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Next to Reiter's cot slept a man of about fifty, a Volkssturm
soldier. The man had let his beard grow and his German was soft and gentle, as
if nothing that happened around him could touch him. During the day he often
talked to two other ex-Volkssturm soldiers, who walked and ate with him.
Sometimes, however, Reiter saw him alone, writing in lead pencil on various
slips of paper that he took out of his pockets and then put away with great
care. Once, before he fell sleep, Reiter asked what he was writing, and the man
said he was trying to get his thoughts down on paper. Which, he added, wasn't
easy. That was all Reiter asked, but after that, every night before they went
to sleep, the former Volkssturm soldier found a reason to exchange a few words
with him. He said his wife had died when the Russians took Küstrin, where they
were from, but he didn't bear anyone a grudge, war was war, he said, and when
the war ended it was best for each side to forgive the other and start anew.

Start
how? Reiter wanted to know. From zero, and with joy and imagination, whispered
the other man in his deliberate German. The man's name was Zeller and he was
thin and withdrawn. When Reiter saw him walk through the camp, always with the
other two former Volkssturm soldiers, he radiated a great dignity, perhaps in
contrast to his two companions. One night Reiter asked whether he had any
family.

"My
wife," Zeller answered.

"But your wife
is dead," said Reiter.

"I
had a son and a daughter," Reiter heard him whisper, "but they died
too. My son in the battle of
Kursk
and my
daughter during a bombing raid on
Hamburg
."

"Don't you
have any other relatives?" asked Reiter.

"Two
little grandchildren, twins, a girl and a boy, but they died in the same
raid."

"Good
God," said Reiter.

"My
son-in-law died too, not in the raid, but days later, from sorrow at the death
of his wife and children."

"That's
terrible," said Reiter.

"He
killed himself by taking rat poison," whispered Zeller in the dark.
"He suffered agonies for three days before he died."

Reiter
didn't know what to say anymore, partly because he was about to fall asleep, and
the last thing he heard was Zeller's voice saying that war was war and it was
best to forget everything, everything, everything. The truth is that Zeller
possessed an enviable serenity. This serenity was disturbed only when new
prisoners appeared or upon the return of the visitors who interrogated them one
by one inside the barracks. After three months it was the turn of those whose
last names started with Q,
R,
and S, and Reiter went in to talk to the
soldiers and some men in civilian dress, who politely asked him to face forward
and sideways and then searched through a couple of files that were probably
full of photographs. Then one of the civilians asked what he'd done during the
war and Reiter had to tell them that he'd been in Romania with the 79th and
then in Russia, where he'd been wounded several times.

The
soldiers and civilians wanted to see his wounds and he had to undress and show
them. One of the civilians, who spoke German with a
Berlin
accent, asked him whether he ate well
at the camp. Reiter said he ate like a king, and when the one who had asked the
question translated for the others, they all laughed.

"Do you like
American food?" asked one of the soldiers. The civilian translated the
question and Reiter said: "American meat is the best in the world."
They all laughed again.

"You're
right," said the soldier, "but what you're eating isn't American
meat. It's dog food."

This
time the translator (who chose not to translate the answer) and some of the
soldiers laughed so hard they fell down. A black soldier looked in the door
with a worried expression on his face and asked whether they were having
trouble with the prisoner. They ordered him to close the door and leave,
nothing was wrong, they were telling jokes. Then one man took out a pack of cigarettes
and offered one to Reiter. I'll smoke it later, said Reiter, and he stuck it
behind his ear. After this the soldiers suddenly turned serious and began to
write down the information Reiter gave them: date and place of birth, names of
parents, address of parents and of at least two family members or friends, et
cetera.

That night Zeller asked what
had happened during the interrogation
and Reiter told him everything. Did they ask
what year and month you joined the army? Yes. Did they ask where your recruitment
office was? Yes. Did they ask what division you served in? Yes. Were there
photographs? Yes. Did you see them? No. When he had finished his own private
interrogation, Zeller pulled his blanket up over his face and seemed to fall
asleep but after a while Reiter heard him mutter in the dark.

On the next visit, which took place a week later, only two
interrogators came to the camp and there were no lines or interrogations. The
prisoners were made to stand in formation and the black soldiers went through
the ranks, pulling out approximately ten men, whom they led to two trucks, into
which they were loaded after they'd been handcuffed. These prisoners, the camp
commander told them, were suspected of being war criminals, and then he ordered
them to disband and resume their usual activities. When the visitors returned a
week later they moved on to the letters
T
,
U
, and
V
and
this time Zeller really got nervous. His voice was as gentle as ever, but his
talk and manner of speech changed: words came tumbling from his lips and at
night he couldn't stop whispering. He spoke quickly, as if compelled by reasons
beyond his control, reasons he scarcely understood. He craned his neck toward
Reiter and leaned on one elbow and began to whisper and moan and imagine scenes
of splendor that together formed a chaotic assemblage of dark cubes stacked one
on top of the other.

During the day things were different. Zeller once again radiated
dignity and decorum, and although he didn't associate with anyone except his
old comrades from the Volkssturm, almost everyone respected him and believed
him to be a decent person. For Reiter, however, who had to endure his nightly
disquisitions, Zeller's countenance betrayed a progressive deterioration, as if
inside of him a merciless struggle were being waged between diametrically
opposed forces. What forces were these? Reiter didn't know, but he sensed that
both sprang from a single source, which was madness. One night Zeller said his
name wasn't Zeller, it was Sammer, and it therefore stood to reason that he
need not appear before the alphabetic interrogators on their next visit.

That
night Reiter wasn't tired and the full moon filtered through the fabric of the
tent like boiling coffee through a sock.

"My name is
Leo Sammer and some of the things I've told you are true and some aren't,"
said the fake Zeller, rolling on his cot as if his whole body itched. "Do
you recognize my name?"

"No,"
said Reiter.

"There's
no reason you should, son. I'm not nor have I ever been a famous man, although during
the time you've been far from home my name has grown like a malignant tumor and
now it turns up on the most unlikely documents," said Sammer in his soft
and increasingly rapid German. "Of course, I was never in the Volkssturm.
I fought, never let it be said I didn't fight, I did fight, like any wellborn
German, but I served in other theaters, not on the military battlefield but on
the economic and political battlefield. My wife, thanks be to God, isn't
dead," he added after a long silence in which he and Reiter watched the
light sweeping the tent like a bird's wing or a claw. "My son died, that
much is true. My poor son. An intelligent boy who liked sports and reading.
What more can you ask of a son. Serious, an athlete, a good reader. He died in
Kursk
. At the time, I was
the assistant director of an organization responsible for supplying workers to
the Reich, whose main offices were located in a Polish town just a few miles
outside the territory of the General Government.

When
they gave me the news I stopped believing in the war. My wife, to make matters
worse, began to lose her grip on her senses. I wouldn't wish my situation on
anyone. Not even my worst enemy! A son dead in the prime of life, a wife with
constant migraines, and an exhausting job that required maximum effort and
concentration from me. But I forged ahead thanks to my methodical nature and
tenacity. The truth is, I worked to forget my misfortunes. As a result, I was
appointed the head of the government organization to which I lent my services.
From one day to the next, our work tripled. Not only did I have to send workers
to German factories but now I also had to ensure the proper functioning of the
bureaucracy in that rainy part of Poland, a sad backwater we were trying to
Germanize, where every day was gray and the earth seemed stained with soot and
no one enjoyed himself in civilized fashion, so that even the ten-year-old boys
were alcoholics, if you can believe it, poor boys, but they were wild, too, and
all they cared about was liquor, as I've said, and soccer.

Sometimes I watched them from
the window of my office: they played in the street with a rag ball and their
running and jumping were truly pathetic, because the liquor they had drunk was
always making
them fall or miss easy goals. But I don't mean to go on and
on. The point is, these were soccer matches that often ended in blows. Or
kicks. Or with empty beer bottles broken over the heads of the rival team. And
I watched it all from the window and didn't know what to do. My God, how to end
that plague, how to improve the situation of those innocents.

I
confess: I was lonely, very lonely. I couldn't rely on my wife. The only time
the poor thing left her dark room was to beg me on her knees to let her return
to
Germany
, to
Bavaria
, to join her
sister. My son had died. My daughter lived in
Munich
, happily married and far removed from
my troubles. Work piled up and my fellow workers were losing heart. The war
wasn't going well and anyway it no longer interested me. How can someone who's lost
a son care about the war? My life, in short, unfolded under permanent black
clouds.

Then
I received a new order: I was to take charge of a group of Jews from
Greece
.
I think they were from
Greece
.
They might have been Hungarian or Croatian. But probably not, the Croats killed
their own Jews. Maybe they were Serbian. Anyway, let's call them Greek. They
were sending me a trainload of Greek Jews. Me! And I didn't have anywhere to
put them. It was a sudden order, unexpected. I ran a civil operation, not military
or SS. I didn't have experts on the subject, I just sent foreign workers to the
factories of the Reich, so what would I do with these Jews? Courage, I said to
myself, and one morning I went to the station to wait for them. With me I
brought the local police chief and all the officers I could muster at the last
minute. The train from
Greece
stopped on a siding. An official made me sign some papers confirming the
delivery of five hundred Jews, men, women, and children. I signed. Then I
approached the cars and the smell was unbearable. I forbade them all to be
opened. This could lead to the spread of disease, I said to myself. Then I
phoned a friend, who put me in touch with a man who ran a camp for Jews near
Chelmno. I explained my problem, asked what I could do with my Jews. I should
say that there were no Jews in the town where I worked, just drunk children and
drunk women and old people who spent all day chasing the sun's meager rays. The
man from Chelmno said to call back in two days, that believe it or not he had
problems of his own.

I thanked him and
hung up. I returned to the siding. The official and the engineer were waiting
for me. I bought them breakfast. Coffee and sausage and fried eggs and hot
bread. They ate like pigs. Not me. I had other things on my mind. They told me
I had to unload the train, their orders were to return to southern
Europe
that very night. I met their gaze and said I
would. The official said I could count on him and his guards to empty the cars
in exchange for
a
hand
with cleanup from the station crew. I said that was fine.

We
set to the task. The smell that came from the cars when they were opened made
even the woman who cleaned the station washrooms wrinkle her nose. Eight Jews
had died on the trip. The official made the survivors fall into ranks. They
didn't look well. I ordered them to be taken to an abandoned tannery. I told
one of my employees to go to the bakery and buy all the bread available to
distribute to the Jews. Have them charge it to me, I said, but be quick about
it. Then I went to my office to take care of other urgent business. At noon I
was informed that the train from
Greece
was leaving the village.
From the window of my office I watched those drunken boys play soccer and for
an instant I felt as if I'd had too much to drink myself.

I
spent the next few hours seeking a more permanent arrangement for the Jews. One
of my secretaries suggested I put them to work. In
Germany
? I asked. Here, he said. It
wasn't a bad idea. I ordered that some fifty Jews be given brooms and that they
be divided into brigades of ten to sweep my ghost town. Then I returned to the
main business of the day. Several factories in the Reich wanted at least two
thousand workers and I had missives from the General Government requesting available
labor. I made a few phone calls: I said I had five hundred Jews available, but
they wanted Poles or Italian prisoners of war.