The boat took advantage of a warm western wind to get some distance from the nightmare. The next evening it stopped in Ciutadella, on Minorca, where six more people embarked, and three days later it arrived in Palermo, Sicily, where they rested for half a week from the seasickness brought on by the roughness of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Once they had recovered, taking advantage of favourable winds, they crossed the Ionian Sea and docked at the Albanian port of Durrës, where the six families embarked, fleeing from tears towards some place where no one would be offended by their whisperings on the Sabbath. Since they were warmly welcomed by the Jewish community in Durrës, they established themselves there.
Dolça Xarom, the fleeing girl, had children there, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and at eighty years old, still stubbornly recalled the silent streets of Girona’s Jewish Quarter and the hulking Christian cathedral, silhouetted against the stars and blurred by tears. Despite the nostalgia, the Xarom Meir family lived and prospered over twelve generations in Durrës and time was so insistent that a moment came when the memory of the ancestor burned by the ungodly goyim shattered and was almost erased in the memory of the children of the children of the children, just like the distant name of their beloved Girona. One fine day in the Year of the Patriarchs 5420, the nefarious Year of the Christians 1660, Emanuel Meir was drawn by the commercial boom to the Black Sea. Emanuel Meir, eighth great-great-grandson of Dolça the fleeing girl, moved to bustling Varna, in Bulgaria on the Black Sea, in the period when the Sublime Porte ruled there. My parents, who were fervent Catholics in predominantly Lutheran Germany, wanted me to be a priest. And I spent quite some time considering it.
‘You would have made a good priest, Obersturbannführer Höss.’
‘I imagine so.’
‘I’m sure: everything you do, you do well.’
Obersturmbannführer Höss puffed up with the well-deserved praise. He wanted to dig deeper into it, with a more solemn air: ‘What you just made out to be a virtue, could also be my ruin. And especially now that Reichsführer Himmler is going to visit us.’
‘Why?’
‘Because as Oberlagerführer, I am responsible for all the failings of the system. For example, I only have two or three cans at the most left from the last shipment of Zyklon gas and the quartermaster hasn’t even thought to tell me to make an order. And so I’ll have to ask for favours, get some lorries to come that probably should be somewhere else, and stifle my craving to yell at the quartermaster because we are all working at our limit, here at Oświeçem. Pardon at Auschwitz.’
‘I imagine that the experience of Dachau …’
‘From a psychological point of view, the difference is vast. At Dachau we had prisoners.’
‘From what I understand huge numbers of them died and still do.’
‘Yes, Doctor Voigt, but Dachau is a prison camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau is designed, created and calculated to exterminate rats. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews aren’t human, I would think we are living in hell, with one door that leads to a gas chamber and another place that’s cremation ovens and their flames, or the open pits in the forest, where we burn the remaining units, because we can’t keep up with all the material they send us. This is the first time I talk about these things with someone not involved in the camp, Doctor.’
‘It’s good to vent every once in a while, Obersturmbannführer Höss.’
‘I’m counting on your professional secrecy, because the Reichsführer …’
‘Naturally. You, who are a Christian … In short, a psychiatrist is like a confessor, the confessor you could have been.’
For a few moments, since he was letting it all out, Oberlagerführer Höss considered mentioning something about that woman, but, despite strong temptation, he managed not to bring it up. He realised it was a close call. He would have to be more careful with the wine. He expanded on the fact that my men have to be strong to carry out the task they have been entrusted with. The other day a soldier, more than thirty years old, not some teenager, burst into tears in one of the barracks in front of his comrades.
Doctor Voigt glanced at this guest and hid his surprise; he let the other man gulp down another glass of wine and waited a few seconds before asking the question the other man was anxiously expecting: ‘And what happened?’
‘Bruno, Bruno, wake up!’
But Bruno didn’t wake up, he was howling and his agony bled from his mouth and eyes, and Rottenführer Mathäus had the superior officers called in, because he didn’t know what to do, and three minutes later the Oberlagerführer himself, Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, showed up just in the moment when the soldier Bruno Lübke had pulled out his pistol and stuck it into his mouth, still howling. An SS soldier! Every inch an SS!
‘Stand at attention, soldier!’ shouted Obersturmbannführer Höss. But since the soldier was howling and sticking the barrel down his throat, his superior made a motion to stop him and Bruno Lübke pulled the trigger with the hope that he would go straight to hell and thus escape Birkenau, the ash they had to breathe in and the gaze of that little girl, who was identical to his Ursula, whom he’d pushed into the gas chamber that very afternoon and seen again when a Jewish rat from the Sonderkommando shaved off her hair and put her in the pile in front of the crematoria.
Höss disdainfully contemplated the soldier — that cowardly jackal — laid out on the ground in a puddle of pale blood. He took advantage of the occasion to improvise a speech in front of the shocked soldiers, and he told them that there is no greater inner consolation and spiritual joy than having the absolute certainty that your actions are carried out in the name of God and with the intention of preserving the holy Catholic and apostolic faith from its many enemies who will never rest until they annihilate it, Friar Miquel. And if some day you falter and discuss in public whether or not the amputation of the confessed prisoners’ tongues is appropriate, as much as I recognise your services to me, I can assure you that I will report you to the higher courts, for lassitude and weakness unworthy of an officer of the Holy Inquisition Tribunal.
‘I spoke thus out of mercy, Your Excellency.’
‘You confuse weakness with mercy.’ Friar Nicolau Eimeric began to shake with repressed rage. ‘If you continue to insist, you will be guilty of very serious insubordination.’
Friar Miquel lowered his head, trembling in fear. His soul shrank when he heard his superior add, you are starting to seem suspect of lassitude, not only for weakness, but for collusion with heretics.
‘For the love of God, Your Excellency!’
‘Don’t take God’s name in vain. And be warned that weakness makes you a traitor and enemy of the Truth.’
Friar Nicolau covered his face with his hands and prayed fervidly for a little while. From the depths of his reflection came a cavernous voice that said we are the only eye attentive to sin, we are the guardians of the orthodoxy, Friar Miquel, we have and we are the truth, and as harsh as the punishment we inflict on the heretic may seem, be it to his body or to his writings, as was the case with the abominable Llull whom I lament not having been able to send to the stake, remember that we are applying the law and justice, which is not exactly a fault, but rather of great merit. In addition, I remind you that we are only responsible before God and not before men. While those who hunger and thirst to be just men are happy, Friar Miquel, those who apply justice are much more so, especially if you remember that our mission was explicitly designed by our beloved Führer, who knows that he can trust in the integrity, patriotism and firmness of spirit of his SS. Or is there any doubt about the Führer’s plans? He looked at each man, dominantly, defiantly, as he walked inaudibly among them. Or do any of you doubt the decision-making ability of our Reichsführer Himmler? What will you say to him when he arrives the day after tomorrow? Eh? And after a dramatic pause of a full five seconds: Take away this carrion!