With his back turned to the Greek, Hubert giggled.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“You thought that all of us can speak Hebrew, didn’t you?”
“I guess,” I shrugged.
“The only thing we Jews have in common are a few traditions, snipped foreskin, and these yellow triangles.”
After rations the next morning the Greek’s body was carried away along with his treasures.
Since Hubert had been in the HKB for more than a week, his odds of being “selected” for the ovens were in the Nazis’ favor. To the boches, if you were too weak and sickly to be a productive slave, then you were a useless mouth to feed and had to go. At irregular intervals and always without warning, the SS would conduct a
“selection”—a weeding out of the Muselmänner, in all the Blocks.
They made more frequent visits to the HKB because they hated to waste aspirin. Recovered or not, Hubert knew he would have to leave. He prayed that, when discharged, he would end up in a different Kommando. The Kommando he had been in mixed concrete for the ever-expanding plant complex, and the dust from the mixers was ruining his lungs. Many from his Kommando had already been stricken with emphysema. Two days later, and still edematous and yellow, Hubert got a release from a reluctant doctor.
“Listen, mon ami.” I grabbed his arm. “We have to stay in contact. Together we’ve got a better chance of getting back home.”
Hubert agreed, but with about 10,000 inmates in the camp, we both knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task. You could go for months without laying eyes on someone if that person wasn’t in your Block or Kommando. And the Nazis made contact more difficult by regularly shifting us around, depending on their labor needs and to prevent gangs of resistance from being formed. Hubert promised that through Janec he would get word to me of his Block number and Kommando.
CHAPTER 10
I had fully recovered. I was amazed what a few days’ rest could accomplish. Janec kept telling me that my saving grace was the resilience of my eighteen-year-old body. By rubbing the thermometer, I was able to make it register high enough to allow me to remain in the HKB. Because of my numerous childhood illnesses, I was barely out of bed until the age of five, and thus I lulled myself into believing I was immune to the epidemics raging around me and could pass any “selection.” I managed to switch to a bottom bunk near a window, figuring I would breathe in fewer germs from those coughing and spitting up blood. I would also have a reminder that there was a world, no matter how unsavory, outside this sideshow of unraveling mortal coils.
For some lucky reason I shared my bunk with only one other man, and though sometimes I woke up chewing his toes, there was enough room for me to roll over. Mario was an anti-fascist Italian who barely uttered a word to me. He was extremely sick and slipping fast. Every night, he would implore some saint or ancestor while his feet kicked my face. Every day the doctor would come by and ask Mario where it hurt. He would point at his whole body, and the doctor would walk away shaking his head. One time I overheard him mention to an orderly that Mario must be a hypochondriac, but I knew better. No one could fake the cramps and convulsions that wracked his body. I was sure that worms were chewing through his guts. A medicine man in the Amazon could have cured Mario with a few herbs, but unfortunately our circumstances were more primitive.
One night I awoke to find Mario trembling and pressing his abdomen with both hands. He was crying silently, his moist, black eyes staring out the window. I felt uneasy, as if I had blundered into a private moment. I wanted to comfort him, but how? Words were impotent—lies, actually—and although I was lying next to the man, I couldn’t bring myself to wrap my arm around him in solace. I didn’t have the courage.
His face taut with pain, Mario slowly sat up at the edge of the bunk. I figured he had to take a leak. He dropped to all fours and crawled to the window. Curious, I sat up. Grabbing hold of the window ledge, Mario pulled himself to his feet. He tried to open the window, but he was too weak.
“What are you doing?” I asked in Italian. “Mario, stop.”
He shook his head defiantly and kept struggling. Not wanting any trouble for either of us from the night watchman, I jumped to my feet.
“Alto!” (Stop!) I hissed.
Breathing heavily, Mario pressed his face against the glass.
Coming up behind him, I realized he was staring at the barbed-wire fence only a few feet away. A searchlight’s beam swept across it. In the nearby watchtower I could see the reddish glow of a guard’s pipe. Mario tried to open the window again, but it wouldn’t budge.
He turned to me with imploring eyes.
“Ajuto, amico” (Help, friend), he whispered.
How could I ask him to go back to that bunk and continue his senseless suffering? I studied his eyes to reassure myself that this was the best and only way. I pried open the window. My muscles tightened against the rush of cold air.
Mario grasped my hand. “Gracie, tante.” (Thanks a lot.) At least it’s on his terms, I consoled myself.
Mario slid over the sill, dropped three feet to the ground, and began crawling toward the wire. The searchlight found him.
“Halt, halt, oder ich schiesse!” (Stop, stop, or I’ll shoot!) Mario didn’t stop. He reached out. A flash of blue light enveloped him, then a thunderclap rattled the window.
As I shrunk back into bed, a burst of machine gun fire echoed.
I guess the guard wanted to leave evidence that he wasn’t sleeping on duty. I had seen many bodies lying next to the fences on my way to work detail, but I had never before seen a person electrocuted. It was hard to fall back asleep. Finally, I got up and closed the window.
The smell of Mario’s burnt flesh was just too much.
In the morning, an Austrian named Pressburger became my bedmate. He was a man of forty, relatively old for the camp. I knew at first glance that he wasn’t going to leave the HKB alive. His breathing was labored, and there was a wet gurgling coming from the depths of his lungs. I had to feed him like a baby because he couldn’t hold a spoon in his trembling hands. I wondered if Janec was bunking me with the most critical cases because he knew I would nurse them. Or was it just his way of scaring my ass out of the HKB?
The second night after Mario’s death I was awakened by the sound of gunfire and guards shouting. The barbed wire glowed red with the reflection of huge flames. One of the Blocks was on fire. I anxiously called to the Häftlinge outside my window, asking if they knew what Block was burning. They shook their heads, no. I flopped down beside Pressburger. With my shithouse luck it’s probably my Block that’s burning, I thought, and my only possession is melting into oblivion. The fire burned through the night because the camp’s poorly equipped fire squad could protect only the adjoining Blocks.
The next day I got the confirmation. Sixty Blocks in the camp, and it was mine that was charred. Fate is so perverted. How many times had I laid in my bunk with a growling stomach, dreaming about the loaf of bread and cauldron of soup I would buy with my ring? How many mornings, standing in the freezing rain, had I schemed how I would buy myself the position of Vorarbeiter in a Kommando working inside the factory? How many ruses had I concocted? How many risks had I taken during searches? And there was that beating I took after I recovered my ring. It had all been for nothing. My only insurance against becoming a Muselmann was gone.