Europa Blues

27

17 February 1945

The noise has grown so loud now. It is almost starting to seem real.

Yet more real is my name, crowning the top of the list.

I thought the ceiling was going to come crashing down today. Pieces of it rained down onto us. They looked like ice floes. A shudder ran through the building. I do not know what is happening out there but I wonder whether we will survive.

Of course I know what is happening: they are, of course, bombs. The liberators’ bombs, killing the interned.

Dare we speak of irony?

Yes, we dare. We must. How else would we be able to breathe? Our last breaths must be taken through a filter of humour. I have been running through all the old Yiddish jokes I know. Not that there are many. I have never been particularly successful in my faith. I had too much respect for the soul.

They walk the corridors; I see them from my cell window, walking like lost souls through an environment which is already gone. They wonder why they have been left on the banks of the river of death. Like drunk ships bobbing on its waters. Their bandages shine like lanterns on their empty skulls.

Yes. I cannot touch upon the fate which awaits me. It simply isn’t possible. It is beyond all else.

I should not feel terror; it is a sign of life. I have no right to show signs of life.

I have no right.

The rain. Afternoons bathed in grey. They are taken away to be shot.

No. Elsewhere. Let me talk about time…

No. Not this time.

Speak clearly. You are on the verge of death, man. Speak clearly.

Your wife and your son were taken away to be shot. You saw them being led round the corner. They were being taken to their deaths at the execution spot. They were to be killed. Magda had stolen food from the barracks to give to Franz. He had been starving to death. For that, they killed my wife. And our son, as an example.

And I ended up here.

Though I was already in Hell.

18 February 1945

You think you will never manage to lift the pencil again. You think you have written the worst words imaginable. After that, what is the point of carrying on? And yet, you do. A new day always dawns.

The bombs are raining down more and more heavily now. I saw time itself shudder.

I am going to describe time. I think I have already done it. Time consists of two things: a clock and a tower. The tower exists so the clock can function. The clock exists to honour the tower.

The clock is our soul, the tower our body.

Though we are here to prove that the clock is substance. That the clock is simply the mechanism driving the hands forward. The same movement for all eternity.

Or until the tower falls.

I have seen it shudder. A bomb was about to fell it. A bomb was about to fell time.

Let me describe time.

Time has a white base. That base may well be quadrangular. Then comes the black. The black is made up of three parts. The lowest of these is hexagonal. On three of these six surfaces, every other one, there are two windows set one above the other. The lower window is slightly larger than the upper. And immediately above the upper window, the next section begins; the middle. It is just as black and shaped like a small, domed cap. This is where the clock sits. Finally, the spire. The spire is black and looks to be needle-sharp.

I am Jewish. I have never understood why churches must look so sharp. Our synagogues do not. I have always thought they look like breasts. Mothers’ breasts.

Why am I describing time in such detail? Because soon it will no longer exist. Because the next bomb will fell it. Because it is already trembling in the breeze.

Because time is about to die.

19 February 1945

Erwin is dead. He was a kind soul. One of the three officers told me. The kindest of them. He is less German than I, and very blond. He looks so sorrowful.

He kills with sorrow in his eyes.

Not the other two. One kills out of curiosity. He is not cruel, simply cold. He watches, observes, writes. But the man with the purple birthmark on his neck, a mark in the shape of a rhombus, he is cruel. He wants to kill. I have seen that look before. He wants you to suffer. Then you can die. Only then is he happy.

I do not know their names. They give no names. They are three anonymous murderers. They are not alike. Not even murderers are alike.

Erwin died of pain.

He is no longer living inside me. I felt him die, and with that I also felt myself die.

Tomorrow, if time still exists, I will write about when I died.

20 February 1945

Her voice speaks to me each night. Always the same words: ‘Why do you want to wait for death? Think of Franz, at the very least.’

I thought I had been thinking of Franz. That is my only defence. He came up to my navel. We could talk. I asked him: ‘Do you want us to run, Franz? We’ll have to leave everything behind.’ And he replied: ‘No.’ I listened.

Of course, I am lying. It is pathetic, lying when I have one foot in the grave. I know not why I wrote that. Why did I write that, God?

No. You won’t answer.

Franz replied the way I wanted him to reply. I asked him simply so that he could say ‘No’. How could he have said anything else?

I was the one who wanted to stay. I couldn’t leave Berlin. It was my city, my country, my life.

And so I denied them.

That was when I died.

I promised I would explain today. I promised myself.

They took Magda and Franz away to shoot them. Magda was caught stealing bread from the soldiers’ barracks. They shot them.

And I did not lift a finger. They would have shot me too, had I done so.

I don’t know what kind of peculiar survival instinct that was. I already knew that I was dead. Why did I choose a long, drawn-out, painful death instead of choosing to die reconciled with my family?

Time is falling now. Here, before my eyes. As I write. The black tower and its old timepiece, the brickwork which has stood for hundreds of years – this very moment, it is falling. The church windows clink delicately with the clamour of the bombs, and framed by the ash-grey smoke of this doomed city’s judgement day, a colourful cloud of glass fragments rises.

It could have been beautiful.

21 February 1945

My name has reached the top of the list. Time has fallen. I saw it fall.

The kindest of the three officers came in to tell me. I would have an hour to prepare myself.

Soon, the little bandage will be pressed to my temple. Someone will watch me through their cell window and think that it is glowing like a lantern.

I do not know what I should say. Soon, the pain will hit me at a level I never thought possible.

That is the price of my betrayal.