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Italian
prisoners of war? I'd never seen an Italian prisoner of war! And I'd already
sent all the Polish men I had, keeping only the strictly necessary. So I called
Chelmno again and asked once more whether they were interested in my Greek
Jews.

"If
they were sent to you, it must be for a reason," answered a metallic
voice. "You deal with them."

"But I don't
run a camp," I said, "I don't have the proper experience."
"You're responsible for them," the voice answered, "if you have
any questions ask the people who sent them to you."

"My
dear sir," I answered, "whoever sent them to me is probably in
Greece
."

"Then talk to
Greek Affairs, in
Berlin
,"
said the voice.

Wise reply. I thanked him and
hung up. For a few seconds I wondered whether it was really a good idea to call
Berlin
.
Outside, all of a sudden, a brigade of Jewish sweepers came by. The drunk boys
stopped playing soccer and stepped onto the sidewalk, watching the Jews as if
they were animals. At first the Jews kept their heads down and swept dutifully,
guarded by a village policeman, but then one of them lifted his head, he was no
more than a boy, and glanced at the villagers and the ball trapped under the
boot of one of those little rogues. For a few seconds I thought they would
start to play. Sweepers versus drunkards. But the policeman knew his job and
after a while the brigade of Jews had disappeared and the boys went back to
playing in the street with their poor excuse for a ball.

Once again, I buried myself in my paperwork. I addressed the
matter of a shipment of potatoes that had gotten lost somewhere between the
region under my oversight and the city of
Leipzig
,
which was its final destination. I ordered that the matter be investigated.
I've never trusted truck drivers. I addressed a matter involving beets. A
matter involving carrots. A matter involving ersatz coffee. I put a call
through to the mayor. One of my secretaries arrived with a document stating
that the potatoes had left my region by rail, not truck. The potatoes had
reached the station in carts drawn by mules or horses or donkeys, all of which
the peasants still kept, but not by truck. There was a copy of the shipping
receipt, but it had been lost. Find that copy, I ordered. Another of my
secretaries came in with the news that the mayor was ill in bed.

"Is it
serious?" I asked.

"A cold,"
said my secretary.

"Well, have
him get up and come in," I said.

When I was alone I started to think about my poor wife, confined
to her bed with the curtains drawn, and the thought made me so upset that I
began to pace my office, because if I sat still I ran the risk of suffering a
stroke. Then I saw the brigade of sweepers come back along the quite clean
street and I was suddenly paralyzed by the sense that time was repeating
itself.

But
thanks be to God, it wasn't the same sweepers. The problem was that they looked
so much alike. The policeman on guard, however, was different. The first
officer was tall and thin and very upright in his carriage. The second officer
was fat and short and sixty, though he looked ten years older. The Polish boys
playing soccer surely felt as I did and they stepped back up on the sidewalk to
let the Jews pass. One of the boys said something. From where I stood glued to
the window, I imagined he was insulting the Jews. I opened the window and
called to the policeman.

"Mr.
Mehnert," I called from above, "Mr. Mehnert." At first the
policeman didn't know who was calling him and he looked all around, confused,
which made the drunk boys laugh. "Up here, Mr. Mehnert, up here."

Finally
he saw me and stood to attention. The Jews stopped working and waited. All of
the drunk boys were staring up at my window.

"If any of
those little bastards insults my workers, shoot him, Mr. Mehnert," I said
loud enough so that everyone could hear me. "Everything is fine,
excellency," said Mr. Mehnert. "Did you hear me?" I shouted.
"Perfectly well, excellency." "Fire at will, at will, is that
clear, Mr. Mehnert?" "Clear as day, excellency."

Then
I closed the window and got back to business. I hadn't been studying a circular
from the Ministry of Propaganda for five minutes when one of my secretaries
interrupted me to say that the bread had been distributed to the Jews, but
there hadn't been enough for everyone. Also, as he oversaw the distribution, he
had discovered that two more had died. Two dead Jews? I repeated, dazed. But
they all got off the train on their own two feet! My secretary shrugged his
shoulders. They died, he said.

"My, my, my,
these are strange times we live in, aren't they?" I said. "They were
two old people," said my secretary. "An old man and an old woman, to
be precise." "And the bread?" I asked.

"There wasn't
enough for everyone," said my secretary. "That will have to be
fixed," I said.

"We'll
try," said my secretary, "but it's too late today, it'll have to be
tomorrow."

His tone was highly
disagreeable. I waved him out. I tried to concentrate on work again, but I
couldn't. I went over to the window. The drunk boys were gone. I decided to
take a walk, cold air has a calming effect and strengthens the constitution,
although I would just as soon have gone home, where a fire in the hearth and a
good book awaited me to while away the hours. Before I went out I told my
secretary that if anything urgent came up I could be found at the station bar.
Out in the street, as I came around a corner, I ran into the mayor, Mr.
Tippelkirsch, who was on his way to visit me. He was bundled in a coat and
several sweaters that gave him an exceedingly bulky look, with a scarf pulled
up to his nose. He explained that he hadn't been able to come before because he
was running a temperature of 104 degrees.

Let's
not exaggerate, I said without slowing my pace. Ask the doctor, he said behind
me. When we got to the station I ran into several peasants waiting for the
arrival of a regional train from the east, from General Government territory.
The train, they informed me, was an hour late. Nothing but bad news. I had
coffee with Mr. Tippelkirsch and we talked about the Jews. I've heard all about
it, said Mr. Tippelkirsch, clutching his cup of coffee in both hands. His hands
were very white and delicate, crisscrossed with veins.

For a moment I was put in mind of the hands of Christ. Hands
worthy of being painted. Then I asked what we should do. Send them back, said
Mr. Tippelkirsch. A rivulet ran from his nose. I pointed it out with my finger.
He didn't seem to understand. Blow your nose, I said. Oh, pardon me, he said,
and after searching his coat pockets he pulled out a white handkerchief, very
large and not very clean.

"How do we send them back?" I asked. "By chance do
I have a train at my disposal? And if I did, shouldn't I use it for something
more productive?"

A kind of spasm
shook the mayor and he shrugged.

"Put them to
work," he said.

"Then
who will feed them? The town? No, Mr. Tippelkirsch, I've considered every
possibility and there's only one answer: we must hand them over to another authority."

"And
what if, as a temporary measure, we lent a pair of Jews to each peasant in the
region, wouldn't that be a good idea?" asked Mr. Tippelkirsch. "At
least until we decide what to do with them."

I looked him in the
eye and lowered my voice:

"That's
against the law and you know it," I said.

"Yes,"
he said, "I know it, you know it, but our situation is grim and we could
use the help. I don't think the peasants will complain."

"No,
absolutely unthinkable," I said.

But
I thought about it and my thoughts plunged me into a deep, dark pit where all
that was visible, lit by sparks from who knows where, was my son's face,
flickering between life and death.

I was roused by the chatter of Mr. Tippelkirsch's teeth. Do you
feel unwell? I asked. He made as if to reply but couldn't and a few moments
later he fainted. From the bar, I called my office and asked them to send a
car. One of my secretaries told me he had managed to contact Greek Affairs in
Berlin
and it accepted
no responsibility for the matter. When the car appeared, between the owner of
the bar, a peasant, and myself we managed to get Mr. Tippelkirsch into it. I
told the driver to leave the mayor at home and then return to the station. In
the meantime I played a game of dice by the fire. A peasant who had emigrated
from
Estonia
won every match. His three sons were at the front and each time he won he said
something that struck me as very strange, even mysterious. Luck and death go
hand in hand, he said. And he gave us a sad-eyed look as if the rest of us
should take pity on him.

I think he was a popular man in the village, especially among the
Polish women, who had nothing to fear from a widower with three grown and
faraway sons, a common old man, as far as I could tell, but not as stingy as
most peasants, someone who every so often would make a gift to a woman of a bit
of food or an item of clothing in exchange for a night spent at his farm. Quite
the lothario. After a while, when the game was over, I bade farewell to those
present and returned to my offices.

I
called Chelmno again, but this time I couldn't get through. One of my
secretaries told me that the official at Greek Affairs in
Berlin
had suggested I call the General
Government SS headquarters. Rather foolish advice, since even though our town and
the surrounding region, villages and farms included, were just a few miles
outside the boundaries of General Government territory, we actually belonged
administratively to a German gau. What to do, then? I decided I'd had enough
for the day and turned my attention to other matters.

Before
I left for home I got a call from the station. The train still hadn't arrived.
Patience, I said. Inside I knew it would never come. On my way home it started
to snow.

The
next day I got up early and went to the club for breakfast. All the tables were
empty. After a while, perfectly dressed, combed, and shaved, two of my
secretaries appeared with the news that another pair or Jews had died during
the night. Of what? I asked. They didn't know. They were just dead. And this
time it wasn't two old people but a young woman and her child, approximately
eight months old.

Defeated,
I hung my head and stared at myself for a few seconds in the calm, dark surface
of my coffee. Maybe they died of cold, I said. It snowed last night. Could be,
said my secretaries. I felt as if everything were spinning around me.

"Let's go and
see those lodgings," I said.

"What
lodgings?" asked my secretaries, startled.

"The
place we've put the Jews," I said, already standing and moving toward the
door.

Just as I imagined, the old tannery couldn't have been in a worse
state. Even the officers on guard complained. One of my secretaries told me the
guards were cold at night and shifts weren't scrupulously observed. I told him
to fix the matter of shifts with the police chief and to bring them blankets.
The Jews, too, of course. The secretary whispered that it would be hard to find
blankets for all of them. I told him to try, I wanted to see at least half the
Jews with blankets.

"What about
the other half?" asked the secretary.

"If
they have any fellow feeling, each Jew will share his blanket with another, and
if not, that's their business, I've done all I can," I said.

On my way back to my office I noticed that the streets were
cleaner than they'd ever been. The rest of the day passed as usual, until that
night I received a call from
Warsaw
,
the Office of Jewish Affairs, an organization of whose existence I had
previously been unaware. A distinctly adolescent voice asked me whether it was
true that I had five hundred Greek Jews. I said yes and added that I didn't
know what to do with them, because no one had advised me of their arrival.

"It seems
there's been a mistake," said the voice.

"So it
seems," I said, and I was silent.

The silence lasted
for quite a while.

"That train should have unloaded in
Auschwitz
,"
said the adolescent's voice, "or at least I think so, I'm not quite sure.
Hold, please."

For ten minutes I stood with the phone to my ear. While I was
waiting, one of my secretaries appeared with some papers for me to sign and
another came in with a memorandum on low milk production in the region and yet
another came to say he had something to tell me, but I shushed him, so he wrote
what he had to say on a piece of paper: potatoes stolen in Leipzig by their own
growers. Which surprised me greatly because those potatoes had been grown on
German farms by people who had just settled in the region and were on their
best behavior.

"How?"
I wrote on the same paper. I don't know, wrote the secretary under my query,
possibly by forging shipping documents.