Spark of Life (24 page)

Rosen moved closer. “I have some money,” he whispered to 509. “Take it. I had it hidden and brought it in. Here, forty marks. Give it to him. That’s how we did it in the other place.”

He thrust the bills into his hand. 509 fingered them and took them almost without realizing what he was doing. “It won’t help,” he said. “He’ll pocket it and still do as he likes.”

“Then promise him more.”

“Where shall we get any more?”

“Lebenthal has some,” declared Berger. “Haven’t you, Leo?”

“Yes, I have some. But once we whet his appetite for money he’ll come every day and demand more, till we’ve nothing left. Then we’d soon be back where we are now. Except that the money would be gone.”

Everyone was silent. No one found Lebenthal’s statement brutal. It was matter of fact, nothing else. The question was whether it was worth sacrificing all Lebenthal’s chances for trading, simply to gain a few days’ reprieve for 509. The Veterans would get less food, possibly so much less that some or all of them would be bound to perish. None would have hesitated to give up everything if by so doing 509 could really have been saved; but this seemed unlikely if Handke meant business. In this, Lebenthal was right. To prolong the life of a single man for a mere two or three days wasn’t worth risking the lives of a dozen. This was the camp’s unwritten, merciless law by which they had so far survived. They all knew it; but in
this case they didn’t yet want to admit it. They were searching for a way out.

“We ought to kill the bastard,” Bucher said hopelessly at last.

“What with?” asked Ahasver. “He’s ten times as strong as we are.”

“If we all together with our food bowls—”

Bucher fell silent. He knew it was idiotic. A dozen people would be hanged if they succeeded. “Is he still standing there?” asked Berger.

“Yes. On the same spot.”

“Maybe he’ll forget it.”

“Then he wouldn’t be waiting. He said he’d wait till after we’ve eaten.”

A deadly silence hung in the darkness. “At least you can give him the forty marks,” said Rosen to 509 after some time. “They belong to you personally. I’m giving them to you. I to you personally. It has nothing to do with anyone else.”

“Correct,” declared Lebenthal. “That’s correct.”

509 stared out through the door. He saw the dark figure of Handke standing against the gray sky. Some time ago, there had been something similar—a dark head against the sky and a great danger. He didn’t remember exactly when. He looked out through the door again and wondered why he was so undecided. A dim vague resistance had formed in him. It was a resistance against attempting to bribe Handke. He had never known anything like this before; there had always been only utter fear.

“Go over to him,” said Rosen. “Give him the money and promise him more.”

509 hesitated. He didn’t understand himself. He knew bribery wouldn’t be much use if Handke were really determined to ruin him. He had seen many such cases in the camp; they had taken
from the men what they possessed and later finished them off so they couldn’t talk. But a day of life was a day of life—and in the meanwhile many things could happen.

“Here come the food carriers,” reported Karel.

“Listen,” Berger whispered to 509, “try it. Give him the money. If he comes back later wanting more, we’ll threaten to denounce him for corruption. We have a dozen witnesses. That’s a lot. We’ll all declare we saw it. Then he won’t risk anything. It’s the only thing we can do.”

“He’s coming,” whispered Sulzbacher from outside.

Handke had turned around. He came walking slowly toward Section D. “Where are you, you bastard?” he asked.

509 stepped forward. It was pointless to go on hiding. “Here.”

“All right. I’m going now. Say good-by and make your will. They’ll fetch you later. With drums and trumpets.”

He grinned. The remark about the will he considered an excellent joke. The one about the drums and trumpets, too. Berger nudged 509. 509 took a further step forward. “May I talk to you for a moment?”

“You to me? Ridiculous!”

Handke walked toward the exit. 509 followed him. “I have some money,” he said to Handke’s back.

“Money? So? How much?” Handke walked on. He didn’t turn round.

“Twenty marks.” 509 had meant to say forty; but the strange inner resistance prevented him. He felt it like a kind of obstinacy; he offered half the money for his life.

“Twenty marks and two pfennigs! Push off, man!”

Handke walked faster. 509 managed to catch up with him. “Twenty marks is better than nothing.”

“Shit!”

There was no longer any point in offering forty now. 509 was
aware of having made a mistake that could never be repaired. He should have offered it all. His stomach suddenly dropped into an abyss. The resistance he had felt before was gone.

“I have still more money,” he said quickly.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Handke stood still. “A capitalist! A croak-capitalist! How much more have you got, then?”

509 took a breath. “Five thousand Swiss francs!”

“What?”

“Five thousand Swiss francs. They’re in a bank safe in Zurich.” Handke laughed. “And you expect me to believe that, you wretched rag?”

“I wasn’t always a wretched rag.”

For a while Handke stared at 509. “I’ll transfer half of the money to you,” said 509 hastily. “A simple transference is all that’s necessary, and it’s yours. Two thousand five hundred Swiss francs.” He looked into the hard expressionless face before him. “The war’s going to be over soon. Money in Switzerland will come in handy then.” He waited. Handke still wasn’t answering. “When the war has been lost,” 509 added slowly.

Handke raised his head. “So,” he said in a low voice. “You’re already counting on that, what? Worked it all neatly out, eh? You can bet your life we’ll spoil that for you all right! Got yourself in a fine mess—now the political department has you, too—illegal foreign currency abroad! And this on top of the other. Man, I wouldn’t want to have your head on my shoulders!”

“To have two thousand five hundred francs or not to have them is not the same—”

“Nor is it for you. Go to hell!” Handke suddenly bellowed, and shoved 509 so hard in the chest that he collapsed.

509 got up slowly. Berger approached. Handke had disappeared in the dark. 509 knew there was no longer any point in running after him.

“What’s happened?” asked Berger quickly.

“He didn’t take it.”

Berger didn’t answer. He looked at 509. 509 saw that Berger had a stick in his hand. “I even offered him much more,” he said. “He didn’t want it.” He gazed around, bewildered. “I must have done something wrong. I don’t know what.”

“What on earth has he got against you?”

“He never could stand me.” 509 wiped his brow. “It’s all the same now. I even offered him money in Switzerland. Francs. Two thousand five hundred. He didn’t want it.”

They arrived at the barrack. They didn’t need to say anything; the others already knew what was up. All of them stood where they had been standing before; no one moved away—but it was as if an empty space had already formed around 509, an invisible uncrossable ring, isolating him; the loneliness of death.

“Damn it!” said Rosen.

509 looked at him. That morning he had saved him. It was strange that he had been able to do that, and that now he was already some place from which he could no longer stretch out a hand. “Give me the watch,” he said to Lebenthal.

“Come into the barrack,” said Berger. “We must think it over.”

“No. Now there’s nothing to do but wait. Give me the watch. And leave me alone—”

He sat alone. The hands of the watch gleamed greenish in the darkness. Thirty minutes of time, he thought. Ten minutes to the administration buildings; ten minutes for the report and the orders; ten minutes back. A half circle of the big hand—that was now his life.

Maybe it was more, he suddenly thought. If Handke had made the report about the Swiss money, the political department would
interfere. They would try to get hold of the money and let him live until they got it. When he had mentioned it to Handke he hadn’t thought of that—only of the greediness of the block senior. It was a chance. But he wasn’t sure whether Handke would report it. Maybe he had reported merely that Weber wanted to see 509.

Bucher came silently through the dark. “Here’s still a cigarette left,” he said hesitatingly. “Berger wants you to come in and smoke it.”

Cigarette. Correct, the Veterans had one left. One of those Lewinsky had produced after the days in the bunker. The bunker—now he knew who the dark figure against the sky had been, whom Handke had reminded him of, and where he had seen it. It had been Weber. Weber, with whom everything had started.

“Come,” said Bucher.

509 shook his head. The cigarette. The condemned man’s last breakfast. The condemned man’s cigarette. How long did it take to smoke a cigarette? Five minutes? Ten, if one smoked slow? A third of his time. Too much. He had other things to do. But what? There was nothing to be done. His mouth was suddenly dry with lust for the tobacco. He didn’t want it. If he smoked he admitted he was lost.

“Go away!” he whispered, furious. “Go away with your filthy cigarette!”

He remembered a similar lust. This time he didn’t have to think for long. It had been Neubauer’s cigar at the time when Weber had beaten up Bucher and himself. Weber, again. As usual. As years ago—

He didn’t want to think of Weber. Not now. He looked at the watch. Five minutes had passed. He looked at the sky. The night was humid and very mild. It was a night in which everything grew. A night of roots and buds. Spring. The first spring of hope. It had been a ragged, desperate hope, only the shadow of a hope; a strange
faint echo out of dead years, but even this had been enormous and had made one giddy and changed everything. He shouldn’t have told Handke the war was lost, something thought in him.

Too late. He had done it. The sky seemed to grow darker, dustier, more charred, lower, a boundless lid lowering itself, full of threats. 509 breathed with difficulty. He longed to crawl away, stick his head in a corner, hide it in the earth, save it, tear his heart out, hide it, so that it would continue to beat if—

Fourteen minutes. A murmuring behind him, monotonous, singing. Ahasver, he thought. Ahasver praying. He heard it and it seemed to take hours before he could remember what it was. It was the same murmuring and singing he had often heard—the prayer for the dead, Kaddish. Ahasver was already saying Kaddish over him. “I’m not dead yet, old man,” he said to the rear. “Nowhere near. Stop your praying—”

Someone answered. It was Bucher. “He’s not praying,” he said.

509 didn’t hear it any more. He suddenly felt it coming. He had learned to know many fears in his life; he knew the gray mollusk-like fear of endless captivity; he knew the sharp tearing fear immediately before torture; he knew the deep fleeting fear of one’s own despair—he knew them all and he had conquered them, he knew them, but he also knew about the other, the last one, and he knew it was here now—the fear of fears, the great fear of death. He hadn’t had it for years and he had thought that it never would come back, that he couldn’t feel it any more, that it had been absorbed by the misery, by the continual proximity of death, and by the final indifference. Not even when he had gone to the office with Bucher had he known it—but now he felt its icy drops in his vertebrae, and he realized that it had happened because he had known hope again; he felt it and it was ice and emptiness and falling apart and soundless scream. He held his hands propped against the ground and stared straight ahead. This was no longer a sky; this
sucking deadly menace there over him! Where was the life beneath? Where was the sweet sound of growth? Where were the buds? Where the echo, the gentle echo of hope? Flickering, extinguishing in bitter agonies, the last miserable spark hissed in the intestines and, leaden, froze the world in plunging fear.

The murmuring. What had happened to the murmuring? There was even no murmuring any more. Very slowly 509 raised his hand. He hesitated before opening it as though it held a diamond that could have changed into coal. Releasing his fingers, he still waited the length of several breaths before looking at the two pale lines encircling his fate.

Thirty-five minutes. Thirty-five! Five minutes more than the thirty on which he had counted. Five more; five terribly precious, important minutes. But it was possible that it had taken five minutes more to get the report to the political department—or Handke had allowed himself more time.

Another seven minutes. 509 sat still. He breathed and he was aware again that he was breathing. There was still nothing to be heard. No steps, no clanking, no shouts. The sky was there again and receded. It was no longer black oppression and funeral clouds. Wind filtered through.

Twenty minutes. Thirty. Someone sighed behind him. The brighter sky. Further away. The echo again, a most remote heartbeat, the tiny drum of the pulse, and more: the echo within the echo, hands that again were hands, the spark—not extinguished—glimmering again and stronger than before. One degree stronger. One degree that had been added by the fear. Feebly the left hand let the watch drop.

“Maybe—” whispered Lebenthal behind 509 and fell silent, frightened and superstitious.

Time suddenly meant nothing any longer. It melted away. Melted away in all directions. Time—water flowing away somewhere
downhill. It was no surprise when Berger picked up the watch and said, “One hour, ten minutes. Nothing will happen any more today. Maybe never, 509. Maybe he has thought it over.”

“Yes,” said Rosen.

509 turned round. “Leo, aren’t the girls coming tonight?”

Lebenthal stared at him. “You’re thinking of that now?”

“Yes.”

Of what else? thought 509. Of anything that takes me away from that fear, which has turned my bones into gelatine. “We have money,” he said. “I offered Handke only twenty marks.”

“You offered him only twenty marks?” asked Lebenthal, incredulous.

“Yes. Twenty or forty comes to the same. If he wants to, he’ll take it, that’s all, and it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s twenty or forty.”