The Vengeance of Rome (92 page)

Abraham, Premier Grand immolateur de ta propre humanité: où ton couteau a-t-il touché ton fils plein de confiance? Antique Sumer, Sumer adorée, ruisselante de peur. Renie le Juif et tu renieras ton passé. Dans quel coin mésopotamien de l'univers Dieu naquit-Il pour avoir abandonné jusqu' à Sa divinité, Sa pureté, en laissant mourir Son propre fils? Illustre Abraham: procréateur fanatique du Mythe sacrificateur. Le fanatique renie l'univers, n'y voit que cruauté, et singe misérablement cette prétendue cruauté qui, en fait, n'est que sublime équilibre. Ich habe keine Wahl gehabt. Ich wurde gezwungen, ihren Richtlinien zuzustimmen. Ich beharrte darauf, ich war nicht jüdisch. Ich erklärte alles. Sie lehnten, mich zu sehr ab. Schliesslich hatte ich keine Wahl ausser mit ihnen übereinzustimmen. Sie hätten mich getötet. Sie töten mich schon.

It is winter again. With nostalgia we look back to the earlier days of the camp. Those who have boots are aristocrats. Those who do not have boots develop gangrene in the snow. Their feet grow black and swell and rot. They limp and hobble through the slush. They will die of poisoned blood if not of the cold itself, but few wish to be taken to the
Revier
. It is gaining an unsavoury reputation. The
Lagerarzt
is not known for his kindness.

The guards make jokes about us. When a transport comes in, they throw boots out into the assembly yard. This is against camp rules, but camp rules are increasingly ignored. The guards are as mad as the inmates. They watch the prisoners scramble and squabble for the boots like ducks over bread.

Few of us now see the horror on the faces of the fresh arrivals. Why should their approval concern us? We are
Lagerfliegen
. They will soon become like us. We crave the approval of the guards, of our captains. Once I longed for books and took every chance to visit the library. Now I loathe them. A reading man is not an invisible man.

I do not become a Musselman. I have a piece of metal in my womb. Once it poisoned me. Now it is my strength. The metal is myself. I wear no star on my uniform. I have the star which was forged in Odessa. Those others have no core. I carry the star that guided the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Few know how to survive as I survive. At any moment a random action can destroy you. The secret is in routine. Everyone loves routine. Every animal in the world feels secure while it experiences repetition.

My boots fit. They were expensive. I have warm socks. Though filthy, I still have a violet armband. I have a guide, a master. I am always predictable. I have become the SS man's pet Jew. I am his heart's desire. My death will be harder for it, but my life is easier.

Sometimes Kolya visits the camp, interfering with my routine. He appears to have some seniority, though he wears civilian clothes. I am taken to his office in the Gestapo building. He always notes how well I look. I admire his office. It has fresh white walls, dark blue paint and looks out on high evergreen hedges. The only sign of the camp is the watchtower, the machine gun, the guard, the top level of barbed wire. I tell him of Schnauben, my faux-Virgil, and he asks me what lesson I am learning on my journey through Hell.

‘That God is either senile or insane,' I tell him.

‘Well, Dimka,' Kolya unbuttons his jacket. ‘At least you still have your imagination.'

‘Can't you get me out of here, Kolya?' Addressing him like this is the one risk I shall take. ‘I could serve the Reich.'

‘The Reich does not believe it needs you, dear.'

Is Kolya responsible for my captivity?

‘Not yet.'

I return to my routine.

Sturmbannführer Schnauben is promoted rapidly while at Dachau. Therefore I, too, am promoted. He is impressed by my relationship with Kolya. When he refers to Kolya I can hear a note of sardonic respect. Schnauben calls Kolya ‘your aristocratic pal from Berlin'. He will not tell me any more about my friend or the outside world. Schnauben only rarely discusses the news of the day, but through him I learn of the Nationalist overthrow of the Red government in Spain. He speaks happily of my suffering country and what Germany avoided through Hitler's vision.

‘It could have been so much worse for us. That is why the public loves the Führer.'

The predicted Civil War has come. Heavy fighting around Madrid. Will it spread across Europe? Or will Hitler form an axis with Franco, Mussolini and other like-minded men to throw up a steel firewall against Red incursion?

Yuzmekligim yazim mu? Dicono che quell'uomo, Messer Zid, sia sceso all'Inferno e sia anche tornato indietro. Poco ci manco che morisse. Il hamdu lilla! Je voyage indépendamment à cavernes imaginaires découvertes près de la Seine. Méditations et Révélations. Zna arciblaz en Kartago? Eine zid? Israel zerstört in einem Tag. Karthago zerstört in einem Tag. Peru zerstört in einem Tag. Die Reiche der Sioux und der Zulu zerstört in einem Tag. Mandschurisches Reich zerstört in einem Tag. Russland zerstört in einem Tag. Was bleibt übrig ausser Stolz? Stolz vernichtete sie …

‘This place has been a rest cure for you,' my master jokes. ‘In America you would pay thousands of dollars to be here. You must thank a benevolent state. Public health has improved considerably in Germany. Why, when I first knew you, you were a cocaine addict.'

I nod my agreement. To disagree would be to die. I was never addicted. I have not lost my love of ‘snow', but I have ceased to regard it as part of my
life. In many ways I am less reliant on human pleasures. Even sex no longer plays a central part in my thoughts. The last film I made with Prince Freddy also destroyed the chains of desire. I was relieved to learn that in the Third Reich all such material was automatically incinerated. However, the record of my shame might exist elsewhere.

‘The Führer is a great man,' says Schnauben. ‘He has scoured Germany from top to bottom. These days even his old detractors admire him. The Americans send experts to study his methods.'

I piss in Hitler's mouth.

I shit in Hitler's face.

I push the dildo into his arse.

Dein Engel.

In the night, when everyone else sleeps, those triumphant eyes still mock me.

Therefore you are nothing.

‘For this,' says Schnauben, ‘everyone is willing to forgive us. You, Peters, are a small sacrifice.'

I am a small sacrifice. I understand.

‘Thank you.'

Poor Röhm. He gave up everything in the end for his Führer. Can I do less?

Sometimes I think of Röhm in Stadelheim, stripped to the waist in that cell, the gun with its single bullet upon the table. He refused to take his own life, knowing ‘Alf' lacked the hardness of heart to kill him.

Schnauben is playing Brahms's
Ein Deutsches Requiem
on his new gramophone. Does the music inspire me? he asks. ‘It must be a consolation to you. It is to me.'

I say it is a great consolation. I thank him for letting me hear it. I return to my barracks.

The music meant nothing. I wonder, abstractedly, if Sturmbannführer Schnauben will be able to harden his heart to kill me when the time comes.

Trauriger und alter Gott, sollte ins Altersheim. Sollte ins Altersheim mit allen anderen schmutzigen alten Göttern.

I am ordered out of the crowded bunk and into the cold air of the compound. I am to be transferred to Sachsenhausen. I am not told why. I am afraid to leave. I am familiar with that note:
Rückkehr nicht erwünscht
. Not wanted back. If I leave I will die. I think they mean to kill me. They say that Sachsenhausen is worse than Dachau. That is where I could be killed. Sturmbannführer Schnauben congratulates me. He seems almost lighthearted. Is this how he evades the responsibility of slaughtering me?

We are marched at a run to the railway yards. We are formed into groups. A label is placed round my neck. Other prisoners are going to Belsen. Belsen is a show camp. Belsen has restaurants. A choice of menu.

Even in the cattle car the Belsen-bound prisoners act arrogantly. As soon as I say where I am going they treat me as if I have somehow failed a test.

‘They'll kill you there for certain,' says one obnoxious young Jew. A lawyer, I understand. I do not find it mysterious why he was sent to prison.

The train is filthy and stinks in a way that Dachau does not stink. We move off. Through the slats I look out at the distant camp. I half expect Sturmbannführer Schnauben to be standing outside, waving me goodbye.

The journey to the north-east takes days. We receive almost no food or water. Some of us die. Our corpses start to rot. Near Berlin, when we are shunted into a siding, the guards climb on to our roof and grin down at us through the openings. They unbutton their trousers and piss into the truck just as we start to eat our bread.

I change trains in some remote, unpeopled place. I am forced into a truck far more crowded than the last. This truck is full of crazed-looking criminals. I have no idea who they are. Most of them do not speak German. Perhaps they are gypsies.

When next we disembark it is early morning. A mist rises. I am immediately singled out. Shouted orders are indistinguishable from the shrieking barks of the dogs. Steel-helmeted soldiers with guns aimed at our heads. At the double I am marched to a wooden hut and pushed into an office with filing cabinets and desks. There stands Kolya, smiling, as if he welcomes me into paradise. He wears his big leather coat. Even inside his breath turns to clouds.

‘Good news, Dimka. The authorities have at last reviewed your case. Those letters and designs you sent to Reichspräsident Göring? You have convinced them of your usefulness. Your efforts have not been wasted.'

Only dimly can I make sense of what he says. ‘Convinced?'

‘Your design for flying infantry, I believe. They don't tell me much. Now war has broken out in Spain we have a practical theatre in which to test your idea. You are to go to Berlin, to a special camp. You will be given the chance to build your prototype.'

Uncertain whether or not this is some SS joke, I give no reaction. If I knew what was expected of me I would display the appropriate behaviour.

‘I'd have thought you'd be delighted, Dimka!'

I understand then that I must smile. I do my heroic best.

‘Excellent.' Kolya puts his beautiful hand on my shoulder blade. ‘I am to take you to the Institute myself.'

Had my friend rescued me at last?

August 1937. After I had showered and been equipped with a civilian suit, Kolya took charge of me. We entered a large Mercedes with a chauffeur. At once the car began moving.

The landscape, so lush and golden with harvest, was too rich for me. I felt almost nauseated by the sight of it. The food we ate on the way was difficult to hold down. I had to close my eyes to keep the images in. If I opened them for too long I began to cry. Sometimes Kolya would pat my arm and offer me a little distant comfort. Sometimes he would croon to me. ‘There, there. It's over. You've paid your debt. It's over.' But I could no longer really believe that. I did not know there had been a debt to pay.

Once I ventured to ask him who had issued the instructions for me to be taken from Dachau. He would not tell me.

‘Circles far above my head, dear.'

Kolya could not be responsible for my imprisonment. Maybe Mrs Cornelius was responsible for my release. Perhaps she had spoken to our old friend Göring. He was a well-known humanitarian. But what if this were an SS charade? I did not allow myself to hope too much.

At night we reached a group of buildings protected by a high concrete wall. As the car's great lamps threw the compound into shadowy perspective I thought at first they were film studios.

Kolya seemed relieved we had arrived. When we got out of the car, we were greeted by a man in SS uniform to whom Kolya gave my papers. ‘You'll have to sign for him,' he said.

‘Are you leaving me, Kolya?'

‘For the moment,' he said. ‘By the way. Your friend Mrs Cornelius is in custody. She will be well treated if only you cooperate fully with us.'

In a state of some shock I was taken directly to the SS cells. Was I to meet Mrs Cornelius here? The cells were clean, well ordered and smelled strongly of pine disinfectant. I answered basic questions: my name, nationality and political affiliations. The interrogator's sallow face was shadowed by the peak of his cap. Satisfied with my answers, he made some rapid marks on the papers in front of him and grunted. I had learned never to speak until spoken to. He got up and left me standing at attention. Tired as I was I did not move until another SS man returned and told me to follow him.

I went with him across a courtyard into a taller building, along several identical lime-washed corridors until we arrived at a door painted pale green. ‘These will be your quarters.' He pushed the door open and made me go in ahead of him. He showed me the sink with running water, a glass, a chamber pot. He then left, closing the door behind him. I did not hear it lock.

Standing in the little cell of my own, with its pristine bed, its sheets and blankets, its radio set and its copy of
Mein Kampf
, I hardly dared to move, let alone undress and get into bed. Everything was antiseptically clean. Opening the top drawer of the little chest at the end of the bed, I found a pair of blue pyjamas, some slippers, not quite my size, some soap, a toothbrush, some toothpaste and other toiletries, all held in a little cotton bag which had my name and a number stencilled on the side:
Prof. M. Gallibasta
. At last they had recognised my qualifications and accepted me as Spanish!

But I was not free of the nightmare. I still trembled with terror as I put the pyjamas on, expecting the door to fly open and guards to be standing there. Even when I had settled between the sheets and switched off the light I listened for boots in the corridor. But it was quiet. There were no screams, no shouts, no barking dogs. Through the unbarred window I heard the ordinary sounds of a late-summer night.