He led the way down the crunching stone steps to the 2nd-level basement.
‘And how long’s this gentleman been in our care?’
‘Uh, 6 days.’ I said. ‘Almost a week.’
‘Yes, Paul,’ he said over his shoulder (I could tell he was smiling), ‘6 days is almost a week. So. Who in Farben gave him the calendar of 1st-use?’
‘He won’t say.’
Fritz crunched to a halt. ‘… What d’you mean he won’t say? He’s been kennelled I take it? And the electrode up his crack?’
‘Ja, ja.’
‘Really? And Entress?’
‘Oh, Entress had a go. Twice. Horder says this bastard’s a masochist. Bullard. Bullard fucking loves it.’
‘Oh, God save us.’
He yanked back the bolts. Within were 2 men, Michael Off half asleep on a stool with a pencil in his mouth, and Roland Bullard lying on his side in the dirt. I noted with fascination that Bullard’s head looked like a halved pomegranate.
Mobius sighed and said, ‘Oh. Excellent work, Agent.’ He sighed again. ‘Agent Off, a man who’s been in the crouch-box for 72 hours, a man who’s twice felt the probe of the professorial scalpel, is not going to see the light because of 1 more kick in the face. Is he now. Can you stand up at least when you’re talking to me?’
‘Ortsgruppenleiter!’
I thought that Fritz was making a very good point. A man who…
‘Some imagination? A little creativity, Off? Oh no.’
With the tip of his boot Mobius nudged Captain Bullard under the arm.
‘Agent. Go to Kalifornia and bring me some pretty little Sara. Or have you fucked things up so thoroughly that he can’t even see? Turn his head… There, the eyes are gone.’ Mobius drew his Luger and deafeningly fired into the straw mattress. Bullard twitched. ‘All right. Well. He can’t see. But he can listen.’
Again I thought that Fritz’s reasoning was fundamentally sound. All right, he can’t see, but as long as he can…
‘The Brits are hopelessly sentimental. Even with Jews. Paul, I guarantee this will all be over in 2 shakes of a lamb’s tail. A man like Bullard — he long ago stopped caring about him.’
What do I find in the Officers’ Club, this breezy Friday, but a copy of Der Sturmer? On its front page, as usual, we are given an artist’s impression of (as it might be) Albert Einstein rutting against a somnolent Shirley Temple…
I tirelessly insist on this: Julius Streicher has done all that is most thoughtful about our movement a great deal of harm, and Der Sturmer may be the sole reason why, contrary to the Deliverer’s initial vision, exterminatory anti-Semitism has not ‘caught on’ in the West.
I’ve pinned up on the Club noticeboard a warning to all officers (of course you can’t do much about other ranks). Anyone found in possession of this foul rag will 1) lose a month’s pay, and 2) forfeit a year’s leave.
Only by the most stringent measures, enforced without fear or favour, can I convince certain people that I happen to be a man who means what he says.
‘Come into the garden, Hannah.’
She was ½ curled up on the armchair beside the chimney piece, with a book and a drink, her Beine not so much under her as beside her, nicht?
‘Watch the Roman candles. And oh yes — humour me. Klempnerkommandofuhrer Szmul, no less, wants to give you a present. He worships you.’
‘Does he? Why?’
‘Why? Didn’t you tell me you once bade him good morning? That’s sufficient for a person of his sort. I let slip it was your birthday, and he wants to give you a present. Come on, it’s nice out. I won’t mind if you smoke. And there’s something I have to tell you about our friend Herr Thomsen. I’ll get your shawl.’
… The sky was a vulgar dark pink, the colour of café blancmange. Down in the dip the flames of the bonfire were darting and wriggling. In the smoky air you caught the tang of scorched potato skins.
‘Tell me what about Thomsen?’ she asked. ‘Is he back?’
I said, ‘Hannah, I sincerely hope there hasn’t been any kind of intrigue between you 2. Because he’s a proven traitor, Hannah. A filthy saboteur. The purest scum. He’s been wrecking some very crucial machines at the Buna-Werke.’
And I felt the charge of vindication, ½ thrill, ½ stoic disburdenment, as Hannah said,
‘Good.’
‘… Good, Hannah?’
‘Yes, good. I admire him and fancy him all the more for it.’
‘Well, he’s in a great deal of trouble. I shudder to think what the next months will hold for friend Thomsen. The only person who can alleviate his extremity’, I said, ‘is myself.’
I was smiling and Hannah smiled back and said, ‘Oh, sure.’
‘Poor Hannah. Fatally attracted to the sweepings of our prisons. What is it, Hannah? Were you sexually interfered with at a tender age? When you were an infant, did you play overmuch with your pooh-pooh?’
‘Nicht? Don’t you usually say nicht? After 1 of your jokes?’
I chuckled and said, ‘All I mean is you don’t seem to have much luck with your boyfriends. Now Hannah. This could lead to an investigation. Into you. Reassure me. You weren’t involved with his efforts in any way? Can you swear, hand on heart, that you’ve done nothing to impede our project here?’
‘Not nearly enough. I’ve made a Piepl of the Kommandant. But that wasn’t hard.’
‘… Thank you for saying that, Hannah. Yes, that’s right — get your laughing done with. Are you relishing your cigarette?’
I just want to see the look on her face.
‘Why d’you need your gun?’
‘Standard procedure with Haftlinge. Here he comes. With your gift. Look. He’ll be taking it out for you now.’
3. SZMUL: NOT ALL OF ME
It won’t be this morning, it won’t even be this afternoon. It will be at the end of the day, as darkness falls.
Although I live in the present, and do so with pathological fixity, I remember everything that has happened to me since I came to the Lager. Everything. To remember an hour would take an hour. To remember a month would take a month.
I cannot forget because I cannot forget. And now at the last all these memories will have to be dispersed.
There is only one possible outcome, and it is the outcome I want. With this I prove that my life is mine, and mine alone.
On my way over there I will inhume everything I’ve written, in the Thermos flask beneath the gooseberry bush.
And, by reason of that, not all of me will die.
AFTERMATH
1. ESTHER: LOST IN MEMORY
ROUGHLY CHRONOLOGICALLY…
Szmulek Zachariasz stopped living at about six forty-five on April 30, 1943 — an hour after my arrest.
Roland Bullard received a bullet in the back of the neck on May Day.
Fritz Mobius suffered a fatal heart attack towards the end of a nightlong interrogation on June 1.
Boris Eltz — six weeks later, on July 12 — was killed on the climactic day of the German defeat at Kursk: an engagement of thirteen thousand tanks on a battlefield the size of Wales. His frenzied Panther was just a ball of fire by the time he rammed it sideways into two charging Russian T-34s; and he was posthumously awarded the pour le mérite.