I have to say that over time one can become accustomed even to miracles. Gradually, I even reached the point, if the doctor happened so to ordain in the morning, of making the trips to the surgery on foot, just as I was, barefoot, my blanket wrapped over my shirt, and among the many familiar odors in the crisp air I detected a new hint, no doubt that of spring, if I thought about the passage of time. On the way back, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a pair of men in prison uniforms just as they were dragging and hauling out of a gray barracks on the far side of our barbed-wire fence a large, rubber-wheeled trailer of the kind that can be hitched to a truck, from the full load of which I was able to pick out a few frozen yellow limbs and emaciated body parts. I drew the blanket more tightly around me, lest I by any chance catch a chill, and strove to hobble back to my warm room just as fast as I could, gave my feet a perfunctory rinse for cleanliness’ sake, then popped swiftly under my quilt, and curled up in my bed. There I chatted with my neighbor, as long as he was there (because after a while he left to go “nach Hause,” his place being taken by an older Polish man), looked at whatever there was to see, listened to the commands issuing from the loudspeaker, and I can tell you that from there in bed, with the aid of no more than these, plus a bit of imagination, I was able to gain a full conspectus and keep track of, conjure up for myself as it were, every color, taste, and smell, every coming and going, each episode and incident, great and small, from crack of dawn to late taps, sometimes even beyond. Thus, the “Friseure zum Bad, Friseure zum Bad” that would be sounded many times daily, with ever greater frequency, was clear: a new transport had arrived. Each and every time, that would be coupled with “Leichenkommando zum Tor, ” or “corpse-bearers to the gate”; and if there was a request for further contingents, then that would allow me to infer the material, the quality, of that transport. I would also learn that this was the time the “E fekten,” which is to say the storeroom workers, were to hurry over — on some occasions, moreover, “ im Laufschritt,” or at the double — to the clothes depots. If, however, the call was, for example, for zwei or vier Leichenträger and, let’s say, “mit einem” or “zwei Tragbetten sofort zum Tor!”[29]then you could be sure that this time it was an isolated accident somewhere, at work, during an interrogation, in a cellar, in an attic, there was no knowing where. I found out that the “ Karto felschäler-Kommando,” or potato-peeling squad, had not only a day shift but also a “Nachtschicht” and much else besides. But every afternoon, always at exactly the same hour, an enigmatic message was heard that was always exactly the same: “El-ah zwo, El-ah zwo, aufmarschieren lassen!” which prompted a lot of head-scratching on my part at first. It was actually simple, but it took a while before I worked out, from the commands “Mützen ab! ” and “Mützen auf!” that would echo every single time from the ensuing solemn, endlessly vast, churchlike silence and the occasional thin, squeaky-sounding music, that across the way the camp was at Appell; that the “aufmarschieren lassen” accordingly meant that the camp inmates were to form up for Appell, while the “ zwo” meant two, and the “El-ah” obviously LÄ, or Lagerältester, so therefore there must be a first and a second, or in other words, two senior camp inmates at Buchenwald, which, if I thought about it, was basically not so very surprising after all in a camp where they had already long ago started issuing numbers in the ninety thousands, so I have been informed. Gradually things would quiet down in our room too; Zbishek would have already gone by now, if it was his turn to receive guests, while Pyetchka would take one last look around before turning off the light with his usual “dobra nots.” I would then seek out the maximum comfort that the bed could supply and my wounds would permit, pull my blanket over my ears, and immediately be overtaken by an untroubled sleep: no, I could not ask more than this, I realized, I could not do better than this in a concentration camp.
Only two things bothered me a little. One was my two wounds: no one could deny them, with their surrounding areas still inflamed and the flesh still raw, but at the margins there was now a thin skin, with brownish scabs forming in places; the doctor was no longer padding the incisions with gauze, hardly ever summoning me for treatment, and the times that he did so, it would be over disturbingly quickly, while the expression on his face would be disturbingly satisfied. The other matter was actually at bottom, I can’t deny it, an extremely gratifying event, no question about it. If Pyetchka and Zbishek, for example, should all of a sudden break off their conversation with faces alert to something in the distance, raising a finger to their lips to ask the rest of us to be quiet, my own ear does indeed pick up a dull rumble, and sometimes what sounds like broken snatches of a distant barking of dogs. Then, next door, beyond the partition wall where I suspect Bohoosh’s room lies, it has been very lively of late, as I can make out from the voices that filter across from discussions that continue well after lights off. Repeated siren warnings are now a regular feature of the daily program, and I have now become accustomed to being awoken during the night to an instruction over the intercom: “