The Kingdom of Shadows (19 page)

The other guards caught him, pinioning his arms and wrestling him clear of the floor. His legs kicked furiously.

“
They’re lying!
” He was no match against the guards, a bear hug squeezing the breath from his lungs. “The showers!” He dug his fingernails into the uniformed sleeves wrapped around his abdomen. “That’s . . . how they do it! The showers . . . and the gas . . .”

Another guard swiped the back of his fist across the fellow’s mouth, silencing him in a spatter of blood. He crumpled to the tiled floor when he was let go.

Pavli was almost knocked from his feet as the crowd of Lazarene men surged toward the doorway. Their voices had risen into shouts, deafening in the enclosed space. The guards scrambled for their rifles, raising them chest high and bracing themselves.

“What is the meaning of this?”

The voice of
Herr Doktor
Ritter struck the men like a whiplash across their faces. The SS officer pushed his way past the guards, confronting the milling crowd of Lazarenes.

As they clustered tighter against each other, their voices falling to silence, the
Scharführer
drew Ritter to one side. The guards kept the false gypsy on his knees as the officer listened to the
Scharführer
’s whispered explanation. Ritter nodded, glancing at the individual in question.

“So.” Ritter strode before the Lazarene men. “I see that my assurances to you are doubted. You would rather listen to the slanderous rumors spread by cowards and lunatics such as this.” His voice boomed in the tiled hollows. “To doubt the honor of an officer of the SS – that is an un-German thing.” He shook his head, contemplating the grievous insult. “You bring shame upon yourselves, upon the name of your people, by doing so.”

A spattering rain-like noise followed the quick gesture Ritter made to the
Scharführer
. Clear liquid streamed from one of the washroom’s metal fixtures. Ritter leaned forward, holding his hand beneath the pipes, the sleeve of his uniform darkening in the spray. He drew his arm back, studying his own wet hand for a moment, then touching a finger to his lips.

“This is water, is it not?” He smiled, his voice calm and measured. The water ran down his wrist as he thrust his palm before the nearest of the Lazarene men. “It is not heated, I grant you – the boilers have not yet been returned to service – but surely you can endure that slight discomfort, that small sacrifice for the benefit of all Germany? It’s not too much to ask, is it? And this –” He bent down and picked up a thick grey lump from just inside the raised edge of the shower area; he held it to his nose and sniffed. “It seems to be soap. Not of the finest quality . . . but your homeland
is
at war.” The smile disappeared from his face as he squeezed the rough block in his fist; the soap crumbled between his fingers, bits falling to the damp floor. He wiped the mess off with his handkerchief.

Ritter had spoken softly. The sudden change in his voice snapped the Lazarenes awake again.

“I promised that no harm would come to you.” The anger spoke in the officer’s booted stride as well. “But then, that depends upon you, does it not? Upon your cooperation, upon your following orders, upon your trust.” Ritter’s voice dropped to a whisper once more. “You do not know, from what dangers I have already saved you. And this is how you repay me . . .”

His steps took him to the guards and their kneeling prisoner. Pavli could see the cringing fear in the eyes set in the blood-spattered face.

“There are none of you so valuable,” said Ritter, “that I can tolerate the spreading of falsehoods.” He didn’t turn to address the crowd of Lazarenes. He nodded to the guards, who yanked their prisoner to his feet. “You should learn from this one’s example.”

Herr Doktor
Ritter strode out of the room. The guards dragged between them the false gypsy, no longer struggling, another thing of rags.

The Lazarene men didn’t speak among themselves as they stripped off their clothes. They listened even as they lowered their heads beneath the icy sting of the showers.

Pavli heard the distant rifle shot, as did the other men, from out in the forest, beyond the walls of the building. A sound that Ritter and the guards had wanted them to hear.

The cold water trickled into the corners of Pavli’s mouth. When he closed his eyes, he could see the startled birds wheeling up from the tops of the trees and vanishing into the sky.

FIFTEEN

Pavli stood among his Lazarene brethren, with the wet smell of the showers and the cloying, sickly odor of the delousing compound drifting between their bodies. They had all submitted to their genitals being swabbed with a fluid the bright orange color of iodine, a bored-looking male nurse dipping a rag on a stick into the bucket beside his wooden stool. No resistance or jokes had been made, not even by the younger men; the echo of the rifle shot from out in the woods, faded except from memory, still oppressed the group.

His brother Matthi had taken advantage of the milling about that had followed the men’s emergence from the tiled washroom, to come close to him and lay a hand on his bare shoulder. “Are you all right?” Matthi whispered close to his ear.

Pavli nodded. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about . . .” He was trying to be comforting in turn. He craned his neck, trying to look past Matthi and the other Lazarene men, back to where they had left the little mounds of their folded clothes near the entrance to the showers. Something did indeed worry him: a secret treasure tucked inside the lining of his boots, a precious thing of paper curved against the worn leather. Perhaps all the boots and shoes, and the good coats and other bits of clothing, were to be gathered up and shipped off as part of the
Winterhilfe
, the charity for poor deserving Germans, the real ones. Or one of the Lazarenes might steal Pavli’s boots, leaving behind a shabbier pair, without a treasure hidden inside. The thief might never even discover what he had taken, the only thing of value that Pavli had left to him.

Would one of his own kind, his brethren, do that? Steal from him? He didn’t want to think so, but he couldn’t be sure; there was an empty place near his heart, where there once had been the sure knowledge of being one of them, of being Lazarene. That had leaked away, a hidden wound of his own, when his brother and the elders had determined not to initiate him into the faith upon his coming of age. Matthi had explained it all to him, that these were bad times, the worst since the Catholics in France had washed the streets with the blood of those they called heretics; to be marked with Christ’s stigmata was to draw the wolves upon oneself through the dark corridors of the forest . . .

Pavli got a grim satisfaction out of the failure of his brother’s plan. All the elders and Matthi had conspired to cheat him of his rightful heritage, and for what result? Here he stood with the other Lazarene men, stripped naked under the hard eyes of the SS guards, their skin turned to gooseflesh by the winds that sifted through the cracked and dusty windows high above the walls’ green tiles. Rounded up with the others and brought here, the eyes in his face enough of a mark to claim his place among them. With the young men, some only a year or so older than him, the muscles of their legs and arms grown lean and taut on the meager diet their ration cards had allowed them; and the true elders, the greybeards, wisps of white hair across brown-spotted skulls, sunken chests and spindly legs bowed by the weight of years. The old men folded their gnarled, large-knuckled hands over their shriveled privates, bearing the shame of their nakedness with silent endurance.

“Silence!” The
Scharführer
shouted, unnecessarily; his voice slapped against the damp walls. “You, the first ten – step forward.”

Using the muzzles of their rifles, two of the guards separated a small group out from the rest of the Lazarene men; both Pavli and his brother Matthi were part of the chosen number. He glanced over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of his belongings left piled against a far wall, to see if the treasure hidden inside one of his boots was still safe. The broad chest and scowling face of the nearest guard blocked his view.

“You heard the order,” said the guard. He jostled the wooden stock of the rifle against Pavli’s shoulder blades. “Move!”

Another room, smaller, the naked forms of the ten Lazarenes filling one side. An eye of glass, a little curved window, stared at them; Pavli blinked at the distorted reflection of his own image before he realized that it was a camera lens. It was like a piece of another world, the one that had been left behind on the other side of the truck journey, the world that had held his uncle Turro’s shop on a narrow street in Berlin.

The guards shoved the Lazarenes in a line against the wall; the camera, mounted on a heavy tripod, stood only a few feet away from Pavli. A model he’d never seen before, a big professional machine, the likes of which had never been displayed in his uncle’s shop. At the front of the black folding bellows, the Zeiss lens seemed nearly as broad as his flattened palm; behind the blue glass, the blades of the shutter could be seen.

Raised voices, the harsh words of Ritter and the
Scharführer
, brought Pavli back from his study of the camera.

On the other side of the room, near the doorway that led to the building’s central corridors, Ritter gestured with an upraised hand, his face darkened with anger. “Where is he? What’s wrong with him
this
time?”

The
Scharführer
echoed Ritter’s demand, turning to call down the corridor. Another pair of guards appeared, dragging a man between them. A drunken man, from the looks and smell of him – the acrid scent of
schnapps
and sour vomit curled in Pavli’s nostrils as the man was thrust forward. He caught himself against the camera, nearly toppling himself and the tripod over to the floor. He swayed unsteadily, fumbling a hand across the stains that covered the front of his uniform jacket, the tight-fitting military collar loosened and flapping open. From just the color of the uniform, Pavli could see that the man was not SS, but regular German army.

“Get to work!” Ritter confronted the drunkard; a backhanded slap across the face brought the bleary eyes open wider, head wobbling upon the man’s neck. “There’s much to do. You’ve shirked your duties long enough.”

The other smiled, eyes slitted and red. “Put me on report, then . . .
Herr Doktor
Ritter. Send me to the Eastern Front. I don’t give a damn –”

“Shut up!” The
Scharführer
’s voice barked out, and the two guards lifted the drunkard even higher between them, so that his feet dangled, barely touching the floor.

“And to hell with you, too.” The drunken man’s gaze grew sharper, nostrils flaring as he looked down at Ritter. He knew how far he had already gone, that there was no turning back, no begging forgiveness. “I don’t care what you bastards do. But I’m not part of it anymore –” He struggled against the guards’ grasp upon his arms. His voice was raw with alcohol. “You hear me? You can send me back to the camps, you can put me on the other side of the wire, I don’t care. I’m not going to help you –” He started to kick, and the toe of one boot caught a slender wooden strut of the tripod, sending the camera crashing onto its side. “I’m not –”

Ritter struck the man with his fist this time, hard enough to knock him free from the support of the guards and send him sprawling against the corner of the floor and wall. The man suddenly burst into sobbing, his hand smearing tears through the blood pouring from his nose and torn upper lip.