In any case, it seemed I must have lain there in that way for some time, and I was getting on just fine, peacefully, placidly, incuriously, patiently, where they had set me down. I felt no cold or pain, and it was more my intellect than my skin which signaled that some stinging precipitation, half snow, half rain, was spattering my face. I mused on one thing and another, gazed at whatever happened to strike my eye without any superfluous movement or effort: the low, gray, impenetrable sky, for instance, or to be more precise the leaden, sluggishly moving wintry cloud-cover, which concealed it from view. Nevertheless, every now and again it would be parted by an unexpected rent, with a more brilliant gap arising in it here and there for a fleeting moment, and that was like a sudden intimation of a depth out of which a ray was seemingly being cast on me from up above, a rapid, searching gaze, an eye of indeterminate but unquestionably pale hue — somewhat similar to that of the doctor before whom I had once passed, back in Auschwitz. A shapeless object right next to me: a wooden shoe and on the other side a devil’s cap similar to mine with, between two jutting appurtenances — a nose and chin — a hollow indentation: a face came into my field of vision. Beyond that were further heads, entities, bodies — what I understood to be the remnants or, if I may use the more precise term, debris of the freight consignment that had presumably been parked here for the time being. Some time later, and I don’t know if it was an hour, a day, or a year, I finally picked out voices, noises, the sounds of work, and tidying up. All of a sudden, the head next to me rose, and lower down, by the shoulders, I saw arms in prison garb preparing to toss it onto the top of a heap of other bodies that had already been piled on some kind of handcart or barrow. At the same time, a snatch of speech that I was barely able to make out came to my attention, and in that hoarse whispering I recognized even less readily a voice that had once — I could not help recollecting — been so strident: “I p… pro… test,” it muttered. For a moment, before swinging onward, he came to a halt in midair, in astonishment as it were, or so I thought, and I immediately heard another voice — obviously that of the person grasping him by the shoulders. It was a pleasant, masculine-sounding, friendly voice, slightly foreign, the Lager vernacular of the German attesting, so I sensed, more to a degree of surprise, a certain amazement, than any malice: “Was? Du willst noch leben?”[25]he asked, and right then I too found it odd, since it could not be warranted and, on the whole, was fairly irrational. I resolved then that I, for my part, was going to be more sensible. By then, however, they were already leaning over me, and I was forced to blink because a hand was fumbling near my eyes before I too was dumped into the middle of a load on a smaller handcart, which they then started to push somewhere, though as to where, I wasn’t too inquisitive. Only one thing preoccupied me, one thought, one question that passed through my mind at this moment. It may well have been my fault for not knowing, but I had never had the foresight to inquire about the customs, rules, and procedures at Buchenwald — in short, how they did it here: was it with gas, as at Auschwitz, or maybe by means of some medicine, which I had also heard about, or possibly a bullet or some other way, with one of a thousand other methods of which, having insufficient information, I was ignorant. At all events, I hoped it was not going to be painful; strange as it may seem, this too was just as genuine, and preoccupied me in just the same way, as other, more valid hopes that — in a manner of speaking — one pins on the future. Only then did I find out that vanity is an emotion that, it seems, attends a person right up to their very last moment, because truly, however much this uncertainty may have been nagging me, I did not address any question or request so much as a single word, nor even cast a fleeting glance behind me, to the person or persons who were pushing. The path, however, came to a high bend, and down below a broad panorama suddenly emerged beneath me. The dense landscape that populated the entire vast downward slope stood there, with its identical stone houses, the neat green barracks, and then, forming a separate group, a cluster of perhaps new, somewhat grimmer, as yet unpainted barracks, with the serpentine, yet visibly orderly tangle of inner barbed-wire fences separating the various zones, and farther off a trackless expanse of huge, now bare trees disappearing into the mist. I did not know what a crowd of naked Muslims were waiting for by a building over there, but I did indeed suddenly identify a few worthies who, judging by their stools and busy movements as they sauntered back and forth, were barbers, if I was not mistaken, which meant it must obviously be the day’s intake for the bathhouse. Farther in, as well, the distant, cobblestoned streets of the Lager were also inhabited by signs of movement, languid activity, pottering about, killing time: founder inmates, the ailing, prominent personages, storemen, and the fortunate elect of the in-camp work Kommandos were coming and going, carrying out their everyday duties. Here and there, more suspect plumes of smoke mingled with more benign vapors, while a familiar-sounding clatter drifted up faintly my way from somewhere, like bells in dreams, and as I gazed down across the scene, I caught sight of a procession of bearers, poles on shoulders, groaning under the weight of steaming cauldrons, and from far off I recognized, there could be no doubting it, a whiff of turnip soup in the acrid air. A pity, because it must have been that spectacle, that aroma, which cut through my numbness to trigger an emotion, the growing waves of which were able to squeeze, even from my dried-out eyes, a few warmer drops amid the dank-ness that was soaking my face. Despite all deliberation, sense, insight, and sober reason, I could not fail to recognize within myself the furtive and yet — ashamed as it might be, so to say, of its irrationality — increasingly insistent voice of some muffled craving of sorts: I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.
EIGHT
I must admit, there are certain things I would never be able to explain, not precisely, not if I were to consider them from the angle of my own expectations, of rule, or reason— from the angle of life, in sum, the order of things, at least insofar as I am acquainted with it. Thus, when they off-loaded me from the handcart onto the ground again, I was quite unable to grasp what I might still have to do with, for instance, hair-clippers and razors. The jammed space, looking at first glance uncannily like a shower room, with its slippery wooden laths onto which I too was deposited amid countless trampling, pressing soles, ankles, ulcerated shanks, and shins — that, by and large, conformed more to my rough expectations. It even fleetingly crossed my mind that, amazing! it seems the Auschwitz custom must be in force here as well. My surprise was all the greater when, after a short wait and a series of hissing, bubbling sounds, water, a copious jet of unexpected hot water, started to gush from the nozzles up above. I was not too pleased, however, because I would have gladly warmed up a little more, but there was nothing I could do about it when, all at once, an irresistible force whisked me up into the air, out of the jostling forest of legs, and meanwhile some kind of big bedsheet and on top of that a blanket were wrapped around me. Then I recollect a shoulder and being draped over it, head to the rear, feet forward; a door, the steep steps of a narrow staircase, another door, then an indoor space, a chamber, a room so to say, where my incredulous eyes were struck, over and above the spaciousness and light, by the well-nigh barrack-room luxury of the furnishings; and finally the bed — manifestly a genuine, regular, single-berth bed, with a well-stuffed straw mattress and even two gray blankets — onto which I rolled from the shoulder. In addition, two men, regular, handsome men, with faces and hair, in white cotton pants and undershirts, clogs on their feet; I gazed, marveled admiringly at them, while they scrutinized me. Only then did I notice their mouths and that some singsong had been humming in my ears for quite some time. I had a feeling they wished to get something out of me, but all I could do was shake my head that, no, I didn’t understand. On that, I heard coming from one of them, but with a most peculiar German accent, “Hast du Durchmarsch?” or in other words, did I have the runs, and somewhat to my surprise I heard my own voice give the answer, hard to know why, “Nein”—I suppose as ever, even now, again no doubt merely out of pride. Then, after a brief consultation and some hunting around, they pushed two objects into my hands. One was a bowl of warm coffee, the other a hunk of bread, roughly one-sixth of a loaf, I estimated. I was allowed to take them and consume them without payment or barter. For a while after that, my insides, suddenly giving signs of life by starting to seethe and become unruly, occupied all my attention and, above all, my efforts, lest the pledge I had given shortly before should in some way be found to have been untrue. I later woke to see that one of the men was there again, this time in boots, a splendid dark blue cap, and a prison jacket with a red triangle.