The Children's War (5 page)

7

R
ICHARD HUDDLED
in the back of the taxi and yawned yet again. He turned his head to look out the window into the cold, dark November morning. Not even a glimmer of dawn on the horizon. Distant bells chimed. One, two, three, four, he counted, then yawned again. God in heaven, what a stupid life he led!

The taxi turned onto a road that Richard thought he recognized. A barbedwire fence on the right finally gave way to a blank brick wall.“How far?” he asked the driver.

“About two kilometers,
mein Herr.”

Richard let a few hundred meters speed by, then he said, “Let me out here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

By the time he and Lederman were pacing through the prison, he had stopped yawning, but the salubrious effects of his walk were overwhelmed by the stifling air of the cells. He was led up a staircase and into a separate section of the prison. They passed through a door and entered onto a walkway overlooking a darkened room that, Richard realized, had once been a large gymnasium. The balcony circled the entire gymnasium, and beneath them the floor had been divided with concrete blocks into a maze of individual cells, each covered by a protective net of chicken wire at the level of the walkway. In each cell was a single prisoner, all of them apparently asleep, though the prison was alive with their varied moans and sighs.

“These are for the new recruits and our problem cases,” Lederman confided. “We keep them in isolation to better observe their responses to our stimuli.”

“Why white?” Richard asked as he scanned the walls and floor and ceilings. Everything was white.

“It’s supposed to be quite disorienting to them,” Lederman explained.

“To me, too,” Richard admitted. He felt nauseous and he wondered if it was the stench or the incongruous whiteness.

A loud thunk and a sudden blaze of fluorescent lights caused him to wince. The prisoners immediately began to rise as shouts, curses, and orders from the guards echoed throughout the room. The two of them continued their inspection of the room and its contents, stopping here and there for Lederman to make an observation or so that Richard could ask a question. Eventually they came to a stop over a small section of cells.

“These are the new ones. I wanted you to see their orientation, but most of them have already been dealt with. All but him.” Lederman pointed to a prisoner who remained prone. He had been thrown onto a straw mattress without a blanket or clothing, and Richard shuddered with vicarious cold. Like the other new recruits, the prisoner’s head had been shaved, on his right wrist was a metal band, and on his left forearm a tattooed number. The metal band, which was welded into place, contained all the information anyone could want about the prisoner, including his number, so the tattoo was redundant, and Richard wondered why it had not been dispensed with yet. Tradition, he supposed, or more precisely, inertia.

Lederman turned to the nearest guard and ordered, “Wake him up!”

The guard glanced down at the prisoner.“He’s out cold,
mein Herr.”

“I saw him twitch. Wake him up!” Lederman repeated angrily. “And fetch whoever’s on call.”

As the guard disappeared to carry out his tasks, Richard decided to explore Lederman’s opinions and asked, “Why do we still use tattoos? Aren’t they somewhat redundant?”

Lederman smiled knowledgeably. “No, no. You see, we’ve really got the dyes down perfect—they’re essentially irremovable! You see, knowing that, the prisoner is aware that his status is for life! These are all convicts, condemned prisoners, and we want them to be aware this is it—there is no other life for them. None but abject service to the Fatherland.”

“I see,” Richard agreed tiredly.

“It’s more than that, though,” his companion explained pompously. “Not only does it mark them for life, it gives them an accurate sense of their worth— they are now like cattle, no longer human. That is, if they ever were.”

“So you reclassify people?”

“No, never! We just correct previous misclassifications.”

“I see,” Richard said, as he watched a bucket of water being thrown onto the unconscious prisoner. The man stirred and moaned. Two guards approached him. “I notice you have everything here: Belgians, Dutch, Frenchmen, Poles, even some Russians. What about condemned Germans? Those with unquestionable pedigrees?”

Lederman shook his head. “For our few German miscreants, I’m afraid we must carry out their sentences. We cannot allow them to mix back in with the population. They are like an infection. It would not only be confusing, but dangerous.”

“I see.” Richard turned his attention back down to the prisoner. He noticed that though the man’s body bore a number of injuries, none of them looked recent except for a nasty welt on the back of his head. “What is this one?” he asked as the guards dragged the man to his feet and then pushed him down onto his knees.

“Common criminal,” Lederman explained. “English.”

Richard watched the criminal look around in confusion as he tried to take in his situation. He looked at the walls of his cell, at his lack of clothes, at the cold water that trickled down his skin. He had the frantic, terrified eyes of a wild animal caught in an incomprehensible trap. His hand reached up to his head, and an expression of horror came over his face when he discovered his lack of hair. He noticed his manacle and brought his left hand up to touch it. As he did so, he saw the tattoo on his forearm and his attention was diverted from the wristband to a savage attempt to rub the numbers off. The two guards standing over him exchanged a look of amusement.

“Not only criminal,” Lederman continued, “but a pervert as well.”

“Was he convicted for that?” Richard asked as the prisoner began a panicked attempt to free himself from the hold of his guards.

“No.” Lederman sounded sad. “Rules of evidence wouldn’t allow it.”

With a sudden effort the prisoner rose from his knees, but was immediately forced back down. “Why not?”

“They only had his word and it would have impugned the reputation of a German officer to accept his testimony.”

“Ah. So, a homosexual,” Richard said. Again the prisoner made a wild attempt to climb to his feet. “Lucky for him he wasn’t so labeled.”

The prisoner was slammed back down, and he yelped with pain as his knees hit the concrete. His struggling ceased momentarily as he seemed to be gaining control of his panic. “Yes,” Lederman agreed. “I can’t even tell the guards. At least not formally—so he’ll escape the special attention his sort usually gets.”

The prisoner looked up at them, noticing his audience for the first time. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, but then his attention was diverted by the door of his cell swinging open. A middle-aged man, mildly overweight, dressed as a bureaucrat would, entered, followed by a guard with a chair. The guard set the chair down, and then all three of the guards withdrew from the room. The bureaucrat calmly sat down and observed his subject for a moment as he lit a cigarette. His face was bland, almost expressionless, his hair thin and, on the top, balding. To Richard, he looked the perfect part of the anonymous official.

With the suddenness of an opening line in a theatrical production, the official spoke. “You are under an execution order. You are as good as dead now.”

The criminal stared at his visitor as if waiting for him to disappear along with the rest of his nightmare.

“Did you hear me?” the official asked.

The criminal turned his head from side to side as if looking for somebody to whom these words might be addressed. He looked upward at his audience, almost pleadingly. Richard bestowed a sympathetic smile on him, and that, for some odd reason, seemed to calm him. His eyes bored into Richard’s as if he could will a knowledge of his humanity into Richard’s head. Then he looked back down at the official, apparently ready to deal with his situation.

“Did you hear me?” the official repeated almost angrily. “You are under a sentence of death!”

“So why all this fuss?” the criminal answered with disarming, quiet logic. “Why not just kill me and get it over with?”

Richard raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had expected a low-class and highly accented German, but the man spoke as though he were an educated, fluent speaker. Richard tilted his head with interest. Perhaps this second-rate opera might be worth watching after all.

The official grinned as though he had predicted exactly such a response and was pleased by his acumen. “Shall we?” he asked, and moved to stand next to the prisoner, pulling a gun out from his jacket as he did so. He placed the gun against the prisoner’s temple. “Do you wish to die?”

Richard realized that the prisoner had been coerced by his disorientation and the theaterlike atmosphere to respond in a histrionic and, in retrospect, rather stupid manner. His bold attempt at preserving his dignity had not only been
pointless, it had left him in the absurd position of having to argue, naked and on his knees, with a man who had a gun pointed at his skull. Richard imagined that with the cold reality of imminent death, the man was already regretting his bravado and perhaps rethinking his next response.

Indeed there was no immediate answer, and all the prisoner did was instinctively try to lean away from the gun, but for each millimeter that he tilted his head, the gun followed. Someone in the distance coughed; the ash on the tip of the official’s cigarette grew long. The prisoner glanced upward, as if seeking answers from his disinterested observers. Richard stifled another yawn and noticed that Lederman was fondling his mustache and smirking.

“Answer me,” the official repeated calmly. “Do you wish to die?”

A glimmer of defiance appeared in the criminal’s eyes and then disappeared. Richard knew that in his mind’s eye the prisoner was shouting his denunciation of the system, or saying something stupid about the coming revolution, but the man was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. The official pressed the gun even closer. Almost imperceptibly his fingers twitched.

“No!” the prisoner gasped without meaning to.

“What? What was that? Shall I kill you?”

“No. Please don’t shoot me.” The prisoner glanced up at his audience again, as if asking their forgiveness for his unwillingness to provide them with a fine show. Richard did feel rather disappointed.

“So you want to live?” the official asked, shoving the gun abruptly forward as if stabbing with a knife.

The prisoner winced. “Yes, I want to live.”

“Whatever it takes?”

“Whatever it takes,” the prisoner agreed reluctantly.

Lederman leaned in toward Richard. “So he’s passed stage one. Now begins stage two.”

Richard nodded and hid another yawn behind his hand.

The official replaced the pistol in his jacket, sat back down in his chair. “Then we can deal with you.” He nodded his head toward the mattress.

Choosing a spot that was not water-soaked, the prisoner sat as directed, crossing his arms defensively in front of himself.

The official paused to blow a stream of smoke into the air, then asked, “Do you understand your position here?”

“I think so.”

“It is my job to see that you do. I am a staff psychiatrist for this institution.” The man announced this so proudly that Richard had to cover his mouth to hide his laughter. The psychiatrist continued, “I have evaluated your records and determined that you may be suitable for our purposes. Your answer to my question confirms that belief.”

“I’m overwhelmed by your astute observations,” the prisoner responded.

The doctor smiled at his success and Lederman nodded approvingly, both
missing the prisoner’s sarcasm. Richard took his eyes off the scene only long enough to glance disdainfully at his companion.