The Shadow Man (16 page)

‘… We were three days on the train. Jammed down together, like animals, in our own filth and dirt. People died around us, one lady, I never knew her name, she died and for eight hours I could feel her weight pressed up against my back, and I couldn’t do anything about it until the old man she was next to, he died too, and I could push her backwards so that the dead fell against the dead, and I remember how still she was, and white, like someone had carved her out of stone. I kept thinking afterwards that I should have found out her name, I wanted to know her name, so that I could tell someone. But I didn’t. The air, I can still taste the air in that train. Every morning, still. I

remember it. Maybe that’s why I came down here to Florida, because the air is so clean, and I wouldn’t have to remember it the way it was those three days. It was like compressed together evil, just thick and harsh, like a disease covering us. Hansi held me, that was my brother Hans, he was fourteen, two years younger than me, but he was strong. He was always so strong. I was short, but he was tall and he held me so I wouldn’t try to help Mama or Papa, who was coughing and grew so weak, I thought he would die, but he kept waving to me and saying, I’m fine, I’m fine, don’t
worry about me. Everything will be all right, but of course it wasn’t, though, I knew we would die when we got to the place, Auschwitz, but still, when they opened the door and the fresh air came in, I thought it would be all right to die, because just once I could breathe fresh air again, but even that wasn’t to be, because even in the cold, the stench from the dying was so great, I couldn’t breathe, and they were yelling Raus! Raus! and everyone had to pile out of the train, and we were clutching each other, trying to stay together but I couldn’t hold Hansi anymore, because they made us get into lines, women on one side and men on the other, and I saw him holding my father and I didn’t know where my mother was, and they kept yelling, forcing us in line, the dogs were barking and snarling and I didn’t even see anyone try to run, we were all so weak and stumbling toward a table. The S.S. man just looked and asked a question or two and then pointed one way or the other, but of course, you know all about that. That’s been told over and over, but it happened. It happened to me. He sat there, with his gray greatcoat and his hat, the one with the death’s head insignia, I remember that. And he wore gloves, so that it was just this black leather hand pointing one way or the other, it was so quick. And I saw, just for a second as my line stepped forward, I

saw Hansi and my father, and my father was coughing and Hansi was holding him, and the S.S. man pointed to the left for my father, and to the right for Hansi, but Hansi shook his head and helped my father over to the left and that was it, oh my God, he wouldn’t leave him, so he went to his death. Hansi was so strong, he might have lived. He might have, that’s what I always thought. He was wiry and strong, with muscles that grew even when we had nothing to eat for days. And he always smiled, did you know? He just lived so well, fourteen, and always happy and smiling, even when everything was awful and everything was all death and dying and he looked over toward me in that little instant, and I knew that he knew he should let Papa go to the left but he wouldn’t, he held his arm and helped him be strong too. He was just a boy, but he knew. He smiled at me. Oh my God, he smiled at me, just like he was saying it’s all right to die even though I haven’t lived yet. Fourteen, but he was the strongest. So he went to help our father and so he died and I was alone forever. Oh Hansi, why didn’t you go to the right?’

Tears were streaming down Sophie Millstein’s cheeks, and Simon Winter thought: How many tears can you store up in fifty years?

On the tape, the young woman’s voice asked: ‘Do you need to take a break?’

‘Yes,’ Sophie Millstein said. Then she added: ‘No.’

She stared at the camera.

‘I lied,’ she said, suddenly forceful.

‘What lie?’ asked the young woman.

‘When I reached the table and the S.S. man, he was a doctor! A doctor! How could a doctor do what he did? He asked me how old I was and I said sixteen and he was thinking and then he started to lift his hand, and I thought he might point to the left, and I said very fast, but I am an

electrician. And he looked at me and I said my father, really, was an electrician, and I was his assistant, but that he taught me everything, and so the S.S. man would think I could be useful, and he pointed to the right.’

‘Did you know…’

‘Nothing. Not really. I lied and I lived.’

Sophie Millstein grew quiet. Then she added: ‘It always bothered me, did you know? I mean, of course, there was nothing wrong, but my mama and my papa - he was really a professor of linguistics at the university - they had always taught us that a lie was like a sin and that it was like a little dark spot on your soul that you could never quite clean away and that it was always, always, always better to tell the truth than to put that little mark there next to your heart. And I hated that, you see, that S.S. man, he made me lie to save myself. And everything else that happened to me, it all seemed like a part of that lie. And I hated them and I guess I hated me for that.’

‘If you’d told the truth

‘I would have died.’

‘So, you became an electrician?’

For an instant Sophie Millstein paused, and Simon Winter saw her eyes narrow again with remembered hatred. She struggled with the words, but after a moment they leaked out.

‘No…’ she said slowly. ‘No. That’s what I told Leo. That’s what I told anyone who asked. But that was a lie too. They shaved my head. They shaved my entire body. And I became a whore.’

She took a deep breath. Her words seemed to shiver , with cold.

‘And that’s how I lived. A whore.’

Sophie Millstein reached down, and Winter saw her retrieve a lace handkerchief from her pocketbook at her

feet. She dabbed her eyes and then looked at the young lady, off camera.

‘I guess I was wrong,’ she said bitterly. ‘I have lots to say.’

Sophie Millstein gazed toward the camera, her eyes still glistening with tears. Again she breathed slowly, deeply.

‘It has been very hard for me to forgive myself,’ she said softly. ‘I feel all these years like I did something terrible and wrong. And I cannot just blow that feeling away into air like it was dust or fluff.’

Again there was a silence on the tape, until the young woman’s voice said:

‘Sophie, you lived. That was what was important. Not how or why or what you had to do. You lived, and you shouldn’t feel guilty.’

‘Yes. That is true. I have told myself that over and over all these years.’

Sophie Millstein hesitated again. Tears now flowed freely down her cheeks, smudging the makeup she’d carefully applied.

‘I guess all this time I thought it was wrong. Living when so many others died.’

Again she paused.

‘Can I have a little glass of something?’ she asked with a small, delicate smile, like a child who has realized they’ve just read their first word all by themselves. ‘Perhaps a little iced tea?’

Sophie Millstein on the tape abruptly disappeared, replaced by gray bands of electronic interference followed by a blue title board with her name, the date, and a document number on it.

Esther Weiss rose and flicked off the television. Then she went to the window. The flat blinds being raised made a rattling sound. Light streamed into the room, and Simon

Winter blinked sharply. He saw the young woman hesitate by the window, as if gathering herself.

She turned toward him. She was casually dressed, in jeans and a loose-fitting cotton shirt. Her mane of curly hair fell down to her shoulders and seemed to frame her face with intensity.

‘Did you know how remarkable a woman Sophie was, Mr Winter?’

Simon Winter felt a catch in his own throat and shook his head.

‘An extraordinary woman. You cannot quantify bravery, toughness, dedication, will to live - all those things that are just words, Mr Winter. Words that describe concepts that seem unbelievably distant and lost in society today. All the survivors had them to some degree, but Sophie, Sophie was a bit special even among special people, Mr Winter. Did you know that about your neighbor, Mr Winter?’

He shook his head again.

Weiss continued: ‘It’s all oddly deceptive. She looked like just a little old lady. A little dizzy, perhaps. A little crazy, maybe.’

She looked at Simon Winter.

‘Everyone’s typical Jewish grandmother. Chicken soup and kvetching about this or that. Right?’

Winter didn’t answer.

‘That’s what you thought, right?’

He nodded slowly.

‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘you were damn wrong.’ The woman looked hard at him. ‘Just completely goddamn wrong.’

The young woman rubbed what were the start of her own tears away from her eyes. Winter saw her take a deep breath.

‘That was just the first, you know, getting started.

Breaking the ice, so to speak. We had high hopes. But your neighbor was only able to make one additional tape before she was—’

She stopped abruptly.

‘Damn,’ she said. ‘Murdered, goddamn it.’

Simon Winter remained silent.

‘Unfair. What sort of world is this, Mr Winter? Isn’t there any justice at all?’

Winter didn’t reply. He understood: What is there to say? She’s right.

‘Did she talk much about her time in Berlin, before her deportation?’

The young woman looked down at some notes on a page. When she looked up, Simon Winter saw her eyes glance toward his forearm. He realized she was looking for a tattoo.

‘Why exactly? You’re not a survivor, are you, Mr Winter?’

‘No,’ he said rapidly, thinking instantly that that was somehow an inaccurate response. ‘I was once a policeman.’

‘Why Sophie’s story, now?’

‘It was something she said. Right before her murder. About the man who turned her in.’

‘U-boats,’ Weiss said.

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘U-boats. That was one of the nicknames the people who tried to hide out in the cities used. Because they were beneath the surface. It was a very difficult life. I will give you some books about what they tried to accomplish. Remarkable, really. Hiding in the midst of a police state dedicated to your very destruction. I think, in history, there are few people who were able to show the sort of creativity, resourcefulness, bravery, oh I don’t know.

These were extraordinary people, and so few survived the war to tell their stories. That’s why we were all so excited when Sophie came to us and started making tapes. I don’t really think we can understand today the sort of courage those people had without their firsthand testimonies. And the life? Starvation. Fear. Always fear. They could never stay more than a few days in any location. They had to move about, frequenting spots where they wouldn’t stand out. When they could, they bribed people. Jewelry usually. If they had gold coins, so much the better. Sometimes they could even bribe the catchers and maybe gain a few days extra suffering, before being caught and sent off to die.’

‘That’s what I’ve learned.’

‘Who have you been speaking with?’

‘Rabbi Chaim Rubinstein. A Mrs Kroner and a Mr Silver.’

‘I know these people. They were U-boats, like Sophie.’

The young woman hesitated, then shook her head. ‘Jewish people employed by the Gestapo to hunt down other Jews. In a society that seemed to breed irony and betrayal in equal amounts, they were maybe the most … I don’t know - what? Morally unique?’

She paused while Winter inhaled sharply. He saw her glance toward the window, her eyes tracking the shaft of light that speared the room.

‘Do you suppose someone like that would go to a special ring in Hell, Mr Winter?’

He did not answer that question, though he thought it a good one. Instead, he started to ask: ‘Did she describe—’

‘It’s an incredibly important subject, Mr Winter. A sort of moral cannibalism. Betraying your own people to monsters in order to save your own life. Over the years, we have had several important scholars visiting the center to study the tapes.’

Esther Weiss glanced at Simon Winter.

‘She made one other tape. I’ll get that.’

The young woman went to a bookcase and started rummaging through shelves of tapes. She double-checked one against a master list, then turned to Winter.

‘Here it is. You want me to get the shade?’

He shook his head. He felt somehow that the nightmares contained on all the tapes were safer in the bright daylight. She nodded and fed the tape into the video machine.

Sophie Millstein appeared on the television screen again. This time she was wearing a less formal dress, one of the many flower prints that Winter recognized. Two electronic interference bars marred the screen and every little motion Sophie Millstein made was jerked by the tape’s speed as the young woman fast-forwarded to the point the conversation started.

‘Right about here, I think…’ Weiss said. She punched a button and Sophie Millstein’s voice returned to the room.

The disembodied voice spoke first.

‘Sophie, how was it that you happened to be caught?’

Sophie Millstein put her hand to her mouth, as if to prevent the words from tumbling out. Then she sat forward rigidly, like an eyewitness in court, and spoke:

‘I remember it was the only time I saw Hansi scared, because he came home that day saying he might have been seen by someone. He wasn’t sure, you know, everyone changed so much in those years. You could stare right at someone you’d known for years and not recognize them. The war did that. And starvation and allied bombs all the time. But Hansi was upset. Still, the next day he went out to look for some work. We needed to eat and there was no choice and it was possible that Herr Guttman at the print shop would give him some bread for a day’s work and

bread was too important. So he went, and he didn’t come back that night at all, until late, long after dark, slipping past the night curfew guards, which was something he never did, because if he’d been caught without papers it would be all over, and even if they believed his papers it might be all over anyway. He came home and I saw him speaking closely, frightened again, with Papa, who refused to let Mama or me hear what they were saying. But I saw Papa go to the coat that had all our money sewed into it, and he came back and gave Hansi a ring. A gold ring. Papa’s wedding ring. Hansi took it and went back out, through the trapdoor, out of the basement. He returned a few minutes later and I remember him saying to Papa everything will be all right now, but maybe only for a few days, and so they talked about moving us. I didn’t want to move. The basement was warm and as safe as anything when the bombing raids came over. Maybe that was why we didn’t move as fast as we should have. They came two days later. Gestapo knocking at the door. They took us out. I remember poor Frau Wattner standing, watching, with two soldiers on either side of her. She looked so scared. She was saying, but I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I thought they were just bombengeschddigte\ She turned to Papa and spat in his face! Schweinejude\ she said, but we all knew she had to say that, still, the word hurt. We were put in the car by the Gestapo man and I looked back once and I saw soldiers throw poor Frau Wattner up against the side of the house. Papa made me turn my head, but I heard the submachine gun and when I looked back, I could not see her anymore …’