Suddenly the light went out in the block, the outside lights as well.
“You have power cuts here just as in Warsaw?” the girl said.
What kind of girls had they brought here? From the far office came a voice shouting into a telephone:
“What? Half an hour to an hour? Scheisse. This is Hauptsturmführer Schneidhuber — Lucian Schneidhuber. Block 21.”
Then came the sound of him groping for the telephone and putting down the receiver. The instrument tinkled for a while before clicking and falling silent.
“Is there anybody else in this block? I need candles!” he called out.
Skinny knew about the candles. “Here,” she shouted into the dark, over the head of the girl. She picked up a flat box of candles, locating it from memory. Groping her way, she carried it to the far end of the corridor to the Hauptsturmführer. He gestured to her to wait by the wall, with the as yet unselected girls. Did he take her for one of the Aryan girls crowding the room? She had nothing to lose. In the morning she would be going up in smoke. The Hauptsturmführer lit the first candle with his lighter, then clicked it shut and with the burning wick lit another. With a candle in each hand, he let a few drops of wax fall on a black, cloth-bound, record book — the kind that Dr Krueger had also used — set the candles into it and held them in place for a moment.
A draught blew through a crack in the door, which Skinny had left ajar, and the flames flickered until she closed it. She stood by the wall, the last in line, trying not to look around too much for fear of being conspicuous; but at the same time she observed the girls who had already been selected, about 15 of them. They wore civilian clothes — blouses and skirts and shoes, and had coloured jackets hanging on hooks. The girls must have been fresh; they had only just been brought in. They were all around 18. The room was beginning to smell of sweat and perfume, and of clothes and underwear not changed for some days. Skinny was preparing herself for the Hauptsturmführer’s questions. She didn’t suppose that those the doctor didn’t choose would become nurses.
She felt as she had on the 28th of September at the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau — at the mercy of whatever might happen, a lump of clay that could be moulded into anything. Was it to be her good fortune that Dr Krueger could not bear cleaners in prison outfits and had ordered some civilian clothes to be brought for her from the store, with long sleeves and lace-up boots and thick woollen stockings?
The girls were standing casually against the wall, legs crossed. Either they did not know they were at Auschwitz or they didn’t realize what that meant.
Now and again the Hauptsturmführer shouted: “Ruhe!” Quiet!
Then he said: “Schweinerei.” He called out three German names from his list: “Mathilde Seiler, Brunhilde Bausinger, Helga Burger.” He had dark rings under his eyes.
At that moment Skinny knew she would deny that she was Jewish. There was no mistaking the pointed questions of the Hauptsturmführer as he verified the racial origin of each girl. She would lie. If he asked her she would say she was Aryan. If he asked her religion she would answer as though she were her drawing teacher from primary school. They’d all known which church she belonged to. She composed her answers in her head, trying to guess what the Hauptsturmführer would ask.
She had been 18 days in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her head had been shaved. The girls by the wall did not yet have the prescribed masculine crew cut. They had slides, ribbons and combs in their hair.
The girl with the quiff failed to answer the Hauptsturmführer’s questions satisfactorily and joined those not selected, along the wall. The girl probably thought she would become a nurse. How come so many people believed the Germans? Probably because it was more comfortable to believe; it was not so easy to disbelieve and terrible not to trust in anything. What qualities would a girl need to have for the Hauptsturmführer to choose her?
Skinny wondered how Kowalska in Block 18 would deal with her absence. Would she assume she was dead already? Unless they had been looking for her in the evening, they wouldn’t bother looking for her in the morning. Even with the meticulous organization of Auschwitz-Birkenau, people got lost for a day, for two or three days, even for longer.
What were her chances? No-one knew that she was only 15. On the advice given to her by some Poles at the ramp as soon as she had arrived, she had added three years to her age. In the twinkling of an eye she was 18. After a day and a night at Auschwitz-Birkenau she wouldn’t have been lying if she’d declared that she was 1,000 years old. Children under 15 went straight to the chimney. And most of those over 40 went as well.
She listened carefully to the Hauptsturmführer’s questioning of each girl, how he moved from one question to another, what he wrote down. He was in a hurry. That was good. The girl with the quiff had accepted her fate lethargically. What did it matter that she would have to carry bedpans around in a sick bay?
The air was getting thick. The candles were smoking. The gaunt Hauptsturmführer was eating porridge from a soup bowl next to his bulging briefcase, washing it down with mineral water from a bottle with a German label. He had searching, tired eyes and short blond hair. His cap with its skull and crossbones was perched on the edge of the desk. On his questionnaire he ticked off the characteristics of the girls he selected. He was not looking for office workers or cooks. If he didn’t like a girl, or if he suspected her of lying, he made no secret of his annoyance. Next one. Another Schweinerei, fort mit dem Dreck. A few times he swore, scheissegal. He spoke carefully and acted in a businesslike manner, severely. His vocabulary was almost coarser than Dr Krueger’s, and he was not exactly prissy. From the ceiling, on a two-foot length of wire, a light bulb, extinguished, swayed in the draught.
It was Skinny’s turn. He looked her over quickly, head to toe. Did he remember that she was the one who had brought him the candles? He picked up his riding crop and lightly smacked the open palm of his hand.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Let’s get on with it then.” He put the crop on the desk and picked up a pencil. He wrote something on the top of the sheet and cursed when the lead broke.
“Aber jetzt nur die Wahrheit!” he said. Only the truth. Without knowing why, he’d decided in advance that he would take her, but she did not know that. She was the last needed to make up the prescribed number. He fumbled among his papers to find the 30th questionnaire. He told her to answer only ja or nein.
It was not the first time her life had been in the balance, but each time felt like the first time. She hung on to what had so far always helped her. Something that made her rely on herself and hope she would be lucky. It was not quite rebellion, but there was a touch of rebelliousness in it.
Perhaps he sensed in her a will to live; and this didn’t affect him the way it did the Waffen-S S who killed people in order to kill that very will to live.
She didn’t wear glasses. Hauptsturmführer Schneidhuber had been told that female prisoners with glasses weren’t suitable for field brothels.
Skinny had already lost everyone she could lose; but she had not yet lost herself and did not wish to. It was a primitive instinct, but it was the only thing she could hold on to. She refused to let it distort her outward appearance: the Hauptsturmführer mustn’t suspect what she was feeling. Pity was not a Nazi characteristic. She was going through a selection, of the kind they had at Auschwitz-Birkenau every Monday, morning and evening. At every selection her life was in someone else’s hands. Whether she lived or died would be decided, as always, by someone who did not know her, who was seeing her for the first time, perhaps with only half an eye. For her brother, Ramon, his first test had been his last. And at one unexpected selection at Block 18, Skinny had lost her mother. In some recess of her brain were all those, acquaintances and strangers, whom she’d last seen at a selection. There must be no uncertainty about supplies to the crematoria. When there were too few sick people, more healthy ones went into the gas chamber. In the commandant’s office they had detailed quotas according to which selections were performed. If there were no Czechs, they took Hungarians. On the Tuesday morning when they selected her mother, a story went around that the Sortierabteilung truck would take them not to the crematorium but out through the gates of Auschwitz- Birkenau.