Fatelessness (16 page)

I would never have believed it, yet it is a positive fact that nowhere is a certain discipline, a certain exemplariness, I might even say virtue, in one’s conduct of life as obviously important as it is in captivity. It suffices merely to take a little look around the area of Block 1, where the camp’s native inmates live. The yellow triangles on their chests tell you all you really need to know, while the letter “L” in them discloses the incidental circumstance that they have come from distant Latvia, more specifically from the city of Riga, I was informed. Among them one can see those peculiar beings who at first were a little disconcerting. Viewed from a certain distance, they are senilely doddering old codgers, and with their heads retracted into their necks, their noses sticking out from their faces, the filthy prison duds that they wear hanging loosely from their shoulders, even on the hottest summer’s day they put one in mind of winter crows with a perpetual chill. As if with each and every single stiff, halting step they take one were to ask: is such an effort really worth the trouble? These mobile question marks, for I could characterize not only their outward appearance but perhaps even almost their very exiguousness in no other way, are known in the concentration camps as “
Musulmänner
” or “Muslims,” I was told. Bandi Citrom promptly warned me away from them: “You lose any will to live just looking at them,” he reckoned, and there was some truth in that, though as time passed I also came to realize it takes much more than just that.

For example, your first device is stubbornness: it may have come in varying forms, but I can tell you there was no lack of it at Zeitz, and at times it can be of immense assistance, so I observed. For instance, I found out more from Bandi Citrom about that weird band, collection, breed, or whatever one should call them, a specimen of which—on my left in the row—had already somewhat astonished me on my arrival. It was he who told me that we call them “Finns.” Certainly if you ask them where they are from, they really do reply—if they see fit to give you any answer at all, that is—something like “
fin Minkács
,” for example, by which they mean they are from Munkachevo, or “
fin Sadarada
,” which, for example (and you have to guess), is Sátoraljaújhely. Bandi Citrom already knows their organization from labor camp and doesn’t speak very highly of it. They can be seen everywhere, at work, while marching or at
Appell
, rocking rhythmically back and forth as they unflaggingly mutter their prayers to themselves, like some unrepayable debt. When meanwhile they speak out of the corner of the mouth to whisper across something like, “Knife for sale,” you don’t pay any attention. All the less so, however tempting it may be, especially in the morning, when it is “Soup for sale,” because, however strange it may sound, they don’t touch soup nor even the sausage that we occasionally get—nothing prescribed by their religion. “So what do they live on?” you might well ask, and Bandi Citrom would reply: you don’t have to worry about them, they look after themselves. He would be right too because, as you see, they stay alive. Among one another and with the Latvians they use Yiddish, but they also speak German, Slovakian, and a smattering of who knows what, only not Hungarian—unless it’s a question of doing business, of course. On one occasion (there was no getting out of it), as luck would have it, I ended up in their work
Kommando
. Their first question was “
Rayds di yiddish?
” When I told them that, no, unfortunately I didn’t, that was it as far as they were concerned, I became a nonperson, they looked at me as if I were thin air, or rather didn’t exist at all. I tried to speak, get myself noticed, but to no avail. “
Di bisht nisht kai yid, d’bisht a
shaygets,”
¹²
they shook their heads, and I could only wonder at how people who after all were reputedly at home in the business world could cling so irrationally to something from which the harm to them was so much more, the losses so much greater, than any gains with regard to the end result. That day I learned that the discomfiture, the skin-crawling awkwardness which at times took hold between us was already familiar to me from back home, as if there had been something not quite right about me, as if I did not quite measure up to the proper ideal, in short as if I were somehow Jewish—a rather odd feeling to have after all, I reckoned, in the midst of Jews, in a concentration camp.

At other times it was Bandi Citrom who slightly amazed me. Whether at work or during a break, I often heard, and quickly learned from him, his favorite song, which he had brought with him from his labor service days in the punishment company: “We clear mines from land in the Uk-raine, / But even there we’re never chicken . . .” was how it began, and I was specially fond of the closing lines, which go: “If a com-rade, a good bud-dy, should be lost, / For those back home our ri-poste / Is: / Come of us what may, / Our dear old home-land, / We’ll not de-ceive you, at any cost.” A noble sentiment, undeniably, and the somber tune, more on the slow side than snappy, along with the ditty as a whole, did not fail to exert their influence on me too, naturally— only somehow they merely jogged my memory of the gendarme, that time back on the train, when he reminded us of our being Hungarian; only in the end, strictly speaking, the homeland had punished them too. I mentioned this to him once, what’s more. He did not come up with any counterargument either, yet he seemed to be just a little put out, even annoyed one could say. On some occasion the next day, though, very wrapped up in something, he again started whistling, humming, and finally singing it as if any recollection of that had been clean forgotten. Another frequently repeated refrain was that he would again “set foot on the pavements of Forget-me-not Road,” that being where he lived back home, and he mentioned the street, even the number of the house, so many times and in so many ways that finally I too knew all its attractions by heart, almost longed to go there myself, even though in my own recollections I actually knew it only as a fairly secluded backstreet somewhere in the neighborhood of the Eastern Railway Terminal. He often spoke about, evoked, and also reminded me of other places too, squares, avenues, houses, as well as certain well-known slogans and advertising signs that blazed on their roofs and in various shopwindows—“the lights of Budapest” as he called them, though here I had to correct him, being obliged to point out that those lights no longer existed on account of the blackout regulations, and the bombing, to be sure, had knocked the city’s panorama about a bit here and there. He fell silent, but as far as I could make out the news was not very much to his liking. The next day, though, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, he again started to go on about the lights.

But then, could anyone be acquainted with all the variants of stubbornness? For I can assure you, had I but known, there were many variants I could have chosen from in Zeitz. I heard about the past, the future, and a lot, a very great deal, about freedom above all; indeed, I can safely say, nowhere does one hear as much about it, it seems, as among prisoners, which naturally makes a lot of sense after all, I suppose. Yet others took some strange pleasure in an adage, a joke, a wisecrack of sorts. I heard this one myself, naturally. There is an hour of the day which falls between returning from the factory and the evening
Appell
, a distinctive, always bustling, and liberated hour that I, for my part, always looked forward to and enjoyed the most while in the Lager; as it happened, this was generally also supper time. I was just pushing my way through the milling, trading, and chatting knots of people when someone bumped into me, and a pair of tiny, worried eyes above a singular nose gazed at me from under the loose-fitting convict’s cap. “I don’t believe it,” we both said almost simultaneously, as he had recognized me and I him, the man with the bad luck. He immediately appeared to be delighted and inquired where my quarters were. Block 5, I told him. “Pity,” he said regretfully, since he was lodged elsewhere. He complained that he didn’t “get to see familiar faces,” and when I told him that I didn’t either he somehow looked crestfallen, though I don’t know why. “We’re becoming split up, all split up,” he observed with an implication in his words and the shaking of his head that was somewhat lost on me. Then his face brightened all of a sudden, and he asked, “Do you know what this here,” pointing to his chest, “this letter ‘U,’ signifies?” Sure I did, I told him: “
Ungar
, Hungarian.” “No,” he answered, “
Unschuldig
,” meaning “innocent,” then gave a snort of laughter followed by prolonged nodding of the head with a brooding expression, as if the notion were somehow highly gratifying, though I have no idea why. Subsequently, and quite often in the beginning, I saw the same on others in the camp from whom I also heard that wisecrack, as if they derived some warming, fortifying emotion from it—that at least is what was suggested by the unfailingly identical laugh and then that same softening of features, the dolefully smiling and yet somehow euphoric expression with which they told and hailed this witticism each and every time they told it, in much the same sort of way as when a person hears music that deeply touches his feelings or some particularly moving story.

Yet all the same, with them too what I noticed was the same endeavor, the same good intention: they too wanted merely to be seen as good prisoners. Make no mistake about it, that was in our interest, that is what the conditions called for, that is what life there, if I may put it this way, compelled us to do. If the rows were perfectly in line and the numbers tallied, for instance, the roll call did not last so long—at least to start with. If one was diligent at work, for example, then one might avoid a beating—usually, at any rate.

Even so, at least to start with, I believe the thinking of each and every one of us cannot have been guided entirely by that gain alone, not exclusively by that kind of benefit alone, I can honestly say. Take work, for example, the first afternoon of work, to start with that straightaway: the task was to unload a wagon of gray gravel. If, after Bandi Citrom and I—naturally having sought permission beforehand from the guard: on this occasion, a soldier who was getting on in years and, at first glance, more docile-looking—had stripped down to the waist (that was the first time I saw his golden-brown skin with the big, smooth muscles lithe under it and the darker patch of a birthmark below the left breast), he said, “Now then, let’s show these guys what Budapesters can do!” then he meant that perfectly seriously. And I tell you, considering it was after all the first time in my life that I had handled a pitchfork, that both the guard and the foreman-type guy, no doubt from the factory, who would nose around every now and then seemed rather satisfied, which only made us reintensify our efforts, naturally. If, on the other hand, a stinging sensation declared itself on my palms after a time, and I saw blood all around the base of my fingers, and then our guard in the meanwhile called over: “
Was is
denn los?”
¹³
so I laughed and held up my palm to show him, whereupon he, abruptly turning surly, even giving a jerk on his rifle strap, demanded: “Arbeiten! Aber los!”
¹⁴
—then it was only natural, in the end, that my own interests should also turn to other things. From then on, I paid attention to just one thing: the times when he did not have his eyes on me, so I could steal the occasional quick breather, or how I might put as little as possible on my spade, shovel, or pitchfork; and I can tell you, later on I made very considerable progress in such tactics, at any rate gaining a great deal more expertise, schooling, and practice with them than in the performance of any job of work that I completed. And anyway, who profits from it, after all?—as I recall the “Expert” once asking. I maintain there was some problem here, some obstacle, some mistake, some breakdown. A word, a sign, a glimmering of appreciation now and again, nothing more, just a scintilla, might have proved more efficacious, for me at any rate. For what malice do we in fact have to bear against one another at the individual level, if one thinks about it? And then, after all, one retains a sense of pride even in captivity, so who would not, in the final analysis, lay claim, in his heart of hearts, to a drop of kindness, to say nothing of getting further with a considerate word, so I found.

Still, at bottom, experiences of that kind could not truly shake me as yet. Even the train was still running; if I looked ahead, I dimly sensed the destination somewhere in the distance, and in the initial period—the golden days, as Bandi Citrom and I later dubbed them—Zeitz, along with the conduct it required and a dash of luck, proved a very tolerable place—for the time being, that is, in the interim, until a time to come should secure release from it, naturally. Half a loaf of bread twice a week, a third of a loaf—three times, a quarter— twice only, fairly regular Zulage, boiled potatoes once a week (six spuds, doled out in one’s cap, though more than likely there would be no Zulage to go with them), noodle milk pudding once a week. One is soon made to forget any initial annoyance at the early reveille by dewy summer dawns, the unclouded sky, and then a steaming mug of coffee too (and you need to be smart at the latrines, as the cry of “
Appell!
Antreten!
” will soon resound). The morning muster, in all likelihood, is bound to be short: after all, work beckons, presses. One of the factory side-gates that we prisoners are also allowed to use lies off to the left of the highway, down a sandy footpath about ten to fifteen minutes’ walk from our camp. Already from a long way off, there is a rumbling, clattering, throbbing, panting, a hacking cough of three or four iron throats: the greetings of the factory, though more a veritable town, what with its main and side roads, slowly trundling cranes, earth-grabbing machines, profusion of rail tracks, its labyrinth of flues, cooling towers, piping, and workshop buildings. The many pits, ditches, ruins, and cave-ins, the mass of ripped-up conduits and spilled-out cables, attest to visitations by aircraft. Its name, as I learned as soon as the first lunch break, is “Brabag,” which is “the shorthand formerly used even on the stock market” to refer to the “Braun-Kohl-Benzin Aktiengesellschaft”
¹⁵
so I heard; moreover a burly man who was just then resting his weight on one elbow with a weary sigh as he fished a nibbled hunk of bread from his pocket was pointed out as the one who was the source of that information and, it was subsequently rumored in the camp, always accompanied by a touch of glee, and who had also formerly owned a few shares in the company, I gathered (though I never heard him personally say as much)—and the smell alone may well have reminded me of the oil works in Csepel—that here too they are hard at work producing gasoline, though by dint of some ingenious trick that allows them to extract it from lignite rather than oil. I thought this was an interesting concept, even though I was well aware that wasn’t what they were looking for from me, naturally. The options offered by the work squads, the
Arbeitskommandos
, are always a matter of lively debate. Some swear by spades, others by pitchforks for choice; some proclaim the advantages of cable-laying work, yet others prefer being assigned to the cement mixers, while who could divine what hidden motive, what dubious predilection, makes certain individuals particularly attached to work on the drains of all things, up to their waists in yellow slime or black oil, though no one doubts the existence of such a motive since most of them happen to be from among the Latvians, plus of course their like-minded friends, the Finns. Only once a day does the word “Antreten,”
¹⁶
wafting down from on high, have a long, drawn-out, and inviting bittersweet lilt, and that is in the evening, when it signals the time to return home. Bandi Citrom squeezes through the throng around the washbasins with a shout of “Move over, Muslims!” and no part of my body can be kept hidden from his scrutiny. “Wash your pecker too! That’s where the lice lodge,” he’ll say, and I comply with a laugh. This marks the start of that particular hour, that hour of odd matters to attend to, of jokes or complaints, visits, discussions, business deals, and exchanges of information that only the homely clatter of cauldrons, the signal that galvanizes everyone, stirs everyone into quick action, is capable of breaking. Then “
Appell!
” and it’s a matter of sheer luck how long for. But then, after a lapse of one, two, or, tops, three hours (with the arc lights going on in the meantime), the great rush along the narrow gangway of the tent, hemmed in on both sides by rows of three-tier bunk-bedding spaces, here called “boxes.” After that, for a while yet, the tent is all semidarkness and whispering; this is the time for spinning yarns, tales about the past, the future, freedom. I got to learn that back home everyone had been a very model of happiness, usually wealthy as well. It was also at this time that I could get an idea what people used to have for their supper, and even, from time to time, certain other topics of what, between men, sounded like a confidential nature. It was then that speculations were debated (though I never heard anything more about it later on) that a form of sedative, a “bromide,” was being mixed into the soup for some particular reason— that’s what was alleged at any rate, amid exchanges of knowing and always slightly enigmatic looks. Bandi Citrom too could always be relied on at this time to bring up Forget-me-not Road, the lights or—particularly in the early days, though there were not that many observations of my own that I could make on the subject, naturally—the “Budapest girls.” At other times, I would become aware of a suspicious muttering, a quiet, stifled chanting and shaded candlelight coming from one of the corners of the tent, and I heard that it was Friday night, and across there was a priest, a rabbi. I scrambled over the tops of the plank-beds to take a look for myself, and in the middle of a group of men it actually was him, the rabbi I already knew. He was going through the devotions just as he was, in prison garb and hat, but I did not watch him for long since I yearned more for sleep than prayers. I am berthed with Bandi Citrom on the uppermost tier. We share our box with two more bedfellows, both young, likable, and also from Budapest. Wooden planks with straw on them and sacking over the straw serve for bedding. We have one blanket between two, though in the end even that is too much in summertime. We don’t exactly have a terrific abundance of space: if I turn over, my neighbor has to do the same, and if my neighbor draws his legs up, I have to do the same; still, even so, sleep was deep and expunged all memories. Those were golden days, indeed.