and put me in prison. Two weeks ago I escaped and made my way back to Hungary. The police stopped me. I had no papers. Worse, I was circumcised. They put me on a train and here I am. And you? How did you get here?”

“I was a Brownshirt,” said Tolan.

“What's that?”

“S. A., Sturmabteilung—the storm troopers. We brought Hitler to power. There were two and a half million of us. I was a high official, one of the highest. It was we who conceived of the concentration camp. We built forty of them by the mid-thirties, for political prisoners. Ironic, eh? Then Hitler turned on us. Roehm, our leader was murdered. We fought back—and lost. I suppose I could have avoided all this if I had thrown in with Goering or Himmler, but I couldn't betray my men. They're still out there waiting. So I've bounced from camp to camp. I've seen them all, but this is the maddest.”

“Why?”

“The Process—the functioning of Birkenau. The logic behind it. Especially this compound. We're different from all the rest. You'll find out, now that you're one of the elite.”

“Elite?”

“A cook. The SS decreed that if any of you defeated a cook last night, you could take his place. You defeated Vassili. Therefore you take his place until he's well enough to fight you again. It's the Process. Come, let me show you around.”

The compound was a long narrow rectangle stretching from the railroad track to the main interior road; the kitchens and the cooks' quarters stood at the road end, next came the roll-call area, then two rows of sixteen windowless barracks spreading to the railroad fence. It was bordered by identical compounds, each enclosed by a twelve-foot-high electrified barbed-wire fence.

The main kitchen building was painted a dull yellow. The stoves were ancient wood-burning relics. The solitary water tap worked irregularly. Utensils were damaged and patched. Only two large boiling caldrons seemed in any state of repair. It was obvious to Spangler that the most functional equipment had been requisitioned by the cooks for their own private kitchen.

The kitchen Kommando, Tolan explained, was a well-defined hierarchy. Four senior cooks constituted the top echelon. Spangler now shared that station with Tolan, Anvil and one other: Der Gronck. The senior cooks' responsibilities were limited to seeing that the others did their jobs, keeping the accounts and allocating food. Even these minor tasks were not really performed by them. The senior cooks owned “Habes,” or, more simply, slaves. The Habes did the work, except for allocating the food.

Spangler had seen that the senior cooks, the subcooks and the apprentice cooks were all large, powerful men. Most kept their hands taped and bore the scars and bruises of recent battles. All wore green triangles on their SS-fashioned prison uniforms, with one exception—Tolan. Tolan was a political prisoner, not a civil criminal. His triangle was red.

The sun was setting. Spangler watched the preparations for the evening meal. The potato shed to the rear of the kitchen was unlocked. Sacks of soft, spotted potatoes were carried in and dumped into the boiling caldrons, along with carefully measured bits of meat and a large can of starchy powder. Every ingredient was entered into two ledgers kept by Tolan's slaves. Even the empty potato sacks were accounted for under “assets” before being washed, flattened and returned to the barracks.

Kitchen security increased when the bread bunker was unlocked. The subcooks had the area cleared as the loaves were laid out and carefully cut. Every slice was recorded.

“Eighteen per cent of the authorized quota is never issued,” Tolan told Spangler. “If the prisoners know we can't feed them all, the lines will move quicker. They're a cunning lot. They know the soup is thickest at the bottom of the pot, so they try to get to the end of the line. But if they're afraid the end of the line won't get fed, the problem is solved, isn't it?”

In the distance a band could be heard playing Liszt. The tramping of far-off feet followed soon after. Spangler watched the parade-ground fill with the hunched forms of returning labor prisoners. The roll-call procedure was the same as the night before, only this time there were no new arrivals to process.

Ranks were broken, and the inmates formed into endless lines. One by one the procession of gaunt, skeletal faces passed in front of the kitchen counters. Subcooks ladled out the thin soup. Each cup was carefully poured. Spangler watched as one portion was spilled. Prisoners dove to the ground and began licking the dirt. They were clubbed away by the Ukrainian SS.

Spangler noticed a second line forming behind the kitchen. He looked on as the subcooks and the assistant cooks worked directly from a ledger. Certain prisoners had already paid for extra rations. Their names were checked off as the accounts were settled. Spoons and cups, undoubtedly stolen from fellow prisoners, brought an extra ladle of soup or a piece of bread. If the utensils were in better-than-average condition the price might be doubled. Bits of soap were worth two thick slices of bread. A cigarette brought five. When the food ran out future orders were negotiated.

Spangler wandered out into the floodlit field. Five thousand exhausted prisoners were seated, devouring their evening meal. They all looked alike; the ragged striped jackets, the threadbare trousers, the torn shoes all appeared identical. So did the faces.

Spangler's eyes searched them. Perhaps somewhere among the countless thousands now squatting at Birkenau, Jean-Claude was at this very moment licking clean his cup and hiding it in his clothes so that it wouldn't be stolen.

Tolan called. Spangler followed him back to the barracks to the senior cooks' private dinner table. The plates were warm and the knives, spoons and forks shiny. The waiters wore white aprons over their prisoner uniforms. The meal began with a thick vegetable-and-beef stew. It was followed by sliced meat, baked turnips, Hungarian wine, butter, jam, honey, ersatz coffee with milk and sugar, and canned peaches.

44

The Habes cleared away the dinner dishes and pushed the tables into line several feet in front of the wooden cabinets.

Der Gronck, the fourth senior cook, a former weight lifter, brought a set of ledgers from the back room and set them on the center table.

Anvil unlocked the first cabinet. Truncheons, five well-honed bayonets and two pistols were removed and distributed among the sub-cooks and the apprentice cooks. Anvil stationed the subcooks around the room and deployed the apprentice cooks outside the barracks.

Tolan opened the second and third cabinets, revealing shelves crammed with canned fruits, salt, pepper, spices, medicines, bandages, knives, spoons, cups, clothing, cloth and almost any other luxury item coveted within Birkenau.

Spangler was seated between Tolan and Der Gronck behind the center table. Anvil, truncheon in hand, stood leaning beside the door. The Bourse was declared open.

The first “suppliers” arrived at their scheduled time, seated themselves opposite the senior cooks, hoisted their sacks onto the table and quickly began unpacking their merchandise. These were the liaison prisoners from the Sonderkommando. Tolan explained to Spangler. The Sonderkommando was the prisoner contingent that operated Birkenau's four crematoria—the Kommando which could never leave its compound, the prisoners who were themselves disposed of every four months.