What they really wanted, however, was Peix, alive.
This was such a threat to life in the camp that, to avoid it, the four hundred prisoners were ready to continue their panic-filled silence in the dark barracks for a long time, but the loudspeaker started to crackle, then play music. If this can happen, anything may happen is what people usually say in such cases. It was once again the famous entrance of Countess Maritza from the Kálmán operetta,* blasting at the prisoners from early morning until late at night so they could not hear the sound of cannons.
Kramer has to perish alone.
Nothing more terrible than this could possibly happen in the camp, because it would leave Peix on his own, with no one to restrain him, to keep him from doing whatever he pleased.
Döhring, the commandant’s new deputy, the younger and crueler of the two Döhring brothers, would surely use Peix differently from the way his predecessor Eisele had done.
Kramer might have been the only person to whom it never occurred that for other people real hell meant Peix.
Everyone was terrified of Peix.
A few days sufficed for newcomers to become terrified by the beauty of this healthy, strong person. Many of them would start coughing at the sight of him.
Past the pine forest, in the middle of a plowed field, Eisele had ordered a long, wide burning pit to be dug, seven meters wide and four meters deep, and for more than a week the living and the dead had been burning in it. A nice footpath led to the pit from the north gate. They set the fire with gasoline, applied generously, and when hair, skin, and fat were happily blazing with eager little flames, they kept on feeding the fire. This was Eisele’s last deed, which does not sound too good but, as people in Pfeilen then said, it was necessary to prevent epidemics; the pit smoked and sizzled. Brains and spinal marrow oozed from skulls and spines opening in the heat at the wide bottom of the pit and very slowly began to glow. Brain and spinal marrow become flammable only at a very high temperature. The high temperature was created by the corpses’ own energies. Easily flammable fatty and hairy parts continually ignited the burning mass. Even if people had wanted to, the fire couldn’t have been put out. After a while, the liquid brains acted as perpetual kindling. Of this, however, nobody spoke in either of the two small towns nearby or in the camp itself; all of them, unequivocally and despite the confusion, inhaled the stench of burning human flesh and bones, and had the impression that the smell had a material-like substance, something sticky, and that they were also eating it. It was impossible not to inhale it. The smell and taste in one’s saliva became a little like those of cheap church candles made of tallow. People coughed cautiously whenever the wind blew across the low pine forest, because after a cough one would have to inhale more deeply. Although they had grown used to everything, the knowledge that burning human flesh was what their sense organs were experiencing in this peculiar way and that tomorrow, in all probability, they too would be burning brought tears to their eyes and literally deprived them of air. Acrolein, which is nothing but unsaturated aldehyde, mildly polymerized at high temperatures, stinks like this; it irritates the mucous membranes whether or not one knows what sort of chemical and physical processes are taking place.
Big, strong young men were terrified of him no less than decrepit enfeebled old ones, who, perhaps because of their stupor and helplessness, might enjoy another happy half hour under the eaves of the Krankenrevier. But if Peix had a chance, he tortured these men too. They warmed themselves in the pale sunshine, together with the flies that dared emerge from the cracks in the dark-brown plank wall of the barracks. Icicles dripped happily. Squatting above the filth and stench of their own dysentery, these men waited for Kramer to perform a miracle and perhaps find room for them. The flies still had enough strength to crawl onto the men’s warm necks, where they became stuck or fell down and buzzed in the stubble-like growth that appeared in place of normal hair. If Kramer saw somebody persevering, he might have him sent to the sick bay, or at least the rumor among the prisoners was that he would find beds for them there. Until somebody else died in bed, they could lie on the cold stones in the warm, clean air and, in their fever-induced daydreams, stare at the snow-covered beautiful pine trees outside.
Kramer saw to it that, despite the congestion, there was silence and order in the two wards; this is what he kept Peix busy with all day, though during the chaotic last days it became impossible. It was not unusual in the midst of this quiet, resigned waiting that someone simply keeled over out of sheer weakness and without being pushed. His body would stay there in the mud, which, along with the excrement, vomit, and flies, would freeze again during the night.
Peix killed many people. He had them stand up, it was their turn, they can come in now, and when they managed more or less to rise to their feet in the drippy midday thaw, he shoved them back down. Mainly the handsome young boys had reason to fear him, the ones he took on as assistants in the sick bay, just as Kramer had taken him, back then. In the camp, people said he was a pervert, which in the prisoners’ lingo meant he did not use them even though he could. But he fed and pampered the pretty boys. He would sell one to Eisele in exchange for liver paste to feed another one. The boys did not have to do anything, they could just lounge around, and while Peix worked diligently all day for Kramer, he kept sending his laughs in the boys’ direction, his mouth wide open.
This was also something Kramer knew more about than anyone else: Peix’s hideously mute laughter.
But one fine day Peix grew tired of them, and no one asked himself why, or whether he would like another one. Kramer never let him keep more than two assistants at a time, which would have put an immeasurable burden on the sick bay’s population. These boys were mostly from the ranks of Russian prisoners of war or from Polish forced labor units who had been isolated from others because of capital crimes; they regularly killed for raw potatoes, for a frozen apple, anything. Peix himself had started his career as a common criminal. He was sixteen when he arrived in the Buchenwald concentration camp having committed a particularly cruel double murder. Kramer looked at his mashed and infected hands and then by chance looked at his face and said to himself, no, this boy may have committed murder, but he is no criminal. Peix eagerly affirmed that indeed he was not a criminal. He was not the one who had murdered the two old art dealers whose place he and his friend had broken into, he told Kramer, quickly realizing what Kramer wanted to hear from him. He and his partner had found the house empty. They knew where to find the two big Leistikow paintings they had been hired to steal; and the two old homos had probably been killed by their lover boys. Kramer took him along to the pathology section, a privilege for which, Peix assumed, he was to pay with his body. By the time they discovered the misunderstanding, they loved each other so much that they could not be separated.