At the end of the road and the end of my run was the entrance to the camp: a large gate of handsomely worked wrought iron, like the entrance to a leisure park or a pleasure garden. There were two sentry boxes, one on either side, painted pink and bright green; the guards inside them stood stiff and straight, and above the gate was a large, gleaming hook, like a butcher’s hook for suspending entire carcasses of beef. A man was hanging from the hook — his hands tied behind his back, a rope around his neck, his eyes wide open and bulging from their sockets, his tongue thick, swollen, protruding between his lips — a poor fellow who resembled us like a brother. His skinny chest bore a placard, on which someone had written in their language, the language of the Fratergekeime (which in the old days was the double of our dialect, its twin sister), ICH BIN NICHTS, “I am nothing.” The wind made his body sway a little. Not far away, three crows watched and waited, craving his eyes like sweetmeats.
Every day a man was hanged like that at the entrance to the camp. When we got up in the morning, each of us thought that perhaps today it would be his turn. The guards rousted us out of the huts where we slept in heaps on the bare ground and lined us up outside. We stood and waited like that for a long time, whatever the weather; we waited for them to choose one of us as that day’s victim. Sometimes the choice was made in three seconds. On other occasions they rolled dice or played cards, with us as the stakes. And we had to stand there, close to them, and wait, un-moving, in perfect ranks. Their games went on and on, and in the end, the winner had the privilege of making his choice. He walked though our ranks. We held our breath. Everyone tried to make himself as insignificant as possible. The guard took his time. Eventually, he stopped in front of a prisoner, touched him with the end of his stick, and simply said, “Du.” The rest of us, all the rest of us, felt a mad joy welling up in the depths of our hearts, an ugly happiness that would endure only until the following day, until the new ceremony, but which allowed us to hold on, to keep holding on.
The “Du” walked off with the guards, who escorted him to the gate. They made him climb a stepladder to the hook. They made him detach the previous day’s hanged man, carry him down on his back, dig a grave for him, and bury him in it. Then the guards made the new victim put on the placard with the words ICH BIN NICHTS, looped the rope around his neck, made him climb to the top of the ladder, and waited for the arrival of the Zeilenesseniss.
Die Zeilenesseniss was the camp commandant’s wife. She was young and moreover inhumanly beautiful, with a beauty composed of excessive blondness and excessive whiteness. She often went walking inside the camp, and we were ordered under pain of death never to meet her eyes.
The Zeilenesseniss never missed the morning hanging. She approached the gate slowly, fresh-faced, her cheeks still ruddy from pure water, soap, and cream. Sometimes the wind carried her scent to us, a scent of wisteria, and ever since then, I can’t smell the fragrance of wisteria without retching and weeping. She wore clean clothes. She was impeccably dressed and coiffed, and as for us, standing a few meters away from her — eaten by the vermin in the rags we wore, which no longer had either shape or color, our bodies filthy and stinking, our skulls shaved and scabby, our bones threatening to poke through every square inch of our skin — we belonged to a different world from hers.
She never came alone. She always carried an infant in her arms, a baby boy a few months old swathed in gay clothes. She gently rocked the child, whispering in his ear or humming the melody of some nursery song. I remember one of them: “Welt, Welt von licht / Manns hanger auf all recht / Welt, Welt von licht / Ô mein kinder so wet stillecht”—“World, world of light / Man’s hand on everything / World, world of light / Be still, my child, my king.”
The baby was always calm when they arrived. He never cried. If he was asleep, she would awaken him with small, patient, infinitely tender gestures, and only when he opened his eyes at last, waved his little arms, wiggled his little thighs, and yawned at the sky would she signal to the guards, with a simple movement of her chin, that the ceremony could start. One of them would give the stepladder a mighty kick and the body of the “Du” would drop, his fall quickly ended by the rope. The Zeilenesseniss watched him for a few minutes, and as she did so a smile came to her lips. She missed nothing and observed everything: the jumps and jolts, the throaty noises, the outthrust, kicking feet, vainly searching for the ground, the expulsive sound of the bowels emptying themselves, and the final immobility, the great silence. At this point, sometimes the child cried a little, I daresay not so much from fright as from hunger and the desire to be suckled, but in any case his mother planted a long kiss on his forehead and calmly left the scene. The three crows took up their positions. I don’t know whether or not they were the same three every day. They all looked alike. So did the guards, but they didn’t peck out our eyes; they contented themselves with our lives. Like her. Like the commandant’s wife. The one we privately called the Zeilenesseniss. Die Zeilenesseniss: “the Woman Who Eats Souls.”
In the aftermath, I’ve often thought about that child, her child. Did he die like her? Is he still alive? If he’s alive, he must be about my little Poupchette’s age. How has he turned out, that little one, who for months was nourished each morning on the warm milk from his mother’s breasts and the spectacle of hundreds of men hanged before his eyes? What does he dream about? What words does he use? Does he still smile? Has he gone mad? Has he forgotten everything, or does his young mind return to the juddering movements of bodies nearing death, to the strangled groans, to the tears running down hollow gray cheeks? To the birds’ harsh cries?
During my first days in the camp, when I was in the Büxte, I talked to Kelmar constantly, as if he were alive at my side. The Büxte was a windowless dungeon cell. The scant light of day came in under the big, iron-bound oaken door. If I opened my eyes, I saw the wall. If I closed my eyes, I saw Kelmar, and behind him, farther off, much farther off, Amelia, her sweet, narrow shoulders, and farther still, Fedorine, weeping and gently shaking her head.
I don’t know how long I remained in the Büxte with those three faces and that wall. A long time, no doubt. Weeks, perhaps months. But be that as it may, over there, in the camp, days, weeks, and months meant nothing. Time didn’t count.
Time didn’t exist anymore.
X
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’m still in the shed. I’m having trouble calming down. About half an hour ago, I thought I heard a funny sound coming from near the door, a sound like scraping. I stopped typing and listened closely. Nothing. I held my breath for a long time. No more sound. However, I was sure I’d heard something, and it wasn’t my imagination, because the sound started again a little later, only now it wasn’t near the door, it was along the wall. The sound moved slowly, very slowly, as if it were crawling. I blew out the candle, spun the page out of the typewriter, and stuffed what I’d written inside my shirt. Then I curled up in a corner behind some tools, near an old crate filled with cabbages and turnips. The sound hadn’t stopped. It was still moving, slowly but steadily, sliding along the walls of the shed.
This went on for a long time. Sometimes the sound stopped for a while and then started again. It moved around the perimeter of the shed, always advancing at the same slow pace. As I listened to it turning around me, I felt that I was caught in an invisible vise, and that an equally invisible hand was closing on me, slowly but surely.