But now he wanted to say good-bye to him; he was taking leave of his sensible life.
Gregor, he said quietly, and this was exceptional because in the four years when they lived in each other’s soul and physical proximity he had never said the boy’s first name out loud. In the barracks, the name sounded so scandalous that he instantly recalled the plank wall, warmed by spring heat, which even the fragrant cold of the woodland night could not quickly cool, where they, squeezed between two buildings, felt the warmth on their bodies. They were standing in the starless, deathly dangerous darkness with their pants pulled down, helpless and listening intently.
He knew a good place, Peix had whispered ten minutes earlier on his pallet. Kramer thought Peix meant a hiding place for something, like food, that he wanted to share; in a few minutes, he followed the boy. They carefully went around the latrines. Twice they had to wait for the searchlight’s beam to pass and then run quickly, one at a time, and then Peix led him here. Kramer followed the boy with alert attention and also with admiration; Peix had arrived only a few weeks earlier but was moving about as if he had lived at Buchenwald for years. As they stood trembling with emotion in the heat emanating from the two buildings on either side of them, Peix excitedly pushed his pants down and, shuddering with passion, groped after the cord of Kramer’s pants. It was as if they had washed the desire of pleasure into the sensation of danger and it was impossible to say which was greater. Kramer, surprised, rather felt, endured, or heard all this, but they could see nothing of each other in the darkness. Within the darkness was a more warmly outlined darkness, and this second quality of darkness was the other person. Which conquered them both, more than either of them had anticipated or wanted. Peix found Kramer’s hand and led it to himself, and for a while that sealed their fate, since from then on they could both justifiably believe that the other one wanted the same thing. Why would Kramer have resisted a kid in such a situation. From then on, the few significant moments of their lives were made up of hesitant, hasty movements like these, directed at each other, of which they were incapable alone and alone would not even have thought of, hasty, impatient movements that occasionally caused a bit of joy or evoked the memory of joy. These fractions of seconds thrust them close together, much closer than any closeness they might have known before. They were intent on fulfilling the obligation they imagined they owed each other, if that is how the other one liked it; neither of them wanted for himself the small amount of good every man’s body knows of the bodies of other men; they both wanted to give it to the other. But it all turned out badly; out of sheer consideration for the other, it became difficult to restrain their aversion, embarrassment, and urge to laugh, so after a while they stopped, giving up, at a loss. They stood in the hiding place, foreheads touching, hugging each other’s shoulders and waist as strongly and mercifully as possible. They were careful not to let their loins make contact again.
But now Peix was paying no attention to him, as if he actually neither saw nor heard Kramer.
Bulla turned to him, looking at Kramer with his wide, clever brown eyes, the man who had saved his life and who, because of him, must now go. If he didn’t want to go — he obviously had turned obstinate — they’d be there in a few seconds with their dogs and take him away.
Bulla thought Kramer might put up a fight.
Perhaps Kramer would approach them, embrace the little Huguenot, and then leave. Perhaps he would graze the nicely ribbed feminine lips with a kiss. Which would have irritated Peix extremely, as did almost any human contact or feeling.
Now he understood Peix’s intention, but this time he’d come too late.
He did not have time to shout or interfere, because Peix had already grabbed the low-hanging, heavy lamp, pulled it back as if taking aim, and with one staggering blow crushed Bulla’s skull. The skull opened from Bulla’s ears to his forehead, they heard something that might have been the beginning of a whimper, and for a split second the strong lamplight illuminated the soft, gleaming, pink, and motionless brain until, with a short thud, the body collapsed in the light.
Peix let go of the lamp, which, skirting sprays of blood and yanking its beam of light in all directions, swung back into place. While the Hungarian countess’s voice continued to crackle and soar, it kept swaying fitfully.
We can go then, Peix answered the loudspeaker, somewhat later, and in his joy he let out a loud neigh of a laugh. He rarely laughed aloud, but when he did he sounded like a whinnying horse. Kramer particularly liked his infernal laugh; it was as if he were shouting to someone, good job, man, well done. And that’s how it really was, they could go because at that instant the loudspeaker fell silent again.
Obersturmführer Döring, who had just called Kramer to the south gate, now simply said, Peix to the south gate.
Across the vast Appelplatz they could go side by side, heads bent sharply down; they never looked at each other, not for a moment. They looked like two mutually offended people parting in extreme anger though neither of them could have named the reason for it. On the other side they were waiting for them with their dogs; from there, they accompanied them farther but separately. Out the large gate that was always brightly lit by floodlights, both its wings, unusually, open. Along the darkly glittering asphalt road for a while, their wooden shoes clacking between the leather boots. They turned off the road where the floodlights faded almost completely. The sky was slowly brightening. Out here, the loudspeaker could not be heard clearly anymore. All one could tell was that somebody, a woman, kept singing the same thing over and over again. But they could hear the cannons more clearly and they could see, at the bottom of the lightening sky, the reflected lights on the western horizon that preceded the flash and blast of firing. For Kramer, these images made it clear that what they were doing to them was being done in the penultimate moment. The huge cauldrons would not be brought again; there would be no more turnip soup in the camp. That’s why today there had been no morning Appel, which usually lasted for hours. He was a bit amused that he’d managed to glean this bit of fateful information but could not pass it on to his comrades. They will kill the two of them and then, in orderly files, they will lead the entire camp out the wide gates and away from here. The Krankenrevier and the Karanten, together with the sick and the convalescing inside them, they’ll simply burn.
And that is how it happened.
But even Kramer did not imagine that they wanted to drown Peix in front of his eyes.
When Döhring raised his cane under his chin and the other man twisted his arms behind him, a position that, as the result of having been tied down for so many months, immediately caused him terrible nausea and involuntary retching, he understood this too. He could endure this much pain only if he could go on retching. Peix had to undress; no matter how badly they were beating him, the undressing progressed very slowly. His nakedness emerged from the darkness before Kramer’s eyes. He would have preferred to suffer Döhring’s blows to seeing what they were doing to Gregor. In his mind, he was praying for him like a child. By now no man could have held Kramer up. And Döhring could not at the same time prop up Kramer’s chin and hit him. Several men rushed to help him, the dogs were raging on their short leashes, and they beat him — but not so that he would lose consciousness.