The Children's War (10 page)

The man kept his head and eyes down and did not return Richard’s curious stare, nor did he turn or in any other way react as Richard paced pensively around him. The identification on the man’s arm indicated that he was English and a common criminal. Gingerly, Richard plucked a bit of something from the man’s hair. He sniffed it and then crumpled it to a coarse black powder—it was dried blood, and obviously not the source of the stench that emanated from the man and his clothing. The smell was rather overpowering, and Richard finished his inspection quickly so that he could put some distance between them.

As Richard paced back toward the door, Lederman, who had politely waited there, gave him a slight bow, clicking his heels as he did so. “What’s the rope for?” Richard asked.

Lederman looked over at the prisoner as if noticing him for the first time.“I don’t know,” he admitted. Both he and Richard turned to the guard for an explanation.

“Don’t know, sir,” the guard answered.

“Take it off,” Richard ordered.

“Take it off,” Lederman parroted. The guard attempted to untie the rope, but the knot was too filthy. After a few minutes, he used a knife and cut the rope off. The entire time, even when the knife was slipped between the rope and his throat, the prisoner stood passively disinterested.

“He was one of the ones I saw in November, isn’t he?” Richard asked as he carefully inspected his fingers to make sure none of the dried blood had adhered to them.

“Yes, yes!” Lederman sounded excited. “I’m glad you remember. Just watch. I want to show you the progress we’ve made.”

“That will be fascinating. I can tell already, you’ve made some changes in him.”

Lederman smiled at the compliment, then turning his attention to the prisoner, snarled, “Down!”

The prisoner apparently understood this to mean he should immediately drop to his knees, crouching with his shoulders hunched and his head bent forward. Lederman stepped forward and pressed his hand into the prisoner’s forehead, pushing it upward a bit so the prisoner looked forward. As Lederman removed his hand, the prisoner’s head stayed exactly where he had placed it. Lederman turned and grabbed a truncheon from the guard and approached the prisoner again.

“Remain still,” Lederman commanded. He theatrically touched the club to the prisoner’s cheek to align it, then raised it threateningly. The prisoner did not
move, his expression did not change in the slightest. Lederman whistled a warning then violently swung the club toward the prisoner’s head. Though his eyes closed in fear, the prisoner remained still. At the last instant, the club swerved to pass over his head, just grazing his hair. Richard could see the man wince as he felt the breeze over his head, but still he did not move.

Lederman turned to Richard and grinned. “See?” he trumpeted. “Didn’t move an inch! Now, watch this.” He turned his attention back to the prisoner and commanded, “Move!” and as he said that word, he swung again. This time the prisoner scuttled backward, just managing to avoid the blow that would have impacted his head. Lederman swung again and again, driving the prisoner backward until he was against a wall, forcing him to change direction and scrabble desperately along the wall until he was trapped in a corner, shielding his head as best he could with his fettered arms, cringing expectantly.

Lederman stopped then and turned to look at Richard.

Richard wasn’t sure what that demonstration was supposed to have proved, but he smiled encouragingly anyway.

“Would you care to have a go?” Lederman asked, offering Richard the club.

Richard shook his head. “No thanks. Don’t want to spoil my polo swing,” he joked.

Lederman laughed and spun back around, in the same movement swinging the truncheon forcefully, hitting the prisoner’s upraised arm and the side of his head. The man moaned with pain.

Richard glanced again at the green triangle and ethnic identification. He felt absurdly relieved that the man was not only a criminal but also a foreigner—the former meant he could dismiss the prisoner’s suffering as probably welldeserved, and the latter put a comfortable distance between them, the sort of safety-net distance one used when looking at the bloated bellies of starving, but faraway, children.

After that first blow, Lederman paused as if deciding whether to continue the beating. By all measures the prisoner had performed admirably, and he decided to reward him by not punishing him further. He hung the truncheon on his belt, then turned to the guard and asked, “Have you kept my orders with regard to food and water?”

The guard replied enthusiastically, “Yes, sir! Not a crumb of food nor a drop of water since you gave the order, sir!”

Lederman paced back to the center of the room. “Come here!” he snapped.

The prisoner began to rise, but Lederman ordered, “No! Crawl!” Obediently, the prisoner returned to his hands and knees and crawled toward the center of the room. His chains scraped noisily across the floor, and he favored the arm that had just been hit. When he reached the center, he was ordered to stand and he immediately struggled back to his feet. Richard could now see the unnaturally thin, cracked, dry lips, the bones that jutted painfully out of the sunken flesh of his face.

“Are you thirsty?” Lederman asked him.

The prisoner seemed stunned by the question. Bewildered, he raised his gaze from the floor and looked at his tormentors with unfocused, bloodshot eyes. His mouth lolled open and a swollen tongue touched the lips as if wetting them in preparation to say something, but his lips remained dry and he remained silent.

Completely mad, Richard thought, as he listened to the rasp of the prisoner’s labored breathing.

“I asked you a question!” Lederman screeched at him.

“I am sorry,
mein Herr,”
the prisoner apologized in a hoarse whisper, mechanically, as though he had said the phrase countless times. He seemed to collect himself and added carefully, “Yes, I am thirsty. Very thirsty.”

“Get me a cup of water,” Lederman ordered one of the guards. He motioned for the other guard to stand behind the prisoner, and Richard wondered at this maneuver. A slight smile played across the guard’s face as he assumed a position with which he was obviously familiar.

The cup of water was brought in and handed to Lederman. Richard watched with detached curiosity as the prisoner’s eyes lighted on the precious fluid. His face assumed a look not unlike lust, and again the tongue tried to wet the lips. The prisoner’s hands twitched but did not move to reach for the cup; instead he waited, quivering with anticipation, like the well-trained animal that he was.

They stood like that a moment, a tableau of thirst about to be quenched, then Lederman began waving the cup back and forth, carelessly letting water spill over the sides and splash noisily to the floor. The prisoner’s eyes widened at the cruel waste, his body jerked convulsively with aborted attempts to snatch at the water. Then suddenly he realized what was expected, and he went arduously down on his knees and in the most abject tones began begging for the water.

Lederman smiled benevolently at the performance, glancing up at Richard to invite him to share the triumph of their explicit superiority. Richard stifled a yawn and wondered if he could get a cup of coffee somewhere. The prisoner continued to beg, his words emerging hesitantly, sticking in the dryness of his throat. As he pleaded, he raised his chained hands in supplication. Lederman brought the cup nearer so that the prisoner could smell the water, putting it within his grasp.

As the prisoner thankfully reached for the cup, Lederman’s indulgent smile turned to an angry scowl and he motioned to the guard behind the prisoner. The guard responded by agilely raising his leg and kicking the prisoner brutally in the back, just below the neck. The prisoner was slammed forward, the water went flying; the cup clattered noisily to the floor even as the prisoner landed with a heavy thump, his face crashing painfully into his arms and his chains.

Richard watched as the man desperately wet his lips on his arms and then moved his face to the floor to try to lap up the spilled water before it had all seeped away. Lederman’s laughter filled the cell, the two guards joined in, and Richard added his own weak chuckle of approval to the humiliating performance.
The others were so involved in their merrymaking that they did not see the way the prisoner interrupted his efforts to look up at them, but Richard saw it, and the expression of pure hatred that greeted him told him that the prisoner was not completely mad, that someone was hiding deep inside that wretched exterior, and that one day, if that person ever escaped, they should all fear for their lives.

Unnerved, Richard glanced at his oblivious companions. By the time he looked back down at the prisoner, the expression was gone, and the man was busily trying to suck water from stone. Lederman indicated that the guards should return the man to his work crew, then suggested to Richard that they take a break and have a cup of coffee and a pastry in the lounge. “Made right here in our own bakery on the premises,” Lederman enthused as he described their pastries, “absolutely fresh and simply delicious!”

He was right, the pastries were delicious, but the coffee was even better. Real coffee, freshly brewed. Richard savored a mouthful, then asked, “Why that man?”

“Man?” Lederman repeated, confused. “Oh, the prisoner!” he corrected.

“Why him?” Richard repeated, bored by the pedantry.

Lederman sipped his coffee and tasted his cherry tart before answering, “I chose him deliberately because he’s a tough case; I wanted you to see that I’m not afraid of challenges.”

“Indeed,” Richard commented ambiguously. “What makes him so difficult?”

“Oh, you saw him! He thinks he’s part of the master race because of his looks. Even worse is the way he speaks—like he’s somebody. That from a common criminal!”

“What exactly was his crime?”

“Now this is interesting.” Lederman dropped his voice as if revealing secrets. “His file says draft-dodging and an unauthorized exit from the Reich with the usual fraud and deception that involves.”

“So?”

“But I know he was involved in homosexual activities. Not only that, but he has no record before being arrested for draft-dodging, about four years ago.”

“No record? What’s wrong with that?” Richard asked, betraying some confusion.

“You misunderstand. I mean no record at all! His file has all the normal stuff—orphanage, school, work—up to when he was sixteen, then poof! He vanishes from the face of the earth. No work record, no residences, no ration coupons, nothing for years and years.”

“Hmm, that is strange. Was he prosecuted along those lines?”

“No! Well, he got five years for having his papers out of order and fifteen for not being able to prove he had done his conscription, but what I want to know is, what was he doing all those years?”

“Good question,” Richard agreed.

“You can imagine the crimes he must have committed! And he wasn’t prosecuted for any of them!”

“Maybe he was just a beggar.”

“Does he look like a beggar to you?” Lederman asked with a touch of derision.

Richard raised an eyebrow at the tone. “We must not exclude any possibility,” he answered dryly.

“I guess not. But he doesn’t talk like a beggar either. There’s something there, mark my words! He thinks he’s somebody, he even tried to match wits with me!”

“Yes, I remember how he made fun of that psychiatrist, too.”

“Huh?”

“The first day, when we watched from above. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, even then,” Lederman agreed uneasily. “Anyway, he had ideas about himself, and that always takes a bit of time to break. What I want to do is find the quickest way to let his sort know their place. You could say I’m looking for the fastest way to drill through their thick skulls and suck out all the unnecessary dross. He’s one of my test cases.”