The Selected Stories

NIGHT AND FOG

If all of us here could return to the womb, half would be trampled to death by those who fight to get in first. A womb is warm, dark, enclosed.

I used to tell myself to play dead. That was before I realized I was a shadow. Now I keep quiet. There is no possible justification for them to have turned me into a shadow. In other countries, the wind still blows, there are still trees, still people. I was filled with a hunger for those people, more than a hunger for food. When that mania came over me, I was ready to smash my head against a wall. The more deaths that occur here, the better I feel. It fills me with such a deep sense of joy, so complex it can’t be described. Meier died some time ago. He stank. All of them do. That’s why I used to have this hunger for people. People sleep, get up, wash their hands, know that roads are for walking, chairs for sitting. People are neat. They do their business in a corner, closing the door so no one will see them. They use a handkerchief, turn off the light to make love. Meier used to piss all the time. “C’est pas de ma faute,” he would say at first with that grotesque accent of his, as a way of excusing himself. Then he stopped talking. He slept in my bed. The first time I felt my thigh damp and warm; a wave of wild anger rose to my head. With all my might I thrust my spoon into his neck. I heard the rattle coming from his throat, right by my ear. Suddenly he kneed me in the stomach. My arms went slack, and I let him go.

They caught me in Bordeaux on 14 March 1943. Six days in a French prison, seven beatings till I bled.

At home, when I was little, we had a fishbowl with three red fish. I would spend hours watching them. They never bumped into the side of the glass. I used to think, “If they don’t see it, how do they manage to sense it and turn at just the right moment?” One afternoon I was alone. Father was working and mother had gone to the hospital to visit a friend who had a tumor on her back. I went over to the fishbowl and grabbed a fish. It struggled frantically in my hand, then opened its mouth, eyes bulging, all shiny and round. (It had a white spot on one side. The other two fish were completely red.) I returned it to the water. When I thought it had recovered, I took it out again. I put it back in the water, then grabbed it again. I continued the experiment until it died. I was playing a game: I wanted to see what the fish would do. I didn’t want it to die.

They dragged me out of my cell, then returned me. They took me out to beat me and sent me back to recover, so they could beat me again.

That’s why here in the camp I was so glad I didn’t have a white spot. Sometimes I was afraid I’d develop one. I would’ve been calmer if I had a mirror. I’d look at myself every morning and wouldn’t have to bother a bunkmate.

“Tu connais?” The guards showed me a picture. It was a young girl with a strand of hair that practically covered one of her eyes. “Connais pas? Connais pas? Salaud!” One of them grabbed my nose and was twisting it like he had some pliers. “Fais pas l’imbécile, voyons. . avoue.” He got all worked up. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I seized his hand. I felt a terrible wallop to my stomach, followed by many more. “Connais pas la poule? Avoue!”

If everyone would just stay still, fewer would die. I should have warned them. “Reserve your strength.” But if I had told them, fewer would have died. When I think of the walks I made Meier take! “Go get some sun, go on: walking in all that air will dry out your trousers.” He believed me. The idiot didn’t realize that the more he ran through the camp, the more he pissed. If I could send them all out to walk, the ordeal would end sooner. This mass of men, these dregs, would slowly vanish, but then I’d be left alone. And the guards would spot me. I’d be visible. It might be better if they hung me out to dry.

One day a truckload of sick men arrived. No one mistreated them; they were just put out to dry. They were taken off the truck and seated on a bench outside. You couldn’t even hear them walking; the soft snow muffled the sound of their footsteps. You could almost touch the sky with your hands. It was overcast, gray, heavy. Once all the sick men were seated, they were never given another thought. The following morning seven were still alive. A frozen corpse is quite pretty. Clean. One had his shrunken legs spread apart, his hands over his eyes. The Belgian slipped his arm under the right knee and called to me, “Grab him by the other handle.” We carried him like that to the pile. When we went back, I noticed his head had made a groove in the snow. Some of them still weighed a good bit.

They haven’t come. Maybe they won’t. They should’ve come the same day, in the afternoon.

When I arrived, the camp seemed like paradise. The tall, wide door and the watch towers made it look like a fortress, but inside. . By the entrance, around a little square, stood some wooden huts, a fresh green color, with flower boxes. They weren’t for us, of course. A gentle slope. The first thing they did was take everything we had. Everything. They led us naked to the shower. The skin on my back was still raw. Freezing shower, boiling shower. We queued for an hour to get our clothes: striped trousers and jacket. And get on with life. And shouts of “Schwein! Scheisse!” Get on with life.

If you want to see some black satin pajamas, you can find them in the prostitutes’ hut. When I was still working in the tunnel, I used to imagine that one night we stormed it and made flags from the black satin, traveling around the world, like a parade of shadows. Literary reminiscences. That’s when I started thinking about the girl in the photo. I remembered her in great detail, almost as if I had known her. Even more than if I’d known her. A narrow forehead, a long nose with wide nostrils, one bright eye open, thin lips. Very dark. That strand of hair falling over her left eye. Sometimes, when I was in the tunnel, I would feel a sudden anguish. Like the day I left my wallet on the table at the Préfecture, the section for Service étrangers—foreigners. As I was walking down the stairs, a dark uneasiness made me realize I forgot the wallet. I felt it all of a sudden when I was pushing a wagon or digging. I spent a long time — couldn’t tell you just how long — without knowing where that anguish came from. Sometimes it almost kept me from breathing. One night I discovered where it came from. It was that wisp of hair over the girl’s eye in the picture. That was what troubled me. I had this intense desire to push it back, leave her face free and naked. That face was the last human thing I saw. I had no wish to stroke her forehead, just the irrational desire to move that strand, place it behind her ear.

My only longing was to breathe the wind that came off the hill. It was pure air that seemed to carry the scent of flowers, making me think of a Sunday afternoon I had spent by the river, in the reeds. That was then, but now. . I still used to wash and undress at night, despite the cold. I still noticed the lice. Whenever I could I would lie facedown and spend long moments with my head between my hands, contemplating the blades of grass, the ants, the only living things in that world of wood, rails, and cement. Now, when I think about the tender leaves on trees that seemed transparent against the light, the sun on the water, the flowers, the little blue and gold insects that climb up stems, the spongy, damp moss, it all seems excessive, useless, greasy, too oily, the world’s tropical disease, the disease of gray and snow. I think about it and nausea fills my mouth with spit.

When Meir died, I kept him in the bed for two days. I made it seem like he was still sick, so I could eat his soup. Dead, he wasn’t so disagreeable at night, because he didn’t piss. And dead men. . Night after night I’d sleep with my head against the thin wooden walls of the hut. Mountains of dead bodies, a hundred, two hundred were piled on the other side. On the second day the Belgian realized. He didn’t say a word until they distributed the soup, and then he took Meier’s ration from me and stared. “Thief,” I yelled at him, my whole body shaking with rage. He raised the bowl to his mouth as he looked at me. I jumped on him. They had to separate us. His mouth was covered in blood; my face was swollen for three days. When I lay down on the bed, I saw they’d taken him away. I was filled with a profound sadness and almost wept. That was the last echo of the shining world from which I was removed the day they applied the pliers to my nose. The last palpitation of the complicated, marvelous feelings of this world. I still used to think occasionally, “If I get out of here alive, what will I be like? I’ll always feel like I’m transporting a stream of corpses. I’ll only beget children with the huge eyes of the starving, their monstrous sex hanging within the thin arch of their thighs.”

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. “Come to dinner son, hurry before your soup gets cold.” “Change your wet shoes, son; the damp is bad for you. You’ll be full of aches and pains when you’re old.” “Brush your teeth.”

“Look at me,” Staub cried the day they gave him a beating. They had just finished purging him because he swallowed the diamond. “Look at me!” He howled, naked and raging, apocalyptic. They had knocked out some of his teeth; those that were left fell out like rotten pears. He wandered around, scratching his chest. From their bunks three or four men raised their heads to look at him, their faces moonlike, like a beheaded Pierrot, the look men have here when they can’t endure the hunger. Maybe Staub thought the sky would open and his Yahweh would give a sign. He fell to the floor on his knees: “I can’t stand.” The day they hanged him in the tunnel, he was the second corpse in the row. When we filed past, I saw that the right leg of his trousers was ripped to the knee. His head was bent, like he didn’t understand.

“Comb your hair, son, comb your hair.” I don’t have any.

Sometimes I think: “How have you survived till now?” Some want to be saved and that saves them. Some think that one day they’ll get out, and that saves them. Get out: why? Some want out so they can continue. If I were part of the resistance or a communist. . But I’m not a communist; I’ve never done anything. I haven’t helped blow up a train or delivered any secret password. Maybe I don’t even hate them. That’s why the first days were hard. I was more distressed by the terrible misunderstanding than by the blows I was dealt. This unsettling feeling seemed to be coming from my stomach. It was like I was the only one who recognized an obvious error in a problem, and I couldn’t make others see it. Get out to take revenge? For what? On whom? One day they called me to help unload the soup thermoses from the truck. It was freezing cold, and while I waited I put my hands in my pockets. The guy raised his fist to hit me in the face. He must have been twenty years old. I thought, “He could be my son,” and I looked at him, waiting for the blow. I don’t know what he said, but slowly he put his arm down and started shouting to the others. I felt a shudder of shame. First for him, then for me. What could he have seen in my eyes? If he could have pulled them out! I don’t know what the last person I hated looked like. I never hated Meier. It was the day they showed me the photograph. He must have been in the office next door. He opened the door and without looking at me told the guard who was beating me: “Écoute, toi: fais pas tant de bruit, quand même.” It’s hard to hate a man if you’ve never seen his face.

The first two blows are the ones that hurt. If they hit you on the head, sometimes only the first hurts. Hide your face. The canons yesterday evening excited a few of the men. “Partir, partir,” the Polish guy said feverishly, “Fini, fini.” His teeth started chattering: “Par. . tir, part. . tir.” They must be nearby. Yesterday they made us line up five times. Took away a lot of men. To start over in this world of oily things, honey-sweetened and peremptory? Start what? No. During the first months here, I kept thinking about the day I’d leave, the day the misunderstanding would end. Not because I wanted to leave, I later realized. It was instinctive for me to have something to anticipate. I had always lived with something on the horizon: exams, the end of my military service, the competition for a job, the end of the war. It was a way of escaping the vertigo of the future, of death. In this camp I have gradually sunk into an infinite, serene marsh. Perhaps death installs itself in people long before it finishes them. As if it wounded them. Be invisible. Invisible like an object. Eyes only slide over you, a brief outline. Be almost an object, like I was the day of the beating when they showed me the photo. I was just an object to that faceless man I hated so deeply.

To return to the womb, doubled up, drowsy, enveloped in warmth. In this corner, the sun is warm. A few days ago two guards found a man hiding here and beat him to death with a shovel. They made me collect him with a cart. It was distressing. He was so heavy I felt like my arms would drop. I didn’t even recognize him. His face was covered with clots of blood. Black blood. Hide your face. Now they come two or three times a day to see if they find anyone there. But what are they waiting for today? What are they waiting for? This breeze that makes the grass sway must still be cold. The wind must blow that wisp of hair. From time to time she must push the strand of hair back. What are they waiting for? Maybe I’ve taken too long to come, to make up my mind. Maybe I should have come the same day, that afternoon, or the following. I didn’t know they were so close by. The first two blows are the most painful. Lower your head, hide your face. After that, it doesn’t matter.