So then it was up over the shoulder again and down the stairs, this time straight out into the open air. We soon stepped into a roomy, gray timber barracks block, a sort of infirmary or Revier, if I was not mistaken. There’s no denying, I again found everything here, on the whole, to be roughly in line with what I had readied myself for, ultimately completely in order, not to say homely, only now I could not quite fathom the earlier treatment, the coffee and bread. En route, down the entire length of the barracks, I was greeted by the familiar triple tier of box bunks. Each was jam-packed, and a somewhat practiced eye of the kind that I too could lay claim to immediately recognized, on the basis of the indistinguishable tangle of onetime faces, skin surfaces with their blossoming scabies and sores, bones, rags, and scrawny limbs in them, that these must represent at least five and, in one or another, even six bodies per section. Apart from that, I vainly sought for a glimpse on the bare boards of the straw that had done duty as bedding even in Zeitz — but then, true, I had to admit, that was hardly a particularly important detail in view of the brief time that I obviously had to look forward to being there. Then a fresh surprise as we came to a halt, and words, some sort of negotiation — evidently between the man carrying me and someone else — struck my ear. To begin with, I did not know if I could believe my own eyes (but then I couldn’t be mistaken, because the barracks were extremely well lit with strong lamps). Over on the left I could see two rows of regular boxes there too, except the planks were covered by a layer of red, pink, green, and mauve quilts, above which was another row of similar quilts, and between the two layers were poking, tightly packed together, the bald-cropped heads of children, some smaller, some larger, but mostly those of boys of about my own age. No sooner had I spotted all that than they deposited me on the floor, with someone propping me up so that I wouldn’t slump over, took the blanket from me, hurriedly bandaged my knee and hip with paper, pulled a shirt on me, and then I was slipping between a row of quilting, above and below, on the middle tier, with a boy on either side hastily making room for me.
Then they left me there, again without any explanations, so I was once more thrown back on my own wits. At all events, I had to acknowledge that there I was, and this fact undeniably kept renewing itself every second (again), continuing to sustain me anew. Later on I also became aware of a number of necessary particulars. Where I was, for example, was most likely the front, rather than back, of the barracks, as indicated by a door opposite that opened to the outside, as well as by the airiness of the well-lighted space that was to be seen in front of me — an area in which dignitaries, clerks, and doctors moved and worked, and which was even furnished, at its most conspicuous spot, with a sort of table covered with a white sheet. Those who had their shelter in the timber boxes behind mostly had dysentery or typhus, or if they did not have it, then at least they soon would in all certainty. The first symptom, as the unrelieved stench itself indicated, was Durchfall, or Durchmarsch by its other designation, as the men of the bathhouse Kommando had immediately inquired about, and according to which, I realized, my own place would in fact also have been back there, if I had told the truth. I found the daily food allowances and cuisine too, on the whole, similar to those at Zeitz: coffee at dawn, the soup arriving already early in the morning, one-third or one-quarter of a loaf for the bread ration, though if it was one-quarter then usually with a Zulage. The time of day, due to the constantly uniform lighting, unaltered in any way by the window’s lightness or darkness, was more difficult to keep track of, being deducible solely from certain unequivocal signs — morning, from the coffee, the time to sleep, from the doctor’s farewell every evening. I made his acquaintance on the very first evening. I became aware of a man who had stopped right in front of our box. He could not have been all that tall as his head was roughly on the same level as mine. His cheeks were not just rounded but positively plump, even flabby here and there in their abundance, and he not only had a moustache that was twirled in a circle and almost entirely grizzled, but also, to my great amazement— because in my time in concentration camps I had not previously encountered its like — similarly dove gray, a very carefully trimmed beard, a small one in the shape of a dapper spike on his chin. To go with that, he was wearing a large, dignified cap, trousers of dark cloth, but a prison jacket, albeit of good material, with an armband on which was a red flash bearing the letter “F.” He inspected me in the way that is customary with newcomers, and even spoke to me. I responded with the only sentence of French that I know: “ Dje ne kompran pa, mussiew.” “Ooee, Ooeee,” he said, in an expansive, friendly, slightly hoarse voice, “bon, bon, mo’ fees,” at which he placed a sugar lump before my nose on the coverlet, a real one, exactly the same as the kind I still remembered from home. He then made the round of all the other boys in both boxes, on all three tiers, with a single lump of sugar being dispensed from his pocket to each of them as well. With some he did no more than just place it in front of them, but with others he took longer, indeed a few were able to speak and he made a particular point of patting them on the cheek, tickling their neck, chattering and jabbering with them a bit the way someone chirrups to his favorite canaries at their regular hour. I also noticed that some favored boys, mainly those who spoke his language, also received an extra sugar lump. Only then did something that had always been preached back at home fall into place, and that was how useful an education can be, most particularly a knowledge of foreign tongues.
I grasped all this, as I say, took it on board, but only in the sense, on the proviso I might almost say, that I was continually waiting meanwhile, even if I could not know specifically for what, but for the denouement, the clue to the secret, the awakening, so to say. The next day, for example, when he must have had the time in the middle of his work with the others, the doctor pointed over to me too; I was pulled out of my place and set down on the table before him. He emitted a couple of friendly tones from his throat, examined me, percussed me, laid a cold ear and a prickly tip of his trim moustache against my chest and back, and gave me to understand, demonstrated, I should sigh then cough. Next he laid me on my back, got an assistant of some kind to take off the paper bandages, and then it was the turn for my wounds. He inspected them initially only from some distance away, then cautiously palpated around them, at which some matter immediately oozed out. At that he muttered something, shaking his head with a concerned air, as if that had somehow made him a little despondent or dampened his spirits, as I saw it. He quickly rebandaged them too, banished them from sight as it were, and I could not help feeling that they could scarcely have met with his approval, for there was certainly no way he could have been reconciled to or satisfied with them.