Fatelessness (10 page)

The next thing, I was wakened by a bustling and flurry of excitement. Outside, the sun was by now blazing in full brilliance. The train was again in motion as well. I asked the boys where we were, and they said we were still in the same place but had just now begun to move on; this time, it seems, the lurch must have awoken me. There was no question however, they added, that factories and settlements of sorts could be seen up ahead. A minute later, those who were at the window reported, and I myself also noticed from a fleeting change in the light, that we had slipped under the arch of some form of gateway. After a further minute had passed, the train came to a halt, at which they informed us in great excitement that they could see a station, soldiers, and people. At this, many started to gather their things together or button up their clothes, while some, women especially, hastily freshened up, smartened themselves, combed their hair. From outside I heard an approaching banging, a clattering-back of doors, the commingling hubbub of passengers swarming from the train; I had to concede there could be no doubt about it, we were indeed at our destination. I was glad, very naturally, though in a different way, I sensed, than I would have been glad yesterday, say, or still more the day before that. Then a tool snapped on the door of our wagon, and somebody, or rather several somebodies, rolled the heavy door aside.

I heard their voices first. They spoke German, or some language very close to that, and from the way it sounded, all at once. As far as I could make out, they wanted us to get off. Instead, though, it seemed they were pushing their way up among us; I could still see nothing as yet. The news was already going around, however, that suitcases and baggage were to be left here. Everyone, needless to say, so it was explained, translated, and passed on from mouth to mouth around me, would get their belongings back later, but first disinfection awaited all articles and a bath for us—and none too soon, I considered. They then got closer to me in the hurly-burly, and I finally got my first glimpse of the people here. It was quite a shock, for after all, this was the first time in my life that I had seen, up close at any rate, real convicts, in the striped duds of criminals, and with shaven skulls in round caps. Naturally enough, I immediately recoiled from them a bit. Some were answering people’s questions, others were taking a look around in the wagon, yet others were already starting to unload the luggage with the practiced skill of porters, and all with a strange, foxlike alacrity. On the chest of each one, apart from the customary convict’s number, I also saw a yellow triangle, and although it was naturally not too hard to work out what that color denoted, it still somehow caught my eye; during the journey I had, in a way, all but forgotten about that entire business. Their faces did not exactly inspire confidence either: jug ears, prominent noses, sunken, beady eyes with a crafty gleam. Quite like Jews in every respect. I found them suspect and altogether foreign-looking. When they spotted us boys, I noticed, they became quite agitated. They immediately launched into a hurried, somehow frantic whispering, which was when I made the surprising discovery that Jews evidently don’t only speak Hebrew, as I had supposed up till now: “
Rayds di
yiddish, rayds di yiddish, rayds di yiddish?”
¹
was what they were asking, as I gradually made out. “
Nein
,” we told them, the boys and me too. I could see they weren’t too happy about that. Then suddenly—on the basis of my German, I found it easy to figure out—they all started to get very curious about our ages. We told them, “
Vierzehn
” or “
Fünfzehn
,” depending on how old each of us was. They immediately raised huge protestations, with hands, heads, their entire bodies: “
Zestsayn!
” they muttered left, right, and center, “
zestsayn
.” I was surprised, and even asked one of them:
“Warum?
” “
Willst di arbeiten?
”—Did I want to work, he asked, the somehow blank stare of his deep-set, drawn eyes boring into mine.
“Natürlich
,” I told him, since that was after all my reason for coming, if I thought about it. At this, he not only grabbed me by the arm with a tough, bony, yellow hand but gave it a good shake, saying then in that case “
Zestsayn! . . . vershtayst di? Zestsayn!
” I could see he was exasperated, on top of which the thing, as I saw it, was evidently very important for him, and since we boys had by then swiftly conferred on this, I somewhat cheerfully agreed: all right, I’ll be sixteen, then. Furthermore, whatever might be said and quite irrespective of whether it was true or not, there were also to be no brothers, and particularly—to my great amazement—no twins; above all, though, “
jeder
arbeiten, nist kai mide, nist kai krenk”
²
—that was about the only other thing I learned from them during the possibly not quite two whole minutes it took as I moved in the crush from my place to the door, finally to take a big leap out into the sunlight and fresh air.

The first thing I noticed was a vast expanse of what looked like flat terrain. I was immediately a little blinded by the sudden spaciousness, the uniformly white, eye-stabbing brilliance of the sky and the plain. I did not have much time to look around, though, what with the bustling and teeming, the cries, tiny incidents, and sorting-out going on all around me. We would now, I heard, have to separate from the women for a short while, for after all we could not bathe together with them under the same roof; however, there were motor vehicles waiting a bit farther away for the elderly, the weak, mothers with infants, and those who had been exhausted by the journey. We were given to understand all this by a new set of prisoners, though I noticed that out here there were now German soldiers, in green forage caps and with green collars on their tunics, who were keeping an eye on everything and making eloquent hand gestures to indicate directions; I was even a bit relieved to see them, since they struck me as smart and trim, the sole anchors of solidity and calm in the whole tumult. I immediately heard, and moreover agreed with, the exhortation from many of the adults among us that we should try to do our bit by cutting questions and good-byes short, within reason, so as not to give the Germans the impression of such a rabble. As to what followed, it would be hard to recount: I was caught up and swept along by a damply seething, swirling tide. A woman’s voice behind me kept on squawking about a certain “small bag” that she was letting someone know had stayed with her. An old, disheveled-looking woman kept getting in the way in front of me, and I heard a short young man explaining: “Do what you’re told, Mama, we’ll be meeting up again before long anyway. Nicht wahr, Herr Offizier?”
³
turning, with a knowing and, in a way, somewhat grown-up conspiratorial smile toward the German soldier who happened to be giving orders right there, “
wir werden uns bald
wieder . . .
” But my attention was already being taken up by a hideous squealing from a grubby, curly-haired little boy, dressed up a bit like a shopwindow dummy, as he tried with peculiar jerks and wriggles to free himself from the grasp of a blonde woman, evidently his mother. “I want to go with Daddy! I want to go with Daddy!” he screamed, bellowed, and howled, stamping and drumming his feet, incongruously shod as they were in white shoes, on the white gravel and white dust. In the meantime I was also attempting to keep up with the boys, following the intermittent calls and signals that “Rosie” was giving, while a stout matron in a sleeveless, floral-patterned summer dress forged a path through everybody, myself included, in the direction where they had pointed out the vehicles were. After that, a tiny old man with a black hat and black necktie bobbed, twisted, and jostled around for a while, looking anxiously this way and that and shouting out, “Nellie! Nellie!” Then a tall, sharp-featured man and a woman with long, black hair clung to one another, faces, lips, their entire bodies locked together, causing everyone a flash of irritation, until the ceaseless buffetings of the human tide finally detached the woman, or rather girl, carrying her away and swallowing her up, though even as she receded I saw her a few times more, struggling to remain in view and waving a sweeping farewell from where she was.

All these images, voices, and incidents in this maelstrom flustered me and made my head swim slightly, jumbling them into what was ultimately a single, strange, colorful, and, I might almost say, crazy impression; that was one reason why I was less successful in being able to keep track of other, possibly more important things. I would find it hard to say, for instance, whether it was as a result of our own efforts or those of the soldiers or the prisoners, or all together, that in the end one long column was formed around me, now made up solely of men, all in regularly ordered ranks of five, which moved forward in step with me, slowly but at last steadily. Up ahead, it was again confirmed, was a bath, but first, I learned, a medical inspection was awaiting all of us. It was mentioned, though naturally I did not find it hard to appreciate, that this was obviously a matter of grading, of screening for suitability for work.

That gave me a chance to catch my breath until then. Along with the other boys beside, in front of, and behind me, we shouted across and signaled to one another that we were still here. It was hot. I was also able to take a look around me and orient myself a little as to where, in fact, we were. The station was smart. Under our feet was the usual crushed-stone covering of such places, a bit farther off a strip of turf in which yellow flowers were planted, and an immaculate white asphalt road running as far as the eye could see. I also noticed that this road was separated from the entire vast area that began behind it by a row of identically recurved posts, between which ran strands of metallically glinting barbed wire. It was easy to work out that over there, clearly, must be where the convicts lived. Maybe because this was the first chance I had to spare the time for it, they now began to intrigue me for the first time, and I would have been curious to know what offenses they had committed.

The scale, the full extent of the plain, also astounded me as I looked around. Yet, what with being among all those people and also in that blinding light, I was not really able to gain a truly accurate picture; I could hardly even discern the distant low-lying buildings of some sort, a scattering of raised platforms here and there that looked like game-shooting hides, a corner, a tower, a chimney. The boys and adults around me were also pointing at something up there, lodged in the milky vapors of a sky that, though cloudless, was nevertheless almost bleached of color, an immobile, elongated, severely gleaming body—a dirigible, to be sure. The explanations of those around generally agreed on its being a barrage balloon, at which point I recalled that dawn siren wail. Still, I could see no sign of concern or fear on the features of the German soldiers around us here. I remembered the air raids at home, and now this air of scornful composure and invulnerability all at once made the kind of respect with which the Germans were normally spoken of back there more clearly comprehensible to me. Only now did two forked lines on their collars catch my eye. From that I was able to establish that this must mean they belonged to that celebrated formation of the SS about which I had already heard so much at home. I have to say they did not strike me as the slightest bit intimidating: they were ambling up and down in leisurely fashion, patrolling the entire length of the column, answering questions, nodding, even cordially patting some of us on the back or shoulder.

There is one other thing I noticed during these idle minutes of waiting. I had already seen German soldiers often enough in Hungary, naturally. On those occasions, however, they had always been hurrying, always with uncommunicative, preoccupied expressions, always in immaculate dress. Here and now, though, they were somehow moving in a different manner, more casually and in a way—so I observed— more at home. I was even able to detect some minor disparities: caps, boots, and uniforms that were softer or stiffer, shinier or merely, as it were, workaday. Each had at his side a weapon, which is only natural, of course, when it comes down to it, given that they were soldiers, yet I saw many also had a stick in their hand, like a regular hooked cane, which slightly surprised me, since they were, after all, men without any problems walking, and manifestly in prime condition. But then I was able to take a closer look at the object, for I observed that one of them, up ahead with his back half-turned toward me, all at once placed the stick horizontally behind his hips and, gripping it at both ends, began flexing it with apparent boredom. Along with the row, I came ever-closer to him, and only then did I see that it was not made of wood but of leather, and was no stick but a whip. That was a bit of an odd feeling, but then I did not see any instance of them having recourse to it, and after all there were also lots of convicts around, I realized.

Meanwhile I heard but barely paid heed to calls being made for those with relevant experience—one, I recollect, for mechanical fitters—to step forward, while others were for twins, the physically disabled, indeed—amid a degree of merriment—even any dwarfs who might be among us. Later it was children they were after, because, it was rumored, they could expect special treatment, study instead of work, and all sorts of favors. Several adults even urged us to line up, not to pass up the opportunity, but I was still mindful of the warning that had been given by the prisoners on the train, and anyway I was more inclined to work, naturally, rather than lead a child’s life.

While all that had been going on, though, we had moved a fair bit farther forward. I noticed that the numbers of soldiers and prisoners around us had, all of a sudden, multiplied considerably. At one point, our row of five transformed into a single file. At the same time we were called on to remove our jacket and shirt so as to present ourselves to the doctor stripped to the waist. The pace, I sensed, was also quickening. At the same time, I spotted two separate groupings up ahead. A larger one, a highly diverse bunch, was gathering over on the right, and a second, smaller, somehow more appealing, in which moreover I could see several boys from our group were already standing, over on the left. The latter instantly appeared, to my eyes at least, to be made up of the fit ones. Meanwhile, and at gathering speed, I was heading directly toward what, in the confusion of the many figures in motion, coming and going, was now a fixed point, where I fancied I could see an immaculate uniform with one of those high-peaked German officer’s caps, after which the only surprise was how swiftly it was my turn.