Götz and Meyer

d 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 therefore it would be better, the document proposes, that there be a light in the truck at the very beginning when the load is being processed, which would help to reassure the load itself, and, I conclude, ensure a more equally distributed inhalation of the carbon monoxide. The author also remarks that it would be necessary to secure the light bulb with metal netting, probably so that no-one would break it and, God forbid, cut their hand or get an electric shock. Götz and Meyer would most certainly have supported such a suggestion, though they doubt that this would entirely do away with the screams and howls, because in their case, where the loading proceeded in perfect order, sooner or later, especially after they had stopped and hooked up the exhaust pipe, someone would start to shout, and the rest would join in. In the end, it never lasted very long, and soon the shouting, as their experience showed, turned into those sounds you hear when you can’t hear them any more. It is over, Götz, or Meyer, would say, the one who is definitely married. He said it every day, sometimes even twice, and Meyer, or Götz, the one who isn’t, maybe, married, would always wince. There is no mention of this in their reports, which I never saw, but I reckon that Götz and Meyer had to have written at least one report. I like to picture them bent over sheets of paper, frowning and chewing on a pencil. They turn to me: Why aren’t you helping us now? No-one can help history, the woman at the Museum says. She says this with such certainty that I don’t even try to respond. While I sit across from her, I know how my students feel. Then I got a letter from Vienna confirming how after the war there was no investigation in Germany into the case of Götz and Meyer, and that there is no way to find out what happened to them. I read the letter in front of the letter boxes. I paid no attention to the stamp. My knees shook, and I had to sit down on the stairs. I didn’t sit long, something nudged me in the back, I barely managed to grab my belongings, get in the queue behind the others, while bits of sentences were coming through from all sides, deep sighs, choked-back sobs. We climbed into the military truck, and through a hole in the tarpaulin, while we were driving, I saw how the buildings and streets passed, and then we reached the bridge, and Belgrade faded into the distance. Picture the life collected in a grain of sand, I told my students. Yesterday it was an entire world, today it is a dot. It is impossible to describe, because in doing so you’d be doing an injustice either to the world or to the dot. You can’t talk, you see, of both in the same language; one starts where the other lets off; one cannot grasp the other. This is far too convoluted for them: I see their eyebrows furrow, their lips purse. Life is history, I write on the board, and in history no-one can help anyone else. Strange, but when he arrived at the Fairgrounds camp and took the bag of chocolates out of his pocket, Götz, or Meyer, felt as if he was leaving history behind. He moved through space outside time, existing only in a present belonging to no-one. Then he’d blink, and the next moment he’d find himself behind the wheel of the Saurer, whistling a march, pleased that it is not his turn to sit in the passenger seat, to be in charge of re-attaching the exhaust pipe. Although he was not superstitious, he’d feel something evil in the air when he got out of the truck, and suddenly, while motes of dust were falling on his uniform, he heard the noise and cries coming from the back of the truck. Once he heard bees buzz, another time a bird sang, but the dull noise grew, especially once he came closer to the underside of the truck with the exhaust pipe in his hand. In one of those dreams when Meyer, or Götz, had to wake him, with threats that the next time he’d pour a glass of water down his neck, which he never did, in one of those dreams, he dreamed someone spoke his name through that little hole. Enunciated it loud and clear: Wilhelm Götz. And then said: You are Erwin Meyer. What a terrible dream, even now he cringed when he remembered it. He had never told it to anyone, although once he had barely kept himself from telling it when he was with Untersturmführer Andorfer. While they were smoking a little way off from the truck, waiting for the unloading to finish, they talked about dreams, and when Andorfer told him of his own exciting dream, something about a double-headed eagle, he wanted to tell him his, but then he bit his tongue, coughed and said he had a sore throat. Andorfer put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a bag of cough sweets. He wasn’t fond of the taste of menthol, though his love of chocolate was famous, but he accepted the offer and put the sweet on his tongue. The children at the camp took his sweets in just the same way: they put them on their tongue and then, eyes closed, pressed them up against the roofs of their mouths. There were children, especially among the youngest of them, who took the chocolates with their grimy fingers and with careful nibbles bit off all the chocolate coating. Then with their little tongues they poked around in the filling as if seeking buried treasure. It occurs to me that none of them knew what Götz’s, or Meyer’s, names were. They’d cluster around him and shout: Mister, over here, Mister! And not only the children, none of the prisoners at the camp had any idea what Götz and Meyer were really called, though it is easy to imagine that they referred to them somehow, maybe as Slim, or Whiskers, in a word, with whatever made Götz, Götz and Meyer, Meyer. They knew, I am thinking here of the prisoners, things that elude me, while I know what eludes them: I know Götz’s and Meyer’s names, and the real purpose of the Saurer, and the real meaning of the words