Hess picked up his whisky, waited for Max to pick up his and clinked his glass. “To us, the survivors.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Max said. “How can we celebrate our lives when so many others have died? It’s arrogant. Any way you look at it, we were lucky.”
“You’re right.” Hess hadn’t considered it from a Holocaust survivor’s point of view. But then, how could he? “To the six million who were murdered.”
The Jew gave him a sympathetic nod.
“What about you, Max? What else happened?”
The Jew drank some of his drink that looked like a Manhattan, staring into the glass as if the answer were floating next to the cherry.
“I was in the Sonderkommando.”
“What was it like to be so close to death every day?”
“Worse than you can imagine.”
“But at least you were well fed.”
“Well fed? You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Better than the others, and you had your own quarters.” Hess was enjoying himself, but had to be careful not to go too far.
“What are you saying?” Max’s face was flush with anger. “You think it was special treatment? Let me tell you how special it was.” He paused, glancing down at the bar. “We were outcasts, isolated from everyone, hated, despised. I remember looking across the yard at the Jewish girls, wishing I could talk to them. The Nazis were very clever to put us in charge of the gas chambers and the ovens, making us their accomplices.”
The Jew drank his drink. “We planned the division of labor based on the size of incoming transports. The Jews would arrive confused, agitated, exhausted after spending days packed in a cattle car. We would take them to the undressing hall, try to keep them calm as we searched for valuables. Deceiving our own people, telling them they were going for a shower as we led them to the gas chamber.”
Hess said, “How did you know when they were dead?”
“When the screaming stopped.” Max took a breath. “There were fingernail scratches on the walls and ceiling.”
“What choice did you have?”
The Jew met his gaze but didn’t answer, paused for a few seconds and said, “We had to carry the bodies out and pull the gold teeth from their mouths with pliers. Then we sheared off the women’s hair. Later it was washed and stuffed in sacks and used to make clothing.” The Jew paused again. “You still think it was special?”
“Forgive me, Max.” It was getting good. Hess had struck a nerve.
“And we were the stokers,” Max said. “Operating the furnaces, sliding bodies into the ovens. We would be covered with ashes. I couldn’t get the smell of death out of my nostrils.” Max cleared his throat, pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled.
“One day I picked up an emaciated body, a woman that looked familiar. It was my wife, Faga.”
“What did you think?” Hess said.
“I was numb, paralyzed. Or maybe hypnotized. The world I knew had been turned upside down.”
“I am sorry for you,” Hess said, with as much sincerity as he could muster. “How many Jews were cremated at Auschwitz?”
“I don’t know, a million, maybe more. I didn’t count them.”
“What did you do with all the ash? You must have had mountains of it.”
“We dumped it around the camp. We loaded it on trucks and dumped it in the Vistula River and also the Sola.”
Hess could see it, the dust of one million Jews, polluting the water table of southwestern Poland. “Did you feel guilty?” he said, rubbing Max’s face in it now.
“Of course I did. It was a moral dilemma. But I wanted to live. I was obsessed with living. For an hour, a day, a week.”
“I understand,” Hess said. “It was all that mattered.”
Max said, “What did you miss the most?”
“My family. And food. My mother was a wonderful cook. And also the Symphony, the Philharmonic,” Hess said, trying to sound like a survivor.
They finished their drinks and Hess invited Max to have dinner with him. He wanted to learn more about this man who bore a striking resemblance to him. In the dining room over plates of sweet and sour chicken, beef chow mein and egg rolls, Max told him he had been a school teacher in Cleveland, Ohio, taught history and accounting for twenty-five years and had retired after his wife died of cancer a year earlier. He had purchased a house in Pompano on the Intracoastal. “I sit outside next to the pool and watch the boats.”
Max had no children. No relatives. No pets. Hess told his new friend he was a scrap-metal dealer from Detroit, down for a week to relax, staying at a motel on North Ocean Boulevard. He was married and divorced and had a seventeen-year-old daughter. When they finished dinner Hess paid the bill and they walked outside and stood in front of the restaurant sign that said Mon Jin Lau in red neon. It was cool and dark, the sky lit up with stars. Not only did he and Max look alike, Hess noticed, they were about the same height and weight.
“Harry, thanks for everything. Why don’t you come by tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have a swim and a drink.” Max wrote his address on a piece of paper and handed it to him. “It’s that way,” he said, pointing west. “Over the bridge and down five streets north, last house, on the Intracoastal, vacant lot next door.”
“I’ll do that,” Hess said, marveling at the situation. Max Hoffman, Sonderkommando, had cheated death once, and now fate had brought Hess back to reclaim him.
Twelve
Cordell had met the Colombians through a black dude name High-Step, on account of one leg was shorter than the other and he had to wear a special shoe. High was tall, six four on one side and skinny. He had receding hair that reminded Cordell of Cazzie Russell.
They met at a bar in Hialeah, High making the introductions. The Colombians were Alejo, short, maybe five eight, with dark oily hair, and either he needed a shave or was growing a beard. Alejo wore a wrinkled white suit and did the talking for the Colombians. His partner was Jhonny, who Alejo called El Pibe, a name High said later meant kid in Spanish. It made sense ’cause Jhonny had nice olive skin and like six hairs on his face and looked about sixteen. The Colombians sold this sappy, fuck-you-up weed Alejo called woo woo for $100 a pound, the wholesale price. Cordell had heard it called a lot of things, bammy and boom and woolah, but never woo woo.
“How much you want to buy?” Alejo said when the four of them were sitting at a table in the dark bar, the Colombians drinking Cuba Libres, Cordell and High-Step Courvoisier and Coke.
“Let’s start with twenty, see how it goes,” Cordell said, thinking, okay, invest two grand, bring home six, calculating its street value. Maybe make a little more depending how he cut it up. High’d get ten per cent, $200, for introducing them.
“My man buy twenty, going to give him a quantity discount?” High-Step said to Alejo, sounding like a professional marijuana broker.
“I’m sure we can work something out.” Alejo glanced at Cordell and grinned. “Man, you got a lot of ambition, uh?”
“My man get to check it out first,” High said. “Make sure it quality shit.”
“Of course,” Alejo said. “Satisfaction guaranteed or you money back.”
They met at a farm off Military Trail the next day. There was a white two-storey house and a crooked barn looked like it was about to fall over. There were fields but it didn’t look like nothing was growing on them, and there was no one around. Just their two cars parked on the dusty yard in front of the barn. Alejo popped the trunk on his black Road Runner that had a layer of dust on it and handed High-Step a black plastic garbage bag knotted at one end.
“Twenty pounds of Colombia’s finest woo woo,” Alejo said.