While all that had been going on, though, we had moved a fair bit farther forward. I noticed that the numbers of soldiers and prisoners around us had, all of a sudden, multiplied considerably. At one point, our row of five transformed into a single file. At the same time we were called on to remove our jacket and shirt so as to present ourselves to the doctor stripped to the waist. The pace, I sensed, was also quickening. At the same time, I spotted two separate groupings up ahead. A larger one, a highly diverse bunch, was gathering over on the right, and a second, smaller, somehow more appealing, in which moreover I could see several boys from our group were already standing, over on the left. The latter instantly appeared, to my eyes at least, to be made up of the fit ones. Meanwhile, and at gathering speed, I was heading directly toward what, in the confusion of the many figures in motion, coming and going, was now a fixed point, where I fancied I could see an immaculate uniform with one of those high-peaked German officer’s caps, after which the only surprise was how swiftly it was my turn.
The inspection itself can only have required roughly around two or three seconds. Moskovics just in front of me was next, but for him the doctor instantly extended a finger in the other direction. I even heard him trying to explain: “Arbeiten… Sechzehn… ,” but a hand reached out for him from somewhere, and I was already stepping up into his place. The doctor, I could see, took a closer look at me with a studied, serious, and attentive glance. I too straightened my back to show him my chest, even, as I recall, gave a bit of a smile, coming right after Moskovics as I was. I immediately felt a sense of trust in the doctor, since he cut a very fine figure, with sympathetic, longish, shaven features, rather narrow lips, and kind-looking blue or gray — at any rate pale — eyes. I was able to get a good look at him while he, resting his gloved hands on my cheeks, pried my lower eyelids down a bit on both sides with his thumbs in an action I was familiar with from doctors back home. As he was doing that, in a quiet yet very distinct tone that revealed him to be a cultured man, he asked, though almost as if it were of secondary importance, “Wie alt bist du?” “Sechszehn,”[4] I told him. He nodded perfunctorily, but somehow more at this being the appropriate response, so to speak, rather than the truth — at least that was my impression offhand. Another thing I noticed, though it was more just a fleeting observation and perhaps mistaken at that, but it was as if he somehow seemed satisfied, almost relieved in a way; I sensed that he must have taken a shine to me. Then, still pushing against my cheek with one hand while indicating the direction with the other, he dispatched me to the far side of the path, to the fit group. The boys were waiting there, exultant, chortling gleefully. At the sight of those beaming faces, I also understood, perhaps, what it was that actually distinguished our group from the bunch across on the opposite side: it was success, if I sensed it correctly.
So I then pulled on my shirt, exchanged a few words with the others, and again waited. From here I now watched the entire business that was proceeding on the other side of the road from a new perspective. The flood of people rolled along in an unbroken stream, was constrained in a narrower channel, accelerated, then branched in two in front of the doctor. Other boys also arrived, one after the next, and now I too was able to join in the greeting they received, naturally. I caught a glimpse of another column farther away: the women. There too they were surrounded by soldiers and prisoners, there too was a doctor before them, and there too everything was proceeding in exactly the same way, except that they did not have to strip off their upper garments, which was understandable, of course, if I thought about it. Everything was in motion, everything functioning, everyone in their place and doing what they had to do, precisely, cheerfully, in a well-oiled fashion. I saw smiles on many of the faces, timid or more selfconfident, some with no doubts and some already with an inkling of the outcome in advance, yet still essentially all uniform, roughly the same as the one I had sensed in myself just before. It was the same smile with which what, from here, looked to be a very pretty, brown-skinned woman with rings in her ears, clutching her white raincoat to her chest, turned to ask a soldier a question, and smiled in the same way as a handsome, dark-haired man stepping up right then in front of the nearer doctor: he was fit. I soon figured out the essence of the doctor’s job. An old man would have his turn — obvious, that one: the other side. A younger man — over here, to our side. Here’s another one: paunchy but shoulders pulled stiffly back nonetheless — pointless, but no, the doctor still dispatched him this way, which I was not entirely happy about as I, for my part, was disposed to find him a shade elderly. I also could not help noting that the vast majority of the men were all terribly unshaven, which did not exactly make too good an impression. Thus, I was also driven to perceive through the doctor’s eyes how many old or otherwise unusable people there were among them. One was too thin, the other too fat, while yet another I judged, on the basis of an eye tic and the way his mouth and nose twitched incessantly rather in the manner of a sniffing rabbit, to be some kind of nervous case, yet he too dutifully gave a wholehearted smile even as he diligently hurried over, with an oddly waddling gait, to join the unfit group. Yet another — already clutching his jacket and shirt, his suspenders dangling on his thighs, the skin on his arms and chest flabby, to the point of wobbling here and there. On coming before the doctor, who instantly indicated his place among the unfit, naturally, a certain expression on the shabbily bearded face, a sort of smile on the parched, chapped lips, identical though it may have been, was nevertheless more familiar, ringing a distant bell in my memory: as if there were still something he wished to say to the doctor, or so it seemed. Only the latter was no longer paying attention to him but to the next one, at which point a hand — presumably the same one as with Moskovics before — now yanked him out of the way. He made a move and turned around, an astonished and indignant expression on his face — that was it! The “Expert”; I hadn’t been mistaken.
We waited around for another few minutes. There were still a great many people in front of the doctor, while there must have been something like forty of us, approximately, in our bunch here, boys and men, I estimated, when the word came: we were setting off for a bath. A soldier stepped up to us (on the spur of the moment, I couldn’t see from where), a short, placid-looking man, getting on a bit in years, with a big rifle — I took him for a common soldier of some kind. “Los, ge’ ma’ vorne!”[5] he announced, or something like that, not quite in accordance with what books of grammar taught, I ascertained. However that may be, it was music to my ears, since the boys and I were by now just a bit impatient, though not so much for the soap, to tell the truth, as, above anything else, for the water, of course. The road led through a gate of woven barbed wire to somewhere farther inside the area behind the fence where, it appeared, the bathhouse must be: we set off along it in slack clusters, not hurrying but chatting and looking around, with the soldier, not saying a word, listlessly bringing up the rear. Under our feet there was again a broad, immaculately white, metaled road, while in front of us was the whole rather tiring prospect of flat terrain in air that all around was by now shimmering and undulating in the heat. I was even anxious about its being too far, but as it transpired the bathhouse was located only about ten minutes away. From what I saw of the area on this short walk, on the whole it too won my approval. A football pitch, on a big clearing immediately to the right of the road, was particularly welcome. Green turf, the requisite white goalposts, the chalked lines of the field of play — it was all there, inviting, fresh, pristine, in perfect order. This was latched onto straightaway by the boys as welclass="underline" Look here! A place for us to play soccer after work. Even greater cause for joy came a few paces later when, on the left-hand border of the road, we spotted — no doubt about it — a water faucet, one of those roadside standpipes. A sign in red letters next to it attempted to warn against it: “Kein Trinkwasser,”[6] but right then that could do little to hold any of us back. The soldier was quite patient, and I can tell you it had been a long time since water went down so well, even if it did leave a peculiar stinging and a nauseating aftertaste of some chemical in my mouth. Going farther, we also saw some houses, the same ones that I had already noticed from the station. Even close up, they were oddly shaped buildings indeed, long, flat, and of an indeterminable shade, with some sort of apparatus for ventilation or lighting protruding from the roof along the entire length. Each one had a little garden path of red gravel running round it, each one a well-tended patch of lawn to separate it from the metaled road, and between them, to my delighted wonder, I saw small seedbeds and cabbage patches, with flowers of assorted colors being grown in the plots. It was all very clean, tidy, and pretty — truly, I had to reflect, we had made the right choice back in the brickyard. Just one thing was rather missing, I realized: the fact that I saw no sign of movement, of life, around them. But then it occurred to me that this must be only natural, since it was, after all, during working hours for the inhabitants.