“With a few exceptions there won’t be any circumcised in this neighbourhood any longer.” He could take the credit for that.
“I know that,” she said.
“They’re breathing their last. We no longer send them to camps. Their Endlösung is my Jagdkommando. Even if only every sixth man kills one Jew, we’ll exterminate them. If you calculate how many there are of us and how many of them, you get the result. The numbers speak for us. We rely on ourselves, and we don’t betray collaborators. We are the guarantee of success. The fewer there are of them, the more marked are the traces they leave behind. The locals are protecting them. The fact that Jewish women can’t read doesn’t mean they’re not cunning. There’s treason all round. Nothing is innocent. A well. A room. A cellar. We’ve searched Russia, the Ukraine and Poland with a fine-tooth comb, like the lice-infested head of a giant. Their world has collapsed like a house of cards. The more they deny themselves the more they unveil themselves. I couldn’t tell you why. It’s in their eyes. Inferiority against our superiority. Fear against our courage. It’s in their features, in their eyes.”
Why was he saying all this to her? What did he want her to say to him?
“The more you deny yourself the more you reveal yourself,” the Obersturmführer continued. “You speak just by moving your eyes.”
“That other redhead you have here does not give what she should give. That’s why she got a flogging. I broke her in. For someone else, not for myself. I hardly ever have a woman twice. For that she’d have to be quite something. But I don’t rule out the possibility of exceptions.”
Skinny repeated what she had told herself on the very first day. You’ve become a whore. So do what whores do. In return you’ll take what you need. Just do what Estelle kept telling her to do: make it possible for them to get what they wanted.
She reflected on what he was right about. People were not born equal, they were born different, but to her this did not suggest lice, although she could see herself as a louse. Some people were born with hard-working hands, others with a hard-working head. Some, like her uncles, with both. Some were good by nature, others less so — like her uncles again. She knew of distinctions of which The Frog would not want to hear. Of the line between justice and injustice. If people were born equal she would not be here with Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin, or earlier with Captain Hentschel, or with so many soldiers that she was ashamed to count them. It was enough that they were counted and recorded by Madam Kulikowa.
“I do what I have to do. That is my unshakeable principle,” he said.
It was obvious that he enjoyed the sound of his own voice. He enjoyed the warmth, his words — she had not encountered this before. His world was incomprehensible to her, a place that she could never share, nor would wish to. He had seen things she had not seen.
The puddle of melted snow around his jackboots had spread as far as the fuel box. She would have to mop it up. Should she ask him to move? She didn’t want to interrupt him.
“The east is almost cleansed of Jews. Not brutality at all. Absolute necessity.”
He was dreaming. He bent his head, proud at his greatness.
“The Jews are like cats, they have nine lives. Either we crush them or they’ll crush us. A pity we aren’t allowed to keep diaries, in which a person could feel free to reveal more than he would otherwise. In summer we hang them in cherry orchards. In winter we let them freeze to death. Of course they scream. Especially the women when it is the turn of their brats.” He laughed.
“They hang from the trees like dirty stockings.”
They could hear a train. The Ostbahn, the eastern railway. He knew all the main stations and railheads. She’d not believe how many camps he’d served in, how many he’d visited in an official capacity. He was warmed through now. He started whistling. Sweat appeared on his rather low forehead, or was it melted snow? His scar glistened on his forehead. It reminded her of what a corporal had told her about the Maginot Line winding along the frontier until the Germans passed through it like a knife through butter.
“Hatred changes to joy in me, to a special kind of joy, perhaps to Schadenfreude,” he said. “I couldn’t live without hatred any more. To deprive me of hatred would be like depriving me of oxygen. Like pulling the ground away under my feet. Like walking on one leg, like fighting with one arm. While I hate, I am. While you hate, you are.”
He wanted to know what she hated.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m afraid to hate.”
“You’re making a mistake. Once you’ve learned to hate you’ll realize what you’ve missed.”
“Perhaps,” she said, avoiding his gaze.
“You should look at me.”
He waited for her to ask why, so he could tell her she would find out, but she didn’t ask. People who could not hate were like a rag for wiping the floor.
The Obersturmführer unbuckled his belt, took his pistol from its holster. He stepped over to the window. He had quite a job opening it; it was frozen to the frame by snow and ice. No-one had opened it since the autumn. The storm swept into the cubicle. The Obersturmführer drew the chair up to the window and climbed onto it. He looked out into the twilight. In the blizzard, as though behind a curtain of mist, wolves were moving. He released the safety catch, aimed and waited before firing.
“Not too bad for the first shot!” He was pleased.
“Last time I got a she-wolf. I stepped on her lower jaw and tore her mouth apart till she bled to death. You should know what that means.”
He realized that she wouldn’t understand if she hadn’t been taught the Teutonic legends.
“Victory goes to the strongest, the fastest, the best prepared,” he said.
He took a deep breath and continued.
“The best thing you can do is what you do just like that, without reason. That’s what amazes those we overcome. They don’t understand.”
Two minutes later he fired again. Sharp, frosty air filled the cubicle. She was standing by the bed, in the draught, feeling cold. She wasn’t sure whether she dared put on her coat. He emptied his magazine.
“I shouldn’t have done that — fired my last round. A soldier should save that for himself. What do you think?”
She remained silent. Only later did she understand why he’d said that. He was not as simple as he pretended, even though some of his sentences were assembled as though from a child’s building set.
Just as laboriously as he had opened it, he shut the window. She was glad the glass didn’t fall out.
“Practice kills boredom,” he said. “It passes the time.”
He saw that she was cold. Closing the window did not immediately warm up the room. “Put some more fuel on the fire,” he commanded.
He carried the chair to the stove and returned his pistol to its holster.
“I’m a good shot,” he said.
She went to stoke up the fire, relieved to get to the stove. She put three shovelfuls of coal on top of a birch log. It was damp. She warned the Obersturmführer that it would smoke for a while. She shut the stove door, taking care not to soil her new clothes, then waited for his instructions.
“They ought to supply you with anthracite,” he said.
“I take the coal from the pile by the kitchen.”
“It’s Scheisse from the mines further up the river. I hope they ship the better coal to the Reich.”
“It doesn’t draw well.”
“You should have put it on earlier.”
“I put on two shovelfuls.”
She picked up a rag and mopped up the little puddles that had formed when the Obersturmführer opened the window. It was almost dark. Sarazin hung his belt over the back of the chair. She washed her hands and lit a candle. The candlelight gave the evening outside a purple hue.