Spark of Life (18 page)

He took a cigar from a leather case and bit off the end. He wanted to go on talking. He suddenly felt a great need for it—but seeing Alfred’s compressed lips he remained silent. Who ever gives a damn for me? he thought. Everyone is preoccupied with himself. I should drive to my garden out of town. The rabbits, soft and fluffy, with red eyes in the dusk. Always, even as a boy, he had wanted to own rabbits. His father hadn’t allowed it. Now he had some. The smell of hay and fur and fresh leaves. The security of boyhood memories. Forgotten dreams. Sometimes one was damned alone. A hundred and thirty thousand marks. As a boy the most he had owned had been seventy-five pfennigs. Two days later they had been stolen from him.

Fire after fire sprang up. It was the old town which burned like tinder. It consisted almost exclusively of wooden houses. The river reflected the flames as though it too were on fire.

Those Veterans who could walk crouched in a dark cluster outside the barrack. In the red darkness they could see that the machine-gun positions were still empty. The sky was overcast; the soft gray layer of clouds had a pink sheen like the feathers of flamingos. The fire sparkled even in the eyes of the dead lying piled up behind them.

A barely perceptible scraping roused 509’s attention. Lewinsky’s
face raised itself from the ground. 509 breathed deeply and got up. He had been waiting for this moment since he had been able to crawl again. He could have remained sitting, but he stood up; he wanted to show Lewinsky that he was able to walk and not a cripple.

“Everything all right again?” asked Lewinsky.

“Sure. To finish us off is not so easy.”

Lewinsky nodded. “Is there any place we can talk?”

They walked to the other side of the pile of corpses. Lewinsky glanced quickly around. “The guards haven’t returned to your place yet—”

“There isn’t much to guard here. Here nobody ever escapes.”

“That’s what I thought. And there’s no control at night?”

“As good as never.”

“What’s it like in the daytime? Do the SS often come to the barrack?”

“Almost never. They’re afraid of lice, dysentery and typhus.”

“And your block leader?”

“He comes only for the roll call. Otherwise he doesn’t bother about us much.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bolte. Squad leader.”

Lewinsky nodded. “The block seniors don’t sleep here in the barrack, what? Only the room seniors. What’s yours like?”

“You talked to him the other day. Berger. We couldn’t have a better one.”

“Is that the doctor now working in the crematorium?”

“Yes. You’re well informed.”

“We made enquiries about it. Who’s your block senior?”

“Handke. A green one. Kicked one of us to death a few days ago.”

“Sharp?”

“No. Brutish. But he doesn’t know much about us. Is also afraid of getting infected with something. Knows only a few of us. The faces change too fast. The block leader knows even less. The control lies with the room senior. One can do all kinds of things here. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s what I wanted to know. You understood me.” Lewinsky glanced slightly surprised at the red triangle on 509’s smock. He hadn’t expected as much. “Communist?” he asked.

509 shook his head.

“Social Democrat?”

“No.”

“What then? You must be something.”

509 looked up. The skin round his eyes was still discolored from the bruises. As a result the eyes seemed brighter; they shone almost transparently in the light of the fire, as though they didn’t belong to the dark, demolished face. “Just a human being—if that satisfies you.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Nothing.”

For a moment Lewinsky was taken aback. “Oh, I see, an idealist,” he said then with a trace of good-natured contempt. “Well, that’s okay so far as I’m concerned. As long as we can trust you.”

“You can do that. You can trust our group. Those sitting over there. They have been here longest.” 509 smirked. “Veterans.”

“And the others?”

“They’re equally safe. Mussulmen. As safe as the dead. Just able to fight for grub and the possibility of dying lying down. No more strength left for treason.”

Lewinsky looked at 509. “Then one could hide someone with you for a while, what? It wouldn’t attract attention? At least not for a few days?”

“No. If he isn’t too fat.”

Lewinsky ignored the irony. He moved closer. “There’s something in the air. In various barracks the red block seniors have been replaced by green ones. There’s some talk about night-and-fog transports. You know what that means—”

“Yes. Transports to the extermination camps.”

“Correct. There are also rumors about mass liquidations. People arriving from other camps brought the news. We must take precautions. Organize our defenses. The SS won’t pull out so easily. Till now we hadn’t thought of you in this connection—”

“You thought we’d kick off here like half-dead fish, eh?”

“Yes. But not any more. We can use you. To make important people disappear for a while when it gets hot over there.”

“Is the lazaret no longer safe?”

Lewinsky glanced up again. “So you know that, too?”

“Yes, I know that also.”

“Were you with us in the Movement over there?”

“That makes no difference,” said 509. “How are things now?”

“The lazaret,” answered Lewinsky in a different tone, “is no longer what it was. We still have some of our people in it; but they’ve been watching us closely for some time.”

“How about the spotted fever and typhoid wing?”

“We’ve still got them. But they’re not enough. We need other opportunities to hide people. In our own barracks we can manage it only for a few days. We’ve always got to reckon, too, with surprise check-ups by the SS at night.”

“I understand,” said 509. “You want a place like this where everything’s in a muddle and constantly changing and there aren’t many check-ups.”

“Exactly. And where a few people we can trust are in control.”

“You can have that with us.”

I’m advertising the Small camp like a bakery, thought 509 and said, “What was that about Berger you wanted to know?”

“His job at the crematorium. We haven’t anyone there. He could keep us informed.”

“He can do that. He pulls teeth in the crematorium and signs death certificates or something like that. He’s been there two months. His predecessor was deported with the cremation gang on a night-and-fog transport during the last change-over. Then, for some time, there was a tooth-plumber who died. After that they fetched Berger.”

Lewinsky nodded. “In that case he has another two or three months. That’ll be enough to begin with.”

“Yes. That’ll be enough.” 509 raised his blue and green face. He knew that those who belonged to the crematorium service were replaced every four or five months and shipped off to be gassed in an extermination camp. This was the simplest way of disposing of witnesses who had seen too much. So at best Berger probably hadn’t more than three months to live. But three months were long. A lot could happen. Especially with the help of the labor camp.

“And what can we expect from you, Lewinsky?” asked 509.

“The same as we from you.”

“That’s not so important for us. For the time being we haven’t anyone to hide. Grub’s what we need. Grub.”

Lewinsky was silent for a while. “We can’t supply the whole of your barrack,” he said then. “You know that?”

“There’s no question of that. We are a dozen men. The Mussulmen can’t be saved anyhow.”

“We’ve much too little ourselves. Otherwise new ones wouldn’t come here every day.”

“I know that, too. I’m not talking about filling our bellies; we just don’t want to die of starvation.”

“We need what we can save for those we’re already hiding. After
all, we don’t get any rations for them. But we’ll do what we can for you. Is that enough?”

509 thought that it was enough and also as good as nothing. A promise—but he couldn’t demand anything until his barrack had rendered a return service.

“It’s enough,” he said.

“Okay. Now let’s talk to Berger. He can be your contact man. He’s the one who can enter our camp. That’s the simplest way. You can take charge of the others. The fewer who know about me the better. Always just a single contact man between one group and another. And one to replace. Old principle which you know, eh?” Lewinsky looked sharply at 509.

“Which I know,” answered 509.

Lewinsky crawled away through the red darkness, behind the barracks, the latrines and towards the exit. 509 leaned back. He was suddenly very tired. He felt as though he had talked and thought hard for days. He had concentrated everything on this meeting with Lewinsky. Now his head was swimming. The town below glowed like a gigantic furnace. He crept over to Berger.

“Ephraim,” he said to Berger after some time. “I believe we’re out of it.”

Ahasver had crawled up. “Did you talk to him?”

“Yes, old man. They’re going to help us. And we them.”

“We them?”

“Yes,” said 509, raising himself up again. His head was no longer swimming. “We’ll help them, too. Nothing is for nothing.”

Something like a senseless pride was in his voice. They wouldn’t receive any gifts; they would give something in return. They were still of some use. They could even help the Big camp. A sharp wind
could have blown them over in their physical wretchedness, they were that weak—but at this moment they didn’t feel it.

“We are out of it,” said 509. “We have contact again. We are no longer cut off. The quarantine is broken.”

It was as though he had said: We are no longer condemned to death; we have a slight chance. It was the whole vast difference between despair and hope.

“From now on we must always think about it,” he said. “We must eat it. Like bread. Like meat. It’s coming to an end. It’s certain. We’ll get out. Earlier it would have killed us. It was too far away. There were too many disappointments. That is over. Now it is here. Now it must help us. We must eat it with our brains. It’s like meat.”

“Didn’t he bring any news?” asked Lebenthal. “A piece of newspaper or something?”

“No. Everything’s forbidden. But they’ve built a secret radio. From scraps and stolen parts. In a few days it’ll be working. It’s possible that they’ll hide it here. Then we’ll know what’s happening.”

509 took two pieces of bread from his pocket; Lewinsky had left them with him. He gave them to Berger. “Here, Ephraim. Divide them. He’ll bring more.”

Each man took his piece. They ate slowly. Far below them glowed the town. Behind them lay the dead. The small group crouched silently together and ate the bread, and it tasted different from any bread they had eaten before. It was like a strange communion that distinguished them from the others in the barrack. From the Mussulmen. They had taken up the fight. They had found comrades. They had a goal. They looked at the fields and the mountains and the town and the night—and at that moment none of them saw the barbed wire and the machine-gun towers.

NEUBAUER AGAIN PICKED
up the paper that lay on his writing desk. Simple for those brothers, he thought. One of those elastic regulations out of which anything could be made—reads harmless enough but is meant quite differently. A list should be made of the more important political prisoners—and it was added: provided there are still some left in the camps. That was the twist. The hint was clear enough. To grasp it, this morning’s conference with Dietz had not even been necessary. It was easy for Dietz to talk. Do away with the dangerous elements, he had declared—in these hard times we can’t afford to have notorious enemies of the Fatherland in our midst and feed them as well. Talking was always easy; but later someone had to do something about it. That was another matter. One should have such things in writing, with all details. Dietz hadn’t provided anything written—and this damned inquiry here was no real order; it left one with the whole responsibility.

Neubauer shoved the paper aside and pulled out a cigar. Cigars were also getting scarce. He still had four boxes; after that there
remained only the Deutsche Wacht, and not even too many of them. Almost everything had been burned. One should have taken better precautions while there was still plenty—but who’d have thought it would ever come to this?

Weber entered. After a brief hesitation Neubauer pushed the box toward him. “Help yourself,” he said with false affability. “Rarities. Genuine Partagas.”

“Thanks. I smoke only cigarettes.”

“Of course. I always forget that. All right, then, you smoke your coffin nails.”

Weber suppressed a grin. The old boy must be in trouble; he was being hospitable. He pulled a flat gold case out of his pocket and tapped a cigarette into shape. In 1933 the case had belonged to the legal councilor, Aaron Weizenblut. It had been a lucky find. The monogram had fitted—Anton Weber. It was the only booty he had acquired in all these years; he didn’t need a great deal and cared little for possessions.

“A regulation has just come in,” said Neubauer. “Here, just read through it.”

Weber picked up the paper. He read slowly and for a long time. Neubauer grew impatient. “The rest is unimportant,” he said. “I’m only concerned with the passage about the political prisoners. How many, roughly, do we still have?”