Spark of Life (40 page)

“Who’d talk nonsense about something like that?”

“I mean, aren’t you fooling yourselves?”

“No,” said 509.

“D’you understand anything about it?”

“Yes.”

“My God!” Rosen’s face grew distorted. He suddenly began to sob.

509 continued to listen. “When the wind changes we’re bound to hear it more distinctly.”

“How far away d’you think they are?” asked Bucher.

“I can’t say for sure. Fifty kilometers. Sixty. Not much further.”

“Fifty kilometers. That’s not far.”

“No, that’s not far.”

“They must have tanks,” Bucher continued. “They can go fast.
If they break through—how many days d’you think they’ll need—maybe only one—” He stopped.

“One day?” repeated Lebenthal. “What are you saying? One day?”

“If they break through. Yesterday we heard nothing. Today they are there. Tomorrow it can be closer. The day after tomorrow—or the day after the day after tomorrow—”

“Don’t talk! Don’t say such things! Don’t drive people crazy!” shouted Lebenthal suddenly.

“It is possible, Leo,” said 509.

“No!” shouted Lebenthal and buried his face in his hands.

“What do you mean, 509?” Bucher’s face was deathly pale and excited. “The day after tomorrow? Or how many days?”

“Days!” Lebenthal shouted again and let his hands drop. “How can it all of a sudden be only days?” he murmured. “Years, eternities, and now suddenly you’re talking about days, days! Don’t lie!” He came closer. “Don’t lie,” he whispered. “I implore you, don’t lie.”

“Who’d think of lying at a moment like this?”

509 turned around. Goldstein stood directly behind him. He was smiling. “I can hear it, too,” he said. His eyes grew larger and larger and very black. He smiled and raised his arms and one leg as though about to dance, and smiled no longer and fell forward.

“He has fainted,” said Lebenthal. “Open his jacket. I’ll get some water. There must still be some in the trough.”

Bucher, Sulzbacher, Rosen and 509 turned Goldstein around. “Shall we fetch Berger?” asked Bucher. “Can he get up?”

“Wait.”

509 bent close over Goldstein. He unbuttoned his jacket and trouser belt. When he straightened himself Berger was there. Lebenthal had let him know. “You were supposed to stay in your bunk,” said 509.

Berger knelt down beside Goldstein and examined him. It didn’t take long. “He’s dead,” he declared. “Probably heart failure. It was bound to happen. They completely ruined his heart here.”

“But he heard it,” said Bucher. “That’s the main thing. He heard it.”

“What?”

509 put his arm around Berger’s narrow shoulders. “Ephraim,” he said gently, “I think the day has come.”

“What?”

Berger looked up. 509 suddenly realized it was hard for him to speak. “The—” he said and paused and pointed towards the horizon. “They’re coming, Ephraim. We can hear them.” He looked at the palisades and the machine-gun towers which swam in the milky white. “They’ve arrived, Ephraim—”

At noon the wind veered round and the rumbling grew more distinct.

It was like a distant electric contact that flashed across into thousands of single hearts. The barracks grew restless. Only a few labor gangs were sent out. Everywhere faces were pressed against the windows. Again and again thin figures appeared before the doors and stood there, craning their necks.

“Has it come nearer?”

“Yes, it seems to be getting more distinct.”

In the boot department everyone worked in dead silence. The kapos saw to it that no one spoke. The SS supervisor was present. The knives severed the leather, cutting out rotten parts, and in many hands they felt different. Not like tools; like weapons. Here and there a cautious glance was directed at the kapos, the SS, and the revolvers and the tommy gun which had not been there the previous day. But in spite of the supervisor’s strict vigilance, every
single man in the department knew precisely what was going on throughout the day. Over the years most of them had learned how to speak without moving their lips; and each time, after the baskets full of the leather strips had been emptied and carried away, the report of the carrier who had been in contact with others outside soon spread through the groups of those within: the rumbling could still be heard. It had not ceased.

The outside gangs were doubly guarded. They marched around the town and then from the west into the old quarter toward the Market Place. The guards were very nervous. They yelled and gave commands without rhyme or reason; the prisoners marched in perfect order. So far they had cleared up only in the new sections of the town; now for the first time they came to the interior of the Old Town and saw the devastation there. They saw the burnt-out remains of the quarter in which the medieval houses of wood had stood. Almost nothing of them was left. They saw it and marched through it and the inhabitants who had stayed behind stood still or turned away as they passed by. They marched on and they no longer felt like prisoners. In a mysterious way they had gained a victory without having been present, and the years of captivity suddenly appeared no longer like years of defenseless defeat, but like years of battle. And the battle was won. They had survived.

They came to the Market Place. The Town Hall had entirely collapsed. They were given picks and shovels to clear away the rubble. They set to work. It smelled of burning; but beneath it they recognized again the other smell, sweetish, putrid, pressing against the stomach, the smell they knew better than any other; the stench of putrefaction. In the warm April days the town smelled of the bodies still buried in the debris.

After working for two hours they found their first body under the rubble. At first they saw only its boots. It was an SS senior squad leader.

“The worm has turned,” whispered Muenzer. “It has turned at last! Now we’re digging up their dead. Their dead!”

He continued to work with renewed strength. “Look out!” bellowed a guard, approaching. “There’s someone lying there, can’t you see?”

They shoveled away more rubble. Shoulders emerged and then a head. They raised up the dead man and dragged him aside.

“Carry on!” The SS-man was nervous. He stared at the body. “Go slow from now on!”

In quick succession they dug up three more Party members and laid them with the first. They carried them away by their boots and uniformed arms. For them it was an unprecedented experience; so far they had carried only their comrades in this way, beaten up and dirty, from the bunkers, from the torture chambers, dying or dead, and then during recent days a number of civilians. Now for the first time they were carrying their enemies. They went on working and there was no need for anyone to drive them on. Sweat poured down their bodies, so hard did they work to find more corpses. With strength they had never suspected, they lugged away beams and iron girders, and full of hatred and satisfaction they dug for the dead as though digging for gold.

After another hour they found Dietz. He had broken his neck. His head was pressed so hard into his chest it looked as though he had been trying to bite his own throat. They didn’t touch him right away. They first shoveled him completely free. Both arms were broken. They lay there as though they had a joint too many.

“There is a God,” whispered the man beside Muenzer without looking at anyone. “There’s still a God! There is a God!”

“Shut up!” shouted an SS-man. “What did you say?” He kicked the man in the knees. “What did you say? I saw you talking.”

The man got up. He had fallen over Dietz. “I said we ought to make a stretcher for the Herr Senior Group Leader,” he answered
with an expressionless face. “We can’t just carry him like the others.”

“You have nothing to say here! Here we still give orders! Got that?”

“Yes.”

Still
, Lewinsky had heard.
Still give orders
. So they know it, he thought. He raised his shovel.

The SS-man looked at Dietz. Automatically he sprang to attention. This saved the prisoner who believed once more in God. The SS-man turned around and went to get the squad leader. He also assumed something like a military attitude.

“The stretchers haven’t arrived yet,” declared the SS-man. The answer of the man who believed once more in God had evidently made an impression on him. A high-ranking officer like that really shouldn’t be dragged away by his arms and legs.

The squad leader looked around. He noticed a door lying a short distance away in the rubble. “Dig that thing out! We must make shift with that for the time being.” He saluted in the direction of Dietz. “Lay the Herr Senior Group Leader carefully on that door over there.”

Muenzer, Lewinsky and two others fetched the door. It was a piece of sixteenth century carving representing the discovery of Moses. It had a crack and was charred. They seized Dietz by his legs and shoulders and carried him towards the door. The arms dangled and the head drooped very far back.

“Take care, you lousy dogs!” bellowed the squad leader. The body of the dead man lay on the wide door. From under his right arm smiled the infant Moses in his basket among the rushes. Muenzer noticed it. They forgot to remove the door from the Town Hall, he thought. Moses. Jewish. All this has already happened before. Pharaoh. Tyranny. Red Sea. Deliverance.

“Eight men! Take hold of it!”

Twelve men sprang towards it with unusual speed. The squad leader gazed about him. Opposite stood the half burned-out church of St. Mary’s. He deliberated for a moment, but promptly dismissed the thought. One couldn’t take Dietz into a Catholic church. He would have liked to telephone for instructions, but the telephone service had been put out of action. He had to do what he hated and feared most—act on his own.

Muenzer said something. The squad leader noticed it. “What? What did you say? Step forward, you lousy dog!”

Lousy dog
seemed to be his favorite expression. Muenzer stepped forward and stood at attention. “I said I thought it might be beneath the dignity of a senior group leader to be carried by mere prisoners.”

Steadily and respectfully he looked at the squad leader. “What?” shouted the leader. “What? Lousy dog! What’s that got to do with you? Who else? We have—”

He fell silent. Muenzer’s argument seemed to make sense. The dead man should actually have been carried by the SS; but meanwhile the prisoners could escape.

“What are you standing around here for?” he bellowed. And suddenly he had an idea as to where Dietz could be taken. “To the hospital!”

What could still be done for the dead man in the hospital no one quite knew. It just seemed to be a suitably neutral place. “Forward—” He took the lead. This, too, seemed to him necessary.

At the exit from the Market Place an automobile suddenly appeared. It was a low Mercedes-Compressor. The car came slowly along, picking its way through the wreckage. Amidst all the destruction its smooth elegance had an almost obscene effect. The squad leader stood at attention. A Mercedes-Compressor was the official car for V.I.P.’s. Two high-ranking SS officers sat in the rear, another in front beside the chauffeur. A number of suitcases were strapped to
the back; a few smaller ones lay inside the car. The faces of the officers had angry, defiant expressions. The chauffeur was obliged to drive very slowly through the rubble. The car passed close by the prisoners who were carrying Dietz on the door. The officers ignored them. “Drive on!” said the one in front to the chauffeur. “Faster!”

The prisoners stood still. Lewinsky held the door’s rear right-hand corner. He looked at Dietz’s broken neck, at the smiling carved figure of the child Moses and he looked at the Mercedes and the luggage and the fleeing officers and he took a deep breath.

The car crawled past. “Shits!” said one of the SS-men suddenly, a huge butcher with a boxer’s nose. “Shits! Damned shits!” He didn’t mean the prisoners.

Lewinsky listened. For a short while the distant rumbling was drowned in the roaring of the Mercedes’ engine; then it came through again, muffled and inexorable. Subterranean drums for a funeral march.

“Move on!” commanded the squad leader irritably. “On with you! On!”

The afternoon dragged on. The camp buzzed with rumors. They blew through the barracks and changed every hour. Now the SS had decamped; then someone appeared who insisted that on the contrary they had been reinforced. Now American tanks were allegedly near the town; next moment they were German troops come to defend it.

At three o’clock the new block senior arrived. He was a red, not a green one. “Not one of us,” said Werner, disappointed.

“Why not?” asked 509. “He is one of us. A political one. Not a criminal. Or what d’you mean by
us
?”

“You know perfectly well. Why d’you ask?”

They were sitting in the barrack. Werner wanted to wait until
after the last whistle before returning to the labor camp. 509 kept himself hidden so as to find out how the new block senior would behave. Beside them a man with dirty white hair lay dying of pneumonia.

“One
of us
is a man who belongs to the camp’s underground movement,” lectured Werner. “That’s what you wanted to know, eh?” He smiled.

“No,” answered 509. “That’s not what I wanted to know. And it’s not what you meant, either.”

“For the time being I mean that.”

“Yes. For the time being. As long as the emergency coalition here is necessary. And then?”

“Then,” said Werner, surprised at so much ignorance, “then, of course, there must be a party to take over. An organized party; not a bunch of people thrown together at random.”

“Your Party, you mean. The Communists.”

“What other?”

“Any other,” said 509. “So long as it’s not another totalitarian.”

Werner gave a short laugh. “You fool! Only a totalitarian. Can’t you read the signs on the wall? All intermediate parties have crumbled. Communism has remained strong. The war will come to an end. Russia has occupied a great part of Germany. It’s by far the strongest power in Europe. The time of coalitions is over. This one was the last. The Allies have helped Communism and weakened themselves, the fools! World peace will depend on—”