The Prosperous Thief (20 page)
He doesn’t know where he’s headed, although it’ll be out of Germany if he’s got any sense. He remembers how pleased he was when he learned how to read and write. Better, he is now thinking, if he’d taught himself another language. He won’t be heading back to Berlin, that’s for sure, and he won’t be heading back to thieving either, no matter where he stops. He’s a cook now. Heinrik Heck: cook. And the rest he’ll leave to chance.
Although one thing’s for certain, he’ll not be sorry to leave this place. He’s seen more corpses than an undertaker, more starvation than would line the gutters of the Scheunenviertel, and more disease than any hospital. He’s seen eyes so empty he might as well be looking into coloured glass, he’s seen people on their feet yet more dead than alive, he’s seen women dying and men dying and worst of all children dying and has learned for his own safety not to be moved. Although once he couldn’t stop himself. A girl, twelve or thirteen years old, impossible to judge when they’re starving, and he’s coming from the kitchen with a full stomach and food in his pocket for later, and he sees her crouched beneath the ramp of one of the huts scavenging for scraps. He knows, as must she, there’s nothing to be found there. He reaches into his pocket, has to be careful, grabs the food, kneels down to tie his bootlace, and with his greatcoat providing cover tosses the food at her. She takes it, her face without expression, and hides it in her rags. A few days later she’s waiting in the same place and they do a repeat performance. And several times after that.
The girl’s been missing this past month. Either she has enough to eat or the typhus has got her, and although it’s unlikely, he hopes it’s the former. It occurs to him he cares more for this unknown Jew girl than his own daughter. Places like this can really screw you up.
It is only midday; he plans to wait until dusk before making his move. The stench in the camp is so strong it has soaked through his clothes and into his skin. Despite the cool weather he’d do anything for a swim. He lies back on his bunk and lets his mind wander back to the days in Berlin when he would float in the river for hours on end, washing away the grime of his old, putrid life.
The Germans have left and the British are coming – or perhaps the Americans or French, no one is certain and Martin Lewin is not waiting to find out. His head is raging and there’s iced lead in his bones, but he is alive. Martin has held out, twelve months in Belsen and before that Westerbork. He has kept alive minute by minute, hour by hour, but is fast approaching the point where succumbing is cruelly seductive.
Martin has stayed alive by stoking his memories of Renate, but now without something more substantial he feels his life sliding away. He needs to see his wife, needs to be with her.And Alice, too, but his daughter is safe in England, his daughter is most assuredly alive. But Renate? Please God let her be alive, for there’d be little point to his own survival if she were not. How he longs for the soft touch of her, the smell of her, how he longs to feel the weight of her in his arms, such pathetic sticks they’ve become but still with strength enough for his wife. He is forty years old and has survived nearly two years in labour camps, too absurd to leave this earth after just half a life, and the last part too rotten even for swill.
He tells himself it’s only typhus, only typhus and he’ll see it through, only typhus that doesn’t necessarily kill, only typhus that most often does. He shrugs off the shadow of death as he drags himself away from the camp. The only death he allows into consciousness is useful death, the sort of death to take advantage of.
He has stripped dead people of their rags and torn the material into broad ribbons and patches to use on his own miserable body, the effort more costly with each passing hour as fatigue and malaise undermine. By the time his swaddling is complete, his arms and shoulders and his pathetic back have barely a tear left in them. But the job is good, and beneath his striped pyjamas he is a mummy. For while the thaw has come and the sun is finding its heat, Martin’s bones are bleached and bare, and his skin has deserted him.
He has scavenged food from those for whom a heel of bread has come too late, will force himself to eat though his poor guts are closing. He has suffered worse, he tells himself, but in truth, beyond a certain point the immediate worse is the worst worse of all. The pain lopes through his head and lodges in his temples and every now and then a lurching in his throat. He knows he must eat for the journey to Berlin, just two hundred kilometres and how long can it take? But whether five days or ten there’s no doubt he’ll become sicker. Belsen has taught him what to expect. Belsen is rife with fever and rash and a head pain so piercing that even your teeth hurt. And the grating in your ears, the cough hacking your joints, the groaning muscles. And worst of all the malaise, he’s seen more of it than food this past year, men lying on their backs muttering a stream of nonsense while waiting to die.
He instructs his legs to walk a little further. Soon he’ll be out of sight of the camp, away from typhus and on the road, back to Berlin, back to Renate, and after that home to Krefeld to gather up what once belonged to them. Then they’ll travel to England to collect Alice, before moving to one of those countries that didn’t want an unemployed Jewish silk merchant before the war but after all that’s happened might consider one now. So many uncertainties, among which there’s only one rock-solid fact: that as surely as water relieves thirst, when Martin is with Renate once more, survival will cease to be an all-consuming issue.
He cannot believe in her death, cannot even entertain the possibility. He knows she was included in a large contingent of Berlin Jews transported to the east on the twenty-seventh of February 1943. He knows the exact date, not simply because it was her birthday, but because on that day all his efforts to get her out of Germany had finally come to fruition. If the Germans had delayed their Berlin action just twenty-four hours, Martin is positive he would have saved his wife. Just one more day was all he needed. He now knows that no matter how careful and extensive the planning, or how numerous the bribes, in the end it is chance more than anything else which determines your fate. No one ever avoided a concentration camp because they deserved to.
As he lugs himself across the broken ground, sick and debilitated but lucky to be alive, it strikes him that even if he had managed to get her out of Germany, it wouldn’t have been much of a saving. A couple of months later Renate would have found herself like him in Westerbork, and nine months after that in Belsen. But they would have been together, and it is extraordinary what a difference that can make.
For most of the past two years Martin had the company of his friend Friedrich. They were each other’s luck. But with Friedrich now gone, Martin is alone except for the typhus and such company he can do without. He feels like he’s walking against a system of pulleys. Inside his skull the pain is kneading his brains, and the light is so sharp he might be staring into the sun. He tells himself Renate is just a few days away, sometimes he thinks he can actually hear her. Having survived the stinking rot of Belsen, he is convinced the fresh air away from the camp will revive him, and hobbles a little further, perhaps even a little more quickly. It would make no sense if he were to die now. Across all Germany, across all Europe he has no idea how many people have died, but if Belsen is any guide, the number is too great for the mind to hold. Although not my wife, he says to himself. Not my wife.
His boots, or rather Friedrich’s boots, weigh a tonne. Friedrich who would be with him now if he had not died two days ago. Friedrich with whom Martin has survived and dreamed ever since the early days in Westerbork. Friedrich who has done almost as much as the memories of Renate to keep Martin alive. And now Friedrich is dead, but surely Martin is able to manage on his own until he reaches Berlin. He walks a little further, he’s heading for the trees. His boots drag him back and briefly he is tempted to discard them. But everyone knows that a man without boots is going nowhere.
As the camp recedes, the fresh air hooks into his throat and hacks into his chest. He stops a moment to find an easier breath. He looks scarcely human, like a spindly insect with broken limbs staggering on the open ground, knows this from having lived with others who look scarcely human. Knows, too, that only a blind man would have compassion enough to help him.
A few more steps, a few more minutes and he reaches the trees, marvels at the clusters of new leaves sprouting in the branches. How tenacious are these plants which manage to thrive despite the death in the air. And he makes himself breathe more deeply. Inside his mummy case his body is burning, yet the chill is just a few minutes or an hour away and he does not dare tamper with the swaddling. Instead he leans down, collects some leaves still damp from last night’s dew and holds them to his face. It would be cooler if he went deeper into the woods but he’s afraid of losing his way. The road he is following leads directly to the main route to Berlin. He clings to the edge of the woods for protection, but never loses sight of the road.
He holds Friedrich in mind, Friedrich who gave him life and boots, and now incumbent on Martin to stay alive for both of them. Friedrich had a wife and three children, and as soon as Martin has found Renate he will search for them and give them the pen and photograph Friedrich entrusted to him. There was a diary as well – the journalist in Friedrich had stayed alive even when all else was dying – but there’s only so much a man weak from typhus and starvation can carry. Martin labelled the diary and hid it among some books in the hospital where he is sure it will eventually be found. He feels he has let Friedrich down, so little bequeathed by the dying man yet already too much, but comforts himself with the knowledge that in a similar position Friedrich would have done the same. He feels beneath his jacket for the pouch he fashioned from some of the rags. Here he has hidden Friedrich’s possessions with his own, so little left but more valuable than gold.
Martin continues onward, pushing one sullen step after another. He has no idea how much ground he has covered but by the time the sun is overhead he has to stop. He moves deeper into the woods, settles against a log in a sheltered grove and forces himself to eat some bread. His brain feels as if it wants to push through his skull. The pain is worse today than yesterday, and will be worse tomorrow.
Night is falling when Martin awakes. He is coughing, his whole guts threatening to erupt. He cannot believe he has wasted so much time. Hours ago when he needed this hard useless cough to wake him it was silent, now it refuses to allow him to get to his feet. He is aware of a change in the light, suddenly it is brighter, perhaps he has made a mistake, perhaps it is still only early afternoon, hard to hold on to his thoughts as he peers through the trees. The sky is flickering, the sky is mauve, although just a moment ago surely he saw the sun, and so thirsty, impossible to know anything with such a thirst, reaches for his bottle, can’t find it, perhaps it’s been stolen, glances towards a movement in the bushes, the thief hiding or just a shimmying of leaves, and doesn’t know now what he is doing here, doesn’t know anything any more.
Heini Heck watches the sick man groping for his water bottle. He recognises the familiar mix of starvation, a body in collapse and typhus. It’s a Jew, and probably dying, and Heini knows he should help, but little point endangering himself when the situation is likely to be hopeless. For the umpteenth time since being stationed at Belsen, Heini thinks about the Jew pastry-cook, how when he was at his lowest the old Jew helped him, how because of him he decided to become a cook, how because of him he’s probably alive today. And quickly pushes the thoughts away – no time for softness now. Instead he finds himself wondering whether as head cook in the officers’ mess at Belsen Concentration Camp he’s had the best life can offer. And is forced to concede he might well have. In fact, with prospects such as his, Heini is not much better off than the poor mug with the typhus lying on the ground hacking up his lungs.