My examination turned out badly in one or two other respects too, I was obliged to conclude. No way could I make myself understood by the boys lying on either side of me. They, for their part, chatted blithely with one another across me, over or in front of my head, and in a way that made it seem I was merely some obstacle that happened to be in their way. Before that they had inquired as to who and what I might be. I told them: “ Ungar,” and I could hear how that news was spread rapidly up and down the boxes: Vengerski, Vengriya, Magyarski, Matyar, Ongroa, and a great many other variations as well. One of them even called out “Khenyir!” the Hungarian for “bread,” and the way he laughed out loud, to be joined straightaway by a chorus of others, could leave me in no doubt that he had already made acquaintance with my kind, and fairly thoroughly at that. That was unpleasant, and I would have liked somehow to inform them it was a mistake, since Hungarians did not consider me as one of them; that, broadly speaking, I too was able to share that same opinion of them, and I found it very odd, not to say unfair, that it should be me, of all people, who was being looked at askance on their account; but then I remembered the farcical barrier that, to be sure, I could only tell them that in Hungarian, or at best possibly German, which was even worse, I had to concede.
Then there was another shortcoming, a further transgression that, hard as I might try, I could not — for days on end— conceal any longer. I quickly picked up that on those occasions when needs must be attended to, it was customary to summon a boy, hardly older than ourselves, who seemed to be some kind of assistant orderly there. He would appear with a flat, suitably handled pan, which one would thrust under the quilt. Then one had to call out again for him: “Bitte! Fertig! Bitte!”[26]until he came along to collect it.
Now, no one, not even he, could dispute the justification for such a need once or twice a day; only I was forced to put him to the trouble three and sometimes four times a day, and that, I could see, bugged him — perfectly understandably too, I couldn’t deny it, there’s no question. On one occasion he even took the pan over to the doctor, explained or argued something, showing him the contents, whereupon the latter too mused for a short while over the exhibit, yet for all that, with a gesture of head and hand, unmistakably signaled a rebuff. Not even that evening’s sugar lump was omitted, so everything was all right; I could safely nestle down again amid the undeniable, and so far — to the present day at least — still enduring, seemingly unshakable security of quilts and warming bodies.
The next day, sometime during the interval between coffee and soup, a man from the world outside entered, one of the distinctly rare Prominents, as I immediately realized. His artist’s beret of black felt, his immaculate white smock, and under that trousers with razor-sharp creases, and his footwear of polished black shoes made me slightly alarmed, not merely by the somehow rough-hewn, somehow inordinately masculine, so to say chiseled features, but also by the conspicuously florid, purple, almost flayed impression given by the skin on his face, that seemed almost to expose the raw flesh beneath. Besides that, the tall, burly frame, the black hair with streaks of gray at the temples, the armband that, because he was clasping his hands behind his back, was indecipherable from where I was lying, but above all a red triangle that bore no lettering — all this marked the ominous fact of impeccable German blood. For the first time in my life, incidentally, I could now marvel at a person whose prisoner number did not run in the tens of thousands or even thousands, nor even in the hundreds, but consisted of just two digits. Our own doctor immediately scurried over to greet him and shake hands, give a little pat on the arm, in short win his goodwill, as with a long-awaited guest finally honoring the house with a visit, and to my great amazement, all at once, I could not help noticing, there could be no doubt about it, all the signs were that our doctor must be talking about me. He even pointed me out, with a sweep of his arm, and from his rapid talk, this time in German, the expression “zu dir” distinctly reached my ear. Then, amid explanatory gestures, he plugged away, averring, appealing to the other’s better feelings, the way one proffers and sells an item of merchandise one wishes to dispose of as quickly as possible. The other, having first listened in silence, albeit somehow in the manner of the weightier party, what one might call a tough customer, in the end seemed to be fully convinced, or at least that is what I sensed from the quick, piercing, and already somehow proprietary look of the dark, beady eyes that he darted in my direction, his brisk nod, the handclasp, his entire manner, not to say the satisfied expression that brightened the face of our doctor as the other went his way.
I did not have too long to wait before the door opened again, and in a single glance I had sized up the prison garb, the red triangle containing the letter “P” (the distinguishing mark for a Pole, as was common knowledge), and the word “Pfleger,” which is to say the rank of a medical orderly, on the black armband of the man who entered. This one appeared to be young, maybe twenty or thereabouts. He too had a nice blue cap, though somewhat smaller, from beneath which chestnut hair spilled onto his ears and neck. Every feature on his long but rotund, fleshy face was as normal and pleasant as one could wish, the pink color of the skin, the expression on the perhaps slightly large, soft lips as engaging as you would like: in a word, he was handsome, and I would no doubt have been lost in admiration had he not immediately sought out the doctor and the latter immediately pointed me out to him, and had he not had a blanket over his arm into which, as soon as he had hauled me from my place, he wrapped me, and then, in what seemed to be the customary fashion here, draped me over his shoulder. He did not quite get his own way without let or hindrance, because I clung on with both hands to a strut separating the boxes which happened to be within reach — purely at random, instinctively so to say. I was even a little ashamed of doing so; nevertheless, I discovered the extent to which, it seems, one’s reason can be deceived, how greatly one’s affairs can be complicated by no more than a mere few days of life. Of course, he proved the stronger, and my flailing and pounding on his back and the area around his kidneys with both my fists was to no effect; all he did was laugh that off too, as I could feel from the heaving of his shoulder, so I gave up and let him carry me off to wherever he wanted.
There are some strange places in Buchenwald. It is possible to get to one of those neat, green barracks behind a barbed-wire fence that, to all intents and purposes, as a denizen of the Little Camp, you had hitherto only been able to admire from afar. Now, though, you find out that inside— that is to say, inside this one at least — is a corridor so suspiciously clean that it sparkles and glitters. Doors open off the corridor, real, proper, white-painted doors, behind one of which is a warm, bright room in which there is a bed already empty and made-up, as if it had been waiting for your personal arrival. On the bed is a crimson quilt. Your body sinks into a plumped-up straw mattress. Between these, a cool, white layer — no, you were not mistaken, as you may convince yourself: a layer of bedsheet, to be sure. Under the nape of your neck too you feel an unwonted, far from unpleasant pressure coming from a well-stuffed straw pillow, on it a white pillowcase. The Pfleger even double-folds the blanket in which he brought you and lays it by your feet, so it too, apparently, is at your disposal, in the event that you might possibly be dissatisfied with the room’s temperature. Then he sits down on the edge of your bed, some sort of card and a pencil in his hands, and asks you your name. “Vier-und-sechzig, neun, ein-und-zwanzig ,” I told him. He writes that down but keeps on pushing, for it may take a while before you understand that he wants to know your name, “Name,” and then a further while, as indeed happened in my case, before, after some rooting around among your memories, you hit upon it. He made me repeat it three or even four times until he finally seemed to understand. He then showed me what he had written, and at the top of some sort of ruled fever chart I read: “Kevisztjerz.” He asked if that was “dobro yesz? — Gut?” I replied “ Gut,” at which he put the card on a table and left.