The Thief of Auschwitz (19 page)

He raises his hands in the symbol of surrender and approaches the guard big as life, confident. “I’m the prisoner they sent for,” he says, wasting no time. “Rosen.”

“No one’s been sent for.”

“Rosen the barber.”

“I said no one’s been sent for.”

“They sent for
me.
Begging your pardon.”

“Your number?”

Jacob gives it, turning his upraised left hand as if he could possibly make the tattoo visible in this light.

Concentrating and looking upward and moving his lips, the guard strains in the effort of committing the number to memory.

Jacob repeats it and lowers his arms to his sides, and the guard raises his machine gun a couple of inches.

“Who sent for you?”

“Vollmer.”

“The
sturmbannführer.”

“The very same.”

“And you’re the barber.”

“I am.”

“Perhaps the
sturmbannführer
needs a trim just now? A shave?”

Jacob tilts his head a few degrees and gets to the heart of the matter: “I’ve learned not to question.”

“Very well,” says the guard, getting an idea that a prisoner might, just this once, have a point. He takes a penlight from his pocket and flicks it on and signals to another guard, down in the grayblack chiaroscuro past the administration building. Nothing happens for the longest time. Nothing but the clawing of the searchlights. The clawing of the searchlights and the beginnings of a little snowfall sifting downward through their arcs.

“I was told to report to the Officers’ Club,” Jacob says.

“Then you were told correctly,” says the guard, still waiting, tapping his foot. The other guard signals back with a single quick flash, but otherwise the night holds nothing. “Every Thursday night they play
Skat.
The whole lot of them. Just like clockwork.”

The other guard signals again, an incomprehensible flashing, and this time a figure begins to emerge out of the darkness. A small vague individual moving quickly along the walk—perhaps a dwarf, Jacob thinks, because even though he’s never seen a dwarf in these precincts you never know; the Nazis have an interest in oddities of all kinds—until the searchlights reveal him at last. It’s Chaim.

Max

We form a strange kind of fellowship, those of us unlucky enough to have been in the camps but lucky enough to have gotten out. I suppose we ought to have meetings, like the AA. Coffee and cigarettes and no last names.

“I’m Max, and I survived Auschwitz.”

But who’d attend? Nobody. Nobody wants to talk about that stuff anymore. Nobody who went through it, at least. Nobody who knew anybody else who went through it. Your mind recoils. Your whole body recoils. It’s bad enough if you happen to see another survivor’s serial number by accident, in a coffee shop or on line at the grocery store or wherever. Imagine the memories that come back, the things that you remember and the things that you picture. I wear long sleeves regardless of the weather, and it’s not to keep the paint off.

Soon we’ll all be dead, and we won’t be able to frighten each other anymore.

The young girl I mentioned—that intern or assistant, the one from Washington—she has a couple of tattoos that you can’t help but notice. I’ll bet she has more that you can’t see, too. Private stuff. It just slays me, the idea of disfiguring yourself like that. What are people thinking?

They’re not thinking about the world I’ve seen, that’s for sure. And the world I’ve seen is just people, when you get down to it. Just people doing the things that people do. The same things that people have always done and the same things that they’ll do again if you let them get away with it. I say why disfigure yourself in advance, when if you wait long enough someone will come along and do it for you?

I’d tell her, if I thought she’d listen. I’d roll up my sleeve and show her my own tattoo, my serial number, my stigma. But what would that prove? You can’t communicate anything that way. It’s just wobbly ink on an old man’s arm.

So I keep it to myself. And I paint.

Eleven

Jacob makes certain that he gets in the first word. “Chaim!” he says. “Why did they send for me? Do you suppose I’ve disappointed someone?”

Count on the boy to climb aboard any deception whatsoever, without so much as a moment’s pause to gather his wits. “No, no, no,” he says. “It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s one of the junior officers. Beck. He’s lost a wager, and it’s about to cost him a shaved head.”

The guard laughs. Perhaps he knows this Beck. Perhaps he thinks he has it coming.

Chaim goes on. “The water’s boiling and the razor’s sharp. I hope your hands are steady.”

“As always.” Jacob holds his right hand out before him to demonstrate, the arm stiff and angled up a few degrees. There’s a parodical hint of the fascist salute about it, which escapes no one but does no harm, not now that the pressure is off and the guard understands his connections and is ready to let him pass.

“They won’t wait,” says Chaim, and off they go together, into deeper darkness.

Once out of earshot, Jacob asks, “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“You go first.”

“The usual,” says Chaim. “Plus saving your ass.”

“Fair enough,” says Jacob.

“And you?”

“I have to see Vollmer.”

“You’re in luck. He’s one of the few of them who can still stand up.” Ahead of them, crossing back and forth in general darkness punctuated here and there by lamps in doorways and lamps in windows and lamps hung high on blank walls, another guard paces, the one who’d signaled back to the Hungarian with his flashlight. They slow before reaching him, just a little bit, and Chaim asks, “How come you want to see
Vollmer?”

“Because you’ve been right all along,” says Jacob, not above employing a little cunning of his own.

“I can’t wait to find out how,” says the boy, taking Jacob by the hand and dragging him toward the guard at a half trot and then dragging him right on past, not stopping and not even looking up. When they’re in the clear he says, “All right, tell me. What is it I’ve been right about?”

“That I should explain to him about Eidel,” he says.

“Of course! It’s about time!”

“You see, then? You were correct from the beginning.”

“Take my word,” says the boy. “As long as you play your cards right, there’ll be something in it for you too.”

“I hope so.”

“But why now?” says Chaim, for he’s not above suspecting a little cunning either, not even from Jacob. “Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“It’s Max.”

“What about him?”

Quickly, Jacob explains. The accident. The broken and bleeding leg. The death watch at the hospital, which is closer to punishment than to anything else.

“Aha,” says Chaim. “So you’ve already considered how you might profit from this arrangement.”

“How Max might profit,” says Jacob.

“Of course,” says the boy.

Over the door to the Officers’ Club hangs a gas lamp, burning white. There’s no guard posted, because everyone in this part of the compound is either on the same side or so outnumbered as to be utterly overwhelmed. The door hangs open a crack and music trickles through—a jolly number played on the piano, all runs and trills and booming bass notes in rapid alternation, some old folk lullaby speeded up and retooled and accompanied by the fierce and merry pounding of boots and fists—and upon this tide of sound a prisoner bursts through, carrying a carton of empty bottles in his arms.

“Beg your pardon,” he says, pure reflex.

Chaim ducks under the carton and Jacob ducks around it and together they go in, down a little hallway with more gas lamps mounted on the walls, and along past a low and dimly lit room where the piano player entertains a mixed audience of SS officers and young women from the auxiliary. There are tables with tablecloths and candles and there’s a jammed dance floor down at the far end, but they don’t look closely. They just scurry past. Some singing starts up behind them, the chorus of that folk song with everyone raising up his voice on cue, and the surprising assault of it makes them jump. One of the officers laughs to spy their terror. “Afraid of a little singing?” he calls, as amused as if he’d shot them himself. “I’m not surprised,” he hollers. “It’s a German number, after all.” They pretend not to hear, and he barks another laugh and returns to his music.

The card room is at the end of the hall. It’s a little quieter than the music room but no more inviting, humming with low argument, dense with an air of gaiety lost and recrimination begun. A gray pall of tobacco smoke covers everything, mingling with the smells of alcohol and desperate men. Jacob knows these individuals, he knows their lowered faces and he knows the backs of their necks, but he’s never seen them like this. He’s never seen them exposed this way, vulnerable to one another, more like animals than ever. He pauses at the door, reluctant to set foot among them, but Chaim goes first and drags him in.

A swinging door on the opposite wall opens at the same time, and two prisoners emerge with steins and glasses and crystal goblets on round trays. They raise them up to shoulder level like old professionals, although Jacob is acquainted with both of them and knows that never in their lives were they waiters before now. One was an optometrist, the other a college professor. He doesn’t know whether to admire them for having elevated their present roles as far as they can or to pity them for needing to.

The officers look up for a variety of reasons: the arrival of the waiters with fresh drinks, the light spilling through the open kitchen door, the chance to catch an opportunistic glimpse at some opponent’s carelessly tilted hand. Not one of them looks toward Jacob and Chaim. Not even Vollmer, who’s shooing off a waiter and shielding his cards low against the table and trying hard not to look as if he’s counting the money stacked in front of him. But he’s counting it all right, and he’s counting the hands he’s won and he’s doing the math and he’s realizing that even this early in the evening someone has shorted him. Probably the commandant himself, and there’s no fixing that. Leave it to the old sot to pull off a stunt like that even though he’s already a few sheets to the wind. He’ll have to be more careful.

Chaim leaves Jacob standing just inside the door and approaches Vollmer alone. The deputy looks up from his winnings and sees the boy coming his way like a telegram bearing bad news. Not that the child is unexpected; he’s here all the time, forever underfoot at the Officers’ Club and in the dining room and the devil knows where else. He’s a recurring bad dream, that child, and from the way Vollmer presses his eyes shut against the thick smoke in the air you would think he’s hoping he’ll dematerialize. But Chaim comes on, and he takes up a position at the corner of the table between Vollmer and Liebehenschel—between God and His Right Hand, for all purposes—and he lifts his little voice above the din of the arguing men and the clanging of the glassware and the rhythmic pounding of the music from down the hall.

Vollmer’s every instinct tells him to raise a hand and press it across his mouth to stifle whatever words are about to come out, but he’d rather not touch him. Thus the unpunishable child gets away with anything. “The barber has something important to tell you,” Chaim says, and for the first time Vollmer notices Jacob, standing there just inside the door. He waves him over and the boy moves aside, just a step toward Liebehenschel, and the commandant drapes an arm over his shoulder. His breath stinking of tobacco and schnapps, the grizzled old
capo di tutti
whispers something in the boy’s ear and the boy laughs, willfully or otherwise. Who can tell anymore.

Vollmer places his cards facedown on the table and looks up at the barber. “What is it?” he says, glad to have Jacob situated between himself and the boy, his mood improving already. He’s about to ask if perhaps haircuts have been rescheduled this week, but Jacob speaks up.

“It’s about your painting,” he says.

“The painting? The painting of the girl?”

“Yes, sir,” says Jacob. “That painting and the other one—the one you want of your family.”

“The portrait.”

“Yes. The portrait.”

“What of it?”

“Begging your pardon,
sturmbannführer
—but I have found your artist.”

“Not that landscape fellow.” Vollmer half turns away, sliding his hand toward his cards.

“No, sir. Not the landscape fellow.”

“Good. You’re learning.” He turns up the near corners of his cards, distracted. “I suppose you’ve located some talented fellow prisoner.”