The Bible of Clay (36 page)

"You're literally taking years off our lives, Mercedes. If you go ahead with what you want to do, I'll have nothing left. What would there be? Everything would be over."

Bruno was speaking from the depths of his soul. He was giving words to his anguish, his friends' collective anguish, and Mercedes knew it.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me. I won't go—I don't think I'll go."

"It does me no good to hear you say you
think
you won't go. I need a promise," Bruno demanded.

"I won't do anything. I give you my word. And if I change my mind, I'll tell you."

"You can't leave us hanging like that.
..."

"No, I know I can't, but I also can't lie to you." Mercedes paused again. The silence stretched between them. "All right, Bruno," she finally whispered. "I won't do anything. I'm not going to do anything."

"Thank you, Mercedes."

"How are Carlo and Hans?"

"They're terrible, like me."

"Tell them that everything is all right—I won't do anything. I promise."

32

"mercedes, don't cry; please, darling, don't cry."

The little girl, shivering with cold and hunger, barely mustering the strength to stand, clutched her mother's hand as she wept quietly. The guard had shoved her—hard— for not standing still in rank with the other women and their children.

She'd fallen to the ground, and her face had landed in a cold puddle of mud. Chantal, her mother, terrified by what the guards might do, had yanked her up by the arm immediately. In the camps, the first rule of survival was to remain unnoticed.

Mercedes felt her mother squeeze her hand. The guard who had pushed her had immediately been distracted by another child squirming in the line, and in those precious seconds Mercedes fought to hold back her tears, as her mother had implored her to do.

She watched some of the SS officers from the camp merrily hugging the men who had arrived with the procession of black cars. They were laughing and slapping one another on the back; they all looked happy, one of them telling another that it was going to be an unforgettable day.

For a few seconds, Mercedes thought about what those men might do to make today so special, and again she shivered.

One of the kapos—as the common criminals who served as guards

were called—a man named Gustav, came over to the row of prisoners and ordered the children to form another row in front of their mothers. The youngest children didn't want to let go of their mothers' hands, until one of the SS officers prodded them with the grip of a whip, and the mothers begged them to stand where the guards told them.

"Achtung!"
shouted an SS officer. "A scientific delegation has come from Berlin to see you. You are going to aid science—at least now your miserable lives will have some value. All of you will walk down to the quarry; a gift will be waiting for you there, and you are to bring it up at once. Your bastards will remain here.
We
have another little gift for them."

Alfred laughed at his SS colleague's little joke, and Georg asked how long the test would last.

"That depends entirely on these sows," Alfred replied.

Mercedes sniffled and wiped away her tears as her mother smiled at her, trying to allay her fears even as she was led away to the steps of the quarry. Her mother was eight months pregnant; seven months ago she had been brought to Mauthausen with Mercedes and put into one of the work details. Chantal was amazed that she was still alive. She had inherited her strength from her own parents—good hearty country people with iron constitutions, as were her grandparents and all her other relatives, as far back as anyone knew. Other women in her condition had died, unable to stand up under the torture and the backbreak-ing labor that the officers forced on them. Some of them had disappeared after they were called into the infirmary, so that the doctors might "inspect" the progress of their pregnancies. But though she was alive, she was thinner than she had been before she got pregnant, and her belly was hardly noticeable.

She had been detained by the Gestapo in Vichy France as she was trying to flee the country with her daughter. The two of them were deported to Austria, locked in a cattle car. There, packed in with hundreds of other prisoners, she told herself that as long as they were alive, she would continue to hope. Her husband was a Spaniard, and like her had been collaborating with the Resistance. He had been killed by the Gestapo on a bright afternoon in Paris as he'd tried to get past a checkpoint. She had been left alone with Mercedes, not knowing she was carrying their second child. She tried to flee to Spain, which had been decimated during the Civil War, to take refuge with her husband's family. She was planning to go to Barcelona and find his mother; she knew she would help them. The Resistance leaders had agreed to transport her and Mercedes, but they'd hardly gotten to the border when she was arrested.

Once in the camp, she was ordered to strip like the rest of the female prisoners and was given the clothing she was to wear from that moment on—a red triangle with the letter F distinguished her blouse from the others. It was the sign of the political prisoners, and the letter indicated her nationality.

At first, she thought her periods had stopped because of her fear, the torture, the lack of food, the exhaustion. When she realized that she was pregnant, she wept inconsolably, blaming herself for bringing a second child into this prison. But, unlike most of the prisoners, despair gave way to hope, for her pregnancy empowered her—she had to stay alive for the child, and for Mercedes. They both were going to need her; she was all they had, although she'd made Mercedes memorize the address of her grandmother in Barcelona in case someday she managed to get out.

"Why don't they send the bastards down too?" Georg asked.

"Not a bad idea, but we have another surprise for them. They are going to shower over there. We'll see how long they can take it," Heinrich replied, chuckling.

"Let's go down and mark the sows' progress," Alfred suggested.

The cheery group of officers and civilian doctors descended the "stairs of death" to watch the women stagger under the weight of boulders harnessed to their backs. Some of the soldiers were shoving them, commanding them to continue, but many of the women could not bear the weight and fell to the ground, crushed by the stones. Of the fifty women sent down, fifteen died quickly, kicked to death or beaten senseless by the guards' cudgels. The others were screamed at and beaten too as they were forced to begin the climb of one hundred eighty-six steps back up to the parade field.

Chantal could hardly breathe; only the image of Mercedes and the desire to one day see her unborn child enabled her to find strength. She was doubled over, dragging her feet, while at the same time trying to control her nausea. And although her face twisted in agony, she exulted inside for each step she climbed. One, two, three . . .

Suddenly she raised her eyes and saw with horror that the guards were shoving the children, forcing them down the stairs.

She could hardly make out Mercedes, but she knew her daughter was frightened, about to cry. She stood up so that the girl could see her, trying to communicate to her the strength that she herself had exhibited. She couldn't imagine why the SS were pushing the children down the stairs toward them but was terrified by whatever they had in mind.

The idea had been Captain Alfred Tannenberg's, and it was unanimously lauded by the other officers. The children were to take nightsticks and beat their mothers, as though they were beasts of burden.

"They are mules," Alfred told the children, laughing, "and you are the mule drivers. You must be strong; if one of them trips and falls, you must hit her hard, even your own mother. If you don't, we will kill them and put the stones on your backs and whip you until you bring them up."

The little ones were terrified, but they hardly dared even cry. Each one took a nightstick and they began, very slowly, hesitantly, to descend the stairs. The women, who were just making their excruciating way up the first steps, looked up at them expectantly, until they realized the cruel game the perverse minds of the SS officers had concocted.

"Any of you who does not hit the mules will be whipped!" shouted Alfred Tannenberg, as his friends and the other guests laughed at the spectacle.

"Come, come! Begin!" the kapos were shouting.

The children looked in anguish at their mothers, not daring to raise the nightsticks.

"Mercedes, hit me! For God's sake, child, don't worry! Just do it!" Chantal implored her daughter.

Suddenly a woman fell, her face falling into the mud and rocks. One of the kapos went over and kicked her, but Alfred told him to stop, looking around for the prisoner's child.

"You! Come here!" he ordered a little girl so thin she looked like a specter.

The little girl, no more than eight years old, nervously took a few steps toward the SS officer, nightstick in hand.

"Is this your mother?" asked Captain Tannenberg. The little girl nodded, unspeaking.

"Well, beat this mule until she gets up. Go on! Hit her!"

There were two or three seconds of silence. The little girl did not move. She had barely understood what the man was saying to her—she was deaf and unable to read people's Hps accurately.

Enraged, Captain Tannenberg grabbed the nightstick and viciously began to beat the woman lying in the mud. The little girl looked on in horror and then, crying, threw herself to the ground beside her mother, as the SS officers burst out laughing.

Suddenly a boy, two or three years older, came over and tried to help the little girl get to her feet. Tannenberg glared at him with fury, his eyes bulging with rage.

"How dare you, you little bastard!"

He kicked the boy to the ground, then pulled his pistol from its scabbard and shot the little girl. The boy tumbled down to the third stair while his mother moaned, on the verge of delirium. The woman tried to crawl over to the motionless body of her daughter, but a series of kicks in the face and head from Tannenberg left her a lifeless mass of bloody flesh. The boy made a move to stand up, but Tannenberg kicked him again and again, until he was at last unconscious. He lay there, motionless, beside the dead bodies of his mother and sister.

"Come on, you mules! Come on! And you children, either hit the mules or you will wind up like this little bastard here. His mother was a rotten Communist, an Italian whore, but we have seen justice done, to the cow and the cow's daughter—daughter? Was that a daughter? Was that a human being?" screamed Tannenberg, wholly inflamed by his own spectacle.

Mercedes was paralyzed by the sight of her friend Carlo lying on the ground, so still. At ten, Carlo was older than she, but he was always so kind to her, always telling her not to be afraid.

The SS men kept shouting at them to beat the mules, and Mercedes began to cry very quietly. She couldn't hit her mother, and she looked around desperately: None of her friends had raised their sticks. She felt a hand on her arm. It was Hans, whose eyes were telling her to start walking.

"Mercedes, please, don't stop; move the stick like this, up and down, but without hitting your mother."

"No, no . . ." moaned the little girl.

A pregnant woman shrieked as she fell in despair to the ground. She was losing her baby right there, on the stairs, and she writhed in agony and anguish. Frau Miiller was an Austrian Jew; she taught piano and had been caught hiding in the house of one of her students after someone had denounced her. She had arrived in this hell with her little boy, Bruno, four months ago.

Captain Tannenberg walked over to her and looked down at her coldly. Then he motioned to one of the camp's doctors.

"Doctor, do you think that Jewish fetuses resemble human beings?
We
should find out, don't you think? This pig won't be good for much else."

Everyone stood silently, expectantly, as the doctor squatted down and sliced Frau Miiller open while she howled; then she arched her back and stopped screaming. She was dead. The other doctors, curious, gathered around her.

Little Bruno had cried desperately throughout the horror. Now he tried to back away, but a kapo grabbed him and forced him to witness the carnage.

Some children, unable to bear the Dantean scene, vomited, while the visitors applauded vigorously.

Chantal had climbed fifteen steps when she slipped and fell; a trickle of blood ran out the side of her mouth.

Tannenberg pushed little Mercedes toward her mother.

"Hit her! Do it! She's nothing more than a beast, a mule—hit her! Do as I say!"

Mercedes was frozen with horror. She couldn't make a sound; her eyes were as big as saucers, and she stared at the man who was pushing and shoving her.

"Hit the mule! Hit her!" Captain Tannenberg ordered, more and more enraged and shouting ever more furiously.

Chantal couldn't speak; her life was ebbing away, and she was powerless to protect her daughter or the child she carried. She managed to put out a hand toward Mercedes, who knelt down beside her mother and started to cry.

Captain Tannenberg strode over to Chantal and kicked her in the belly; she fainted, and blood began to flow from between her legs. Then he started to raise his whip to hit her, but he couldn't—small sharp teeth were biting into his wrist with a fury equal to his own. The visitors from Berlin laughed.

Mercedes looked like a doll gone mad. She was no more than skin and bones, but she had found the strength and courage somewhere to confront this monster.

Tannenberg shoved her to the ground, droplets of blood seeping out from the tiny bite marks. He pulled his pistol, looked at Mercedes, and smiled. Then he unloaded the gun into Chantal's stomach as though it were a bull's-eye—one shot in the center and four around it. He then unsheathed his SS regulation knife and slashed through her abdomen as though he were disemboweling an animal, ripping from her womb her unborn child. He threw the fetus in Mercedes' face.

The child's screams were otherworldly in their anguish, but Alfred Tannenberg hadn't finished with her. He picked her up with one hand and threw her down the stairs. The little girl's body landed among the boulders of granite at the bottom, blood running from gashes in her head.

Hans Hausser ran down the stairs to try to help her, not hearing the horrified cry of his mother, who tried to stop him.

One of the kapos grabbed him as he ran by and kept him from reaching Mercedes' motionless body.

"You worthless Jew! You want to finish her off?"

The kapo beat Hans under the indifferent gaze of Tannenberg and his friends, who had turned back to driving the other women up the stairs of death.

Frau Hausser was one of the few to reach the parade ground, but she had no illusions about her safety, or her son's. She looked back, trying to find him, and she wept when she saw one of the kapos beating him with a nightstick.

Marlene Hausser found the strength to cry out, trying desperately to make her son hear her.