Spark of Life (3 page)

In the Veterans’ corner at this time lay a hundred and thirty-four skeletons. There was room enough for only forty. The bunks consisted of boards, four above one another. They were bare or covered with old rotting straw. There were only a few dirty blankets over which, each time the owners died, there was a bitter fight. On each bunk lay at least three or four men. That was too close even for skeletons; for shoulder and pelvic bones didn’t shrink. One gained
a little more space by lying sideways, packed like sardines, but even so one heard often enough at night the hollow thud of someone falling down in his sleep. Many slept crouching and the lucky one was he whose bedfellows died in the evening. They were then carried away, and for one night he could stretch out until new arrivals came.

The Veterans had secured for themselves the corner to the left of the door. They were still twelve men. Two months ago they had been forty-four. The winter had finished them off. They all knew they were in the last stages; the rations grew steadily smaller and sometimes there was nothing whatever to eat for one or two days; then the dead lay outside in heaps.

Of the twelve one was mad and believed he was a German sheep dog. He no longer had any ears; they had been torn off when SS dogs had been trained on him. The youngest Veteran was called Karel and was a boy from Czechoslovakia. His parents were dead; they manured a pious peasant’s potato field in the village of Westlage; for the ashes of the cremated were poured into sacks in the crematorium and sold as artificial manure. They were rich in phosphorous and calcium. Karel wore the red badge of the political prisoner. He was eleven years old.

The oldest Veteran was seventy-two. He was a Jew who fought for his beard. The beard belonged to his religion. The SS had forbidden it, but the man had kept on trying to let it grow. Each time in the labor camp he had been laid on the whipping block for it and given a hiding. In the Small camp he was luckier. Here the SS paid less attention to the rules and also checked up less frequently; they had too great a fear of lice, dysentery, typhoid and tuberculosis. The Pole, Julius Silber, had called the old man Ahasver because he had survived almost a dozen Dutch, Polish, Austrian and German concentration camps. Meanwhile Silber had died of typhoid and bloomed as a primrose plant in the garden of Commandant
Neubauer, who received the ashes of the dead free of charge; but the name Ahasver had remained. The old man’s face had shrunk in the Small camp, but the beard had grown and become the home and forest for generations of sturdy lice.

The room senior of the section was the former physician Dr. Ephraim Berger. He was important in the fight against death which closely surrounded the barrack. In winter when the skeletons had fallen on the slippery ice and broken their bones, he had been able to put on splints and save some of them. The hospital received no one from the Small camp; it existed only for those able to work and for prominent people. In the Big camp the ice in winter had also been less dangerous; during the worst days the road had been strewn with ashes from the crematorium, not out of consideration for the prisoners but to preserve the useful manpower. Since the incorporation of concentration camps into the general pooling of labor more importance had been attached to it. As compensation the prisoners of course had been worked to death faster. The losses didn’t matter; every day enough new men were arrested.

Berger was one of the few prisoners who had permission to leave the Small camp. For several weeks he had been occupied in the crematorium’s mortuary. In general, room seniors did not have to work, but there was a shortage of physicians; this was why he had been commandeered. It was to the advantage of the barrack; via the lazaret kapo, who had known Berger from earlier days, he could sometimes get some lysol, cotton wool, aspirin and similar things for the skeletons. He also possessed a bottle of iodine which he kept hidden under his straw.

The most important Veteran of all, though, was Leo Lebenthal. He had secret connections with the black market of the labor camp, and, so rumor had it, also with the outside. How he managed this no one exactly knew. It was known only that two whores from the establishment The Bat, which lay outside the town, belonged to it.
Even an SS-man was supposed to be part of it; but of this no one really knew anything. And Lebenthal said nothing.

He traded in everything. Through him one could get cigarette ends, a carrot, sometimes potatoes, leftovers from the kitchen, a bone, and now and again a slice of bread. He didn’t cheat anyone; he just kept things in circulation. The thought of secretly providing for himself never occurred to him. Trading kept him alive; not what he traded.

509 crawled through the door. The slanting sun behind him shone through his ears. For a moment they gleamed waxy and yellow on both sides of his dark head. “They have bombed the town,” he said, panting.

No one answered. 509 could not yet see anything; after the light outside it was too dark in the barrack. He closed his eyes and opened them again. “They have bombed the town,” he repeated. “Didn’t you hear it?”

Again no one said anything. Now 509 saw Ahasver near the door. He sat on the floor and stroked the sheep dog. The sheep dog growled; he was afraid. Over his scarred face hung the matted hair and through it sparkled the frightened eyes. “A thunderstorm,” murmured Ahasver. “Nothing but a thunderstorm! Quiet, wolf, quiet!”

509 crawled further into the barrack. He couldn’t understand that the others were so apathetic. “Where’s Berger?” he asked.

“Still in the crematorium.”

He laid the coat and jacket on the floor. “Do none of you want to go out?”

He glanced at Westhof and Bucher. They didn’t answer.

“You know it’s forbidden,” Ahasver finally said. “As long as the alarm is going.”

“The alarm is over.”

“Not yet.”

“It is. The planes have gone. They have bombed the town.”

“You’ve said that often enough,” growled someone from the dark.

Ahasver glanced up. “Maybe they’ll shoot a few dozen of us as punishment for it.”

“Shoot?” Westhof coughed. “Since when do they shoot people here?”

The sheep dog barked. Ahasver held him tight. “In Holland they used to shoot ten to twenty political prisoners after an air raid. So they shouldn’t get wrong ideas, they said.”

“We are not in Holland here.”

“I know that. All I said was that in Holland they shot people.”

“Shoot!” Westhof snorted contemptuously. “Are you a soldier that you make such claims? Here they hang and club to death.”

“They might shoot for a change.”

“Keep your damned mouth shut,” called the man from the dark.

509 squatted next to Bucher and closed his eyes. He still saw the smoke over the burning town and felt the hollow thunder of the explosions.

“D’you think we’ll get any food tonight?” asked Ahasver.

“Damn it,” answered the voice from the dark, “what else d’you want? First you want to be shot and then you ask for food.”

“A Jew must have hope.”

“Hope!” Westhof sniggered.

“What else?” asked Ahasver calmly.

Westhof gulped and suddenly began to sob. He had been stir-crazy for days.

509 opened his eyes. “Maybe they won’t give us anything to eat tonight,” he said. “To pay us out for the bombing.”

“You with your damned bombing,” shouted the man from the dark. “Do for God’s sake shut up!”

“Has anyone still got something to eat?” asked Ahasver.

“Oh God!” The caller in the dark almost suffocated over this new idiocy.

Ahasver didn’t pay any attention. “In Theresienstadt someone once had a piece of chocolate and didn’t know it. He had hidden it when he was brought there, and forgot it. Milk chocolate from an automat. There was also a picture of Hindenburg in the wrapping.”

“What else?” screamed the voice from the background. “A passport?”

“No, but we lived two days on the chocolate.”

“Who’s that screaming?” 509 asked Bucher.

“One of those who arrived yesterday. A new one. He’ll soon stop.”

Ahasver suddenly listened. “It’s over—”

“What?”

“Outside. That was the All Clear. The last signal.”

It suddenly became very quiet. Then steps could be heard. “Hide the sheep dog,” whispered Bucher.

Ahasver pushed the madman between the bunks. “Lie down! Quiet!” He had trained him to obey commands. Had the SS found him, they would immediately have him syringed as a madman.

Bucher returned from the door. “It’s Berger.”

Dr. Ephraim Berger was a small man with sloping shoulders and an egg-shaped head which was completely bald. His eyes were inflamed and watered.

“The town is burning,” he said, as he entered.

509 sat up. “What are they saying about it over there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not? You must have heard something.”

“No,” answered Berger, tired. “When the alarm came they stopped cremating.”

“Why?”

“How could I know that? Orders. That’s all.”

“And the SS? Did you see any of them?”

“No.”

Berger walked to the rear between the rows of boards. 509 followed him with his eyes. He had waited for Berger to speak to him and now he seemed as apathetic as the others. He didn’t understand it. “Don’t you want to go out?” he asked Bucher.

“No.”

Bucher was twenty-five years old and had been seven years in the camp. His father had been editor of a Social Democratic newspaper; that had been enough to have the son locked up. If he ever gets out of here, thought 509, he can live another forty years. Forty or fifty. Whereas I’m fifty. I have maybe ten, at the most twenty years. He drew a piece of wood from his pocket and began to chew on it. Why am I suddenly thinking of that? he thought.

Berger returned. “Lohmann wants to speak to you, 509.”

Lohmann lay in the rear section of the barrack on a lower bunk without straw. He had wanted it that way. He suffered from serious dysentery and could no longer get up. He thought it was cleaner that way. It wasn’t cleaner. But they were all used to those things. Almost everyone suffered more or less from diarrhea. For Lohmann it was torture. He lay on the point of death and apologized at each convulsion of his intestines. His face was so gray he could have been a bloodless Negro. He moved one hand and 509 bent over him. Lohmann’s eyeballs shone yellowish. “D’you see this?” he whispered, and opened his mouth wide.

“What?” 509 looked at the blue gums.

“In back, on the right—there’s a gold crown.”

Lohmann turned his head in the direction of the narrow window. The sun stood behind it and the barrack on this side had now a weak, rosy light.

“Yes,” said 509. “I see it.” He did not see it.

“Take it out.”

“What?”

“Take it out,” whispered Lohmann impatiently.

509 glanced over towards Berger. Berger shook his head. “But it’s fixed tight,” said 509.

“Then pull the tooth out. That’s not very tight. Berger can do it. He does it in the crematorium, too. The two of you can easily manage it.”

“Why do you want to have it out?”

Lohmann’s eyelids went slowly up and down. They looked like those of a turtle. They no longer had any lashes.

“You know why. Gold. You must buy food with it. Lebenthal can trade it.”

509 didn’t answer. To trade a gold crown was a dangerous job. As a rule gold fillings were registered on arrival in the camp and were later removed and collected in the crematorium. Whenever the SS noticed that a filling, registered in the lists, was missing, the whole barrack was made responsible. The inmates received no food until the filling was returned. The man on whom it was found was hanged.

“Pull it out!” panted Lohmann. “It’s easy! Pliers! Or even a wire is enough.”

“We haven’t any pliers.”

“A wire! Bend a piece of wire into shape.”

“We haven’t any wire, either.”

Lohmann’s eyes closed. He was exhausted. The lips moved, but
no more words came. The body was motionless and very flat, and only the curling of the dark dry lips was still there—a tiny center of life into which quietness was already entering with a leaden flow.

509 raised himself and glanced at Berger. Lohmann could not see their faces; the boards of the upper bunks were between them.

“How is it going with him?”

“Too late for everything.”

509 nodded. It had been so often like this that he no longer felt much. The slanting sun fell on five men who were crouching like withered monkeys on the top bunk. “Is he going to kick off soon?” asked one of them, scratching his armpit and yawning.

“Why?”

“We’ll get his bunk, Kaiser and I.”

“You’ll get it all right.”

509 glanced a moment into the hovering light which did not seem to belong to the stinking room. In this light the skin of the man who had asked the question looked like that of a leopard; it was sewn over with black spots. The man began to eat the rotten straw. A few bunks further on two men were quarreling in high thin voices. Feeble slappings were heard.

509 felt a slight pulling on his leg; Lohmann was plucking at his pants. He bent down again.

“Pull it out,” Lohmann whispered.

509 sat down on the edge of the bunk. “We can’t swap it for anything. It’s too dangerous. No one will risk it.”

Lohmann’s mouth trembled. “They must not have it,” he uttered with difficulty. “Not them! I paid forty-five marks for it. 1929. Not them! Pull it out!”

He suddenly doubled up and moaned. The skin of his face puckered up only round the eyes and the lips—elsewhere there were no muscles left to show pain.

After a while he stretched out. A pitiful sound came with the air
pressed out of his chest. “Don’t worry about it,” Berger said to him. “We still have some water left. It doesn’t matter. We’ll get rid of it.”

For a while Lohmann lay still. “Promise me you’ll take it out—before they fetch me,” he whispered. “When I’m gone. Then it’ll be easy.”

“All right,” said 509. “Wasn’t it registered when you arrived?”

“No. Promise me! For certain!”

“For certain.”

Lohmann’s eyes filmed over and grew calm. “What was that—just now—outside?”