Fatelessness

EIGHT

I must admit, there are certain things I would never be able to explain, not precisely, not if I were to consider them from the angle of my own expectations, of rule, or reason— from the angle of life, in sum, the order of things, at least insofar as I am acquainted with it. Thus, when they off-loaded me from the handcart onto the ground again, I was quite unable to grasp what I might still have to do with, for instance, hair-clippers and razors. The jammed space, looking at first glance uncannily like a shower room, with its slippery wooden laths onto which I too was deposited amid countless trampling, pressing soles, ankles, ulcerated shanks, and shins — that, by and large, conformed more to my rough expectations. It even fleetingly crossed my mind that, amazing! it seems the Auschwitz custom must be in force here as well. My surprise was all the greater when, after a short wait and a series of hissing, bubbling sounds, water, a copious jet of unexpected hot water, started to gush from the nozzles up above. I was not too pleased, however, because I would have gladly warmed up a little more, but there was nothing I could do about it when, all at once, an irresistible force whisked me up into the air, out of the jostling forest of legs, and meanwhile some kind of big bedsheet and on top of that a blanket were wrapped around me. Then I recollect a shoulder and being draped over it, head to the rear, feet forward; a door, the steep steps of a narrow staircase, another door, then an indoor space, a chamber, a room so to say, where my incredulous eyes were struck, over and above the spaciousness and light, by the well-nigh barrack-room luxury of the furnishings; and finally the bed — manifestly a genuine, regular, single-berth bed, with a well-stuffed straw mattress and even two gray blankets — onto which I rolled from the shoulder. In addition, two men, regular, handsome men, with faces and hair, in white cotton pants and undershirts, clogs on their feet; I gazed, marveled admiringly at them, while they scrutinized me. Only then did I notice their mouths and that some singsong had been humming in my ears for quite some time. I had a feeling they wished to get something out of me, but all I could do was shake my head that, no, I didn’t understand. On that, I heard coming from one of them, but with a most peculiar German accent, “Hast du Durchmarsch?” or in other words, did I have the runs, and somewhat to my surprise I heard my own voice give the answer, hard to know why, “Nein”—I suppose as ever, even now, again no doubt merely out of pride. Then, after a brief consultation and some hunting around, they pushed two objects into my hands. One was a bowl of warm coffee, the other a hunk of bread, roughly one-sixth of a loaf, I estimated. I was allowed to take them and consume them without payment or barter. For a while after that, my insides, suddenly giving signs of life by starting to seethe and become unruly, occupied all my attention and, above all, my efforts, lest the pledge I had given shortly before should in some way be found to have been untrue. I later woke to see that one of the men was there again, this time in boots, a splendid dark blue cap, and a prison jacket with a red triangle.

So then it was up over the shoulder again and down the stairs, this time straight out into the open air. We soon stepped into a roomy, gray timber barracks block, a sort of infirmary or Revier, if I was not mistaken. There’s no denying, I again found everything here, on the whole, to be roughly in line with what I had readied myself for, ultimately completely in order, not to say homely, only now I could not quite fathom the earlier treatment, the coffee and bread. En route, down the entire length of the barracks, I was greeted by the familiar triple tier of box bunks. Each was jam-packed, and a somewhat practiced eye of the kind that I too could lay claim to immediately recognized, on the basis of the indistinguishable tangle of onetime faces, skin surfaces with their blossoming scabies and sores, bones, rags, and scrawny limbs in them, that these must represent at least five and, in one or another, even six bodies per section. Apart from that, I vainly sought for a glimpse on the bare boards of the straw that had done duty as bedding even in Zeitz — but then, true, I had to admit, that was hardly a particularly important detail in view of the brief time that I obviously had to look forward to being there. Then a fresh surprise as we came to a halt, and words, some sort of negotiation — evidently between the man carrying me and someone else — struck my ear. To begin with, I did not know if I could believe my own eyes (but then I couldn’t be mistaken, because the barracks were extremely well lit with strong lamps). Over on the left I could see two rows of regular boxes there too, except the planks were covered by a layer of red, pink, green, and mauve quilts, above which was another row of similar quilts, and between the two layers were poking, tightly packed together, the bald-cropped heads of children, some smaller, some larger, but mostly those of boys of about my own age. No sooner had I spotted all that than they deposited me on the floor, with someone propping me up so that I wouldn’t slump over, took the blanket from me, hurriedly bandaged my knee and hip with paper, pulled a shirt on me, and then I was slipping between a row of quilting, above and below, on the middle tier, with a boy on either side hastily making room for me.

Then they left me there, again without any explanations, so I was once more thrown back on my own wits. At all events, I had to acknowledge that there I was, and this fact undeniably kept renewing itself every second (again), continuing to sustain me anew. Later on I also became aware of a number of necessary particulars. Where I was, for example, was most likely the front, rather than back, of the barracks, as indicated by a door opposite that opened to the outside, as well as by the airiness of the well-lighted space that was to be seen in front of me — an area in which dignitaries, clerks, and doctors moved and worked, and which was even furnished, at its most conspicuous spot, with a sort of table covered with a white sheet. Those who had their shelter in the timber boxes behind mostly had dysentery or typhus, or if they did not have it, then at least they soon would in all certainty. The first symptom, as the unrelieved stench itself indicated, was Durchfall, or Durchmarsch by its other designation, as the men of the bathhouse Kommando had immediately inquired about, and according to which, I realized, my own place would in fact also have been back there, if I had told the truth. I found the daily food allowances and cuisine too, on the whole, similar to those at Zeitz: coffee at dawn, the soup arriving already early in the morning, one-third or one-quarter of a loaf for the bread ration, though if it was one-quarter then usually with a Zulage. The time of day, due to the constantly uniform lighting, unaltered in any way by the window’s lightness or darkness, was more difficult to keep track of, being deducible solely from certain unequivocal signs — morning, from the coffee, the time to sleep, from the doctor’s farewell every evening. I made his acquaintance on the very first evening. I became aware of a man who had stopped right in front of our box. He could not have been all that tall as his head was roughly on the same level as mine. His cheeks were not just rounded but positively plump, even flabby here and there in their abundance, and he not only had a moustache that was twirled in a circle and almost entirely grizzled, but also, to my great amazement— because in my time in concentration camps I had not previously encountered its like — similarly dove gray, a very carefully trimmed beard, a small one in the shape of a dapper spike on his chin. To go with that, he was wearing a large, dignified cap, trousers of dark cloth, but a prison jacket, albeit of good material, with an armband on which was a red flash bearing the letter “F.” He inspected me in the way that is customary with newcomers, and even spoke to me. I responded with the only sentence of French that I know: “ Dje ne kompran pa, mussiew.” “Ooee, Ooeee,” he said, in an expansive, friendly, slightly hoarse voice, “bon, bon, mo’ fees,” at which he placed a sugar lump before my nose on the coverlet, a real one, exactly the same as the kind I still remembered from home. He then made the round of all the other boys in both boxes, on all three tiers, with a single lump of sugar being dispensed from his pocket to each of them as well. With some he did no more than just place it in front of them, but with others he took longer, indeed a few were able to speak and he made a particular point of patting them on the cheek, tickling their neck, chattering and jabbering with them a bit the way someone chirrups to his favorite canaries at their regular hour. I also noticed that some favored boys, mainly those who spoke his language, also received an extra sugar lump. Only then did something that had always been preached back at home fall into place, and that was how useful an education can be, most particularly a knowledge of foreign tongues.

I grasped all this, as I say, took it on board, but only in the sense, on the proviso I might almost say, that I was continually waiting meanwhile, even if I could not know specifically for what, but for the denouement, the clue to the secret, the awakening, so to say. The next day, for example, when he must have had the time in the middle of his work with the others, the doctor pointed over to me too; I was pulled out of my place and set down on the table before him. He emitted a couple of friendly tones from his throat, examined me, percussed me, laid a cold ear and a prickly tip of his trim moustache against my chest and back, and gave me to understand, demonstrated, I should sigh then cough. Next he laid me on my back, got an assistant of some kind to take off the paper bandages, and then it was the turn for my wounds. He inspected them initially only from some distance away, then cautiously palpated around them, at which some matter immediately oozed out. At that he muttered something, shaking his head with a concerned air, as if that had somehow made him a little despondent or dampened his spirits, as I saw it. He quickly rebandaged them too, banished them from sight as it were, and I could not help feeling that they could scarcely have met with his approval, for there was certainly no way he could have been reconciled to or satisfied with them.

My examination turned out badly in one or two other respects too, I was obliged to conclude. No way could I make myself understood by the boys lying on either side of me. They, for their part, chatted blithely with one another across me, over or in front of my head, and in a way that made it seem I was merely some obstacle that happened to be in their way. Before that they had inquired as to who and what I might be. I told them: “ Ungar,” and I could hear how that news was spread rapidly up and down the boxes: Vengerski, Vengriya, Magyarski, Matyar, Ongroa, and a great many other variations as well. One of them even called out “Khenyir!” the Hungarian for “bread,” and the way he laughed out loud, to be joined straightaway by a chorus of others, could leave me in no doubt that he had already made acquaintance with my kind, and fairly thoroughly at that. That was unpleasant, and I would have liked somehow to inform them it was a mistake, since Hungarians did not consider me as one of them; that, broadly speaking, I too was able to share that same opinion of them, and I found it very odd, not to say unfair, that it should be me, of all people, who was being looked at askance on their account; but then I remembered the farcical barrier that, to be sure, I could only tell them that in Hungarian, or at best possibly German, which was even worse, I had to concede.

Then there was another shortcoming, a further transgression that, hard as I might try, I could not — for days on end— conceal any longer. I quickly picked up that on those occasions when needs must be attended to, it was customary to summon a boy, hardly older than ourselves, who seemed to be some kind of assistant orderly there. He would appear with a flat, suitably handled pan, which one would thrust under the quilt. Then one had to call out again for him: “Bitte! Fertig! Bitte!”[26]until he came along to collect it.

Now, no one, not even he, could dispute the justification for such a need once or twice a day; only I was forced to put him to the trouble three and sometimes four times a day, and that, I could see, bugged him — perfectly understandably too, I couldn’t deny it, there’s no question. On one occasion he even took the pan over to the doctor, explained or argued something, showing him the contents, whereupon the latter too mused for a short while over the exhibit, yet for all that, with a gesture of head and hand, unmistakably signaled a rebuff. Not even that evening’s sugar lump was omitted, so everything was all right; I could safely nestle down again amid the undeniable, and so far — to the present day at least — still enduring, seemingly unshakable security of quilts and warming bodies.

The next day, sometime during the interval between coffee and soup, a man from the world outside entered, one of the distinctly rare Prominents, as I immediately realized. His artist’s beret of black felt, his immaculate white smock, and under that trousers with razor-sharp creases, and his footwear of polished black shoes made me slightly alarmed, not merely by the somehow rough-hewn, somehow inordinately masculine, so to say chiseled features, but also by the conspicuously florid, purple, almost flayed impression given by the skin on his face, that seemed almost to expose the raw flesh beneath. Besides that, the tall, burly frame, the black hair with streaks of gray at the temples, the armband that, because he was clasping his hands behind his back, was indecipherable from where I was lying, but above all a red triangle that bore no lettering — all this marked the ominous fact of impeccable German blood. For the first time in my life, incidentally, I could now marvel at a person whose prisoner number did not run in the tens of thousands or even thousands, nor even in the hundreds, but consisted of just two digits. Our own doctor immediately scurried over to greet him and shake hands, give a little pat on the arm, in short win his goodwill, as with a long-awaited guest finally honoring the house with a visit, and to my great amazement, all at once, I could not help noticing, there could be no doubt about it, all the signs were that our doctor must be talking about me. He even pointed me out, with a sweep of his arm, and from his rapid talk, this time in German, the expression “zu dir” distinctly reached my ear. Then, amid explanatory gestures, he plugged away, averring, appealing to the other’s better feelings, the way one proffers and sells an item of merchandise one wishes to dispose of as quickly as possible. The other, having first listened in silence, albeit somehow in the manner of the weightier party, what one might call a tough customer, in the end seemed to be fully convinced, or at least that is what I sensed from the quick, piercing, and already somehow proprietary look of the dark, beady eyes that he darted in my direction, his brisk nod, the handclasp, his entire manner, not to say the satisfied expression that brightened the face of our doctor as the other went his way.

I did not have too long to wait before the door opened again, and in a single glance I had sized up the prison garb, the red triangle containing the letter “P” (the distinguishing mark for a Pole, as was common knowledge), and the word “Pfleger,” which is to say the rank of a medical orderly, on the black armband of the man who entered. This one appeared to be young, maybe twenty or thereabouts. He too had a nice blue cap, though somewhat smaller, from beneath which chestnut hair spilled onto his ears and neck. Every feature on his long but rotund, fleshy face was as normal and pleasant as one could wish, the pink color of the skin, the expression on the perhaps slightly large, soft lips as engaging as you would like: in a word, he was handsome, and I would no doubt have been lost in admiration had he not immediately sought out the doctor and the latter immediately pointed me out to him, and had he not had a blanket over his arm into which, as soon as he had hauled me from my place, he wrapped me, and then, in what seemed to be the customary fashion here, draped me over his shoulder. He did not quite get his own way without let or hindrance, because I clung on with both hands to a strut separating the boxes which happened to be within reach — purely at random, instinctively so to say. I was even a little ashamed of doing so; nevertheless, I discovered the extent to which, it seems, one’s reason can be deceived, how greatly one’s affairs can be complicated by no more than a mere few days of life. Of course, he proved the stronger, and my flailing and pounding on his back and the area around his kidneys with both my fists was to no effect; all he did was laugh that off too, as I could feel from the heaving of his shoulder, so I gave up and let him carry me off to wherever he wanted.

There are some strange places in Buchenwald. It is possible to get to one of those neat, green barracks behind a barbed-wire fence that, to all intents and purposes, as a denizen of the Little Camp, you had hitherto only been able to admire from afar. Now, though, you find out that inside— that is to say, inside this one at least — is a corridor so suspiciously clean that it sparkles and glitters. Doors open off the corridor, real, proper, white-painted doors, behind one of which is a warm, bright room in which there is a bed already empty and made-up, as if it had been waiting for your personal arrival. On the bed is a crimson quilt. Your body sinks into a plumped-up straw mattress. Between these, a cool, white layer — no, you were not mistaken, as you may convince yourself: a layer of bedsheet, to be sure. Under the nape of your neck too you feel an unwonted, far from unpleasant pressure coming from a well-stuffed straw pillow, on it a white pillowcase. The Pfleger even double-folds the blanket in which he brought you and lays it by your feet, so it too, apparently, is at your disposal, in the event that you might possibly be dissatisfied with the room’s temperature. Then he sits down on the edge of your bed, some sort of card and a pencil in his hands, and asks you your name. “Vier-und-sechzig, neun, ein-und-zwanzig ,” I told him. He writes that down but keeps on pushing, for it may take a while before you understand that he wants to know your name, “Name,” and then a further while, as indeed happened in my case, before, after some rooting around among your memories, you hit upon it. He made me repeat it three or even four times until he finally seemed to understand. He then showed me what he had written, and at the top of some sort of ruled fever chart I read: “Kevisztjerz.” He asked if that was “dobro yesz? — Gut?” I replied “ Gut,” at which he put the card on a table and left.

Well, since you clearly have time, you can take a look around you, inspect things, get your bearings a little. For example, you can establish — if it had not previously struck you — that there are others in the room. You only have to look at them to hazard the not particularly difficult guess that they too must all be sick. You may work out that this tint, this impression caressing your eyes, is actually the all-pervasive dark red color of some gleamingly lacquered material of the floorboards, and that even the quilts on each and every bed have been selected to be of that same shade. Numerically, there are roughly a dozen of them. All of them are single beds, and the only tiered bunk is this one here, on the floor-level of which I myself am lying, with a partition wall of white-painted laths on my right, along with its twin in front of me, by the partition wall across the way. You may be mystified by all the unused space, the big, comfortable gaps, a good yard wide, in the even line of beds, and marvel at the luxury should you happen to notice that, here and there, the odd one is actually empty. You can discover a very neat window, split into lots of small squares, that provides the light, and on your pillowcase you may catch sight of a light brown seal in the form of a hook-beaked eagle, the “Waffen SS” lettering of which you will doubtless discern later on. Little point in trying to scan the faces, though, in search of a sign, some manifestation, of the event of your arrival, which after all, you might suppose, might surely count to some degree as a novelty, to see in them some interest, disappointment, jubilation, annoyance, anything at all, even a cursory flash of curiosity; yet the hush is unquestionably the strangest of all the impressions you will be able to experience, should you somehow chance to be washed up here, becoming all the more uncomfortable, all the more disconcerting, and in some respects, I would say, all the more puzzling the longer it lasts. Within the square of free space enclosed by the beds, you may also spy a smaller, white-covered table, then over by the wall opposite a larger one with a few backed chairs around it, and by the door a big, highly wrought, steadily crackling iron stove, with a glittering-black full coal scuttle beside it.

Then you may well begin to scratch your head as to what, in fact, you are to make of all this, this room, this joke with the quilt, the beds, the stillness. One thing or another may cross your mind; you may attempt to remember, deduce, have recourse to your experience, pick and choose. It could be, you may meditate as I did, that this too may perhaps be one of those places that we heard about in Auschwitz where those being cared for are well looked after with milk and butter until finally, for instance, they have all their internal organs extracted, one by one, for instruction, for the benefit of science. But then, you have to concede, that is no more than one hypothesis of course, one among many other possibilities; besides which, anyway I had seen no trace of milk, let alone butter. Come to think of it, it occurred to me, over there it would long ago have been soup time by now, whereas here I had not detected any sign, sound, or smell at all of even that. Still, I was struck by a thought, a somewhat dubious thought perhaps, but then who would be in a position to judge what is possible and credible, who could exhaust, indeed even sift through, all the innumerable multitude of notions, escapades, games, tricks, and plausible considerations that, were you to summon up your entire knowledge, might be set in motion, implemented, effortlessly converted from a world of the imagination into reality in a concentration camp. Suppose, then, I deliberated, that one is brought into a room exactly like this one, for example. They lie you down, let’s say, in a bed with an eiderdown exactly like this. They nurse you, take care of you, do everything to please you — all except for not giving you anything to eat, let’s say. It could even be, if you prefer, that the manner in which you starve to death might be observed, for instance; after all, no doubt there is something of interest in that in its own right, maybe even a higher-minded benefit — why not? I had to concede. Whichever angle I viewed it from, the notion seemed all the more viable and useful, and therefore must plainly have already occurred to someone of greater competence than me, I reckoned. I turned my scrutiny to my neighbor, the patient about a yard or so away to the left. He was a trifle elderly, his pate rather bald, and he had managed to preserve some of the features of a former face, even a bit of flesh here and there. Despite that, I noticed his ears had suspiciously begun to take on something of the appearance of the waxy leaves of artificial flowers, and I was only too familiar with that jaundiced tint of the nose tip and the areas around the eyes. He was flat on his back, his quilt rising and falling feebly; he seemed to be asleep. Notwithstanding that, by way of a trial, I whispered over to ask whether he spoke any Hungarian. Nothing: he did not appear to understand or even hear anything. I had already turned away and was about to carry on spinning my thoughts when my ears suddenly caught a whispered but clearly comprehensible “ Igen … yes.” It was him, no doubt about that, although he had neither opened his eyes nor shifted position. For my part, I was so oddly cheered, I have no idea why, that for a few minutes I completely forgot what it was I had wanted from him. I asked, “Where are you from?”—to which he replied, after another seemingly endless pause: “Budapest.” “When?” I inquired and, after further patience, learned “In November…” Only then did I finally ask, “Does one get anything to eat round here?” His answer to that, again only after the requisite period had elapsed that it seems he needed, for whatever reason, was, “No…” I was about to ask…

But at that very moment the Pfleger came in again, making a beeline for him. He folded up the coverlet, wrapped him in his blanket, and then I could only gape at how easily he shouldered and carried out through the door this, as I could see now, still quite bulky body, with a detached flap of paper bandaging somewhere on the belly waving good-bye as it were. Simultaneously, a brusque click, then an electrical crackling noise was audible. That was followed by a voice announcing: “Friseure zum Bad, Friseure zum Bad,” or hairdressers to report to the bathhouse. Slightly rolling its “r’s,” the voice was very pleasant, suave, one could say ingratiatingly silky and melodic, the kind that makes you almost feel it was looking at you, and the first time it almost startled me out of the bed. But then I saw from the patients that this incident aroused about as much excitement as my arrival had done earlier, so I supposed that doubtless it too must obviously be something routine around here. In fact I spotted a brown case that looked like a sort of loudspeaker, above and to the right of the door, and guessed that the soldiers must make a practice of transmitting their orders from somewhere via this gadget. Not much later, the Pfleger returned again, and again went to the bed next to me. He folded the quilt and sheet back, reached through a slit into the palliasse, and from the way that he put the straw in it into order, then the sheet back on top, and finally the quilt as well, I gathered it was not very likely that I would see the previous man again. I could not help myself, then, from reverting to wondering whether it might, perhaps, have been in punishment for blurting out our secret, which might have been picked up and overheard — why not, after all? — via some sort of gadget, an appliance similar to the one up there. However, my attention was again diverted by a voice— this time from a patient over toward the window, three beds away. He was a very emaciated, white-faced young patient, who even had hair on him, thick at that, blonde and wavy. He uttered, or rather groaned, the same word two or three times over, elongating, dragging out the vowels — a name, as I was gradually able to discern: “Pyetchka!… Pyetchka!…” To this the Pfleger said, in an equally drawn-out and, so I sensed, quite cordial tone, just one word: “Tso?” After that he also said something at greater length, and Pyetchka — for I had gathered that this must be what they call the Pfleger— went over to his bed. He whispered to him for a good while, somehow the way one does in appealing to someone’s better feelings, urging him to be patient, to hold on just a while longer. As he was doing that, he reached behind the boy’s back to raise him a little, plumped the pillow beneath him, set the eiderdown straight, and this was all done so cordially, with such alacrity, so affectionately — in such a manner, in short, as to utterly confound, all but belie, virtually all the suppositions I had been making. The expression on the face as it again sank back was such that I could only regard it as an expression of calmness, a measure of relief, while the feeble, sighing, and yet still distinctly audible “Jinkooye… jinkooye bardzo…” could only be words of thanks, unless I was mistaken. My sober deliberations were upended once and for all by an approaching rumble, then rattle, and, finally, unmistakable clatter that filtered in from the corridor, rousing my entire being, filling it with mounting, ever less suppressible anticipation, and in the end, as it were, obliterating any difference between myself and this state of readiness. Outside there was a clamor, much coming and going, a clopping of wooden soles, and then a gruff voice irritably crying, “ Zaal zecks! Essahola!” which is to say “Saal sechs! Essen holen!” or “Room 6! Get your food!” The Pfleger went out then, assisted by an arm that was all I could see through the crack in the door, lugged in a heavy cauldron, and the room was immediately pervaded by the aroma of soup, and had it been no more than dörrgemüze , merely the familiar nettle soup, I would likewise have been mistaken on that score too.

I was to observe more later on, slowly becoming clear on many other matters as the hours, parts of the day, and eventually whole days passed. At all events, I could not help realizing after a while, however piecemeal, however reluctantly, however cautiously, that, so it seemed, this too was possible, this too was credible, merely more unaccustomed, not to say more pleasant of course, though essentially no odder, if I thought about it, than any of the other oddities that — this being a concentration camp, after all — are very naturally each possible and credible, this way or that. On the other hand, it was precisely this that troubled and disquieted me, somehow undermining my confidence, because after all, if I took a rational view of things, I could see no reason, I was incapable of finding any known and, to me, rationally acceptable cause for why, of all places, I happened to be here instead of somewhere else. Little by little, I discovered that all the patients here were bandaged, unlike in the previous barracks, and so in time I ventured the assumption that over there had been, possibly, a general medical ward, to say no more, whereas this here was perhaps — who knows? — the surgical ward; yet even so, naturally, I could not consider this in itself to be a sufficient reason and appropriate explanation for the work, the enterprise, the veritable coordinated concatenation of arms, shoulders, and considerations that had, in the end — if I seriously cast my mind back — brought me all the way from the handcart to here, this room and this bed. I also attempted to take stock of the patients, get some sense of how things were with them. In general, as best I could tell, most of them must have been older, long-established inmates. I would not have regarded any of them as functionaries, though somehow I would have been equally hesitant to put them in the same category as the prisoners at Zeitz, for example. It also struck me, as time went by, that the chests of the visitors, who popped in to exchange a few words for a minute, always at the same time in the evening, displayed nothing but red triangles; I did not see (not that I missed them in the slightest) a single green or black one, nor for that matter (and this was something more lacking to my eye) a yellow one. In short, by race, language, age, and somehow in other ways beyond that, they were different from myself, or indeed from anyone else, none of whom I had ever had any difficulty understanding up till now, and this bothered me somewhat. On the other hand, I could not help feeling that the explanation was perhaps to be found precisely here, in this. Here was Pyetchka, for instance: every night we fall asleep to his farewell “dobra nots,” every morning we awake to his greeting of “dobre rano.” The always immaculate order in the room, the mopping of the floor with a wet rag fixed to a handle, the fetching of the coal each day and keeping the heating going, the distribution of rations and the cleaning of mess tins and spoons that went with it, the fetching and carrying of patients when necessary, and who knows how many other things in addition— each and every one of these was his handiwork. He may have wasted few words, but his smile and willingness were unvarying; in short, as if he did not hold what was, after all, the important post of the room’s senior inmate but was merely a person standing primarily at the service of the patients, an orderly or Pfleger, as indeed is inscribed on his armband.

Or take the doctor, for as it has turned out, the raw-faced man is the doctor here, indeed the chief medical officer. His visit, or ward round as I could call it, was always a fixed and invariable ceremony each morning. No sooner had the room been made ready, no sooner had we drunk our coffee and the vessels been whisked off to where Pyetchka stows them, behind a curtain formed from a blanket, than the now familiar footsteps are heard clicking along the corridor. The next minute a vigorous hand throws the door wide open and then, with a greeting of what is presumably “Guten Morgen,” although all one can pick out is an extended guttural “Moo’gn,” in steps the doctor. For some unknown reason, it is not seen as appropriate for us to respond, and evidently he does not expect it either, except maybe from Pyetchka, who welcomes him with his smile, a bared head, and respectful bearing, but, as I was able to observe on many occasions over a long period of time, not so much with that already all-too-familiar respect that one is generally obliged to pay to authorities of higher rank than oneself, but rather as though he were somehow doing no more than simply paying him respect at his own discretion, of his own free will, if I may put it that way. One by one, the doctor picks up from the white table and, with an act of severe concentration, checks through the case-sheets that Pyetchka has set down by his hand — almost as if they had been, say, genuine case-sheets in, say, a genuine hospital where no issue is more cardinal, more self-evident than, say, a patient’s well-being. Then, turning to Pyetchka, he attaches a comment to one or another, or to be more precise, only ever one of two types of comment. He may read “ Kevisch… Was? Kevischtjerz!” for example, but as I soon learn it would be just as unseemly for one to respond to this, to offer any evidence of one’s presence, as it would be to respond to his good-morning before. “ Der kommt heute raus!” he may go on to say, by which in every case, as I notice over time, he always means that during the course of the afternoon the patient in question — on his own legs if he is able, or over Pyetchka’s shoulder if not, but one way or the other in any case — must report to him, among the scalpels, scissors, and paper bandages of his surgery, some ten or fifteen yards away from the exit to our corridor. (He, by the way, unlike the doctor at Zeitz, does not seek my permission, and no loud protestations on my part seem to disconcert him in the least as, with an oddly shaped pair of scissors, he snips two new incisions into the flesh of my hip, but from the fact that, after doing that, he expresses the pus from the wounds, lines them with gauze and, as a final touch, smears them, albeit very sparingly, with some sort of ointment, I can only acknowledge his indisputable expertise.) The other observation he may make, “Der geht heute nach Hause!” means that he considers the person healed and therefore ready to return nach Hause, or home, or in other words, naturally, to his block within the camp and to work, his Kommando. The next day it all happens exactly the same way, an exact replica of these same orderly arrangements, according to rules in which Pyetchka, we patients, and even the items of equipment themselves seem to participate, fulfill their role, and lend a hand, with uniform gravitas, in the daily recapitulation, enforcement, rehearsal, and, as it were, corroboration of this invariability — in brief, as if there were nothing more natural, nothing more incontestable, than that for him, as doctor, and for us, as patients, our manifest concern and worry, indeed our sole, not to say impatiently awaited aim, is the soonest possible treatment, then speedy recovery and return home.

Later on, I came to know a bit about him. For it might happen that the surgery would be very busy and others were present. At such times Pyetchka would set me down from his shoulder onto a bench at the side, and I would have to wait there until the doctor, with a breezily peremptory call of, for instance, “Komm, komm, komm, komm!” and with what is in fact a friendly yet, all the same, not exactly agreeable flourish grabs me by the ear, pulls me toward him, and hoists me in a single motion onto the operating table. On another occasion, I might happen to drop by in the midst of a veritable throng, with orderlies fetching and carrying away patients, the ambulant sick arriving, other doctors and orderlies also at work in the room, and it might happen on such occasions that another, lower-ranking doctor performs on me whatever treatment is scheduled, as it were modestly off to the side, away from the operating table in the center of the room. I made the acquaintance of, and might even say got on friendly terms with, one of them, a gray-haired man, on the short side, with a slightly aquiline nose, likewise bearing a red triangle with no letter and a number which, though maybe not of two or three digits, was still in the highly exclusive thousands. It was he who mentioned, and Pyetchka indeed subsequently confirmed, that our doctor had now spent twelve years in concentration camps. “Zwölf Jahre im Lager,” he said in hushed tones, nodding repeatedly, with a face that was, so to say, saluting some rare, not entirely plausible, and at least in his view, as best I could tell, plainly unattainable feat. I even asked, “Und Sie?” “Oh, ich,”[27]and his face changed immediately, “seit sechs Jahren bloss,” just six years, he disposed of it with a single dismissive wave of the hand as being nothing, a mere trifle, not worth mentioning. In truth it was more a matter of him interrogating me, asking how old I was, how I had ended up so far from home, which is how our conversation started. “Hast du irgend etwas gemacht?”—had I done anything, he asked, something bad perhaps, and I told him I had done nothing, “ nichts,” absolutely nothing. So why was I there anyway? he inquired, and I told him that it was for the same simple reason as others of my race. Still, he persisted, why had I been arrested, “verhaftet,” so I recounted to him briefly, as best I could, what had happened that morning with the bus, the customs post, and later the gendarmerie. “Ohne dass deine Eltern…” or in other words, he wanted to know if, by any chance, that had been without my parents’ knowledge, so naturally I said “ohne.” He looked utterly aghast, as if he had never heard of such a thing before, and it passed through my mind too that he must have been well insulated from the world in here, then. What is more, he promptly passed on the information to the other doctor who was busy there, beside him, and he in turn on to other doctors, orderlies, and the smarter-looking patients. In the end, I found that people on all sides were looking at me, heads shaking, and with a most singular emotion on their faces, which was a little embarrassing because, as best I could tell, they were feeling sorry for me. I felt a strong urge to tell them there was no need for that after all, at least not right at that moment, but I ended up saying nothing, something held me back, somehow I couldn’t find it in my heart to do so, because I noticed that the emotion gratified them, gave them some sort of pleasure, the way I saw it. Indeed — and I could have been mistaken of course, though I don’t think so — but later on (for there were one or two other occasions on which I was similarly questioned and interrogated) I gained the impression that they expressly sought out, almost hunted for, an opportunity, a means or pretext for this emotion for some reason, out of some need, as a testimony to something as it were, to their method of dealing with things perhaps, or possibly, who knows, to their still being capable of it at all; and in that form it was somehow pleasing, for me at least. Afterward, though, they exchanged glances in such a manner that I looked around in alarm that some unauthorized eyes were watching, but all my gaze encountered were these similarly darkening brows, narrowing eyes, and pursing lips, as if all at once something had again occurred to them and, to their mind, been confirmed: maybe the reason why they were here, I could not help thinking.

Then there were the visitors, for example: I would look at them too, trying to figure out, to fathom what wind, what business, might have brought them. What I noticed, first and foremost, was that they usually came toward the end of the day, generally always at the same time, from which I realized that here in Buchenwald too, in the Main Camp, it seemed there might well be an hour exactly like at Zeitz, here too, no doubt, likewise presumably between the time the work details returned to barracks and the evening Appell. Those in the greatest numbers, perhaps, were prisoners carrying “P” markings, but I also saw the occasional “J,” “R,” “T,” “F,” “N,” and even “No” and heaven knows what else besides; in any event, I noticed many interesting things, and through them learned a lot that was new to me, indeed in that way gained a somewhat more precise insight into circumstances here, the conditions and social life, if I may put it that way. The original inmates at Buchenwald are almost all good-looking, their faces full-fleshed, their movements and step brisk; many are also permitted to keep their hair, and even the striped prison uniform tends to be put on only for daily wear at work, as I also observed with Pyetchka. If he were preparing to pay a visit, once our own bread ration had been distributed (the usual one-third or one-quarter loaf, along with the customarily dispensed or customarily withheld Zulage), then he too would select from his wardrobe a shirt or pullover and to go with that — while perhaps striving to pretend before the rest of us, and yet, for all that, with a pleasure that declared itself in the expression on his face and his gestures — a fashionable brown suit with a pale pinstripe, whose only imperfections were, on the jacket, a square cut out of the very middle of the back and mended with a patch of material from prison duds, and on the trousers, a long streak of indelible red oil paint down the legs on either side, not to forget the red triangle and prisoner’s number on the chest and left trouser leg. A greater nuisance, or I might even call it an ordeal, arose for me when he was preparing to welcome a guest in the evening. The reason for this was an unfortunate aspect of the room’s layout, for somehow or other the wall socket happened to be right by the foot of my bed. Now, however hard I might try to keep myself occupied at these times, staring at the immaculate whiteness of the ceiling and the enameled lampshade, immersing myself in my thoughts, when it came down to it I could not help but be aware of Pyetchka as he squatted down there with a mess tin and his own personal electric hot plate, hear the spitting of the margarine as it heated up, inhale the intrusive aroma of the onion rings frying on it, the slices of potato that were then added, and eventually, possibly, the wurst of the Zulage that was diced in or, on another occasion, notice the distinctive light clunk and sudden surge of sizzling caused (it was caught by my eyes just as I averted them again, though they long remained near-dazzled in total stupefaction) by a yellow-centered, white-fringed object — an egg. By the time everything was fried and ready, the supper guest himself would have come in. “Dobre vecher!” he says with a friendly nod, because he too is Polish; Zbishek by name, or Zbishkoo as it sounded at other times, perhaps in certain compounds or as a diminutive, and he likewise fulfills the office of Pfleger somewhere across the way, so I have been told, in another Saal. He too arrives all dressed up, in low ankle-boots of the kind suitable for sport or hunting, a dark blue serge jacket, though naturally this too has a patch on the back and a prisoner number on the chest, and under that a black turtleneck sweater. With his tall, burly frame, his head bald-shaven, either of necessity or maybe of his own free choice, and the cheerful, canny, and alert appearance of his plump face, I find him, all things considered, a pleasant, likable chap, even though I, for my part, would not willingly trade him for, say, Pyetchka. They sit down at the larger table at the back, eat their supper, and chat, with one or another of the Polish patients in the room occasionally dropping in a quiet word or comment, or crack jokes, or test their strength, elbows planted on the table and hands gripped, in the course of which — to the delight of everyone in the room, myself included naturally — though Zbishek’s arm looks stronger, Pyetchka will generally manage to force it down; to put it succinctly, I realized that the two of them shared their blessings and disadvantages, joys and worries, all their concerns, but evidently also their wealth and rations, or in other words, they were friends, as they say. There were others too, besides Zbishek, who would drop in for a quick word with Pyetchka, occasionally with some object very hastily changing hands, and although I was never really able to see what it was, this too was always essentially obvious and easy to understand, naturally. Yet others would arrive to see one or another of the patients, hurriedly, scurryingly, furtively, all but surreptitiously. They would sit down on the bed for a minute, possibly set some little parcel wrapped in a scrap of cheap paper down on the blanket, humbly and, even more than that, somehow almost con-tritely. Then, although I could never make out what they were whispering (and even if I had, would not have been able to understand), it was as though they were asking: How are you doing, then? What’s new? and reporting that this or that was how things were going on the outside, passing on that so-and-so had said hello and had asked after him, assuring that greetings would be passed back, sure thing, then realizing that time was up, giving pats on arms and shoulders, as though to say never mind, they would come again very soon, and with that were already on their way, still scurryingly, hurriedly, usually visibly pleased with themselves, and yet otherwise, as far as I could make out, without any other upshot, advantage, or tangible profit, so I had to suppose that their sole reason for coming, it seemed, was for those few words, for nothing other than for them and the patient in question to be able to see one another. Apart from that, and even if I were unaware of it, the haste in itself would be indication enough that they were obviously doing something prohibited that presumably could only be accomplished by Pyetchka’s turning a blind eye and, no doubt, on condition of its being brief. Indeed, I suspect, and on the basis of a fair bit of experience would venture to assert outright, that the risk in itself, that stubbornness, one could even say defiance, was to some extent part of the event, or at least that is what I gathered from their expressions, hard to read as they were but, so to say, lighting up with the successful completion of some piece of rule-breaking, as if (or so it seemed) they had thereby managed to change something after all, to punch a hole in or chip away at something, a particular order, the monotony of the daily routine, to a small extent at nature itself, at least the way I saw it. The oddest people of all, however, were those whom I saw by the bed of one of the patients who was lying along the partition wall opposite me. He had been brought in during the morning on the shoulders of Pyetchka, who then spent a lot of time fussing over him. I realized it must be a serious case and also heard that the patient was Russian. That evening visitors half-filled the room. I saw a lot of “R’s” but also plenty of other letters, fur caps, strange padded trousers. Men with hair on one half of the head, for example, but a completely shaved scalp from the center to the other ear; yet others with normal hair except for a long strip right down the middle, from the forehead to the nape of the neck, corresponding in width precisely to the ravages of a hair-clipping machine; jackets with the customary patch and also two crossed brushstrokes of red paint rather like when one deletes something unnecessary— a letter, a number, or a sign — from what one has written; on other backs a big red circle with a fat red point in the middle stood out from far away, invitingly, enticingly, signaling like a target as it were: this is where to shoot, if need be.

They stood there, hanging about, quietly conferring, one leaning over to adjust the pillow, another — as best I could see — possibly attempting to interpret what the patient was saying or a look he was giving, when all of a sudden I saw a glint of yellow, then a knife and, with Pyetchka’s assistance, a metal mug materialized, a crunchy rasping — and even had I not believed my own eyes, my nose was now able to give irrefutable proof that the object I had just seen was, no two ways about it, truly a lemon. The door opened again, and I was utterly dumbfounded to see that this time the doctor hurried in, an occurrence that I had never previously witnessed at that uncustomary time of day. People immediately made way for him; he bent over the patient to examine and palpate something, only briefly, then vanished just as quickly and moreover with an extremely glum, stern, one could say snappish look on his face, without having addressed so much as a single word to anyone, even cast so much as a single look at anyone, indeed somehow rather trying to avoid the glances that were being directed at him — or at least that is how it seemed to me. Before long, I saw the visitors had fallen strangely silent. One or another separated from their midst to go over to the bed and bend down over the patient, after which they started to drift away in their ones and twos, just as they had come. Now, however, they were a bit more despondent, a bit more haggard, a bit more weary, and somehow even I myself felt sorry for them at that moment, because I could not help noticing that it was as if they had finally lost their hope, however irrationally it might have been sustained, or their faith, however secretly it may have been nourished. A while later, Pyetchka very circumspectly set the corpse on his shoulder and took it away somewhere.

Last of all, there was also my own guy, for example. I came across him in the washroom, seeing that, bit by bit, it no longer even occurred to me that I might be able to wash anywhere other than at the water tap over a washbasin in the bathroom at the end of the corridor, and even there not out of any compulsion, merely out of a sense of propriety, as I gradually came to find out; as time went by, indeed, I even noticed that I was almost starting to take exception to the fact that the place was unheated, the water cold, and there was no towel. Here too you could see one of those portable red contraptions resembling an open cupboard, the invariably spotless inner receptacle of which was maintained, changed, and kept clean by some mystery person. On one occasion, just as I was about to leave, a man walked in. He was good-looking, his brushed-back mop of silky black hair slipping back in unruly fashion over his brow on both sides, his complexion having that slightly olive shade sometimes seen with very dark-haired people, and from his being in the prime of manhood, his well-groomed external appearance and his snow-white smock, I would have taken him to be a doctor had the inscription on his armband not informed me he was merely a Pfleger, while the letter “T” in the red triangle told me he was Czech. He halted, seemingly surprised, even a little bit astonished perhaps, at my presence, from the way he looked at my face and the neck poking out from my shirt, my sternum, my legs. He immediately asked me something, and, using a phrase that had stuck with me from the Polish conversations in the ward, I said “ Nye rozumen.” So he inquired in German who I was and where I came from. I told him Ungar, from here, Saal sechs, whereupon, bringing in an index finger to clarify his words, he said “Du: warten hier. Ik: wek. Ein moment zurück. Verstehen?”[28]He went off, then returned, and before I knew it I found that my hand was holding a quarter loaf of bread and a neat little can, the lid already opened and bent back, in which was an untouched filling of pinkish sausage meat. I looked up to thank him, only to see the door already swinging shut behind him. After I had returned to my room and tried to recount this to Pyetchka, describing the man in a few words, he immediately recognized that it must be the Pfleger from the room next door, Saal 7. He even mentioned the name, which I understood to be Bausch, though on reflection I think it is more likely he said Bohoosh. That, at any rate, is what I heard later from my new neighbor, because in the meantime patients in our room had come and gone. Above me, for instance, having already taken a patient out the very first afternoon I was there, Pyetchka soon brought a new one, a boy of my own age and, as I later found out, also race, though Polish speaking, who was called Kuhalski or Kuharski, as I heard it from Pyetchka and Zbishek, with the stress always on the “harski”; at times they cracked jokes with him, and they must have annoyed him, maybe even pulled his leg, because he was often fuming, at least as far as one could tell from the irritated tone of his voluble chattering and thickening voice and the bits of straw that were sprinkled through the gaps between the wooden cross-boards onto my face by his tossing and turning on these occasions— to the great amusement of all the Polish speakers in the room, as I could see. Somebody also came in place of the Hungarian patient in the bed next to mine, another boy, though at first I had little luck in ascertaining where he was from. He and Pyetchka could make themselves understood, yet to my now steadily more practiced ear he did not sound entirely Polish. He did not respond to my Hungarian, but, what with the carroty hair he was now beginning to sprout, the freckles dotted over a fairly full-fleshed face that suggested a very tolerable manner, the blue eyes that seemed to quickly size up and soon get the measure of everything, I immediately found him a little suspect. While he was making himself comfortable, settling down, I spotted blue marks on the inner surface of his forearm: an Auschwitz numbering, in the millions. It was only one afternoon, when the door burst open and Bohoosh entered to set down on my blanket, as had become his regular practice once or twice a week, his gift — this time too, as usual — of bread and a tin of meat, and without leaving time for even a greeting, and with barely a nod to Pyetchka, before he was already off and away, that it turned out the boy spoke Hungarian, and what’s more at least as well as I do, because he asked straight off: “Who was that?” I told him that, as far as I knew, it was the Pfleger from the next room, Bausch by name, and that was when he corrected me: “Bohoosh, perhaps,” seeing as that was a very common name in Czechoslovakia, he declared, and that was where he himself was from, as it happened. I asked why he had not spoken Hungarian before now, to which he replied that it was because he did not like Hungarians. He was quite right, I had to admit; all things considered, I myself would find it hard to find much reason to like them. He then proposed that we speak Hebrew, but I had to confess I didn’t understand that, so as a result we stayed with Hungarian. He told me his name too: Luiz, or maybe Loyiz, I didn’t quite catch it. But I did note, “Ah! Lajos, in other words,” however, he strongly objected to that, seeing as it is Hungarian whereas he was Czech and insisted on the distinction: Loiz. I asked him how he came to know so many languages, so he then told me that he actually came from Slovakia, but along with the great bulk of his family, relatives, and acquaintances had fled from the Hungarians, or “the Hungarian occupation” as he termed it, and that sparked off a memory of an event back home, long ago, when flags were flown, music played, and a day-long celebration had imparted the jubilation that was felt on Slovakia again being reannexed to Hungary. He had arrived in the concentration camp from a place that, as far as I could make out, was called “Terezin.” He remarked, “You probably know it as Theresienstadt.” I assured him that no, I didn’t know it by either name, not at all, at which he was utterly amazed, though somehow in much the same way as I was used to being amazed at people who had never heard of the Csepel customs post, for example. He then explained: “It’s the ghetto for Prague.” He maintained that, apart from Hungarians and Czechs, and of course Jews and Germans, he was also able to converse with Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, and even, at a pinch, Russians. In the end, we got on quite famously; I told him, since he was curious, the story of how I had become acquainted with Bohoosh, then my initial experiences and impressions, what had passed through my mind the very first day in regard to the room, for instance, which he found interesting enough to translate for Pyetchka as well, who laughed uproariously at me; likewise my fright over the Hungarian patient and Pyetchka’s response, which was that it had been expected for days, so it was pure coincidence that his death had come right then; and there were other things too, though I was now finding it irritating that he started every sentence with “ten matyar,” or in other words, “this here Hungarian,” before getting down, obviously, to he says such and such; but this turn of phrase, fortunately, somehow seemed to escape Pyetchka’s attention, as far as I could see. I also noticed, though without thinking about it or drawing any inferences from it, how conspicuously often, and always for a prolonged period, he seemed to have things to attend to outside, but it was only when once he returned to the room with bread and a tin of food, obviously stuff that had come from Bohoosh, that I was somewhat surprised — quite unreasonably, no two ways about it, I had to acknowledge. He said that he too had met Bohoosh by chance in the washroom, just like me. He had been addressed just the same way as me, and the rest had happened just as it had with me. The difference was that he had also been able to speak with him, and it had turned out they were from the same country, and that had really delighted Bohoosh, which was natural enough after all, he maintained, and I had to agree that indeed it was. Looking at it rationally, I found all this, on the whole, entirely understandable, clear, and reasonable; I held the same view as he plainly did, at least insofar as it emerged from his final, brief remark: “Don’t be mad at me for taking your guy,” or in other words, from now on he would be getting what up till now I had been getting, and I could watch while he had a bite to eat, just as he had watched me before. I was all the more astonished when scarcely a minute later Bohoosh bustled in through the door, this time heading straight for me. From then on, his visits were meant for both of us. On one occasion he would bring a ration for each of us separately, on another just one in total, depending on what he could manage, I suppose, but in the latter case he never omitted a hand gesture to indicate that it was to be shared fraternally. He was still always in a hurry, wasting no time on words; his face was still always preoccupied, sometimes care-laden, indeed at times almost angry, all but furious, like someone who now had a doubled burden, a twofold obligation to carry on his shoulders but has no other option than to bear it, since it has landed on him; I could only suppose that this was merely because he apparently took pleasure in it; in a certain sense, he needed this, this was his method of dealing with things, if I may formulate it in such terms, because whichever way I looked at it, puzzled over, or pondered it, I was quite unable to hit on any other explanation, particularly in light of the price that could be commanded, and the great demand there was for such scarce commodities. Even so, I think I came to understand these people, at least by and large. In light of all my experiences, piecing together the entire chain, yes, there could be no doubt, I knew it all too well myself, even if it was in a different form: in the final analysis, this too was just the selfsame factor, stubbornness, albeit, I had to admit, a certain highly refined and, in my experience, so far the most fruitful and, above all, make no mistake, for me the most useful form of stubbornness, there was no disputing that.

I have to say that over time one can become accustomed even to miracles. Gradually, I even reached the point, if the doctor happened so to ordain in the morning, of making the trips to the surgery on foot, just as I was, barefoot, my blanket wrapped over my shirt, and among the many familiar odors in the crisp air I detected a new hint, no doubt that of spring, if I thought about the passage of time. On the way back, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a pair of men in prison uniforms just as they were dragging and hauling out of a gray barracks on the far side of our barbed-wire fence a large, rubber-wheeled trailer of the kind that can be hitched to a truck, from the full load of which I was able to pick out a few frozen yellow limbs and emaciated body parts. I drew the blanket more tightly around me, lest I by any chance catch a chill, and strove to hobble back to my warm room just as fast as I could, gave my feet a perfunctory rinse for cleanliness’ sake, then popped swiftly under my quilt, and curled up in my bed. There I chatted with my neighbor, as long as he was there (because after a while he left to go “nach Hause,” his place being taken by an older Polish man), looked at whatever there was to see, listened to the commands issuing from the loudspeaker, and I can tell you that from there in bed, with the aid of no more than these, plus a bit of imagination, I was able to gain a full conspectus and keep track of, conjure up for myself as it were, every color, taste, and smell, every coming and going, each episode and incident, great and small, from crack of dawn to late taps, sometimes even beyond. Thus, the “Friseure zum Bad, Friseure zum Bad” that would be sounded many times daily, with ever greater frequency, was clear: a new transport had arrived. Each and every time, that would be coupled with “Leichenkommando zum Tor, ” or “corpse-bearers to the gate”; and if there was a request for further contingents, then that would allow me to infer the material, the quality, of that transport. I would also learn that this was the time the “E fekten,” which is to say the storeroom workers, were to hurry over — on some occasions, moreover, “ im Laufschritt,” or at the double — to the clothes depots. If, however, the call was, for example, for zwei or vier Leichenträger and, let’s say, “mit einem” or “zwei Tragbetten sofort zum Tor!”[29]then you could be sure that this time it was an isolated accident somewhere, at work, during an interrogation, in a cellar, in an attic, there was no knowing where. I found out that the “ Karto felschäler-Kommando,” or potato-peeling squad, had not only a day shift but also a “Nachtschicht” and much else besides. But every afternoon, always at exactly the same hour, an enigmatic message was heard that was always exactly the same: “El-ah zwo, El-ah zwo, aufmarschieren lassen!” which prompted a lot of head-scratching on my part at first. It was actually simple, but it took a while before I worked out, from the commands “Mützen ab! ” and “Mützen auf!” that would echo every single time from the ensuing solemn, endlessly vast, churchlike silence and the occasional thin, squeaky-sounding music, that across the way the camp was at Appell; that the “aufmarschieren lassen” accordingly meant that the camp inmates were to form up for Appell, while the “ zwo” meant two, and the “El-ah” obviously LÄ, or Lagerältester, so therefore there must be a first and a second, or in other words, two senior camp inmates at Buchenwald, which, if I thought about it, was basically not so very surprising after all in a camp where they had already long ago started issuing numbers in the ninety thousands, so I have been informed. Gradually things would quiet down in our room too; Zbishek would have already gone by now, if it was his turn to receive guests, while Pyetchka would take one last look around before turning off the light with his usual “dobra nots.” I would then seek out the maximum comfort that the bed could supply and my wounds would permit, pull my blanket over my ears, and immediately be overtaken by an untroubled sleep: no, I could not ask more than this, I realized, I could not do better than this in a concentration camp.

Only two things bothered me a little. One was my two wounds: no one could deny them, with their surrounding areas still inflamed and the flesh still raw, but at the margins there was now a thin skin, with brownish scabs forming in places; the doctor was no longer padding the incisions with gauze, hardly ever summoning me for treatment, and the times that he did so, it would be over disturbingly quickly, while the expression on his face would be disturbingly satisfied. The other matter was actually at bottom, I can’t deny it, an extremely gratifying event, no question about it. If Pyetchka and Zbishek, for example, should all of a sudden break off their conversation with faces alert to something in the distance, raising a finger to their lips to ask the rest of us to be quiet, my own ear does indeed pick up a dull rumble, and sometimes what sounds like broken snatches of a distant barking of dogs. Then, next door, beyond the partition wall where I suspect Bohoosh’s room lies, it has been very lively of late, as I can make out from the voices that filter across from discussions that continue well after lights off. Repeated siren warnings are now a regular feature of the daily program, and I have now become accustomed to being awoken during the night to an instruction over the intercom: “Krematorium ausmachen!” followed a minute later, and now crackling with irritation: “Khematohium! Sofoht ausmach’n!” from which I am able to decipher that someone is rather anxious not to have inopportune light from the flames draw airplanes down on his head. I have no idea when the barbers get any sleep, for I am told that nowadays newcomers may have to stand around naked for two or three days in front of the bathhouse before being able to proceed farther, while the Leichenkommando too, as I can hear, is constantly at work on its rounds. There are no longer any empty beds in our room either, and only the other day, among the routine ulcers and gashes, I first heard from a Hungarian boy who is taking up one of the beds on the far side about wounds that had been caused by rifle bullets. He had acquired them during a forced march lasting several days, on the way from a camp in the countryside (which, if I heard right, went by the name of “Ohrdruf” and, as far as I could make out from his account, was by and large roughly like the one at Zeitz), constantly seeking to avoid the enemy, the American army, though actually the bullets had been intended for the man beside him, who was flagging and had just slumped out of the line, but in the process one had hit his own leg. He had been lucky it had not touched a bone, he added, and it even crossed my mind that, hell, now that could next happen with me. Wherever a bullet might hit my own leg, there was surely no place where it would not touch bone, there was no arguing otherwise. It soon emerged that he had only been in a concentration camp since the autumn, his number being in the eighty-something thousands — nothing to write home about in our room. In short, in recent days I have been picking up news and rumors at every hand of impending changes, inconveniences, disturbances, disorders, worries, and troubles. One time Pyetchka made a round of all the beds, a sheet of paper in his hand, and asked everyone, myself included, whether he was able to move on foot, to walk, “laufen.” I told him, nye, nye, not me, ich kann nicht. “ Tak, tak,” he rejoined, “du kannst,” and wrote my name down, just as he did that of everyone else in the room, by the way, even Kuharski’s, even though both his swollen legs are covered, as I once saw in the treatment room, with thousands of parallel nicks that look like tiny, gaping mouths. Then, another evening, just as I was chewing on my bread, I heard coming from the radio: “Alle Juden in Lager”—all Jews in the camp—“sofort”—immediately—“ antreten!”— to fall in, but in such a terrifying tone that I promptly sat up in bed. “Tso to robish?” Pyetchka asked curiously. I pointed to the device, but he just smiled in his usual manner and gestured with both hands to lie back down, take it easy, no need to get worked up, what’s the hurry. But the loudspeaker was going the entire evening, crackling and speaking: “Lagerschutz,” it says, summoning the club-wielding dignitaries of the camp’s police force to instant action, and it seems it may not be entirely satisfied with them either as before long— and I found it hard not to listen without shuddering — it was asking the Lagerältester and the Kapo of the Lagerschutz— in other words, explicitly the two most powerful of the camp’s prisoners that one could think of — to report to the gate, “aber im Laufschritt! ” Another time, the continually badgering, summoning, ordering, popping, and crackling box was full of questions and reproaches: “ Lagerältester! Aufmarschieren lassen! Lagerältester! Wo sind die Juden?”[30] and Pyetchka would just give an angrily dismissive wave or talk back to it: “Kurva yego mat!”[31]So I leave it up to him, he should know after all, and I just keep quietly lying there. But if the previous evening had not been to its liking, by the next day there were no exceptions: “ Lagerältester! Das ganze Lager: antreten!”[32]then shortly afterward a roaring of motors, barking of dogs, cracking of rifles, thudding of clubs, pattering of running feet, and the heavier pounding of boots in pursuit shows that, if it comes down to it and some people would prefer it that way, then the soldiers themselves are quite capable of taking the matter into their own hands, and what comes of such failure to obey — until finally, goodness knows how, there is a sudden stillness. Not long after that, the doctor pops in unexpectedly, his customary ward round having already taken place that morning as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening outside. Now, though, he was not so cool nor so well-groomed as at other times: his face was worn, his not entirely immaculate white smock was stained with rusty flecks, and he hunted his grave-looking, bloodshot eyes around, obviously looking for an empty bed. “Wo ist der… ,” he asked Pyetchka, “der, mit dieser kleinen Wunde hier?”[33]making an indeterminate gesture around thighs and hips while letting his searching gaze rest on every face, mine as well for a moment, so I very much doubt that he failed to recognize me, even if he immediately snatched it away in order to rivet it again on Pyetchka, waiting, urging, demanding, obliging him, as it were, to answer. I said nothing, but I was already preparing myself to get up, don prison garb, and go out into the thick of the turmoil, but to my great surprise I noticed that Pyetchka, judging from his face at least, hadn’t the slightest idea to whom the doctor was referring, then after a brief moment of perplexity, it suddenly dawned on him, as though the penny had dropped after all, and with an “Ach ja” and a sweep of the arm he pointed to the boy with the gunshot wound, a choice with which the doctor seemed straightaway to concur, he too like someone — yes, that’s it— whose concern has been lighted upon and addressed in one go. “Der geht sofort nach Hause!” he ordered straightaway. And then a very peculiar, unusual, and, I might say, indecorous incident occurred, the like of which I had hitherto never seen once before in our room, and which I was barely able to witness without a certain discomfiture and embarrassment. The boy with the gunshot wound, having got out of bed, first merely placed his hands together before the doctor, as if he were about to pray, then as the latter recoiled in astonishment, dropped to his knees in front of him and reached out with both hands to grasp, clutch, and enfold the doctor’s legs; after which all I noticed was a swift flash of the doctor’s hand and the ensuing loud smack, so I only understood he was angry and did not quite follow what he said when, having pushed the obstacle aside with his knee, he stormed off, his face drawn and even rawer red than usual. A new patient then arrived in the vacated bed, another boy, an all-too familiar stub of tight bandaging revealing to my eyes that his feet no longer had any toes at all. The next time Pyetchka came my way I said to him in a low, confidential tone, “Jinkooye, Pyetchka.” But then, from his “ Was?” his look of total incomprehension and complete blankness in response to my attempted explanation of “Aber früher, vorher…”—“just before, earlier on…”—and the bemused, baffled shaking of the head, I realized that it was now me, apparently, who might have been committing the faux pas, and thus, evidently, there are certain things that we are obliged to straighten out purely in our own minds. But then, to start with, it had all happened in due accord with justice (that was my opinion, at any rate), as I had been longer in the room, after all, and then he was fitter too, so there was no question (to my mind) that he would have a better chance on the outside, and above all, in the final analysis it seems I find it easier to reconcile myself to accidents that happen to someone else than to myself — that was the conclusion I had to draw, the lesson I had to learn, however I might view, ponder, or turn the matter over. But most of all, what do such concerns count for when there’s shooting going on, because two days later the window in our room shattered and a stray bullet bored into the wall opposite. Another feature of that same day was a perpetual stream of suspicious-looking characters who dropped by for a quick word with Pyetchka, and he himself was often away, occasionally for prolonged intervals, only to turn up again that evening with a longish package or bundle under his arm. I took it to be a sheet — but no, it also had a handle, so a white flag then, and from the middle, well wrapped up in it, poked the tip or end of an implement I had never previously seen in a prisoner’s hands, something at which the entire room bestirred itself, gave a sharp intake of breath, and was abuzz, an object that Pyetchka, before putting it under his bed, allowed all of us to see for a fleeting moment, but with such a broad smile, and hugging it to his chest in such a manner, that I too could almost imagine myself under the Christmas tree, clutching some precious gift that I had been looking forward to for ages: a brown wooden part and, sticking out of that, a short, bluishly glinting steel tube — a sawn-off shotgun (the word for it all at once came to mind), just like the ones I had read about in the old days in the novels about cops and robbers that I was so fond of.

The next day too promised to be another hectic one, but then who could keep tabs on each single day, and on every event of each day. What I can relate, in any event, is that the kitchens managed to keep working at their regular schedule throughout, and the doctor was likewise usually punctual. One morning, however, not long after coffee, there were hurried footsteps in the corridor, a strident call, a code word as it were, at which Pyetchka swiftly scrabbled his package out from its hiding-place and, gripping it under his arm, vanished. Not much later, somewhere around nine o’clock, I heard over the box an instruction that was not for prisoners but soldiers: “ An alle SS-Angehörigen,” then twice over, “Das Lager sofort zu verlassen,” ordering the forces to leave the camp at once. I then heard the sounds of battle first approaching then receding, for a while almost whistling about my very ears but later gradually diminishing until finally there was a hush — altogether too great a hush, because for all my waiting, straining of ears, keeping eyes peeled and on the lookout, neither at the regular time nor later did I manage to pick out the by now long-overdue rattling and the attendant daily hollering of the soup-bearers. It was going on 4:00 p.m., perhaps, when the box at last gave a click and, after brief sputtering and blowing sounds, informed all of us that this was the Lagerältester, the camp senior inmate, speaking. “ Kameraden,” he said, audibly struggling with some choking emotion which caused his voice first to falter, then to shrill to an almost high-pitched whine, “wir sind frei!”—we are free, and it crossed my mind that in that case the Lagerältester too, it seems, must have shared the same views as Pyetchka, Bohoosh, the doctor, and others like them, must have been in cahoots with them, so to say, if he was being allowed to announce the event, and with such evident joy at that. He proceeded to deliver a decent little speech, then after him it was the turn of others, in the most diverse languages: “Attention, attention,” in French, for example; “Pozor, pozor!” in Czech, as best I know; “Nyemanye, nyemanye, russki tovarishchi nyemanye!” and here the melodious intonation suddenly triggered a cherished memory, the language that, back at the time of my arrival here, the men of the bathhouse work detail had been speaking all around me; “Uvaga, uvaga!” upon which the Polish patient next to me immediately sat up in his bed in agitation and bawled out to all of us: “Chiha bendzh! Teras polski kommunyiki,” and then I recalled that he had been fretting, fidgeting, and squirming around throughout the entire day; then, to my utter amazement, all of a sudden: “Figyelem, figyelem! A magyar lágerbizottság…”— “Attention, this is the Hungarian camp committee…”— amazing, I thought to myself, I never even suspected there was such a thing. However hard I listened, though, all I heard of from him, as from everyone before, was about freedom, but not a single word about or in reference to the missing soup. I was absolutely delighted, quite naturally, about our being free, but I couldn’t help it if, from another angle, I fell to thinking that yesterday, for instance, such a thing could never have happened. The April evening outside was already dark, and Pyetchka too had arrived back, flushed, excited, talking thirteen to the dozen, when the Lagerältester finally came on again over the loudspeaker. This time he appealed to the former members of the Kartoffelschäler-Kommando, requesting them to resume their old duties in the kitchens, and all other inmates of the camp to stay awake, until the middle of the night if need be, because they were going to start cooking a strong goulash soup, and it was only at this point that I slumped back on my pillow in relief, only then that something loosened up inside me, and only then did I myself also think — probably for the first time in all seriousness — of freedom.