Spark of Life (28 page)

Sulzbacher got up. “I’m going,” he said. “I’m going to ask for a priest.”

“Where?” asked Lebenthal.

“Anywhere. In the office. From the guards.”

“Don’t be crazy. There are no priests here. The SS won’t stand for it. They’ll throw you in the bunker.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Lebenthal stared at Sulzbacher. “Berger, 509,” he said then. “Did you hear that?”

Sulzbacher’s face was very pale. His jawbones stood out sharply. He didn’t look at anyone. “It won’t be any use,” said Berger to him. “It’s forbidden. Nor do we know any priest among the prisoners. Do you imagine we wouldn’t have fetched him already?”

“I’m going,” answered Sulzbacher.

“Suicide!” Lebenthal tugged at his hair. “And for an anti-Semite as well!”

Sulzbacher’s jaws were working. “All right, for an anti-Semite.”

“
Meschugge!
One more
Meschugge!
”

“All right,
Meschugge
, I’m going.”

“Bucher, Berger, Rosen,” said 509 calmly.

Bucher was already standing behind Sulzbacher with a stick. He banged him on the head. Though the blow wasn’t hard, it was enough to make Sulzbacher reel. Then they all dragged him down and rolled on top of him. “Give me the sheep dog’s straps, Ahasver,” said Berger.

They tied Sulzbacher’s hands and feet and let him go.

“If you yell, we’ll have to stuff something in your mouth,” said 509.

“You don’t understand me—”

“Yes, we do. You stay like this till your fit’s over. We’ve lost enough people this way already.”

They rolled him into a corner and didn’t take any more notice of him. Rosen raised himself. “He’s still confused,” he murmured, as though he ought to ask forgiveness for him. “You must try to understand. His brother that time—”

Ammers had grown hoarse. He could only just whisper. “Where is he? Where—the priest—”

By now they had all had enough. “Is there really no priest or sexton or acolyte in the barracks?” asked Bucher. “Anyone to make him quiet.”

“There used to be four in Barrack 17. One has been set free; two are dead; and the other is in the bunker,” said Lebenthal. “Breuer beats him up every morning with a chain. He calls it ‘reading the Mass with him.’ ”

“Please,” Ammers continued whispering. “For Christ’s sake, a—”

“I believe there’s a man in Section B who knows Latin,” said Ahasver. “I once heard about it. Couldn’t we get him?”

“What’s his name?”

“I’m not sure. Dellbruck or Hellbruck or something like that. The room senior is bound to know it.”

509 got up. “That’s Mahner. We can ask him.”

He walked over with Berger.

“It may be Hellwig,” said Mahner. “That’s the one who speaks languages. He’s a bit mad. He recites off and on. He’s in A.”

“That’ll be him.”

They walked to Section A. There, Mahner talked to the room senior, a tall thin man with a pear-shaped head. The pear-head shrugged his shoulders. Mahner walked into the labyrinth of bunks, legs, arms and moaning and called out the name.

A few minutes later he returned. A suspicious-looking man followed him. “That’s him,” said Mahner to 509. “Let’s go out. One can’t hear a word in here.”

509 explained the situation to Hellwig. “Do you speak Latin?” he asked.

“Yes.” Hellwig’s face twitched nervously. “D’you realize they’ll be stealing my food bowl now?”

“Why?”

“They steal here. Yesterday my spoon disappeared while I was sitting on the latrine. I had hidden it under my bunk. Now I’ve left my food bowl inside.”

“Then get it.”

Hellwig disappeared without a word. “He won’t come back,” said Mahner.

They waited. It turned darker. Shadows were creeping out of shadows; darkness out of the darkness of the barracks. Then Hellwig appeared. He held the food bowl pressed to his chest.

“I don’t know how much Ammers understands,” said 509. “Certainly not more than
Ego te absolvo
. That might have stayed in his memory. If you say that to him and anything else that occurs to you—”

Hellwig’s long legs doubled up while walking. “Virgil?” he asked. “Horace?”

“Don’t you know anything ecclesiastical?”

“Credo in unum Deum—”

“Very good.”

“Or
Credo quia absurdum est—
”

509 glanced up. He looked into two strangely restless eyes. “We all do that,” he said.

Hellwig stood still. He pointed with a knobby forefinger at 509 as though he wanted to spear him. “This is a sacrilege, you know that. But I’m going to do it. He doesn’t need me. There is a repentance and an absolution of sin without confession.”

“Maybe he can’t repent without someone being present.”

“I’m doing it only to help him. In the meantime they’re stealing my portion of soup.”

“Mahner will keep your soup for you,” said 509. “But give me your food bowl. I’ll look after it for you while you’re inside.”

“Why?”

“He might be more likely to believe in you without a food bowl.”

“Good.”

They walked through the door. Now the front of the barrack was almost in darkness too. Ammers could be heard whispering. “Here,” said 509. “We’ve found one, Ammers.”

Ammers fell silent. “Really?” he then asked clearly. “Is he here?”

“Yes.”

Hellwig bent down. “Glory be to Jesus Christ.”

“For ever and ever, Amen,” whispered Ammers with the voice of a surprised child.

They began murmuring. 509 and the others walked out. Outside, the late evening lay very still over the forests on the horizon. 509 sat down with his back to the barrack wall. It had still kept some warmth from the sun. Bucher came and sat down beside him. “Strange,” he said. “Sometimes hundreds die and one doesn’t feel anything, and then a single man dies, one who doesn’t even concern us much—and it seems as though it were a thousand.”

509 nodded. “Imagination cannot count. And feeling does not grow stronger through numbers. It can never count beyond one. One—but that’s enough if one feels it.”

Hellwig came out of the barrack. He came through the door stooping, and for a moment it was as though he carried the stinking darkness as a shepherd carries a black sheep on his shoulders, in order to take it away and wash it in the pure evening. Then he straightened himself and was once more a prisoner.

“Was it a sacrilege?” asked 509.

“No. I didn’t perform any clerical act. I helped him only with the repentance.”

“I wish we had something for you. A cigarette or a piece of bread.” 509 handed the food bowl back to Hellwig. “But we haven’t anything ourselves. All we can offer you is Ammers’ soup if he dies before supper. We’ll still get his portion tonight.”

“I don’t need anything. Nor do I want anything. It would be a dirty trick to take anything for that.”

Only then did 509 notice that there were tears in Hellwig’s eyes. He looked at him in utter amazement. “Is he calm?” he asked.

“Yes. At noon today he stole a piece of bread belonging to you. He wanted me to tell you.”

“I knew that.”

“He’d like you to come in. He wants to apologize to you all.”

“For God’s sake, why that?”

“He wants to—especially to one called Lebenthal.”

“Do you hear, Leo?” asked 509.

“He wants to make his deal with God before it’s too late. That’s what it is,” declared Lebenthal, unforgiving.

“I don’t think so.” Hellwig took his food bowl under his arm. “Funny, I once really wanted to be a priest,” he said. “Then I ran away. Don’t understand it any more now. Wish I’d done it.” He let his strange eyes flutter over the sitting men. “One suffers less if one believes in something.”

“Yes. But there are a lot of things one can believe in. Not only God.”

“Certainly.” Hellwig suddenly answered with the politeness of someone standing in a salon holding a discussion. He held his head slightly askew as though listening for something. “It was a kind of emergency confession,” he said then. “Private baptisms have always
existed. Emergency confessions—” His face twitched. “A question for the theologians—good evening, gentlemen.”

Like a giant spider, he stalked toward his section. The others gazed after him, dumbfounded. It was the farewell greeting that had dumbfounded them. Gentlemen! They hadn’t heard anything like that since they’d been in the camp. “Go to Ammers, Leo,” said Berger, after a while. “After all, why not?”

Lebenthal hesitated. “Go on,” repeated Berger. “Otherwise he’ll start yelling again. The rest of us will now unstrap Sulzbacher.

The dusk had turned into a light darkness. A church bell was ringing up from the town. In the furrows of the fields lay deep blue and violet shadows.

They were sitting in a small group in front of the barrack. Inside, Ammers was still dying. Sulzbacher had recovered. He sat ashamed beside Rosen.

Lebenthal suddenly raised himself. “What’s that there?”

He stared through the barbed wire at the fields. Something there flitted back and forth, stopped, and flitted on.

“A hare,” said Karel, the boy from Czechoslovakia.

“Bunk! How d’you know what a hare looks like?”

“There used to be some at home. I saw lots when I was young. I mean, at the time when I was free,” said Karel. For him his youth had stopped when he came to the camp. At the time when his parents had been gassed.

“It actually is a hare.” Bucher screwed up his eyes. “Or a rabbit. No, it’s too big for that.”

“Merciful God!” said Lebenthal. “A live hare!”

Now they all saw it. For a moment it sat upright and its long ears stood up. Then it loped on.

“Imagine if it came in here!” Lebenthal’s denture rattled. He was thinking of Bethke’s fake hare, the dachshund, for which he had given up Lohmann’s gold tooth. “We could swap it. We wouldn’t eat it ourselves. We’d swap it for two, no two and a half times as much offal-meat.”

“We wouldn’t swap it. We’d eat it ourselves,” said Meyerhof.

“Really? And who’d roast it? Or would you rather eat it raw? If you gave it to someone to roast, you’d never get it back,” declared Lebenthal heatedly. “Funny what some people know without having left the barrack for weeks.”

Meyerhof was one of the wonders of Barrack 22. He had been lying around for three weeks on the point of death with pneumonia and dysentery. He had been so weak that he hadn’t been able to speak. Berger had given him up. Then, in a few days, he had suddenly recovered. He had risen from the dead. For this reason Ahasver had called him Lazarus Meyerhof. Today he was outside again for the first time. Berger had forbidden it; but he had crawled out all the same. He wore Lebenthal’s coat, the dead Buchsbaum’s sweater and a Hussar tunic which someone had been given as a jacket. The bullet-pierced surplice which Rosen had received as underwear was wrapped around his neck as a scarf. Every Veteran had contributed towards fitting him out for his first excursion; each of them considered his recovery a personal triumph.

“If it tried to get in here, it would run into the electric wire. Then it would be roasted on the spot,” said Meyerhof hopefully. “One could pull it in here with a dry stick.”

They watched the animal with eager attention. It loped through the furrows, stopping off and on to listen. “The SS will shoot it for themselves,” declared Berger.

“That’s not so easy with a bullet in the dark,” answered 509. “The SS are only used to shooting men, in the back and at a few yards’ range.”

“A hare.” Ahasver moved his lips. “What that must taste like!”

“It tastes like a hare,” explained Lebenthal. “The best part is the back, it must be larded. Bits of lard are stuck into it, to make it more juicy. With it goes a cream sauce. That’s how the Gojim eat it.”

“With mashed potatoes,” said Meyerhof.

“Nonsense, mashed potatoes. Chestnuts and cranberries.”

“Mashed potatoes are better. Chestnuts! They’re for Italians.”

Lebenthal stared at Meyerhof, annoyed. “Listen—” he began.

Ahasver interrupted him. “What’s the good of a hare? I’d rather have a goose than all the hares in the world. A fine stuffed goose—”

“Stuffed with apples—”

“Shut up!” someone shouted from behind. “Are you crazy? That’s the way to go off one’s head!”

Bent forward, they crouched and followed the hare with eyes sunk deep in their skulls. At a distance of barely a hundred yards a dream meal was leaping about, a furry bundle containing several pounds of meat which could have saved a number of their lives. Meyerhof felt it in all his bones and intestines. For him the animal would have been an assurance against a relapse. “All right, with chestnuts, too, for all I care!” he squawked. His mouth was all of a sudden as dry and dusty as a coal cellar.

The hare raised itself and sniffed. At this moment one of the dozing SS guards must have seen it. “Edgar! Man alive! A long-ear!” he yelled. “At it!”

A few shots rang out. Earth flew up. In long bounds, the hare leapt away. “You see,” said 509, “they can only hit prisoners from the closest range. For that they then get a furlough and decorations.”

Lebenthal sighed and stared after the hare.