Prominenten fed better, beaten less than their comrades, docile subordinates, accountants, administrators or photographers at the service of the camp, who can blame them for having escaped the 186 steps of the stone quarry, the freezing baths or the pickaxe handles, for having come through and survived, the luxury prisoners were authorized to move freely throughout the camp, is there guilt in surviving, probably, in Venice by the edge of the black water when I was thinking about Andrija I was overcome with shame and pain, Andrija’s sad death, I am carrying his absent corpse wherever I go, it’s heavy, I move forward with his body on my shoulders suitcase in hand, all this is very heavy — in the beginning Lebihan my pimply boss thought my passion for archives and secrets was completely natural, he said to me you’ll see, it will pass, beginners are always enthusiastic, it’s normal, after all it’s one of the advantages of the job, this kind of knowledge, he helped me get information I would normally not have had access to, old records that no longer interested anyone but were still classified “military-top secret,” archive reports often microfilm, personal files, Lebihan said that this way of working was the best way to teach me the Service’s real way of functioning, to know how to get some piece of information or other, etc., his motto was “archives are the compost that grows information,” he was an old hand at the “human” touch, as they say, with him I was in good hands, when he retired he invited me out to lunch, oysters at the Brasserie Wepler, if you please, he was pretty happy, even though he told me he was going to miss it, all this, I picture him clipping newspapers in the countryside around Évreux or Vannes, checking the sources, filling binders with scissors and glue, unless he’s given himself over solely to his passion for biking, Lebihan told me as he gobbled up his plump fines de claires oysters on the Place de Clichy that when he started out, for another agency, he liked investigating the cycling world, we all have our hobbies, he added referring to my own, mine was biking, the leftists and anarchists in bicycling — there’s no such thing as a profession not worth examining, I thought, and many facets to national security — of course we didn’t find many, pinkos on bikes, that’s OK, but I dug up a few each time, especially sports journalists, heh heh, my bosses at the time would always say to me come on, Lebihan, go to the Sorbonne or Nanterre instead, that’s where they’re recruiting, so then I wandered around the university for a while to put up a front, but as soon as there was a chance to follow the Tour de France or a Paris-Roubaix race, I was there — today he must be caught up in the scandals and finances of his favorite sport, explaining the ins and outs of things to a wife with her mind on something else or to his buddies at the bar, of course I haven’t heard any news about Lebihan since our last handshake after brandy at the Wepler, he was moved, the old cyclist, think of it, he had trained me, and trained me well, he had made the style of my notes and reports drier, had taught me all the secrets of the shadowy trades, records and archives, enough to fill the suitcase, he suspected something, of course, but he was too close to retirement really to bother about anything, no need to saddle himself with possible annoyances, the affair with Stéphanie would make the rounds of the Service, or almost, “intimate relations” between functionaries were not encouraged, even if, at bottom, they resolved a certain number of security problems, at worst the possible leaks would remain internal and pillow-talk wouldn’t pass the Boulevard door: it was the end of the affair that got me a strategic “removal” into the distant reaches of the Zone for a while, so as not to see her every day, and this thanks to Lebihan’s scheming with the personnel department, thanks to the paternalist bicycle-loving boss — Francesc Boix the photographer of Mauthausen loved bikes too, he covered the Tour de France from 1947 to 1950 for L’Humanité and Regards, on the back of a motorcycle, as required, Lebihan might have classified him as a “Red” at the end of the 1960s if he hadn’t died in 1951, poor Francesc dead of a strange illness of poverty or remorse he had contracted in the camp, one of those inexplicable illnesses of which death is the only outcome, I can imagine where it can come from, one winter night in 1943 who knows Francesc Boix might have gotten a few bogus reichsmarks from the Mauthausen camp in exchange for his work, Paul Ricken has him for good, he got him to walk around the first barracks near the entrance, the brothel for prisoners, opened after Himmler’s visit six months earlier, a pass costs two marks, a few deportees from Ravensbrück worked there they were chosen by the SS they are beautiful they say, Boix crosses the main yard at night, the first time he went to a brothel it was in Barcelona, near the Parallel, in a murky neighborhood of stinking alleyways, an old-fashioned cathouse, red, full of velvet, the tiny bedroom smelled of lust and Doctor Cáspar’s prophylactic ointment, he lay down with a pudgy Aragonese, much older than him, the business was finished off very quickly, he put his pants back on in a hurry to finish getting drunk with his friends, he should have taken a picture of the young woman, a souvenir of her milky thighs and abundant pubic hair, which grew up almost to her belly-button, he will remember her, but maybe not really the orgasm, at least not as much as he’d like to remember it, pleasure is a lightning-bolt that leaves no trace, he crosses the Mauthausen yard the death-place to go find his friend Garcia at the brothel, final recompense of Nazi power for those who serve it welclass="underline" Germany holds us by the balls, he thinks, Germany holds us by the balls and he laughs all alone, that morning fifteen Czechs and Yugoslavs were shot by the Gestapo right next to the identification office where he works, he was developing film when he heard the gunshots, he went out of his darkroom looked out the window saw the corpses sprawled against the wall there were four women among them, and now that night has fallen he’s going to the brothel where there’s a record-player with German songs, the “guards” of the cathouse are common-law criminals, sent here after the most terrible crimes, killers, rapists, these degenerates are the kings of the camp, their subjects the Jews, Poles, and homosexuals, the nobility are the German opposition parties, the Spanish Republicans, the typical Nazi hierarchy — Francesc Boix passes a few scrawny prisoners returning from a Kommando outside, he greets them with respect, he knows he’s lucky, that the few Spaniards employed in the camp administration services are privileged, that the prisoners are succumbing one after the other, exhausted, broken down by slavery and the guards’ sadism, he also greets Johannes Kurt the SS officer who’s accompanying them, not one of the cruelest, not one of the best either, among the detainees there are also former SS officers deserters from the Eastern Front, they never escaped any chores any heavy labor, they won’t last much longer, they have failed, they don’t deserve to live, they have betrayed the homeland and its aggressive Führer, Francesc arrives at the door to the brothel, he goes in, takes off his beret, in the antechamber an ex-warder converted into a pimp is slumped in an armchair, his eyes are gleaming, the room stinks of potato-peel alcohol, there’s music,