Unknown, p.16
Unknown, page 16
And Josef stumbled away from Wernecke and Bruckman, leaning forward, as if following the rock he was carrying.
"Bring him back!" shouted the guard, but his attention was distracted from Josef by some other prisoners, who, sensing the trouble, began to mill about. One of the other guards began to shout and kick at the men on the periphery, and the new guard joined him. For the moment, he had forgotten about Josef.
"Let's get to work, lest they notice us again," Wernecke said.
"I'm sorry that I-"
Wernecke laughed and made a fluttering gesture with his handsmoke rising ." It's all hazard, my friend. All luck." Again the laugh.
"It was a venial sin," and his face seemed to darken." Never do it again, though, lest I think of you as bad luck."
"Carl, are you all right?" Bruckman asked." I noticed some blood when-"
"Do the sores on your feet bleed in the morning?" Wernecke countered angrily. Bruckman nodded, feeling foolish and embarrassed." And so it is with my gums, now go away, unlucky one, and let me live."
They separated, and Bruckman tried to make himself invisible, tried to think himself into the rocks and sand and grit, into the choking air. He used to play this game as a child; he would close his eyes, and since he couldn't see anybody, he would pretend that nobody could see him. And so it was again. Pretending the guards couldn't see him was as good a way of staying alive as any.
He owed Wernecke another apology, which could not be made.
He shouldn't have asked about Wernecke's sickness. It was bad luck to talk about such things. Wernecke had told him that when he, Bruckman, had first come to the barracks. If it weren't for Wernecke, who had shared his rations with Bruckman, he might well have become a Musselmann himself. Or dead, which was the same thing.
The day turned blisteringly hot, and guards as well as prisoners were coughing. The air was foul, the sun a smear in the heavy yellow sky.
The colors were all wrong; the ash from the ovens changed the light, and they were all slowly choking on the ashes of dead friends, wives, and parents. The guards -stood together quietly, talking in low voices, watching the prisoners, and there was the sense of a perverse freedom-as if both guards and prisoners had fallen out of time, as if they were all parts of the same fleshy machine.
At dusk, the guards broke the hypnosis of lifting and grunting and sweating and formed the prisoners into ranks. They marched back to the camp through the fields, beside the railroad tracks, the electrified wire, conical towers, and into the main gate of the camp.
Bruckman tried to block out a dangerous stray thought of his wife.
He remembered her as if he were hallucinating: She was in his arms.
The boxcar stank of sweat and feces and urine, but he had been inside it for so long that he was used to the smells. Miriam had been sleeping.
Suddenly he discovered that she was dead. As he screamed, the smells of the car overpowered him, the smells of death.
Wernecke touched his arm, as if he knew, as if he could see through Bruckman's eyes. And Bruckman knew what Wernecke's eyes were saying:
"Another day. We're alive. Against all the odds. We conquered death."
Josef walked beside them, but he kept stumbling, as he was once again slipping back into death, becoming a Musselmann.
Wernecke helped him walk, pushed him along." We should let this man become dead," Wernecke said to Bruckman.
Bruckman only nodded, but he felt a chill sweep over his sweating back.
He was seeing Wernecke's face again as it was for that instant in the morning. Smeared with blood.
Yes, Bruckman thought, we should let the Musselmann become dead. We should all be dead…
Wernecke served up the lukewarm water with bits of spoiled turnip floating on the top, what passed as soup for the prisoners. Everyone sat or kneeled on the rough-planked floor, as there were no chairs.
Bruckman ate his portion, counting the sips and bites, forcing himself to take his time. Later, he would take a very small bite of the bread he had in his pocket. He always saved a small morsel of food for later-in the endless world of the camp, he had learned to give himself things to look forward to. Better to dream of bread than to get lost in the present. That was the fate of the Musselmanner.
But he always dreamed of food. Hunger was with him every moment of the day and night. Those times when he actually ate were in a way the most difficult, for there was never enough to satisfy him.
There was the taste of softness in his mouth, and then in an instant it was gone. The emptiness took the form of pain-it hurt to eat. For bread, he thought, he would have killed his father, or his wife. God forgive me, and he watched Wernecke-Wernecke, who had shared his bread with him, who had died a little so he could live. He's a better man than me, Bruckman thought.
It was dim inside the barracks. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling and cast sharp shadows across the cavernous rooms. Two tiers of five-foot-deep shelves ran around the room on three sides, bare wooden shelves where the men slept without blankets or mattresses.
Set high in the northern wall was a slatted window, which let in the stark white light of the kliegs. Outside, the lights turned the grounds into a deathly imitation of day; only inside the barracks was it night.
"Do you know what toni lit is, my friends?" Wernecke asked. He sat in the far corner of the room with Josef, who, hour by hour, was reverting back into a Musselmann. Wernecke's face looked hollow and drawn in the light from the window and the lightbulb; his eyes were deep-set and his face was long with deep creases running from his nose to the corners of his thin mouth. His hair was black, and even since Bruckman had known him, quite a bit of it had fallen out. He was a very tall man, almost six foot four, and that made him stand out in a crowd, which was dangerous in a deathcamp. But Wernecke had his own secret ways of blending with the crowd, of making himself invisible.
"No, tell us what tonight is," crazy old Bohme said. That men such as Bohme could survive was a miracle-or, as Bruckman thought-a testament to men such as Wernecke who somehow found the strength to help the others live.
"It's Passover," Wernecke said.
"How does he know that?" someone mumbled, but it didn't matter how Wernecke knew because he knew-even if it really wasn't Passover by the calendar. In this dimly lit barracks, it was Passover, the feast of freedom, the time of thanksgiving.
"But how can we have Passover without a seder?" asked Bohme.
"We don't even have any matzoh," he whined.
"Nor do we have candles, or a silver cup for Elijah, or the shankbone, or haroset-nor would I make a seder over the traif the Nazis are so generous in giving us," replied Wernecke with a smile.
"But we can pray, can't we? And when we all get out of here, when we're in our own homes in the coming year with God's help, then we'll have twice as much food-two afikomens, a bottle of wine for Elijah, and the haggadahs that our fathers and our fathers' fathers used."
It was Passover.
"Isadore, do you remember the four questions?" Wernecke asked Bruckman.
And Bruckman heard himself speaking. He was twelve years old again at the long table beside his father, who sat in the seat of honor.
To sit next to him was itself an honor." How does this night differ from all other nights? On all other nights we eat bread and matzoh; why on this night do we eat only matzoh?
"M'a nishtana halylah hazeah…
Sleep would not come to Bruckman that night, although he was so tired that he felt as if the marrow of his bones had been limned away and replaced with lead.
He lay there in the semi-darkness, feeling his muscles ache, feeling the acid biting of his hunger. Usually he was numb enough with exhaustion that he could empty his mind, close himself down, and fall rapidly into oblivion, but not tonight. Tonight he was noticing things again, his surroundings were getting through to him again, in a way that they had not since he had been new in the camp. It was smotheringly hot, and the air was filled with the stinks of death and sweat and fever, of stale urine and drying blood. The sleepers thrashed and turned, as though they fought with sleep, and as they slept, many of them talked or muttered or screamed aloud; they lived other lives in their dreams, intensely compressed lives dreamed quickly, for soon it would be dawn, and once more they would be thrust into hell.
Cramped in the midst of them, sleepers squeezed in all around him, it suddenly seemed to Bruckman that these pallid white bodies were already dead, that he was sleeping in a graveyard. Suddenly it was the boxcar again. And his wife Miriam was dead again, dead and rotting unburied…
Resolutely, Bruckman emptied his mind. He felt feverish and shaky, and wondered if the typhus were coming back, but he couldn't afford to worry about it. Those who couldn't sleep couldn't survive.
Regulate your breathing, force your muscles tink.
Don't think.
For some reason, after he had managed to banish even the memory of his dead wife, he couldn't shake the image of the blood on Wernecke's mouth.
There were other images mixed in with it, Wernecke's uplifted arms and upturned face as he led them in prayer, the pale strained face of the stumbling Musselmann, Wernecke looking up, startled, as he crouched over Josef… but it was the blood to which Bruckman's feverish thoughts returned, and he pictured it again and again as he lay in the rustling, fart-smelling darkness: the watery sheen of blood over Wernecke's lips, the tarry trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth, like a tiny scarlet worm…
Just then a shadow crossed in front of the window, silhouetted blackly for an instant against the harsh white glare, and Bruckman knew from the shadow's height and its curious forward stoop that it was Wernecke.
Where could he be going? Sometimes a prisoner would be unable to wait until morning, when the Germans would let them out to visit the slit-trench latrine again, and would slink shamefacedly into a far corner to piss against a wall, but surely Wernecke was too much of an old hand for that… Most of the prisoners slept on the sleeping platforms, especially during the cold nights when they would huddle together for warmth, but sometimes, during the hot weather, people would drift away and sleep on the floor instead; Bruckman himself had been thinking of doing that, as the jostling bodies of the sleepers around him helped to keep him from sleep. Perhaps Wernecke, who always had trouble fitting into the cramped sleeping niches, was merely looking for a place where he could lie down and stretch his legs…
Then Bruckman remembered that Josef had fallen asleep in the corner of the room where Wernecke had sat and prayed, and that they had left him there alone.
Without knowing why, Bruckman found himself on his feet. As silently as the ghost he sometimes felt he was becoming, he walked across the room in the direction Wernecke had gone, not understanding what he was doing nor why he was doing it. The face of the Musselmann, Josef, seemed to float behind his eyes. Bruckman's feet hurt, and he knew, without looking, that they were bleeding, leaving faint tracks behind him. It was dimmer here in the far corner, away from the window, but Bruckman knew that he must be near the wall by now, and he stopped to let his eyes readjust.
When his eyes had adapted to the dimmer light, he saw Josef sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall. Wemecke was hunched over the Musselmann. lessing him. One of Josef s hands was tangled in Wernecke's thinning hair.
Before Bruckman could react-such things had been known to happen once or twice before, although it shocked him deeply that Wernecke would be involved in such filth-Josef released his grip on Wernecke's hair. Josef s upraised arm fell limply to the side, his hand hitting the floor with a muffled but solid impact that should have been painful-but Josef made no sound.
Wernecke straightened up and turned around. Stronger light from the high window caught him as he straightened to his full height, momentarily illuminating his face.
Wernecke's mouth was smeared with blood.
"My God!" Bruckman cried.
Startled, Wernecke flinched, then took two quicksteps forward and seized Bruckman by the arm." Quiet!" Wemecke hissed. His finI erne were a cue, Josef began to slip down sideways along the wall. As Wemecke and Bruckman watched, both momentarily riveted by the sight, Josef toppled over to the floor, his head striking against the floorboards with a sound such as a dropped melon might make. He had made no attempt to break his fall or cushion his head, and lay now unmoving.
" My God," Bruckman said again.
"Quiet, I'll explain," Wernecke said, his lips still glazed with the Musselmann's blood." Do you want to ruin us all? For the love of God, be quiet."
But Bruckman had shaken free of Wernecke's grip and crossed to kneel by Josef, leaning over him as Wernecke had done, placing a hand flat on Josef s chest for a moment, then touching the side of Josefs neck.
Bruckman looked slowly up at Wernecke." He's dead," Bruckman said, more quietly.
Wernecke squatted on the other side of Josef s body, and the rest of their conversation was carried out in whispers over Josef s chest, like friends conversing at the sicklied of another friend who has finally fallen into a fitful doze. gers were cold and hard.
"Yes, he's dead," Wernecke said." He was dead yesterday, wasn't he?
Today he has just stopped walking." His eyes were hidden here, in the deeper shadow nearer to the floor, but there was still enough light for Bruckman to see that Wernecke had wiped his lips clean. Or licked them clean, Bruckman thought, and felt a spasm of nausea go through him. … But you," Bruckman said, haltingly." You were…
"Drinking his blood?" Wernecke said." Yes, I was drinking his blood."
Bruckman's mind was numb. He couldn't deal with this, he couldn't understand it at all." But why, Eduard? Why?"
"To live, of course. Why do any of us do anything here? If I am to live, I must have blood. Without it, I'd face a death even more certain than that doled out by the Nazis." m as if the words he wished to speak were too jagged to fit through his throat. At last he managed to croak, "A vampire? You're a vampire?
Like in the old stories?"
Wernecke said calmly, "Men would call me that." He paused, then nodded ." Yes, that's what men would call me… As though they can understand something simply by giving it a name."
"But Eduard," Bruckman said weakly, almost petulantly." The Musselmann… forward and speaking more fiercely." His strength was going, he was sinking. He would have been dead by morning, anyway.m him something that he no longer needed, but that I needed in order to live. Does it matter? Starving men in lifeboats have eaten the bodies of their dead companions in order to live. Is what I've done any worse im…
Wemecke was silent for a moment, and then said, quietly, "What better thing could I have done for him? I won't apologize for what I do, Isadore; I do what I have to do to live. Usually I take only a little blood from a number of men, just enough to survive. And that's fair, isn't it? Haven't I given food to others, to help them survive? To you, Isadore? Only very rarely do I take more than a minimum from any one man, although I'm weak and hungry all the time, believe me. And never have I drained the life from someone who wished to live. Instead I've helped them fight for survival in every way I can, you know that."
He reached out as though to touch Bruckman, then thought betthan that?"
"But he didn't just die. Yo ter of it and put his hand back on his own knee. He shook his head.
"But these Musselmanner, the ones who have given up on life, the walking dead-it is a favor to them to take them, to give them the solace of death. Can you honestly say that it is not, here? That it is better for them to walk around while they are dead, being beaten and abused by the Nazis until their bodies cannot go on, and then to be thrown into the ovens and burned like trash? Can you say that? Would they say that, if they knew what was going on? Or would they thank me?"
Wernecke suddenly stood up, and Bruckman stood up with him.
As Wernecke's face came again into the stronger light, Bruckman could see that his eyes had filled with tears." You have lived under the Nazis," Wernecke said." Can you really call me a monster? Aren't I still a Jew, whatever else I might be? Aren't I here, in a deathcamp?
Aren't I being persecuted too, as much as any other? Aren't I in as much danger as anyone else? If I'm not a Jew, then tell the Nazisthey seem to think so." He paused for a moment, and then smiled wryly." And forget your superstitious boogey-tales. I'm no night-spirit.
If I could turn myself into a bat and fly away from here, I would have done it long before now, believe me."
Bruckman smiled reflexively, then grimaced. The two men avoided each other's eyes, Bruckman looking at the floor, and there was an uneasy silence, punctuated only by the sighing and moaning of the sleepers on the other side of the cabin. Then, without looking up, in tacit surrender, Bruckman said, "What about him? The Nazis will find the body and cause trouble.
"Don't worry," Wernecke said." There are no obvious marks. And nobody performs autopsies in a deathcamp. To the Nazis, he'll be just another Jew who has died of the heat, or from starvation or sickness, or from a broken heart."
Bruckman raised his head then and they stared eye to eye for a moment.
Even knowing what he knew, Bruckman found it hard to see Wernecke as anything other than what he appeared to be: an aging, baking Jew, stooping and thin, with sad eyes and a tired, compassionate face.
"Well, then, Isadore," Wernecke said at last, matter-of-factly." My life is in your hands. I will not be indelicate enough to remind you of how many times your life has been in mine."
Then be was gone, walking back toward the sleeping platforms, a shadow soon lost among other shadows.
Bruckman stood by himself in the gloom for a long time, and then followed him. It took all of his will not to look back over his shoulder at the corner where Josef lay, and even so Bruckman imagined that he could feel Josefs dead eyes watching him reproachfully as he walked away, abandoning Josef to the cold and isolate company of the dead.
Bruckman got no more slee that night, and in the morning, when the Nazis shattered the gray predawn stillness by bursting into the shack with shouts and shrilling whistles and barking police dogs, he felt as if he were a thousand years old.
