If everyone would just stay still, fewer would die. I should have warned them. “Reserve your strength.” But if I had told them, fewer would have died. When I think of the walks I made Meier take! “Go get some sun, go on: walking in all that air will dry out your trousers.” He believed me. The idiot didn’t realize that the more he ran through the camp, the more he pissed. If I could send them all out to walk, the ordeal would end sooner. This mass of men, these dregs, would slowly vanish, but then I’d be left alone. And the guards would spot me. I’d be visible. It might be better if they hung me out to dry.
One day a truckload of sick men arrived. No one mistreated them; they were just put out to dry. They were taken off the truck and seated on a bench outside. You couldn’t even hear them walking; the soft snow muffled the sound of their footsteps. You could almost touch the sky with your hands. It was overcast, gray, heavy. Once all the sick men were seated, they were never given another thought. The following morning seven were still alive. A frozen corpse is quite pretty. Clean. One had his shrunken legs spread apart, his hands over his eyes. The Belgian slipped his arm under the right knee and called to me, “Grab him by the other handle.” We carried him like that to the pile. When we went back, I noticed his head had made a groove in the snow. Some of them still weighed a good bit.
They haven’t come. Maybe they won’t. They should’ve come the same day, in the afternoon.
When I arrived, the camp seemed like paradise. The tall, wide door and the watch towers made it look like a fortress, but inside. . By the entrance, around a little square, stood some wooden huts, a fresh green color, with flower boxes. They weren’t for us, of course. A gentle slope. The first thing they did was take everything we had. Everything. They led us naked to the shower. The skin on my back was still raw. Freezing shower, boiling shower. We queued for an hour to get our clothes: striped trousers and jacket. And get on with life. And shouts of “Schwein! Scheisse!” Get on with life.
If you want to see some black satin pajamas, you can find them in the prostitutes’ hut. When I was still working in the tunnel, I used to imagine that one night we stormed it and made flags from the black satin, traveling around the world, like a parade of shadows. Literary reminiscences. That’s when I started thinking about the girl in the photo. I remembered her in great detail, almost as if I had known her. Even more than if I’d known her. A narrow forehead, a long nose with wide nostrils, one bright eye open, thin lips. Very dark. That strand of hair falling over her left eye. Sometimes, when I was in the tunnel, I would feel a sudden anguish. Like the day I left my wallet on the table at the Préfecture, the section for Service étrangers—foreigners. As I was walking down the stairs, a dark uneasiness made me realize I forgot the wallet. I felt it all of a sudden when I was pushing a wagon or digging. I spent a long time — couldn’t tell you just how long — without knowing where that anguish came from. Sometimes it almost kept me from breathing. One night I discovered where it came from. It was that wisp of hair over the girl’s eye in the picture. That was what troubled me. I had this intense desire to push it back, leave her face free and naked. That face was the last human thing I saw. I had no wish to stroke her forehead, just the irrational desire to move that strand, place it behind her ear.
My only longing was to breathe the wind that came off the hill. It was pure air that seemed to carry the scent of flowers, making me think of a Sunday afternoon I had spent by the river, in the reeds. That was then, but now. . I still used to wash and undress at night, despite the cold. I still noticed the lice. Whenever I could I would lie facedown and spend long moments with my head between my hands, contemplating the blades of grass, the ants, the only living things in that world of wood, rails, and cement. Now, when I think about the tender leaves on trees that seemed transparent against the light, the sun on the water, the flowers, the little blue and gold insects that climb up stems, the spongy, damp moss, it all seems excessive, useless, greasy, too oily, the world’s tropical disease, the disease of gray and snow. I think about it and nausea fills my mouth with spit.
When Meir died, I kept him in the bed for two days. I made it seem like he was still sick, so I could eat his soup. Dead, he wasn’t so disagreeable at night, because he didn’t piss. And dead men. . Night after night I’d sleep with my head against the thin wooden walls of the hut. Mountains of dead bodies, a hundred, two hundred were piled on the other side. On the second day the Belgian realized. He didn’t say a word until they distributed the soup, and then he took Meier’s ration from me and stared. “Thief,” I yelled at him, my whole body shaking with rage. He raised the bowl to his mouth as he looked at me. I jumped on him. They had to separate us. His mouth was covered in blood; my face was swollen for three days. When I lay down on the bed, I saw they’d taken him away. I was filled with a profound sadness and almost wept. That was the last echo of the shining world from which I was removed the day they applied the pliers to my nose. The last palpitation of the complicated, marvelous feelings of this world. I still used to think occasionally, “If I get out of here alive, what will I be like? I’ll always feel like I’m transporting a stream of corpses. I’ll only beget children with the huge eyes of the starving, their monstrous sex hanging within the thin arch of their thighs.”
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. “Come to dinner son, hurry before your soup gets cold.” “Change your wet shoes, son; the damp is bad for you. You’ll be full of aches and pains when you’re old.” “Brush your teeth.”
“Look at me,” Staub cried the day they gave him a beating. They had just finished purging him because he swallowed the diamond. “Look at me!” He howled, naked and raging, apocalyptic. They had knocked out some of his teeth; those that were left fell out like rotten pears. He wandered around, scratching his chest. From their bunks three or four men raised their heads to look at him, their faces moonlike, like a beheaded Pierrot, the look men have here when they can’t endure the hunger. Maybe Staub thought the sky would open and his Yahweh would give a sign. He fell to the floor on his knees: “I can’t stand.” The day they hanged him in the tunnel, he was the second corpse in the row. When we filed past, I saw that the right leg of his trousers was ripped to the knee. His head was bent, like he didn’t understand.
“Comb your hair, son, comb your hair.” I don’t have any.
Sometimes I think: “How have you survived till now?” Some want to be saved and that saves them. Some think that one day they’ll get out, and that saves them. Get out: why? Some want out so they can continue. If I were part of the resistance or a communist. . But I’m not a communist; I’ve never done anything. I haven’t helped blow up a train or delivered any secret password. Maybe I don’t even hate them. That’s why the first days were hard. I was more distressed by the terrible misunderstanding than by the blows I was dealt. This unsettling feeling seemed to be coming from my stomach. It was like I was the only one who recognized an obvious error in a problem, and I couldn’t make others see it. Get out to take revenge? For what? On whom? One day they called me to help unload the soup thermoses from the truck. It was freezing cold, and while I waited I put my hands in my pockets. The guy raised his fist to hit me in the face. He must have been twenty years old. I thought, “He could be my son,” and I looked at him, waiting for the blow. I don’t know what he said, but slowly he put his arm down and started shouting to the others. I felt a shudder of shame. First for him, then for me. What could he have seen in my eyes? If he could have pulled them out! I don’t know what the last person I hated looked like. I never hated Meier. It was the day they showed me the photograph. He must have been in the office next door. He opened the door and without looking at me told the guard who was beating me: “Écoute, toi: fais pas tant de bruit, quand même.” It’s hard to hate a man if you’ve never seen his face.