Because I wouldn’t want to be left behind, thought Pavli as he watched the bird flicker and disappear into the sky. He kept silent; the other wouldn’t have understood. I’d rather be here than be left behind, all alone.
The guards began unloading the people from the newly arrived truck. The younger men jumped down and helped their elders. Pavli stood on tiptoe, craning his neck, despite the desperate tug on his sleeve and hissing from his companion. He managed to catch a glimpse of his brother. Matthi had been separated from him in the confusion of the street, the press of bodies lashed by the orders barked at them. Pavli couldn’t tell if Matthi had spotted him in turn; before he could call out his brother’s name, he was nearly knocked off his feet by the crowd surging backward like a single creature.
A scuffle had broken out at the back of the truck, and the guards waded into it, the stocks of their rifles raised in their hands. Pavli stood where he was, letting the crowd thin before him so that he could see what was happening.
A man with his head swathed in dirty bandages, his clothing torn and darkened with his own blood, knelt on the muddy ground, his broken hands clawing at the belt of the uniformed figure standing before him. The SS officer gazed down with cold disdain as a sobbing cry emerged from the toothless mouth.
“ Ich bin kein Jude! ” The words rose to a howl. “I’m not a Jew!” The figure managed to drag himself upright, eyes taking in with horror the sea of watching faces and the barbed wire written along the sky. “I’m not, it’s a mistake… it’s always been a mistake, I tell you…”
The officer struck the figure across the face, sending him sprawling. “Why do you speak such nonsense?” The officer glanced at the huddled Lazarenes, then back to the sobbing creature at his feet. “There are no Jews here at all. Why would there be?”
No words came from the mouth of what had been a human being, only red spittle and a moan of terror.
Pavli watched, feeling his own hands grow damp with sweat. The broken man hadn’t been with the Lazarenes when they’d been driven into the street. A black car had pulled up and the two men in the back seat, in civilian clothes – the car had came from the direction of the Gestapo headquarters on the Prinz-Albrecht-Stra?e – had dragged the silent figure out between them. A chill scent of prison cells, an odor of damp iron in darkened spaces, had clung to the near-unconscious man. He’d dangled limp as dirty laundry as he was handed over to the SS guards manning the trucks; his last beating had rendered him mute.
Two guards hoisted a ragdoll up by its arms. The eyes in the black-and-red face looked beseechingly at the crowd, as though someone might step forward and bestow his freedom.
Before, in the street back in Berlin, Pavli had caught only a glimpse of the man before he’d been loaded into one of the trucks. Now Pavli recognized him. Underneath the bruises and crusted blood was a face he’d seen in his uncle’s camera shop, a face that had once glowed with smug self-satisfaction, the knowledge of one’s own cleverness. The man once had bragged of the plans he’d made, that would save him and his family from the knife-edged winds that were already blowing across the land, a storm that would batter his foolish and improvident brethren…
The thing of dirty rags and swollen flesh was the father of the angel in the shop’s window. Marte Helle’s father.
“What a fool,” muttered Pavli’s dark companion. His voice held the perfect contempt of one who’d steeled his heart for survival, despising those who stayed human and fated for death. “He’s in for it now.”
The broken man had achieved freedom of a sort: the gate had been opened long enough for the two guards to drag him out, his heels inscribing two lines in the mud. The guards disappeared with him into the dark ranks of trees.
Pavli whispered from the corner of his mouth. “Will they shoot him?”
“No -” The other shook his head. “They won’t waste a bullet on him. One of them can just stand on his throat until he’s quiet.”
The guards came back a little while later, by themselves, one of them smoking a cigarette, the other wiping his hands with a cloth he tucked back into the pocket of his uniform jacket.
Some of the elders and the women with small children had sat down on the ground. The mothers kept the restless children close to themselves, hushing them when they cried, rocking the infants in their arms and shielding their pink faces from the sun.
It was close to noon when the car arrived, a high-fendered cabriolet from the Bayerische Motoren Werke, the whine of its supercharger cutting through the distance before it could be seen. The guards stiffened to attention, a couple of them hurriedly fastening the tight collars of their uniforms, as the driver held the door open for his passenger.
The Scharfuhrer, the sergeant in charge of the guards, extended his arm in salute. “All shipments of the subject population have arrived and been accounted for, Herr Doktor Ritter.”
The false gypsy hissed in alarm. “It’s him! ” He clutched his fingers tighter on Pavli’s arm. “He was there, at Auschwitz!” That was the other name, the German one, for the little Silesian village and the camp from which the fellow had been returned. “In Block Ten -”
There wasn’t time to ask what Block Ten was. The officer – Pavli could see the insignia of a Hauptsturmfuhrer SS on the man’s uniform – acknowledged the guard’s salute with a nod, as he pulled the gloves from his hands. His gaze moved across the crowd behind the fence.
“Line the males up.” The gate swung open to admit the officer. He pointed to the open space a few yards away. “Right there will do nicely.”
The Scharfuhrer presented the tally sheet to the officer. “You will find the group to be short one subject, sir. A death occurred during transport; the man was not well.”
“Oh?” The officer raised a skeptical eyebrow. He smiled coldly at the guard. “During transport, you say? How unfortunate. What was done with the subject, upon your learning of his demise?”
“The body was removed -”
“But not yet buried? Good.” The officer gestured with a flick of his hand. “Have it brought inside. We shall waste nothing here. Every one of our guests, breathing or not, is of value.”
They made no effort to lower their voices, to keep the Lazarenes from overhearing. Pavli let himself be herded forward with the other men. The guards kept their rifles slung behind their shoulders as they shoved the group into a rough straight line.
Pavli could see the officer better now. He stood only a few feet away, running a finger across the names on the tally sheet. Shorter than all but one of the guards, with eyes of watery blue socketed in finely wrinkled skin. He had the thin lips of an unloved woman. He didn’t seem to Pavli like a doctor, but these things were hard to tell anymore. In this world, he had already learned that all words were arbitrary; they could easily mean the opposite of what they had meant the day before.
The officer and the Scharfuhrer started at the left end of the line. “Your arm, bitte.” Before the Lazarene could respond, the Scharfuhrer had grabbed the man’s forearm, twisting his palm upward. The tight double row of buttons were torn open, exposing the white skin of the Lazarene’s wrist.
“Ah…” The officer breathed a connoisseur’s sigh of appreciation as he looked at the blue-inked tattoo that ran toward the inside crook of the elbow. He reached out a forefinger and traced the length of the representation of Christ’s stigmata. “A fine specimen.” To Pavli, watching from the corner of his eye a few places farther down the line, the officer did seem like a doctor now, examining an interesting skin condition. “Open your shirt.”