Alphabet House (7 page)

One of the naked men got up, arms hanging limply by his sides, and began peeing mechanically over both the mattress and his neighbour, who made a feeble evasive attempt. The nurse rushed forward and struck him on the neck, instantly interrupting the stream, and led him over to the buckets at the far end of the room.

Bryan counted himself lucky not to have had anything to eat or drink for several days.

The door leading to the back building opened and a trolley was wheeled inside, loaded with blankets.

It remained there for some time.

The floor wasn’t cold, but the draught from the entrance gave them goose flesh. Bryan curled up in order to keep warm.

After a while someone started groaning. Several of the naked men were trembling visibly. The two nurses who had been ordered to watch over them shook their heads in irritation and pointed towards the trolley. Apparently they were supposed to fetch their own blankets. A couple of thin, gnarled men jumped over the mattresses with no sign of embarrassment and snatched a blanket, not caring whether it lay at the top of the heap or the bottom.

The rest of the men stayed where they were. Dazed. Their minds clouded over.

Bryan lay there for several hours. The monotonous rhythm of chattering teeth grew louder as the men grew colder. The nurses sat nodding, stealing some sleep on the stools at the far end of the room.

In the feeble light Bryan could scarcely tell James’ huddled body from all the others. Then he saw a corner of Jill’s scarf sticking out from under the mattress.
For God’s sake, leave it there!
he begged silently. Suddenly, James shot up in bed and rushed towards the pails. For a few seconds one of them resounded hollowly.

The act itself lasted only a moment, but the reverberations of his upset stomach and chills kept James frozen in his awkward position for some time. Then he snorted in exasperation and fumbled around the buckets without finding paper to dry himself.

Without any further hygienic considerations James rushed over to the trolley, seized a blanket and ran nimbly back to his mattress.
Why didn’t you bring me a blanket, idiot?
Bryan thought. Glancing over at the dozing, uniformed women beside the end wall, he considered following suit.

But he didn’t.

Later that night the outside door opened with a crash, immediately followed by a blinding light as the ceiling lights were
switched on. Bryan lay motionless. Without hesitation the SS soldiers went straight over to two men who lay huddled in their blankets. They bent over them, found their case notes and tore off a corner of the front page.

One of the men thus branded lay beside James. The bundle of rags lying on top of him was James’ blanket. Bryan doubted whether he himself could have been so cunning.

James had deliberately fished only one blanket out of the pile.

The night inspection had woken the whole room. Even though by then most of them had been dressed in nightshirts and the blankets had at long last been distributed, the moaning increased hour by hour. The effect of the medicine was wearing off.

More and more of them tried to shut out their surroundings with rocking movements, awkward contortions and blank expressions. Bryan had never seen anything like it. For his own part, he lay quite still.

Some men he hadn’t seen before switched on the lights and cursorily inspected the crowd of bodies on the floor. One of them was wearing a black, ankle-length coat, buttoned to the neck. When he stamped on the floor everyone looked up. He rapped out an order and a couple of the patients reluctantly got up and tugged at their neighbours’ nightshirts until they, too, rose to their feet. Finally only six or seven men remained lying down.

Accompanied by a couple of orderlies, the man in the coat asked one of the recumbent patients a question and didn’t receive a reply. He signalled to his assistants to take hold of the patient under the arms and force him into a standing position. When they let go of him again, he collapsed like a rag doll and struck his neck on the floor between the mattresses with an impotent smack that made Bryan gasp. The nurses glanced up at the officer as they knelt down to help the unconscious man back onto his bed, but he was already striding straight over to Bryan.

When Bryan stared into the pale face that was inspecting him, he chose to get to his feet.

The swaying movements and slight trembling at the knees were genuine enough, since he hadn’t stood up for several days. The blood rushed from his brain and made him dizzy. When they let go of him, however, he remained standing. James was the only one of the seven to follow his example.

During the smarting, painful delousing that followed, Bryan tried to move closer to James, but the women continually slapped their rubber gloves against their rubber aprons, making sure the patients were in constant movement.

James stood in a queue alongside a grubby tiled wall, hugging a numbered shirt like all the others and waiting for the next row of showers to become vacant. One of the naked men stood in the bath, head bent back and staring wide-eyed straight up into the shower. He stood like this for a long time and when he began to scream with pain the howls spread from one deranged man to another like a wolves’ chorus.

Blows and threats restored order almost as quickly as the commotion had erupted. The man who had started it stood moaning with bloodshot eyes as they beat him, totally unaware of what was going on around him. Then they dragged him by the hair and flung him against the wall. He didn’t stop moaning until they pulled the straitjacket over him and hauled him away.

Before they both returned to the gym again, Bryan caught sight of James as he apathetically let himself be pushed under the ice-cold showers, smiling and humming softly, still hugging his shirt.

Inside the gymnasium they were all equipped with the same-sized shoes and arranged in three rows alongside the ribbed walls facing the middle of the room. A few of them were sorted out immediately and grouped together along the outer wall. Among them Bryan could recognise a couple of the poor fools who had fetched their own blankets during the night. They apparently didn’t understand their special status.

In the meantime several tables had been placed in front of the canvas booths. The man in the long coat had discarded his flowing garment and was sitting with other security officers and white-coated representatives of the medical corps. There were no longer any women among them.

One of the men gave a start when his name was called out. A soldier hauled him in front of this court of inquiry. Several names were called without anyone reacting, whereupon a security officer looked over his list and began calling out a number that, as far as Bryan could tell, corresponded to the shirt markings. Bryan wished desperately he could understand what was being said. He listened intensely. As his confusion grew, an officer pointed at him and a soldier dragged him into the line.

James was among the last to be called. According to customary Prussian thoroughness they had apparently been called up in alphabetical order. He, too, had to be pushed into line.

The wounded soldiers were behind the curtains for an average of about two or three minutes before they were led out again and placed in a new row against the back wall in the same order as before. They didn’t seem to have been harmed, but stood to attention in a ridiculously exaggerated manner with expressionless grey faces.

Soft muttering and rustling sounds could be heard from behind the curtain. Nothing alarming. One of the patients shouted his replies like shrill orders, whereupon a couple of those who were waiting their turn clicked their non-existent heels and puffed out their chests.

Behind the faded green canvas one of the officers sat behind a flimsy desk reading Bryan’s case notes while a doctor looked over his shoulder. The soldier who had led him in pushed Bryan down onto a chair in front of the desk and then hastily withdrew to the other side of the curtain. As the officer ran his finger down the page, the attitude towards Bryan seemed to change slightly. They nodded to him, addressed him respectfully and nodded again as Bryan tried to control the fear and uneasiness that was about to overcome him. Even though they smiled at him they could become his executioners at a moment’s notice.

The questions they asked hung heavily in the air. The security officer drummed his fingers on the edge of the table and glanced up at the doctor, who immediately grasped Bryan’s wrist in order to take his pulse. Then he shone a light into Bryan’s eyes, slapped him on the side of the head and shone it again. Bryan felt paralyzed and didn’t notice the doctor walking round him. The smack of hands being clapped right in front of his face made him blink and hunch his shoulders with such a start that his entire torso shook. However the observers didn’t appear to regard this as anything unusual.

The doctor walked behind the officer who, looking up from his papers, did an about-turn, grabbed something from the table and flung it towards Bryan, all in one movement. He would not have been able to defend himself even if he’d tried. A pain at the bridge of his nose made him open his eyes wide.

Apart from that he kept a straight face.

From the next compartment came the sound of a blow that made the patient cry out, and then another blow that made him stop. The security officer smiled at Bryan again and conferred with the doctor, who spoke so fast that Bryan would not have been able to understand a word even if it had been his mother tongue. The officer shrugged his shoulders and got up as Bryan was led out to the others.

Here he came to stand just opposite James, who was still waiting in the relatively short line. His dripping-wet shirt still clung to his body. Just under the neckline was a dark shadow. Bryan stiffened. James was wearing Jill’s scarf again. Even though this crazy act could prove fatal, James appeared relaxed and calm. But Bryan knew better. Beneath the facade he radiated terror. All his senses were on red alert. Without his talisman he had nothing to cling to.

But it would also be the death of him if he didn’t get rid of it.

It’s OK
, Bryan mouthed, but James just shook his head silently and took a step forward like the others.

The chief security officer finally got up from his seat and signalled to the little group of men over in the corner, those who had helped themselves to blankets during the night, to line up beside the curtain nearest the door.

Behind the curtain, loud bursts of anger almost raised the roof and the canvas began pulsating as if a fight were going on behind it. The chief security officer’s face was bright red when they tore down the curtain and hauled the man who had been questioned across the floor, his feet dragging after him and torment painted all over his face.

Two guards seized his arm. The culprit stared wildly at the apathetic assembly, searching in vain for something to cling to. Bryan looked at him with eyes out of focus. Blood was quietly trickling down the man’s forehead. He, too, had been hit by something. Perhaps he’d made the mistake of trying to ward it off.

The senior officer sat down heavily on the corner of the table behind him, smiling cruelly at the guards as they dragged the patient around amongst the others so they could see him from close up. Then he stopped smiling. Breathing deeply in aggressive concentration, he roared his accusation at the rows of men who again began to fidget nervously. The words tumbled out in bursts as the furious man stood with his hands clenched behind his back, rocking back and forth on his toes. There was no mistaking one of the words.

Malingering!

The man stopped trembling when he heard the charge. He let his head fall limply forward, aware of his guilt, unmasked and prepared to suffer the consequences.

Suddenly the officer stopped short in the middle of his outburst of rage. Then, smiling jovially, he spread his arms wide as he appealed gently to his audience. Bryan grasped that he was trying to get other malingerers to own up, if there were any. Nothing would happen to them as long as they stepped forward now, while there was still time.

It was impossible to look over at James as long as this beast was inspecting them.
We’re not giving ourselves up, James!
Bryan pleaded silently, mostly to himself.

The officer stood waiting, nodding smilingly at the groups of men for just as long as it took Bryan to say the Lord’s Prayer. Then suddenly he stepped behind the accused, drew his pistol and executed the culprit with a shot to the back of the head before the man could manage to scream.

The rest of the assembly scarcely reacted. Blood welled out of the man’s head for a moment and flowed slowly across the floor towards James. Bryan watched imperceptibly. James stood stock-still, white in the face, but no more so than the protracted standing to attention could warrant.

The two guards took hold of the body and dragged it across the floor. One of the white-coated doctors was still shielding his face with his hands in delayed shock. When he came to his senses his protests sounded feeble and remote. The security officer turned on his heel. No report would be written about
that
incident. Protests were out of the question.

Bryan began counting the seconds while James was behind the curtain. When he reached 200, James was led out again, remote and paralyzed. The next man in line stood still, ignoring the shouts of the doctor who was holding the curtain open. As the soldiers tried to grab him under his arms he quietly toppled forward. The soldiers took the next one instead and pulled him around the man on the floor. He had rolled on to his side and was sobbing almost deliriously, constantly repeating a name Bryan had heard before. A sweetheart, wife, mother or daughter?

James had begun humming again, slowly and tonelessly. His skinny, red-eyed neighbour stood ruminating in his straitjacket as urine dripped down his shirt, which grew darker and darker.

Bryan imagined he might have lapped up the shower water too eagerly while staring up into it.

He awoke with a start. Someone had shouted, ‘Leave me alone!’ Could it have been himself, since he had understood it? Bryan shuddered at the thought and glanced over at the nurse who had just been standing beside his bed. So he’d only been out for a moment. The nurse poured a glass of water and put two tablets in his neighbour’s mouth. She hadn’t heard anything. Maybe he’d dreamt it.

By now the whole ward lay quiet. Bryan looked cautiously around, cursing the short second when he and James had become separated on their way from the wooden barrack buildings. Otherwise they would be lying side by side now. This would undoubtedly have felt safer. As it was, Bryan lay in bed number five to the left of the door, while James lay at the far end on the opposite side. Twelve beds on Bryan’s side, ten on James’. That was six beds too many according to the construction of the ward. Now the beds had scarcely a foot between them. They were sticking haphazardly out from the wall. Some were in front of a window, others in between, but most of them stood completely at random. It made an extremely disorderly impression.

This pale-green ward with its high ceiling was about sixty feet long and thirty feet wide. It constituted his entire world. Besides the bed, his earthly possessions consisted of a time-worn chair that stood in the central passageway together with twenty-two other such chairs, a hospital shirt, a pair of slippers and a thin dressing gown.

Apart from four beds already occupied by unconscious, wounded and bandaged patients, the whole ward was filled with soldiers from the same transport who had been ordered into the bed they happened to be standing next to. A couple of them kept their shoes on in bed and messed up the bedclothes before the nurses had distributed the pills. Each man was fed two white pills followed by a gulp of water from a mug that was passed around and constantly filled up from a white enamel jug.

The nurses had almost completed their round.

The smell of the first meal was indefinable and scarcely appetizing, but extraordinarily tempting nevertheless. Bryan had not dared to think about food for days, but now his mouth was watering, making the final waiting moments torture.

The lumps on the iron plate looked like celery but were tasteless. Perhaps it was kohlrabi. Bryan didn’t know. His family was used to quite different food.

The men’s greedy scraping with their spoons and animal-like chewing spread through the room like wildfire, and Bryan realised that not all their senses were numbed.

The plate over on James’ bed was already empty and tipped dangerously over the edge of his bed. His relaxed face and the regular heaving of his chest were clear proof of man’s incredible ability to adapt to circumstances. Bryan envied James his peaceful slumber. The dread of revealing himself in his sleep still preoccupied him. A single word and he would end up like that poor soul in the gym whose body was now lying between the barracks, flung into the snow.