Too Many Men (20 page)

“Of course,” Ruth said. “Millions of Jews were waiting for the comple-tion of the job.”

“It was very stressful,” said Höss. “I wanted to build a good camp. In direct opposition to the practices at other concentration camps. I wanted to house and feed the prisoners well. I knew that this would be the most effective way of getting good work out of them. But I soon realized that all of my intentions would be doomed. I could not build the camp that I had envisaged with the stupid and ineffectual officers that were posted to me.

All of my requests to obtain good and competent officers and noncommis-sioned officers to work in Auschwitz came to nothing. The entire core, the backbone of what had to be built was faulty, unsound, defective from the start.”

Ruth couldn’t speak. “What an understatement,” she said, eventually.

“It was not just us,” Höss said. “Why does everybody blame the Nazis?

It was not just the Nazis. It was all Germans. It is unfair to put the blame on the Nazis. Really, I mean this.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Ruth.

“People have said that we went to great lengths to hide and conceal what we were doing,” Höss said. “They say we did this because we Nazis knew that the bulk of the German people would not agree with what we were doing.

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“It is most absurd to think that only thousands of individuals were responsible,” Höss said, “for murdering millions of people. And that those thousands were clever enough and had the necessary resources to conceal their activities? Simply, simply absurd. The Nazi party allocated very little resources for concealment. Why should they? We knew the German people agreed with us. This sole apportioning of blame on to the Nazis is the most upsetting and unsettling part of the whole thing.”

“If that is what upsets you most, you’re never going to get to heaven,”

Ruth said.

“I am discussing something of extreme seriousness,” Höss said, and for a moment his voice echoed the sharp ring and bark of his former position.

“The Germans wanted the Jews dead,” Höss said. “It was a will and a desire of the German people to be rid of the Jews. Germans had been told that Jews were a threat to their blood for years. A germ, an infection. Jews were a disease that would destroy German culture. Germans were told this by politicians, by the popular media. They were told this in speeches and in literature. Mark my words, Germans were ready to get rid of Jews. We, the Nazis, needed their cooperation. We needed their enthusiasm and their participation. We needed not just the cooperation but the participation of administrators, engineers, lawyers, doctors, architects, manufacturers, and administrators. Are you listening to me? Can you hear what I am saying?”

Höss was shouting now.

“I am listening,” she said.

“No ordinary accountants or clerks or contractors or engineers or sig-nalmen or chemists or physicians who contributed to the killings were ever brought to trial,” Höss said. “Only those directly connected to the Nazi party or those directly involved in the administration of the death camps and labor camps were ever brought to trial. All the other Germans developed overnight amnesia.” Höss was very wound up. Ruth could hear he was having trouble breathing.

“I think you should calm down,” Ruth said. Höss’s anger and tension were making her nervous.

“I am calm, I am calm,” he said. “You should see all of the Germans in Zweites Himmel’s Lager. The place is crawling with Germans. It is infested with them. There are more Germans in Zweites Himmel’s Lager than any other nationality of people.” He started to laugh. “And even surrounded

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by all of these Germans, I am still unpopular.” He laughed out loud again.

“Where are you going?” Höss said.

“I’ve got to go outside,” Ruth said. “I feel sick.”

Outside the café, on Piotrkowska Street, Ruth took deep breaths. The air felt thick. It wasn’t the congestion of the coal smelters and the car exhausts she could feel. The air was clogged and jammed with more than the usual pollutants. The air was congealed. Curdled with ghosts.

From the café came the strains of the Polish pianist tackling “On the Street Where You Live.” The pianist had returned for the third time that evening to a tune from
My Fair Lady
. Höss and
My Fair Lady
. It was enough to make anyone doubt his sanity.

“Your gardener, Stanislau Dubiel, reported Mrs. Höss as saying several times in his presence, ‘I want to live in Auschwitz until I die.’ ”

“We had a very comfortable life there,” Höss said. “The accommoda-tion and the servants came with the job. Why shouldn’t my wife be happy with this?”

“All the prisoners employed in your household were given special underwear,” Ruth said. “Underwear obtained from the barracks for storing possessions stolen from the Jews. The barracks were named after Canada, a country seen as a land of wealth and opportunity. Other prisoners didn’t have underwear from Canada.”

“As commandant, I had standards to maintain,” Höss said. “Our staff had to have clean clothes. We couldn’t risk infection. After all, we were living in a location where infection, especially typhus, was epidemic.”

“Of course,” Ruth said. “Jews were dropping dead with typhus every day.”

“Household staff must look respectable,” Höss said. “They must look decent and clean.”

“Decency and cleanliness are not what come to mind in reference to you or your wife,” Ruth said.

“Can you leave Mrs. Höss out of this?” Höss said.

“When she received the underwear to distribute among the prisoners who worked for her, she kept it for herself. She gave the staff old, worn underwear discarded by your family. Your children were wearing the underwear of gassed people?”

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“Stanislau Dubiel was a brazen, Polish braggart. A compulsive liar,”

Höss said.

“Dubiel said that Mrs. Höss never gave him any of the money coupons that were needed by all the SS in order to buy food in Auschwitz. She just gave him lists of what she wanted. Meat, fruit, bread, sausages, cigarettes.

“And you, Mr. Höss, who were busy setting such a fine example for your fellow officers, failed to notice the abundance of foodstuffs on your dinner table every night, and at the parties Mrs. Höss gave regularly,” Ruth said.

“We had no more than our strict rationing of bread and skimmed milk,”

Höss said. “If other food was available we paid for it with the coupons that were required.”

“It’s a shame that others are saying otherwise, isn’t it?” Ruth said.

“I myself was far too busy with other things,” Höss said. “Before Auschwitz I was always prepared to see only the best in my fellow human beings, particularly my comrades. However in Auschwitz my so-called colleagues were dishonest and deceitful and disloyal to me. Every day I was forced to suffer new disappointments. Slowly, I, myself, began to become mistrustful and extremely suspicious. I retreated into myself. I became distant, remote, and noticeably harder. It was hard on my wife. She was always trying to draw me out of myself. To force me to engage with others. For my own good, you understand?”

“I understand her concern,” Ruth said. “She had good reason to be concerned.”

“She was a very good wife,” Höss said. “She would invite people to our home. Old friends from outside the camp, comrades who also worked in Auschwitz. Sometimes, with the help of a little alcohol, I would pull myself together, for her sake, and socialize.”

“You’ve left out an obvious H,” Ruth said.

“No,” Höss said, “I have not. Hitler has already received much attention. Everybody knows Adolf Hitler. The whole world was interested in Herr Hitler,” Höss sounded peeved.

“Does that bother you?” Ruth said.

“No, not at all,” said Höss. “But it is disproportionate that Hitler is so famous. He is a celebrity. He did not do so much by himself. We all worked hard and had an equal influence on the course of things. Why should Hitler

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be so well known? He did, I admit, have a talent for public speaking. But that in itself I consider to be a minor talent. And he had such a grating voice.”

“You think his histrionic hoarse shouting was public speaking?” Ruth said.

“It was in public and he was speaking,” Höss said. Höss took a deep breath. Ruth could hear him inhale.

“Enough of Hitler,” he said.

“Better late than never,” she said. But Höss didn’t reply. Maybe he hadn’t understood.

Chapter Seven

R
uth woke up singing. In a semiconscious state, halfawake, she had realized that she was singing lines from
My Fair Lady
to herself. She had never seen the musical. She had never known the lyrics to any of the show’s songs. Yet here she was, in her hotel room in Lódz, endlessly repeating lyrics from the song “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.” It wasn’t a languorous rendition of the song that she was singing. It was a speeded-up version much faster than the composers of the musical, Lerner and Loewe, had intended.

Ruth was copying the tempo of last night’s performance. The brisk variation of the show tune played by the young pianist in the café. One staccato note after another. Each note jolly and complete. There was no sign of the wistfulness or longing implied in the lyrics. She had to get the song out of her head. It was giving her a headache. She moved to get out of bed. Her brain hurt. She knew that this couldn’t be true. She knew that brain tissue contained no sensory nerves. She got out of bed slowly. The words kept going round and round in her head.

She poured herself some bottled water, and assembled the fifteen different vitamin tablets she took every day. She swallowed the pills, then drank some extra water. Dehydration could cause headaches. Maybe she was dehydrated? She drank some more water.

It was an appropriate song for her to be singing, she thought. Any room

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would be preferable to this room at the less than Grand Victoria. Any room, anywhere. Nothing in the room worked. Ruth had wanted to have a bath last night. The trickle of water that came out of the bath taps would have had to have continued for several days before being enough to fill a tub. She had complained about it to the male receptionist. “Is impossible,”

was all he could say. “Is impossible.”

What did he mean? Was it impossible to fix? Impossible to believe?

What was he saying? Was he being sympathetic? Agreeing that a room without a functioning bath was impossibly difficult? Ruth had no idea. “Is impossible,” he kept saying, as she hung up.

Ruth turned on the tap in the basin. Water sprayed over the carpet, and over her. This happened with both the hot water tap and the cold water tap. Ruth tried to tighten the faucets. They wouldn’t budge. The faucets had clearly been this way for years. Maybe most guests at the Grand Victoria didn’t wash? Everything in the room was broken. The dial on the rotary phone moved around in fits and starts. The toilet was so energetic it flushed some of its contents right out, into the room. The bed sagged at both ends, and inexplicably rose in the middle. The pillows were limp and marked, Ruth felt, with the dents of other people’s heads. She hated this hotel.

“I never seen you look so tired,” Edek said to her when she came down for breakfast. He was talking to the doorman. The gold-necklaced, thick-necked doorman. The doorman seemed engrossed in the conversation with Edek. “I’ll meet you in the breakfast room,” she said to Edek. “No, no, I am coming with you,” Edek said. Edek patted the doorman on the back while the two men exchanged extensive farewells.

“Don’t you find him revolting?” Ruth said to Edek.

“What is wrong with you?” Edek said. “Why should you call him revolting?”

“I’m tired,” she said. “I didn’t sleep well.”

“I did not sleep so good, too,” said Edek. “But I am all right. I did read a book from four o’clock. I got a bit of a pain in my leg. But, at my age you got to take it.”

“You didn’t sleep from four A.M.?” Ruth said.

“No,” Edek said. “But I am not sleepy.”

“Do you think you were nervous about going out into Lódz today?”

she said.

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“Maybe a bit,” he said. “I got such butterflies.”

“You mean butterflies in the stomach? Nerves?” she said.

“Yes, a few,” he said. “Inside my stomach I got a few such butterflies.”

“We’ll be okay, Dad,” she said. “We’re together. We’ve got each other.”

“I have got a daughter who does not look so good,” Edek said.

“I found the bed impossible,” Ruth said. “It was so lumpy. It went up in the middle and down at both ends.”

“Mine was the same,” said Edek. “A bed like this is good for sexual things.” He put his hand behind him, in the small of his back, to demonstrate how the bed could push the pelvis forward. Ruth found the demonstration disturbing.

“Dad,” she said, sternly.

“It is just a normal thing what I am saying,” he said.

“Well, say it to someone else,” she said. “I’m sure your doorman friend would like to know.” She walked off ahead of him. Why were men so disgusting? Couldn’t her father see the crudity in his comment?

Her mother used to flinch at her father’s crudity. Rooshka had expended a lot of energy in an effort to eliminate all obscenity and crudity from her existence. She had been exposed to too much crudity. It had made her hypersensitive. She overreacted to every lewd or coarse joke. She was unable to tolerate ordinary lewdness, ordinary coarseness.

An attractive blonde walked past Edek and Ruth. She was wearing a tailored black suit and carrying a briefcase. Ruth looked at her. She must be meeting somebody at the hotel for breakfast, Ruth thought. The woman looked so out of place in Lódz. Her clothes were too sophisticated. Her demeanor was too clean. Her blond hair was shiny and blunt cut. Her complexion was clear. Her fair skin and large blue eyes gave her an air of innocence and health. Ruth found her presence reassuring. An antidote to the feeling that she was surrounded by obscenity.