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He regarded it as good luck amid misfortune that he was not born to the circumcised. Race was his pillar.

He turned to look at the girl.

‘I’m going to test you in a different way from that which you’re accustomed to.”

He ordered her to sit facing him and to lean against the end of the bed. He leant against the head, the scar throbbing in his forehead.

“I savour each second three times. The poet utters what he hasn’t known before. Three times and twice. The dance of my numbers; the principal one is the three — birth, life, death. Intention, action and lesson.”

She would be happier if she could believe that the Obersturmführer had gone round the bend. She followed his strange gaze. Had he had a drink for Dutch courage? Unlike Captain Hentschel, he had not offered her any.

“You should know, before I leave, that I am my own man. Not like the majority, who are dead while still alive.”

The fire in the stove was drawing well. The flue roared as the flames leapt up. She could hardly pretend that she had to add more fuel.

“Imagine a mirror spattered with the blood of those I have killed. These three years, every day, every night. Moments of decision. I see myself in that mirror. I can look at myself in a blood-spattered mirror without soiling myself. In the western Ukraine we killed a whore who turned out to be a Jewess. I thrust a hand grenade between her legs.”

He paused.

“You haven’t answered me yet.”

“I don’t know what you want to know.”

“Are you afraid of death?”

He took his watch off and put it on the chair by his empty beaker and the holster. He pulled the chair nearer. She imagined she heard the watch ticking.

“Do you know how to handle a pistol?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“No-one’s taught me.”

“No-one, not anywhere? Shooting is something we learn ourselves.

The sooner the better. It’s like riding a bike. You get on, you pedal and you’re riding. Know what kind of gun this is?”

“No.”

“A Steyer? A Bergmann? A Luger?”

“I don’t know.”

He was weighing the pistol in his palm as if acquainting himself with it, as if it were not his own weapon.

“Are you fond of money?”

She remained silent.

“Are you happy?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve no money, you don’t know how to fire a gun, you don’t know if you’re happy. You certainly have whims. I’ll remember that.”

“Why do you want to test me?”

“To discover what I don’t know,” he said. “What you perhaps don’t know yourself. What few people know about themselves, before they see themselves as others see them.”

He was still confusing her.

“Do you know how many parts my pistol has? How much it weighs?”

“No.”

Could he possibly know about the 30 marks Captain Hentschel had given her and which she had hidden under her mattress?

“What did I do to you?” she asked suddenly.

He looked into her eyes thoughtfully.

“Wrong question. What didn’t you do to me?”

“I did what you wanted.”

She was unable to read his expression.

“Weren’t you in a youth organization before they sent you here?”

“No.”

“Always no. No, no, no. Are you concealing your background? It won’t get you anywhere.”

“I wasn’t in an organization.”

Every word could have several meanings.

“Do you think they’d accept you into the Bund deutscher Mädel?

“I don’t know. No-one here got an application form.”

“You’re probably telling the truth now. You’re not German after all.”

For the fraction of a second she felt relief, then her fear travelled down to her guts. What had he meant by saying that everyone had secrets? She broke into a cold sweat. She thought of her father’s sacred books. The Obersturmführer might not realize how close he had come to the truth. Had he come to the end of his “test”?

“Why not tell Uncle Sarazin what’s on your mind? Do you think I want to shoot you?”

“That’s for you to know.”

“You’re wrong. Not yet. A pity they didn’t enrol you in our youth organization. You’d have learnt to fire a gun, or how to use a hand grenade. These things shouldn’t be put off. Were you in some youth association — when you were still at home?”

She could not say that she didn’t remember. But she didn’t want to trap herself. Surely he had asked her this question already? How was he testing her and what did he hope to discover?

“I used to go on school outings.”

From the age of ten she had been in the Jewish Girl Guides. They went on outings along the banks of the Vltava, to the Davie reservoir. For a second she saw the rock face under which they had erected their tents and made their camp fire. They would sing Czech and Zionist songs. None of them had been to the Promised Land. In the evenings they were taught to recognize the stars, during the day they went out into the woods and read signs or learnt to orient themselves with a compass. They had swimming and running races. Once she came first in the 400 metres. They shared anything they had brought along; they called it a commune. Everything was still ahead of them. Life was comprehensible then, the future was far away and good. She remembered every minute of it.

“Our young people know from earliest childhood what a dagger is, or a pistol, or a hand grenade. It’s the responsibility of the parents. At eighteen the boys put on a uniform and join the Waffen-SS or the Volunteer SS. They learn to operate anti-aircraft guns. Some as young as sixteen. They disdain death — that is the test. They do sentry duty at air-raid shelters, they guard factories and sewers to prevent saboteurs from damaging them. They disdain death because they love Germany. Killing is part of basic education, of basic morality. You’d better hurry and catch up with what you’ve missed. I know what I’m talking about.”

She remained silent.

“Two things are all you need — fire and a pistol,” he added. “The third is loyalty. Suppose you had to defend yourself? Or defend me?”

“We have guards here, watchtowers with machine guns, guard dogs,” she said carefully. “We’re protected by a wall. We’re here on your territory.”

He looked into her green eyes.

“I’m just like all the rest,” she said weakly.

He looked at his Luger with admiration and gratitude, with what he would call love and loyalty; something she didn’t understand and could explain to herself only by the power that the weapon lent him, the superiority it gave him. It frightened her, as did everything in which she could not orientate herself and against which she had no defence. She sensed the danger in her whole being. She watched him looking at his pistol. She was waiting for what he was going to say or do next.

Did she lack something the others had? Could she catch up or put it right if she didn’t know what it was?

She thought of Big Leopolda Kulikowa’s advice to accept everything as normal, even the most unexpected and the most eccentric. Hadn’t the Madam told them that people satisfied themselves in any way they could, even with ducks, sheep and bitches? She must hold on to what she could.

She fixed her gaze on his eyes. She didn’t know what would happen next. He was lying on his side, supported by his elbow, holding the gun with his finger on the trigger. Before her eyes was the whiteness that comes to those sentenced to death. Did it matter whether he shot her as a Jewess or as a whore with whom he had failed, or both? In her mind she wrestled with that invisible difference.

At the same time, she felt like that little girl she had seen on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, under the arc-lamps, which were swinging in the wind. The girl had been separated from her parents and her brother. Crowds of people walked past her. Then a woman invited her to join her. The little girl didn’t move. The woman took her by the hand and included her with her own family. All four of them came up before the doctor in the middle of the ramp. With a jerk of his thumb he sent them to the gas chamber.