Annexed (24 page)

I have left him. I have left him behind, the last of us. I have deserted him. Because I want to live. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot.

When I finally look up, the day is nearly done. There are fewer of us. They have shot the ones who fell, who could not keep up. On a hillside there are trees. The sight of them makes my heart leap up. They are green. Fir trees. The color burns bright against my eyes. I am not used to it. Color.

We sleep where we fall. In the morning we leave the dead where they are. Frozen and curled in their blanket of frost.

We walk. We put one foot in front of the other.

I have left him. I have left him behind. Each step takes me farther, and farther from him.

I walk for days, I see villages again, and people who are not guards, or Häftlinge. I see a woman wearing a bright blue scarf on her head. I cannot stop staring at it, it is so beautiful. She offers us food. The Häftling who takes her food is shot.

"What can I do for them?" she asks, shocked.

"Nothing," say the guards.

Her kindness confuses us. Feelings flare up and burn in us. Die because they cannot be borne.

I am walking.

I have shed everything. One by one the people I have loved are gone. I am alone. I am walking bones—and soon now, it will be over.

Soon, even the smoke will stop coming out of the chimneys, the last pieces of bone will have been ground to dust and they will have won. They will blow the last of our dust away upon the wind, and in the years that follow even their stories will be true.

That we were only as they saw us:

Rats. Cockroaches. Crushed.

And so we few that remain go on. We put one foot in front of the other. We walk. When we stumble and fall and want to die, we get up—and go on. Because this is all there is. There is no Peter, no number.

There is only survival.

Them or us.

Their story or ours.

Which will it be?

Can you hear me?

Or is it just like in my dreams?

Are you already turning and walking away, back into the sunlight of that other world—your world—where I no longer exist?

Am I truly the last? The last Jew on earth?

There is a noise outside the hut. I close my eyes. Footsteps. I lie still, hoping they will think I am dead. The footsteps keep on coming. They are searching through the bodies, looking for signs of life.

"
I think they're all dead," a voice says.

Someone is standing beside my bed.

"
I think there's life in this one!
"

I do not move. If I am lucky I will not be worth a bullet. I would like to die without that final violence.

"
Can you hear me?" the voice says into my ear. "Who are you?
"

He is speaking in Spanish. He repeats the words in German.

"
Who are you?
"

I open my eyes. The man is not dressed as a guard. He is thin, but not as thin as bones. I answer him, or try to. My voice sounds strange.

"
Stegi Stersi, B-9286." My mouth waters as it says the number, it is already thinking, at last, at last there will be soup.
A
lager creature is a creature of habit.

"
Not your number," he says. "That time is over. What's your name?" he asks.

Phrases jump in my head. But none of them makes sense. Is this a
seleckcja? A
trick?

My name, it's on the tip of my tongue. My name. My name. What is it?

I am? I am? I am?

"
Never mind, boy, can you stand?
"

I don't know. They lift my legs.

I try.

I feel my heels press against the floor. My knees begin to grind. My bones press and crunch against each other. There is no cushioning flesh between them.

I start to rise. My legs begin to lever. I am standing. I am standing.

I hear my voice.

"
Peter!" it says. "I am Peter!
"

"
Peter!" says the man. "I am Stefano.
"

I am Peter.

The words ring inside me.

I am Peter.

A
carillon of bells.

His arm rises and he touches me. I feel his hand on my shoulder. It is a long time since I have been touched, my body flinches, expecting a blow.

"
Don't stand, sit," Stefano says. It is surprising. His voice is gentle. His eyes look at me.

"
Peter, can you make it outside?" the other one says. I stare at him. He is not as thin as I am. He wears the red triangle of a political. He seems to be crying.

"
He's just a boy!" he says, but Stefano shakes his head.

"
There are no children here. If he's survived this far, he's a man.
"

They link their arms together and make a sling. They lift me up and carry me.

"
We need to get you out of here. There are still some of those bastard Blockaltesters left. Can you make it outside?
"

Outside.

Outside.

I remember that word.

I see a chestnut tree.

There were streets. I think. And canals. And sunshine. And in autumn the leaves fell like gold coins that floated on the dark water of the canals.

"
Is it still all there?" I whisper. "The outside?
"

But they are struggling to carry me and cannot answer.

Around us there are piles. Piles of long matchsticks lying like people in the dirt. There are no rows now, no Häftlinge standing. There are no guards shouting. I close my eyes. I lift my face to the warmth and silence of the sun and feel it on my face.

I look around me. I see that the piles of matchsticks are men.

So many men.

All dead now.

Or dying.

I am still in Mauthausen, the place where...

The guards hold hoses in their hands.

"Stand! Stand! In fives. Two yards apart!" they shout.

The Häftlinge shuffle into place quickly, efficiently. They are old and young and ill and lame and injured. They were all different once—but in the guards' eyes they are all the same.

"Stand!" the guards scream.

The men crawl naked in the dirt, they struggle to rise to their feet. Some, just a few, jump up quickly, eager to please—but the old and the wise crawl as slowly as possible, saving each small second of energy. Judging it finely, this balance between rising as slowly as they can, but quickly enough not to be shot, or beaten—this balance between living and dying.

Every day I shuffle past the men standing like the naked skeletons of winter trees on my way to the quarry. Each evening when I return they are fewer. They are all naked. And it is freezing. At night the stars shine in a clear black frosty sky. The moon is clear. And they are beneath it. Standing. Like trees. In the morning the guards turn on the hoses.

"Stand!"

Each day there are less of them.

"Stand!"

Again and again.

It took the last man days to die. He stood up. He would not lie down. In the end they played with him. Let him rest for longer. Took bets. He thought he could win...

...but like I am, he just took longer to die.

The two politicals put me down. There is something soft beneath me.

"
One of the guards' uniforms." Stefano laughs. "He won't be needing it now!
"

The sun on my face feels like...

...a warm ball on my chest, bodies rising together like the whisper of the wind through the leaves of a chestnut tree, a burst of happiness like the taste of a strawberry. I remember Mouschi.

I feel my face smile.

The sun is real. I am not imagining it. It is here on my face.

"
That's right, boy, you lie in it!" I open my eyes.

"
They came!"Stefano says.

"
We're liberated," says the other.

I close my eyes and smile. I've heard it all before, a long, long time ago. That word: Liberation. There was a room. And a radio. There was Anne. I had a mother then, and a father. We waited together, high in an attic, but no one came.

Except them.

It was sunny that day, too.

Stefano laughs.

"
In the end, there were just too many of us!" he says. I listen to his voice. It has something strange in it. It has life in it. He must be a low number to be so strong. Has he done terrible things, too, like me?

"
You sleep, boy," he says. "It's over now. The Russians gave us guns!
"

"
Do you know?" I whisper. "Do you know what they did?
"

"
We know, and soon the whole world will know, too," says the voice.

I sigh. I close my eyes. He talks of all the terrible things as though they are in the past, and not inside us.

I am thinking of Otto Frank. Of all the terrible things I did, leaving him to die is the worst. I can see him now...

We are standing together. It is the day they took my father. I cannot speak.

"What is left of him?" Mr. Frank says. "The clothes that came back were not his, the number on his wrist was not his."

"There's nothing left," I whisper.

"You!" he says. "You are what he has left. You will remember. You will survive. You will tell his story."

"Are we even men?" I ask. I am ashamed. I let my father go.

I let Mr. Frank go too ... I walked away without him...

Can I call myself a man?

"Yes. We are men." Mr. Frank's voice is sharp and angry. "Never forget, Peter, it is
they
who are not men—all those who cannot feel shame. It is not
your
guilt or shame that matters. It is theirs. That is why you must tell your story."

And so I begin. In the only way I can, in words like footsteps, putting one in front of the other.

"
Are you there?" I whisper to Stefano. "Can you hear me?
"

"
I'm here," he says, "I'm listening.
"

"They brought us here to Mauthausen from everywhere. Survivors. From Auschwitz and Budapest, from Plaszow and Buchenwald. All the Jews. They said we were vermin. A swarm of locusts. They kept on trying to kill us. But we kept on coming. They were our nightmare; now we are theirs. They gassed us. They beat us. They hanged us and machine-gunned us. They tried to walk us to death. But still, we kept on coming."

The man holds my hand.

"
You're shaking," he says. "Hold on to me.
"

"They hosed us until we froze. They made us fall like dominoes down the steps of the quarry. They stood us by the wire and made us dance until we fell from exhaustion. And when we died upon the wire, dancing from the electricity twisting through our bodies, they laughed—and said—'He dances better dying!'

"
Do you know this is true?" I ask him.

He squeezes my hand, "I know it now," he says.

"Some held hands and leaped to their deaths—they called them parachutists. And all the time they starved us. Worked us. Beat us. And still we came. Waves of us. They gave us typhus. And fever. And cholera. They made us carry our dead and leave them in piles. They fed our bodies through the chimneys and empty ovens. They spread the ashes of our bones upon their roads, and walked upon us. They made us wear the clothes of our dead, lest we should ever forget that we were next. They woke us before the sun rose. They stole our dreams. And still, we kept on coming."

"
Yes! It was terrible," I hear the voice say, "and now its over.
"

I have lived in fear, afraid not of death, but of a greater loneliness than that—of survival. Of having to tell when there is not a single other Häftling left. Not one to nod his head and say "Yes," or "It is true, they called us
Häftlinge
and
Untermenschen.
"

Only me, alone, with the disbelief in the eyes of the people outside.

"
You're not alone!" he says. "There are others!
"

"
Other Jews?" I ask.

"
Yes!
"

Then I am not alone.

I am not alone.

I am only dying.

I close my eyes.

"
Peter!" they say. "Hang on, Peter!
"

I smile.

My name is Peter van Pels.

I am Peter.

And I have told my story.

"
They've found some of the guards—look at that! They're killing them, Peter. They're beating the bastards to death with their clogs!
"

I will not open my eyes,

I do not want to see their hatred.

Somewhere else, outside of here, there is a world where birds are singing.

In that world, I dreamed of freedom, of liberation.

And it has come.

"
They're dead, the stinking cowards! Bloody hell, we're free.
"

"
Can you open your eyes, boy?
"

"
I think he's going, mate.
"

"
Not now! Not now, boy!
"

"
Can you hear me, Peter?
"

"
Listen, boy. Your people have risen up!
"

I smile.

It is here, then. The moment I have longed for. Fought for. Watched others die for.

"
You're free, boy. Free!
"

Am I?

Can I ever be free of the pictures inside me? Of people standing in lines? Of a man putting a noose around his neck and jumping? Of God dying? Of bodies lying in piles like matchsticks? And of the truth that when there is nothing else, there is still the will to live? Driving us on, making us put one foot in front of the other. Me. In front of you. Because if I do not, I will die.

No more. I do not want any more.

Do you understand?

Are you listening?