The Road Between Us (19 page)

Half an hour later he lowers his paintbrush and realizes how tightly he must have been gripping it. His hand is aching. The pilot’s face looks distorted and foreshortened because of how close up it is, the same intimate and intrusive distance one has to one’s own face in a mirror. With the paint still wet, Charles sits back and spins the panel. The paint runs, making the face look as if it is melting and, as it alternates with his own open-mouthed reflection, the two faces appear to blur into one. He lights the stubs of two candles and places them in front of the two angled side mirrors, just out of reach of the spinning arc of the larger central mirror.

He spins the mirror again. As it passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, he sees his own reflected face melting in the flames of the candles.

VII

Alsace

SEVERAL MONTHS HAVE PASSED SINCE THE EXPERIMENTS BEGAN
– Anselm is not sure how many – and thanks to the light work and the extra rations he and his fellow human guinea pigs are looking healthier. Whatever is in the injections they receive once a month, the side effects all appear to be positive, for now. Anselm’s eyes are no longer jaundiced, a pinkness has returned to his skin and he feels stronger, so much so he can even get through the hour-long roll call without black spots dancing before his eyes.

Today he feels uneasy. Something is wrong. Are there prisoners missing? This will mean more hours standing in the square. Or worse. For every
Häftling
absent for the roll call, ten will be shot. That is the rule. Not that this is a deterrent to escape attempts. The fate of one prisoner is of little concern to another. They are all condemned here, after all, and empathy is a luxury none of them can afford.

But something is definitely wrong today. Something is different. Something is … protean. The camp even has a new smell. It is more than the usual acid combination of disinfectant, human sweat, damp straw and excrement. It is something chemical in the atmosphere. Sulphurous. Today the camp smells like the cauldron of hell.

An hour after it begins, the roll call comes to an end, and a
corpulent
Unterfeldwebel
carrying a clipboard marches up to the officer on duty and salutes. He is known as the Ukrainian. Known and loathed.

‘
Wieviele Stücke?
’ the officer barks.

‘
2,632 Stücke
,’ the Ukrainian answers.

There are 2,632 pieces. Pieces, not people. The numbers are correct. Yet the electricity of violence is still in the air.

Anselm looks around. Two fences of barbed wire, the inner one carrying a high-tension current, surround the camp. Positioned at regular intervals along this perimeter are watchtowers, fourteen of them, and under each is a pole bearing a speaker, like that of a gramophone. These are used as air-raid sirens, an ugly shrill tested from time to time, but so far never needed. They are also used for announcements, made in German to the mostly uncomprehending ears of the French. Before these are made, the microphones are switched on for a few seconds and a crackling noise fills the air. The sound, more an amplified absence of sound, is heard now and it fills Anselm with dread.

The other prisoners now sense that something worse than usual is to happen today. There seems to have been a change in the atmospheric pressure that has increased gravity, made the air heavier.

Then Anselm hears it. The sound of a needle scratching rhythmically on a gramophone. The music is almost inaudible at first. A repeated rolling of the upper strings followed by a slow, dissonant wailing of oboes and flutes and a deep sustain of bass instruments that anchor the harmony. Then, as the choral voices come in, the volume increases so that it is distorted and raw and the emphatic chords take up the rolling violin sounds. Its mood is one of despair, of impeding tragedy. Anselm recognizes it. The St John Passion. He cannot remember the last time he heard Bach, but this is beautiful, like rainwater easing over his parched soul. Yet it is also, in this context, sinister and theatrical. There is a movement to his left. A wooden contraption is being dragged out: a cross of two planks of wood, the size of a man. It is being placed below the gallows in front of the assembled prisoners.

Feeling overwhelmed, Anselm closes his eyes and savours the music while he can, clinging to its beauty as to a lifebuoy. As well as losing himself, he loses track of time. When the emotional climax comes – Jesus’s last sung words, ‘
Es ist vollbracht
’, it is finished – he feels confused. It cannot be over yet. Just one more passage of music, please. The long, flowing, downward phrases seem unbearably heavy now. He opens his eyes and stares emptily at the cross.

There is another movement, to his right this time. A dozen SS officers in full dress uniform file out and, with their boots clattering on the stone and their heads snapping in unison, goosestep towards the gate. Here they form a guard of honour, six down each side. As two sentries open the gate, the SS officers come to attention as one, with a synchronized clicking of heels. They now draw their ceremonial swords and hold them out to form an arch.

Two minutes pass before a horseman appears, riding at a steady walking pace from the direction of the Commandant’s house, a white château that is all but hidden from the camp by a row of trees. By his side is a dog, an Alsatian, walking at the same measured pace. It looks different from the other camp dogs, longer in the leg, its thick, greying coat better groomed. It could be crossed with a wolf. No, Anselm now realizes what the main difference is: it is not barking, not baring its teeth. Unlike the others it has no need of a leash.

His gaze returns to the horseman, who is wearing the black silver-braided cap of a senior SS officer. His riding boots glint with polish. Though it is warm today, he is wearing black leather gloves and a long leather trenchcoat, the tails of which are spread out over the horse’s flanks. Its blackness merges with the black coat of the horse, a chiaroscuro that makes it hard to see where the rider ends and the horse begins. It is as if their very blackness is absorbing all light. Then a sunbeam catches the metal of his death’s head, as well as the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves around his neck, and the bit in his horse’s velvety mouth.

This must be the new commandant, the fourth since Anselm’s arrival here. His predecessors all made their entrance in Mercedes staff cars with small swastikas flapping on the bonnet. They all
quickly demonstrated they meant business with an execution, a show of cruelty, to remind prisoners and guards alike what they are all here for, the task that must be done, the business in hand.

The silver-piped collar tabs on this commandant reveal he is a
Hauptsturmführer
. According to the rumours circulating around the camp in the past few days, he has served in an SS cavalry division in Poland. He is of tall stature and agile build and is about forty years old, at a guess. His eyes are shielded by the peak of his cap, which rests on the bridge of his long and straight nose, a nose that seems to exaggerate the length of his lupine face. The vertical of this nose ends dramatically with the wide, thick horizontal of his mouth, as though he were a line drawing. It is a visage of terrible beauty. If Death had a human form, Anselm thinks, it would be like this.

The Commandant comes to a halt in front of the cross. The Alsatian sits on its haunches without being asked. A
Häftling
is marched out from the compound near the infirmary. He has a pink triangle over a yellow star with a green bar. A Jewish, homosexual thief. This will be bad.

‘The man before you has stolen food from an officer,’ the Commandant drawls in a slow, educated voice. ‘He knows the penalty for stealing food … You all know the penalty for stealing food.’

Food. The word triggers a convulsion in Anselm’s gut. Since taking part in the medical experiments he has been fed better, but hunger is still a habit. Perhaps this execution will distract him for a time. They know the drill. If they avert their eyes from what is to come they will be punished – in all likelihood they will be obliged to join the poor bastard on the gallows. They watch as the
Häftling
is stripped, his thin arms and legs shivering violently. He is to receive lashes on his back, for sure.

But no. When he is tied upside down on the cross, facing outwards, the air thickens further. Anselm has studied images such as this in Renaissance art. But wasn’t it St Peter who was crucified upside down? No, he thinks, it must have been St John. In this
senseless place, that would make sense. Bach’s passion of St John. That piece of choral music.

The Commandant is speaking again, Anselm understands his German. ‘This man is hungry. He is going to be fed. He will not be hungry again.’ He unbuttons his leather overcoat, removes his ceremonial dagger from its scabbard and points with it at a prisoner in the front row. ‘You. Come here.’ The prisoner doubles forward, removes his cap and stands to attention with his eyes downcast. The Commandant flips the dagger up in the air so that he is holding it by the tip of its blade. He presents it handle first to the prisoner. ‘Feed him. Feed him his own
Fleischklösschen
.’

The prisoner looks at the dagger out of the corner of his eyes but he does not move.

‘Slice off some meat and feed it to him.’

Anselm understands now what the prisoner is being asked to do. He has heard from the Slav inmates that the Waffen-SS do this on the Eastern Front. They cut the genitals off dead and dying Red Army soldiers and stuff them in their mouths as calling cards. The Russians do it back to the Germans. Meatballs, they are called.
Fleischklösschen
.

The naked prisoner upside down on the cross also seems to understand what fate awaits him. He gives a pitiful scream. More a whimper. A guard silences him with a jackboot to his face.

The standing prisoner gives a single, almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Anselm cannot believe his eyes. What is this? Defiance? Not a good idea, my friend. Surely he must know an act of defiance will result in his own death?

The Commandant nods and his mouth turns down at the edges, as if he is weighing this action up and is, despite himself, a little impressed. He slips his dagger back in its sheath, removes his Luger from its holster and digs his spurs into the horse’s ribs. Once the horse has turned and he is sideways on to the standing prisoner, he lifts the safety lock on the pistol, takes aim and, without anger, shoots him through the top of his head. The horse flinches but
stands its ground. The prisoner buckles at the knees and falls forward, steam rising from his wound. There is a delay of a few seconds before the blood seeps out into the dust, as if it had been too surprised to leave his skull any earlier.

The Commandant now rides along the ranks of prisoners, like a visiting dignitary inspecting troops, and the leather of his coat makes a squeaking sound against the leather of his saddle. Please God, Anselm prays, make him pick someone else. Anyone else.

But his height draws the Commandant’s eye.

‘You.’

Anselm will later try to convince himself that he hesitates at this moment, yet he knows in his heart that this is not true. There is nothing with which his conscience has to wrestle. The skin and bone on the cross is a corpse already, his continued breathing an affront to nature, a cruelty that should not be prolonged. He cannot be saved. Unlike Anselm. Maybe. This will be a mechanical act from which he is distanced, about which he has been spared the agony of choice. With this action Anselm will be buying himself another hour of life, another day, another week.

‘
Hast du verstanden?
’

Has he understood?

Anselm removes his cap and stands to attention. When the Commandant leans forward in his saddle once more to proffer the handle of the dagger, Anselm takes it, marches to the front and, without hesitation, without even a whispered apology to the man whimpering below him, takes the fear-shrivelled testes in one hand, pulls them out at an angle to stretch the scrotum, and begins sawing with the other. The blade is sharp. This time the blood does not hesitate, and if it cannot be easily staunched, the screaming can. When Anselm places the
Fleischklösschen
in the upside-down man’s open mouth, he tries to spit them out but chokes on them instead. His nostrils are filling with the blood cascading down his torso and neck.

Anselm steps back, his breathing now rapid and audible. He picks up the man’s clothes and wipes the dagger on them before handing
it back to the Commandant, holding it by the tip. He must not look up. To look this devil in the eye will be to turn to stone. The Commandant positions his horse between the prisoner and Anselm and studies the pink triangle on his jacket. ‘
Vous êtes français?
’

Anselm knows the truth must out now. Lying to the Commandant would be like lying to God.

‘
Nein, mein Kommandant
.’

‘
Reichsdeutscher?
’

Anselm hesitates. ‘
Jawohl, mein Kommandant. Reichsdeutscher
.’

The German words sound foreign on Anselm’s tongue at first, then he tunes in to them.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Aachen, Commandant.’

‘You have a fine cathedral there.’

Anselm looks up. From this angle the Commandant’s eyes are visible below the cap. They are narrow and a fraction too close together. ‘Yes,’ he says in bewilderment. ‘It is very fine.’

There is a gurgling sound as the crucified man continues to drown in his own blood.

‘How old are you?’

Anselm has to think for a moment. He must be twenty-five by now. ‘I am twenty-five, Commandant.’

‘Why are you not serving the Fatherland?’

‘I was going to.’ It is not a lie. ‘I was studying in England before the war when I got my call-up papers. I was about to return to Germany when …’ He hesitates.

‘You were arrested?’

‘Yes, Commandant.’

Instead of the expected blow, there is another question. ‘What were you studying in England?’