First Thrills

On the Train by Rebecca Cantrell

Joachim Rosen shifted on the wooden bench. He was lucky to have a seat at all. Most prisoners had to lean against the sides of the train car or sit on the floor.

He pulled his tattered striped jacket closer around himself, folding his arms over the bright yellow triangle. Despite the afternoon sun, he shivered, but the presence of the man leaning against the side of the car next to him weighed more heavily on his mind than the cold. He looked familiar, and he did not want to meet anyone from his old life.

Out of the corner of his eye Joachim noticed the man’s pink triangle. The familiar face belonged to a homosexual. He avoided the man’s gaze.

“I know you from before.” The man pursed his lips.

Joachim tensed, but ignored him.

The man inhaled slowly. “I’m Herman Schmidt. We met at El Dorado on the Motz Strasse, in Berlin. Ernst Vogel was scheduled to sing. Remember?”

“No.” Joachim watched the white puff of air that accompanied the word. “Never been to Berlin, except to get to Oranienburg.” He glanced around the car. Had he told anyone of his shop in Berlin?

Herman stared at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”

He straightened on the bench. “Always was.”

“Being different didn’t used to be so difficult.”

Both sat silently. Joachim listened to the clatter of the train’s wheels and the high scream of the wind. The metal door clanked against the side of the car. Perhaps it had fallen off once and been refastened too loosely. Through the high window fragile black limbs of bare winter trees appeared and disappeared, each tree a sign that they were one step closer to their final destination.

“My name was in someone’s address book.” Herman’s voice cut through the wind. “Some imbeciles didn’t even know enough to throw them away.”

Joachim flinched. If informers heard Herman, it could cost Joachim his life. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m certain you don’t,” Herman said sarcastically. “Where are we going?”

He lied. “Don’t know. Another camp. They’re all the same.”

Herman picked at his ragged cuticles. “I’ve never been to a camp. What are they like?”

Joachim looked at him for the first time. Herman suddenly seemed plump and healthy in the clear, cold afternoon light stabbing through the window. “Bad. For you, even worse.”

Herman pointed to his pink triangle. “Because of this?”

“It’s the worst kind to have.” Joachim glanced involuntarily down the car at the bowed, bald heads of the other prisoners. No one paid them attention.

“You’ve been very careful, I see.” Herman twisted the right corner of his mouth into a smile.

“I’m here because I’m Jewish.”

Herman studied his face. “We could jump the guards when they stop the train. I’m still strong.”

The man on Joachim’s right shifted on the bench. Joachim froze. What if he overheard them?

“They have guns,” Joachim whispered. “I’ve never seen anyone escape like that. But I’ve seen men die trying. It’s reckless.”

Herman sighed. “I was never very good at being careful.”

Joachim stared blankly at the sliding door in front of him. Rust had bled deep lines into the metal. Loneliness howled through him like the wind through the open door. “I’ve always been good at it.”

Herman ran his palms along his cheeks, as if he just woke. “Good at what?”

“Being careful.”

Herman slid to a sitting position with his back to the door and wrinkled his nose. The smell of so many unwashed men crowded into the car obviously bothered him.

“It’s not a simple thing to do,” Joachim said.

Herman embraced his round knees. “I should be in Berlin. Studying for my degree in engineering or reading the paper and thanking the Führer for ridding the country of vermin like you. Of vermin like me.”

Joachim scratched a flea bite on his shrunken calf. It itched, but he tried not to think about it.

“Then I’d have dinner with my landlady, Frau Biedekin. She’s an exquisite cook. We’d have potatoes, smothered with butter. We’d have sauerbraten, since today is Sunday. For dessert, let’s see-”

Joachim’s stomach clamped into a tight knot. “Stop it!”

Herman snorted. “Is it more than you can stomach?”

Joachim glared at him until Herman stopped laughing.

“That’s the only way you’ll get it,” Herman said. “By dreaming.”

“Dreaming is not,” Joachim hesitated, searching for the right word, “careful.”

“I believe I mentioned that I was no good at being careful.”

Joachim shrugged, the coarse material of his jacket scraping across his shoulders. “Dream, then. Just quietly.”

“If you can’t escape from them in dreams, they’ve defeated you.”

“What do you know? You’ve never even been to a camp,” Joachim said. “Tell me about dreams in a month, friend.”

“If I can’t tell you about dreams then, I hope to have the sense to end it.”

Joachim drew in a sharp breath.

“Life,” Herman said as he stood, “is more than mere survival.”

Joachim shook his head. “Not right now.”

“No!” Herman’s voice echoed off the sides of the car. Several prisoners swiveled their heads toward him. No one spoke.

Joachim pretended to be asleep. He sat with his chin against his chest, swaying with the movement of the train, listening to the wind whine, and watching shadows cast inside the car by passing trees.

“You know it’s about more than simple survival,” Herman finally whispered at Joachim. “You were in Berlin with us. You remember good food and love and music and dance.”

Joachim gripped his bony knees, knuckles whitening. “I wasn’t there.”

Herman studied Joachim. “Do you want to know what became of the rest of the group? Francis? Ernst? Kurt?”

Joachim inhaled. One, two, three times. “I don’t know any Francis or Ernst or Kurt.”

Herman stared at his own soft hands. “Not even Kurt? Everyone knows Kurt, even the Gestapo. They got my name from his address book. I’m surprised yours wasn’t in there, too.”

A hot pain stabbed Joachim’s neck. Relax, he ordered himself.

“I saw you together.” Herman pointed a pudgy finger at him. “Everyone was together with Kurt.”

He concentrated on relaxing his muscles, despite the cold and Herman’s voice.

“Remember how graceful Kurt was?” Herman’s hands sketched arcs in the air. “He should have been a dancer, not a soldier. He flowed when he moved, like a cat.”

Joachim clenched his right fist, the one that Herman could not see. “I don’t know any Kurt,” he answered in a level voice.

“That wasn’t you holding his hand at El Dorado that February? Or was it Silhouette? One of those clubs. Weren’t they wonderful? And the pianos. I love piano music, although I never learned to play myself.”

Joachim said nothing. His mother had forced him to practice two hours a day.

“It’s a wonderful thing to make beautiful sounds with your fingers.”

Joachim shifted his gaze to the floor; the slats were coated with about a centimeter of freezing mud and crisscrossed with ridges created by his shoes. “It would do you no good now.”

“Just knowing would be enough.” Herman scratched his back against the door. “I could play the songs in my head and beat time on the ground.”

Joachim wanted to warn him. “Will that help when you’re hungry? Or tired? Or cold?”

Herman nodded. “If I can feel the music, I won’t think about my stomach, or my body.”

Joachim pulled his arms tighter around himself. His elbows cut into his hands, almost numbing them. “You will.”

“I won’t.”

“You’ve never been there.” Joachim crossed his legs, savoring the thin ribbon of warmth where his right leg lay on top of his left. “You can’t know.”

“I don’t need to know what it’s like there to know myself.”

“You won’t last long. Your kind never does.”

“Is that why you’re afraid that the people here will recognize you? Are you afraid they’ll realize your triangle should be as pink as mine?”

Joachim prayed that the man on his right slept. That everyone in his end of the car slept. “No, it shouldn’t. I’m Jewish, but I’m no fag.” He stressed “fag,” trying to make it sound hard and ugly.

“Wasn’t Kurt the most exquisite fag?” Herman’s voice caressed the word. “But not after the Gestapo was through with him.”

Joachim’s stomach cramped.

“They ruined those delicate cheekbones. He could barely walk when they were done.” Herman watched Joachim, a gleam in his eye. “I think he escaped to Switzerland.”

Joachim’s stomach relaxed. The car rattled along.

“Where are they sending us?” Herman asked again.

“Dachau, I think,” Joachim said, angry at himself for not lying this time. He’d also heard they might be going to Auschwitz, but he didn’t tell Herman that.

“Dachau is only a few hours by train from Constance, from Switzerland.”

“You wouldn’t be allowed on a train.”

“So I’d walk.” Herman rubbed his palm over the rough stubble on his shaved head.

“A few hundred kilometers in the snow? Anyone who sees you will turn you in. Or shoot you. You are the enemy now.”

“I’d reach the border.”

“The Swiss won’t let you in.”

“I won’t go through the checkpoint.” Herman smiled. “I’d lift a boat and row across Lake Constance.”

“Nazis guard the boats. You’d never make it.”

“What a way to die.” Herman sighed. “Free and on the water.”

Joachim stirred on the bench. He had loved to swim as a boy and had been the best swimmer in his school. “You shouldn’t think of dying,” he said to the door. “It’s not… careful. You have to be careful.”

“Have you ever had Swiss chocolate?” Herman asked.

Joachim clasped his hands in his lap.

“I can almost smell it,” Herman continued. “Thick dark chocolate with bitter marzipan.”

“Or with-” Joachim did not finish his sentence, surprised that he had even begun it.

“Peppermint,” Herman finished. “Crisp peppermint.”

Joachim pushed his chin against his chest. His shoulders were taut and raised, and he forced them down. He would not think about chocolate.

Herman swallowed. “I wanted to go to school in Zürich. A friend of mine went. Came back in thirty-three as a Nazi. I was stunned.”

Joachim raised his head. “It’s hard to lose a friend that way.”

Herman searched Joachim’s face. “It’s hard to lose a friend any way.”

Joachim tried to imagine the friendship he could have had with Herman in Berlin. Then someone farther down the car coughed, and he forced his mind to go blank.

Herman rubbed his hands together. “When do we arrive in Dachau?”

“I don’t know. Try to sleep.”

Herman almost fell when the train abruptly slowed to climb a steep grade. “I could run faster than this train.”

Joachim laughed, quietly and cynically. “What good is that? Do you want to run to the next car? Get there earlier?”

Herman’s words tumbled out. “We can get out of that door. It’s not wired on very well. We could jump off the train and no one would notice.”

Joachim’s stomach clenched again. His hands trembled. He could not remember when he had been so terrified. Even when the Nazis came for him, he was not so afraid. “The Nazis notice everything.”

“Not everything,” Herman said, staring at Joachim’s yellow triangle. “Not everything.”

“If they catch you, they will kill you. Slowly.”

Herman smiled. Suddenly he looked very old, and Joachim flinched away from him. “Aren’t we dying slowly now?”

Joachim thought of the cold outside, the Nazis who were sure to be around with rifles, the incredible distance to the Swiss border. They would never make it. Never.

He spoke to his worn wooden shoes. “Eventually the war will end, and Germany will lose. They will set us free then.”

“Maybe,” Herman said. “Eventually.”

Joachim stared at a brown stain on top of one shoe. Blood? he wondered. “It won’t be too long.”

“Are you daring to dream?” Herman mocked him as he turned to the door. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s not careful.”

Joachim’s voice trembled. “I don’t want you to go.”

“By this time next week we could be in Switzerland, with Kurt.”

“Or we could be dead.”

“Or we could be dead,” Herman repeated. “We could be dead anyway. At least this way we get to decide.”

Muscles tightened in the backs of Joachim’s legs. He wanted to stand. But he did not know what kind of death waited outside. It would be a death, probably a sooner death than awaited him at Dachau. A sooner death.

Herman dropped his warm hand onto the crown of Joachim’s head. “I’m leaving. Are you coming with me?”

Joachim shook his head. He needed time. He hated his cowardly survival instinct.

“Kurt didn’t escape to Switzerland,” Herman said abruptly. He withdrew his hand, the spot he’d warmed now colder than the rest of Joachim’s head. “Kurt died.”

Joachim’s stomach convulsed. His voice almost broke when he spoke, but he brought it under control. “I don’t know any Kurt and I don’t care what he did.”

He gazed into Herman’s eyes, surprised that they were such a vivid blue. They reminded him of a mountain lake he swam across as a child. Joachim dropped his eyes first.

“Be careful then, Joachim Rosen.”

Herman forced the door out, grunting as his arms shook with the strain. Slowly, the wire stretched. Joachim admired his strength. He could never force the door like that.

“Good-bye.” Herman dropped out of the train into the snow.

For the first time since they took him, Joachim wept. He did not cry with the loud, wet wails of his childhood. He sat and wept the dry, silent sobs of a new grief.

The prisoner next to him reached over and put a cold hand on his arm. Joachim slowly brought himself under control.

The train jerked to a stop and knocked him to the floor. He pulled himself back onto the bench. Whispers ran the length of the car. Why were they stopping?

Were they in Dachau already? Herman had escaped at the last instant. Joachim tried to imagine him rowing across Lake Constance to a land filled with chocolate, but instead pictured him bleeding in the snow.

The familiar aroma of cigarette smoke wafted in. Behind him several prisoners inhaled the smell greedily, but Joachim shrank back. That odor meant soldiers.

The car door jerked open, and Joachim threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the scalding light. Dark profiles of three soldiers with guns loomed in the doorway, a prisoner sagged between two others. They heaved a body in and slammed the door.

Joachim alone crossed to the inert figure, giving up his precious seat on the bench. He knelt and rolled him over. Dim light from the window illuminated a battered face. Herman.

Joachim shook him, thinking of Kurt’s beautiful face broken by the Gestapo. Herman’s head lolled on his shoulders. He looked dead.

Joachim put a finger under Herman’s nostrils to check for breath just as the car jolted back into motion. Off balance, he fell across Herman’s body. Herman’s heart beat against Joachim’s chest. Joachim smiled. He lay there a moment, remembering other men and other nights.

He pulled himself to a sitting position and peeled off his own jacket, shivering. He wiped blood from Herman’s face with its tattered sleeve, tracing the angle of his cheekbone. Herman moaned.

Joachim’s shaking fingers unbuttoned Herman’s jacket. He lifted Herman with one hand and pulled his jacket off, wincing at the darkening bruises on his ribs.

Another prisoner put a skeletal hand on Joachim’s naked arm. “Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to be pink at Dachau.”

Joachim squeezed his hand.

The prisoner pulled back. Joachim finished switching jackets with Herman. Now his own jacket bore a pink triangle, Herman’s a yellow one.

The prisoner turned away.

Joachim cradled Herman’s head in his lap until the train stopped hours later. The doors opened onto darkness.

“Raus!” yelled the guards. The prisoners stumbled out.

The guards marched through the weary prisoners, separating them into two long lines. They sent Joachim to one line, Herman to another. Joachim looked at the pink triangle on the man next to him. Herman was safe.

But then Joachim noticed the other triangles in his line: red, black, and purple, but no yellow. Herman stood in a line of all Jews.

Joachim read the station name off a sign. Not Dachau at all. Not a work camp.

The sign read Oswiecim. He closed his eyes. The German name for Oswiecim was Auschwitz. A death camp. He smelled sweetish smoke from the crematorium.

Joachim opened his eyes and searched for Herman. Herman’s blue eyes met his. Herman nodded. He knew, too.

Joachim’s line moved toward a convoy of trucks, Herman’s into the darkness. Joachim realized that the yellow triangles were never coming back. He pulled his jacket closer around his thin frame, one hand lingering on the pink triangle. Strains of Wagner drifted through the cold air surrounding both of them.

REBECCA CANTRELL writes the critically acclaimed Hannah Vogel mystery series set in 1930s Berlin, including A Trace of Smoke and A Night of Long Knives. She lives in Hawaii with her husband, son, and too many geckoes to count. For more details, see www.rebeccacantrell.com.