March Violets (35 page)

After a while I realized that he was right. The heavy work was killing me, just like it was killing the Jews in my kommando. And so I stopped. Feeling ashamed, I helped a convict who had collapsed, hiding him under a couple of empty handcarts until he had sufficiently recovered to continue working. And I kept on doing it, although I knew I was risking a flogging. There were informers everywhere in Dachau. The other convicts warned me about them, which seemed ironic since I was half way to being one myself.

I wasn't caught in the act of hiding a Jew who had collapsed, but they started questioning me about it, so I had to assume I'd been fingered, just like I'd been warned. I was sentenced to twenty-five strokes.

I didn't dread the pain so much as I dreaded being sent to the camp hospital after my punishment. Since the majority of its patients were suffering from dysentery and typhoid, it was a place to avoid at all costs. Even the SS never went there. It would be easy, I thought, to catch something and get sick. Then I might never find Mutschmann.

Parade seldom lasted longer than one hour, but on the morning of my punishment it was more like three.

They strapped me to the whipping frame and pulled down my trousers. I tried to shit myself, but the pain was so bad that I couldn't concentrate enough to do it. Not only that, but there was nothing to shit. When I'd collected my alms they untied me, and for a moment I stood free of the frame before I fainted.

 

For a long time I stared at the man's hand which dangled over the edge of the cot above me. It never moved, not even a twitch of fingers, and I wondered if he were dead. Feeling unaccountably impelled to get up and look at him I raised myself up off my stomach and yelled with pain. My cry summoned a man to the side of my cot.

‘Jesus,' I gasped, feeling the sweat start out on my forehead. ‘It hurts worse now than it did out there.'

‘That's the medicine, I'm afraid.' The man was about forty, rabbit-toothed, and with hair that he'd probably borrowed from an old mattress. He was terribly emaciated, with the kind of body that looked as though it belonged properly in a jar of formaldehyde, and there was a yellow star sewn to his prison jacket.

‘Medicine?' There was a loud note of incredulity in my voice as I spoke.

‘Yes,' drawled the Jew. ‘Sodium chloride.' And then more briskly: ‘Common salt to you, my friend. I've covered your stripes with it.'

‘Good God,' I said. ‘I'm not a fucking omelette.'

‘That may be so,' he said, ‘but I am a fucking doctor. It stings like a condom full of nettles, I know, but it's about the only thing I can prescribe that will stop the weals going septic.' His voice was round and fruity, like a funny actor's.

‘You're lucky. You I can fix. I wish I could say the same for the rest of these poor bastards. Unfortunately there's only so much that one can do with a dispensary that's been stolen from a cookhouse.'

I looked up at the bunk above me, and the wrist which dangled over the edge. Never had there been an occasion when I had looked upon human deformity with such pleasure. It was a right wrist with a ganglion. The doctor lifted it out of my sight, and stood on my cot to check on its owner. Then he climbed down again, and looked at my bare arse.

‘You'll do,' he said.

I jerked my head upwards. ‘What's wrong with him?'

‘Why, has he been giving you trouble?'

‘No, I just wondered.'

‘Tell me, have you had jaundice?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good,' he said. ‘Don't worry, you won't catch it. Just don't kiss him or try to fuck him. All the same, I'll see that he's moved onto another bunk, in case he pisses on you. Transmission is through excretory products.'

‘Transmission?' I said. ‘Of what?'

‘Hepatitis. I'll get them to put you on the top bunk and him on the bottom. You can give him some water if he gets thirsty.'

‘Sure,' I said. ‘What's his name?'

The doctor sighed wearily. ‘I really haven't the faintest idea.'

Later on, when, with a considerable degree of discomfort, I had been moved by the medical orderlies on to the bunk above, and its previous occupant had been moved below, I looked down over the edge of my pallet at the man who represented my only way out of Dachau. It was not an encouraging sight. From my memory of the photograph in Heydrich's office, it would have been impossible to identify Mutschmann but for the ganglion, so yellow was his pallor and so wasted his body. He lay shivering under his blanket, delirious with fever, occasionally groaning with pain as cramp racked his insides. I watched him for a while and to my relief he recovered consciousness, but only long enough to try, unsuccessfully, to vomit. Then he was away again. It was clear to me that Mutschmann was dying.

Apart from the doctor, whose name was Mendelssohn, and three or four medical orderlies, who were themselves suffering from a variety of ailments, there were about sixty men and women in the camp hospital. As hospitals went it was little more than a charnel-house. I learned that there were only two kinds of patient: the sick, who always died, and the injured, who sometimes also got sick.

That evening, before it grew dark, Mendelssohn came to inspect my stripes.

‘In the morning I'll wash your back and put some more salt on,' he said. Then he glanced disinterestedly down below at Mutschmann.

‘What about him?' I said. It was a stupid question, and only served to arouse the Jew's curiosity. His eyes narrowed as he looked at me.

‘Since you ask, I've told him to keep off alcohol, spicy food and to get plenty of rest,' he said drily.

‘I think I get the picture.'

‘I'm not a callous man, my friend, but there is nothing I can do to help him. With a high-protein diet, vitamins, glucose and methionine, he might have had a chance.'

‘How long has he got?'

‘He still manages to recover consciousness from time to time?' I nodded. Mendelssohn sighed. ‘Difficult to say. But once coma has set in, a matter of a day or so. I don't even have any morphine to give him. In this clinic death is the usual cure that is available to patients.'

‘I'll bear it in mind.'

‘Don't get sick, my friend. There's typhus here. The minute you find yourself developing a fever, take two spoonfuls of your own urine. It does seem to work.'

‘If I can find a clean spoon, I'll do just that. Thanks for the tip.'

‘Well, here's another, since you're in such a good mood. The only reason that the Camp Committee meets here is because they know the guards won't come unless they absolutely have to. Contrary to outward appearances, the SS are not stupid. Only a madman would stay here for any longer than he has to.

‘As soon as you can get about without too much pain, my advice to you is to get yourself out of here.'

‘What makes you stay? Hippocratic oath?'

Mendelssohn shrugged. ‘Never heard of it,' he said.

I slept for a while. I had meant to stay awake and watch Mutschmann in case he came round again. I suppose I was hoping for one of those touching little scenes that you see in the movies, when the dying man is moved to unburden his soul to the man crouching over his deathbed.

When I awoke it was dark, and above the sound of the other inmates of the hospital coughing, and snoring, I heard the unmistakeable sound, coming from the cot underneath, of Mutschmann retching. I leaned over and saw him in the moonlight, leaning on one elbow, clutching his stomach.

‘You all right?' I said.

‘Sure,' he wheezed. ‘Like a fucking Galapagos tortoise, I'm going to live for ever.' He groaned again, and painfully, through clenched teeth, said: ‘It's these damned stomach cramps.'

‘Would you like some water?'

‘Water, yes. My tongue is as dry as -' He was overcome by another fit of retching. I climbed down gingerly, and fetched the ladle from a bucket near the bed. Mutschmann, his teeth chattering like a telegraph button, drank the water noisily. When he'd finished he sighed and lay back.

‘Thanks, friend,' he said.

‘Don't mention it,' I said. ‘You'd do the same for me.'

I heard him cough his way through what sounded like a chuckle. ‘No I fucking wouldn't,' he rasped. ‘I'd be afraid of catching something, whatever it is that I've got. I don't suppose you know, do you?'

I thought for a moment. Then I told him. ‘You've got hepatitis.'

He was silent for a couple of minutes, and I felt ashamed. I ought to have spared him that agony. ‘Thanks for being honest with me,' he said. ‘What's up with you?'

‘Hindenburg Alms.'

‘What for?'

‘Helped a Jew in my work kommando.'

‘That was stupid,' he said. ‘They're all dead anyway. Risk it for someone who's got half a chance, but not for a Jew. Their luck is long gone.'

‘Well, yours didn't exactly win the lottery.'

He laughed. ‘True enough,' he said. ‘I never figured on going sick. I thought I was going to get through this fuck-hole. I had a good job in the cobbler's shop.'

‘It's a tough break,' I admitted.

‘I'm dying, aren't I?' he said.

‘That's not what the doc says.'

‘No need to give me the cold cabbage. I can see it in the lead. But thanks anyway. Jesus, I'd give anything for a nail.'

‘Me too,' I said.

‘Even a roll up would do.' He paused. Then he said: ‘There's something I've got to tell you.'

I tried to conceal the urgency that was crowding my voice-box. ‘Yes? What's that then?'

‘Don't fuck any of the women in this camp. I'm pretty sure that's how I got sick.'

‘No, I won't. Thanks for telling me.'

 

The next day I sold my food ration for some cigarettes, and waited for Mutschmann to come out of his delirium. It lasted most of the day. When eventually he regained consciousness he spoke to me as if our previous conversation had been only a few minutes earlier.

‘How's it going? ‘How are the stripes?'

‘Painful,' I said, getting off my bunk.

‘I'll bet. That bastard sergeant with the whip really lays it on like fuck.' He inclined his emaciated face towards me, and said: ‘You know, it seems to me that I've seen you somewhere.'

‘Well now, let's see,' I said. ‘The Rot Weiss Tennis Club? The Herrenklub? The Excelsior, maybe?'

‘You're putting me on.' I lit one of the cigarettes and put it between his lips.

‘I'll bet it was at the Opera - I'm a big fan, you know. Or perhaps it was at Goering's wedding?' His thin yellow lips stretched into something like a smile. Then he breathed in the tobacco smoke as if it was pure oxygen.

‘You are a fucking magician,' he said, savouring the cigarette. I took it from his lips for a second before putting it back again. ‘No, it wasn't any of those places. It'll come to me.'

‘Sure it will,' I said, earnestly hoping that it wouldn't. For a moment I thought of saying Tegel Prison, but rejected it. Sick or not, he might remember differently, and then I'd be finished with him.

‘What are you? Sozi? Kozi?'

‘Black-marketeer,' I said. ‘How about you?'

The smile stretched so that it was almost a rictus. ‘I'm hiding.'

‘Here? From whom?'

‘Everyone,' he said.

‘Well, you sure picked one hell of a hiding place. What are you, crazy?'

‘Nobody can find me here,' he said. ‘Let me ask you something: where would you hide a raindrop?' I looked puzzled until he answered, ‘Under a waterfall. In case you didn't know it, that's Chinese philosophy. I mean, you'd never find it, would you?'

‘No, I suppose not. But you must have been desperate,' I said.

‘Getting sick . . . was just unlucky . . . But for that I'd have been out . . . in a year or so . . . by which time . . . they'd have given up looking.'

‘Who would?' I said. ‘What are they after you for?'

His eyelids flickered, and the cigarette fell from his unconscious lips and onto the blanket. I drew it up to his chin and tapped out the cigarette in the hope that he might come round again for long enough to smoke the other half.

During the night, Mutschmann's breathing grew shallower, and in the morning Mendelssohn pronounced that he was on the edge of coma. There was nothing that I could do but lie on my stomach and look down and wait. I thought of Inge a lot, but mostly I thought about myself. At Dachau, the funeral arrangements were simple: they burned you in the crematorium and that was it. End of story. But as I watched the poisons work their dreadful effect on Kurt Mutschmann, destroying his liver and his spleen so that his whole body was filled with infection, mostly my thoughts were of my Fatherland and its own equally appalling sickness. It was only now, in Dachau, that I was able to judge just how much Germany's atrophy had become necrosis; and as with poor Mutschmann, there wasn't going to be any morphine for when the pain grew worse.

 

There were a few children in Dachau, born to women imprisoned there. Some of them had never known any other life than the camp. They played freely in the compound, tolerated by all the guards, and even liked by some, and they could go almost anywhere, with the exception of the hospital barrack. The penalty for disobedience was a severe beating.

Mendelssohn was hiding a child with a broken leg under one of the cots. The boy had fallen while playing in the prison quarry, and had been there for almost three days with his leg in a splint when the S S came for him. He was so scared he swallowed his tongue and choked to death.