Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (52 page)

Down Among the Dead Men

Introduction to Down Among the Dead Men

Some writers become friends. Reader, you probably know the feeling: that initial buzz when you encounter, perhaps in little more than a few lines or pages, a writer about whom you notice something which intrigues, something which chimes a bell deep within you, something which draws you in. You remember that writer’s name, you look out for them on the shelves and in lists of contents. When your paths brush against each other again, you open their pages with that fragile extra feeling of anticipation. You welcome them eagerly into your mind.

Gardner Dozois the writer has long been that kind of friend to me. I think it was probably
Omni
where I first encountered him, or perhaps an edition of
Orbit
I borrowed from the library. Which story was it? I’m honestly not sure, but what I do remember is the feeling, the sense of
aha
—here’s someone to look out for. All of that was long ago now, but I can honestly say that Gardner’s never let me down. He’s not that kind of friend, he’s not that kind of writer, and the story you have before you shows many of the reasons why.

Gardner’s often a harsh writer both in mood and choice of subject, but his prose, even in pieces as essentially uncompromising as “Down Among the Dead Men,” always has that extra edge of grace, surprise, wonder. There’s a scary, lovely moment you’ll soon come across when the struggles of a body are compared to the flapping of a kite. Gardner holds the image, develops it, brings the unsaid things home, all in a couple of sentences. Of course, he’s a good writer in the obvious sense of the word, but he’s also a good writer because he cares about goodness. Who else could choose the subject of vampires in a concentration camp, then bring it off with a sense of grace and humanity, and yet still leave you with a genuine shiver of horror? It’s a tricky balancing act to say the least, yet, here along with Jack Dann, Gardner achieves the task, surmounts it, makes the very difficulty of what he’s doing part of the significance and substance of the story. After all, in a world of near-ultimate horror, what could be more horrific than what is already happening? This story probes this question like a tongue at a sore tooth, and then gets close to the truth when, with typical lightness of touch, the world is briefly tilted upside down by the main character’s musings, and real history suddenly (and rightly) seems far more fantastical than the fantasy the story is describing. Gardner often seems surprised at what he’s writing; he never takes wonder or suffering or the characters he’s created or the setting he has made for granted. As I say, he’s a friend—he’s a good writer.

I’ve also known Gardner in his other literary incarnation as an editor for quite a few years. It’s a different kind of thing, friendship with an editor, although with Gardner I’ve always felt that the one relationship was grounded on the other—and he’s certainly been good to me in all the ways you’d expect of someone who writes such fine and honest prose. Then, finally, there’s Gardner Dozois the person. Introductions of these kinds are often full of the kind of the-time-we-got-drunk-in-Hong-Kong sort of tales we all recognize, but Gardner-and I have bumped into each other person-to-person only once, and for then literally no more than 20 seconds in the flurry of a convention hotel. We went our separate ways to our separate appointments, then back home to our separate continents, where we sometimes e-mail or write. But a stronger connection remains. Gardner’s a friend, and he’s a good one. And the friendship you can get from a writer can be long and deep and important—indeed, it can last and enrich a whole life. Reader, I hope Gardner Dozois can do a little of the same for you.

Ian MacLeod

Down Among the Dead Men

by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

Bruckman first discovered that Wernecke was a vampire when they went to the quarry that morning.

He was bending down to pick up a large rock when he thought he heard something in the gully nearby. He looked around and saw Wernecke huddled over a
Musselm
ä
nn,
one of the walking dead, a new man who had not been able to wake up to the terrible reality of the camp.

“Do you need any help?” Bruckman asked Wernecke in a low voice. Wernecke looked up, startled, and covered his mouth with his hand, as if he were signing to Bruckman to be quiet . . . .

But Bruckman was certain that he had glimpsed blood smeared on Wernecke’s mouth. “The
Musselmänn,
is he alive?” Wernecke had often risked his own life to save one or another of the men in his barracks. But to risk one’s life for a
Musselmänn?
“What’s wrong?”

“Get away.”

All right, Bruckman thought. Best to leave him alone. He looked pale, perhaps it was typhus. The guards were working him hard enough, and Wernecke was older than the rest of the men in the work gang. Let him sit for a moment and rest. But what about that blood . . . ?

“Hey, you, what are you doing?” one of the young SS guards shouted to Bruckman.

Bruckman picked up the rock, and, as if he had not heard the guard, began to walk away from the gully, toward the rusty brown cart on the tracks that led back to the barbed-wire fence of the camp. He would try to draw the guard’s attention away from Wernecke.

But the guard shouted at him to halt. “Were you taking a little rest, is that it?” he asked, and Bruckman tensed, ready for a beating. This guard was new, neatly and cleanly dressed—and an unknown quantity. He walked over to the gully and, seeing Wernecke and the
Musselmänn,
said, “Aha, so your friend is taking care of the sick.” He motioned Bruckman to follow him into the gully.

Bruckman had done the unpardonable—he had brought it on Wernecke. He swore at himself. He had been in this camp long enough to know to keep his mouth shut.

The guard kicked Wernecke sharply in the ribs. “I want you to put the
Musselmänn
in the cart. Now!” He kicked Wernecke again, as if as an afterthought. Wernecke groaned, but got to his feet. “Help him put the
Musselmänn
in the cart,” the guard said to Bruckman; then he smiled and drew a circle in the air—the sign of smoke, the smoke which rose from the tall gray chimneys behind them. This
Musselmänn
would be in the oven within an hour, his ashes soon to be floating in the hot, stale air, as if they were the very particles of his soul.

Wernecke kicked the
Musselmänn,
and the guard chuckled, waved to another guard who had been watching, and stepped back a few feet. He stood with his hands on his hips. “Come on, dead man, get up or you’re going to die in the oven,” Wernecke whispered as he tried to pull the man to his feet. Bruckman supported the unsteady
Musselmänn,
who began to wail softly. Wernecke slapped him hard. “Do you want to live,
Musselmänn?
Do you want to see your family again, feel the touch of a woman, smell grass after it’s been mowed? Then
move.”
The
Musselmänn
shambled forward between Wernecke and Bruckman. “You’re dead, aren’t you,
Musselmänn,”
goaded Wernecke. “As dead as your father and mother, as dead as your sweet wife, if you ever had one, aren’t you? Dead!”

The
Musselmänn
groaned, shook his head, and whispered, “Not dead, my wife . . .”

“Ah, it talks,” Wernecke said, loud enough so the guard walking a step behind them could hear. “Do you have a name, corpse?”

“Josef, and I’m not a
Musselmänn.”

“The corpse says he’s alive,” Wernecke said, again loud enough for the SS guard to hear. Then in a whisper, he said, “Josef, if you’re not a
Musselmänn,
then you must work now, do you understand?” Josef tripped, and Bruckman caught him. “Let him be,” said Wernecke. “Let him walk to the cart himself.”

“Not the cart,” Josef mumbled. “Not to die, not—”

“Then get down and pick up stones, show the fart-eating guard you can work.”

“Can’t. I’m sick, I’m . . .”

“Musselmänn!”

Josef bent down, fell to his knees, but took hold of a stone and stood up with it.

“You see,” Wernecke said to the guard, “it’s not dead yet. It can still work.”

“I told you to carry him to the cart, didn’t I,” the guard said petulantly.

“Show him you can work,” Wernecke said to Josef, “or you’ll surely be smoke.”

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 hand—smoke 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.”

“Eduard, 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
Musselmänn
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
Musselmänn.
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
Musselmänn
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 the 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
Musselmänner.

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 room. 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 ground into a deathly imitation of day; only inside the barracks was it night.

“Do you know what tonight 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
Musselmänn.
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 death camp. 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 shank bone, 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 years 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 nisht’ana 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 sucked away and replaced with lead.

He lay there in the semidarkness, 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 was 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 to relax, don’t think. 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
Musselmänn,
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 . . .