A room about fifteen feet square, with a concrete floor and walls of stone; no windows, and no light except half a dozen candles; only one article of furniture, a heavy wooden bench about eight feet long and two feet broad, in the middle of the room. From end to end the bench was smeared and dripping with blood, and there was blood all over the floor, and a stench of dried blood, most sickening. Also there was the pungent odor of human sweat, strong, ammoniacal; there were four Nazis standing near the bench, stripped to the waist, and evidently they had been working hard and fast, for their smooth bodies shone with sweat and grease, even in the feeble light. Several other Nazis stood by, and one man in civilian clothes, wearing spectacles.
Lanny had read all about this; every anti-Nazi had learned it by heart during the past year and a half. He took it in at a glance, even to the flexible thin steel rods with handles, made for the purpose of inflicting as much pain as possible and doing as little permanent damage. If you did too much damage you lost the pleasure of inflicting more pain—and also you might lose important evidence. Lanny had read about it, heard about it, brooded over it, wondered how he would take it—and now here it was, here he was going to find out.
What happened was that a wave of fury swept over him; rage at these scientifically-trained devils, drowning out all other emotion whatsoever. He hated them so that he lost all thought about himself, he forgot all fear and the possibility of pain. They wanted to break him; all right, he would show them that he was as strong as they; he would deny them the pleasure of seeing him weaken, of hearing him cry out. He had read that the American Indians had made it a matter of pride never to groan under torture. All right, what an American Indian could do, any American could do; it was something in the climate, in the soil. Lanny’s father had hammered that pride into him in boyhood, and Bub Smith and Jerry had helped. Lanny resolved that the Nazis could kill him, but they wouldn’t get one word out of him, not one sound. Neither now nor later. Go to hell, and stay there!
It was hot in this underground hole, and perhaps that was why the sweat gathered on Lanny’s forehead and ran down into his eyes. But he didn’t wipe it away; that might be taken for a gesture of fright or agitation; he preferred to stand rigid, like a soldier, as he had seen the Nazis do. He realized now what they meant. All right, he would learn their technique; he would become a fanatic, as they. Not a muscle must move; his face must be hard, turned to stone with defiance. It could be done. He had told himself all his life that he was soft; he had been dissatisfied with himself in a hundred ways. Here was where he would reform himself.
He was expecting to be told to strip, and he was ready to do it. His muscles were aching to begin. But no, apparently they knew that; their science had discovered this very reaction, and knew a subtler form of torture. They would keep him waiting a while, until his mood of rage had worn off; until his imagination had had a chance to work on his nerves; until energy of the soul, or whatever it was, had spent itself. The two men who led him by the arms took him to one side of the room, against the wall, and there they stood, one on each side of him, two statues, and he a third.
VIII
The door was opened again, and another trio entered; two S.S. men, leading an elderly civilian, rather stout, plump, with gray mustaches, a gray imperial neatly trimmed; a Jew by his features, a business man by his clothes—and suddenly Lanny gave a start, in spite of all his resolutions. He had talked to that man, and had joked about him, the rather comical resemblance of his hirsute adornments to those of an eminent and much-portrayed citizen of France, the Emperor Napoleon the Third. Before Lanny’s eyes loomed the resplendent drawing-room of Johannes Robin’s Berlin palace, with Beauty and Irma doing the honors so graciously, and this genial old gentleman chatting, correct in his white tie and tails, diamond shirtstuds no longer in fashion in America, and a tiny square of red ribbon in his buttonhole—some order that Lanny didn’t recognize. But he was sure about the man—Solomon Hellstein, the banker.
Such a different man now: tears in his eyes and terror in his face; weeping, pleading, cowering, having to be half dragged. "I didn’t do it, I tell you! I know nothing about it! My God, my God, I would tell you if I could! Pity! Have pity!"
They dragged him to the bench. They pulled his clothes off, since he was incapable of doing it himself. Still pleading, still protesting, screaming, begging for mercy, he was told to lie down on the bench. His failure to obey annoyed them and they threw him down on his belly, with his bare back and buttocks and thighs looming rather grotesque, his flabby white arms hanging down to the floor. The four shirtless Nazis took their places, two on each side, and the officer in command raised his hand in signal.
The thin steel rods whistled as they came down through the air; they made four clean cuts across the naked body, followed by four quick spurts of blood. The old man started up with a frightful scream of pain. They grabbed him and threw him down, and the officer cried: "Lie still, Juden-Schwein! For that you get ten more blows!"
The poor victim lay shuddering and moaning, and Lanny, tense and sick with horror, waited for the next strokes. He imagined the mental anguish of the victim because they did not fall at once. The officer waited, and finally demanded: "You like that?"
"Nein, nein! Um Himmel’s Willen!"
"Then tell us who took that gold out!"
"I have said a thousand times—if I knew, I would tell you. What more can I say? Have mercy on me! I am a helpless old man!"
The leader raised his hand again, and the four rods whistled and fell as one. The man shuddered; each time the anguish shook him, he shrieked like a madman. He knew nothing about it, he would tell anything he knew, it had been done by somebody who had told him nothing. His tones grew more piercing; then gradually they began to die, they became a confused babble, the raving of a man in delirium. His words tripped over one another, his sobs choked his cries.
Of the four beaters, the one who was working on the victim’s shoulders apparently held the post of honor, and it was his duty to keep count. Each time he struck he called aloud, and when he said "Zehn" they all stopped. Forty strokes had been ordered, and the leader signed to the civilian in spectacles, who proved to be a doctor; the high scientific function of this disciple of Hippocrates was to make sure how much the victim could stand. He put a stethoscope to the raw flesh of the old Jew’s back, and listened. Then he nodded and said: "Noch eins."
The leader was in the act of moving his finger to give the signal when there came an interruption to the proceedings; a voice speaking loud and clear: "You dirty dogs!" It rushed on: "Ihr dreckigen Schweinehunde, Ihr seid eine Schandfleck der Menschheit!"
For a moment everybody in the room seemed to be paralyzed. It was utterly unprecedented, unprovided for in any military regulations. But not for long. The officer shouted: " 'Rrraus mit ihm!" and the two statues besides Lanny came suddenly to life and led him away. But not until he had repeated loudly and clearly: "I say that you dishonor the form of men!"
IX