One further thing that I truly made acquaintance of here was the vermin. I was quite unable to catch the fleas: they were nimbler than me, and for a very good reason too, after all, they were better nourished. Catching the lice was easy, only it made no sense. If I grew particularly exasperated with them, all I had to do was run a thumbnail at random over the canvas of the shirt stretched on my back to mete revenge, wreak devastation, in a series of clearly audible pops; yet within a minute I could have repeated it all over again, on the selfsame spot, with exactly the same result. They were everywhere, wriggling into every hidden crevice; my green cap was so infested as to turn gray and all but crawl with them. Still, the biggest surprise of all was the consternation, then horror, of feeling a sudden tickling sensation on my hip and then, on lifting the paper bandage, seeing they were now on my open flesh there, feeding on the wound. I tried to snatch them away, get rid of them, at least root and winkle them out, compel them to wait and be patient at least a little bit longer, but I have to admit that never before had I sensed a more hopeless struggle or a more stubborn, even, so to say, more brazen resistance than this. After a while, indeed, I gave up and just watched the gluttony, the teeming, the voracity, the appetite, the unconcealed happiness; in a manner of speaking, it was as though it were vaguely familiar to me from somewhere. Even so, I realized that, to some extent, and taking everything into account, I could see it their way. In the end, I almost felt relieved, even my sense of revulsion very nearly passed. I was still not pleased, still remained a little bit bitter about it, understandably enough I think, but now it was somehow more generalized, without acrimony, in acquiesing to a degree in nature’s larger scheme, if I may put it that way; in any event, I quickly covered the wound up and subsequently no longer engaged in combat with them, no longer disturbed them.
I can affirm that there is no amount of experience, no tranquillity so perfect, nor any insight of such weight, it seems, as to lead us to abandon yet one more last chance in our favor — assuming there is a way, naturally. Thus, when I, along with all the others on whom it was clear not too much further hope can have been pinned of being set to work again here, in Zeitz, was returned to sender as it were — back to Buchenwald — I naturally shared the others’ joy with every faculty that was left me, since I was promptly reminded of the good times there, most especially the morning soups. However, I gave no thought, I have to admit, to the fact that I would first have to get there, by rail at that, and under the conditions of travel that now implied; in any event, I can tell you there were things that I had never previously understood, indeed would have had trouble in crediting at all. A once so commonly heard expression as “his earthly remains,” for instance, as far as I knew up till then, was applicable solely to someone deceased. For my own part, I could hardly have doubted it, I was alive: even if only guttering and, as it were, turned down to the very lowest mark, a flicker of life nevertheless still burned within me as they say, or to put it another way, my body was here, I had precise cognizance of everything about it, it was just that I myself somehow no longer inhabited it. I had no difficulty in perceiving that this entity, and other similar entities to its side and above it, was lying there, on the wagon’s jolting flooring, on cold straw so dampened by all sorts of dubious fluids that my paper bandage had long since frayed, peeled, and become detached, while the shirt and prison trousers in which I had been dressed for the journey were pasted to my naked wounds— yet all this was of no immediate concern to me, of no interest, no longer had any impact, indeed I would maintain that it had been a long time since I had felt so easy, tranquil, almost lost in reverie — so comfortable, to be quite frank. For the first time in ages, I was freed of the torments of irritability: the bodies squeezed up against mine no longer bothered me, indeed I was somehow even glad that they were there with me, that they were so akin and so similar to mine, and it was now that an unwonted, anomalous, shy, I might even say clumsy feeling toward them came over me for the first time — I believe it may, perhaps, have been affection. I encountered the same on their part as well. True, they no longer held out much in the way of hope, as they once had. It could be that this — above and beyond all other difficulties, naturally — is what gave rise to other manifestations that could sometimes be heard alongside the general groaning, the hisses from between clenched teeth, the quiet plaints — a word of solace and reassurance — so hushed and yet, at the same time, so intimate. But I can say that those who still had any capacity at all were not remiss in actions either, and when I announced that I needed to urinate diligent hands were merciful to me too by passing on the brass can from who knows how far away. By the time ice-skimmed puddles on paved ground, instead of those on the train’s floorboards, finally came to be under my back — how, when, and by dint of the hands of which person or persons, I have no idea — I can tell you it no longer meant all that much to me that I had arrived safely back at Buchenwald, and I had also long forgotten that this was the place, when all is said and done, that I had yearned so much to reach. I did not even have an inkling where I might be, whether still at the railway station or farther inside; I did not recognize the surroundings, nor did I see the road, the villas, and statue that I still clearly remembered.