Götz and Meyer

rthermore, then there was an entire army of people who were all the same. And all of them, the girl asked, wrote poems? They never stopped, I say. My earlobe is burning, warning me, but there is no turning back. Allow me, I say, to recite one of their poems to you. I feel the students’ attention growing denser around me. I cough and say: Daniel, Isak, Jakov; Bukica, Estera, Sara; Solomon, Rafael, Haim; Rašela, Rifka, Klara. The class erupted in peals of laughter. I laughed with them, because only when I do that, opening my mouth wide and squeezing my eyes shut, can I hide the tears. Did Götz and Meyer ever burst into tears, except when they watched sappy romances in cinemas about poor girls falling into the hands of unscrupulous and ruthless capitalists? Tears are the most ordinary of excretions, Götz, or Meyer, said, while driving to Belgrade. They talked about all manner of things, it was a long trip, and so it was that they came to the subject of tears. I despise people who cry, said Meyer, or possibly Götz. Yes, replied Götz, or Meyer, real men never cry. Although, he said, growing solemn, I did cry when my aunt died. That doesn’t count, Meyer, or Götz, consoled him. I was sorry for her cat, said Götz, or Meyer, it miaowed so sadly as we lowered my aunt into her coffin. He bowed his head and pressed the corner of his eyes with his thumb and index finger, but when Meyer, or Götz, glanced over at him, he put it down to the grime. There certainly was grime, it’s not that there wasn’t, they could feel it between their teeth, touch it in their hair, even in their eyebrows, let alone on their uniforms. Every job has its downside, such is the order of things in the universe, and there is no point trying to change that. Take that brush and use it, Götz, or Meyer, must have told Meyer, or Götz, a thousand times if he’d told him once. If he’d been a pilot, which he had always wished he could be, at least he wouldn’t have had to worry about the grime. But the uniform is the pride of every SS officer, and clothing, despite that old saying, does, after all, make the man, and Meyer, or possibly Götz, dedicated himself assiduously to cleaning. That was why, after all, task forces always ordered their victims to strip before they were shot. Naked, they were no longer people, which had an auspicious effect on the firing squad, because it is always easier to kill people who are nothing. And besides, naked people don’t run away, mostly they try to shield their genitals and stand still, finding their last defence in a feeling of shame. The people who went into the “soul-swallower” still wearing their clothing at least weren’t shamed, and that is some sort of comfort, isn’t it? There is no comfort in death, the woman I met at the Jewish Historical Museum said, especially not in a death that someone else chooses for you. I wasn’t thinking of them, I shouted, but of myself, because those small consolations are the only weapon with which I can stand up to the meaningless and horrible void filling the faces of Götz and Meyer, and without them, without those small consolations, I would sink right to the bottom, I would accept that what happens represents an implacable order of things and not some monstrous distortion, that human dignity is an illusion, that nothing exists except the dark face of evil, which each of us carries within, some people have it closer to the surface of their being, some in their depths, and actually, it isn’t that we resist the repetition of evil, rather that sooner or later we recognise it in ourselves, joining with it in the end. I stopped talking, out of breath. I was always exhausted by long sentences, especially those which could have been said with fewer words, and even more by those that could have not been said at all. I never learned the lesson from that ancient saying that silence is a wall around wisdom. I talk until my mouth hurts, until my throat gets dry, until my larynx gets tied up in knots, as if words mean something, as if I could really save someone. Like a man who, lost in a forest, walks round in circles and keeps coming back to the place he started from, I keep starting from the beginning, closing my eyes to the failure of all my attempts. So I sat down, as if nothing had happened, and started writing letters to the military archives in Germany and Austria, to the documentation centres in Israel and America, even to Riga and Moscow, anywhere where there was the slightest possibility that I might stumble onto some trace. It is impossible, I figured, that Götz and Meyer vanished as if the earth had swallowed them up, although, in fact, it was easiest to imagine that off in the grass, by some road somewhere, their bones were rotting in an unmarked grave. In a couple of unmarked graves. No matter how odd it may sound, I did not wish for their death, rather I longed desperately for their life. I wanted to meet them, lively or decrepit old men, I wanted their faces to fill slowly with wrinkles or moles, see their teeth or hear the clacking of their dentures, sit with them on a bench in front of a house in a village or at the dining-room table in some old people’s home, to hear the air wheezing in their lungs, how their hearts beat and guts growled, to watch them leaning on sticks, blinking at the glaring neon light, the spittle pooling in the corners of their mouths. I wouldn’t ask them anything. I’d just sit there next to them and be quiet, and let my quiet wash over them. And then, when there was nothing left in them but that quiet, when they were swimming in it like fish in the sea, I wanted them to turn to me, and in their eyes, which had finally filled with colour, blue or brown, I would be able to see that they knew who I was though they had never seen me, and they would know that they had lost the chance to know me, I wanted to see them remember. At that point I could get up and go, but I’d stay a little longer. I would sit next to them and watch the sun set behind the hill and the shadows moving towards us with giant steps. That is that: that is the end of the road. In reality, however, the end of the road was nowhere in sight. The answers I received brought me no closer. They led me to the vast expanses of the Soviet Union, described camps and ghettoes in Poland, listed data on the killing of ailing Jewish children in Kislovodsk, listed names which meant nothing to me. In May 1942, Untersturmführer Dr August Becker visited, on assignment, several places where gas trucks had been used, with the objective of ascertaining their efficiency and proposing further guidelines. In his final report he mentioned two problems: the great mental pressure on the members of the SS who unloaded the trucks themselves, because they did not wish to entrust this job to prisoners who were prepared to take every available opportunity to escape, as well as a second problem, the frequent breakdowns resulting from the poor condition of Soviet roads. There is nothing to suggest that Dr Becker came to Belgrade. Had he done that, I don’t doubt that Götz and Meyer would have agreed with his second conclusion, keeping in mind the problem with the rear axle on their Saurer. However, in the case of the first problem, they could point to what had clearly been successful cooperation with the prisoners, who not only unloaded the trucks but buried the corpses, which had an exceptionally salutary effect on the German soldiers, so that during the work you could often hear their cheery banter; for all that, it was enough to promise the prisoners some sort of reward, in this case they were promised that when they had completed their work, they would be sent to a work camp in Norway. Götz and Meyer, of course, were not the masterminds behind this successful organisational structure, they would not want him to think they were taking credit for someone else’s accomplishments, far from it. They don’t know who deserves the credit, perhaps Commander Andorfer, but whoever came up with the idea showed that, with a little self-confidence, one can overcome problems which seem, at first, to be insoluble. Fine lads, Götz and Meyer, aren’t they now? Under other conditions, considering how diligent they were, surely they would have headed up a labour union. But, had he heard their testimony, Dr Becker would not have hesitated: gas trucks were good, especially when dealing with the smaller, more distant Jewish communities, but their effect was not sufficient for places with a larger concentration of Jews, where — again I reach for my calculator — the cost of maintaining a camp with stationary gas chambers and crematoria, with the use of a free labour force, was far cheaper than the cost of using the gas trucks and the extremely awkward involvement of military troops, who could be used to greater benefit elsewhere. In short, Götz and Meyer lost their job at some point. The gas trucks died out like dinosaurs. Making way for more perfect forms, camps functioning as death factories. Science must move forward, there can be no mercy here. Perhaps there were certain sentimental recollections, a tenderness stirred by the sentence: Do you remember those good old Saurers? But that would have been all, no trace of mercy, science has no time for such emotions, no time for any emotion, especially when such a vital task is involved. Eh, Götz and Meyer gestured dismissively, if we had been caught up in thinking like that, we never would have done anything. They are conscientious, they always arrive on time, they are calm and cheerful, their signatures are legible, their uniforms tidy, their step light. Nothing can be held against them. And then when Götz, or was it Meyer, walks into the camp and begins handing out chocolates! At times like that, Meyer, or was it Götz, who simply didn’t like children much, still was stabbed by jealousy now and again. That’s nice, he’d think, when you are liked for the work you do, but still he couldn’t make himself behave the way Götz, or maybe Meyer, did. Those revolting little creeps, what is there to talk about with them, he wouldn’t have put his hand on their heads, and look how skinny they are, and some of them with those bulging bellies, with those sunken, black-ringed eyes. Horrible. Though, interestingly, Meyer, or Götz, was not particularly convinced of Götz’s, or Meyer’s, sincerity in his expressions of concern for those kids. I have a feeling, says Meyer, or Götz, that this was all an agreement, probably with Commander Andorfer — who had already managed to come up with the rules for the non-existing camp, why shouldn’t he think up the chocolates — and once, while we were in Jajinci waiting for the unloading to finish, the two of them talked a little way off from the truck, and I saw how Commander Andorfer handed him something white, which I later saw quite clearly was a paper bag of chocolates. A brown-noser’s words if ever I heard them, wholly unbefitting an SS-Scharführer, but people are fragile, there is no human being who, sooner or later, won’t crack. Look at me: I am lying on the floor like a whipped dog, I’ve rested my head on a pile of books, I’m staring at an empty wall. I am lying, pressed down by figures, scenes from photographs, descriptions, technical details on the production of trucks, numbers, averages, names. I have a feeling I’ll be paralysed forever. I will never be able to go out again. Götz and Meyer’s warnings that only the weak of spirit fall don’t help. This is not news to me. How many times have I collapsed under heaps of notebooks containing homework assignments, and how I’d really collapse once I had finished marking! And the other day, while I was climbing up Rhigas Pheraios Street, I felt something touch me when I was standing on a corner. I don’t know if I’ll be able to describe that touch. Like the impression of a moist palm on your face. It doesn’t matter. I stood there on that corner, facing a building, convinced that one of my relatives must once have lived there. No need to look down the lists in my bag and check the address. Or perhaps it was that Götz and Meyer’s truck had passed this way, maybe that was what held me, and I imagined how one of them might draw the other’s attention to the balding man standing on the corner, gesticulating and talking to himself. At the Library of the Municipality of Belgrade, they even warned me that they’d throw me out if I didn’t stop bothering the other users with my mumbling. Götz, or Meyer, one of them, also liked to talk to himself from time to time, especially when they were driving through monotonous scenery. Meyer, or Götz, was irritated at first by the tiresome drone of the two identical voices, but later, when he got used to their noise, they started making him drowsy. He would stare out of the window, his eyes closing, and then he squinted through his lashes, and then he dropped off to sleep. He dozed like a baby, with a smile on his lips, his eyelids fluttering, his cheeks dimpling. Only a peaceful man, pleased with his life, who feels fulfilled, can sleep like that. What I’d give to be in his place! When I wake up in the morning, the sheet is wound round my throat, the duvet is on the floor, my hands are twisted up in the pillowcase. I could talk for hours of my dreams — more wrestling matches than dreams. I dreamed, for instance, how I was wandering through the labyrinth of the family tree; I was wandering for ages, my feet hurt; finally I caught sight of a way out and gladly ran towards it and found myself at the gate to the pavilion at the Fairgrounds, choked by the stench of fear and desperation; I feel nausea rising and try to hide, crouching in a corner, but no matter how I try, I can’t regurgitate anything; then in the distance I catch sight of Götz and Meyer wearing white hospital gowns; with their arms outstretched, faceless, walking towards me. Dreams like that make my face clench up. Sometimes I have to press my face with my fingers to push the wrinkles up off my forehead, stretch my eyelids. At school, in the classroom, I don’t dare look up at the students. My head bowed, poring over an open folder, I listen to them discussing novels written on subjects from World War II. As if you were living in a war, I tell them, talk about it that way, as if you were in a war now. Götz and Meyer are sitting in the last row, whispering, ripping pages out of their notebooks and folding paper aeroplanes. Later, at break, they eat hotdogs with mustard in a near-by park. Through the window of the classroom, hunched behind the curtains, I watch as bits of bread vanish into their facial voids. In twosomes like that, usually one is tall and the other short, one chubby, the other slender, but there is practically no difference between Götz and Meyer: they are the same height, of ordinary build, they wear the same-sized boots. Fine, one of them has slightly wider feet than the other, which means that his boots chafe him a little more, but a little difference like that, or so they say, only emphasises their similarity, their walk, for instance, or the way they raise their hand in greeting. Götz actually could be Meyer, and Meyer, indeed, could be Götz. Maybe they are, who knows? Both talk with equal earnestness about their Saurer, praising it with carefully chosen words, without hesitating to make certain comments, for instance: on the instability of the truck’s body when it was filled to capacity, which meant that it was essential to cut back on the number of items in each load, which had as a consequence an increased consumption of fuel, because the carbon monoxide had to fill more empty space. The smaller the body of the truck, they concluded, the greater its effect. Later, in a book, I happened upon a German report from June 1942 that discusses in almost the same words the problem of the stability of gas trucks. The author’s position, which Götz and Meyer couldn’t have known, is quoted: had they reduced its size, they would have thrown the balance of the entire truck out of kilter, and then the front axle would have had to bear an incomparably greater pressure. In practice, however, those who submitted the report claimed, the load would rush instinctively to the back door as it closed, and at the end of the trip, the greatest number of them would be right there, which meant that the weight of the load was heavily over the rear axle, thereby maintaining the necessary equilibrium. This same document is touching in its concern for the welfare of the load, which found itself in the dark in the back of the truck, screaming and banging at the door, and therefor