He found the raft the demolitions detail had left tied to one of the piles, and threw in the pack and helmet, and then slipped into the icy water and began to drift through the blackness, clinging to the raft. He was almost across when the Americans arrived and the battle began, and by the time he got out of the water, shivering and exhausted, the Ami tanks had gotten the range and began to blow apart the barricade in earnest.
Repp crawled up the bank. Behind him, multiple small suns descended in a pinkish haze and tracers flicked across the water. But he knew he was out of range.
And that he was still on schedule.
21
“What are you doing here?” was all he could think to say.
“I work here. I’m with the field hospital.”
“Oh, God, Susan. Then you’ve seen it, seen it all.”
“You forget: I knew it all.”
“We never believed.”
“Now of course it’s too late.”
“I suppose. How did you end up here?”
“A punishment. I made waves. I made real waves. I got publicly identified with the Zionists. Then Fischelson died and the Center died and the British made a stink, and they sent me to a field unit in a DP camp. British influence. It was said I didn’t appreciate London. And when I heard about Belsen, I tried to get there. But it was in the British zone and they wouldn’t have me. Then came Dachau, American. And my doc at the DP camp did think highly of me, and he knew how important it was to me. So he got me the orders. See? Easy, if you have the right connections.”
“It’s very bad, isn’t it.”
“Bad. That’s not a terribly eloquent word. But, yes, it is bad. And Dachau is nothing compared to Belsen. And Belsen is nothing compared to Sobibór. And Sobibór is nothing compared to Treblinka. And Treblinka is nothing compared to Auschwitz.”
They were strange names to Leets.
“Haven’t heard of them. Haven’t been reading the papers, I guess.”
“I guess not.”
“Did you see Shmuel? He’s with us. He’s still fine. I told you he’d be fine.”
“I heard. An OSS detachment. With a Jew in an American uniform. That’s how I knew.”
“We’re still after him. After that German. That’s what we’re here for.”
“One German?”
“Yeah. A special guy. With a special—”
“Jim, there were thousands of them. Thousands. What’s one more or less?”
“No, this one’s different.”
“No. They’re all the same.”
But Tony was not filing a report to JAATIC. He was writing a letter to his older brother, in response to a letter that had finally caught up with him earlier.
“Dear Randolph,” he wrote.
It was of course splendid to hear from you. I am glad Lisbon is interesting and that Priscilla is well.
Please do not believe any of the rumors, and do not let them upset you. I realize my behavior has been difficult to fathom of late and that it must be the subject of much discussion in certain circles. I have not surrendered to the Americans. I do not flee my own kind. I do not think myself Robert Graves. I am not insane, though that was not a question in your note; I still sensed it beneath your Foreign Office diction.
I am quite well off. I am totally recovered. No, I do not see women. Perhaps I should, but I do not. I do not see old friends either. They are rather too kind for my somewhat peculiar tastes. I am among Americans by choice: because, fools all of them, they talk only of themselves. Children: they prattle incessantly about self and city, country, past, future, manufacturing noise from every orifice. They have no curiosity beyond their own skin. I do not have to make explanations. I do not get long, sad stares of sympathy. No one inquires solicitously how I’m getting along In The Aftermath….
Dearest Randolph, others lost children and wives in the bombings. Jennifer and Tim are quite gone now; I’ve accepted it and hardly think of it. I do not, as you suggest, still blame myself. Things are quite chipper here. We are hunting down a dreadful Jerry. It’s great fun, most fun I’ve had in the war….
But Tony stopped writing. He felt himself about to begin to cry again. He crushed the document up into a ball, and hurled it across the room. He sat back, and pinched the bridge of his nose. The pain would not go away. He doubted if it would, ever. He wished he had a nip of something. But he didn’t. He thought he might try and get some sleep. Where was Leets? Should he head back to the office, where the two Jews were? He had to do something, he knew that for sure.
The old man slept. Shmuel watched him. He lay on the cot, stirring now and again — the jab of an interior pain. His breath came shallow and dry, a rattle, and a bubble of drool inflated in one corner of his slack mouth. His skin was milky and loose and spotted, shot with a network of subtle blue veins. He’d pulled the blanket around him like a prayer shawl, though in doing so a foot fell free and it dangled off the cot. Somehow this old creature had survived, another freak like Shmuel, a meaningless exception whose only function was to provide a scale for the larger numbers of extinction.
Why couldn’t the Americans have captured some nice plump SS officer? An eager collaborator, a cynic, a traitor? Or why couldn’t they have arrived just a day earlier, before the warehouses had been looted? No — again, this Repp had been lucky. He’d left nothing behind, leaving them to hunt through the pale, pained memories of Eisner the tailor.
“Remember: the records,” Leets had said.
But instead he remembered his own first interrogation with Leets and Outhwaithe: two hard, glossy Gentiles, eyes blank, faces impassive. Men in uniforms: was there a difference? Hard men, with guns and jobs to do, no time to let human feelings get in the way. The whole world was wearing a uniform, except for the Jews. No, the Jews had a uniform too: blue and white stripes, a jagged, dirty star clipped over the heart. That was old Eisner’s uniform, that was the uniform Shmuel preferred, not this—
Startled, he looked at his own clothes. He was wearing American boots, field pants and a wool OD shirt. To old Eisner he was an American, the language made no difference.
Eisner the tailor still slept fitfully on the cot as Shmuel slipped out. He did not have far to go. Of the warehouses there were two kinds: badly looted and heavily guarded. Soldiers marked the latter, smashed doors and a litter of debris the former. Shmuel immediately found the single exception to this rule, a brick building that was not guarded, and had not been looted.
He stepped inside. It smelled musty and the darkness clamped down on him. He stood, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Small chinks of light glittered in the roof, almost like stars, and slowly in the darkness shapes appeared. Pile and pile, rank on rank, neatly arranged after the Teutonic fashion, were blue-and-white prison uniforms.
“No. This guy is different. I don’t know why, but he is. He’s a curious combination of valor and evil. He’s very brave. He’s enormously brave. He’s much braver than I am. But he’s—” He paused, groping.
She would not help him.
“I can’t figure out how they turned out such men,” Leets said. “You see, we always expect them to be cowards. Or perverts. Or nuts, of some sort. What if they were just like us? What if some of them were better even? Braver? Tougher? What if some were heroes. Unbelievable heroes?”
“You melodramatize. I’ve seen their work. They were grim, seedy little killers, that’s all. Nothing glamorous in it at all. They killed in the millions. Men, women. The children, especially. At Auschwitz, at the end, they threw children living into the ovens.”